Announcements

Join the ongoing conversation on Discord: https://discord.gg/w6Tpkp2

Please read the current update for instructions on downloading the latest update. Players with Mac versions of the game will not be affected, but you will have a slightly longer wait for your version of the new maps. Please make a copy of your character folder before running the new update, just to make sure you don't lose any of your custom work.

It looks like we can give everyone a list of minimum specs for running City of Titans. Please keep in mind that this is 'for now' until we are able to add more graphics and other system refinements. Currently you will need :
Windows 10 or later required; no Intel integrated graphics like UHD, must have AMD or NVIDIA card or discrete chipset with 4Gb or more of VRAM
At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.

To purchase your copy of the City of Titans Launcher, visit our store at https://store.missingworldsmedia.com/ A purchase of $50 or more will give you a link to download the Launcher for Windows or Mac based machines.

The Five Ask-a-Dev's Answered

Q: Regarding lore: Are you finding it difficult or easy to pull together cohesive storylines that will take a player from character creation to end game? Is the core of the story line (primary game plot) based off a 2 faction system (Such as Recluse and Statesman were) or has the story developed into a multiple factions all fighting for/against each other?

A: [Kitsune9Tails]

It is not particularly difficult for our crew to come up with cohesive storylines. If anything, there may be more ideas than gameplay hours.

We have 50 different factions all vying for various agendas, but things do eventually split between crimefighter and criminal on some level. This is neither a black and white world, nor a world completely composed of shades of grey. It is entirely possible for crimefighters/heroes to be violent, lawless and/or dishonorable. It is entirely possible for villains/criminals to be law-abiding (as in twisting/subverting laws), honorable, and/or non-violent. Side switching will definitely be a thing.

Moreover, NPC factions will shift alliances and agendas as the story develops, so it is as inaccurate to say there are only 2 factions as to say there are 50. Gaining favor with any faction will likely cause gains and losses in popularity with several other factions.


Q:The keybind system in CoH was probably its biggest selling point to me. Are you going to have a similar system wherein we can bind any power to any key, along with the fun stuff like spoken text, costume changes, and emotes? (My personal favorite use of this: activating 4 powers with a timed press/release cycle of a single button)

A: [DeathSheepFromHell]

I would consider user-configurable keybinds and some form of basic macro language to be a bare minimum. Whatever means we use to achieve it, the current plans actually call for adding several additional types of functionality over the CoH/V system. We would *like* to go beyond that (in fact, *way* beyond that), to things which, to the best of my knowledge, CoH/V never even attempted to support. And we are looking at options there, but saying anything more on that subject would be premature.

Fear not, however. Your ovine coding-fiend used to have a full set of keypad bindings for his MMs, along with several other rebound commands, and some that weren't even keybindings, per se. Whatever we end up with, we'll have your day to day needs covered at launch, and the more advanced ones will not be forgotten — I can't promise those will be in at launch, but they certainly aren't out of scope for it yet, either.


Q: I'd love to hear anything you can tell us about your plans for, and implementation of, procedurally generated maps.

A: [DeathSheepFromHell]

Getting into this fully would be its own update, or rather, its own *series* of updates, but I can offer you both a handful of details and some of the design philosophy involved:

* The 'overworld' (main city areas, as opposed to mission or social instanced maps) terrain is not actually procedural. It is, instead, based on combining sampled data from real terrain in real places, then manual adjustments where needed. This data is currently being managed in 'real' GIS tools (GDAL+QGis but that may be extended a bit in the future). Most of the dry terrain sampling is LIDAR based samples on a 1 meter grid, which means the vertical measurement is accurate to within a couple of centimeters at worst, usually better.

* The overworld roads are expected to be composed of a combination of hand-placed roads and 'anchors' for certain crucial spots with algorithmic placement of the intermediary roads based on the urban planning style that would have been appropriate to the era in which that part of the city was built, potentially modified by later overbuilding in a few of the areas.

* Similarly, while there will be a significant number of hand-placed buildings (including, of course, pretty much all of the 'important' ones), there is simply too much area in the city for it to be practical to hand-place every house, business, etc. That said, 'procedural' here does *not* mean 'random': variation will be controlled in a couple of ways, but much as with the streets, it will be heavily influenced by factors such as how old the neighborhood is, what disasters it has survived (or *not* survived), what architectural styles were in fashion, what sort of 'audience' it was intended to sell to, and so on.

* Unless the intent of an area is specifically about having a modernist subdivision built of pre-fab or modular houses where the most significant distinguishing feature of most houses is whether they picked taupe, eggshell, sky blue, or seafoam as the exterior color scheme… you won't see that. On the other hand, things also won't be radically different within a neighborhood. Except when they are. Whether that's a 50 foot amateur radio mast, a Barbie-pink house because there is no HOA, or some other oddity, they'll be there. Sometimes, anyway. Just often enough to be noteworthy, not enough that they stop being so.

* One of the goals that is somewhat more up in the air about "how to accomplish it" due to game-play requirements: buildings should be the same shape on the outside and the inside. Because we can use the same procedural logic that assembles the building exterior to generate the interior for an instance map. If you walk into something that is bigger on the inside, it should be because it really IS bigger on the inside somehow. I am expecting this to be one of the hardest parts to truly get right, because what works for a plausible modern office building runs almost directly counter to what makes for a good mission instance. But we have several techniques already in the works to experiment with. However, even in the worst case scenario, things will at least be a lot less obviously "wait, we've been flying along a single path with no turns for ten minutes, and it only takes me fifteen seconds to fly past it on the outside".

* For "throwaway" instance maps, we are looking at doing much the same thing as we will with housing in the overworld: the map will be coherent, but you won't have memorized every warehouse map in the game after two dozen missions. This will be both easier and harder than the previous point; easier because we have a bit more flexibility, harder because we will need to get the map generator to place *everything* properly, while the 'fixed' interior maps at least have a fallback of "have a human tweak it."

* One major implication of the previous two points is that buildings will in fact be treated as three-dimensional spaces. If the floor is made of something you can punch through? Go for it. Just remember that that means the enemies might have placed something on the ceiling of the level below you, as well… Although I promise no holes in the adminium. Or at least, if there are, I will find the responsible party and use them to seal said hole while we patch over it.


Q: What do you think was the greatest mechanical or game play flaw in CoH, and how are you addressing this in CoT?

A: [Warcabbit] There are a number of them. For example, the whole PvP mess. But the core flaw is that CoH was a happy accident. It was designed to be something like EQ with capes. What we got was a game where the Holy Trinity - tank, healer, DPS - was all but irrelevant, and you could play any type of character you wanted and still be useful.

We're improving on that by doing the whole thing again, except on purpose.

Enhancement Diversification was necessary to do IOs. So we're building the game so we won't need to do ED in order for our crafted augments and refinements to function. (You will note that if Damage is only available as an Augment, it is impossible to six-slot it.) (Editors note: Warcabbit is referring to the information contained in the following update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/959841)

We're making sure control is a big and fun part of the game, on purpose. We're being real sure that travel powers are controlled properly for PvP and regular play, so artificial slowdowns won't be quite the same as CoH's patched in work.

And where we choose wrongly, we're making sure we can go in and change that.

A: [DeathSheepFromHell]

I will second this — what they ended up with actually has some *fundamental* differences from "holy trinity" game-play, at a game theory level. Interestingly, several of those differences actually drive some of why PvP had such persistent issues; it wasn't just "everyone is OP!" since OP-on-OP isn't unbalanced in and of itself.


Q: What significant changes in game play will City of Titans have from City of Heroes?

A: [Warcabbit]

"No single thing from CoH will be the same. There are multiple reasons from this, from the practical (we know how to do it better) to the legal (That would be such a rip off, man.). However, the sum and total of CoH and CoT should wind up being highly similar - as similar as a 1964 1/2 Ford Mustang and a 2013 Ford Mustang. We are not remaking City of Heroes. We are making the game that should have been City of Heroes 2 - a new generation of game, with the lessons learned from ten years of listening to the CoH devs, with ten years of lessons learned, and learned well.

The differences in the game will, we hope, not be different enough to harm people who just want to play CoH again. Generally, they exist because we see a better way to do something. (Knockdown versus Knockback? Sometimes you wanted one, sometimes you wanted another. We've made it better.) Some changes may not be liked, and we will work to improve them. Some, we hope very much, you will find the same joy we have found in creating them. (Masteries are the start of so many new things to do to and with your character.)

The controls will be largely the same (We think we can improve on pets - but we can't implement them yet), the enemies will be colorful and you will fight them in batches. Missions will be instanced, and the streets will be alive. (It is possible our purse muggers will be a bit more dynamic.) Teaming will be easy, and large in number - eight to ten is our aim. Finding teammates will be a snap, and there will always, always, always be something for you to do. In the end, we're trying to make the game CoH could have been, if it could start again, knowing what we know now.


Talk about this here!: http://cityoftitans.com/forum/discuss-five-ask-devs