Ask a Dev: Introducing Bruce Harlick!
By
Aliana Blue,
Posted on: 2008-09-09 09:59 in Developers' Corner
Bruce,
Where will City Of.. be going direction wise from a story writer point of view such as yourself?
Member of Team Awesome���
Justice Server
Hello Bruce, thanks for answering our questions.
When you script missions, is there a 'standard script' for various mission objectives that you can 'cut and paste' or does each mission require individual tweaking?
Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes
Nice to meet ya.
My question would be.... are you working on any new Circle of Thorn story arcs?
Are you working on introducing new Magic Origin villians?
Bruce, as someone who started out in Pen and Paper games, is there one particular aspect of them that you would like to bring to a game like City of that you think it might be missing at this time?
S.
Part of Sister Flame's Clickey-Clack Posse
Hey Bruce! You'd better pick a character name, or we'll be forced to assign you one. I vote "The Can Man."
Will the new Mission Architect feature make mission writing easier for you guys?
What was your favorite mission/story arc that you made/worked on?
What is you forum persona going to be?
We need to get you a cool hero/villain name/avatar.
Edit- Out of my head Greydog!
@Mental Maden @Maden Mental
"....you are now tackle free for life."-ShoNuff
Great guns, what a resume!! I think your cover letter for the job application could pretty much be: "Do you want me to start this week or should I wait until Monday?"
Bruce....
1) Which summer super-hero movie was your favorite?
2) What will your Red name be?
Bruce,
The picture on your cube wall looks like you had a rockin' fu manchu/pornstache! What happened to it? Or is that not you?
Are you prepared for the thrashing my wife's going to give you, if she finds out you have this job? :P
Got a simple questions that has been buzzing in my head since the announcement of Issue 13.
Will you be incorporating any of the Mission Editor storylines into the game's storyline? I imagine that there will be some very good ideas come from these editor missions and was curious if some of them might influence your future storylines for COH and COV.
Hey there Bruce, welcome to the nut house 
1. What was your proudest moment/greatest acheivement while working in the gaming industry?
2. If you could have a super power in real life, what would it be?
3. What's the weirdest thing you've ever done/encountered in a pen and paper RPG?
"You wear a mask to hide who you are, I wear a mask to show who I am"
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CLICK THE ABOVE LINK TO HELP DO YOUR PART TO SAVE C.O.H!!!!!
Hi Bruce
Just wondering what direction you are planning to take with the missions. It seems they are somewhat reduntant and are becoming less interesting - likely due to the repeated use of similar tile sets and similar enemies. Are you going to continue this trend or will you be working in new tile sets, enemies, arch-enemies and bosses?
It just seems the missions can be very repetitive and similar. Any plans to change this up down the line?
If I recall correctly, one of the special elements of The Matrix Online was supposed to be that player-characters had the chance to play integral roles in the development of the overall Matrix Online story. Any plans to incorporate that kind of "your success/failure impacts the metastory" element into City Of...?
What kind of missions will you be adding to the game? And what exactly does designing systems to help support missions mean?
Will you be working on more of the same mission types (kill named boss, rescue hostage, click blinky.) or creating new types of mission for us?
Will there be any mission support features that will incorporate the day jobs feature and missions themselves?
What sort of mission support features to help better educate new players to understanding many different aspects of the game could be implemented? If the Architect feature of mission building by players gives more indepth tutorial and education to new players by player made missions for that purpose, do you see that as a viable solution and worthy of the "dev's" choice classification?
The use of cut scenes in a very sparse number of missions is a shame, will this feature be supported for the Architect system for I13?
-Storm Revenant-
Fires Within: Lvl 50 Fire/Kinetics Controller (Champion)
Steamed: Lvl 50 Thugs/Dark Miasma Mastermind (Freedom)
Hi Bruce! Two questions for you...
1) With the Mission Architect coming in Issue 13, the bar of player expectation from the Devs is going to be raised, because we'll be able to see how the basic missions are done. We won't be able to go into some of the old missions any more without thinking 'Map type: Warehouse, Enemy Group: Council, Mission Type: Boss Defeat... hey, I could have written this myself!'
So what new tricks and features are the incoming missions going to have, which players CAN'T access? In other words, how are you going to keep Dev-made mission content special, other than just through the quality of the writing and the canonicity?
2) There are a lot of stories in City of Heroes that we've not come back to as yet. Do you have any storylines that you, personally, are looking forward to extending?
Bruce,
Do you think that you might ever go back over the older story lines and spruce them up abit? Or change them completely to give them a better feel?
"Designing systems to help support missions"?
Does that mean we get more variation in mission objectives? If so, can you give us an example?
Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"
Welcome Bruce!
As a formerly avid P&P fan, often characters and themes from my P&P sessions have inspired me in CoX, even though the genres between my P&P games and CoX are completely different. The same can be said for Jack Emmert with the Statesman, and Matt Miller with Positron - both characters that (AFAIK) were originally Heroes P&P characters that eventually fell into the CoX universe.
As a creative thinker, does this happen to you? From what kind of P&P ideas have you drawn inspiration? Do you find yourself using elements from P&P sessions in your storylines, missions or writing? Do you find yourself taking some old P&P ideas and turning them on their edge to give them a new spin?
Heya Bruce:
1. If I wanted your job... how would I do it? (Srsly.) I'd even work fer badges.
2. Your signature hero: Who would it be? (In the CoX universe.)
3. As far as mission writing, what would be the craziest setup you could think of for really taking the playerbase on a memorable trip?
(And NO, I'm not jonesing for ideas for the mish creator!)
@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE
Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
Turg Fiction: IX is now LIVE on Architect Entertainment!
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Im primarily responsible for making cool stories and missions, and designing systems to help support missions.
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Sounds like you might be the Architect of the Mission Architect 
Could you give us some insight into what the Architect can do, what it cannot do but may be able to do in a future update, and what it will probably never be able to do, whether through technical limitations or game design related limitations.
And yeah, you need a red name alias. Is anyone using Synapse?
Hi Bruce and welcome...we don't bite....hard
Now a couple questions:
1. Do you plan on using some of the little used NPC groups in future Blue & Red missions? i.e. Corolax hero missions
2. If given free rein, what would you change/add about/to CoX?
3. What is your favorite AT & power set?
4. Blue or Red?
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Bruce was responsible for the creation of some of Hero Games most memorable characters, including the ever-popular Foxbat.
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I... I love Foxbat! *has the original comics featuring Foxy and those other classic hero games icons* I hope we'll see some creative characters like that introduced to CoX. ^^
With the significant expansion of the NCsoft NorCal team that supports and develops City of Heroes, we felt it was important for the fans to get to know some of the new personalities on the team. To that end, we are reviving the "Ask a Dev" feature. Here's how it works.
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Ask a Dev
Periodically, we'll introduce a member of the City of Heroes Development Team and open a reply forum thread where fans can pose their questions for that developer. Then a few weeks later we'll close the question thread and go through and pick out the best and most appropriate questions and the developer will provide the answers!
So, without further ado, we want to introduce to you one of the latest additions to the City of Heroes Development Team, Senior Designer Bruce Harlick! Read the below and then reply with your questions for Bruce!
City of Heroes "Ask a Dev" with Senior Designer Bruce Harlick
Biography
Bruce Harlick got his start in the gaming industry way back in 1981 as Hero Games' first employee. Starting as an editor, Bruce enjoyed a 20-year relationship with the Hero Games, culminating with the job of company president. Bruce was responsible for the creation of some of Hero Games most memorable characters, including the ever-popular Foxbat.
After Hero Games and some time spent as a technical writer and editor outside of the gaming industry, Bruce took at job with Monolith Productions in 2003, working on The Matrix Online and the DC Universe Online game. After Monolith sold MxO and the rights to DC Online to Sony in 2005, Bruce moved down to Sigil to work on their Marvel Comics MMO. When, alas, Bruces plan to work on a superhero MMO was foiled once again, he moved back to his hometown of San Francisco in 2006 to work on an Indiana Jones game.
Bruce jumped at the chance to join his old friend Positron and the rest of the dev team working on City of Heroes and City of Villains. His long background in superhero roleplaying games made him a natural fit for this project.
An Introduction from Bruce
Ive been playing superhero roleplaying games since I was in High School (which was a long time ago now) and Ive wanted to make a superhero-based MMO for ages. Im really happy to be here on this game and Im looking forward to making a mark on it.
MMOs are great fun; I've been playing them hardcore ever since EverQuest was in beta (and before then, back when they were all text-based) and havent stopped since. Ive played or beta-tested just about every major MMO to come along and was an early tester and player of City of Heroes.
In my spare time, I like to take photographs, read, cook, dine at fine restaurants, and roast coffee. I like to play roleplaying games and am involved in several active campaigns. Im planning on running some 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons for my fellow content designers here.
What does Bruce do on the City of Heroes Team?
Im primarily responsible for making cool stories and missions, and designing systems to help support missions. So Im here at work all day, thinking of cool stuff and then putting it into the game. It's a dream job.
Please use this thread to post your questions for Bruce!
Questions will be collected on Monday, September 22nd from both the North American and European forums.
Not long after that, we'll post Bruce's answers and introduce our next dev and ask for your questions for them.
Lighthouse
Community Relations Manager
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