City of Heroes Q&A

TotalVideoGames has conducted an interview with Cryptic Studios' Jack Emmert, in which the lead designer once again talks about City of Heroes. Here's a little something to get you started:
Q: Please tell us about how you can join with other superheroes and what if anything is the drawback in teaming up?

A: There's several ways to team up in City of Heroes. The first, and most common, way is the ad hoc team up. One player meets one or more players and they decide to do something together. A maximum of eight people can team up in this fashion; an XP bonus is given for every person in the team.

The most innovative team up method in City of Heroes is our Sidekick system. A high level player can '˜sidekick' with a low level character and artificially raises the Sidekick's level. This means that one friend who's been playing awhile can talk his buddies into starting the game and they can all still adventure together! This was a frequent problem I personally had in other games. By the time that I became interested in the MMP, or been convinced to play by others, my friends were on levels so much higher than me that I really couldn't enjoy playing. Our Sidekick system solves this issue.

In addition to our Sidekicks, we recently added the '˜Exemplar' system. This is the converse of sidekicking: a high level character can lower his level to match another player. This means that a high level character can help his lower level friend on beginning quests. It also means that the high level character can go back and content that he may have missed the first time.