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City of Heroes: Mission Architect System Overview
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.
Enter Joe Morrisey, Lead Designer of the Architect System, who improved on the old spreadsheet model so much that the tools became accessible to the point that the powers that be at NCsoft (who had fairly recently obtained full ownership of the game and infused a bit more cash into it, allowing this system to be developed) decided that it should be developed and released not only to developers, but to the City of Heroes community at large.
Plans to integrate the system into the game in Issue 13, released on December 3rd, 2008, had to be changed so that developers could properly respond to player feedback that they had received and expand the system to allow players as much freedom and customization as possible.
So, what is the Mission Architect system? I’m going to let the developers tell you themselves in this internal Q&A created to do just that:
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| Internal Question: | What is Mission Architect? |
| Answer: | Mission Architect is a new game system we have developed for the City of Heroes massively multiplayer game. It allows our players to create their own stories and share those stories with other players on our live servers. Creators can pick from hundreds of maps and thousands of characters. They can use existing characters or create their own custom enemies. They can get even more detailed and create full enemy groups, giving each enemy unique costumes and powers. We allow players to write all of the dialog for their story as well as decide on level of difficulty and enemy placement. We even give them the ability to trigger one mission goal off of another, creating a chain of events within a single mission. Each story can have up to five chapters or missions and each mission can hold up to a maximum of 25 achievable goals. For people who just want to play the user created content, we give them access to the mission browser that shows all the generated content. You can sort these stories by name, highest rated, length and recently added. You can also filter content to show only those with specific ratings, arcs you have or haven’t played as well as the alignment of the story. As people play content, they’ll be able to rate that content from one to five stars. Creators will actually get in game benefits for making content that gets highly rated. We even offer a Dev Choice and Hall of Fame standing for the best of the best. |
| Internal Question: | How does it work? |
| Answer: | Players create content in game through a computer terminal within one of the Architect Entertainment buildings. Architect Entertainment is the name of an in-game company that’s developed this type of ‘simulated experience’ for heroes and villains of Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. You can think of this like a holo-deck or a simulated mission tool. Players go to these facilities that are spread through out most of our zones and interact with a computer that walks through the creation process. Here is where they pick all of their options for a mission as well as write all the dialog and build their custom characters. Once they’ve gotten their story together, they can test it out and see how it plays. Once they’ve gotten it perfect, they can publish the story up to our Arc Server. This server is cross shard and cross game. So, any content published will be seen by everyone on every server, regardless of where they play. |
| Internal Question: | What rewards are we giving to the players and creators? |
| Answer: | We’re granting full experience (XP) and influence rewards for defeating enemies in player made content. We’re also giving players tickets in place of random drops. They can take these tickets to an Architect ticket vendor and redeem them for various in game rewards, such as enhancements, recipes and salvage. We’re also allowing players to purchase unlockable content with their tickets. They’ll be able to get maps, costume pieces and different characters. |
| Internal Question: | What special features does Mission Architect have? |
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| Internal Question: | Can you talk more about Dev Choice vs. Hall of Fame? |
| Answer: | The Hall of Fame is where the best player rated content goes. To get to this rank you need to have over a 1000 votes with an average of 5 stars (we round up). Getting into the Hall of Fame changes your standing in the mission browser, moving it further up the cue. Becoming a Dev Choice story happens when one of us (the developers) sees content that we feel best represents what Architect can be, good story and fun gameplay. Getting into Dev Choice actually elevates you beyond Hall of Fame and gives your mission the same sort of rewards and drops you would get outside of Architect. The only difference being that you get a ticket bonus at the end of a mission as opposed to an experience bonus. We also have a third tier of stories which we will talk about at a later date. |
| Internal Question: | How are you dealing with inappropriate content? |
| Answer: | We’ve worked very closely with our customer service department to develop systems for this. In the end, we implemented a number of different systems. We have language filters that check for bad words and won’t let you publish them until you remove them. We’re also allowing players to flag content for inappropriateness. We also track all users and flags for any potential vote griefing. |
| Internal Question: | What’s appealing to the players of user generated content? |
| Answer: | We’re creating a system where the best content rises to the top of the list and everything else is filtered to the bottom. Players can sort by rank as well as what they have and haven’t played. When playing in someone else’s content you’ll continue to earn full XP and influence. We’ve replaced the random drop system with a ticketing system. Players collect tickets as they go through content. Once they’ve collected enough tickets they can go to a ticket vendor and purchase exactly what they want as far as rewards go. |
| Internal Question: | How long does it take to make a decent five mission storyarc? |
| Answer: | You can create a single mission rather quickly, in less then ten or fifteen minutes. However, to truly craft something unique and excellent, you’ll have to spend a decent amount of time in the tool. It could take someone a couple of days of to write, build and test something really good. |
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Not mentioned in the Q&A is the fact that NCsoft plans to release a new retail box of City of Heroes featuring the new system. The box, which will be released this April, will not only highlight the new system, but will also be the first to include both a PC and Mac client. More on this when details become available.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ryzom Ring
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.
I'm looking forward to it ( ' :
I agree this should become the new standard feature in newer MMOs, It's great that CoX has decided to do this. I have been following various games that do allow player created content and I believe this is much more worthwhile than silly Raids and junk that has little story and lacks creativity. Where in this method you can end up with a lot more Good content that people would be willing to keep playing. Because it is self containing and the cheapest in the long run for content.
Thanks to the team at CoX for helping to bring this to the community. I will definately be re-subing to check this out and add a little bit of content myself :)
Other games to note that have this system are Ryzom and Hero's Journey as well as maybe Champions and DC Universe.
This is awesome stuff indeed.
Thanks for all,I am looking forward to it!
I had been aching to don on my capes for some time now - and this has definitely won me over! *starts scribbling screenplay* When is this patch due to happen?