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Written by FrostByghte
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Welcome to Coldfront's Quick Q&A with developer Positron! We would like thank Positron for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer these questions for us. Thank you Aura Manning for your assistance as well... :)
I've been playing City of Heroes since release. The game is still as fun for me today as it was a year ago when I started playing...however, I do see some clamping down on play styles. Power leveling being the most obvious one, the suppression change to travel powers (quick in and out strikes) and recent comments about pulling folks in off the streets and getting them back into the missions. Are there any other methods of play that you personally feel are detrimental to the game mechanics and design you and your team have put in place?
You pretty much hit the nail on the head with the playstyles we see as detrimental. We want to make the game fun in the long-term, so the changes we are making are so that the game never becomes tediously easy. If a Tanker is able to solo an Archvillain, well, that is something that none of the other Archetypes can do... his risk isn't matching his reward. We want the risk to match the reward, and for players to actually partake in some of the stories and story arcs we have in the game. That means making missions more viable and brining a greater balance to the Archetypes. |
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Even though there have been a few bumps in the road over the last year how do you feel about the game design looking back in retrospect? Essentially has City of Heroes met all your personal goals and are there any goals for the next year you would like to share?
I think the biggest goal that City of Heroes met was to be accessible to the casual player. I have a lot of real-life friends for which City of Heroes was their first Massively Multiplayer Game, and they have become so addicted to it that they still play over a year later. One thing where City of Heroes could use more of is end-game content. A lot of those "casual players" are reaching level 50 and finding not a lot left to do with their characters. One of our biggest goals is making sure that level 50's have a wide variety of things to do, even though Experience Points are meaningless to them now.
Issue 4 brought some awesome changes and obviously one of the key changes is the arena PVP combat. At this point how do you feel the Arena combat has been received by the players and do you feel you and your team hit the mark with this addition?
The Arenas were put in to satisfy a missing core-element from the game, that of Player versus Player combat. We don't want open Hero against Hero dueling, so the Arena became the backbone to adding PvP to City of Heroes. The Arenas have obviously underperformed in many people's eyes, but I think that the addition of new game styles in the future can bring more players back to the arena. When City of Villains comes out, with all of its PvP options, many players will actively take to the Arena for teamwork practice or just trying out new PvP tactics.
The separation of PVE and PVP powers/changes/styles is very important to a lot of players. You have a dedicated group that really will not ever touch PVP and another group that bores easily with PVE. How do you decide if a change affects both PVE/PVP play or just one?
The first rule when altering a power for one is not to touch it for the other. In some corner cases however, that is impossible. In those cases, we try and come up with a solution that solves whatever problem we are having AND has the least amount of impact on the other playstyle.
At City of Heroes launch there was a very dedicated modding community. For various reasons support of this community was scaled back considerably. Could this community expect any renewed support in the future?
One of the biggest fears with modding a game like this is someone being malicious and making a mod that seems innocent, but in reality is meant to grief the person who installs it. Because of this, we are very hesitant about supporting any mods to the game.
The chat system received a huge boost with the addition of server to server communications and now we have Coalition chat as well. Any chance this system of communication is going to expand even more? Perhaps contact outside the game?
We are always looking to expand communication in City of Heroes. This is a social game, and the more interaction you have with other players, the better.
Copying characters to other servers... Seems this is in the works. I have seen references to a mission based and to a small fee being charged for the service. Could you offer any clarification for how this will function?
I have no concrete information on this, other than we'd like to see it implemented before City of Villains launches.
Kheldians have certain stats that increase in power when grouped with certain archetypes. Are there any plans to expand on this functionality for other archetypes? Perhaps allowing heroes to combine certain powers at some point?
We look at Kheldians as a success in creating a Tank-Mage type Archetype that can not perform that way solo. Because of this we are always keeping an eye on new and interesting ways to use the "combining" method to generate over-powered effects. Combining powers would be cool, especially if it was powers that you had access to because of things your Supergroup did.
With CoV's purported use of cut scenes to show a more in depth story, I'm assuming we can expect some of that being back ported into CoH? Are there any other plans to make the storyline more immersive in either CoH or CoV?
Yes, after City of Villains, we will be going over City of Heroes missions and adding the CoV technology to them. We will learn in the CoV beta which methods work the best and concentrate our efforts on making all the missions have the same feel of quality.
Base design is right around the corner and I'd say a LOT of players are excited about this. However how much of the base content will be functional versus appearance only? Could you name a few functional items that players can put down?
We are still hammering out the details, but I think we're going to end up with a better than 60/40 split of Functional/Decorative items for bases.
As for functional items... well, a teleporter is one. With this in your base you can teleport to any zone in the game. A lot of Supergroups are going to get bases just for that nifty piece of tech. We are also looking at adding defense turrets (for added firepower in Base Raids), and a sort of Crime Computer that can dole out Supergroup-specific missions.
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