The Digital Continuum: Concerning superpowers

It's been a long time since City of Heroes launched and up to the sale of the CoX property to NCsoft, Cryptic Studios added quite a bit more into the game. Not just City of Villains with its slew of additional content but also additional levels, tailors for extra costumes/costume redesigns, epic archetypes, plenty of new zones, PvP elements, game balances, new powers, an item system that allows players to invent all sorts of things and even an alien invasion or two. Just recently players were given with another set of new powers that they themselves were able to help choose via the official forums! While that laundry list of additions is quite well and good, for me it still feels like something is missing from my super hero game.

Largely, I think the problem lies with what the game engine is and isn't capable of rendering. The recent inclusion of customizable melee weapons and guns/bows has made me realize something. What about the guy who shoots fire or throws punches full of pure energy? What if I want to create a magic character ala Dr. Strange and green magical fire sounds really cool to me? Well too bad, my fire looks like everyone's boring red fire and there's not a thing that I can do about it. Yet in a game where customization is king, personal touches like green fire or red and purple energy blasts seem to me an incredibly important feature. I've paid a lot more than one or two months of subscription fees just to design myself some characters in CoX and I only manage to get them to around level 14. Just imagine how much more money and time someone would spend given further customization choices.

It isn't the direct fault of City of Heroes or its developer that I feel this way. As I previously said the game is older, having launched back in April of 2004. There are plenty of design choices available to developers now that just weren't possible five or seven years ago when City of Heroes was still being developed by Cryptic.

Another problem that the list of changes hasn't fixed (and probably never will) is that the content in CoX isn't just unfriendly to solo play, it's contentious of such practices. I really do feel like the game would rather do nothing more than kick me in my scrotum for trying to play all alone. The team member/party finding system in CoX is great, but unfortunately teams aren't always an option when I want to play. Like many, I never have a set time to play and most of the time I find myself logging into a game late at night or early in the morning. A person can attempt to play content on their own but it certainly wasn't designed that way. I see two changes, or additions if you will, that would help CoX immensely.

These two things would easily make a game that's rather good into a game that's pretty great. Whether the design team (now working under NCsoft) decides to tackle these things at all is beyond my ability to guess. It isn't crucial for the game that they do, simply because most players are happy with more of what they've been getting the past four years. Whatever developer is out there right now designing the next superhero MMO should, however, be taking notice on these two faults. Reasons being that one of them (customization) is responsible for making CoX as successful as it has been and the other (solo play) has been one of the games largest weak spots.

Granted, from the rumors that we've been hearing, the Marvel game which Cryptic has been working on could very well be on the chopping block. If true, that would be a very unfortunate turn of events for Marvel and its fans. Cryptic is easily the only developer with the experience to take a superhero IP and create gaming gold. Over the past year or so I've been thinking more and more on that fact and came to the conclusion that I'd much rather have Cryptic developing a DC MMO. Surprisingly, my reasons aren't what I would have expected.

I love both worlds and their characters, but it would seem to me that the DCU lends itself to the trappings of an MMO much better than the Marvel Universe. Gotham, Metropolis, Coast and Keystone cities are all grandiose locales that take our own real world cities and make them much larger than life. They are also respectively home to the likes of Batman, Superman and the various men who have taken up the mantel of Green Lantern as well as The Flash. Although Marvel has its share of locales as well, they're always just a bit more grounded than the DCU, plus Marvel isn't so big on superhero lineage and Tolkien-style history. The biggest difference is that with DC you get things like the Green Lantern Corps, the Justice Society, the Justice League, Teen Titans and the Legion of Doom to mention just a few. All of these make wonderful sources of lore for a game to tap into regarding all sorts of uses, permitted the developer is creative and ambitious enough.

Sony Online Entertainment is of course developing the DC game. Jim Lee is at the design helm as the "Executive Creative Director", but that's like hoping that buying the best Brita water filter on the market will make used toilet water taste like sweet apple cider. Sure, there is the slim chance that with Jim Lee assisting SoE, they could manage to create a good DC MMO. Sadly for them and for us, the odds are against them after Star Wars Galaxies and the even worse "New Game Enhancements" debacle.

With the Marvel game rumored to be canceled and the DC game in development obscurity under SoE, superhero geeks are left with City of Heroes and City of Villains. That and the hope that NCsoft and the development team will do something to knock us off our feet. Aside from that possibility we're really only left to our own devices wondering what things may come. Will we get further customization, allowing us to tweak the appearance of our powers as well? Maybe a new expansion will add a robot body type with power sets and pieces that will allow us to create armies of mechanical superheroes (or villains!). Could NCsoft actually figure out a way to ease the pain for solo players, letting them get somewhere on their own without a proverbial scratching nails against a chalkboard type of experience? Nobody truly knows whether or not solo play is possible in CoX, simply because the game has been designed from the ground up for team play. Trying to redesign something as complex as that would be like pulling teeth without a pain-killer. Let us just hope that whatever does happen, the superhero MMO genre doesn't fizzle out.

Until next time true believers!