Recently, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood took a look at the upcoming Mission Architect system coming to City of Heroes. In this article, the dev team sheds some light on what Mission Architect is all about via an internal Q&A.

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with, and get my hands on, the upcoming Architect System coming to NCsoft’s City of Heroes in the aptly named Issue 14: Architect. For those of you who don’t know what the Architect System is, it’s a function within the game that will allow players the opportunity to design missions not only for themselves and their friends, but for the entire CoH community, across servers.

The system itself was conceived almost by accident: Up until fairly recently, quest writers working on City of Heroes were forced to slog through their task using an unwieldy spreadsheet. This fact had the unfortunate result of making quest creation a) more difficult than it needed to be and b) only accessible to the few select developers who knew how the system worked. This, thought those in the positions of power to muse on such things, was simply unacceptable. The tools needed to be accessible enough that anyone on the development team could sit down and write a mission.

Read the Mission Architect System Overview

This sounds so cool. While I am sure that there will be plenty of junk content I bet some of the more creative folks in the game's community will create some gems that are probably better than what you can get in game now.

I don't have an account any more 'cause I played for two years and had just had it with the game. But I will be re-subbing to try this thing out. :) Can't wait!

This system is going to be the kicker that makes me resubscribe to the game.  I've always liked CoX, but gameplay got kind of old.  Not only do I look forward to creating content myself, but I suspect that people will find ways to use these tools to create stuff that the professional content team never imagined.

Now this is an innovation i would like to see in other MMORPGs as well. User generated content releases the players from the leash of the developers and lets the players shape the world with stories of their own.

Thanks Jon for the good info. I hope to get to beta this soon.

Well now this should spice thinsg up a bit for CoH/CoV. I look forward to checking this out.

This sounds like it could be really cool.  Unfortunately, a lot of players in most games will think that a "good" mission is one that makes it easy to get more loot than appropriate, so they'd better have something in place to prevent that. 

Originally posted by Quizzical

This sounds like it could be really cool.  Unfortunately, a lot of players in most games will think that a "good" mission is one that makes it easy to get more loot than appropriate, so they'd better have something in place to prevent that. 

From what I have heard while you will get real rewards the actual rewards will be based on what the system says it should be, So you won't be able to make a max level enemy that can be one shotted easily and gives a lot of experience.

Originally posted by Nicoli 

From what I have heard while you will get real rewards the actual rewards will be based on what the system says it should be, So you won't be able to make a max level enemy that can be one shotted easily and gives a lot of experience.

The devil is in the details.  Maybe they've got a good fix for it, but it won't be easy to do.  Professional game designers trying to properly balance the rewards accidentally make some quests give a lot better rewards for the time spent than others.  It will take awfully strong constraints to prevent amateurs who are trying to give their own quests way too good of rewards from being successful.  It's hard to imagine a system that can make that work without making most of the player-done quests give far inferior rewards to normal quests.

As most of the people responding to this thread have already stated, this is truely a great MMO innovation. NCSoft has basically taking Never Winters Nights design system and implemented it into a MMO. Not only will this improve the game from a players stand point in terms of variety of content, but this system could also be utilized to uncover some truely talented story artists in our gaming community.

This is fascinating enough to me that I would subscribe simply to use this specific tool. Actually NCSoft, you can count me in... BRAVO!

While I hvent played the game in years and this wont draw me back in...I absolutely love the idea. Most games die for lack of content and no dev team could ever compete against a strong player base. I think most of the loot/xp issues are resovled by the fact the computer AI is still the computer AI. I dont think you can gimp an npc and in the end rewards are going to be based on what kind of npcs you put in the story arc.

The other piece of the puzzle is the community and the ability for the community to self police. The ability to flag content as being inappropriate and rate content good to bad will do 90% of the devs work to make sure exploits and the like dont happen or do not last.

The next step will be a map maker program that is akin to The Sims. Maybe NC Soft could upgrade the game engine with the Hero Journey engine. From what I have heard, it has a map/ Quest editing built into it.

As awesome as this is guys...and it is awesoem NCsoft is a day late and a dollar short with this, as both Champions and DCUO will have similar systems, and the DCUO system will let you import storylines from a database of  DC Comics, and  add your own continuation.  I think it will bring a good number of people back, but I don't think it will retain them because it just isn't an exclusive feature.

  I cannot wait to toy with this.  Many of you won't really understand JUST what I mean when I say I'll be LIVING on the servers for awhile making things.  I mean it very literally...creating things is what I live for.  I've spent months creating worlds and their inhabitants for D&D for years now.  

  That I get to do so for my choice MMO (though, I won't lie...Champions is gonna have my attention as well) is amazing.  The best part is getting to set up unique powers and costumes for my mission foes.  I'll be at this for a VERY long time, and be very glad for it.

  Kudos NCSoft.  I'll be supporting THIS good ideal with my wallet.

Originally posted by todeswulf

As awesome as this is guys...and it is awesoem NCsoft is a day late and a dollar short with this, as both Champions and DCUO will have similar systems, and the DCUO system will let you import storylines from a database of  DC Comics, and  add your own continuation.  I think it will bring a good number of people back, but I don't think it will retain them because it just isn't an exclusive feature.

Very true. It's too late. CO and DCUO will be doing this. It's going to snatch up people who want to do this sort of thing I think. Still, it's sad Marvel Universe fell through. I have no idea if I'll play DCUO or CO instead. Just depends which gives me more freedom I guess.

Originally posted by AkumaDaimyo

Very true. It's too late. CO and DCUO will be doing this.

Will they be doing this before issue 14 is released? If not, they're the one who'll be late to the party.

Me, I'll certainly resubscribe and try the system. I hope the system allows creating branching mission trees (based on user selection and mission failure), and not just linear stories.

Me want!

Seriously, though, I've had some ideas for missions for a while now. Hopefully I'll be able to make them a (virtual) reality now.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Nicoli 

From what I have heard while you will get real rewards the actual rewards will be based on what the system says it should be, So you won't be able to make a max level enemy that can be one shotted easily and gives a lot of experience.

 

The devil is in the details.  Maybe they've got a good fix for it, but it won't be easy to do.  Professional game designers trying to properly balance the rewards accidentally make some quests give a lot better rewards for the time spent than others.  It will take awfully strong constraints to prevent amateurs who are trying to give their own quests way too good of rewards from being successful.  It's hard to imagine a system that can make that work without making most of the player-done quests give far inferior rewards to normal quests.

The ticket system sounds like the merit system. Sounds like a reasonable compromise between actual drops and no drops at all.
 

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Originally posted by Fuerchtegott

 

Now this is an innovation i would like to see in other MMORPGs as well. User generated content releases the players from the leash of the developers and lets the players shape the world with stories of their own.

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Ryzom Ring

Originally posted by todeswulf

As awesome as this is guys...and it is awesoem NCsoft is a day late and a dollar short with this, as both Champions and DCUO will have similar systems, and the DCUO system will let you import storylines from a database of  DC Comics, and  add your own continuation.  I think it will bring a good number of people back, but I don't think it will retain them because it just isn't an exclusive feature.

WOW! if this is true then DCUO has won me over. I had not read this anywhere.

This is the kind of innovation and reinvestment of mmo's that we need.  This feature alone adds immeasurable value to the game.  City of Heroes hasn't been on my radar for quite a while.  But this is something that I find very intriguing.

I know there is a lot of creativity and genius out there that has as yet been untapped.  This is a great opportunity to showcase just what the user is capable of.

I think you can chalk this game feature up to one of those things that should be included in all mmo's at some point, to breathe new life into them and sustain interest.  The key ofcourse will hinge on ease of use and versatility.  I'm looking forward to see how this plays out.  It might be worth a a resub.