A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Because you demanded answers
It's been another month, and you all know that means it's time for more questions and answers regarding City of Heroes. It's pleasing that I've been getting an ever-greater number of questions, but that also means that more and more I have to just pick a few of them to answer. So, if your question was not among those chosen, fear not; we'll get to it in due time. For now, let's move on past the preamble and into the meat of the column.
Superfan asked: "Will hazard zones ever become co-op?"
I'm going to do the unthinkable and attempt to predict the future here. Yes, hazard zones will become a place where both heroes and villains (and rogues and vigilantes, really) may group together, with nary a care for the alignment of their brothers in supernatural armor. City of Heroes will grow to embrace all of its players inside of these horrifying lands of insane spawns and maddening geographic layouts. While it might sound like I'm treading into ridiculous sarcasm, I'm really not.
The fact is that the roadmap for increased hero-villain interaction has been on the table for quite some time, and it's clearly been an item on the developer agenda for longer still. Heck, the central element of Going Rogue was something the team started discussing almost as soon as the game was released. You don't start making a game based on comics without asking when you can start turning heroes into villains and vice-versa. Given that we've finally seen the faction changes becoming a reality, it's only a matter of time before hazard zones start blurring the boundaries further.
No, I don't have hard facts to back this up. But just you wait and see.
Nick asked: "If new stories don't fit for your definition of content, then what does?"
Admittedly, the question wasn't aimed at me, but we do have certain vocal readers who have complained about precisely this problem. And while I generally do fall into the camp of those who believe that "new stories are new content," I can understand where the other side is coming from.
In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the biggest problem facing Paragon Studios? Geography.
Let's back up. New content can involve three basic pieces: new systems, new stories, or new gameplay. We've seen a lot of new stories and new systems in CoH, but by and large missions play the same as they ever did. You walk to a blip on your minimap, enter a map full of enemies in groups determined by your party size, and beat them up for a while. Then you either click glowies, kill a specific named enemy, or just finish clearing out the area, at which point you're rewarded with a "Mission Complete" flash and an exit button. Oh, and sometimes you have to lead someone back to the entrance.
World of Warcraft is currently the gold standard in MMOs, but it doesn't have a lot more variation. You're told to go kill X of Y, obtain X items from enemy type Y, escort NPC X to location Y, or click on X interactive objects in area Y. The difference is that you're not popping in and out of doors to do so, nor do almost all of the missions take place in identical office buildings, warehouses, or caves.
Going Rogue helps give us some new geography, which at least feels refreshing even if the gameplay doesn't change underneath. But the biggest call from players asking for new content is for something that doesn't fall under the broad summary I just put forth. More dynamic spawns, and so forth. The team at Paragon has done great work trying to alter the structure as much as possible, but that's why even new stories and new systems don't satisfy everyone.
Angermark asked: "Are there any plans for new epic archetypes?"
This question actually got answered way back in the day, but to repeat: While the devs aren't opposed to new epic ATs, they don't currently have any plans for more. You get a nice bonus for reaching level 20 on either side, and right now that's as far as they want to take things.
From the standpoint of things left unsaid, another epic archetype added to the game would require one for each faction, and both would need to do things that the existing archetypes cannot while remaining distinct from one another. That's a pretty tall order when you have to also keep the existing 14 achetypes with multiple powers in mind. And then there's the sticky mess of how new archetypes would be unlocked in the first place...
Long story short, with the Incarnate system taking the place of one of the major hinted EATs (the Incarnates, naturally), it doesn't seem likely we'll see any more until the next expansion. When will that be? It's way too early to even speculate.
Rogue Peter asked: "Everywhere I go, I see people talking about stalkers and masterminds being useless. I'm pretty new to the game, are they all that bad?"
No. But yes. Both of them work just fine, but neither of them is always super-useful in a party environment.
Stalkers are probably the weakest link in this particular chain, because their damage output and entire mechanic is based on using Hide, sneaking up to their targets, and letting out a massive alpha strike. While great for unsuspecting souls in PvP, this doesn't work quite as well in normal PvE encounters against at least three enemies at a time, which are best taken out by area attacks. They're an archetype built around burst damage on single targets when multiple targets are the norm.
Masterminds are on the other side of the scale, with a bunch of pets that are only borderline-predictable and a whole lot of firepower being spread all around. They're often tough to target if you want to heal one of them, and the result of several masterminds in a given group is a sea of minions jamming up the place. They're far from useless, but kind of inconvenient at times. Luckily, unlike being a stalker, being the head of an entire army allows you to take out many threats you would otherwise be unable to manage.
Is either of these archetypes bad? Not in the slightest. But if there have to be two unwanted archetypes in a group, those would be it. Stalkers really do get the short end of the stick, sadly. (Sorry about that, guys.)
Those are our questions for this week, although I'm sure we'll have another batch ready in 30-odd days or so. (These things are predictable, you know.) Until then, you can direct questions, comments, or interesting threads along to eliot@massively.com. Of course, next week's article will come after what I'm sure will be a nice batch of news from PAX, which makes me sad I can't be there... but at least I'll be able to take a look at what happened.
