I curious to know if the OP has spent money on the game, and how much, or does he hope others will chip in so he doesn't have to (either PWE or other players)?
cryptic runs 3 games two have well known IP and bring in players just to play that IP on a game. these are not owned by cryptic and have to be used properly and productively in order to keep the IP licence. theses two have been launched to console.
then we have CO, a little known IP based on a role playing game, and it is owned by cryptic/pwe . due to various stuffups up at the start and concentration on the other two after that, little has been done including advertising. the other two games have (at last count) dev teams of 40+ each. CO has about 10 or less.(counting names as possible)
yes we would like more stuff in it , however a lot of people are realistic about the business aspects. why would a company invest a load of money on the remote chance that a horde of people will suddenly become interested in a little known hero rpg . where they can't even play their favorite(copyrighted) characters.
check out the steam charts for sto & nw. nw started at 15k but rapidly dropped to 5k. that's a well known IP dropping those numbers. ------------ you should get together with the person who thought the company should put out comics, af's and other stiuff to get people interested. then you can spend millions on that and see how many extra people play. ----------- jaazaniah, he sounds like a1fighter
You know, you're not the first guy to come around and be like "This game could make millions of dollars with this one weird trick!" In the eight years I've been playing this game, this is the first that I've heard that the game would do so much better if the zone caps were lifted. If only Cryptic had thought of that earlier the game wouldn't be how it is. How sad for the state of this entire game that you hadn't said anything eight years ago, all our problems would be over. If only they hadn't arbitrarily chosen to put up zone caps for no reason. I mean, there couldn't possibly be a reason behind this decision.
Sorry to be so snarky but a lot of us have been here a very long time, and we've talked to people in charge about the state of the game on several occasions, and how we want better things for the game, but they've been very candid with us about what's possible and what isn't. Unless you personally know a way to convince someone at PWE to throw more money at the game, then you're in the same position as us. If you believe change is possible, then make that change. Until you do that, you're gonna be "sheep" just like us. So, let us know when you've convinced PWE to increase Champs' budget to rework the game engine to handle more people per zone, and then I'll gladly call you my shepherd.
It's interesting to see the defeatist atmosphere here. Clearly you have accepted the game's quality as it is. I just wanted to know. Now I have the answer.
Why would lifting the zone caps make the game better? I've been playing the game for over seven years now and I don't understand why you think that.
> @biffsmackwell said: > You know, you're not the first guy to come around and be like "This game could make millions of dollars with this one weird trick!" >
“CO got rid of zone caps... you won’t believe what happened next!”
You’re right... these are the forum equivalent of clickbait.
I have definitely not accepted the games terrible quality as is, that's why I spend most of my time playing other games now.
Despite you allegedly not playing CO very much, the post count next to your name is over 11,000. I guess the forums for this game are the highest quality game forums anywhere.
Presumably while you're playing those other games, you keep talking in-game about how their forums suck and that's why you spend most of your time on Champion's forums.
So the chances of a CO2 being in development is pretty much null? Seems strange that a mmo company doesn't want to continue evolving, that's just bad business. You won't get more players unless you evolve.
Afaik it's mostly a case of legacy code and old stuff making it so that changing the current system would be difficult at best. There's a reason why, as far as I'm aware, we're the only Cryptic Studios mmo without the Foundry (I'm probably mistaken on that).
As for a sequel...
That's mostly just a matter of investment, I feel. You need a number of factors to make it likely for a new superhero game to emerge, and the thing is, CO capitalised on the early superhero movie bubble to make its name... But that was then, and this is now. Superheroes over-saturate our media right now.
I want there to be a CO2, preferably with a lot of dynamic systems that encourage emergent gameplay, but honestly, if there isn't any incentive to make anyone suppose there's a feasible major profit in a wholly new game (virtually nothing would be kept from the old game with its age), there probably won't be a new one.
ChampionsVR would be a nice progression, even with the limited 3D quality we have now. Just a whole new interaction before being distracted by 4000K quality shaders.
My kid put her own character into VRChat the other day, just hours after playing the game for the first time she was running around with a custom Blender modeled avatar that she happened to be working on before playing.
Cryptic should find a way to get the goggles and jiggle physics going. This game would be addictive...to other people as well.
It's interesting to see the defeatist atmosphere here. Clearly you have accepted the game's quality as it is. I just wanted to know. Now I have the answer.
To put it in the nicest terms possible, you are extremely ignorant of how things work in the background of your computer and the server if you think any MMO can handle not having a cap on the number of people in a given zone. That CO can handle as many as 50 people gathering up in one location to fight something like Takofanes without the game lagging for everyone there is actually somewhat impressive for a game that's as old as CO is. I've played newer games running on newer hardware that started to lag at much lower numbers.
Zoning minimizes lag and resources needed. Given the state of the game (and MMOs in general), this is not a problem. Maybe some day (if ever) that a renaissance of population justifies it? Sure. For now, this is just fine.
Cool, grad. You could even start that process right now, by ceasing to increase the number here. Just sayin'...
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
There should be portals left behind so other players can follow you through to the other zone. Just leave them floating there for a split second for alerts, and then a thirty seconds or so for zone/hideout changes. See what kind of strange new adventures occur. Maybe a random team teleporter would be fun too, basically put all missions on scary monster mode and set them to 'kill all mobs' and then throw the dice when the team leader/owner of the gizmo presses the button. Wouldn't that be exciting?
New Mutants: Demon Bear and Cloak and Dagger are both in production, by the way, so get that teleportin' magick happening today! Or Do What Thou Will, whatever.
We kinda do need to keep zone pop limits. I remember what an uncapped zone did back in 2009. Lots of crashes and rendering issues.
What I would love to see is one of two things:
Dynamic phasing between zone copies when you cross a neighborhood boundary.
or
Fast zone copy switching that is very similar to channel switching in TERA. No zone unloading, just character data unloading.
and the ability to squeeze thru that li8ttle dimensional crack between the pavement in westside. There's gotta be something , we can get attacked by under it, ---------------------- new mutants films- i have all the comics series except 75., comic shop closed.
in pnp champions teleport is a stop sign power i think.
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
Ah. I haven't played tabletop since 3rd, and there Teleport was limited to line-of-sight unless you paid extra points for memorized locations, and was further limited by being both expensive and very energy-intensive, especially Combat Teleport ('porting as a combat action). I think I only ever played with like three people who ever took it, although one used his Combat Teleport to great effect in the Magna Carta game - the character with the energy sword drew a cross on the ground and assumed an attitude of prayer, the archer fired a flash arrow at the center of the cross, and the teleporter took the rest of the team (who had been hiding atop a building while the swordsman scouted) directly onto that spot before onlookers' eyes could clear. From the perspective of the 13th-century Englishmen watching, a stranger had just pulled out a glowing sword and carved a Cross into the earth, and in that cross a group of strange-looking (angelic, one might say) people suddenly appeared in a flash of light.
They got much more respect from that point on, especially when a priest blessed them with holy water (to make sure they weren't devils, you see) and Ohm sparkled (electrical powers - he let himself ground a bit).
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
I mean, when "Zone" commentary crosses all instances of that zone, what difference does it make? If you want to meet up with a friend, just pop over to their zone, or whatever. You can still carry on inane conversations across all instances of the zones.
As far as the other zones, Canada, VB, etc, I think all they really need to do is give someone a reason to go there. Perk hunting only appeals to a very small segment of the population. Place special gear in each zone that must be farmed, possibly be repeatable missions. That would be good for the gear tweakers. You know, kind of like you can only get Dark Speed in Resistance. The gear would have to be worthy, of course, but it would not need to be game breaking. Dark Speed is a perfect example. Specialty items that you get only in certain zones/instances would definitely increase usage. BoP, of course.
Create more interesting RP instances in the different zones, or rather, juice up the ones there. What if the movie theater in VB actually showed real movies? Wouldn't that be fun? Or maybe, have it show Champions related movies (but then those would have to be created).
Really, making all the top-end gear buyable through a very few boss fights really went a long way to killing off diversity of content across the zones. All of that gear could be spread through the zones via different missions and hunting drops. Make it just as time-consuming to get the gear as it is, now, but the pathways to success would be more diverse. Of course, if you did that, everyone would cry about fighting the RNG, but I don't really mind that, as long as I am not being asked to spend real money to battle the RNG *cough*lockboxes*cough*
Also, put GMs in ALL the zones (at which point, you would probably want to reduce the rewards they give).
Anyway, that's my thought. Rather than collapse all the zones to one boring one, give people better reasons to go to the other zones.
- - - - -
SIGNATURE:
Used to be coach on the forums. Still @coach in game.
This is a superhero genre MMO, and as such, a small zone cap of 65 or even 50 is entirely consistent with the genre.
The superhero genre tends to keep only handful of heroes in a given city. Even Marvel's NYC, while the 'home' of a thousand or more heroes, most spend their time in other 'zones' and only headquarter in the big apple, are retired, or spend a majority of their time in the role of their (non-heroic) secret identity.
On the tech side, CO appears to be built using an overhauled successor of the Aurora Engine BioWare developed under Atari (who originally distributed Champions Online, and from whom Cryptic got the Neverwinter and Star Trek licenses when Atari filed bankruptcy). The Aurora Engine's tile based interior instances and exterior terrain editor are clearly evident in the game, along with a variety of quirky scripting issues the engine suffered from. That engine was also notoriously poor at handling large populations in an instance.
Nitpicking, n8 - but Cryptic purchased the licensing for CO from Hero Games, the creators of Champions, then licensed back the rights to the tabletop version. Cryptic also negotiated the MMO rights for STO from CBS, and Neverwinter from Hasbro. Atari was the publisher at the time, but Cryptic was the game studio that held the rights and developed the games. (That's why they got to hold onto everything when Atari sold the publishing rights to Perfect World.)
I'm unfamiliar with the source engines you specify; all I can say from what I've seen is that this game is spaghetti-coded like All You Can Eat Night at Luigi's House of Italy. (I remember when vehicles were first introduced, in the very first Nighthawk event, and the entire chat server across both CO and STO was offline for two or three weeks. The two systems shouldn't even interact, much less be able to crash one another, but there you go.)
"Science teaches us to expect -- demand -- more than just eerie mysteries. What use is a puzzle that can't be solved? Patience is fine, but I'm not going to stop asking the universe to make sense!"
As far as I am aware, due to hardware and software limitations, they can't just increase the cap on zones, which is sad. They would have to basically rewrite most of the code and update the game's engine, along with getting new hardware for the server, if they wanted to increase the cap. I've been in a zone that had 100+ people in it one time due to a bug (that was hotfixed), it was lagtastic, even for me, who rarely experiences lag in CO. So, yeah, they would basically have to do those things to make it work.
Nitpicking, n8 - but Cryptic purchased the licensing for CO from Hero Games, the creators of Champions, then licensed back the rights to the tabletop version. Cryptic also negotiated the MMO rights for STO from CBS, and Neverwinter from Hasbro. Atari was the publisher at the time, but Cryptic was the game studio that held the rights and developed the games. (That's why they got to hold onto everything when Atari sold the publishing rights to Perfect World.)
I'm unfamiliar with the source engines you specify; all I can say from what I've seen is that this game is spaghetti-coded like All You Can Eat Night at Luigi's House of Italy. (I remember when vehicles were first introduced, in the very first Nighthawk event, and the entire chat server across both CO and STO was offline for two or three weeks. The two systems shouldn't even interact, much less be able to crash one another, but there you go.)
for the complete list of bugs caused by the original nighthawk mission. look up a thread called A torrent of bugs. it literally screwed up things all ocer the game including getting and handing in missions. somewhere between 30 and 50 items
------------ you should get together with the person who thought the company should put out comics, af's and other stiuff to get people interested. then you can spend millions on that and see how many extra people play. -----------
I don't know if anyone should get together with that guy.
He seemed like a thoroughly unpleasant individual.
*snip* Really, making all the top-end gear buyable through a very few boss fights really went a long way to killing off diversity of content across the zones. All of that gear could be spread through the zones via different missions and hunting drops. Make it just as time-consuming to get the gear as it is, now, but the pathways to success would be more diverse. Of course, if you did that, everyone would cry about fighting the RNG, but I don't really mind that, as long as I am not being asked to spend real money to battle the RNG *cough*lockboxes*cough*
Also, put GMs in ALL the zones (at which point, you would probably want to reduce the rewards they give).
Anyway, that's my thought. Rather than collapse all the zones to one boring one, give people better reasons to go to the other zones.
get rid of alerts so people have to do more than spam grabs for xp. oh yes. "but it takes too long" "but it's boring after the first time"(after doing dozens of alerts in a row)
*snip* Really, making all the top-end gear buyable through a very few boss fights really went a long way to killing off diversity of content across the zones. All of that gear could be spread through the zones via different missions and hunting drops. Make it just as time-consuming to get the gear as it is, now, but the pathways to success would be more diverse. Of course, if you did that, everyone would cry about fighting the RNG, but I don't really mind that, as long as I am not being asked to spend real money to battle the RNG *cough*lockboxes*cough*
Also, put GMs in ALL the zones (at which point, you would probably want to reduce the rewards they give).
Anyway, that's my thought. Rather than collapse all the zones to one boring one, give people better reasons to go to the other zones.
get rid of alerts so people have to do more than spam grabs for xp. oh yes. "but it takes too long" "but it's boring after the first time"(after doing dozens of alerts in a row)
Hence why you usually do not find me doing anything in the game...except Costume Contests.
engaging? fun? quick and simple well except with the mobs with knocks, then it's "why do they have these stupidly powerful knocks" while a PC goes round with roomsweeper
engaging? fun? quick and simple well except with the mobs with knocks, then it's "why do they have these stupidly powerful knocks" while a PC goes round with roomsweeper
more engaging and fun than leveling missions. Oh look some cardboard cutouts... well they fell over... guess that's done o3o
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two have well known IP and bring in players just to play that IP on a game.
these are not owned by cryptic and have to be used properly and productively in order to keep the IP licence.
theses two have been launched to console.
then we have CO, a little known IP based on a role playing game, and it is owned by cryptic/pwe . due to various stuffups up at the start and concentration on the other two after that, little has been done including advertising.
the other two games have (at last count) dev teams of 40+ each. CO has about 10 or less.(counting names as possible)
yes we would like more stuff in it , however a lot of people are realistic about the business aspects. why would a company invest a load of money on the remote chance that a horde of people will suddenly become interested in a little known hero rpg . where they can't even play their favorite(copyrighted) characters.
check out the steam charts for sto & nw. nw started at 15k but rapidly dropped to 5k. that's a well known IP dropping those numbers.
------------
you should get together with the person who thought the company should put out comics, af's and other stiuff to get people interested. then you can spend millions on that and see how many extra people play.
-----------
jaazaniah, he sounds like a1fighter
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Sorry to be so snarky but a lot of us have been here a very long time, and we've talked to people in charge about the state of the game on several occasions, and how we want better things for the game, but they've been very candid with us about what's possible and what isn't. Unless you personally know a way to convince someone at PWE to throw more money at the game, then you're in the same position as us. If you believe change is possible, then make that change. Until you do that, you're gonna be "sheep" just like us. So, let us know when you've convinced PWE to increase Champs' budget to rework the game engine to handle more people per zone, and then I'll gladly call you my shepherd.
> You know, you're not the first guy to come around and be like "This game could make millions of dollars with this one weird trick!"
>
“CO got rid of zone caps... you won’t believe what happened next!”
You’re right... these are the forum equivalent of clickbait.
Presumably while you're playing those other games, you keep talking in-game about how their forums suck and that's why you spend most of your time on Champion's forums.
PARSER USAGE GUIDE: click here for an easy how-to ٩(๑･ิᴗ･ิ)۶٩(･ิᴗ･ิ๑)۶
Spectre beats Eido in an SG run: VIDEO HERE
As for a sequel...
That's mostly just a matter of investment, I feel. You need a number of factors to make it likely for a new superhero game to emerge, and the thing is, CO capitalised on the early superhero movie bubble to make its name... But that was then, and this is now. Superheroes over-saturate our media right now.
I want there to be a CO2, preferably with a lot of dynamic systems that encourage emergent gameplay, but honestly, if there isn't any incentive to make anyone suppose there's a feasible major profit in a wholly new game (virtually nothing would be kept from the old game with its age), there probably won't be a new one.
My kid put her own character into VRChat the other day, just hours after playing the game for the first time she was running around with a custom Blender modeled avatar that she happened to be working on before playing.
Cryptic should find a way to get the goggles and jiggle physics going. This game would be addictive...to other people as well.
Please tell me more....
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My super cool CC build and how to use it.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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What I would love to see is one of two things:
Dynamic phasing between zone copies when you cross a neighborhood boundary.
or
Fast zone copy switching that is very similar to channel switching in TERA. No zone unloading, just character data unloading.
New Mutants: Demon Bear and Cloak and Dagger are both in production, by the way, so get that teleportin' magick happening today! Or Do What Thou Will, whatever.
----------------------
new mutants films- i have all the comics series except 75., comic shop closed.
in pnp champions teleport is a stop sign power i think.
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- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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They got much more respect from that point on, especially when a priest blessed them with holy water (to make sure they weren't devils, you see) and Ohm sparkled (electrical powers - he let himself ground a bit).
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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My super cool CC build and how to use it.
(/o3o)/
\(owo\)
(/o3o)/
\(owo\)
(/o3o)/
\(owo\)
(/o3o)/
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
As far as the other zones, Canada, VB, etc, I think all they really need to do is give someone a reason to go there. Perk hunting only appeals to a very small segment of the population. Place special gear in each zone that must be farmed, possibly be repeatable missions. That would be good for the gear tweakers. You know, kind of like you can only get Dark Speed in Resistance. The gear would have to be worthy, of course, but it would not need to be game breaking. Dark Speed is a perfect example. Specialty items that you get only in certain zones/instances would definitely increase usage. BoP, of course.
Create more interesting RP instances in the different zones, or rather, juice up the ones there. What if the movie theater in VB actually showed real movies? Wouldn't that be fun? Or maybe, have it show Champions related movies (but then those would have to be created).
Really, making all the top-end gear buyable through a very few boss fights really went a long way to killing off diversity of content across the zones. All of that gear could be spread through the zones via different missions and hunting drops. Make it just as time-consuming to get the gear as it is, now, but the pathways to success would be more diverse. Of course, if you did that, everyone would cry about fighting the RNG, but I don't really mind that, as long as I am not being asked to spend real money to battle the RNG *cough*lockboxes*cough*
Also, put GMs in ALL the zones (at which point, you would probably want to reduce the rewards they give).
Anyway, that's my thought. Rather than collapse all the zones to one boring one, give people better reasons to go to the other zones.
SIGNATURE:
Used to be coach on the forums. Still @coach in game.
The superhero genre tends to keep only handful of heroes in a given city. Even Marvel's NYC, while the 'home' of a thousand or more heroes, most spend their time in other 'zones' and only headquarter in the big apple, are retired, or spend a majority of their time in the role of their (non-heroic) secret identity.
On the tech side, CO appears to be built using an overhauled successor of the Aurora Engine BioWare developed under Atari (who originally distributed Champions Online, and from whom Cryptic got the Neverwinter and Star Trek licenses when Atari filed bankruptcy). The Aurora Engine's tile based interior instances and exterior terrain editor are clearly evident in the game, along with a variety of quirky scripting issues the engine suffered from. That engine was also notoriously poor at handling large populations in an instance.
I'm unfamiliar with the source engines you specify; all I can say from what I've seen is that this game is spaghetti-coded like All You Can Eat Night at Luigi's House of Italy. (I remember when vehicles were first introduced, in the very first Nighthawk event, and the entire chat server across both CO and STO was offline for two or three weeks. The two systems shouldn't even interact, much less be able to crash one another, but there you go.)
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Spectre beats Eido in an SG run: VIDEO HERE
it literally screwed up things all ocer the game including getting and handing in missions. somewhere between 30 and 50 items
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He seemed like a thoroughly unpleasant individual.
...been holding that in for a while now.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
get rid of alerts so people have to do more than spam grabs for xp.
oh yes.
"but it takes too long"
"but it's boring after the first time"(after doing dozens of alerts in a row)
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MFW someone wants to put GMs in every zone when one "HEY LISTEN!" is bad enough.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
quick and simple
well except with the mobs with knocks, then it's "why do they have these stupidly powerful knocks"
while a PC goes round with roomsweeper
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Also Roomsweeper guy is awesome owo
My super cool CC build and how to use it.