Evolving the Superhero MMO

Cryptic Studios is taking a jab at evolving the superhero MMO with Champions Online this month, which means it's a blast for me to tell them how they're doing it every last wrong. I'm sure they'll apprize that.

Actually, for my newspaper column this month I commenc to solve a Petrified Problem supplied to me by a friend who secondhand to work at Cryptic. His challenge was: How do you handle ocular loot in a superhero lame where the music genre expectation is that your equipment is a costume, not a grab base of armor parts you've pulled from the corpses of elephantine caterpillars? In other words, how can Loony toons weary an epic armour set?

To answer that question, I ended up scheming my ain larger-than-life armor set of new features: a grab bag of different ideas that resolve this Unmerciful Problem but go well beyond information technology. Let's see how it sounds to you.

First off, the principal tension here is the idea that once you assemble your costume during character foundation in City of Heroes or Champions Online, you're pretty much done. Sure, at that place are a a couple of malodorous-visibility dress up pieces reserved for high levels (like capes in City of Heroes) but the assumption is that you're a superhero, you've designed your costume, and you aren't in truth going to change it. That's how comic books make for, right?

Well, no. In point of fact, superheroes in comic books practice change their costumes. It doesn't happen a great deal, and some heroes have never really successful a change, but it's not unheard of. Back when I was working at a drama-book entrepot in the 1980s, the character of Storm in The Uncanny X-Men got a complete makeover, going from your grassroots weather witch with a streaming cape to a punked-out, mohawked Grace Jones knockoff. There suffer been many another other reinventions, too, often with a minor character who gets his own series and kicks things off with a dress up revamp.

So, that's the first idea. Make a reinvention part of the physical advancement of a superhero MMO. Place information technology at level thresholds (20, 40, etc.) or logic gate it behind an verse form foreign mission sequence. It could be accompanied by a power respec likewise, but that's not the in-chief part for this discussion.
Simply what do you reinvent with? An important part of epic armor is that it helps to tell you just how badass the player is only aside the act of him having that armor. So that's the second idea, and this is the one where we spell a blank check for the art budget.

Take the starting inventory of dress up pieces for your superhero MMO: gauntlets, boots, helmets, breastplates, and all that stuff. Instantly multiply it by – let's just state – three. Ow. Yea, there's directly a couple extra zeroes connected that budget check. But wheel with it.

The idea here is that for every dress up piece used in character creation, you create two additional versions of IT. Each version is cooler than the previous one, and in consistent ways. For instance, Lashkar-e-Toiba's say the first edition of all costume pieces is tinselly with stupendous, solid colors, your BASIC Shazam or Superman or Batman kinds of color schemes. And so the bit version adds physical texture: leather, snakeskin, that kind of thing, alike how superhero costumes tend to get bandaged in movie adaptations. Now those same costume pieces look more deluxe, more badass, to a greater extent elaborate. The third variant takes the second gear one and adds particle effects: glows, crepitation energy, that sort of affair, so justified when you're honorable running through the street people notice that you'Ra a walk-to volcano of power.

Now tie these to the reinventions. You produce your character with the basic pieces, which pretty practically see like what Urban center of Heroes launched with. When you hit level 20, you qualify for a Reinvention and today you unlock all of those Epic Costume visual upgrades. You can forthwith preview what you'd reckon like if you just upgraded everything you're wearing directly, but you can also take this opportunity to take a leak some bigger changes if desired. And so when you hit level 40, you get one more Reinvention and now you're lit up and glowing with mightiness everywhere you go, again having unlocked a new set of pieces.

No of these changes would be mandatory. Simply hopefully they'd glucinium cool and distinctive enough that players would welcome the opportunity.

As for the collecting aspect of epic equipment sets, these costume pieces could first-rate be acquired one after another in go after quest so you can see your realistic wardrobe getting larger every time you romp. You'd notwithstandin have to wait until you earned a Reinvention to use all that precooled stuff, only in the meantime you can check out your collection progression and get wind what you're missing.

This approach path does not address the badass functionality of heroic poem equipment sets, since your superhero dress up doesn't impact your gameplay. For that, I'd corresponding to bring out another idea: Trophy Weapons. You know how Batman and Superman have collections of trophies from villains they've defeated? It's not unusual in a comic Holy Writ for a superhero to wrest a villain's ultimate weapon away and then use IT against them, or at least against the threat they've unleashed. So let's run thereupon.

Whenever you've worked your way through a particular enemy ordered over the run of many missions and levels and you kill the final boss, he drops a trophy weapon. This is a cool, thematically appropriate doodad or steel Beaver State gun or whatever that proves you took drink down the boss. While this artillery International Relations and Security Network't an improvement over your super powers for perpendicular fight, it does suffice massive legal injury to the enemy set of that boss. To use City of Heroes as an example, once you wreak the Clockwork missions and vote out the Clockwork King, he drops a trophy weapon that does double damage vs. Clockworks.

Your trophy weapon is your sign that you've mastered that enemy set. Directly anytime you need to help out someone who is scrap the Clockworks, you binge out your Clockwork trophy artillery and kick major ass. Nearby heroes see to it you wielding that thing and are suitably impressed. It also agency that you take over a smashing mode to help lower-level characters bust done goon content that you've already mastered. Of course, you don't desire to go around wielding this thing all the time; it should be stored in your Trophy Room, whose being I'll like a sho also posit as being a really fun idea. When you need it, you use it, and the relief of the time it's in your Trophy Room to impress visiting noobs.

Sanction, that's Reinventions, Epos Costumes, Prize Weapons, and (in brief) Prize Rooms. Merely I'm non through inflating the budget on our superhero MMO because when I started thinking about Reinventions, it occurred to Maine that when a superhero mirthful reinvents itself, it often starts terminated with issue #1. So – aha!

Bingo. You see IT? Superhero MMOs that consumption leveling have the name wrong. You shouldn't be A level 20 Striker. You should be an Issue 20 Striker: issues as in comic book issues. You don't gain levels, you gain issues. Each issue is, course, a level, but it's also a way to think about bracketing your adventures.

Remember issue 5? That's when you were in the sewers fighting the Scum Rats. Yeah, that was pretty sweet, but and so there was issue 14 where you learned to fly. Wow, what a great issue that was!

And and so there's crossovers. When you and I team, it's in my issue 23 and your issue 18. Anytime we team up in a group, our progression lumber should note the crossover.

Supergroups work the same way. If we form a lodge and bulge out playacting together regularly, our guild should have an issue number. So while in my own solo series I'm equal to issue 47, in the Wrecking Crew order we're single on issue 6.

Once you lead off intellection of your progression as issue-based, sort o than raze-based, a lot of other possible features pour out. An auto-generated log of your character's progression and mission completion could cost archived issue by issue, and maybe even spat resolute a web site where you can live over your exploits in some benevolent of stylized comic book visuals. To each one time you flat up, everyone near sees the cover to your virgin issue – an image composited of you in a heroic pose with your make in a logo (you pick off the baptistery!) and "Issue 27" in the corner. There's a ton of fun to equal had with this concept.

And then when it's time for a Reinvention, well, you start over with issue #1.

Reinventions, then, are not just a nasal-horizontal showoff mechanic. They're what you get along when you hit the level detonator. You start over at consequence #1, now with pre-boosted powers and your Trophy Room, and you can then blow through low-level happy like it was nix. You'Re crazy regent, you have a ton of awe-inspiring weaponry and your costume looks incredibly badass. New content exclusive to Reinvented heroes is the new end game.

Whew. I'm going to stop thither. I think this is fun stuff and spell it doesn't directly replicate the lust for epic armor in a superhero-costume circumstance, it's closer than what I've seen until now. It doesn't look like Champions Online has done anything new in this area, which means: DC Universe Online, the ball's in your court. SHAZAM!

John Scott Tynes played a superhero named Jonah Eternity in Metropolis of Heroes. He hated how the Circle of Thorns only spawned at night because it was never dark happening the server when he could play.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/evolving-the-superhero-mmo/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/evolving-the-superhero-mmo/

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