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City of Heroes lays out the design for Street Justice
You could argue that City of Heroes has been about street justice since launch, since there is no branch of the US legal system that involves beating people up in the streets with electrical powers. But the Street Justice powerset is the latest addition to the game in the Paragon Market, and as with the previous powersets, a new issue of the Intrepid Informer has been released so that players can understand how the set works, what the designers were thinking, and how to get the most benefit out of it. Written by Phil "Synapse" Zeleski, the diary outlines both the similarities and differences between this set and Dual Blades. While both are combo-oriented sets, Street Justice allows you to build a combo on the fly; by way of contrast, Dual Blades generates a variety of powerful secondary effects with its combos. If the set sounds like the sort of thing that's right up your alley, you may want to pop until the game, drop a couple of dollars, and start breaking some kneecaps. For justice.
Take justice to the streets in City of Heroes
If you're not satisfied taking out thugs with merely a katana or a kick, then Paragon Studios has your answer: Street Justice. It's a brand-new powerset just released in City of Heroes Freedom, available to Scrappers, Brutes, Stalkers, and Tankers. It looks like a flashier mashup of the Martial Arts and Super Strength sets, and according to a post by Paragon's Phil "Synapse" Zeleski, Street Justice is like many of the newer CoH sets in that it comes with a special mechanic, in this case, combo levels and finishing moves that give more freedom to the player than does the similar gameplay hook of Dual Blades. Street Justice is available for purchase in the game's cash shop for 800 Paragon Points (about $10 US). It is one of two new powersets not granted freely to VIP subscribers. Check out the video after the break to peek before you buy.
City of Heroes to get frickin' laser beams [Updated]
If there's one common cry on the City of Heroes forums, it's "give us new power sets!" Fortunately, the upcoming Freedom expansion aims to deliver just that. This morning, CoH's Phil "Synapse" Zeleski offered up a new dev blog outlining one of the planned power sets, Beam Rifle. Available to Blasters and Corruptors (as a primary set) and Defenders (as a secondary set), Beam Rifle is heavy on the AoE and features a signature cascading Disintegrate effect, which can be spread to nearby enemies and causes targets to take ever more damage from the power set's attacks. In a nod to style, Synapse noted that "plasma beams from movies, games, and other sources were the inspiration for the style of beam used by this power set" and that it has "a synthetic, futuristic sound with some 'grime' added [to make it] sound powerful." In related news, Paragon Studios has reiterated that various CoH-flavored purchasables on the NCsoft store website, including the booster packs and expansion boxes, will be discontinued in advance of the looming F2P conversion. If you can't live without a Steampunk costume in the meantime, you have until August 30th to get your fix. [Update: A second dev blog outlining each of Beam Rifle's powers in-depth is also now available on the official website.]
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.
New to Paragon City: Sunstorm and Synapse
Two new 'rednames' have been introduced to the super-powered community by City of Heroes/Villains Senior Designer Floyd "Castle" Grubb at NCsoft. The new bright stars are Jonathan "Sunstorm" Courney, and Phil "Synapse" Zeleski. Both have been around for a little while now, but this is their formal debut. Both Sunstorm and Synapse have been working on Powers. Sunstorm particularly is tackling bases (which many players may find to be an area long-overdue for attention), and you can find an Issue 13 Base Q&A from Sunstorm on the forums. Synapse for his part has already made (ahem) heroic efforts to clarify misunderstandings in the Merit Rewards system, even prior to his formal introduction. That's two devs thrown bodily to the masses. Make them welcome, as only you know how.
The City of Heroes devs explain the new Merit Reward system
City of Heroes Issue 13 is enormous. Even with the Mission Architect pushed out to early next year, the next big patch coming to City of Heroes has enough content to satisfy a small army of players. We've talked previously about the upcoming PvP changes, the Day Job system, and we had the chance for extensive conversations with the developers back when the Issue was first announced. That said, there's still a lot of ground to cover. That's why we were thrilled when designer Phil Zeleski and the infamous Matt 'Positron' Miller reached out to us to clarify what's coming down the pipe with game rewards. We chatted with the gents extensively about the new and improved meta-currency coming to City of Heroes. It's going to make Task Forces and Story Arcs far more rewarding for the average player, and the background behind their design is fascinating. Join us below the cut for discussions about how they chose what rewards to give out, trends along these lines in the indstry, and much more.%Gallery-36910%
