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Mission Architect fix goes haywire in City of Heroes
With any player-generated content system, a game becomes a struggle between two equal and opposing forces: the designers who want to cram in every possible exploit to get the best possible rewards with the least possible effort, and those who just want to make really neat story arcs. City of Heroes recently dropped a small patch in the hopes of fighting something that had been a target for exploits, and unfortunately the latter group got caught in the crossfire. In short, the patch was designed to target allied NPCs in missions who didn't attack, but buffed the player characters to the gills in order to make missions easier. Unfortunately, caught in the crossfire were almost any missions that involved things other than enemies, up to and including missions where players would rescue hostages. Needless to say, player response has not been kind. Sean "Dr. Aeon" McCann was quick to give an official statement on the matter, explaining that the idea was to implement a temporary fix that would prevent current farming, with a more permanent one coming around Issue 17's launch. (Although we don't have a specific date on that, it's been generally pegged for early this month.) Until then, City of Heroes players might find themselves advised to take a break from Mission Architect for a little while. [ Thanks to Steve for the tip! ]
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Question and answers go retro
It's time to head back in time, back through the many views and opinion of the past month, and see where we've gone with questions from far and wide. And as long as we're going back in time, why can't City of Heroes go back with us? Seriously, where's the time-travel arc where everyone has to team up with their Silver Age counterpart in bell-bottoms and bad hair? We've long been missing that from the game, and now that I have the time to think clearly it's a problem which should be immediately addressed. Of course, we do have that new Doppleganger system coming up. It could happen. Also, questions should probably be answered before I deviate too far. Zsazsa piped up with an obvious question about the PAX information: "Was anything said about new maps located in space for level 50 characters?" Possibly? When talking with the inimitable Miss Bianco, she mentioned that there were new maps we haven't yet seen... emphasis on those of us in the playerbase. It's very possible that there are, in fact, maps set in space which will be used for the Incarnate system (which requires level 50 and Going Rogue to be playable, so there you go). But as it's implied here that they already exist, wouldn't we have seen them by now?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Meet the PAX press
Compared to the other two City of Heroes events that I took part in at PAX East, the meet and greet almost seems like an afterthought from a news standpoint. And it's fair to say that no new information could be teased from the development team, mostly because they were far too busy laughing and chatting with fans. Not that any of the fans seemed too keen on asking big questions anyhow. It was, all in all, a big chance for everyone to relax, talk about what the state of the game was, and be pestered by me in the form of Mr. Not-So-Mild-Mannered Reporter. And it was a fun time, with a lot of different opinions and a very relaxed atmosphere. However much of an afterthought it might have been from the perspective of hard news, it was a great time for the fans, and that's what the column is really all about, right? So check on past the break for some of the highlights from the evening, not to mention my global handle. (Because people asked there and I blanked under pressure. Plus there wasn't room on the nametag.)
PAX East 2010: Our interview with Melissa Bianco of City of Heroes
Melissa "War Witch" Bianco is without a doubt one of the leading ladies of the MMO world, a title she said she could definitely get used to. But as she says it, that hasn't made an impact on her in some ways, because she never felt there was a bias to overcome at either Cryptic or the current Paragon Studios. "I don't know if I just happened to be in a company that wasn't like that," she says, "or if I'm just so awesome it didn't matter." We would certainly believe either. Bianco is riding fairly high on success at the moment in the eyes of many players, having a solid track record of revamped and improved zones coupled with a highly-anticipated expansion on the way. We had a chance to speak with her after the City of Heroes panel to talk about more future plans for the game, aiming for several of the more outlying areas in the game's development. Read on past the cut for her answers ranging from the immortal warehouse map to the possibility of new epic archetypes.
City of Heroes whips up some demon summoning
One of the features that City of Heroes: Going Rogue is heavily selling are the addition of new powersets. We've already seen the trailer for Dual Pistols, and we were shown the trailer to the Demon Summoning powerset at PAX East. That trailer is now available for every City of Heroes player to view online, allowing all to witness the power of ripping blood-caked monstrosities straight from the nether realms to do your diabolical (or possibly somewhat heroic) bidding. While it's not a full demonstration of the improved graphical designs coming in the expansion, it's clear just how far the game's models have come. Like most Mastermind powers, the set features both minions and a "secondary" power, in this case a flaming whip. The whip, appropriately enough, seems to be both used offensively and in a support role, as the summoner is seen whipping at least one of her demons in what appears to be an enhancing spell. And if the flamboyant gestures aren't enough to impress players, the skull-faced monstrosities should do the job. City of Heroes players who missed out on PAX East as well as those who just want to see Issue 17's upcoming pre-release powerset should click past the link for the video.
PAX East 2010: City of Heroes panel reveals many things
Unpacking the City of Heroes panel at PAX East is a big deal: there were huge amounts of information being thrown around, and a lot of new pieces of information to process. For that matter, there was far more than anyone expected, with information about the full spread of new issues up to Issue 19 and the reveal of Matt "Positron" Miller's heretofore unrevealed new endgame system. The panel as a whole featured a huge breadth of information about the game from concept into the future, and was filled with people long before the official start time, with fans vocally professing their adoration for the team the whole way through. We had the good fortune to be front and center at the theatre, and once we started taking notes we didn't really stop until the event was over. At the panel were lead designer Melissa Bianco, former lead designer and current lead system designer Matt Miller, art lead David Nakayama, and development producer Jesse Caceres. They opened off with a discussion of the game's history from launch back in 2004 to the present. The changeover from Cryptic to Paragon Studios was discussed in brief, mentioning that four of the major launch employees (Miller, Bianco, CW Bennet, and Brian Clayton) were still with Paragon even after the change.
City of Heroes: Going Rogue takes a look underground
There are four months to go before the release of the second City of Heroes expansion, but the development team has been doing a lot of work to keep Going Rogue on everyone's mind. The announcement of Issue 17 certainly did quite a bit in that direction, as did the early release of Dual Pistols for prepurchasing customers. Now we've been given the first major update to the site since the biography of Tyrant, and it's a meaty one. Information and screenshots have been posted for both Calvin Scott, the leader of the Resistance, and the tunnel-dwelling nightmares known as Ghouls. Calvin Scott's biography may be of interest to many players because it gives us something that the community had wondered about -- a heroic Mastermind, leading the Resistance troops against Praetoria's fascist regime. Ghouls, on the other hand, are at once more straightforward and more unsettling, crazed undead that lurk beneath Praetoria and threaten to devour anyone who strays into their territory. The black-and-white world of City of Heroes is getting many more shades of gray in the upcoming expansion, and both of these lore tidbits hint at just how blurred the lines will get come July.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Pay the man
Back on the first column I ever wrote about City of Heroes, many moons ago, someone made a comment that's stuck in my head. It wasn't negative, just something that stuck in my mind. They mentioned how the game had been portrayed in a somewhat poor light on the site as a whole, and used as an example that it had been used as the title image for this article about microtransactions and other payment goodies. Go ahead and take a look at the author of that piece, and you might understand why the comment stuck in my mind. I don't think that City of Heroes does a bad job with their microtransactions. I actually love their setup and like to point to it alongside Dungeons & Dragons Online as a prime example of how to do an item shop correctly. And I'm fairly sure I'm not the only person who feels that way, although there's doubtlessly the other side of the story that thinks they do an awful job. So strap yourselves in, because today we're going to be diving headfirst into the cash shop and my enthusiastic praise for same.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Tripping the XP fantastic
City of Heroes has the best pseudo-seasonal event anywhere: the double XP weekend. Forget holidays that you're usually sick to death of in which you can get some arbitrary gimmick powers, it's cold hard character boosting that really gets everyone excited. And if those of us that play the game weren't swimming with enough alts, we also had our chance to scream up with dual pistols. In summary, it was poised to be the best Christmas ever, except for the minor detail of not being Christmas. Going into the weekend on Friday. I had three major priorities. I wanted to level one of my two "mains" which had been suffering from some neglect, I wanted to bring a villain to 20 or as close as I could manage, and I wanted someone with paired handguns. A tall order, even for a doubled-up weekend, but I live for challenges. Or I'm a glutton for punishment, one or the other. Read on past the break for the path of events and some observations about the leveling game, and perhaps even a bit of enlightenment.
The Daily Grind: Taking part in the doubled experience for City of Heroes?
If you've ever played City of Heroes before, you most likely got the e-mail enticing you to take part in the game's ongoing doubled experience weekend, during which all inactive accounts get a brief chance to return to active duty. And with the game's second expansion on the way, there are plenty of people taking just that opportunity to spring back into the game. Veteran players, by the same token, have something to be enthusiastic about -- with the preorders for said expansion being open, they can get their hands on the highly-anticipated Dual Pistols powerset and speed past the low-level areas in record time. The short version is that if you still have an interest in City of Heroes, now is a prime time to be giving it some of your gaming hours. So what about you? Are you a lapsed subscriber lured back in by the promise of a trial to see what's changed and improved? Or are you a longtime player interested in seeing the new powers in action? And as a special bonus question, are there other games you would like to see run a similar double-rate and reactivation weekend?
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Riddle me this, riddle me that
We've all heard the repeated statement that there are no stupid questions. This is pretty obviously incorrect, and can be proven as such by asking what color has the most pizza, or how much a clearly-priced item costs, or how you mine for fish. But when it comes to being unsure about things in City of Heroes, that old chestnut rings true. Certainly you can ask questions that have obvious answers in retrospect, but there's enough to learn and know about the game that it's never a bad idea to ask a question. We'll kick off with a question asked by Sharko: "Are we ever going to see new Epic Archetypes in the game?" The developers have been fairly close-lipped on this point, and for somewhat good reason. Making a new archetype requires a concept that doesn't fit within any of the existing power frameworks, has enough to do that it can sustain itself for the same range of play as the other archetypes, and usually requires some complex balancing against the other archetypes to avoid being more powerful or less. With the breadth of options available to current City of Heroes characters, there's not always a lot of new space to squeeze in something else.
City of Heroes: Going Rogue open for pre-orders
This weekend, every City of Heroes player will get an opportunity to double up on their experience, Influence, Infamy, and possibly their playtime. (Actually, depending on how many alts you have to level you may very well be tripling or quadrupling it, but that's not the rate of increase for anything else.) So why not get the chance to start leveling one of the new powersets in the process? Pre-orders for City of Heroes: Going Rogue have opened up on the official site, allowing you to digitally purchase an advance copy of the expansion and get early access to Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning. Unfortunately, if you wanted to level up a demon-summoning mastermind, you'll have to wait just a little bit, as that powerset will go live with Issue 17. And the expansion itself still isn't set to release until July, when a whole new slew of options will open up. But if you're a longtime City of Heroes player or a recent convert, there's a whole lot of things out there to shoot and one little assault rifle likely isn't going to do the job. Go ahead and get your pre-order in, and take a look at the improved website for the expansion while you're at it. [ Thanks to Skystreak and Celestial Lord for the tip! ]
Twice the bullets in CoH's dual pistols powerset video
The newest Powerset heading to City of Heroes is coming from the Going Rogue expansion, and we've got a video showcasing it. Everyone loves shooting stuff in videogames, so we're pretty sure everyone will enjoy rolling a Hero, Villain, or Praetorian and busting out some crazy gun moves. Actually, the way this Dual Pistols video is cut, you can tell someone is a fan of the Matrix and Equilibrium films. Plus, we're pretty sure the last power shown is basically full-on Gun Kata. Yeah, you'll probably want to check out the video for yourself. Find it after the break, as usual.
City of Heroes extends free transfers yet again
City of Heroes players have been heavily anticipating the upcoming double experience weekend for understandable reasons -- there's no finer chance to get a character leveled, or take a character who hasn't been played in a while and bring them up to new heights. As the developers have been wont to do of late, they decided to sweeten the deal a fair bit -- specifically, they've decided to add in a healthy dose of moving your character wherever the heck you want. That's right -- after the last extension, the team decided to further lengthen the period allowed for free server transfers. February 28th was originally slated to be the final day, but with the weekend so close, they've pushed it ahead another week, ending either on Sunday or Monday. (The official announcement says "Sunday, March 8th." This is doubtlessly a typo, as the calendar forbids such an interaction from taking place.) An extended transfer period means that everyone you play should be well-positioned for the double experience weekend, as well as the upcoming changes to the game. So get your smackdown on in City of Heroes wherever you want, and ramp up for the big changes just over the horizon. [ Thanks to Skystreak for the tip! ]
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: All the community news that's fit to print
In a city marked by constant alien invasions, assaults from an island controlled by a sadistic villain, rampant street crime, and various technological and magical disasters, there's always something to talk about. There's usually more than a few things for players to talk about on top of that, which certainly helps keep our interest in City of Heroes even when we're not right in the thick of things. After all, whatever else you might say about the game and its flaws -- it's fun. It gives you a fun ride of being a superhero or supervillain. If you can't enjoy a conversation about that, really, you're just plain getting jaded. Naturally, having discussions about nothing more than "it's fun" would get a little old, but that's certainly not all of the discussions about the game. Just about half. Today, we're taking a look at some of the other half, spotlighting some of the most interesting, though-provoking, or just plain funny discussions and threads coming out of the City of Heroes community.
New Issue 17 details for City of Heroes
If you play City of Heroes, you're looking forward to the upcoming Issue 17. We've heard some of what can be expected from the big pre-expansion drop, but much of it was cloaked in vague terms -- improvements that didn't have any hard data attached to them, like the promise of new missions and UI revisions. But the official site has put up a page on the coming features for the update, and it helps clarify some things we didn't know about, as well as offering some excellent news besides. And it promises the end of Positron's dreaded unending task force! (It'll still be there, but it will be split into two parts and improved all around.)
City of Heroes opens beta testing for Dual Pistols
You have two hands, so why not use two guns? That seems to be the operant philosophy behind dual-wielding handguns, often going to absurd lengths with ridiculously high-caliber guns. (Go ahead and try using two Desert Eagles at once.) But whether you want to be Roland or Maelstrom, you can start experiencing the joy of going to town with paired handguns. Testing for the Dual Pistols powerset in City of Heroes has now begun on the test servers, which will likely spend the rest of the testing period covered in shell casings. One of the highlights of the upcoming expansion, Going Rogue, it was recently announced that Dual Pistols would unlock early for players who pre-ordered, which means this test is a straight ramp-up to the coming release. There's also a forum devoted solely to feedback for the new powerset, as excellent an execution as ever there was. Naturally, this news is going to be quite exciting to some, as it both means a preview and test of what's to come, not to mention it means Going Rogue seems better poised to hit its target date. So what are you waiting for? Get your City of Heroes test client set up and start shooting!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: I'll play your game, you rogue
One of the disadvantages to working ahead is the fact that sometimes, time catches up with you. Case in point: the latest bout of Going Rogue information. By the time I found out about everything, had digested it, and was ready to write up a whole article about it... well, it was 10:40 PM on Tuesday night, and I wasn't going to have enough time to write it before the column went live. Not to mention that there wasn't an illustration ready. (Drawing those things takes the talented A. Fienemann time, after all.) So we're going to talk about it just a wee bit later. But that's not such a huge deal, because there's quite a bit to digest in the most recent batches of news. Enough that we have quite a bit to look forward to and speculate on, even if we don't necessarily find all of it quite as interesting, and a whole lot of ramifications for the game's future to think about.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: The endgame oddity
As long as I'm exhorting our new lead designer and hoping she brings a swift death to the warehouse map, it seems only fitting to take a look at the promised new "endgame system" that Matt "Positron" Miller is supposedly developing. I say this in quotes because, really, that's all we've been told. It is a system and it will involve the endgame, and presumably some sort of rewards in exchange for effort. For all we know it's going to be an interactive kitten-petting simulator. Regardless, I think that Miller is exactly the right person for the job. (I'm sure Paragon Studios has been waiting for my approval.) We've seen some spectacular system launches during his tenure, but the content problem extends through to the endgame, and is an issue that City of Heroes needs to deal with. And the oddity is that the game simultaneously has the most populated endgame possible, with huge amounts of things to do... yet not nearly as many interesting things to do when you hit max level as other games. It's a bit of design strangeness, one that serves the game well up until the last level and will take some clever work to overcome. How can the endgame be so sparse when it's so rich?
Ultra Mode, new powersets, and new issue coming to City of Heroes
Dr. Aeon is as good as his word and better yet. We're not just getting Ultra Mode prior to the launch of City of Heroes: Going Rogue, we're getting a whole cavalcade of new things. City of Heroes players who have been holding off on pre-ordering the expansion are being given good reason not to dawdle, as pre-order customers will get access to the powersets in March and April. While an exact date of release has not been given, we are now being told that Going Rogue is expected to release in July, meaning we have a pretty clear idea of when we can start switching sides. But hold on to your hats, because there's still a lot more. Issue 17 is also going to bring the biggest change to Epic Archetypes since they were introduced: they will now unlock at level 20. That's a thirty-level drop and makes playing one as your main more fesable than ever. Oh, and we're promised new UI improvements, Mission Architect improvements, and more missions and badges. And that's not even touching on the promise of Going Rogue's collector's edition... suffice it to say that there's a lot to look forward to for City of Heroes players, and there looks to be quite a bit to talk about in the near future. %Gallery-85069%
