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MMO Blender: Bree's big-budget sandbox
Writing MMO Blender feels like getting three wishes from a magical lamp and having to think very, very carefully about what you ask for. You have to word it just right and ponder the consequences of each wish on the others because you just know that Genie's going to screw with you. If I were stronger, I'd reject the wishes (here, the 1000 words) outright, knowing they're a trap, but I just can't resist a turn at this column. I want a new sandbox. A good one, not one made by gank-obsessed fanboys on a shoestring budget. I don't think sandboxes are dead; I just know it takes money to make money, and modern indie sandboxes are forgetting that rule. Fortunately, I don't need money for this column. I'll take my MMO Blender wishes and build a sandbox that's more than just a pile of sand and an empty box.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Two City of Heroes factions played as one
At launch, City of Heroes didn't have factions at all. You were a hero. That's just what you were. Once City of Villains went live, however, the game had its second faction, one that existed in contrast to the original option. Now you could be a villain, a super-powered bastard of the first order, stealing and destroying and doing generally villainous things. And yet people don't really think of the game, on a whole, as a two-faction game. Oh, the game has two factions -- everyone acknowledges that. But it's not lumped into the same category as the many games that have a direct split between two opposing player factions largely because the game has two factions only in the most high-level sense. Let it be known that this article isn't meant to discuss whether or not two factions are a good size for a game or not; that's a Soapbox topic right there, and it's not one I have a very strong feeling about anyway. No, this is entirely about why it is that City of Heroes has two factions but you never really see them as such. Being a hero or villain is almost a afterthought when it comes down to it.
One Shots: A big white blur
Conventional wisdom holds that snow zones in games and movies make for a featureless, monochrome eyesore that bores onlookers, and yet both Star Wars Galaxies and Star Wars: The Old Republic couldn't resist the allure of Hoth. Today's One Shots from reader Brooks reveals his character resting above an imposing crevasse on the notorious ice planet as depicted in SWTOR: Surrounded by the harsh beauty of ice and stone, Jedi Knight Omiko Kell takes a meditative moment to reflect on the weight of her responsibility to the native people and Republic forces struggling for freedom and survival on the desolate and unforgiving planet of Hoth. Does she sway from her primary mission set forth by her Order and help others, or will she let them stand alone in their fight against the Empire, pirates, and mercenaries while she focuses on her Masters' directive? Whichever one gives you the most legacy points, of course. Brooks' full screenshot and a few others are beyond the cut!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Too many choices
We've gotten a lot of new powersets in City of Heroes ever since the game went free-to-play. This is something that I've talked about before: There's rather uncomfortable cycle during which a new set is released full of bugs, but it gets played for a month before the next set comes out and you stop thinking about the old one. And that's definitely a potential problem, but with the release of the new Water Blast set, I'm thinking that there's a much more coherent one in mind. Specifically, I'm thinking for the first time that maybe there's something to the old issue of being locked into a power set after character creation. Don't get me wrong -- I don't think Water Blast is overpowered or underpowered. It actually looks like it makes better use of a new mechanic than did the last big ranged set. But we now have an absolute surfeit of options for playing a Blaster, and as the game gets more and more endgame-heavy, I'm starting to wonder how long it will be before players get tired. We're seeing a different sort of power creep here: We just have too many choices for a new character.
The Daily Grind: Is looting important in MMOs?
As I play City of Heroes, rolling through the Summer Blockbuster content, I'm reminded that CoH's looting system is really weird. As in, there kind of isn't one. Recipes, enhancement, salvage, and influence just sort of magically appear in their respective trays. There are no sparkly bits to tell you that hey, you should totally come click this monster because its still-warm corpse has shinies for you. You never have to worry that you missed a piece of choice loot back in the last room. And players never, ever fight over loot because at the end of an important mission, everyone gets a drop. At the same time, CoH is missing some of the thrill that comes when you best the random number generator and finally get your purple shiny sword of doom. The near-intangibility of the game's drops means fewer crushing defeats when that freaking Hunter rolls on your tanking sword, but it also means fewer victory laps. You give up the rush from clicking on a monster just to see what he has; that step is completely stripped out. What do you think -- is a physical "looting" process critical to MMOs? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: City of Heroes' Summer Blockbuster in review
Ah, summer, the time of year when kids and teachers don't have to worry about school, no one has to worry about clean sweaters, and the movie industry worries about which films wind up with the most significant profit over the next several months. More knowledgeable folks than I have discussed summer blockbusters in the past, but the truth is that I'm not here to talk about the concept; I'm here to talk about the new City of Heroes event. The idea behind the Summer Blockbuster is a pretty clever one, although you have to be willing to accept the kind of meta structure of the whole thing. It's still a chance for players to go into the meat of a big summer blow-out extravaganza, which would seem like exactly the right time for the developers to just give us some enormous brawls. Instead, the event consists of two parts that actually show off some of what City of Heroes is capable of despite its age. It's good stuff, in other words, and there are some things worth taking away for the future.
City of Heroes shows off the Water Blasting set under development
Are you ready to get wetter than you've ever been? If not, how about letting your enemies get drenched? The Water Blasting set coming to City of Heroes will allow you to do just that, and it's a set that players have been waiting on for what seems like half of forever. And if you're wondering what the set can actually do, it's probably a fine time to take a look at the newest issue of the Intrepid Informer, showing off the set's powers and the new mechanics involved. The core of Water Blasting is a stacking buff known as Tidal Power. Certain powers build Tidal Power, certain others consume it, and some build the buff if you're at less than maximum capacity but consume it otherwise. The powers involve several knockdowns as well as a heal, a short-range defensive burst, and an assured AoE knockdown when played correctly. Take a look at the full rundown and start planning on your upcoming squirt gun character (Super Soaker being the obvious choice)!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: All we need are radio missions
Radio missions are not the most controversial aspect of City of Heroes. Considering the nature of the game, I'm hesitant to even point to one thing as being "the most controversial," but PvP and Incarnates would probably be near the top. That doesn't mean that radio missions aren't an important part of the game, nor does it mean that these missions are universally beloved, and that's because they screw with a very big part of the game in a way that not everyone is going to like. First added in City of Villains as newspaper missions and later ported over to heroes via the police radio, these missions are great little bursts of content that give you a place to fight and a reason to do so without hunting down a contact or a specific arc. Unfortunately, they also do so in a way that really steamrolls much of the game's content and encourages their nigh-exclusive use. Like many of the systems added to City of Heroes over the years, they add a lot of fun, but they also are directly at odds with an existing set of fun content.
MMO Blender: Eliot's self-made legend
I like games that make your characters feel legendary, but sometimes I think they've gotten the whole formula wrong. The problem is that the only thing important about your character is what he or she has done, not what he or she is. World of Warcraft has a lot of quests and raids that seem to imply your character is a big deal, but how big a deal can you really be if you're learning all of your tricks at the local trainer? What about a game where your personal history has as much to do with your future development as anything else? A game where your accomplishments aren't just backstory but an integral part of your character's abilities? A game where every new encounter is a chance for your character to learn something unique? I'd love to see a game where your accomplishments are not a list of things that you've killed but a clear litany of skills learned and scars accumulated -- a game where the path to power isn't necessarily clearly marked.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Upcoming Blaster changes
Not every game faces the mage problem, but a lot of them do, and it starts back in classic Dungeons & Dragons. The core of the issue is pretty simple to understand: Because mages have so much phenomenal offensive power, they need some staggering weakness to balance that out. As a result, the class is very physically weak and lacks any real defenses. But the counter to that is that this creates many situations in which the mage is just plain useless because he or she has no effective defenses to weather an initial assault. Blasters aren't mages. Unless they are, anyhow -- City of Heroes is kind of resistant to pigeonholing. Whether your Blaster is an arcane caster or just a guy with radioactive hands isn't important because the class still suffers from the mage problem. Blasters are one of the most powerful classes in the game when it comes to raw damage, but they're also one of the hardest classes to solo, and they're one that goes from hero to zero the fastest.
City of Heroes summer blockbuster event starts tomorrow
We're in the thick of the summer movie blockbuster season, so you can't blame the folks at Paragon Studios from trying to get in on the fun. The devs are so on board with this concept, in fact, that City of Heroes will kick off its Summer Blockbuster Double Feature event starting tomorrow. As the name implies, this event features two movie-like adventures. The first one is called Time Gladiator, and it features an over-the-top fight in a Roman coliseum. The second one, Casino Heist, is a robbery-gone-awry as the superheroes take on the tough security forces. Each movie event has a different mechanic as well: Time Gladiator will have players filling up a favor meter to unlock a bonus stage, while Casino Heist divvies up your team into specialized roles. Paragon's even made a movie theater lobby for players as they wait. It's here that winning submissions from the player-designed poster contest are displayed. Players are welcome to kick back with this double feature as long as they're level 15 or higher. If a player completes both movies, they'll be treated to a new universal damage IO enhancement. One enhancement can be earned every 20 hours.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: In praise of City of Heroes' zone revamps
If the classic MMO is an open sandbox wthout direction and the modern MMO is a guided ride along the quest railroad, City of Heroes was made on the day in between those two points. Nowhere is that more evident than in classic zones from the earliest days of the game, which featured a large number of contacts who would send you scurrying across a zone to largely random points without any real rhyme or reason. It was a different time then, and I think we all still expected to get most of our rewards via killing random things on the streets. You knew that they were criminals because they attacked you, see. These days, MMOs are very different, and not entirely coincidentally, City of Heroes as a game keeps revamping its zones. After the Atlas/Mercy/Galaxy revamp that we all thought would never happen, it seems that the team behind the game is really making an effort to give players some redone and more invigorating zones with coherent plot threads. And for many reasons, this is one of the best things that can happen to the game from start to finish.
Leaderboard: Superhero costume creators
Every cape worth his, her, or its salt knows that without a snappy fashion statement, all of the powers in the universe won't be able to make you a cool superhero. That's why our current trifecta of superhero MMOs place such a premium on giving players tools to create a unique, memorable, and suitable outfit for their comic book star. But this being Leaderboard and all, we can't just allow the three costume creators to co-exist peacefully. Nay, we must throw them into the DoomSphere™ and spin that puppy around until only one good-looking candidate remains. Will it be the grand-daddy of them all, City of Heroes? Or Cryptic's follow-up with Champions Online? Or perhaps the upstart, DC Universe Online? Vote for the best costume creator after the jump and help to pulverize the competition!
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Praetoria's invasion in review
It's all over and done for Praetoria now. Well, not all done; as long as new characters can start in City of Heroes as Praetorians and later run through the relevant Incarnate Trials, it'll never really be done. And we'll have more stuff in the postscript, of course, because there's always a postscript. But this big overarching story arc that the game has been running since the launch of Going Rogue almost two years ago is finally finished. And that prompts an obvious question: How did the whole arc look in retrospect? Let's face it: This whole arc has been something new for City of Heroes, an attempt to replicate the huge multi-comic crossovers that are really fun until they make up all the comics ever. You know, like what happened to Marvel comics from the late '90s until the early '00s or what's currently happening at DC. And just like those big crossovers, this one had some big flashes of brilliance and some moments that seemed like a letdown.
City of Heroes unveils fan-created Retro Sci-fi costume set
City of Heroes players, we hope you're ready for a flashback because the game's new Retro Sci-fi costume pieces are full of old-school goodness right out of yesteryear's sci-fi classics. Ray-guns, jetpacks, and shiny suits with rings on them are all present in the new costume pieces that were initially conceived with fan input at last year's City of Heroes fan summit. The folks at PC Gamer had the chance to sit down with Paragon Studios' Eric Johnsen to talk a bit about the new additions. Johnsen talks briefly about the creation of the costume set's conception at the fan summit and the process of taking those ideas and turning them into full, in-game costume pieces. If you want to know anything about the design process of the Retro Sci-fi set or about the most recent fan-designed costume set and its release, head on over to the full article and give it a read.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Underused enemies in City of Heroes
Last week I discussed why I'm not fond of Nemesis as a group, and this week I promised to discuss villainous groups that I think that City of Heroes could use a bit more actively. So I am certain that longtime readers expected me to spend most of this week talking about the Fifth Column because of course I would. I love the Fifth Column, I think they're a fantastic group of villains, and I've talked about how great they are as a group over and over. Surprise! Not this time. For all that I love the Column (and their continual curbstomping of their pale imitation in the Council), that wasn't my goal this week. No, this time around I want to highlight other groups that I think Paragon City could use a bit more often, enemies that either fall off the radar or just don't get as much attention as they're due. Even in a game that's been around as long as City of Heroes, there are certain enemy groups that just never get the love they deserve. Maybe the future can fix that for some of these guys.
Exclusive City of Heroes dev diary: Design insights from the Magisterium trial
Today the war ends in City of Heroes. Today players are taking up arms (and mutated plant spores) in the final battle of the Praetorian War, and it will be a glorious eruption of particle effects and superheroic feats. The Magesterium incarnate trial is arguably the centerpiece of Issue 23, and Associate Designer Jeff Hamilton flew in to give us the skinny on this chaotic fight. You can get all the details on the Magisterium as well as an exclusive sneak peek at images from the fight, all after the jump!
City of Heroes Issue 23: Where Shadows Lie launches today
City of Heroes' Issue 23 launches today, and Paragon says that Where Shadows Lie is "the culmination of two years' worth of storytelling as it heads to its epic conclusion." It's not all about story, though, as the patch also includes the new Night Ward zone, the Magisterium Incarnate Trial, a server-wide chat channel for both VIP and free players, and new incarnate powers. Perhaps the best part of all this is that it's a free update. You can head to the official CoH website for a complete breakdown of all the patch additions. [Source: Paragon press release]
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: It's all a Nemesis plot
City of Heroes has a lot going for it, but it doesn't offer an easy nemesis for your character. Which is kind of a problem in a superhero game, but also a problem in the sense that you always want a nemesis in a game. You want someone that's just plain bad, a villain whose motives you don't need to understand in great depth. Every so often, it's nice to just have an adversary. I think that was, at one point, the goal behind Nemesis. But the group has wound up in a very different and much less entertaining place. At a glance, Nemesis isn't really all that overused in City of Heroes. Sure, there's the vague implication that he's behind a lot of different schemes, but for the most part that's just window-dressing. Despite the fact that I should adore a group of steampunk criminals in modern-day Paragon City, I feel my hackles raise every time Nemesis shows up, because the group and the leader are both massively overdone.
One Shots: Bamboo Kat's
If you followed MJ's Choose My Adventure in City of Heroes throughout the month of May, you know that veterans constantly recommended that she do one thing: roll blueside. More people play superheroes than villains, and if you want to group, Paragon City is the place. But I say the villains of the Rogue Isles surely have the best scenery. Massively reader Jeromai chipped in two gorgeous shots of the grimy skyscrapers of redside with this note: One of my favorite spots villain-side is the Jackpot area of St. Martial, especially when it gets dark and the building lights are a stark contrast to the gloom of all the other previous zones. Sure, it's still a soulless Las Vegas-style strip wannabe, but I love super-jumping down the street as the music changes. This is my normal view of things when super-jumping. But if you get down to street-level, it's also surprisingly immersive. Notice the Marcone or Family gangster leaning nonchalantly against one building as the cars and pedestrians cruise through. Both shots (and a few others) are tucked behind the break!
