Champions Online

Anyone who's been playing CoX since launch knows that while initial CoX was very fun (and at this time is also great fun.) Emmert, while he was in control of the game post-release, really messed the game up multiple times with terrible choices and changes that nobody liked, but he thought needed changed because HE didn't like the way some things turned out, no matter how much the players disliked the change.

So now that he's clearly trying to make CoX 2, will he screw the pooch this time from the start, or will he learn that players matter.

We have to remember that a significant segment of the CoH player base played a role in encouraging him to make all those negative changes in the game.

Anyone who spent some time on the forums over there can see how loud the fanboys were in that game and they were ready to praise anything the devs did even if Jack literally peed on the game. For God's sake they treated the devs like gods or celebrities with them being their personal fans. They would praise all their doings and defend them.

Funny enough, some of those same fanboys ended up bitten by even more bad changes later on that they didnt like.

But in all honesty, I think that even if those changes did not take place, the game might have lasted a little longer but its appeal would have weakened just as it did now.

The changes had nothing to do with the fact that the game is repetitive and cookie cut by design.

all coh needs to do is add new and fresh content and not in the way of TF's thats the one thing the game LACKS fresh content.

Emmert's okay.  I think his changes were reasonable for the most part.  He tended to want to make things weaker (him being the main coordinator for dominators at launch shows this, as well as his player=3 minions types of comments) but I think there's a good argument for going cautiously when handing out powers.

I recall PM'ing him twice (and I was not a regular forumite or anyone he would have felt he had to respond to) and he responded (personally) both times with well thought out comments.  How many other games would have their head designers do that?

All in all, CoX was/is a good game with many innovative ideas.  I'm not currently subscribed (just playing single player games right now) but it was my favorite MMO, and I played a fair number of them.

Originally posted by tasanna

all coh needs to do is add new and fresh content and not in the way of TF's thats the one thing the game LACKS fresh content.

QFE like fresh i don't wanna run the same layout mish 3 times in a row!

I read a really good interview he did talking about CoX this may give you a little more info.

www.massively.com/2008/02/22/gdc08-jack-emmert-on-cryptics-success-and-failure/

Originally posted by ivan50265

I read a really good interview he did talking about CoX this may give you a little more info.

 

www.massively.com/2008/02/22/gdc08-jack-emmert-on-cryptics-success-and-failure/

based on that interview, and after consulting with the magic 8-ball; it seems the answer is, "yes".

I don't think the mistakes were made post launch, but really pre-launch.  The game engine was too hard coded to allow for many features that players wanted.  The pre-launch hype and promises were huge and the expectation was that CoX was truly going to be different.  Did the break away from the standard MMO conventions?  Not really but they did make some deviations especially in character design (in abilites as well as look).  But in the end it was still the same old MMO philosophy with a super hero wrapper.  Don't get me wrong, there were many innovations in the game and so many actually that it really did make the game feel different than other games.  But once you'd done the content through with one or 2 characters the underlying standard mmo philosophy really became evident.

So the real question here is Jack really going to make an innovative game that sets a new path for mmos or will it once again just be incremental changes?

He still doesn't acknowledge the fact that the nerf's he made did in fact detract from the game. It went from superhero to hey let's milk them more for the grind experience by making the game harder.

I played CoH at launch and for a while after and the game was/is too limited by its design.  Simply, there aren't new things to do and the game has no, ZERO, zilch for depth.

Unless he can design the game to support my in-depth simulation then this game will be nothing more than CoH with a different skin.

Originally posted by Fion

Anyone who's been playing CoX since launch knows that while initial CoX was very fun (and at this time is also great fun.) Emmert, while he was in control of the game post-release, really messed the game up multiple times with terrible choices and changes that nobody liked, but he thought needed changed because HE didn't like the way some things turned out, no matter how much the players disliked the change.

So now that he's clearly trying to make CoX 2, will he screw the pooch this time from the start, or will he learn that players matter.

Players matter, but they don't own the game.  Unfortunately, most players are in an age range where they'd prefer no challenge at all--they just want to rip up the pavement on their way to terminal level.  They don't want the game--they want the end-game.

The joy is in the journey, not the destination.  I, for one, think that making the game a challenge (which does not necessarily equate to "grind"), is a good thing.  Giving the players immediate gratification is a bad thing (if I have to listen