Limited Edition

After a week of cryptic (no ex-dev pun intended) clues all pointing to today for a big bit of City of Heroes news, Issue 13: Architect features are released to the players and contain confirmation of the previoulsy mentioned Mission Architect tools and a surprising addition of ‘Day Job’s’ the new offline character progression system.

The Mission Architect tools for players will allow the community to design their own missions and story arcs, these missions will be shared with the entire playerbase. The tools will be very similar to the character creations screens and provide a simple way for players to create missions from scratch. PLayers are able to change environments, objectives, enemies, fiction and character dialogue. Described as ‘near infinite’ possibilities makes this a system to rival the Ryzom Ring that proved to have a loyal following. Given the number of Role Players who love CoX this is set to be an amzing toolset from day one.

I have to admit when I first heard about this, I was worried it would become a great tool for power levelling and it seems that this concern was also shared with NCSoft. The goal was to make it a toolset for telling stories and having fun so reward levells were discussed at great length and it will be interesting to see what is actually implimented on launch. It seems players will receive reward for most appreciated designs too, making the focus on quality level design as each mission will be rated by the community. This system in itself avoids the problem fo having to play through endless dross to find a decent design by the players that will do a good job.

I’m looking forward to giving this a go and hopefully it simplicity and flexibility will be another string to CoX bow in the fight against the up and coming rival hero titles in the genre.

The other unexpected side to this is the ‘Day Job’ system, originally planned to be named secret identitites this was reamed as that particular name was more suited to something else NCSoft have in mind. I really hope secret identities is non-super characters in a social environment similar to what Playstation Home will be as I think MMO;s need something like this, but we are a long way off from that yet.

Instead Day Jobs will be an offline character progression system, the idea being that if you log off in say a hospital that is assumed to be your job. You character will gain some sort of medical buff for this behaviour to me so far it seems more like loggin of in an Inn when playing a fantasy mmo and getting the rest buff, but we will see how this turns out.

Along with these big implimentations we also get the following:

NEW POWERSETS 

• Shields – Heft a Shield for Heroic or Villainous Ends!  This new powerset brings a classic power to City of Heroes: Shields!  Now, you can arm Tankers, Scrappers, Brutes and Stalkers with a powerful shield to protect both themselves and their allies.
• Pain Domination – Villains can now bend the power of pain to serve their own ends!  Those playing a Corruptor or Mastermind have access to this new powerset.  The antithesis of the Hero healing powerset “Empathy,” Pain Domination brings parity between Heroes and Villains with a distinctively evil flair.

NEW CIMERORA MISSIONS�
New Hero and Villain story arcs expand upon the history and lore, and delve into the players and politics of Cimerora.

THE MERIT REWARDS SYSTEM�
A new game system that allows players to earn tokens by completing Trials, Task Forces, Strike Forces, Raids, etc. The most challenging and time consuming tasks grant the most reward tokens, which can be redeemed throughout Hero and Villain zones for recipes, enhancements, salvage, costume pieces, badges, inspirations and other game items.

Other features include new Invention Origin Sets, new Costume Sets, a Patron Power Respec, Zone Refinements, and much more!

These free updates continue to impress me!

Tags: City of Heroes, Games, MMO