The Perfect Superhero MMO

I feel like every games has aspects of it (especially this one), but what are the features of a "perfect" superhero MMO. What game would grab you and engulf you enough to warrant a monthly subscription, a F2P model, or a combination of the two. I guess what I want to know is what features would make you feel as though you are the superhero you always imagined?

For me personally, Blondeshell encapsulated the answer to this question in their thread: What made City of Heroes unique for you?

Short answer: The ability to be uniquely customize the experience on every level, to have many secondary options that are not required for functional gameplay (enhancements, market, badges, souvenirs, etc), to have a story environment that centers around heroism, and to capable of fully unrestricted and untimed flight.

Okay, on the last one CoH technically has warwalls and an invisible ceiling, but I have the ability of continuous 3-dimensional flight through dozens of interesting environments for as long as I am inclined. Sometimes for literally hours at a time. Such flight was one of my biggest hooks in City Of Heroes.

Something that developers cannot code but is equally important is a cooperative community. Then again, something about playing a hero does bring out the best in us, thus leading to a player base that is supportive and encouraging.

First, some things that are important to me in any MMO, and they're ones that CoH mostly does:

- Variety of playstyles supported: solo, team groups (2-8 team members), massive groups (a lot more)
- An easy mode. Partially based on powersets you can choose from and options. I'm a casual player who plays a lot. Real life has plenty of frustration and stress and impossible odds already, don't need them from my game
- Lots of well-written content
- A PVE environment that is free from any PVP and not affected by PVP. I'm not saying no PVP, but unless I take actions to seek out PVP, it should leave me alone. No challenge for duel, no "your faction has buffs/debuffs because people doing PVP in your faction have won/lost".

Now, what I want that's related to a superhero MMO. Some are desirable for other genres, but my concept of a superhero means these would all be great.

Number one, flexibility in the creation of the look of the character, and the look is not affected by what gear I pick up. Happy to have gear unlock costume parts (you find a flight ring, it unlocks a "gloves" appearance of bare hands with the ring) but no forced change to appearance or even "default" changes (yes, DCUO, I'm looking at you)

Number two, we're saving people from tutorial to end game. Not every mission needs to be save people, sometimes you need to go and take down some bad guys for their own sake, but there should be people you're protecting. (DFB completely lacks this.) Also, there should be opportunities to save people from natural disasters too. Ideally, iconic moves like catch a falling plane, lift a train over the broken track - but if that's not practical, missions/events where you go into a crash site/collapsed building, smash rubble out of the way, carry people out, etc.

And that's a minor bit but still part of the perfect Superhero MMO - carrying people. When the JLA goes into operation, often the fliers are carrying the non-fliers. Flash carries people all the times. And how many times has Superman caught Lois Lane falling somewhere. No, this isn't a trivial thing, what happens if you get attacked, how do you make sure that the person being carried wants to be carried, merging animations. But would be cool and iconic.

Persistence when possible. Yes, people will rerun some content, and the contact shouldn't go "so you'll need to - eh, why bother, you've done this a dozen times before, just go do it". But I've defeated Maelstrom in a variety of missions. When I do the tip mission with the 5th column and the nuclear triggers, Maelstrom should at least seem a bit more wary and less boastful about the upcoming fight.

Semi-destructable environment. This is something CO makes progress on. If you're strong enough, you can go to a light pole, rip it out, and use it as a club. Pick up parked cars and throw them. But I'd go even further - if you knockback hard enough, knock through walls. Huge explosions should damage buildings. In public zones, limit the damage, no knocking down the building someone else is trying to enter. But in an instanced mission, when the battle is done, the room you're in should look trashed.

Moral choices. In theory, you should be able to reject any action, any choice, etc. Again, ideally, it means decision trees, but at minimum, you should be able to reject any mission, quit any story arc at will. (And there should be enough content that you shouldn't feel forced to do so to progress). This is even more important for Supervillains, because there's such a variety in Supervillains - some do what they do for money, some for power, some for chaos, some because they like hurting people.

Thanks for the input. I want the opinon of experts and none have more expertise than the folks here.

What I think would be perfect is - something similar to secret world for a superhero mmo.

There is no leveling you pick your powers from a list of the type you picked. Empty of enhancements - those you find and get through missions, leveling, buying or pvping. (yes the perfect mmo would have pvp day one.) I would add in a dash of SWTOR where you had pvp and pve servers and on certain places heroes and villz would run into each other going to missions. It always struck me as dumb that I an in the middle of grandville fighting Recluse and there are no villz around?

While we are at it - I would put in place natural resistance. If I am an ice blaster you would think I would be resistant to ice dmg. Same for fire or psi. I mean there is ice coming out of my hands, you would think that a ice blast to me would mean nothing. That would be where secondaries come in. ICE/EM vs ICE/EM would never work but ICE/MM VS ICE/EM would because each would be vulnerable to the secondary.

I think the sg/vg concept could be taken much farther as well. Ranking systems could be in place with the most points being awarded for conflicts. Fights between groups sg/sg vg/sg vg/vg etc. There could be missions for SGs that allow them to collect pieces of a rare relic, that once gathered and combined would boost stats for every member of that sg, which they would then have to defend in a raid type situation. Imagine one SG had an item that gave a 20% increase in res or max hp to every member of the sg. People would want to be in that sg, other SGs would want to raid them to get that item.

The problem with several MMO's who try to grab the best of each MMO and put it into one game, it eventualy wont fit together. The theme isnt right, the system doesnt work properly, the combat is borked, the balance is out.

But one thing i dont want to see again is the simpliticy of Holy Trinity, CoH broke through this basic system by combining 4 aspects of the default 2 (healing&tanking), by adding buffing and debuffing.

And its that, that makes CoH way more enjoyable. Its not some dungeon with 3 adds that can 1 shot basicly everything in sight, its the combined effort of offense and defense that makes you win or loose, mass defeat mobs or focus on a single one, the insane diversity you can put into the combat with 8 people and finish of the goal of the mission, hardly no game ever done that on such scale.

And if i ever would read news about CoH2, i feel worried, alot. GW1 was among one of the most unique MMO's out there, but with GW2 they shattered all the aspects that would be 'see, this is GW', dumbed down to some generic MMO with a few 'oh cool' flavored features that at the end are more fun to play with at start, but after a month get boring as hell.

The pieces are all out there in other games, the trick seems to be how to wrap it all up in an engrossing and addictive game.

For me there needs to be decent character creation, powers that I like, fun basic gameplay, and my characters should feel "super" without having to get to endgame or jump through a bunch of loot/crafting hoops.

From City of Heroes, keep the costume creator or at least the spirit of it, speed of the game/characters, powerset models (i.e. allow people to play support via controllers, defenders, corruptors etc with different options outside of just "Heal some hit points"). Keep SG bases / personal space type locations. Keep a loot system that does not tie in to your appearance. Keep the large AOE cap's and ability to melt many minions, it makes gameplay very satisfying. Keep the general idea for tanks. High defense, High resists, high HP, self sustaining if built well and right. Not just a sack of HP for a healer to funnel heals into.

Keep 8 man teams for standard encounters, don't be afraid to make bigger spawns. Its more fun to tear through lots of enemies than to have everyone beating on a sack of HP.


Part of me would like to see it be a twitch based game in that you aren't standing still pressing 1 2 3 4 but are always on the move, chaining combo's and the like dodging big attacks. I like the idea of a base combat system being tied to the mouse with special abilities being bound to number keys.

The idea would be characters would havea combo system of 5 basic abilities that act as finishers. With left mouse (L) being your combo builder and right mouse (R) being a finisher.

So you'd have say L R being a quick blast then AoE fireball. L L R being blaze. Stopping and holding R would charge blazing bolt. The longer you hold it the more damage. L L L L R (which would be about the longest build up) Would end up being a high damage PbAoE. The goal being to have a good mix of AOE and ST finishers with the longer ones in the chain being more powerful.

An easy way to add depth to this system is as you level up, unlocking extra finishers at the end of the combo. For example L L L L R L once you rank this combo high enough would finish by casting rain of fire in addition.

Doing these basic combo's would fill up a gauge allowing you to do your big bang moves such as inferno which would be bound to say 1 / 2 / 3 / 4.
**(This idea is borrowed from another MMO's combat)

For leveling it'd be nice to start out with your basic combo abilities and build on them with special attacks, self buffs, etc as you level up. Special abilities can be tied to building a gauge up similar to domination or simply put on cool downs. As much as I like my 50 alts in CoH I'd love a reason to keep playing them once I hit level 50 progress wise. This can be accomplished by adding in an ability point system in addition to XP. Where you can rank things up as you go and continue to do so after you hit the level cap. You could add in power advantages (like champions has, that add little extra bits to powers) as well as the simple +rank giving it more damage, less end cost, etc etc. Basically in the end, between gear and AP you have a lean mean fighting machine, but a fresh level capped character is sort of like an SO'ed character.

I'm sure there is a lot more, but just the tip of the iceberg how *I'd* like my next super hero MMO to play.

I have been trying to create a system that builds on CoH's strengths, but gets away from the more rigid class structure without the free-for-all that is Champions. To do it right, it seems it would have to be the biggest MMO ever created.

I expect the next great super hero MMO have a costume creator on par with or surpassing APB's, only with a greater number and variety of costume parts.

Meaning we get to paint our own tights patterns, create our own tattoos and chest logos, all with extensive body and face sliders.


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To start with, the mentality that we're building a cult game for a core group of dedicated players, as opposed to a blockbuster game with appeal to millions.

I think too many studios set out to remake Titanic and end up making Pearl Harbor.

The problem here is, of course, "best" is different from person to person, so some of the ideas for a "perfect" game in this thread turn me off.

For example, if there was heavy PvP on day 1 and lots of twitch gaming, I wouldn't play. I hate PvP (unless it's extremely casual and very very optional, and even then I wouldn't do it much), and even the slower gameplay of CoH sometimes overwhelms me when there's a lot of enemies around (so I don't want something even faster).

I just sort of want CoH But More, rather than an all-new game. I've been playing games since the 1970s, and CoH was the first one to scratch every gaming itch I have. And it still is, even as it's in its death throes.

I'm not saying that CoH was itself perfect, but it's the closest I've come to perfection — in any genre, superhero or otherwise.

"For example, if there was heavy PvP on day 1 and lots of twitch gaming, I wouldn't play."

There is a happy medium here somewhere. Rooting and Recharge in CoH was an issue for many, but the twitchy "run-and-gun" of DCUO is a problem for many as well. Take a look at a typical superhero battle in a cartoon, in that there is a blending of fast and cinematic attacks. That is the feel I am looking for.

A lot of the stuff we already know, because CoH has it. What we need is MORE of it, or to have it tweaked.

However, if it's a twitch game with controller-type combos, count me out. As well as virtually all of your other over-35 gamers. You know, the ones with the most discretionary income who are more loyal than youngsters.

Solo-friendly as well as easy-to-make teams the way we have it here is a must. I play casually and like to pretend that my character is experiencing his own story so I rarely team, but I do like to do it. I like the mix we have here. Also the way mission difficulty scales up and down when you add or subtract people.

No raids. Hate them. I realize others love them, but this is just my opinion. No PvP unless you're building it in at the very beginning and everyone is exactly equal. The reason FPS multiplayer is so popular is because all the guns are the same and the power-ups are of limited, temporary benefit.

I love CoH's UI. Easily one of the best ever. I realize WoW allows you to customize it, but I don't find that one as easy to use. (Or didn't, back when I tried it.) Champions shows you how NOT to do it.

There needs to be bigger boobs on the female toons.

/signed


I think the level 1 to xx method is old. I play swtor and it is the same grind - long rides to missions, find something, kill something, watch a cut scene next.

If I were making a super hero MMO I would start with basic classes with no levels...but what missions you choose to do as well as pvp determine what your powers evolve into. Similar to the Dragon Ball Z toons, the more you fight the stronger you get. If you want to be a melee or ranged dmg toon and get stronger you have to start fighting other people, your stats will boost the more you fight, the more you fight the stronger you get, as well as missions that will develop your powers, accuracy, endurance, regen. This would also encourage teaming in pve missions. Say I pick a healer class and want to develop stronger buffs and heals, every mission I perform this role on, my buffs and heals grow. Same goes for pve, if I am teaming and performing these roles my powers grow. You can eliminate grinding for advancement if missions give diminshed returns. Say my +healing missions, if I do them once I get the full buff to my heals, but after that I get little to no buff from it.

This way it spurs development as the players will want more misssions to get better powers and encourage active pve from pvpers and pvp from pvers as both aspects will drive your toon to higher levels.

The Alt-itis must be fed.