There's a new developer diary about City of Heroes to be found at IGN's today. In this fifth installment of the series, Jack Emmert, lead designer of the game, tells about the character reward system of his superhero project. The diary is actually quite an interesting read, as it shows you how far they stretched the typical MMORPG design rules, to make the genre fit to the setting. A snippet:
Abstractly, I considered that the best items make a given character better at the things he does. In other words, a wanted item makes the magic user a better spell caster - the thief better at picking locks, etc. If an item doesn't help a player's character, the player will quickly discard or trade it for something else. In the City of Heroes, players don't have body slots or inventories at all, because heroes typically don't wear armor or carry loot with them. But every hero does have powers. And even though two heroes could have the same basic powers, no two heroes are exactly the same. This eventually led to the idea of Specializations, which we later renamed Enhancements. |