The folks at City of Heroes have posted a letter to the community following the launch of Issue 14: Architect, saying that in just 24 hours since launch, players have created more than 3800 mission arcs, more mission arcs than the CoH team has made in the last 5 years.

On behalf of the entire Paragon Studios/City of Heroes team, I wanted to take a few minutes to write this letter to express our excitement and appreciation for all that you have done for us. We've had a lot of exciting things brewing over here, and with each step and unveil we have received an amazing amount of positive feedback and activity which is exciting to see.

Issue 14: Architect has been live for over a week now, and I must say we are simply astounded at the response we've gotten for it. Not only have the current players of CoH and CoV taken a shine to the new feature, but we are seeing a lot of familiar faces return to Paragon City and the Rogue Isles to check out this new innovation in MMO's...user created content.

Like every system we design here, the Mission Architect system has been a labor of love that we have poured over every little decision on. I feel like everything we have worked on has really been worth it when I see that within 60 minutes, we had 360 entire Mission Arcs (each containing up to 5 missions) available for other people to play. By midnight on day one, we had over 2600 arcs, and exactly 24 hours after launch we were already at 3800 arcs. We did some data mining of our own, and 3,800 surpasses the amount of content that we, the developers, have made for all of City of Heroes and City of Villains combined. In just one day our users did more than we could in almost five years.

Read more here.

That looks really interesting. I may have to reactivate my account and take a look.

I can see two views on this coming up however... On the one hand it could be said that this gives some really interesting opportunities to people who like to create content or story lines. It allows for some creativity that up until now has been unheard of in an MMO.

On the other hand, I can see people griping about paying to do the work of the devs to create content for their game. Perhaps they could offer at least a free month for creating content that gets a 5 star rating. Anything less gets dropped after a couple months and the best arcs get to stay in the game. That would help keep the crappy arcs from wasting people's time.

At any rate, it sounds like it's taking off in a big way. Congrats to the devs and creative players.

Its a blast! Im loving it!

 well normally created arcs give Tickets which are like Merits or Influence/Imfamy

bur Deb Choice Arcs are treated like a real mission giving SO and recipe drops instead of tickets

so..............

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Originally posted by Netuddki

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Originally posted by Reno0513

 It allows for some creativity that up until now has been unheard of in an MMO.
 

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It was already realised in Star Wars Galaxies. I don't know how deep this one goes, because I don't play CoH any more, but it's not new.
As far as I know, in CoH these are instanced missions and have nothing really to do with the main game. In SWG it was all in the same world. No instances were made for player created content.
Nice feature nonetheless.

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When I played SWG I saw some of the stuff the RPers were doing with StoryTeller, pretty impressive. I think at one point they added the ability to create a story then commit it to blueprint to sell or give away. They were always tweaking and adding stuff when I was in game but I never messed with it, just bumped into a number of stories while traveling.

I know that NCSoft has committed a lot of resources and sacrificed other game content to release MA so I hope it pays off with increased/longevity in subs. My concern, which has not changed, was it would not help with complaints that the game is to repetitive. Yes, you have 1000's of new arcs but with the same in-game mission objectives and maps/tile sets. Thankfully NCSoft's quarterly report will show the numbers and the MMO community will see if this gamble worked.

As bitter as I am about micro transactions (which ended my 2 year sub) I really hope MA attracts new players who stick around which could breath new life into this fading MMO.

Originally posted by Kravis

 

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Originally posted by Netuddki

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Originally posted by Reno0513

 

 It allows for some creativity that up until now has been unheard of in an MMO.
 

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It was already realised in Star Wars Galaxies. I don't know how deep this one goes, because I don't play CoH any more, but it's not new.
As far as I know, in CoH these are instanced missions and have nothing really to do with the main game. In SWG it was all in the same world. No instances were made for player created content.
Nice feature nonetheless.

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When I played SWG I saw some of the stuff the RPers were doing with StoryTeller, pretty impressive. I think at one point they added the ability to create a story then commit it to blueprint to sell or give away. They were always tweaking and adding stuff when I was in game but I never messed with it, just bumped into a number of stories while traveling.

I know that NCSoft has committed a lot of resources and sacrificed other game content to release MA so I hope it pays off with increased/longevity in subs. My concern, which has not changed, was it would not help with complaints that the game is to repetitive. Yes, you have 1000's of new arcs but with the same in-game mission objectives and maps/tile sets. Thankfully NCSoft's quarterly report will show the numbers and the MMO community will see if this gamble worked.

As bitter as I am about micro transactions (which ended my 2 year sub) I really hope MA attracts new players who stick around which could breath new life into this fading MMO.
 

So, let me get this straight, you unsubscribed from the game because people could buy wedding dresses and rocket-packs with real money? [if they so choose to] That's rather silly. You're entitled to your opinion and all, but you also brought it up, so I'm just as entitled to offer mine. The CoH "micro transactions", don't unbalance the game any. That's the usual whine that folks use. Again, for some reason pvp is a major deal-breaker for some people. [Which is why pvp needs to be in a seperate game from a pve game. Preferably one without a plot.] PvP is more trouble than it's worth. But back on topic, yes my characters can do the robot dance. However, unless you're not a fan of break-dancing, that wont take away anything from your experience. But in the end, it's your dime. Hell, you can unsub if you dislike the intitial loading-screen if you so choose.

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Originally posted by Sanguinia

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Originally posted by Kravis

 

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Originally posted by Netuddki

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Originally posted by Reno0513
 
 It allows for some creativity that up until now has been unheard of in an MMO.
 

---

 
It was already realised in Star Wars Galaxies. I don't know how deep this one goes, because I don't play CoH any more, but it's not new.
As far as I know, in CoH these are instanced missions and have nothing really to do with the main game. In SWG it was all in the same world. No instances were made for player created content.
Nice feature nonetheless.

---

 
When I played SWG I saw some of the stuff the RPers were doing with StoryTeller, pretty impressive. I think at one point they added the ability to create a story then commit it to blueprint to sell or give away. They were always tweaking and adding stuff when I was in game but I never messed with it, just bumped into a number of stories while traveling.
I know that NCSoft has committed a lot of resources and sacrificed other game content to release MA so I hope it pays off with increased/longevity in subs. My concern, which has not changed, was it would not help with complaints that the game is to repetitive. Yes, you have 1000's of new arcs but with the same in-game mission objectives and maps/tile sets. Thankfully NCSoft's quarterly report will show the numbers and the MMO community will see if this gamble worked.
As bitter as I am about micro transactions (which ended my 2 year sub) I really hope MA attracts new players who stick around which could breath new life into this fading MMO.
 

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So, let me get this straight, you unsubscribed from the game because people could buy wedding dresses and rocket-packs with real money? [if they so choose to] That's rather silly. You're entitled to your opinion and all, but you also brought it up, so I'm just as entitled to offer mine. The CoH "micro transactions", don't unbalance the game any. That's the usual whine that folks use. Again, for some reason pvp is a major deal-breaker for some people. [Which is why pvp needs to be in a seperate game from a pve game. Preferably one without a plot.] PvP is more trouble than it's worth. But back on topic, yes my characters can do the robot dance. However, unless you're not a fan of break-dancing, that wont take away anything from your experience. But in the end, it's your dime. Hell, you can unsub if you dislike the intitial loading-screen if you so choose.

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Well actually it wasn't just me, but a group of friends and family.

A "silly" decision? Not from my viewpoint, which was watching what NCSoft would do after the franchise was bought from Cryptic and that was answered with charging people for content always made freely available in the expansions. The Wedding Pack I knew was only the beginning, that once they opened that door they would keep swinging it open wider. Instead of ramping up marketing to bring more subs their solution was to con the dwindling base to buy into this "You got VEATS earlier because of Wedding Booster!". I am sorry but Posi's statement was such a blatant marketing spin on their new way of doing business, one which I was not going to endorse. This is not about the money, it's the principal of the matter.

I know that a lot of people in-game enjoy those Booster Packs and continue to beg the devs to create more, more power to them. I refuse to pay a monthly sub, then have content which was once free turned into a nickel & dime operation. No fanfare, no Jerry Maguire speech on the official forums just "Poof!" about 10 2+ year accounts gone. Our group is currently playing EVE and very happy but I can assure you if CCP tries the same stunt I will respond no differently.

In hindsight I am glad it went down the way it did, we would have left anyways if we were around for those PVP changes. What really amazes me is that they would even attempt this with competitors coming around the corner. Is it possible they know they can't compete so NCSoft is doing everything it can to milk it while they can?