Mission Architect - CoH killer?

If, and I stress the "if" part, anything done by the game caused the sharp decline, I'm with those who cite lack of new things to do. That burned me out, as well as many on my friends list, most of whose names I haven't seen light up since. While I bought yearly subscriptions, I took longer and longer breaks from the game. I've logged more hours since the Freedom relaunch than the two years prior to it.

However, we all have our own anecdotal tales of what caused people to leave, and they usually are the things that bothered us personally since we tend to gravitate towards people who we have things in common with. Given that none of us know more than the tiniest fraction of total players, if any of those anecdotal reasons are truly responsible, it is sheer coincidence, not insight.

I personally believe that the AE was a great idea, badly implemented so that it harmed the game in that putting out the Architect Edition brought new blood into the game, who then thought the game was PL to 50 and have nothing to do so they left. Of course, it is also very possible that those people would never have stayed since they clearly thought PLing to max level is what you do in a game to get to the end game raids. I find it ludicrous to believe, especially after the ED uprorar and the I13 PvP squabble players left in droves over PLing in AE. UberGuy has the most logical explanation.

Actually the only thing that is really telling and significant for us that are still playing is that free to play made absolutely no difference. We should have seen a boost in Q2 2012 revenue.

I disagree entirely.

MA added a lot to the game. From allowing players to expand their creativity to even drawing attention from major authors IRL.

Much like base editing, collecting and altaholicing - some players found this to be their cup of tea, including me.

It allowed players to enjoy new content and create their own. Not everyone was as excited as others, but, in no way did Mission Architect entirely contribute to the "downfall" of COH.

My opinion.

If other people power leveling is what ruined the game for you, I feel sorry for you.

I actually signed up for City of Heroes because of Issue 14: Mission Architect. In childhood, I always appropriated toys for my own fantastical universes and learned how to write my own adventure games in Basic (sometimes I wonder how life would have turned out if I had continued learning how to program). I didn't just read comics, I created my own comic book characters. Captain-Electric and several other characters have had long lives. I used to play a computer game by pre-evil Electronic Arts named Adventure Construction Set, that let me design my own worlds, quests, and characters. I loved it.

I waited many, many years for CRPGs to get back around to my dream game--one that let you participate in its creation. Years later, I learned how to emulate an Ultima Online server, but not for the reason you might expect (I still paid to play the official servers): I learned enough JavaScript to appropriate the engine for my own single-player Britannia, filled with custom gumps, characters and chained-together quest-lines. Only one other person ever played any adventures in my Ultima: Forgotten Tales world, an emulator engineer from Brazil who used to help me with troubleshooting. But they loved it. Good enough for me!

Mission Architect brought me in, but it would be a year before I picked it up. Instead I found friends, a dev team, and official story arcs that lured me into their official game world like no one has since my first year in Ultima Online; and also got me back into reading comics, which has added much enjoyment to bedtime reading for three years now.

For the past couple of years, Architect has added immensely to my play experience. This system brought me to City of Heroes, and I'd say it represents at least 1/3 of the reasons I stuck around. I was lucky enough to befriend a couple of players whose talent for creating stories has put them firmly among my favorite comic book authors, despite this being "a game". Several other authors also adorn my list of favorite talent, many of them largely undiscovered and with few ratings. I have SO many architect tickets and I never "farmed" for any of them. They're all from playing stories for the story's sake.

When one of my friends greatest works yet, a massive story arc trilogy pitting heroes against an unexpected Axis America invasion, was due out around the same time as the new Pandora's Box SSA, I realized I was actually looking forward to his arc more; which is saying something, considering I was REALLY looking forward to the new SSA. And that's when it hit me: this was another great first in gaming for me--fans becoming huge fans of other players content within mainstream MMORPGs--so much so that if he had been accepting donations, I would have opened my wallet.

The worst mistake Paragon made was to confuse the system's initial player reaction for an overall failure of the idea itself. Mission Architect should have blossomed over successive issues, giving players the power to create (and the power to reward, even if those rewards were particular to instanced Mission Architect content) their audiences with increasingly mind-blowing special effects tricks, worlds, maps, access-points (beyond the AE building's rather unimmersive access point), and multiple NPC contacts, contact chains and complex mission trees.

Other games have picked up the torch, and games will continue to pick up the torch, but it was a sad thing to see a great system with so much potential receive so little care after its creation. Still, it was amazing to see what my favorite authors did with so little. We created worlds.