Discussion: April Producer's Letter and Anniversary Address

Happy anniversary, everyone! After seven years of live service, City of Heroes remains the most successful super-powered MMO of all time, and that’s thanks to you, the great people who have played the game these many years. We here at Paragon Studios have planned a whole month of celebrations for you, including in-game events, community participation, and even some special deals in the store.

Some of our most experienced players will recall that in the early days, City of Heroes was a very different game. The leveling curve was quite steep, missions used the longest maps whenever possible, the Monorail and Ferry required you to traverse long distances between multiple lines, and contacts regularly sent you to a different zone for every mission and were very private about their cell phone numbers. Some of the earliest Task Forces and Strike Forces were quite long as well, and I know I spent many a weekend on Trials that required a significant amount of dedication to complete.

We have changed many of these things over the last few years, sometimes by reworking existing content, other times by approaching new content differently. “Live” is an appropriate term for an MMO, since it really does feel alive -- always changing and evolving. Our goals have shifted more and more to make the game more accessible and friendly to your lifestyle. We want our more casual players to be able to engage in all of the action, as well as provide a wealth of options for our hardcore players to explore.

It is important to learn from the past -- it got us here and we are thankful for the successes we’ve had, as well as some of the things we learned from that weren’t so successful. We want to build on that history and we are focused on the future of the game: we know we have many great years ahead of us. Being able to constantly improve and expand upon the game is truly one of the most rewarding things to experience as a developer, and we always want that to show in our passion for City of Heroes.

We view City of Heroes is as a storytelling medium. We have a lot of long-term plans for the main story, and all of these plans are intended to provide a backdrop for the stories you tell with your characters every day. The Incarnate storyline weaves into the Freedom Phalanx, Arachnos, and the Praetorian storyline, and they all lead to the “Coming Storm” we have been hinting at for a some time now. The Well of the Furies, the Menders, the Letter Writer – all of these entities have their own agendas, and their motives are currently unclear, but that will change and threads of these tales will be more tightly wound. The next year in particular already bears some true surprises, and your characters will become more important all the time.

Related to this, the Incarnate System is an important part of our plans, and in May we will be going into closed beta with the next Incarnate Trial: Keyes Island Anti-Matter Reactor. As I have noted before, we will add Incarnate Trials with every issue, but this year we will roll out even more Incarnate Trials to build a solid foundation for the future. We will also expand the Incarnate Abilities periodically, though not necessarily as often as we add Incarnate Trials. This includes adding more abilities to any individual slot as well as growing up the tree -– one of the great things about the Incarnate System is that you can swap between multiple abilities for any Incarnate slot, and we want to give you more choices to use in more situations: there won’t always be a single “best” choice when it comes to an Incarnate Ability. We will also introduce whole new Incarnate Trees in the distant future to broaden your choices.

We know that there are players who are looking for alternative ways to experience the Incarnate System, especially options that are more accessible to solo players and small groups. We are looking into this for a future issue, and we want it to be added in a meaningful way that augments the epic Incarnate storyline and still remains accessible to our more casual players. Group-oriented play remains an important part of the CoH experience but we understand that not everyone likes to play in a group, and we will endeavor to take this into consideration in future development decisions.

Additionally we will introduce content that is not directly Incarnate-related; we will wrap up some old plotlines and expand on others. In the next Issue (21), we will be featuring an entire new zone with lots of things to do, both solo and in a group. We aren’t abandoning the independent spirit many of our players have. The zone will not only have new story arcs and contacts, but a very unique zone event that significantly links it to the greater storyline of the world.

We are very much looking forward to this month of celebrations, and future celebrations as well. Thanks for your ongoing loyalty, for your honest feedback over the years, and the great times we all get to share with you.

First! Can't wait for more details on the new zone.

Hmmmm. Liking the sound of a solo option for Incarnate progress, as well as the new zone and the expanding Incarnate system.

Woohoo!

Great news and all. I'm excited to see the new stuff.

One request, can we get Incarnate Trial content that is not related to Praetorian content? Maybe a more sinister dark fantasy bent like Rularuu?? Or challenging the ancient gods related to the Well. Something else?

Beating up on the same robots gets old.

Solo and small group advancement in the Incarnate system would be great.

Moooooooooon Baaaaaaaaaaaase.

*cough*

All that I ask is that you continue to consider the pressing matters that effect the playerbase in addition to all that other good stuff. For example... I just did a BAF with a full league... and the lag was nearly unbearable (So much so that it was preventing me from doing my role effectively because of the major button lag... which I'm certain exceeded the recharge times on many of my powers). Seriously, I had my graphics turned all the way down... and I'm reasonably certain it's not my machine.

Anyway, looking forward to the new content and all. =)

Congrats on year 7!

... I can't wait to dig into that new zone!

I'll hold judgement until we know about the small group/solo path.

Glad to hear it is being considered. Still.

Touched on everything I think we've wanted to hear. Sounds good. I understand Praetoria is the flavor of the month right now, but I feel like there's so many other factions that haven't been tapped in a while. I kind of sick of all the technology origin stuff, Rikti, Malta, Praetorians, Sky Raiders, etc. Haven't seen much of the Devouring Earth, CoT, Shivans, or Rularuu lately.

hehe, I "can't wait" to see that new zone be a coop zone and then have all the villains say, "we need a new zone just for us!"

Woot!

A new zone is always welcome! Hopefully, it won't be Praetoria-themed...

Yay for 7 seven years of awesomeness!!

Based on the number 21 appearing in the sentence about the new zone, I conclude there will be a casino involved.