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What could have been
kojirohellfire
Posts: 2,075 Arc User
It's tragic that this game was never a success. It has nice flavor to it now that I've returned after a few years of absence. Last time I logged in was two years ago. But, y'know, lifetime sub, so that chair's always warm for me. Still, sad that barely anything's been added. It's a game frozen in time almost. Oh well, at least it's still up....
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It may not have been the success which had millions of players worldwide or always had a full dev team, but the community it has kept which has fluctuated over the years, has really been a core part of keeping CO active.
I mean...CO had a phase where it had "zero development" for around 10 months, as in nothing was added to the game...and that was in 2012/2013...and it is still alive and had had content additions & power set reviews since.
Take a look at Patch Notes since you last logged in and read through them since you're back on forums, you might be surprised.
I do agree, I wish there was more money poured into CO especially considering how well things like MCU took off, it would have been a super smart move to beef up CO, and put it out there again...but it is an old game which has now been around for 11 years...I think the ability for it to be around this long speaks to it being a success in its own right.
My Characters on PRIMUS
[#]WeNeedHeroicFashion - <Aura Suggestions> - <CO Wiki (WIP)> - <Crowd Control Discussion> - <Telepathy in Champions Online> - How to review The Force Power Set - Join the Champions Online: On Alert Discord!
I am @RavenForce in game
__________________________
Oh, wait...Those weren't even made.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
That made me chuckle. Thanks. Needed that.
Oh, a little more development that what we've seen. The game always felt like Cryptic's red-headed step-child, given little crumbs here and there. I would have loved a new zone, even if it was half the size of Millennium City. And the Nemesis system was always my pet interest, I would have loved that expanded. Otherwise we were just getting vehicles and monthly events. Nothing I could really bite my teeth into.
Would love a Apoc version of Lemurian one where the waters have been drained.
They did add Save the Earth which uses one person's Nemesis each time.
Sounds like for you lots of new content = success?
The QWZ? Can you perhaps assume that I have no idea what that abbreviation stands for?
Tell me more?
Something like that, but not quite. New content is tricky because on the one hand it brings in players, but on the other hand new content needs to be justified by having said players. Generally, content rolling in is a sign that the game is generally successful because it has the money to produce it. From what I recall it was determined that CO was just kind of... breaking even.
I play a game that does this. It's almost as old as Champs. It gets stale too. But when you can go anywhere and do any repeatable content and it is fun and fulfilling, that makes a huge difference.
But, something like this would take a massive overhaul. I don't see that ever happening.
-=-=-=-=-=-(CO in-game handle: @WarCan )-=-=-=-=-=-
"Okay, you're DEAD, what do you do NEXT?"
Save the Earth is a newish alert that rotates in every 8 weeks (unless the devs mess something up). To be honest, most of the fight involves herding and fighting through usually an endless stream of your Nemesis's minions and if you do that successfully (not always certain, depending on your group) you get to fight your Nemesis at the end. This is probably the most despised alert in the rotation (even over Forum Malvanum and Cybermind) because of having to fight all the mooks. Still, it does have a Nemesis.
Death Rattle followed by Serene Abyss, 4 missions each with the next and final Chapter being in Development!
The mission structure, writing and the way the story unfolds may be a Hit or Miss but each mission gives different rewards and they are all Fully voiced!
The most noticable criticism and complain about the series is that each mission is locked behind a 24 hours gate, you cannot proceed to the next part until the next day
as well as the annoying back and forth between Westside and Downtown Lab Doesn't help it has some really annoying bugs that can make the Alert unbeatable
Example: If someone attracts the mobs attention and move back to the Hall-Room, the Mobs will start spazzing and keep respawning, creating an unbeatable loop
> (Quote)
> The most noticable criticism and complain about the series is that each mission is locked behind a 24 hours gate, you cannot proceed to the next part until the next day
Sounds annoying.
I have always loathed CO's boss fights - I think they're one place where the age of the game really, really shows - and so Epic lairs, Therakiel etc have no interest. But clearly there is a market for that type of game and the players that like it are those that stay, so good luck to them.
The QWZ was OK but the tasks got repetitive and the story made no sense. Story writing, throughout CO, is poor.
Save The Earth was always something I rather enjoyed because it was less about bosses, but it just shows up the awful absence of team play in the game and the expectation of many players that they will either zerg through everything or be carried through.
The Comic Series content was OK but I've played about half of it on one character and lost interest. Story writing is poor - or at least the story is so short it makes little sense - and the daily gate should only apply when the content is new. It's very rare that I play CO more than two days running, and this isn't strong enough to bring me back.
Lemuria? An interesting zone and the one place where Vehicles could be used in their original configuration without being a problem in Cosmics or wherever. That might be something worth exploring.
The main problem with any form of comeback to the game is nerfs. Ones which are done to ensure that there isn't a "go-to" power are really boring and have sapped my will to play the game - coming back after a break to find ten characters in need of a retcon is really frustrating. Vehicle nerfs and so on are the same. So I don't play much, at the moment.
There's certainly less players each year, thanks to the Great Purge by the dev/moderator.
Marvel Heroes was mentioned.
History Lesson
Marvel Universe Online was the original working title of Champions Online. The game was developed by Cryptic Studios and was to be published by Microsoft Game Studios. In 2008, due to Microsoft pulling the project from the current marketplace, Cryptic Studios announced they would continue using a new intellectual property license related to Champions, a superhero role playing game. Gazillion Entertainment signed an exclusive 10-year deal to develop Marvel games.
Also CoH was brought up.
City of Heroes was developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCSOFT. The game was launched in, 2004, and the last day the servers was up was on November 30, 2012. NCSOFT shut it down and not Cryptic Studios. Anything else is fans running pirated copies on servers elsewhere.
There is only 2 ways for this game to fail and be removed. Perfect World has to decide to stop development and tell Cryptic to close the server. The other would be a sale of Cryptic Studios to another game publisher and that publisher would decide on the fate of all games under development at Cryptic Studios. In my opinion, PW should stop investing into the Universal Pictures flop films and keep production in their own TV, feature films, and blockbuster hits. Any financial liabilities are covered by the PW corporate umbrella.
I would not call this game tragic by comparison to the other games, Cryptic Studios helped develop, and were toss in the garbage bin by those publishers.
Raging Princess Blaze + Model 286 + Red Inferno + Burgundy Beetle
Epic Stronghold
Block timing explained
The game is stable much in the way Dark Age of Camelot is. Hardly any major updates and few concurrent players, yet it gets a trickle of tuning and small content patches with existing assets.
As someone who has played since f2p, I really haven't noticed that much of a decline in the past 4 years or so. Sure old players leave, but there are enough new players to keep things going.
Yeah, some dev decisions have been pretty crappy. Some nerfs are excessive, but most aren't without reason at least. I don't often agree with the focus of new content but I'm always grateful to see it when it comes.
CO is, and has always been (for me at least), a laid back game that's kind of its own thing. I don't really talk about it to my IRL friends, despite that I've spent way too much time on it. But I always see that time as well spent, because at the end of the day, I'm enjoying making characters and trying new things, even after 8 or so years of playing.
Of course it could be better. I think everyone agrees on that, and no doubt all of us here would love to see CO live up to its full potential. But given the game's shoddy engine, programming, limitations, relatively obscure IP, and aging infrastructure, I think they've done an okay job with it. And regardless of the "what if's," I'll proudly and happily look forward to many years ahead.
Champions Online was the 3rd best-seller PC title in 2009.
Good thing I've only played it for 8 then.
Since then it's just been treading water.
I wish this got as much love and attention as STO.
A successful game would be a game that is highly known, or have the player count compare to a game like Neverwinter online or Star Trak online, or at the impossible level of WoW or EVE online And Runescape, or made a lot of income Profits that not many people can confirmed if was or is a success.
As of NOW, this game got the population of a disowned Korean MMO game, or a game just starting up in OB\Open Beta.
what is not a successful MMO Game:
A game with a low population.
A game not know outside of its player base.
A game that made little to not much profit during or after its launch.
And This is a game with little to no content, and proceed to de-progress then to Progress, with only a small amount of things being changed over and over and over again.
a game Just lasting for sake of lasting don't make any game a successful game.
And This is by far a Fact.
This game would be a Truly a Game changer to the public eye, a lot of MMO's would have taken notice of that, but sadly, no.
As a lifetime member, in during Beta, and who has always recommended this game to every gamer I meet, I do have to say that the well-meaning defense of CO as a "Success" is something I have to disagree with.
It is a diamond-in-the-rough, survived 11 years, and provides hours of entertainment. It is surviving, but it is hardly thriving. I suppose the disparity is due to the relative nature of the word, but I think the OP and some others are coming from the perspective that this could have been MUCH MORE "Successful". And not in a wishful manner either. Practically speaking, there were a lot of lame decisions made that crippled this game in many ways.
Logging on and seeing 100-200 players online isn't a metric that would impress many. And I've been through the periods of times where I was lucky to see 80. Even the fact that this game DIDN'T (afaik) see a substantial bump during the hype of Marvel movies, similar to what looked like to me how SWTOR did with the newest trilogy and then with The Mandalorian, is evidence towards CO not being exactly stellar in the "success" department.
Yes, Champions online is NOT a "failure". However, I agree with the sentiment that I wish that things had gone better. This game has so much potential, and short of MS buying the group Cryptic MMOs for Billions, will probably not see this MMO shine any brighter, as it slowly flickers and fades.
Obviously, there is always hope, but the reflection back on what could be, wasn't off-base. Perhaps if we are brutally honest about this, it would encourage all of us to make a renewed effort to at least grow the user-base by getting "out there" and encouraging/advertising this fine game, which might in turn encourage its owners to re-invest more than they have...
That being said, I truly hope that CO will be in business for 11 more years!
[ edit: typos ]
Don't get me wrong (as so many in the past have), I love this game. But I'm allowed my criticisms and dreams.
The tabletop RPG on which this game is based has presented a superhero setting that is the broadest, deepest, most diverse yet coherent around, outside of the Big Two comics publishers. That so little of it has been translated to Champions Online breaks my heart.
Failure is a lack of success in doing or achieving something, especially in relation to a particular activity.
Now applied to CO :
-on the financial level, CO definitely didn't achieved the expected benefits and is certainly a failure.
-on the adaptation level, CO is so loosely adapted from the Hero Games rpg that it's clearly not a successful adaptation.
-on the gameplay level, I'll let you count how many powers are bugged/glitched/underperformong to figure yourself that here too it *is* a failure.
See, it much depends on the context in which the word is used.
A failure is also a falling short or giving out, as a failure of a water supply; a breaking down in health, strength, action, or efficiency; nonperformance of some expected or required action, as in failure to obey the law; becoming insolvent or bankrupt; not passing a required grade in education; and there are others in my dictionary. Some could arguably apply to CO, but giving out, and becoming insolvent, clearly don't.
jaazaniah1 makes a good point: success or failure aren't invariable, they're dependent on the context against which they're measured. They also aren't absolutes. All your examples are degrees by which the game could be perceived as less successful than it was expected to be, or than it could be. But those factors would only be failures if they're considered below a minimum acceptable level. For the people still playing the game, and the game's owners, they clearly are not.
None of which dilutes my own disappointment that the game doesn't have more players, make more money, have fewer bugs, and use more of the lore.
You should remind him so because his definition of success is an absolute, i.e. : if he is having fun therefore the game is a success.
No. That's clearly an absolute.
@jaazaniah1 comment is just a data to measure the scale of success but the way he's extrapolating it as a valid definition of success... is false.
On the other hand, my definition of success is the one that is contextual and relative.
I just think the game has strayed A LOT and spread itself thin with nonsense, and it’s such a shame. I’ve watched friends, great players and even better humans, with really cool characters they’d invested in, leaving throughout the years, and it breaks my heart. I still have hope, however, and will ALWAYS root for CO’s success and continued existence, no matter what.