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.

Comments

COH's "go outside and play now, kids" feature

[Skyshadow]

So far as I can tell, City of Heros is unique among major online games in that it uses its in-game mechanics to discourage people from spending every last waking hour in the warm glow of their monitor plugging away at their character instead of rewarding obsessively constant attention to the game.

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?

Re:COH's "go outside and play now, kids" feature

[rhsanborn]

Note http://www.eve-online.com/ also has a system that lets people who aren't online constantly keep up with those that are as well. Thei training system is based on time as opposed to in game experience.

MMO's get paid by the month, whether your online or not. But if your not online, you don't cost them as much money.

Re:COH's "go outside and play now, kids" feature

[Kentamanos]

I played CoH up until about two months ago, and I'm not sure what in game mechanics you're referring to. Is this a fairly recent design change?

Re:COH's "go outside and play now, kids" feature

[451]

I played every waking hour for three months straight. Then I got a job, and had to leave Paragon city for good, since I was not about to stay awake for 24 hrs a day 7 days a week. Where is this control you refer to?

Re:COH's "go outside and play now, kids" feature

[Damodred]

Are you perhaps thinking of World of Warcraft and its "Rest" system? The one where the longer you NOT play, the more XP you can gain upon returning?

If so, it doesn't work very well. The XP boost lasts for about 10 minutes, or 3-5 monsters, and then it's back to normal. That's not really much of an incentive to "rest". At least that was its state a week ago...

City of Heroes does not have any such feature. What it does have is a sidekick/exemplar feature, where you can invite a friend lower/higher than your level to fight with you by raising/lowering their level for the duration of the "Team Up".

This does promote some stress relief, as you don't have to level as quickly as your friends; you can just be their sidekick if they outpace you (or vice versa).

That is one unique feature that all MMOs should have, but I don't think it's the one you're referring to...

Re:COH's "go outside and play now, kids" feature

[Skyshadow]

Yup, my bad. Hey, they came out around the same time, I just mixed up the features.

Endgame

[Selfbain]

I'd like to know how they designed the game without ever thinking about end game content. I played this game for all of a month before I realized that once I made it to 50, there was going to be nothing for me to do. After reading the game boards, I found I was not alone and that lots of other people had reached the level cap only to find they'd wasted their time.

Re:Endgame

[Flamefly]

I found I was not alone and that lots of other people had reached the level cap only to find they'd wasted their time

Every second you spend in a game, you are wasting your time, that is indeed the point of games, a usually fun way to waste time when you have nothing better (or more fun) to do. To think that the game will be forever forfilling, that when you reach the top level you'll suddenly get access to a trust fund or a blast of enlightenment might be a bit of a wishful dream :] Luckily you realised it before you actually had to experience it.

All MMOG's suffer from this same problem with levelling, the game makers need some way of keeping people engaged in the game (time == money in pocket) and the obvious answer is levelling, they are purely timesinks, you can base the levels on a logarithmic scale, so it's nigh-on impossible to reach the upper echelons, but there has to be an end somewhere, otherwise the devs would spend forever coding additional quests, spells, badges, whatever (which costs them moola, so bad!). The developers hope that by the time you've spend so long in game you would have created friends/aquaintences that would take over from the timesink aspect and you'll essentially become addicted (through habit) to playing the game.

When players themselves can create quests like the good old text based MUD's you'll see something that doesn't need this boring levelling basis to power it. People generally (I hope) play these mmog's to play with like minded people who they can have fun with, but I feel that developers don't tend to build off this aspect of MMOG's and focus on 'if we dangle this carrot of fire shielding VII at level 50, then they'll force themselves to play through the crap times.' I'll stop before I start comparing it to religion.. :}

FF.

Re:Endgame

[Phrogman]

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.

Re:Endgame

[Selfbain]

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.

When will City of Villans be rolled up with CoH?

[S810]

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.

Statesman's helmet

[CrashPoint]

So, Statesman...has Magneto asked for his helmet back yet?

How do you plan to get me back?

[bugnuts]

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?

Re:How do you plan to get me back?

[thenerdgod]

Others have asked how to reduce the "Level Grind", but I'd like to get more specific. This Halloween, the wife and I passed up several of the usual assigned door missions, stopped caring about XP, and did nothing but run door to door playing trick-or-treat. I think what appealed to us was that it was not merely a change, but partially a game-within-a-game. It was gambling, with the bonus that we got badges for killing so many pumpkin-headed monsters, and witches, and zombies.

Also, recently, Paragon City was "Attacked" by roving bands of monsters, which was fun, as well as the addition of new zones. Obviously things are being done to help alleviate the feeling of sameness and repetition, but it is unavoidably still there, since there are really only five or six common missions.

My question is, specifically, what other forms of game-play are being contemplated for non-PvP expansion? Will we see more interactivity in the city? Will, perhaps, the very landscape of the existing zones change (It was interesting when I heard that all the lights went out in one Zone when the city was attacked). Will there be opportunities, as there were this halloween, for large groups of people to come together to fight giant, lumbering monsters, and not just beat up the same group of baddies in some abandoned warehouse?

(The Apparatchik, Coalition of Communist Crusaders for the Proletariat)

Re:How do you plan to get me back?

[thenerdgod]

I'd like to expand on what I wrote above. When we started playing, I mentioned to a friend that what I really wanted from an MMORPG like City of Heroes, was the ability to inhabit a place like Kurt Busiek's "Astro City", where normal (and not so normal people) lived out their lives amidst an ever-changing landscape with well-known and active villains and heros. What I was envisioning was a place where not every super-villain showed up inside a door mission, where sometimes an entire part of town face faced with a common peril, and all the heroes had to answer the call of duty, come together, and fight against some great foe, where even dying in the line of fire was worth it just to say "I fought the Kraken when he attacked Pier Cove and ate that oil tanker!" I think what bugged me was the oppresiveness of the mundane in MMORPGs... Not the Level Mill, necessarily, but the fact that you even worry about levels to acheive some goal. I'd prefer that the goal be taking part in some larger shared story, and not getting the next chit on your 'blast the baddies' power*.

So, to that end, I'd ask "What are the game designers doing to bring the players together, to give them a true sense of community and a real stake in the game, instead of giving them a stake in the lesser reward of levelling up for the next power slot or costume change?

(The Apparatchik, Coalition of Communist Crusaders for the Proletariat)

*Part of working on the supergroup I'm in was working towards that, that even if the game offered no great ever-present Hero or Villain, we could fall back on the standard of Freedom versus Oppression, twisted, of course, into the tongue-in-cheek black-sheep-style heroics of being the Hero for the Wrong Side.

Long term plans?

[claytongulick]

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?

Why No Mac Support?

[JohnA]

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.

Re:Why No Mac Support?

[Kenja]

"So why no Mac support? Any request to your tech support department is a canned response."

I bet the reason is the same as it is with just about every other game. The cost of a Macintosh port and support would be more then the money made from the Macintosh market.

Capes

[jreaperhero]

Is it possible to iron your cape? Because I like to look fresh and clean in the game? Thx

Why do I have to buy the game...

[teamhasnoi]

when I'm paying to play it too?

(This comes from someone who has never played an MMPORG, as I've got enough subscription-based services to take care of, like electricity, food, web access, and smokes.)

Re:Why do I have to buy the game...

[bugnuts]

I can answer that :)

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.

I hate subjects for asking questions :p

[DragonPup]

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?

Boring Games

[rlandrum]

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?

Re:Boring Games

[Sheetrock]

There is a problem with traditional RPG puzzles; MMORPGs allow collaboration or walkthroughs and the pressure to advance with your peers means that the individual player will most likely take the easy way out of puzzles to keep up, robbing him of the satisfaction of thinking things over and working at his own pace.

A Tale In The Desert takes an interesting approach where community-wide advancement and shaping of the game world is possible and encouraged, but the advancement of the individual character is a little flat (gather items to build stuff or travel someplace to get another skill.) In a way, this is a "life simulator".

Finding some means of bringing the two together is the way to go -- a potential future MMORPG would work out a system that randomizes the puzzles for each character, discover a way to permit characters with a wide range of 'levels' to adventure together meaningfully, and permit a very dynamic game world where players build their own towns and outposts and PvP becomes a little more epic.

Future CoH comics

[leyf]

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?

Death penalty?

[claytongulick]

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?

Duping

[Anonymous Coward]

Duping seems to be the bane of many online role playing games. (Credit duping, item duping, etc.) What steps have you taken in CoH to avoid this problem?

Re:Duping

[Kaboom13]

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.

skeptical of the genre

[oprahjesserafael]

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?

MMO Competition

[servognome]

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?

Class system

[CrashPoint]

I recall reading a couple of years ago that you didn't want CoH to use a class system. But with "archetypes" that define the powersets available to a character, that's essentially what happened. What made you feel this system was necessary, rather than a more freeform system where players could simply choose their powersets from all those available in the game?

Re:Class system

[kosanovich]

This question has been answered by him before. Basically when they had it free form it allowed those who knew what they were doing (power gamers) to become super powerful and the casual gamer ended up gimping themselves more often than not. At the time there was no respec possible so all the people who didn't know EXACTLY what to choose were very vocally upset so they changed it to make it more friendly to the average person and balance things out a bit.

cross-influences?

[ed.han]

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

Super Speed

[claytongulick]

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...)

Re:Super Speed

[wrong]

Why are some levels difficult with Super Speed? So you have a reason to get Super Jump, Teleport, or Fly (or at least Hover).

Hazard zones like Terra Volta and Faultline are meant for groups, so there's a much better chance someone will have Recall Friend and be able to bail your ass out of a large hole. Also, Cryptic have been very good about making sure that a character without travel powers can walk out of anything they can get into, although you will probably have to fight a lot of foes to do it and the route is not always obvious.

How are things now?

[deanj]

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?

Content updates

[Uriel]

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?

Game Infrastructure

[chiph]

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.

Any Plans to Adapt the COH Engine to Other Genres?

[Phrogman]

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...

City of Heroes on Linux

[a3217055]

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.

Demo / Trial?

[InfinityWpi]

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?

Priorities

[Dragoon412]

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?

Train and Time Travel

[a3217055]

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.

Biggest surprise after launch?

[DevNova]

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)?

I think you're thinking of WoW

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that the feature you're thinking of is in World of Warcraft, not City of Heroes.

That said, it's still a somewhat valid question if you tweak it a little: Since CoH has a few features built in to level playingfields and generally feels a little more slanted towards the casual player than other MMORPGs, why didn't it include a system like the one in WoW where it encourages players to go out and get some air/sleep/food?

Fees

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Real-life.

[Mac Degger]

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?

Re:Real-life.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the case of griefers, the reason there aren't police in CoH, is that they have a GOOD DESIGN.

Griefing in MMOs occurs because players exploit design flaws. If your design says that mean monsters will get mad at a player, then follow him across the level when he flees (despite an inability to catch up or hurt that player), and finally decide to attack people standing near the "zone entrance" when the person they were mad at before goes through it, you'll have a problem. (A worse problem if the monsters just attack whoever is closest, and can be simply led to another player). CoH does not have this problem (or a lot of the other problems) because the design of the game is better.

"Training" (described above) doesn't occur because monsters don't stay angry indefinitely, stop following once following becomes ridiculous, don't become angry at other players on a whim, and get killed before entering the "safe areas" around a zone entrance. (good design).

"Spawn Camping" doesn't really occur because most "quest items" are recovered from instanced dungeons. If me and player X both get the mission to "find an artifact" then we'll be sent to different instances of the mission so that we won't meet up at the artifact and have to argue over who brings it back to it's owner. I can still have somebody help me (players on a team enter the same instanced dungeon) but if I want to do it alone, nobody will be able to bother me. Some missions ask you to wander the streets and defeat X members of some group, but the number of criminals waiting to be defeated is so large that camping is uncommon in these instances as well. It's easier to find a new group to kill than it is to wait for the group you just killed to respawn.

"Kill Stealing" can occur to a small degree (experince is split based on damage done to the enemy), but usually doesn't. First, because the experience is split between every team who damaged it (teams split it evenly), it's really more like "kill sharing" than kill stealing. Second, the reasons to do this are less prevalent since there are TONS of "monsters" and they occur in a large enough variety of places that there's no "spawn camping" (see above). Third, if it's still a problem, instanced dungeons allow you to go to an area where other players cannot disrupt you (though you can still bring teammates along). So the design makes it range from impossible (when in dungeons) to very diffucult and not worthwhile (in the open areas of the city).

So, in general, griefing is not a problem in CoH. In fact, in playing I've been HELPED (in ways that don't steal experience) MUCH more frequently than anybody has ever tried to harm me. This is because CoH was designed well, and griefing is an exploit of design FLAWS.

A better question for Stateman would be, "What sort of steps did you take in designing the game to both predict and solve the kinds of problems that are typical in MMOs, such as griefers? In what ways is it easier to prevent these things in games than it is in real life?"

Developer made content vs user made content?

[Gldm]

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?

making your game stand out from the crowd

[cats-paw]

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 ?

Perils of Design.

[Alkaiser]

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.)

A more general question...

[Gothic_Walrus]

My 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? 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...

RPG "light"

[Hays]

I'm an active COH player and an ex-everquest player. I must first give you kudos for making a really polished, fun game. It's really a great take on the MMORPG.

The game has a bus-load of fun ideas. The badge system is great. The costume system and character creation are amazing. Technically, the game is top notch- great mapmaking, great animation, etc...

One of the best ideas is simplicity. Starting players don't have to worry about complicated inventory systems. They just go out there and start kicking butt. Kicking butt is not to difficult, because the player is quite a bit stronger versus the environment compared to previous MMORPGs.

But that simplicity becomes a drag in the later game. I've got 3 characters approaching the high end (mid 30s) and I'm starting to dislike the slow experience grind, with nothing to look forward to but a new ability every 3 levels.

Missions are fun, but they get a bit formulaic. With one huge exception, they offer uninteresting rewards and have cookie cutter goals. (The exception being the wonderful respec mission)

I'm sure it was a conscious design decision to have no inventory system, no armor, no weapons. And I think that's a great idea, at first. But by the time you're level 30 and you've played the game for a couple of months, you really start to want MORE. The enhancement system doesn't cut it. That's just a trip to the store every 5 levels. I'd like to get a cool piece of (origin specific) armor when I complete a task force.

Even baby steps in this direction would great. A way to distinguish myself (other than aesthetically) from other players would be nice. This could also give origins a chance to actually matter.

So the question in all of this is- why the aversion to traditional RPG elements, even at high levels? Is this going to change?

Maximizing time

[Lord_Dweomer]

One of the pitfalls of every MMORPG I can think of is maximizing time in order to advance. Every action to advance your character requires you to think of the most efficient way of doing things.

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?

Great Gameplay but Runs Poorly

[WebMasterP]

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?

Character Designer

[Kentamanos]

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?

Live Events

[brandonY]

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?

PvP Healing in CoH

[Elsebet]

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.

Genre Innovation

[sprayNwipe]

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?

Hmmm

[PyrochMaster]

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?

Will MMORPG ever leave the "skinner box" model?

[gad_zuki!]

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?

Re:Will MMORPG ever leave the "skinner box" model?

[Bugmaster]

I like what you're saying, but let me just play Devil's Advocate for a moment.

CoH is a game about superheroes. Superheroes (at least, traditional ones) do not generally take chances or rely on "patience, tactics, etc.". This may sound ridiculous, but think about it for a moment. Superman is impervious to all damage (except for Kryptonite); it's impossible to hurt him. He can also fly and throw cars around (after grilling them a bit with his heat-vision). Spiderman's Spidey Sense warns him of imminent danger, and his super-reflexes allow him to cocoon the enemies before they can even think of taking a swing at him. Storm can rain city-wide lightning from the skies. Even Batman has no trouble with most evildoers he comes across: he just hangs them from a roof and keeps going.

Comic-books superheroes can be hurt, but it takes a supervillain to do it. Lex Luthor has his cryptonite, Doc Oc has techno-tentacles, etc. CoH is the same way: regular thugs are pretty much there for you to fry, but Dr. Vahzilok or the Clockwork King are trouble. Storm wouldn't assault Magneto's asteroid fortress (or whatever he has now) without getting support from Professor X and the other X-men; and your character wouldn't come after Dr. Vahz without putting together a strong team. It may not be uber-heroic, but that's the way comics work.

Furthermore, there already exists a game where "a gunshot kills any level character and only the better players survive"; it's called Counterstrike. You'll have to admit, though, that the gameplay there is very different from CoH. Not better, not worse, just totally different. Sure, you could make CoH just like CS, but then it would be a different game.

Shared World

[miyako]

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.

Re:Completely wrong! EQ has an "end game".

[shumway]

How long has EQ been out now? And how much of that endgame content was there in the first year?

Re:Costs too much

[zokrath]

I am going to throw some theoretical numbers at you, because I doubt he is going to give you any real numbers to contradict the ones that I am about to retrieve from that infinite repository of questionable facts that is my arse.

Let us assume that fifty people are paid directly by this game; this includes live content creators, the design team, 24 hour IT guys, and management at the companies involved. It does not include the full team that created the boxed product, or the Game Masters, or tech support.

If we take half of that monthly fee then that is an average of 27,000 a year, and we are left with 1.35 million.

The hourly customer service and GM support, being paid ten dollars an hour with an average of thirty people working twenty-four-seven ( A measly 1 to 834 ratio of customer to service assuming 25,000 as a peak average), which is another 216,000 a month. Multiply that if you want better ratios.

Assuming a consistent output of 5kB per player per second, and an average cieling of 25,000 players online at once, that is 128,125,000 bits per second, which is about 85% of an OC-3 pipe, which can cost 35-60 thousand a month, simply for their base bandwidth. They will need extra for patches, and will need reserve bandwidth on tap in case the load gets heavier than normal.

There is also several million dollars of server hardware, which needs to be maintaned, updated, upgraded, and expanded over its lifetime.

Massive games also have longer development time, with more people working on the project during that time, but the box costs the standard price of a stand alone game, which means the publisher needs to recoup the costs of paying for all of those extra salaries and that extra cooking time.

No doubt a fair bit of the monthly fee is pure profit, which is why you see so many massive games being released. But the entire development team is not running around with giant sacks of the playerss cash and laughing manically. Well, they might be, but eventually they will use that money to pay for the upkeep of the game.

Death

[Databass]

Let X represent the percentage of your life lived. So level 100 is your death.

"Alas," you exclaim, upon reaching the end of your life "I have reached level 100, and there was nothing more! My whole life was for naught!"

Can't the journey of the game be meaningful in and of itself? I grant that the endgame can be important in keeping players in the long term, but to make it seem like players were robbed and the entire experience up to level cap was meaningless without some kind of endgame seems a bit extreme.

Going from one medium to the other

[planeswalker]

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?

Re:Any Plans to Adapt the COH Engine to Other Genr

[Maserati]

While you're waiting for his next game with the CoH engine, check out EVE Online. Four starting factions (not actively at war last I heard) and dozens of large player organizations make for very strong raiding and "realm" competition. EVE also has a lot of PvP. Core areas are patrolled by tough NPC ships, rim regions are patrolled by even tougher PC ships. On the downside, the game is very, very hard solo. If you don't have backup, you're dead in over half the map.

Action-Oriented MMORPG's

[Erik Hollensbe]

Hi Jack,

One of the things that originally attracted me to CoH was the more action-geared combat. As I'm sure you know, a good deal of games in your selected genre involve basically initiating an attack, and pressing a key at an interval or not at all. Magic is "fun" by letting you do different attacks instead of just one.

My point is, you guys have carved a niche that is not so much action it's a FPS (Planetside), but has not made combat so dull it could all be done on pen and paper with relative ease (FFXI, EQ, etc). CoH does a great job mixing things like proper positioning with powers and great teamplay.

Where do you see this going in the future? If I may be so coy to coin your game as a "Massively Multiplayer Platformer", do you agree with this assertion, and (heh) without violating any contracts, do you think it has room to allow for expansive gameplay beyond what CoH offers?

Getting into the industry.

[ontheheap]

What advice, other than studying mathematics and programming, do you have for an undergrad wanting to get into the game industry as a programmer?

comics instead of just text

[testadicazzo]

So, this is more of a suggestion than a question. At the beginning and end of missions you give a little text blurb saying what we have to do or have accomplished. I'd dig it heavily if you guys could put these text blurbs into comic form-- it could even be done with miniaturezed screenshots with text bubbles sort of thing.

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?