Will we see a City of Heroes 2?
January 15, 2012
NCSoft West is currently looking for a couple of people to work on a next-gen MMO at their Mountain View office. The Mountain View office is Paragon Studios, so it sounds likely that there is ongoing work for a new MMO for those of us who like to put on virtual spandex.
Given the positions mentioned I guess the work has gone past the concept stage and into some early development. Maybe in 2-3 years we will know for sure?
Categories: MMO Games
A ding world 
I have to be honest. I’m skeptical that everything I like about COH would carry over into COH 2.0. All the things I like about COH transplanted onto a basic world structure that is less clunky and more engaging than COH would be about the best MMO I can imagine. However, it would be a rare developer that could do a good enough job separating babies and bath water to keep the family together in that kind of transition. I hope you can excuse my strained analogy 🙂
There has not been that many MMO sequels and the track record for those that have been done is not the best. I guess Lineage -> Lineage 2 could be considered successful. EQ->EQ2 perhaps not as much as I guess SOE hoped for. Asheron’s Call 2 also perhaps not as successful as people had hoped for.
Kind of “spiritual sequels” like Champions Online is a good example of what you are pointing out – in theory they picked some nice elements from CoH, put in improved versions of other elements and added a bunch of stuff from other MMOs out there, as well as a few new things.
But I think the different pieces did not fit that well with each other in the long run, in practice.
Maybe GW2 will work out, but I think that may be because it seems Arenanet started with a blank slate and not taken anything done previosu for granted in the new context.
For City of Heroes, if they are doing a sequel I would be a bit sceptical too. Mainly because I do not think they would get the budget and time that NCSoft has given Arenanet and compromises would have to be made.
I think SWTOR is a good look at where COH2 will go. COH was very story focused and I think a sequel with full npc voice acting (I doubt it will have PC voice acting) would be a true follower to that. 2014 will be the tenth anniversary so my bet is they’ll be aiming for release sometime around there.
I hope you are wrong on the SWTOR direction, Coridan. One of the reasons for me to still play COH after 6+ years is because I can always find to play with. In SWTOR I played my own little story by myself. In COH I can join any size/level/skill/combo of a group, and complete a story. Whether it is one of the signature arcs, or an AE farming fest, or simply a set of radio missions, there is a story to follow whenever I play. And because it can be done in any kind of group structure a lot of stories are worth doing again and again. That is the power of COH that in my mind no other MMO has managed to recapture. If (big if) COH2 comes to be I hope they keep that as the main focus. The ability to *always* have a team to play with without the need for specific skills, armor, or reputation. Voice acting is just a cherry on top. The cake will be nice (or not) with or without it.
I hope to see CoH-2. I played CoH for years, and loved it for most of that time, but it came to feel like a big spreadsheet with graphics after a while — the grinding was just grinding; no real surprises. I left when they screwed around with the implants and created the university or whatever that system was, because it introduced needless complexity without benefit.
No idea whether they’ve polished that addition into something enjoyable since then, but there’s a lot about the gameplay itself that could use refining and spicing up, and a reboot would be more likely to draw me back than an expansion I’ll never even hear about.
The Inventions system is still there. There has certainly been refinements of the system as well as how rewards are handled, but the general principles of the system are the same as in the beginning.
I think it is a fairly good system – there is a certain amount of complexity in it and used properly it can provide substantial benefits to a character. And as it was when it was introduced (Issue 9 I think), it is an optional gameplay element.
You are right though that it used to be quite grindy to be able to equip a decent set up of invention set enhancements – which is one reason I did not bother much with the system for a long time. Nowadays there is less of that, even though some parts can get a bit repetitive in order to gain what you want.
I have not bothered with with the IO sets for most of my characters, but a couple of them are decked out with IO sets, almost all of that done in the past year only.