konshu

[ QUOTE ]
I have to admit I don't care about a lack of a map editor if I have 1,000 map choices now.

[/ QUOTE ]

The existing map choices may work for you, but I find I'm struggling a bit with it. It would be very helpful to be able to make small modifications to existing maps, to add or remove an item here or there to help set the scene. It would also be good to be able to modify spawn locations.

I find I'm coming up with mission ideas all the time that I can't create in the MA due to lack of ability to A) make transitions and B) make modifications to maps.

Hopefully some form of these two things (transitions and map mods) will be among the first things added to the existing MA.

Another thing that would be great would be if we could feed a set of coordinates and a zone name to the MA and have it automatically generate an outdoor map centered on the given coordinates. For storytelling purposes, I'd love to give my players the ability to enter a structure from the outside, as we can do on a mayhem/safeguard map, or fight in a known outside area, such as Gemini Park or Prometheus Park.

[ QUOTE ]
I did a Google News search for "City of Heroes Mission Architect" and one of the articles that came up was this:

http://www.geeksugar.com/2859675


[/ QUOTE ]

Are you hoping to convince us you're not a regular reader of GeekSugar?

From what I can see we do get the ability to place spawns, trigger some events, and chain objectives (victory conditions). We'll have the ability to create new NPCs and foe groups. All of that sounds great.

However, we lack the ability to assign transitions. That's the ability to take a building's door, sewer grate, or van door and make it connect between a zone and a map or between two maps. So all MA content will involve consulting a hologram then entering a door at AE, doing the mish, then exiting back to AE.

That's unhappy news for me, because I wanted to use transitions creatively to enhance storytelling, but ... the devs say they have difficulty with transitions in their own Excel-based mission generator, so evidently this is beyond their reach at present. Hopefully the ability to assign transitions will be one of the first things added to MA. (And, devs, if zone-to-map transitions are too difficult at first, please consider enabling map-to-map transitions, and map-on-exit button, which should be considerably easier.)

The next biggest concern I see as a designer is that I'll be able to create new content much faster than my existing content will ring up stars. So I'll have to pull down published content to get my new content up, and that will prevent my previously published content from going anywhere.

So, as someone who expects to put up a lot of content, maybe there should be some sort of facility for adding published mission slots beyond the initial 3 ...? Perhaps buying them with the architect tickets, or even buying them with actual cash thru the PlayNC store (like character slots).

My third concern is that if I ever did make an arc that ascended to the MA heavens it could never be part of the real world of CoH/CoV. It will always be limited to AE, at least till the situation regarding zone-to-map transitions is addressed.

My final concern, as others have expressed, is the ratings system and the likelihood it will become part of the metagame. It seems to me the big SGs will dominate MA by getting their members to vote for SG-created content. It will become a popularity contest, basically, and not really a means of measuring the value of player-created content.

Having said all of that, I must say that this is for me the most exciting addition to the game, period.

I'm (sadly) not in the beta, but it seems like it won't be long before we'll hear about whether or not we can use triggers in missions, and what kinds of triggers - if any - are available.

For instance, some people said there would be no option for ambushes in MA, yet others said there was a misunderstanding on this, and it was the pre- or post-mission ambushes (that occur outside the instanced area) that would not be available.

I'm looking forward to having all this cleared up.

I agree with all of the previously noted criticisms.

For myself, I'd have to say:

Objectively, I think the new missions show that NCsoft mission designers still don't use all the tools at their disposal to create interesting missions. We're lucky when they put one or two clever wrinkles in an arc.

Subjectively, I feel this practice causes the game to lose a lot of its luster.

NCsoft must have some sort of reason for doing things this way, as it has been like this since I joined in spring of 2005. I remember complaining about it to an in-game friend after I'd been playing for a month and being told "The game is still new. Give the devs a chance to make it better." Well, years have passed and the quality of the new missions is nearly identical to the old ones. The only real difference between a scanner mission and an arc mission is that the arc will eventually give you merits.

It's as though the devs are A) designing strictly for the average ten year old, or maybe B) giving mission designers just a day to develop and turn in each arc. I don't know what it is that limits the story telling, but from what I can see it must be in the way designers are asked to work and not due to technical limitations.

The Magic Man arc and the Warriors arc each took tiny steps in the right direction, but more could have been done. The tools used by the devs that helped those missions (IIRC) included putting the mission objectives in the ambushes (Warriors) and creative use of a foe (the time-traveling Magic Man). The Daedalus arc was disappointing and possibly of lower quality than some of the 2005 content.

I like virtually all of the other aspects of the game - art, zones, powers, ATs, enhancements, costume generator - but the mission design / story telling aspect blows and it always has. The tiny dribble of content we've received in the last year, and the quality of it, highlights this weakness. I have to question the senior developers' basic intentions with mission design and perhaps even the HR department's method of hiring for the position. Bottom line: I wish we were getting better results.

Sorry to be so negative, but really it is just this one area of the game that is to me so obviously lacking, and I wish the shortcomings in this area would be addressed. It seems pretty clear to me how to fix it. I've presented my ideas on how missions could be made better in other posts and in PMs but the suggestions have gone nowhere. As the game presently exists, there isn't an arc or TF I wouldn't want to see replaced with an improved version, including imaginative player favorites such as the TV arc.

I'm looking forward to Architect so I can see if better missions can be created even with the limited toolset we'll be given.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Well, if the goal is to gain xp (and this is how the game is set up), then the smart thing to do is to play each toon for a level and move to the next.

[/ QUOTE ]

If it takes 10 days to get 1 level's worth of double xp, it would take 490 days in addition to play time to level a character to 50. If you started at level 20 it would take 300 days. No matter how many characters you have that is not smart.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know what your point is ... but you seem to be making MY point.

By your math, if I play for another year (and if I don't make a lot of new toons), I'll have about 60 level 50 toons.

By contrast, in my play since May 2005 I have brought only 2 toons to level 50. So this On Patrol rule would seem to make the game a lot easier.

But, no big deal. I was just trying to bring up a point about the devs designing more and more for rewards instead of challenges, and wondering if that was a good policy.

I've not read through all the posts on this, as most of what I've seen in the comments is about the Day Jobs. I have no interest in the Day Jobs, period. Though if standing my toons at the SG base or WW/BM would give an advantage, I would do that, as that's where I leave my toons anyway.

The part of this that concerns me most is the On Patrol feature. I have over 60 active alts. What this means for me is that even if I play 6 alts a day, so long as I play them for just one level each I will be continually receiving double xp. I suppose that's intended as a reward, but I feel I'm already earning levels pretty quickly, usually picking up several levels every time I play.

And how is this going to change the game? Well, if the goal is to gain xp (and this is how the game is set up), then the smart thing to do is to play each toon for a level and move to the next. Since players can often gain a level in just 1-3 missions, it means we could see people dropping from teams even faster than before and we'll spend even more of our in-game time recruiting.

I'm just surprised the devs feel they need to do this in order to sell their product. You'd think they'd put more pathways of compelling content in the game or make new types of toons to play, but instead they do more and more to remove the challenge of leveling up your toons. I think they're focusing so much on the reward side of play they've forgotten entirely about the challenge side of the equation. You're supposed to balance challenges and rewards, not simply dish out the rewards. Can we please have more challenges in the game?

Or is logging your toon out in a particular location supposed to be a "challenge?"

There are so many things I wish they'd do to improve the game, but they never do them.

I think the best two rewards they've put in the game since I joined (in May 2005) have been the Sands of Mu veteran power and the jet packs / zero-g packs from the safeguard / mayhem mishes. These help with some of the challenges that were more onerous than fun, such as having to walk long distances or trying to solo missions with a tank, def, or troller at low levels.

After that, I think the veteran wings and trenchcoat, the temp stealth powers from pvp zones, and the Ouroboros portal are the best game rewards. I think the ability to convert 3 insps into 1 insp of your choosing is the best innovation in the game.

And the best content? I don't think there's a lot of good content, which is why people mostly do scanners and paper mishes. I like doing the TFs and the safeguard / mayhems (with side missions) because they are more challenging. I think it would be great if NCsoft would make it easier to find and join TF / trial teams, and if they could use the safeguard / mayhem missions as a template for team pvp play.

We've had the arena, pvp, cooperative zones, and cooperative missions for some time now. I wouldn't be surprised if the devs begin to address the idea of "pvp missions."

When we first got mayhems and safeguards, I imagined that pvp versions of them would not be far behind. In pvp play you could have the villains enter a section of a hero zone to complete their various objectives (rob bank, steal jewels, abduct hostage, bomb building, vandalize, resist arrest, etc.) and the heroes would be challenged to find the villains and stop them. Heroes could be rewarded for each villain they jail, and villains rewarded for each objective they complete. The mission could end when either a timer expires (say, 20 min) or the villains successfully get away after completing an objective.

This kind of play could be fun, but it would be a stretch to go with the classic pve reward system (xp, inf, inspirations, salvage, and recipes for defeats), so some new reward system would need to be created. Maybe the "merits" would fit into this. Designers must also take care to ensure that the scenarios can't easily be "gamed" by players ... say, where one side of the pvp contest simply yields to allow the other side to get all the prizes.

[ QUOTE ]
I don't see why we wouldn't be able to use the same outdoor mission maps that are currently in game, though I doubt we would be able to choose any areas that aren't already mission ready. They did say that npcs could be customized with around a dozen options, so we might can alter an existing group's look and rename them. A very limited way of making a new npc group, but a start that can be expanded later on.

[/ QUOTE ]

Having access to outdoor maps that are presently in use would not be a big help to me. One of the things that inspires me most about mission creation in CoH is the thought of grabbing areas in zones that have not been grabbed before. However, I can easily see that you could be right on this. I mean, how many times in the game do we see the same outdoor maps used over and over and over? It seems we're always getting the same park map or one of 4 city maps. There must be a reason for this other than laziness.

As for the ability to slightly customize foe groups ... that helps, especially if we're able to change the sex of the toons. Female foes are highly under-represented in the game, especially in the older content.

Thanks for the clarification! So all door missions are instanced while all hunt missions are not.

I think it is essential to be able to grab sections of outdoor maps for instanced missions, and I think we also need to be able to stick usable doors on buildings in those outdoor maps so players can enter buildings to explore indoor maps.

Basically, I think a functionality like what we see in safeguard / mayhem maps is a basic requirement for the mission design tool. If we're restricted to just indoor maps spawned at randomly selected doors ... that would be quite the bummer.

Perhaps I used the wrong term? I meant that we would not be able to - say - grab a neighborhood from Galaxy City and use that as part of our mission map.

If "instanced" is not the correct term for this, what is?

I have a lot of concerns about the usefulness of the mission design tool in Architect.

I'm thinking it will not enable instanced maps, and will force users into the warehouse, sewer, office, and cave maps. I'm also thinking it won't enable placement of items on maps. If so, created missions will be a lot like scanner missions.

I'm thinking we will not be able to create new foes or foe groups, but will only be able to draw from the list of existing foes. This is not entirely crippling, but it does severely hurt creativity as new story lines would not be able to embrace new characters.

I'm thinking we will not be able to write any programming. This means we will be limited to boss/glowie missions with the few frills we're given. We won't be able to create ambushes, prisons, patrols, alter foe AI, or have special mission dynamics (as in "protect the henge" in Croatoa), and so on.

And naturally we won't be able to provide players with existing temp powers, new temp powers, badges, costume items, or other things that normally draw players to missions. So ... pretty much the same as scanners, again.

Because of all this, put me in the group of people that expect the new mission design tool to be basically a scanner mission generator, where the main thing we get to do is choose a foe group and write a line of boss dialog.

I'm hoping for the best and expecting the worst.

Here are my storytelling questions to be answered:

1) Why is CoX storytelling limited to the manner used in the very earliest computer games? I understand the programming team is going to include more options for dialog, but that is a minor point in my opinion (and easily misused, too). Is the storytelling limitation a result of the way the NCsoft creative team is formed with writers and mission designers holding separate positions? If so, will we ever see missions that have been made with the same person being the writer and designer?

(As I see it, the natural way to tell story in the game is not through a contact's expositions but primarily through the complications that occur in mission play. A number of mission complications already exist, and are used, but apparently in a nearly random manner. I have to consider that maybe this aspect of storytelling is unrecognized by the NCsoft development team.)

2) Why is there so much uniformity in the stories / foes in CoX? Is there a policy or system that restricts creativity? I've never been the type to read just one comic book series, I've always read several, but most of CoX reads like just one comic series. I'd prefer a system that shows the flair of many different creators. (Often, one of the most exciting things in comics is when a new creator comes to a magazine. Renewal through creative shake-ups is essential - or the product becomes moribund.) I'd also like to see the creators of each mission or group of missions get credits on the zone transition screens, much like the artists, writers, and so on get credited in comic books.

3) Can we have more frequent additions of content, especially revision of old, outmoded content? The present policy seems to be focused on creation of zone arcs, which must be fairly labor intensive. It would be nice to have - in addition to the occasional zone arc - two or three small teams of creators reworking old content, fixing bugs, and adding new small arcs. (Example of a good small arc that was added: Dr. Creed in Mercy.)

It's interesting to me that so many people perceive "getting to 50" as the only true and valid goal of the game. Where does this idea come from?

I'm an altaholic, and even after occasional fits of toon deletion I have over 50 toons. Recently, with the diligent and generous help of a regular teammate, I have leveled one toon up to 50 in CoV. All I can say about it is: "big deal." I received zero emotional satisfaction from my achievement. What it felt like to me was that I played one of my favorite toons a lot more frequently than I really wanted to, and now that toon is basically dead. Unless you are a PvPer, or a SG leader, or you are trying to unlock the Kheldian ATs, there is no real point in having a level 50. So tell me again: what is the point in grinding it out to finally get to 50?

Altism is one of the purest pleasures in CoX. I enjoy creating new concepts, even if I have already used the same AT/ powerset before. I like playing a toon till it gets its travel power, or till it gets a cape or aura, depending on the character. I like saving my toons for a day when I get the craving to play them again. And if a global friend logs on with a toon of level "x," maybe I have a toon in my repetoire of about the same level, and we can enjoy a pleasant afternoon of gaming.

But relentlessly playing a toon till I have killled it? That's a mountain I just don't care to climb.