The Intrepid Informer is back with a three-part story to tell you about Mission Designing!
First off, let us introduce you, or re-introduce you, to John "Protean" Hegner, Lead Mission Designer at Paragon Studios.
John has been devising attention-grabbing missions for years now. As the Lead Mission Designer on city of Heroes, he is the one coming up with ideas and finding ways to overcome seemingly insurmountable roadblocks to keep a coherent and cohesive lore in City of Heroes while unraveling riveting plots and unveiling unexpected denouements.
Please enjoy this insight into the mission development process at Paragon Studios!
Mission Design part I
by John "Protean" Hegner
Greetings intrepidly informed! I'm John "Protean" Hegner and I'm here today to give you some insight into what I do as Lead Mission Designer for City of Heroes here at Paragon Studios.
Firstly, the job isn't all fun and games. As one might expect, there is some tough decision making that goes on during my day on what stories to tell, and which ones to pursue in each of our issues. This is the sort of thing akin to Praetorian Moral choices, only it's on the level of pirates or ninjas, robots or zombies, pie or cake, dinosaurs or aliens, etc. You get the picture. It's the tough choices, the choices you want someone like me to be making when that phone call comes in at 3 am, except I'm usually still awake at that hour, so it's no bother, really. (If "Second Measure" calls me at 3 am with a story question I will probably act annoyed, but then answer it with appropriate geeky enthusiasm).
But how do I get to those choices in the first place? You might ask. Well, City of Heroes is chock full of lore and content, and it's a super hero game, so really, there are any number of entry points that can lead us to a story about anything we want. A story, like rain water, will always find a way to its destined ending. The path may be full of twists and turns around immovable obstacles (or ones you don't want to touch with a 10 foot pole), but that's what makes it fun to lead the mission team. The journey is always interesting. The point is, there are a lot more choices that just whether or not we should do something, and often, in exploring those choices, we determine that the journey is too long and we should pick something else to do. Design can dream up anything, but whether that dream can be crafted into pixels and code is something that I have to keep in mind when we're aiming for the moon. My advice; aim for the moon, but do everything in your power to make the job of the engineers and artists that are building your rocket, easier. Sometimes that means moving the moon closer, or eliminating pointless things like gravity or physics to do it, the end result remains however; hitting that moon, which is what you, the players, get to experience.
My day to day tasks vary quite a bit depending on where we are in the development of an Issue. When we start work on an Issue we begin with some pre-production meetings to discuss what all we are going to be able to pack into the time allotted for said Issue (like which moon we are aiming at this time). This is the first of many decisions. We want to give you guys everything, but time is the eternal enemy of production schedules, and reality has to cut or push ideas off until another time. Usually this process is mostly painless, the Issue has a theme to it and we want to put content in that matches that theme. That automatically rules out a lot of the items on the table. So once we've boiled things down to the real meat and potatoes (see what I did there? hungry?) the production leads work to fit it into the time tables, and that's where the tough decisions start to occur.
As a general rule, we are always trying to push the City of Heroes story forward. We have a list of big stories that remain unfinished and plans for the order in which we want to roll them out to the players. Sometimes the order changes or things are delayed in order to fit something else in that is more immediate and pressing, but we have a pretty solid order to how the big ticket stories are going to roll out and be presented. When we put an Issue together, we look at this order for the stories and see how things will fit. Sometimes a new system or feature is being presented to the players and we shift the focus more toward that, other times we have more stuff to tell than a single Issue can possibly carry, so we wait, or stretch the story out over multiple Issues. There are a lot of factors to take into account and I'm happy that I'm just responsible for the cool story telling part. When the meetings happen, I'm the one who reiterates where the story needs to be heading.
Once production has given the green light on the content and story context of the Issue, that's when I go and talk to the rest of the Mission Team. We discuss the broad story that will unfold in the Issue and then discuss the production time we have allotted to us to do it in. Until this point I have a very broad overview of the Issue with a few story points that I know I want the Mission Team to hit. Some Mission Design meetings happen and we come up with a basic framework of what can get done. Usually this is something along the lines of X number of missions, Y number of story arcs, and Z number of Task/Strike forces. Once I get those numbers from my designers I take that back up to Production and give them the overview of what we are planning on doing. Sometimes they'll push back and say we should focus more on one area or another, but usually they just do a sanity check and give me the thumbs up to do what we do best.
With carte blanche from production (mwahaha!), the Mission Designers and I now start to really dig deep into the stories we want to tell by working within the framework of the number of missions, story arcs, and task/strike forces we know we can do. Matt "Positron" Miller and Sean "Dr. Aeon" McCann each lend their individual expertise to this discussion, with years of CoH history, lore, and experience along with utilizing our mission mechanics in new and interesting ways. Together we pretty much form a tri-force, or a three-branch style of government that keeps checks and balances on each other. With the characters and stories giving depth and richness, and the mechanics fresh and new, we lay out our plan and then start writing and playing our missions.
At this stage, my role of Lead Mission Designer takes a back seat to me actually getting into the guts of writing missions. I don't sit on some lofty perch, surveying the good works that my team does with three fingers of whiskey in my hand. I jump down into the trenches and use my hands to scoop up raw clay and form it into stories right alongside them. But, to better explain the more detail oriented aspects of mission design, I'm going to have "Positron" and "Dr. Aeon" fill you in on their particular areas of expertise and the day to day of writing and designing missions.
That'll be for the next two issues of the Intrepid Informer!
The Intrepid Informer is back with a three-part story to tell you about Mission Designing!
First off, let us introduce you, or re-introduce you, to John "Protean" Hegner, Lead Mission Designer at Paragon Studios.
John has been devising attention-grabbing missions for years now. As the Lead Mission Designer on city of Heroes, he is the one coming up with ideas and finding ways to overcome seemingly insurmountable roadblocks to keep a coherent and cohesive lore in City of Heroes while unraveling riveting plots and unveiling unexpected denouements.
Please enjoy this insight into the mission development process at Paragon Studios!
Mission Design part I
by John "Protean" Hegner
Greetings intrepidly informed! I'm John "Protean" Hegner and I'm here today to give you some insight into what I do as Lead Mission Designer for City of Heroes here at Paragon Studios.
Firstly, the job isn't all fun and games. As one might expect, there is some tough decision making that goes on during my day on what stories to tell, and which ones to pursue in each of our issues. This is the sort of thing akin to Praetorian Moral choices, only it's on the level of pirates or ninjas, robots or zombies, pie or cake, dinosaurs or aliens, etc. You get the picture. It's the tough choices, the choices you want someone like me to be making when that phone call comes in at 3 am, except I'm usually still awake at that hour, so it's no bother, really. (If "Second Measure" calls me at 3 am with a story question I will probably act annoyed, but then answer it with appropriate geeky enthusiasm).
But how do I get to those choices in the first place? You might ask. Well, City of Heroes is chock full of lore and content, and it's a super hero game, so really, there are any number of entry points that can lead us to a story about anything we want. A story, like rain water, will always find a way to its destined ending. The path may be full of twists and turns around immovable obstacles (or ones you don't want to touch with a 10 foot pole), but that's what makes it fun to lead the mission team. The journey is always interesting. The point is, there are a lot more choices that just whether or not we should do something, and often, in exploring those choices, we determine that the journey is too long and we should pick something else to do. Design can dream up anything, but whether that dream can be crafted into pixels and code is something that I have to keep in mind when we're aiming for the moon. My advice; aim for the moon, but do everything in your power to make the job of the engineers and artists that are building your rocket, easier. Sometimes that means moving the moon closer, or eliminating pointless things like gravity or physics to do it, the end result remains however; hitting that moon, which is what you, the players, get to experience.
My day to day tasks vary quite a bit depending on where we are in the development of an Issue. When we start work on an Issue we begin with some pre-production meetings to discuss what all we are going to be able to pack into the time allotted for said Issue (like which moon we are aiming at this time). This is the first of many decisions. We want to give you guys everything, but time is the eternal enemy of production schedules, and reality has to cut or push ideas off until another time. Usually this process is mostly painless, the Issue has a theme to it and we want to put content in that matches that theme. That automatically rules out a lot of the items on the table. So once we've boiled things down to the real meat and potatoes (see what I did there? hungry?) the production leads work to fit it into the time tables, and that's where the tough decisions start to occur.
As a general rule, we are always trying to push the City of Heroes story forward. We have a list of big stories that remain unfinished and plans for the order in which we want to roll them out to the players. Sometimes the order changes or things are delayed in order to fit something else in that is more immediate and pressing, but we have a pretty solid order to how the big ticket stories are going to roll out and be presented. When we put an Issue together, we look at this order for the stories and see how things will fit. Sometimes a new system or feature is being presented to the players and we shift the focus more toward that, other times we have more stuff to tell than a single Issue can possibly carry, so we wait, or stretch the story out over multiple Issues. There are a lot of factors to take into account and I'm happy that I'm just responsible for the cool story telling part. When the meetings happen, I'm the one who reiterates where the story needs to be heading.
Once production has given the green light on the content and story context of the Issue, that's when I go and talk to the rest of the Mission Team. We discuss the broad story that will unfold in the Issue and then discuss the production time we have allotted to us to do it in. Until this point I have a very broad overview of the Issue with a few story points that I know I want the Mission Team to hit. Some Mission Design meetings happen and we come up with a basic framework of what can get done. Usually this is something along the lines of X number of missions, Y number of story arcs, and Z number of Task/Strike forces. Once I get those numbers from my designers I take that back up to Production and give them the overview of what we are planning on doing. Sometimes they'll push back and say we should focus more on one area or another, but usually they just do a sanity check and give me the thumbs up to do what we do best.
With carte blanche from production (mwahaha!), the Mission Designers and I now start to really dig deep into the stories we want to tell by working within the framework of the number of missions, story arcs, and task/strike forces we know we can do. Matt "Positron" Miller and Sean "Dr. Aeon" McCann each lend their individual expertise to this discussion, with years of CoH history, lore, and experience along with utilizing our mission mechanics in new and interesting ways. Together we pretty much form a tri-force, or a three-branch style of government that keeps checks and balances on each other. With the characters and stories giving depth and richness, and the mechanics fresh and new, we lay out our plan and then start writing and playing our missions.
At this stage, my role of Lead Mission Designer takes a back seat to me actually getting into the guts of writing missions. I don't sit on some lofty perch, surveying the good works that my team does with three fingers of whiskey in my hand. I jump down into the trenches and use my hands to scoop up raw clay and form it into stories right alongside them. But, to better explain the more detail oriented aspects of mission design, I'm going to have "Positron" and "Dr. Aeon" fill you in on their particular areas of expertise and the day to day of writing and designing missions.
That'll be for the next two issues of the Intrepid Informer!
John "Protean" Hegner
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