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Is Cryptic the MVP developers of 2009?
Milky
Member Posts: 339
With Champions Online shaping up to be another fun MMO with even more character customization than CoX, and Star Trek Online projected to be released later this year, is 2009 the year of the Cryptic? Will they bring back MMO's from the industry of failures and current stale slump?
Comments
It would be really nice, but It's really tough to say. Both Champions and STO appear even more dumbed down then the 2008 MMO's that didn't do so hot. Champions looks like a console button masher and STO (I think it's actually due in 2010 ) is focusing on single player gameplay where you're forced to be the Captain, you're forced to play with NPC pets instead of people. They've already made all of your decisions for you. Then other games like DCUO from SOE due this year, looks even more dumbed down then Champions does.
These developers just seem to have lost total touch with the gaming community, they're making all these new MMO's for the console, but by the looks of the games they must think the console market are a bunch of retarded zombies who can't handle a complex game. Which probably means it will lead to another batch of games, that people play for 2 months before heading back to boring ass WoW again.
Yeah what ^Wolfdor^ said....both of those MMOs are going to be solo, easy and fail!
The only interesting things about Champions Online and Star Trek Online are the IPs they are based on. Both are going to be spectacularly average games in my opinion.
And considering the 20 odd MMOs that are due out this year, average is not going to win you any prizes.
*sigh* I used to love the concepts of STO and Champions when I first heard of it, but since then my esteem of both the company as well as the games has fallen deep.
Both games look like they were very narrowed and simplified in their approach. EVERYTHING we hear and see about them is combat, action, and kill, kill, kill. I havent seen anything about depth, RP, story, something to have a reason to be in those worlds. I imagine both Superheroes and even more Star Trek about so much more than mere combat. Tbh, I think Cryptic just has no clue how to make a good MMO (or how to handle fans and future customers. Their forums are in both cases delete/lock-thread orgies! Something that never bodes well.)
Cryptic used to have good credit from my side once, because I loved the character customization of CoH. But that credit has been entirely sucked away. I have some friends in the beta(s) and both how (bad) Cryptic handles the beta as well as how little they listen to any critique sounds good. Its unfortunately the usual. Especially Champions has a ton of problems and is under heavy critique from the beta players, but Cryptic silences them, and tends to pretend everything is fine. I guess at release we'll see the proverbial shit hitting the fan, something similar to PotBS.
While STO is further away, all I hear and see tells me the same. Why they limited the vast and socially oriented Trek universe to a "everyone is captain" -space shooter is beyond me. I could imagine a lot of things NOT being captain I would have liked to be in STO. Ok, I was a dancer most of the time in SWG, so my approach is way more of a social player anyway then endless, boring pew-pew-pew, and I had thought if ANY MMO would allow vast social gemplay as another pathway it should be Star Trek! I mean, isnt Trek about trying NOT to fight?
No. My opinion about these games has constantly fallen. I dont think they will be totally bad, but it all sounds like very mediocre stuff at best and an epic fail at worst. I'll stay midly curiious because of the interest in the theme, but thats about it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Champions Online may have been good, if they didn't let that bag of puke Bill Roper near it.
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/MMORPG
It's funny, ever since Roper got on board. All we've been hearing is "Champions Online is Action" or "our combat is a Run & Gun style". Watch every video since Roper was hired that has a Dev speaking in it, you'll hear those words at least once like they're reading it right from the cue cards Roper brought with him.
Cryptic probably gave Roper low to mid six figures (plus a percentage of the profits) for him to come up with their slogan "Champions Online is Action." I'll bet that took a lot brainstorming.
I agree with the comments above on STO. Because Jack Emmert prefers solo gameplay, he's going to force that on his MMO's. If STO was a single player RPG like a Mass Effect, I would have no problem being forced to be a Captain. But creating a MMO and not allowing people to group together is just a giant contradiction in making a Massive Multiplayer game. No wonder they're only focusing on showing off the character creation.
I never follow names, alas. What did those Roper and Emmert make before?
Kinda surprised how similar everyone thinks, I expected to be an expectation with my sceptics.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Roper was at one time with Blizzard and was actually a key figure in their popular single player games like Diablo, Warcraft (he wasn't part of WoW's team), and Starcraft. He then went on his own to form Flagship Studios who created *cringe* Hellgate: London.
Emmert is the head honcho of Cryptic Studios. He's the original creator of CoH. I actually kind of like him, he has some really good ideas. But his downfall is that he refuses to listen to the people who play his games and has a tendency of thinking he knows what we want more then we do. Maybe he just uses the same focus groups of non MMO players that SOE uses, that came up with gems like the NGE was more fun and that we wanted more microtransactions in our games.
Star Trek is more than about just combat. However, I don't think there is much more to a super hero game than just combat.
Plus, good combat games are fun too. I just finished Call of Duty 5 .. you do NOTHING but kill nazis & japs and it was fun.
You've asked this question about a year too early. You might as well ask right now whether Peyton Manning will be the NFL's MVP for the 2009 season.
Well the year is still young but I am liking what I have seen so far from Cryptic. They will probably do better than alot of people will give them credit for. I think their Action MMO will be a breath of fresh air that people will like. If you like the typical mmo then the action mmo will probably not be for you.
Regarding STO. I would like to know what kind of MMO people expected from this IP? Most of the tv series' take place on a ship ( except DS9) so being on a ship makes sense. Do you really want to be a science officer or security personnel on someone else's ship? I don't. So making everyone a captain makes sense. Cryptic was very clear that being a captain in no way stops you from having a science, security, or medical background. Picard was a diplomat and archealogist, B Crusher a doctor, Janeway a scientist etc...
In regards to upcoming mmorpgs of 2009, other than The Old Republic which MAY have a chance for a launch date near the end of 2009, the only other game i am remotely interested in would be Jumpgate. ST:O and Champions just don't look that good in their descriptions. I actually have higher hopes for DC Online than Champions.
but if TOR doesn't launch, i think EVE's ambulation project will be very ambitious, and if done correctly, will trump anything else coming out this year.
Well you have to understand that some people haven't a clue as to what Star Trek is about. Just like people have no idea what Champions is about before they post rubbish. Someone this morning said it isn't superheo-like to fight in forests or deserts. Obviously that person had no clue about Champions and certainly some need a backgroud education on STO
I never follow names, alas. What did those Roper and Emmert make before?
Kinda surprised how similar everyone thinks, I expected to be an expectation with my sceptics.
Oh Roper, he was just some hack from Blizzard that helped make Diablo, Warcraft, warcraft 2, starcraft, and diablo 2 modestly successful.
Executive producer and senior producer, those titles don't really mean much anyway.
Both games have potential. HOhwever, as WAR and AoC has shown us, We have to wait for release before we will know for sure
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
Cryptic would have to make a good game first before I'd start making predictions about their future success.
(and no, COX were not good, average at best, fun for some, but most quickly set it aside)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Emmert and all of the original Cryptic people are a sort of special case.
Cryptic was founded by people who cashed out before the dot com bubble burst. They were various types of computer/electrical engineers who loved RPGs and had enough money to do what they wanted. They then got together with some old Atari Arcade games guys. And then they brought in Jack Emmert who was a RPG writer (not a CRPG dev).
So in a sense Cryptic started out as a rather amateurish operation, which is not that surprising when you look at all the issue CoX had that needed to be fixed. Many of those issues are especially peculiar to Online games.
I am not 100% sure how Emmert got to be Statesmen, ie. the head dev of old CoX. And i do not know if he has learned all the lessons from CoX. I do know that CoX is very interesting case study in MMORPGs and what can go right and wrong. Both from a design stand point and a social standpoint. Many of the more rigid things came from Emmert such as not spreading out powerset across archetypes. This does not surprise since he started as a writer.
Anyway the point being that Emmert is not exactly a "Dev" or a games industry wonk like many of these guys. He started in the computer games industry with Cryptic with an outfit that cobbled a lot of things together.
That is both good and bad. But he is not like say Brad McQuaid who was a MUD devloper for years before he made EQ.
Yeah Emmert and company made a lot of mistakes and pissed a lot of people off. I can't tell you if they learned their lesson. But I can tell you that is basically what will alwasy happen when normal people run an Online gaming company and do it because they want to make their own cool thing.
That is the thing with many 1st gen MMOs the devs wanted to make their own cool thing rather than create a platform and allow the players to make their own cool things. This does not mean "sandbox" like Eve, although it includes that. Its just in general giving people the ability to create stuff they want. That is why many people hate classes but don't agitate for a sandbox game.
There is a thread right now in the CoX scrapper forums asking for Super strength powerset for scrappers because people want to be able to create that idea for a character. It makes sense. But back in the day Emmert said tankers get this and scrappers get that and we can't mix because that would ruin their signature stuff. Now CoX has moved to spreading powersets across ATs to let people do what they like, make what they like to fit their own ideas rather tha nthe developers ideas. The devs just make sure the sets fit a certain general theme (ie. scrappers are melee range) and are not ridicukously more and less powerful than other sets. The next step in this process is giving players the ability to create their own missions and storylines which should come out in the next issue.
Did Jack Emmert learn from this? I dunno. The people pushing this stuff now used to work for Cryptic but they no longer do. And for a long time it was Emmert who made the rule that Super Strength is a Tanker set. Period.
Emmert is not a typical Dev and we do not really know what take away lesson he got from CoX. We know he can be rigid. We know he is not afraid to make sweeping changes. We know he says stuff that pissed players off sometimes.
Past that we can't really say too much. I suspect Emmert is not going to take a lead dev role anyway. I think he doesn't want to. I think he would rather not sweat the details like he once had to. I am pretty sure he would rather be an idea man and let someone like Roper be the producer.
I troll these forums a lot, and I usually agree with you, but come on, enough with the generalization.
I didn't play CoH at launch, and I can definatly see why some would have disliked it then, but CoH has evolved a ton and has become easily one of the funnest MMOs on the market, imo. I've played a ton of MMOs and when SWG went bye-bye, I went to CoH and loved it.
I have a ton of faith in Cryptic to provide excelent gameplay and at the very least, provide a great foundation of a game that will grow over time. I don't think anyone can really claim that Cryptic isn't one of the best Companies for adding Free Content after the game has launched. Looks at CoH and how much it has changed, and it only had 1 Paid expansion.
So... Luckyly you like to breath or we would all be in trouble.
I troll these forums a lot, and I usually agree with you, but come on, enough with the generalization.
I didn't play CoH at launch, and I can definatly see why some would have disliked it then, but CoH has evolved a ton and has become easily one of the funnest MMOs on the market, imo. I've played a ton of MMOs and when SWG went bye-bye, I went to CoH and loved it.
I have a ton of faith in Cryptic to provide excelent gameplay and at the very least, provide a great foundation of a game that will grow over time. I don't think anyone can really claim that Cryptic isn't one of the best Companies for adding Free Content after the game has launched. Looks at CoH and how much it has changed, and it only had 1 Paid expansion.
I love CoH, But you have to admit that the future for it was quite bleak until Jack left.
CoH has som mayor issues like the repetitiveness of the missions. They fixed, in a aceptable maner the issue with the powers. And I would love to see new powersets. But also new archetipes that fit more heroes.. And the changes that the traveling powers needs.
Now that I think about, most of the things why CoH is not great were caused by Jack Emmet. Is not suposition, he claims it so.
That gives you an idea on how Champions online probably is.
With Jack Emmert and Bill Roper working together? Magic 8 Ball says, "Hahahahaha....Dream on!"
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
I'm not exactly sure the future was "Bleak" while Jack was there. He did quite a few things I don't agree with in my personal game design philosophy, but when have you ever totally agreed with the way your MMO was handled?
Also, I'm not going to argue that the missions can get repetitive, but I can't think of a single other MMO on the market where it isn't true... CoX doesn't have quite as many "Fetch" missions, but it does re-use the same maps abit. I wish for some more maps that you see at the higher-end content to be in some of the lower lvls, but oh well.
As for the travel powers... not exactly sure what the real problem is with the travel powers are besides limited options for "natural" super heores (Even though there are rocketboots and costumes options along those lines). As a matter of fact, The travel powers are one of the MAIN reasons I stuck with CoX for so long. I can get almost anywhere with very little travel time, and it's only gotten better. Unlike WAR (Which I am currently playing) and WoW, i'm not sitting around for ages, I can get to the highest lvl areas to the lowest in seconds and to the PvP zones just as fast ect.
I will agree that Jack's departure and Matt Miller taking the lead on CoX certanatly through the game into Overdrive, but still, I think that a lot of hate is misplaced on Jack.
As to Champions... I looked over the forums and they said I can acknowledge I'm in the Beta, but nothing else... so yeah...
I ment:
by repetitive missions. The missions are exactly the same... My worst example is one task foce that puts you against the council. Level 35 i think we got it in, is it striga? (i don't want to say the wrong isle). An anyways, the description for the 4 mission was "this underground base is exactly the same as the past 3" I may be paraphrasing, but the part of "exactly the same" was there.
EDIT: Oh and the enemies in missions are allways doing nothing, Its a lot better streetsweeping to my test, where de villains are allways trying to do evil stuff, or hanging out in villanous ways XD
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying CoH is bad game, but it could be a lot more polished. There are only a few warehouses and you do them all the time... But there are some amazing places and storylines, like the hollows or the new faultline story arcs. And that was with Jack... I know... but still after you did the hollows there were mayor level holes in content, that is only being adressed lately with the greek zone (that i havent played yet)
The powers I ment that sometimes the options were limiting, and other times the concept didn't fit inside and archetipe, or power pools. I with power proliferation is a good start to change that.
The lack of new content in every day is going to get fixed somehow letting players create their own maps...
And by travel powers issues, I mean power supression... :S
What I ment by bleak was this:
The game released and it was jack who made the masive nerfs.. Nerfs for a PVE game, even with Arena there was no reason to do them.
Then he ignored the core issues of the game, like the lack of missions and invested time in new features that most of the comunity didn't care.. like a wow like crafting and an AH!
And the bases where soooo expensive that there were almost imposible to maintain... or even customise. Most SG that HAD bases had a minimal funcional base, because you got charged for decorations! :O
So after he left you can clearly see the cork blowing away and all the water in the damn finally starts flowing, all we have seen in the last 2 patche have been asked by the players since forever.
(That doesn't mean I aprove the micro transactions for costume pieces and sucks sh*t)
Anyways, thats how I see it. I see Jack as someone quite egomaniacal. I mean, he is statesman, the most powerfull hero in his universe... you even more got that idea from the comics. And you could see that in his way of making games. Is HIS game and he makes is how he likes..... and he is the most powerfull guy in his world...
It kinda reminds me of that episode from Dexter's lab were Dexter was a D20 dungeon master.
That specific mission you refer to... it is on Striga in the Moonfire TF (I think) but those 3 missions are literally 10-15 seconds long :P Not really a good excuse, I know. However, I did agree that there needs to be more locals in the game, but honestly, adding a bunch of new maps only solves the problem for a short period of time. It does certanatly inspire more awe when you actually get to go to Atlas park in the future where the city is destroyed and robots are walking around...
Well, the content problems were being adressed much earlier then I12 with the Roman Island. Looking back at I10 they added the Rikti War Zone which added a lot to the game for lvl 35-50. Of course, I think they started back much firther then that, but I can't honestly comment, because I never even got my first lvl 50 until after I10, so I never really experienced any Content shortages.
If you honestly don't think that Player Created Content isn't going to give you something to do at every lvl of the game, then I'm not sure what you want. No game can keep enough content in game to keep everyone happy. Some people were done with the majority of the content in WotLK inside the same week it launched.
Also, I know there were tons of features requested by players that Jack didn't deliver, but The Crafting and Auction houses were great additions. It's one of the features I use the most now.
Bases were never hard to maintain, bleh. I am NOT a hardcore player, I am a casual player. I didn't have my first 50 until 24 months of paid time in the game (I suck at lvling in ALL MMOs, sue me :P) but I had a SG base with all the teleporters I maintained by myself. Most of my friends all have solo SGs as well.
Jack did nerf things... That is where he totally went against my game design philosophy. If there is one thing I have gotten from reading Comics is that Super Heroes don't fall under a single archtype. The "Tanks" still can put out tons of damage. Psycic "Controllers" can still take damage, and deal it out as well.
However, I do think he did lots of positive things as well. I am looking forward to STO and CO the most... except for maybe Jumpgate. but that is a diffrent story