I was a HUGE fan of CoH and it appears that this is trying to be it's spiritual successor. I would love nothing more that to see this game succeed. My only worry is that most crowd funded projects tend to get abandoned due to a lack of funding/drive. I've been peaking in on the site occasionally for years now and I don't really see any updates on the game progressing. I would donate to get alpha access, but I've been burned by early access games before. My question is has progress actually been made on this game over it's years of development? I know this is a passion project from other CoH fans, but I also know that this is not a studio focused on it's development. It's a project that fans work on when they have the time to do so. I reiterate I would love to see this game succeed. I'm just hesitant to invest in a game that's not going to see the love it deserves.

I think they best thing would be for people on the forums to answer how they feel about our progress.

That being said, we will be finishing up alpha in the near future and moving to Steam. More on that... well, soon (sorry for using that word).

We also are doing some crowd funding while looking for investors and planning on funding from Steam of course.

I am curious, AEGIS, if Soon (tm) is 3-6 months, 6-12 months, etc. Even with the firm caveat that "This date is subject to change, this is merely our hope" kind of thing.

As to the state of the game, it's raw. Very raw. It's got some good points going for it, but for the most part you're going to get more out of the forums at the current time than you are from playing the game. Just my honest opinion.

That being said, I don't regret putting my 25 dollars in at all, and can't wait to see this game go into Early Access or beta or whatever you guys intend to call it.

So really, you've got to ask yourself, "Am I willing to kiss this 25 bucks goodbye on good faith?" Nobody can answer that for you. I've been burned by at least half a dozen early access games, in various degrees. I dropped 100 on a kickstarter project that never went anywhere.

I still bought into this, because I believe in it. They're transparent and friendly on the Discord server. That might actually be the place you want to be, for now. I was hesitant for about 3 days, and then I decided f' it.

It is very much alpha. As a former business database developer, I would say it is well past proof of concept and more like a final working demo. The main features are in place: Character creation with various archetypes and costumes; contacts and quest missions; enemies of various levels that attack, can be defeated and give XP and loot; leveling up, adding powers, and probably adding enhancements to powers (I have not found out how to do that). Chat works, but the place is pretty deserted when I play (in Europe, so Americans are probably sleeping or working). Anyway, it is pretty rough, performance is not optimized so it runs sluggish on legacy hardware, but it is still fun to log on periodically and see new details and new quests have been added. I am sure it could move forward faster if they had enough money to make it a full-time job, but as you say, there is a chicken and egg situation here. At the current speed I don't see it being ready for release for a few years, but I'd probably play the investor alpha (and later beta) off and on in the meantime if it stays open. I particularly love that they have already implemented a commander class (like Mastermind in CoV), and it is mostly working too. While the other second-generation successors are still closed to the public. So, no regret here. I actually sent them my monthly subscription fee again the other day, after I found out how to get back into the game (had to delete all things Valiance on both of my disks and reset graphics which had maxed somehow). I'm not really paying on faith, I pay because I have fun with the game as it is now. It needs tons more content, but they are adding that over time, and I love watching a new game grow. Your love may vary.

NWOrpheus wrote:
I would rather not say until Ironsight finishes up the current round of patches, then we'll see where things stand...
Itlandm wrote:
If in your line of work this is considered a final working demo I am switching industries!

When we get to beta, well somewhat through the beta testing period, we'll be more towards (but not at) that level. Much more to add/fix before we get there.

Itlandm said what I was going to say The game is evolving, you can check out youtube videos from the pre-alpha years ago, and the dev streams from right before the investor alpha, and compare to today.

On the downside, the "playable content" hasn't increased much since the investor alpha started. There are still about the same number of powerset, same mobs, same overall map. But on the upside the visual effects on powers look way better, the map has more details, the quests work better, and there is one interior map already, with more on the way.

You can see improvements over time and get an idea where the game roughly will go. But it is still an alpha at this point. The stuff which is here to do is to test if it will work in a bigger scale game; so at this point its all bare bones filled with placeholders and a chain of a few quests which cover the aspects mostly used in RPG quests (go to a, speak to a; a sends you to beat NPC b to get item x; etc).

But from what I gathered some of the hardest things on MMO development would be getting multiple players on a map working, chatting and seeing each other. They got this covered. Now its about making it look less like



and more like



(without infringing any copyrights of course)

/faints

AEGIS wrote:
chop chop, or I start making closeup screenshots of pixelated floating buildings