It seems to be a popular belief that all of the original ideas for an MMO have already been used in some fashion. Of course, this kind of small, defeatist thinking is fuel for the originality fire that seems to be raging over at NCsoft, as demonstrated in City of Heroes' new Architect system.

The Architect system gives players the ability to design their own missions and story arcs to share with the entire City of Heroes community. In yesterday's press release, NCsoft outlined some of the additions that players will see with the architect system. "Using an intuitive interface, players can browse through other player created missions and create their own missions from the ground up. Players will determine details ranging from environments, mission objectives, and enemies, to written fiction and character dialogue; giving their stories nearly infinite depth and personalization."

Players have been waiting for the mission architect for quite a while and the City of Heroes team has delayed it a number of times, to address requests voiced from those same players. "When we exposed our ideas to the players last year, they said 'Making missions is great, but what we really want is the ability to make our own enemies.' ... because of that we delayed the mission architect from the end of last year, to make sure we got our enemy editor into the system." said Matt Miller, Senior Design Lead on City of Heroes, at a press demonstration in San Francisco on Tuesday.  It's refreshing to see a company promise less than they eventually give the players. Typically, it's the other way around.

One of the initial questions I had about the beneficial mechanics was, "Why would players want to waste time with user created content if they weren't max level?" Well, when players engage in the user created content, they actually gain equivalent experience and rewards as they would outside of the missions architect system. Players can easily level from 1-50 playing only user created content. This creates opportunities for players to create their own game, totally unrelated to the City of Heroes story arc. I've actually been working on my own story arc about an invasion of Space Pirates and the Aquatic Ninjas that must defend the planet. It's a work in progress.

It's important to note how much opportunity exists for social networking and creating never ending replay value for anyone who plays. Spore is a good example of what I'm talking about. Though, since I've played both, I can safely say that the mission architect is much more addicting. To this degree, tools like the mission architect could, in fact, revolutionize the way MMOs are developed in the future, giving players the wheel when it comes to new content. Imagine an MMO where there was so much to do, you never had time to do the same quest or activity twice. In the words of Michael Cera's character in Superbad, "I mean, you know, that's the world I one day want to live in."

In the mission architect, NCsoft has done an amazing job of making the creation process as much fun for the creator as it is for the person playing their creations. "Once players are through with the story that you've built, they'll have the ability to actually rate that story from 1-5 stars. Depending on how well your stories are created, you, as the creator, will actually gain rewards that you can cash in within the game system. So there is a benefit to making content that people like to play. That's one of the goals of this feature." said Joe Morrissey, Senior Designer, while talking about the creation process.

Now that I've touched on post creation, it's relevant to point out that it's extremely simple for players to find an architect created mission that best suits what they're looking for. Fantastic search options exist that let you browse by title, length, date published, name of creator and, of course, the rating.  In addition to player ratings, there are special ratings like Developers Choice and Hall of Fame. The CoH team will be paying attention to creativity and making sure the players know which missions the developers consider outstanding with these ratings.  "I'm very interested to see the players who are really invested in our lore. [...] If there's something that's really cool out there, and there's a guy who really nails it with Shark Attack, and knows how to build awesome missions with the tool, yeah, we're going to call him in for an interview." Matt told us.

For the time being, players can't create new environments or include cut scenes like some of the more notorious missions in game presently. However, that's something the team is going to shoot for in the perspective future. Additionally, players are only permitted to publish three story arcs which can each hold five missions. Each mission can hold up to twenty five mission goals.  This is more than enough to keep anyone using the mission architect amused and engaged for months to come.

Despite these restrictions, I've never seen a more complete, not to mention more remarkable addition to an MMO. NCsoft hit a major artery with the mission architect. All that remains to be seen is how players will receive the new addition when Issue 14 makes its way to live servers within the next month. It's safe for me to give that timetable considering that NCsoft plans to unveil a new box set that will include City of Heroes & City of Villains with the Architect system and a booster pack code. The "City of Heroes: Architect Edition" box set will be available for both the PC and the Mac in April. Until that time, I'll be busy designing an army of Space Pirates for my story arc.

Andrew "Tamat" Beegle
Editor-in-Chief
ZAM.com