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City of Heroes: Death of the Statesman Interview
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Last week, City of Heroes was rocked with the death of one of Freedom Forces' most iconic members, the Statesman. We had the opportunity to chat with Paragon Studios Lead Designer Matt Miller about this momentous event and its repercussions. Check it out and then let us know what you think in the comments.
The Statesman has been synonymous with City of Heroes for the life of the game. What is it like to end such an iconic character in the CoH Universe?
For me it was a really tough thing to do. I mean, City of Heroes has really revolved around this character since the very beginning and killing him off was going to be a huge deal. We knew with Freedom we had a chance to have a new starting point for players, and one of the things we wanted to do was make them the star of their own game, and not have the NPCs overshadow them. Once we had this mindset, killing off Statesman just seemed like a good logical place to go with the story. Of course, his story doesn’t just “end.” He is too ingrained in the game-lore. His death has a far reaching ripple effect that we will see unveiled over the next several issues.
Read more of Garrett Fuller's City of Heroes: Death of the Statesman Interview.
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Comments
And has this melodramatic move increased subscriptions? Because that's why Comic Book companies do this. When a franchise is flagging they kill off someone...get a lot of press...and sales surge.
Killing Statesman...really?
:-
who knows, but it might cause more people to pay for a full account if nothing else to get to enjoy all the sweet stuff.
This have been a good conversation
As someone who has been with CoH since it launched, I have to say the move to F2P and this Signature Story arc in particular has been an absolute blast. 7 years on and I'm still enjoying this game a lot.
Not true. That is one reason to do it, another reason is bloat. Often characters are killed off for shock value, because the amount of heroes that exist has become bloated and they've become losing their usefulness. This is precisely what happened with Marvel's House of M/Civil War storylines. They essentially killed everyone off so they could start over.
In the case of City of Heroes, Statesman is getting the most press but he's not the only NPC hero that's been permanently killed off. The issue is that, since Incarnates, they're no longer useful. The players are now more powerful than the signature heroes, even they've admitted it. Actually with Incarnate powers, you could pretty much go in and solo a Hero/Archenemy without too much effort. NCSoft has acknowledged this and said they were cleaning out the old, to make way for the new. The "new" could be the players as incarnates, or maybe some new faction coming soon. Don't know yet.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
yeah but.
It was Statesman.
:~(~
Apparently something like 10,000 players did come back for this, but as near as I can tell, they must all have gone to the subscription only server (because basically a subscription is the best way to play these story arcs - otherwise they are like $5 for a 30 minute mission).
They really really need to merge the servers. Outside of the VIP one and 2 of the more popular ones, the game is a ghost town. If they added cross server grouping for dungeons (er, trials) it would help too.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
Really? I play on Justice, Infinity and Liberty and I've never had trouble finding people to do things with. Justice in particular is good for late night gaming here on the East Coast.
Have you tried joining your server's global chat channels? I've found that's usually where a good portion of the group forming goes on.
Of course, I don't know that many people would be against cross server teaming for trials though.
Guardian has been hittting Yellow load most nights too since Freedom came out. To tell you the truth I think the only servers NOT hitting medium load have been the European ones. Maybe it's just the time of day people log in that make them think the place is a ghost town?
Though cross server Trails would be cool.......
Thank god they killed him off. That tool was responsible for "enhancement diversification."
I just wish he would stay dead. But how many heroes do? Next time they need a ratings boost, bam, he's back. "Oh, by the way, I'm Zeus."
the game isn't f2p. Since my level 50 MM isn't available to me, even though I bought the class with CoV...I guess they don't want me back. My $150 for buying expansions means nothing to them...everything I got in those expansions and original game are locked and have to re-buy them...uh no thanks. If I'm going to buy a game I'd rather it be something new, not something I've already bought. I never liked Statesman anyways, good riddens
Um. The only two things that were part of the CoH and CoV boxed sets that should be locked from you as a returning 'premium' player are Controllers and Masterminds. Oh, and a bunch of character slots. Pretty much everything else they've locked off has been added since then.
Personally I kind of agree that returning players who purchased a box shouldn't have to unlock controllers or masterminds, but if you really enjoyed the game $15 isn't really all that much.
Oh, also they did put a price-point on how much a returning character needed to have spent in order to get Controllers and Masterminds unlocked. One box and (I believe) 27 months of subscription time. If you were remotely close to that then it actually might be better to just buy some stuff in the store and get the couple of reward tokens it would take to get you to finish off tier 5. Since getting tier 5 complete unlocks controllers and masterminds without having to purchase them from the store.
Making new f2p accounts buy Masterminds and Controllers, okay, fair enough. But locking returning players out of their characters was not a good move for the business model.
yeah.. no thanks... graphics are....
Yea. It's almost an 8 year old game at this point so the graphics aren't going to be the shiniest in the world.
I've always thought it looks relatively good for its age though, but that's just me.