MASSIVELY: Has Homecoming torched the plans of City of Heroes successors?

[Bill Z Bubba]

7 hours ago, Luminara said:

I'd have to say that it was the general lack of progress displayed over nearly a decade that put the kibosh on the successors.  None of them were showing any sign of a live release before Co* was brought back, after all, so it's not like Co* being back changed anything.

 

This. They were all vaporware.

[Moka]

City of Heroes was not a very popular game in relative terms when it shut down. It's unarguable to say it was loved, inovative, and had the best community and all that. But going off numbers, it got more than left in the dust compared to the big dogs at the time. 

 

Statistically, City of Heroes having as many successors as it did was already impressive and showed how dedicated a small community could be. However, also statistically, the chances of any of these successors being at all close to reality and if they were reality, on any sort of presentable and professional level were and now are very low. There won't be a direct successor to City of Heroes in the forseeable future. Most upstart MMOs prefer to stick to grounded fantasy, and bringing the creative freedom of City Of Heroes to a modern day game is a lot to ask even of a professional studio. 

 

Not only do I think a modern day City of Heroes will never happen, I don't know if it really needs to happen, because it'd have a lot of catching up to do with City of Heroes. Obviously any superhero game that comes out isn't going to have half the content a nearly twenty year old game has. It would be nice, though, even if it's a far fetched dream. 

 

tl;dr I don't think a successor was ever going to happen.

[Dauntless]

6 hours ago, SmalltalkJava said:

COH servers like homecoming have miniscule populations.  It shouldn't have too much effect on the market.  

 

It does if the other game devs end up wasting their time playing COH instead of working on their game...

[golstat2003]

13 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

This. They were all vaporware.

 

Pretty much this. COH being back didn't do anything to fact that most of these "superhero games" haven't had any real progress in nearly a decade.

[Shred Monkey]

If a "great" game came out for our demographic, of course Homecoming would disappear.  However, I've become convinced that it's just not possible to make a "great" game anymore.  Nobody will finance it.  The investment money all goes toward producing trash games wrapped up in a pretty package to turn a quick buck.  Homecoming's continued success is just a reflection of the popularity of the original title. 

 

[Without_Pause]

50 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Two pages and I had to actively Google to find the one whose name I forgot: Valiance Online. 

RIP to the brain cells I lost watching gameplay videos from 2020. Seeing a ranged attack be split among the targets was nice, but that's about it for a compliment.

[Optimum_Man]

20 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

Correct, but CoX was gone from all but a few secretive b*stards for many years

Over 2,000 people were playing it. That's more than a few. And tbh without them there would be no Homecoming, because the game would just be gone. HC literally only exists because of them.

[Shenanigunner]

11 minutes ago, rmader989 said:

Over 2,000 people were playing it. That's more than a few.

 

It was gone from the player community at large, and I and many other very involved, very interested players never heard of the shadow servers. So numbers don't really matter.

 

2,000 is a lot of people to cram on a bus. It's not that many, worldwide, over 5-6 years, playing an MMO.

 

What that has to do with HC escapes me, other than that the code was available for them to take public.

 

Edited October 22, 2021 by Shenanigunner

[Hero of Truth]

To be clear:  Homecoming exists because of an employee of Paragon Studios leaking the source and because a whistle blower revealed the existence of SCoRE to the rest of the world.

The people playing secretly on SCoRE in no way contributed to the existence of Homecoming.

[Ukase]

Personally, I think HC is a huge disruption. Why? Because it's essentially free. Some folks donate, but the window closes quickly, so it's free for most of us. 

So..I get that most of us can afford a different game, and would likely fork out some cash to investigate a new game - but how many would continue to do so? 
What void would those games fill that HC:CoH doesn't? In order to succeed long term, there has to be some sort of competitive advantage. Whether it be content, or compelling game play, or some other facet of gaming, there has to be some offering that the others don't have, or don't do as well. 

Even though I was in the initial kickstarter for CoT, how long has it been, for this volunteer staff? A damn long time. I'm not complaining - just stating a fact. Even though they're all essentially volunteers, they've yet to complete, and it will still be another year -  AT LEAST - before a Beta is ready. To be fair, they are in Alpha stage now, if I read correctly. 

But given that HC is free...how are these Successors going to compete when they'll have to charge money - while HC is free? And odds are, at least a few of those folks are using the spare time they were putting into the game into playing this one. I don't know this, but I suspect it's the case. 

As for Ship of Heroes, I'm connected with McGeever on LinkedIn. The dude is every bit as legit as Jack Emmert, as far as game executives go. That said, the concept of a bunch of heroes on a ship just sounds silly to me. I'll probably wait until the ship lands. 

So, yeah, I read the article on Massively, and I do think that HC is a big problem for any game company that's going to try to capture and keep market share with a free game like this available. But - hey, I've certainly been wrong before. 

[Bill Z Bubba]

5 minutes ago, Hero of Truth said:

To be clear:  Homecoming exists because of an employee of Paragon Studios leaking the source and because a whistle blower revealed the existence of SCoRE to the rest of the world.

The people playing secretly on SCoRE in no way contributed to the existence of Homecoming.

 

Besides, ya know, them actively helping set up HC's servers after the first failed go-live when someone shut everything down out of fear of NCSoft. That and writing some of the patch notes early on. And if you don't think some of the current dev batch were playing on the SSPS and/or part of its changes, you're out of your mind.

[Shenanigunner]

4 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

Besides, ya know, them actively helping set up HC's servers after the first failed go-live when someone shut everything down out of fear of NCSoft. That and writing some of the patch notes early on. And if you don't think some of the current dev batch were playing on the SSPS and/or part of its changes, you're out of your mind.

 

I don't think there's really anything to argue here. The post-Live community is more or less continuous, yes. I just disagreed with the n00b's contentions as some kind of counterargument.

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

2 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:

I don't think there's really anything to argue here.

 

It's a game forum. We'll FIND something to argue about!

 

Hell, I'm still annoyed that I was never invited to the SSPS.

[Shenanigunner]

21 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

It's a game forum. We'll FIND something to argue about!

 

Oh, bullhockeys.

 

Quote

Hell, I'm still annoyed that I was never invited to the SSPS.

 

I never figured out why I never heard a word about the private servers. I was pretty well connected and active in several long-running grief discussions. I was more than a little pissed to find out my world still existed, if somewhat in the shadows, all the time I truly felt desolate at its sudden destruction.

 

(To be fair, I'm not now and never really was a gamer in the modern sense, just a guy who liked a few games over the years. I've never had the IGN news feed on IV.)

 

But oh, well. We're here now.

 

Edited October 22, 2021 by Shenanigunner

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, Shenanigunner said:

Oh, bullhockeys.

 

I never figured out why I never heard a word about the private servers. I was pretty well connected and active in several long-running grief discussions. I was more than a little pissed to find out my world still existed, if somewhat in the shadows, all the time I truly felt desolate at its sudden destruction.

 

(To be fair, I'm not now and never really was a gamer in the modern sense, just a guy who liked a few games over the years. I've never had the IGN news feed on IV.)

 

But oh, well. We're here now.

Ha! I can kind of relate. My discovery of the game being back consisted of, rather randomly after a discussion with a childhood friend about our favorite videogames, me googling CoH to see if I remember something correctly. This happened around the Summer of 2019 - and to my very big surprise, I saw a result that said something of the effect that CoH was back or a server was hosting the game. Boy what a funny thing! Without that whim, I would probably not even have known about this two years later 😅

[PeregrineFalcon]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

Without that whim, I would probably not even have known about this two years later 😅

That's the thing that bothers me the most about Homecoming. I wonder almost every day just how many people are out there that still miss City of Heroes, and would love to play again, but just don't know about Homecoming.

[OmegaOne]

4 hours ago, Ukase said:

But given that HC is free...how are these Successors going to compete when they'll have to charge money - while HC is free? And odds are, at least a few of those folks are using the spare time they were putting into the game into playing this one. I don't know this, but I suspect it's the case. 
.....
So, yeah, I read the article on Massively, and I do think that HC is a big problem for any game company that's going to try to capture and keep market share with a free game like this available. But - hey, I've certainly been wrong before. 

Well, just because Homecoming is free doesn't stop people from playing or spending money on other games. I mean personally I play all kinds of other games besides HC. It's not really a question of either/or for most people I think.

[Ukase]

15 minutes ago, OmegaOne said:

Well, just because Homecoming is free doesn't stop people from playing or spending money on other games. I mean personally I play all kinds of other games besides HC. It's not really a question of either/or for most people I think.

I did mention that some folks had no issue paying to play other games. The question will be - will they keep paying if the game fills the same kind of void? Whatever it is - it's got to be somewhat different and offer something HC doesn't. 

Even though I've got some "free" goodies for being on CoT's kickstarter, they're going to be charging money if/when they finally get things going. Am I going to pay to play that game when I can play this one for free? I have to wait and see. I'll certainly see what they did with my $75. But odds are, once more cash is expected to part ways with my wallet, unless there's some reason to keep playing, I'm not going to keep paying. 

[Hyperstrike]

4 hours ago, Hero of Truth said:

To be clear:  Homecoming exists because of an employee of Paragon Studios leaking the source and because a whistle blower revealed the existence of SCoRE to the rest of the world.

The people playing secretly on SCoRE in no way contributed to the existence of Homecoming.

To be clear, this is bollocks.

These people were able to help get the server up and in working order.  Stripping out "phone home" apparatus in the game.
They were able to reverse engineer operational procedure for the games.
And their donations kept the servers going through multiple iterations.
And they provided playtesting and development for additions to the game content.

How you received HC was NOT what was turned over to the SCORE team back in 2012.

If you want to hate on them, fine.  What you do to keep yourself occupied is your problem.

But to say the people from SCORE contributed nothing?
Out here in meatspace, we call that LYING.

In 2013, having seen multiple attempts at keeping other games alive CRUSHED under orbital-drop C&Ds, shutting the hell up and running dark to avoid notice was a valid concern.
And sure, maybe 6 years later it was a bit less valid.
Of course YOU hadn't invested tens of thousands of dollars in hosting fees and servers.  So it's easy for you to say.
Y'know, stuff that could be SEIZED, leaving the project DEAD.

I'm sorry that the circle of people wasn't wide enough to make you a "cool kid".
This happens in trust-based environments.
It isn't anyone's fault.
And every time we had a leak, we'd go into lockdown mode.

Now, had virtualization been, in 2013-2014 what it was in 2019+?
The SCORE project would likely have opened up to a much wider audience.
But 2013 virtualization in the cloud simply couldn't handle the back-end traffic of the game.
Hence the expensive physical servers and hosting.

The big improvement on this front was the HC crew, who were familiar with more modern virtualization offerings at the point, showing how to do it.
So hosting is now eminently more mobile, more robust (in multiple ways), and far FAR less expensive than hosting dedicated physical hardware.

How do I know this?

Because I was one of the first people in the SCORE server in early 2013.
Feel free to start hating on me and simply discounting and ignoring everything I say now.
 

[Hyperstrike]

4 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

 

It's a game forum. We'll FIND something to argue about!

 

DAMN STRAIGHT!

 

4 hours ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Hell, I'm still annoyed that I was never invited to the SSPS.

Had I known you and had solid contact information, you'd have been in once the invites structure was set up.

[Hyperstrike]

4 hours ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

Oh, bullhockeys.

 

 

I never figured out why I never heard a word about the private servers. I was pretty well connected and active in several long-running grief discussions. I was more than a little pissed to find out my world still existed, if somewhat in the shadows, all the time I truly felt desolate at its sudden destruction.

 

(To be fair, I'm not now and never really was a gamer in the modern sense, just a guy who liked a few games over the years. I've never had the IGN news feed on IV.)

 

But oh, well. We're here now.

 

Again, it's a side-effect of the security mindset and access to you.

There's a lot of people I would have loved to have invited in.
But I didn't have contact info for a lot of people.
And to be fair, there's a bunch of people I DID invite who never set foot in the game once their account was up and running.
 

[Snarky]

They seem to be progressing at the exact same "will release sometime this century" pace they had been before Homecoming arrived.  Did you notice some giant shift in pacing???

[mcdoogss]

Whoa the beta videos of ship of heroes look pretty rough.  

[Industrious1]

I'd say this is a question better answered in 30-40 years when one of these games is actually released.  

[GraspingVileTerror]

Seems some wounds are still pretty fresh.  Some apologies might help lead to some reconciliation.

Is there any hope of that?