On YouTube = Death of a Game: COH

servantrules

Some valid points, some debatable ones. I'm bothered that no mention of CO given that Marvel Universe Online was noted (and the vaporware "spiritual successors").

Thoughts? What say you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YahAati0d2c

decorumfriends

My thoughts are...I was a die-hard CoXer, but it's been four freakin' years. Video post-mortums are pointless at this juncture. Everyone just needs to let it go.

championshewolf

I've watched this the day it came out. There were many things in the facts he got wrong, for instance, the "you would have access to everything you had before you left the game" was an absolute lie. I had to choose I think 4 of my 12 characters to unlock, and I had to pay to unlock the rest (thank god I didn't have characters across multiple servers cause that 4 unlock limit applied to every server not just the one I was on). Not to mention the bone headed idea of having a premium only server where subscribers could go further dividing the fractured community, as their answer to spam.

My inventions were completely shut off and I had to subscribe (at the time) to be able to use them, and later, I could pay a small fee on a monthly basis in their cash shop to use said items if I wasn't subbed. Items I crafted and worked hard for years before in fact. And at the start of said cash shop, many of the features found in specialty packs, like the height slider, gender change and such, that were $10 bucks in their respective packs that had other items to, on the store cost $15 bucks or more each. Never mind the price of getting the full story adventures if you weren't a subscriber, was the price of a new game to. So as a returning player, I did not keep everything, and the things that I worked on long before that update were locked behind a pay wall.

Now while I applaud certain things in the cash shop for CoH, such as the ability to buy individual pieces of costume, they did a lot of pay to win things in that cash shop to and it baffles me how much is going under the radar or is wrong with this Death of a Game retrospective. For starters, you could buy powerful set inventions on the cash shop. That's essentially pay to win there. How did that get missed? They also locked masterminds, controllers, Kheldians and the Soldiers of Arachnos behind a pay wall as well, which baffled me completely.

He also got the whole veteran reward thing wrong, cause he made it sound like it was only introduced with the freemium model, which it wasn't. Vet rewards had been around a long time, and go figure, I was locked out of those I earned as well to when I got back to the game. And those items became huge pay to win incentives to.

The one thing that baffled me of their freemium model, was the fact that the raid content was completely locked out unless you subscribed, along with the incarnate stuff. No method to get like a timer or anything, like TOR does (which ironically seems to be built on this draconian freemium model CoH came up with) just locked out completely. I saw that cash shop, and it just felt like a con job from then. I bought a few things but the moment I found out the inventions I made years ago were shut off and my characters were essentially unplayable, well Paragon lost what little respect I had for them. They had already thrown City of Villains under the bus, but to get ripped off like that? And the funny part, new power sets were not even free to the subscribers, they had to use their stipend to unlock them or pay for them separately if they already used their stipend.

And according to my friends who had left but bought Going Rogue, when this freemium thing started, even though they bought the expansion they were locked out of Praetoria from the get go. Not sure if that eventually changed but yea, that one seemed shadey. I never bought Going Rogue myself, because I just saw it as another nail in the coffin for City of Villains, and of course going to the Rogue Isles after such made that abundantly clear when the most populous locales had less people on than a slow day in Millennium City.

And my major bone to pick with their update, changing the iconic music of CoH and CoV to whatever that wannabe Star Trek 2009 crap is they put in. The music I had logged into Mercy Island and loved listening to, like the music in Mercy City itself, replaced by whatever that travesty was, and I know some songs in Paragon were changed but at least those songs still some what matched their originals. But that's my personal gripe, and still felt nothing but Villains being thrown under a bus and saying they had "villain content" felt more like a bullet point than actually meaning it since exclusive villain zones and content never really happened.

I do applaud the effort made and the attempt at being unbiased in this youtube video, but there was still quite a bit of nostalgia goggles painting the picture a bit and ignoring some other factors as well. Honestly, I won't go into much more of the details beyond what I have already said because it's clear while he did some research it was surface skimming at best and not much digging. As far as not mentioning Champions, honestly that's just CoH 101 at this point as it seems taboo to mention Champions at all to a scarily large number of former CoH players.

ashensnow

I didn't care for the game. At all.

But I feel for those who lost something that meant a lot to them.

servantrules

decorumfriends said:

My thoughts are...I was a die-hard CoXer, but it's been four freakin' years. Video post-mortums are pointless at this juncture. Everyone just needs to let it go.

The author, Nerdslayer, does a series for these defunct MMOs like Star Wars Galaxies. When I heard about it, I had a feeling CoH would be one of them. I agree, it's way past time to accept that CoH's time is done (and no "spiritual successor" is going to recapture what it had). Though judging by the comments on that video on YT, many are still clinging... what I find sad is so many aren't even aware of CO and think only DCUO is the current running superhero MMO. It could really help if CO gets more visibility out there.

championshewolf said:

I do applaud the effort made and the attempt at being unbiased in this youtube video, but there was still quite a bit of nostalgia goggles painting the picture a bit and ignoring some other factors as well.

I had a similar takeaway from this. Though there are some truths, CoH wasn't at all as good as what was presented or as community friendly as stated. I came in the latter quarter in CoH's lifespan, and it was not at all newbie friendly with a lot of elitists. And the gameplay was slooooowwww for a superhero genre game (not SW:Galaxies slow, but still enough to bore most casuals).

That said, I did like CoH for what it was in the broad strokes, and it had some great ideas/mechanics. The "day job" mechanic was simple (stay in a certain building, gain a bonus while logged out from the game, reap once you log back in) and the broader Super Group options, the mission crafting... CO could implement these (I mean we all know it's possible as STO and NWN use the same base engine and these exist in some form in those games), but likely not as soon as we would all want.

championshewolf

championshewolf said:

I do applaud the effort made and the attempt at being unbiased in this youtube video, but there was still quite a bit of nostalgia goggles painting the picture a bit and ignoring some other factors as well.

I had a similar takeaway from this. Though there are some truths, CoH wasn't at all as good as what was presented or as community friendly as stated. I came in the latter quarter in CoH's lifespan, and it was not at all newbie friendly with a lot of elitists. And the gameplay was slooooowwww for a superhero genre game (not SW:Galaxies slow, but still enough to bore most casuals).

Yes, I was avoiding that part in particular in my long winded counter points made. The CoH community, when you knew people, was good. No doubts about that, but it was very insular, very cliquish and very much prone to NIMBY attitude. Anything done to help the game would be met with instant attacks from players (such as when they tried to host ads in games for a small revenue stream to help out the game and there was a much larger backlash against the booster packs than probably many of the die hards will claim there was).

And let's not even get started if you talked about any game that was not CoH. I can't list the countless games that had come out in the life span of CoH that if you even mentioned them to that community at whole, you would be met with a backlash of such hate and derision that it was startling. Even if the game had nothing to do with CoH.

And when Champions was first announced, CoH people were all ecstatic, then Paragon (known as NCSoft NorCal I think?) started a smear campaign against Cryptic and even tried to claim that Cryptic was sending private messages to people on the CoH forums recruiting them for Champions Alpha/Beta. The funny part, there was only one instance of it, and it wasn't even a recruitment thing was just someone asking about Champions to a Cryptic dev before the CoH IP was sold. The reason I know this, because I was in the elitist private forum, Lighthouse little clubhouse basically, and they told us straight up there was no evidence of this, but to let rumors continue to propagate against Cryptic. When they got the new forums they even banned former CoH employees despite none of them even logged into those forums any more. Was a big hubbub against Jack Emmert when people saw the Statesman account banned, as the Emmert hate went into full drive.

And on top of this? Paragon created a thread specifically devoted for bashing on Champions. Plain and simple. And it wasn't a small thread either. It had hundreds of pages of posts from that supposedly "great" community devoted to just bashing on Champions, and anytime an article showed up on game sites, you can bet your last dollar there were quite a few people there from CoH bashing Champions. Even sadder part was many of them were making statements and in the same sentence saying they never played the game. It was just utterly disgraceful to watch a community I use to admire go so low.

I try to remember the positives about a game I enjoyed when I was there, and the community I was with definitely felt welcoming at times. But that community doesn't exist, especially now. And not because the game is gone, but because they decided to be insular, and bash anything that wasn't their game. And instead of trying to help the actual successor to CoH, they instead continue to deride it like it doesn't matter. And these are the people that after CO launched and went Free, they kept laughing at CO for going free, then when CoH went free it was a smart move and the nickel and dime cash shop of CoH was better than COs, some how, I just don't get it anymore.

And when we tried to welcome them in to the game after CoH closed down, we got our hands slapped away, despite many of us were sympathetic towards their plight. Many of them have and still do blame Champions and Cryptic for CoH disappearing. Even though we honestly rarely worried about CoH and when CoH did close down many of us did have some fond memories of it, we got treated like the worst thing ever for trying to be welcoming and understanding. Such attitudes and poor mistreatment of people trying to come to the aid of those in need left a bitter taste in my mouth with that community.

nepht

When CoH's true follow up CO appeared I moved to that it has fingers. Wish the game was still about it was still decent fun.

spinnytop

championshewolf said:

it was very insular, very cliquish and very much prone to NIMBY attitude.

Glad we're not like that!

servantrules

championshewolf said:

I try to remember the positives about a game I enjoyed when I was there, and the community I was with definitely felt welcoming at times. But that community doesn't exist, especially now. And not because the game is gone, but because they decided to be insular, and bash anything that wasn't their game. And instead of trying to help the actual successor to CoH, they instead continue to deride it like it doesn't matter. And these are the people that after CO launched and went Free, they kept laughing at CO for going free, then when CoH went free it was a smart move and the nickel and dime cash shop of CoH was better than COs, some how, I just don't get it anymore.

And when we tried to welcome them in to the game after CoH closed down, we got our hands slapped away, despite many of us were sympathetic towards their plight. Many of them have and still do blame Champions and Cryptic for CoH disappearing. Even though we honestly rarely worried about CoH and when CoH did close down many of us did have some fond memories of it, we got treated like the worst thing ever for trying to be welcoming and understanding. Such attitudes and poor mistreatment of people trying to come to the aid of those in need left a bitter taste in my mouth with that community.

I hear ya. I had old friends who were very much into CoH that refused to acknowledge Champions Online, even when it was clear CoH wasn't going to be "saved". Even to this day, they'd rather cling to WHAT WAS rather than build on WHAT IS and WHAT CAN STILL BE.

I mean look at that 70 year old grandpa who played Asheron's Call. He was sad, yes, but he was openly and cheerfully looking for another MMO to start over and build anew. That should be the spirit we're fostering (more so because this is a SUPERHERO MMO... where characters are supposed to be hopeful and building better tomorrows in our own little ways).