Liquid

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$20 says the new animations for MA are simply a mixed bag of copy/pasted melee sets.

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Even that would be an improvement over 'kick-kick-kick-kick...oyah COBRA! - kick-kick...brawl.'

IMO

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Yep. Punches would mean my level 37 MA/SR scrapper is going to get a lot more use. I'll have to make an MA/Willpower scrapper too.

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The best thing about it for me is that I don't have to restart my level 50, totally-maxed-out-with-IOs MA/SR for a Street Fighting set as I'd been expecting I'd have to-- I can just swap some of his kicks out for punches!

Holy crap that's a lot of powerset proliferation, and the difficulty settings are going to be really fun.

Issue 16 is bringing a lot more that we've been asking for, and I'm really excited about it!

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Super Strength and Martial Arts will each receive an alternate animation for their powers, and Stone Armor and Necromancy will include limited customization.

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Customized MA animations? Could this mean punches?


I hoped for this, but never expected it to actually happen!

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That would be so awesome, and way better than a new all-punching set. You could mix and match and have punches AND kicks!

I'm also really surprised at the Super Strength option, I wonder what we'll get?

Some minor corrections:

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Cryptic and NC Soft made this game jointly.

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Cryptic made the game, NCSoft was the publisher. NCSoft also provided bandwidth, likely servers, GMs and the forums.

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During the time this game was in production, lots of people worked on it, many left the project during production or after Launch of City of Heroes. The game went through a couple Lead Designers, before Jack Emmert, AKA Statesman. (If I remember correctly, there was at least one before him.)

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The game had just one prior Lead Designer: Rick Dakan, the man that came up with the idea for City of Heroes in the first place, and the one who wrote the bulk of the game's lore. He was lead Designer from 2000 until late 2002, at which time he and Jack switched roles (Lead Designer and Designer), and a month later he was fired and rehired as a contract writer (but called "Lead Writer" by Statesman on the website blog post made about the change). Rick remained a contract writer through Issue 2, and also wrote the original Blue King CoH comic-- the one with Apex and War Witch.


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Shortly after they bought out the game, NC Soft moved the developers from Texas ( Austin I believe, but who knows Im going completely off of memory.) To mountain view, which is in the Bay area, California.


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The developers were moved from Los Gatos CA, to Mountain View CA. Both are in the Bay area.

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And some where in that sordid history were lots of beta tests, lots of Doom crying, a number of new issues and updates and a couple Hero Cons.

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One (very memorable) HeroCon, though there was a previous meet-up that might be considered the first HeroCon in spirit.

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I remember it was Statesman & Hero1 who came up with most of the game's story bible. Dakan was just senior designer.

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As stated earlier in the thread, Rick Dakan came up with the idea for City of Heroes, wrote (according to various interviews) the bulk of the game's backstory, and was Lead Designer until late 2002 (and look how long Melissa Bianco, aka War Witch has been with the game!). Hero 1 wasn't hired until Issue 9 or 10-- he's the current steward of the "story bible", but he didn't come up with most of it. We have no idea how much Jack Emmert contributed to it, the only other person I've seen mentioned as having anything to do with it is Sean "Manticore" Fish (who I'd guess is likely second to Dakan in contribution, though it would be awesome to have a dev clear this stuff up).

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I think Dakan posted under the screename "Gaffer" but i'm not sure. It's been 8 years after all.

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As stated earlier in the thread, that was Jeremy Gaffney, the NCSoft executive producer for CoH (quoted as such here in a Ctrl+Alt+Del blog post-- second on the page).

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Hmm I remember there being a Hero1 dev on the boards in 2001.

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Maybe that was what Rick was posting under back then. On the archived staff pages, there is no "writer" position, and Rick and Jack are the only people listed as designers until the staff listing was removed in 2003, so if someone named Hero1 back in 2001 claimed to be involved in writing the backstory, and nobody knows what Rick's board name was, it would be logical to assume that Hero1 may have been Rick. I don't think anyone's remembered/figured out what Rick's board name was back then, if he posted on the forums at all.

Here's a forum thread from 2006 where someone seems to think Rick's forum name was Hero1:

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Wasn't Rick Dakan's name on the original forums Hero1? So I'd assume while he'd have a say in Statesman, his hero was more Hero1. Jack was already on the team at that time, I think he just got bumped up to Lead Designer, which meant he could then change whatever he wanted about Statesman.

But that still doesn't change the complete origin flip that was 'Unlocked his inner will' and 'Drank from the fountain of Zeus,' it just explains the original magical artifact origin being changed.

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And hey, I remember that original origin for Statesman!

Oh, as for Rick's writing the Story Bible, here you go, straight from Jack's mouth in August of 2004:

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Who wrote the storylines that run through Paragon City? Was it a collaborative effort?

Rick Dakan penned much of the initial fiction of the City. It’s our talented writing team that’s brought it to life. Sean Fish, Matt Miller, Jane Kalmes and Brian Gilmore have set a new standard, I think, in the quality of quests for MMP’s. Many players view our storylines as much of a rewards as any XP!

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Sounds to me like Rick wrote the majority of what would be considered the Story Bible, and the others used that fiction to write the actual missions. Note that Jack does not take any credit for writing.

Edit: Also, note that he gives Rick no credit for "bringing it to life" during his time as a contractor-- Rick claims to have written 400,000 words of background material and NPC dialogue in 2003 after being fired and re-hired as a contractor, which sounds to me like he was involved in mission writing. But maybe they threw his dialogue out.

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I remember it was Statesman & Hero1 who came up with most of the game's story bible. Dakan was just senior designer.

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As stated earlier in the thread, Rick Dakan came up with the idea for City of Heroes, wrote (according to various interviews) the bulk of the game's backstory, and was Lead Designer until late 2002 (and look how long Melissa Bianco, aka War Witch has been with the game!). Hero 1 wasn't hired until Issue 9 or 10-- he's the current steward of the "story bible", but he didn't come up with most of it. We have no idea how much Jack Emmert contributed to it, the only other person I've seen mentioned as having anything to do with it is Sean "Manticore" Fish (who I'd guess is likely second to Dakan in contribution, though it would be awesome to have a dev clear this stuff up).

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I think Dakan posted under the screename "Gaffer" but i'm not sure. It's been 8 years after all.

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As stated earlier in the thread, that was Jeremy Gaffney, the NCSoft executive producer for CoH (quoted as such here in a Ctrl+Alt+Del blog post-- second on the page).

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I honestly have no idea how they got the powersets done as quickly as they did as well as they did.

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That seems to get quoted a lot, but I think people are missing the point. They got everything ready, functioning and actually playable for the release of an MMO, in a time when it was customary for MMOs to be shunted off to Live in a stage only tangentally better than early Beta. When City of Heroes launched, one of the key points people kept praising the game for was the fact that it launched without any showstopping bugs and with pretty high quality. The game worked!

To me, the mere fact that they actually got all powers animated and working really is doing things quickly and well. It may not have been a perfect setup, but it worked.

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On the other hand, I think what Starsman was commenting on was that the powers system worked, but it really couldn't be said to work well. I think we've forgotten how broken the powers system was at launch, but as an example of how broken things were remember it was possible then to have 100% resistance. Sure all the powers worked. But you really couldn't say that this game launched with a powers system that was sensible.

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I think the key words here though are "as they did". I think Castle is really saying something more like, "given the short amount of time and small amount of people they had, I'm surprised the powers system wasn't far worse, or unfinished (functionally, not just balance-wise)."

Thanks, UnSub. Google keeps giving me addresses that don't work.

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I wonder where this game would've gone and how it would've evolved if Dakan had stayed on board. Would ED have happened? Would balancing issues have been sorted out?

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I recently listened to a (very amateur) interview with him about his Geek Mafia books, and the interviewer had a City of Heroes related segment. Rick made a comment that he found it "interesting" that Cryptic was going with a classless system for CO, as he'd originally wanted for CoH. He said "interesting" in a "and they told me that wouldn't work" tone of voice.

So-- Rick wanted a system radically different from what was here at release. We don't know exactly who wanted it to change-- Jack? Michael Lewis? Richard Garriott (who Jack quoted a few times after he took over as lead designer) or someone else at NCSoft? Would Rick have continued to fight the idea as a lead designer? ED was far out enough that asking the question might be totally irrelevant, because the system could have been radically different at release. It's also possible that it would have ended up the same way, and that ED would still have been done.

My questions are more related to story and lore, and later developments: If Rick had stayed as lead designer or even as lead writer, would the Council have taken over the 5th Column? Would Arachnos exist? Assuming he remained lead designer, would there have been a City of Villains (he was on record saying the idea of a separate city filled with villains was silly), or would they have existed in Paragon? Or would there have been player villains at all?

Regardless, I want it to be known that I've been happy with the general direction of CoH since about Issue 8. I've had some complaints, sure, but I'm really happy with the state of the game and hints of things to come. I just feel sad that the guy who came up with the very idea of this game we love so much, and put ~5 years worth of work into it, almost never gets any credit for it.

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Here's an article about Rick Dakan.

He was originally the Lead Designer of CoH and we have him to thank for a lot of the lore and story. CoH wouldn't have existed without him.

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Yes. Rick Dakan is the "father" of City of Heroes. It was his idea, not Jack's, as so many people seem to think. Rick created Nemesis, the Rikti, the 5th Column, and who knows how much else. He was a writer for the game at least through Issue 2 (he claims to have had some writing involvement with the Shadow Shard, I don't know how much). There was a much more detailed article on warcry.com from just before Issue 3's release, but it seems to have been removed.

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As a minor point, can we get a bit more backstory in the Schadenfreude's bio about who this character is? My initial impression was that he was the Axis Earth version of Nosferatu, but that's just a guess.

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It says in his bio that he stayed with the Column when the Center made his move, and rose up through the ranks in the ensuing power gap.

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We've read this, but you'd think someone identical to Nosferatu would have been noticed before now. He just feels shoved in.

It would be much cooler if he was the Axis America version of Nosy, and is helping the 5th (or a renegade faction of the 5th fed up with Requiem's interest in personal power over the ideals of the Third Reich) and the Reichsman by developing his crazy alternate Marcus Cole power sucking device.

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Just one little additional comment because I've said plenty about canon and the TF already: the original Axis America troops looked like this and they aren't in the game any more. The unlockable Axis America critters in the Mission Architect are wrong. They're just the Council Empire models, with human faces instead of Fifth Column masks.

Please bring back Original Flavour Axis America.

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The original Axis America mobs don’t have a lot of variety to them – there’s basically four minions (the rifle, rocket, grenade, and flamethrower), one lieutenant, and one boss in the group. That’s not enough variety to provide interesting encounters for an entire story arc.

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Oh no, we (or I, anyway) just meant to use the Axis America troops in the Axis America mission-- the one mission that takes place in Axis America. Is that still not good enough? (also, just reskinning 5th would be fine too, as suggested, but note that they never had robots, vampires, or warwolves, just troops) The whole arc doesn't need to be Axis Americans. Note that the 5th have tried to ally with them before, and they were receptive to it until we (the heroes) broke up their negotiations.

Also, is there any chance that the propaganda that played over the loudspeakers can be added to that mission?

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I just want to say here that Mr Harlick is being quite modest. The current version of the SF story, informed by player feedback in the Beta, is radically re-written from the original one. I was frankly astonished by how much changed. This was a ton of work and writing flexibility.

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I'm hoping he's talking about the Hero TF here. Very little has changed in it.

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Switching voices, I am aware of the canon issues with the story. The problems are purely my fault; when I came up with the original flow for the story I was under some mistaken impressions on some events in the game’s history. While I did make some adjustments to the story due to the feedback from the training room, I didn’t get all the details nailed down as best I could. Due to a tight translation deadline, I was unable to get final text passes into the build that was going to the Live servers, but rest assured I’ll be doing my best to address them over the next week or so to bring the story of Reichsman’s return in line with the existing history of the 5th Column.

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Thank you so much. I really appreciate this post. I'm sorry if I've been overly harsh about the story issues, the lack of response prior to this made me worried that they would never be addressed. This response makes me feel much better.

I've always enjoyed the WWII connections in the superhero genre, and the 5th Column and Axis America were CoH's WWII tie-ins. I was very upset when they were removed, and very excited as the 5th slowly began to be re-added through the Lazarus TF and the Imperious TF. Issue 15, though many were unhappy that it seemed small, had me thrilled, as the 5th freeing the Reichsman was exactly what I'd wanted to see since I first read the timeline and learned that he was still in stasis under the Freedom Phalanx headquarters. So, you can probably understand why I might have been upset about the canon issues.

Again, thank you very much. Next week I'll have plenty of time to check out any changes you make and give feedback, and I'll make sure to do so.

Welcome to the forums, Mr. Harlick, and thank you again for taking the time to address our concerns.

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So, those pages and pages of discussion of how the hero side TF makes no sense...

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I expected this to happen. I gues it's useless to reason with them on some things

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I expected it too, but I still had a glimmer of hope.

::snuff::

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Don't give up just yet. There was a small patch over the weekend, and we don't know what was in it. I'd guess, though, that text changes in the TF could easily have been what was in there, since it was so small, and since text changes are so unlikely to cause major problems that the Devs could go ahead with a Monday live launch.

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I guess at this point I'd rather give up and be pleasantly surprised later, than hold out hope and be disappointed again.

And it's not just text, the final fight is still a slog, the Energy Sources are still above ground, and I really think the Boomtown mission was intended to have a cut scene. The hero version deserves a cut scene as much as the villain version does. It's weird that so much attention was given to the villain version, and so little to the hero one. Maybe it was Fearghas' write-up of how he thought the story should go. I wish I'd had time to sit down and come up with one of my own for the hero side instead of just pointing out errors.

It's just so anti-climactic following the build up of the 5th's return story from Issue 11 and 12, and 5 years of wanting to see the Reichsman. The story just feels like a slapped together afterthought.

My earliest PM is from Statesman in August of 2004, in response to my question, "will Scrappers ever get Super Strength?"

His answer was that no existing powersets would ever be ported to the other ATs.

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Yeah, I understand the idea. What I don't agree with is that it warrants in-game rewards for choosing a specific path,

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Unless we talking just about badges. The post made it sound as if the extra slots were one of such loyalty rewards.

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As I said in the post above, badges is something I'd totally agree with. There's no question that side-switchers would have an advantage there unless they lose side-exclusive badges. I also would agree with temp powers that are equivalent to the temp powers that are only accessible to the opposite side.

But yes, if it's something like the global enhancement slots, or something else totally unique that gives "native" ATs an advantage, I disagree with the idea. The benefits of side-switching are more aesthetic than power-related. Unless somehow Tankers are both more powerful than Brutes villainside, but less powerful than Brutes heroside.

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Not to mention it won't work. If you start purely neutral, no one starts on the hero or villain side so its meaningless.

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I have wondered how they would handle this. If these extra rewards are only for people who start and stay in Paragon, or start and stay in the Rogue Isles, that seems to discourage people from starting neutral at all, unless they get something for staying neutral.

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Yeah, I understand the idea. What I don't agree with is that it warrants in-game rewards for choosing a specific path, that the other path does not get. What does the side-switcher get that the "pureist" does not?

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Side switching increases flexibility and options, possibly access to badges and other rewards, and potentially allows for limitless back-and-forth. What reward ought they design for characters that don't switch, that will be equivalent to the flexibility granted by the ability to switch sides?

I see no problem with the "exemplary" idea. In fact, using your logic, I'd say something like that is almost a necessity to keep people who don't want to switch sides from feeling shafted.

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The problem I have is with the unique rewards. Outside of specific badges and minor temp powers, there is nothing exclusive, rewards-wise, offered on either side.

As far as access to different content goes (I assume that's what you mean by "flexibility")-- we all have access to all of the content regardless of the character. Just because Dr. Deception has been able to run missions on both sides while Captain Admirable and Miss Malicious haven't, doesn't mean Captain Admirable and Miss Malicious each deserve unique advantages over Dr. Fabulous. Time played is time played, and there is no inherent advantage to having done all of the content on one character or all of it on two different characters that makes the two different characters deserve special rewards that the one doesn't, aside from badges and temp powers.

I agree with your logical conclusion-- if side-switchers get to keep badges and temp-powers from both sides, then it's a great idea to offer special badges and/or temp powers to those who don't ever side-switch. That's not what it sounds like to me, though. "Unique Rewards" sound like something more than mere badges and temp powers.

I suppose I should withhold my judgment until we see what the rewards actually are, but I would rather express my opinion of the concept behind it while it's still in design phase where arguments are more likely to have an effect.

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To save other people the trouble,

<ul type="square">[*]2.) Characters that do not wish to change sides are rewarded by becoming exemplary heroes or villains, and earning rewards not available any other way - possibly different or cut[/list]

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I hope that's cut. I'd prefer that the choice of whether a character switches sides or not was done based on character-based reasons, not what rewards they might or might not get a shot at.

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I think the idea here is that if you have a hero character, who's never going to 'go rogue' and become a villain, you could instead continue to do heroic things and eventually become an exemplary hero...at which point, you'd have access to rewards not available in other ways.


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Yeah, I understand the idea. What I don't agree with is that it warrants in-game rewards for choosing a specific path, that the other path does not get. What does the side-switcher get that the "pureist" does not? Is it on-par with the new special rewards an exemplary character will get?

As has been said before (I believe by you!) if you give people a bonus for being in one state, people will perceive not being in that state as being penalized. The feeling here is that I would be penalized for having a character concept that involves switching sides, or for having a character concept for a Dominator that makes more sense as a hero, or a Blaster that makes more sense as a villain. That means I'm being discouraged from doing what is best for the character, concept wise.

However, if you allow us to start as Hero Dominators and Villain Blasters (or allow us to start neutral and pick one or the other and stick with it to get those exemplary bonuses), then nevermind. This solves the latter problem, and for the former problem I can at least pretend that those characters started on the other side and then switched without being less effective (or however the rewards will affect us) than those who didn't.

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To save other people the trouble,

<ul type="square">[*]2.) Characters that do not wish to change sides are rewarded by becoming exemplary heroes or villains, and earning rewards not available any other way - possibly different or cut[/list]

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I hope that's cut. I'd prefer that the choice of whether a character switches sides or not was done based on character-based reasons, not what rewards they might or might not get a shot at.

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- if you cant figure out that Fire is hitting you for Fire damage, you deserve to be confused

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True, but it's just one example. I don't think anyone's going to be confused by any of it, PvE or PvP. I think it's a ridiculous reason to restrict customization. fire looks like fire no matter what color it is; it's "flamey". Probably the only confusing thing would be ice vs earth, but all you have to do is have the projectiles have different texture and size/shape.

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- Sorry DC, if my uniqueness has to be second string to the established characters, that's an experience I can get right here with 3 and a half years of Vet perks to boot. Plus, it looks like I might not have to endure it here for much longer either.

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DC is more appealing to me than CO, but yeah these are the thoughts I'm having, too. Also, their costumes look to be far more restricted by unlocking through loot, and they have some costume types restricted based on your origin.

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- Car throwing WOULD be awesome. What do I have to sign to get car throwing in this game?

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The problem, probably, is that the game wasn't designed with it in mind. They'd have to go back and add throwable items to all the map types. I'm obviously all for it, but they may not feel the ROI is high enough.

I want it so bad, though.

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I like them too, but they don't suit all characters. It will be great if I can get Darkspeed to have a black glow surrounding his hands for Hasten and a trail of shadows for superspeed. Similarly, my Bane Spider will look much better without any effect on Hasten at all.

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given their historic insistence that every power have a visual component, I doubt we'll be able to turn anything 'off'.

And I expect fairly stringent limitations on how inconspicuous we can make things.

Still, it'll be a lot of fun to mess around with.

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Possibly. Though they might well allow it, because the player is actively choosing to get no visual feedback from the power.

I'm also gonna take a guess and say that PoCu won't work in PvP zones or the Arena.

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On a related note, for those who don't know already, DCUO won't have power color customization at all, and they claim it is specifically because of a PvP concern-- it would be confusing to players and force them to check combat stats to see what they were hit with.

Meanwhile, they've stated that this won't apply to NPCs (Fire's fire will indeed be green). Apparently, it's okay to force people to check combat stats in PvE but not PvP.

After I16 and Going Rogue, the only thing left to interest me in the competition will be car throwing, martial artists that can punch (assuming I16 doesn't allow animation changes), being treated as an equal by the signature characters (so Sony is claiming), and having my characters exist in an established world I've loved since I was a kid. That's really not very much.

And all CO has to offer me is car throwing.

I predict a speech by Statesman.

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The criminal mastermind known as Dr. Brainstorm has somehow altered the fabric of the universe and allowed the archetypes of the Rogue Isles access to power colors that they did not have previously.

By using the Hypothetical Frameworks used by inventors the world over, he laid the foundation of his master plan.

We believe that even Dr. Brainstorm could not foresee the full effects of this, as many of the heroic archetypes have found similar new colors for their powers.

Surely this is to maintain some sort of cosmic fashion balance, but to be sure Positron as well as the city's top scientists are looking into the situation.

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Whew. I'm glad I'm not the one that posted this thread, because when I read that post, I thought Graham was the one on his honeymoon. Skimming bad!

Congrats pohsyb!

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I appreciate how, by player requests, Lord Recluse's tone and demeanor has changed and how Akarist was pulled from the Task Force. But, our notes on the mysterious absence of Axis America and the mysterious ubiquity of the 5th Column continue to go unaddressed.

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I think this can be explained very easily. There are lots of parallels between the various Earths. Mostly it's been people, but who about an organization?

We don't have much in teh way of detauls from the public game lore about Reichsman and Axis Earth. It's makes sense that Reichsman was (is) attached to the Axis Earth military. Being who he is, he would be part of an elite unit as the commander no less. And every his elite superpowered lieutents, he would also have elite troops as well. And the name of this Axis America elite unit..the 5th Column.


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Sorry Fuz, the name of the elite unit is the Amerika Korps. I always got the impression that it was a Nazi version of the Freedom Phalanx, but I'm now noticing that this may not be the case, exactly, based on the two mentions of it (though the second mention suggests to me that it is a Nazi version of the Freedom Phalanx):

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The Reichsman, an alternate version of our world's Statesman, led the Amerika Korps, an elite super powered hero organization that helped preserve Nazi rule over the former United States.

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Fortunately, the rest of the Amerika Korps did not measure up to the Freedom Phalanx (apparently in his world the Reichsman did not take kindly to potential rivals, and thus their training had been somewhat lax.)

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The troops in Axis America have always been Axis Americans. They're even still in the game in the MA. Why change that now? Sure, have a bunker with 5th there, saying that they recently established a base there. But the streets should have Axis Americans in it like it always did.