City of Heroes Wrap Report

Development Timeline We formed Cryptic Studios in July, 2000. We didn't really start working on the game in earnest for a couple of months; we were still sort of feeling our way around. Our initial enthusiasm had us imagining a launch date of July 2002; we soon learned that was our naivete talking. We eventually launched in April, 2004 after a few hitches in the road.

The delay was due to our inexperience in the MMP field. There were a lot of design errors in the beginning - some stuff just ended up being not fun - and a few software mistakes. Mostly, however, we just didn't learn how to get organized until we had been working on the game for a while.

You can't quantify enjoyment; it's either there or it's not... While something might seem good on paper, that doesn't make it good in practice.

Changes and Enhancements The largest difference in the game we released was character creation. Initially, we started with a free form power selection system, where a player could essentially choose any power they wished. Internal playtesting soon revealed that players either chose poor combinations of powers or min / maxed themselves. Either way, there was a wide variety of power levels with even novice heroes. Players really didn't like learning that they weren't as good as another player; even worse, it became difficult to balance the villains properly against such a wide range of power levels.

We did not look at previous MMP examples of these free form systems; we were making the same mistakes that others had. So, we turned to an Archetype system, where we could guide the players' choices a little more, but still offer them a lot of room for individuality. Clearly, the change worked for the good, because many, many people are enjoying City of Heroes!

Major Challenges The biggest challenge we tackled was organization. How do you establish workflow on a project where just about every piece connects to something else? Every single decision we made had ramifications on other things; we learned to hold brainstorm meetings followed by intensive documentation reviews to make sure every angle of a situation was covered. All three departments - art, design and software - had to operate cooperatively on a daily basis.

A second major challenge was growth. We started out Cryptic Studios with five people; we're now a team of more than 30, and still growing. Management wasn't an issue until we started getting more than 20 employees. The Founders at that point couldn't really follow everything that was going on. We needed to find people to manage small teams - and they in turn would report to the overall director. Finding the right people for these management positions was quite tough.

Lastly, the hardest thing in game development is making a game fun. You can't quantify enjoyment; it's either there or it's not. In the early days, the designers would be frustrated that their ideas weren't panning out in actual gameplay. While something might seem good on paper, that doesn't make it good in practice. The design team needed to learn flexibility and to respond to internal playtesting.

Best Decisions The best decision we made was making a wide variety of costumes and powers available right from the start. In other MMPs, players typically need to strive for some time to attain any kind of unique appearance. We felt that players valued their avatar's look a great deal and, more importantly, superheroes wore lots of different costumes in the comics. We felt that it would have been too restrictive to make people "earn" costume pieces. Even more difficult would have been the choosing certain things as beginning level costume bits and those things that would be earned later. What's cool to one person isn't necessarily cool to another.

Key Strengths I think our Art Director, Matt Harvey, captured the perfect look and feel for a superhero MMP. Paragon City seems like a real place; its citizens need our help! The great art also extends to our villains and power effects - everything is top notch. And any mention of art and City of Heroes has to include our gorgeous costume creation system. A player can build just about any hero he's ever seen or imagined.

The second thing that really stands out is our combat. In comparison to other MMP titles, City of Heroes' battles are fast-paced. We intentionally made this decision so that players would feel like superheroes, rather than fantasy wizards or knights. More importantly, we made a design decision to have the players outnumbered by the villains. So instead of a full group concentrating all of its firepower on just a single foe, a group often needs to battle against two dozen snarling foes.

Lastly, I think our character creation system perfectly handled the needs of our game. Because the superhero genre has become so mainstream (movies, novels, etc.), many first time MMP players have picked up City of Heroes. At the same time, many veteran MMP players have turned to City of Heroes for a change of pace from their previous fantasy or sci-fi MMP game. We wanted to create a simple system that allowed the new player to get in and play right away, but also allow the deep gameplay that the experienced players expect. We did away with some core elements of typical RPGs, such as stats, to focus on the super hero essentials, namely super powers. And so far, so good. City of Heroes is fun right out of the box!