Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Super heroes are their powers. Without a super heroes powers or gadgets, he or she is little more than a grown up toddler that’s pretending to be the masked vigilante. So even though there are plenty of initial customization options in Champions Online regarding costume and body type, it’s equally as important for the developers to present gamers with a extremely customizable set of options and initial powers to choose from. As the first in a series of exclusive interviews with CO’s Bill Roper, we sat down with the Cryptic leading-man to learn more about the powers in the game and what kind of options the gamers have in terms of customizability and making the “best” super hero.  

---

Ten Ton Hammer: First off, why did you guys decide to push back the release date? Obviously you felt like the game needed some more time, but which areas in particular are you focusing on with that extra time?

Bill Roper: From the other side of the fence, we really wanted to make sure we have the proper marketing and PR so people knew more about the game and have the time for that. But I think that the big deal really is that we have the time now to go through and really get the game polished and have all those different elements in that we wanted to get done so that we can launch as soon as possible but get it as polished as it can be. And with that extra time there are a couple things that were on the bubble of getting in that now we can get in, so I think that’s really good too. We got a couple of extra things in that we weren’t sure if they were going to make it by the July 14th date, but can definitely be in by September 1st so we’re finishing those up now, and then just bug fixing and polish and polish and polish and polish. We really want to make sure that when the game comes out that it’s as good as it can be.

Ten Ton Hammer: For those people that aren’t familiar, the term frameworks, is that from the original pen and paper version of Champions? And in that game do players pick a framework like they’re picking a class, or do you pick powers from different frameworks? How does that typically work?

Bill Roper: The frameworks are another way of thinking of how you’re building all the powers for your character. The reason we use that is to give it some kind of overall guideline on putting a character together, it goes inside of a framework.

The presentation to players though is that there’s different power sets. There’s 18 different power sets in the game and those are all very thematically put together - like Fire, Lightning, Archery, Gadgeteering, and Telekinesis – so they’re very ‘4 color comic’, thematic sets of powers that are together. If you wanted to you can stay within a power set to make that framework usable and just fill in the framework for your character, but any time you add a power you have the ability to choose from every power that’s available.

So that’s what we mean when we say you have a ‘custom’ framework that you can build to. The concept being that you’re not required to just stay within a certain class or power set. Whatever you can think up for your hero, as best you can and with the powers that we have available you can build that hero out by creating this customized framework.