a-mild-mannered-reporter
Latest
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Potential new homes after City of Heroes
Despite what many of us might feel, the world is not ending when City of Heroes shuts down. Just our world. But the sun will continue shining, other games will continue running, and most likely your interest in video games will not evaporate. So after an appropriate period of mourning, it's going to be time to think about getting together with another game. The problem, of course, is that nothing else can ever be City of Heroes. Like Benjamin Franklin, nothing can serve as its replacement, merely as its successor. But it's worth examining some of the more reasonable and likely destinations for the community. I'm sure there are more, but the four I've listed seem to be the games that either are or will be hoovering up a large number of the game's former players, games that are close enough to what CoH represents to serve as a reasonable successor. So let's look at our potential new homes and see what they have to offer, both good and bad.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The unseen cost of closing City of Heroes
City of Heroes is leaving a lot of victims with its closure: the employees of an excellent and underrated development team, a group of players with a lot of passion and energy, and an entire world that deserves to keep going. But there are a lot of other costs along with all of those, things what we're losing out on that you might not have even considered at the time. At least, not until some writer on the internet decided to call attention to all of those things. Guilty as charged. Those of us who are adamant fans of the game have been lamenting the loss of the game that is. But one of the reasons I tied every single anniversary post with another post looking forward is that City of Heroes has always been a game that moves in both directions. It's a game where a lot of the fun is tied into what it will be. And while there are some directions I've been critical of, there's a lot about what's coming up that's never going to be realized.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: No hope for CoH, no faltering for us
By now every City of Heroes fan has no doubt seen NCsoft's backhanded dismissal of the entire Save CoH movement. If by some coincidence you hadn't seen it, congratulations! Welcome to Wednesday; here's your bad news. NCsoft has heard us and responded with, "Aw, shucks, we really tried," which is the equivalent of a five-year-old child claiming that he did try to clean his room after three minutes of picking up toys and putting them back down in roughly the same spot. If I sound bitter, it's because I am. But what does this mean for City of Heroes? Is all hope truly lost? Have we lost the fight to save our city? Is there no chance for a reprieve or some shining light in the late night? Well... not much. But this is not actually the change that it's being framed as. This is what we went in knowing, and while it changes the game being played, it doesn't change many of the hard facts. I said in my first column that we were fighting a battle with a slim hope, and the fact that it's now pretty much no hope doesn't change much, nor does it mean we should stop fighting.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Remembering my time in City of Heroes
Not long after my first column on the City of Heroes shutdown, I received an email that contained several of the testimonials from this full-to-bursting thread on the Save CoH boards. And they're not the only ones out there. There are countless stories about what the game means to people, ranging from the silly to the sublime, stories that can only really accumulate in a game that's run for eight solid years. When it comes to recollections about the game, I'm not Mercedes Lackey or Scott Kurtz or even Eric Burns-White. I'm what the byline says: a mild-mannered reporter. But I'm also a guy with a lot of feelings about the game, one that I've been playing on and off for nearly all of its eight-year run. To be blunt, I've got the microphone and you don't. So I'm going to go ahead and throw my hat into the ring when it comes to remembering City of Heroes, starting with the game that I played at launch for less than two weeks.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: To save City of Heroes, we must be jerks
The City of Heroes community has been great in rallying to save the game, but I'm wondering whether that's enough. If you missed it, this week has not been a good one for efforts to keep the game alive. I'm not going to reprint everything laid out in TonyV's recent post, but the short version is that there are currently no signs that things are changing. NCsoft has set up an email for players to send letters, one that I suspect is not read vigilantly, and there have been no signs that any of the various talks about the game's future have resulted in anything. It's the email thing that really set me to wondering about whether or not City of Heroes fans are the right people to be protesting. While I love you guys -- beyond a shadow of a doubt -- there's a certain revolutionary spirit necessary for an effective protest. I'm not entirely certain that we've got that. And if there was ever a chance to save the game, we may just be unable to do what's necessary.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: A personal tribute to Paragon Studios
When I started my career at Massively, I wasn't hired to be the City of Heroes guy. I wasn't hired to be the anything guy, although I quickly earned a reputation. It was a few months after I got hired that I got the opportunity to start doing a pair of weekly columns, one on City of Heroes and one about the online Final Fantasy installments. This was due to the fact that my affection for City of Heroes was well-known on staff, and I was already knee-deep in the game, so... It wasn't quite three years ago, but it was close enough. And I've said many times that my professional career has been tied in directly with City of Heroes because of that. As I've grown as a writer and a journalist, I've been working alongside City of Heroes. So today I'm not going to talk as much about the game itself. I'm going to talk about the people of Paragon Studios, some of whom I had the good fortune to interact with over the years and all of whom seem to be absolutely astonishing human beings.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The fight to save City of Heroes
City of Heroes fans took to the streets on Saturday. Specifically, they took to the streets of Atlas Park, running a massive in-game protest against the game's cancellation. I'm going to assume that you were there if you're reading this column, as I certainly was, and I got quite a number of screenshots of the whole protest part of the event. If you missed it, we've got video. I didn't stick around for the costume contest, mostly because it turns out I didn't have a slot for Melissa Bianco with a crab backpack. The protest was the brainchild of TonyV, who is also the organizer behind the entire movement to save City of Heroes via a special message board dedicated to keeping the community organized. And considering what I've said in the past regarding other games that have shut down, you probably knew I would have something to say about this movement. It's something I support, but there's more nuance to it than just that. So let's talk about the fight to save the city.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Requiescat in pace, City of Heroes
Sometimes I know about things before other players do. Friday was not one of those times. Friday I heard the rumor, and I dismissed the whole thing as being patently ridiculous... and then the reports poured in, and I could only stare with horror. City of Heroes is going to be shut down. Later this year. November 30th, less than three months away. For me, this isn't just a game closing. This is a huge chapter in my professional life coming to an end. Covering City of Heroes has been a major part of my writing for the site over the past three years. To think that it's going to be gone soon is just... baffling. So this is a column written in mourning. It's going to be disconnected, and for that I apologize, but there are a few things that I think should be put down right now. Next week I can start in on the process of creating a tribute; this week, it's about sadness.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Things to steal from Guild Wars 2
Whether you play NCsoft games or work for NCsoft, it's hard to ignore that this is the week Guild Wars 2 launches to the general public. And if I know the folks at Paragon Studios, which I sort of do but not really, they are scouring the game right now to figure out what can be yanked from the game and adapted for City of Heroes. This is not an insult. City of Heroes has always done a great job of taking ideas from other games and blending them into the core engine, creating a game that takes some good snippets from other games and puts an interesting spin on each individual element. Granted, some of those adaptations work better than others, but it's the core concept that works so well here. So I wouldn't be surprised to see some elements from Guild Wars 2 leading into updates for CoH. But to save a little time for the team at Paragon Studios, I've gone ahead and figured out what could be nicked for the game. (Or for a sequel. Just saying.) You can all take a look at it now and thank me later.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spotlight on the Freakshow in City of Heroes
There are three basic tiers that the villains in City of Heroes occupy. At the bottom you've got guys like the Hellions and the Skulls, chumps with just enough superhuman ability to deal with low-level heroes and villains. In the middle are groups like the Trolls and the Family, groups that either lack organization but have power or have organization but lack power. At the top are people like the Circle of Thorns or Nemesis, organized societies with villainous intent. The Freakshow are another ballgame because they're not organized at all, but they break to the top through sheer power. If you're going to be facing off against street thugs in the highest levels of the game, you'll be dealing with the Freakshow, and that's true of both villains and heroes. The gang is just a group of punks without any real goals or overriding drive, and yet they're a big enough force that even Arachnos has to deal with them from time to time. So it's worth looking at the group as a whole, since they're a bigger threat than they get credit for even if they don't have any sort of real goal.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: City of Heroes' Issue 24 is coming
When I first started doing my "next time on A Mild-Mannered Reporter" routine, I knew that there would be a problem -- namely, that every so often I would find out some news that makes my preview incorrect. In this case, it was the preview of Issue 24 that dropped on the same day my column came out, which meant I couldn't write about it then. But I can write about it now, so that's good. I'll freely admit that even as a fan of City of Heroes, I hadn't been super-azzed about Issue 24. It wasn't that I thought it would be awful; it just hadn't really roped me in. But now that all of the features are laid out in front of us, I find that it's actually looking a lot more interesting. There's some cool stuff here, and in what may be the most welcome news, it's stuff focused on a variety of the game's elements.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Hooray for the existence and removal of City of Heroes' Tweet Code Thursdays
I've given Paragon Studios a lot of grief over the past year and a half or so. I don't think this is unwarranted; the studio is still feeling out how City of Heroes works in the free-to-play marketplace, and part of my job as an opinion columnist is to occasionally mention that the emperor's new dress code could use the addition of some actual clothes. But we're still talking about a game I like run by a studio I like and staffed with people genuinely attempting to make the game as good as it can be. So when I have the opportunity to give the team behind City of Heroes props, I'll take it. And this week, I can give it props for a bad idea and then further props for apparently realizing that this was a bad idea. I'm talking about the Tweet Code Thursday giveaways that the community team had been running via social networking. It's an idea that deserves tons of respect for the attempt and tons more respect for the cessation of same.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Can City of Heroes' PvP be saved?
In theory, City of Heroes boasts a variety of different PvP options. In practice, pretty much no one notices or cares about any of those options because the game's PvP is dead in the water. Beyond dead in the water, even. Its carcass has settled to the bottom of the ocean and been nibbled away into just bones and a few shreds of clothing. Paragon Studios' reaction is usually to distract anyone who asks about PvP, either with a code giveaway or a well-timed blow to the solar plexus. I could go into a routine about a parrot, but I trust you get the idea. This doesn't bother me categorically. I play other games, and those games give me enough of a PvP fix. PvP has never been why I play City of Heroes. But it does matter a lot to some people, and so it's worth asking: Can PvP be saved? Or should it just be allowed to continue its current slow death of neglect? Speaking from the outside, I think the answer seems to be a definite maybe. I do think that things can be done to make the PvP actually worth playing; unfortunately, those changes might burn away a chunk of what the hardcore PvP crowd is hoping for, and they might frustrate some of the existing crowd that's quite happy with PvP in its current state as a faint memory. I'm not going to talk about whether or not it should be saved; I'm just going to look at whether or not it's even a possibility.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Two City of Heroes factions played as one
At launch, City of Heroes didn't have factions at all. You were a hero. That's just what you were. Once City of Villains went live, however, the game had its second faction, one that existed in contrast to the original option. Now you could be a villain, a super-powered bastard of the first order, stealing and destroying and doing generally villainous things. And yet people don't really think of the game, on a whole, as a two-faction game. Oh, the game has two factions -- everyone acknowledges that. But it's not lumped into the same category as the many games that have a direct split between two opposing player factions largely because the game has two factions only in the most high-level sense. Let it be known that this article isn't meant to discuss whether or not two factions are a good size for a game or not; that's a Soapbox topic right there, and it's not one I have a very strong feeling about anyway. No, this is entirely about why it is that City of Heroes has two factions but you never really see them as such. Being a hero or villain is almost a afterthought when it comes down to it.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Too many choices
We've gotten a lot of new powersets in City of Heroes ever since the game went free-to-play. This is something that I've talked about before: There's rather uncomfortable cycle during which a new set is released full of bugs, but it gets played for a month before the next set comes out and you stop thinking about the old one. And that's definitely a potential problem, but with the release of the new Water Blast set, I'm thinking that there's a much more coherent one in mind. Specifically, I'm thinking for the first time that maybe there's something to the old issue of being locked into a power set after character creation. Don't get me wrong -- I don't think Water Blast is overpowered or underpowered. It actually looks like it makes better use of a new mechanic than did the last big ranged set. But we now have an absolute surfeit of options for playing a Blaster, and as the game gets more and more endgame-heavy, I'm starting to wonder how long it will be before players get tired. We're seeing a different sort of power creep here: We just have too many choices for a new character.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: City of Heroes' Summer Blockbuster in review
Ah, summer, the time of year when kids and teachers don't have to worry about school, no one has to worry about clean sweaters, and the movie industry worries about which films wind up with the most significant profit over the next several months. More knowledgeable folks than I have discussed summer blockbusters in the past, but the truth is that I'm not here to talk about the concept; I'm here to talk about the new City of Heroes event. The idea behind the Summer Blockbuster is a pretty clever one, although you have to be willing to accept the kind of meta structure of the whole thing. It's still a chance for players to go into the meat of a big summer blow-out extravaganza, which would seem like exactly the right time for the developers to just give us some enormous brawls. Instead, the event consists of two parts that actually show off some of what City of Heroes is capable of despite its age. It's good stuff, in other words, and there are some things worth taking away for the future.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: All we need are radio missions
Radio missions are not the most controversial aspect of City of Heroes. Considering the nature of the game, I'm hesitant to even point to one thing as being "the most controversial," but PvP and Incarnates would probably be near the top. That doesn't mean that radio missions aren't an important part of the game, nor does it mean that these missions are universally beloved, and that's because they screw with a very big part of the game in a way that not everyone is going to like. First added in City of Villains as newspaper missions and later ported over to heroes via the police radio, these missions are great little bursts of content that give you a place to fight and a reason to do so without hunting down a contact or a specific arc. Unfortunately, they also do so in a way that really steamrolls much of the game's content and encourages their nigh-exclusive use. Like many of the systems added to City of Heroes over the years, they add a lot of fun, but they also are directly at odds with an existing set of fun content.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Upcoming Blaster changes
Not every game faces the mage problem, but a lot of them do, and it starts back in classic Dungeons & Dragons. The core of the issue is pretty simple to understand: Because mages have so much phenomenal offensive power, they need some staggering weakness to balance that out. As a result, the class is very physically weak and lacks any real defenses. But the counter to that is that this creates many situations in which the mage is just plain useless because he or she has no effective defenses to weather an initial assault. Blasters aren't mages. Unless they are, anyhow -- City of Heroes is kind of resistant to pigeonholing. Whether your Blaster is an arcane caster or just a guy with radioactive hands isn't important because the class still suffers from the mage problem. Blasters are one of the most powerful classes in the game when it comes to raw damage, but they're also one of the hardest classes to solo, and they're one that goes from hero to zero the fastest.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: In praise of City of Heroes' zone revamps
If the classic MMO is an open sandbox wthout direction and the modern MMO is a guided ride along the quest railroad, City of Heroes was made on the day in between those two points. Nowhere is that more evident than in classic zones from the earliest days of the game, which featured a large number of contacts who would send you scurrying across a zone to largely random points without any real rhyme or reason. It was a different time then, and I think we all still expected to get most of our rewards via killing random things on the streets. You knew that they were criminals because they attacked you, see. These days, MMOs are very different, and not entirely coincidentally, City of Heroes as a game keeps revamping its zones. After the Atlas/Mercy/Galaxy revamp that we all thought would never happen, it seems that the team behind the game is really making an effort to give players some redone and more invigorating zones with coherent plot threads. And for many reasons, this is one of the best things that can happen to the game from start to finish.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Praetoria's invasion in review
It's all over and done for Praetoria now. Well, not all done; as long as new characters can start in City of Heroes as Praetorians and later run through the relevant Incarnate Trials, it'll never really be done. And we'll have more stuff in the postscript, of course, because there's always a postscript. But this big overarching story arc that the game has been running since the launch of Going Rogue almost two years ago is finally finished. And that prompts an obvious question: How did the whole arc look in retrospect? Let's face it: This whole arc has been something new for City of Heroes, an attempt to replicate the huge multi-comic crossovers that are really fun until they make up all the comics ever. You know, like what happened to Marvel comics from the late '90s until the early '00s or what's currently happening at DC. And just like those big crossovers, this one had some big flashes of brilliance and some moments that seemed like a letdown.
