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Ask City of Heroes Lead Designer Jack Emmert
Massively Multiplayer games have grown increasingly popular in the last few
years, and one of the hottest products out there today is NCSoft and Cryptic
Studios' City of Heroes. City of
Heroes is currently hovering around the 180,000 player population mark,
with a European launch for the game coming up fast. The lead designer of the
online super hero game is Jack Emmert, veteran of the video game and
roleplaying game industries. He has written gaming supplements for Deadlands and All Flesh Must Be Eaten, reads
several dozen comics a month, and saves the world on a regular basis. Jack has
kindly agreed to answer questions from Slashdot readers about game design,
massive games, and what it's like to be a superhero, so go
ahead and let em' fly. One question per post, please, but as many questions as
you'd like. We'll forward the best on to Jack to answer and post his responses
when we've got them.
I'd like to hear about this decision since it's so obviously 180 degrees away from what other designers have been up to. What was the reason for this decision? Was it a public health consideration, a method of letting more casual players keep up with the no-life crowd, a way of reducing load on your servers, or are there other more significant reasons that I'm not seeing? Do you think that this decision has impacted the playerbase of your game considerably in terms of who picks up the game and who is still playing a few months in? In hindsight, should you have structured this aspect differently?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I was curious when City of Villians will be rolled up with City of Heros?
It would be very kewl to be able to choose, at time of character creation, either a Hero or a Villan.
Please let us know if, and when, this should happen.
"I think you know what I'm talkin' about, Mr. President; We're gonna kill us a mummy!" - Bruce Campbell as Elvis Presley
Jack, I played COH for a while, and am still very impressed by it. You should be proud of your remarkable achievement of finding the right niche. But after playing a couple months and doing several story arcs, I fell into the level-grind abyss. Things stopped being fun. The distance to my next power was seen in terms of xp, not in terms of heroic adventure.
So, what is going to happen to get me back? How can you significantly reduce the "level grind" (even if it's just the feeling of grinding levels) to get casual players like myself back?
I've been playing CoH (way too much!) since beta, and have really enjoyed it, but I am running into some of the same issues that alot of others are running into, lack of content, lack of purpose, no new powers, nothing but "grind". My question is this: With all of the new MMORPGs coming out (EQ2, WoW etc) this month, what will CoH do to keep my interest (and paying account)? New powers? Anything?
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
Have there been any thoughts to incorporate his character or his message in your MMORPG in a more permanent way, perhaps allowing players to discover in-game through a quest or discussion with an NPC the merits of what he was proposing in real-life (making health research a priority, investigating the potential of stem cells, etc.)?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I would love to pay you a monthly fee, but alas, my Powerbook and it's Radeon 9700 are unsupported.
So why no Mac support? Any request to your tech support department is a canned response.
Is Geko still nerfing accuracy? Kidding, kidding.
Real question: Looking back at CoH's development, if there was one thing you wished you did differently, what would it be and why?
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
I've played MMO's, and I haven't been impressed. I think some of the lingo speaks for itself ('grinding'). The last game I got into was Star Wars Galaxies. While technically the game was very nice, and the gameplay was decent, the game became extremely boring after only a few hours of gameplay.
I've also played games like Zelda, Occarina of Time (a classic), and the newer Zelda, Wind Waker. Both games contained a series of puzzles that needed to be solved before allowing the story to progress. It was this sense of achievement that made the games fun to play.
In MMO's, I have no sense of achievement. Obtaining the next skill level doesn't get me anywhere, it only makes me more powerful.
How will MMO's of the future fill this sense of achievement? Or do you see games progressing more towards the "Life simulator", like the Sims?
Not to knock the present CoH comic, but what are the chances of getting some 'name' talent to produce some issues in the CoH universe?
I understand that without some risk, death in a MMORPG would lose alot of the "tension" that game designerns feel that players need in order to stay "hooked". As a player, I can tell you that the exp penalty of dying is usually what ends up getting me to cancel an account. When I see all that debt/exp loss/penalty I start thinking "Why am I wasting my time here? Its a nice day outside..." Even the illusion of "exp debt" that CoH has still amounts to the same thing: total playing time added to make up for dying. Since death is frequently not a player's fault (lag, imbalance, etc...) I can tell you that I am very attracted the the approach that WoW is taking with having no death penalty other than travelling as a ghost back to your corpse. My question is this: What goes into the decision for death penalties? Has anyone actually asked the players if this is what they want?
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
I've tried MMOGs before to little satisfaction. I am skeptical of the entire genre, is there anything City of Heroes can do lure players like me that normally will not have anything to do with MMOGs?
With several highly anticipated MMOs launching this year and next year (WoW, EQ2, Matrix Online), what is your perception of competition in the MMO industry, has it become too crowded? Do you believe new games can be supported by drawing new players into the genre, or will these games pull mostly from the existing player base?
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mr. emmert:
as a pen & paper gamer myself, i'd be curious to know your opnion on just how transferable traditional RPG skill-sets are vs PC or console-based skill-sets, beyond the obvious things like coding, etc. i'm also curious to know what pen & paper designers would you consider most influential on your own work, beyond dave arneson & gary gygax of course.
ed
In a game where super speed is one of the 4 travel powers, why did you design levels that are impossible for players with SS to get around in? (Terra Volta, Faultline etc...)
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
But that is true of many other MMORPGs too that lack an "Endgame". From what I can tell Dark Age of Camelot seems to have introduced the concept of an "Endgame" that is different from the regular gameplay, and now people seem to expect it, but its not the norm.
What if anything is the "Endgame" for Everquest? Surely once you have all the stuff and you have all the levels thats pretty much it no?
Arguably the Endgame for City of Heroes will come about with the City of Villains expansion which will introduce PvP play into City of Heroes. It will be a standalone expansion from what I hear, but both games are going to have to have some changes made to allow PvP.
I am playing COH right now, with no PvP, no End game and I am perfectly happy with it. When my main character (currently level 37) reaches 50, they will retire until PvP is implemented. Not everyone anticipates an Endgame as much as some I guess, you see *I ENJOY THE GAME AS IT IS* not for some nebulous endgame concept that has still to be developed, or I wouldn't bother playing it.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I left CoH after being in beta and signing up for the first month. They game was interesting, but it didn't have that "hook" that other MMORPGs have had for me. There just didn't seem that there was much to do, other than beat up the thugs. I know other people who have since quit CoH feel the same.
What's in CoH now that you feel would be a good reason to come back and what do you have planned in upcoming expansions that might keep me coming back?
CoH is the first game I've noticed since Asheron's Call to really provide large amounts of new content on an ongoing basis. That's great. So far we've seen amazing amounts of new stuff. Will there be new powers or costume pieces any time soon?
180,000 players is lot of people -- obviously, not all of them are online at the same time. But even so, what's the backend of the game like to handle that number of players?
Do you have redundant servers to handle systems failure? Are they geographically dispersed to avoid "backhoe" cable cuts? What are some of the operational challenges involved with running a Massive Multiplayer game?
Chip H.
Do you have any plans for development of another MMORPG - possibly Fantasy or SF based - using the City of Heroes game engine?
This subject just came up today as a discussion on one of the gaming boards in fact. Many current players of City of Heroes who posted there seemed to think they would be very interested in the possibility of a Fantasy-based MMORPG using the same game engine. Obviously, when adapting it to a new genre many changes would be required.
Cryptic has shown they can think outside the box and push the envelope in MMO design, it would be very interesting to see what they could do with the more traditional MMORPG genres if they put their mind to it.
I would love to see a 3 realms at war style game a la Dark Age of Camelot based on the COH design and interface...
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
I was wondering if City of Heroes ( which I played at a friends house ) can be available on for a Linux x86 based system? I seem to have used up all my money making my 100% Linux compatiabale Athlon 64 and so did not have any money to buy a Microsoft Windows License.
As a gamer geek but also a new father and a victim of the economy, I have to be very careful with my 'entertainment' money. I've heard good things about CoH, but I can't justify buying the game if I'm only going to be playing it for a month (I can really only justify that with $15 bargain-bin titles). Will CoH have a one-week (or, better, two-week) trial available in the near future?
Second question, if I may: Everyone talks about how MMORPGs are different from 'traditional' RPGs mainly due to the lack of a strong, world-changing storyline. Granted, comics aren't always world-changing except for the occasional crossover, but you never see Superman's secret identity being revealed to the world in the pages of, say, JLA. Comics have a definite 'solo' vs 'group' theme going. Is it possible to really have a single-character-changing experience in CoH, or is it all mainly "Nothing major will happen; this isn't hos book" vibe?
City of Heroes had a fantastic beta, with much communication with the dev team, and a sense that the game was truly moving forward.
However, almost immediately after release, issues regarding aspects of the game that had been widely known, reported, and even confirmed by developers to be working correctly during beta (i.e. Super Speed, Hasten) were quite savagely nerfed. Along with those nerfs was a change to the con system that drastically slowed the pace of advancement in the game.
One expects MMOGs to be in a state of perpetual change, but the severity of the changes made were practically unprecedented in the genre. What changed between beta and release that made those specific issues such a priority and warranted such a drastic change?
I am not quite sure how City of Heroes is set up and it seems that you cannot leave City-1 and go to City-2 due to some reason or the other. I was wondering if you could travel by a Train over a period of days there, so all the database stuff can be synced up and you won't loose your character ?
Another thing that I think would be cool if their was something like your City of Heroes Character can go back in time to and save people or get teleported back into the past and have some sort of story along those lines. But definately CoH is a kick ass game.
Since the official launch, can you think of something that really, really surprised you about the game? Did the players start to do things you didn't expect, or did some game mechanics/results turn out far differently than you thought it would (for better or worse)?
Do you play your own game, do you play other massively multiplayer games, consoles, board games, or do you just like to design em??
When you do play are you a 'serious' gamer, or are you playing causually, or are you playing as a professional who has an stake in keeping up with what is going on in the gaming industry?
What do you think of the how other games have handled trying to avoid the 'level grinding' like A Tale in the Desert and Puzzle Pirates?
The development of a MMORPG client/server takes about as much work as a single-player game. Plus the packaging and distribution are about the same. But the MMORPG developer's duties are not done with just the sale of the game. Unlike the single-player game dev, the MMORPG game dev must supply
- Servers
- Sysadmins for the servers
- Bandwidth (lots!)
- and content updates to keep your playerbase playing.
An interesting data point I read in an interview is that Cryptic (makers of COH) will not be in the black until next year sometime even with 180k people giving them $15/mo.Alot of the complaints and concerns about MMORPGs resolve around the ongoing monthly fees. Can you give us any idea of how these fee's are spent?
ie. What portion pays for the servers, and the content development.
I know exact values aren't likely, but I've always wondered how much of that fee goes back directly into maintenance and content development.
What's stopping more real-life equivalents from crossing over into MMORPG's?
I'll give an examples to illustrate my point:
-griefers are a problem; why not allow either (part of) the dedicated live team or 'the good players' (meaning those who play a lot and have good community standing [you dev's know who your cream of the crop are] and maybe an innate sense of fairness) to become cops or peacekeepers within the game? Give 'em not-exactly-admin powers, but enough to grief a griefer (maybe after being called up on an ingame 'hotline' and judging the situation).
My point is really that MMORPG's have real-world problems...so why not use more tried and true real-life solutions?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Recently I started a thread on the COH suggestion forums that got a high rating about wanting a new ski area zone after having seen how ice worked in one of the missions I played. I also mentioned in a later post if there was a map editing tool I'd probably make it myself.
Do you think most future MMORPGs are going to stay with the developer-based content model like COH and Everquest, or do you think we'll begin seeing more user-based content such as in Second Life?
Do you think Cryptic will ever release some kind of content editor (aside from the already incredible character creator) to the users?
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Uhm, in Everquest it was nearly impossible to make your character the absolute best it could be due to the sheer effort required to reach most of the endgame. It was almost always possible to advance it further and the gear you could obtain could add effects to your character and change its appearance. Aside from minor color changes and a cape, there is no way to change your character's appearance in CoH. Also, there is no equipment so your character is as advanced as it's going to become once you reach the cap. When they increased the cap before, all they did was allow you to pick some new abilities that if you had really wanted, you could have gotten them before.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
Now that MMORPG's are a "genre", making your version stand out from the crowd has got to be a challenge.
So is it 1% perspiration and 99% inspiration, the opposite, or somewhere in-between ?
Absolute statements are never true
Two-parter:
What's the biggest misconception the general public seems to have about the job of Lead Designer, and what's the best path for me to take to get your job? (you know, like, at a different company...heh.)
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
For those of us who are programmers, and would be interested in getting into developing a MMO, what would be the best way to get into the industry?
Currently, any game company will give you the canned response -- "you need experience building games and must have shipped X megahits"...etc. -- but unless you've been developing games your whole life, this is impossible. What route did you take to get into your position, and would it be viable for others?
I can answer that. CoH has no "rare" items, and the money is worthless, most lvl 40+ have enough to spare to buy every enhancement (the closest thing to an item in game, bought from the NPC shop) 100 times over. There is no parity in the money between levels, and lvl 50's often give away large sums of money for kicks. Any effort put into duping could have just as easily been spent getting one high level char and using it for all your money needs.
What do you think of the MMOG market as a whole? Over the past few years, we've seen a flood of games released. We've seen sequels to established games - Everquest II, for example. We've seen games based on licenses, such as Star Wars Galaxies. We've seen high-profile titles such as Mythica cancelled. We've seen completely unique ideas, like A Tale in the Desert. Obviously, the market is completely different than it was even a year ago today.
Put simply, what do you think of the market in its current state, and what future do you see for it? Will you be a part of that future? MMy question is simple, but I think we need at least one question that's not related to the game or to Mr. Emmert directly.
What do you think of the MMOG market as a whole? Over the past few years, we've seen a flood of games released. We've seen sequels to established games - Everquest II, for example. We've seen games based on licenses, such as Star Wars Galaxies. We've seen high-profile titles such as Mythica cancelled. We've seen completely unique ideas, like A Tale in the Desert. Obviously, the market is completely different than it was even a year ago today.
Put simply, what do you think of the market in its current state, and what future do you see for it? Will you be a part of that future?
The question might not seem very exciting, but I belive that Mr. Emmert is in a very unique position to answer it...
Goo goo g'joob.
This does not sound very fun, and aside from social aspects, what gameplay features do you plan on implementing to make sure CoH strays away from this rut that every MMORPG has thusfar fallen into?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
One of the things my friends and I comment on most about the game is that it is fun. However, we almost always follow that up with a comment how poorly the game runs. Even on high-end video cards (my roommate's Radeon 9800 and my GeForce 6800) with better than average CPU and RAM the game runs so choppy and slow. It seems to be that if you don't turn your particle counts down to nothing, it's visually annoying. Also, visual sluggishness seems to be directly affected by ping and since all the servers we can choose from seem to be on the East Coast or something, we ping ~200ms (190 in good times).
It's kind of aggitating to me because I've played WoW in early beta and it felt like a finished game compared to CoH (at least game-engine wise).
I'm not trying to flame or anything, I'm being honest. Why aren't there servers on the west coast, and if there are, why aren't we shown server pings so we can pick which one we want?
CoH probably has the most flexible system for designing the visual appearance of a character of all the MMORPG's I've played or tried (beta/free trial, etc.). The Star Wars Galaxies character designer is maybe a little more flexible in certain areas (face, age, and weight), but I think CoH's offers more variety. It usually takes an hour just to play around with how your character will look.
Due to its flexibility, it's not too hard to make characters that look very close to copyrighted comic book characters etc.
How big of a struggle was the content creation process for costume items. For instance, were certain masks rejected by your legal department because they looked too much like Batman's or perhaps Cyclops' visor. Also, has anyone actually calculated the number of combinations of all 5 archetypes and origins?
I was wondering what your thoughts are on the current state of the enhancement model for power upgrading and customization.
Quick version of comment and question: As a longtime player it seems that enhancements turn from a rewarding and fun aspect of the game into a tedious chore as you progress. Do you consider the current implementation of enhancements an unmitigated success? And do you think the system will go forward unmodified from its current implementation?
Long version: I see enhancements as a mixed bag. On the positive side the system allows one of the great advantages that your game has, a relatively easy way to implement a sidekicking system. Another great benefit is how flexible character choices are for how their own powers work. On the negative side however enhancements just seem to become more and more tedious as the levels go up. In more traditional mmorpgs and their equipment model you seldom needed to worry about details of any particular item, if you got the Super Awesome Sword of Slaying, you just equiped it and were done with any choices till you came across another item. With enhancements, and the large number of enhancement slots, enhancement management gets to be more and more tedious as you progress in the game. Especially considering the "aging" model that enhancements age out of usefulness every few levels.
My issues with enhancements and their consequences on characters in no particular order:
- Aging of enhancements lead to a weird "roller coaster" effect on character power. Every chance you get to upgrade enhancements (every 5 levels) your character gets a considerable power boost, and then declines until the next chance to fully upgrade.
- Trading enhancements with players just doesn't work at higher levels. (and is questionable at lower levels unless you can get SO's(read level limited more powerful upgrades) early.) Yes, you can buy enhancements on the market, however at the higher levels when many powers need to be working their best buying over 50 enhancements is a rather unrealistic way to play, it just isn't worth the time or effort to spend 5 minutes negotiating a sale when influence(money) is almost worthless, and you are only able to buy an upgrade for 1/6th of one of your many powers by doing so.
- Enhancements as a system of reward is broken because of the relative value one single enhancement has on your character. At higher levels I essentially NEVER get excited about an enhancement drop. Lets face it, enhancements are the only system of Loot in the game, and the same 1/6th of just one of your powers problem is here too. When I have 18+ powers and I can upgrade 1/6th of one of those, it is barely a measurable change in my characters power.
- Because of the lack of excitement of enhancement rewards the boon you get on completion of high end task forces in the game is incredibly anti-climactic. "I just saved the world and all I got was this lousy enhancement."
As a result of these issues and others enhancements just become a tedium as the game progresses. (managing, selling, upgrading and trading all become work rather than anything that contributes to the fun of playing.)
Some of these issues could be addressed easily. (The rollercoaster effect could be elminated by allowing purchase of all lvls of enhancements from stores for example.) However the lack of a viable (imo) loot system is a serious detraction from the game. Perhaps a global power upgrade system that could be awarded on story arcs and task forces would be a possible solution, say an item or even a secondary system of enhancement slots that upgraded one aspect of all powers a (possibly very) minor amount.
Finally the question, how do you think the current system of enhancements is working, and are there any changes you think might be made to make this aspect of the game more exciting/rewarding for players?
I know NCSoft is a Korean game software developer (in fact, it's one of the biggest in Korea, with tons of people competing to get into the firm every year). What is/was their role? Do they supply the networking expertise, while Cryptic designed and developed the game and its engine? Or was there a mixed team of developers from both companies working on the whole thing from start to finish?
On the last day of the beta test, there was a famous invasion of Paragon City. Now, in the live game, there have been a few events like Trick or Treat, but there hasn't been any real attack or invasion approaching the Rikti invasion in size. Does having a number of worlds instead of a single one make things like this harder to implement? Is it hard to create events that players of all levels can participate in? Will we see more major events in the coming months?
Thank you for an enjoyable game. I only levelled to 34 before it became less enjoyable and more a grind. However I do have to commend you on the Defender class and more specifically the Empathy line. It was the first healer in an MMORPG that I've played (and yes I've played almost all of them) where sacrifice was an important aspect of the class.
For those of you who haven't played, the Defender's Empathy power set was the most robust when it came to heals. However the Empathy Defender had only 1 way to directly heal themselves, with the least powerful group heal. Sure they could use the health regeneration boost as well, but it is more a small HoT (heal over time). The Empathy Defender's biggest heal (Absorb Pain) actually hurts the Defender and makes them unable to heal for 30 seconds or so.
This same concept is shown now in Guild Wars, where the Monk cannot heal his or herself except through their mitigation buffs and one group heal. The monk's group heal also heals enemies which requires an even higher level of proficiency to use in PvP.
My question then, was this a direct way to balance and challenge the top healer class for PvP? I've seen PvP Healing to be a debate in other games (Anarchy Online and EQ especially) and this seemed an interesting way to deal with it and not harm the PvE component too much. I'm eager to see how CoV shapes up for the Empathy Defenders/Controllers.
Sacré-bleu! Where is me mama?
As a long time game designer, why did you choose to go through the cliched "Skills and Levels in an RPG" route for COH, when there is such a huge gaping hole for MMO games that don't have their core game mechanics rooted in old-school tabletop mechanics?
What have you learned about what players want from MMORPG's from the creation and operation of CoH, and will you apply what you've learned in future expansions? Or will that be saved for another MMORPG to be stuffed into an already crowded enviroment?
All MUD-based games are simple skinner boxes in which we are expected to perform repetitive tasks (killing mobs, missions) to get rewards (levels, powers). I played COH for a couple months and appreciated how your team shifted away from the standard MUD model by incorporating missions and large group missions as opposed to relying on just killing mobs which pop-up. Still, its just a variation on the skinner box and there is a lot of MUD-like killing.
Ironically, there is no incentive to "act like a hero" in City of Heroes. Everyone has their role to play, be it tank, healer, hitter, etc. Its very formal and deterministic. Trying to be Spiderman or Superman will get you killed quickly. Can you break this formula and deliver a game in which taking chances produces results? Can you envision a level-less character system? That is to say a game where your cunning, skill, intelligence, patience, tactics etc determine your strength not your level or armor rating? A game where a gunshot kills any level character and only the better players survive regardless if the character is 2 minutes or 2,000 hours old?
not sure if this will get modded up, I'm posting a little late, but anyway...
One idea that has always been interesting to me is a shared world between many online type of games, COV seems to be the first game to do something like this, with two stand alone clients connecting to the same world. Star Wars Galaxies tried to do something similar by allowing many different play styles. My question is this: With many different types of popular online games (first person shooters, RTS, RPGs, as well as more social type games like A Tale in the Desert and The Sims Online), what do you think of the idea of having a single shared world in which multiple types of games take place.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
As someone who follows the game industry (because I have hopes of joining it one day) I have a question that has peaked my interest for some time now. What is it like to go from working the pen and paper medium to going to the electronic one, espescially in the MMoG field? What kind of design differences have you noticed, and which one do you favor, and why?
What advice, other than studying mathematics and programming, do you have for an undergrad wanting to get into the game industry as a programmer?
Maybe not for every mission, but for story arcs and task forces... If you let us save them that would be a lot bigger incentive for me than badges. If you do the screenshots idea, or use images generated from our characters, this would also provide us with a a cool memento of who we were with when we did said task...
Too onerous, or a good idea?