If only I could go back in time...

[Solarverse]

...and tell Jack Emmert the future of what happens to City of Heroes and warn him not to sell to NCSoft.
 

 

[Jaguaratron]

Are you kidding? If Emmert had his way this game would have folded years sooner and no one would have been clamoring for a revival, the mess that is Champions Online is much closer to what he wanted out of the game. City of Heroes was a success in spite of him not because and he was pretty resentful of that success too.

[Normal Thomas]

I love these early beta build videos. Its always really fascinating to see what the game was in the very early stages like how in this particular video it appears build up was the lvl 32 power of the energy blast set. Or the fact in this video that "Super Personality" is listed as a powerset

 

 

As far as NCSoft goes... I think the thing there was they helped with distribution and what not so if the CoH property wasn't owned by NCSoft it might have been harder for CoH to get out there? We don't have Ouroboros so no way to find that out. I will say that the further that CoH drifted from the initial Jack Emmert vision the better it got. More exciting and focused story arcs, better leveling curve, cooler power sets and just better game design. I'm thankful he helped make the game but I'm not sure what he or what any of us could have down to prevent it from getting unfairly shutdown by NC.

[Solarverse]

2 hours ago, Jaguaratron said:

Are you kidding? If Emmert had his way this game would have folded years sooner and no one would have been clamoring for a revival, the mess that is Champions Online is much closer to what he wanted out of the game. City of Heroes was a success in spite of him not because and he was pretty resentful of that success too.

Trust me, I don't like the guy, not at all. To a point that I would be willing to spend a night or two in jail over him. It was just a nostalgic moment after watching that video.

[Solarverse]

16 minutes ago, Normal Thomas said:

I love these early beta build videos. Its always really fascinating to see what the game was in the very early stages like how in this particular video it appears build up was the lvl 32 power of the energy blast set. Or the fact in this video that "Super Personality" is listed as a powerset

 

 

As far as NCSoft goes... I think the thing there was they helped with distribution and what not so if the CoH property wasn't owned by NCSoft it might have been harder for CoH to get out there? We don't have Ouroboros so no way to find that out. I will say that the further that CoH drifted from the initial Jack Emmert vision the better it got. More exciting and focused story arcs, better leveling curve, cooler power sets and just better game design. I'm thankful he helped make the game but I'm not sure what he or what any of us could have down to prevent it from getting unfairly shutdown by NC.

Interesting, it has Twilight Men, Killing Crew, Fear Factor and Seraphim listed as mob types in game. I wonder what they were? Also, they actually had clouds that you flew above if you look at the clip at 1:13 in and there doesn't appear to be any War Walls...which I would have preferred, it would have given it more of a seamless open world feel. And at :32 in, you can see when the character turns, he did so more naturally rather than the stiff turn on the spot we have today. Too bad that didn't stay as well to give the game a more realistic feel.

[Ulysses Dare]

People forget, or more likely never knew, that at the time NCSoft bought out Cryptic the City dev team had been reduced to around fifteen people. NC poured a ton of money into setting up Paragon Studios, without which most of the game we love would have never come to pass. While I have no love for the way NC handled the shutdown, we shouldn't pretend they never did anything for the game.

[Ironblade]

12 hours ago, Solarverse said:

Interesting, it has Twilight Men, Killing Crew, Fear Factor and Seraphim listed as mob types in game.

Oh, I used to know some of these.  I think Killing Crew became the Freakshow.

[srmalloy]

2 hours ago, Ulysses Dare said:

People forget, or more likely never knew, that at the time NCSoft bought out Cryptic the City dev team had been reduced to around fifteen people. NC poured a ton of money into setting up Paragon Studios, without which most of the game we love would have never come to pass. While I have no love for the way NC handled the shutdown, we shouldn't pretend they never did anything for the game.

If you could go back in time and change things, going back to when NCsoft was buying out Cryptic and putting language in the documents creating Paragon Studios that would explicitly allow PS to buy itself and its properties away from NCsoft in the event of NCsoft shutting down Paragon Studios might be a more effective long-term alteration.

[PeregrineFalcon]

3 hours ago, Ulysses Dare said:

People forget, or more likely never knew, that at the time NCSoft bought out Cryptic the City dev team had been reduced to around fifteen people.

What's worse, is that while Cryptic was working on Champions, but before they sold City of Heroes to NCSoft, people made accusations that CoH was in "maintenance mode" and that the CoH team was a skeleton crew. Jack Emmert denied this, multiple times, and then this article came out:

 

CoH Players Salute the 'Surviving 15'

 

Which just proved that Jack is the liar that we all knew he was.

[Oubliette_Red]

On 1/21/2020 at 6:26 PM, Oubliette_Red said:

With regards to Jack Emmert...

 

 

[srmalloy]

16 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

With regards to Jack Emmert:

My concern about Jack's success in his game development career after CoH was removed from under his thumb:

[Aberrant]

I like this video a lot, you can see an extremely early Atlas Park with the metal framework Atlas Globe, and the City Hall building in it's original form as the Freedom Phalanx HQ. Also marvel at the terrible 'click to target each power' system, and real-time door opening action!

While we're gawking at the past, here's some early loading screen images with an extremely complicated city map of the supposed 40 zones and questionable typeface choices.

Edit: Looks like the Globe was full metal at one point. Strange decisions, maybe they didn't have the concrete or framework globe texture ready yet! Echo: Atlas Park is not enough, I want to go further back!

 

Edited November 28, 2020 by Aberrant

[Greycat]

7 hours ago, Ironblade said:

Oh, I used to know some of these.  I think Killing Crew became the Freakshow.

Way back when, I created a guide to the original COH trailer. The links don't work now (as I recall) and going through the wayback machine breaks the formatting, but here it is.

 

Edit: Hmm. Wonder if I can copy paste and make it readable...

 

================================================================================================

 

Once in a while, questions pop up about the first COH video listed on the site. It shows quite a bit about the changes in the game - and naturally leads to questions about what's in the game, what's not, what changed and why.

Out of boredom, I decided to write this guide up.

The video is the first one rendered completely "in game" at the time, and is at low (640x480) resolution.

When was this video made?

This was pre-beta. If you look on the FTP site, it gives a date of 7/6/2005. Given there are *several* other movies (such as one on the Shadow Shard, which came well after) with that date... that isn't accurate. I don't have an exact date, only that this was much earlier.

Bolded numbers are time references.

0 - 0.12
- Cryptic logo. Nothing special here.

0:13 to 00:24
- City render. Compare to how it looks now, with depth of field and other graphics updates. I really wish they'd do the "comic box" on cutscenes...

00:24 to 00:35
- Our first look at a hero, who apparently has Superjump and Flight, but nothing notable to me at this point other than that.

00:40
- Our first look at the costume and character creator.

Notable -
Across the top, it shows the steps, which are far different from what we have now.
1-Stats
2-Powers
3-Skills
4-History
5-Costume (highlighted)
6-Profile
And "CFG" which I *assume* stands for Configure.

Next notable item - right next to "Costume" on the main screen is what appears to be a cost of 20485. Some of this is slightly rearranged (for instance, instead of all being in one list, we currently have "Head," "Upper body," "Lower body," "Capes" (soon to be back detail) and "Auras." I'm assuming this was done to help clean up this screen a little - though the layout is much the same. Also notable is that "Eye detail" is being modified to "Lightning."

This is the same hero shown at 0:25, apparently, with the lightning "crest" which this *might* be referring to.

The animated background is interesting, too. The origins, at this point, were *much* different (more of them,) and had more of an impact on the game. My guess would be the background is related to the origin.

For those who are curious, there were seven Origins. As Jack Emmett described in the dev diaries (linked at the end of the guide - worth reading
 

Quote

Nothing guided the player to which powers he should choose. The only limitations for powers came from the hero's origin. The seven origins determined how many powers a player could have as well as how powerful they could become. A mutant hero, for example, could have as many as eight powers, but couldn't raise them to their maximum level. A scientifically altered hero, on the other hand, could have only five powers, but would be able to raise them to a power level above that of the mutant.

]As it flashes through other options, you can see some minor changes:
00:41 - boots, Geometry ("Big,") texture ("Banded 01") and Mask ("Lightning.") From what I'm seeing, "Mask" is simply "pattern."

Also, bottom of the screen, "Save visuals." The blurred bit seems to be instructions to click for more INF... unsurprising in an early test version.

00:46 shows "Skin head 04." Yeah... I think we can guess why they renamed that. Mask of "Cheetah," which looks like "spots" to me.


00:46
- Powers

This is the section that often gets a lot of comment, with "Electricity control," "Darkness control" What has to be remembered is that these were actually picking the equivalent of power pools, with very few powers involved, according to those who ran through this (alpha/early beta.) You can see an example on this early version of the website. The first hero shown, for instance, has "Air control," "Cold control," "Core powers" and "Fire control." I'd say he's very much what turned into a Controller.

Yes, at this point there *were* no Archetypes. No blasters, tanks, scrappers, just people with origins and powers. This has been asked for over and over. So, why was it changed?

Per an interview with Jack Emmett/Statesman, players weren't just being flexible. They were either building "tank-mages," overpowered characters that had no real challenge in the game, or gimping themselves into unplayability. (Say, they have Flight and Invulnerability. Which is fine... they can... fly and be invulnerable. They cant' fight anything, though.) So, despite wanting to get away from "classes," they ended up with Archetypes.

The issue, simply put, is that some had come from a pen-and-paper RPG world and were designing an MMO. Exceptionally flexible creation is automatically (in theory) balanced in a PnP game by the Game Master, who runs things and adjust difficulty on the fly so that everyone, even Mr. Invulnerable Flier, can have a role and participate. That can't really be done in an MMO.

Or from another perspective, a quote (Sword) :
 

Quote

I remember Yankee Daring. He's still my favourite player-created hero. Ever. Remember the "What villains say about Yankee Daring" thread? He was ina class all by himself. Guess he quit after he realized his super strong character couldn't move and did piddiling damage

Where did some of these go? Some ("Earth control") are obvious in what they inspired. Others...

Super Stamina - hmm...

Super Intelligence: Found a quote, of course
 

Quote

Q.How can Super Intelligence be used? How would my character be different with it, than without it?
A.Super Intelligence will be very advantageous for skill-based heroes—those that use a lot of items. They will be able to figure out and use their skills more quickly and effectively.

Super Willpower, Super Personality - not knowing *what* they did, I'd hazard a guess at some. The idea of Personality *might* have morphed into the Presence pool (taunts and fears.) Of course, they also seemed to have a "Fame" statistic (those of you who want to lose XP vs going into debt....)

Darkness control - from board comments previously, sounds like Dark Miasma.

Density Control - a search actually got an explanation of this from Tal_N:
 

Quote

It contained phase shift, increase density, inertial reduction and several invulnerability type defences as I recall. It was quite a limited set as I recall.

Life Drain - several powers have this component. Warshades and Dark scrappers touch on this.

Light control - No telling. Possibly Illusion ("Blind.")

Paralysis - sounds like a generic Hold.

Plant Control - well, we now have a Dominator set with this.

Poison - again, we have a Mastermind set with this.

I have to say again, these weren't powersets, but powers... at best, from what I've been seeing prior, power pools. When I'm saying "This turned into this," we're looking at inspiration or themes for sets.

Shape Shifting - Again, not knowing what it did...

Sonic control - finally made it into the game as a set, giving people headaches.

Super Vision - sounds like part of Leadership (Tactics,) giving +perception now. What it did then... unknown to me.


00:50
- A group of heroes heading out. Things to note at 00:51 =
- The chat interface. Rough around the edges, but, it is alpha.
"Targetting Body" (upper left.) Yes, targettign specific areas, to a point.
"Gest," I'm assuming means gesture. With what *appears* to me to be chat choices beneath it, if I'm seeing SG and TM ("Team?") in the bottom two.

Next to it,t he power window - text feedback saying he's "using power punch."

There's no enemy bars above their heads with HP and END. I'm *assuming* the bar above the power bar shows enemy health. (These look like Hellions.)

Boxes to the right... I'd love feedback on. Is the slider a choice between "Attack" and "Style" (IE more effective, but straightforward, or more flashy but less powerful?) Same with the buttons.

In the upper right - three bars. i'm *guessing* these were Health, End, and XP. (so these are very low level...)

00:55
- Enemy groups.

This is the other thing that brings up discussion. Some of the names are familiar, some... not so much. Listed:

Circle of Thorns
Seraphim
The Lost
Revelation (from the font, I'd assume a tech/space/future group)
The Rikti
Twilight Men - we know them as Malta
Nemesis
Fifth Column
Freakshow
Killing Crew - a search found this:
 

Quote

Take this with a grain of salt, but I heard that Killing Crew was the original Sky Raiders. Thw went from blood thirsty mercs to, well, greedy government trained blood thirsty mercs.

Crey Industries
Devouring Earth
Fear Factor
(Also for completeness, though not seen in the clip - "Soul scavengers" turned into the Carnies. (Found under Doc_LotD.)

Heroside groups changed, too. At high levels you got to the Freedom Phalanx, Dawn Patrol, Midnight Society, etc. for missions of the Elder Game. (Groups that didn't make it in, or were altered: Explorers, Free Company and D.E.N.A. - Dept. of Extra Normal Affairs. Easy to see what happened there.) (The_Spy_Is_Dead) )

00:59
- back to our heroes (and some eye popping colors.)

1:03
- Panning around the city, we seem to have a "fisheye" effect... given they say this was rendered in game, I'm really glad to not see this, even at 640x480.

1:06
- The Flip. Hero flips off a building into flight. Perhaps that "Style" slider

1:10
- A peek at the Fifth Column uniforms, if you haven't seen them, as they're given a good beatdown.

1:12
- A few other interesting things. You can *somewhat* see a targeting icon at the hero's head (apparently aiming for the crotch - what is it with crotches and this game?) Alternately, it could be something for the Alpha dealing with character cameras, as it's the character's eye level.

Also, what is she fighting? My *first* instinct is that it's what turned into a Vahzilok Eidolon.

1:21
- COH logo after some fights vs Fifth Column, and fade to black (six seconds of it...)
 

Quote

I remember the first time I saw a Hero fly overhead and how it made me think, "This is going to be the coolest game ever."

 - MissInformed.

That quote is from this thread, if you're interested.

A link worth going to: theCity of Heroes Design Diaries (Edit - go to one of the other diary links, or use this one. For some reason, the link to all of them is borked, but they're all linked at the bottom, too) at IGN. If you want to see what's going on, or what *went* on, during design, why certain things were done one way or another, why things were scrapped - this is very interesting reading. It's almost easier to go to Diary #9 first - which is short, and "is it ready" in summary. The reason to go there first is that at the bottom, all the development and design diaries - including the (often rambling) ones from the original lead designer - are at the bottom. If you want to see the evolution of a game from "we'd really like" and "this would be fun" to "this doesn't work, we have to change," go read them.

 

=======================================================================================

 

The original video was on ftp.coh.com and I don't think that link's recoverable. (Edit - No! It's actually archived - just not on the internet archive. Found a link that has it for download... and it works.... ) Trying to find links to the dev diaries on wayback. Sadly I apparently used tinyurl on them.  (Ooh. I can probably finagle them from this one - devi diary #4: http://web.archive.org/web/20090415070740/http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/366/366748p1.html)

 

Some other links from the recovered thread:

Early discussion about COH tech, OCT 5 2001:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011005102755/http://www.cityofheroes.com/tech.htm

First completed listing of each origin type, dec 7 2002:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021207210910/http://www.cityofheroes.com/heroes.htm
(And I suspect this bit of design still lingers on in the current game as being why origin is so "baked in" to an AT that it's one of the four things we can't change.)

 

Some of the other comments in the archived guide are worth reading, too...

Edited November 28, 2020 by Greycat

[Solarverse]

38 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Way back when, ...snip

Edit: Side note, I wish I had a way to find my first post on those threads, sadly I can't figure out how to do it. I don't think I posted for the first time until maaaaybe issue 3 or 4, I simply did not want anything to do with forums until the longest time. I just wanted to play the game and stay out of the game's politics in those days. Hell, it might not have been till issue 5 (the aggro nerf) that I might have made my first post...and if I did at that time, I am sure it was nothing but rage for the nerf, lol.

 

Thanks for that! Good info. I did not get a chance to read all of it, but will for sure come back to this often for information. Too bad some of those links don't work anymore.  😞

Edited November 28, 2020 by Solarverse

[Techwright]

On 11/27/2020 at 8:05 PM, Greycat said:

00:55
- Enemy groups.

This is the other thing that brings up discussion. Some of the names are familiar, some... not so much. Listed:

Circle of Thorns
Seraphim
The Lost
Revelation (from the font, I'd assume a tech/space/future group)
The Rikti
Twilight Men - we know them as Malta
Nemesis
Fifth Column
Freakshow
Killing Crew - a search found this:
 

Crey Industries
Devouring Earth
Fear Factor
(Also for completeness, though not seen in the clip - "Soul scavengers" turned into the Carnies. (Found under Doc_LotD.)

Heroside groups changed, too. At high levels you got to the Freedom Phalanx, Dawn Patrol, Midnight Society, etc. for missions of the Elder Game. (Groups that didn't make it in, or were altered: Explorers, Free Company and D.E.N.A. - Dept. of Extra Normal Affairs. Easy to see what happened there.) (The_Spy_Is_Dead) )
 

"Seraphim" sounds like it would be a supernatural/magic organization.  I suppose it could have been the prototype for Knives of Artemis as well.    I wonder if the name was dumped due to its similarity to S.E.R.A.P.H.?

 

Personal opinion, but I'd love to see Homecoming take these unused names and create new groups and new content around them.

[Vanden]

On 11/27/2020 at 2:44 PM, PeregrineFalcon said:

What's worse, is that while Cryptic was working on Champions, but before they sold City of Heroes to NCSoft, people made accusations that CoH was in "maintenance mode" and that the CoH team was a skeleton crew. Jack Emmert denied this, multiple times, and then this article came out:

 

CoH Players Salute the 'Surviving 15'

 

Which just proved that Jack is the liar that we all knew he was.

Considering they release issue 8, with a revamped Faultline with new story arcs, the veteran reward system, and a host of new costume options during that period, I think it's safe to say that the team was obviously not in maintenance mode.

[KauaiJim]

I am not a huge fan of Jack Emmert (or John Smedley for that matter).  But, I try to still have appreciation for their part in creating something I love and enjoy, even if they tried to 'break' their own toy.  Honestly it seems to me that every one of these games has or had someone that was instrumental in both getting the game up and running, and yet a hindrance to what it could be.  It's like when Dr. Manhattan tells the Comedian's daughter how special she is despite the circumstances of her conception and what a jerk the Comedian was.  So, part of me says 'thanks' to these folks for what they did and part of me is grateful that they weren't able to destroy their own creations out of eccentricity.  I wish them the best where ever they are, while silently counting my blessings that they moved on.

 

I wonder if those two ever collaborated what kind of tortuous grind fest they could create.  Might be able to compete with some of those pretty all flash mmo's where the trees and rocks and hair and wind are just perfect, but good luck killing that level 2 gopher without better gear and a team...  Wow, THAT'S fun, not.

 

Anyhow, sometimes people with a really good idea just can't stop messing with it until it's a wreck.  Kind of like Chris Farley and dinner rolls:

 

Tommy Boy (7/10) Movie CLIP - I Killed My Sale! (1995) HD - YouTube

Edited May 7, 2021 by KauaiJim

[Blackbird71]

Earning points for that necromancy badge?

[KauaiJim]

Evidently I am.  Whoops.  Sorry.  Makes me wonder how this thread popped up in my browser.  Could have sworn it showed up on the first page in general - it's not like I went looking for it.  Guess I got a little distracted.  Who knows how I did that.  But it happens.  I will try to be more careful when I'm playing the forums and the game at the same time. lol

 

... aaaand of all threads for me to do this to it's a touchy subject for some.  Double apologies everyone.  Looks like I picked the wrong day to quit sniffing glue!  Doh!  How about this weather everyone?  (taps foot looking around nervously)

 

But at least now I can check the necro badge off my to-do list.

 

(the Chris Farley video is still funny through)

 

Edited to add (because I like to say that);  This thread should have been somewhere around page 30 of general.  I sure as heck wasn't looking that far back and I wasn't searching so HOW did I do this?  lol  (and I was always one of those folks who shakes their head tsk tsk when I see accidental forum necros, now I am the offender and I haven't a clue how I did it).  I'm going to go ahead and blame my parrot.  He likes to play tricks on me sometimes.

Edited May 7, 2021 by KauaiJim