UltraAlt

Happy Winter Event!

If they give it a badge, I think it should be named "YouHaveBeenPlayingTooLong" or "YouHaveBeenPlayingAWhile".

NCSoft is a Korean company. From what I understand, City of Heroes never did well in Korea. Compared to their other games City of Heroes was just simply having too small of a return per player and too small of a player base for it to be worth continued investment. I did hear gossip about some directions that NCSoft wanted the game to go in and, if I call correctly, that mostly had to do with increased microtransactions.

They used to go after anyone tooth-and-nail, but https://bleedingcool.com/comics/is-this-the-end-of-marvel-and-dcs-defense-of-the-superhero-trademark/ seemed tos stat that they started slacking around 2019. Not sure if that is COVID related or Disney not being as alert as the could be about the trademark ... if the shared trademark this is really an issue as stated in the article. I mean it has stood up in court for like 50 years or more, I figure if it is an issue now it would have been an issue before.

Not really. There are F2P games, but they all seem to have P2P/P2W elements that I have tried in Steam. Think of a starter package to get you hooked and then luring you into micro-transactions. Some are flat purchase price, but, again, it appears the games all have micro-transactions that are for expansions, cosmetics, etc. Some are subscription - with the same sort of micro-transactions. My exposure is limited.

"Acquisition and new studio On November 6, 2007, NCsoft announced that it would assume ownership of both City of Heroes and City of Villains. As part of a push to further develop City of Heroes, the company also announced the formation of a new development studio dedicated to new titles as well as their interest in distributing and administering their future works once launched. This new team was centered on key members of the Cryptic and NCsoft City of Heroes/Villains teams who accepted the NCsoft offer to join their new studio in Northern California. The sale of the City of Heroes IP granted Cryptic Studios the freedom to work on its new superhero MMORPG (at this time, an RPG/Action hybrid) Champions Online without concerns of conflict of interest.[64] Shortly after having acquired full ownership of the property, NCsoft granted all existing and former City of Heroes account holders access to both games (City of Heroes and City of Villains).[65] This allowed all Hero players access to Superbases, which initially required a CoV purchase from its release in Issue 7 until Issue 10, and was no longer required as of Issue 11. Before the purchase, NCsoft allowed players with a subscription or a time card for City of Heroes to have the same access to City of Villains as well (at its lowest price point, $14.99 covered access to both titles for a month), whether or not they had purchased the other title. This was still being honored after all accounts who had only City of Heroes received access to City of Villains for free. In a July 2008 press release, NCsoft announced the successful completion of allowing all copies of City of Heroes or City of Villains to access the other game (it claimed that Single Title Retail Boxes recently purchased did not successfully unlock the other game when activated). On April 14, 2009, NCsoft NorCal formally changed its name to Paragon Studios to become a fully owned developer subsidiary of NCsoft (similar to Destination Games and ArenaNet) dedicated to City of Heroes. Paragon Studios was credited alongside Cryptic Studios on the website and NCsoft websites for development of the game." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Heroes

I don't drink much anymore, but here's one for you, Jukebox hero.

We can even go into the Captain Marvel curse. Of course Fawcett wasn't sued by Marvel because they weren't around yet. They were sued by DC Comics because they said Captain Marvel was a Superman rip-off. Doesn't seem relevant? Well, a British publisher took the original Captain Marvel comics and basically erased the costume and redrew of over them and named the hero Marvelman. Years later, they bought back the character in Warrior Magazine. Still okay to call him Marvelman as his name wasn't on the cover .... ..... in big bold letters until .... Now that "Marvelman" was on the cover; the British branch of Marvel comics that put out magazines like Rampage sued over "confusion in the marketplace" because "Marvel" was on the cover. These things do happen. Not so? Not just my tale. -and- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrior_(comics) - "Marvelman last appeared in Warrior in issue 21. This was ostensibly because, after Quality published a spin-off Marvelman Special featuring stories from the character's original run, Marvel Comics objected that this was a trademark infringement on the better known Marvel brand name."

And I forgot. It is also the same kind of reason that BattleTech is called BattleTech. BattleTech first came out as Battledroids, but Lucas sued them over the "droid" part.

Not "superhero game" but they have trademarked "Superhero" and that is part of "superhero game" It's with its City of Heroes and not City of Superheroes. And why Champion is the Super Role-playing game. I think it is you that doesn't understand how trademarks work.

Some of the players say that they set up their Steam to show that they played City of Heroes, so i was wondering if it tracked that.

Oh, I didn't know that. I thought Daybreak Game Company would have kept a tighter grip than that on Everquest since the still have live servers (multiple Everquest (9) and Everquest 2 (8) servers not including a beta/test server for each).

Oh. I guess my answer is "yes". The DEVs have been doing a great job. Keep up the great work, Homecoming DEV team and Happy Winter Event to you all!

They are doing it. No. They are doing great.

Really? The readers do. I come from a world before radical retconning. "People" didn't know Batman's secret identity. It isn't much of secret identity if "people" know who you are.

I'm superhero. I always wear a mask. It doesn't just protect me, but it protects others around me. I /gfriend those that I think are good players even if I have just teamed with them one time. If people want to /gfriend me in game, I'm pretty much always welcome to it, but you're not going to find me if you go looking for me. (I went ahead and set-up a game account as a mask in-game so someone won't try to impersonate me in-game, but my forum name is not my global name in-game) I'm superhero. I always wear a mask. I don't need to stand out in the crowd. I'm everywhere and nowhere. When someone needs help, I appear out of nowhere. I don't need to have a "main" to help people in the /help channel, to join a team, or to recruit a team. People don't need to have a "main". Most of the long time players don't seem to have a "main" as far as I can tell; as they all seem to like making alts. That is to say, most of the players that I interact with don't have "mains" because I see them on various alts when I check my /gfriend list. Thanks!

Is that for all the City of Heroes private servers or just Homecoming?

Why does City of Heroes need to be recommended to other players? Homecoming as a presence on Discord. Clearly, people using Discord can talk directly to other players. My use of Steam is limited. Some people seem to push Steam, but I really don't see a need to go through Steam for access to most games unless you are trying to use it as an overall banner for all your games. I really don't need a holding house for all my games. The only benefit that it really would provide for me would be as one central purchaser so I'm only providing my credit card number to single payee. I don't see how Steam doesn't have any kind of VOIP system as far as I know. (half a joke in that) I don't see how Steam would spread knowledge of the game. It can't list it as a superhero game as the term as Marvel and DC Comics have joint ownership of the term as a trademark. Where do you think the exposure for the game would show up on the platform? I believe there are people streaming and posting City of Heroes gameplay on both YouTube and Twitch (and probably other platforms as well). None of this content should be for monetary income per the Code Of Conduct and what not. At this point, YouTube is running ads on everything regardless if the channel owner is monetizing or not. This really puts YouTube posts of Homecoming in a tenuous light as YouTube is making profit off of the content. Has Homecoming's exposure on Twitch and City of Heroes increased the player base? (I'm thinking very little). Personally, I think that the players that would really enjoy playing City of Heroes are going to be the old fans or ones that have stumbled into it from their internet travels because they are searching for it. I think that intentionally drawing F2P players is a bad idea. Many are just going to pass through. There seems to be quite a number of players that play F2P games that use them as a platform for trolling (both in and out of game) and other chat/post related misbehavior. F2P players - these days - also think that they can buy their way to OP status (of course, we have the AE and farming for that now - but we even see in the forums as players want to find away to "pay" to bypass even that by use of in-game currency). You make my point. Why lure more here? I see plenty of ideas being posted for the DEVs all the time. They have limited time and they are working toward goals that they have set for themselves. Since the AE came out, it primarily has been used as a farming/power-leveling tool. People that complain that there isn't enough content could be making missions in the AE and the AE could be the go-to place for new missions. That isn't happening. Players want the cheap out. If that isn't the case they need to show that "creativity and engagement". On the other side, we do have extremely creative players that do stand out. Some make great AE missions and some make great bases. These are the few. Fly-by-night F2P players aren't going to engage in game creation. They won't be creative in something so simple as character creation. Heck, as simple as thinking up a good name that hasn't been used. Er, what? What are our claims? What are our goals? how exactly does advertising City of Heroes enrich the experience for everyone? And is the "little grinch in the dark corner" comment supposed to validate your post somehow or is that a directed attack against another player. Are you targeting me and calling me a "grinch in the dark corner" because I believe that we have a good player base and feel that the people in this community are the best game-wide gaming community that I have ever been involved with? I somehow ruining something for you because I'm asking questions? https://forums.homecomingservers.com/forum/50-developers-corner/ People can find slots in the DEV team there. As you see, most of the posts are for software and not mission content. I'm assuming that they have teams working on missions. Most people working on AE missions are working solo. In fact the DEVs are trying to spotlight good AE missions. What would be better would be if they added them as an active part of the game outside of the AE. For this, the AE content would need to match up with the canon of the game or not. There really is no reason that player created content shouldn't be part of the game itself it is well done and it is canon. I think that would actually spur AE content development. I haven't fiddled with it much, but I "might" take time to fiddle with the costume graphics if I had a more clear explanation of the graphics file types and how to download, re-upload, and test assets. Have done quite a bit of costume mod-ing for another game that readily allows and promotes costume mod-ing as well as active costume deployment system for those that wish to use the costumes. I don't know if they use pattern overlays or if it is all 3D sculpting here. I'm not a coder or some modeller. I'm a writer and modifier. Those are duties given to game programmers for some reason. We wouldn't want - say Alan Moore - writing content for City of Heroes, would we? I mean he isn't a coder or a skilled CGI artist. Imagine if Base building was integrated into the AE for building mission environments. If the influx is large enough they will eventually pour towards them in search of a fresh new land to build up their name, not to mention one of those shards has a very specific identity that may be strengthen with certain changes that are in the works, that recent migrations started because of a perceived emptiness rather than a factual one, and that if it becomes an issue measures to encourage a more balanced distribution can be developed. No. most players aren't going to go to a low population server. They aren't going to do that. We know what happened on live. There wasn't a list of how many players online at any given time, but anyone that used the player search to look for teams back then knew which servers were most populated and the ones that weren't. Players that aren't dedicated to the game are going to the most populated server(s) and stay there. That is the way it is going to happen. If they find themselves on a low population server and they really want to play but they really want to team up... they are going to move the most populated server or the one that their friends game on. I don't think there are any changes being made to force players to go to another server. I know players that are already avoid playing on the most populated servers because of the lag and server disconnects that they experience more frequently on them because they live in rural areas without hardwired internet access above old school landlines and accessing the game through the internet connection on their cell phones. The DEVs can't do anything about that. You didn't post my full comment. My comment was valid. Are "we"? I didn't even know that MO staff as posting stuff about City of Heroes. I guess I'm not part of your "we". I don't really care. I looked into it as it was an incomplete comment, but I guess the implication was that "we" all knew something that apparently there are people here that don't know about that subject. Why does the discussion in regard to Homecoming need to spread out from the forums and the Discord channels? Yep. That's a thing. *** I think the need to find new players was the downfall of City of Heroes at the sunset. It was all about monetary rewards for the publisher. (I can see at the onset that F2P was targeted at getting other players into the game to give subscribers more people to play with so that they continued subscribing. It quickly turned into a microtransaction system that went after the subscribers and not just the F2P players). We don't need monetary rewards for the publisher. We have people that are more than willing to pitch in and the monetary needs are meet very quickly when the donation period opens. People take it as a special honor to even to be able to get a donation in during the small window of opportunity. People that want to play with a larger player base move to servers with a larger player population. Players that want to role-play flock to the unofficial RP-server. Some players play on server because their friends play on that server. Some players play on a server because the server is closer to them physically. Some players play on a less populated server because of their internet connection speed. Spreading information that City of Heroes is back is great. I don't think Homecoming needs to worry about advertising or marketing. Homecoming appears to be supporting the game for the existing community from before the sunset. Other people that want to play along are welcome. I don't think that they have a goal to monetize the game; at least, I (and I'm sure that I am not alone) am very happy with that.

Why would you want Steam tracking you? or tracking that you are playing City of Heroes? or other non-steam games for that matter? i would go with HIGHLY unlikely. NCSoft had to deal with lawsuits from Marvel and DC Comics. I'm sure that they are going to do their best to avoid lawsuits from Disney.