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City of Heroes Sr. Designer Talks Architect System
Kheldon writes "The MMO Gamer sits down with Joe Morrissey, a Senior Designer at Paragon Studios, to discuss the inspiration behind, and current implementation of, the Architect user-generated content system in City of Heroes. Quoting: 'Really for me, wanting tools so the rest of the team could actually come up with content was the idea. Because we have a lot of guys on the team that are hardcore players, they play the game all the time. Then they come to me like, "I’ve got this idea for this story, we should really do this arc with this guy!" And I’m like, "That’s great. I haven’t got time to do it. I’ve got plenty of other story arcs to work on." But, if we made the tools easy enough, then they could actually come up with the arcs, and we can put them out. Then somewhere along that road it dawned on me: Why stop with the rest of the team?'"
...and then I was like, "I know, we'll create a program that lets the players create their own content!" and I was like, "We could call it, I dunno..." And then, I had this really original idea, "A level editor!" I announced. And then, I played DOOM, and realized that level editors have been around since the dawn of modern gaming! So then a little devil appeared on my shoulder shaped like the microsoft logo that said, "Hurry! Patent it! And claim originality!"
http://www.beanleafpress.com
However it's not like Second Life. There are two important differences:
1) There is plenty of professional content. The game has loads of content designed by Cryptic's team. In fact, when it was launched, that is all it was. So you aren't running around in an amateur user generated world, that is just something you can play around with if you like.
2) It's an actual game. Second Life had no real point, it was just a place for a bunch of people to get around and act like jackasses. Like IRC, but with giant walking penises and such. City of Heroes is a videogame, there's fun stuff to do, if you like the super hero thing.
Also, user generated content can be really good in some cases. Have a look at Fallout 3 Nexus or the like, there are some amazing user made mods for some games. The main problem comes down to filtering it, because there'll be a lot of crap mixed in.
Second Life's failing was no filters, no professional content and no point overall.
How many variations of go to X and kill/collect Y of Z are there, I wonder? Granted, I remember a long time ago playing user created campaigns in NWN, and they weren't half bad, but even professional designers seem to have difficulty putting together compelling mssions in MMOs... color me skeptical.
In the (admittedly short .. only got around level 30) time I played CoH, the biggest thing that impressed me was the writing. Not that it was super great literature or anything, but I was coming back each day to do quests not to get experience or items, but to see what happened next. That's a good sign. I never got very much into the AE stuff, but the concept was great. Some people complained about balanced, but really... so what? Personally I play games to have fun, not balance formulas.
I compare this to the newer Champions Online. Great hopes ... costume customization was a bit better, more powers, etc. But boy does Champions fail hard on everything else. Lots of flavor text is self-referential tongue-in-cheek commentary felt like the programmers put stuff in as a placeholder and they never bothered to hire writers to fix it. The stories are super generic and feel committee-written, the settings are just about as generic as you can come up with, and ... there's just nothing to come back for. WoW has better writing and content. CO just doesn't take itself seriously, and the only real reason to play is to get exp to get to the next level, and as soon as you have the powers you want, suddenly there's no reason to keep playing. Making hero concepts is the only interesting thing.
This brings us back around to CoH's AE. The ability to make your own content plays especially well with super heroes---especially player-made concepts---because you can go beyond just a costume and description, and create and play your own entire story. And that is just awesome.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
You say that as if the developers were surprised by these events, as if they did not fully expect exploits to happen. They did. You just can't find out the full extent of what exploits exist until the system goes live (else they would have had all that worked out by the time it hit the test server). As much as some players like to think so, no game developer has ever, EVER been taken by surprise by their willingness to exploit. Ever.
I take it the headline is obnoxiously hard to parse* on purpose, right?
(* at least for anyone who's not necessarily familiar with every damn MMO out there)
sic transit gloria mundi