Given that YOU are a Planeswalker when you play Magic, almost every Planeswalker relies on summoning creatures. I’d hope player options are more inspired by iconic spells from the same than from the design of Planeswalker cards, which are far more limited in comparison.
City of Heroes was a supreme MMO, so much character design, even the same “class” could be modified into your personal uniqueness. Healing with darkness (via damage) plays very differently from healing with radiation (mutates your target while you heal), tanking with Will Power too plays differently from Super Strength, the list could go on.
And Mastermind, Warshade, Widows, etc, that game allows you to play true hybrid in YOUR own way. I cannot complain.
Let’s not oversell CoH/V. Character creation and design was fantastic. The rest of the game had a lot of questionable elements. Repetitive missions leading to no real variety in leveling, total lack of interesting enemies (a world of superheroes and you never saw a super villain...yay, more thugs), not much endgame content... I still dream of a game that marries CoH character creation with diverse and varied gameplay.
I think that, to an extent, a lot of that simply goes with the MMO trappings. MMOs have always been, and likely will always be, built on repetitive gameplay elements. You're always going to have huge numbers of generic enemies to defeat just by shear virtue of MMO progression. They can't all be super villains, or the term "Super Villain" stops meaning anything.
I don't disagree that this WAS one of the game's problem areas, though for what it's worth, I think that CoH/V got better at this later on in its run. This was especially egregious back in the beginning.
I hope the trinity is in full force in this game. Games who tried to kick that aspect of MMOs out were dreadful.
City of Heroes (interestingly, the OG Cryptic designed game) did a good job of it.
It didn't try to completely reinvent the wheel. There were still class archetypes, not some sort of freeform "everyone can be everything" type of system. The Trinity classes were still PRESENT in the game (Tankers (Tank, duh), Defenders(Support) and Blasters/Scrappers(Ranged/Melee DPS respectively), but there were also Controllers which were a primary control focused archetype. Not like you see in most games (A 3second stun with a 1 minute cooldown), but to the point where if you had a competent Controller you could do without a Tanker or without a Defender, or sometimes even with them filling the DPS role depending on what powersets the controller had. (Which was another great thing with CoH, every archetype had an array of different Primary and Secondary powersets to chose from (1 of each) so you could have two characters of the same Archetype that performed wildly differently, only really sharing their core traits.)
CoH's Support was also a lot more than just "Heals" as well. In fact there were a few Support sets that lacked heals entirely. Support was far more centered around buffing and debuffing, essentially preventing damage rather than just recovering from it. Buffs also stacked from different casters, so you were never in a situation where adding a second player with the same support set was redundant and actually hurt your performance. In fact, some of the strongest teams in the game came in the form of All Defender groups, where stacking multiple buffs or multiple types of buffs from different sources could push everyone into Tank level survivability with pure DPS levels of damage output.
You COULD run a group strictly adhering to the Trinity (and some players even insisted on it, since that was the system they were used to), but you could really run content with almost any team buildup, and never NEEDED to strictly obey "Tank, Healer, 3 DPS." No tank? Get a Controller; They can lock down enemies enough that you don't have to worry about who has agro. No DPS? Add another Defender; they'll either buff everyone else's damage/recharge/resource recovery, or debuff enemy defense/resistance enough to make up the difference (possibly more than that, even). Don't have a Defender? Get a Controller; they'll neuter incoming damage and have enough support powers to mitigate anything that slips through.
I'd agree that Humans should be a generic default Race, and not tied to any color. They appear in large volume in every single color of Magic, so any sort of limitation would be contrived and awkward. Plus, White has other characteristic Races they could use (Kor and Leonin).
I'd do: 1 Human W Kor/Leonin U Merfolk/Vedalken (though I think I'd save Vedalken for a later content pack/microtransaction, since IMO they're not distinct enough from Humans, unless we're talkin the Mirrodin, four-armed version, which would require a distinct skeleton/animations to work) B Innistradi Vampire/Azra (Azra are still very new, but black has the problem where MOST of its characteristic Races simply can't hold a spark, so slim pickins) R Goblin G Elf
For Classes, I think Soldier, Cleric, Wizard and Rogue for base classes, branching into numerous options for Advanced Class. I feel like Cleric needs to be distinct from Wizard, because the source of their power and how they acquire it is very, VERY different. They're only contemporary in that they're magic users, but the same could be said about the relation between Soldier and Rogue (They're both melee based weapon users), so they should be distinct from each other.
They are. Champions Online has been in maintenance mode for ages, basically, and City of Heroes was super sweet but got shut down, sadly.
I think their Star Trek game is pretty ok, but man, passing hard here. Not looking forward to lootboxes and keys on every street corner.
Now, to be fair, Cryptic had long since sold off their stake in CoH before it got canned. That was entirely NCSoft's doing.
I'm willing to give Cryptic another chance on this one. Wizards has a vested interest in not being too greedy since the MMO will fuel card sales.
There's so much potential for an amazing MMO experience in the MTG IP. I'm delighted at the thought of running around casting the spells from the cards in an actual MMO, at visiting the planes in person. They could do some really interesting things with an open-ended class design that ties into the color pie. I hope they can pull it off!
I'll still keep an eye out for the game, it could prove decent. But Cyptic certainly doesn't inspire my confidence. This really seems to be Cryptic's standard MO. Acquire rights to develop game for popular, established IP. Half-ass it and turn in a game designed entirely on farming the wallets of your consumer base, then let it crash and burn.
While I was a huge fan of City of Heroes and played it basically from release to shut down, nothing else Cryptic has ever done has impressed me, and in fact the blatant money-grabbing nature of all of their other games (whether the studio's fault, or the distributors or who-evers) has seriously damaged the company's reputation for me. The the point where reading that it was being done by Cryptic essentially killed any budding excitement I might have had for the project.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I think that, to an extent, a lot of that simply goes with the MMO trappings. MMOs have always been, and likely will always be, built on repetitive gameplay elements. You're always going to have huge numbers of generic enemies to defeat just by shear virtue of MMO progression. They can't all be super villains, or the term "Super Villain" stops meaning anything.
I don't disagree that this WAS one of the game's problem areas, though for what it's worth, I think that CoH/V got better at this later on in its run. This was especially egregious back in the beginning.
City of Heroes (interestingly, the OG Cryptic designed game) did a good job of it.
It didn't try to completely reinvent the wheel. There were still class archetypes, not some sort of freeform "everyone can be everything" type of system. The Trinity classes were still PRESENT in the game (Tankers (Tank, duh), Defenders(Support) and Blasters/Scrappers(Ranged/Melee DPS respectively), but there were also Controllers which were a primary control focused archetype. Not like you see in most games (A 3second stun with a 1 minute cooldown), but to the point where if you had a competent Controller you could do without a Tanker or without a Defender, or sometimes even with them filling the DPS role depending on what powersets the controller had. (Which was another great thing with CoH, every archetype had an array of different Primary and Secondary powersets to chose from (1 of each) so you could have two characters of the same Archetype that performed wildly differently, only really sharing their core traits.)
CoH's Support was also a lot more than just "Heals" as well. In fact there were a few Support sets that lacked heals entirely. Support was far more centered around buffing and debuffing, essentially preventing damage rather than just recovering from it. Buffs also stacked from different casters, so you were never in a situation where adding a second player with the same support set was redundant and actually hurt your performance. In fact, some of the strongest teams in the game came in the form of All Defender groups, where stacking multiple buffs or multiple types of buffs from different sources could push everyone into Tank level survivability with pure DPS levels of damage output.
You COULD run a group strictly adhering to the Trinity (and some players even insisted on it, since that was the system they were used to), but you could really run content with almost any team buildup, and never NEEDED to strictly obey "Tank, Healer, 3 DPS." No tank? Get a Controller; They can lock down enemies enough that you don't have to worry about who has agro. No DPS? Add another Defender; they'll either buff everyone else's damage/recharge/resource recovery, or debuff enemy defense/resistance enough to make up the difference (possibly more than that, even). Don't have a Defender? Get a Controller; they'll neuter incoming damage and have enough support powers to mitigate anything that slips through.
Man, I miss that game.
I'd do:
1 Human
W Kor/Leonin
U Merfolk/Vedalken (though I think I'd save Vedalken for a later content pack/microtransaction, since IMO they're not distinct enough from Humans, unless we're talkin the Mirrodin, four-armed version, which would require a distinct skeleton/animations to work)
B Innistradi Vampire/Azra (Azra are still very new, but black has the problem where MOST of its characteristic Races simply can't hold a spark, so slim pickins)
R Goblin
G Elf
For Classes, I think Soldier, Cleric, Wizard and Rogue for base classes, branching into numerous options for Advanced Class. I feel like Cleric needs to be distinct from Wizard, because the source of their power and how they acquire it is very, VERY different. They're only contemporary in that they're magic users, but the same could be said about the relation between Soldier and Rogue (They're both melee based weapon users), so they should be distinct from each other.
I'll still keep an eye out for the game, it could prove decent. But Cyptic certainly doesn't inspire my confidence. This really seems to be Cryptic's standard MO. Acquire rights to develop game for popular, established IP. Half-ass it and turn in a game designed entirely on farming the wallets of your consumer base, then let it crash and burn.