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

Ten Ton Hammer: Out of the three elements, Ice seems to be the most variable in term of usage that we see in comic books. There are options for it to become a shield, slide, ice construct, etc. in the comics. Are all of those power options available for players to pick up?

Roper: One of our big focuses when building powers is to give players a diversity of powers that they can use to build a theme from each of the various power sets. For example, you can take ice slide as a power specifically, so we tried to take some of those big thematic elements and implement them into the powers. Fire has the same thing in terms of fiery flight where you light on fire and there's a fire trail behind you as you fly. I also think we were doing electrical teleport, or something along those lines.

Blocking powers, buffing powers, we wanted to give all of these power sets these different aspects in each. I don't think we have a summonable in each power set, because we separated summonables out into different power sets because it's such a different gameplay mechanic. It was odd to just kind of paste summonables on into the power sets at the end just for the heck of it.

However, there are all sorts of powers that we may release post launch and give every one of those powers a summonable creature, like an ice golem or a fire sprite. That's the cool thing about this game, we can continually add powers into the game. Like, we might decide to one day create a batch of summonables for players to use.

That said, there are a bunch of different powers and abilities in each power set that provide you with both offensive and defensive categories, along with a number of other elements.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are there power replacers specifically for the elements? We've talked about power replacers a lot in the last interview, and I was just wondering if there were things that could "alter the geometry" of the element powers? Maybe altering the looks of the powers or the way characters go through animations or something like that?

Roper: Not as much in the direct powers that way, but one of the things that is available is the ability to take elements and apply them to weapons. You can attach fire or electricity or ice to weapons, and that's spread across all the melee weapons. Again, if I want to make an ice-based character because I like Ice Form, but if I want him to be melee oriented I can just stick in some of he martial arts schools and use ice as power replacers for all my melee weapons.

Even on the normal attacks, there's this kind of "swoosh" trail behind it that's colored, and I can go in and change that color.

Ten Ton Hammer: After playing through some of the beta sessions, it's becoming apparent that each power set has a variable amount of powers that it includes. For people that aren't in beta, are the elemental power sets fairly robust? Gadgeteering obviously has a lot in it, but are the elemental sets anywhere near as large?

Roper:  I think gadgeteering is such a catch all that it's definitely the biggest out of them all. It would be like us creating one general elemental power set and cramming all the elements into it at once.

That said, I do think each of those power sets is really big and really full. The goal was to allow players to be able to simply make fire or ice or electrical characters, and I think we were able to do that. We wanted characters that could remain within their power set and really be able to succeed within one alone.

Ten Ton Hammer: Oddly enough, "earth" or "soil" seems to be the one element that has been left off the list. Do you have any plans to include this in the future? Eventually be able to make our own little Captain Planet team?

Roper: It's funny that you mention that, because every day we have an email within the company that tells us the new stuff that's gone into the game, and even though we don't have the full earth power set, we did want to include it as a travel power. So, I just received this email and it had a screenshot of a guy riding around on a flying chunk of earth. It looks awesome.

I think in the future we may have a full earth power set, simply because there are some players that are talking about it now but we don't want to put a full one in just yet.

Ten Ton Hammer: Is there anything else that you think is really striking about the elemental power sets?

Roper: The elemental set is striking both visually and in the sense that you can really build a character within these power sets and make really cool characters that have very interesting mechanics. When you stay within the power sets, you get very interesting synergies and you can build great characters that feed off those strengths. Even if you blend them together, you still get something with an "elementalist" sort of feel in the end.