With a game that has been around for over three years, things begin to crop up and one of their programmers had a laundry list of things he'd always wanted to fix or add, but never had a chance. They set him loose and in Issue 12, the players will get to see what he's done.
"[We're] making the game a lot easier for players to manipulate on their end," Miller explained. He also talked about little tweaks, like for example a temporary boost when a player levels up. Now, they get a bonus and truly get to feel the surge of power that rushes through everyone after they hear that level up tune.
He's also excited about the addition of traditional RPG branching tree dialogue, something they didn't have in City of Heroes until this Issue and will now begin to use quite a bit.
"In this issue it's just the test bed for it, we got the tech late into the development process so we were not able to use it everywhere we wanted to," said Miller.
This allows them to put options into conversations or theoretically do things like present players with situations like which wire to cut when diffusing a bomb. It sounds simple, but it makes their options as mission designers much greater.
Miller could not - however - comment on whether they plan to go back over old content and backwards integrate this technology.
Along with the renewed focus on City of, NCsoft has also undertaken a number of new initiatives within the game. Traditionally, they have always released small bites of content for players to buy and enjoy if they so choose and that has continued after the transition.
They also recently announced a decision to add optional advertising to the game. This worries some fans, but seems to make sense in a more contemporary/Sci-Fi setting that City of offers.
"It's actually been received very well," said Miller of their announcement. "We wanted to make sure that we affected our user experience as little as possible."
As such, they first plan to integrate it only on logical places, such as the billboards that decorate the cities of City of Heroes and Villains. They also have their art director hard at work with potential advertisers to ensure that every advertisement that enters the game fits with the setting and style.
If that's not enough, players can simply go into their interface and turn off all advertisements. No penalties, no questions asked. Obviously, Miller hopes they leave them on - it helps fund the game's continued expansion and development - but he doesn't have an interest in forcing players to be subjected to something they didn't sign up for.
Issue 12 is currently in Beta, in advance of its roll-out on the live City of Villains and Heroes servers.
