City of Heroes mission editor delayed

NCsoft has delayed the Architect update to its superhero MMO City of Heroes, which was to allow players to design their own missions.

The game's next update - Issue 13 - is now retitled Power and Responsibility. It will contain all the other features planned for Architect, plus some new ones, including the an extension to the game's "sidekick" buddy system called Levelling Pact.

This feature allows you and a friend to synchronise XP over your characters so that they're always at the same level, even if one of you plays much more than the other; an idea that will come as a welcome relief to many MMO players.

Power and Responsibility also adds Multi-Builds, allowing you to keep two different versions of each of your characters. The Day Jobs, powersets and Merit rewards system planned for Architect will also be included.

Lead designer Matt Miller explained that the delay to the Architect mission editor was due to overwhelming player demand for the ability to create custom NPC characters for missions.

"Adding custom characters has always been on our Mission Architect feature list, but we had considered it a 'stretch goal'," Miller explained. "That is, we could launch the system without this feature because our confidence was high that the rest of the system was incredibly robust.

"But after listening to you guys, we realise that this feature simply must be in at launch," he said.

This the Architect update becomes Issue 14, and will be released in early 2009. Issue 13: Power and Responsibility will be released in the autumn this year.