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SDCC 09: City of Heroes devs on the future of player-created content
This week marked the annual pilgrimage to Comic-Con International in San Diego for the comics and gaming faithful, and a number of superhero MMO developers were there as well to whip the fanboys (and girls) into a frenzy. When you think about it, comic conventions are as big for superhero games as other events like E3 and PAX. Massively was on the ground at SDCC this year and among the games we took a look at was, not surprisingly, City of Heroes. We caught up with City of Heroes game designers Joe Morrissey and Matt "Positron" Miller who shared with us a bit about how things have changed in the game in recent months, and gave us some info about the content and features on the way in Issue 16: Power Spectrum.%Gallery-68649%
One Shots: Celebrating 50 with the Carnival
Hitting 50 - the level cap in City of Heroes - for the first time is an imporant moment for any hero, just as hitting the level cap is in any MMO, really. Of course, unlike say, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes really doesn't change significantly at endgame - you just get to spend all that Influence on the max-level IO Enhancements. Today's One Shots shows off one of our readers, Tony P., hitting 50. He writes in: The shot was taken in a Carnival of Shadows radio mission. I was waiting for the level animation so I could take a screenie of reaching 50 on my first character. I must have been casting one of the archery AOEs at the time as I got this interesting shot of arrows and and the levelup animation combined. My character was in stealth which is why you can't see them much. Grats on 50, Tony!Do you have a particularly cool shot of a casting animation, a Ding-shot, or just one of combat? We dig on those cranked-up spell effects. Just send it to us here at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the game and location. Descriptions are, as always, welcome but not required. We'll post it out here for the world to see!%Gallery-9798%
Twice the experience for Paragon's heroes this weekend
We know how busy things can get after the start of the year. Kids head, grumbling, back to school; college is open for another grueling term; work may just seem like a string of meetings about the next year - to the point where you think if you hear the word "budget" one more time, you're going to go medieval on someone. Those guys from Office Space? That fax machine? Yeah, they won't have anything on you when you finally toss the Power Point projector through the window.The good news is that if you're looking to escape all those worldly frustrations this weekend, City of Heroes has just the treat for you. All the Heroes and Villains of Paragon, recently having taken on Day Jobs of their own, are getting a break in the form of a weekend stuffed full of double experience! So if you've got an alt that you've been considering running up, or just want a break from hanging out in Pocket D or Atlas Park, grab some friends and go get your mission on for tons of sweet, sweet double experience. And hey - you can always imagine some big nasty boss is really that Power Point projector you've come to loathe so much.
Third video out for City of Heroes and Villains
Thanks to the team at NC NorCal, we have a bit of superhero and supervillain fun for your Friday. They're winding up their three-video set to celebrate the launching of the Mac client for City of Heroes and City of Villains with this video titled "I'm a Hero, I'm a Villain: Sidekick." This time we get to meet the new sidekick - and thank the stars that being a sidekick in the game is much more fun! The final video in the heroic Mac-themed trio is behind the break for your viewing pleasure. If you missed either one of the earlier videos, be sure to check out "I'm a Hero, I'm a Villain", or the follow up "Day Jobs" as well. Also, if you're a Mac player and have been considering checking it out, be sure to read our hands-on with the Mac City of Heroes client.
NC NorCal brings on another Hero vs Villain video
To celebrate the Mac client going gold, NC NorCal has produced a trio of videos showing off City of Heroes in the style of the Mac commercials. Last week we got to meet their hero and their villain, who gave us a few giggles as they introduced themselves. This week, NC NorCal has expanded it just a bit to tell us about our hero's secret identity; his Day Job. Of course, the villain thinks this is pretty funny - and we do too! See if you can guess what our hero's Day Job is from the above image, then check behind the break for the video to find out if you're right. For those curious about the new Mac client, be sure to check out our hands-on, and if you missed the prior video, you can check it out in all it's silliness right here.
The Digital Continuum: City of Heroes 2
A surprisingly large amount of people didn't believe me at all when I said something to watch out for in 2009 was an announcement for City of Heroes 2. In fact, pretty much everyone has disagreed with me here. That's fine, but they're all wrong, and in this week's Digital Continuum I'll explain why I think as much.
NCsoft NorCal and ArenaNet weigh in on storytelling's future in MMOs
Our sister site Joystiq recently had the chance to speak with several developers about the future hurdles facing storytelling in games. Two members of the MMO industry were in the mix, and their views on how to tell a story in future MMOs are each a very focused snapshot at how City of Heroes and Guild Wars each approach story. With City of Heroes, it's not about the level of tech, but about how much the audience cares about the story. As for Guild Wars, the opposite seems to be the case: it's about learning how to tell interesting stories with new tools.We don't think either method is wrong, as both views are a product of their origin. Namely, of what the developer has learned and their audience has demanded. We're certain that both developers will continue produce story within games that evoke unexpected responses from us, for better or worse.
Meet the ultimate City of Heroes Issue 13 guide, Infoman
Walking down the street, you're suddenly stopped by a man wearing a fedora and trench coat. "Hey you, yeah you!" he spits out in hushed tones. "Uh, what's up?" you respond cautiously."Yo, the name's Infoman," he looks about nervously, like someone may be watching him, "check out the merchandise" opening his jacket to reveal countless links for articles all about the recent City of Heroes' Issue 13 update. Everything from the Positron interview at Joystiq to in-depth fan-made videos of all the new systems added into the game."It's all free, take whatever ya like." says the calm street walker, who now seems like a pretty nice guy. "I'll take that Floyd 'Castle' Grubb interview about the new powersets." you say. He nods, hands it over and says, "I gots more if'n you want it, kid. Be down at the docks." and struts off down the street whistling a tune.
The 26 Shields of City of Heroes
When we logged into City of Heroes to check out the new Shield powerset released in yesterday's Issue 13 patch, the one thing that we were not expecting was to find 26 shield types to choose from. It took us quite a while to settle on a shield, as our impulse was to have them all. Once we did make our selection though, it dawned on us that we should share this amazing catalogue of bodily protection with the rest of the world.We'd like to stress that this isn't every mutation of all the shields, otherwise this would be called "The 4,532 Shields of City of Heroes" and that just doesn't have the same ring to it. Plus, we value what little social lives we actually have. So without further day we present to you, our dear Massively readers, the 26 shields of City of Heroes.%Gallery-38575%
City of Heroes Issue 13 goes live!
Months in the making, delayed when the Mission Architect was pushed to next year, finally finally, City of Heroes Issue 13 is live! Yesterday saw the servers go down for one of the largest content pushes ever by the NCsoft development team. The patch notes are up on the official site, and they're simply monsterous. We've been through this list before, but it's worth going over again: new story arcs for the Midnight Squad, new story arcs for Cimerora, the all-new Merits reward system (which was featured in an exclusive interview here on the site), Day Jobs, new powersets, multiple builds, a huge PvP revamp ... it's exhausting just to mention, let alone consider playing. For a 'thousand foot view' of Issue 13 and its philosophy, be sure to check out our extensive interview with Brian Clayton and Matt Miller all about the "Power and Responsibility" super-patch to this venerable superhero MMO. During that chat we also talked about the future of purchaseable content packs in the game, something we think we're likely to see new talk of soon. Be sure to check out the links above, read up on the full official patch notes, and dig in to our coverage of City of Heroes Issue 13. Excelsior!
Artist David Nakayama joins City of Heroes team
Comics artist David Nakayama, who has done an immense amount of work for Draw the World Together, has joined the NCsoft NorCal team as a concept artist for City of Heroes. The official announcement was made at HeroCon, where David was also making character sketches for the lucky contest winners.David's no stranger to the CoX universe, having drawn several of the comics that came out as accompaniment to the MMO and worked on art for the trading card game. His recent work also includes projects for Marvel Comics, including an upcoming series written by Chris Claremont. The addition of a concept artist of David's calibre at this stage in the game's life is an exciting development and raises some questions.
Super Boosters and beyond in City of Heroes
Massively recently had the chance to talk with City of Heroes executive producer Brian Clayton and Lead Designer Matt Miller about a multitude of CoX topics. One of the points we covered was the downloadable optional content, such as the recent Cyborg Pack.Massively: The recent changes in the studio, the additional bandwidth you were talking about: would you connect those to the changes you've made in pricing, with the additional purchaseable content? Or is that more a direct result of NC NorCal coming into its own? Brian Clayton: It's a little bit of both, to be perfectly honest. We certainly have huge plans, plans that go over the next five to ten years, for the City of Heroes franchise. So we certainly need to ramp up for that. But we also feel that by providing the Super Booster packs and things like that, it's a win-win in that it helps grow the studio internally to provide more things for our community, but it also helps us to justify those costs and build for the future. I think that's certainly a part of it, but there are larger initiatives again that we can't fully go into detail about, for the future of the franchise.
A new era for PvP in City of Heroes
Massively recently had the chance to talk with City of Heroes executive producer Brian Clayton and Lead Designer Matt Miller about a multitude of CoX topics. It was clear to us that some major PvP changes were afoot, so we picked up the topic and ran with it.Massively: So the 'multi build' feature sounds incredible for PvP, and it sounds like you're going to be doing some PvP rebalancing, which I know can get into fiddly details, but can you talk generally about what sort of rebalancing you guys are doing for PvP combat? Matt Miller: We're basically trying to balance it out and make it a lot more fun, not make it so one-sided where certain archetypes and certain powersets completely dominate the PvP game.
Brian Clayton and Matt Miller on Power and Responsibility in City of Heroes
Right now the news is breaking about a major change to the City of Heroes issue release schedule. The Mission Architect feature is being moved to Issue 14, because overwhelming player response convinced the developers not to release the feature until it contained a key element the players wanted: the ability to include customized allies and opponents. Issue 13, now titled Power and Responsibility, will include a whole lot more cool content and reach the player base that much sooner. City of Heroes executive producer Brian Clayton and lead designer Matt Miller were extremely generous with their time yesterday and gave us a lengthy interview, in which they covered a whole host of details about the improvements coming in Issue 13, the changes to the studio, and the future of the City of Heroes franchise.Matt Miller: So the title for Issue 13, Power and Responsibility, that has a lot of meanings. We picked it very specifically to make sure that not only were we conveying the fact that we're adding more powersets and giving players more power in what they're able to choose for rewards and things like that, but then the responsibility nature takes on the day jobs, that offline character advancement system, the responsibilities your character has when you're not playing.
Brian Clayton and Matt Miller: Page 3
Alternate BuildsMassively:There's a ton of new features that you guys are putting in here to go along with the leveling pact and to make up for Architect being moved over a little bit. Can you talk about multi-builds a little bit? Is there going to be a minimum level after which the feature's going to become available? Matt Miller: Yeah, I believe it's level 10. We're going to be experimenting with it in Closed Beta and seeing where's a good point to introduce this concept. Because it is a fairly complex concept and we don't want the new players to have to deal with it right away, at level 1! It's around 10 or 15, when you pretty much know how your character's playing, and an alternate build would probably be of actual benefit to you. Basically, what it is is you get to create a new character, the same level and archetype and powersets as your other character, and you can switch between them. You get a respec that doesn't actually change your main set of powers, but you level up that character, you pick where the slots go, you pick what powers you want, you slot those with Enhancements, and that's your alternate build. Massively: So basically you create the character, and he has the archetype and he has the power selections that he has when you make the character, but then you can switch what powers you have selected over the course of your career at a specific NPC, right? Matt Miller: Yep! Base ChangesMassively: You mention that base items will be seeing a change. We're wondering if any of that is going to come through with Issue 13. There were rumors that Issue 13 would be seeing a lot of base changes, and we're wondering if any of those are going to make it through, with this change to Issue 14. Matt Miller: One of the first things coming for base changes is going to be in Issue 13, and that is a repricing for a lot of things that supergroups can purchase for their bases. We're lowering a lot of the Prestige costs on not only rooms and base plot sizes, but for items as well, to make them more affordable. We have a lot of datamining now. We know exactly what plot sizes and rooms supergroups can afford. And so we're going through and we're making sure that more supergroups can afford those cooler rooms and those cooler base items, and things like that. "...we're getting rid of the Base Salvage out of the game, because a lot of the players were getting confused with the Invention Salvage, since they both get the same kind of message." And in addition, one of the things we're doing is we're getting rid of the Base Salvage out of the game, because a lot of the players were getting confused with the Invention Salvage, since they both get the same kind of message. Players get excited when they get Invention Salvage, and then they get disappointed when they find out it was only Base Salvage, especially if they don't have a supergroup or their supergroup doesn't really need the Base Salvage any more. So what we're going to do is we're going to get rid of the Base Salvage, and just make everything that's currently craftable in the bases from salvage, craftable through that Invention Salvage as well. Massively: So is that going to make turrets and other raid items for bases easier to get? Matt Miller: Oh yeah. Absolutely. The Ongoing StoryMassively: So there are some really great ongoing story arcs in the game, including the Rikti War and the Coming Storm, and there hasn't been a ton of information previously about whether there's going to be anything like that in Issue 13. Is there going to be a strong story component in Issue 13, or is that getting moved off to Issue 14 along with the Mission Architect? Matt Miller: The real big storyline stuff is coming in Issue 15! Massively: Any hints at all about what that would be touching on? Matt Miller: It's hopefully going to tie up a lot of loose ends that we've had hanging out there for a while now, while at the same time creating a lot more. Brian Clayton: Like any good superhero story. Matt Miller: Like any good superhero story, or episode of LOST. Side switching in the future?Massively: So one last question for Brian: we know there was a marketing survey that went out to players not too long ago, and there were a number of different questions, but one that we think players really attached to was the idea of players being able to switch sides. We wanted to know if this is something that's been taken up and noticed by the folks at NC Norcal, and whether or not you think that's something from your perspective that you guys might be able to address some time down the line? Brian Clayton: We're going to be doing more and more in-depth focus groups and research, and things like that, going forward, so eventually I think this is going to become more noise for the community than it is groundbreaking news! But what I can say is that having players go from hero to villain, and villain to hero, would nicely tie together what we've already done to date with City of Heroes and City of Villains. We certainly like the concept and the idea, but we're just not ready to talk about the details yet.Massively would like to extend our sincere thanks to Brian Clayton and Matt Miller for giving up so much of their time to answer our questions! Read what Brian and Matt had to say on PvP changes, and on the Super Booster packs.
Brian Clayton and Matt Miller: Page 2
The Leveling PactMassively: Brian, you talked about how day jobs are part of NC Norcal's idea of involving players in the game even when they're not necessarily playing, and it seems like the Leveling Pact is obviously a tie-in to that. Can you talk a little bit about that, from a philosophical perspective? Brian Clayton: I'll talk about it from a philosophical perspective and then let Matt follow up with the nuts and bolts of it. The one thing that we continue to strive for with City of Heroes is to pick areas where the MMO genre could use some innovation. We certainly have the best character creation system, and I would argue that sidekicking was very innovative, at the time when that was released. Even the further iterations, like our base creation system, were still very innovative. So we looked at another area of innovation with the Mission Architect system, and now the Leveling Pact. These are things that had been begging to be done in the MMO space for so long. Again, while sidekicking and exemplaring accommodate a number of player types, we feel that the leveling pact now accomodates another type of player. These things not only benefit City of Heroes, they push the genre forward. Matt Miller: It's definitely one of those features that came to us based on a lot of feedback we had from our players, and especially our friends who are playing the game. They came to us and said 'You know, I like playing the game, and I like the sidekicking system, but I'm getting to a point where my friends are so far outleveling me that they don't want to exemplar down and do my stuff because they've already done it before. Is there any way that we can stay more in synch?' "So we had this idea for the Leveling Pact: essentially splitting each character's XP gain directly in half and just distributing it across two characters whether they're offline or online." So we had this idea for the Leveling Pact: essentially splitting each character's XP gain directly in half and just distributing it across two characters whether they're offline or online. And we said: 'You know what? There's a system here. This is a workable system. This is really innovative, and this is taking a new step in sidekicking, making sure that you and your friend are always able to play the game together, and will always be the same level.' Massively: So basically the main character's XP gain is halved, and the other part is given to the buddy? Matt Miller: Yeah, basically both characters when they earn XP, they go through all the calculations for earning XP – how much they're supposed to get, based on their team size, what they defeated – every calculation possible in the game, and at the very end it's divided in two and each person in the pact gets their share. Massively: So the obvious question there, and Brian, this might be more to you, is from a business standpoint, this seems like it might be a dangerous ground to walk for powerleveling services. Because there's some obvious ways that this could be taken advantage of by those kinds of guys. Is that a concern for the company?Brian Clayton: Sure. I mean, it's absolutely a concern. It's a concern that we deal with today, without the system. Really, what we're trying to do is build opportunities for our players to play the games in the way they want to. We'll continue to enforce our policies, and do everything we can to mitigate powerleveling services and things like that. But more importantly, this is a feature that our customers have been asking for, and it's a feature that we want to provide them with. Arguably, you could say we're making it easier for some of these powerleveling services, but at the same time we're probably improving the grouping experience for a substantial amount of our customers. Matt Miller: There's actually less incentive now to use a powerleveling service, because now instead of paying someone to powerlevel my guy, I can actually have my friend play... and I'm not giving up my play time to some other service. I actually get to play whenever I want to on my character. And my friend gets to play whenever he wants to on his character, and we're both leveling at the same rate.New Story ArcsMassively: So for both of you: Issue 13 had already announced that you were going to do more Cimerora mission arcs, and now we hear there will be more Midnight Squad arcs too. Can you talk about where those are coming from as far as the overall story is concerned, and what you guys are hoping to get across for players on the mission content front? Matt Miller: Sure. On the overall story, we always had more story to tell in Issue 12, with both the Midnight Squad and with Cimerora. We just didn't have time to get it all in. When we hired on – we just hired on a couple of new mission writers, and we wanted to make sure that their training didn't go to waste. We wanted to make sure that they understood the systems they were going to be dealing with. And so we had a bunch of these leftover stories from Issue 12, and said 'Okay, let's get these in. Let's train you, and at the same time, get content in the game.' It's a win for us in training, and it's a win for the players in that they get some content. So that's basically what we did, and the story arcs are really fun. They give you more of the background to Cimerora, and more of the characters of the area, and more of the characters in the Midnight Squad, and more of the background on who they are. So it's a lot of cool stuff for the people who are really into the storylines. Continue to Part 3
