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Some new details gleaned of City of Heroes Issue 13
Carolyn Koh of MMORPG.com has recently had a chat with several of the City of Heroes developers, in particular the infectiously enthusiastic Joe 'Hero 1' Morrissey, about the history of the property and the recently announced Issue 13: Architect. The development team has doubled in size, from 20 people to 40, and the Mission Design department now has three people instead of just one. With that in mind, we're now even more curious to see the mission content in Issue 13; so far, the only Dev-made mission content that's been explicitly mentioned is more Cimerora arcs.Much of what the interview covers will already have been picked up on by eager CoX players, but there are some nuggets of apparently brand new information. According to the article, the Day Jobs feature will not just offer appropriate buffs for logging out in a given area, but a bonus to XP when you log back in. If this feature is in, it means CoX will at last have 'rested XP', which was once (a long time ago) dismissed by one of the then-developers as 'rewarding players for not playing'. It seems a lot has changed with the shift in management.
Joe Morrissey reveals more details of CoX Mission Architect
One of the most eagerly anticipated features of City of Heroes Issue 13: Architect is the Mission Maker, which will let players build their own story arcs for others to play through. There's been a torrent of speculation about what we will and won't be able to do. Now, lead CoX writer Joe 'Hero 1' Morrissey has given a brief question and answer session live from PAX, via the CoX Test Server.Arriving in character as 'the Honoree', Joe proceeded to answer selected questions from the storm that followed his appearance, mostly in clipped Rikti dialect. An in-the-flesh presentation at PAX filled in some additional information. We were pleased to see that missions will indeed be more sophisticated than just radio missions with new text. Players will be 'able to customize existing heroes, villains and enemy groups with a dozen or so options, if not more at launch.' It will also be possible to include Archvillains and Heroes, though some of this content might need to be unlocked.
Further details emerge of CoX Issue 13: Architect
As the City of Heroes community fell upon and devoured the news of Issue 13: Architect like a pack of wild crack manatees, the developers occasionally ran out from under their desks to answer a question or two. The merits system in particular has been clarified, courtesy of Positron: 'Upon completing tasks in the game (Task Forces, Trials, etc.) you get an option of receiving Reward Merits instead of a normal reward. The number of merits is based on the difficulty of the mission, how long it takes to complete on average, etc. Thus things like the Katie Hannon TF have minimal merits associated with them, and things like the Shadow Shard Task Forces get bunches.' This is, as we had suspected, a step to counterbalance the quick farming of Task Forces, not by nerfing them but by making the longer Task Forces worth doing. We'd like to see them made more interesting, too - some of the real marathons are very old now, dating back to launch and the first two Issues - but it's a step in the right direction.
NCsoft announces CoX Issue 13: Architect!
The speculation that built up following Positron's haiku is over. NCsoft has announced its new free expansion for City of Heroes/Villains: Issue 13, Architect. The main focus is the Mission Architect feature, by which players can make missions for others to play through. Positron is emphatic that it won't be usable as a 'badging' or 'farming' system, and we're glad to see that. There's also a real surprise, something which we've not seen as a feature in any other superhero game, current or planned: a Day Job system that allows offline character progression, so that your character can fill in the mild-mannered reporter hours (while you're offline) as well as the super-powered hero ones!
CoX Issue 13: All your base are belong to us?
Bizarre as it may sound, that's the title by which the NCSoft developers have taken to calling City of Heroes Issue 13. Or so players learned while listening in to the Dyyno test over on mmorpg.com, in which lead developer Matt 'Positron' Miller took viewers on a tour of Cimerora and talked them through the highlights of Issue 12: Midnight Hour. Players are always eager for snippets of information on new issues, however trivial, and when Matt let slip the in-house joke title for Issue 13 along with the reason for it, it was quickly noted.Matt's comment allegedly reflected the huge number of base changes and fixes that will be coming in the next Issue. Well, it's not as if there isn't plenty to fix. The base raid system has never worked properly, the Cathedral of Pain trial proved broken and had to be put on indefinite hold, and despite all the excitement building up to their initial release, bases themselves have not seen much use beyond acting as a teleport hub, crafting spot and resource storage area for supergroups, with temporary buffs available from Empowerment Stations if you own any; convenient, but falling short of their potential. Jack 'Statesman' Emmert, former lead developer for CoX, even said of the base design system that '... players hated it. It's the most underused facet of the game.'
