Lore AMA: Difference between revisions
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==Overview== | ==Overview== | ||
The '''Lore AMA''' ('''A'''sk '''M'''e '''A'''nything), or "Loregasm", is a series of documents created by [[Positron (Developer)|Positron]] to answer questions [[City of Heroes]] players had about the game's story following the [[Sunset]] announcement. | |||
In the [https://web.archive.org/web/20120906033004/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=296786 thread announcing its creation], Positron stated that anything it contains "SHOULD be considered canon when concerning anything to do with Issue 24 and previous. Anything after that is speculative and should be treated as such. We'll note in the answer if it's anything different." On September 18th, 2012, Positron posted a link to the first Lore AMA as a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qbHHrRmifxGPz60-_ApLNiwOmF5QVEMrXHgB1Nrd4o/edit?pli=1 Google Doc] in a [[Official Forums|City of Heroes forums]] [https://web.archive.org/web/20121107213509/http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=297476 thread]. | |||
In | In a 2012 [http://www.onrpg.com/articles/metas-verse-interview-with-melissa-bianco-and-matt-miller-on-city-of-heroes/ interview] of Positron and [[War Witch (Developer)|War Witch]] at [http://www.onrpg.com OnRPG] discussing the closure of the game, Positron stated that he would do yearly AMAs as long as people had questions: | ||
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|'''MeticulousMeta:''' There are still a lot of questions after the Lore AMA. Is there any chance of getting another? | |||
'''Matt:''' I’ll make a deal: I’ll do AMA’s about CoH lore every April 28th until the questions stop coming in. I’ll give more details as we get closer to that date, and I can’t promise everyone who should be involved will be. | |||
|} | |||
== AMA by Year == | |||
{{EdNote|note=This page contains the text of the documents as they appeared at release. A list of the questions linked to by topic and developer can be found here: [[Lore AMA/Sorted]].}} | |||
{{Spoiler}} | |||
== | {{center|Be advised that there are spoilers for existing and future content contained within the AMA documents.}} | ||
=== <div style="font-weight:bold;text-align:center;border-top:1px solid #5555FF;border-bottom:1px solid #5555FF;background-color:#ffffff;margin:1em;padding:0.2em;font-size:1.2em">'''AMA: 2012'''</div> === | |||
The first Lore AMA was linked in a forum post by Positron titled "Loregasm" and includes a key of the answering developers' initials: | The first Lore AMA was linked in a forum post by Positron titled "Loregasm" and includes a key of the answering developers' initials: | ||
{{ | {{Quotebox|type=dev|name=Positron (Developer)|source=the initial post from the forum thread announcing the AMA|text=[https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qbHHrRmifxGPz60-_ApLNiwOmF5QVEMrXHgB1Nrd4o/edit?pli=1 City of Heroes AMA 2012] | ||
That's a link to the doc, in case these boards get shut down, and because I don't want to clean it up for our forum posting format (if someone ELSE does, feel free to pad your postcount). | That's a link to the doc, in case these boards get shut down, and because I don't want to clean it up for our forum posting format (if someone ELSE does, feel free to pad your postcount). | ||
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Some answers are not satisfying. Some answers are made up, and that answer only exists in that doc. I tried to get everyone who was involved in the stuff at the end to answer the questions as best they could. | Some answers are not satisfying. Some answers are made up, and that answer only exists in that doc. I tried to get everyone who was involved in the stuff at the end to answer the questions as best they could. | ||
MM: Matt Miller (Positron)<br> | MM: Matt Miller ([[Positron (Developer)|Positron]])<br> | ||
JH: John Hegner (Protean)<br> | JH: John Hegner ([[Protean (Developer)|Protean]])<br> | ||
JAH: Jeff Hamilton (Arbiter Hawk)<br> | JAH: Jeff Hamilton ([[Arbiter Hawk (Developer)|Arbiter Hawk]])<br> | ||
SM: Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon)<br> | SM: Sean McCann ([[Dr. Aeon (Developer)|Dr. Aeon]])<br> | ||
RG: Ryan Greene (Viridian)<br> | RG: Ryan Greene ([[Viridian (Developer)|Viridian]])<br> | ||
TS: Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion)<br> | TS: Tim Sweeney ([[Black Scorpion (Developer)|Black Scorpion]])<br> | ||
If there is a miracle and somehow CoH is saved, we reserve the right to change any and all answers given in the doc, to maintain suspense and surprise.}} | If there is a miracle and somehow CoH is saved, we reserve the right to change any and all answers given in the doc, to maintain suspense and surprise.}} | ||
The Lore AMA itself at its time of release is as follows: | The Lore AMA itself at its time of release (September 18th, 2012) is as follows: | ||
{{hidden|Lore AMA|content= | {{hidden|Lore AMA|content= | ||
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MM: I’ll see if I can find the story I wrote.(Yes I found it, will publish it after this) | MM: I’ll see if I can find the story I wrote.(Yes I found it, will publish it after this) | ||
{{EdNote|note=In an [http://www.onrpg.com/articles/metas-verse-matt-positron-interview/ interview with onrpg.com] Positron notes that the story was originally not published, but that elements of the relationship first appeared in a piece of fiction for the [[Seventh Anniversary Event]]. That piece of fiction can be found here: [http://web.archive.org/web/20110507054206/http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/news_archive/prepare_for_the_praetorian_inv.html?utm_source=newsletter_coh&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email_na_20110428_in&utm_content=event Prepare for the Praetorian Invasion on the live servers!] The original story, still a draft, was published following the shutdown announcement on the CoH Forums. A Google doc of the forum thread can be found here: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ldiYao3KQPkZJW5QnqH3bR2V-6247dnUCbTmKcQ7MIE/edit?usp=sharing Past Lives (draft)].}} | |||
'''IP was destined for a revamp per the Pummit... how so? Any lore influences there?''' | '''IP was destined for a revamp per the Pummit... how so? Any lore influences there?''' | ||
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MM: We use whatever faction fits the stories we want to tell. Void Sanction is really a Hero Corps story line, so there’s that at least. | MM: We use whatever faction fits the stories we want to tell. Void Sanction is really a Hero Corps story line, so there’s that at least. | ||
'''What breed of dog is Woofers?''' | '''What breed of dog is Woofers?''' | ||
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'''Why are all the plaques in Praetoria, First Ward, and Night Ward in Estonian? | '''Why are all the plaques in Praetoria, First Ward, and Night Ward in Estonian? | ||
{{ | {{EdNote|note=This question does not have an answer in the original document.}} | ||
'''Was it possible and were we going to see more mundane personal vehicle transport powers such as a Motorcycle?''' | '''Was it possible and were we going to see more mundane personal vehicle transport powers such as a Motorcycle?''' | ||
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STM: This was one of the first stories I wrote after being hired. The idea was that the power of invulnerability is super powerful and has its own kind of will to choose its owner. The goal of the power was that the user of the power help save the world and themselves, so it had a knack for choosing people who were not so heroic. The previous Ajax had done all that he could for himself and the world. It was time for him to move on to the afterlife and help someone else change. He knew that going into the fight with the new Ajax. The invulnerability power left the original Ajax and granted themselves to our Ajax to help change his life and the people around him.|bg1=#ccccff}} | STM: This was one of the first stories I wrote after being hired. The idea was that the power of invulnerability is super powerful and has its own kind of will to choose its owner. The goal of the power was that the user of the power help save the world and themselves, so it had a knack for choosing people who were not so heroic. The previous Ajax had done all that he could for himself and the world. It was time for him to move on to the afterlife and help someone else change. He knew that going into the fight with the new Ajax. The invulnerability power left the original Ajax and granted themselves to our Ajax to help change his life and the people around him.|bg1=#ccccff}} | ||
== | === <div style="font-weight:bold;text-align:center;border-top:1px solid #5555FF;border-bottom:1px solid #5555FF;background-color:#ffffff;margin:1em;padding:0.2em;font-size:1.2em">'''AMA: 2013'''</div> === | ||
After taking questions in an open Google Doc, the first of the yearly AMAs was [http://www.onrpg.com/articles/editorial/city-of-heroes-9th-anniversary-loregasm/ announced at OnRPG] on May 3rd, 2013, and released as a closed [https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bjjR2rdP9Kbe8baODElUQGRxNTTlj_b5PVqCdNXJ8o/edit Google Doc]. In most cases, the name of the dev giving an answer is listed after the answer. The devs that answered are: | After taking questions in an open Google Doc, the first of the yearly AMAs was [http://www.onrpg.com/articles/editorial/city-of-heroes-9th-anniversary-loregasm/ announced at OnRPG] on May 3rd, 2013, and released as a closed [https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bjjR2rdP9Kbe8baODElUQGRxNTTlj_b5PVqCdNXJ8o/edit Google Doc]. In most cases, the name of the dev giving an answer is listed after the answer. The devs that answered are: | ||
* Matt, a.k.a. [[Positron (Developer)|Positron ]] | * Matt Miller, a.k.a. [[Positron (Developer)|Positron]] | ||
* Hosun, a.k.a. [[Black Pebble]] | * Hosun Lee, a.k.a. [[Black Pebble]] | ||
* Tim, a.k.a. [[Black Scorpion (Developer)|Black Scorpion]] | * Tim Sweeney, a.k.a. [[Black Scorpion (Developer)|Black Scorpion]] | ||
* Sean, a.k.a. [[Dr. Aeon (Developer)|Dr. Aeon]] | * Sean McCann, a.k.a. [[Dr. Aeon (Developer)|Dr. Aeon]] | ||
* John, a.k.a. [[Protean (Developer)|Protean]] | * John Hegner, a.k.a. [[Protean (Developer)|Protean]] | ||
* Keetsie, a.k.a. [[Tunnel Rat (Developer)|Tunnel Rat]] | * Keetsie Braz de Cunha (née Berbel), a.k.a. [[Tunnel Rat (Developer)|Tunnel Rat]] | ||
* Vince, a.k.a. [[The Dark Watcher (Developer)|The Dark Watcher]] | * Vince D'Amelio, a.k.a. [[The Dark Watcher (Developer)|The Dark Watcher]] | ||
{{EdNote|note=This is the most likely list of developers who answered AMA 2, as there are multiple devs with some of those first names. | {{EdNote|note=This is the most likely list of developers who answered AMA 2, as there are multiple devs with some of those first names. Some questions do not have a dev name, and it can be assumed that they were answered by Positron unless the context indicates otherwise. Several questions were unable to be answered, and are marked as "Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)."}} | ||
Some questions do not have a dev name, and it can be assumed that they were answered by Positron unless the context indicates otherwise. Several questions were unable to be answered, and are marked as "Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)." | |||
The second Lore AMA at its time of last revision (May 7, 2013) is as follows: | The second Lore AMA at its time of last revision (May 7, 2013) is as follows: | ||
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'''Q) What did the Khalisti Wharf TF entail? (Randy Jarvis)'''<br> | '''Q) What did the Khalisti Wharf TF entail? (Randy Jarvis)'''<br> | ||
A) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now) | A) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now) | ||
'''Q) Since Arbiter Sands had hooked up with Mynx romantically were we ever going to see him switch sides and become a hero?'''<br> | '''Q) Since Arbiter Sands had hooked up with Mynx romantically were we ever going to see him switch sides and become a hero?'''<br> | ||
A) It was a possibility that we considered but had nothing set in stone. At the time I had planned on exploring deeper into the Valentine’s Day themes in future Valentine’s Day Tips. (John) | A) It was a possibility that we considered but had nothing set in stone. At the time I had planned on exploring deeper into the Valentine’s Day themes in future Valentine’s Day Tips. (John) | ||
''' | |||
Q) Was Ouroboros ever going to be expanded to let us visit the WWII era? (Eldritch_Knight)'''<br> | '''Q) Was Ouroboros ever going to be expanded to let us visit the WWII era? (Eldritch_Knight)'''<br> | ||
A) The problem with past time period is art assets. Doing eras like “1940’s” involved a ton of environment work to remove/replace “modern” things like phone booths and street lamps. In the end it was decided that if we were going to do environment work, it would be for something blatant and obvious, like the moon. (Matt)<br> | A) The problem with past time period is art assets. Doing eras like “1940’s” involved a ton of environment work to remove/replace “modern” things like phone booths and street lamps. In the end it was decided that if we were going to do environment work, it would be for something blatant and obvious, like the moon. (Matt)<br> | ||
A) If we had the urge, we likely would have tried to steal natural cliffs and shorelines from the Cimerora / First Ward terrain, bunkers from the Striga and RWZ sets, and done an “Omaha Beach” style outdoors map. It would have been one of those hodgepodges that came together because of a one-off idea (like the Lost Ouroboros map). Cities and anything else would have been too involved. (Tim) | A) If we had the urge, we likely would have tried to steal natural cliffs and shorelines from the Cimerora / First Ward terrain, bunkers from the Striga and RWZ sets, and done an “Omaha Beach” style outdoors map. It would have been one of those hodgepodges that came together because of a one-off idea (like the Lost Ouroboros map). Cities and anything else would have been too involved. (Tim) | ||
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'''Q) Was there going to be a payoff with the Penny/Clockwork King relationship? If so, what? (@kaosarcanna)'''<br> | '''Q) Was there going to be a payoff with the Penny/Clockwork King relationship? If so, what? (@kaosarcanna)'''<br> | ||
A) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now) | A) Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now) | ||
'''Q) Just how advanced were Nemesis’s automatons supposed to be? Some seemed clanking and comically robotic, while others like James Harvan were disturbed and upset to learn they were machines. (@Dr. Reverend)'''<br> | '''Q) Just how advanced were Nemesis’s automatons supposed to be? Some seemed clanking and comically robotic, while others like James Harvan were disturbed and upset to learn they were machines. (@Dr. Reverend)'''<br> | ||
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For example, if a level 50 hero gave a level 10 hero 1,000,000 influence, the level 10 hero would receive only 100,000. The other 900,000 would lost in the exchange. The idea behind this was people were still willing to do favors for the level 50 hero, but less so when they realize that the favor is actually benefiting this level 10 that they never heard of before. (Matt) | For example, if a level 50 hero gave a level 10 hero 1,000,000 influence, the level 10 hero would receive only 100,000. The other 900,000 would lost in the exchange. The idea behind this was people were still willing to do favors for the level 50 hero, but less so when they realize that the favor is actually benefiting this level 10 that they never heard of before. (Matt) | ||
'''Q) Were synthetic intelligences sentient and if so, what were the ethical implications of them being bought and sold at the market? {@Quinch}'''<br> | '''Q) Were synthetic intelligences sentient and if so, what were the ethical implications of them being bought and sold at the market? {@Quinch}'''<br> | ||
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'''Q) I remember weather was once mentioned but was presented to have had no actual gameplay purpose. Do you think that it could have ever have been implemented? (@RobotoHQ)'''<br> | '''Q) I remember weather was once mentioned but was presented to have had no actual gameplay purpose. Do you think that it could have ever have been implemented? (@RobotoHQ)'''<br> | ||
A) It rains in Statesman’s death scene. We could have made it rain on maps, but streets would not get wet and it would end up looking odd. (Matt) | A) It rains in Statesman’s death scene. We could have made it rain on maps, but streets would not get wet and it would end up looking odd. (Matt)<br> | ||
We began doing weather for dramatic moments in cutscenes, as Matt has mentioned. First Ward also had a few environmental effects like flying dust. The main challenge with precipitation like rain or snow was that we needed new tech to keep those effects from rendering inside buildings like Wentworth’s. We also needed a lot of time to properly mark those places. Additionally, there were some more minor concerns with what the rain would look like at super-speed, and how much the extra particles would tax the player’s machine. Frankly, I don’t think we would have found the time to implement it, especially with all the new powersets coming in. (Keetsie)<br> | A)We began doing weather for dramatic moments in cutscenes, as Matt has mentioned. First Ward also had a few environmental effects like flying dust. The main challenge with precipitation like rain or snow was that we needed new tech to keep those effects from rendering inside buildings like Wentworth’s. We also needed a lot of time to properly mark those places. Additionally, there were some more minor concerns with what the rain would look like at super-speed, and how much the extra particles would tax the player’s machine. Frankly, I don’t think we would have found the time to implement it, especially with all the new powersets coming in. (Keetsie)<br> | ||
A) Fake Tim Sweeney did figure out a pretty cool way to make snow appear though, during last year’s Winter Event. I think it was basically a PbAOE. (Hosun)<br> | |||
A) We could do full screen space camera effects, which is how the snow appeared on the screen near the Winter Horde in the last Winter Event and the rain appeared in some Dark Astoria missions. We hadn’t discovered (back then) a good way to systemically tell the difference between indoors / under a bridge and outdoors, so we didn’t want to use it in areas where it wasn’t magically generated (and hence snow was fine indoors) or only had outdoors. One of the things I had uncovered before the shutdown was a way to do this easily - so it was plausible. We would have never had puddles, though. | A) We could do full screen space camera effects, which is how the snow appeared on the screen near the Winter Horde in the last Winter Event and the rain appeared in some Dark Astoria missions. We hadn’t discovered (back then) a good way to systemically tell the difference between indoors / under a bridge and outdoors, so we didn’t want to use it in areas where it wasn’t magically generated (and hence snow was fine indoors) or only had outdoors. One of the things I had uncovered before the shutdown was a way to do this easily - so it was plausible. We would have never had puddles, though. | ||
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'''Q) What was Mender Tesseract? We’re told she’s from the future and that she’s supposed to be crazy powerful in her own time, but we know little about what she actually was or her powers.'''<br> | '''Q) What was Mender Tesseract? We’re told she’s from the future and that she’s supposed to be crazy powerful in her own time, but we know little about what she actually was or her powers.'''<br> | ||
A) Mender Tesseract is ex-Battalion. As Lord Nemesis traveled back in time, he had to make various “stops” to upload into a new body (this is how he got around the whole temporal tether rule). During one of these stops, he convinced the crazy powerful Tesseract that Battalion was bad and doomed to fail, and she should join the winning side when she had the chance. Pulling her out of the Battalion equation was a key part of weakening them to the point where they could be destroyed in the future, should Ouroboros fail at stopping them in the past. In other words “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey... stuff.” (Matt) | A) Mender Tesseract is ex-Battalion. As Lord Nemesis traveled back in time, he had to make various “stops” to upload into a new body (this is how he got around the whole temporal tether rule). During one of these stops, he convinced the crazy powerful Tesseract that Battalion was bad and doomed to fail, and she should join the winning side when she had the chance. Pulling her out of the Battalion equation was a key part of weakening them to the point where they could be destroyed in the future, should Ouroboros fail at stopping them in the past. In other words “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey... stuff.” (Matt) | ||
'''Q) Let's play Rowling-after-the-fact for a minute. Who was gay? Come on. I bet it was Ice Mistral. [Yes! Was anyone gay, bi, trans, etc? (MisterMagpie)]'''<br> | '''Q) Let's play Rowling-after-the-fact for a minute. Who was gay? Come on. I bet it was Ice Mistral. [Yes! Was anyone gay, bi, trans, etc? (MisterMagpie)]'''<br> | ||
A) Honestly, there was no thought put into this. Characters were whatever we needed them to be at the moment. If we did want a front-line LGBT hero or villain it likely would have been a new character, since retconning existing ones can feel kinda artificial (ala Alan Scott in DC comics) (Matt) | A) Honestly, there was no thought put into this. Characters were whatever we needed them to be at the moment. If we did want a front-line LGBT hero or villain it likely would have been a new character, since retconning existing ones can feel kinda artificial (ala Alan Scott in DC comics) (Matt) | ||
''' | |||
Q) Was Anna Palatine intended to be the Praetorian Lady Grey? (@Dynamite Monkey)'''<br> | '''Q) Was Anna Palatine intended to be the Praetorian Lady Grey? (@Dynamite Monkey)'''<br> | ||
A) At one point, there was going to be a Lord Grey to be the Praetorian Lady Grey. I think he got cut. (Vince)<br> | A) At one point, there was going to be a Lord Grey to be the Praetorian Lady Grey. I think he got cut. (Vince)<br> | ||
B) Anna Palatine was left undefined so that we could have had her develop into anyone we wanted. Lady Grey, however, was never discussed, at least, not with me. (John) | B) Anna Palatine was left undefined so that we could have had her develop into anyone we wanted. Lady Grey, however, was never discussed, at least, not with me. (John) | ||
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'''Q) Additionally, what ever became of the rumored Coralax EAT? Since EATs always had fairly large plots centered around them, (more or less,) did that thought process go far enough to have a story developed for it? (@Mako)'''<br> | '''Q) Additionally, what ever became of the rumored Coralax EAT? Since EATs always had fairly large plots centered around them, (more or less,) did that thought process go far enough to have a story developed for it? (@Mako)'''<br> | ||
A) The large plots is actually one of the things that prevented us from introducing more EATs. We had a ton of ideas, but the sticking point was always a lack of time necessary to both do the powers and the content associated with the EAT that would meet player expectation. I remember working on ideas for a Circle of Thorns PEAT as well as a Devoured PEAT. (John)<br> | A) The large plots is actually one of the things that prevented us from introducing more EATs. We had a ton of ideas, but the sticking point was always a lack of time necessary to both do the powers and the content associated with the EAT that would meet player expectation. I remember working on ideas for a Circle of Thorns PEAT as well as a Devoured PEAT. (John)<br> | ||
A) EAT’s in general were a PITA (pain in the arse) as they required a lot of mission content to be created for them, and only the EAT’s could run that content. I think it was a precedent set by HEAT’s that we ended up following for VEAT’s. There was also a Praetorian EAT that was going to be a redeemed Clockwork. A lot of design and animation for the EAT’s were done, but they still needed art and content. Eventually we were thinking of introducing Purchasable Archetypes, which had no story content tied to them. (Hosun) | |||
'''Q)What plans did recluse have in regards to statesman’s murderer?'''<br> | '''Q)What plans did recluse have in regards to statesman’s murderer?'''<br> | ||
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'''Q) Was Praetoria always intended to be a 1-20 zone, or was it originally meant for higher levels? Some of the content felt challenging for lower levels, and having the story originally stop at 20 seemed a bit odd, and made more sense for later on in the game after encountering Portal Corp in Peregrine Island. (@Scitenik)'''<br> | '''Q) Was Praetoria always intended to be a 1-20 zone, or was it originally meant for higher levels? Some of the content felt challenging for lower levels, and having the story originally stop at 20 seemed a bit odd, and made more sense for later on in the game after encountering Portal Corp in Peregrine Island. (@Scitenik)'''<br> | ||
A) Praetoria was originally intended to be a revamped newbie experience from 1-20. After we had designed to have the players leave and not return until incarnate, however, we added First Ward back in from 20-30 and then Night Ward (which was originally supposed to be a part of First Ward itself) as 30-40 content. This was in response to players wanting to have a Praetoria only Praetorian. I believe the challenge level of some of the early Praetoria stuff was simply a case of getting to work with new tools and have missions do things we hadn’t done before combined with some power creep on the villain groups that ended up getting out of control due to the small margin of error allowable at such low levels. (John)<br> | A) Praetoria was originally intended to be a revamped newbie experience from 1-20. After we had designed to have the players leave and not return until incarnate, however, we added First Ward back in from 20-30 and then Night Ward (which was originally supposed to be a part of First Ward itself) as 30-40 content. This was in response to players wanting to have a Praetoria only Praetorian. I believe the challenge level of some of the early Praetoria stuff was simply a case of getting to work with new tools and have missions do things we hadn’t done before combined with some power creep on the villain groups that ended up getting out of control due to the small margin of error allowable at such low levels. (John)<br> | ||
A)I know at one point Praetoria was supposed to be just the tutorial, then it lets you out in Primal Earth. Then at a different point, Praetoria was supposed to be nuked at the end, which was part of the reason it looked like heck when you visited in the Portal Corp missions. (Hosun) | |||
'''Q) Virgil Tarikoss Claimed that Magic in CoH at first could only be commanded by humans, but then the gods (Hequat, and Ermeeth) usurped the power.. Was this actually true to canon or just Virgil’s personal beliefs? (@Hagia Sophia)'''<br> | '''Q) Virgil Tarikoss Claimed that Magic in CoH at first could only be commanded by humans, but then the gods (Hequat, and Ermeeth) usurped the power.. Was this actually true to canon or just Virgil’s personal beliefs? (@Hagia Sophia)'''<br> | ||
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'''Q.) Was there any kind of development at all of more flying poses, vehicles, etc or was it something that was never looked into?(@Emerald Cloak)'''<br> | '''Q.) Was there any kind of development at all of more flying poses, vehicles, etc or was it something that was never looked into?(@Emerald Cloak)'''<br> | ||
A.) We were starting to look into that with powers like the flying carpet and hover board. We weren’t discussing additional flight poses, but I think vehicle ideas were being tossed around for our travel powers. I think Colin wanted to look into a motorcycle power. With the introduction of pool power customization we were also considering elemental skins (like Ice Flight and Electric Speed). | A.) We were starting to look into that with powers like the flying carpet and hover board. We weren’t discussing additional flight poses, but I think vehicle ideas were being tossed around for our travel powers. I think Colin wanted to look into a motorcycle power. With the introduction of pool power customization we were also considering elemental skins (like Ice Flight and Electric Speed). | ||
A)I THINK the above answer was from Keetsie. We all wanted vehicles, but the animation system didn’t easily allow for it. Every animation had to be redone for every single ability in game. Ninja Run alone took Nelson Tam 3 full months of nonstop work to make. That’s why Rocket Board detoggled you. We estimated it would take about 9 months of dedicated animation and tech time to redo the animations system to allow you to use your powers while in a vehicle. Aside from that most vehicles wouldn’t fit inside a mission (imagine a car in the layer cake map), and the game didn’t really have a flag we could use to set vehicle powers to be usable only when you’re not in a mission. The COH engine was really really really really really broken. Which allowed the Dev team to do impossible things on a regular basis, but only if they were mostly impossible versus completely impossible. (Hosun) | |||
'''Q) In Ghost Widow’s Patron arc, we find out just how much she hates Red Widow. Why exactly did she hate her so much? And now that she’s back, what does that mean for Ghost Widow? (@Samuraiko)'''<br> | '''Q) In Ghost Widow’s Patron arc, we find out just how much she hates Red Widow. Why exactly did she hate her so much? And now that she’s back, what does that mean for Ghost Widow? (@Samuraiko)'''<br> | ||
A) It was never retconned what the bad blood was about. We also never got around to what it meant for her to be alive now. (Matt)<br> | A) It was never retconned what the bad blood was about. We also never got around to what it meant for her to be alive now. (Matt)<br> | ||
A) My off the cuff speculation would be would have said there was an Arachnos prophecy that Red Widow would be the end of Arachnos if she was allowed to live. Since that was Ms. Liberty’s plan in the first place, it makes sense that she showing up would have the potential to upset the Arachnos applecart (esp. when tied with the death of Statesman). | |||
'''Q) Related question to the above - I can’t believe I’m actually asking this, but is Red Widow, perhaps, the only woman for whom Recluse might actually have some feeling? (“Love” per se might be out of his range, but “the only woman who can truly understand me and my genius...” Gods, even that sounds wrong, but you know what I mean.) (@Samuraiko)'''<br> | '''Q) Related question to the above - I can’t believe I’m actually asking this, but is Red Widow, perhaps, the only woman for whom Recluse might actually have some feeling? (“Love” per se might be out of his range, but “the only woman who can truly understand me and my genius...” Gods, even that sounds wrong, but you know what I mean.) (@Samuraiko)'''<br> | ||
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'''Q) Who was messing with the player’s timeline in the Pilgrim’s introductory Ouroboros arc? (@minimalist)'''<br> | '''Q) Who was messing with the player’s timeline in the Pilgrim’s introductory Ouroboros arc? (@minimalist)'''<br> | ||
A) I honestly don’t remember. Requiem I think (Matt)<br> | A) I honestly don’t remember. Requiem I think (Matt)<br> | ||
A) If we go with the plots laid in the Mender Ramiel arc, it was Battalion after they co-opted Silos following their triumph. (Tim) | |||
'''Q) With the death of Statesman, would Hamidon have become the head of the Freedom Phalanx? (Hamidon THE GOO!)'''<br> | '''Q) With the death of Statesman, would Hamidon have become the head of the Freedom Phalanx? (Hamidon THE GOO!)'''<br> | ||
A) Positron was the new leader, Penny replaced Psyche and a contest would have been held for the CoH fans to create the new replacement for Statesman. (Matt)<br> | A) Positron was the new leader, Penny replaced Psyche and a contest would have been held for the CoH fans to create the new replacement for Statesman. (Matt)<br> | ||
A)The big marketing event I was working on was the “Hero Tryouts.” We would have a contest where players could submit a character for inclusion into the Freedom Phalanx. The Dev Team would pick the top 10 or so of those, and then we’d let teh players vote between the top 10. The winner would join the Freedom Phalanx (but not as the leader). Matt was even working on a mission or TF for I24 or I25 where the new member would be introduced. Using the Alternative Power Bar, you could actually play as the new member. There would even be a Hero side version and a Villain side version. Sigh..... We were also working with Rooster Teeth to do a series of live action comedy videos to promote it, which would have culminated in the winner being announced at their show in Austin. (Hosun) | |||
'''Q) In Studio 55, there is a ladies’ room door where the cursor turned to a hand when you moused over it, although clicking it did nothing. An error, or a future Easter Egg? (@Interface)'''<br> | '''Q) In Studio 55, there is a ladies’ room door where the cursor turned to a hand when you moused over it, although clicking it did nothing. An error, or a future Easter Egg? (@Interface)'''<br> | ||
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'''Q) Also, comment on “Vinceland” being in the game files as a City Zone? (@Cold Bob)'''<br> | '''Q) Also, comment on “Vinceland” being in the game files as a City Zone? (@Cold Bob)'''<br> | ||
A) Private zone that Vince used to test things with. Marked as “public” at one point and therefore published to the players in a patch. (Matt?)<br> | A) Private zone that Vince used to test things with. Marked as “public” at one point and therefore published to the players in a patch. (Matt?)<br> | ||
A) Vinceland was a magical place where anything could happen! I used it for testing new features and scripts. Patrols, Dropships, RV glowies, Workbenches, Superdyne Raids, Villian respec vines, locked doors, keys, burning buildings... all of these first were tested there before being given to the design team to implement in the full zones. (Vince)<br> | |||
A) I used the lesser-known “Daveland”, another similar zone, for a lot of screenshots. Having an empty space made asset generation a lot easier. Another “Vince Fact” is that the internal (dev) name for Powers Suppression was “Vince_is_evil” (Hosun) | |||
'''Q) Was there any significance to the texts on the whiteboards in all the offices, remember something about sales or if we don’t something or other..? (@bobhir)'''<br> | '''Q) Was there any significance to the texts on the whiteboards in all the offices, remember something about sales or if we don’t something or other..? (@bobhir)'''<br> | ||
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'''Q) As hinted in the beginning of the Incarnate storyline, where you’re standing in the remnants of Ouroboros after the Storm, you’re supposed to be crazy uber powerful, similar to Emperor Cole when he wiped out Arachnos single handedly. What was to come after the storm? Was the introduction to Battalion and their henchmen so off the charts that you would have to be uber godly just to survive? What of the rest of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles? And where did Battalion come from? (LadyShin)'''<br> | '''Q) As hinted in the beginning of the Incarnate storyline, where you’re standing in the remnants of Ouroboros after the Storm, you’re supposed to be crazy uber powerful, similar to Emperor Cole when he wiped out Arachnos single handedly. What was to come after the storm? Was the introduction to Battalion and their henchmen so off the charts that you would have to be uber godly just to survive? What of the rest of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles? And where did Battalion come from? (LadyShin)'''<br> | ||
A) That’s more than one question. In order: The Dimensionless, Yes, Where ever the story took us, the other side of the galaxy.<br> | A) That’s more than one question. In order: The Dimensionless, Yes, Where ever the story took us, the other side of the galaxy.<br> | ||
A) Eventually the player would become so powerful it would be difficult to actually tell those stories in any conceivable manner. By that point we would have needed to hit the COH2 button in order to have anything make any sense. (Tim) | |||
'''Q) Where there plans to add all ‘Beaconed Zones’ to all SG/VG bases so that transportation to the Rogue Isles would be possible for Vigilantes/Rogues, and were there plans in the works to expand upon the amount of ‘Beaconed Zones’(Shadow Shard, Praetorian zones)? (@Dark Energon, aka Nephila)'''<br> | '''Q) Where there plans to add all ‘Beaconed Zones’ to all SG/VG bases so that transportation to the Rogue Isles would be possible for Vigilantes/Rogues, and were there plans in the works to expand upon the amount of ‘Beaconed Zones’(Shadow Shard, Praetorian zones)? (@Dark Energon, aka Nephila)'''<br> | ||
A) I originally read this as “Baconed Zones.” Which oddly enough, made more sense to me. Tim could answer this better than I, but I think Rogues/Vigilantes were hacked into the system, and getting them to work properly was an incredibly difficult dev task. (Hosun)<br> | A) I originally read this as “Baconed Zones.” Which oddly enough, made more sense to me. Tim could answer this better than I, but I think Rogues/Vigilantes were hacked into the system, and getting them to work properly was an incredibly difficult dev task. (Hosun)<br> | ||
A) We had unearthed the right way to do these after some time in limbo. If it had been mentioned in my presence when I had a free couple of hours it would have probably gone in as a QOL feature in the gaps. (Tim) | |||
'''Q) When was Canada Joe going to start handing out missions? Don’t tell me he was just going to hang there forever... (@SpoilersBelow)'''<br> | '''Q) When was Canada Joe going to start handing out missions? Don’t tell me he was just going to hang there forever... (@SpoilersBelow)'''<br> | ||
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'''Q)In the CoH backstory, when the portals started appearing before the Rikti War, Star Strider entered one. He never returned. Was there a plan to have him return, or for us to find out what happened to him at some point? (Liquid)'''<br> | '''Q)In the CoH backstory, when the portals started appearing before the Rikti War, Star Strider entered one. He never returned. Was there a plan to have him return, or for us to find out what happened to him at some point? (Liquid)'''<br> | ||
A) No plans, because I think no one remembered about him, if I had, I might have used him instead of Dark Watcher in Vanguard (Matt)<br> | A) No plans, because I think no one remembered about him, if I had, I might have used him instead of Dark Watcher in Vanguard (Matt)<br> | ||
A) I had wanted to have some more survivors of Omega Team return in addition to having the Rikti join Earth in the fight against Battalion and thus release those Omega Team members they managed to capture. I had planned on the original Tin Mage having survived, and I believe Matt wanted Ruin to have carved out an empire on the Rikti equivalent of Australia. no reason Star Strider couldn’t have returned this way to boot. (John) | |||
'''Q)Can you elaborate on the original discussion/decisions around replacing the Fifth with the Council? I spoke with Rick Dakan (the original lead designer, original primary writer of the story bible, and, from everything I've read, the creator of the Fifth Column) in 2006, and he told me that the Council takeover was not "planned all along" (which I realize is a relative statement). We know that you created a story around the change (and there were some weird retcons that were backed out like Ubelmann the Unknown being about the American Civil War instead of WWII), but are there any details that you can give us now about why the story was created? (Liquid)'''<br> | '''Q)Can you elaborate on the original discussion/decisions around replacing the Fifth with the Council? I spoke with Rick Dakan (the original lead designer, original primary writer of the story bible, and, from everything I've read, the creator of the Fifth Column) in 2006, and he told me that the Council takeover was not "planned all along" (which I realize is a relative statement). We know that you created a story around the change (and there were some weird retcons that were backed out like Ubelmann the Unknown being about the American Civil War instead of WWII), but are there any details that you can give us now about why the story was created? (Liquid)'''<br> | ||
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'''Q)What are your thoughts on the RP community within the context of the lore? (@Mazzo Grave)'''<br> | '''Q)What are your thoughts on the RP community within the context of the lore? (@Mazzo Grave)'''<br> | ||
A) My thoughts are: thank you for playing in our world. I hope we made it entertaining and inspiring to you. (Matt)<br> | A) My thoughts are: thank you for playing in our world. I hope we made it entertaining and inspiring to you. (Matt)<br> | ||
A) A collaborative and collective story will entertain in ways that a single or handful of storytellers never could. Understanding that no one story will ever entertain everyone equally, and then appreciate the effort and love that others put into their additions. You can always filter what you do and do not like, including the official lore. I loved seeing what the RP community would do, it gave me some great ideas of where to take the official story lines. :) (John) | |||
'''Q)Tell me the truth. Was Statesman actually permanently dead? Were there plans to revive, reuse or recreate him in ANY way in the future? (@Mazzo Grave)'''<br> | '''Q)Tell me the truth. Was Statesman actually permanently dead? Were there plans to revive, reuse or recreate him in ANY way in the future? (@Mazzo Grave)'''<br> | ||
A) Dead. Of course, I planned an “out” (Which Dr. Aeon hated). A “non-dick” version of him from another dimension (where he was the sole survivor after some cataclysmic event) finds refuge in our world and takes up the mantle. (Matt)<br> | A) Dead. Of course, I planned an “out” (Which Dr. Aeon hated). A “non-dick” version of him from another dimension (where he was the sole survivor after some cataclysmic event) finds refuge in our world and takes up the mantle. (Matt)<br> | ||
A) Well there was also John “Protean” Hegner’s idea.....(Hosun)<br> | |||
A) See above. Tyrant teaches the world a valuable lesson while briefly stepping into Statesman’s shoes in order to give Earth the rallying symbol they needed. Then like a total badass he tells them the truth, tells them that symbols are worthless without the power of the people behind them, and that that power exists in them all, puts on sunglasses, retires to a horse ranch in Montana. (John)<br> | |||
A) Dead. Tyrant masquerade was the only viable way of having him return, everyone loved John’s idea for it. (Tim) | |||
'''Q)If Statesman was actually permanently dead, were there plans to replace him with a new original character? Were there ever talks of maybe letting the players try and fill those shoes? (@Mazzo Grave)'''<br> | '''Q)If Statesman was actually permanently dead, were there plans to replace him with a new original character? Were there ever talks of maybe letting the players try and fill those shoes? (@Mazzo Grave)'''<br> | ||
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'''Q) Kheldian players successfully defeated Arakhn, Requiem and the world take over plot. Given that this is a multi-stellar war fought across vast distances and multiple races, what incentive was there for joined Peacebringers to stay joined and on Earth? (@Ardua)'''<br> | '''Q) Kheldian players successfully defeated Arakhn, Requiem and the world take over plot. Given that this is a multi-stellar war fought across vast distances and multiple races, what incentive was there for joined Peacebringers to stay joined and on Earth? (@Ardua)'''<br> | ||
A) Memphis BBQ. Nothing like it in the entire universe. (Matt)<br> | A) Memphis BBQ. Nothing like it in the entire universe. (Matt)<br> | ||
A) In the Incarnate speculation talk we proposed that “beings who were contributing to the Well’s gestalt” - ie a way to include non-humans, artificials, mystic entities etc who called Earth “home” in some way would find themselves being drawn to it. This was the lore figleaf for why players would stay in areas around Earth, for one. (Tim) | |||
'''Q) For that matter, did the Peacebringers start recruiting Warshades to help bring the war back off of earth and take it to the Nictus? (@Ardua)'''<br> | '''Q) For that matter, did the Peacebringers start recruiting Warshades to help bring the war back off of earth and take it to the Nictus? (@Ardua)'''<br> | ||
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'''Q) Was the Incarnate arms race (overpowered characters vs. overpowered content/trials) worth the time and effort? Do you regret introducing 50+ abilities? (@ScopeCreep)'''<br> | '''Q) Was the Incarnate arms race (overpowered characters vs. overpowered content/trials) worth the time and effort? Do you regret introducing 50+ abilities? (@ScopeCreep)'''<br> | ||
A) Absolutely worth the effort. No regrets. We had amazing success with the incarnates, and even though people voiced displeasure with them, that never showed up in the metrics. You guys played the crap out of them. (Matt)<br> | A) Absolutely worth the effort. No regrets. We had amazing success with the incarnates, and even though people voiced displeasure with them, that never showed up in the metrics. You guys played the crap out of them. (Matt)<br> | ||
A)I loved the Incarnate System. It finally allowed me to make the balanced hero that I wanted, versus a limited glass cannon. (Hosun) | |||
'''Q) What was the deal with Weaver 1, and for that matter all the orb weavers of Arachnos? Was he/they ever going to be introduced and/or explained? If so, in what capacity? (@Dr. Mechanor)'''<br> | '''Q) What was the deal with Weaver 1, and for that matter all the orb weavers of Arachnos? Was he/they ever going to be introduced and/or explained? If so, in what capacity? (@Dr. Mechanor)'''<br> | ||
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'''Q) Was Sally real?'''<br> | '''Q) Was Sally real?'''<br> | ||
A) Sally was actually a virtual construct of code and graphics. Simply put, she was a computer graphic running via a computer simulation. As was Croatoa. And Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. The entire game of City of Heroes actually. None of it was real. (Matt)<br> | A) Sally was actually a virtual construct of code and graphics. Simply put, she was a computer graphic running via a computer simulation. As was Croatoa. And Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. The entire game of City of Heroes actually. None of it was real. (Matt)<br> | ||
A) Sally was real in my heart. <3 (John)<br> | |||
A) John doesn’t have a heart. (Hosun) | |||
'''Q) Was there any plans to de-Riktify The Honoree? (@EF)'''<br> | '''Q) Was there any plans to de-Riktify The Honoree? (@EF)'''<br> | ||
A) MMO timelines are a bear. If we de-Riktify him, then half the playerbase would demand we remove the Rikti version of him from the game to remain consistent, and the other half would want that content to remain in the game because they want to play it on Alts. Since there is “no good solution”, it was best just to leave him as is. (Matt)<br> | A) MMO timelines are a bear. If we de-Riktify him, then half the playerbase would demand we remove the Rikti version of him from the game to remain consistent, and the other half would want that content to remain in the game because they want to play it on Alts. Since there is “no good solution”, it was best just to leave him as is. (Matt)<br> | ||
A) Would have been part of a heroic sacrifice moment (ie, not have to deal with him in the world after the fact) if we had done it. (Tim) | |||
'''Q) What was up with those Angels of Vengeance and such we encountered standing around in Night Ward? Any connection to Prometheus’s two friends? And who were they supposed to be anyways? His assistants or his minders? (@Dr. Reverend)'''<br> | '''Q) What was up with those Angels of Vengeance and such we encountered standing around in Night Ward? Any connection to Prometheus’s two friends? And who were they supposed to be anyways? His assistants or his minders? (@Dr. Reverend)'''<br> | ||
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This went on for millennia. They conquered half the galaxy, and eventually started scouting for new Wells and came across “Earth”. Earth was unique. It had a powerful Well, so powerful it would bestow powers to the citizens of the planet. No other Well had done this before. It made Earth a very tempting target, but also one of the most difficult they ever would attempt to conquer. | This went on for millennia. They conquered half the galaxy, and eventually started scouting for new Wells and came across “Earth”. Earth was unique. It had a powerful Well, so powerful it would bestow powers to the citizens of the planet. No other Well had done this before. It made Earth a very tempting target, but also one of the most difficult they ever would attempt to conquer. | ||
They sent agents to undermine the Earth’s defenses, many of which have been on the Earth for decades, planting themselves into positions of power. For a while they thought the Rikti were going to do their job for them, but that only proved how resilient of a species mankind actually was. | They sent agents to undermine the Earth’s defenses, many of which have been on the Earth for decades, planting themselves into positions of power. For a while they thought the Rikti were going to do their job for them, but that only proved how resilient of a species mankind actually was. | ||
'''Q) I kept hearing there were Easter Eggs, especially in the Rikti War Zone, that the players never found. If so, what were they and were there any other Easter Eggs put in that the players never discovered or reported? (@Pogothulu)'''<br> | '''Q) I kept hearing there were Easter Eggs, especially in the Rikti War Zone, that the players never found. If so, what were they and were there any other Easter Eggs put in that the players never discovered or reported? (@Pogothulu)'''<br> | ||
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A) We hadn’t gotten to that part of the story development yet, but 5th Column definitely had a foothold on the Moon. (Matt)|bg1=#ccccff}} | A) We hadn’t gotten to that part of the story development yet, but 5th Column definitely had a foothold on the Moon. (Matt)|bg1=#ccccff}} | ||
== | === <div style="font-weight:bold;text-align:center;border-top:1px solid #5555FF;border-bottom:1px solid #5555FF;background-color:#ffffff;margin:1em;padding:0.2em;font-size:1.2em">'''AMA: 2014'''</div> === | ||
An [http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,9602.0.html unofficial thread] was started on the Titan Network forums for gathering questions. Positron was contacted and said: "I plan on doing it a bit differently this year. Doc will only be up for a short window." On April 17, 2014, at 8:45 AM PDT, Positron posted [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ocOo69mXIQ8HthabNe1F4X1EcZcSDwZFEE9sT8WSBc4/edit# a Google Doc] that he left open for only 24 hours. Positron also put in some general rules for asking questions, largely prohibiting questions not related to the game's lore: | |||
{{hidden|Original 2014 rules for posting|content={{Quotebox|type=dev|name=Positron (Developer)|source=the original public version of the third AMA Google Doc|text=CoH Loregasm: 2014 Edition | |||
{{hidden|Original 2014 rules for posting|content=CoH Loregasm: 2014 Edition | |||
On April 28th, 2014, Matt Miller and other members of the Paragon Design team will put answers to lore-related questions of City of Heroes to questions that are in this public document. | On April 28th, 2014, Matt Miller and other members of the Paragon Design team will put answers to lore-related questions of City of Heroes to questions that are in this public document. | ||
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2012: | 2012: | ||
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qbHHrRmifxGPz60-_ApLNiwOmF5QVEMrXHgB1Nrd4o/edit?usp=sharing|bg1=#ccccff}} | https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qbHHrRmifxGPz60-_ApLNiwOmF5QVEMrXHgB1Nrd4o/edit?usp=sharing}}|bg1=#ccccff}} | ||
Following the initial 24 hour period, there were 76 questions. A copy of the document seven minutes before its takedown for answering can be found in a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/155aXZStUUjXxRfn_v5mMjjsh60Jdz-maIwmUct73LFY/edit Google Doc]. Positron noted in [https://twitter.com/MMODesigner/status/458994112230727680 a tweet] on April 23rd, 2104, that all questions for the 2014 AMA had answers. | |||
On April 28th, 2014, the tenth anniversary of City of Heroes, Positron released the answered questions as a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ocOo69mXIQ8HthabNe1F4X1EcZcSDwZFEE9sT8WSBc4/edit Google doc]. The devs that answered are: | |||
* Matt Miller, a.k.a. [[Positron (Developer)|Positron]] | |||
* Melissa Bianco, a.k.a. [[War Witch (Developer)|War Witch]] | |||
* Chris Behrens, a.k.a. [[Baryonyx]] | |||
* Tim Sweeney, a.k.a. [[Black Scorpion (Developer)|Black Scorpion]] | |||
* Sean McCann, a.k.a. [[Dr. Aeon (Developer)|Dr. Aeon]] | |||
* John Hegner, a.k.a. [[Protean (Developer)|Protean]] | |||
The third Lore AMA at its time of last revision (April 28th, 2014) is as follows: | |||
{{hidden|CoH Lore Questions 2014|bg1=#ccccff|content={{EdNote|note=The content below has not been changed except as needed for formatting or clarification purposes. The most notable change is the way comments or sub-questions are shown - rather than an extension after the initial question, in this article they are bullet points below the question. The wording is unchanged, and can be seen in its original format at the link above.}} | |||
'''CoH Loregasm: 2014 Edition''' | |||
Previous Year’s Lore Q&A docs: | |||
2013: | |||
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11bjjR2rdP9Kbe8baODElUQGRxNTTlj_b5PVqCdNXJ8o/edit?usp=sharing | |||
2012: | |||
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qbHHrRmifxGPz60hi-_ApLNiwOmF5QVEMrXHgB1Nrd4o/edit?usp=sharing | |||
'''Q) There were several villain group names in the original trailer (Revelation, Twilight Men, Seraphim, Fear Factor, Killing Crew) that we never really, or ever, saw in game. Were there plans for them? Did they end up getting sidelined by other groups? How wicked awesome were they? (@bpphantom)''' | |||
*'''[IIRC, Twilight Men became Malta, Fear Factor became the Carnies, but I could be wrong - @Samuraiko]''' | |||
*'''[I seem to recall Killing Crew becoming the Freakshow... Felderburg]''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Samuraiko and Felderburg are correct. There was some trademark issues with the original names and/or better names were thought up. Also some groups were concepted but cut (Revelation and Seraphim I think) long before real production started. | |||
'''Q) While I understand it wasn’t truly completed yet, how were the upcoming villain groups powers being designed to fight against a fully powered Incarnate? What was the idea about long term opposition viability against the characters who were starting to get more powerful than the first trials threat levels.''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - We started to get a bit more creative about the things we would allow villains to do. There were quite a few rules that we started to bend and then outright break at the end. This started with the Going Rogue VGs, from Protean, Castle and Synapse, but really broke loose with the First Ward groups, which Arbiter Hawk, Black Scorpion, Zillionaire, Protean and I designed. The best (worst?) example here were the Psionic-damage Awakened, which had some unusual mechanics where they would synergize with each other, forcing choices as to which part of the group was most threatening to your team’s make up, or bosses with mechanics that forced a lot of movement or management of adds. The First Ward groups generally were really risky, given the level range, but they generated an interest in more challenging fights that we wanted to build on. | |||
The Talons of Vengeance, the Banished Pantheon monsters, the Knives of Vengeance, … many of the late villain groups began to do things like have powers that behaved differently at different radii, used unusual debuffs like -EndCost and -MaxHP, stacked on the -Def, -Rech and -Acc, or struck at combinations of damage that weren’t necessarily easy to build for. We began combining powers together on single creatures that would be absolutely debilitating unless planned around, and then had them be one of a couple of types that could appear together (ToV Siren and Sorceress). Eventually, we’d have to start including Incarnate level powers on regular villains, particularly when Omega appeared, but we hadn’t reached that point yet. Thanks to Black Scorpion, we also got better at estimating what an individual power, or a suite of powers, behaved like, so we could build to a challenge level we wanted to hit. There was still plenty of experimentation to be done! | |||
Another thing we focused on, though, was creating an epic feeling. We spent time trying to make these powers and the creatures using them feel like you were facing something you’d never seen before. It wasn’t enough for a Keres to have a death-energy ice blast; she needed to do it with a titan weapon slung on her shoulder and blackened shadow ice. It wasn’t enough that the Siren sang; it was her song itself that took physical form and tore into you. It wasn’t enough to have a death creature running you down; it needed to be a skittering, chittering nightmare that would be memorable because it felt different than anything you’d really seen before. | |||
'''Q)Did Paragon City have plans on how they were going to rebuild The Hollows? (@AtomikSteel)''' | |||
A) Matt (Positron) We hadn’t really planned on rebuilding the Hollows, we threw a lot of design time over the years to fix its initial implementation though. In hindsight we probably should have scrubbed it and started over with it. | |||
Tim (Black Scorp) One of the crazier EAT ideas involved the Battalion and the Rikti civil war moving forward- some Rikti becoming tenuous allies (and therefore Rikti EAT pcs). One of the underutilized hazard zones would become terraformed to be their home on Primal Earth. A similar concept involved the Recovered Devoured EAT concept and possibly one of the DE zones. | |||
'''Q) Instead of just demolishing the older zones (Galaxy CIty) was there any plans to rebuild or renew the older zones (Perez Park?) @MetalMountain''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I had a design document written up for a revamp of Perez Park. It was going to be a mix of a high level/low level zone. The Circle of Thorns would have completed a ritual and caused the main “park” to come out from beneath the ground and rise into the sky, and they would’ve begun remaking part of Oranbega there and on the ground. The ground portion would’ve remained the same level band, while the island would’ve been a high level zone. The idea was that you would see the floating islands as a vista from the city zones that surrounded Perez. We were planning on re-doing Perez Park for Freedom launch, but decided against it, as we were doing a lot as it was and the quality of the content would suffer. I wrote the doc in preparation for that, but we cut re-doing Perez Park early on. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Yeah, I know we kicked a few ideas around for Perez Park, and the rising of Oranbega just seemed appropriate. As the main 1-50 magic origin villain group in the game, the Circle of Thorns were definitely deserving of the injection of awesome. New costumes and now a whole high level zone dedicated to them. | |||
One of the things I really enjoyed talking about with Oranbega, is how it would have enjoyed U.N. protection, what with being a sovereign nation in its own right. The fact that it uglied up the Paragon City skyline with some nefarious dark wizard mojo was just salt in the wound. I had some ideas involving Oranbega playing a much more political game in the future from their base right in the heart of Paragon City. | |||
'''Q) One of my favorite additions to the game was Faultline’s update. It really made the CoH world feel “alive” or dynamic. Were there any plans to wreck different zones or rebuild others? Thanks again for all of the great times and stories. (@Peter_Chess)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Faultline’s update taught us a ton of things, primarily it was pretty much exactly the same amount of work to overhaul an existing zone as it was to make an entirely new one. Adding a new zone makes the game bigger, whereas overhauling a zone makes the game the same size, and removes something that some players liked. | |||
In the end if given a choice of overhaul or make a new zone, we almost always would choose to make a new zone (unless our focus was something like acquisition of new players, then overhauling early zones became a priority). | |||
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) I loved Faultline. It was my "baby", replete with endless easter eggs. But Matt's right. We thought it would be quick, but the old assets were so well...old, they didn't mesh easily with the newer ones and we spent time reinventing a wheel that wasn't technically broken. So it wasn't quick. In fact, if you placed old Faultline next to new Faultline you'd notice that new Faultline is 1/3 smaller. However, what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in unique areas rather than just endless crags of rock. | |||
Still love Bianco's restaurant, I had to beg to get that in there. | |||
'''Q) What with Talos. Kings Row, Steel Canyon, and Skyway being trashed in various task forces, were there ever plans to revamp those zones? Talos was kinda nice as it was, but Christ did Skyway ever need an overhaul… and were we eventually going to take back Galaxy City after the Shivans wrecked it? (@Samuraiko)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - We had some ideas of having players go back to a wrecked Galaxy City as a level 50+ zone, but to that, we would’ve had to make the Shivans way more impressive to fight. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I had laid out a massive zone revamp plan at one point, where some of the salad bar villain group treatment for the zones got reduced to tell just the core stories. It would have been a ton of work, and as Matt said in the question above, it was a hard sell when we could churn out a whole new zone instead. Still, I argued that revamping the older zones was necessary to keep new players interested, and I think the revamps for Freedom and i24 were steps in the right direction. | |||
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) I wanted to revamp Boomtown back into Baumton, complete with amusement park, fairgrounds, but there would be absolutely no asset reuse there and it never made the list for touch up. | |||
'''Q) Prometheus at one point brings up “Ascended” wells and renegade Ascended, using Rularuu as an example. Was there more intended for this concept of ascending into that kind of power in it’s own right, either for NPCs or as a further stage of Incarnate abilities waaaaay down the line? Further, who were some of these others who either ascended by circumvention or went renegade? (@Twi)''' | |||
*'''Q) The Dimensionless created the Wells, but it also seems like people / beings can contribute power to Wells, or even become Wells themselves. Additionally, it seems like beings of great power can have their power transferred in whole to a new being (Zeus -> Statesman, Merulina -> Leviathan) rather than just having it reabsorbed into a Well. Can you explain more about this? (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There isn’t really a good way to answer this without tackling the second question first, so here goes. | |||
The “Wells” were created by vastly more powerful entities than the Dimensionless. We tentatively called them the Primordials, but never settled on a player-facing name because they wouldn’t really be a factor until Issue 32 or after. The Dimensionless were the collective name for the dimension-spanning armies of each Primordial, and were charged with supervising the sapient species and their “Wells” in order to protect the first Primordial, who was bonded to the font of existence, which we internally called the Source. | |||
“Wells” were individuals chosen by the Primordials to provide a buffer between the font of existence and the sapient species to which a “Well” was tied. Essentially, once a species became sapient, its deeper potential and creativity could leverage the energy of the Source to achieve amazing feats. “Wells” were trusted to serve as control valves helping the sapients grow their potential while keeping the power-mad from coming too close to the first Primordial/Source and threatening existence. The “Wells” would be influenced by and grow with their species, and in return the species was helped to freely develop their powers and abilities as they saw fit, but without risking everything to do it. | |||
This is why rogue “Ascended” like Rularuu are considered extremely dangerous: by effectively becoming their own link to the Source, an Ascended could potentially gather enough power to challenge the Primordials themselves and change the nature of existence. Those chosen for it must be trusted; rogues are anything but. | |||
Each “Well” had a watchman from the Dimensionless, who would be a check on the “Well” to ensure it didn’t get any ideas of its own, and serve as a balance to the “Well” helping the species along. Rogues generally didn’t accept such oversight willingly, making them doubly dangerous. This oversight was Prometheus’ job, though he aggressively took the approach that the Well was a tool meant to be used by the “multiverse of humanity” to shape their destiny, while the “Well” thought its role was to shape and influence the species to grow in directions where “humanity” became his tools against other “Wells”. | |||
This conflict between the two first came to a head with the Flames of Prometheus. Zeus, one of the Well’s first champions, punished Prometheus for attempting to awaken the species’ latent ability to manipulate the Well with the Flames. Prometheus’ resentment over his punishment has festered for millennia, and he has gone from hating Zeus to hating the Well and distrusting the Dimensionless for their lack of intervention. | |||
A second factor influencing Prometheus is the success of Battalion. He sees their continual expansion across the universe as a sign that his philosophy of “Wells are tools” is correct. Combined with his resentment of the Well and his own self-importance, Battalion’s success has inspired him to the belief that he could lead humanity to shake off the Well’s control and build a better Battalion. In this sense, he denies the player the chance to become Ascended not so much because of the threat they pose to existence, but because it would obviate his role as our guide. He would once again be surpassed by those he believes owe their success to him, as Zeus had done. He would lose to those he should control. He would once again beaten by a Well. This result was something he simply would not tolerate, and we intended for this to boil over near the end of the war with Battalion. Prometheus would have eventually become a traitor to his cause (and you) as you came closer to ascension. | |||
Sometime in Issue 25/26, we planned to introduce a “Third Way” NPC, who would be a Dimensionless sent by the first Primordial to guide the players through the path between the Well and Prometheus. This is because the Dimensionless are aware that the defeat of Battalion means that those Wells they consumed would need to be taken over to save the lives of trillions, and the players would be in a position to ascend to do this. You could be a villainous Ascended, and rule like a tyrant, or a heroic Ascended, and rule like a paragon. Once this started, however, both Prometheus and the Well would personally take issue with it, and they would need to be dealt with. We never got far into designing this stage, however, since it would have happened around Issue 30-32. | |||
So, with all that out of the way, DJ Zero was one of the other Ascended. There were some others, though I cannot find those notes at the moment. The Praetorian Hamidon was certainly on its way there, though. | |||
For movement of suites of powers, this was going to be covered in the Pandora’s Box arc more thoroughly. Essentially, the Box provided a way for a “build” to be preserved separate from the “Well”, rather than be reabsorbed and redistributed. Zeus and Tartarus had done this long ago. There were many other items of great power out there that would facilitate the same thing, some of which had already been mentioned in game, and some of which we were developing. An interesting direction we planned on taking this is how these items (and the builds therein) might interact with the player, and how they could be used to assist in the war against Battalion, Prometheus and the Well. | |||
That went on awhile… someone else want to jump in? | |||
(Matt) Why? You covered it better than any of us could. | |||
'''Q) What was the lore on the Trashcan man located inside Fort Trident? If memory serves, him and his… trashcan were clickable, the latter function as a contact but had no missions. Just a little joke or was there to be more for him down the line?''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) It was originally designed that EVERY Contact have a unique story arc associated with them. In an effort to make our release date, the story arcs were condensed down into Origin-specific arcs and multiple Contacts would hand out the same arc. | |||
Trashcan Man had a unique rhyming voice to the character, so putting an existing Story Arc (or even the general missions) didn’t work for him, so he lost his “Contact” status right before Alpha. | |||
Since I liked the character so much, I made sure players visited him in a Task Force (Synapse’s, I think, I am probably wrong though). | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean): Matt, I’m not sure if they are talking about him, or the guy that Pitman had in the Arachnos recruitment area who was also ninja’d into Fort Trident to explain where he got his sweet enhancements. Basically he was a gutter rat who had the ability to pretty much get into anything and the only reason he wasn’t a smear on the training room floor was because he stole great stuff. IIRC he was effectively the villain version of B.O.T.L.E.R. | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Good lord, you’re right. I got confused with The Can Man. I always got them confused and hated the Trashcan Man name you guys chose because of that. :) | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion) The joke was his power was that anything anyone “trashed” wound up in his hands. Hence the name and the goods. | |||
'''Q) Why would you have Operative Lo Pan be a named Arachnos paper mission boss instead of a Tsoo one?''' | |||
*'''Arachnos can have Asian members too. (Felderburg)''' | |||
*'''Beyond that, all Arachnos paper mission bosses were named after movie villains. Operative Bligh, Operative Lo Pan, Operative Gruber, Operative Kurgan (have to remove the head FULLY!), the list goes on. (Kadmon)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Yeah, newspaper missions were randomly generated, and that name just was on a list. No thought put into it. | |||
'''Q) Did Statesman or Lord Recluse have a weakness? (Mentalshock)''' | |||
*'''Statesman: Darrin Wade. Lord Recluse: the short-sightedness of obsessive villainy. (DarkGob)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Both of these characters were empowered directly through the Well of Furies. This was their weakness. If you could sever that connection (which was thought to be impossible), then you could kill or destroy them. | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion) They also were influenced by the elements they were Incarnates of - having drawn that power in as opposed to entirely generating it themselves. You could say that there is an element of “living up to their roles” in how they acted. | |||
'''Q) Did PCU offer classes in power training/was it possible to get scholarships to PCU through your hero license? ( ParadoxicalOxymoron )''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) They tried to offer classes in power training, but no insurance company would cover them if they did. They did offer free classes on criminal justice to those who had hero licenses though. Better to teach them the limits of the law, and know how to spot crimes in progress. | |||
'''Q) Could you have gotten a degree in Super Heroing from PCU? And if yes, then was it a BA or BS? Was there a graduate degree program? (@AtomikSteel)''' | |||
A) See above answer. | |||
'''Q)I have always wondered, who was on the take within Paragon City Hall? All the villain groups had to have an inside man in order to pull off all of their hijinks. (@AtomikSteel)''' | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean): first, never make a list when that list doesn’t need to see the light of day. Second, i24 had a story arc in Kings Row that dealt with the Family, Skulls, and some political corruption. | |||
'''Q) Were there plans for Crey to get involved in the Incarnate arms race? What with Malta forging an alliance with Battle-Maiden, and Crey’s Paragon Protector project seeming like small beans in comparison to the rapidly upscaling power levels, how would they have kept viable as a villain group? (@Twi)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I had written out an idea that Crey were trying to biologically engineer their own incarnates in an improved version of the Revenant Program, which would involve them trying to scientifically measure Incarnates. The goal was to build an army of Incarnate Paragon Protectors. I really liked the idea that Incarnates started an arms race between high level villain groups that were trying to match the powers that were coming out. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Back in the first few drafts of Praetorian content I had Battle-Maiden and Black Scorpion having a nano-tech vs. power armor arms race for some higher end content that sent you back and forth between Primal Earth and Praetoria. We scraped it, but I had always liked the idea of Crey making a deal with the Freakshow to upgrade their cybernetics with Battle-Maiden’s nano-tech. | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) We won’t talk about the Incarnate artifacts the Countess bought up to become an Incarnate herself. That storyline lives in the same place as the one where Manticore winds up turning to her for solace after he goes fully downhill. | |||
'''Q) Simple question… where were all the buses?? Plenty of Bus Stops, but no buses! Silly cosmetic thing really, but were buses ever planned? I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s asked this? (@Wolfybane)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Sadly no. The Paragon Transit Authority switched over to 100% Monorail system shortly before 2002, but the bus stops still brought in ad revenue, so they kept them around instead of demolishing them | |||
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) If someone didn't cap off a monorail correctly, you'd get buses, of a sort. Monorails would hop the tracks and wander down streets with the cars. My question is how, considering how many ambulances were part of the atmospheric SFX no one really noticed there weren't any on the streets. | |||
'''Q) In general, what was the deal with Praetorian Hamidon? And in specific, why did it come into being so much sooner than Primal Hamidon, and if it didn’t start with Hamidon Pasalima, why was it still named Hamidon? I asked Protean about this once, and he basically said he couldn’t tell me yet, but that there was actually an important reason for it. (@TA)''' | |||
*'''I don’t remember the specifics but if I recall right, someone went overboard with nukes during an earlier war, spurring Hamidon Pasalima to take drastic actions earlier. I remember that this was mentioned somewhere in the promotional material for Going Rogue but I can’t remember where. @Mekkanos''' | |||
*'''Nukes were used in the Praetorian Korean War. I don't remember how that eventually led to Early Hamidon. (@DKellis)''' | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean): Reading between the lines, when Marcus Cole (praetorian version) disappeared after the nuclear exchange in Korea, he retreated from the world, hating what it had become. This event changed everything in Praetorian Earth. Years later, a young Dr. Hamidon, his life’s course changed by the environmental tragedy of the nuclear crisis, would discover early the means of creating the Devouring Earth. He tracked down Marcus Cole (many believed he was dead) and offered Cole the chance to be humanity’s guiding light and bring them into a new age of peace and prosperity and one-ness with the Earth. Cole dismissed him as a lunatic and thought nothing of it. | |||
Years later, Dr. Hamidon, convinced if something wasn’t done sooner than later, and untrusting of anyone else with the responsibility to guide humanity, used himself as the germinating seed that would soon become the Hamidon. The rest is more or less history that was written up on the Going Rogue website, where the Devouring Earth nearly wiped humanity out, but Cole returned to save the day. | |||
In that history, there is a moment where Cole is fighting the Hamidon (Kaiju?) and it projects a telepathic beam into Cole. During that momentary connection, Cole and Hamidon have a heart to heart discussion which he never reveals to anyone else, but it is at that time that cole convinces Hamidon to give humanity a chance to redeem themselves. Hamidon lets himself get “beaten” and waits to see if Cole can rally humanity into something worthy of saving. By the time Going Rogue begins, with the horns of war between Primal and Praetorian Earth sounding, Hamidon is unconvinced. | |||
Cole is on the fence about invading primal earth, because he knows Hamidon will be unhappy, but he also has the backup plan of simply fleeing Praetorian Earth and sealing the portal up behind him and starting anew on Primal Earth. A third option, becoming the Well’s champion, presents itself and leads to Cole’s final defeat. | |||
'''Q) How much did the US Government/Paragon City spend per year on repairs to buildings, roads, etc.? (@AtomikSteel)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The U.S. Government was asked not to step in and help, and was told Paragon City could take care of its own. Paragon City had an insane tax rate on the super-rich, and those taxes were used exclusively to pay for damages caused by super-powered beings. | |||
You see, all the Billionaire Playboys are secret (or public) IDs of super-heroes anyway, so they just thought of the tax as a work/hobby expense. | |||
'''Q) So in the Midnighter arc, the heroes help develop a cure for the Lost. Which (thanks to a bug, until they fixed it) you could actually zap the Honoree with! Was this the early groundwork for eventually restoring Hero 1? (@Samuraiko)''' | |||
*'''Much to my amusement, you could also zap the AV at the end of the Lost section of Death From Below. Not much utility there, as it robs the group of XP, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t funny :) (Kadmon)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There was a redemption/reversion arc planned but I can’t recall what it involved. I do know that when writing the Lady Grey Task Force, the writer didn’t like the fact that Hero One came back as a Lost. One of the variables in the mission data was “INeverLikedThisStoryArcAnyway”. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean): We had some discussion on bringing back Hero-1 as well as a handful of Omega Team who had somehow survived all these years on the run on Rikti Earth. IIRC Ruin had taken over Rikti Australia. The restoration of Hero-1 would have been closely related to the reveal of these characters and their work with renegade factions within the Rikti who opposed both the war on Primal Earth and the genetic modification of the Rikti people. | |||
'''Q) Prometheus told us about how the Well of the Furies came to be, and how a person came to embody it - details hazy, text isn’t in the wiki. The identity of that person was suggested to be someone we’d know of, but wasn’t revealed. Who was it, and why/how? (@TA)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Prometheus was actually referring to DJ Zero as another Ascended with whom we were already acquainted. The identity of the Well wouldn’t be someone we’d met in game at that point. “He” was already ancient when humanity came to be. Then again, Positron, Protean or Dr. Aeon may have had other ideas… | |||
'''Q) The Lore Bible suggested that it might have originally been intended for the street gangs of Paragon to remain viable threats all the way through to level 50. The way things played out, though, that was pretty much just The Freakshow (and to a lesser extent The Warriors). Were there ever any lore plans to demonstrate truly high-level versions of other street gangs? The Outcasts always seemed to have potential and the lore suggestion that Grendel gave Statesman problems suggest high danger from The Trolls. (And the mysterious leaders of The Skulls and The Hellions were probably more dangerous than their bottom-of-the-totem-pole members implied.) (@CyberSunset)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - The Skulls were getting an update for Issue 24 that would have introduced us to the three leaders, Morena, Veles and Chernobog. I believe Protean had some other future plans for them as well, but they’d have at least acquired Arch-villains and made it to level 25. We would probably have found a way for most of the other groups to get higher-level or more powerful versions if the story development merited it, but there weren’t any solid plans. | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There were two “paths” of Streetgangs in the games, the artifact ones (Hellions, Warriors, Tsoo) and the superadyne ones (Skulls, Trolls, Family). This was intended to keep the players fighting streetgangs, although ever more powerful ones, as long as possible if that’s what their character was into. There is a running storyline through the missions and story arcs of the two paths. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Part of the i24 revamp of Kings Row was to bring the Superadyne story arc into clearer focus. Before, most of the initial story is scattered through a handful of task pool contacts, which meant a good number of people probably missed them. My goal was to pull those threads out of task pools and turn them into full story arcs or even Task Forces. | |||
Part of my grand revamp plan was to really redefine the turf wars in the zones, making them “belong” more to one group or the other. The Hellions served the Warriors who were rivals to the Tsoo and Family. The Skulls and Trolls had a relationships that fed up into the Family, who opposed the Warriors and Tsoo. The Tsoo were sort of the odd men out, but were strong enough to hand without a mewling low level gang serving them. This was one major chunk of the Paragon City criminal puzzle. | |||
The other side of the coin had the paramilitary groups like the 5th Column and Council battling it out from 1-50, meanwhile the Sky Raiders and Freakshow showed up mid-level to mix things up and provide some cross over to the more gang related smash and grab activity and heists with such characters as Captain Castillo. | |||
Then you had the Circle of Thorns and Vahzilok, who were a bit more marginal and self contained. The CoT and Tsoo, however, did clash over magical matters from time to time, while the nobody really liked to mess with insane Dr. Vahzilok, whose grandiose plans petered out around level 25 anyway. | |||
'''Q) In the Going Rogue promo, Manticore and Ghost Widow were shown with auras around them. Were there plans for them to change sides at that time? If not, what were the auras meant to represent? (Liquid)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I forget. Maybe? I think it was just to represent how those characters saw themselves, Vigilante and Rogue. | |||
I know we pitched having a “major player” switch sides, but then realized the headache of all the content that character was involved in and came up with two new characters to poster-child Going Rogue. | |||
'''Q) Was Mr. G always intended to be Praetorian Protean? (Liquid)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Yes, John “Protean” Hegner had this planned from the get go. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Yeah, we wanted it to be super subtle (so totally obvious to our massive player base of apparent psychics). If you read the Praetorian content, any character that tends to repeat his last sentence is actually Doppelganger - off the top of my head I think it was just Mr. G and Tami Baker, but I am certain we hid Easter Eggs here and there. The intention was that Protean was damaged goods in Primal Earth. Doppelganger had been playing the game of masks forever and had no issues about discovering his missing identity. After all, he trained Chimera after murdering his parents. Manipulative bastard, ain’t he? | |||
'''Q) What was the Kheldian “homeworld” like, their government, native culture, etc, prior to their being a big space war? Did they evolve their symbiosis with the Dwarf/Nova races peacefully, or was that a necessity of the war with the nictus? (Spectralent)''' | |||
*'''Q: And would we ever have gotten to visit? (Memphis Bill)''' | |||
A) Matt (Positron) It was never fleshed out, afaik. | |||
'''Q)Would Tyrant redeem himself and take Statesman place? (@Night Prowler)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There were some idle discussions that mentioned this as a possibility. To my memory, it was not settled, however. | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) That was my plan. After he broke Praetoria he would see the error in his ways and redeem himself taking up the mantle of his former enemy. I know some of the writers pushed back on this saying that “Statesman is dead-dead, no backsies.” I would like to point out that this respected that and also got us our marketing poster-child back at the same time. :) | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I had a vision for Tyrant’s redemption as basically playing out similar to Hannibal Lecter. When the going gets tough for Earth, Vanguard turns to the one man who has been the Well’s Champion for some insight into how to stop Battalion. Cole basically points out that what Earth is lacking is a symbol to rally behind. Statesman was that symbol for Primal Earth, just as Emperor Cole was that symbol for Praetoria. | |||
In a massive PR move, Lady Grey and Vanguard basically convince the world (and the players) that Statesman has been resurrected. But really it’s Emperor Cole just carrying the symbol forward in order to rally Earth’s forces. I had ultimately wanted him to try to sacrifice everything in one last hurrah, but Cole’s curse would be that he could never become the man he was destined to be on Primal Earth, and would be forced to survive time and time again, never achieving the redemption and glory in death he so desired. | |||
This truth would come out issues later and cause some massive issues between Ms. Liberty and Vanguard. | |||
'''Q)Were there any plans to allow Heroes/Villians to go to the Preatorian zones for badge hunting, exploration badges, etc? (TheJudge)''' | |||
*'''I recall that they could do that anyway. The only thing they were locked out of without purchasing GR was access to story content and contacts. @Blondeshell''' | |||
A) Matt (Positron) Yeah that sounds right to my knowledge. I think there were some badges that were impossible for a non-Praetorian to attain and vice-versa. | |||
'''Q) Was there anything that the team wanted to include plotwise that was deemed too controversial or grimdark? (@Peter_Chess)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - The original introduction arc for the revamped Atlas Park involved Matthew Habashy purposefully abandoning his wife to the destruction of Galaxy City. He did it out of cowardice, and his arc was supposed to be a redemptive one where he was out to prove his love to his wife after leaving her to die. However, in our first team playtest, the content was very divisive. Some people loved it and wanted more, other people hated Matthew Habashy for what he did and wanted no part in the rest of his story. We changed it after considering that it might be too divisive for the very first story arc in the game. | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - When Positron asked for my idea for “Who Will Die?”, I suggested pretty much instantly that Sister Psyche and Manticore have a child, but she is murdered and the child kidnapped. It kind of cascaded into misery from there, but I could tell almost immediately from the reaction that it was going to a bit too dark a place. | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There was a letter for the Omega Team Time Capsule from one of the suicide team members that was very, very, grimdark. It was extremely emotional, but had such a dark ending to it that it was deemed inappropriate and (thankfully) never published. | |||
A John Hegner (Protean) - We could have taken Mother Mayhem much further, but decided she was creepy enough as is. Mother is still my favorite Praetorian baddie. Isn’t she yours? ISN’T MOTHER YOUR FAVORITE TOO!? Good. | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Minds of Mayhem remains my personal favorite of all the trials I worked on, and it couldn’t have existed without Mother Mayhem, so I second John’s motion! | |||
'''Q)What was the plot of the third novel going to be? I still re-read the other two novels every so often. (The_Judge)''' | |||
*'''I seem to remember it being “The Rikti War.” (Memphis Bill.)''' | |||
*'''That is correct. It is even mentioned on one of the last pages of the Freedom Phalanx novel (Lycantropus)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) It was to be the first Rikti War. I think that what we did in game (with the time capsule) was far superior than anything that the novel could have achieved. | |||
'''Q)With the Praetorian relocation occurring, were there plans to use the formerly Praetorian-only enemy groups in additional content? (IE The Destroyers, Syndicate) (@Carin_McLeoud)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I think we had some plans for the Syndicate to start working together with the Family. There was a long villain story arc for i24 that involved Praetorian Penelope Yin going crazy while trying to take control of the Awakened. The idea was that she would become the new leader of the Awakened and become a nemesis for primal Penelope Yin. | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - The Talons of Vengeance were everywhere, thanks to Diabolique, and as we introduced the remaining elements in new powersets (Water, Wind), we’d have continued to expand them. We also combined some other forces, mainly DUST, IDF, and Resistance into the Unified People’s Army, under Calvin Scott’s leadership. The Carnival of Light would continue under Desdemona’s guidance, though some of them would also join up with Aurora Pena, and that story could have gone a few ways (*cough*Praetor Tilman?*cough*). The Forlorn would continue to follow Noble Savage as well. The only ones I think were completely wiped out, not to appear again were the Destroyers. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - In some ways The Talons of Vengeance were the slowly creeping death that would ultimately destroy humanity. Master Midnight has a monologue where he paraphrases what they are about, and basically says that they are the literal reason why the ancient Greeks punished oathbreakers so harshly, because if left unpunished, then the punishment of the Furies (i.e. The Talons of Vengeance) would consume mankind until justice was done. The oathbreaker in this case was Emperor Cole. The oath he broke… ask Praetorian Stefan Richter. | |||
'''Q) From the Summer Blockbuster Double Feature, was there anything significant about the extra information you could get by reading the bios of the Time Gladiator enemies? I’ve occasionally wondered if the backstory for Armageddon, Apocalypse, Gotterdamerung (and the never-seen Gehenna) was meant to set up something down the line. (@CyberSunset)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I don’t think so. That whole thing was a piece of fiction within the fictional universe of CoH. (Like Tarantino’s Kill Bill). | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) I don’t know about Time Gladiator, but you could learn the oh-so-secret revelation that the devs were big fans of Leverage and Ocean’s Eleven from Casino Heist. Also, the VO for that event’s trailer was done by our lead engineer. | |||
'''Q) If you have a chance... everything in this post, which also includes questions not answered in previous AMAs as well as general dev opinion / favorites questions that only a few devs answered: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,9602.msg138418.html#msg138418 (I will post my most burning questions here, though) (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Matt (Positron) I would recommend putting questions into next year’s AMA. It’s way more convenient to work in this format than a forum post. | |||
'''Q) Who or what are the Furies? Would we have ever seen them in-game? Are they the same in both dimensions, or is it just the one set in charge of every single alternate Earth well? (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Like Prometheus is a watcher and agent of the Dimensionless, the Furies were watchers and agents of the Well. They work to see its interests preserved, but like Prometheus notes, they haven’t evolved with their master, who has changed with “humanity” through the millennia. Their ideals are ancient and somewhat out of sync with the current mindset of the Well. However, they also still serve his interests, particularly in loosing the Talons on Praetoria to test Tyrant’s mettle, so there’s not much pulling of the leash. There was only one set for all dimensions; they were made immortal by the Well’s power. I like to think they were drawn from three different dimensions, but that wasn’t official at all. Neither was their appearance. I tended to think that they would have multiple forms, and this dichotomy in form was reflected in the beautiful Sirens and the monstrous Keres. | |||
'''Q) How accurate is the 2004 Story Bible that was released? (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Story_Bible) Some of its lore is contradicted by in-game materials, while some of it is seemingly confirmed. (Felderburg)''' | |||
*'''I think that was “This is what they started with/at launch, it changed during development.” (Memphis bill)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The number of people working on the game when the bible was written as well as the last couple years of the game was TWO: Melissa and myself, and neither of us contributed greatly to the original Story Bible. | |||
I made it clear to any person who wanted to contribute to the game that they were not beholden to anything in the bible as long as it still maintained the integrity of what the players were already told and knew about. How did we remember what we told the players? ParagonWiki of course. | |||
I was convinced that if an admin at ParagonWiki knew Paragon Studios’ IP address they could look at what pages we were reading and pretty much decipher the content of our upcoming issues. | |||
That said, I am not surprised there are contradictions. If someone had an idea for backstory that contradicted something the players were never told, what kind of manager would I be to say no? “Sorry, Joe, you can’t be creative this week. Please use stuff that was written by Rick 6 years before you ever got here, even if the players have no clue about it.” I never wanted to be that guy. | |||
'''Q) Can you tell us more about the nature of Rularuu, how his dimensional devouring / transferring to himself worked? Or just everything about Rularuu in general? (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Rularuu was a very power super who, in his native dimension, grew so powerful he consumed his entire universe. Unsated, he found an alternate reality, and an alternate version of himself, and teamed up and consumed that one too. Did this over and over and over until he got to our dimension, where the Midnight Squad figured out what was going on and created a “Shadow Shard” for him to consume, and in doing so would trap him there. | |||
That was the crux of the ‘ruu. Pretty much he was our Galactus. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - What Rularuu had discovered was a means of jumping dimensions. There were some strange caveats to this process. First: He could only jump to a dimension where there existed another dimensional version of himself. Second: When he left a dimension he had traveled to (or originated in) he consumed the entirety of that dimension. This was why he was so insanely powerful. It was also the reason that Battalion feared him above all other things. | |||
It also happened to be the reason that the Dream Doctor was able to defeat Rularuu. He was Primal Earth’s version of Rularuu. It’s also why he went into hiding. He realized that as long as he stayed on Primal Earth, Rularuu could one day go to him, consume everything, and leave. | |||
Battalion sought to discover what happened to Rularuu, as they detected his arrival in our dimension, and then… nothing. This made them incredibly paranoid about Earth, for they apparently had the power to stop the Devourer of Everything. Discovering that the Dream Doctor was the key would have focused Battalion’s efforts to the nth degree in destroying him. | |||
I had wanted to have Dream Doctor sacrifice himself by merging with Rularuu and containing his dimension consuming power to just the localized area of the Battalion fleet. With Dream Doctor gone, Rularuu could never return. With the Battalion fleet annihilated, Earth gets a fighting chance and moves onto the offensive. None of this was ever given a green light or fleshed out completely in a meeting, but damn we were getting close to having those meetings where I was going to present it. | |||
'''Q) Who funded the first manufacture of Superadine back in the 70s? According to the 2004 Story Bible, Nemesis didn't know about dimensional travel until Portal Corp's presentation, so I assume it wasn't him (as he would have known about the dimensional discovery of the immoral scientists creating Superadine). (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The 70’s was a crazy time, man. There was a group of super-villain scientists who called themselves the Mood Ring (Made up of Lava Lamper, Belle Bottom, Rock Pet, Smiley Face, The Streaker, and 8-Tracks of Destruction) who perfected and sold the formula to the Family who used their considerable business interests to see to its manufacture and distribution. | |||
'''Q) Would the True Rikti have looked/acted like the regular Rikti but… bigger? Or would the True Rikti have been even more alien and bizarre? Would fighting them have been like fighting regular Rikti with lots of crazy defenses and new tech basically? (I’m similarly curious about The Dimensionless and other long-way-off enemies.) (@CyberSunset)''' | |||
*'''Would we have fought the True Rikti of our dimension, or the "fake" Rikti's dimension? (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I would have loved for them to be even more alien, on a non-humanoid animation rig for one, but that would have limited what they could do in-game, so they likely would have been humanoid, looking like super-exaggerated Rikti. | |||
Both True Rikti’s would have been in-play. The one in Rikti Dimension would have been answering the distress beacon sent before the uprising on Rikti Earth took place. They would NOT have been happy at the outcome of their race, diluting it with the genetic material of these “humans” even if it was the only possibility for their survival. | |||
True Rikti would have made their way to Primal Earth and contacted our True Rikti. We were still up in the air as to whether or not our True Rikti were conquered by Battalion or not. | |||
'''Q) In regards to existing power sets, I believe it had been brought up on the original CoH forums, were some of the underperforming (perhaps perceived as such) powersets going to be tweaked (ie: Energy Melee, Electrical Blast, Icy Assault)? Also what can be mentioned about what the other origins versions of Sorcery, and what were they going to have for powers? (ErrantBlue)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) That question is in the hands of the powers designers and not the story-guys. Maybe one day Arbiter Hawk will do a Powers AMA or something. | |||
'''Q) The initial contacts whose story arcs were replaced when COX went free to play had their own backstories (for example, the tech contact was the former hero Horatio whose armor was used to help rebuild Citadel). Were there any plans to use them at all in new content? (Blue Battler)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We were always open to the possibility, but as far as I know, no writer was running with that idea. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - The arrival of Battalion, and Earth getting its ass royally kicked, was going to have people come out of the woodwork to fight the good fight. And yes, Katie Douglas was going to have a bad hair day and take it out on a Battalion Warship. | |||
'''Q) There never seemed to be any mention of professional team sports in CoH. Was there ever a thought to expand missions, contacts, or costume sets (besides boxing) in that direction? I referenced American football in one character bio (http://cit.cohtitan.com/character/2089) but rarely heard of or saw mention of anything else even in other players’ character bios. (@Blondeshell)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Not a lot of thought went into sports in a super-powered world. I am sure that they are around, but how do you know that the guy who hit 90 home-runs last season wasn’t a telekinetic? | |||
If we ever put an arena or colosseum into CoH, we would have had to come up with some sports team. But alas, we never did. | |||
'''Q) Were the non-immortal characters (like Psyche and Statesman) supposed to be in their mid-40’s/early 50’s by the time CoH started? Or was this just sort of a screwup brought about by the timeline introduced in “The Freedom Phalanx”, which had the modern incarnation coming into being in the mid 1980’s. (@Hyperstrike)''' | |||
*'''This was just the game acknowledging “Comic book time” if I recall correctly. Basically there was no attempt to explain why some character seemed long lived yet youthful, same as Spider-man was introduced as a teenager in the early 1960s, yet is only mid twenties today. (Rune)''' | |||
*'''Additionally, States was an Incarnate, which I recall being used to explain his youth, while Psyche’s mind-riding was used at least once to explain her youth (her body somehow didn’t age without her mind in it). (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Comic-book aging, although Dr. Raymond Keyes is in his 50’s during the time of the main game. | |||
'''Q) Were there ever any regrets or apprehension in “The Origins of Power” story line being used in game to explain in game changes and/or mechanical functions of powers (ie: the introduction of diminishing returns/enhancement diversification)? (ErrantBlue)''' | |||
*'''At least one Dev had regrets about it, per the 2012 AMA question: “If you could retcon any one thing in the storyline, what would it be? Alternately, what’s the one retcon you’ve made that you later regretted?” Don’t know about any other dev’s feelings, so hopefully they answer. (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - I can’t speak for the others, as this came into the game before I joined the team, but it was certainly in the back of our mind while we developed the background that drives the Well, Prometheus, Battalion, Praetoria, the Dimensionless, the Primordials, etc. One thing we worked on in this regard for Incarnates and up was to emphasize that the Well was not the source of powers; human creativity and potential were instead leveraging the energy of the Source (which we planned to rename), through the Well, to achieve superhuman feats in whatever way they chose. The player should be the driver of their own story, and we wanted the framework to be flexible enough to accommodate that, even though it didn’t seem that way when we had to dole it out slowly. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I think if anything we regretted that we couldn’t tell it all up front without spoiling the story. We heard the outrage and had to knuckled down knowing that the pay-off in the end would more than justify the momentary appearance of lack of character control. | |||
'''Q) Were there ever any plans to finally rescue/revert Tanya/Terra from “The Terra Conspiracy?” That was a favourite, though somewhat sad, arc. (Memphis Bill)''' | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) There were plans for two Praetorian Epic Archetypes on the tables, and quite a few of the powers were actually implemented. One a Praetorian Clockwork, and one a Recovered Devoured. I think that we probably would have used the former as a way to help refresh some of the AI/robot related storylines, and the second to advance Devouring Earth plotlines like that. An way to trigger factionalizing or internal disruption to the DE might have been a good, polarizing plotline. Plus, we could probably have turned her into our own version of Sarah Kerrigan. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Unrelated except for the DE comments above. Many players asked us about what the deal was with Praetorian Infernal (since he wasn’t from Primal Earth initially anyway). We kept him off the radar for a few reasons, not the least of which was a lack of Praetorian CoT costumes. Anyway, I had toyed with the idea early on of Infernal being Cole’s greatest concern because his magic was unrivaled in Praetoria. His master stroke would have been learning of a way to use the Thorns on Hamidon and to effectively possess him and through him all of the Devouring Earth. The temp name I had for him was Hamidaemon. | |||
'''Q) Were there ever any plans (before or after release) to flesh out, or possibly branch by choice, the VEAT arcs? The later ones always felt disappointingly *rushed* to me (and let’s not get into the speech on the last one…) and given the insight from some of the independent arcs, there was potential in the banes and fortunatas. (Memphis Bill) ''' | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) It would have been a passion project by one of the staff, as there wasn’t a good case for going back. On the other hand, I could have seen Sean writing additional VEAT only optional or side content into whatever came next in terms of the Recluse/Red Widow plotlines. | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon): What Tim said. | |||
'''Q) I don’t know if any of you were present at the time, but I remember how, early in development, CoH was *very*different from the way it was at release; no archetypes, and origin mattered a lot. If you remember that far back, could anyone expand on the way it was first planned? (@Interface)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) It was before even I joined the game. It was much more freeform, but it was quickly discovered that without a guiding hand in choosing powers, a player could make a completely combat-gimped character that could never gain XP. It was then decided that a guiding hand, in the form of powersets, was the way to go. | |||
A) Melissa Bianco (War Witch) I was around for this, though I'd barely gotten past responsibilities beyond laying down combat beacons in the Sewer maps so I wasn't "in" on the design decisions or plans. It was way back in the beginning when the game had spawn generators, rudimentary loot (as in, yes you really could loot a defeated foe), a completely different UI, and the beginnings of directioned attack locations (i.e. head shot vs. leg shot). The game used a points system for abilities and, yes, Flight was pricey so while I could fly, I had no real attack powers to use as Matt mentioned. | |||
These were very reminiscent of "traditional" gameplay mechanics players were used to at the time. I believe there were inherent bonuses with whatever origin you chose, but the reward wasn't stellar - maybe something like more Heal for X and more Stamina for Y. But it did incentivize choosing X origin just for the benefits so it was scrapped. | |||
'''Q) Given the I24 changes, Blasters were, IMHO, just about right. In your opinion, were all the archetypes ‘just right’ at that point? Personally I’d say Corruptors needed a bit of love, and Warshades were still a failed experiment, but that’s just my two INF. (I know these aren’t technically Lore questions, but I really need to know.) (@Interface)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Again, outside the wheelhouse of what this AMA can easily answer. | |||
'''Q) Can you give us a general description of what the Battalion would have looked like, what they’re powers were, and how they were connected to existing lore? (@Liberties)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Battalion’s forces were sort of a mish-mash of hundreds of different alien races all subjugated to work for them. To that end the art direction was a uniform suit of power armor, made from Impervium, that we could throw into the costume creator and then put alien heads, arms, legs, and tails on in hundreds of different ways. | |||
Their powers were planned to be extreme. You would have needed level shifts to have a hope of hitting and hurting them, and surviving their attacks. They were end-game content exclusively. Non-end-game Battalion would have been lackeys like the Shivans. | |||
Battalion had an agent on Earth for decades, planting the seeds for their eventual arrival. Now, originally the Battalion bible had this as Lady Grey, who sold out to Battalion shortly after becoming head of Vanguard. This would have allowed Battalion to subvert the organization put together to stop threats like them. | |||
As time went on we eventually created a new NPC to be the “traitor to Earth”, named (XXX). This would have been cleaner and better fit with the story that the writers wanted to tell, and left Vanguard intact (not causing us a bunch of work tearing out and re-working stuff involving Lady Grey). | |||
As we worked on the story it became obvious that this new NPC was going to be the traitor, so we decided to change it. We looked at our roster of NPCs and saw that Stephen Sheridan, aka Dr. Science, fit the bill of Battalion agent perfectly. He would have used the new zone, Cole Plaza, as the staging point for the invasion by Battalion. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - IIRC there was Battalion (the race) and then there were the legions of loyal super soldiers. Levied from the myriad worlds Battalion had conquered the Wells of, these legions were equipped with the finest technology in the galaxy. The legions were going to be badasses themselves, but facing down an actual member of the true Battalion race was intended to be nothing short of epic. | |||
'''Q) Penelope Yin was revealed to be Vanessa DeVore’s daughter in the Praetorian arcs. Was there a proper backstory built around this, as it seems to really strain the timeline (with Vanessa being a graduate student and finding Giovanna Scaldi’s mask in 2000, Penelope Yin being an older teenager in 2012, and Wu Yin being noticeable older than Vanessa by some 20 years)? Where was this storyline going? (@Phoenicia)''' | |||
*'''Did this revelation of her mother apply to the Primal Earth side of things? (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Dr. Aeon had planned out Penelope’s story into Primal Earth, where she would have become the arch-villain Penelope Mayhem, leader of the Awakened. He or Protean could probably go more into her background, though. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Because the Praetorian timeline is suitably mixed up due to the events following the Korean War and the Hamidon Wars, we had license to determine that some individuals were born earlier or later than they were on Primal Earth. Vanessa DeVore is one such individual. I did have a rough timeline at one point, but I doubt it exists anywhere anymore. | |||
'''Q) Was Penny Yin's mother always intended to be DeVore? (Liquid)''' | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - To my knowledge, no. I remember connecting the potential dots at one point, mulling it over, and then excitedly dropping the idea on designers to see their reactions. Majority of reactions were positive, so we went with it. It also helped flesh out Mr. Yin as the head of the Syndicate as well. Until then, that villain group had no true heart. | |||
'''Q) OK, *one* last not-really-Lore question then I’m done. You step through a time warp back to ‘04. Axe the Fitness pool or keep it? How about Hasten? (@Interface)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - C) Buff the heck out of Pummel. (also, I’m not a powers designer) | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Axe the fitness pool. Hasten has a hilarious history. In Alpha it was way too good. If I recall correctly, there was no crash. When we added some drawbacks to it, the players went ballistic. I still remember one player claiming that it was “completely worthless now”. | |||
I would always, always, keep that player’s comment in mind whenever we would downgrade other abusive powers and players would complain. A small part of me would always think “maybe it’s not enough?” | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Fitness seemed to remind me of making a Palladium character. How everyone seemed to be a gymnast/boxer/track&field star/professional lawn dart champion, etc, because the bonuses were just too good to pass up. I always felt like choosing your tertiary power pool should have been like D&D feats. The unique spice to make your Fire Tank stand out from the Fire Tank next to him. Instead, some pools were almost universally ignored, while others, like Fitness, were pretty much required. | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) Barring any other changes, making them more like feats or utility powers from D&D 4e would have been a nice move. Several powersets suffered because thematically correct powers were in the 9, though failed to fulfill a clear mission. | |||
'''Q) Were there ever plans to delve further into Cimerora? (Lord Arkasas)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - I really wanted to expand on the Path of the Dark and its connections to Cimerora. | |||
'''Q) Less of a lore question, more of a general writing question. Were there any stories/characters/ideas you didn’t use because you thought they might be too close to existing comic stories, or would cause potential trouble with Marvel/DC? (@Cooldrew/@Crippl3)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We wanted to make a game where comic book fans could feel at home, yet at the same time make it their own. Many, many, of the storylines in CoH pay homage to classic comic book stories. GIFT was pretty much just Xavier’s School, HeroCorp was Heroes for Hire, Vanguard was S.H.I.E.L.D., Altas Park was Metropolis and Kings Row was Gotham, etc. etc. | |||
I mean, they were our own versions with their own stories and uniqueness about them, but we wanted players to find familiar footing when they played CoH. | |||
'''Q) What were the ultimate Magic origin and Technology origin threats that were conceived of by time of the sunset announcement, and what made them scarier than what we’d fought before? (@Draeth Darkstar)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - I don’t know that these were specific to an origin, but the “ultimate” threats included: | |||
*A possible battle against Praetorian Hamidon, though we were also considering other solutions to that story. | |||
*A war against Battalion, culminating in showdowns with their well-consuming “True Battalion” leadership, some as early as Issue 26. | |||
*A war against Prometheus, the Furies, and the Well to free yourself from all of them. | |||
*A war against the Primordial who came closest to eliminating the Source at the dawn of existence when he returns. You have to rally other Wells (along with some NPCs, that’s you in the post-Battalion, post-Furies world) to your side. | |||
*A war where the Concepts of Order and Chaos themselves break out of the void, culminating in battles against their personifications and the first Primordial to save (or control!) all of existence. | |||
But first you need to survive a civil war tearing the Dimensionless and their Primordial leadership apart, fraying the whole infrastructure keeping it all going. | |||
'''Q) What tabletop RPG system do you feel best fits the power scale, game style, and themes of City of Heroes? Have any of the developers designed any unofficial homebrew City of Heroes pen and paper material? (@Draeth Darkstar)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Jeff Hamiliton and I were just talking about this the other day. IMO, the best “system” for conveying a comic-book game would be something akin to Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPG system. Extremely narrative storytelling, less emphasis on making numbers into bigger numbers. | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) If I were to do it, I’d probably start with FATE. It’s got a lot of room for the player’s imaginations and thoughts to move the game along. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Power Scale, Game Style, and Themes. This sounds like you want something that plays like CoH combat. My money is firmly on D&D 4th edition. Hell, Matt even ran a Cimmerora game using 4th edition rules. I’ve seen people playing Justice League using their rules (Batman is a Rogue, fyi). But if you are looking for something that plays like a comic book, well, I would suggest modifying Dogs in the Vineyard or In a Wicked Age to use their rules but match the superhero theme, as they are heavy story games and not so much about min/maxing stats and abilities. | |||
'''Q) If City of Heroes came back would you bring back Statesman and Sister Psyche? (@Nyght Blade)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Personally, no. I hate it when comic book characters are brought back to life. | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - Same, though we did discuss it. My opinion is that there were other, more interesting stories to tell in the context of their death that wouldn’t work if they just came back to life. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Death is such a formative part of life. We had so many places we wanted the death of those two iconic characters to take us. Ms. Liberty and Manticore both have these huge gaping wounds in their hearts now, so many possibilities to go with that. We fleshed out a number of ideas as well, and they shook things up something fierce. | |||
'''Q) Something I actually quite enjoyed about the story in the game’s later years was that the villains (both groups like Arachnos, and the player character) WEREN’T incompetent; they were extremely skilled and organized, and probably accomplished more than the heroes from about Going Rogue onwards. Was this an intentional decision, or did that just happen during writing? (@Cleretic)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Villain groups in games fascinated me, and I was a big City of Villains player. I loved being able to advance the stories of villain groups and the player villain. One of my favorite was with Malta, Praetoria, and Incarnates. I loved the idea of Malta rescuing Battle Maiden, since she was totally powered by technological means. It was a lesson I personally learned in the Alpha Strike task force where people said it didn’t feel good to be fighting Malta when you’re an Incarnate - why are they a threat? That’s when I began to think… this must be what the villain groups are thinking. How can we face Incarnates, and what do we do to solve this? | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) Heroes had a ton of advantages, and it felt like the momentum was on their side - villains needed to step it up to keep pace, and we wanted to ramp up the stakes at the high-end. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - A hero is only as good as their villain. Definitely intentional. The writing for Praetoria necessitated that shift in possibility, since a decidedly non-heroic faction had taken power in Praetoria. Furthermore, the capacity for humanity to overcome obstacles basically empowered villain groups like Malta to start catching up. Only the inclusion of Incarnates kept the heroes a step ahead of them. Basically, the heroes shine brightest when surrounded by darkness, and we wanted things to get oh so dark. | |||
'''Q) One thing I never really got an answer to was, what was going on with Primal Earth’s Furies while Praetoria’s (insane) Furies were running rampant in our world? Why did they not intervene? (@Lycantropus)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There’s only one set of Furies. They unleash the Talons of Vengeance, their army of the Well’s will, on Praetoria because of Emperor Cole’s actions when claiming his power. Primal Earth originally did nothing to offend the Well or the Furies, so the Talons had no business there, until Diabolique fled there and Mot started waking up. | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) They trusted Statesman to do the right thing. I suppose they would had some reaction after his death. | |||
'''Q) Speaking of Primal Earth’s Furies, they had a resturant in Kings Row at the top of a building. Was that ever planned to be represented in game (or was it and we just didn’t know-if so, where!?)? (@Lycantropus)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - There were some talks about it appearing in the Pandora’s Box arc, but I think that was scrapped. Someone else could elaborate more on that arc. If not there, it would have likely been seen when it came time to face them. | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I wanted that restaurant so bad. One of my driving goals was to get things referenced in the novels and comics into the game whenever possible. | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) That would have been a great place to use the phasing tech. What has looked like a bunch of vents and water towers on top of that building suddenly appears to be a restaurant now that you’ve completed the story arc. | |||
'''Q) Were there any Easter eggs that no one ever seemed to find? (@Crantz)''' | |||
*'''Per previous AMA: “The Producers were the keepers of the Easter Eggs, so bug Melissa Bianco or Nate Birkholz. (Matt)” So if they’re around for this AMA, hopefully they’ll be asked. (Felderburg)''' | |||
*'''Oh, okay, thank you (@crantz)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) I don’t think anyone noticed that there was a skull on each and every cover of the Who Will Die? SSA.<br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//6/69/Who_Will_Die_Part_1.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//7/71/Who_Will_Die_Part_2.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_3.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_4.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_5.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_6.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Who_Will_Die_Part_7.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
For Pandora’s Box there is a Nemesis tidbit contained in every cover.<br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/w/images//3/34/Pandora%27s_Box_Part_1.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Pandora%27s_Box_Part_2.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Pandora%27s_Box_Part_3.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
<nowiki>http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/File:Pandora%27s_Box_Part_4.jpg</nowiki><br> | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I know it took months before anyone finally triggered the massive Hamidon tentacles outside of the sonic fencing in Praetoria, and months later someone finally got a screen shot after people were talking on the forums about hearing or seeing “something” out there. | |||
I remember the design team got dragged into the sound designer’s office at one point when it was all finally hooked up for the first time, and played it. My immediate response was, “I’m a loyalist!” | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) Null the Gull’s talk tree had a certain path through it that seemed like it was looping, but it was just repeating the same text in different internal states. If you kept going in the right pattern for about 10-12 pages, it did a badgegrantall on your character. No one found that on Live. (WHAT?! - Matt) | |||
[[File:Gullible.png]] | |||
{{EdNote|note=The '''Gullible''' badge was created by [[User:Leandro|Leandro]] and posted via twitter, in response to Positron's response above. Positron then added it to the AMA doc.}} | |||
'''Q) Did Nemesis have a real name? If he didn't, do you want to make one up right now? (@Crantz)''' | |||
*'''According to the novel “The Freedom Phalanx”, his name was Gerhardt Eisenstadt from Austria in the late 1800’s (@Lycantropus)''' | |||
*'''Ah! Thank you (@crantz)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Yes, Mr. Eisenstadt was a gifted clockmaker and toy maker, and well ahead of his time. | |||
'''Q) If Megan Duncan learned of the ability to resurrect someone who died (per the Valentine event) why did she choose to bring back Red Widow instead of her grandfather or Sister Psyche so soon after their deaths (this Valentine event was presented shortly after the Who Will Die arc reached that point so it just seemed weird)?(@Lycantropus)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Statesman wasn’t killed, he was destroyed, so no resurrection magic would work. Sister Psyche was killed on the cusp of frying the minds of everyone on Earth. Bringing her back would just resume the countdown, so that was out of the question until a solution to that problem could be found. | |||
'''Q)We never saw how the Signature Story Arc “Pandora’s Box ended. How was that all going to play out? (@Lycantropus)''' | |||
*'''Episode 5 did get released to the beta server before shutdown, and both the hero and villain versions are documented at Paragon Wiki. http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Pandora%27s_Box_(SSA) (@Blondeshell)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) That’s a great resource for that sort of thing. Far better than what we have access to. | |||
'''Q) Can we just make a big, running doc left open for questions, that devs can answer as they see fit? It seems like it’s sort of a chore to try and gather a bunch of people once a year, and it would also help get more responses to general “what was your favorite ___?” type questions, which seem to be answered by only a few devs at a time. (Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Then what would we do every April? This is more fun (and less year-round work). | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I agree with Matt. Having it be a “time of year” brings it more into focus that if it was just sitting there all the time. How often would I be expected to check it? I wouldn’t want you guys to feel let down if I got distracted by something shine-tastic and didn’t answer for months on end. | |||
'''Q) Is there anything you can tell us about what was going to happen story-wise at Kallisti Wharf? I know some of the arcs that were in beta made some mention of it apparently being a source of a lot of technology, which seemed to interest Arachnos. (@Mekkanos)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - A new friend of the people would present a technologically advanced waterfront development to the people of Paragon City, complete with memorial to Statesman. He would be a totally innocent, upstanding citizen, and not in any way connected to Battalion. Certainly not one of the well-consuming true Battalion, ruler over an army designed to crush resistance before it even notices a... Coming Storm? | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We changed the traitor to Stephen Sheridan after Chris left. :) | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - The storyline would still firmly point the finger at the new guy, then Steve Sheridan was going to blindside everyone. Oh what could have been! | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - What about Shiva? Was that event still kicking around? That would have been a really fun event… indeed, what could have been! | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - If I recall correctly, the idea was Battalion would show up for the first time at the opening of Statesman One. A portal into the Shadow Shard would open, and Battalion would begin to try and actively attack and destroy it in order to stop Rularuu, who they devised was the only being powerful enough to completely stop them. Their main plan was to bombard it from space and then Shiva would deliver the final blow. I think in the last month before we were shut down Addison Delaney, one of our environment artists, had finished the initial pass of the final fight, which would have taken place in space on top of Shiva, and ended back down in a crater in a random part of the world. At the end, Steven Sheridan, revealed as a Battalion agent, would arrive to fight you. I think if you were a hero, you fought him on Shiva and used Shiva’s power to launch him back down to Earth. If you were a villain, your overall goal was to take a chunk of Shiva’s power for yourself, and we planned that the villain, temporarily gaining the strength of Shiva, would have a drag-out brawl with Steve Sheridan, who eventually would retreat before the villain’s power was removed. This was all in the first pass phase, so nothing was too set in stone… ish. | |||
My favorite… FAVORITE… part of Kallisti Wharf, was the villain section, which was a bit more fleshed out. The idea was that your villain was planning their biggest move yet, which involved crashing Statesman One Plaza durings it opening ceremony. You set up a secret base within Kallisti Wharf, and then summoned previous contacts to aid you. For example, in the unreleased i24, you gained allies in Mr. G, TRANSMUTOR, and a few others. If you didn’t betray them in the end, they would show up in the i25 arc to help you, along with Dean MacArthur, Leonard, and Vincent Ross, if you did their arcs. You had a choice at the start of a few missions of who to bring with you. | |||
I think the ultimate goal was if you summoned Dean, he would have no powers whatsoever, but would just shout out one liners. We also had a mission that we had (sort of) gotten to work where you as the villain had to defend your secret base from incoming heroes. The owner of the mission wouldn’t fight - they would be flying around placing items to fight groups of heroes. If you were teamed, your teammates would be on the ground fighting. If you had NPC allies, they would be your “heroes” who you could order around to move, attack, defend, like mastermind pets. This was all in the extremely experimental phase, but it would’ve been amazing to get it off the ground and in. | |||
'''Q) The Drudges, and Night Ward in general: What’s going on with the British themes? Is Praetoria actually in the British Isles, or is something else going on? Also, are the Hooded Lanterns supposed to be “unformed” Drudges, or just conjured entities? (@Goblinman)''' | |||
A) Tim Sweeney (Black Scorp) The Black knights and Pendragon had a large effect on the artistic focus for the zone, and the Midnight Squad being similar to the stereotypical British “Watchers” can also be blamed for this. Night Ward was also supposed to evoke “not of the present time, but containing the past,” and “British” tends to read as “old.” It had a good deal of influence on the art, and also gave the excuse to put a blue police box in Night Ward. Part of Pendragon’s shtick is his deep connection to the ideas and collective spirit of the Isles, so as in-world explanations go it is somewhat plausible. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Whispering Coyote mentions that the Drudges took samples of the world of the living to model their enterprise on. He mentions the DMV amongst other things, IIRC. The cruel task masters took a page from Industrial Age Britain for their efficient utilization of labor for profits, those profits coming from shipping souls in exchange for wax to keep their candles burning. | |||
'''Q) What was the deal with Number Six from the I24 beta? It’s implied that he was the AI Executable Number Six from one of the early Crey arcs. In fact, he outright said that things were simpler when he was Executable Number Six at one point. However, his bio claimed that he was a human with the ability to turn himself digital and his “real” name sounds humanlike. Which was he; human or AI? Was he an AI that was pretending to be human, maybe? (@Mekkanos) | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - He was Executable Number Six. I wrote that arc. Bonus trivia, we squeezed in that Incarnate Arc when we noticed we had nothing for solo incarnates for i24. His initial character was someone who could turn himself digital, but then I decided it would be much more interesting if he tied back to Executable Number Six. He would have more backstory, and create a conflict between Crey and Vanguard. However, the idea was that he was originally human with the super power to turn himself digital, but that Crey trapped him in a computer for so long that he nearly lost his mind.''' | |||
'''Q) Was there anything planned for the Lord of Frosts from the backstory lore? To recap, he was the leader of the Imperial Japanese supers in WW2, and he "vanished mysteriously" along with his US counterpart Captain Volcano at the end of WW2. (@DKellis)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Nothing planned, sorry. | |||
'''Q) Can you go into more detail on the actual background of Countess Crey, and was the Clarissa van Dorn personality made up by her (Countess Crey) or was it an actual person that she was impersonating? (@Liberties)''' | |||
*'''Clarissa Van Dorn was a real person. In fact, in the arc where you find out about Countess Crey’s background (Check it out [[Janet Kellum|here]]), you find Clarissa Van Dorn’s dead body. That’s what spurs the whole''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Looks like someone got cut off writing that, but yes, that was all resolved in-game. | |||
'''Q) Were there any future plans concerning the Freedom Phalanx and their HQ? In the SSA, their meetings seemed to take place mostly within the underground/cave base in Atlas Park, but it seemed kind of lackluster compared to the likes of Grandville and Cole's tower in Nova Praetoria. Expanding on that, were there ever any past plans to give a group a headquarters that didn't work out, or any headquarters that you had planned to introduce in the future? (@Scitenik)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The Freedom Phalanx “main HQ” was more of a gathering point than a Watchtower-like HQ. Each member had their own base that fit their own needs, and they only gathered at the main FP HQ when briefing the team on a crisis worthy of their combined talents. | |||
As for the second part of your question, “not really”. But in a similar vein I really wanted you to be able to buy vistas that you could stick on the walls of your Supergroup Base that would show a windowbox of an in-game zone (totally faked), so that you could deem your base as existing in that zone. The aritsts claimed they couldn’t make it look good, so they nixed the idea in the planning stage. I’m still sad. | |||
A) Shiny bases exist to get blown up (cf. Tyrant’s Tower, and every action movie with a cool base ever -- how many Helicarriers are they going to go through at S.H.I.E.L.D.?). I’m sure this would have happened to the Moonbase, should we have ever gotten there. | |||
'''Q) Did you guys have any plans for future storylines involving S.A.M. (Superpowered Activities Monitoring) or FBSA (Federal Bureau for Super-Powered Affairs)? (@Scitenik)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) There would have probably been a time in the future where we had to do our “Government Taking Control of Supers” storyline, but that wasn’t in the next few issues planned (that was all Battalion). | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - S.A.M., for the record, was intended to be annoying and redundant, like any good overfunded government program. Some group decided that they didn’t like how FBSA ran things and figured they could annoy the piss out of Congress enough to warrant them slipping in a loophole to give S.A.M. traction and legal authority. This was intended to make friction and provide a hook later for some government vs. government infighting. | |||
'''Q) Were there any plans for Praetorian zones after Night Ward? Or in continuing the Resistance/Loyalist storylines in the Primal Zones (similar to the arcs that were available in the i24 beta that involved the fallout from Tyrant's Trial)? (@Scitenik)''' | |||
A) Chris Behrens (Baryonyx) - We thought about filling out Praetoria to 50, including going out into the Hamidon Wastes, but it was hard to justify it given concerns about Praetoria fatigue and the fact that Issue 24 spelled out the world’s fate. | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Yeah, players made it clear that they were getting sick of Praetoria, so we expedited its demise. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) After working on Praetoria for nearly 4 years, I was getting a bit sick of it too. Though, we did have a plan to take players to Neo Tokyo at one point for 40+ content. | |||
'''Q) Was the Prime/main universe the only one with Kheldians? It always seemed strange that they never showed up ‘canonically’ in multiversal arcs. (@Tab)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Battalion’s existence ties directly with why Kheldians are on Earth. Battalion doesn’t exist in other universes like it does in ours, hence why Kheldians never play a role in multidimensional stories. | |||
'''Q) Were there plans in the making for a special event for this year, 10 year anniversary of the game. And is it possible to get the badge for this (@Dark Energon)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) We hadn’t got to this point yet in our planning. | |||
'''Q) Can you explain how the CoS strongmen were recruited/created? One arc suggested they were dead, but the wiki talks about their loyal service. (@Sooner)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) The dead can be extremely loyal. | |||
'''Q) Why were the remaining members of W.I.S.D.O.M., Rose Star and Spark Blade never added to the game? Were there plans to add them? Also, what is W.I.S.D.O.M. an acronym for? (Peacemaker - copied from Titan forums by Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Art time to do their costumes. | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Pretty much. They had elaborate costumes that didn’t justify the art time needed to put them into the game. And I have no recollection of what WISDOM stood for, but it was probably something Korean. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - I strongly supported having Rose Star step up her game to fill in for Statesman as primary tank on the Freedom Phalanx. I thought it would be badass to have her take the hits and show Spark Blade and the other gents that she doesn’t need protecting, but the backup is nice to have. | |||
'''Q) Did Katie Douglas survive the destruction of Praetoria - and if she did, was she going to appear in any further content? (Golden Girl - copied from Titan forums by Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon) - Katie Douglas did survive everything and was part of the Praetorian refugees who arrived on Primal Earth. I had an idea that she would one day join the New Praetorians if the Praetorian Aurora Borealis ever left it. | |||
A) John Hegner (Protean) - Katie Douglas is such a fun character for me. She evolved from what was intended to be a glimpse into the life of a seer and became pretty much the poster child for Praetoria and gained a cult following. Definitely psychic manipulation going on there. | |||
'''Q) I've got one more - when the 5th Column returned, during some of their street fights with the Council, a 5th Column soldier would sometimes unfavorably compare the Council's base on Striga with their own secret base, which they claimed was in the heart of the city - where was it located, and was it going to play a role in any future content? (Golden Girl - copied from Titan forums by Felderburg)''' | |||
A) Matt Miller (Positron) Weird, I don’t recall that. I mean, the 5th Column base was on the moon, why would they claim otherwise?}} | |||
=== <div style="font-weight:bold;text-align:center;border-top:1px solid #5555FF;border-bottom:1px solid #5555FF;background-color:#ffffff;margin:1em;padding:0.2em;font-size:1.2em">'''AMA: 2015'''</div> === | |||
On April 24th, 2015, Positron released a [https://twitter.com/MMODesigner/status/591725359634075648 tweet] with a link to a [http://goo.gl/forms/B3k5ebv5Zy Google Docs form] for submitting questions. The form was open until April 28th, and players were limited to one "lore related (not business, development, or systems / powers)" question. Upon submitting a question, the form noted that answers would be "made available sometime the week of May 3rd." After the form was closed, it told players that it was not accepting further submissions, but to "Try again next year!" | |||
On May 17th, 2015 Positron released a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IiWUZeUrkFkeTobtQpaRY2WONFdXvjlxjphs4eoG1ck/pub Google Doc] with the 2015 AMA answers. The devs that answered are: | |||
* Matt Miller, a.k.a. [[Positron (Developer)|Positron]] | |||
* Sean McCann, a.k.a. [[Dr. Aeon (Developer)|Dr. Aeon]] | |||
* John Hegner, a.k.a. [[Protean (Developer)|Protean]] | |||
The fourth Lore AMA at its time of release (May 17th, 2015) is as follows: | |||
{{hidden|City of Heroes Loregasm 2015|bg1=#ccccff|content={{EdNote|note=This document is presented largely as it appeared at release. Minor changes to formatting have been included, and images are shown rather than text links where relevant.}} | |||
'''Matsuri: Were any aspects of the comics that were released inspired by often unknown or not implemented lore or storylines?''' | |||
Positron: Pretty much all of them, especially the Blue King comics written by Rick Dakan. He took the parts of the story bible that he wrote that might not have been in the game at the time and fleshed them out into comic book form. Sean "Manticore" Fish also continued this tradition while running the Top Cow run. | |||
'''Samuraiko: Which story arcs are you a) most proud of, b) most ashamed of, and c) most wishing you had the chance to go back and revamp lorewise?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: Most Proud Of: Dark Astoria. I'm not really ashamed of any of them, but I do wish I could go back and tweak the Roy Cooling story. | |||
'''Jargo: Is Mender Silos actually Lord Nemesis?''' | |||
Positron: Yes. He's from 10,000 years in the future though, enough time to truly rehabilitate and see the results of his actions. Since he's just a consciousness in a robot body, he just kept transferring into new (older) versions of himself to get past his time-travel tether. | |||
'''Blackout: Ok, this is gonna be kind of a long one, but what was up with Eisensturm?''' | |||
'''He's described as being the leader of the Storm Korps (The sort of Nazi 5th column equivalent during WWII, the column, whilst German were involved more with the Italians than with the Nazi's back in the day). Furthermore, what little lore there is on them places them at Normandy on D-Day, and the Statesman is described as being injured during this battle to the point where he was unable to take part in the rest of the war; Did they do that? Did Eisensturm and the Storm Korps beat down the most powerful superhero on the planet so badly that he was hospitalized for months? That's kind of significant for such an overlooked character.''' | |||
'''In addition to this they also kidnapped the King of England (again pretty significant) and nearly succeeded in escaping with him. Finally the last piece of lore regarding them describes all but five of them being killed by the First Hero Brigade in the Black forest of Germany at the very end of the war, but it doesn't actually specify who survived. Did Eisensturm survive? If so is he still alive in a prison somewhere?''' | |||
Positron: Short answer to a long question: I had completely forgotten about Eisensturm until you brought it up, that’s how little effect his story had on the game as a whole. Sorry. | |||
'''@Nyght Blade: What events would you make to celebrate the 11th Anniversary to City of Heroes if the game was still running?''' | |||
Positron: Something we would have figured out about 3 months before the anniversary, probably. Maybe less. | |||
'''Zombie Fryer: What flavor jello is Hamidon?''' | |||
Positron: None, since he's more of a celled organism than a by-product of animal bones. | |||
'''Kheldarn: In the story arc, "The Cult Of The Shaper", from Diviner Maros, you encounter Barracuda trying to find out what happened to her. You end up having to fight, and defeat her, before she can find out. What happened to her that she's not supposed to discover, and why?''' | |||
Positron: I must apologize, I don’t know the answer, and it looks like everyone who looked at these questions didn’t know either. This will have to go on as unanswered. | |||
'''Blue Battler: Was there ever any thought given to introducing Professor Null and Revenant (Positron and Synapse's archenemies from the Freedom Phalanx novel) into the game?''' | |||
Positron: I think there was plans for them for the unreleased "Rikti War" novel, but since that never materialized they were fair game for us to use, only no one on the team actually wanted to use them, so they went unused. | |||
'''Felderburg: In the story for the Rikti invasion ([http://web.archive.org/web/20121025125040/http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/game_info/history/paragon_city_alien_invasion.php]) it notes that the entire world was affected. Right after the first Rikti invasion, what was the status of Rikti in the rest of the world? Do places like London and Tokyo have the same sort of Rikti infestation that Paragon does?''' | |||
Positron: The Rikti were pushed back to the portals in Paragon City, so that's where the majority of them have been found. There might be a small "undiscovered tribes" of Rikti popping up from time to time in other parts of the world, but it's rare. | |||
'''@duane: Many hero missions to kick COT butt had sewer or abandon mine entries. | |||
'''Is Oranbega "under" Paragon City or just accessible by dimensional portals "under" Paragon City?''' | |||
Positron: Orenbega is literally under Paragon City, no dimensional portals needed to access it. | |||
'''Lord Epsilon: My question is this: What is it like in Paragon City these days, now that the BSHA (Bureau of Super-Human Affairs) has been defunded? Are Skulls and Hellions just sitting around, moping about a lack of thrill in doing heists, since there's no one there that can legally stop them anymore?''' | |||
Positron: I am sure an alternate reality like the one you describe exists. | |||
'''6X: Say two mid-game villain groups had to merge together to become big enough to survive into the late game, what two groups do you think would work lore wise, and also from a gameplay challenge perspective? Were there plans for anything like this?''' | |||
Positron: We’d never thought about combining groups for late game. We had a zillion ideas for new groups for late game though. | |||
'''Todogut: Matt, you tweeted, "When I went to Korea to pitch CoH2, I set my luggage combo to be the planned release date. My luggage combo is 914." Please tell more about the pitch for CoH2. What did the pitch consist of? How was it received? Would CoH2 have replaced CoH... or would they have coexisted? How would CoH2 have differed from CoH? I'm very intrigued about what might have been.''' | |||
Positron: I've probably said too much already with just that tweet. | |||
'''Zombie Hustler: During the revamped Dark Astoria story arcs, Battle Maiden is freed by and teams up with Malta. What was planned for the ultimate outcome of this pairing?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: The plan was that she would help give a major upgrade to all of Malta by giving them the secrets to her nanite tech. The set up was for Incarnate-Level Malta with new powers, in the future. Imagine that! | |||
'''KelpPlankton: Portal Corp introduced us to the idea of a CoH multiverse, but outside of Praetoria we mostly just saw ones that were like "world where <enemy group> took over the planet" and not a lot of fully alternate Earths like the Praetorians. Are there any other ones like that, drastically different Earths, that we never got to see?''' | |||
Positron: Of course! However, the game wasn't a Sliders MMO, so visiting alternate dimensions was just one thing you could do, and Praetoria got the most amount of attention from us, so it's the most fully fleshed out. With Praetoria behind us we moved on to other classic tropey comic book stories, like the planned outer-space stuff and the moon base. | |||
'''Black WildFire: You've said previously Lady Grey was being considered to be a sleeper agent for the Battalion. Does this mean she may not be human and instead be one of the many races absorbed into the Battalion? Was she planning on syphoning Darrin Wade's knowledge to use against Earth?''' | |||
Protean: This story thread had a few iterations and some supporters of her being a double agent, while others wanted her to be loyal through and through. | |||
Dr. Aeon: Adding to what Protean said, I think in the end we moved away from Lady Grey being a double agent and instead chose Steve Sheridan. | |||
'''Czar Bal: I have always wonder who/what was Black Heart (Black Heart Memorial Hospital from many of the villain zones)?''' | |||
{{EdNote|note=The question about Black Heart appeared after the Lady Grey question and before its answers in the original document, and went unanswered. However, information may be found at the [[Black Heart Memorial Hospital|Black Heart Memorial Hospital article]]. According to [[Manticore (Developer)|Manticore's]] Canon Q&A Thread: "Black Heart is an homage to Sacred Heart Hospital. If there is a Black Heart in the Rogue Isles, he or she has yet to make a move."}} | |||
'''Mesmorizer: Ruladak, Faathim, and Lunaruu were all very interesting and distinct personalities in the Shadow Shard. Did you ever plan to include Chularn the Slave Lord, Kuularth the Scavenger, Aloore''' | |||
Positron: If the need arose to use more aspects, sure. But I don’t think we wanted to visit that well too often. | |||
'''Zemo: Why was nessie such a weakling''' | |||
Positron: That’s what she wanted you to believe. | |||
'''Joosy aka Control Queen: What was the real secret (if any) behind Ouroboros? Where they recruiting us to save the future or actually destroy it?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: From my memory: Ouroboros's goal was to use the power of Rularuu to destroy Battalion. Mender Silos aka Nemesis witnessed Battallio's wiping the floor with Earth's heroes and villains, even after the whole world united to take them on. After centuries on the run and planning everything out, Nemesis realized the only way to defeat Battalion would be to unleash Rularuu upon the core structure of the group. So, Ouroboros wanted to save the timeline by using Rularuu as a nuclear option, while Dream Doctor and his team wanted to find a different solution. Internally, when we were planning it out, the idea was that when the time actually arrived, we'd show the core Battalion leadership to be someting like Incarnate Level 100, but that you could defeat them with the help of Rularuu.... which a whole other story! | |||
'''Fescu: As far as I know there were never any actual retcons when Going Rogue went live, and the old lore states that Praetorian Earth did have a Rikti Invasion. A few of the new missions even have war walls in them. So how come the populace doesn't appear to know about the Rikti?''' | |||
Positron: We retconned out the Rikti invasion of Praetoria and replaced it with the Hamidon-threat. Sorry to burst your bubble. | |||
'''SaffyMcA: Was there a lore-specific reason why some NPC groups had access to power combinations that players couldn't, such as the Tsoo with their storm summoning martial artists?''' | |||
Positron: Devs cheat. | |||
'''@Artificial Intel: What exactly happened to Arachnos, Lord Recluse, and the four generals during the events of Going Rogue? It seemed like outside of a brief excursion into Praetoria and the Well, they completely took the backseat compared to the Freedom Phalanx and Longbow.''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: If I remember, Arachnos was actually trying to support the Resistance in Praetoria to destabilize Cole's regime. Lord Recluse wanted Tyrant out of the picture, knowing that Tyrant killed Recluse in Praetoria's timeline. | |||
'''NerfedAgain: Where did all the witches, werewolves, ghosts, zombies and other Halloween-specific monsters go after Halloween ended? And was there anymore story behind the Deadly Apocalypse Halloween event beyond different groups showing up and summoning a giant monster that had to be stopped? I always wanted to know what they were up to during the rest of the year.''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: You thought they were monsters? My God. | |||
'''E.Normus: What was the long-term story and details about the rest of the Incarnate Powers and the end of that storyline?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: i25 (I think?) was going to have Battalion's first invasion of Earth in Kallisti Wharf. We would have established 2 competing "time travel" groups; Dream Doctor's team and Ouroboros. Dream Doctor still would have been the, "we can defeat Battalion if we figure out something", while Mender Silos was in the camp of, "the only way to destroy Battalion is to unleash Rularuu upon them and then somehow destroy Rularuu." We had revealed that Rularuu being sealed in the Shadow Shard was not part of Dream Doctor's plan. The Dagger of Jocas was supposed to kill Rularuu, but someone had gone back in time to tamper with the ritual and instead created a container for Rularuu to be used in the future. There was going to be a lot of fighting with Battalion and eventually culminate in the two sides coming together to release Rularuu when it became obvious that there was no way to defeat Battalion. The players would've faced the leadership of Battalion, who were out of anyone's league, essentially fighting the end boss of a game, but you're only on hour 2. The goal of the fight would've been to release Rularuu. Dream Doctor would have sacrificed his life to bring Rularuu back into the world to destroy Battalion, but not blink all of the universe out of existence. That was going to be the end of the current Incarnate storyline, but we already had plans for what was after that. The leadership of Battalion were essentially Incarnate level 100; players would've been barely incarnate level 56. There would be a LOT of bad guys between 56 and 100 that now no longer had to fear Battalion's influence to deal with. Also, I think we had some vague ideas to do more with the Shadow Shard, assuming that Rularuu was now even further shattered than before. ... I think. | |||
'''MechaCrash: One of the generic villains from bank robbery missions, Pyra, looked like she had cat ears. Was she a catgirl or what?''' | |||
Positron: Yes. | |||
'''Michiel: One of my favorite villain groups was the Vahzilok, and I was always hoping that there would eventually be higher level content for the good doctor. It just seemed like a natural progression for a man bent on immortality to show back up and be more powerful than when we lasts him. Were there any plans to have new Vahzilok content, or to create another higher level, horror themed villain group?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: No plans that I'm aware of, but it would've been cool to bring Dr. Vahzilok in as a support character. | |||
'''Gaymer: Where there any future plans for Lusca (story arch development to further flesh her out)?''' | |||
Positron: Not that I can recall. | |||
'''Elindor: What was the source of Kheldian abilities? With Shapeshifting, Energy Projection, Flight, Healing and that Team Buff going on, the best I can come up with is a combination of being able to freely convert matter and energy and the Force.''' | |||
Positron: [[File:Aliens LoreAMA2015.png|150px]] | |||
'''Capt. Obvious: Do you think you would have added additional "media" contacts like Radio, and Television.''' | |||
Protean: We had HD in Praetoria and had talked at length about Internet | |||
'''Mentalshock: What would the next step have been if Nemesis had succeeded in uploading himself into the Rikti Hive Mind? I find it hard to believe that that was a final goal - obviously the greatest mastermind in the world would have had plans to use such an asset.''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: Go.Hunt.Kill.Heroes | |||
'''Mr. Titan: Was "Hero 1" originally a placeholder name for the cape mission that just stuck?''' | |||
Positron: Hero 1 was in the backstory for years before we decided to put a cape mission in. His concept art was the most “capey” so we drummed up the idea that you had to honor his memory in order to get a cape. | |||
{{EdNote|note=[[File:Hero1WP1600B.jpg|center|200px]]{{center|The concept art as seen in the [[City of Heroes Fansite Kit]].}}}} | |||
'''Pogoman: Were there any easter eggs you guys put into the game for the players to find and the players never did? If so what were they?''' | |||
Positron: We get this question every year, and every year it’s harder and harder to remember what you guys did and did not find. Probably at this point just in-jokes and names based on people we know. | |||
'''HarvesterOfEyes: Whatever happened to Tabitha Fabish? | |||
She was the original owner of the magic-origin shops in Talos and IP. One day her signage was replaced with that of a Mexican restaurant, and when those were removed the shops were taken over by Pandora's Box. | |||
As Frida Lyngstad would say, "there's something going on."''' | |||
Positron: She slipped dimensions trying a new spell. Lost forever. | |||
'''Rise of Heroes: Hey, i'm kinda wanna know when does the City of Heroes return, i actually getting each tears when i see it's gone, Please return :_: When??''' | |||
Positron: Not something I can answer, sadly. | |||
'''Venture: Excalibur as seen on Ms Liberty's belt does not match Excalibur as seen wielded by Hero 1. | |||
{{center|<gallery heights=200px caption="Images linked in AMA question (Click for full size images)"> | |||
File:Ms. Liberty old.jpg|Miss Liberty in game | |||
File:Hero1Glory.jpg|An unused model of Hero 1 | |||
</gallery>}} | |||
'''Is there a lore reason for this or is it more a design issue due to the size of Ms Lib's character in game?''' | |||
Positron: Artistic license. That and Excalibur can morph itself into whatever shape it (i.e. the artist drawing it) desires. | |||
'''Arkasas: What was the story rationale going to be behind opening Kallisti Wharf?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: Kallisti Wharf was one of the "in between" neighborhoods that was decimated in the Rikti War. The opening was to commemorate the rebuilding of the wharf and also Paragon City's continued recovery. It was going to be marked by the opening of Statesman One Plaza in honor of Statesman, which would be a huge tower dedicated to the pursuit of technology and science. It was going to be previously named after a brilliant scientist, Emil Christie, but he offered instead to name it after Statesman after the events in Who Will Die. Emil Christie was a pupil of Steven Sheridan, and the two worked hard to build the infrastructure of the tower. | |||
The storyline of Kallisti Wharf was going to be seen on two sides - heroes and villains. Heroes would be working to help secure Kallisti Wharf in the final days before its release, while villains were working towards establishing their own villain base in the heart of Kallisti Wharf with the aim of taking over Statesman One Plaza. The villain storyline was going to be the culmination of several story previous story arcs, where the villain had gathered their own villainous inner circle of previous contacts - evil Penelope Yin, Transmutor, Agent G (if he was still alive), Leonard, Dean MacArthur, to name a few. | |||
Both storylines led up to the opening of Statesman One Plaza; the villain was going to ambush the opening, use a device to knock out the huge amount of heroes present, and take the Plaza for themselves. The heroes just finished foiling a plot from a smaller group of villains to do the same and was attending the opening. As Emil Christie was giving his speech, a member of Battalion appears, tells everyone in Paragon to bow, then unleashes the first wave of Battalion to attack and take Statesman One Plaza. The villain and hero storylines would have converged here to fight off Battalion's first attack, but were forced to retreat when a Battalion ship appeared and turned the tables. Battalion would have also kidnapped Steven Sheridan. | |||
There were going to be a lot of cool things after this that may or may not have worked since we were still testing them. I had set up a castle defense mission where Battalion discovered the villain's base and was sending soldiers to destroy it. As the villain for the first part of the mission, you could fly around and place your lackeys around the area to defend against Battalion, while also dropping down turrets etc. to help them. After the first few waves were defeated, you'd jump back down and fight the mission's boss yourself. | |||
This is getting kind of long without me even getting into the meat of the story, so I'll wrap it up. Statesman One Plaza eventually opens up a gigantic portal into the Shadow Shard, with Rularuu trying to escape. A genetically modified Shiva, controlleed by Battalion, appears near Earth and begins to bombard the portal with meteors. Battalion had figured out that the only way Earth could kill them was by using Rularuu, so they were going to use Shiva to destroy it from far away. Players would eventually close the portal and discover that Steven Sheridan was an agent of Battalion. | |||
The final act of the storyline was going to be a showdown against Shiva. Battalion was going to order Shiva to bombard the planet and be done with it. Emil Christie concocts a device to drain Shiva of her powers. If you were the hero, Emil Christie was willingly working with you. If you were the villain, you kidnapped Emil Christie and forced him to make the device in order to transfer Shiva's power to you. | |||
The last mission was going to be a showdown in space on top of Shiva (which we had already built before the closure). You'd fight waves of Shivans while Emil Christie's device went to work. At a certain point, Steve Sheridan appears to fight you as a representative of a "higher" member of Battalion. The heroes and villains get infused with the power of Shiva and go toe to toe with Sheridan, eventually knocking him down back to Earth. The player chases after Sheridan to a small crater his impact made. The fight continues for a while before Sheridan retreats, admitting that more care would have to be taken when fighting the players. | |||
The player's Shiva power would be depleted after that, and the arc would be complete. Shiva would remain de-powered near Earth, and the initial Battalion attack would have been deflected, but now Earth would know that it was "on" - Battalion had arrived and had no intention of stopping until Earth submitted or was destroyed. | |||
So yeah, the Kallisti Wharf arc was going to be pretty small. | |||
'''Sam T (@Psyte): If you fast-forwarded the game's story by 10 years, which of the low-level enemy factions would have "graduated" to the big leagues (level 40-50 and/or Incarnate content)? The Tsoo? Legacy Chain? Wyvern?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: Tsoo - Incarnate-level ink, we hinted at that in Dark Astoria. | |||
'''Demon Cat: How were Portal Corp dimensions designated? For example you had: Upsilon Beta 9-6 (Praetoria) and Omicron Zeta 12-20 (Freakshow world). Was there a method to the madness or was it simply random?''' | |||
Positron: Whatever the writer needed at the time, so... random. | |||
'''MattBold: I NEED more information and Lore about the Kheldians. Please tell me everything.''' | |||
Positron: [[File:Aliens LoreAMA2015.png|150px]] | |||
'''Exclius: What lore did you have regarding the Star Sentinels. Were they just a Green Lantern analogue or where they something more specific? I heard about them in some of the Battalion lore and they instantly caught my attention.''' | |||
Positron: They were Green Lantern/Alien Legion analogues that didn’t get fleshed out greater than that. | |||
'''Tataku: So one thing missing from the comic book experience of CoH was the uber-powerful alien warlord, ala Darksied or Thanos. Were there any plans to implement such an AV? Perhaps the head of Battalion?''' | |||
Protean: Battalion was run by a war council of galactic warlords, each one being immensely powerful and leading vast armies of subjugated alien races. | |||
'''General X: What would COH2 entail? Lore-wise, how power sets and archetypes would work, whether it was a new engine, or anything you can openly share about it?''' | |||
Positron: Well, you see... waitaminute, this isn’t a CoH question, this is a question about CoH2! Nice try! | |||
'''Nightsjester: Was there ever any plans or ideas to redeem Lord Recluse?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: I don't think we planned to ever fully redeem him, but there were plans to make him a more relatable super-villain. We had him try to go after Tyrant in Praetoria with the full might of Arachnos in order to stop Tyrant's further attacks on Primal Earth. Lord Recluse would have been researching how to empower Arachnos to Incarnate-levels in order to fight of Battalion. | |||
We wanted to make it a big deal that Lord Recluse was one of the few super villains in charge of both an army and an entire nation, the Rogue Isles. That makes him a villain with something to defend and something to lose, and he would behave in that way. Since we were dealing with lots of inter-galactic threats, Recluse would, of course, be mobilizing his army to deal with it and making deals not to get in anyone's way, because why would Arachnos be fighting Longbow when Battalion is attacking? | |||
However, we also wanted to make it abundantly clear that Recluse is still the bad guy. Even if Arachnos was working together with other groups, they would still be stealing information on them, making plans to deal with them when the bigger threat was over, and other nefarious things. | |||
'''Firemoth: Why did Statesman never take his wife to the Well of the Furies? Did he not know he was immortal at the time?''' | |||
Positron: Recluse destroyed the Well, there were no more waters running to take her to. | |||
'''Phoxx: Are you happy with the direction the new Super Hero MMO's are going considering a lot of them seem to borrow ideas from COH/COV i.e. Champions Online, DC Universe Online, etc''' | |||
Positron: Honestly, I haven’t really been paying attention to the other Superhero MMOs. Obviously if they are borrowing ideas they A) want old CoH players and B) We were probably doing something right. | |||
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ | |||
'''Oak: How exactly did the Praetorian war get started? What catalyzed Cole's interest in Primal Earth to the point of full-on invasion and war?''' | |||
Protean: Cole's primary interest in Primal Earth was as an escape plan from Hamidon. | |||
'''Overclock: With all the time travel that happened after Issue 11 and the release of Ouroboros, were there ever thoughts about retconning out some bit of established game lore? Bonus points if there were and the reason was that what had been established in-game and was a pain for the new content writers to deal with (aka the reason most retcons seem to happen in comics).''' | |||
Positron: We retconned stuff out all the time. Players hated it whenever we did it though.}} | |||
=== <div style="font-weight:bold;text-align:center;border-top:1px solid #5555FF;border-bottom:1px solid #5555FF;background-color:#ffffff;margin:1em;padding:0.2em;font-size:1.2em">'''AMA: 2016'''</div> === | |||
Positron posted a [http://goo.gl/forms/PrD6STRXIA Google Doc form] in an [http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php?topic=11829 unofficial thread] on the Titan Network forums. | |||
On April 28th, 2016, Positron released a [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YjnwmdqnU-W5neQ-JGrfPtX9pysGZuetyvmHtdSbjs0/edit Google Doc] with the 2016 AMA answers. The devs that answered are: | |||
* Matt Miller, a.k.a. [[Positron (Developer)|Positron]] | |||
* Sean McCann, a.k.a. [[Dr. Aeon (Developer)|Dr. Aeon]] | |||
The fifth Lore AMA at its time of release (April 28th, 2016) is as follows: | |||
{{hidden|City of Heroes Loregasm 2016|bg1=#ccccff|content= | |||
'''''I'd like to take a moment to thank Sean "Dr. Aeon" McCann, without whom this Loregasm would not have been possible (or very much more boring at any rate). Honestly I'd forgotten pretty much everything Sean added to this Q&A until he wrote it down. My old age and distance from the project has forced me to make room in my head for other stuff. While I'd like to keep doing these, I will tell you that if Sean's not here to save my bacon next year, these are going to get a lot more boring.''''' | |||
'''Samuraiko: What, if any, was your favorite 'lore conspiracy theory' that the playerbase had going? Something that the players were going nuts trying to figure out, and were probably WAY off base. ("Such-and-such is a spy," "this is a Nemesis plot," that kind of thing.)''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: The really annoying thing was when the lore conspiracy theories were true. I think people had mentioned before Dark Astoria that they thought the Dream Doctor was the Letter Writer, and I remember thinking, "How the heck would you think that?" We also used to joke that anyone could tell what we were planning if they knew the IP of the studio, because then they could see all the pages we were looking at on paragonwiki for reference, since it had all the details of everything we ever did in the game more than we did. | |||
Positron: Most players were really good about just enjoying the game we served them, but a few players (even some devs in the studio) never really could accept a GOOD version of Nemesis, Mender Silos, and kept picking at and digging for a future betrayal that would never come. | |||
I like to believe that people can change, and that a version of Nemesis forced to live and see the world he tried to conquer, conquered by someone else due to his actions, and forced to work for those new conquerors... he had to change. Silos would never go against the modern version of himself (Paradox and all that), but Ouroboros had no ulterior motives. The Letter Writer's warnings were just that, cautions against what COULD be, not what was GOING to be. | |||
'''@Placta: Which Council AVs returned to the 5th Column when it resurfaced?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: If I recall correctly, Arakhn and Nosferatu rejoined Requiem, who had also recruited Reichsman during the events of Dark Astoria. I think Vandal was sticking with the Council due to their technology, and Archon Burkholder would've flipped at the moment it looked like the 5th Column was winning... but of course Requiem wouldn't have allowed him back. Protean is Protean, and was loyal to no one. Maestro continued to serve with the Council. | |||
'''Fink: Is it all a Nemesis plot?''' | |||
Positron: People ask us all the time "why did you never finish x or y plotline?" Well, the answer is two-fold. First, player fatigue. Praetorian Earth was SUPER fun to visit, but after a while, the players wanted something NEW. We still had a ton of stories to tell there, but we made the decision to leave it alone and move along the main (Coming Storm) storyline of the game. | |||
Second, that plotline was likely shepherded and nurtured through to life by a designer that no longer worked on the game. Just like plotlines in comic books, writers aren't (and frankly shouldn't) be asked to pick up and finish something started by someone else. Hopefully then have their OWN ideas and can take a plot from start to fruition, and leave just enough lore and plot hooks for another writer to, ''if they wanted'', pick up and make their own. | |||
'''AJ: What are other "Elseworlds" you could have envisioned exploring eventually?''' | |||
Positron: All the different Statesmen/Stateswomen from the various universes was something I really wanted to see happen. Also exploring what happened to the Omega Team on the Rikti Homeworld (and Ruin's takeover of their version of Australia) was something I was super into. | |||
'''Not the Gamester: Did the Gamester have an actual identity and backstory or was he just an excuse to have a winter holiday event?''' | |||
Positron: He absolutely did. Manticore (Sean Dornan-Fish) did a backstory for him. He was basically the City of Heroes version of Arcade/The Trickster, and a convenient go-to for holiday events in-game. What it was, I have no idea. | |||
'''Cobalt Azurean: Would Statesman ever have returned?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: After I went through all the trouble of killing him, someone in the studio mentioned they wanted to bring him back eventually. I don't know if they were serious or trying to get a rise out of me, but I always got really angry because I worked so hard to kill him in the first place. | |||
Positron: As you can see Sean never liked the idea of him returning, but he was 100% coming back (on my watch anyway). First let's make something super clear: Primal Statesman was dead-dead. Sean did go through a ton of work to kill him, and he did successfully do so. | |||
But there is more than one Statesman in the multiverse, and you end up capturing one in an Incarnate Trial: Tyrant. The plan was, in a couple years, have Statesman "mysteriously return," but in reality it was Marcus Cole from Praetoria, now reformed (for now anyway). The Phalanx would know the truth, but the general populace would see it as a miracle in a time of desperate need. | |||
'''Felderburg: What ideas for Signature Story Arcs beyond the two that were released were being floated around?''' | |||
Dr. Aeon: I was working on a 3rd sig arc when we shut down. It was going to be a combo of a personal story and a sig story where the player played from the POV of Scirocco defecting to Paragon w/Ice Mistral, trying to become a hero with Serafina guiding him. He'd unlock his Incarnate powers, which was become a dual-wielder (because it's awesome) and earning the mantle of Scirocco. Ice Mistral would defect back to Arachnos because being the good guy was too hard. Scirocco would go back to try to rescue her, facing Mako in the Golden Giza and Black Scorpion in Grandville square. He'd be defeated by Ghost Widow, and in that moment he'd realize for everything he felt about Ghost Widow, she'd never betray Arachnos, not even for him. Lord Recluse orders Ghost Widow to finish him off, but Ms. Liberty and her team breaks in to save Scirocco. He and Ice Mistral escape through the tunnels beneath Grandville, where they'd have a final showdown with Lord Recluse. They beat him and retreat back to Paragon. The plan was an issue later to replace Scirocco with the Mu we introduced in Dark Astoria. | |||
'''Blue Battler: In the Freedom Phalanx Novel, Positron and Synapse are long time friends before they got their powers and Synapse is an accountant. I remember an in-game plaque that implied Synapse was also a scientist like Positron and they don't get along very well. What was game canon? Was Synapse a scientist or accountant? Were he and Posi childhood friends who just liked to give each other a hard time?''' | |||
Positron: Ah, the backstory paradox. I wrote the plaque based on what Sean Dornan-Fish and I came up with for Synapse and Positron's backstories when we launched City of Heroes. | |||
Then we work-for-hired out the novel and Sean forgot all about that dumb plaque when giving the writer the backstories to work into the story. | |||
Game canon was that Synapse was a scientist, not an accountant. While we usually tried to come up with some cockamamie answer to smooth over canon mistakes like this without dreadedly "ret-conning" stuff, some stuff is just too contradictory. Terrible answer I know, but you get what you pay for.}} | |||
=== <div style="font-weight:bold;text-align:center;border-top:1px solid #5555FF;border-bottom:1px solid #5555FF;background-color:#ffffff;margin:1em;padding:0.2em;font-size:1.2em">'''Back Alley Brawler reddit AMA'''</div> === | |||
On 2016-04-29 [[Back Alley Brawler (Developer)|Back Alley Brawler]] began [http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4gv8xl/final_moments_before_city_of_heroes_shut_down_for/d2lkkqd answering questions about City of Heroes in an informal AMA]. Although he framed it as an AMA, some of the responses are more conversational in nature, but still reveal interesting information about the game and the culture of Paragon Studio. {{EdNote|note=When looking at the original reddit thread, the answers may sometimes be hard to find when the threads grow larger. CTRL+F (and keep tapping F3 thereafter) to find the phrase "load more comments" and click those to view his answers; you can also F3 cycle through the phrase "CBruce" once all comments are loaded.}} | |||
The questions he has answered as of August 8, 2018 are: | |||
{{hidden|Back Alley Brawler AMA (2016)|bg1=#ccccff|content={{EdNote|note=Due to differences in reddit's threaded format and wiki presentability, there have been changes to the original formatting. The intent is to transform the reddit thread into a more traditional "Q&A" like the other Lore AMAs with as little loss of content as possible. Where relevant, threads are indented to indicate that they originated from the answer immediately above them; otherwise, replies have been broken out into their own Q&A portion. Because reddit easily allows direct quotes in its comments, those are indicated by an indented blue square, in both questions and answers - all bold text is a direct question or quote from a player; all non-bolded text is an answer from BAB. There have also been minor typo corrections when the typo was clearly obvious.}}{{EdNote|note=The current state of the AMA includes the entirety of comments; it is possible that they will be trimmed for only the context important to the actual question in the future.}} | |||
Back Alley Brawler here, AMA? | |||
'''Q) Wretschko''' | |||
'''Holy shit, it IS you. | |||
'''First, I hope you're actively employed, heh. | |||
'''Second, do YOU believe the chatter that there are STILL on-going negotiations from a group of folks willing to license/buy the CoH IP from NCSoft or do you think it's just wishful thinking/unrealistic hype? | |||
'''Third, do you think the current efforts are viable? (City of Titans, Atlas Park Revisited, etc.) | |||
'''And lastly, is there a private server running CoH and if so, can you please tell me who to contact to gain access to it? ;) | |||
'''I mean, I know the game engine is now absolutely ancient but I think a few thousand people would still cough up a monthly sub to bring back their heroes/villains. I know I would. It wasn't so much as the graphics that made CoH/CoV great, it was the atmosphere and friendships made. For some reason, no other MMO could live up to what CoH was for me.''' | |||
A) BABs | |||
*'''First, I hope you're actively employed, heh. | |||
I am, thank you. After being laid off from Paragon, I almost immediately went back to work at Cryptic Studios. There, I helped launch Neverwinter and got to work on a couple of other unrealized projects. About a year ago, I relocated to Champaign, IL to work for Deep Silver Volition, where I am now. | |||
*'''Second, do YOU believe the chatter that there are STILL on-going negotiations from a group of folks willing to license/buy the CoH IP from NCSoft or do you think it's just wishful thinking/unrealistic hype? | |||
Honestly, I haven't followed it that much. I've no idea what kind of negotiations any third party has had with NCSoft. I know that Matt Miller once confided that Paragon tried to acquire the franchise from NCSoft and go at it on their own, but the big hangup was the liability of active accounts and how all of that got transferred from one owner to another. Like acquiring CoH a year after it had shut down would have been more likely, but by then it would be too late to matter. Pretty sure Cryptic approached NCSoft about re-acquiring City of Heroes when they shuttered Paragon as well. I have no specifics about it, but clearly nothing came of that. | |||
This was the second MMO I worked on that was shut down by NCSoft, and NetDevil did a similiar thing where they tried to assume all operational costs in order to keep Auto Assault live. At the time, NCSoft seemed to have this 'go big, or go home' attitude about their franchises. They would have rather completely shut down prematurely than let it linger on, even it if was profitable. | |||
In my experience, every publisher will always talk as if they're on the verge of signing a deal even if there's zero chance of that ever happening. It costs them nothing to say that. But when it comes time to writing up contracts and signing paperwork, that's where the process stalls out. | |||
*'''Third, do you think the current efforts are viable? (City of Titans, Atlas Park Revisited, etc.) | |||
Again, not really familiar with any of these projects or their status. I can say that making an MMO is a massive venture and for any small group to pull it off without a major source of funding is almost insurmountable. If one of these projects manages to make it, it'll be a real testament to the dedication and talent of their team. Even if they flounder, it's still an impressive thing for anyone to attempt. | |||
It's interesting, because it seems to me that the environment right now with the wildly popular Marvel/DC film franchises is far more ripe for a 'super hero' themed MMO. But I don't know if anyone's willing to take the risk with the genre and tone that fans probably really want. | |||
*'''And lastly, is there a private server running CoH and if so, can you please tell me who to contact to gain access to it? ;) | |||
Legitimately no idea. There were illegal servers supposedly going while the game was live, so seems likely someone somewhere might have something. There's a Paragon Chat application that seems pretty interesting. | |||
*'''I mean, I know the game engine is now absolutely ancient but I think a few thousand people would still cough up a monthly sub to bring back their heroes/villains. I know I would. It wasn't so much as the graphics that made CoH/CoV great, it was the atmosphere and friendships made. For some reason, no other MMO could live up to what CoH was for me. | |||
I hear you. City of Heroes is a significant part of my life. I was a player long before I started at Cryptic. I invested thousands and thousands of my free time into playing the game and years of my career working on it. Both of my sons were born while it was live. And while I couldn't bear to play again after Paragon, seeing it shut down and knowing that it's gone forever has left an aching hole in me. I've never connected with an online community the same way since. | |||
:'''Q) NondeterministSystem | |||
:*I've never connected with an online community the same way since. | |||
:'''We still love you, BABs. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I'm still in touch with a lot of my Super Group. We're having a get together later this month. | |||
:'''If we're doing questions, though... What were the remaining Incarnate Slots conceptualized to do? | |||
:A) BABs | |||
:*'''We still love you, BABs. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I'm still in touch with a lot of my Super Group. We're having a get together later this month. | |||
:Awesome. | |||
:*'''If we're doing questions, though... What were the remaining Incarnate Slots conceptualized to do? | |||
:See my answer here: {{EdNote|note=The linked answer has been copy / pasted for convenience; this may change as this AMA is finalized}} | |||
:Incarnate system came online right after I was laid off from Paragon and I was really to burnt out and heartbroken to log in to the game from that point on. | |||
:Matt would undoubtedly know. In fact, it seems like he's talked about that topic before. Definitely laid out some things about mysteries and where they were going in with the lore. | |||
'''Q) HighPiracy | |||
'''Hey! Loved the game and appreciate all the work you did on it. I was a day 1 player, one of the first regen scrappers (dark melee was the other half). Have great memories of flying around and just perching of rooftops in a heroic manner. Built so many alts, and loved City of Villains. Any mechanic you wish you could have added or done to the game? | |||
A) BABs | |||
*'''Loved the game and appreciate all the work you did on it. | |||
Me too. Thanks. | |||
*'''Any mechanic you wish you could have added or done to the game? | |||
I got to implement power customization and weapon customization. Those were big things for me. | |||
I always wanted a way to make flight faster. It was gated as a travel power because of the soft limit on super-speed, and the need to balance super-speed's 2D limitation against super-jumping and fully 3D freedom of flight. But man, it would have been great to really tear across the skies of Paragon City. | |||
And of course, one of the reasons I left Cryptic to join Paragon (apart from the weird contractual business of 'no longer having a job') was the promise of doing City of Heroes 2. Really sad the day that fell through. More sad when the other MMO we were working on didn't pay out because that was--in my opinion--a better tonal fit for the modern audience. | |||
:'''Q) implicitlyimplying | |||
:'''I was so impressed with power customization when it launched. I remember the feature's announcement on the forums (I think it was a post by Positron). People went wild about it because it had been requested for so long. I was glad you guys took the time to get it right. I literally played around with that feature almost everyday after it launched. | |||
:A) BABs | |||
:Was a huge endeavor. One of the biggest things I've ever tackled in my career. Were it not for Mike Chock's help with Python scripting and on the implementation side, it would have never happened. Keetsie also put in a ton of work with me on converting something like 4,000 VFX scripts by hand to support it. | |||
:In retrospect, I kind of regret not pushing back harder at those wanting to limit the creative options. But some were really worried about having yellow ice controllers and whatnot. I let myself get convinced it was the right decision and a few players got locked out of making character concepts they had in their head because we didn't want to have 'Captain Yellow Snow' running around in game. | |||
'''Q) Wretschko | |||
'''Remember the first time you flew up to the top of the world on Atlas' shoulder? | |||
A) BABs | |||
I think you mean slowly hovered. | |||
:'''Q) implicitlyimplying | |||
:'''Wow, I don't think I've ever felt this level of nostalgia. CoH was a major part of my adolescence. I started playing on the Justice server in 2004 when I was 12 years old. As someone who had a difficult time making friends as a child, CoH was a game changer. The game was so user-friendly and had so many community-building tools that made it so easy to build long-lasting friendships. I played the game for countless hours and I've never felt that connected with any game since. | |||
:A) BABs | |||
:What was your character name on Justice? I played mainly as Tic-Toc. | |||
:Justice was a sort of unofficial dev server. There were a number of us hiding out there. | |||
:What was really interesting is when I started at Cryptic, I was cautioned to not let other players find out who I was. If it ever became common knowledge, I was at risk of having my personal accounts locked. So there was an element of having a real secret identity that I had to deal with and protect while playing a super-hero in a game. | |||
:Always thought that added another level to the game for me and wondered how we could do something similar for everyone else. | |||
'''Q) Hephoran | |||
'''How did you feel about having your character stuck in "2nd rate Atlas city"? :P | |||
'''As for a more serious question, what were your ideas about where the whole Incarnate system was going? It really sucked that one week we got the announcement of a new Issue with a new tier of Incarnate powers, and the next week we heard the servers would shut down... | |||
'''Thanks for all the work you and the rest of the team put into this game. It still stands as my best gaming experience ever. | |||
A) BABs | |||
*'''How did you feel about having your character stuck in "2nd rate Atlas city"? :P | |||
To be fair, BABs was never really my character. I only adopted that identity so that when we did dev-run events, I'd have control over a character that I actually know how to play (INV/SS tank). | |||
*'''As for a more serious question, what were your ideas about where the whole Incarnate system was going? It really sucked that one week we got the announcement of a new Issue with a new tier of Incarnate powers, and the next week we heard the servers would shut down... | |||
Incarnate system cam online right after I was laid off from Paragon and I was really to burnt out and heartbroken to log in to the game from that point on. | |||
Matt would undoubtedly know. In fact, it seems like he's talked about that topic before. Definitely laid out some things about mysteries and where they were going in with the lore. | |||
'''Q) philosoblanka | |||
'''No questions, just want to say that my time playing CoH/CoV was, to date, my best gaming experience. Addictive and fun, with frequent quality updates. The level of communication between the development team and the players should be used as the best example for game developers today. Great stuff. | |||
A) BABs | |||
*'''No questions, just want to say that my time playing CoH/CoV was, to date, my best gaming experience. | |||
Me too. | |||
*'''The level of communication between the development team and the players should be used as the best example for game developers today. | |||
I don't know if you meant me personally, but I got into so much trouble for various forum posts. I was probably personally responsible for the implementation of a whole suite of formalized rules and procedures for even getting to post to the forums. | |||
Kind of sad, because as a player I really enjoyed the casual interaction between players and developers in game and on the forums. By the time I was working there, and managed to weasel my way into a redname account, that culture was starting to go down a different path. Partially because of the whole Cryptic/Marvel deal. | |||
I never intentionally set out to rock the boat, but there's 3 or 4 instances I can remember where I got called into someone's office or taken for a walk by Ken and told to watch what I was saying. I think ultimately, I got written up, had to sign an agreement to pass every post through CMs for approval, and that was when I stopped participating on the forums quite as much. It stopped being organic and genuine to me. | |||
Completely understandable why NCSoft/Paragon did what they did--they're looking to protect their investment--but as a fan, player, and member of the community it just didn't sit right with me. | |||
Was fun while it lasted. I really enjoyed giving other players insight into the inner workings that I'd managed infiltrate myself. | |||
:'''Q) Noodlespanker | |||
:'''I remember having quite a few arguements in IM with Statesman, chatted up Posi a few times. Always amazed me that I could reach out and yell at the developers. Even if they probably saw me as a buzzing gnat, they responded. I think the best part was seeing the devs in game. I think it was end of beta where I met most of you guys and could chat at you while the world was invaded. | |||
:'''Write ups be damned. There's something in being able to interact with the development of the game like that that is another great element of old mmo's that is now lost to time. | |||
:A) BABs | |||
:*'''Write ups be damned. There's something in being able to interact with the development of the game like that that is another great element of old mmo's that is now lost to time. | |||
:I agree. As a player and developer, it was a very rewarding experience. | |||
'''Q) Rienuaa | |||
'''Thanks for helping make my time with CoH so amazing. Thanks to my dedication to the game, it inspired a love of online games in me. Now I work for Turbine Inc. on DDO :D | |||
A) BABs | |||
*'''Thanks for helping make my time with CoH so amazing. Thanks to my dedication to the game, it inspired a love of online games in me. Now I work for Turbine Inc. on DDO :D | |||
Awesome. Players often make the best devs. | |||
'''Q) ChanThe4th | |||
'''This is crazy! Thank you for helping make literally my favorite game of all time better on a consistent basis. You and the other developers were a massive part of my teenage life and I cannot thank you guys enough for doing such a great job. | |||
'''I played on Virtue because the roleplaying community was so immersive and honestly a great group of people. However I noticed as time went on the "big name" roleplayers started mingling with the developing team regularly, or so they claimed, these people include Golden Girl and Captain Valor. Is there any truth to this? If this is true, did they have any influence on decisions for patches? Such as costumes or even gameplay? | |||
'''Arcana is a huge part of the titan network and was apparently involved with the developer team quite heavily. Her knowledge of the game and the coding seems to be larger than any other player I'm aware of. I suppose my question is that similar to the big name roleplayers, how much influence did she have (if any) on how the game conitinued its development? Did you personally ever interact with her? | |||
'''Lastly, and I realize this has been asked by so many people most likely, but if you have any information regarding private servers or who to talk to join a private server I would love you like a brother. I miss this game more than anything in my life. It was such a huge part of me to have it taken away was literally like losing a close family member or friend. | |||
A) BABs | |||
*'''This is crazy! Thank you for helping make literally my favorite game of all time better on a consistent basis. You and the other developers were a massive part of my teenage life and I cannot thank you guys enough for doing such a great job. | |||
Thank you for helping enrich my playtime and providing a living for all those years. | |||
*'''I played on Virtue because the roleplaying community was so immersive and honestly a great group of people. However I noticed as time went on the "big name" roleplayers started mingling with the developing team regularly, or so they claimed, these people include Golden Girl and Captain Valor. Is there any truth to this? If this is true, did they have any influence on decisions for patches? Such as costumes or even gameplay? | |||
I know the names, but I don't know of anyone like that having a direct influence on decisions. Generally, they were things we wanted to do anyway, like costume change emotes, power customization, etc. | |||
*'''Arcana is a huge part of the titan network and was apparently involved with the developer team quite heavily. Her knowledge of the game and the coding seems to be larger than any other player I'm aware of. I suppose my question is that similar to the big name roleplayers, how much influence did she have (if any) on how the game conitinued its development? Did you personally ever interact with her? | |||
We communicated a lot with Arcana. Really sharp player. I pinged her a lot for basic math help for all sorts of things. | |||
I think we even contracted with her to design a whole procedural rewards system for...shit, what was it...architect missions maybe? That was kind of done hush hush. Dunno if it was ever made public knowledge. So as far as players having a direct influence on the game...yeah, she definitely did. | |||
Fun Arcana story. After I got laid off, I sent her a signed box copy of Going Rogue. She sent me a bunch of goodies from Hawaii. Koana cofee is delicious. SPAM flavored peanuts, not so much. | |||
*'''Lastly, and I realize this has been asked by so many people most likely, but if you have any information regarding private servers or who to talk to join a private server I would love you like a brother. I miss this game more than anything in my life. It was such a huge part of me to have it taken away was literally like losing a close family member or friend. | |||
I have no information about private servers. Honestly. | |||
To be frank, if I had any way to liberate the code for the game servers and release it into the wild, I would be sorely tempted to do so right now. It's a damn shame that people can invest so much time, money, and passion into a game only to see it permanently locked out of ever playing it again. Companies could totally figure out some way to keep minimal servers operational for players. From what I understand, even City of Heroes was eeking out a tiny profit up until the day it was shut down. | |||
:'''Q) ChanThe4th | |||
:'''First of all thank you for the answers! Still helping the CoH community all these years later :P If you don't mind I just have a couple more questions for you, if you don't have the time I'll completely understand! | |||
:'''Was there any other player outside of Arcana that was helping out development that more or less went un-noticed? Or perhaps somebody that played a major role from the shadows sort of thing? | |||
:'''Were there ever any major arguements between developers that lead to something either being intergrated or not? I realize saying who they were might be frowned upon professionally but if you don't mind I'd love to know who! Or maybe even who the hardest to work with was? | |||
:'''What was the biggest difference between the early stages of CoH compared to when you left? | |||
:'''If you remember early on when Jack was running the game, what was he actually like? I vaguely remember him having the opinion that releasing the numbers for powers and what have you would turn the game into just another cookie cutter, do you believe that or no? | |||
:*Companies could totally figure out some way to keep minimal servers operational for players. From what I understand, even City of Heroes was eeking out a tiny profit up until the day it was shut down. | |||
:'''I figure if companies had a license that was purchased by server owners to allow them to legally run the game it would solve so much issues, but companies like NCsoft seem like having any sort of legacy servers are a sin. | |||
:'''Once again just want to say thank you so much, honestly if the game somehow released again I'd break down in tears of joy. I really wish that was an overstatment. However reliving the old memories is all we got and I appreciate you helping me do so! | |||
:A) BABs | |||
:*'''Was there any other player outside of Arcana that was helping out development that more or less went un-noticed? Or perhaps somebody that played a major role from the shadows sort of thing? | |||
:Apart from other devs who were players, not that I'm personally aware of. | |||
:I mean, all of the players who were active on the forums helped shape the game through bug reports, feedbacks, suggestions, and general morale. | |||
:*'''Were there ever any major arguements between developers that lead to something either being intergrated or not? | |||
:Arguments? Not exactly. Certainly passionate disagreements about things, but I don't remember any really heated 'arguments' about any topic. I'm sure there's plenty of instances of things that got integrated that not everyone was on board with. Either because it was done in lieu of something else or because it was not the direction some thought we should go. | |||
:That's just inherent any any collaborative effort. Floyd and I used to get into conversations about nuances of powers all the time, but I always deferred to his decisions. | |||
:Now that I think about it, I guess there were a couple of people that I found occasionally challenging. But I'd rather not get into specifics. Professional thing. Sorry about that. Probably not anyone you'd suspect if that helps. | |||
:*'''Or maybe even who the hardest to work with was? | |||
:When I came on at Cryptic it was shortly after Issue 7 launched, and a good portion of the team was already being shifted over to Fight Club. I was part of the small, dedicated team for City of Heroes/City of Villains and later became one of the founding members of Paragon Studios. | |||
:In all of that time, I don't recall anyone being 'difficult' to work with. Everyone was generally open to feedback from players and especially the other members of the development team. Again, there'd be disagreements and someone like Matt or Ken would have to just make the call they felt was best, but I never felt undervalued or like I had no voice in the project. | |||
:*'''What was the biggest difference between the early stages of CoH compared to when you left? | |||
:Difficult to say, as I was a player in the early stages of CoH (working at 2015 and later NetDevil) and only became a developer after City of Villains. So the game had already taken a pretty many significant departure long before I started working on it. | |||
:The game, like all games, developed fairly organically to try and appease the existing player base and/or attract new players. | |||
:*'''If you remember early on when Jack was running the game, what was he actually like? | |||
:I think overall people greatly overestimate how much direct influence Jack had in City of Heroes way after it initially launched. He was involved for some key discussions (I specifically remember his involvement during design meetings for inventions and the auction house), but was otherwise largely hands off up until NCSoft acquired the franchise and our team. I didn't work directly with Jack all that much. At either time. | |||
:From my perspective, Jack has changed a lot over the years. Particularly after moving up into more studio-wide leadership positions at Cryptic. Was always impressed with his competency in that area and Cryptic has managed to weather many shaky moments that I've seen destroy plenty of other studios. | |||
:I do remember him once getting an intern to make photocopies of some Warhammer maps and Ken getting really pissed when he found out about it. We were eeking by with a tiny crew and could have totally used the extra hand. | |||
'''Q) Tony_Vz | |||
'''Ooh, I have a bunch! I was going to ask what you're up to these days, but you answered that above. Congrats on being picked up by Deep Silver Volition! I haven't played Saints Row, but I've had several people tell me it's awesome. | |||
'''I know several other folks whose names were very familiar have scattered. Do you guys still keep in touch with each other beyond a "I might need them for networking in case I need another job" capacity, even though everyone has gone in different directions, many literally? How gruesome is that, being in an industry where you typically get laid off every year or two, and knowing that you might have to pick up and move a couple thousand miles for your next job? | |||
'''Paragon Studios always struck me as a particularly tight-knit crew, more than just a group of developers who happened to work with each other. Not being a member of the game developer community and myself having worked for megacorporations for the past couple of decades, is that kind of thing the norm or the exception in the game development industry? Or is that just a misperception, was working for Paragon Studios fun with some folks you liked, but at the end of the day, still just a job? | |||
'''Also, how does the City of Heroes community compare to others you've dealt with? I mean, I know you probably won't say any bad things about us (at least, I hope not...), but in terms of things like how forgiving we were of mistakes, how influential we were in game development decisions, how demanding we were of new content and mechanics, how interactive we were with developers, how supportive we were of not just the game, but the developers and publisher, that kind of thing? After all these years, what still sticks out to you as, "Man, those City of Heroes folks, they were really different because of that"? | |||
'''As for the game itself, can you ever remember a time when something was unpopular, but you knew in your heart that it was what had to be for the long-term health of the game? Was there ever a time when you just had to dig in and refuse to change something, or change something that was broken, because you genuinely felt you knew better than the community? Was there ever a time when you did something that was unpopular that later reflecting on it, you thought, "I was wrong," and wished you could go back and undo? | |||
'''Thanks again a ton for your work on the game and support of the community, and we wish you nothing but the best at DSV and in the future! | |||
A) BABs | |||
*'''I know several other folks whose names were very familiar have scattered. Do you guys still keep in touch with each other beyond a "I might need them for networking in case I need another job" capacity, even though everyone has gone in different directions, many literally? How gruesome is that, being in an industry where you typically get laid off every year or two, and knowing that you might have to pick up and move a couple thousand miles for your next job? | |||
Wish I could say yes, but I've never been good at this. We moved around a lot when I was a kid and I never developed the ability to maintain friendships over long distances. | |||
Honestly, I'm not that good at maintaining friendships over short distances. Large part of why I got married, so I'd always have at least one friend no matter what... :P | |||
*'''Paragon Studios always struck me as a particularly tight-knit crew, more than just a group of developers who happened to work with each other. Not being a member of the game developer community and myself having worked for megacorporations for the past couple of decades, is that kind of thing the norm or the exception in the game development industry? Or is that just a misperception, was working for Paragon Studios fun with some folks you liked, but at the end of the day, still just a job? | |||
It depends. Some small studios are really tight-knit. Some large studios manage it. Some small studios rarely interact with each other outside of work. | |||
It's really difficult for a company to feel that way when there are over 50 people working there. At it's peak, Paragon got big enough that I no longer knew everyone's name, and my circle of people that I considered to be more than 'workplace proximity acquaintances' become more cliquish. But I always felt Paragon felt more like a family than a corporation. I remember the shock I felt when Rachel was let go. Even screwed up and sent a 'WTH?!' email to the whole company rather than just Ken like I intended. | |||
*'''Also, how does the City of Heroes community compare to others you've dealt with? | |||
Amazing, imo. | |||
*'''I mean, I know you probably won't say any bad things about us (at least, I hope not...), | |||
The hell I wouldn't. You guys could be a right bunch of assholes at times. But I always tried to remember that people who don't give a shit about the game aren't complaining about it on the forums. | |||
*'''After all these years, what still sticks out to you as, "Man, those City of Heroes folks, they were really different because of that"? | |||
I admired how hard they fought to keep the game alive and preserve it's memory even today. | |||
*'''As for the game itself, can you ever remember a time when something was unpopular, but you knew in your heart that it was what had to be for the long-term health of the game? | |||
*'''Was there ever a time when you just had to dig in and refuse to change something | |||
No. But I do have a story related to this. Shortly after I started at Cryptic, they decided to add cat ears as a costume accessory. Jay made some cat ears, for female models. We said cool, now we need to port them over for male costumes. | |||
Jay planted his heels and refused. For him, cat ears on male characters was a bad idea. What ensued was a lengthy argument over email about this, with Jay posting pictures of effeminate men and crossdressers wearing cutesy cat ears. The debate started to heat up. | |||
Then someone posted a number of examples of bad ass characters with 'cat ears', like Black Panther. | |||
That ended the debate, and the ears got ported over. After that, Jay never argued against porting things over between genders. | |||
*'''change something that was broken, because you genuinely felt you knew better than the community? | |||
Not me personally, but we certainly made changes like that all the time. The community, for all their passion, just didn't have the same access to the big picture and data that we had. They weren't as personally vested in the success of the game. If CoH shut down, they'd be sad...but life would go on. We'd be out of work. Literally looking for a new paycheck. | |||
Two very different mindsets there. Hopefully, if things go right, we're in agreement the vast majority of the time. But while many people might think they really wanted to be completely omnipotent, when given absolute power and no challenge, the game becomes boring, pointless, and you walk away from it. So we were always trying to find ways to give large moments of gameplay that involved a lot of cannon fodder and made you feel unstoppable, balanced against different levels of challenge for people to overcome. | |||
*'''Was there ever a time when you did something that was unpopular that later reflecting on it, you thought, "I was wrong," and wished you could go back and undo? | |||
I think I mentioned limiting the color palette for some of the power customization. I'm sure we got a bit to zealous with trying to make very fine balance adjustments to random powers. The later was really done with the intention of avoiding the 'City of X' builds that so many complained about. | |||
It's a tough place to be. The game hinges around creating a personal super hero. People need to feel more powerful than everyone else, that's part of the fantasy. But when your choices are overshadowed by someone else who's tapped into an imbalance in design, that cheapens the gratification. Then when you try and balance the power, the people who've built up an identity centered around those powers/powersets without regard for their balance feel like they're being singled out. | |||
Really no way to win... | |||
*'''Thanks again a ton for your work on the game and support of the community, and we wish you nothing but the best at DSV and in the future! | |||
Thank you. | |||
'''Q) Sin_Stalker | |||
'''Hey BABs, Maybe you recognize my name, or perhaps I wasn't even a blimp on your radar but I wanted to say Hi. You were my favorite dev, ever since I found out you played on Justice and that it was you who RP'ed as Manticore on Xmas with my friend Biosphere and myself. That interaction inspired my first story idea for my comic (that used coh screen shots). I remember very much wanting you of all people to read it. Of course the story sucks and I'm (slow goings) trying to remake it into something better that I can be more proud of. Its a fun hobby and good practice for if I ever write comics (the dream). So I was wondering if you ever ended up reading that little comic of mine? Not an issue if you didn't. In fact I kind of hope you didn't, so I can show you the better version I come out with. That's scheduled to be released around... december 2042. Give or take a decade... (RL can be a drain). :) Anyways, thanks again for being the coolest and best dev I've ever had in any game! | |||
A) BABs | |||
*'''Hey BABs, Maybe you recognize my name, or perhaps I wasn't even a blimp on your radar but I wanted to say Hi. | |||
Of course I remember you. | |||
*'''That interaction inspired my first story idea for my comic (that used coh screen shots). I remember very much wanting you of all people to read it. | |||
And I remember the comic as well. Not any of the specifics, just that you spent the time to make it and send us a copy. | |||
'''Q) slickriptide | |||
'''Hi, Chris. | |||
'''Dunno if you're still taking questions, but I thought I'd mention that I really appreciated your work and your willingness to engage with the player community. Sorry to hear you were called on the carpet about it. The day I wrote you with a suggestion that, "Wouldn't it be easy to just do X?" and you not only replied but you wrote back, "No, because our server works like this:" and you gave me some technical insight into how the game actually operated, that pretty much spoiled me for interacting with the devs of every game I've played since then. | |||
'''What was your favorite powerset or costume set to work on or the one you felt the most attachment to? | |||
A) BABs | |||
*'''What was your favorite powerset or costume set to work on or the one you felt the most attachment to? | |||
As a player, I'll always feel an attachment to Inv/SS because that was my main character. | |||
Professionally, I touched just about every powerset. Dealt with every animation, every visual effect. I worked on player powers, enemy powers, emotes. It's impossible for me to single one out as memorable. | |||
I really liked doing things no one else had figured out. Weapon customization, power customization, costume change emotes/FX...that sort of thing. I remember animating a sail on a ship one of the ancient wood ships because that was something I'd never done before.}} | |||
== AMA by Homecoming == | |||
'''An AMA hosted by Homecoming June 4th, 2024 featuring 15 [[Paragon]]/[[Cryptic Studios|Cryptic]] Studios Devs''' | |||
''Todo: Insert Q&A from link below. Likely sorted by Question rather then by Dev.'' | |||
== See Also == | |||
* [[Canon Fodder]] | * [[Canon Fodder]] | ||
* [[Story Bible]] | * [[Story Bible]] | ||
* [https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/52119-20th-anniversary-qa-responses/ Dev AMA (2024)] | |||
== External Links == | |||
* The apparent first recorded use of the term "Loregasm" in the [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x31reb2 Signature Story Arc ViDoc Outtakes] (The "loregasm" section is at 3:19) | |||
* [http://mcdesignertales.blogspot.com/ Dr. Aeon's blog] detailing game industry stories, including City of Heroes behind the scenes insight. | |||
[[Category:Lore]] | [[Category:Lore]] |
Latest revision as of 10:31, 10 June 2024
Overview
The Lore AMA (Ask Me Anything), or "Loregasm", is a series of documents created by Positron to answer questions City of Heroes players had about the game's story following the Sunset announcement.
In the thread announcing its creation, Positron stated that anything it contains "SHOULD be considered canon when concerning anything to do with Issue 24 and previous. Anything after that is speculative and should be treated as such. We'll note in the answer if it's anything different." On September 18th, 2012, Positron posted a link to the first Lore AMA as a Google Doc in a City of Heroes forums thread.
In a 2012 interview of Positron and War Witch at OnRPG discussing the closure of the game, Positron stated that he would do yearly AMAs as long as people had questions:
AMA by Year
![](/w/images/8/8d/EdLetter.png)
This page contains the text of the documents as they appeared at release. A list of the questions linked to by topic and developer can be found here: Lore AMA/Sorted.
AMA: 2012
The first Lore AMA was linked in a forum post by Positron titled "Loregasm" and includes a key of the answering developers' initials:
![](/w/images/0/0f/Chatballoon-Dev.png)
That's a link to the doc, in case these boards get shut down, and because I don't want to clean it up for our forum posting format (if someone ELSE does, feel free to pad your postcount).
Some answers are not satisfying. Some answers are made up, and that answer only exists in that doc. I tried to get everyone who was involved in the stuff at the end to answer the questions as best they could.
MM: Matt Miller (Positron)
JH: John Hegner (Protean)
JAH: Jeff Hamilton (Arbiter Hawk)
SM: Sean McCann (Dr. Aeon)
RG: Ryan Greene (Viridian)
TS: Tim Sweeney (Black Scorpion)
If there is a miracle and somehow CoH is saved, we reserve the right to change any and all answers given in the doc, to maintain suspense and surprise.
The Lore AMA itself at its time of release (September 18th, 2012) is as follows:
AMA: 2013
After taking questions in an open Google Doc, the first of the yearly AMAs was announced at OnRPG on May 3rd, 2013, and released as a closed Google Doc. In most cases, the name of the dev giving an answer is listed after the answer. The devs that answered are:
- Matt Miller, a.k.a. Positron
- Hosun Lee, a.k.a. Black Pebble
- Tim Sweeney, a.k.a. Black Scorpion
- Sean McCann, a.k.a. Dr. Aeon
- John Hegner, a.k.a. Protean
- Keetsie Braz de Cunha (née Berbel), a.k.a. Tunnel Rat
- Vince D'Amelio, a.k.a. The Dark Watcher
![](/w/images/8/8d/EdLetter.png)
This is the most likely list of developers who answered AMA 2, as there are multiple devs with some of those first names. Some questions do not have a dev name, and it can be assumed that they were answered by Positron unless the context indicates otherwise. Several questions were unable to be answered, and are marked as "Answer hazy, ask again later (Matt because he couldn’t find someone to answer this right now)."
The second Lore AMA at its time of last revision (May 7, 2013) is as follows:
AMA: 2014
An unofficial thread was started on the Titan Network forums for gathering questions. Positron was contacted and said: "I plan on doing it a bit differently this year. Doc will only be up for a short window." On April 17, 2014, at 8:45 AM PDT, Positron posted a Google Doc that he left open for only 24 hours. Positron also put in some general rules for asking questions, largely prohibiting questions not related to the game's lore:
Following the initial 24 hour period, there were 76 questions. A copy of the document seven minutes before its takedown for answering can be found in a Google Doc. Positron noted in a tweet on April 23rd, 2104, that all questions for the 2014 AMA had answers.
On April 28th, 2014, the tenth anniversary of City of Heroes, Positron released the answered questions as a Google doc. The devs that answered are:
- Matt Miller, a.k.a. Positron
- Melissa Bianco, a.k.a. War Witch
- Chris Behrens, a.k.a. Baryonyx
- Tim Sweeney, a.k.a. Black Scorpion
- Sean McCann, a.k.a. Dr. Aeon
- John Hegner, a.k.a. Protean
The third Lore AMA at its time of last revision (April 28th, 2014) is as follows:
AMA: 2015
On April 24th, 2015, Positron released a tweet with a link to a Google Docs form for submitting questions. The form was open until April 28th, and players were limited to one "lore related (not business, development, or systems / powers)" question. Upon submitting a question, the form noted that answers would be "made available sometime the week of May 3rd." After the form was closed, it told players that it was not accepting further submissions, but to "Try again next year!"
On May 17th, 2015 Positron released a Google Doc with the 2015 AMA answers. The devs that answered are:
The fourth Lore AMA at its time of release (May 17th, 2015) is as follows:
AMA: 2016
Positron posted a Google Doc form in an unofficial thread on the Titan Network forums.
On April 28th, 2016, Positron released a Google Doc with the 2016 AMA answers. The devs that answered are:
The fifth Lore AMA at its time of release (April 28th, 2016) is as follows:
Back Alley Brawler reddit AMA
On 2016-04-29 Back Alley Brawler began answering questions about City of Heroes in an informal AMA. Although he framed it as an AMA, some of the responses are more conversational in nature, but still reveal interesting information about the game and the culture of Paragon Studio.
![](/w/images/8/8d/EdLetter.png)
When looking at the original reddit thread, the answers may sometimes be hard to find when the threads grow larger. CTRL+F (and keep tapping F3 thereafter) to find the phrase "load more comments" and click those to view his answers; you can also F3 cycle through the phrase "CBruce" once all comments are loaded.
The questions he has answered as of August 8, 2018 are:
- Incarnate system came online right after I was laid off from Paragon and I was really to burnt out and heartbroken to log in to the game from that point on.
- Matt would undoubtedly know. In fact, it seems like he's talked about that topic before. Definitely laid out some things about mysteries and where they were going in with the lore.
Q) HighPiracy Hey! Loved the game and appreciate all the work you did on it. I was a day 1 player, one of the first regen scrappers (dark melee was the other half). Have great memories of flying around and just perching of rooftops in a heroic manner. Built so many alts, and loved City of Villains. Any mechanic you wish you could have added or done to the game?
A) BABs
- Loved the game and appreciate all the work you did on it.
Me too. Thanks.
- Any mechanic you wish you could have added or done to the game?
I got to implement power customization and weapon customization. Those were big things for me.
I always wanted a way to make flight faster. It was gated as a travel power because of the soft limit on super-speed, and the need to balance super-speed's 2D limitation against super-jumping and fully 3D freedom of flight. But man, it would have been great to really tear across the skies of Paragon City.
And of course, one of the reasons I left Cryptic to join Paragon (apart from the weird contractual business of 'no longer having a job') was the promise of doing City of Heroes 2. Really sad the day that fell through. More sad when the other MMO we were working on didn't pay out because that was--in my opinion--a better tonal fit for the modern audience.
- Q) implicitlyimplying
- I was so impressed with power customization when it launched. I remember the feature's announcement on the forums (I think it was a post by Positron). People went wild about it because it had been requested for so long. I was glad you guys took the time to get it right. I literally played around with that feature almost everyday after it launched.
- A) BABs
- Was a huge endeavor. One of the biggest things I've ever tackled in my career. Were it not for Mike Chock's help with Python scripting and on the implementation side, it would have never happened. Keetsie also put in a ton of work with me on converting something like 4,000 VFX scripts by hand to support it.
- In retrospect, I kind of regret not pushing back harder at those wanting to limit the creative options. But some were really worried about having yellow ice controllers and whatnot. I let myself get convinced it was the right decision and a few players got locked out of making character concepts they had in their head because we didn't want to have 'Captain Yellow Snow' running around in game.
Q) Wretschko
Remember the first time you flew up to the top of the world on Atlas' shoulder?
A) BABs
I think you mean slowly hovered.
- Q) implicitlyimplying
- Wow, I don't think I've ever felt this level of nostalgia. CoH was a major part of my adolescence. I started playing on the Justice server in 2004 when I was 12 years old. As someone who had a difficult time making friends as a child, CoH was a game changer. The game was so user-friendly and had so many community-building tools that made it so easy to build long-lasting friendships. I played the game for countless hours and I've never felt that connected with any game since.
- A) BABs
- What was your character name on Justice? I played mainly as Tic-Toc.
- Justice was a sort of unofficial dev server. There were a number of us hiding out there.
- What was really interesting is when I started at Cryptic, I was cautioned to not let other players find out who I was. If it ever became common knowledge, I was at risk of having my personal accounts locked. So there was an element of having a real secret identity that I had to deal with and protect while playing a super-hero in a game.
- Always thought that added another level to the game for me and wondered how we could do something similar for everyone else.
Q) Hephoran
How did you feel about having your character stuck in "2nd rate Atlas city"? :P
As for a more serious question, what were your ideas about where the whole Incarnate system was going? It really sucked that one week we got the announcement of a new Issue with a new tier of Incarnate powers, and the next week we heard the servers would shut down...
Thanks for all the work you and the rest of the team put into this game. It still stands as my best gaming experience ever.
A) BABs
- How did you feel about having your character stuck in "2nd rate Atlas city"? :P
To be fair, BABs was never really my character. I only adopted that identity so that when we did dev-run events, I'd have control over a character that I actually know how to play (INV/SS tank).
- As for a more serious question, what were your ideas about where the whole Incarnate system was going? It really sucked that one week we got the announcement of a new Issue with a new tier of Incarnate powers, and the next week we heard the servers would shut down...
Incarnate system cam online right after I was laid off from Paragon and I was really to burnt out and heartbroken to log in to the game from that point on.
Matt would undoubtedly know. In fact, it seems like he's talked about that topic before. Definitely laid out some things about mysteries and where they were going in with the lore.
Q) philosoblanka
No questions, just want to say that my time playing CoH/CoV was, to date, my best gaming experience. Addictive and fun, with frequent quality updates. The level of communication between the development team and the players should be used as the best example for game developers today. Great stuff.
A) BABs
- No questions, just want to say that my time playing CoH/CoV was, to date, my best gaming experience.
Me too.
- The level of communication between the development team and the players should be used as the best example for game developers today.
I don't know if you meant me personally, but I got into so much trouble for various forum posts. I was probably personally responsible for the implementation of a whole suite of formalized rules and procedures for even getting to post to the forums.
Kind of sad, because as a player I really enjoyed the casual interaction between players and developers in game and on the forums. By the time I was working there, and managed to weasel my way into a redname account, that culture was starting to go down a different path. Partially because of the whole Cryptic/Marvel deal.
I never intentionally set out to rock the boat, but there's 3 or 4 instances I can remember where I got called into someone's office or taken for a walk by Ken and told to watch what I was saying. I think ultimately, I got written up, had to sign an agreement to pass every post through CMs for approval, and that was when I stopped participating on the forums quite as much. It stopped being organic and genuine to me.
Completely understandable why NCSoft/Paragon did what they did--they're looking to protect their investment--but as a fan, player, and member of the community it just didn't sit right with me.
Was fun while it lasted. I really enjoyed giving other players insight into the inner workings that I'd managed infiltrate myself.
- Q) Noodlespanker
- I remember having quite a few arguements in IM with Statesman, chatted up Posi a few times. Always amazed me that I could reach out and yell at the developers. Even if they probably saw me as a buzzing gnat, they responded. I think the best part was seeing the devs in game. I think it was end of beta where I met most of you guys and could chat at you while the world was invaded.
- Write ups be damned. There's something in being able to interact with the development of the game like that that is another great element of old mmo's that is now lost to time.
- A) BABs
- Write ups be damned. There's something in being able to interact with the development of the game like that that is another great element of old mmo's that is now lost to time.
- I agree. As a player and developer, it was a very rewarding experience.
Q) Rienuaa
Thanks for helping make my time with CoH so amazing. Thanks to my dedication to the game, it inspired a love of online games in me. Now I work for Turbine Inc. on DDO :D
A) BABs
- Thanks for helping make my time with CoH so amazing. Thanks to my dedication to the game, it inspired a love of online games in me. Now I work for Turbine Inc. on DDO :D
Awesome. Players often make the best devs.
Q) ChanThe4th
This is crazy! Thank you for helping make literally my favorite game of all time better on a consistent basis. You and the other developers were a massive part of my teenage life and I cannot thank you guys enough for doing such a great job.
I played on Virtue because the roleplaying community was so immersive and honestly a great group of people. However I noticed as time went on the "big name" roleplayers started mingling with the developing team regularly, or so they claimed, these people include Golden Girl and Captain Valor. Is there any truth to this? If this is true, did they have any influence on decisions for patches? Such as costumes or even gameplay?
Arcana is a huge part of the titan network and was apparently involved with the developer team quite heavily. Her knowledge of the game and the coding seems to be larger than any other player I'm aware of. I suppose my question is that similar to the big name roleplayers, how much influence did she have (if any) on how the game conitinued its development? Did you personally ever interact with her?
Lastly, and I realize this has been asked by so many people most likely, but if you have any information regarding private servers or who to talk to join a private server I would love you like a brother. I miss this game more than anything in my life. It was such a huge part of me to have it taken away was literally like losing a close family member or friend.
A) BABs
- This is crazy! Thank you for helping make literally my favorite game of all time better on a consistent basis. You and the other developers were a massive part of my teenage life and I cannot thank you guys enough for doing such a great job.
Thank you for helping enrich my playtime and providing a living for all those years.
- I played on Virtue because the roleplaying community was so immersive and honestly a great group of people. However I noticed as time went on the "big name" roleplayers started mingling with the developing team regularly, or so they claimed, these people include Golden Girl and Captain Valor. Is there any truth to this? If this is true, did they have any influence on decisions for patches? Such as costumes or even gameplay?
I know the names, but I don't know of anyone like that having a direct influence on decisions. Generally, they were things we wanted to do anyway, like costume change emotes, power customization, etc.
- Arcana is a huge part of the titan network and was apparently involved with the developer team quite heavily. Her knowledge of the game and the coding seems to be larger than any other player I'm aware of. I suppose my question is that similar to the big name roleplayers, how much influence did she have (if any) on how the game conitinued its development? Did you personally ever interact with her?
We communicated a lot with Arcana. Really sharp player. I pinged her a lot for basic math help for all sorts of things.
I think we even contracted with her to design a whole procedural rewards system for...shit, what was it...architect missions maybe? That was kind of done hush hush. Dunno if it was ever made public knowledge. So as far as players having a direct influence on the game...yeah, she definitely did.
Fun Arcana story. After I got laid off, I sent her a signed box copy of Going Rogue. She sent me a bunch of goodies from Hawaii. Koana cofee is delicious. SPAM flavored peanuts, not so much.
- Lastly, and I realize this has been asked by so many people most likely, but if you have any information regarding private servers or who to talk to join a private server I would love you like a brother. I miss this game more than anything in my life. It was such a huge part of me to have it taken away was literally like losing a close family member or friend.
I have no information about private servers. Honestly.
To be frank, if I had any way to liberate the code for the game servers and release it into the wild, I would be sorely tempted to do so right now. It's a damn shame that people can invest so much time, money, and passion into a game only to see it permanently locked out of ever playing it again. Companies could totally figure out some way to keep minimal servers operational for players. From what I understand, even City of Heroes was eeking out a tiny profit up until the day it was shut down.
- Q) ChanThe4th
- First of all thank you for the answers! Still helping the CoH community all these years later :P If you don't mind I just have a couple more questions for you, if you don't have the time I'll completely understand!
- Was there any other player outside of Arcana that was helping out development that more or less went un-noticed? Or perhaps somebody that played a major role from the shadows sort of thing?
- Were there ever any major arguements between developers that lead to something either being intergrated or not? I realize saying who they were might be frowned upon professionally but if you don't mind I'd love to know who! Or maybe even who the hardest to work with was?
- What was the biggest difference between the early stages of CoH compared to when you left?
- If you remember early on when Jack was running the game, what was he actually like? I vaguely remember him having the opinion that releasing the numbers for powers and what have you would turn the game into just another cookie cutter, do you believe that or no?
- Companies could totally figure out some way to keep minimal servers operational for players. From what I understand, even City of Heroes was eeking out a tiny profit up until the day it was shut down.
- I figure if companies had a license that was purchased by server owners to allow them to legally run the game it would solve so much issues, but companies like NCsoft seem like having any sort of legacy servers are a sin.
- Once again just want to say thank you so much, honestly if the game somehow released again I'd break down in tears of joy. I really wish that was an overstatment. However reliving the old memories is all we got and I appreciate you helping me do so!
- A) BABs
- Was there any other player outside of Arcana that was helping out development that more or less went un-noticed? Or perhaps somebody that played a major role from the shadows sort of thing?
- Apart from other devs who were players, not that I'm personally aware of.
- I mean, all of the players who were active on the forums helped shape the game through bug reports, feedbacks, suggestions, and general morale.
- Were there ever any major arguements between developers that lead to something either being intergrated or not?
- Arguments? Not exactly. Certainly passionate disagreements about things, but I don't remember any really heated 'arguments' about any topic. I'm sure there's plenty of instances of things that got integrated that not everyone was on board with. Either because it was done in lieu of something else or because it was not the direction some thought we should go.
- That's just inherent any any collaborative effort. Floyd and I used to get into conversations about nuances of powers all the time, but I always deferred to his decisions.
- Now that I think about it, I guess there were a couple of people that I found occasionally challenging. But I'd rather not get into specifics. Professional thing. Sorry about that. Probably not anyone you'd suspect if that helps.
- Or maybe even who the hardest to work with was?
- When I came on at Cryptic it was shortly after Issue 7 launched, and a good portion of the team was already being shifted over to Fight Club. I was part of the small, dedicated team for City of Heroes/City of Villains and later became one of the founding members of Paragon Studios.
- In all of that time, I don't recall anyone being 'difficult' to work with. Everyone was generally open to feedback from players and especially the other members of the development team. Again, there'd be disagreements and someone like Matt or Ken would have to just make the call they felt was best, but I never felt undervalued or like I had no voice in the project.
- What was the biggest difference between the early stages of CoH compared to when you left?
- Difficult to say, as I was a player in the early stages of CoH (working at 2015 and later NetDevil) and only became a developer after City of Villains. So the game had already taken a pretty many significant departure long before I started working on it.
- The game, like all games, developed fairly organically to try and appease the existing player base and/or attract new players.
- If you remember early on when Jack was running the game, what was he actually like?
- I think overall people greatly overestimate how much direct influence Jack had in City of Heroes way after it initially launched. He was involved for some key discussions (I specifically remember his involvement during design meetings for inventions and the auction house), but was otherwise largely hands off up until NCSoft acquired the franchise and our team. I didn't work directly with Jack all that much. At either time.
- From my perspective, Jack has changed a lot over the years. Particularly after moving up into more studio-wide leadership positions at Cryptic. Was always impressed with his competency in that area and Cryptic has managed to weather many shaky moments that I've seen destroy plenty of other studios.
- I do remember him once getting an intern to make photocopies of some Warhammer maps and Ken getting really pissed when he found out about it. We were eeking by with a tiny crew and could have totally used the extra hand.
Q) Tony_Vz
Ooh, I have a bunch! I was going to ask what you're up to these days, but you answered that above. Congrats on being picked up by Deep Silver Volition! I haven't played Saints Row, but I've had several people tell me it's awesome.
I know several other folks whose names were very familiar have scattered. Do you guys still keep in touch with each other beyond a "I might need them for networking in case I need another job" capacity, even though everyone has gone in different directions, many literally? How gruesome is that, being in an industry where you typically get laid off every year or two, and knowing that you might have to pick up and move a couple thousand miles for your next job?
Paragon Studios always struck me as a particularly tight-knit crew, more than just a group of developers who happened to work with each other. Not being a member of the game developer community and myself having worked for megacorporations for the past couple of decades, is that kind of thing the norm or the exception in the game development industry? Or is that just a misperception, was working for Paragon Studios fun with some folks you liked, but at the end of the day, still just a job?
Also, how does the City of Heroes community compare to others you've dealt with? I mean, I know you probably won't say any bad things about us (at least, I hope not...), but in terms of things like how forgiving we were of mistakes, how influential we were in game development decisions, how demanding we were of new content and mechanics, how interactive we were with developers, how supportive we were of not just the game, but the developers and publisher, that kind of thing? After all these years, what still sticks out to you as, "Man, those City of Heroes folks, they were really different because of that"?
As for the game itself, can you ever remember a time when something was unpopular, but you knew in your heart that it was what had to be for the long-term health of the game? Was there ever a time when you just had to dig in and refuse to change something, or change something that was broken, because you genuinely felt you knew better than the community? Was there ever a time when you did something that was unpopular that later reflecting on it, you thought, "I was wrong," and wished you could go back and undo?
Thanks again a ton for your work on the game and support of the community, and we wish you nothing but the best at DSV and in the future!
A) BABs
- I know several other folks whose names were very familiar have scattered. Do you guys still keep in touch with each other beyond a "I might need them for networking in case I need another job" capacity, even though everyone has gone in different directions, many literally? How gruesome is that, being in an industry where you typically get laid off every year or two, and knowing that you might have to pick up and move a couple thousand miles for your next job?
Wish I could say yes, but I've never been good at this. We moved around a lot when I was a kid and I never developed the ability to maintain friendships over long distances.
Honestly, I'm not that good at maintaining friendships over short distances. Large part of why I got married, so I'd always have at least one friend no matter what... :P
- Paragon Studios always struck me as a particularly tight-knit crew, more than just a group of developers who happened to work with each other. Not being a member of the game developer community and myself having worked for megacorporations for the past couple of decades, is that kind of thing the norm or the exception in the game development industry? Or is that just a misperception, was working for Paragon Studios fun with some folks you liked, but at the end of the day, still just a job?
It depends. Some small studios are really tight-knit. Some large studios manage it. Some small studios rarely interact with each other outside of work.
It's really difficult for a company to feel that way when there are over 50 people working there. At it's peak, Paragon got big enough that I no longer knew everyone's name, and my circle of people that I considered to be more than 'workplace proximity acquaintances' become more cliquish. But I always felt Paragon felt more like a family than a corporation. I remember the shock I felt when Rachel was let go. Even screwed up and sent a 'WTH?!' email to the whole company rather than just Ken like I intended.
- Also, how does the City of Heroes community compare to others you've dealt with?
Amazing, imo.
- I mean, I know you probably won't say any bad things about us (at least, I hope not...),
The hell I wouldn't. You guys could be a right bunch of assholes at times. But I always tried to remember that people who don't give a shit about the game aren't complaining about it on the forums.
- After all these years, what still sticks out to you as, "Man, those City of Heroes folks, they were really different because of that"?
I admired how hard they fought to keep the game alive and preserve it's memory even today.
- As for the game itself, can you ever remember a time when something was unpopular, but you knew in your heart that it was what had to be for the long-term health of the game?
- Was there ever a time when you just had to dig in and refuse to change something
No. But I do have a story related to this. Shortly after I started at Cryptic, they decided to add cat ears as a costume accessory. Jay made some cat ears, for female models. We said cool, now we need to port them over for male costumes.
Jay planted his heels and refused. For him, cat ears on male characters was a bad idea. What ensued was a lengthy argument over email about this, with Jay posting pictures of effeminate men and crossdressers wearing cutesy cat ears. The debate started to heat up.
Then someone posted a number of examples of bad ass characters with 'cat ears', like Black Panther.
That ended the debate, and the ears got ported over. After that, Jay never argued against porting things over between genders.
- change something that was broken, because you genuinely felt you knew better than the community?
Not me personally, but we certainly made changes like that all the time. The community, for all their passion, just didn't have the same access to the big picture and data that we had. They weren't as personally vested in the success of the game. If CoH shut down, they'd be sad...but life would go on. We'd be out of work. Literally looking for a new paycheck.
Two very different mindsets there. Hopefully, if things go right, we're in agreement the vast majority of the time. But while many people might think they really wanted to be completely omnipotent, when given absolute power and no challenge, the game becomes boring, pointless, and you walk away from it. So we were always trying to find ways to give large moments of gameplay that involved a lot of cannon fodder and made you feel unstoppable, balanced against different levels of challenge for people to overcome.
- Was there ever a time when you did something that was unpopular that later reflecting on it, you thought, "I was wrong," and wished you could go back and undo?
I think I mentioned limiting the color palette for some of the power customization. I'm sure we got a bit to zealous with trying to make very fine balance adjustments to random powers. The later was really done with the intention of avoiding the 'City of X' builds that so many complained about.
It's a tough place to be. The game hinges around creating a personal super hero. People need to feel more powerful than everyone else, that's part of the fantasy. But when your choices are overshadowed by someone else who's tapped into an imbalance in design, that cheapens the gratification. Then when you try and balance the power, the people who've built up an identity centered around those powers/powersets without regard for their balance feel like they're being singled out.
Really no way to win...
- Thanks again a ton for your work on the game and support of the community, and we wish you nothing but the best at DSV and in the future!
Thank you.
Q) Sin_Stalker
Hey BABs, Maybe you recognize my name, or perhaps I wasn't even a blimp on your radar but I wanted to say Hi. You were my favorite dev, ever since I found out you played on Justice and that it was you who RP'ed as Manticore on Xmas with my friend Biosphere and myself. That interaction inspired my first story idea for my comic (that used coh screen shots). I remember very much wanting you of all people to read it. Of course the story sucks and I'm (slow goings) trying to remake it into something better that I can be more proud of. Its a fun hobby and good practice for if I ever write comics (the dream). So I was wondering if you ever ended up reading that little comic of mine? Not an issue if you didn't. In fact I kind of hope you didn't, so I can show you the better version I come out with. That's scheduled to be released around... december 2042. Give or take a decade... (RL can be a drain). :) Anyways, thanks again for being the coolest and best dev I've ever had in any game!
A) BABs
- Hey BABs, Maybe you recognize my name, or perhaps I wasn't even a blimp on your radar but I wanted to say Hi.
Of course I remember you.
- That interaction inspired my first story idea for my comic (that used coh screen shots). I remember very much wanting you of all people to read it.
And I remember the comic as well. Not any of the specifics, just that you spent the time to make it and send us a copy.
Q) slickriptide
Hi, Chris.
Dunno if you're still taking questions, but I thought I'd mention that I really appreciated your work and your willingness to engage with the player community. Sorry to hear you were called on the carpet about it. The day I wrote you with a suggestion that, "Wouldn't it be easy to just do X?" and you not only replied but you wrote back, "No, because our server works like this:" and you gave me some technical insight into how the game actually operated, that pretty much spoiled me for interacting with the devs of every game I've played since then.
What was your favorite powerset or costume set to work on or the one you felt the most attachment to?
A) BABs
- What was your favorite powerset or costume set to work on or the one you felt the most attachment to?
As a player, I'll always feel an attachment to Inv/SS because that was my main character.
Professionally, I touched just about every powerset. Dealt with every animation, every visual effect. I worked on player powers, enemy powers, emotes. It's impossible for me to single one out as memorable.
I really liked doing things no one else had figured out. Weapon customization, power customization, costume change emotes/FX...that sort of thing. I remember animating a sail on a ship one of the ancient wood ships because that was something I'd never done before.
AMA by Homecoming
An AMA hosted by Homecoming June 4th, 2024 featuring 15 Paragon/Cryptic Studios Devs
Todo: Insert Q&A from link below. Likely sorted by Question rather then by Dev.
See Also
External Links
- The apparent first recorded use of the term "Loregasm" in the Signature Story Arc ViDoc Outtakes (The "loregasm" section is at 3:19)
- Dr. Aeon's blog detailing game industry stories, including City of Heroes behind the scenes insight.