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Designing the missions for City of Heroes
With more than seven years of content, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes of City of Heroes when new content is being developed. The regular developer dispatch newsletter, The Intrepid Informer, has just kicked off the first in what promises to be a series of writeups about the process of creating new task forces, missions, and other content. In the first entry, John "Protean" Hegner details the role of the Lead Mission Designer in the process. As Hegner explains, the game's storylines and overarching foci are all planned out, with certain elements coming into prominence or moving to the background depending on the focus of a given issue. The early part of development centers around figuring out which parts of the game's ongoing story will be explored and how much space the designers have been given to do so. If you're a City of Heroes veteran, the full dispatch is well worth a read for a look at how missions get made at Paragon Studios.
Exclusive Dev Diary: Designing the task forces for City of Heroes Issue 20
City of Heroes traditionally packs quite a lot into its large content patches, and Issue 20 looks to be no exception. Aside from the two new Incarnate Trials meant for endgame players, the update is going to see two new mid-level task forces added for players between levels 20-40. With one force for heroes and another for villains, everyone will have a chance to enjoy some new storytelling about the war against Praetoria outside of the earliest invasions. But of course, new task forces don't just materialize out of thin air. It takes some hard work and a solid set of design principles to make them rewarding, something that Paragon Studios has been steadily improving since launch. John Hegner, Lead Mission Designer for City of Heroes, took the time to share with us what went into the construction of these new task forces and what they should mean for the player, so click on past the break for our exclusive developer diary on the design of the new content.
City of Heroes first ever livestream developer chat
When speaking to this reporter outside the City of Heroes panel at PAX East, producer Nate Birkholz could not emphasize the importance of the community enough. In fact, according to a post back in January, the whole team has upped developer communication to the fans. The players of CoH really help steer this mighty superhero MMO, and the development team wishes to have as many opportunities to speak to its committed community members as possible. Next Thursday, John "Protean" Hegner and Tim "Black Scorpion" Sweeney of the development team and Andy "Zwillinger" Belford and André "Beastyle" Carlos of Paragon's community team will be on UStream to help promote the upcoming Issue 20 and answer viewer questions. For the first time ever, Paragon Studios is opening its doors to video livestream. As an intrepid fan, you will have to watch every minute on the edge of your desk chair. On March 31st from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. EDT, tune in to the official City of Heroes UStream channel to catch all the latest news from Paragon City.
