We have had the chance to chat to Cryptic’s Bill Roper, Design Director and Executive Producer of Champions Online, all about the launch, current status and the future of the title.
Techulous: Are you pleased with how well Champions Online has taken off since it was first launched?
Bill: The game is really finding a solid base of players that make up our wonderful community. As with any game, we’re always looking to bring more players into the world, and we’ve been focusing on having our players help spread the word about what they love about the game. We’re all very excited about the huge amounts of work of we’ve done since the launch of the game, and what we have in the pipeline for our players.
Techulous: What will players find in the upcoming Blood Moon update released in time for Halloween?
Bill: New Power Set: Celestial! Our first new power set being added to Champions Online, Celestial is a support and healing based set with dual-purpose abilities.
Dawn of the Undead Heroes! Takofanes has trapped the souls of the Heroes who fell during the Battle of Detroit and are commanding them to spread ruin across Millennium City! Players who can save all 13 Undead Heroes will unlock the Celestial power set two weeks before anyone else!
BITE! Players will have the chance to join the Wolf Hunters and rid the land of the abominable Werewolves. However, falling to one of the beasts will force you to rise under the curse and become one yourself.
Rise of Takofanes! The Undying Lord has risen, and is appearing throughout Millennium City. Those who are strong enough to defeat his retinue will receive unique perks and rewards only available during the Blood Moon event.
Zombie Apocalypse! A brand new PvP map is here to stay! Survive as long as you can as endless waves of zombies approach, but beware, because those defeated will rise as a zombie and become the enemy.
The event runs through November 10th, and you can some very detailed information on Blood Moon at http://champions-online.com/bloodmoon
Techulous: With the Halloween theme of Blood Moon, do you foresee more theme based updates, perhaps Christmas?
Bill: We’ll have some special things happening both during the months of November and December. We’re working incredibly hard to have a steady stream of new features and events for our players. The greatest thing about an MMO is the ability to continue to grow and improve the experience, so keep an eye on our website for more information as it becomes available.
Techulous: Do you plan to add more low and mid-level content in the near future?
Bill: We actually just released two all-new mission chains in Millennium City that fall into the 18 – 21 level ranges. We’ll also be adding more content throughout all of the game as time goes by to offer different development paths for new heroes to follow. We’re also looking at adding more end-game content for our high-level heroes. There’s always more content we can add!
Techulous: With the upcoming release of Star Trek Online – do you have two separate teams working on both games so that Champions Online will continue to have added content?
Bill: We’ve always had separate teams on Champions and Star Trek Online, and we’re keeping a solid team on Champions to ensure that we keep making content for our players. Of course, just as some of the STO crew chipped in before we launched, we’ve had some of the Champions developers coming in on weekends to help out. The huge benefit that Star Trek has is that the tools are so much further along now than they were for much of the Champions development schedule. And since both games share a development platform and engine, it’s been easy our team for us to help out in any way we can while still keeping Champions as our top priority.
Techulous: Has there been any more progress on the Xbox 360 release of Champions Online?
Bill: We’ve been focusing on graphics performance, UI, and chat right now – so yes, we’re still quite active on the development of the 360 version.
Techulous: How are player comments being taken onboard to shape the future of the game?
Bill: We spend a huge amount of time on our forums talking with our players and looking to them for much of what we do next. We take both direct requests and also the spirit of those interests to create new content and game systems for Champions Online. Many of the changes and additions we’ve done since launch are in direct response to our players’ desires, such as the numerous alterations we made to the Power House, or coming up with the new Zombie Apocalypse map.
Techulous: What can we expect from the game in the future?
Bill: We have a lot of things in the pipeline, including a new Nemesis-centric lair in November, a Winter Event in December, and something really big in the first part of 2010. And of course, we’ll continue to fix issues as they arise, balance the game, and come up with other tweaks and content as we go through the next few months in deep into the following year!
Looks great!
as far as the cartoon look that people are complaining about the game is made to look like a super hero comic book that is why there are the outlines, and because of the outlines it pulls of the look very well. There has never been another MMO to my knowledge that has allowed you to mix and match your powers freely with out any penalty, and the customization is unmatched in other mmo and most console games. The game is still very new so a lot of problems are going to happen, it happens with all mmo’s and even console launches have problems. New content also takes time they have to make it then play test and so on. I agree the game is not perfect but no game is, but some people can find things to love about the game while others can’t, it happens.
Still can’t get over the look of the game, far to cartoony for me. Even so, I hope that the game improves and becomes something that I could eventually like.
However, the problems they had with their “free weekend” over Halloween weekend and the inability to even download it was a huge strike against the game for me and several others. Shoot, my friends who actually bought the game don’t even play anymore.
Still, I’m willing to check the game out in another 6 months or so after they’ve added more content and hopefully addressed several of the other flaws the game has at the moment. I wish them luck.
You were on the public server. I had the same problem when I tried to do the free beta. But there are NO download issues like the one you experienced once you purchase the game. In fact, it is all going much smoother than at launch.
I question that statement regarding “NO download issues after purchase” as I purchased the game online on the yhursday before the free weekend and it took around 12 hours to download the game client after several stallouts on Saturday during the free weekend. After the free weekend” was over I downloaded the client again for installation on another PC in my house and it took only 2 hour to download with no stallouts at all.
Also, if you look at the actual download path of the link to download the client you will see that the link is the same whether you are logged into a valid account or not so it looks to me that we all suffered the same issues during the “Free Weekend” whether we were paid subscribers or not.
Psicho is a fanboy, just ignore him. I can imagine how long it must have taken to patch for someone that didn’t have all the game data before then, because when I was downloading a tiny, dinky little bug fix patch around the beginning of the free weekend it took me nearly 10 minutes to get, so if he had to download the full game I’d imagine it probably took hours.
That’s not to say that other games don’t have long download times during a new patch, I remember during the mission architect update in CoX I couldn’t even get the patch because the servers were so overloaded, and that wasn’t even a free weekend. But my point is, idiots like Psicho will tell you just about anything to support their fanboyism, and Cryptic really does need to get on the ball here. I mean, the server crashes almost every Saturday like clockwork, you’d think they’d be ready for it by now.
Funny thing, My man. Wow still has server crashes and issuesdownloading patches after what, 5-6 years.. And don’t think about actually playing half the srvers on Tuesday morn “after” the maintenance. this isn’t a new issues for any any mmo.
WoW is the Microsoft Windows of MMOs. WoW’s servers crash because it’s Blizzard doesn’t care enough to make them not crash, and it’s so big people put up with it’s bull hockey. That doesn’t make it right, in fact that’s all the more reason to people to be fed up with that kind of crap.
Also, this is coming from a large portion of the same people who made CoH, and they got the whole stable and smooth MMO thing down pretty well. They’ve have their rough patches, the occasional rubberbanding and lag during stuff like the invasions or a slow patch server, but crashing servers and mysteriously vanishing character data is something you wont find there. You’d think they would have taken whatever they learned there with them to Champions, but time and time again they manage to prove they’ve forgotten everything.
And no, they’re not new issues for a new MMO. And that’s the problem, MMO after MMO has come out buggy, full of holes, exploits, server issues and everything else in the way of technical problems, and MMO developers and/or their publishers don’t seem to even want to try and do a better job of ensuring a smooth launch. This is going to hurt in the long run, as more and more MMOs launch like this and less and less people are willing to put up with it, we’ll end up seeing more and more MMOs crash and burn out of the gate.
Really, it comes down to one of two things: Developers not knowing what the heck they are doing, or greed. In this case, Champions seems to have suffered from a combination of the two, and in all honestly if one or the other wouldn’t have not been an issue, it would have launched much smoother. Unfortunately, the Champions devs made a bunch of rookie mistakes, and the game was pushed out early, probably by Atari, and it’s lucky it’s servers are as stable as they are.
Balance and bug wise, on the other hand, not so much: The nerf bat didn’t’ stop swinging for a full month and a half, they still haven’t gotten around to buffing the powers that were under performing in the first place, and there are still dozens and dozens of bugs that were known about since beta (alpha if you believe some of the people on the forums) that haven’t been fixed yet. Really, if they would have just waited to launch till the Christmas season, and ran some full scaled closed beta testing followed by a longer period of open beta, they would have had a more solid launch and would have turned a bigger profit.
Gah, lots of typos in there. The right side of the page formating ate the text box and I couldn’t see half of what I was typing. Shouldn’t be too hard to understand anyway.
As for the ” cartoony” feel you do realize that the game is MEANT to give the feel of a comic right? Keeping that in mind there is still an option to turn off the outlines which cuts the ” cartoony” feel down a lot. I dont know what game you are coming from but graphically the game has a nice feel that fits the genre very well. I have been playing since OB and I agree there is a lot that needs to be fixed with the game a big part is the CB was not set up in a way that gave the testers ample test time with the restrictive schedule they were given to test in each week. Since launch the live players have IMHO turned out better results from the devs as to geting them to alter things that should not have gone live. However in their haste to ” Fix ” things they are listening to far to many QQ and over nerfing ability’s in to dust due to a few PvPers lack of intellect/ skill to avoid/negate the ability’s.
I will admit that when I first started playing and was in the avatar creation part of character creation I was shaking my head because of the ‘cartooniness’ of the game.
In the game the uniforms and bodies look a lot better because of the reflections and effects and so forth. And because they are bodies in motion and you aren’t zoomed in 20X looking up the nose.
I also usually run at least 2 mmo accounts at once to keep from getting bored with any particular game.
I have one now. It is Champions Online.
Lok – It aint even cartoony if you have the outlines off* This game makes wow look like a saturday morning children’s programme (and so do many others for that matter) lolz.
This games is awesome!
Can’t agree on the other comments. This game looks fun in the beginning but it gets boring really fast, even for a casual gamer.
Been with the game since launch and i got burned out on this game already a month ago and i haven’t even been going overboard with the playing times.
Started playing Fallen Earth and that game got me totally hooked up.
They can add new content all they want. It wont change the fact that it is just a mediocre game.
Have to disagree. I play everyday, was in the beta testing (not the free beta) and am still having a blast. I am looking forward to the new content as well. I am also a huge fan of the superhero genre, however, and never played CoH.
We are hoping to do monthly coverage of the game on the site so keep the comments coming. We are very new so are still getting to grips with our posts, hope you enjoy the site.
Video games are one of those things you can argue all day and night with each other about on whether or not they’re any good because everyone has different tastes in them. For instance, I’ve had no trouble getting into and continuing to enjoy this game since head start, but with WoW it was like pulling teeth trying to get into it for me.
So just saying you like it or not really doesn’t matter, discuss the specific things you like or dislike about a game. That’ll actually give people an idea of what to expect from it.
As for the server issues – yeah, I’ve gotten pretty sick of it myself but shit happens man. That’s why I have other games or even other hobbies that don’t involve extended periods of sitting around; so I can do something else in my down time if my current MMO interest is experiencing its own brand of down time. =P The game is still fairly new here, give it a little more than like what two months live now? I’m sure the kinks will get worked out eventually.
I got NWN2 on release day and regretted it for about two or three months because Atari rushed the release and the devs weren’t necessarily happy with how everything was yet, and that’s exactly what publishers want to do. They just want to get it out there and get their money, the people more involved want it to really shine and then they look bad when the product is rushed for a deadline they realized wasn’t actually going to work with what was left to do.
There is the foundation for a really good game in Champions Online but it has some problems. For starters, the regular weekend server outages are pretty stupid two months after release.
Beyond that though, the game has exactly enough content to get you to Lv40 and not an ounce more. It’s the big failure in the game that you have the ability to create massively unique heroes and each of those heroes are forced to live out the exact same story because they all do 100% identical mission paths.
Some people complain about content holes at certain levels but I think adding the crime computer to point you to available missions has helped people around that. And you can get XP from other people’s missions in a group, but those missions will either be something that you’ve already done or will be doing eventually.
Beyond that, because the game doesn’t have classes that have inherent strengths and weaknesses, characters are designed to be self sufficient with an emphasis on offense. Every challenge can be overcome with firepower. Grouping is only necessary (and desirable) in situations where you just need more firepower.
The sidekicking system is very easy to use and makes it simple to put together groups of heroes of varying levels but it also makes it easy to trivialize content. You get most of your XP from missions not kills so if you get a lv40 friend and sidekick up to complete your missions, you get full XP value when you complete it. They’ve essentially built in power leveling tools.
And, at the end of the game, the high level UNITY mission content is still incomplete or not working properly so there really isn’t a lot to do at lv40.
Having played City of Heroes at launch until ‘ED’ I really wanted to love this game. I followed the development of Champions Online since it was Marvel Universe Online. The graphics were stunning, the concept of a nemesis was awesome, complete customization in terms of powers and costume was great, semi destructable environments – EXCELLENT!! & there was an underwater realm. It seemingly picked up where City of Heroes left off.
Purchased the game at launch.
However upon closer inspection, the graphics did seem too ‘cartoony’, even with that ugly black border turned off. The animations were not as dynamic as City of Heroes. The settings of a Canadian Wilderness, a Desert, Monster Island & Lemura didn’t feel appropriate to a superhero genre (just my opinion). Perhaps most frustrating was the lack of content & broken missions.
The game does not favor ‘grinding’ or ‘street sweeping’ as a feasible way of advancing to the next level, characters must depend on missions. Further the majority of these missions are designed for single player. (Personally I would have liked the option to team up with others, but the game gives little incentive for this). Further, some of these missions are broken. i.e Trumping the Shark.
Having completed all the missions I could find I spent level 39 to level 40 killing the same 6 master villians around the temple in Lemuria.
Additionally there were several times where I experienced lag spikes, screen freezes, & rubber banding while on a 5 person team. I had to leave the mission, without apologies as the text I typed turned up approx. 3 mins later.
Curiously in discussing these issues with other players, I’ve encountered the argument that the game is new; that Cryptic should be cut some slack & we should make allowances for these difficulties. For me I cant get over the fact that I’m paying for this experience. I am not a Beta Tester. This was NOT what I envisioned when I enthusiastically purchased the game. I dont remember City of Heroes being this unpolished at launch.
I wanted a whole game. Not a game with holes. I really wanted to love Champions Online (I loved City of Heroes at launch). I wanted to imurse myself in the realms. Unfortunately the lack of missions, the forced solo play, the technical issues, undermine the experience. My account is still active, but I just dont care about Champions Online. Playing this game has been an excercise in frustration & disappoitment.
You obviously haven’t played many MMO’s from launch. Thats the way most MMO’s are its really nothing new. A couple of broken missions is nothing to crap your pants over. I understand where your coming from when you talk about the lack of incentive to team.
Seriously though if you have that high of expectations for MMO’s out of launch you should stay away from them altogether until the companies can get their shit together. Its just the way it is, take it or leave it.
Thanks Camden…. im leaving it…….
You didn’t play CoH at launch.
If the issues this game had at launch bothered you that much, you definitely would not have loved it.
The leveling from 1-50 in CoH within the same 3 mission maps doesn’t bother you – then by all means please go back and play ‘mission architect online’
Enjoy yourself!!
qq u…..
Thanks 4 taking the time 2 read & respond 2 the post…..
But… who are you to state that I did not play CoH at launch?
Were you monitoring the programs on my computer?
I really love the game. For me, it’s a great second MMO, with my “serious” grouping and raiding on WoW.
In this game, I can create any hero I want, log in for an hour, and have a great time with family and friends killing some evildoer or in a nemesis battle.
It’s light fun, with a good sense of humor, and the performance and reliability for the last couple weeks have been really good. I really enjoy the graphics and the gameplay. The scripted Nemesis events are just a blast.
I think the planned lairs and improvements to the LFG sections will REALLY make the game shine, though I’m a satisfied customer right now.
I was once an avid COH player, and too see the steps from COH to Champions is nothing short of astonishing.
This is still a very new game, and bugs are a part of the proccess to find the path to perfect. From what I’ve read about future content and future ideas this is shaping up to be something phenominal.
I’ve been playing since day one release and although I haven’t posted this before, I have no real BIG issues with the game. Sure, there are things that could be better, but the same could be said about any game…ANY game.
So keep up the good work Cryptic, and you’ll have at least one die hard fan on your side.
I really fell in love with this game when I saw the customization options. The power sets are amazing on paper. I have had hours of fun on the character creator screen but I only actively play two heroes. My highest level is 30 and I am finding missions a real bore right about now. Also disappointed with the lack of group content not to mention raid content is null and void. I really enjoy grouping and loved the idea of a big group of super heroes fighting a tough master villian, but I must admit at level 30 I am starting to believe myself that this game is not finished. This is the first game I have ever played an MMO from release and I am thankful for that. I have found enjoyment in MMOs much more after they have made their changes and become a polished product normally a year after release.
I can’t say I have ever liked WoW, it was the worst of grinds and leveling was the most boring in that game than in any I’ve played. And I didn’t even pick up that piece of junk until after WOLK. WoW is a great game if you can’t afford a decent CPU to run a better game (IE every other MMO). I did enjoy Everquest 2 which I did not pick up until the ROK expansion.
I do realize most games will be lacking in terms of content at release. In honesty will probably cancel my subscription to this game even though I really want to support it and I think it has great potential, it is not worth $14.99/mo when I don’t even play it at the moment. The game is really lacking exciting events and zones. The Blood Moon event was horrible and possibly just as rushed as the release of the game. The event is centered around freeing 13 heroes who have no background or meaning, they all say essentially the same thing when you rescue them, you fight the same boss for every hero you rescue and the instance is almost exactly the same except for one variation. Couple that with the fact that the instance doesn’t even scale with your level so if you’re a level 30, you can basically just fly by all the trash mobs and go straight to the name. And you had to do the same instance, kill the same boss, and free the same hero (with a different name) 13 times. I was really disappointed in the event.
I hate missing out on any new content and testing new powers but the sub fee each month isn’t worth it for me. I have stayed optimistic about this game for a very long time really vouching for it and recommending it, but playing the game has really become a bit of a chore. I think anyone who leaves this game should definitely return like I plan to in a few months, but I don’t blame anyone for leaving right now as I don’t feel this is a finished game at the time either. Bugged quests and long patches are the least of my concern. I just want content and replay ability. Cryptic can expect me back in a few months to check out what improvements they’ve made, and I really hope they take this project seriously and do their best to perfect it. I wish my pockets were deep enough to keep supporting the game at this stage. That’s my two cents.
Read most of these posts. This one is almost dead on, Yume you did a good job at explaining the pros and cons and being “fair.” I too was unimpressed with Blood Moon. Only thing I really think was done well was “zombie apocalypse.”
However, I will keep my subscription going for the simple reason of I have gone back to WoW 3 times since I officially quit and I just can’t do it again. Having lost my subscription I don’t even want to think about leveling to 70 again (I realize its 80 now). Champions can give me a short burst of fun for an hour or so, something that WoW could only achieve by PvP’ing and leveling (which is SOOOOOO BORING). Hell logging on and creating a character gives me great satisfaction especially when you want to just sit down and get some quick playtime in.
Champions Online can and I think will be better than CoH (if it already isn’t) it just needs some time. When Bill talks about responding to what the players request, for the most part is VERY important. Now all they need to do is give healers an incentive in PvP. Seems like dps gets way more of an experience and acclaim bonus.
Pardon my grammar and spelling, I just got off work and its 2:00 AM.
BEDTIME!
man these comments are really insightful and interesting. *grabs popcorn*
I want popcorn…
I do agree with Yume and Battalion in regards to Champions. I also was very excited about this game. I am a 6 month subscriber and I feel this one has great potential. I actually like the comic book art style better than CoH which I played for 4 years. I still love making characters.
However, I do think they missed the mark on a couple of key principles of mmo games.
1. Players need to know their role. Class role or primary skill helps us know what our primary function is to the team. Champions allows us to choose the best of the best powers and allows us to customize our role… guess what. Unless your teaming with a regular group. We all choose a DPS build for soloing and most players never change from “balance” stance.
2. Teaming up is a KEY principle that should be fun in a MMO. Provide an incentive to teaming!! However, Champions has poor teaming mechanics. The LFG interface was pretty much non existent because teaming wasn’t required. No Voice. If missions aren’t designed to need a balanced team with Support / Healers /& Tanks then why even have the stance system.
3, The experience gain is too heavy on missions which makes it difficult to team up because it guaranteed that someone is getting screwed out of the optimal xp rate. As far I as knew the sidekick system allows a higher level player to move down, but you can’t upgrade a lower level player and play in zones outside your level? For example a lvl 10 toon can’t team up and go to Monster Island.
4. Balance. If the game is going to have PVP then it has to “try” to balance the powers. Otherwise, it causes too many issues. In my opinion they should have focused more on teaming and mid-high level raid content and not even bothered with PVP.
2cents and still xing my fingers
Bugs bugs and more bugs but its expected for a new MMO. Il play it for now but if i hear the 360 version is being scrapped (lets face it we are all expecting that) then im done and il buy a PS3 for DCUO next year. I just wish they would stop giving one line answers regarding the xbox version. Its basically a “yeah..um..er..were tweaking the bumplewhatzits and adjusting the whopledinkers” I read a few months ago the 360 version was ready to go and the “huge slow moving beast” Microsoft was to blame for the delay. Now they are fixing the controller issues on one website and tweaking the UI on another.
Just give us a god damn release date and stick to it. Or better yet why not just tell us its never going to happen and stop pulling on our dicks. The 360 thread in the forum was removed ..GASP.. and there is no information regarding the developement. Big mistake guys there are a lot more dedicated console players than PC these days and its moving in that direction. PC gaming is doing the slow die thing arcades did. Dying but twitching and still fighting for life..hahahaha
I bought CO about 2 days after launch and have been playing it pretty regularily since launch. I have now ended my subscription so can only play on till the 12th of this month.
CO at the start is excellent, up to about level 20 I loved the game but then I realised there wasn’t really anything else. Up to 30 you have just three zones to explore and the difficulty of finding content will lead you to dispair. Replay value is nil as there is only enough content to play through once, you will do nothing different playing through again and cant explore anywhere new.
As for the powers there aren’t as many as people claim most are exactly the same only the animations change depending on your powerset. For example a fire attack does no more damage to an ice monster than an ice attack, no effect is taken into account for the type of attack this is bizarre and simplistic. Most powersets simply have an AoE that you spam to kill weaker enemies outright, your playstyle as a munitions expert is no different from your playstyle as a gadgeteet or an archer. likewise while there are many melee powersets you just spam one attack style no matter what weapon you are holding.
Also the ability to pick from more than one powerset is deeply flawed, PvP for a casual gamer is impossible as hardcores simply have PvP designed characters with powers from maybe half a dozen different skillsets. A normal person set up to play the actual game with a themed character cannot win in such a contest unless very very good or very very lucky. This means PvP is a barren wasteland at higher levels as the only people in there are people who have spent all their time levelling through PvP and have about 12 different powersets reflecting this. You will never voluntarily enter a PvP zone as a result as you know you simply cannot win.
The most annoying thing about this is, rather than acknowledge that maybe allowing people to pick and choose is causing abuses and a problems Cryptic keep nerfing the individual powers that are abused in PvP. This doesnt hurt the PvPers as they simply change to what is next best they only care about winning in PvP. The only person it hurts are those playing the actual game as they find with every few weeks their character are made weaker and weaker and so the game gets harder and harder. Some powersets cannot solo at all anymore and so to play the game at all one must compromise their character style and take on one of the overpowered powers simply to survive not because you want it.
When I say abuses what I mean is a shotgun weilding alien with dark sorcery attacks, a bicycle chain, a sonic bow and arrow, web grenades, regeneration powers from a demon and pyshic healing powers topped off by the abilty to teleport and a chainsaw. What i have just described is a normal build in PvP it makes no sense whatsoever but if you dont have it you are in for a headache.
In six months time if content is added and powers are developed/balanced a bit better then buy this game it will be excellent. If this hasn’t happened get it anyway but only expect to play it for a month, 2 tops before dropping in frustrated.
Comics are cartoons… Jesus.
If you’re running out of missions, try PvP. The new Zombie map is pretty cool, if only because you don’t have to fight against FotM builds over and over again. Everyone is on the same team to start with (well, except the Designated Zombie). And you gain XP playing it.
[...] Interview with Bill Roper on http://www.techulous.com/news/exclusive-interview-champions-onlines-bill-roper.html, he mentions CO devs helping with Star Trek [...]