Category: City of Heroes/Villains

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Great Moments in Specialization

A favorite little moment in City of Heroes was when my friend Adam maxed out his Sniper Shot. This was back before Enhancement Diversification, back when Hamidon-Origin Enhancements gave +50%. One of them was +50% to range and +50% to damage. Slot six of those in a power: quadruple range and damage. Put them all in a snipe, which already has a lot of range and damage.

The range of the attack was beyond the game’s draw distance. He had to assist off a spotter to test how far it went. We were testing on grays, which was good because it was also well beyond the distance at which you would be rewarded for the kill.

: Zubon

This is, of course, less impressive than the Canadian sniper who holds the record for a kill at over 1.5 miles.

CoX Time Codes

Now that I have re-subscribed to City of Heroes, I can give out codes for free time. If you want a trial code or one for “welcome back” (must have been unsubscribed for 90 days) leave a comment. I can see the hidden e-mail field. You get some free time, and I do too if you give them money. See that huge ulterior motive? And yes, this comes right after the “why should I care about $15?” post. Hey, free trumps irony. It keeps me poking around Mission Architect.

: Zubon

Mission Architect Video

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

Individual Expression or Group Coherence?

I thought that limited class options helped pick-up groups in The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ while making City of Heroes PUGs sometimes vulnerable to ineffective “concept” builds. Ravious commented that Guild Wars PUGs were improved by being able to see what skills other people were using, with the implication that you could educate the newbs or avoid people who look useless. (For the unfamiliar: you equip one bar of abilities in Guild Wars, and that is all you can use until you go back to town and change your bar. Many options, few available at once.) These experiences suggest to me that putting characters in small boxes lets you build things more easily.

Is this trade-off I am proposing between ease of grouping and narrowness of class roles a false dilemma? Can you have highly flexible character roles and still have the ability to assemble groups quickly? DC and Champions Online have both planned to bridge this divide by having roles that change on the fly instead of classes. That is, you build your character with “fire hammer,” “healing flames,” “fire shield,” and “blinding smoke,” and have a dial that makes you a DPS, tank, or support class. If you turn it to DPS, you deal more damage, but take a defensive penalty (alternately: set the dial to give only bonuses and not mention that the penalty is built in).

If the trade-off exists, which direction should your game take? I am a fan of individual expression, but as a game designer I would be more interested in seeing people play together frequently and smoothly. Bind people to each other, make cooperative play in your game a good thing, and let social factors help you retain players. This is why you add bottlenecks, downtime, and forced grouping: bring people together for interaction and bonding. Or maybe this is all crap, because WoW made its billions as an extremely solo-friendly game, but then the end-game is entirely raid-centric, forcing people into class roles.

Do you like being able to over-specialize? Planned supergroups in City of Heroes are awesome. Brutal Speed was a simple City of Villains idea: Corruptors with Kinetics, Brutes with AE attacks, everyone with Leadership, no one with knockback. A standard group was any 5 Brutes and any 3 Corruptors, with no further thought needed. No one needed to take Hasten or Stamina, because you always had 3 Speed Boosts available. And the little Leadership toggle bonuses stacked nicely when everyone had them. In The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢, our Casualties of War group has low DPS because we all went with tanks and support classes. Why go for that soloing build if you will always have a group available?

: Zubon

In Praise of PUGs

Most of my pick-up groups have been rather good. I have clearer memories of the horrid ones, but my non-guild groups almost never fail to accomplish their objectives, and few have really serious problems along the way. The problem is that the good groups blend together: teams succeed similarly, but each fails in its own unique way.

Continue reading In Praise of PUGs

Unlockables versus Items

How many mounts do you have or have you had? My Hobbit seems to be collecting ponies, and she does not get rid of them when a new one comes along. She has a Bree pony (low-level, slower), a blonde sorrel (first real mount), a chestnut (faction mount that survives more hits), a gray pony (white horse reward for finishing Volume One), and however many seasonal event ponies she has (plus tokens for more). These will soon be replaced with a Nimble Goat, which can be used in Moria.

I could sell a pony every time I get a better one, but they are ponies. My wife might never forgive me, and maybe today I want to ride a different pretty pony. What I would prefer, rather than having an inventory item for every possible mount, is to have a single mount item or power. When I get a new mount, I get a new option for that single mount. Give me a drop-down menu on my character to set my mount choice. (I am aware that I just asked for a pony menu on my paper doll. You cannot have my man card.) If the mount color is not considered PvP-relevant, I should be able to set the appearance to any mount I have unlocked — separate functionality improvements from appearance options, and leave me all my appearance options.

That is a general principle. As with most appearance issues, City of Heroes does it right. You start with a variety of options for what your sword looks like, and when you get a new option, you get a new sword appearance option on your list rather than a new sword to carry around. You unlock costume pieces through badges, task forces, microtransactions, and veteran rewards.

If you have item sets for each class, make that a deed, accomplishment, badge or whatever you call it. Once you finish the set, you permanently unlock that set appearance. You already have a cosmetic equipment tab, don’t you? Have another option on it: pick a completed item set from this drop-down menu.

Or better yet, everyone start using a system like the City of Heroes costume designer. I am looking forward to what Champions delivers. I still need to see The Chronicles of Spellborn’s version, once my addiction to The Lord of the Rings Onlineâ„¢ Volume Two: Mines of Moriaâ„¢ fades.

: Zubon