City of Heroes Issue 14: Architect
by Wayne Cole
From the beginning City of Heroes has not been like other MMORPGs. At launch City of Heroes did not have any form of crafting, PvP, or drops that could not be purchased from an in game store. The character creator was the most versatile of any MMO to date and new enhancements would not change your characters appearance. Most missions were instanced and scaled to the size of the team allowing for soloist and large teams to experience the same content. City of Hereos also had no end game content to speak of and focused more on creating new starting content so new characters would have a different experience. With the exception of City of Villains; which was intended to be its own stand alone game, all expansions have been completely free.
Over the years City of Heroes has had to adapt to the market and fan requests. PvP, crafting, and special drops were all added to the game in a manner that allowed them to be completely optional. PvP was first introduced as an arena, and later as zones dedicated to that purpose. Crafting was introduced as something to expand your Supergroup base and has expanded to enhancements, temporary powers, and costume pieces. With crafting came rare drops, an auction house, and an in game economy.
The developers of City of Heroes have introduced some truly innovative game mechanics in response to fan requests.
- The sidekick\exemplar system allows players of different levels to adjust themselves up or down to the other players’ level. This was designed to let new players play with veterans without the veteran players needing to create new characters.
- Global Chat channels allow players to communicate with each other regardless of the character or even server they are playing on.
- Players are given rewards based on the amount of time they have subscribed to the game. These can be powers, costume pieces, or other in game extras. They give veterans additional bonuses to deal with some of the limitations of new characters.
- Ouroboros missions allowed players to go back and complete any story arcs that they missed when they played through the game or just replay their favorite arcs any time they want.
- The badge system gives rewards to players that want to explore maps and provides something for completionists to strive for.
- A difficulty adjustment system allows advanced players to increase the difficulty of their missions to present more of a challenge.
So innovation is nothing new to city of Heroes, but with their latest free expansion “Issue 14: Architect” they have introduced a feature that is truly unique among MMOs. The Architect system allows players to create their own story arcs and publish them for other players to experience. A player creating an arc chooses the number of missions, the objectives, and all text associated with the missions. This allows a player to create anything from a single mission to an Epic Taskforce. The arcs are not limited to in game villains and villain groups either. The innovative City Of Heroes character creator is available for players to create their own custom villain groups to inhabit their missions. You can adjust the look, difficulty, and powers of these villains while creating your story arc. Also as an added incentive to play other users missions you receive tickets that can be turned in to unlock additional content for your own missions.
While City of Heroes may not fit what everyone is looking for in an MMO with this issue it continues to provide features that other development teams would be wise to pay close attention to. COH has a strong community and while it might not have as many subscribers as some other games, its fans are easily more vocal and supportive. That is in no small part due to the creators focusing on ways to expand on that community. Early in the game’s life one of the developers spent some of his off time to code a dance club because players were requesting a save non-combat location to meet and just hang out with their friends. Costume contests, trivia games, and hide and seek are events frequently run by super groups in the starting zones. This new Architect system just expands on those concepts. If you have a group of people that love your product and spend a lot of time thinking about it they will keep the game interesting if you just provide them the tools and get out of their way. The true key to being successful in the MMORPG business is to make your players feel invested in the game so they don’t want to leave.
If this blog has interested you, you can try a free 14-day trial of City of Heroes.
Unfortunately the Architect system is being abused, badly- there are exploits so players can play “meow” missions that power level characters without a lick of story. They are trying to fix it, slowly introducing rules that make the player made content illegal, but they are not doing a good job telling the players what they are.
I’ve played those exploit missions- one even had a special bunker for lower level players to *literally* hide while the higher players power leveled the group. It was boring, i left and quit the game.
Also, all of those missions, NPC contacts, Special quests- all of the previous content ignored while people use the Architect system exclusively.
Not quite that unique, the MMO Ryzom had this sort of thing too quite awhile ago, but of course its also had a very sketchy history and has changed hands a few times. Not sure if its exactly the same as the CoH one but it allowed you to create your own events/stories etc.
Any system will be exploited. If people want to badly enough they will find a way to exploit just about anything. It is a shame too because it is these kind of actions that seem to have gotten the press attention. The system works very well for those that have stories they want to tell and for those that want new interesting content.
I also forgot about a few innovations like leveling pacts.
Is their a FtB group of players in City of Heroes? Been thinking of picking it up again and, knowing that games like this are always more fun in a group.
Chad started a thread here: http://www.feartheboot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=3374&start=0
Some hookup details are in that thread.
There’s not a podcast-sponsored guild, per se, but there is a group of us playing villains on the Pinnacle server. We’d love to have you join us!
More info on the forums.