City of Heroes

Wow. Just...wow. This is really cool, IMO. From Positron's four year address:

"I can’t tell you how excited I am for our game’s future, and although we have some major announcements yet to be made, one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning. Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon."

I'm already planning story arcs for my SG. This will be epic. 

I already see a dungeon with 50 AV in 50 different rooms.  Farming purples Inc.  :P  Or a Villain map with 50 time the Hero: Synapse, in order to farm purples. :P

I also see a dungeon with an incredible amount of Freakshows/Family/Nemesis to make the best farming map for the XP/$$$ farmers.

But despite my cynic attitude, this is a great news indeed.  I just hope they will figure a way to "limit" the 2 exploits I just write above, unless they completely give up?

Originally posted by Anofalye

I already see a dungeon with 50 AV in 50 different rooms.  Farming purples Inc.  :P  Or a Villain map with 50 time the Hero: Synapse, in order to farm purples. :P

 

I also see a dungeon with an incredible amount of Freakshows/Family/Nemesis to make the best farming map for the XP/$$$ farmers.

 

But despite my cynic attitude, this is a great news indeed.  I just hope they will figure a way to "limit" the 2 exploits I just write above, unless they completely give up?

I have no doubt that people will try to exploit this, but I'd imagine that the devs are planning ahead for that. There will probably be some limits on how far you can go or how densely populated a map can be in order to avoid the 50 AV's in 50 rooms scenario, like requiring a certain number of minions, lieutenants and bosses per AV. Still, the general idea is fantastic.

Allowing players to write and customize their own missions and story arcs? I see it as a positive in the long run because when you create your character, you'll be able to fully flesh out their backstory, or give more depth to Super Group's storyline. Sure, some folks will try to use the system to farm for XP or influence/infamy, but that's true now without the player generated content.

Speaking for myself, this system would allow me to have one of my characters face Countess Crey as part of her personal story arc, since it's the whole reason I created her in the first place. I can't wait to fully write out the scenario I've got in mind, and turn it into an arc. It will be cool, I think.

I'm psyched for storyteller functionality.

As far as farming goes, keep in mind that they didn't say players could specify loot.  For player generated content, the loot table may be scaled back to prevent such abuses.  Regardless, I'm excited ( ' :

Player generated content sounds like a neat idea....

.... except that one of the most common criticisms of CoH is the repetitiveness of existing missions. If all this is going to do is increase the pool of repetitive missions....

The only mission I've played in recent times which struck me as even mildly novel was a bank mission where the sewer broke up into a building.

For this thing to actually make a difference to the game, it's going to have to allow players to make missions of a totally different ilk to the existing ones - fight through all the mobs/fight through all the mobs and click glowies/fight through all the mobs and kill boss/click glowies/fight through all the mobs, click glowies and kill boss.

IF it allows players to make missions that really feel different, I could see this having the potential to breathe more life into CoH - but the same could have been achieved by developers doing this. If not, I can't see this having any appreciable impact on the game, other than the already suggested farming.

- Foreign languages stories.

Prolly one of the most interesting aspect of it.  You will now find "content" and stories in all languages.  Personnally, I am easy going and quite willing to always play in English, but most of my friends aren't.  Dunno if I would write stories in french, or in english.  Or a weird mixt of both?  :P

At any rate, if I put Nemesis troops anywhere, they would speak in French, that is for sure!  :P

I Can't Wait ! ! !

Originally posted by Anofalye

- Foreign languages stories.

 

Prolly one of the most interesting aspect of it.  You will now find "content" and stories in all languages.  Personnally, I am easy going and quite willing to always play in English, but most of my friends aren't.  Dunno if I would write stories in french, or in english.  Or a weird mixt of both?  :P

 

At any rate, if I put Nemesis troops anywhere, they would speak in French, that is for sure!  :P

That's an interesting point -- I wonder if it we'll see flagging for language specific missions.

Ryzom did it first, and with much greater capacity for variety. Just so you know.

Originally posted by katriell

Ryzom did it first, and with much greater capacity for variety. Just so you know.

From my perspective, on 1 side of the road you have CoX, on the other side of the road you have Ryzom, and in between you have bazillions other MMOs which are hybrids variations of the 2 games.