One of my first MMO experiences was City of Heroes, which was a superhero MMORPG set in the fictional city of Paragon. The different character classes were different roles in a good party: The long range, low-health blaster; the high-health, low-damage, party-buffing defender; the high-health, high-damage tank; the low-health, low-damage, party debuffing controller; and the self-buffing, short-range, high damage scrapper. This game got so many things right and yet they still ended up failing their player base and losing it. There were player crafted missions, there was a cutthroat cross-server in-game item market, there were conventions and contests. It seemed like City of Heroes would remain a strong contender for years to come. But the makers made crucial missteps that scuttled the game. In a multiplayer environment with hyper-attentive and critical players in a game dealing with a lot of numbers, the developers frequently implemented sweeping nerfs to many classes. While adjusting values for PvP is important, there were a large percentage of gamers that were only interested in PvE gameplay and wanted to avoid the high stress PvP environment. So nerfs helped balanced the battle interactions between the players, but it ruined the party dynamic. Additionally, the nerfs were frequently too severe, occurring too rapidly, and made the game much less fun. Another problem with City of Heroes was there were many problems they simply ignored while new content was generated. They would dazzle the player community with new areas zones and missions while the existing material remained either half done or broken. One last thing I’d like to remember about City of Heroes was that, throughout the majority of the game’s popularity, it was a subscription based game. They did try to transition to a free model, but it was implemented so badly it turned people away from it. The hope of a gamer when they commit to a subscription based service is that the developers will be able to work on it exclusively and relentlessly, and in many ways City of Heroes delivered. Fast support, developer and server updates, and active forum admins were a welcome change. The player community was active and invested. I know people who played it from its beta to the day the servers shut down. It’s just a shame to see a thriving community disperse, like when Firefly was cancelled.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 04:43:09 +0000
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