City of Villians

[MrHat]

Care of Blues:

City of Villains—Want to play the bad guy in Paragon City? You’ll get your chance in Cryptic Studios’ City of Villains, currently under development and to be shown in limited play at E3. While City of Heroes (www.cityofheroes.com) is ready for an April 28 launch, Cryptic developers already are working on the first major expansion to the game that will allow players to take on the role of villain in Paragon’s modern metropolis. Turn the tide on all the heroes and heroines and lead your crime syndicate into battle in the impressive 3D backdrop of Paragon City.

Rejoice!

If any (or all) of you fuckers are attending E3 (I hate you), please tell us what it's like.  I'm pretty sure that we'll all still be playing by the end of May anyways.

I am excited about this, as I cannot envision playing this game long term (more than 3 months) without some sort of PvP.

Edit: Something about Crime Syndicate makes me all tingly.  Macho-Tingly.  Instead of that Gay-Tingly feeling you get from Supergroup.

[schild]

Wow. Already showing it at E3. Thanks for the scoop.

[kaid]

Damn thats alot farther along than I expected. If I can join a villan group I would be devouring earth. I love their weird scary ebil minions.


Kaid

[schild]

Heh, when City of Villains comes out I'm sure "Bat Country"'s motto will take on a whole new meaning.

[Venkman]

Thanks for the announce! That will be the very first thing I check when I get there.

As an aside, I expect a lot of gems in the next few weeks. About this time every year, people start hyping their overpriced booths in Los Angeles :)

[Soukyan]

Just when you thought Cryptic couldn't possibly look any better, they pull this one out of their hat. *boggle*

[Murgos]

Sorry, if we do a crime-syndicate it has to be "The World Crime League" otherwise I'll cry.  Then again I wanted "Blue Blazer Regulars" for the supergroup name...

[HaemishM]

Jeebus... not even on release and they've already got the first expansion on the boards for E3 showings.

I guess doing a real feature lock 3 months before serious beta work is probably a good idea after all.

[WayAbvPar]

Coolness. I think PvP would be a fucking blast in this game. Think 'Freedom Force', but without the tons of suck.

Edit- Villains DOES mean PvP, right? Otherwise it is only mildly cool. Raping and pillaging would get old after a while.

[daveNYC]

Coolness. I think PvP would be a fucking blast in this game. Think 'Freedom Force', but without the tons of suck.

Edit- Villains DOES mean PvP, right? Otherwise it is only mildly cool. Raping and pillaging would get old after a while.

Supergroup 1: Go rob this bank vault.
Supergroup 2: Go protect this bank vault.

Yeah, that'd work.

[Shockeye]

Here's a link to the press release about E3.

http://www.plaync.com/about/press_release_042304.html

[Venkman]

Finally getting to see some Tabula Rosa too.

I'm sure we'll know if City of Villains is PvP+ well in advance of E3.

[Murgos]

As has been pointed out elsewhere the press release doesn't specifically state +pvp will be added.  It's a major detail so not mentioning it would have to be intentional.

Still, it makes it hard to whine about lack of content when a whole new dynamic is announced for a game before it's released.

[Alluvian]

*drool*

AutoAssault is something I have been wanting for a fucking long time.  Hope it don't suck.

Tabula Rosa with full integrated voice chat?  Interesting.  I was wondering who would do that first.  Planetside technically did, but it sucked.

And delicious villians.

This is the booth to be at for MMOG fans it looks like.  NCSoft might have a pretty fucking impressive product lineup pretty soon.  The new MMOG SOE?

[NiX]

It seems my trip to E3 is going to be one big fun fest. Gets me a video camera and I'm set. Already got a digital cam ready to roll.

[WayAbvPar]

Shamelessly stolen (Jiffy posted it at Corp)-

City of Villains quickie
I'm travelling right now, so no time for a big update, but just as a quickie from a glance at the boards - City of Villains will have PvP but it will NOT force PvP on everyone as a free-for-all. If you want to be a hero who never once sees a player villain, that's perfectly possible. Jack will probably have some more details later.

For other details, ya gotta wait for E3 Thanks again for the beta fun, all -

-jg

__________________
Jeremy Gaffney
Executive Producer, 3rd Party
NCsoft

Woohoo!!!

[Alluvian]

Sounds like PVP zones, or instanced dual sided pvp missions.

The latter would make me their bitch.  I have been wanting that since I first heard about the instancing in AO.  And nobody has done it.  It would not be THAT hard and it would be insanely fun.

Not just team deathmatch, but objective play.  Blow up the building/save the building.  Anyone could think of 2 dozen types in just a few minutes.  If you die you don't get back in.  It would make you feel SO much more heroic than just killing some spandex goon who calls himself a villian and will just respawn anyway.

[kaid]

Team vs team missions in a well done instance with objectives could be pretty freaking killer. That is the kind of pvp I would like. Also the lack of equipment makes catassing and twinking pvp issues ALOT less in COH than in any other mmrpg.


Kaid

[kaid]

Ah I just read the artical holy crap autoassult never saw much on it before but if you can make a carwars mmrpg sign me up dude I want to try it.

Kaid

[geldonyetich]

We were clued in that Netdevil was working on an autoduelish game for NCSoft a few months back.  Good to hear that it's still on track in development.

That City of Villians announcement might be a little premature.  I'd be surprised if we see it out any earlier than 3 months after CoH's "release" date.   Still, good to hear that the PvP fantactics will be able to get their fix.   Although The Nanites will be butt kicking for *justice* as a matter of principle.

[Murgos]

That City of Villians announcement might be a little premature.  I'd be surprised if we see it out any earlier than 3 months after CoH's "release" date.

Were you born yesterday?  Expect 12-18 months.

[Daydreamer]

You're both wrong.  They mentioned on their forums they are aiming for an XP-every-six-months schedule.  I don't theink thats realistic, nor do I think it would be a good thing (pity my poor poor collegian check book).  Given a small fudge factor, and that Everquest averages just under a year for each expansion (I think), I'd say they are going to average around 8-9 months per.  My money is on a late Christmas release (Mid December), or maybe January if they pick an ambitious featureset.

EDIT: Your != You're

[geldonyetich]

Were you born yesterday? Expect 12-18 months

My own reasoning is they may have already put in a lot of early development work on CoV, so 4 months isn't entirely out of the question, if unlikely.

My money is on a late Christmas release (Mid December)

This seems probable to me too.

Of course, the complicated thing about wagering these guesses is it all comes down to how much the devs want to do and how successful they are in doing it.   It more or less renders all estimation null and void until the fact is pretty much established.

[Shockeye]

My money is on a late Christmas release (Mid December),

I was thinking sometime around Christmas as well. Everyone could use a little evil in their stocking.

[Venkman]

This is the booth to be at for MMOG fans it looks like. NCSoft might have a pretty fucking impressive product lineup pretty soon. The new MMOG SOE?

Shit, you shoulda seen it last year. CoH confirmed for me that NC Soft is a company to watch. They are out SOEing SOE in options. I may hate L2, but last May it looked fine as silk, and played well. And that booth also had CoH, Exiarch (Diablo-esque MMOG) and Guild Wars. It's the booth I spent the most time in easily.

Were you born yesterday? Expect 12-18 months

No doubt. Last year at this time, I built an entirely customized CoH character and dumped a cumulative three hours over three days (a lot at E3) into the game and it still took them another whole year to launch it. What goes on after polished playable demos is quite a bit.

The real complicated part is how extensible the system is at all. Have they designed in the powers they want to release to us for the next few expansions, are will they all be entirely new systems (AAXP, Adventure Points, Darkness Falls Seals, etc) because they didn't? Six month expansions are possible if the system is easily built upon, your Dev team is your Live team, and you know what you're about. Cryptic has done well so far, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. SOE on the other hand... if we see the Space Expansion before SWG's two year anniversary, I'll be shocked.

Guessing is fun and all, but ludicrous. It's nice to see the mythos of the "Holiday Season" still holds true with the proto economists though, even though the game we're discussing is launching, oh, a few months ahead of it :) Someday I'll be able to actually prove my conviction that MMOGs are much MUCH better off NOT launching at Christmas, and why the publishers agree with me :)

[UnSub]

Here's a link to a thread of proposed additions (first post, a little way down):

http://www.coh.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43725&highlight=Carnival+of+Shadows

I have an idea that CoV was announced as it is a showstopper, while the rest of the content is what you'd expect in an expansion. Plus I've also seen a number of threads saying "Now that pvp is going to be in, I'm going off to buy CoH for launch!"

Much as I don't like the idea of pvp in CoH, I'll wait and see what the system is before passing judgement.

And I'd expect an expansion by Christmas as well.

[schild]

<fanboi> I find the message on the beta boards more interesting. "Thanks again Beta Testers, see you again soon" could be either 'see you at retail' or 'see you when CoV goes into beta.' </fanboi>

It seems as though my brain has wandered off...I'll go look for it now.

[daveNYC]

The people at Cryptic seem to have their heads on their shoulders (as opposed to being inserted into a body cavity).  I think I'll be checking out gamasutra in case they decide to speak some words of wisdom to the masses.

[Velorath]

How well this expansion turns out could make or brake CoH, but I find the fact that they're far enough along to show some of it at E3 to be very encouraging.  I was a little afraid of the balancing issues that could come up putting villains and PVP in after release, but if they've been working on it for this long than there's a good chance it will fit in nicely.  Fucking Cryptic though man... I feel like when I stopped playing all those shit MMORPGs it was like I quit smoking or something and then Cryptic came along with some of that  Maui Wowie from Half Baked.  The better these guys get, the more I'm afraid of some horribe bait-and-switch, like when some hot-ass woman is hitting on you and you're looking for the Adam's apple, or a hidden camera somewhere.  Cryptic and CoH just seem almost too good to true at times, and I keep waiting for them to announce something like the "City of Crafting, 150 person raids, and Auto Attack" expansion.

[eldaec]

While it's obviously too early to say much about this, my first thoughts weren't as positive as many....

1) I assume this will work on the daoc model (PC villans in Paragon as we know it today surely couldn't work?) with hero pve zones, villan pve zones, and rvr zones where we duke it out)

2) How do you balance the villan realm when numbers will start at zero and ramp up? (only thing I can think of is limiting rvr to inside instanced missions, created by some kind of matchmaker)

3) Almost everyone has stun, aoestun is far from rare....

4) Geometric power curve....

5) Melee archetypes very much rely on aggro management to be viable - you think chasing down fleeing *NPC* villans is a pain?

If it works then it sounds great, but just in design terms it seems like a bloody hard game to set up right.

[Censorship]

I gotta agree with Eld on this one.  PvP balance or even parity seems nigh impossible for this game.  As a controller, one of your first available powers (should you choose the proper field) is a stun.  And it only gets worse from there.  Couple this with the fact ranged attackers don't have to worry about getting in close (ala AC) and you could have yourself a very one sided system.  Finally, what about Repel Field.  The PBAoE knockback or the PBAoE hold (forget the name but its a radiation power).  In any case, these powers make it extremely difficult for melee'ers in a pvp environment.

As much as I would love to duke it out with some PC heroes (good or bad), I find it difficult to be enthusiastic about a system with such a wide range of possible failures or balance issues in the battle of uber vs uber.

[Soukyan]

All of those concerns are really DAoC concerns. Sure, I suppose skills/archetype balance could be an issue, but then again, that's going into spreadsheet mode with the game. Of course, I don't want to be owned by everyone in the game as a Controller, but I have no delusions about which archetypes will suffer the most... tanks. Staying in melee range will be a real pain against other heroes, but then again, we could see more tank vs. tank fights with the ranged folked outside pulling CC and plinking off other ranged people trying to kill their tanks. I'm not sure though and I don't want to speculate on the system. Hopefully they will have a beta test of the expansion and hopefully some of us will get in it to see what they've come up with. But for right now, this is a fun game and I'm not going to pan their PvP although they won't do it right for everyone. Hell, DAoC's RvR is probably the best implementation of a PvP system to date and there are lots of folks who will say it sucks. It's the nature of the beast.

[Venkman]

I understand that roots and dizzies can be broken, and assume that stuns can as well. CoV has already resolved a year's worth of bitching in DAoC :)

Otherwise, yea, balance hard. Particularly because our HPs and END increase with level.

[geldonyetich]

The part where they said "lead your crime syndicate into battle" might carry a bit of weight.  There's been some discussions amongst the players on the beta boards about having an archetype built around working through third parties.   Much like The Shadow from the original radio broadcasts, these heros would operate as the brains behind an organization.    I wonder if this is what they're planning on implementing in City of Villians - the villians actually being the masterminds with a plethora of minions at their disposal.

[schild]

The part where they said "lead your crime syndicate into battle" might carry a bit of weight.  There's been some discussions amongst the players on the beta boards about having an archetype built around working through third parties.   Much like The Shadow from the original radio broadcasts, these heros would operate as the brains behind an organization.    I wonder if this is what they're planning on implementing in City of Villians - the villians actually being the masterminds with a plethora of minions at their disposal.

That's kinda how I played my SWG guild leader. Well, as much as I could that way.