CoH to be shut down

[Lantyssa]

It invented the even more brilliant (but oddly less-appreciated) giant monster combat code.

Always one of the things I point to when talking about dynamic or level-scaling mobs.  I guess most don't understand why this is just so awesome to us.

[Ingmar]

It invented the even more brilliant (but oddly less-appreciated) giant monster combat code.

Always one of the things I point to when talking about dynamic or level-scaling mobs.  I guess most don't understand why this is just so awesome to us.

Well, to be fair it is also quite a bit more complicated to implement something like this in games with stats, spell ranks, gear, etc. Same for sidekicking, etc. CoH is just way more mechanically suited to scaling people up and down.

[SurfD]

W.  T.  F.

That is pretty much all I can say.  Out of all the MMO games out there, there must be half a dozen that probably deserve to die a lot more then CoX.

Anyone know if anybody has ever looked into Emulated Servers for this?  Even though I have only played it for a tiny bit since it went FTP, I would hate to lose it completely.

[Kageru]

That's sad, I liked CoH a lot (still have money on the account) and always meant to get a character to cap. It was old, and an abandoned child for much of it's history, but there was still a lot of goodness in there.

[Minvaren]

CoX has the distinction of being the first MMO that I ever played a character to max level on.

And the only MMO where character creation was so cool that I took screenshots.  Two from 2004 of my blapper, Mintergy.


And after I got my aura:


Copying it from the laptop (where I kept it for boring business trips) to the PC for some nostalgia while it lasts.

[Morat20]

I played CoX on and off. Never got to max level, but enjoyed it. I'd resub every once in awhile to make new characters, goof around, and feel...heroic.

Sad to see it go. Thankfully I have a ton of screenshots of my various characters -- although my brother's, curse him, always had better names.

They did an awful lot right -- and I'm not sure that a lot of the "done right" stuff ever really propegated to the MMORPG genre as a whole. Sidekicking and exemplaring was brilliant, for one.

Damn, I was actually considering picking it up again in a few weeks.

[Rokal]

CoH was really my first MMO. I'd played DAoC before it, but not for a significant amount of time.

I haven't touched it in 6+ years, but I'm still sad to see it go. Tempted to reinstall and give my old character one last spin.

[Rendakor]

CoH was my first real MMO as well; I'd tinkered around in both EQ and SWG for ~a week each but CoH was the first one that stuck. Really sad to see it go; I fired it up every year or so for a few days to go smash some baddies.

[UnSub]

CoH/V was my MMO, the one that ruined all other MMOs for me. I was playing RIFT, watching my character run slowly up a hill thinking, "In CoH/V, I'd have jumped this".

But...

Look at NCsoft's financials. They are appalling. For the first time I can remember, NCsoft ran at a loss in Q2 2012. CoH/V, despite having a lot of investment into it to turn it F2P, hasn't actually seen an increase in revenue - it continues to dwindle, with a rough 50k - 60k active player equivalents. CoH/V has also shrunk heavily in importance to NCsoft, only providing 2% of its worldwide revenue (at its peak I think it was about 14%).

Plus Nexon has increased its stake in NCsoft, meaning it may be partly behind the axe-wielding.

And then there's the Secret Project Paragon Studios was meant to be working on that it never publicly talked about.

So, although people have said other games "deserve" to die before CoH/V, going F2P didn't see any of those players come back to spend money.

[PalmTrees]

Quite sad. It was my most played mmo. I had many 50s, quite a few of them IO'ed out. I stayed subbed for about six years I think. No one's done character customization better and super jump is still in a class by itself. The powers  and effects still better than anything I've played. No other mmo ever let you feel as powerful. Recklessly charging into groups as as scrapper, or shutting them down as a controller. Fun times.

[Ingmar]

CoH/V was my MMO, the one that ruined all other MMOs for me. I was playing RIFT, watching my character run slowly up a hill thinking, "In CoH/V, I'd have jumped this".

But...

Look at NCsoft's financials. They are appalling. For the first time I can remember, NCsoft ran at a loss in Q2 2012. CoH/V, despite having a lot of investment into it to turn it F2P, hasn't actually seen an increase in revenue - it continues to dwindle, with a rough 50k - 60k active player equivalents. CoH/V has also shrunk heavily in importance to NCsoft, only providing 2% of its worldwide revenue (at its peak I think it was about 14%).

Plus Nexon has increased its stake in NCsoft, meaning it may be partly behind the axe-wielding.

And then there's the Secret Project Paragon Studios was meant to be working on that it never publicly talked about.

So, although people have said other games "deserve" to die before CoH/V, going F2P didn't see any of those players come back to spend money.

Everything I've heard/seen says that CoH was still making a net profit, though. No amount of bad financials make it sensible to shut that down, unless you're selling it off for cash or something. Which it appears they are not.

[Malakili]

On the plus side, I've heard Champions Online sucks less than at launch.

[Amaron]

Sad to see it go but not surprised.   Too much competition these days and the game is too dated.

[Kageru]

Good evidence that f2p is not a panacea. If the game is niche in appeal, old in graphics and gameplay (it's too slow moving for modern tastes I think), f2p is probably going to drop your subscription revenue as much or more as you get new cash-shop sales.

It had a lot of interesting mechanics. Scaling door missions to represent a city, lots of nice soft power synergies to make group play fun, and an interesting model for gear. But I don't think it's any surprise that any money it making was just noise, the chance for future revenue increases was limited and NCsoft has better things to focus on. It would be nice if they sold the bones so someone with cash could consider funding CoH2.

[UnSub]

Everything I've heard/seen says that CoH was still making a net profit, though. No amount of bad financials make it sensible to shut that down, unless you're selling it off for cash or something. Which it appears they are not.

It's hard to say - Paragon Studios is saying that CoH/V is making a profit, but that doesn't necessarily say for the studio overall. Paragon Studios second project may have meant the studio overall was costing more than it was earning.

But less important than that was CoH/V being a small title that wasn't going anywhere but down in revenue terms. NCsoft signed off on a box expansion (Going Rogue) and an F2P transition, and whatever costs those entail, only to keep seeing revenue drop.

The decision makes sense if you think of it as an alternate investment - Paragon Studios is (at best right now) only going to hold steady, so NCsoft is looking to put the money into projects that may generate a higher return.

[Sir T]

I've never even played it but this hit me hard.

[Redgiant]

Ah, for the early days when Perez Park was hard to live through.

I feel most sorry for those continuing to sub and play. Like most of the old games, those still faithfully playing are *really* faithful to it. The remaining supergroups still very active have no real place to turn given how special this game is.

Also, their free update Issues may be another reason why they are being closed despite not losing money. They have had one of the best constant update records going, but now it's a liability.

[koro]

What gets me is just how coldly this has been handled by NCSoft and is the source of most of my frustration with CoH shutting down. I doubt nearly as many people would be as upset if we were just told "The game isn't bringing in enough money to be worth our continued investment in such a limited audience" instead of the vague conspiracy theory-spurring non-reason given, if the dev team was allowed to gracefully sunset the game over the next couple of months instead of being unceremoniously canned an hour before the announcement, and if the game was just opened up for people to come back and say their goodbyes instead of having people whose subs lapsed over the weekend switch to F2P status with most of their characters locked out, or people who bought Paragon Points literally the day before suddenly unable to use them due to the store being closed and unable to be refunded.

People would be upset and angry and depressed, sure, but I doubt that many would feel quite as bitter about the suddenness and lack of empathy.

They may as well just go ahead and turn the servers off Monday if that's how it's going to be.

[Kageru]

That would be an element of how little they care about the NA market?

I mean since Aion was the one losing all the money I wondered if it was being shut down in NA. But it looks like they'll keep it going because it has a Korean audience whereas CoH was not.

[Redgiant]

Yeah this is pretty weak in terms of handling.

Just take a look at the official server forums, let alone all the other usual sites, to see how active they are and how much this is hitting them.

You can count on one hand the old veteran titles that evoke this level of response and dismay if it were to happen to them (or has already): UO, EQ, DAoC, SWG. And for some reason this one seemed like one of the last that would ever get shut down. Like others said, this one hits me harder maybe because it was the first superhero MMO and a break from the up-to-then fantasy themed ones, and like the other MMOs mentioned above it was ground-breaking in many ways when it came out. It's character creation is STILL the best one ever produced.

CoH was always fun to return to from time to time, even when I had to resub, just to fly and superjump around and trigger all the music. It may not have held me constantly, but it did successfully create a world with unique mechanics, zone styles and sound that you were drawn back to over the years. The people on the streets, the familiar instances. And the mobs: the Nazi-esque Fifth Column, the Big-Trouble-in-Little-China oversize paddy hats on those Tsoo, too many to list but they all had their own character. The music queues from many zones are imo only rivaled by classics like old EQ. The login screen theme (the original one), Atlas Park, Steel Canyon, Talos Island, ... RIP.

[Xanthippe]

CoX had the best character creator I'd ever seen, and better than most I've played since.

My daughter spent hours designing costumes on that. I'd like to log in again just to see those.

It's sad that they can't find a way to keep this going, and surprising to me that it's a loser for them. I thought it was doing ok.

[Kitsune]

Yeah, that's a serious whatthefuck decision, given the fanbase of the game.  I could see them canning major development and just throwing an occasional costume onto the marketplace to keep a profit turning over the cost of running the servers, but pulling the plug completely is just idiotic.  Those people were still customers, money was still coming in through the cash store.

[eldaec]

Played this for a few years, and it remains a fantastic counter argument to people who whine about how all classes have to be the same or how it is impossible to make fun support characters so we shouldn't have any.

Noone else has managed to make characters play so differently and so well together without demanding trinity style fixed class mix in a group.

Also sidekicking.

And giant robots.

[Koyasha]

Funny thing, I would probably pay a few bucks just for the character creator to use offline.  I'd also pay a bit just for the base creator and a way to do that locally, to create environments to share with others.  I suspect they could actually make a bit of money selling parts of this game as standalone applications just to play with.

[Soln]

Never got to see the giant robots.  Just a bunch of instance doors.  Never found the fun. 

[Scold]

I feel most sorry for those continuing to sub and play. Like most of the old games, those still faithfully playing are *really* faithful to it. The remaining supergroups still very active have no real place to turn given how special this game is.

CO is pretty fun, and with a whole lot less grinding. I'm sure a lot of them will find their way over there, especially if Cryptic is smart and runs some sort of promotion.

[koro]

I feel most sorry for those continuing to sub and play. Like most of the old games, those still faithfully playing are *really* faithful to it. The remaining supergroups still very active have no real place to turn given how special this game is.

CO is pretty fun, and with a whole lot less grinding. I'm sure a lot of them will find their way over there, especially if Cryptic is smart and runs some sort of promotion.

I think Champions, outside of the very basic mechanics of combat and the character creator (which is superior in some ways to CoH's and inferior in others) is largely shit. If former CoH people migrate there, it will be because the only other choice (DCUO) is even worse.

For one thing, the game sees jack-all for content updates. Looking through recent updates, the only things I see are tons of cash shop costume bits, vehicles, and travel power stuff and only one or two minor combat encounters which are randomly spawned in the world. This is since May. A single Issue in CoH likely saw more actual go-out-and-do-stuff content updates than Champions will see in a full year. Why would I want to play a game that's so poorly supported outside of a constant flow of cynical cash grabs (that Cryptic themselves have admitted don't sell)?

Then there's the writing. Never, ever have I seen a game with such universally godawful writing. Normally MMO writing is either excellent or so bland it's completely ignorable. In Champions, it's so aggressively bad that it actively hurts the game. "World of Warcraft has puns and pop culture references right?! And it's more popular than Jesus, yeah?! How about we make every single mission a shitty pun or a pop culture reference, no matter how tired or dated or situationally inappropriate! That's the fucking ticket to gravy town right there!" The mission writing itself is pure schlock. I cannot think of a single mission or mission arc with a standout storyline; there's no Frostfire moments or Striga Isle volcano moments in Champions. The Honoree fight at the end of the Lady Grey Task Force and the storyline surrounding and leading up to it was one of my favorite things in CoH. There is nothing like that in Champions. There are few overarching storylines, no care for weaving a mythos, or even attempting to tie it to the mythos they paid cash goddamned money for. The voice acting is never good, and none of the pointless, horrific in-game cutscenes can be skipped.

The art style isn't awful on its own (though that's subjective as I know a lot of people who detest it), but it ties in with the terrible writing to create another problem: it is impossible to take anything in this game seriously. Everything is so damned campy. All the time. To paraphrase someone elsewhere, "City of Heroes is more like 616 Marvel, Champions is Adam West's Batman." Camp is fine, but when everything is camp all the time it becomes nigh-impossible to craft a storyline that anyone will care about. City of Heroes had dark, heavy moments but it also had light-hearted camp and everything in between. In Champions, everything feels so light-hearted and inconsequential that I can never even begin to care about what happens to these worthless assholes in nu-Detroit, never mind my own character. When I can't even begin to care about my own character in an MMO from a storyline perspective, all that leaves is gameplay, and Champions comes up sorely lacking.

CoH people will migrate over to Champions, to DCUO, but most probably won't like it. A few will find CO's punchy play fun enough, others will carve out a corner in the not-Pocket D, and some will even buy Cryptic's overpriced cash shop crap, but CO will probably never get any better.

[Scold]

I think Champions, outside of the very basic mechanics of combat and the character creator (which is superior in some ways to CoH's and inferior in others) is largely shit. If former CoH people migrate there, it will be because the only other choice (DCUO) is even worse.

A lot of CoH players have always said this, but it's basically just the narcissism of small differences, a series of relatively minor differences that fanboys of one property or the other get worked up about. But when faced with a limited range of options, most CoH players who aren't burnt out on superhero MMOs entirely will largely find they can scratch the same itch with CO. The common thread in all of the differences you mentioned hating about CO is how trivial they are in the broader swing of things.

For one thing, the game sees jack-all for content updates. Looking through recent updates, the only things I see are tons of cash shop costume bits, vehicles, and travel power stuff and only one or two minor combat encounters which are randomly spawned in the world. This is since May.

Er...

Back in April, there was the largest update in the game's history: http://co.perfectworld.com/about/onalert/onalertmain

And the latest update looks to be pretty substantial, too: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Champions-Online-Nighthawk-Update-Adds-Vehicles-46381.html

Not to mention the Comic Book story arcs.

But since CoH is getting shut down, and DCUO's update schedule is more along the lines of CO's, perhaps that could be taken as an indication that there isn't enough of a market for these games to justify the staffing necessary to pump out content at the rate that CoH was, and CO's schedule is the "new normal"?

[Numtini]

I'm not convinced that COH's players are primarily looking for superheroes, but more of a type of gameplay. A bit more RP, a lot more team based play, and a lot more action. I'm not sure if anything out there really works for that. If anything the super heroes thing hurt rather than helped. I still believe if you took the COH engine, dated as it is, and reskinned it for Norrath or some fantasy world and threw in the usual modern things like an LFD system and raiding, we would all be declaring it a WoW killer.

[Rendakor]

What Numtini said. I'm a huge fan of CoH but it's despite the super hero setting, not because of it. Flexible grouping, actual roleplay/backstories/character concepts, that badass feeling where it's you versus 10 mobs, stellar character customization, the list goes on and on. The biggest tragedy here is that none of the things CoH got right are being incorporated into any more modern MMO because they didn't earn money hats or get ripped off by WoW.

[Scold]

That might be true for the most vocal superfans who are also long-time MMOers, and I personally enjoy those features too; that said, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the average CoH player likes superheroes and, if they're staying in the MMO space, would gravitate towards a superhero MMO.

Also, as a tangent: for what it's worth, having played CO to cap (played it for about a month) and CoH to significantly under the cap, at every level range I felt I could take on far more monsters in CO, usually eight or nine at a time without much in the way of downtime. My run-of-the-mill CoH character could usually only take on 3 or 4 baddies at a time, less if they were the bigger guys. This was using an archtype rather than freeform character.

[Kageru]

What Numtini said. I'm a huge fan of CoH but it's despite the super hero setting, not because of it. Flexible grouping, actual roleplay/backstories/character concepts, that badass feeling where it's you versus 10 mobs, stellar character customization, the list goes on and on. The biggest tragedy here is that none of the things CoH got right are being incorporated into any more modern MMO because they didn't earn money hats or get ripped off by WoW.

GW2 is probably the closest. In the idea of soft roles, relatively flat gear progression and content that scales to group size and levels. Plus dynamics that mean more people are generally more fun (and chaos). But it's not really the same thing because the super-hero genre was a license to have ridiculously overblown mobility and CC mechanics. Super-leap and watching mobs get thrown around will remain some of my fondest memories, and the player made missions were ahead of their time. Also spent so many hours playing in the character designer. But it also suffered from limited and repetitive content and really needing a PC model over-haul which I have heard blamed on it being resource starved while the developers focused on their next big thing (Champions).

Champions was a terrible game when I played it in beta. Dumbed down and button mashy for the console generation, DCUO seemed to have the same goal too.

[Redgiant]

I'm not convinced that COH's players are primarily looking for superheroes, but more of a type of gameplay. A bit more RP, a lot more team based play, and a lot more action. I'm not sure if anything out there really works for that. If anything the super heroes thing hurt rather than helped.

This is more what I meant about nowhere for them to go.

It's the combination of genre and social gameplay that together you just can't find anymore.

Even if you dismiss the superhero genre part, how many MMOs of any genre still reward socializing and grouping over soloing everything and not bother really knowing anyone else?

I also agree that offline character creation and zone viewer tools would actually sell quite well.

I also expect a serious effort at a server emulator, that up to now has largely been ignored since it was just easier to sub or f2p on the real servers. Legally sanctioned or not (it hasn't affected p99, Dalya, Utgarde or Feenix now has it).

[apocrypha]

Sorry to say I never played this. Was one of those games on my list of want-to-plays that I never got around to.

I've seen the comment several times that shutting it down while it's still making a profit is senseless or stupid (paraphrasing, don't get panty-bunched if those weren't your exact words). Thing is that if the profit rate is low for a given number of staff then a business would be sensible to move those staff onto a project where they can generate a greater rate of profit. That's just simple business economics, and games aren't some kind of special magic activity that doesn't exist in the same world as every other kind of business.

I also think there's some selective rose-tinting going on in this thread. Yes, CoH sounds like it did lots of things very well, and that's great and it would be good if some of those things were translated to the genre at large. However I've also heard a lot of complaints about various aspects of CoX over the years and forgetting the bad things does nothing to further understanding of why it's no longer as profitable as it needs to be to stay alive.

[eldaec]

The big downside was that if you stick to one character the game just gets exponentially grindy. The end game was making more alts and the devs kept adding low and mid level content to support that. If you didn't like making alts you'd get bored and be better off playing eq2, lotro or whatever.