Ship of Heroes gets a release date!

[SuperPlyx]

 

Ship of Heroes has set a release date for August 18 2025:

https://shipofheroes.com/release-date-for-ship-of-heroes/

 

There was a few teams that started after CoH closed down to make a new heroes game. It took years but one of them has finally delivered.

I think this is the only team that started to develop a heroes game after CoH closed that has actually gotten to a release date with a full game. 

 

Wasn't sure where to put this,just thought a few might be interested

[Coin]

Interested in this, depending on the price/subscription cost etc.

Trying to remember, was this the one that Golden Girl was involved in?

 

Also, what was the other one that had a good Kickstarter? I think that's the one I paid towards and nothing has happened with it?

 

[El D]

1 hour ago, Coin said:

Interested in this, depending on the price/subscription cost etc.

Trying to remember, was this the one that Golden Girl was involved in?

 

Also, what was the other one that had a good Kickstarter? I think that's the one I paid towards and nothing has happened with it?

 

 

Golden Girl's project was Heroes & Villains. Basically been entirely dead for at least the last 5 years or so and made a bunch of claims that never went anywhere. Which, remembering her from the original forums... tracks. Valiance Online and City of Titans were the other two. City of Titans/The Phoenix Project had a kickstarter that was successful (got twice as much funding as they asked for at the time) but have been incredibly slow-going. I was briefly an assistant proofreader/lore editor at the start of their volunteer efforts, then bailed when the progress and administrative oversight stalled out even that early on. Valiance Online apparently cancelled their kickstarter some time ago, no idea what they're doing now.

 

Seeing the Ship of Heroes trailer and the content from their Steam page... I applaud them for actually getting something made but that is rough. It looks like an AI filter applied to early CoH beta footage. It'd look dated for the 2010s, much less for something intending to be a 'new and exciting' MMO in the year 2025. I understand the need to pay the bills but that's not a finished product, much less one worth charging a box price and an on-going subscription for. Especially when the competition - the professionally made game they're cribbing off of with 10+ years of fully developed content and an actual community - has a 'just sign up and make an account!' policy.

Edited July 3 by El D

[Kyksie]

When Ship of Heroes first appeared I thought for sure it was a take-the-money-and-run Kickstarter scam, and when said Kickstarter raised roughly $37 I thought they would vanish. 

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

I've always thought that the premise was great, and I'm definitely going to check it out, but I didn't see anything in that last video that made me think that I'll be playing it for years.

[ThaOGDreamWeaver]

16 hours ago, El D said:

Especially when the competition - the professionally made game they're cribbing off of with 10+ years of fully developed content and an actual community - has a 'just sign up and make an account!' policy.

Oddly, it reminds me of Champions Online in the early days: animation needs (a lot) of work to make it as fluid as COH's, for a start.

(And surprisingly, Champions is still going too over at ARC: I haven't touched it since about week two, I think.)

 

But I've seen worse in alleged high-end FPS games. I applaud them for getting the thing hauled spaceborne before Star Citizen comes out.

Which may be roughly the same time as we achieve warp and the whole thing becomes old hat.

[Jacke]

Welp, I don't know about Ship of Heroes.  Will try to find out more, but I can't see me going with it when it launches.

 

I've tried a few other MMOs and it's tough to get them right.  Even some times getting things too right hurts; example is the original The Secret World which was just too good about making things feel like a Eldritch Horror World.  Just didn't have enough space where I felt safe.

 

I still feel I will get more out of City of Heroes here on Homecoming than in any other MMO.

 

On 7/4/2025 at 11:15 AM, ThaOGDreamWeaver said:

But I've seen worse in alleged high-end FPS games. I applaud them for getting the thing hauled spaceborne before Star Citizen comes out.

Which may be roughly the same time as we achieve warp and the whole thing becomes old hat.

 

Yes, Ship of Heroes beat Star Citizen on getting to release.  I also expect we'll see Half-Life 3 and a good Duke Nukem sequel game before we see Star Citizen released.  😺

 

 

Edited July 8 by Jacke

[Triumphant]

I'd have to take it for a test drive, before I make a judgement (everything deserves a fair shake).  But that's if it would even run on my janky, old computer.  CoH runs like a top on this thing, which puts it pretty much head and shoulders above everything else that I play.  🤷‍♂️

[battlewraith]

[aardvarkKeeper]

On 7/3/2025 at 7:47 PM, PeregrineFalcon said:

I've always thought that the premise was great, and I'm definitely going to check it out, but I didn't see anything in that last video that made me think that I'll be playing it for years.

Yeah I've got so much invested in HC, but I'll give the ship a try

[aardvarkKeeper]

On 7/4/2025 at 10:17 AM, Jacke said:

I still feel I will get more out of City of Heroes here on Homecoming than in any other MMO.

This is my feeling as well

[Skyhawke]

On 7/9/2025 at 7:16 PM, battlewraith said:

 

The body and costume look great! That face...oof...that face looks like the Winter Soldier ate the Winter Soldier and went blonde and gray and dead inside from it. Many Ureal Engine users seem to always hit the "everything looks great except the faces" wall. 

[battlewraith]

Just now, Skyhawke said:

 

The body and costume look great! That face...oof...that face looks like the Winter Soldier ate the Winter Soldier and went blonde and gray and dead inside from it. Many Ureal Engine users seem to always hit the "everything looks great except the faces" wall. 

 

It looks good against a simple background. The problem is that when you put those textures and colors against a background and other characters that are similarly shaded, it's just too garish. It grates on the eye. The face is hilarious but at the same time there is something oddly compelling about those eyes boring into my soul. Also looks like he might be whistling, so maybe the sound effects pull the whole thing together like the Big Lebowski's rug.

[PeregrineFalcon]

Ship of Heroes was supposed to launch tomorrow, August 18th. It was just announced, earlier today, that launch has been delayed until Monday, August 25th.

 

😞

[Techwright]

3 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Ship of Heroes was supposed to launch tomorrow, August 18th. It was just announced, earlier today, that launch has been delayed until Monday, August 25th.

 

😞

 

Still, it will be a faster full release than Star Citizen.  🙄

[Captain Electric]

There's a lot of people looking forward to it on the game's main forum, but the game's Steam forum is a bigger cesspool than Mercy Island (although it looks like that's finally started to change over the past couple days). 

It's no City of Heroes, but a long time ago I realized I like dragging my characters to other superhero universes sometimes, it was way back in 2012 when Champions Online welcomed Primal Earth's refugees; I just thought that was so cool that they didn't only just reach out to us as potential subscribers, they welcomed our characters from this world into theirs. Portal Corp was busy that month. DCUO probably wouldn't have approved of such behavior, but I did it there, too, although it was an alternate version that fit their world. If a game world allows customizable heroes, I've probably already been there. And I've got at least five characters who stand a good chance to still be around in 500 years, when SoH takes place.

To date, none of these games have surpassed City of Heroes IMO. But I'm still batting for them, warts and all, because it's just more story arcs for my heroes and villains. 

[Captain Electric]

Also, I just think of it like, not all of the comic books I've read were (or could have been) drawn and inked by my favorite comic book artists. Didn't stop me from enjoying them. 

[Lunar Ronin]

8 minutes ago, Captain Electric said:

There's a lot of people looking forward to it on the game's main forum, but the game's Steam forum is a bigger cesspool than Mercy Island (although it looks like that's finally started to change over the past couple days). 

 

 

That's a combination of Steam forums being cesspools in general, and the Heroic Games developers being a bit in their own bubble and not realizing how people other than CoH fans and SoH donors would perceive the game.

[Captain Electric]

Maybe, but I don't know, going by comments, it seems like most of the worst poop is being flung by CoH fans and fans of other superhero MMOs on the market. And to an extent, I understand (even if I don't condone). The average indie game consumer on Steam already knows what indie games look like, there are no surprises here for them. But the average superhero MMO fan is probably just thinking they want a new superhero MMO that looks like the next step. And they're not going to stop to ask themselves how many millions of dollars that would take, or if these developers have millions of dollars. They're just mad and confused by what they see, and ready to fling poo.

[Techwright]

Well, I just went over to Steam to view SoH, and it's saying it unlocks in 1 hour.  The game looks reasonably good, more like a Champions Online minus the claw hands, but I went back to re-read my opinion of the demo from 22 months ago, and was reminded that there were a great many problems to address.  I didn't really find it playable back then.  That and I ended on a note that suggested the game was heavily angled towards magic origin, even to creating cybernetic opponents that were magic based.  This, as I said, doesn't hold much appeal to me, as I feel the market is oversaturated with magic MMOs as is.  If I want such, there's pages of magic MMOs on Steam that I could pick from.

 

Still, they may have been more aggressive at fixing issue than I suspected.  I'll keep a wait-and-see attitude rather than outright rejection.

[PeregrineFalcon]

2 hours ago, Techwright said:

Well, I just went over to Steam to view SoH, and it's saying it unlocks in 1 hour.

So it's been 2 hours. Did the game unlock? Can you download it?

[Skyhawke]

9 hours ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

 

That's a combination of Steam forums being cesspools in general, and the Heroic Games developers being a bit in their own bubble and not realizing how people other than CoH fans and SoH donors would perceive the game.

 

I just peeked at their Steam forum and it made me miss Diantane. 🤣