It seems that most of the topics I read are about features and qualities we want in CoT. When I think back to when I started playing CoH there were sooooooo many things not there. Ninja run, auction house, recipes, a decent map, nerfing, CoV, mission architect, etc. were all woefully absent. This topic may be a little late, but It seems that with limited dev resources there are some things that can and maybe should be delayed. I searched a little and didn't find a related post. So what can we do without on day one?
NERF:
It's hard for me to pick anything since I want it all, but I do think i can do without nerfing. Personally I don't understand the burning need that most game developers seem to have to make all classes equal. Sometimes I want to play a super powered character that smacks every enemy effortlessly. Sometimes I want to play a low powered character that struggles through every conflict. I suppose this can be accomplished by a difficulty setting, but nerfing my fire/ice tank totally caused a long rage quit. I can do without nerfing.
VILLAINS:
I never really played villains much. It just never felt right to me. Although I imagine that it may be critical for others to balance the game, I think I can do without it.
MISSION ARCHITECT:
Although I think that opening up the story telling as wide as possible can lead to the best new content, I don't think it's needed day one.
EVERYTHING?:
If I think about it long enough I'd almost be happy to have the costume creator, travel powers, and chat. Basically Titan Icon. I know they can't release something so incomplete, but it might be nice for those of us on the forums and the kickstarter.
Your thoughts?
'Nerfs': Well, as I recall, most of the nerfing came, not from making 'all ATs equal', but from suppressing certain powers that were performing beyond initial expectations. We will have to Expect a certain amount of rebalancing as the game matures. On the other hand, yes, I did scream with rage and existential agony over some of the changes made in CoH.
I'm pleased to say that I've already seen factors going into CoT that will make some of those horrible experiences less likely.
Villans: While I agree with you, that Player Villains are not something I would ask for in a game, I'm aware that a certain segment of our community feel the opposite. If we conclude that Villains will be in the game eventually, then it's better to build the game with that in mind, from the start.
Player Created Content: AKA 'Mission Architect', if I recall right, is not planned to be in the game, at start. However, the TOOLS needed for such content are incredibly useful and the Devs have said the tools are being built for their own use, with the Plan being to release a sub-set of those tools to the Players "soon". A Base Building module is also in the works, I believe, so we'll have character-modeling, interior-modeling, and mission-modeling tools built into the game, instead of shoe-horned in after the fact.
'Everything': I believe the biggest problem with releasing any sort of 'pre-release game' without full functionality is not with us, in the eager community, but with Outsiders in the larger gaming community. They will have expectations. If the game does not deliver, that will generate a lot of bad energy and that may become an insurmountable issue. It would be better to let us 'suffer' and enjoy Paragon Chat, than to release a non-functional game. Look at all the flack Valiance is dealing with.
Be Well!
Fireheart
"A certain segment of our community will feel the opposite" PRESENT! ;)
Yeah don't make the CoH mistake of ignoring Redside.
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I personally like heroes as much as villains. I don't skew towards one side. I also like rouges and vigilantes.
Or that guy/gal that just uses his powers to help with mundane things....
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You make a valuable point here that I think most of us (including myself) forget sometimes: CoH had a full 8.5 years AFTER its launch to introduce all sorts of new items/features so we can't expect that CoT will be anywhere near as instantaneously complete as CoH was anytime soon. It's almost not really a question of deciding what "ought to be" prioritized as much as what "will" be delayed simply because the CoT folks will not have had the time to do everything by launch time regardless of their desires.
I would agree that if a given game is designed well from the beginning then major nerfs should never be necessary in the first place. I might even agree that it's probably not absolutely necessary for a game to try excessively too hard to make every class 100% perfectly equal because as we likely all can agree that's an effectively impossible goal to achieve. Classes are always going to be "apples and oranges" based on how different they usually are to each other.
But even though [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Global_Defense_Nerf]GDN[/url] and [url=https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Diversification]ED[/url] were wildly unpopular at the time most people have begrudgingly concluded that they were absolutely necessary not only for the overall health of the game but for paving the way to allow the entire IO system to happen. I strongly believe the game would not have lasted as long as it did AFTER those adjustments (6+ years) if those bitter pills were not imposed as quickly and decisively as they were. I get that you might have felt individually cheated that your fire tank could no longer pull an entire map's worth of critters but if you can't seriously see now, in hindsight, how stupidly overpowered that was then I'm not sure what else to say about it.
The key reason why adding "villains" never quite worked out in CoH was that the whole concept was basically a "tacked on" update to the main game instead of being something that was well designed/integrated from the beginning.
Remember that in CoT there won't be binary "heroes" and "villains" with hard-wired redsides and bluesides. The alignment system will be such that everyone will exist in various "shades of grey" and the ONE city will automatically be open to everyone. There may be neighborhoods that favor some alignments over others but there won't be strict "sides". If you still want to play as a completely "squeaky clean" hero you'll be able to do that. But by design villains aren't going to be relegated to an isolated wasteland where they are trapped all by themselves.
I would agree that strictly speaking players don't NEED access to the Mission Architect on launch day.
But as Fireheart implied if this game is designed correctly the Devs will have already created maybe 80-90% of everything the Mission Architect will become for themselves as their own primary tool for creating Dev-built mission content. By the time launch day happens the Mission Architect might not be polished enough to let players have access to it but it would likely not take that much more effort to get it ready for prime time. Ideally I would expect to see the Mission Architect released to the players as one of the first major updates after the launch.
One of the very few things we do know at this point is that the Devs want to release the costume creator as a standalone app before the release of the main game itself. This was mentioned way back during the Kickstarter. As far as just having a "place" with travel powers and chat I'm sure those will be among the first things that'll be included in the first beta builds of the game.
I understand the desire to get something (anything) we can log into ASAP but I'd rather wait another six months or a year to have an actual core of a functional game with working missions and city zones and so on. I don't need the first betas to have dozens of zones or hundreds of missions, but it should at least have all the bare essentials needed for a workable game.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Accounting for every possible combination in a game like Coh or COT can be difficult. We have to keep in mind that players are a clever bunch. With a game like CoH (and now CoT), the population of players have an enormous number of "tools in the toolbox", so to speak. They can stumble upon exploits or overpowered combinations and such that my have been missed in Beta.
As for the ATs being equal - Lothic is correct - trying to perfectly balance them is a fool's errand. As long as they have their niche, and do it well, the classes should be fine. Though, again, as more people play and interact with each other when the game goes live and more information is collected for the devs to mine, some adjustment may be necessary.
The ideal would be "no nerf hammers ever" but that may be unrealistic - there will likely be some continuing adjustments after launch. Hell - some of these may take the form of buffs (as several of the hero classes like Defenders, Controllers and Tanks were buffed in the later years of CoH)
Agreed. I wasn't a fan of it at the time either, but I came to understand it was a VERY necessary adjustment. A "bitter pill" is an apt description.
To be clear I wasn't trying to say that if a game is "well designed" it'll never need any nerfing. As you say something unforeseen could always crop up that becomes so glaring that it needs to be fixed regardless. I was just implying there are ways to minimize the need for MAJOR nerfs.
I believe the Devs of CoT have a reasonable chance to avoid something as drastic as GDN and ED if for no other reason than they are aware of what lead up to those situations and can hopefully learn from the past. Of course even with that there's always the slim chance a new scenario might arise that would justify something like that again. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Lothic, you do a great job of analyzing what I typed, but did you answer the question? What can you do without... at least on day one? Jiggle physics maybe? =)
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I kind of answered you by saying I'm willing to live with the expectation there will be relatively less content in CoT on day one than there was in CoH after 8.5 years. If you want something specific I'll say fully functional PvP. PvP is important and I realize some people really want it ASAP. But it was never a huge part of the overall CoH community so MWM probably doesn't need to make it a top launch day priority.
As far as "jiggle physics" goes I have always said (despite all the good-natured "bickering" on the other thread) that it does NOT need to be a launch day priority. In fact I suspect that even if it does get implemented in CoT it might not be until some YEARS after launch. That said I won't stop wanting a reasonable version of it for CoT regardless. *shrugs*
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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PVP, that's a good one.
I had not thought of that. I agree it's vital to many players and thus to a healthy game, but I could certainly do without it on day 1.
Jiggle physics:
I'm just kidding about that of course. That being said I do think it's inevitable for games in general as the industry typically pushes for realistic graphics. The only way I see CoT not doing it is if they aim for some form of classic cartoon aesthetic.
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I'd be fine without PvP, crafting, mission architect, and lair/personal bases at launch I would be ok without base building, but, seeing how many SGs had someone spring for Mogul there might be a angry mob if it wasn't there. But the game needs to have content for player villains at launch as much as it needs it for heroes. I mean, what is the point of the tri-axis alignment system if it can only be influenced on the positive side?
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Crafting is probably going to be in at launch due to the fact that it's planned to be a big cog in the economy machine if I recall correctly. They want to avoid making the mistakes of CoH after all - and one of those mistakes was letting players build up a big nest egg of "cash" and THEN opening up crafting/trade. It would be best to get that in ASAP.
I think they wanted to have bases available for launch - or at least some form of "personal housing". Last I heard, they wanted to have the Avatar Builder running, then the Base Builder (using scaled-down/very simplified dev tools), and then go into beta for the full game. This is, of course, assuming that priorities haven't changed behind the scenes (it's probably been a couple years since I read that).
The mission builder is planned to be a scaled-down version of the same program they themselves are going to use to generate mission content. So if it's not in at launch, I can see it being in one of the first few updates. This would also help with the smaller amount of content usually present at the birth of an MMO.
While PvP is being considered in the design from the start, I can see actual PvP combat being held off for a while just to make sure things on the PvE side are working well first.
TBH, all I really need at launch is a reasonable selection of costume options to design my character and enough mission content and xp levels/powers to keep me busy till the next release. I can wait for everything else.
Spurn all ye kindle.
+1. As long as they have a decent regular release schedule, at least at first till content is built up, I'd be perfectly happy with this.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Did you know that in Star Trek Online the Cryptic developers are extremely determined to repeat the mistake of heavily ignoring Redside?
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That's one of many reasons I haven't bothered with STO in a few years even though I otherwise consider myself a big Trekkie (Trekker?).
I just read a bit of news the other day where they're finally offering a Tier 6 Connie but making it a rare lockbox thing. That's just wrong on so many levels. Here's hoping CoT doesn't do stupid things like that.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Yeah CoH spoiled me to other MMOs, I'm mostly SP now :p
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Avatar by MikeNovember
There are two sides to this coin of course. If the CoT devs start off with just as much material for villains as they do for heroes, but over the weeks, months, or even years, they notice that only a small percentage of players are on "redside", well then the devs will naturally feel the pressure to cater to the larger number of players.
All that said - when CoV was released, it was it's own thing - the player populations were effectively segregated (except for PvP - but then PvP was never a big thing in the game). Add that to the fact that CoH was already well established and closer integration was years away, redside kind of started off at a disadvantage and never really maintained the relative consistency of blueside. I've also seen discussions on the psychology of heroes vs villains and that people supposedly preferred to play heroes - I'm not sure if I put TOO much stock in that, but I remember reading more than a few redside bios featuring undercover, misunderstood or vigilante heroes. Heh - I still remember a discussion on the beta boards for CoV on whether villains should say "grats!" or "curses!" when a teammate levelled. Grats eventually won out LOL.
I know there are plenty of devs who were fans of redside so I'm hoping the two sides start off on an even footing in CoT. What happens after that? Well, that may indeed come down to populations, manpower and money - we will have to see I suppose.
I'm still under the educated impression that there won't be isolated "sides" in CoT. There will probably be places in the common city that are "heavily blue leaning" or "heavily red leaning" but I don't think there will be segregated "sides" that only villains and/or heroes are allowed to enter.
Remember the proposed alignment system is going to set everyone in the game on various spectrums/shades of grey. No one's going to be a strict 100% binary hero or villain. I feel that making the alignment system work this way will correct many of the shortcomings the CoH design suffered from. Villains will no longer be "trapped" in a semi-forgotten wasteland that was never fully developed/supported.
Sure it's possible that the theory about "most people preferring to play heroes" is true. But even if that's the case the alignment setup proposed by the CoT system will still allow the "villain minority" to enjoy the same basic "cityscape" that the heroes will be running around in.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Oh yes - that's what I am assuming as well - I wasn't trying to imply otherwise. That said while we may be inhabiting the same space for the most part, there will probably be different content/missions for blue, red (and grey?) what have you. Actually - I'm not sure how the alignment spectrum will interact with the content or what the plans for content distribution are (if there are any concrete ones at this point). I was just saying that I would not be surprised if the realities of population distribution influences the type of content added to the game post-launch.
Sure there still may be more "bluish" content than "reddish" overall. I just doubt the percentage is going to be like 90/10 in favor of blue like it seemed like it was in CoH.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Honestly, I wouldn't mind a blue (lawful, peaceful, honourable) slant to the content, but yeah, there better not be a 3:1 ratio like in CoH.
However, if the mission creator is at launch, UGC could fill the void. But the devs shouldn't crutch on it.
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Avatar by MikeNovember
I know what I can do without since my time in Eve Online.
No PvP in PvE. I am in high sect for a reason. This brings to many "gankers" who just want to mess with you because they can when you just want to do missions or be left alone an area that is suppose to be off limits. I hear some MMO's are going this route and allowing this nonsense into their games. Please no, just no.
"jiggle physics"? I think Guild Wars has that and it did not add to anything. Also since playing modded out Skyrim with it as well, I uninstalled it after a while because it was just silly.
Villains(red side) It can be a welcomed addition as long there is content is the same as heroes( Blue side).
One I can really say is what we can never be without, is an ever changing story. Make a comic book game the universe needs to feel alive. Heroes or villains can die and be stored away if story demands.
All 4 Mutants
Evolution is key. And mutants are key.
Capes don't "add anything" to a game either but I suspect a good number of people would still want them in CoT.
Any feature that's done in a "silly" way wouldn't be worth having. Unfortunately up until the last year or two pretty much every game that added "jiggle" has done it for the wrong reasons and usually done it very badly. Newer games like Fallout 4 have better mods for this and of course big games like WoW are doing it in better ways now too. Like anything else if a feature is finally implemented in a good, reasonable way it can positively add to the game's overall level of detail.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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I don't have anything near accurate numbers but I don't think they should deviate more than, say, 10% from how much content they do for each "side" otherwise I believe that it'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In that if they make less and less content for redside then people will be less and less inclined to play it in the first place.
Personally though I don't think that that many people will go "pure blue" for it count that much against the overall generation of "redside content", also taking into account that we share the world and not segregated as in CoH.
As I understand it red and blue are forgone conclusions. In fact it'll be closer to COX+GR at the end of life than any other point. Similarly crafting will be integrated early on. One of the dev team's problems with COH was that it was developed in a very focused manner and didn't leave much room to grow. To combat this COT will integrate switching sides and crafting from the start. Will they be fully flushed systems? Maybe not. But the goal is to have a framework which can be built upon. Day one goals are to have a lobby and a character creator. But there will be a strong foundation and a a frame capable of supporting robust crafting, alignment switching, player content, PVP, and much more.
So what can I do without on launch day? Well some of that depends on your definition of launch day. On launch day I expect a character creator and maybe a chat client. Anything beyond that is above and beyond what I understood the Kickstarter to be offering.
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Based on reading about how the alignment system is going to work in this game I'm still at least 95% sure we are NOT going have a strict "redsides" or "bluesides" like we had in CoH. There will be no segregated "sides" in the main city at all. Think of it using your own "COX+GR" example - now think of what the game would be like if it was ONLY like Going Rogue where everyone of ANY alignment co-exists in a single city. That's what CoT is going to be.
There won't be strict binary "heroes" and "villains" anymore. Everyone will exist on a spectrum of alignments and you can choose to be as "heroic" or "villainous" as you want to be. It's really the way CoH should have always been from the beginning and it was the direction they were trying to steer the game towards throughout most of its lifetime.
As I mentioned before it's obvious CoT will not start off being as big as CoH ended up being. But I think it's fairly likely that CoT will "launch" with more than just a character creator and chat client. If that's all we were going to start with we'd very probably have that already.
No, CoT is going have at least a basic amount of content (combat missions, street sweeping, etc.) to allow characters to level up. The Kickstarter did actually mention it would launch with a level cap of 30 which would then be increased as more content was added.
Now I suppose you could quibble over the strict definition of "launch" to include the alpha/beta testing phases. If you're blurring that distinction then sure the very first public testing cycles might only feature a chat lobby. But remember the character creator is going to be released as a standalone app long before the main game is even tested so at a bare minimum that'll also be included in any test or release of the main game.
I realize we players don't know much about how/when this game will roll out but everything I've mentioned in this post was in fact covered in the Kickstarter materials.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Dev's said they will launch with a level 30 cap. But they seem to have more resources on the artistic side..
So my guess we will have from most effective side about 140% character detail. 20% of the initial base costume variations
and 60% of the content the City of heroes started with.
Since the base format showed primary secondary and tertiary colors. Costume piece stacking,
we will end up with a lot more options then City of heroes or Champions Online would have provided.
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What can I do without...?
PvP. Completely unnecessary in my opinion. The future of PvP is battle arenas, anyway. The MOBA and mobile MOBA is exactly the type of environment where PvP shines, and where it belongs. It is the environment that PvP players have always dreamed of and wasted millions of hours demanding in games entirely unsuited to it. As a result, I don't think City of Titans even needs PvP. Anyone who wants PvP is probably going to be playing Paragon or something similar.
A public server. I'm convinced this game will not be able to attract even a hundred thousand players. I think we have entered the "better buggy whip" phase of MMORPGs. No matter how well this game is done, the vast majority of potential customers will be playing Candy Crush, Angry Birds, Mobile Strike, Pokemon GO, or some other mobile phone based game. City of Titans should be released as a private-server based game environment for small groups of dedicated players (maybe, 1-5 admins and up to 100 players), with the ability to offer broader public access to your private server through a MWM gateway, and only through their gateway.
But that's only my own opinion. Others might see things differently.
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That's a good thought or two. I do hope that if they go out of business the code gets open sourced or some such solution that gives us an opportunity to carry the torch. I also think it would be cool if they had a game client for mobile that did more than auction.
"THE TITANS ARE COMING!!! THE TITANS ARE COMING!!!"
I am willing to accept that mobile games will remain a key market. Hopefully the costume creator for mobiles will meet much of the need. I'm definitely excited about it. But I'm not willing to forego the grand vistas of a desktop or even laptop screen when I'm hero-ing about. Perhaps if external displays become a thing for phones then my phone could be a bigger part of my game. But I'm too old to stare for long at its screen. Input devices are another factor. I'm so old I still remember keyboards.
As for "dedicated" players, I played at various times of day or night, and on random days. I could not be relied on, despite my dedication. Yet I would always find people to team with. I hope we can cram as many players as practical onto the smallest number of servers to keep the environment busy.
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MWM has said that there will only be one single mega-server, and they'll use instancing to not become overcrowded.
I personally don't intend to do PVP or make any User Generated Content, and I could see that stuff not being included in the up-front release of the game. Some classes aren't going to be ready early on, like pets-based classes, from what I remember. I can live without that, at first.
Personal lairs and SG bases probably aren't necessary at launch. Personally, I'm not really all that excited about alignments and reputations, but that might be integral enough that they have to incorporate it up-front, I don't know.
I would like there to be an auction house and a cash shop at launch. I think those are pretty necessary.
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I'd hope that scalability will be factored in though, in the event of wanting to expand to regional servers? It does make sense to avoid deploying a load of servers early on though.
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I haven't heard anything about it but I do hope that they have the technical capability to be able to spread the load over several physical data centers so that they can have a physical presence in several regions to lower latency, though I don't really expect it at launch since it will most likely cost more the benefit gained.
As for general scalability, well that's kinda the point of going with a megaserver design. If you have too little hardware you just buy or rent more and let the server software decide how best to utilize it, too much hardware and you just sell off or stop renting some of it. In either case nothing changes for the players so no need to do anything that would move them around.