Is there any plans to preserve this game?

aredein · March 2019

There were news that Cryptic will disable foundry quest making feature for both Neverwinter Online and Star Trek Online, because it's too expensive to maintain.
And seeing a low population in Champions Online https://steamcharts.com/app/9880 . That raises the worry that Champions Online might cease to exist in following years.

Why do I write this? Well, two of my favorite games are shutting down: "Blacklight: Retribution" and "Orcs Must Die! Unchained". And I don't want another online game to get shut down.

It's difficult to get back to a game to have fun, because of fear of losing it at any moment.

I wonder if there is any emergency plan for the game, like Server Emulation that would've let you play it after official server shut down.

This video explains the Online Game Preservation in more details

https://youtu.be/S4SFE0a9Vqs

jonsills · March 2019

When Cryptic says the Foundry is too expensive to maintain, what they mean (as they explained) is that when the Foundry breaks, which it does every single time the game gets an update, the entire software team has to drop everything else (and I mean everything - bug fixes, new ships, what have you) to repair it, a process that can eat their entire personnel budget for weeks at a time. This to provide a service that only a minority of their userbase even uses. (I've played maybe three STO Foundry missions. One was superb, one was fair enough but littered with grammatical and logical errors as well as placing my character on a railroad worthy of "Divide et Impera", and one was a buggy mess apparently created entirely as a way to give a player quick XP for doing pretty much nothing. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the concept.)

CO is a different sort of beast altogether, and never had a Foundry in the first place, doggone it (I had such plans...). So the economic calculus is far from the same.

bulgarex · March 2019

Cryptic representatives have repeatedly assured us that while Champions Online is far from a cash-cow, based on the existing fan base and the resources currently budgeted for it, it more than pays for itself. There don't seem to be any foreseeable practical pressures to terminate it any time soon. Managerial impulses, of course, are impossible to predict.

aredein · March 2019

jonsills wrote: »

When Cryptic says the Foundry is too expensive to maintain, what they mean (as they explained) is that when the Foundry breaks, which it does every single time the game gets an update, the entire software team has to drop everything else (and I mean everything - bug fixes, new ships, what have you) to repair it, a process that can eat their entire personnel budget for weeks at a time. This to provide a service that only a minority of their userbase even uses. (I've played maybe three STO Foundry missions. One was superb, one was fair enough but littered with grammatical and logical errors as well as placing my character on a railroad worthy of "Divide et Impera", and one was a buggy mess apparently created entirely as a way to give a player quick XP for doing pretty much nothing. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the concept.)

CO is a different sort of beast altogether, and never had a Foundry in the first place, doggone it (I had such plans...). So the economic calculus is far from the same.

So foundry was implemented like a mod, that needs its own update. It's quite good summary you made. Thank you. But it is still alarming at least a little.

flyingfinn · March 2019

You're fine.
We're fine.
The game is fine.

Why worry something that is inevitable. It will happen eventually. Games do that.
Just enjoy the ride.
When it's really, really sure, then gather in Ren Center with torches and signs that say "hell no, we won't go!".
Until that:

pantagruel01 · March 2019

Games are not forever, but it's not decaying very fast (looks like about -10% per year), so it could easily persist for multiple more years. Or not, there are sometimes code landmines that aren't visible from outside but make it no longer maintainable.

aredein · March 2019

bulgarex wrote: »

Cryptic representatives have repeatedly assured us that while Champions Online is far from a cash-cow, based on the existing fan base and the resources currently budgeted for it, it more than pays for itself. There don't seem to be any foreseeable practical pressures to terminate it any time soon. Managerial impulses, of course, are impossible to predict.

It's good you mentioned "managerial impulse" factor. It's what can lead to the worst fate for the game.
Maybe the game will live for next couple years, but I fear that it might collapse after that.

We also entered a time when bubble called "Games as a service" is bursting. More and more online games are shutting down.

And if "Champions Online is far from a cash-cow", then I hope the developers will do make some emergency plan to make game playable after servers shuts down.

pantagruel01 · March 2019

aredein wrote: »

And if "Champions Online is far from a cash-cow", then I hope the developers will do make some emergency plan to make game playable after servers shuts down.

I would be rather surprised by them doing something like that.

aredein · March 2019

flyingfinn wrote: »

You're fine.
We're fine.
The game is fine.

Why worry something that is inevitable. It will happen eventually. Games do that.
Just enjoy the ride.
When it's really, really sure, then gather in Ren Center with torches and signs that say "hell no, we won't go!".
Until that:

I can agree with you, but at the same time, not entirely. With this logic, games that were from PS1 era should have perish once new generation of games came in. I still can play these old games via roms and emulators. Their playable state is vastly increase. Without these things, these games would mostly fade away if not such preservation.

aredein · March 2019

pantagruel01 wrote: »

Games are not forever, but it's not decaying very fast (looks like about -10% per year), so it could easily persist for multiple more years. Or not, there are sometimes code landmines that aren't visible from outside but make it no longer maintainable.

Well, yes. But there is a way to prevent that. Like people who extracted old games into roms and can be played via emulators. So they're closer to immortality than before.

aredein · March 2019

pantagruel01 wrote: »

aredein wrote: »

And if "Champions Online is far from a cash-cow", then I hope the developers will do make some emergency plan to make game playable after servers shuts down.

I would be rather surprised by them doing something like that.

I would be surprised too. In a good way.

pantagruel01 · March 2019

aredein wrote: »

Well, yes. But there is a way to prevent that. Like people who extracted old games into roms and can be played via emulators. So they're closer to immortality than before.

That doesn't work for games with both a client and a server unless the server software is released, and server code tends to be exceptionally hairy.

sistersilicon · March 2019

Jon summed up the Foundry situations quite nicely.

To Bulgarex’s point about self-sufficiency and managerial impulse, I worry about Magic: The Gathering’s impending launch. Cryptic has been exceptionally quiet about it since its announcement, but if it’s on track, the launch is bound to impact CO in some way. Hopefully, they’ll have learned the necessary lessons from the Neverwinter/Legacy of Romulus simultaneous crunch that left CO in an effective maintenance mode for much of 2012. There’s still a chance that MtG’s development could upset the balance CO needs to remain viable, though. Maybe they haven’t learned their lesson, and there’s another dev vacuum coming when MtG hits its pre-launch crunch. Maybe data center space or cost becomes a problem and CO gets squeezed out. Maybe, like NW and STO’s Foundries, years of accumulated technical debt comes due, and MtG’s engine enhancements break CO to the point that it’s too expensive to fix. Or maybe that managerial impulse simply says that as MtG approaches its launch date, it would be a good time for CO to $TRAVEL_POWER off into the sunset.

Anything data center-related would likely be terminal. I doubt Cryptic or PWE want to allow player-run CO servers because allowing even binaries to exit their control would put STO, NW, and MtG at risk for exploits, since they all use the same engine and architecture. Migrating player accounts out of Arc would also be a significant risk. Other than that, maintenance mode would be an option, and might keep the game alive for a while longer, but I don’t like CO’s chances of lasting in that state as long as, say, Guild Wars 1.

aredein · March 2019

sistersilicon wrote: »

Jon summed up the Foundry situations quite nicely.

To Bulgarex’s point about self-sufficiency and managerial impulse, I worry about Magic: The Gathering’s impending launch. Cryptic has been exceptionally quiet about it since its announcement, but if it’s on track, the launch is bound to impact CO in some way. Hopefully, they’ll have learned the necessary lessons from the Neverwinter/Legacy of Romulus simultaneous crunch that left CO in an effective maintenance mode for much of 2012. There’s still a chance that MtG’s development could upset the balance CO needs to remain viable, though. Maybe they haven’t learned their lesson, and there’s another dev vacuum coming when MtG hits its pre-launch crunch. Maybe data center space or cost becomes a problem and CO gets squeezed out. Maybe, like NW and STO’s Foundries, years of accumulated technical debt comes due, and MtG’s engine enhancements break CO to the point that it’s too expensive to fix. Or maybe that managerial impulse simply says that as MtG approaches its launch date, it would be a good time for CO to $TRAVEL_POWER off into the sunset.

Anything data center-related would likely be terminal. I doubt Cryptic or PWE want to allow player-run CO servers because allowing even binaries to exit their control would put STO, NW, and MtG at risk for exploits, since they all use the same engine and architecture. Migrating player accounts out of Arc would also be a significant risk. Other than that, maintenance mode would be an option, and might keep the game alive for a while longer, but I don’t like CO’s chances of lasting in that state as long as, say, Guild Wars 1.

These two videos will explain what I mean.

https://youtu.be/tS9vvF1V1Dc

https://youtu.be/fvxaadSzvxU

jonsills · March 2019

Sorry, not going to watch basically blind-linked videos. Had too many people trying to prove things about ST:DSC by linking to Midnight's Edge videos.

aredein · March 2019

jonsills wrote: »

Sorry, not going to watch basically blind-linked videos. Had too many people trying to prove things about ST:DSC by linking to Midnight's Edge videos.

That's OK. I just wanted to say that online game death is preventable.

spinnytop · March 2019

PS: Steam charts are a bad way to measure our population since many people don't login through Steam. It's entirely possible that a majority of the population doesn't, since CO started outside of Steam and is primarily promoted through ARC.

pantagruel01 · March 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

PS: Steam charts are a bad way to measure our population since many people don't login through Steam. It's entirely possible that a majority of the population doesn't, since CO started outside of Steam and is primarily promoted through ARC.

They're a fairly plausible way of measuring change over time, though, absent some reason to think the percentage of steam users has changed dramatically.

aredein · March 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

PS: Steam charts are a bad way to measure our population since many people don't login through Steam. It's entirely possible that a majority of the population doesn't, since CO started outside of Steam and is primarily promoted through ARC.

I can agree on that. Unfortunately, I don't have info on how many players are here on ARC. So my bad, I suppose.

pantagruel01 · March 2019

aredein wrote: »

I can agree on that. Unfortunately, I don't have info on how many players are here on ARC. So my bad, I suppose.

A lot of people don't use ARC either, you can fire up the launcher directly.

jaazaniah1 · March 2019

pantagruel01 wrote: »

aredein wrote: »

I can agree on that. Unfortunately, I don't have info on how many players are here on ARC. So my bad, I suppose.

A lot of people don't use ARC either, you can fire up the launcher directly.

Guilty as charged. I don't use Steam and don't use ARC.

jaazaniah1 · March 2019

We haven't seen that much new stuff lately. Certainly not as bad as those dark days. I know some have argued that that they are working on fixing code so that future development will be easier, but atm it "feels" like not much is going on in CO.

sistersilicon wrote: »

To Bulgarex’s point about self-sufficiency and managerial impulse, I worry about Magic: The Gathering’s impending launch. Cryptic has been exceptionally quiet about it since its announcement, but if it’s on track, the launch is bound to impact CO in some way. Hopefully, they’ll have learned the necessary lessons from the Neverwinter/Legacy of Romulus simultaneous crunch that left CO in an effective maintenance mode for much of 2012. There’s still a chance that MtG’s development could upset the balance CO needs to remain viable, though. Maybe they haven’t learned their lesson, and there’s another dev vacuum coming when MtG hits its pre-launch crunch. Maybe data center space or cost becomes a problem and CO gets squeezed out. Maybe, like NW and STO’s Foundries, years of accumulated technical debt comes due, and MtG’s engine enhancements break CO to the point that it’s too expensive to fix. Or maybe that managerial impulse simply says that as MtG approaches its launch date, it would be a good time for CO to $TRAVEL_POWER off into the sunset.

aredein · March 2019

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

We haven't seen that much new stuff lately. Certainly not as bad as those dark days. I know some have argued that that they are working on fixing code so that future development will be easier, but atm it "feels" like not much is going on in CO.

sistersilicon wrote: »

To Bulgarex’s point about self-sufficiency and managerial impulse, I worry about Magic: The Gathering’s impending launch. Cryptic has been exceptionally quiet about it since its announcement, but if it’s on track, the launch is bound to impact CO in some way. Hopefully, they’ll have learned the necessary lessons from the Neverwinter/Legacy of Romulus simultaneous crunch that left CO in an effective maintenance mode for much of 2012. There’s still a chance that MtG’s development could upset the balance CO needs to remain viable, though. Maybe they haven’t learned their lesson, and there’s another dev vacuum coming when MtG hits its pre-launch crunch. Maybe data center space or cost becomes a problem and CO gets squeezed out. Maybe, like NW and STO’s Foundries, years of accumulated technical debt comes due, and MtG’s engine enhancements break CO to the point that it’s too expensive to fix. Or maybe that managerial impulse simply says that as MtG approaches its launch date, it would be a good time for CO to $TRAVEL_POWER off into the sunset.

I hope they'll continue supporting CO. And if not, we need to ask the developers if the have any emergency plan for the game to keep it's playability after it stops giving money.
I heard that developers are likely to read forums here than in steam forum.

galactickiri · March 2019

bulgarex wrote: »

Cryptic representatives have repeatedly assured us that while Champions Online is far from a cash-cow, based on the existing fan base and the resources currently budgeted for it, it more than pays for itself. There don't seem to be any foreseeable practical pressures to terminate it any time soon. Managerial impulses, of course, are impossible to predict.

I hope so, because I've really become rather fond of this game. I didn't become an instant-fan like I did with City of Heroes; it took me time to warm up to it, but it really is the best MMO of its genre in operation.

n8mcd · March 2019

Keep in mind, Steam's login numbers only represent one channel of access to CO, and that is all Steam CAN track.

Many like me, launch the game directly, and many more use the ARC game browser to access CO. Steam isn't showing you those numbers

spinnytop · March 2019

pantagruel01 wrote: »

They're a fairly plausible way of measuring change over time, though, absent some reason to think the percentage of steam users has changed dramatically.

There's also no reason to think that a change in the number of steam users equates to a change in any other population. On any given day 100 steam users could rage-quit the game, while 200 new players join through Arc meaning steam charts would give an impression of population change that is the opposite of reality.

aredein wrote: »

I can agree on that. Unfortunately, I don't have info on how many players are here on ARC. So my bad, I suppose.

Yeah nobody really has that information. Some people in the past were really stubborn about repeatedly posting Steam numbers and claiming they proved the game was dying. And here we are years later with the game still alive, and those people are dead.

aredein wrote: »

I hope they'll continue supporting CO. And if not, we need to ask the developers if the have any emergency plan for the game to keep it's playability after it stops giving money.
I heard that developers are likely to read forums here than in steam forum.

The developers would have no ability to do anything if the owners decided to shut the game down, and the owners don't read these forums. I bet the devs wouldn't even be allowed to tell us ahead of time if they were told the game was shutting down soon.

paneth48 · March 2019

The game runs on the same servers as STO and Neverwinter as far as I know, so the cost of keeping it up is probably low and won't be shut down unless STO and NWO gets shut down. It also still brings in some money, probably not tons but enough, and since they really don't develop content for it aside from lockboxes and sometimes bug fixes not really any cost there. In addition they bought the IP for Champions (Which is a table top RPG) so they don't have to pay anyone for its just sitting around and gathering dust. In the case for the Foundry being shut down, its because no one knows how to keep fixing it as the last person who knew how no longer works there. That can be seen many ways but mainly both STO, NW, and CO are fairly old games MMO wise so it's not a surprise that staff would change and some things lost. Their main problem was anytime they updated STO or NW it broke the Foundry for weeks at a time so they would have to have someone hunt and peck code to fix it instead of fixing content on the games themselves. The Foundry was also not bringing them money to support these fixes so eventually they axed it.

paneth48 · March 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

There's also no reason to think that a change in the number of steam users equates to a change in any other population. On any given day 100 steam users could rage-quit the game, while 200 new players join through Arc meaning steam charts would give an impression of population change that is the opposite of reality.

It probably also doesnt count people like me who log in through the original STO launcher I've been using ever since it came out.

aredein · March 2019

spinnytop wrote: »

pantagruel01 wrote: »

They're a fairly plausible way of measuring change over time, though, absent some reason to think the percentage of steam users has changed dramatically.

There's also no reason to think that a change in the number of steam users equates to a change in any other population. On any given day 100 steam users could rage-quit the game, while 200 new players join through Arc meaning steam charts would give an impression of population change that is the opposite of reality.

aredein wrote: »

I can agree on that. Unfortunately, I don't have info on how many players are here on ARC. So my bad, I suppose.

Yeah nobody really has that information. Some people in the past were really stubborn about repeatedly posting Steam numbers and claiming they proved the game was dying. And here we are years later with the game still alive, and those people are dead.

aredein wrote: »

I hope they'll continue supporting CO. And if not, we need to ask the developers if the have any emergency plan for the game to keep it's playability after it stops giving money.
I heard that developers are likely to read forums here than in steam forum.

The developers would have no ability to do anything if the owners decided to shut the game down, and the owners don't read these forums. I bet the devs wouldn't even be allowed to tell us ahead of time if they were told the game was shutting down soon.

And that is what makes me worried, that we are not allowed to know how well the game is going from their perspective.
We also don't know what amount of money goes to support the game and what amount of money is going to owner's wallets.

Is there any plans to preserve this game?

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