Once in a while, questions pop up about the first
COH video listed on the site. It shows quite a bit about the changes in the game - and naturally leads to questions about what's in the game, what's not, what changed and why.
Out of boredom, I decided to write this guide up.
The video is the first one rendered completely "in game" at the time, and is at low (640x480) resolution.
When was this video made?
This was pre-beta. If you look on the FTP site, it gives a date of 7/6/2005. Given there are *several* other movies (such as one on the Shadow Shard, which came well after) with that date... that isn't accurate. I don't have an exact date, only that this was much earlier.
Bolded numbers are time references.
0 - 0.12
- Cryptic logo. Nothing special here.
0:13 to 00:24
- City render. Compare to how it looks now, with depth of field and other graphics updates. I really wish they'd do the "comic box" on cutscenes...
00:24 to 00:35
- Our first look at a hero, who apparently has Superjump and Flight, but nothing notable to me at this point other than that.
00:40
- Our first look at the costume and character creator.
Notable -
Across the top, it shows the steps, which are far different from what we have now.
1-Stats
2-Powers
3-Skills
4-History
5-Costume (highlighted)
6-Profile
And "CFG" which I *assume* stands for Configure.
Next notable item - right next to "Costume" on the main screen is what appears to be a cost of 20485. Some of this is slightly rearranged (for instance, instead of all being in one list, we currently have "Head," "Upper body," "Lower body," "Capes" (soon to be back detail) and "Auras." I'm assuming this was done to help clean up this screen a little - though the layout is much the same. Also notable is that "Eye detail" is being modified to "Lightning."
This is the same hero shown at 0:25, apparently, with the lightning "crest" which this *might* be referring to.
The animated background is interesting, too. The origins, at this point, were *much* different (more of them,) and had more of an impact on the game. My guess would be the background is related to the origin.
For those who are curious, there were seven Origins. As Jack Emmett described in the dev diaries (linked at the end of the guide - worth reading
[ QUOTE ]
Nothing guided the player to which powers he should choose. The only limitations for powers came from the hero's origin. The seven origins determined how many powers a player could have as well as how powerful they could become. A mutant hero, for example, could have as many as eight powers, but couldn't raise them to their maximum level. A scientifically altered hero, on the other hand, could have only five powers, but would be able to raise them to a power level above that of the mutant.
[/ QUOTE ]As it flashes through other options, you can see some minor changes:
00:41 - boots, Geometry ("Big,") texture ("Banded 01") and Mask ("Lightning.") From what I'm seeing, "Mask" is simply "pattern."
Also, bottom of the screen, "Save visuals." The blurred bit seems to be instructions to click for more INF... unsurprising in an early test version.
00:46 shows "Skin head 04." Yeah... I think we can guess why they renamed that. Mask of "Cheetah," which looks like "spots" to me.
00:46
- Powers
This is the section that often gets a lot of comment, with "Electricity control," "Darkness control" What has to be remembered is that these were actually picking the equivalent of power pools, with very few powers involved, according to those who ran through this (alpha/early beta.) You can see an example on this
early version of the website. The first hero shown, for instance, has "Air control," "Cold control," "Core powers" and "Fire control." I'd say he's very much what turned into a Controller.
Yes, at this point there *were* no Archetypes. No blasters, tanks, scrappers, just people with origins and powers. This has been asked for over and over. So, why was it changed?
Per
an interview with Jack Emmett/Statesman, players weren't just being flexible. They were either building "tank-mages," overpowered characters that had no real challenge in the game, or gimping themselves into unplayability. (Say, they have Flight and Invulnerability. Which is fine... they can... fly and be invulnerable. They cant' fight anything, though.) So, despite wanting to get away from "classes," they ended up with Archetypes.
The issue, simply put, is that some had come from a pen-and-paper RPG world and were designing an MMO. Exceptionally flexible creation is automatically (in theory) balanced in a PnP game by the Game Master, who runs things and adjust difficulty on the fly so that everyone, even Mr. Invulnerable Flier, can have a role and participate. That can't really be done in an MMO.
Or from another perspective, a quote (Sword) :
[ QUOTE ]
I remember Yankee Daring. He's still my favourite player-created hero. Ever. Remember the "What villains say about Yankee Daring" thread? He was ina class all by himself. Guess he quit after he realized his super strong character couldn't move and did piddiling damage
[/ QUOTE ]
Where did some of these go? Some ("Earth control") are obvious in what they inspired. Others...
Super Stamina - hmm...
Super Intelligence: Found a quote, of course
[ QUOTE ]
Q.How can Super Intelligence be used? How would my character be different with it, than without it?
A.Super Intelligence will be very advantageous for skill-based heroes—those that use a lot of items. They will be able to figure out and use their skills more quickly and effectively.
[/ QUOTE ]
Super Willpower, Super Personality - not knowing *what* they did, I'd hazard a guess at some. The idea of Personality *might* have morphed into the Presence pool (taunts and fears.) Of course, they also seemed to have a "Fame" statistic (those of you who want to lose XP vs going into debt....)
Darkness control - from board comments previously, sounds like Dark Miasma.
Density Control - a search actually got an explanation of this from Tal_N:
[ QUOTE ]
It contained phase shift, increase density, inertial reduction and several invulnerability type defences as I recall. It was quite a limited set as I recall.
[/ QUOTE ]Life Drain - several powers have this component. Warshades and Dark scrappers touch on this.
Light control - No telling. Possibly Illusion ("Blind.")
Paralysis - sounds like a generic Hold.
Plant Control - well, we now have a Dominator set with this.
Poison - again, we have a Mastermind set with this.
I have to say again, these weren't powersets, but powers... at best, from what I've been seeing prior, power pools. When I'm saying "This turned into this," we're looking at inspiration or themes for sets.
Shape Shifting - Again, not knowing what it did...
Sonic control - finally made it into the game as a set, giving people headaches.
Super Vision - sounds like part of Leadership (Tactics,) giving +perception now. What it did then... unknown to me.
00:50
- A group of heroes heading out. Things to note at 00:51 =
- The chat interface. Rough around the edges, but, it is alpha.
"Targetting Body" (upper left.) Yes, targettign specific areas, to a point.
"Gest," I'm assuming means gesture. With what *appears* to me to be chat choices beneath it, if I'm seeing SG and TM ("Team?") in the bottom two.
Next to it,t he power window - text feedback saying he's "using power punch."
There's no enemy bars above their heads with HP and END. I'm *assuming* the bar above the power bar shows enemy health. (These look like Hellions.)
Boxes to the right... I'd love feedback on. Is the slider a choice between "Attack" and "Style" (IE more effective, but straightforward, or more flashy but less powerful?) Same with the buttons.
In the upper right - three bars. i'm *guessing* these were Health, End, and XP. (so these are very low level...)
00:55
- Enemy groups.
This is the other thing that brings up discussion. Some of the names are familiar, some... not so much. Listed:
Circle of Thorns
Seraphim
The Lost
Revelation (from the font, I'd assume a tech/space/future group)
The Rikti
Twilight Men - we know them as Malta
Nemesis
Fifth Column
Freakshow
Killing Crew - a search found this:
[ QUOTE ]
Take this with a grain of salt, but I heard that Killing Crew was the original Sky Raiders. Thw went from blood thirsty mercs to, well, greedy government trained blood thirsty mercs.
[/ QUOTE ]Crey Industries
Devouring Earth
Fear Factor
(Also for completeness, though not seen in the clip - "Soul scavengers" turned into the Carnies. (Found under Doc_LotD.)
Heroside groups changed, too. At high levels you got to the Freedom Phalanx, Dawn Patrol, Midnight Society, etc. for missions of the Elder Game. (Groups that didn't make it in, or were altered: Explorers, Free Company and D.E.N.A. - Dept. of Extra Normal Affairs. Easy to see what happened there.) (The_Spy_Is_Dead) )
00:59
- back to our heroes (and some eye popping colors.)
1:03
- Panning around the city, we seem to have a "fisheye" effect... given they say this was rendered in game, I'm really glad to not see this, even at 640x480.
1:06
- The Flip. Hero flips off a building into flight. Perhaps that "Style" slider
1:10
- A peek at the Fifth Column uniforms, if you haven't seen them, as they're given a good beatdown.
1:12
- A few other interesting things. You can *somewhat* see a targeting icon at the hero's head (apparently aiming for the crotch - what is it with crotches and this game?) Alternately, it could be something for the Alpha dealing with character cameras, as it's the character's eye level.
Also, what is she fighting? My *first* instinct is that it's what turned into a Vahzilok Eidolon.
1:21
- COH logo after some fights vs Fifth Column, and fade to black (six seconds of it...)
[ QUOTE ]
I remember the first time I saw a Hero fly overhead and how it made me think, "This is going to be the coolest game ever."
[/ QUOTE ] - MissInformed.
That quote is from
this thread, if you're interested.
A link worth going to: the
City of Heroes Design Diaries (Edit - go to one of the other diary links, or use
this one. For some reason, the link to all of them is borked, but they're all linked at the bottom, too) at IGN. If you want to see what's going on, or what *went* on, during design, why certain things were done one way or another, why things were scrapped - this is very interesting reading. It's almost easier to go to
Diary #9 first - which is short, and "is it ready" in summary. The reason to go there first is that at the bottom, all the development and design diaries - including the (often rambling) ones from the original lead designer - are at the bottom. If you want to see the evolution of a game from "we'd really like" and "this would be fun" to "this doesn't work, we have to change," go read them.
