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City of Heroes Purchased By NCsoft
Rock, Paper, Shotgun comments on the big news from late last night: NCsoft has announced that it has purchased City of Heroes/Villains from Cryptic Studios, the Massive game's original developer. Everyone on the team has been offered a new position with the newly formed NCsoft NorCal studio, and many of them have accepted. As far as the players are concerned, NCsoft only intends for them to see freebies as a result of this deal: "Now back to you, the players. You are the lifeblood of our game. In celebration of our new studio and our exciting plans, and in order to thank you for the fantastic community that you have built, we are pleased to announce the following: All players with City of Heroes retail accounts will now have access to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail accounts will now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now. Just log in to check it out! After the launch of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time this Fall, we are removing Debt from all characters and giving you a fresh start ... Also after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive an additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member."
Debt doesn't work like that in CoH. It's essentially negative experience points that accrue when a player is defeated - having it halves the rate of experience gain until it is paid off. It isn't like debt in the sense we usually think of it, where you get something in exchange for a future obligation; the player gets nothing for their debt in CoH.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
To be exact, all but one member of the dev team are moving to NCSoft
I've got to say that I'm kind of worried. One of the best things about CoH is that the developers seem to focus a lot on what the players want. There have been several instances of major changes being brought to the game simply on player request, and it's greatly appreciated. I'll be kind of upset if NCSoft abandons this policy in favor of their plan to "aggressively develop and expand the franchise."
Gamertag: WyleType
It has been a long time since I played COH so I might have the details wrong, but I remember that debt wasn't monetary, but rather experience realted. Death (getting teleported to the hospital) resulted in an experience point debt that could put you in the hole on your way to the next level. You could work it off directly, but it also encouraged you to go on lower level missions and sidekick/mentor newer players to work it off faster.
So there isn't much abuse possible, it's more a "wipe the slate clean" deal.
Debt was already capped, so you're not getting that much. Plus for everyone who was at level 50, debt had no effect whatsoever, so, you know, why bother?
And running an xp debt on purpose is a bad idea anyway.
1. It means running up a lot of death, which means a lot of running back to your corpse instead of doing quests and killing NPCs. Plus, it's demoralizing for most people. It's associated with a failure, no matter how minor.
2. Until NCSoft forgives it, you'll get half xp, as the other half goes to paying back the debt.
Planning to faceplant lots just so NCSoft will forgive it, umm, sounds like just about the dumbest thing one could do. You could just finish the quest the old fashioned way in that time, and get more xp in the process.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
As opposed to go into dungeon, kill 100 rats, level, go into another dungeon, kill 100 larger rats and level... all so you can get to level 1000 in order to go into the Dungeon Of Fat Loot with 50 other people to kill the Uber Rat Of Doom?
:).
This is a MMOG we're talking about here
Until level 10 there is no debt at all, and below 20 or so, debt is a silly joke. Doubly so between levels 10 and 13, which is where people do it the most. (Because at 14, as you know, they get a travel power.) That's why people do that: because it doesn't matter at that level. The first couple of groups in a solo mission will clear that hospital teleport debt.
So now look at the GGP post or so, claiming that people will abuse that debt forgiving. What's the worst that can happen there? That a couple of frustrated newbies will be forgiven of 100xp debt because they hospital-ported from the Hollows?
Well, good, because God knows that the Hollows can be a kick in the nuts when you get a mission at the opposite corner, you're level 12 and your Zero G pack just ran out of fuel. (Though admittedly it was an even bigger pain in the nuts before they introduced the safeguard missions and those temporary travel powers.) You know, whop-de-do, such a game-breaking exploit it will be that someone might actually have fun instead of running through purple trolls and COT.
Or, what, will the level 49's start doing that too now, just to exploit the debt forgiving? Never mind that anything that can kill a level 49 is in PI, and it takes less time to even run with Sprint+Swift to the hospital than to go looking for a group that can kill you, and wait for them to finish the job.
Basically that's all I'm saying: I don't see how that's abusable.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The 'Crisis of Infinite Nerfs' was years ago. I was upset too -- quit the game for two years. Came back this summer after I heard that 1.) The nerfs were mitigated with the new invention system (which apparently was always the plan, they just didn't think to release the two at the same time), and 2.) Statesman was no longer with the game.
That's right -- Statesman no longer worked with City of Heroes/Villains, and he was no longer driving the game toward the Lineage PvP template that he admired so much. Positron was lead developer, and he prefers PvE games and more importantly *heroes*. The devs have spent the last year or two asking the players for what they want and then implementing those requests. The game is much, much improved and well-cared-for now than it was when the global nerfs descended years ago.
And with the latest news, it looks like it's going to remain in good hands. You might want to swing by and give the hero biz another try, see how you like it now.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
True, but the content was significantly different. Maybe not quite as much as various games using the Half Life engine or somesuch, but close enough.
However, they're officially merging the two games into one soon, according to this announcement: http://www.cityofheroes.com/press/a_new_age.html. Then there's the expansions and sequels referred to in this announcement: http://www.plaync.com/us/news/2007/11/ncsoft_announce_23.html
Both were written by Cryptic and published by NCSoft, and IP was owned 50/50 by each on both games. Now it's 100% NCSoft owned, and a lot of the Cryptic folks who worked on them moved over to NCSoft. This is a massive win for the franchise, IMO, as it means there's no more conflict of interest with Cryptic working with Marvel on their MMO (even if they said there wasn't any conflict).
It's been a while since I played and I can't really be bothered to go into the nitty gritty, but essentially, they changed the way that enhancements affect a character's powers.
Unlike WoW, the only real 'drops' in CoX are enhancements - tokens that you can drop into the six slots that can be created (one at a time, at level-up time) in every power in order to improve its effectiveness. Enhancements do things like boost attack damage and accuracy, increase the rate at which powers recharge, reduce the amount of energy ('Stamina', IIRC) they use, and so on. This verisimilitude of enhancements, slots and powers is one of the games strengths, IMO.
Pre-nerf, enhancements were straight multipliers -- one damage meant an attack did Damage x N, two meant Damage x 2N, and so on, all the way to six. You could mix enhancements, of course -- four damage and two accuracy in an attack, for example -- but it was personal preference.
As with any MMORPG, this lead to ideal 'builds' and certain tricks were possible. For example, six recharge enhancements in the 'Hasten' power (which itself increased the recharge time of certain powers) created 'Permahasten' -- the Hasten power that normally had a down-time between uses would instead be permanently active.
The change alluded to by the previous poster was Enhanced Diversification (ED), which was introduced under the guise of creating more varied characters by de-emphasising ideal 'builds'. How so? With ED, if you 'slotted' up to three enhancements of the same type in a power, you still got the standard multiplier effect, but more use than three and the gains were drastically reduced. So, it was pointless to six-slot enhancements of the same time -- 'enhanced diversity'. This meant the end of Permahasten and other (what were arguably) exploits.
The big complaint was that this wasn't a device to improve gameplay, but a massive nerf and it upset lots of players. It doesn't really seem like that big a deal now, but then there are only about 50 people playing in the UK*.
*Source: Out of my ass.
You're forgetting something about perma-Hasten. (And before I get started: this is coming from someone who never used it, just to be different from the cookie-cutter builds.)
Perma-hasten wasn't an exploit. It was the officially allowed possibility, with Cryptic's blessing.
As the game was launched, you could make Hasten permanent with IIRC 2 SOs. Or maybe 3? I can't really remember. At any rate, you could not only make it "perma", you could have it stack with itself most the time.
Statesman seemed to be genuinely surprised that this was possible. Like many other powers (remember the City Of Blasters smoke grenades for example?) noone at Cryptic had done the maths. What happened with which powers on SOs, was a genuine surprise to them.
So as a sort of compromise, Statesman accepted that, yeah, perma-Hasten is a useful thing and will remain available, but it's only fair to need 6 slots for that. So the maths were changed to produce just that result. Officially, and with Cryptic's blessing. It was _not_ an exploit, any way you want to slice it.
Which just made the sudden U-turn in ED more baffling. They painted some things as evil exploits, that previously they treated as just normal tweaks allowed by the game.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I played City of Heroes for a couple of years, from a few months after initial launch up until shortly after the launch of City of Villains. I experimented with a few alternate characters but I had reached level 45 with my main; 5 levels below the level 50 cap.
I got into the game on the recommendation of my brother and another friend of ours. I played Everquest years earlier for a few months, shortly after the first expansion. The demanding nature of that game, including the reliance on grouping burned me out quickly. What attracted me to CoH was the ability to solo and lack of reliance on gear. It was kind of like a socialist MMO.
What really hooked me was the pace of combat. The game gets really exciting during a fight; I don't think there's been another MMO yet that matches the pace of that game. It's as close to direct, active control as I've seen thus far. Apparently a new powerset is being introduced which even allows for combos.
Additionally, a lone hero could face a group of upwards of 5 foes and emerge victorious, depending on the class. It was fun to jump into the midst of some villains and beat the hell out of them all. So in that regard, it was a very satisfying game.
The pace of leveling was fairly quick but, like all other MMOs it still had considerable grind. And that's really where things broke down. There was nothing else to do but fight. Every single thing in the game revolve around beating up badguys. There were conditions for some missions, like clicking on glowing items, but even then it required getting past hordes of villains. Story was presented in dialog boxes; at the time there were no cutscenes. Alternative skills, comparable to blacksmithing in fantasy MMOs were finally introduced a few months ago. This was after years of promising they were coming soon.
Apparently the skill system was completely redesigned at least 3 times over because it was deemed to not be fun enough. I haven't played what was finally implemented but from what I've read I'm not impressed. It looks like it's merely an adaptation of the supergroup base item building feature.
The character customization is excellent, and probably still surpasses what's available in most other MMOs. Beyond that, however, there's only one way to improve a character. And that's through enhancements which is comparable to stats for other games. Basically, enemies "drop" these enhancements which are then applied to a character's powers. So a player can boost damage, or the power's secondary debuff effect. That was all well and good until the developers decided they didn't want people focusing on a single aspect of any given power. So, every power has 5 slots, if I remember correctly, but using more than two slots for the same boost was essentially a waste. This was supposed to encourage enhancement diversity but I think it resulted in standard ideal templates for specific powers.
There was also the incessant complaining by those who had chosen classes that were less effective solo who felt it was unfair that other classes could solo so effective. Nevermind the fact that the best solo builds weren't always well-suited for groups. So a lot of work went into addressing that with mixed results and to, I feel, the general detriment of the game.
Another problem I came to find with the game was the excessive reliance on templates for environmental design. Basically, upon entering a zone the first time a player had a good sense for how the rest of the zone looked. And many of those features were reused in most other zones. So where other MMOs have a varied and dynamic landscape City of Hero's was a bit contrived. It was tiring running through the same laboratory with a random, nonsensical layout for the 5th time in a few hours. Despite that, the art style was great. It was a lot of fun traveling amongst those skyscrapers. The game simply could have benefited from more variety.
One thing that was good about CoH/CoV was how Cryptic has maintained a close relationship with the players. They've n
Bzzt, wrong. Look at some of the early comics, and super-heroes were just that: unassailable gods with perfect morals.
Superman, for example, started with no vulnerability whatsoever. The whole "kryptonite" thing was invented as a tongue-in-cheek explanation when they had to skip an episode or two for the radio version later, for example because the actor was on vacation. And even there it wasn't actually used _in_ any story line. Superman didn't have to battle anyone wielding kryptonite at that point.
Mind you, if you're going to say that that's not (necessarily) much fun in a game, we can even aggree quickly.
But that's a limitation of video games, not a limitation of super-heroes. Literary or comic book characters can be as god-like as the author wants, and still be fun and popular.
Heck, you don't even have to look only at superhero comics. Take Terry Prattchett's Diskworld books, for example. Cohen the barbarian is, for example, so good at dodging that in Interesting Times he even dodges a cannonball from a gun that got teleported right in front of him and fired. Rincewind is comically incompetent except he always ends up on top, even if by sheer luck and without fully realizing what he's done. The witches are just short of god-like in their own right, and can pretty much get what they want even from Death himself. Wossname the monk learned from yetis how to "save and reload" IRL, so he just comes back after being beheaded. Etc, etc, etc. Almost every single major character in those books has some kind of super-power that makes him completely invincible and unstoppable, even by the whole freakin' army of China (or the DW equivalent of it.)
Does that make the books any less fun to read? Nope.
Think action movies. Rambo can stand tall with a machinegun in front of a whole tank division, or get in a pissing... err... shooting contest with a gunship and come out on top. Jedi in SW movies are just about gods that can only kill each other. But they're way out of the league of mortal soldiers or drones, even when those are in brigade-sized formations and with AT-AT and air support. Etc.
And you know what? I dare say that that's actually good character design. People want to be told a nice story where the hero overcomes everything, and everything ends with a happy ending.
Not many people want to be told a tale where the hero thought he could fly circles around the Death Star, but the laws of firepower always beat the rules of literature. Or not many want to be told the story of the guy who thought he could jump in front of the enemy company with a pistol, and was riddled with bullets before he even finished the clip. Those are depressing stories of failure. They're not fun.
We want to be told stories where one determined guy changes the world for the better, and nothing whatsoever can stay in his way. Not one where he fails in the first 15 minutes.
But, again, I can see how that doesn't translate into a fun video game. We just have to accept that it's simply different media, with different rules.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Dude, I've run CoH on Linux using Cedega. There are no "glitches," it runs perfectly well. Like I said, it's officially supported by Cedega, just like World of Warcraft. The only thing that I would consider a glitch is that some of the higher-end graphics rendering functions, such as depth-of-field effects and such, don't work because the video driver that Cedega reports to the app claims to not have those capabilities (even if the card does).
The game not only works, it is actually a lot faster running on Cedega on Linux than on Windows. The time to zone is cut by two or three seconds at least, sometimes a lot more.
And because you obviously missed it the first time, I'll put it in bold letters this time: City of Heroes uses OpenGL to render its graphics. I don't know how much clearer I can make it.
I've been with City of Heroes since open beta 3.5 years ago (just missed the closed beta). I've seen several posts here on /. saying basically "Been to CoH, didn't like it, left the game" and I'd like to say a little about how the game has matured since then.
Today's CoX (so abbreviated since both City of Heroes and City of Villains is really the same game) has changed massively during those 3.5 years. There's City of Villains, 2 years old as of last week, which nearly doubled the number of playable archetypes (think classes). There's tons of new zones (over 30 now) to play in. There's different mission types - rescuing hostages, destroying or defending the urban landscape - than the original "beat up all the bad guys". And there's Inventions, which is the CoX crafting system, a fairly new system that's still growing.
Bad things have happened too. Enhancement Diversification, unfortunately abbreviated ED, upset a lot of people by basically capping the amount by which you could improve your powers. Just over 2 years ago, there was a massive nerf to defense that made melee archetypes much squishier. And plenty of the little nerfs that every MMORPG gets along the way.
One thing that has not changed in the entire 3.5 years is the dedication of the CoX team to the community. The faces have changed - we've had several community representatives, the original lead designers for both CoH and CoV are gone - but the team has continued and has been very open with us about how the game is doing and their plans. Sure, they don't tell us everything, just as I wouldn't tell my clients everything about how I run my consulting business - but they're very open with everything they're allowed to share. And we get new updates (called issues) typically once every 3 months or so, which is great for keeping the game fresh even for us old-timers.
Another thing that continues to grow is the player community. Sites like http://www.paragonwiki.com/, http://www.cohtitan.com/, http://coh.redtomax.com/data/ and http://www.badge-hunter.com/ are continually adding more support for players.
This NCSoft acquisition is a good thing for the game, in my opinion. The developers will no longer have to worry about two masters (Cryptic and NCSoft) - even when both your bosses are in agreement, red tape can cause problems, much less when they don't agree. That issue is gone. NCSoft has shown their commitment to maintaining the game through their offers of employment to practically the entire development and support team, as well as the creation of the NorCal studio. Personally I won't get much out of the in-game gifts, but it says a lot about NCSoft that they're reaching out to the community in this way.
Skip Franklin
It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black. -- despair.com