This kind of thing is why, despite its flaws and despite being (because it is?) nearly five years old, City of Heroes has much to teach the industry and is probably better than whatever game you’re playing. The main thing City of Heroes is missing at this point is a sense of “new shiny,” and now players can create an endless pool of shiny.
How many games remotely approach that character creator? Does anyone have anything approaching Mission Architect? I am very much about new games’ competing with old games as they stand now, not as they stood five years ago. There are several superhero games in development, and they better offer the world if they want to compete with City of Heroes.
: Zubon
It really does look like they’ve done a nice job on it.
I wonder how long it will be before another game goes the EVE Online route and completely rewrites their graphics engine and art assets. WoW has talked about it, but I think CoX would be a great candidate for this as well. As you say, really all it is missing at this point is newness.
Mike
mikedarga.blogspot.com
I know I’m trying CoH again at the moment and the mission architect looks awesome. I am curious as to what Champions Online is going to do to draw people away. Because the PR so far hasn’t really grabbed me.
Mission Architect on the other hand …
Going back in…
Considering it myself, but I still need to put 7 levels on a healer to catch up with the CoW static group in LOTRO.
I resubscribed simply because of that feature. I sincerely hope player generated missions/quests/dungeons is copied by the rest of the industry.
No worries, I have a healer ready to go.
If only they made the game flow better, be more interesting and – dare I say – fun… I’d sub.
http://www.massively.com/2009/04/06/gdc09-mission-architect-in-depth-part-4/
In fairness to the Cryptic/NCSoft developers: they probably have a much better awesome/crap ratio than the players.
CoH is an impossible game. I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again. When it was developed, there had been… one good superhero game in the last ten years. (Spider-Man), and a lot of bad ones. An untried team, a first product, a _lot_ of failures in the past. (Remember My Incredible Super Team?) Instancing was pretty much a brand new concept on an individual level there. No gear? A near-infinite variety of powers? A costume generator?
CoH succeeded… partially despite the designer’s intentions.
And it’s still a lot of fun, even if it is older than WoW. Heck, I think it’s older than EQ was, when it launched.
Dude. Ascendant _did_ write the Saul Rubenstein Discount Task Force.
Try it.