What might have Happened...

[Marine X]

I got curious this morning, so in a moment of post Doughnut / Peanut Butter Cookie contemplation, decided to do some calculations. I wondered what would have happened had the game never shut down. I was on Automatic Payments and had no plans to stop, one of my failings is that once I find something I like I tend to stick with it. Did not want to go Free to Play and loose my Vet Rewards. So to date I would have paid $1465.10 in subscription Renewals. I figure by the rate that Issues were coming out we would be in about Issue 48. We would have had a Moonbase for Years at this point. The Coming Storm would have Came, and Went. I would have a 16th Anniversary Badge, and the Vet Rewards that went with it. Possibly have a Level 50 Shapeshifter. Probably a Few other, ahem, OK, dozens of Characters I haven't even thought of yet, I can't recall what the "Live" limits were. OR, we would be playing COH2, with upgraded Graphics, and lot's of new Cheese.

 

Anybody else have any thoughts?

[Lockpick]

I had 2 accounts on Live I was paying for and would have kept paying.  I think NCSOFT really missed the opportunity.  Frankly, I think they are still missing an opportunity.  They could easily take the game today, make some updates, clean it up, and re-launch.

[Safehouse]

Of all of the calculations, the fact that we would be at Issue 48 really slammed hard to me. By this point, not only would the Coming Storm have come and gone, but it would be as distant of a memory as issue 0/1 was to players by the time of shutdown. So much of the game as it currently stands is centered on the buildup to Battalion. Heck, even the Dimensionless (which were going to be the enemies after Coming Storm) would probably be deep in the rear view by now.

 

I wonder if we would have had a new expansion? Potentially major graphic upgrades? There's so much that might have been.

 

14 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

I had 2 accounts on Live I was paying for and would have kept paying.  I think NCSOFT really missed the opportunity.  Frankly, I think they are still missing an opportunity.  They could easily take the game today, make some updates, clean it up, and re-launch.

Agreed. I'd be somewhat hesitant to play it with NCSoft at the helm (been burned before and all that), and the Paragon Studios devs would be missed, but there remains opportunity even now. There's a dearth of superhero MMOs out there (at least ones that I'm personally interested in). A "refreshed" COH or even COH2 would be pretty rad.

[Ukase]

Back then, I was out of work, playing about 14 hours a day, if you can believe that. Honestly, the game closing probably saved me from diabetes and certainly obesity. When it shut down, I finally got to moving around instead of sitting on my keester all day. This game can be addictive for some. You sit and you invest in your character, instead of investing in yourself. 

So, I would probably be 320 pounds, instead of 210, and I certainly would have never taken up rowing as a form of exercise. And I certainly wouldn't be ranked in the top 100 of indoor rowers in my age group. So, yeah, I'm kind of glad it shut down. 

[Greycat]

Thinking about it, I probably would have left and come back at this point at least once. (Well, once more, I did briefly when it looked like the attitude towards solo-able Incarnate content was "lol, no, grind for it.") Or I'd just flat out be burnt out.

 

Then again, IIRC they were working on COH 2 pitches at shutdown, or probably would have been, so I'd probably have moved on to that.

[Ironblade]

1 hour ago, Marine X said:

I was on Automatic Payments and had no plans to stop, one of my failings is that once I find something I like I tend to stick with it. Did not want to go Free to Play and loose my Vet Rewards. So to date I would have paid $1465.10 in subscription Renewals.

I had two accounts, both of which were subscribed in order to get the rewards.  Also, I bought pretty much every update and costume pack for at least my main account.  During the time the game was running, I spent just under $1900.  Spreading that out over about 7 years, I feel that was pretty cheap entertainment.  By this point, I imagine that figure would have been around $4000.  Or maybe higher.  I have a lot more money now.  I've got close to $1000 put into various crowdfunded games that haven't even released yet.

 

1 hour ago, Marine X said:

I would have a 16th Anniversary Badge, and the Vet Rewards that went with it. Possibly have a Level 50 Shapeshifter. Probably a Few other, ahem, OK, dozens of Characters I haven't even thought of yet, I can't recall what the "Live" limits were.

On 'live', we were initially limited to 12 characters per shard.  I had filled those slots on Infinity so I got the second account just a couple years into the gam.  Then they gave us the ability to purchase additional character slots, up to a limit of 36 per shard.  That was plenty for me.  At shutdown, I had 37 level 50's (35 of them on Infinity) and an additional 4-6 characters leveling up.  I probably would not have double that many by now as I continued to play characters after they reached 50.  So, with more and more 50's, I would have less time to level new characters.  Also, part of my early push was to get at least one of every AT to level 50.  Then I took every tank armor set to 50 at least once.  After that, I didn't have any goals that involved large numbers of 50's.

 

FYI, the 'secret server' continued issuing anniversary badges and you can buy them for merits each year, during the anniversary month (May).  I plan to do so on my badger.  I was here when the first anniversary badge was issued.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Ironblade

[tidge]

I feel like the game would have morphed at least a couple more times, and almost certainly in at least one direction I would not have appreciated. In some ways, I'm still not over the (relatively neutral) changes to zones that added Universities, Auction Houses, and Arenas! Please don't bring up the zones that were destroyed/re-imagined. I did not appreciate the grind... either for build-crafting or Incarnate content.

 

The future plans included more zone remodeling (Perez Park was to be made into some combination of Dark Astoria and Grandville, with high-level content that existed on geographically high levels) and more Incarnate grinds. The Live Incarnate system really rubbed me the wrong way. I saw it as "in order to be really good at running this content, you have to run the exact same content a whole lotta times to maybe get the rewards that will make you even better at running the exact same content." I know that people held out hope that more incarnate content would be the answer, but I always saw that as a dead end.

 

Writing only for myself: I appreciate the Lore the best when it is essentially open-ended. I understand that the Live Devs felt like they wanted to tell stories about certain characters, but the game didn't need that. There is a reason the Golden and Silver ages of comics lasted a combined 50 years, and 'modern' comic universe re-imaginings last less than 5.

[Frostbiter]

We might have gotten Galaxy City back, complete with it's own newbie mission arcs like Atlas Park received with Mathew Habashy and the follow-ups. Oh well, one can dream, right HC Team?

[KC4800]

Boomtown would be completely rebuilt by now.  And whatever that was in north Steel Canyon might have become part of it.

[Frostbiter]

3 minutes ago, KC4800 said:

Boomtown would be completely rebuilt by now.  And whatever that was in north Steel Canyon might have become part of it.

That was to have been the spaceport once upon a time. I'm pretty sure whatever plans they had for it got scrapped before the shutdown.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Frostbiter

[Bill Z Bubba]

I had quit playing. Came back for the shut down when I was told it was happening. Hopped to the beta server when Pinnacle shut down. Were incarnate powers actually locked out if you were only F2P? Or was it a case where if you had enough vet lvls they stayed available?

[CursedSorcerer]

I honestly have no idea what NCSoft was thinking when they cancelled this game, and frankly I don't even care.

[Frostbiter]

2 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I had quit playing. Came back for the shut down when I was told it was happening. Hopped to the beta server when Pinnacle shut down. Were incarnate powers actually locked out if you were only F2P? Or was it a case where if you had enough vet lvls they stayed available?

Everything Incarnate, from drops to content to crafting required you to be a subscriber. F2P and even Premium players had access to none of it. I bounced back and forth from VIP to Premium and would lose my Alpha Level Shift when not subscribed.

[EmperorSteele]

There are few things in life one can be sure of. Everything else is just guesswork. In the vast expanse of possibility and probability, where every decision is impacted by what came before, and impacts everything after, it becomes difficult to predict any kind of alternate outcome compared to what actually happened.

 

However, given existing patterns and data, I can say with 100% certainty that they would have nerfed Regen.

 

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk!

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, Ironblade said:

On 'live', we were initially limited to 12 characters per shard. 

Well, if you want to get really nitpicky, 8, then 12 once COV came out ("if you owned both," I believe.) But given those were combined for so long...

 

And 8 really got me expanding onto other servers. I couldn't imagine "just" 8 now. Or even "just" 12.

[Marine X]

57 minutes ago, Frostbiter said:

That was to have been the spaceport once upon a time. I'm pretty sure whatever plans they had for it got scrapped before the shutdown.

Matt Miller mentions this in one of the Lore AMAs:

 

Were there actual plans for a moonbase?

 

MM: I approved art dailies from it on the last day of the studio. 😞 Issue 28.

 

RG: The funny thing is, our database had a value called MOONBASE that basically represented a build that didn’t exist in the system yet. It was a running gag that we would always be planning a moonbase, but it would never actually come to fruition. The plan for Issues 25-28 were the moment we hunkered down and said, “We’re actually going to do it this time!” We were... wrong.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I left Live sometime after incarnates were introduced and sometime before it went from subscription to RMT.  

[oedipus_tex]

2 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

I had quit playing. Came back for the shut down when I was told it was happening. Hopped to the beta server when Pinnacle shut down. Were incarnate powers actually locked out if you were only F2P? Or was it a case where if you had enough vet lvls they stayed available?

 

All the incarnate stuff was behind the paywall. In the End Game thread you and I were participating in a few days ago, this came up about the Destiny power. Destiny used to be available to paid players only so you'd run into it on teams less often. Level Shifts too.

[Coyotedancer]

I'll always be sad about not getting that moonbase. 😥

[Johnny]

4 hours ago, CursedSorcerer said:

I honestly have no idea what NCSoft was thinking when they cancelled this game, and frankly I don't even care.

This youtube video explains it well, specifically at the 24:40 point: Death of a Game: City of Heroes

 

To keep it simple for TLDR, it boils down to:

• NCSoft was mainly a South Korean company
• CoH only amounted to 2-4% of company revenue
• Their other games were fantasy MMOs, popular in the South Korean market
• But CoH was not significantly popular in South Korea, despite marketing attempts
• And it was expensive to operate the California offices for the sake of the NA market
• Despite earning *some* revenue, there was an opportunity cost in terms of manpower
• So it probably made sense to move manpower to better support their other titles

[CursedSorcerer]

13 minutes ago, Johnny said:

This youtube video explains it well, specifically at the 24:40 point: Death of a Game: City of Heroes

 

To keep it simple for TLDR, it boils down to:

• NCSoft was mainly a South Korean company
• CoH only amounted to 2-4% of company revenue
• Their other games were fantasy MMOs, popular in the South Korean market
• But CoH was not significantly popular in South Korea, despite marketing attempts
• And it was expensive to operate the California offices for the sake of the NA market
• Despite earning *some* revenue, there was an opportunity cost in terms of manpower
• So it probably made sense to move manpower to better support their other titles

Maybe that's true, maybe... I never had good mind for business.

[EmperorSteele]

Captain America ain't the only one who understands that reference!

[Chris24601]

Regarding “Issue 48”...

 

I believe the Live devs basically admitted that the incarnate grind/powers and need to create escalating enemies would have eventually led to breaking the game engine and them having to reboot into a CoH2 after whatever was after the Dimensionless.

 

With that in mind, I suspect instead we’d have seen a sunset (on new content anyway) about issue 36-ish c. 2016 and then a beta launch of CoH2 (probably CoH: Insert meaningful subtle here) in 2017 and live release in 2018, which due to Covid slow downs, would probably be stalled on Issue 7 or 8 with everyone awaiting the issue 9 open beta “Soon^TM.”

 

CoH2 would have been built with endgame grind and RMT in mind from the start (because NCSoft) with far less focus on the ride to get there and so would have been a disappointment to many longtime fans.

 

Honestly, things happen for a reason and getting this almost time capsule of how great gaming used to be right at a time where life has given more time than we’d really like with not much in the way of genuinely new entertainment feels like a Godsend, as does that pause meaning it’s ethos wasn’t warped by the near decade of monetizing games into the soulless shells many feel like today.

 

I mean, we had barely a year of Incarnate content and it was already straining things. How much of our fondness for CoH would still remain today if over half the game’s life cycle had been incarnate grind focused? (i.e. 2004-2020 with incarnate content starting in late 2010 w. Alpha Strike and fully implemented in early 2011).

 

Instead development on that branch pretty much died with the Snap and there’s now not the capacity to really push that further under the current development paradigm so now we’re getting some smaller stories and powers for the 1-50 ride that has always been this game’s heart and soul.

 

Honestly? I think that what actually happened may have ended up being for the best in the long run.

Edited October 16, 2020 by Chris24601

[Darmian]

^ THIS.

 

And for the future? Personally I don't really want to see the current tiny dev team shackle themselves to Battalion or what have you. More and more stories across the 1 to 50 range. The weird breathing space of the best part of a decade might have been, as said above, a blessing in disguise. Let's say it HAS been 7 or 8 years since Cole was defeated and he sits in his prison cell. What else has been going on? That's 7+ years of story to fill without ever getting to another "Big Bad", which apart from the mechanics and fun of a large team challenge is, IMO, narratively dull, because that just brings things to a point, and that's kind of limiting really.

 

Anyhoo.

Edited October 17, 2020 by Darmian

[FoulVileTerror]

With eight accounts by 2009, I had spent nearly $5,000.00 on City of Heroes subscriptions, expansions, and related purchases.  I pulled the plug by 2010.  I could not continue to spend that kind of money on the game, and given the change in direction that was taking place at the time, it was actually not that difficult a decision to make.

Of course, finding out about the sunrise and the free nature of Homecoming, well . . . creating 8 accounts straight away was a bit of a no-brainer.

 

But what -could- have been?  Well, 8 accounts, each with the monthly subscription fee?  Assuming I wouldn't have spent more money on other add-ons and the like, another $10,000 or so would have been sunk in to the game.

I definitely do not have that kind of money to burn any more.  Honestly, never really did  . . . 

 

So, for the record:  Thanks to everyone who let's me continue to play on Homecoming free of monetary charge!   It's appreciated.