Make your own City of Heroes content

By Robert Purchese Published 29 April, 2008

NCsoft either lazy or ingenious.

NCsoft has plans to let you make your own missions and story arcs in City of Heroes.

Lead designer Matt Miller unveiled the ambitious decision after thanking those who had stuck with the Spandex MMO since launch over four years ago.

"I can't tell you how excited I am for our game's future, and although we have some major announcements yet to be made - one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning," said Miller aka "Positron" on the official forums.

"Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You'll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialogue and any clues needed for the missions.

"When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon," added Miller.

City of Heroes appeared in 2004 and make our own super hero and fly around saving the planet from baddies. We really rather liked it.

Just over a year later, the City of Villains expansion was released and finally let us dress up as baddies. We really rather liked this, too.

Since those early days, Miller says more than 32 million characters have been created and clocked up more than 29,200 years ("292 centuries") of game time. And, since auction houses were launched in 2007, more than 100 million items have been traded.

Don't you have better things to do?

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (12) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • The_Aardvark #1 4 years ago

    This sounds really, really cool. And potentially game-breaking.

  • Mox #2 4 years ago

    Didn't Cryptic sell CoH and CoV to NCSoft last year? And doesn't Matt Miller work for NCSoft these days? And isn't Cryptic developing a completely different Heroes MMO on the Champions license?

  • spazmo #3 4 years ago

    This isn't about GTA IV!! What gives?

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #4 4 years ago

    Didn't Cryptic sell CoH and CoV to NCSoft last year? And doesn't Matt Miller work for NCSoft these days? And isn't Cryptic developing a completely different Heroes MMO on the Champions license?

    I couldn't have said it better myself, unless, of course, I'd gotten it right in the article the first time around.

  • AHiFi #5 4 years ago

    Lol

  • Mox #6 4 years ago

    I always hoped there'd be a system like this where villain characters could make evil fortresses for heroes to attack, in a Dungeon Keeper kind of way. And vice-versa, of course. This sounds good, and so far City of Heroes has delivered pretty well. I always hoped for power customisation, so you could get the powers you want in a style that matches your character conception. E.g., characters that shoot all their powers out of their fists only, or their eyes only, or a cannon on their arm, instead of having power sets with a variety of expressions.

  • Res #7 4 years ago

    I thought heroes and villains could already attack each others bases, I never really played it enough to find out though. I got bored after getting my cape.

  • Mox #8 4 years ago

    Yes, you can raid each other's bases. But it's mano-a-mano PvP combat rather than PvE scenarios devised by players.

  • Mr_Dodger #9 4 years ago

    This could definitely drag me back. CoH/CoV has always been a good, solid experience, so it's great they're still working on innovation.

  • MrChuckles #10 4 years ago

    That sounds awesome, a whole Story Arc trying to defeat the evil Mr Chuckles!

    Dammit, i design computer games for a living, i can't do it in the evening too, but it's so tempting...

    if only you could design the bosses gfx etc...

  • Sar #11 4 years ago

    This could really liven up the game as whole. I haven't played in over a year, because I'd got my Hero to 50 and got pretty bored after doing everything in the game of note.

    But this has the potential to change all that.

  • SleepyMagpie #12 4 years ago

    Now, the report of ingame ads coming to CoX was most likely the nail in the coffin regarding this game - for me, but my admittedly cynical take on this new "just add your own content" move, is not a wholly positive one either.

    Of course, if this came as a side order to new content added by the devs, with new storylines and villains to take down for each side, it could only be a good thing. But following on the tail of the ingame ads, it could be seen as an exploitation of the CoX license by a mostly "brain dead" remaining crew. By brain dead I mean that the devs, the writers of storylines could still be back in Cryptic Studios, holed up making Champions Online, and those that sold out to NCSoft are mainly programmers and junior staff, and not really apt at writing riveting storylines.

    I loved spinning involved yarns for my P&P mates back in the day, but when you get home from work, most are too pooped to cook up interesting scenarios, and that's why many turn to online RPG's.

    This is one of those ideas that sound great, but might turn out really naff.

    Who knows? This isn't cause for any rejoicing on my part though... yet.