For every MMO player there has always been that quest, that mission -- you know the one. It was so utterly frustrating that you contemplated stabbing yourself in the eye with a pencil, and ultimately it left you ranting at the screen "What moron designed this? I could do so much better than this tripe. This load of crap shouldn't be allowed in a game! " Well now it's time to put your money where your rant is, because with Issue 14 City of Heroes is adding in the Mission Architect system, and it's about to change the way we see online gaming.
Let's back up here and give a bit of background. When I went to preview Mission Architect a few days ago, Lead Designer Matt "Positron" Miller told us the sad story of how the mission design team used to create their missions -- with Wordpad. We're talking professional game designers ripping out their story arcs, their trigger mechanics, everything built in a text document. From out of the stone age arose an innovation: Excel spreadsheets. Using these simple yet still basic tools, the mission designers limped along until their acquisition by NCSoft. Acquisition meant money, and money translates to new features.
At this point in the game, the mission design team was led by a guy named Joe Morrissey. Morrissey was given the task of creating a new Excel spreadsheet, and he came back to the higher ups with an idea: why not create a tool to automate mission design? And while we're at it, why not give it to the players? It's a crazy notion, but one that makes sense when you consider the incredible connection the City of Heroes developers have with their community. When the community speaks, the developers listen, in a way that reminds you of chatting during a backyard barbeque.
Six months later the Mission Architect system was born, an easy-to-use yet incredibly powerful story arc creator. Any player interested in creating missions visits one of the 19 Architect Entertainment facilities scattered around Paragon City (what, you're suprised they tied this system to the lore? I'm not.), click on the panel, and begin creating their own missions. The UI is simple and easy to follow, with clear little tooltips to guide you through the many options provided.
To get an idea of the amount of features in the Misson Architect system, lets give you a bit of perspective and tell you about my experience creating a Story Arc. I sat down, logged in, selected one of the premade characters and within seconds I was in the Mission Architect system. The first thing you do is create your quest text and select who will be delivering the mission. I chose as evil a villian I could without having to build one myself, and wove a horribly executed story about a Circle of Thorns cult attempting to raise pirates from the dead.
From there I built a simple two-mission Story Arc, one where the first villain was a premade character aptly named Capt. Stubby. With the Mission Architect system, you have the ability to work with villain groups in two ways: you can select from those already created in the game, or you can build your own. And when I say build your own, I mean it: in creating my second villain, I stepped into a modified version of the now infamous City of Heroes Character Creator, where I created his powerset, his look, even the color of his peg leg. Then I changed my mind, and decided to make him a tree. Trees can run away to be pirates too you know.
There's definitely something powerful here. I liken the Mission Architect system to Little Big Planet, where the story mode is awesome, but it's the user-generated content that really sucks you in. And because the CoH developers are all about community, they have put some incredibly innovative reward systems into the Mission Architect in order to drive what I can tell will be an incredibly popular system, just judging from the closed beta numbers. When I play through a Story Arc you created, I get tickets, redeemable Chuck-E-Cheese style for loot, dual-origin enhancements, and even those random rolls you would have gotten if this was a standard mission. I then rank your Story Arc based on how well I enjoyed, it, and you as a creator get tickets because I played through your missions. If your Story Arc ends up being particularly wonderful, the developers can flag it for the Hall of Fame, or as a Developer's Choice, and you'll get even more rewards.
While this isn't the first system of this sort in online gaming, the City of Heroes Mission Architect is the first to create a seemingly flawless transition from developer to user generated content. I foresee these Architect Entertainment hubs being packed with players because it is just so much fun to create your own stories within the maps you've been playing for so long, and its even more fun to see how creative other players are. As far as Capt. Stubby and his evil pirate tree friend, they will have to go unplayed and unloved because really, that load of crap shouldn't be allowed in a game.
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