Tag: Mechanist Games

City of Steam: Resting, Not Retired


City of Steam was a rather highly spoken of game here at MMO Fallout from years back, although it only shut down about a year ago, but I’ve found myself thinking about the game every now and then. As it happens, I stumbled onto the website for no real reason only to find that it is still operational, with a message to fans of the game: We are resting, not retired. As it turns out, the team over at Mechanist Games still wants to do proper by the game via a sequel.

City of Steam certainly isn’t retired, but we’ll need time to reflect on these things. A sequel would have to do justice to the world in a way that honors the original, addresses as many critiques and quirks as possible, and improves or innovates at the same time. It would also have to be good enough to make up for the shortcomings of the original – stuff that no one was really happy with. Rushing into such a massive commitment would be foolish, and would risk destroying the goodwill that still exists for the game.

When I originally talked about City of Steam back in 2012 (my how time flies), I had nothing but praise to heap unto Mechanist Games. Following several successful closed beta weekends, Mechanist announced an unholy union with R2 Games and turned it into the form that ultimately killed it: A watered down grindfest with casino-style blinking lights and everything geared toward a horrendously opportunistic cash shop. The prior fans abandoned ship and City of Steam became a ghost town.

The thought of a City of Steam sequel seems pretty interesting, hopefully Mechanist Games can figure out where the title went wrong last time and realize what was looking to be an incredible title.

City of Steam Is Shutting Down This Month


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City of Steam developer Mechanist Games has announced that services for the MMO will shut down later this month. The game launched in 2013 and was named MMO Fallout’s ‘Most Disappointing MMO of the Year,” due to a partnership with R2 Games that saw many of the game’s mechanics simplified or outright removed and the overall meta-game transformed into a mobile grinder with energy and an overwhelming cash shop.

The announcement focuses on the declining support of UNITY in browsers.

But we’re sorry to say that this chapter of The New Epoch is coming to an end. A number of factors went into this decision, the decline of Unity support in the browser is one of them – Google Chrome no longer supports NPAPI plugins like the Unity Webplayer, and Microsoft’s next browser, Edge, won’t either.

While City of Steam was relaunched as Arkadia, the changes made to the game between closed and open beta unfortunately kept many players from coming back. The game has been in maintenance mode since November 2014 and no one has bothered to moderate the forums since at least August of last year, leaving nearly dozens of pages of spam.

(Source: City of Steam)

City of Steam Merging US Servers


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City of Steam developer Mechanist Games has announced that the three US servers will be merged into one, bringing gamers together and dealing with waning populations. The merger is set to take place on October 21st and is expected to require four to five hours of downtime. Players from servers 2 and 3 will receive compensation in the form of subscription time and resources to compensate for the head start that players on server 1 received by launching several months ahead of the other two.

European players can fire an email off to Mechanist Games to receive a similar compensation.

(Source: City of Steam)

City of Steam Hits Steam Today


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Today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic. Following the launch of City of Steam: Arkadia last year on web browsers, through Kongregate, and via an available micro-client, Mechanist Games will be launching their MMO on Steam today at approximately noon EST. Arkadia was voted on to Steam through the powers invested in Greenlight, Valve’s crowd-voting platform of approval. In an announcement on the official website, Mechanist noted that certain features had either become obsolete or were deemed unsuitable for the Steam environment, such as the mobile-inspired power limitations. The team admits that 2013 was a “downright rotten year” and, having recovered somewhat, continues to make amends.

For Mechanist, 2014 is all about making the best game, doing what we originally intended, keeping our promises no matter how long ago they were. The two most important ones we have to fix as soon as possible are paragon supporter promises and steam greenlight promises. We’re doing both right now, actually started immediately after new year.

The City of Steam Steam launch coincides with the release of update 2.4 and the launch of a brand new server, and will also introduce a bevvy of content originally anticipated for the previous version’s Steam launch. New pets, new vehicles, Steam achievements, hats, dungeons, jetpacks, and character customizations, with Valve-inspired pets and vehicles among the lot.

Both updates go live at 9am Pacific.

(Source: City of Steam)

Rant: Disappointment In Arkadia


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Back when City of Steam launched its open beta, removing features, emphasizing the cash shop, increasing failure rates on modifications, and more. As someone who loved the game’s closed beta period enough that I not only loved enough to throw my own money into very early in closed beta, I partnered with Mechanist Games to share beta keys, I was particularly disappointed. After open beta on R2Games fell hard and we found out about City of Steam: Arkadia, I had hoped with every fiber of my being that the reason the game went so astray was because of publisher pressure.

How wrong I was. I opened Arkadia in hopes that it would bring back the special moments that I shared with closed beta, but instead I found that the game had fully made the transformation into every other Chinese free to play browser title. I apologize in advance if this rant jumps from topic to topic without a proper segue. I don’t know where to start, so let’s dive in.

Direct trading between players does not exist, still, rather you are forced to use the auction house which only deals in Electrum (real money currency). Previously instanced dungeons are now open world areas where players stumble over each other to complete intricate puzzles like killing twenty enemies and collecting five shillings. Luckily for you, and the other random people you’ll be sharing the dungeon with, groups of mobs respawn just as quickly as you can defeat them, often times faster.

And you will never be under-powered or outmatched. Thanks to fishing and mining, which serves no other purpose other than throwing mass quantities of ability and talent points at you, I probably have enough ability points at level 8 to sustain me to the level cap, and enough talent points that I never have to worry about running out. Even without these upgrades, I found myself constantly emptying my inventory of the hundreds upon hundreds of potions given during quests, as drops, and I haven’t had a reason to use any of them. I don’t think my health has dropped below 97% for the entire time I’ve been playing, and that includes solo’ing boss battles on the harder mode for that dungeon.

Apparently Mechanist Games realized that somewhere along the line, City of Steam had its soul stripped and churned into mulch, because they added the ability for the game to play itself. A built in goldfarming bot! Your character will walk himself through the dungeons, kill enemies with pinpoint precision, use abilities, pick up shillings and whatever else drops, use mana potions as they are needed, find his way to the boss, kill them, and the game will then log you out of the dungeon. I believe that experience and shillings are capped per run, because I hit the auto-attack button and went to sleep just to see what would happen, only to wake up to find my character still running around killing stuff but without any notable increase in experience or cash from the previous night. I haven’t checked my achievements, I probably have a good few thousand gun kills racked up over that seven hours.

Then I came across two of the game’s new mini-games. One game mode is a giant Pacman level, where you run around a maze with knee-high walls and the game throws experience at you. The other game mode has you smashing eggs that drop massive quantities of shillings. There-in lies the problem, that the game gives you everything and does everything for you. Arkadia feels like it is two degrees away from handing me a book and some crayons and telling me to color and stay quiet while it plays itself.

Now that I’ve finished shouting myself blue in the face, I want to end this rant as I normally try to do: On a positive note. The silver lining in all of this is the admission that the US version of Arkadia was essentially built up on short notice with a tiny crew. There are multiple versions of City of Steam, each meant to cater to their respective region, which hopefully means that the English game will be molded to better focus on American and European customers.

For COS English, unfortunately, we are very short of hand for now. The English version will be started from Dave, Ethan, and Shirley. I believe it will get better and better and we will have more resources to be invested, more localization, more specialized cosmetics, and more and more cool stuff which I don’t know.

One can dream.

City of Steam: Arkadia Coming December 4th


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City of Steam may already be dead and buried, at least as far as the English servers under R2Games are concerned, but that hasn’t stopped the folks at Mechanist Games from continuing work on its sleeker, slimmer replacement. In a news post published today, Mechanist Games has revealed that the launch date of City of Steam: Arkadia is December 4th at 9pm EST.

CoS: Arkadia will bring in a slew of new features such as Mercenaries, Alchemy, Fishing, etc, along with redesigned dungeons and improved gameplay. We do think it has a good chance to reach a wider player demographic than before and satisfy the appetites of our loyal fans.

Check it out when the game goes live next Wednesday.

(Source: City of Steam)

City of Steam Is A Chilling Lesson For Indies


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City of Steam is a heavy contender for the most disappointing MMO of 2013, and even if the upcoming relaunch and branding as Arkadia goes well, the story of the folks at Mechanist Games will no doubt find its way into the nightmares of indie gamers everywhere. Much like how we use viruses and bacteria to observe evolution in its quickest form, City of Steam has proven itself an excellent example of a developer going from beloved to dismissed in zero seconds flat. Where some MMOs take years for publisher or investor pressure to simplify their gameplay and treat customers not as long term friends to be treated with respect but as open wallets ready for the bilking, City of Steam managed it under R2Games in the simple cycle from closed to open beta.

I hate to say I told you so, so I won’t. That honor goes to the community who spent countless hours explaining why a partnership with R2Games was a bad idea and warning that when time came that City of Steam was gutted for parts and everything had a price tag on it, that they wouldn’t be there to help pick up the pieces. And they weren’t. When City of Steam launched into open beta and everyone’s fears of a partnership with R2 Games were realized, they simply threw their hands up and departed. There was no big hubbub, no boycotts like with City of Heroes, not the kind of angry outburst you’d expect, people simply left. Anything that could be said had already been discussed over the previous months, and by this point there was nothing left to say.

The good news in all of this is that Mechanist Games always had a kill switch, an option that very few indie developers have once they partner with an outside publisher, and it’s obvious by the lack of updates since open beta that they pulled it pretty quickly. As a gamer, I can only hope that Mechanist Games realized the problem before their customers started leaving in massive numbers, and not after. I can dream that every single request by R2Games to remove features, monetize, increase failure rates, and make the game more cash shop reliant were fought tooth and nail every step of the way, and I can picture that when Mechanist Games bought back their publishing rights, it was done with a generous helping of profanity.

City of Steam has what many other games will never get, a second chance. An opportunity to right their wrongs and gain back the goodwill of their audience, one that appears to be more than willing to forgive them of their trespasses. I hope they make use of it.

But that’s just my opinion.

Mechanist Games Will Compensate Players


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As plenty of you already know, City of Steam’s English servers under R2 Games are shutting down November 21st. In a press release by Mechanist Games sent out today, the developer has revealed plans to compensate backers and restore the faith of their community. While not all of the details are final, when City of Steam: Arkadia launches in November, supporters will find their Electrum restored.

We will recharge all original supporter accounts their total Electrum’s worth on the new Mechanist servers. We want to restore faith in our players, especially those early adopters who believed in us.

Unfortunately, characters created on R2’s servers will not be brought over to Arkadia, however accounts will be compensated based on how far they managed to get in the original game.

Mechanist will be opening new servers, not continuing R2’s servers. But to honor the loyalty of returning players, compensation will be given on these new servers based on the specs of their old characters. We have a strong desire to give everyone the fresh new start this game deserves, but we also really want to thank the loyal players who stuck with City of Steam and welcome them home, whether they spent Electrum or not.

Gamers in City of Steam’s other territories will be happy to know that their service will be mostly uninterrupted. Foreign language versions of City of Steam will also be upgraded to Arkadia, but will continue to enjoy their current publisher.

Those game versions are not affected by the English version’s publishing handover. They can continue playing now, and enjoy the improvements that come along with City of Steam: Arkadia when it is ready. And just like any other version upgrade, all the non-English language versions will also receive it.

(Source: City of Steam)

A Message From Mechanist Games


Hello everyone,

First of all, we’d like to thank all players for supporting this game since the very beginning; it couldn’t have come this far without you.

Circumstances have contributed to a significant loss of players and we’ve decided to cease the current game operations for the Global English version and take City of Steam back. This is a decision we have taken months to reach, and are confident that it’s best for the health of the players, the community and the game itself.

City of Steam is not shutting it down. We at Mechanist Games will improve and self-publish the game, and endeavor to make it available to as many of the original fans as possible by cooperating with popular English language browser-gaming platforms (to be announced).

City of Steam will be upgraded during the time it is offline to better suit the player demographics of the new browser-gaming platforms publishing the game; new content, new features, new systems, massive change to the economy and statistics, new equipment and cosmetics, new quests and an overhaul of most of the level art and main quests. Some features will be removed. There will also be a massive flying fortress for characters of any level to congregate in.

Because of these numerous and sizeable changes, the game will be re-launched in November under the title City of Steam: Arkadia.

Thanks to all the game’s players, and the support of the City of Steam community.

Mechanist Games

(Source: City of Steam)

Mechanist Games Revokes City of Steam From R2 Games


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Back when I previewed City of Steam’s open beta, I noted that while the game was still fun in multiple aspects, that the game had been taken a rather notable hit in quality since its closed beta and before R2 Games was announced as the publisher. Certain game mechanics were severely simplified, the FAQ for the game was so shoddily put together that it was a combination of Engrish, questions and answers that had nothing to do with City of Steam, and bits rolled over from other games. The cash shop grew, prices rose, and suddenly Electrum found its way into many aspects of City of Steam life. And then the game stopped receiving updates and patches, and customer support went silent.

Players who left due to the monetization and simplification will be happy to hear that R2 Games will soon be out of the picture. Mechanist Games has announced on Facebook that they are taking back City of Steam. While the R2 Games servers will be shutting down November 21st, it will be relaunched as City of Steam: Arkadia.

Hello all, today we officially announce that Mechanist Games has taken CoS back. Stay tuned for City of Steam: Arcadia this November! More info coming soon!

R2 Games will not be offering refunds for any recent Electrum purchases.

(Source: City of Steam)