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Feb. 23rd, 2008 03:36 amVia Websnark.
Apparently, in a fairly bizarre move, developer Cryptic Studios has outright sold the flagship (only) superhero MMORPH City of Heroes to publisher NCSoft and bought (not licensed but BOUGHT) the Champions RPG to adapt into their next MMO project. This is after their attempt to bring a Marvel-licensed game to the market apparently fell apart.
I honestly don't know how to feel about this. I'm not terribly invested in City of Heroes... I've got a lot of characters in it, but no higher than mid twenties because I have more fun creating characters than I do leveling. I've always had a sense that City missed out on a lot of opportunities by slavishly following models that evolved for typical fantasy gaming... like an overly rigid class system. You could cutomize your character's appearance on a level that seemed to approach infinity, but there were only a couple ways to be A Fire Guy or An Ice Guy, which misses the point of having superpowers.
They've taken a couple steps towards drastically improving the game in recent updates, including a system that lets you somewhat customize the models for your characters weapons (if you have a weapon power)... something that should have been in from the beginning and doesn't go far enough. I've long thought they needed to let you customize your power visuals. No, it wouldn't affect gameplay if some people had green fire and others had purple fire... but it would add so much to the ambience. And imagine if you could choose an energy type and color for the particle effects/trails used by your movement and other side powers? The Fire Guy could appear in a puff of flame when he or she teleported, and leave a flaming (or at least orange) contrail when flying or running at superspeed.
Eric Burns (Websnark) says that the intention for the new game is to allow the same level of customization that CoH had for costumes at every level of play, including allowing any character archetype to choose any power. I'm not immediately familiar with the Champions system, but my impression of it is that it's point based, which is always a good choice for the supers genre. He also says that the game is intended to include the option for secret identities (YAY!) and a system that lets you design your own NPC archnemesis (YAY!)... these are two features that everybody I know who is a comic/supers fan said "This game needs..." re: City of Heroes.
So on the one hand, it's awesome that there might be a superhero game out there that has what a superhero game needs. On the other hand, it's kind of sad that they feel they have to ditch City of Heroes (what's NCSoft going to do with it development-wise, I wonder?) and start again. Then again, if they pretty much relaunched it from the ground-up (which is about what it would take), the level 50 characters might feel a little miffed.
I suppose one way to look at it is that City of Heroes, being first of its kind, was more than a little bit experimental... Cryptic has spent this time learning how to make a great superhero game by making the only superhero (MMO) game. Better that they apply this knowledge, even it means such a radical departure (literally) for City of Heroes, then just continue plugging along with their existing product.
Of course, the Champions Online game still has plenty of time to actually suck.
Apparently, in a fairly bizarre move, developer Cryptic Studios has outright sold the flagship (only) superhero MMORPH City of Heroes to publisher NCSoft and bought (not licensed but BOUGHT) the Champions RPG to adapt into their next MMO project. This is after their attempt to bring a Marvel-licensed game to the market apparently fell apart.
I honestly don't know how to feel about this. I'm not terribly invested in City of Heroes... I've got a lot of characters in it, but no higher than mid twenties because I have more fun creating characters than I do leveling. I've always had a sense that City missed out on a lot of opportunities by slavishly following models that evolved for typical fantasy gaming... like an overly rigid class system. You could cutomize your character's appearance on a level that seemed to approach infinity, but there were only a couple ways to be A Fire Guy or An Ice Guy, which misses the point of having superpowers.
They've taken a couple steps towards drastically improving the game in recent updates, including a system that lets you somewhat customize the models for your characters weapons (if you have a weapon power)... something that should have been in from the beginning and doesn't go far enough. I've long thought they needed to let you customize your power visuals. No, it wouldn't affect gameplay if some people had green fire and others had purple fire... but it would add so much to the ambience. And imagine if you could choose an energy type and color for the particle effects/trails used by your movement and other side powers? The Fire Guy could appear in a puff of flame when he or she teleported, and leave a flaming (or at least orange) contrail when flying or running at superspeed.
Eric Burns (Websnark) says that the intention for the new game is to allow the same level of customization that CoH had for costumes at every level of play, including allowing any character archetype to choose any power. I'm not immediately familiar with the Champions system, but my impression of it is that it's point based, which is always a good choice for the supers genre. He also says that the game is intended to include the option for secret identities (YAY!) and a system that lets you design your own NPC archnemesis (YAY!)... these are two features that everybody I know who is a comic/supers fan said "This game needs..." re: City of Heroes.
So on the one hand, it's awesome that there might be a superhero game out there that has what a superhero game needs. On the other hand, it's kind of sad that they feel they have to ditch City of Heroes (what's NCSoft going to do with it development-wise, I wonder?) and start again. Then again, if they pretty much relaunched it from the ground-up (which is about what it would take), the level 50 characters might feel a little miffed.
I suppose one way to look at it is that City of Heroes, being first of its kind, was more than a little bit experimental... Cryptic has spent this time learning how to make a great superhero game by making the only superhero (MMO) game. Better that they apply this knowledge, even it means such a radical departure (literally) for City of Heroes, then just continue plugging along with their existing product.
Of course, the Champions Online game still has plenty of time to actually suck.
