Stolen me
A while back, a reader suggested that I talk about the five things that City of Heroes ought to steal from other games, inspired by a column written by our inimitable Ryan Green for a different game. (I've sadly lost the original mail through various cleanups of my inbox, so if the reader in question might speak up, that would be great.) In the wake of the big upgrades coming with Issue 19, now is a wonderful time to take a closer look at the things that would make fine additions from elsewhere.

Of course, part of the reason this took a while (as the reader noted in the mail) was that, truth be told, there are a lot of systems that Paragon Studios was either the first or darn near the first to innovate. How many games even have content-generation at the level of the Mission Architect? But there are still places where City of Heroes could take a lesson or two that (hopefully) wouldn't require rewriting the entire game from the ground up.

Guildleves (Final Fantasy XIV)

If you read the site and the stuff I write on a regular basis, you probably know that I love Final Fantasy XIV in a wholly platonic way only because it is not possible for me to love it romantically. If not, well, there you go. But one of the interesting aspects of the gameplay -- in fact, one of the central elements -- is the way that guildleves work. Essentially, you start a quest that takes place in the wider world, with enemies spawning in a certain location -- a quest that cannot be claimed by other players. You don't pop into an instance, but your targets are selected for you.

There's a well-known fact about street sweeping missions, and that's the fact that no one wants to do them if he can avoid it. Imagine if they just popped for you leve-style in the correct location. Imagine undertaking a personal mission without having to find the correct office building instance. I have to admit it's pretty darn tempting