A sense of Deja-Vu again

championshewolf · February 2018

Paragon Institute is trying to raise capitol to buy Marvel heroes Omega to restart it.

This is two for two so far in the super hero genre of fans just not being able to let go it seems. Insanity is strong in this genre.

shadowolf505 · February 2018

So, Marvel Heroes making a comeback. I never was a fan of it but how did it play around? Like, was it fun or... ? Just finding out stuff from people who played it to know if to be hyped or not.

championshewolf · February 2018

No, Marvel Heroes is not coming back. It's another group of fans (or in this case scammers, like the last several for CoH) saying they want $900 grand to start up a gaming company and try to convince Disney to sell them the game IP to start it again. And Marvel Heroes was not doing well at all. They dumbed the game down so much at the end, it was more linear than a game of Super Mario Brothers. Diablo 3 was way better.

chaosdrgnz43 · February 2018

Marvel is really having a tough time lately. Their mmo shutdown, the new spider-man show going down the Generator Rex route(e.g. trying too hard to be cool), Agents of Shield on 4 week hiatus, terrible reception on the Inhumans show... hope that after the Infinity War things will be look up.

ealford1985 · February 2018

Marvel is hardly having a rough time. Maybe some misses on shows...but hardly hardly tough time

championshewolf · February 2018

chaosdrgnz43 said:
Marvel is really having a tough time lately. Their mmo shutdown, the new spider-man show going down the Generator Rex route(e.g. trying too hard to be cool), Agents of Shield on 4 week hiatus, terrible reception on the Inhumans show... hope that after the Infinity War things will be look up.

Uhh, Marvel heroes was never that great, it was decent but far from the Diablo 2 successor people claimed it was. And Marvel is hardly going down. Agents of Shield was, again, never that good and I am surprised they've kept it going, and the Inhumans was a comic series that I am sure they only green lit for a live action adaptation because at the time they didn't have the rights to their mutants. But now that Disney has bought out Fox, that has changed and I am sure the Inhumans will be quietly let go and the Mutants wills tart coming out with proper MCU series and such.

pantagruel01 · February 2018

Well, Marvel television has never been particularly good; I'm sure they'd like to change that but not going to predict success. In general success in one medium seems poorly correlated with success in others; Marvel is obviously doing just fine in movies, comic books in general are doing poorly.

biffsmackwell · February 2018

Marvel Heroes was fun. If you like Diablo style games and super heroes, you may have enjoyed it. It also had one of the best free-to-play setups ive seen.

Before anyone says that it sucked because you can't make your own characters, that's no big deal. There were tons of superhero games that came before it that you couldn't make your own character, and there will be tons more. Not everybody needs to create their own characters all the time. Sometimes you just wanna play as Spider-Man, sometimes you wanna play the Hulk (though you never want to play Wolverine), and that's fine.

Me, I've always loved character customization from the beginning. If there's an option for it, I won't play the premade characters. I own GTA V and have only played online because I have no interest in playing the game's characters. But sometimes, you just wanna be Spider-Man.

These people though that wanna bring the game back but strip it from anything Marvel, meh. Just build a new game. But Marvel Heroes was fun and I think the game deserves to be running still.

jonsills · February 2018

AoS' winter hiatus is in fact now common among TV shows. The traditional "season" starting in September and continuing with rare breaks into May or June has been a thing of the past for several years now, starting with the concept of the "mid-season replacement" and accelerating with the introduction of streaming series on the Net.

When they're in trouble is when they go on hiatus - and there are no cliffhangers. That's how we knew Agent Carter had ended, when the second season ended with a few dangling plot threads but nothing even vaguely resembling a cliffhanger. AoS continues, apparently, to draw ratings perhaps best characterized as "just high enough not to cancel"; it's no Scandal or One Of Us ratings-wise, but it's also nowhere near as low as, say, Knight Rider 2020 or Salvation.

lordnightmare · February 2018

championshewolf said:
Insanity is strong in this genre.

Fans of game want to keep playing game despite it being shut down. Oh my, someone call the doctors we have a huge case of the loonies.

championshewolf said:
It's another group of fans (or in this case scammers, like the last several for CoH)

What scammers? The only one you could technically count as that is Ship of Heroes simply because their overall concept and release schedule seems way too ambitious especially considering it's only been announced for a few months.

biffsmackwell said:
Marvel Heroes was fun. If you like Diablo style games and super heroes, you may have enjoyed it. It also had one of the best free-to-play setups ive seen.

I will say I was excited for it early on because I was dumb enough to think it'd be as good as Ultimate Alliance, the best Marvel game ever. Sadly it wasn't and had none of the fun factor of UA.

biffsmackwell said:

Before anyone says that it sucked because you can't make your own characters, that's no big deal. There were tons of superhero games that came before it that you couldn't make your own character, and there will be tons more.

And generally the best ones don't have character creation. Freedom Force, Ultimate Alliance, a good bit of Spider-Man games...

championshewolf · February 2018

lordnightmare#9851 said:

Fans of game want to keep playing game despite it being shut down. Oh my, someone call the doctors we have a huge case of the loonies.

There is a difference between wanting to keep a game going or someone that goes to far as make wild an unsubstantiated rumors and attacks because they didn't like their perfect gem didn't do as great. Never mind the plethora of people that continuously make believe that an 8 year old floundering game was some how ended before its time.

lordnightmare#9851 said:
What scammers? The only one you could technically count as that is Ship of Heroes simply because their overall concept and release schedule seems way too ambitious especially considering it's only been announced for a few months.

You mean how City of Titans promised a a beta as early as 2015 (what year is it again?) and there still is nothing of a whisper of said project or that Valiance promised they would be going into early alpha since 2014? Oh and both are promising huge games on a budget that is laughable, at best.

Never mind all the promises made by Titan Network that CoH was returning soon that a deal was being brokered to buy CoH, but NCSoft was scared off by the whopping 20,000 player petition and canceled the deal because CoH was so big... and these talks had to be kept on the down low for some odd reason, because the 20,000 people some how scare NCSoft compared to the millions of people that play their games... I mean seriously... what next call the 250 grand spent on City of Titans just a failed project? The videos released have been laughable at best, with graphics and art that would have been laughable on a PS2, and they are expecting to have a pay to play model?

lordnightmare#9851 said:
And generally the best ones don't have character creation. Freedom Force, Ultimate Alliance, a good bit of Spider-Man games...

Probably because few games even do super hero genre right, let alone well, and those that do, are average at best, the aforementioned Spider-Man games. The only big successful super hero game to date has been the Arkham Series. We will see what the new Spider-Man game offers for the PS4, since they look to be copying the Arkham style game play, but the plethora of quick time events already makes me leery since the Bat Tank in Arkham Knight pretty much ruined that game.

markhawkman · February 2018

Freedom force? you mean the original didn't have a character creator? I loved the character creator in the sequel!

lordnightmare · February 2018

championshewolf said:

There is a difference between wanting to keep a game going or someone that goes to far as make wild an unsubstantiated rumors and attacks because they didn't like their perfect gem didn't do as great. Never mind the plethora of people that continuously make believe that an 8 year old floundering game was some how ended before its time.

Well-liked things with a relatively active community get no support/shutdown. It's a fact of gaming. The difference with MMOs and other games is that generally a lack of support in MMOs means you cannot play it period whereas in, say, legacy fighting games you can still access them either through previous releases or re-releases. 3rd Strike came out in 1999 and still has a sizeable community despite having no updates and only 1 rerelease in 2010. As for floundering, if memory serves me right the playerbase for CoH was around 10K which is impressive for a legacy game in a niche genre. Marvel Heroes had a relatively large playerbase as well, around 60K across all platforms IIRC.

championshewolf said:
You mean how City of Titans promised a a beta as early as 2015 (what year is it again?) and there still is nothing of a whisper of said project or that Valiance promised they would be going into early alpha since 2014? Oh and both are promising huge games on a budget that is laughable, at best.

Never mind all the promises made by Titan Network that CoH was returning soon that a deal was being brokered to buy CoH, but NCSoft was scared off by the whopping 20,000 player petition and canceled the deal because CoH was so big... and these talks had to be kept on the down low for some odd reason, because the 20,000 people some how scare NCSoft compared to the millions of people that play their games... I mean seriously... what next call the 250 grand spent on City of Titans just a failed project? The videos released have been laughable at best, with graphics and art that would have been laughable on a PS2, and they are expecting to have a pay to play model?

I have no idea where you get your information but almost all of that is so wrong it sounds 3rd or 4th hand.

CoT projected (not promised) a beta of JUST the character creator around 2014. During that time a good amount of assets were being worked on in Unreal 3. Around a year after Kickstarter, EPIC allows them to be one of the first to use Unreal 4 for free which, as it turns out, was almost entirely incompatible with assets made in Unreal 3 and required all of them to be remade from scratch. The announcement goes out that everything has been heavily delayed and no one has an idea of when they'll be ready. Last year it was projected that they may be ready for beta around Late 2018 and that seems to stay the story.

Titan never promised CoH was returning but did say that there were attempts to negotiate some form of deal with NCSoft. Eventually the idea was dropped as NCSoft remained adamant to keep the IP mostly due to cultural differences. The idea of buying and selling IPs is just weird outside of the US somehow.

draogn · February 2018

chaosdrgnz43 said:
Marvel is really having a tough time lately. Their mmo shutdown, the new spider-man show going down the Generator Rex route(e.g. trying too hard to be cool), Agents of Shield on 4 week hiatus, terrible reception on the Inhumans show... hope that after the Infinity War things will be look up.

The hiatus is likely, at least partially, due to the Olympics.

nepht · February 2018

Disney will never work with indie game people.

catstarsto · February 2018

shadowolf505 said:
So, Marvel Heroes making a comeback. I never was a fan of it but how did it play around? Like, was it fun or... ? Just finding out stuff from people who played it to know if to be hyped or not.

Marvel Heroes if Im thinking of the same game, was fun, It was like diablo 3 in perspective and controls, but like CHampions online in always having active world missions and power progressions for classes/heroes. But didnt stand up to a real mmo fan base because of its outdated setup and very very poor end game, one of the worse endgame setups ever! Rocket and Squirrel Girl where the best to play, OP and could clean up mobs fast....and what was awesome was, the player base never yelled "nerf" because we didnt want to come up short nor have another come up short in boss battles. But a lot better then LoL who was a poor mans version of Marvel Heroes which is strange since LoL is misleading in its cinematic ads, its gameplay was the worst Ive seen, but its cinematic ads where misleading and described champs more then its own game....i wish CO would make trailers like they did!!

My personal opinion, Champs is the best super hero game, I would stick with it even if the game's re-release isnt a myth.

jonsills · February 2018

Of course Squirrel Girl is OP. In Marvel canon, she's defeated Dr. Doom single-handedly (well, unless you include the swarms of squirrels under her command). There was also the defeat of Thanos, but the Watcher seemed to be waxing a bit sarcastic about that being "definitely the real Thanos", so...

spinnytop · February 2018

"Once the needed funds are raised, they will be used to found ElderMage Studios "as a learning lab to partner experienced professionals with aspiring game developers" and includes a secondary mission to "preserve games that are no longer supported so that those who licensed them may continue using them"."

Mm, seems like "reaching too far too fast" is always an issue with these groups. It's not just about trying to keep MH afloat, it's about trying to create some educational thing and a whole process to preserve other games too. Seems just as poorly planned out as the whole "we are a tiny indie group and we will build a fully functioning MMO in 5 years!" bit. These folks need to really stop and learn to think about scope before asking people for money. Until they do, they're just going to keep creating financial black holes.

championshewolf · February 2018

lordnightmare#9851 said:

I have no idea where you get your information but almost all of that is so wrong it sounds 3rd or 4th hand.

CoT projected (not promised) a beta of JUST the character creator around 2014. During that time a good amount of assets were being worked on in Unreal 3. Around a year after Kickstarter, EPIC allows them to be one of the first to use Unreal 4 for free which, as it turns out, was almost entirely incompatible with assets made in Unreal 3 and required all of them to be remade from scratch. The announcement goes out that everything has been heavily delayed and no one has an idea of when they'll be ready. Last year it was projected that they may be ready for beta around Late 2018 and that seems to stay the story.

Titan never promised CoH was returning but did say that there were attempts to negotiate some form of deal with NCSoft. Eventually the idea was dropped as NCSoft remained adamant to keep the IP mostly due to cultural differences. The idea of buying and selling IPs is just weird outside of the US somehow.

Actually it came from CoT themselves and their Kickstarter. They didn't project, they said they would have a working beta by 2016. Furthermore, again it's been 6 years. And no, EPIC didn't choose them to be one of the first to use Unreal Engine 4 for free. Now that sounds completely third hand. On top of that, CoT devs tried spin the core demo assets and world set up as created by them as well, something everyone who has used Unreal Engine 4 to date has used.

Now onto that first to use;

Considering they made it available through a subscription pay method at something like $19 a month, hardly call that free when CoT would have had the earliest access to it in 2014. Unreal was only made free to university students later in 2014. And it's hardly a big damn deal when CoT announces they will use Unreal Engine 4, in 2017, two years after it was made free to the public in 2015.

And still looking and checking even part of the special Unreal Dev Grants program that EPIC hands out, and so far I've looked at multiple sites and multiple lists, but Missing Worlds Media nor City of Titans is ever on any of those lists. Special treatment like that usually gets quite a bit of publicity, considering EPIC's new outlook on gaming and indie development.

And no, TitanNetwork was very adamant about City of Heroes would soon return. They even made a post about telling people to not send emails and letters to NCSoft as it was "spooking them" and making them not want to sell because of "fear" of the fanbase. I got quite a chuckle out of that post.

sistersilicon · February 2018

championshewolf said:
And no, EPIC didn't choose them to be one of the first to use Unreal Engine 4 for free. Now that sounds completely third hand.

Primary Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/783054

Missing Worlds Media said:
There have been requests for screenshots and videos, and until recently we were under NDA. Why? Well, that’s because shortly after our Kickstarter closed, we were granted a license to move from Unreal 3 to the brand-spanking new Unreal Engine 4 in December 2013.

Emphasis mine. They had already paid for a UE3 license. UE4 went to a "free + a cut of the revenue" model for everybody a year later, of course.

championshewolf said:
On top of that, CoT devs tried spin the core demo assets and world set up as created by them as well, something everyone who has used Unreal Engine 4 to date has used.

Primary Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/795643

Missing Worlds Media said:
In this case, ‘Clicky Cape’ is our compiler test dummy product. It’s based on Tappy Chicken, a demo an Epic artist made in about two hours. We’re using it to make sure UE4 compiles smoothly on multiple systems and OSes.

No spin. They explained exactly what they were doing.

championshewolf said:
Considering they made it available through a subscription pay method at something like $19 a month, hardly call that free when CoT would have had the earliest access to it in 2014. Unreal was only made free to university students later in 2014. And it's hardly a big damn deal when CoT announces they will use Unreal Engine 4, in 2017, two years after it was made free to the public in 2015.

Primary Source: The first Kickstarter link above, dated 19 Mar 2014, the very same day Epic themselves publicly announced UE4.

championshewolf said:
And still looking and checking even part of the special Unreal Dev Grants program that EPIC hands out, and so far I've looked at multiple sites and multiple lists, but Missing Worlds Media nor City of Titans is ever on any of those lists. Special treatment like that usually gets quite a bit of publicity, considering EPIC's new outlook on gaming and indie development.

Primary Source: https://cityoftitans.com/forum/have-devs-seen

Missing Worlds Media said:
Frankly, we have not needed it. It seems unfair to compete for a grant that would make or break it for someone else when we are doing ok.

championshewolf · February 2018

The article of course is suspiciously dated March 19th, which is the day the UE4 subscription model kicked in. Again dubious and no real confirmation from EPIC themselves. So that's suspect all by itself. Again, I've looked at EPIC's actual lists for these things, guess who's not showing up, and again, EPIC is usually very generous about giving press to companies specifically using their engines.

And frankly, anyone claiming to be well off, while what is it, going on 6 now, and well behind schedule, and claiming to be starting over to be "well off" and "in a good position" is a load of hogwash. Citing what Missing World states but nothing from EPIC is a one sided debate, is suspect by itself, especially in light of the simple fact that again, EPIC is usually very good about giving press coverage to Indies using their engine.

So again I call hogwash. Never mind the simple fact that again, people continuously give support for a project that has had no forward momentum and has yet to achieve any of the basic promises made? Again, for a game in development this long, what has been achieved? Some very crude 3D modelling and artwork, even their stills look bad, artwork in many places that looked like it was ripped from a Saints Row or an older GTA title? And we are suppose to believe they are hard at work on this game and it's been 6 years but using the Unreal Engine 4? Or, if you want to believe their press, 5 years since 2013 that they've had access to this engine?

Blind faith in a project just because you can't accept reality and only taking the word of developer is why the gaming industry is in the shape it is in now. What has been shown has been lackluster at best, not even up to the polish that people claim CoH had, and there is still no signs of an alpha let alone a beta for the backers as the Kickstarter had long since promised.

never mind the real questions that no one has been asking; where has the money been coming from? $250 grand is hardly mountain moving, especially in MMO title space. When a title like WoW back in vanilla cost a reported $63 million for the large world and scope they created, while Everquest reported cost $3 million initially for it's vanilla product. And that was from 1999 to 2004 for WoW and 1999 for Everquest respectively. And I am sure these developers have livelihoods so where is the money coming from?

Who's footing the bill, because $250 grand on Kickstarter, as many other development studios have proven, that well runs dry fast on smaller projects with a fraction of the ambition of an MMO, but we are talking about a big MMO project with a bunch of amateurs trying to deliver a major product. Even Ultima 7 cost $1 million to make, and that was back in 1992. City of Heroes itself cost a reported $7 million to make so where is the money coming from? I seriously doubt Titan merch sales are exploding all over to foot that bill. That's not even disclosed on their site either.

And let's cover there little "Community Based Game Studio";

MWM is a collection of programmers, designers, project managers and fans, all banded together with decades of software and game experience.

We're committed to rebuilding and creating worlds that are missing. Worlds that died far too quickly with hundreds of thousands of fans waiting for, and committed to, a rebirth.

I would love to see this resume of these game developers so I can see this decades of software and game experience. Operating MS Word is hardly what I call software experience, and playing Call of Duty is hardly what I call gaming experience as well. Never mind that hundreds of thousands of fans lines. CoH, at it's prime (at launch) had 250,000 subscriptions that had fastly dwindled down to 125,000 by City of Villains launch, and had long since dwindled to at best 50,000 accounts when the game closed down (ignoring the cash shop) and the signs point to it was even lower since the petitions barely amassed more than 20,000 signatures. The tag line of worlds dying too quickly also is humorous since CoH itself was well over 8 years old and long past its prime. To say it died too quickly in the gaming world is like claiming the dinosaurs didn't get enough time on earth. The only thing that happened was how shocking the closure came, but when you look back at well, the facts, you could see it was going to happen.

So again, where is well anything at? Since this project has started, there has been big, almost Peter Moleneux level speak of huge promises and details given, but nothing of substance and one sided statements of them being personally selected for UE4, a bunch of inexperienced indy programmers no less, that isn't even a real company but just a come and go company of volunteers at best. Not even able to qualify as an indy development company then. The fact people take everything at face value from developers, indy or otherwise, and don't ask crucial, pertinent questions (like who is paying for the artists and programmers or story boarders because I doubt all of them will work for free, regardless of it being a passion project) is starting to wear thin at this point. Especially when even taking the most bottom feeding level of development for an MMO, Missing Worlds only a fraction of the funds.

And the one thing that comes up, making a game for the community and what the community wants, then that flat out means this title will never be released since a community can never agree on what they fully want and as time goes on, people's desires change dramatically. Case in point, I thought it would have been awesome to have alignment shifting in CoV, later after thinking about it I realized it would murder CoV. And low, it did when Going Rogue came out.

sistersilicon · February 2018

championshewolf said:
The article of course is suspiciously dated March 19th, which is the day the UE4 subscription model kicked in.

Primary Source: https://www.epicgames.com/news/epic-games-releases-unreal-engine-4-for-all

Primary Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/783054

Epic Games said:
Epic Games Releases Unreal Engine 4 For All

Missing Worlds Media said:
There have been requests for screenshots and videos, and until recently we were under NDA. Why? Well, that’s because shortly after our Kickstarter closed, we were granted a license to move from Unreal 3 to the brand-spanking new Unreal Engine 4 in December 2013.

Are you implying that Epic imposing an NDA that would expire on the day Epic announced general availability of UE4 is a reason to suspect MWM?

championshewolf said:
Who's footing the bill, because $250 grand on Kickstarter

Primary Source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans

The original goal was $320,000. The final pledge was $678,189.

These are all basic, verifiable facts. You make it very easy for others to question your credibility and motives when you make these simple errors, so how do you expect anybody to trust your criticism?

A sense of Deja-Vu again

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