Resurrecting the Superhero MMO - City of Titans Q&A

[JonB]

Resurrecting the Superhero MMO - City of Titans Q&A

City of Titans started out as a dream. These are the people making it a reality.

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[Falterfire]

Ew. That's a hideous budget plan. They are rather critically forgetting to include people in their budget. That means they're planning on doing it worth a force of volunteers. Building an MMO is a difficult and lengthy process which fails even with highly skilled professionals working on it full time and they are trying to do it with volunteers?

I'm hopeful since I loved City of Heroes, but I'm doubtful. A team of volunteers who met over the internet trying to build an MMO on what is (relatively speaking for an MMO) a shoestring budget? I have serious reservations about this ever actually seeing the light of day.

 

[JonB]

Ew. That's a hideous budget plan. They are rather critically forgetting to include people in their budget. That means they're planning on doing it worth a force of volunteers. Building an MMO is a difficult and lengthy process which fails even with highly skilled professionals working on it full time and they are trying to do it with volunteers?

I'm hopeful since I loved City of Heroes, but I'm doubtful. A team of volunteers who met over the internet trying to build an MMO on what is (relatively speaking for an MMO) a shoestring budget? I have serious reservations about this ever actually seeing the light of day.

These were volunteers who are, as of the Kickstarter funding, being paid.

 

[Falterfire]

These were volunteers who are, as of the Kickstarter funding, being paid.

That contradicts their Kickstarter page. Their initial goal was $320,000, which according to them was to be divided as:

$70,000 to taxes an administration
$70,000 to licensing for the Unreal Engine

They list the rest of the money as going to combination of software, servers & bandwidth, and hardware.

If they are paying themselves, they didn't list that on the Kickstarter page. Even the list of stretch spending only discusses middleware and assets as things to spend the money on.

It's possible they're getting funding to pay their guys elsewhere, but between the lack of a mention on the Kickstarter page (Which describes their development studio as 'all volunteers') and the very small sum considering the timeframe and number of 'employees' they claim to have (100+, again according to the Kickstarter page) I'm doubting they are planning to pay their team much, if anything.

Of course, that will probably change if they manage to grab an insane amount of money from the Kickstarter, but I'm not impressed by a team that would even create a plan involving two years of production with no money allocated to pay their staff.

(All information pulled from the Kickstarter page)

 

[WildFire15]

It's a volunteer effort. I think they plan on possibly having full time employees once the game goes live but for now it's unpaid.

 

[Lunar Templar]

please don't let this suck, please don't let this suck, please don't let this suck.

did I mention I don't want this sucking? cause I don't :/ we've been with out a good Super Hero MMO for to long

 

[Nathaniel Downes]

Ew. That's a hideous budget plan. They are rather critically forgetting to include people in their budget. That means they're planning on doing it worth a force of volunteers. Building an MMO is a difficult and lengthy process which fails even with highly skilled professionals working on it full time and they are trying to do it with volunteers?

I'm hopeful since I loved City of Heroes, but I'm doubtful. A team of volunteers who met over the internet trying to build an MMO on what is (relatively speaking for an MMO) a shoestring budget? I have serious reservations about this ever actually seeing the light of day.

You are quite right, we are all volunteers. That does not mean we will stay that way, the budget only tells you the minimum needed to get things going.

We have plans for doing that. But to ensure that goes smoothly, we need to resolve the foundations first, namely, the Kickstarter.

 

[CharrHearted]

Colour me pessimistic, but I can't see this succeeding, but my views are very uneducated and unrefined. Can anyone help change my opinion on it? Or help me gain hope for this?

 

[garjian]

I wish I understood what was so wrong with Champion's Online... I loved that game just because you had so many options and so much freedom with your characters.
I don't have the time to play MMOs these days, but it's among my favourites from back then.

 

[Nathaniel Downes]

Colour me pessimistic, but I can't see this succeeding, but my views are very uneducated and unrefined. Can anyone help change my opinion on it? Or help me gain hope for this?

I would need to understand why you are pessimistic. I am the technical director for the project (fancy title for the guy who manages the software and programmers), ask me anything you wish to know and if I don't know the answer, I will get the answer from the person who does.

 

[Amakusa]

interesting, i hope it works out but i guess it's a wait and see event.

 

[bjj hero]

I love the enthusiasm of these guys. I wish them all the best as their intentions seem to be honest. Having said that I dont do mmos (played a lot of phantasy star online via 56k modem on the dreamcast but i dont think that counts).

An enjoyable read and some big ideas.

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

I loved City of Heroes, and was annoyed when they pulled the plug, so I backed this project. It seems a little overly ambitious, and I think they've way underbudgeted themselves, but if it doesn't succeed...meh. I'm out twenty-five bucks. I've spent more than that on nights out at bars or movies.

 

[Seventh Actuality]

Overall, the fact that the story is actually about the player characters, rather than their being simply spectators to events or interchangeable cogs in a larger event. We will be using a technique City of Heroes did, where multiple player characters can each complete the same piece of content, but we never put it in their faces that they have done so- in each character's individual canon, that experience was unique, and their further content will treat it as such. The player character is the protagonist, and the story follows them through their development into a super of epic proportions, as opposed to treating them as one of many, who are all largely irrelevant next to the most major NPCs.

The fact that they're saying shit like this in 2013 like it's a novel idea doesn't bode well. This has been tried time and again and people either don't give a shit about it, actively dislike it because it misses the whole point of MMOs or will praise you on forums for it then go back to WoW anyway because the rest of the game isn't good enough.

Then again, "Kickstarter MMO by and for fans of a game whose only good point was its character creation screen" doesn't bode too well to begin with.

 

[Kahani]

What will make City of Titans stand out from the average MMO?

Sara Quinn: Overall, the fact that the story is actually about the player characters, rather than their being simply spectators to events or interchangeable cogs in a larger event. We will be using a technique City of Heroes did, where multiple player characters can each complete the same piece of content, but we never put it in their faces that they have done so- in each character's individual canon, that experience was unique, and their further content will treat it as such. The player character is the protagonist, and the story follows them through their development into a super of epic proportions, as opposed to treating them as one of many, who are all largely irrelevant next to the most major NPCs.

So what will make City of Titans stand out is doing exactly the same as every other MMO in existence? Seriously, can anyone name a single MMO in which a player doesn't do unique quests for unique NPCs and get given unique rewards, then promptly get confronted with hundreds of other players who have done exactly the same? WoW is easily the most average MMO around; how many times has the Lich King been killed now? Hell, even Eve, one of the least average MMOs, does this with its tutorial missions. It doesn't exactly build confidence when the people trying to make an MMO apparently have absolutely no idea how existing MMOs actually work.