City of Villains Q&A - Final Thoughts

City of Villains, the stand-alone follow-up to last year's online role-playing game City of Heroes, will arrive in stores next week. And as its name suggests, this is a game in which you'll be able to create your own supervillain, whom you can adventure online with while living a life of crime, which is diametrically opposed to all the heroic deeds you did in City of Heroes. On the eve of the game's arrival, we caught up with Jack Emmert, creative director of City of Villains, for some final thoughts on the game.

GameSpot: Congratulations on finishing development on City of Villains. What were the team's top three goals of City of Villains, aside from the most obvious one of letting the player be "evil," and how were you able to achieve all of them?

Jack Emmert: The first was to allow players to create customized bases for their supergroups (a staple of comic books). Second was to create exciting player-versus-player content, where players contest one another for specific goals. Third was to create a new mythology for villain characters to unfold.

GS: We understand that City of Villains is a completely stand-alone game that doesn't require City of Heroes in order to play. Obviously, this might bring in new players who never played City of Heroes. So is the game as easy to pick up as City of Heroes, or even easier? What specific improvements have been made to the learning curve?

JE: We've improved the tutorial to cover topics, such as teaming up, in order to prep new players more thoroughly than before. We also have laid out the early level zones with a better feel for player flow and exploration.

GS: We understand that nuances, like letting grouped players complete missions together (rather than requiring them to continue doing each one separately), came from feedback from the City of Heroes fan community. How has this and other feedback shaped the development of City of Villains? What will current City of Heroes fans like most about the new game?

JE: We've added numerous tweaks to the user interface based upon player feedback from City of Heroes. Probably the most significant feedback we've taken is about our missions. At City of Heroes' launch, players complained about the repetition of mission types and tilesets. Over the past year of free expansions, we've gone back and customized a lot of City of Heroes' missions with art and tech so that they feel more unique. With City of Villains, we've done that from the very start. For example, after the first few missions, you'll find yourself fighting alongside Arachnos soldiers against an infestation of inhuman snake men.

GS: You might think that with City of Heroes under your utility belts, City of Villains must have been an easier job to take on than starting from scratch. Was it? What were some of the unique challenges you encountered in developing this new game?

JE: The number one problem: How do you make an online role-playing game about supervillains?

Readers might think it's an easy question to answer. After all, the game store shelves are full of "real crime" games inspired by Grand Theft Auto. That style of open-ended gameplay works great for a single- player game, but not so well for an online RPG. Why? Because several hundred people committing random crimes in a mile-by-mile area makes for nothing but nonstop chaos. What makes games like GTA work is that the player is the one committing the crimes within the context of a stable society. If a player were to, say, carjack someone in the middle of a city where there are carjacks going on everywhere, there wouldn't be enough cars to go around! The villain player loses any sense of immersion.

It's Good to Be Bad

JE cont'd: We needed to create a game environment where a player could still feel like a "bad guy," though without ruining the gameplay experience. Our solution was to make beginning players start out as prison escapees. They've got some power, but not a lot. The villain group Arachnos has sponsored a prison break in order to recruit new members into its ranks. Players are trying to make their mark in order to achieve a high rank within Arachnos. The crimes they commit are in instanced missions, rather than on the street, so that the sense of immersion isn't lost. The player and his teammates are the ones robbing the bank; you won't see anyone camping in front of a bank waiting to rob it!

GS: We understand that City of Villains includes new character abilities and new character professions, and also, the new game is closely linked with the original game now that villains will be able to clash with heroes. So, how difficult was it to balance City of Villains, both on its own and with respect to the first game?

JE: The year-plus work on City of Heroes really expedited balance issues. We knew what power combinations worked and which didn't. We had a wealth of player experience to draw upon. To be honest, the player-versus-environment experience was easier to do than City of Heroes. But PvP is another matter. That'll be an ongoing issue. So far, things seem great.

GS: Here's a follow-up question on character balance. We assume that as time goes by, more tweaks and adjustments need to be made to make sure all characters are on roughly equal footing. So how do you see villains stacking up against heroes in the long run? Will one side or the other be more reliant on having group members to support it? What kinds of unique strengths and weaknesses will villains have compared to heroes? How will those differences eventually guide players into choosing which characters to play as? Will villains be better suited to a specific type of player, for instance?

JE: Our focus on PvP has always been on teams, whether the players are villains or heroes. All "City" archetypes are made to work within the framework of a group. Hero archetypes tend to be more extreme in their abilities than villains. A tanker, for instance, has higher protection values than any villain archetype. The controller has stronger mez abilities than the nearest villain equivalent, the dominator. But all the villains have more damage capabilities (on average), and they also have unique abilities. To use the previous example, the brute builds up "fury"--the more damage he takes, the more he does.

GS: Do you have a personal favorite new feature in City of Villains in particular? Or perhaps it's a new area, or a new monster, or a new ability?

JE: I love how the archetypes work. I'm happiest that the villain archetypes play completely different than anything in City of Heroes.

GS: If we know our comic books (and we're not claiming we do), we're guessing that the battle between villains and heroes will go on for a while. But at some point, there may be a need to freshen up the conflict, possibly by banding heroes together with villains to face a new, more-powerful threat? In the future, can we expect to see an invasion of aliens or otherworldly creatures that forces heroes and villains to work together?

JE: You read my mind.

GS: Otherwise, what's next for the series? Do you have ideas for an all-new project, or is the plan to focus mainly on providing new content for the existing games?

JE: I've always got ideas for more games! But right now, the City franchise is my passion.

GS: Thanks as always, Jack.