Article dives deeper in game play for SoH...

ARTICLE TEXT Part 2: One of the things that rapidly became clear as we spoke was how much Heroic Games values community. They are building their game from the ground up with the community in mind. And yes - there is sidekicking! Casey stressed how important it was to him that level 1 characters be able to group and have fun with higher level characters right off the bat. They won't have as many tools in their toolkit, but even so, they can be sidekicked up to join in on whatever adventures are happening around them. It was clear that the community comes first even with things like raiding. As we were walking, I kept seeing little signs along the roads, and when I asked about them I was told they would mark raid progress. "If you remember City of Heroes, you had all sorts of raids there. You had Hamidon, Rikti mothership battles, you had my favorite, Rikti invasions. What I liked about Rikti invasions is that if you had a new level 1, and you were looking around, someone would invite you onto a team. And even if your team leader was level 50 and you were 1, you could still join in and be effective. They would sidekick you up to level 49. We want to do that, we want to have raid content where it doesn't matter what level you are. Although I do say that with a proviso, because if you're actually level 1 you're only going to have a couple of powers, and it will be more difficult for you. But you should be able to join in and have fun. Then we moved on to the next area. We circled around what looked like empty sand dunes, stretching out along a river. Off in the distance I saw a landmark that was reminiscent of the Golden Gate Bridge. I was informed that this area was being left empty deliberately - it was intended to be populated as part of an effort to bring the community into the game even at this early stage. It's going to be a hazard zone, and when it's time to fill it up they will look to the community. "We deliberately left it blank," Casey explained as we flew above it, "so that we could engage our community and ask what they want to see in our hazard zone. What kind of monsters? What kind of dangers? What do you want to see here?" And he once again commented on the importance of community, and how important it was to him that players be able to play the characters they wanted to play. "We don't want to force players to play our story. We think super hero games should enable you to be a creator of the story. Be your own hero. Create your own backstory." It is worth noting that we also discussed powers, and while they were not ready to reveal specifics, that freedom to create is carried through into powers as well. Like City of Heroes, players will have access to powers and slots to customize those powers. But that is where the similarity ends. Want to dump all your slots onto just one power? You'll be able to do that. You'll also be able to stack the same enhancement type into that same power if you really want to super specialize. The cost of that freedom is that not all builds will work out, but they feel that the freedom to do that, the freedom to create and explore possibilities is more important than locking characters down into easily predictable templates. Customization and being able to build the hero that you want to play is the name of the game in Ship of Heroes.

If you're a long term super hero fan, you've probably been wondering - but wait Nephthys! You mentioned day jobs! And so I did. My husband is a supers fan, and one of the things that has disappointed him with every supers game we've tried is the lack of day jobs. Heroes are not heroes every minute of every day, after all! Ship of Heroes is addressing that absence. Casey talked about engineering jobs, medical jobs, securities, trading, and bounty hunting, each with their own missions, contacts, and rewards. Day jobs will be where you can obtain crafting recipes for rare and valuable items related to the type of field you've entered. He mentioned such things as schematics for temporary powers like invisibility and life and power buffs. You will be able to work through all of them if you want to take the time, but my impression was that it would take some real time and dedication to acquire all of them. And then he uttered the magic phrase. And while I cannot help but feel some skepticism after all the times this has been promised but left undelivered, what I was seeing during my tour was rock solid enough that I find myself daring to hope that this time, in Ship of Heroes, it will actually happen:

"We're not making a race to the end type of game. It's the journey that's important, we're about the journey."

/r/Cityofheroes Thread Link - 2p.com