f13.net

From an X06 press release:

Link (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3154045) to 1up.com story.

Edit:

Link (http://crypticstudios.com/news.php) to Cryptic's press release.  Page down for a letter and FAQ.

We will probably have to grind levels to make The Hulk green.

If only they'd allow marvel knockoffs in CoH again. Captain A-Hole rides again! Well, maybe not...but Man of Iron was a great energy blaster.

(http://home.twcny.rr.com/iamthey/images/ironman.jpg)

Well, that's pretty much the death knell for CoH/V.
Also: LOLZ @ Sigil.

If I was them, I'd be looking for a way to integrate the two games in some way; come up with a way to transfer your CoH character to the Marvel game.

cool.

Also, shouldn't Storm just stop talking and make sure we get a Bioware MMO SOON!  His company is the only reason I'm buying a 360 in April.  HURRY UP!  I'm getting really old waiting.

k?   :-)

I wonder if this was part of the settlement they reached with Marvel. I know it was "thrown out" by the Judge, but that lacks a shocking amount of business details.

Anyway, kudos to Cryptic. Kicking it mainstream. Which is good. CoX probably still makes them money, but it's not a runaway hit.

F13.net does not comment on rumors or speculation (http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=208).

Stormwaltz linked to a specific Marvel MMO for PC and Xbox 360. You sound like you're talking about a separate effort from Cryptic for a console game. Could that be part of the "many efforts" mentioned in Positron's note to the community that nevermore just posted (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8295.0)?

To me it's fairly cut and dry from the press release: Marvel MMO, developed by Cryptic, published and distributed by Microsoft. Other-console-effort-based-on-who-they're-hiring = separate project.

Ehh....

There was a time when I would have said that Cryptic was the only developer qualified to make a superhero MMO, but now I'm not so sure.  They did well with the travel powers and the basic fighting, but it's all the niggling details that annoy me: the grind, the glacially slow introduction of powersets, the endless nerfs that leeched all sense of fun from the game, the lack of endgame content or anything at all to do besides combat, and the pathetic grafting on of the "villain" experience in a bizarro seperate-but-equal manner that eliminates any real conflict from the world.

Sorry, but I'd rather see someone like Mythic or God help me, Sony, take a stab at a superhero game.  I lost my faith in Cryptic a long time ago.

I agree. I thought CoH was awesome at release, but the advancement was SOOOOO slow, levels and powers, and they just never addressed many of the issues the game had.

CoX is prime example of what not having an end game will do to your game.

Actually, this is exactly the game I was talking about. If I'd been able to say what I wanted to say it would have gone been a 2 sentence newspost. :P

Positron has attempted to head these thoughts off at the pass. (http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/archives/2006/09/letter_from_pos.html)  Basically, he says the current City of Heroes team is staying put, an entirely different development team will be working on the project with Marvel, and that Cryptic still has big plans for City of Heroes/villains, including Issues 8 (hitting the test server soon) 9, 10, and 11

Now, if only they'd adjust the grind to not require herculan doses of patience to reach 50.

NCsoft's official statement on the matter of Cryptic Studios making games for other people is that NCsoft has no official statement on the matter of Cryptic Studios making games for other people.

NCsoft®'s Statement Regarding Cryptic Studios™
 


On a less Korean overlords in the American market note: didn't f13 recently have a large about thread about BioWare's MMO, in which it was decided that an MMO in a universe which takes place around "main characters" ends up feeling like crap because you don't get to be wolverine, you get to do quests FOR wolverine?

I wonder if the Marvel universe is better or worse since it has hundreds of "main characters"? Would it be cool to be doing some quest and have the Fantastic 4 show up to aid you in a battle against generic villain 23, or would it feel like crap due to some shitty instanced implementation in which every single alt you roll up fights the same battle and receives the Fantastic 4's help?

On the one hand, it sounds like shit to me. On the other hand... Galactus would be a hell of a raid.

Heroes in LOTR or SW end up changing the world (or even the galaxy), in ways that players in an MMO never can.  Heroes in the Marvel Universe tend to maintain the status quo.  Their overall goal is to ensure there isn't any change.  They fight the same enemies over and over, the dead come back to life regularly, and any destruction that is caused in any given story seems to be repaired overnight.  It's almost too well fitted to being an MMO.

Just take COH, add some Marvel characters as NPCs, add enough costume tweaks for people to dress up as "Spider-Man's Clone" and "The lost Summers brother". Game complete.

I can't get too excited about this either. I'll reserve full blown hate though until I get an idea on what experience the console oriented people they've picked up have.

Secondly, they're going to have to implement something far more flexible and inventive than class roles and generic looking powersets (in order for player characters to stand out from the thousands of other characters who already exist in the Marvel Universe).

[edit]

Also.....

No grind. Assholes.

You bring up a mighty fine point sir! However, it will largely be based on the implementation of that world. Part of the thing that makes the Marvel universe interesting is the always changing allegiances, political affiliations, deaths of characters, long story arcs, etc. This world will need to be actively changing, and preferably, with players involved in that change. Here's where we run into trouble. If the world changes it would not take long to deviate from some of the comic book plot lines, and if the internet has taught me anything about X3, it's that Marvel nerds hate to deviate from comic book plot lines.

Some do.  On the other hand games like X-men Legends, comics like Marvel's  Ultimate line, and movies like Blade or the first couple X-men movies, haven't met with much resistance from fans.  As far as X3 goes, if Singer had stayed on and did a slightly better version of the same storyline I don't think some people would have reacted as negatively.  The MMO is going to need to deviate because there is no way it would be able to keep up with what goes on in every comic that Marvel publishes.  Hell, Marvel can't even keep their own plotlines straight these days.  Just looking at their main books you could probably come up with 4 or 5 divergent MU timelines.

LOL GRIND

Now that that's out of the way.

I am now officially torn.  This is a questionable move for City of Heroes/Villains, as this will cannibalize a LOT of the player base.  Okay for Cryptic, shitty for NCSoft, great for Microsoft.  While I genuinely enjoy the universe in CoX, a lot of people are just there because there is no Marvel MMO yet.

So I suppose, in a way, this is a great survival effort on the part of Cryptic.

Sony can't do this because Sony's doing DCOnline.  Mythic can't do it because they're doing Warhammer and DAoC for the first two years had a worse grind than CoH/V EVER had, or did we forget that because OMG RVR!?  Took me 6 months to get to 50 in CoH, took me over a year to get to 50 in DAoC.

I'm excited to see what will come of this.  With a major budget and license to back them up, Cryptic could really pull something off here.  Let's not forget that when CoH came out, it broke a shitload of MMO rules successfully.  Do we really have a lot of reason to think they are incapable of doing so again?

I do hope they get better mission writers, though.  Some of the stories in CoH/V are interesting, but some are just... well, predictable and crappy.  Call me crazy, but I'd really like to see some actual comic writers step up and propose some ideas.  Just keep Bendis away from Nick Fury and we should be okay.

I think the Marvel MMOG is going to be a different creature to CoH/V. Why?

1) Marvel MMOG is on consoles too.

2) Different development team with different pressures / aims. Marvel isn't going to want to see CoH/V reskinned so that it looks like Noo Yawk and Ms Liberty now looks like Black Widow.

There may be superficial differences, but they are probably going to have quite a few differences to their in-game systems. Cryptic learned a lot from designing CoH/V that is likely to make its way into the Marvel MMOG. As much as people like to hang Statesman as the bad guy, he actually got CoH released (and with a damn good release too). I don't think he's the kind of guy to make the same mistakes twice (so look for a whole new set of mistakes, especially as Marvel fanbois get involved).

Also, there is a demo movie out:

http://crypticstudios.com/movies/Marvel_Universe_Online.wmv

I should add - that demo is pure shiney promo, with no substance at all.

Nice trailer, even with that little "Vista - Games for Windoze" up yours at the end. :-P

Then explain the long and endless series of nerfs.

He means every class will be "pre-nerfed" this time around.

Count me in the "Meh" camp. Will the MUO game have the Civil War Registration act shit in it? Will I be unable to kill Iron Man for being a dick? Will it have the enervating grind of the COH engine? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, I really don't care.

Will it be fueled by the desire for random solitary lunatics in leotards performing vigilante justice? If the answer is yes, I really don't care.

If people start making Superman and Batman clones in a marvel MMORPG, would DC sue, is that too ironic?

Don'tcha think?

oh the nerd fury

talk about future ravenous canon debate

I had a hard enough time as a reader of Spiderman, Xmen, Hulk, in the same universe keeping things straight

[edit]
If they have deformable terrain and models, I might be interested.  Still want to throw people through a few buildings as a superhero.  Would be funny otherwise to find the Hulk in an empty zone, just bouncing up and down, with nothin to smash. 

Never mind any of that, can I join up with H.A.T.E. ?

1) The endless nerfs ended around I5, which was about 12 months ago.

2) And yeah - the power balance is likely to be a lot better at MUO's launch than it was at CoH's launch.

3) Why in god's name do people expect devs to get incredibly complex systems like powers 100% right on their first try? Especially knowing what MMOG players are like...

It's going to be released also on XBOX 360... so good luck for having anything as close as the controls you have in CoH/CoV...

I know that everyone fantasizes alot about Blizzard's revenues and wants to leverage it IP into a MMO in order to get a share of the pie but it takes more than a few announcements. It requires being realistic in your expectations.
Having Marvel authorize CoH/CoV to use IP from its comics would have been a far greater idea than trying to do yet *another* MMO. Moreover communities are hard to build. And I seriously doubt people will follow.

But I guess they are way too proud to finally accept the use of their IP in CoH/CoV...

The only thing I am hoping they do for this is try for the more casual market by making the grind much less intense. Also, maybe they will add items like X-Men: Legends.

Hey one can dream right?

Items and less grind would probably get a box purchase out of me. I love the genre, but CoH was way too grindy after level 20.

Why?  When I was playing CoH I had it mapped to a Dualshock controller and it worked just fine.   Felt very natural in a lot of ways, the only thing lacking was communications, which wouldn't be a problem with the 360 since VOIP is there by default.

And really, if there is such a long list of powers you just set up one of the trigger buttons to be a toggle where you can switch between different powersets.  This isn't a difficult concept.

This is a stupid idea, even if the game doesn't suck worse then CoX, mostly because it will remind so many of all the bad parts of CoX.  There is the inherent console issue, unless I missed a X360 keyboard announcement while I was away.  There is also the problem that the chat in a Marvel game will make Barrens global seem like a font of fucking philosophical wisdom.

Nerd fury indeed, also grats to Schild for the "I told you so".

FFXI on the PS2 is fine, it's a real MMORPG that plays better with a controller than with a keyboard. I don't see what the big deal about console is.

I found the FFXI interface to be downright byzantine, which I thought was because the game had to be able to be run on only a single PS2 controller.

Phantasy Star Universe is better with a controller. No reason I'd know though.

It also proves Zelda Style combat isn't just possible, it's already here.

Also, crafting with robots.

Also, I MIGHT BE LYING.

I MIGHT NOT BE.

WE'LL KNOW IN A WEEK OR TWO.

Edit: It's not quite as fast as Zelda combat, but I mean combos, spells tied to BUTTONS, being able to dodge....anything. Etc.

I'm not really worried about gameplay there are plenty of "action rpg's" on console that work fine.  But typically it is nice to be able to communicate in a MMO, I'm not sure how people expect that to work unless we're talking X360 keyboards or some kind of built in voice com system.  Which hypothetically could be the greatest thing EVAR but most likely will be implemented terribly the first time someone tries it.

Keyboard or voice chat would be a must. In PSO you could set up various macros to communicate quickly, like in the old Tribes games, worked faily well for simple things like 'over here', 'press that switch you moron', etc.

VVG

Yeah Tribes1's voice commands worked but really within 6 months of release EVERYONE was on ventrillo/teamspeak in fact I swear teamspeak was developed by people within the community but that could be my memory playing tricks on me.

Maybe for the organized clan shit they were. But who bothers to go through the trouble of booting up a VoIP program for PUGs?

It's the first question others ask in every WoW PUG I do.  People are lazy, and typing is a herculean effort.  I mean, if it wasn't why the prevelance of 'u' 'ru' '2' and 'b4' as well as all the other shorthand.

More that people are lazy and some think it's cool, some think it's just the way you type online. Typing isn't a big deal, though typo-free typing in real time isn't always going to happen. But with the slower pace of mmo, I don't think you need the shortcuts often used in fps (text shortcuts, not the cool stuff like VVG in Tribes/Planetside).

Fuck that shit. Just reading the shit they type is bad enough; I'm not trying to make my ears bleed or something.

City of Heroes and Neverwinter Nights both had a handy little quick chat interface that is rarely ever used.  I guess computer illiteracy transcends all GUI enhancements.  So, what, do the developers need to add that and a mandatory tutorial on how to use it? 

They're considering a tutorial for the wiimote. Never underestimate the luddites. Not until you've taught a basic computer skills class and tried to get a ninety-yr-old woman with arthritis to double-click.   :cry:

In my opinion, VoIP is not an emergency exception to some well-established rule for interaction. It's technology finally catching up to what people do by nature. While language requires training, speech itself I believe is intuitive. As such, it's been typing as a primary form of realtime communication that's been the exception.

Also, to me, the Wiimote is for people who are not console junkies. But there's a fair chance the first people who buy it bought that instead of another console, so they're at least familiar with that concept. For the last 15+ years, the "console" has been defined by a arthritis-inducing blob with some buttons and joysticks located on it. Into this convention wisdom comes a TV remote that can be used in various orientations and a thing that looks like a Buck Rogers phaser.

Sky is right.  My mother-in-law simply cannot comprehend right-clicking.  These people exist in large numbers.

I swear 3/4 of the people I work with can't single click. Everything has to be a double click.

YES.  People who double-click links in a browser make me punchy.

There is a guy in the next cubicle who was just doing that in a meeting. I am surprised he can dress himself.

God.  Mouse snobs.  Sheesh.

If I worked in a warehouse or insurance company or something I might let it pass. However, this is a software development office, so computer literacy is kind of important.

Your zipper is open.

That would be my father.  I've told him repeatedly that he doesn't have to double click links, but apparently it's ingrained, and the idea of alternating between single clicking some items and double clicking others throws him.  Okay, I think to myself, I'll just set his computer up like mine is set up; everything is single click.

Doesn't work, he still double clicks everything, launching multiple instances of whatever he's trying to launch.  I turned him back to his usual setup and just had to put up with the link double clicking.  I've also tried to convert him to using bookmarks instead of just pulling down the recently visited urls window, but that doesn't seem to be working out either.

Because the number of click to activate powers + inspirations + teammates selection + mob selection + reticle placement on screen + movement is just too much for a single controller and yes, you'll want those available directly... if you have some PvP. The only way to do it is to dramatically reduce the number of powers activable at one time.

Just look at the controls for a Mastermind to get a feel. I have two rows of powers (1-0 + Alt-1-0), binds all over the num pad + standard controls + a mouse for the multiple powers with a reticle to place on screen.

VOIP is a problem for multiple reasons:
- It's immersion breaking - Voice of people rarely are super-heroic feeling
- It's intrusive - I have no intention of having some teenagers squeel in my ears... and of my surroundings. Talk about language control...
- It's hard for non-fluent english speakers. VOIP makes sense only in the US. In Europe, it's impossible unless you are in a clan . This works for FPS, not for MMOs. Lots of people from France play on the US servers and are not good at english. I am not even talking about all the people in the world that don't have a server for their zone.

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=7516.msg205721#msg205721

Cryptic are hiring again... just about everything, too.  I guess it's for the new Marvel game. 



And there's  THIS!!!  (http://crypticstudios.com/jobs.php)


Actually, it really does seem a very friendly place.

D & J Hobby is a cool place (it's fricking huge). I don't think I've been to that comic shop, though (maybe once).

Son of a...I worked at Cryptic for six years and never knew we got a discount at D&Js.  Is there any hobby in the world more expensive than Warhammer?  Cocaine maybe?   

Nope - coke is cheaper.

I bet they'll have you back!  I bet they'll give you coupons or something, too.  Or maybe it's a new benefit to lure the comic/game addicts to their sekret lair.

omg

It's like a hotel!