No Plans For Consoles, STO over 100K subscribers
Mar 25, 2010 Articles Recommend|358views
Over the past couple years, it looked as though Cryptic had console ports in its plans, from bringing on board console engine programmers to public plans of expanding their subscriber base into the console market. However, when the date for the supposed console release kept getting pushed back, players grew worried, and now it seems that the concern was justified. This might have been compounded by the fact that recently Champions Online experienced a major transition as executive producer Bill Roper stepped down and Shannon “Poz” Posniewski took over.
The folks over at The Big Freaking Podcast grabbed a bit of face time with Jack Emmert, Cryptic’s Chief Operating Officer, to expand on this news as well as the future for Champions and Star Trek Online. Read on for the highlights of this interview!
“I never envisioned selling it,” Jack said of Cryptic’s first MMORPG. “I thought we’d be working on City of Heroes for a decade or more.”
Jack began the interview by tracing the history of how and why Cryptic made the transition from NCSoft to Atari, going from City of Heroes to Champions and Star Trek Online. The move was partially prompted by the desire to retain employees who would have been laid off otherwise. After landing at Atari, Cryptic built both recent MMOs from the ground up in two years as a necessity of time and funding.
When it comes to experienced studio leads, Jack puts himself in an elite category, with four MMO launches under his belt — City of Heroes, City of Villains, Champions Online, and Star Trek Online. — an impressive number for this genre. He saw a major shift in the industry after World of Warcraft’s launch, as every subsequent game’s “success” was compared to that title and fell short. He cited Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online as examples of decent games that struggled after a buildup of huge hype and eventual player disillusionment. Reviewers, he said, changed the way they evaluated MMOs in this post-WoW world, for better or worse.
Jack reviewed some of Champions’ strengths — such as great character customization and lush art — while also pointing at a few of its weak spots, like unbalanced powers and obscure tooltips. “I’m just as perplexed as you are as to the description of some of these things!” he confessed. He is incredibly excited about Champions’ Revelation update, which is apocalyptic in theme and epic in scope, and boasts 20-30 hours of new content for high level players.
Although they were disappointed by some of the reviews, Cryptic is proud of Star Trek Online’s launch, which has “well over 100K subscribers” at this point. In dealing with such a huge IP, they had to “pick their battles” as to what would be included with STO. This led the team to focus on space and ground combat as the core of the game, as a necessity to its success. He knows that some fans were upset as to the lack of features like diplomacy, which he says is on its way.
While the Cryptic team was working on a console MMO for Marvel Universe Online, this is no longer the case for their current lineup. He is clear on this point: “It is not happening. The console is not a current focus.”
As for Bill Roper, Jack says he’s moved to a “floating design role” to assist both titles, and is the “good cop” in the studio to Emmert’s self-professed “bad cop.”
What are some of Jack Emmert’s dream licenses that he’d love to work with? “Godzilla and Dungeons & Dragons,” he confessed.
The man has taste.
Tags: Age of Conan, Champions Online, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Star Trek Online, Warhammer Online, world of warcraft
City of Heroes Keeps playing It!
Sep 17, 2009 City of Hero|344views
Yep I said it, bringing IT! The game is still going strong, still fun, and now even more fun. City of Heros Issue 16 has made it to live. The main aspect I am excited about is the power customization. We can now customize our powers, animations colors, and sets. A full list of the patch notes can be found here;
Here is a list of the features;
Powers Customization:
Hundreds of powers have been updated to allow new color selections and customization. Players can now pick new Themes for each powerset, adjusting colors, appearance, and even animations for some sets.
Key Features:
• Thousands of Tintable particle and geometry effects for powers, such as Energy Blasts and Stone Mallet colors.
• Customizable Primary and Secondary colors for powersets, with color choices themed to match the selected powerset.
• Powerset Themes selectable for a complete set, or individual powers.
• Powerset Themes selectable at character creation, as well as in the tailor screens.
• Independant Theme selection for each character costume.
New Theme selections:
New Themes of Spines and Thorny Assault available, including themes of Thorns, Metal Spines, Crystal Spines, and Slate Spines. New Animation Themes for Super Strength and Martial Arts.Huge variety of customizable powersets, including Cold Domination, Dark Armor, Dark Blast, Dark Melee, Dark Miasma, Devices, Earth Control, Earth Melee, Electric Armor, Electric Assault, Electric Blast, Electric Melee, Electricity Manipulation, Empathy, Energy Assault, Energy Aura, Energy Blast, Energy Manipulation, Energy Melee, Fiery Aura, Fire Assault, Fire Blast, Fire Control, Fire Manipulation, Fire Melee, Force Field, Gravity Control, Ice Armor, Ice Assault, Ice Blast, Ice Control, Ice Manipulation, Ice Melee, Illusion, Invulnerability, Kinetics, Mental Manipulation, Mind Control, Necromancy, Plant Control, Psionic Assault, Psychic Blast, Radiation Blast, Radiation Emission, Regeneration, Sonic Resonance, Sonic Blast, Spines, Stone Armor, Storm Summoning, Super Reflexes, Thermal Radiation, Thorny Assault, Traps, and Willpower.
_______________________________________________
New Character Creator:
• The Character creator and Tailor screen have been updated to be easier to use and even preview the animation and color choices for powers!
Key features:
• Tabbed Character Creator: Jump between Archetype, Power Sets, Costumes, and Character ID in any order without losing progress.
• New Powers Customization screen, for adjusting powers and previewing animations.
• Select colors and themes for each individual power, or apply it to the entire power set!
• Preview live animations of all powers, showing the selected Theme and color choices.
• Save and Load Theme settings for each powerset, saving colors and selections for all powers.
Costume slots: Your active costume slot is stored when you log off will be the costume slot used when you log back in. It will also display that costume in the character selection screen.
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Powerset Proliferation: More power sets are now in the hands of Archetypes who couldn’t use them previously!
Archetype - Blasters
• Radiation Blast
Archetype - Brutes
• Claws
Archetype - Controllers
• Cold Domination
Archetype - Corruptors
• Archery
• Trick Arrow
Archetype - Defenders
• Assault Rifle
• Traps
Archetype - Dominators
• Earth Assault
Archetype -Masterminds
• Thermal Radiation
Archetype -Scrappers
• Electric Melee
• Electric Armor
Archetype -Tankers
• Electric Melee
• Electric Armor
Archetype -Stalkers
• Broadsword
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Enhanced Difficulty Options: The old notoriety system has been removed and replaced with a new difficulty system of independent settings. You can now fine-tune the difficulty levels of the missions you play by telling the game exactly how you want to be treated:
• Choose to fight monsters between a -1 to +4 level difference from the player’s level.
• Choose to set your personal team size (1-8).
• Choose if you want bosses to scale down to Lieutenants when soloing or not
• Choose to have AVs scale down to EBs.
The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled. Actual team size overrides any difficulty setting, so you will always get Arch-Villains if the team has 6 or more members. The difficulty setting is per task, so personal team member sizes do not add together.
You can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.’s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.
_______________________________________________
Sidekicking Changes: Super-Sidekicking! One player can now sidekick or exemplar the whole team, everyone can always play together!
• Each player in the group’s level is set to the level of the owner of the active team task. If no team task is selected, everyone in the group’s level will be set to the level of the team leader.
• When the team level changes, players will be notified via a dialog and have the option to quit the team or immediately accept. The dialog will time out after 30 seconds at which point acceptance is implied.
• While in the pending state, players cannot receive rewards and any critters they damage will be worth no experience.
• Players can choose to auto-accept team level changes 0 to 50 levels above or below their current level.
• Exemplars will now earn XP and a level capped person will get XP converted into influence like exemplars used to.
Tags: City of Heroes
City of Heroes: Movement Powers and PvP
Aug 31, 2009 City of Hero|496views
The Frequency of Travel Powers in Player vs. Player (PVP) and Zone Player vs. Player (ZPVP) Combat
The following Travel Powers dominate CoX:
- Flight
- Concealment
- Leaping
- Speed
- Teleportation
The campaign world of CoX revolves around these five powers because of the importance of reaching a task-based destination (usually called Player vs. Environment, or PvE) and all forms of PVP. The Concealment power pool is of special mention because, although it does not change your method of travel, it does increase your ability to reach the destination without being challenged.
In the CoX PVP and ZPVP (which will be now be broadly referenced as “PVP”) environment, nearly every character (referred to as a “toon”) has the Super Speed power; this can be observed directly by watching a PVP battle or going to a PVP zone. Often, Super Speed (also referred to as “SS) is used in combination with the Super Jump power, which creates an extremely fast, high-and-low reaching character.
Flying, or the Fly power, is surprisingly one of the lesser chosen powers in ZPVP. If taken, it will mostly be chosen with other existing travel powers. For example, even though a person wouldn’t think jumping is needed when you fly, the Jumping power pool has the powers Combat Jump (which gives more maneuverability and some protection from immobilization effects) and Acrobatics (which gives limited protection from hold and knockback effect).
As well, a strong majority of the players use invisibility, or some variant of stealth, for their characters in PVP. One of the most predominant methods for avoiding the “Concealment” power pool, where Stealth and Invisibility reside, is to use a +Stealth “process”. This process is something that can be bought and/or created through the CoX invention system, and will grant the user a degree of invisibility when activating the power linked to it. For most players, the linked power will be Super Speed.
Teleportation waxes and wanes dependent on the current mechanics surrounding it. The Issue 13 release has changed teleportation enough that it is less desired by characters and less seen on the battlefield.
The Leaping power set is probably of equal, if not more, prevalence than any other pool set. The basis of this belief is due its ability to operate (and provide functionality) simultaneously with all other travel powers, while having two very desirable powers that are heavily needed to survive, those being Combat Jump and Acrobatics, described above.
While it is a debatable point, it can be observed that the travel powers have led to the creation of the artificial response mechanic (ARM), namely “Travel Suppression” (TS) in PvP. Because of the relevance of movement to using techniques such as kiting, and escape, this sparks less of a debate.
The notion of suppressing travel only came through the observations of developers who saw players “strafe” and “kite” their attacks in one fluid motion, being unassailable due to the speed of the action. The result was to “force”, through TS, an artificial mechanic that keeps the player in the confrontation as long as possible. (It should be noted that the timer for suppression is completely arbitrary; right now your ability to run or fly away is a few seconds, but they could easily raise it to one minute.)
A Description of Outcomes of PVP and ZPVP Due To Travel Powers in CoX
What has been observed is a constantly changing environment in all forms of PVP. Because of the prevalence of travel powers, some other powers have become less effective.
Melee attacks, as a whole, are less effective unless supported with super speed (and usually Super Jump). Without super speed, a ranged attacker will consistently have an advantage of dealing damage and getting away from a close range fighter. The advantage is with the ranged attack at this moment.
Invisibility, or Stealth, has the obvious advantage of determining the battlefield in ZPVP. CoX has one archetype (AT) completely developed as a stealth template (The “Stalker”) and, coupled with Super Speed, he is easily capable of closing in on an opponent and striking, only to get away. Subjectively, it appears that is his sole purpose, but it should also be noted that the developers of CoX are currently using Travel Suppression as a mechanism to keep the Stalker “attackable”, visible, and in the confrontation for a few more seconds at this time (however, there are other powers the stalker can use to be completely intangible to attack for example, Phase Shift, which makes you intangible, and Hibernate, which encases you in a block of ice, untouchable).
Teleportation has been more affected than any other travel power. One extremely common power in the Teleportation pool is “Teleport Foe”. It has the ability to target an enemy at long range and bring them to your feet. At the post-I13 release, any foe who is teleported has a moment of intangibility which they can use to run off. As well, players that used to teleport out of combat, now find that their power does not function for a number of seconds after they are hit.
Flight may be underrated, but this may also be because there are so many powers in the past that removed the ability to stay aloft (some powers have a “-fly” effect in them). After I13, powers that immobilized or held characters became less effective because of their short durations, the fact that passive powers no longer toggled off when held, and that the hover power will normally keep you flying even when immobilized or held.
But one of the reasons flying is used fairly infrequently could be because a flier cannot catch up to a person running at super speed. Subsequently, since traveling at super speeds is extremely common in all forms of PVP, fliers lack the ability to chase characters running from battle. It should be noted that characters cannot fly at super speeds (The two do not work together).
As stated before, some attacks are less effective. At the same time, though, other attacks are nearly completely ineffective. For example, among one hero archetype, there is a power known as “Time Bomb”, which resides in a secondary power set known as “Devices”. The time bomb takes eight seconds to set and will go off after 15 seconds. The problem with this power is that it is easy to be killed in the eight second preparation and extremely unlikely that the bomb will even be near a battle when it actually explodes with its extreme damage. Needless to say, Time Bomb is not a PVP chosen power and the occasions where it has been chosen are rare.
The viability of choosing a power for PVP is, therefore, based not only on its damage. The animation time, or prep time, of the attack is extremely important. (It should be noted that NCsoft has lately been working with the powers to establish a link between the amount of damage done and the prep time.)
But what seems of most importance to choosing a power is how easily it can connect based on travel powers. Since their prevalence, all powers that require range to continuously work (such as the Radiation Infection power, which requires you to stay within 70 feet of your target) are often, but not completely, ignored. Maintaining a specific range is very difficult, and therefore more immediate powers that “Fire and Forget” are chosen.
Further Use of Artificial Mechanics and Implementation of Travel Powers In The Future
The Artificial Response Mechanic “Travel Suppression” is the system that is used by CoX to handle balance to the pervasive use of travel powers as a means to attack and escape combat. It is not believed that travel powers were originally meant to be used as a means of combat; instead, they were only meant as a method of arriving at the fight destinations.
Although this is speculation: what ensued appears to be less than intended. Early on in their release, characters were performing “drive-by” attacks through the forms of travel and removing themselves from commitment of combat before any actual confrontation took place.
Travel Suppression, although artificial, is designed to counteract such an action. Through the use of arbitrary timers which can be raised or lowered, you are forced to move at walking speed levels if you are attacked or attack. While it can objectively be argued whether this system is working, it is noteworthy that all forms of PVP are going through changes at this time, which keep the characters in a state of change. It is not uncommon for the developers to allow “respecification” tokens, where a character can change his power choices, after they make they make such changes.
It is anticipated that CoX will remain in a state of change with all forms of PVP for a long time. While it is not extremely uncommon in MMORPGs to establish patches and minor changes, major overhauls are not often as frequent. Where they have occurred, other trends have been established (i.e. The “Trammel” event in Ultima Online and the “NGE” event in Star Wars Galaxies).
Therefore, the conclusion is that PVP will have many changes to come, because it has been changing from the moment of its inception. Yet, it will be extremely difficult, or even dangerous, to change the system dramatically, because of the implementation of travel powers as an optional choice for any character in the spectrum. The backbone of the system becomes dependent on dealing with those powers as a majority; for them to go away now, or be revised into a completely new system, would likely cause a collapse in the loyal subscribership.
Recommendations for Travel Power Implementation in Next Generation Superhero MMO PVP
The City of Heroes/City of Villains MMO model is a great example to how a superhero setting can be implemented. Yet, what we notice is that travel powers dramatically affect PVP outcomes in CoX and have caused it to undergo constant changes. This includes changes so significant that players often resort to re-choosing or rebuilding their powers.
An option for a next generation superhero MMO might be to incorporate travel powers into actual full-scale powers within the normal framework of choices. For example, as noted above, Super Speed and Teleportation have a natural course of effects which could be used to cause damage and provide utilitarian uses. Invisibility and stealth are likewise the tools of defense and elusiveness. This also applies to Flight and Leaping.
This recommendation would reduce the necessity (but not necessarily the appearance) of travel powers in PVP; instead they would serve the primary purpose of being a trademark characteristic of the intended hero or villain. This becomes more attuned to how comic book implementations have curtailed the overuse and advantageous use of travel powers in their pages.
Another recommendation could be the use of Natural Response Mechanics (NRMs) as opposed to artifical ones (ARMs) like Travel Suppression. For example, a natural response to super speed, flight, and so on would be the lessening of accuracy. In this model, the faster you go, the more difficult it is for you to accurately target. The outcome, then, becomes natural: If you want to fight well, you slow down. Subsequently, an indirect response later becomes less people choosing the power, but not entirely discarding it as an option.
The goal, therefore, is not to devastate any single power; it is to make it equally as important as the others.
Yet another option for a future superhero MMO would be more interactivity within the environment. As is clear, melee-based attacks have a natural disadvantage among fast-running, high-flying, and teleporting-to-escape, opponents. As a matter of fact, even when both characters have the same modes of travel, the ranged attacker has advantage over the melee user.
An interactive environment allows characters new strategies; what if the fire hydrant can be smashed and the pool of water turned to ice? Now the speedster can slip and fall. What if you can push a building over on top of the flier? What if you can pull a lamppost out of the ground and swat the jumper like a fly?
Summary
It is clear that Travel Powers have a predominance to mold the shape of PVP, and can significantly alter the importance of other powers in combat. It is also important to see that wide-scale use of Travel Powers seem to delegate the need for consistent changes, refiguring, and revising of PVP.
To future development, it becomes of primary importance to determine what percentage of fliers, jumpers, teleporters, and speedsters designers would like to see among their populations. Is it necessary for each person to have a form of “super” travel? How does your travel system compare to other MMOs, both from your, and all other, genres?
Careful implementation of these powers, by paying attention to how they were treated throughout comic book history, is advisable, due to the scenarios writers foresaw in their evolution. Likewise, a natural implementation of these mechanics may indirectly help influence choices and outcomes. What we are observing is not ironic; many well-circulating documents (i.e. comic books) have addressed these powers before.
Tags: City of Heroes
City of Heroes: Depth of Customization
Aug 15, 2009 City of Hero|885views
From the beginning, Paragon Studios’ City of Heroes has been known and praised for one thing above all else: its incredible array of customization options. These range in scope from something as simple as choosing the exact color you’d like your cape to be, to as complex as making your very own missions and bad guys to fight.
No game before or since has had anywhere near the same ability as City of Heroes to make your character appear just as you would like him or her to appear. City of Heroes’ costume creator was and continues to be an unparalleled gem in the MMORPG world. The character creator in Champions Online, due out soon from City of Heroes’ original development studio, may end up rivaling that of its predecessor, but that won’t take away from City of Heroes’ achievement.
The character creator in City of Heroes was robust to begin with, but that hasn’t stopped the developers from adding hundreds of new costume items since launch. Nearly every update to the game - called “Issues” in reference to the comic book feel of the game - has featured at least a few new costume pieces. And ever since the game’s second update, characters have had the option of switching between several different costumes on the fly.
Recently, City of Heroes has added yet another way to customize the look of your character, in the form of “costume change emotes.” These are special emotes that are used when switching costumes. Want to have a bolt of lightning strike your character and change his form or look ala Captain Marvel? Done. Going for a Jekyll and Hyde feel, where a mild-mannered scientist drinks a formula and becomes a monster? You can do that now! Some costume change emotes, like some new costume pieces, are tied to specially themed $10 costume/power/emote packs called “SuperBoosters,” but many are part of free updates as well.
The latest of these “SuperBoosters” focuses on Science, and even allows players to have multiple body types for their various costumes. Want a small character who can suddenly transform into a giant hulk of a creature? That’s possible now. How about a character who has both male and female forms? Yes, you can. This gender switching has not been without its critics; there are some who think it has no place in a teen-rated game, but these people are missing the point. As one of the developers said, gender switching is only a problem if you sexualize it; there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. And it adds yet another way for some players to make their perfect character.
City of Heroes even gives characters a place to go and hang out, make plans for upcoming missions, or find teleporters to other areas of the game. That place is a supergroup base, and once again it’s something that can be customized to suit the designer’s wants and needs. Bases were introduced with the City of Villains expansion (and the Issue 6 update to City of Heroes) and have become an integral part of the game for many players.
Not content with merely being able to make your own character into whatever you want him or her to be, or in making your supergroup base cozy and comfortable? The City of Heroes Mission Architect, introduced in the Issue 14 update, allows players to take on the role of mission designer and create their own story arcs! With the ability to use the majority of mission maps that exist in the game, and to write all dialogue and story clues, the Mission Architect is yet another innovation introduced by City of Heroes.
Not only can the Mission Architect be used to make your own missions, but it can also be a way to introduce your very own custom enemies. Using the same character creator that is used to create player characters, players can make enemies and even enemy groups for use in their missions. The game’s Issue 15 update even introduced the ability to customize standard enemies (i.e., developer created baddies) by changing their costume colors, names, and descriptions. What other game allows the player to have so much control over what you do and even the enemies you fight?
But the developers of City of Heroes are not content to rest on their laurels. In fact, they really can’t afford to. They’ve been the only entry in the superhero MMORPG genre for more than five years now, so anyone looking for a different kind of MMORPG among the dozens of fantasy and several science fiction games would inevitably check out City of Heroes to see what it had to offer. Now, though, we’re coming up on the release of Champions Online (due September 1st from Cryptic Studios, the original development studio of City of Heroes) and DC Universe Online, coming next year from Sony Online Entertainment.
Suddenly a genre which has belonged solely to City of Heroes is about to be a bit more crowded, and City of Heroes will need to step up their game to compete with the upstarts.
Fortunately for fans of City of Heroes, the five-year-old game shows no signs of slowing down, even in the customization department. For years now, players have clamored for power customization, i.e., the ability to recolor or otherwise customize their characters’ powers. One of the key features being touted by Champions Online is just this, power customization. Not to be outdone, Paragon Studios recently announced Issue 16: Power Spectrum, which will bring this long-awaited feature to City of Heroes, nearly negating what could have been a key difference between it and Champions Online.
Issue 16: Power Spectrum will allow players to recolor powers from nearly every powerset for which this ability would make sense. Along with weapons customization, which was introduced in the Issue 11 update, this means nearly every powerset in the game can be made to look very different from the way it did at the game’s launch. A couple of powersets which don’t have energy beams or force fields to recolor (Martial Arts and Super Strength) will be getting alternate animations, meaning there’s something for just about everyone when it comes to power customization.
Some may think I’d be stretching the idea of customization too far if I included the Going Rogue expansion pack as yet another example of City of Heroes’ ongoing efforts to allow players to make characters the way they want them to be. I disagree. City of Heroes: Going Rogue will be the first paid expansion since City of Villains in 2005, and will finally let heroes fall from grace and become bad guys, and villains see the light and become good guys. If you’ve ever wanted to play a Mastermind in Paragon City or a Scrapper in the Rogue Isles, your wish will come true with Going Rogue.
Not content to let its original status as “the only superhero MMORPG” define it, City of Heroes leads the way in terms of character customization. This should position them well for the fight among superhero MMORPGs that is about to take place.
Tags: City of Heroes
City of Heroes: Power Set Proliferation-Issue 16
Aug 13, 2009 City of Hero|425views
For Issue 16: Power Spectrum, we wanted to proliferate more powersets; at least one per archetype. In looking at which sets to shift around, there were a number of considerations that had to be examined. There wasn’t a specific rule, it was more the circumstances of development which really guided the decisions. As the art team was busy with Powerset Customization, we tried to stay away from sets that required too much animation or FX work. We also wanted to fill in matching Themes where we could, like with adding Assault Rifle and Traps to Defenders. In other instances we wanted to fill in highly requested options, such as adding Claws to Brutes. In the end though, there are just far too many aspects to cover individually, but I’d definitely like to highlight some examples.
Tanker & Scrapper: Electric Armor and Electric Melee
The original plan was just to proliferate Electric Armor and to use this opportunity to make some survivability adjustments to the set at the same time. To that end, we renamed “Conserve Power” to “Energize” and added a small self heal and short duration regeneration buff to the power. During testing, we realized that Energize came too late in the lifetime of a character to truly be useful, so for the new versions of the powerset, we swapped the progression of Lightning Reflexes and Energize (Brutes and Stalkers do not get this advantage, unfortunately). Ultimately, we decided that we really wanted a thematic match for Electric Armor on the attack side of the fence, and added Electric Melee to the mix as well.
Dominator: Earth Assault
Earth Assault began life as a training exercise for Jonathan “Sunstorm” Courney. Shortly after he began working here, he decided to build a new assault set for Dominators in order to help familiarize himself with the powers system. He spent some time picking the powers, dreaming up new ones and testing them, and in general just doing some really innovative and crazy things with them. After a while, he decided to take his test bed and turn it into something that could be released to the fans. This led to a lot of rebalancing, rebuilding, and when he was finally satisfied with it, he pitched it to me. Although it’s taken awhile for it to be implemented, we’re happy that we’re finally able to include it with Issue 16.
Earth Assault, like other Assault sets, combines a good mix of Ranged and Melee powers. It has a healthy dose of soft control, good damage, and with Mud Pots - one of the best Damage Auras available.
Earth Assault:
1 Stone Spears2 Stone Mallet4 Tremor10 Hurl Boulder16 Power Boost20 Heavy mallet28 Seismic Smash35 Mud Pots38 Fissure
Additionally, we also conducted a mini-proliferation pass on the Ancillary and Patron Power Pools, adding 5th powers to most Pools and adding Blaze Mastery for Scrappers. This has been something which people have been asking for since Fire primaries and secondary’s were given to them.
We hope that all these new powersets and combinations will provide our players with even more ways to enjoy Paragon City and the Rogue Isles
so Go! Hunt! Kill Skulls!
Tags: City of Heroes
City of Heroes:Overcoming the Impossible-Powers Customization
Aug 7, 2009 City of Hero|403views
Ok, maybe “impossible” is overstating it, but “Overcoming the Boat Load of Work” just doesn’t have the right ring to it. You see, when City of Heroes was made over five years ago, customizing the look of your powers was never considered. When the art for the powers was done, the colors for the powers were “baked in,” in such a way that it would be impossible to tint them to a different color later. It wasn’t until we had our first feedback from outside the company that we realized the corner we had painted ourselves into.
You see, we had given players the most customizable character creator ever seen in an MMO. In a genre where individuality was sometimes very hard to come by, yet desired by nearly everyone who played, we offered your heart’s content of custom options for your look even before you logged into the game. Or so we thought we did. We had not considered the fact that everyone’s Power Blast looked like everyone else’s. It wasn’t just Energy Blast either, it was every single power set in the entire game.
In game development there is a lot of decision making. What gets worked on, and what gets put on the back burner for when there is “more time” or “when you can get to it.” Unfortunately the attitude back then was that going back and changing every single power to be tintable wasn’t worth the time. The same people involved in that were also involved in making new powers and new enemies for players to enjoy. They were involved in crafting entirely new systems that added much needed gameplay and were not simple “cosmetic” features like Powers Customization was thought to be. And so the ability to edit the visuals of your powers in any way was put on the dreaded “back burner” and there it simmered for years.
When NCsoft acquired not just the rights to the City of Heroes IP, but every developer who was currently working on the project, we were given a great opportunity. We knew there was going to be a large re-investment of resources into the game, something that couldn’t happen under the old relationship. Chris “Back Alley Brawler” Bruce took this opportunity to resurrect a feature that we had wanted to do but never had the resources: Powers Customization.
Chris pointed out that now was the time to start looking at this feature. If we really wanted to improve the game and give players what they were asking for, we needed to look to the back burner, grab some popular stuff from there and get cooking. In the Spring of 2008 we held several exploratory meetings on the subject and it was then decided that this feature was worth doing and we now had the manpower to get it done.
It’s worth noting that date: Spring 2008. We’ve been working on the feature that long. When we told the players that it couldn’t happen because it would take too long, we weren’t kidding. In my address to the player community for the fourth anniversary (in April of 2008) I begged my bosses to let me announce the feature. Since we were never sure when it would be done, it was decided that the information should not be divulged. We had to sit on that for over a year until we were really, really sure when we could get it into the hands of the players.
When we showed the results off at the San Diego Comic-Con this past July we were blown away at how well received this “cosmetic” feature really was. Players were checking out all the different ways that powers looked under different color schemes. They played around with the “Bright” color palettes and “Dark” color palettes that some power sets offered, and were very happy to see some alternate animations for Super Strength and Martial Arts as well. Overall the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.
A ton of people in the studio had a hand in making this feature come to life. I will do my best to make sure they get credit, but I will probably be leaving someone out: Chris Bruce was really the champion behind this feature, and Mike Chock was the engineer in charge of getting Chris’ vision implemented. Jason Olmstead helped design the UI, and Edison Luong worked out a solution that enabled players to create their characters in any order they want, as opposed to the linear fashion that is currently in the game. Jonathan Courney worked on the Powers end, and Keetsie Braz da Cunha really helped out in the F/X department. Now these are just the major players. A ton of other people at Paragon Studios have had a say in the design or development of this long-awaited feature.
Even if you never thought about it, being able to customize your character’s powers with multiple colors to match their costume or their theme is something that nearly every player will want to do, whether at level 1 or level 50. And since you can have different settings per power, and per costume slot, we wanted to make sure you could make the best of this feature when it goes live. To that end, every character in the game will receive a free Tailor session for every costume slot they have unlocked, when Issue 16 is released on the Live servers this summer/fall. This is our special thanks to our players for never giving up on suggesting the feature to us, no matter how “impossible” we might have said it was to do in the past.
Tags: City of Heroes
City of Heroes Issue 16 Comic Con
Jul 29, 2009 City of Hero|403views
Joe Morrissey, Senior Game Designer and Matt Miller, Senior Design Lead at Paragon Studios are just great people to talk to and we joked around as they waited for a “Marketing Watchdog” to come by before we could start the interview at Comic Con. “Just a mindful presence to keep me from saying too much,” Joe quipped.
“Shhh! Don’t tell her about the Ninja Space Monkeys?” Matt hushed him. “Are you sure they weren’t Pirate Space Monkeys?” Joe responded “The space expansion? What space expansion?” They chorused, deadpan.
Build 16, which goes into open beta in two weeks, is a response to player requests and primarily consists of the Power Spectrum, which is the ability to customize the colors of your character’s powers. A new interface has been created with tabs across the top so that players creating new or tailoring old characters can easily switch from the different customization screens to adjust each of the customizable features of their characters.
Joe ran the game and character customization screens to show the new system while Matt talked. “Each power will have a palette associated with it,” he said, “a reflection of the type of power it is.”
They showed off the earth armor, which has a palette of earthy tones associated, although you can push the boundaries of blue and green, it won’t turn shocking neon green or electric blue.
“The summons will take on the color palette of the summoning spell,” continued Matt, “and some powers, like energy and fire, will have additive or subtractive colors in the effects.” Masterminds, however, will have a larger palette of colors for their pets, and this will not be included at launch of build 16 but will come later on down the line.
Another player request being fulfilled in this build are animations, in particular for super strength and martial arts. The current animations will be the default animations, but others may be set at the character customization at character creation or at a tailor shop.
The mission difficulty mission settings will also receive an overhaul. Players will be able to adjust the difficulty level according to team size as well as the level of the NPCs. “For example, the player or team leader can say… treat me or my team as a team of anywhere from one through eight and NPC spawn will be set accordingly,” said Joe. For NPC levels, players can set them to from minus one of their level to plus four. This creates missions of flexible variety. To test himself against many, a player may choose settings as a team of two or three but set the NPC level at negative one to see how he does, and then move up the difficulty. It is a joy to test the power of your character and sometimes you just want to go in with a bunch of friends and kill things with the action coming fast and furious.
When I asked about the continuing rumors of the game dying, both disputed that. “We had a bump in numbers when we released the Mac version of City of Heroes and our numbers rose quite a bit more when Mission Architect was launched,” said Matt “and they have stabilized.”
“I think we are a victim of our own success,” Joe commented. “The streets are empty because everyone is playing player designed missions at the System Architect building.”
The team is enjoying the success of their Mission Architect system and both were proud to speak of it. “We have over 50,000 arcs in Mission Architect right now. It’s leveled off as each player has only five slots unless they choose to buy three more,” said Joe.
“We’ve put in a new search system and continue to tweak the system,” Matt elaborated. Players may now search the system using key phrases and then refine the search from there onward.
“It’s amazing to play the missions that players have come up with. They use the NPC designers to great effect and put the system in use in ways we’ve not imagined.”
The next build after Build #16 is their coming paid expansion, “Going Rogue.” As the title hints at, players will have the ability to switch allegiance. Players can walk the line between Hero and Villain, or they can cross it. Two new iconic characters representing “Going Rogue” will be introduced: Maelstrom, a pistol-wielding hero gone rogue, and a Desdemona, a demon-summoning villain who has been redeemed.
They could not talk much more about it other than to say that they would have missions and areas for new characters as well as level 50+ characters. Although we did joke again about Ninja Pirate Monkeys. Yes, the expansion after #16 is Going Rogue… the Space Expansion. This is a joke, readers. No Ninja Pirate Monkeys down the line. Unless of course, the joke is too good not to make true in an April Fool’s Day event.
Tags: City of Heroes