Issue 13: Power and Responsibility

[Alaric]

Good morning! When we announced Issue 13: Architect a couple weeks back, we were overwhelmed by the positive response. Much of the feedback was centered around the Mission Architect system which allows players to create their own missions and story arcs. We have been actively following forum threads and private messages about the feature, and have even discussed it with players in person at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle.

It became apparent that you guys really want this feature, but in order to fully realize your dreams of writing your own missions you need creative control in one more key area: The ability to create "customized" characters to fight with or against in your missions. Adding custom characters has always been on our Mission Architect feature list, but we had considered it a "stretch goal." That is, we could launch the system without this feature because our confidence was high that the rest of the system was incredibly robust.

But after listening to you guys, we realize that this feature simply must be in at launch. You have convinced us that it is an integral part of the Mission Architect, and we have reworked schedules and timelines to accomplish this. Rather than push the launch of Issue 13 out completely for one (albeit really cool and very complex) feature, the Mission Architect is going to see a slight delay. What is not going to be delayed is the rest of Issue 13. To that end, the previously announced feature set for Issue 13, together with new features that we are announcing today, will become Issue 13 and Issue 14.

Issue 14 will take on the name "Architect" and contain the Mission Architect feature along with other features we'll announce at a later date. We are planning Issue 14: Architect to be released Winter of 2009. Issue 13 is now called "Issue 13: Power and Responsibility" and be launched in the Fall of 2008.

Issue 13: Power and Responsibility
Issue 13: Power and Responsibility will contain the bulk of features we've announced previously, including:

• Shield and Pain Domination powersets
• Merit Reward system
• Day Jobs (that include a suite of new costume pieces)
• Additional Cimerora and Midnight Squad mission arcs

In addition, we have some other new exciting features to reveal that will be included in Issue 13: Power and Responsibility. These include:

• Leveling Pact
• Multi-Builds
• PvE & PvP Powers rebalancing
• Villain Patron Power Respec
• Supergroup Base Repricing

Over the coming weeks we'll be providing more details about the above points, but let me give you an overview of some of them now.

The Leveling Pact: A new innovation to MMOs, this groundbreaking system allows you and a buddy to create new characters and have your XP be permanently in sync, whether both characters are online or not. You will always be the same level, even if your buddy plays ten times more often than you do! It's sort of like "Extreme Sidekicking."

Multi-Builds: Another innovation to City of Heroes, we are delivering the ability to have two different build-outs of each character, including which powers are selected and which Enhancements are slotted. This will now be possible for characters who want to take advantage of it. By visiting any Trainer you can switch the entire build of your character to an alternate one. You can use this separate build for whatever you like. If you wish to use different power selections for soloing and groups, you can do that. This even makes it possible to have different IO sets slotted for PVP and PVE. It's up to you.

PvE and PvP Powers Rebalancing: Floyd "Castle" Grubb and the powers designers have been hard at work in finding ways to strike a better balance between the many powers in the game. The scope of what they are doing is too broad to go into details here, but we're very excited and we'll share more information soon. Suffice it to say that we know that you don't want your PvE powers adjusted because of how they play in PvP, so we're taking a new tact in power balancing with Issue 13.

Summary
Issue 13 was so big we had to turn it into two releases, Issue 13: Power and Responsibility and Issue 14: Architect. Issue 13 will be going into beta soon and launching this Fall. It will include most of the previously announced features of Issue 13, and then some. Issue 14: Architect will include the full-featured Mission Architect and is scheduled to launch to the live servers in Q1, 2009. I am really looking forward to getting Issue 13 into your hands as soon as possible, and starting off a kick-[censored] 2009 with the release of Mission Architect.

Matt "Positron" Miller
Lead Designer, City of Heroes/Villains

Original post here!

[BlueBard]

Hmm...

I find the multi-build feature to be somewhat interesting.  It would be even more interesting if it would let you flip flop between AT's and powersets, but I predict it's going to be limited to selecting new powers from within the pre-existing powersets for that character.  And I'm wondering exactly how this is going to impact slotting.  Will we have to purchase a whole new set of enhancements for the new build?  That could get awfully expensive really fast.  Those of us who are poor will find ourselves influence-starved very quickly.

Levelling pact is kind of neat.  It makes sense for friends to play together when one has limited play time.  I wonder if it will be limited to new characters, or if existing characters will be able to take advantage of it.  And I can see at least one potential for 'abuse' if it's extended to existing characters... instant fiddies.

[BlueBard]

Nevermind... I missed the "create new characters" phrase.

[captainspud]

Leveling Pact seems fairly abusable... I make a blinding-speed lawnmower character, and Pact it to a friend's slow-levelling one (ie, a tank). He makes a support guy for my lawnmower, and Pacts it to a slow-leveller of my own (ie, an Empath).

We get to 50 as, for example, a pair of Fire/Kin trollers, and then as a bonus, we each have another 50 that would've been a nightmare to level legit.

So, yeah. Free fiddies. :/

[MJB]

Is this the first time that 2 issues have been announced at the same time?

I'm glad they didn't hold back issue 13 for the architect feature. I'm looking forward to all the new goodies.

-MJB

[BlueBard]

Leveling Pact seems fairly abusable... I make a blinding-speed lawnmower character, and Pact it to a friend's slow-levelling one (ie, a tank). He makes a support guy for my lawnmower, and Pacts it to a slow-leveller of my own (ie, an Empath).

We get to 50 as, for example, a pair of Fire/Kin trollers, and then as a bonus, we each have another 50 that would've been a nightmare to level legit.

So, yeah. Free fiddies. :/

Well, I don't necessarily see that as a huge abuse.  More of a 'feature' :)  Yeah, it's true that you could use it to boost the levelling of slow-levelling AT's.  But if you don't occasionally play them, what's the point?

Pact levelling, if it had been available before, might have allowed me to more or less keep up with the other, more regular FR players so I could team up with them.

[BlueBard]

More info:
http://www.massively.com/2008/09/25/brian-clayton-and-matt-miller-on-power-and-responsibility-in-cit/

[MJB]

Leveling Pact seems fairly abusable... I make a blinding-speed lawnmower character, and Pact it to a friend's slow-levelling one (ie, a tank). He makes a support guy for my lawnmower, and Pacts it to a slow-leveller of my own (ie, an Empath).

We get to 50 as, for example, a pair of Fire/Kin trollers, and then as a bonus, we each have another 50 that would've been a nightmare to level legit.

So, yeah. Free fiddies. :/

One of the Devs said that while in a "Pact" you will receive 1/2 xp. That should keep people from abusing this feature.

-MJB

[BlueBard]

Right.  The way I read it, any earned xp is divided equally between the two partners.  Trying to powerlevel with a pact would take twice as long.

Now if you're both online and teamed up you'd level at more or less the normal rate, as two halves make a whole.

[Alaric]

Right.  The way I read it, any earned xp is divided equally between the two partners.  Trying to powerlevel with a pact would take twice as long.

Now if you're both online and teamed up you'd level at more or less the normal rate, as two halves make a whole.

Yes. That's the way I read it, as well.

Also, apparently, if this Leveling Pact thing works out, they plan to extend the idea, eventually allowing an entire team of 8 to share a Pact.

[BlueBard]

Right.  The way I read it, any earned xp is divided equally between the two partners.  Trying to powerlevel with a pact would take twice as long.

Now if you're both online and teamed up you'd level at more or less the normal rate, as two halves make a whole.

Yes. That's the way I read it, as well.

Also, apparently, if this Leveling Pact thing works out, they plan to extend the idea, eventually allowing an entire team of 8 to share a Pact.

Sounds great.  All I want to know is, if I'm soloing would my share be 7/8ths or 1/8th? :D

[BlueBard]

If anyone is interested in participating in a levelling pact, perhaps we could coordinate through FR?

I know I'm going to want to tinker with a Shield scrapper or tanker when I13 hits.  Probably others will, too.  Maybe some scrapper/tanker duos?  Hopefully we'll start getting more info about what the Shield sets will look like.

[Figure Fan]

Geez, these features are pretty awesome, even without the mission architect feature.

I'm really interested in the dual powerset configurations.

Eez niiizeee

[Stopman]

Leveling Pact seems fairly abusable... I make a blinding-speed lawnmower character, and Pact it to a friend's slow-levelling one (ie, a tank). He makes a support guy for my lawnmower, and Pacts it to a slow-leveller of my own (ie, an Empath).

We get to 50 as, for example, a pair of Fire/Kin trollers, and then as a bonus, we each have another 50 that would've been a nightmare to level legit.

So, yeah. Free fiddies. :/

One of the Devs said that while in a "Pact" you will receive 1/2 xp. That should keep people from abusing this feature.

-MJB

I volunteer to be in a pact with Mikey!  :rolleyes:

[Verfall]

Leveling Pact seems fairly abusable... I make a blinding-speed lawnmower character, and Pact it to a friend's slow-levelling one (ie, a tank). He makes a support guy for my lawnmower, and Pacts it to a slow-leveller of my own (ie, an Empath).

We get to 50 as, for example, a pair of Fire/Kin trollers, and then as a bonus, we each have another 50 that would've been a nightmare to level legit.

So, yeah. Free fiddies. :/

One of the Devs said that while in a "Pact" you will receive 1/2 xp. That should keep people from abusing this feature.

-MJB

I volunteer to be in a pact with Mikey!  :rolleyes:

The hell you do! I call Mikey!

[Viking]

Dude.  Mikey has so many alts, and two separate accounts.  We could all make pacts with Mikey without even causing him to blink.