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City of Heroes: PAX Panel: New Info Revealed
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Mike Bitton was on hand at PAX East this past weekend for the City of Heroes panel in which they reveal details on their upcoming new Issue, the Going Rogue expansion and the long awaited endgame system.
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We stopped by the Naga Theater at the Hynes Convention Center to check out the City of Heroes panel, “Re-Inventing a Superheroic MMO” at PAX East this weekend and we’ve got quite a bit to talk about! The panelists included: Senior Design Lead Matt “Positron” Miller, Producer Jesse “Ghost Falcon” Caceras, Design Lead Melissa “War Witch” Bianco, and finally City of Heroes Art Lead David Nakayama.
The panel kicked off with a bit of a Cryptic Studios/Paragon Studios 101, going back over City of Heroes’ storied history as far back as the inception of Cryptic Studios. Of the original launch team, four members are still around. Curiously, they mention that when Cryptic Studios sold off the IP most of the original CoH team decided to stay with City of Heroes over at NCsoft instead of sticking with Cryptic, yet only four members are still a part of the City of Heroes team. Perhaps many have left since then? Or perhaps they are working on a super secret project on another team? Hmm!
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Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
It is shaping up to be a good spring/summer in CoH.
Although, I really need to upgrade my comp to take better advantage of ultra-mode...
CoH: Mr E-Man, Energy Arc, IG-2112MD, Slayer Faith, Master TimeLord Mr E-Being
CoV: Mr E-Villain, Dark Willow, Cold Satisfaction, Mr E-Mech, Mr E-Lectric
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Thanks for reminding me! Going to poke them for official Ultra Mode specs.
Indeed, the folks at NCsoft are doing good work on CoH this year. I hope they keep it up! Issue 17 looks awesome, as does Going Rogue.
I hope Issue 18 and 19 follow suit. If they do, this'll definitely be a very awesome year for CoH!
So I did beta for the original CoH, did the preorder through CUSA, etc. I will have accumulated 9 months of paid sub time at the end of this cycle. I have never been able to get by the core issues of the game for me. I will generally create 10-20 toons, get one to mid 20's, and then I am gone again. Some of the issues are minor (such as certain costume pieces seriously needing that third color) and some are major (the definition of repetition and tedium)...but, CoH:GR may finally resolve one of the issues in a jury-rigged manner. It is funny how CoV gave us some obvious powerset combinations that were missing from CoH, yet they never proliferated to CoH (nor did they go from CoH to CoV). With GR, it will finally be possible to have the hero with the better matching powersets from CoV...by Going Rogue, lol. Interested to see how this goes - did the prepurchase to get the DP, since I liked them on my Thug MM.
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Actually, Paragon Studio did just that. Make every power on each side available for everyone, hero or villain, a few months ago.
The real issues with CoH/CoV have been the same for a long time : repetitive content, lack of high level content and confusing functionnalities with actual PLAYABLE content. Changing colors for powers is not content, just cosmetic changes, which are welcome, don't get me wrong.
Hopefully, it seems that GR will -finally- correct that. This is good news. "Wait and see" attitude for me anyway...
On the other hand, what bothers me a little are the minimum specs needed to take advantage of the new visual effects. From what I've read and understood the gear that can run Age Of Conan full throttle will just be enough to play it?
Seems like we've got an optimisation issue here, right? I mean, CoX's engine is far from offering what Funcom's game can graphically deliver...
Issue 19 is the incarnate system so that's looking awesome. The assumption is that issue 18 is kind of tied to the release of going rogue in july.
Issue 18 = Going Rogue, yes.
In the existing game, their existing environment design leaves a little to be desired considering lots of stuff apparently gets drawn that isn't seen and therefore wastes processing cycles. In a more favorable light, cox really does render a lot of power effects and ragdoll physics at the same time. Anyway, Ultra Mode is optional and avaialble to those with the hardware and desire to turn it on.
Nvida side your looking at for max every thing turned on in ultra,thern any thing 260gtx an up.Any 9800gt can run ultra mode but not every thing cranked.The new ati 4500ish cards can do ultra as well .Coh has always been coded more for nvida but that may change .
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Hmmm... I've skipped the past couple free weekends, but some of this rogue stuff actually sounds cool. I may actually scoop that up and play for a month or so.
odd that the expansion is 30 bucks, and the complete game, with ingame goodies and a free month, is 40 bucks. Wouldn't it save money and make sense to buy the complete edition(even if you have the game already?)? 5 bucks off, an updated box and some goodies...
If you pre-purchase the upgrade, you can start playing Dual Pistols now and Demon Summoning sometime in April when I17 hits Live. Basically, it's kind of an impatience tax for those that go the straight upgrade path.
"Curiously, they mention that when Cryptic Studios sold off the IP most of the original CoH team decided to stay with City of Heroes over at NCsoft instead of sticking with Cryptic, yet only four members are still a part of the City of Heroes team."
Actually, they said that there are only four members left from when CoH was originally in development. The entire City of Heroes team stayed when Cryptic sold it to NCSoft in 2007, but only four of those people had been with City of Heroes from day one in 2004.
People like Jack Emmert who were with City of Heroes from day one were no longer working on City of Heroes within Cryptic when it was sold to NCSoft, and people like Ghost Falcon (who was also on the panel) went with the NCSoft sale, but he had been hired after City of Heroes launch, so he was hired by Cryptic sometime between 2004 to 2007 and stayed with CoH.
Also, I agree that they are working on a super secret project! Positron stepped down as lead design to work on the Incarna system, and an as of yet unreavealed project, and David Nakayama was promoted to Art Lead while the old art lead went on to work on unspecified projects!
Hmmmmmmmm....
I dunno, I will probably check it out when GR is released, but unless it is absolutely fantabulous, I doubt I will hang around long.
To me, it is too little too late. I loved CoH when I started playing it a couple months after it launched, and then got to watch it gutted and left for dead by dear Jack Emmert. CoV kept my interest up for a couple months longer but then, it was time to go. No endgame and the constant roadblocks to playing around with new powerset combinations without actually running up all the content I already knew insided out killed it for me. PvP was monkeyed around with so much, it became no fun at all. Once all my friends left, what was the point.
Every so often I come back and check out the new shinies, and wear out the new content in a week or two. Then off to other things.
This all looks like it might breathe some fresh air into the franchise, but I'm not holding my breath. It's a shame too, this was the game that introduced me to MMOs, and I really enjoyed it for a long time.
I love CoH and still does, so i cant wait for these features to be in game :]
Couldn't agree more really. My experience is similar to yours in that COH was my first MMO and I had some great times with it.
However these things all come to an end and the Emmert Massacres of issue 3, (or 4 can't remember), led a lot of my online friends away. I stayed around a lot longer after that but things were never quite the same, the repetitive content and lack of people on the Euro side killed my interested in the end.
Where I'm not so sure about is whether I'll bother checking this out at all. A lot of the new powersets to me seem like things that should have been introduced a long time ago, (Demon Summoning and Dual Pistols), or pointless, (Kinetic Melee...err energy melee maybe? or Electrical control which sounds similar to Electricity so whats the point?).
Also the key feature the, 'Going rogue', hasn't really been explained mechanics wise how it's going to work. It's the most interesting idea, for me, of the whole expansion and at the moment there talking in very vague terms. Seems to me there pushing the graphics update a lot and I wonder if in part that's where most of the development funds are going, while your getting a similar system of content as before.
For me the game is now too old, built on 'hardcoded' systems which they've never been able to move beyond and isn't worth investing my time in. Saying that if your still subbing and enjoying then good for you
The graphics update is part of Issue 17, which will be free to everyone, and should go live sometime in April. Going Rogue won't be released until July. This is why they're "pushing the the graphics update a lot" as you wrote. I'm sure the going rogue mechanic will get pushed around a month before its launch too ( ' :