Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

No placing, pathing, or scripting is involved; whether you choose pre-fab bosses and enemies, mix and match from the available enemy groups, or create your own re-usable bosses and enemy groups from scratch, they’ll be placed and patrols will be pathed as the professionally-made maps dictate (you can specify whether a boss appears at the front, middle, or back of the map) and make the best use of their built-in capabilities as per the difficulty you set. As with all CoH missions, also scale to the player’s level as well as how many (2 to 8) are in the player’s group). Also, you never even have to leave the game to create or play missions - everything is done within the game client. There’s even a little backstory to accompany this player-generated content system featuring a joint venture between Crey Industries and Dr. Aeon to study heroes in a holodeck-esque testbed called Architect Entertainment, in time creating a supergroup for hire from what they learn.

Unlike previous efforts toward player-created scenarios (e.g. Ryzom Ring), Architect Edition will amply reward players for creating and playing missions. Full experience and influence is rewarded (unless powerful NPC allies such as freed captives accompany you through part of the mission, then you’ll split the proceeds evenly), and items are awarded as per what Matt Miller described as a “skee-ball” ticket system (tickets are awarded both to the publisher and player of a mission as they go through with a big bonus if they complete the mission, and items cost x tickets at the ticket vendor).

By removing the tedious aspects of game design and concentrating on the sheer storytelling possibilities of the interactive experience, NCSoft has sacrificed a little flexibility for a lot of speed and accessibility. Because you can’t create maps, place objects and characters, specify a boss’s reaction to a certain attack, etc., you simply have to concentrate on the “who”, “what”, and “why” rather than the “how” and “when.” The onus falls squarely on the creator to tie together the experience with an excellent storyline, well-suited bosses and enemies with accompanying dialogue and animations, and the perfect blend of gameplay conditions to match.

Players find your content, play it, give it a 1-5 star rating and comment via a nifty browser that sorts to your preferences? Looking for a short, villainous mission, or a lengthy high difficulty heroic one for your group? Oh, and there’s not enough time in the day for bad content - of course you’ll only want to play a four or five star mission. A few clicks and you’re there. The Dev’s Choice and Hall of Fame designations make for no-miss content, and getting such a designation frees up a slot of your three-published-missions-per-character limit (you can have infinite missions stored locally and swap them out at will, perhaps making for some fun seasonally-themed missions too).

Rather than bewailing the lack of a map editor, I’d sooner wish for a cutscene creator, some DM tools, and perhaps a way of creating a PvP mission something like a small-scale Recluse’s Victory from Issue 7. Given that City of Heroes not only has evolved into the most customizable MMO this side of the sandbox category, the latter two are ambitious, but the framework is clearly in place. CoH even has a built-in demo recorder to create cutscenes, and Lead Designer Matt Miller hinted that this might be the first additional AE feature NCSoft will tackle.

Inevitable wishlist aside, NCSoft has crafted perhaps the most revolutionary free expansion to-date, rivalling the WoW battleground / arena free updates and the ten free expansions (Cold War in particular) that created the PvP sandbox symphony that we know as EVE Onlinetoday. While free expansions generally expand only the endgame and even that mostly through PvP, Architect Edition provides something incredible for even a level one hero or villain: the power to see your imagination play out on your monitor screen and even share the experience with the every other CoH / CoV player.