What I’m looking for from my next MMORPG

Okay, while I’m still in mourning about City of Heroes, I want to set down what’s made it so special, in a way that looks forward to the next MMO Margie and I get involved in.

Because, yes, while there are any number of pragmatic reasons why this provides a good opportunity to kick the habit and turn all those hours into something more “productive” … playing CoH has been such a very nice thing for Margie and me to do together that I want to maintain that experience. Though, obviously, sadly, in a different game.

So … here’s what I’m looking for the next thing (and, it goes without saying, I’m looking for specific suggestions from my vast reading audience as to what that next thing should be based on that).

1. It needs to be soloable and duoable. That’s how we play. If the significant content and advancement requires you to belong to a guild of some sort in order to access it, that’s not for us.  I don’t mind mass events or the options to do such a thing, but this is about Me and Us time.

2. I’d prefer minimal grinding. One thing CoH got away from over the years were a lot of the “Go shake down 20 Council and find out their next target” kind of things. Those missions still existed, but they were a minimal part of the action in more modern content.  That sort of busy-work was one of the things I disliked about LotRO, too (“Collect 30 Neek-a-breeker wings! Great. Now go out and collect 40 Fruit Bat Eyeballs!”).  That leads into …

3. I want to be a big damn hero. This was another place where I always felt LotRO fell short. I never felt heroic, in the sense of being a person of extraordinary skill and ability, able to do incredible things (and faced with incredible things to do).  Sure, I was a cool character with a sword, but I was fighting other guys who were also cool and who could take me down at any moment. I’m not asking for a walk in the park, but feeling extraordinary, not just another guy with a sharp axe, is important to me. Travel powers are definitely a part of that (something LotRO has partially solved with more pony-power options) — if I spend the majority of my time running across the landscape to the next content, I’m not being heroic, just persistent. And bored.

4. I’m an alt-aholic. The system has to have a high “paper doll” factor in terms of letting me try a wide array of both appearances and abilities.  And I don’t want to be limited to just a few of those as my sole build(s) (“Man, I’d really like to try this character concept, but I only get four slots so I’d have to drop someone else.”) And, by definition, that means a high replayability factor in terms of content and approaches to tackling it.

5. Instanced missions are okay. In fact, preferred. One thing I always disliked with Champions Online was the “Okay, go defeat XYZ” … who is standing in the open and thus gets gacked by a series of people on the same mission and you have to stand around and wait for your turn to do it.  Going through a mission door and being on our own to defeat the bad guy(s) is a big improvement, in my opinion.

6. Decent scaling. I seem to recall LotRO had (has?) this problem — a very narrow band of mission levels suitable for your character. Take one a level or two too hard, and you’re dead meat. A level or two too easy and it’s drop-dead boring.  CoH, over the years, really added a lot of flexibility to tackle content above and below with appropriate scaling, as well as being able to set global difficulties for your character (bump up/down the opponents X levels, multiply the villains X much).  As a sidebar to this, appropriately scaled missions are also important — Champs Online felt way too uneven, as though one mission was way easy, then the next nigh-impossible.  I like a constant and consistent challenge.

7. Not so much with the crafting, please. Though I eventually got used to it on CoH and enjoyed playing games with it, in most systems crafting is (a) a time sync, (b) a way to keep you from exhausting content, and too often (c) a requirement for advancement. I don’t like any of those options.  If I want to worry about a day job, I’ll worry about my real one. This was another place where LotRO failed for me.

8. I’m investing my time and, probably money. Likewise, please. So now I’m skittish about getting involved in a game only to have it yanked out from underneath me.  Call it commitment anxiety.  My inclination is for a game with something of a track record, and certainly from a company that’s doing well.

9. Trying things out. I don’t mind a subscription model. In fact, I’ve kind of liked that with CoH.  I wouldn’t mind starting out on a F2P format and be able to graduate to a playing player once I’m convinced the game style is what I want.  But I’m open to a variety of options, as long as it’s not too microstransactional (“Welcome to Level 5. Please deposit 35 BlastCorp Bucks to continue playing!”).

10. I’m looking for RP Lite. In line with the Solo/Duo thing (and the Alt-aholic thing) above, I don’t need something that’s highly social, but I would like to stand out a bit in a crowd, and have a backstory concept that’s reflected in how I can behave. I want to feel at least some level of role-playing in the design and naming of the characters. If every toon is simply a set of characteristics and standard abilities, and there’s a sense of  “Oh yeah, well, every Blue Elf is like every other Blue Elf,” then it’s just mixing and matching numbers and not nearly as much fun.

I’m not particularly tied to any genre — I’ve done a lot of supers, obviously, but fantasy or SF or whatever are certainly viable settings.

I suspect it’s not going to be easy to find these things all in one bundle. They’re what I’ve loved most about CoH, and obviously no other game is going to have quite the same level set in these attributes. But, as I said, options and opinions are welcome.

The End of City of Heroes

Well … dammit.

This morning we announced that Paragon Studios will be taking to the skies of City of Heroes for the last time.

In a realignment of company focus and publishing support, NCsoft has made the decision to close Paragon Studios. Effective immediately, all development on City of Heroes will cease and we will begin preparations to sunset the world’s first, and best, Super Hero MMORPG before the end of the year. As part of this, all recurring subscription billing and Paragon Market purchasing will be discontinued effective immediately. We will have more information regarding a detailed timeline for the cessation of services and what you can expect in game in the coming weeks.

That … just … SUCKS.

It’d hard to express in words how much City of Heroes has meant to me.  It was the first MMORPG I ever played.  I met folks there. I ran a supergroup of friends and acquiaintances.  I gave a sub to my wife for Valentines Day, and the two of us have logged weeks worth of  time over the years.

I came in at I3, when things were in a nascent stage.  I remember mad dashes through the Hollows … go-hunt-killing Skulls in Kings Row … endless jogs through Steel Canyon to the missions before hitting that magic Level 14 when you could get a travel power …

The expansion of content, of character types and powers, of Quality of Life features kept it all fresh and new, yet still familiar.

We had a stable of characters on different servers, spanning everything from toons in their teens (level-wise) to retired Level 50s, and in an array of powers and synergies that playing the same missions back to back (e.g., the Signature Story Arcs) never felt like a dull grind, but a series of wargames with differing conditions.

I wrote a novel. Well, half a novel.  That I still plan to get back to.

We tried different games — DC Universe Online, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and (and Margie and Kay still play this, too), Lord oft the Rings Online.  But we always came back to CoH.

It made us feel super. Especially together.

And now … after, what, 8, 9 years? … it’s going away.

The team here at Paragon deserves special praise for all that we have accomplished over the last 5+ years. These developers are some of the most creative and talented people in the gaming industry. By now, we’ve all been given this news internally, but to anyone who may be reading this message after the fact; know that your hard work and dedication has not gone unappreciated or unnoticed. To any potential studios looking to grow your team; hire these people. You won’t regret it.

The Dev community on CoH, including their accessibility through the forums, was always one of the cool aspects of CoH.

To our Community,

Thank you. Thank you for your years of support. You’ve been with us every step of the way, sharing in our challenges, encouraging us to make City of Heroes better, more than everyone else thought it could be. We couldn’t have come this far without you. I implore you all, focus on the good things of CoH and Paragon Studios. Don’t dwell on the “how” or the “why”, but rather join us in celebrating the legacy of an amazing partnership between the players and the development team.

Thank you, and I’ll see you in the skies, one last time.

I don’t blame the Paragon Studios folks. The direction for this is clearly about NCSoft. I’ll be curious as to what news comes out about what’s driving this decision.

Regardless, it’s sad. Depressing. Grief-making. Like finding out the restaurant you liked so much, where you go every few weeks, where you know the staff’s names, where you proposed to your wife … is not only closing, but being torn down for a WalMart.

Ugh.

COH Signature Story Arcs

Okay, I admit it — I have a bit of Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior viz City of Heroes. Such that, as the various Signature Story Arcs have come out, I’ve been insistent on our running through them with all of our alts who qualify.

Which, given that they tend to ramp up in level, has limited the scope.  We have 13 “high-level” alt pairs that we run — defined, loosely, as level 25 or higher.  Some are Legacy Consortium Heroes on Champion, and a few high-levelers on a some other servers. Several were part of the Great Praetorian Boom. Still other were the Final Level Pact Rush.

But 25 or so only gets you (on the Pandora’s Box SSA) so far.  I think the first installment is level 30, and the second was 35. The third (just out) is 40+, which restricts us to six duos to run (we’ve now done four), though we hae twom ore that are in the 38-39 range and could be advanced with a bit of focus.

What’s actually cool about the SSAs is that they play quite differently depending on who’s going in on them. We have an array of variations in our duos (scrapper-or-brute/troller of various flavors, blaster-or-corruptor/tank ditto, scrapper duos, mastermind duos) as well as variations on their difficulty settings.  Given that we can usually plow through one of the SSA installments in an hour (after the first hero and villain run-throughs, where we actually read the dialog), that’s not too bad a way to kill an evening.

The current installment (2.3) is actually pretty darned good.  Malta is always a challenging mix of firepower and debuffs, but the final installment does a nice job triggering some status quo changes that are due out with I24.

I look forward to the third SSA. And, as well, to our herd of level 5-20 duos we have growing up on Exalted qualifying for these adventures …

I24 Overview and Musings

Why it seems like only yesterday when I was talking about the upgrade from I3 to I4 (PvP! Body part sliders!). And here we are, a scant seven (!) years later, talking about I24:

Issue 24: Resurgence is the next major free City of Heroes Freedom™ content update. Issue 24 provides new story arcs for a variety of character levels, ongoing power and Enhancement upgrades, and continuing premier content for our VIP players. Now that the Praetorian War is over, former adversaries work shoulder to shoulder to rebuild in the aftermath. As refugees from Galaxy City and Praetoria flood the streets of Paragon City, fresh conflicts bubble to the surface and new enemies emerge, setting the stage for a coming storm.

If I said I haven’t been involved in the Praetoria War, does that make me a bad hero?

Power and Enhancement Upgrades

Blaster Upgrades:  Blasters receive a substantial increase to their damage and toughness. All Blaster secondary power sets now include a new element: Sustain. The Sustain attribute grants increased regeneration and recovery to upgrade to the following Blaster secondary powers; Touch of Fear, Blazing Aura, Chilling Embrace, Cloaking Device, Lightning Clasp, and Conserve Power. Blasters who already have these powers do not need to respec in order to benefit from Sustain. The attack range of some powerful Blaster attacks has also been doubled, while all Snipe powers can now be instantly fired under certain conditions.

My blasters will certainly enjoy this — instantsnipe (if you have a high enough to-hit bonus going) will be really keen on teams, where the build-up time for snipe powers is often difficult to make happen.

Having the short-range blasts become standard-range is pretty awesome, too. Sounds like it will be time for some respecs for Torchielle and Miss Crackle, among others.

Power Pool Customization: Players who have unlocked tailor access can now change the colors of their Ancillary, Patron, and Power pools, allowing customization of powers such as Super Speed, Hasten, and Soul Tentacles.

THANK YOU, JESUS!  Or whoever decided to prioritize this.  Assuming that I can actually choose “Minimal FX” for things like Hasten and Superspeed.

Power Pool Upgrades:  The Concealment, Fighting, Leadership, Medicine, and Presence pools have received an additional power each. They are trainable at level 14 if you own two other powers in that pool. Each power pool also has a new fifth power that can now persuade opponents to disregard a character, transform into an unrelenting berserker, or dramatically improve a team’s Endurance recovery.

Power Pools haven’t been touched since practically Day 1.  The changes that have been discussed (more details elsewhere) will also trigger some serious respecs, for all characters, I suspect.

Improved Enhancement Set Bonuses: Invention Origin Enhancement set bonuses, such as XP debt reduction and specific mesmerization/mental control resistances, have been replaced with more useful set bonuses. These new set bonuses provide more powerful resistance against a broader variety of damage.

That’s … probably good.  Though no doubt it will throw the markets into a tizzy for a month or three as people buy the new hot thing and decline to buy the old, not-quite-as-relatively-good thing.

New Invention Origin Sets: Four new Invention Origin Enhancement sets debut with Issue 24. Annihilation (targeted AoE), Unbreakable Guard (damage resistance), Reactive Defenses (defense), and Preventive Medicine (healing). These new sets all offer different and specific bonuses, such as decreasing an opponent’s resistance, increasing a character’s maximum hit points, improve resistances, and even granting an absorption shield.

More IO sets are definitely a good thing (see also, “markets in a tizzy”).

New VIP Bonuses

Martial Assault and Martial Combat (Free for VIPs): Dominators and Blasters can now combine ranged powers with melee martial arts attacks. Martial Assault combines ancient weapons with deadly physical attacks. It is available for all Dominators. Martial Combat focuses on using the energy within to perform remarkable feats. It is available for all Blasters.

As previously noted, blapper-tastic!

Actually, it should work well for a variety of purposes, as some blasters and doms just don’t need “powered” secondaries for their character concepts.  (I have several that have Energy as their secondary, simply for the “go away!” first level punch — which Martial Combat now has as well as other useful things.)

More Lore Incarnate Abilities (Free for VIPs): Level 50 Incarnates can now craft new Lore abilities that let them summon powerful members of the Banished Pantheon, Knives of Vengeance, Talons of Vengeance, or the Tsoo as allies in combat.

Still find the Level 50 Incarnate stuff confusing as hell (yes, what we need is another power / crafting system).  So no interest here, aside from thinking the above concept sounds cool.

New Incarnate Story Arc (Free for VIPs): The majority of Praetoria except for one last bit of civilization outside of the city has been destroyed. This tiny corner of civilization crumbles from constant attacks by the Devouring Earth, and its days are numbered unless someone with the power of an Incarnate fights against the forces of Hamidon! Characters who are ready for this great challenge can contact the Vanguard scientist Number Six in the Rikti War Zone.

Wait, what?

Oh, man, did I sleep through the world being destroyed again?

Have to wonder, what does this actually mean for Praetoria (as in “can I still run characters through Praetoria like before, or is that whole zone now gone?”).  I’ll have to ask the CoH G+ team on Friday …

New Tier 9 Tech Knight Costume Set (Exclusive to VIPs): Tier 9 VIP players in the Paragon Rewards program can unlock the new Tech Knight Costume Set. The Tech Knight costume set fuses cosmic energy and high-tech power, allowing players to create truly fantastic warriors for good or evil.

New costumes = always good.

New Stories and Adventures for All Levels

Kings Row in Crisis (Levels 7-20): With Galaxy City destroyed, the displaced and homeless flood into neighboring Kings Row to find shelter, work, and protection. The beleaguered Paragon Police Department already has its hands full, and the fallout is that the city’s gangs are thriving and enlarging their turf. Back Alley Brawler and the Regulators have put out a call for a new team of Heroes to stop the villainous gang members and to protect the refugees.

Good to see a new reason to go back to Kings Row.  Now if only the Hollows weren’t a ghost town …

The Giant Monster, Paladin, is also taking advantage of this chaos to try to destroy Kings Row. Paladin and his minions now rampage throughout High Park, seeking to claim it. The heroic Shining Stars stand up against Paladin’s mechanical might, but they need help from the Heroes to finish Paladin off.

Oooh … nice to see the Shining Stars mixing it up, plus some sort of way of duking it out with Paladin that doesn’t requiring finding a critical mass of heroes in KR?  Nice.

Brickstown’s New Alliances (Levels 30-50): The remnants of the Praetorian Army now work with the Vanguard in Brickstown. Forging an alliance of Praetorians and Heroes from Primal Earth, the Vanguard seeks to fight the emerging threats from both Praetoria and Primal Earth. All interested Heroes should contact Provost Marchand in Brickstown.

Hmmm. Okay, makes sense. Bricks is sort of a dumping ground at the moment, so giving it a new feel is worthwhile.  Wonder how that will work in conjunction with the Zig?

To add to that, the Praetorians are not the only issue to worry about in Brickstown. Prisoners have broken out of the Zig maximum security prison! In the new Prison Break zone event, Heroes have their hands full with stopping fugitive super-powered criminals from wreaking havoc throughout Brickstown.

Ha! Asked and answered.  This makes great sense, and sounds like it should be fun.

St. Martial’s Secrets (Levels 30-50): Arachnos has set up a portal to Praetoria with the intent to loot that devastated world. However, Villains have determined that they can slip into the war-ravaged land themselves to loot Praetoria before Arachnos does! What Villains discover in Praetoria surprises even them and may turn out to be something that helps their ongoing schemes in the Rogue Isles!

Adding to the mayhem in St. Martial’s is Family Raid, a new zone event. Longbow has discovered that the Family, a criminal organization, is holding illegal weapons throughout its casinos in St. Martial. Longbow is staging attacks to recover those weapons, but Villains with foresight can stop the attack and even steal the weapons for their own use!

Don’t have many active redside characters, but these sound like fun additional material.

All in all, a worthwhile Issue, I’d say.  Game on!

What’s the Matter with Penelope Yin?

The Paragon Studios team does a “Freedom Friday” weekly quasi-chat on Google Plus, answering questions that people pose, etc.  Today, after getting my actual game question answer, I made the following observation:

Just some feedback on the current splash screen, btw: it’s awful.  Not only am I less than thrilled with young Penelope Yin going from t-shirted and jeans-wearing teen to not-quite-dominatrix-geared hero, but you have her up there in one of those stereotypical super-heroine twisted-spine positions so that the viewer can conveniently see both her butt and her boobs.

Bad show. I expect better from Paragon.

Here’s the image (reversed, as it’s the current background for the cityofheroes.com site):

So some background. Penelope Yin first shows up in the game as the heroes are hitting level 15 or so, in Faultline.  She’s a t-shirt-and-jeans teenager trying to deal with some problems in that zone. She also can psychically control Clockwork.

Over time it’s developed that Penelope is one of the most powerful psychics in the world, and with recent events she’s joined the Freedom Phalanx as a full-blown hero.

She’s also managed to pick up an awful costume. It’s not quite dominatrix-wear.  Not quite.  But between the thigh-high red high-heeled boots, the not-really-bare stockinged legs under a red bikini bottom, and the gartered crop-top bare-belly look above the waist … it’s just a silly costume, almost as though she were trying to find a parody of a Sexy Super-Heroine Outfit to show off in.

And then there’s the picture above.

On the splash screen (which I couldn’t find an image of), she’s  leaping forward to go toe to toe with some villain (on the web page, he’s off facing the other direction to match her).  But look at it.  First off, her legs are impossibly long. But secondly, she’s in that all-too-stereotypically awful Contorted Female Super-Hero Display Pose.  The one where, through a twist of the spine, she manages to be pointing both her butt and her boobs toward you.

And this was a teenaged girl not very long ago, and now is one of Paragon’s pre-eminent heroes.  A role model, in-game and potentially for other teens (or tweens) in real life.

And this is now the splash screen that pops up for the next N months (until the next issue) every time you go into the game or change servers.

As Margie phrased it, “Probably not appropriate and an ugly costume.”

As Isaac Sher, a commenter on the same thread, put it:

Again, let’s set aside how her costume looks — her face does not say “I’m about to fight a dangerous foe”, it says to me “Tee Hee, I’m posing for a swimsuit issue photo shoot!  YAY!”  It’s really out of place.   Also, her body is, as others have said, twist so that she’s thrusting both her posterior and her breasts towards the camera, and it just looks grotesque and unnatural — and just seems like she’s there to Look Sexy For Male Players rather than Be An Awesome Hero For Justice.

Yeah, I actually engendered a reaction — a couple of commenters and some +1s on my remarks.

Now, I certainly don’t mind a bit of cheesecake (mmmmmm, cheesecake), though in general my heroines tend to be a bit more covered up.  But there’s two things going on here that bug me, and they’re somewhat intertwined:

Penelope in her more teen-aged, less thigh-high-boots days.
Penelope's new outfit, as rendered in the game.

First off, it’s just an ugly costume. And silly.  I mean, thigh-highs, and the bikini/stockings, and the armor bits on her arms and shoulders and face … and then a bare midriff (with straps holding up her pants?).   Nice costume pieces, but the whole is much less than the parts.  And it — especially as painted (and posed) above, just comes off as a tawdry sexualization.

Which even then wouldn’t be horrific (just a scosh distasteful in some fashion), except I still think of Penelope as a teenager.  I have no idea whether she is or not (she’s a “teenager” and a “girl” in the Faultline thread, and it’s ostensibly now 4-5 years later — though you can still find her there, I believe), and certainly she has gone through a lot of big experiences since then.  But I still associate her with being younger than I should be leching after (or being hinted that I should be leching after).

And even if it’s just “I knew her when she was young and innocent,” it still just jars seeing her in that splash screen every time I fire up the game, angling her butt and boobs at the viewer.

And what did Paragon have to say?

Thanks for the feedback! We’ll convey your thoughts on the art back to the dev team. We’re extremely happy and lucky to have a team of talented artists working on City of Heroes Freedom, and we’re grateful for all the hard work they put in to make City of Heroes an even greater game than ever before.

Um …

To which I replied:

The art team’s certainly talented, and that’s part of what makes the game a deserved success.  I just think in this case (and esp. for something as pervasive as the splash screen) there was some bad judgment (aesthetic and otherwise) involved.

Which, apparently, was ’nuff said, since the conversation faded out after that.

For more on this kind of contorted female posing thing, check out More super-hero posing goodness and Contorting a dead, sexy horse, two entries on my main blog from a few months back.

Level Pacts and the Future

Participated in a Freedom Friday with Paragon on Google Plus today, and finally remembered to ask my favorite question.

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Me: So … when will Level Pacts return? My wife and I do a lot of duoing in the game, and LPs made this a lot more fun (we could solo while the other was away, one of us could opportunistically hunt, etc., without worrying about getting out of sync with leveling).

We still have a number of toons from when LP was put in, and they function just fine. It’s just the ones before (and since) that it’s a problem with.

I understand there are some difficulties with it being abused, but surely there are some ways it could be restored on a restricted fashion. Though I’d also like to see it available at any level — I’d be willing to have my lvl 20 drop to lvl 18 to get pacted with someone at that level.
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City of Heroes Freedom: +Dave Hill : We’d really like to get level pacts working, but they’ll take some time to work out right, and we don’t have an ETA for it at the moment. Hopefully soon! I can understand your desire to have them back. We know they were really popular.

Me: +City of Heroes Freedom – Thanks, I’m glad to know they’re still on the map. Is the problem a technical one, or dealing with unintended (and abusable) consequences? I assume it’s the latter (since the existing LPs were allowed to continue), but it’s hard to believe the latter couldn’t be handled through some limits, cool-offs, etc. I’d rather have a reasonably limited way of doing it than not have it at all.

Je Saist: +Dave Hill: they were disabled, if memory serves, in order to prevent abuse of the pact-system by F2P players. There were also comments that Level Pacts were being envisioned as a VIP benefit only, and I also believe comments were made that the underlying leveling engine itself would need some work in order to isolate level-pacts to VIP’s only.

City of Heroes Freedom: +Dave Hill & +Je Saist : This is roughly correct, though I’m personally fuzzy on the details. I believe there were technical issues involved with level pacts when there were multiple tiers of players, and we need time to work these out so that a robust system can be created.

Me: Fair enough. I’m surprised it’s difficult to ID VIP (or F2P) players, but I’ve done enough development work in legacy systems to be not too surprised.

As I said, I’d settle for a less robust, basic system in the interim than one that’s as polished and powerful as we’d all like to see. But I also appreciate you guys wanting to do it once and do it right. As long as it’s on the docket, I’ll try to be patient. After all, its an excellent game even without it. 🙂

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I certainly don’t know about CoX internals, but if there are “technical issues with level pacts when there were multiple tiers of players,” then simply don’t have those for the moment (if I understood completely what that means, of course) until it gets fixed.