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'Tis the season for the Distro Gift Guide -- 125 geeky giving ideas
We've been doling out or holiday gift giving advice in installments, but instead of making you wait, we're speeding things up a bit, and offering the full 14 categories just in time for Black Friday. Before you go into a turkey-induced coma, download our very latest special edition, the Distro 2011 Gift Guide, to find out what we've got on our wish list, and what you should have under your tree. From TVS to tablets, from smartphones to Lego sets, we've compiled a list of our favorite gadgets, gizmos and gear for every price range. Consider this your manual for fighting turkey-induced giving indecision. Now, go forth and spend! (Just don't go crazy.)
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Architectural concerns
The big news for City of Heroes over the past week (at least at the time of writing) was the rather borked Mission Architect fix that went live. Well-intentioned, sure, but still borked beyond all comprehension. There's nothing like losing out on experience gained because of rescuing hostages to make players feel like they're welcomed to try out player-created content. But let's not kid ourselves: this is not exactly a unique occurrence. We've been having problems involving some combination of Mission Architect and farming more or less since it launched, and that was back on Issue 14. A year out, you would kind of expect that they'd fix the basic problem of people trying to get something for nothing... but here we are, and the team is still rocking back and forth on the feature. If you're one of the players who prefer the farming style, nowadays it likely feels like more trouble than it's worth. So naturally, I decided to take a look at Mission Architect and what it means for City of Heroes today. Specifically, both why it's important that the team does their best to keep it balanced, and why said balancing is pointless and a waste of time. (I love arguing self-defeating premises.)
Rampant farming forces Paragon Studios to remove City of Heroes badges
When City of Heroes brought us Issue 14, they also brought something rather unique to the MMO space with the Mission Architect -- the ability for players to create their own mission scenarios and share them with other players. Unfortunately, when many games offer achievements of some sort, there are people who figure out ways to cheat the system and farm them out... which, sadly, has proven to be the case with City of Heroes. Synapse (aka Phil Zeleski) from the City of Heroes development team addresses this in a recent blog post. He writes: "We really didn't want the Mission Architect to be an environment that encourages farming for XP, Rewards or Badges, and we thought long and hard about the current Architect badge situation. Ultimately we'd like it to be a place where you go to play great player created content." To keep the Mission Architect system in keeping with their initial goals, Paragon Studios is removing the badges commonly farmed from the game, 90 of them in all, which he lists in his post.
City of Heroes player created content surpasses dev's in 24 hours
It seems as though Paragon Studios have hit content gold with their Issue 14 free update and its Mission Architect system. In the short span of just one day, the City of Heroes community has made more content for the game than has been built during the entirety of the game's life. And even though initial excitement is bound to sizzle down as time passes, we can't wait to see what kinds of missions come out of the players who stick with it over the coming weeks and months.Something that caught our eye was the fact that 70% of all player created content uses custom enemies made with the character creator. If there's one thing you notice after playing an MMO long enough, it's that all the enemies you fight start to become stale no matter how wonderfully designed they may be -- it's inevitable. With this update, however, there's no telling what strange creation you'll end up fighting when a new mission hits the list.The launch definitely seems to have exceeded everyone's expectations, and what's really encouraging is that this is only the beginning for custom created game content in not only City of Heroes, but MMOs as a whole.
Paragon City streets unusually quiet as meta-humans flock to Architect Entertainment
So far, it seems, NCsoft's City of Heroes/Villains Issue 14 Mission Architect feature has been a cracking success. The zones containing Architect Enterprises have been stuffed to overflowing with users learning the system, creating missions and trying missions out. The Mission Architect system isn't exactly all-singing and all-dancing, as it has to work within the constraints of the existing engine, but it does the job quite nicely, and doesn't have a gigantic learning curve. Users have created and published literally hundreds of missions since Issue 14 went live a few days ago.
City of Heroes shows off Issue 14 Architect in new video
The time that many people have been waiting for has finally come! Issue 14: Architect has finally released to the live City of Heroes and City of Villains servers for players to enjoy. This new addition to the City of lineup adds in the ability for players to create their own content, including missions and full story arcs. Ever thought to yourself that your boss/teacher was an evil cyborg sent to bore the world to death? Now with the Architect mission creator, you can recreate them in-game and conquer them before they put Paragon City into a state of eternal power-nap! Brian Clayton, general manager and Executive Producer for City of Heroes/Villains said "We are very excited for City of Heroes to be the first-ever MMO to offer this revolutionary new system to our players. Within two weeks of opening the beta version of Mission Architect to our community, players published an astounding 5,000 custom stories, representing up to 25,000 user-created missions. Such a steady in-flux [sic] of fresh content offers the capacity for endless adventures to City of Heroes subscribers." If you're curious about this nifty new system implemented into City of Heroes, be sure to check behind the break for the hot, fresh launch video.
City of Heroes Issue 14: Architect is live
Much of our recent coverage of City of Heroes has focused on the Mission Architect, and with good reason. Issue 14 brings player-created content into the superhero MMO, placing the tools the developers have used to create missions in the hands of the players. Essentially, players can create their own playable content and tailor these missions to their liking, right down to the characters and the story itself. In some respects, it takes the UI of the character creation tool and applies it to the creation of actual game content. We had a good look at the potential for user-generated content with the Mission Architect at GDC 2009, while it was still in beta testing. Mission Architect is clearly ready for primetime though; NCsoft has announced that Issue 14: Architect is now live, giving City of Heroes players more control over their gameplay than ever before. The Issue 14: Architect release notes are up and detail the many features the update brings to City of Heroes and City of Villains.%Gallery-45908%%Gallery-48661%
GDC09: Mission Architect in-depth
At GDC recently, Joe Morrissey, Senior Designer at NCsoft and Lead Designer for Mission Architect talked to an audience about the challenges of implementing a user generated content system in a 5-year old MMO. Afterwards, we had a chance to sit him down and ask a few questions of our own. But to start with, the basics, for those of you who haven't been following Mission Architect's development: it's a system that allows any City of Heroes or City of Villains player to create their own missions, complete with their own characters and stories. (If the idea of user generated content sounds strange and foreign to you, let Captain Dynamic explain the idea to you.) Currently in beta, this content Godzilla will be released upon the live realms in Issue 14. (For people who haven't yet dived into the City of franchise, there will also be a new game box coming out for Mission Architect: the aptly named Architect Edition.)%Gallery-48661%%Gallery-45908%
City of Heroes Issue 14 open beta has begun
City of Heroes has announced the open beta phase for Issue 14: Architect, which allows players to customize their own missions, at long last bringing player-created content to the superhero (and supervillain) MMO. The NCsoft announcement reads: "Now is your chance to play and give feedback on one of the most in-depth player created mission systems in an MMO to date! Your story/mission masterpieces will be available in-game for all your fellow gamers to play and rate - and the higher the rating, the more YOU benefit!" They also announced that they'll be handpicking the best player-created content as 'Developer's Choice' stories. Those missions will be identified by a unique icon and the creator will receive a Dev's Choice badge. The devs aren't the only ones who get to rate the best missions. There will be a Hall of Fame where the highest peer-rated stories can be recognized for being a cut above the rest. As with the Developer's Choice missions, these stories receive a Hall of Fame icon and badge, but these rankings established during open beta won't carry over once Issue 14 goes live.%Gallery-45908%
A chat with the architect of City of Heroes Issue 14
If you're anything like we are, the goodies coming in City of Heroes upcoming Issue 14: Architect have you pretty excited. Sure, opening up player-built content means someone will likely try to cobble together a flying penis in there somewhere (not that we'll likely ever see it, mind) but you have to take the bad with the good. After all, the refinements that are helping I14 become reality are the same ones that have brought other improvements like the ones for SG/VG bases.The folks over at Ten Ton Hammer got the chance to sit down and talk with Joe Morrissey, Senior Designer for City of Heroes. He explained some of the things we can expect with Architect, how the project fits in with the lore, and touched on some of the other things we've already heard in the hour-long audio clip we brought you earlier. Overall, though it's definitely an interesting teaser of what we can look forward to when I14 drops later this month!
Captain Dynamic wants you to touch his 'awesome button'
We'd like to take this moment and declare our love for Rooster Teeth, because they have once again created something wonderful (probably by touching their awesome button) for City of Heroes' upcoming Mission Architect system.This is the first episode in a three part mini-series entitled Captain Dynamic, and it's basically about the very cool create-your-own-mission tools coming in the free Issue 14 update. So we hope you enjoy it as much as we did, because we really enjoyed it. Actually, yeah, we may need to see a doctor about the searing pain in our sides.Check out the entire first episode just below the cut!
Full details on Mission Architect system for City of Heroes
Today, NCsoft has lifted the veil on their Mission Architect system coming in the free Issue 14 update for City of Heroes -- which is currently looking at a March 2009 release.We've got both a shiny collection of screens and a nice juicy hour-long audio file of Joe Morrissey discussing the various (and numerous) ins and outs of this hugely anticipated feature. Of course, we've also distilled the most pertinent information into an easily skimmed list, which you can find after the break along with the audio.%Gallery-45908%
