Champions Online is inching its way towards the final stages of development and
in a couple of short months, this fan favorite will release superhero
madness everywhere! 

Are you prepared to fight crime or instigate chaos?  No matter which side
you are on, your super powers will be your edge in any battle.  Be prepared
by reading up on the various powersets!  We have this exclusive interview
with Design Director and Executive
Producer Bill Roper of Cryptic Studios discussing the sorcery, darkness, and
supernatural powersets.  Ten Ton Hammer's Cody Bye asks the questions that
we all want to hear the answers to.  Learn all about these mystical powers and get some
inside info on what is happening behind the closed doors of Champions Online!



Ten Ton
Hammer:
  For those not in beta, can you give us a brief overview of what the
sorcery, darkness, and supernatural power sets are like? What are the big themes
behind them?

Bill
Roper:
  Darkness, supernatural, and sorcery go together in the way that they are
in the feeling of "otherworldly".  We tend to group powers around what their
base ideas are, so sorcery and supernatural go together really well since they
are otherworldly powers.  Darkness fits into that as well, although it isn't as
magical in nature but it can be laid out that way.

Darkness
and sorcery are predominately ranged power sets and supernatural tends to be a
mix of ranged with a lot of melee.  For example, the energy building power in
supernatural, which is Beastial Fury, is a melee combo.  We want supernatural to
have the ability to have both ranged and melee flavors.

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Sorcery
blows into the areas of blasts and bolts and actually has a whole series of
"circles" that give AoE type buffs or defense and allows you to cast your
spells. It kind of gives you an area-based gameplay where you're laying down
these circles and trying to be near them to gain their advantages.  That's how
it's designed to work.

With
darkness, the secondary tier of powers that you're doing other than damage, is
fear.  Fear is a very common idea for RPG players where you control different
enemies and lock them down distances away from you getting them off of their
aggressive mode.  We also have within darkness a feature that when you defeat an
enemy that has been feared, it gives you an additional way to gain energy with a
secondary energy builder.  So with a lot of the combinations, you’ll fear
different enemies and then when you defeat them you’ll get a little energy
return.

Supernatural is built around a secondary damage type.  Lash, for example, is the
second power you get in the basic set.  As you add ranks to it, you not only get
additional damage, but you can also add things like Aspects of the Celestial
which has a chance to do a heal over time for you and your allies, or Aspects of
the Inferno which does additional fire damage over time, or Aspects of the
Dragon which does toxic damage over time.  So basically you can add different
DoTs or heals that can be either positive or negative over time effects using
different supernatural powers as a secondary feel.

Ten Ton
Hammer:
It's been argued that sorcery may be the power set in the game that's
most like a healer or a support class.  Would you say that's true? Would a
healer classes want to play a sorcerer?

Bill Roper: I
can see that.  Basically when you're laying down the power circles it does have
different buffing effects.  I can see that if you wanted to play a healer and
you went really heavy in that direction, you could do that.  It does have a
really good offensive set as well, but it is also a really good support class so
I can see why players are saying that.

Ten Ton
Hammer:
We've also been seeing that Darkness is really powerful and sort of a soloer type power set where you can drain life and do lock down effects that are
helpful as a solo player.  Would you say that Darkness is a good power set to go
into if you wanted to play solo?

Bill Roper: 
Yeah, I think it works in both ways.  It's also really good in terms of working
with a team, because you can do a lot of crowd control with the lock downs and
fears, so when you're going into a group or into the persistent world where we
use the reinforcement system to increase enemy group sizes, they can get help. 
Or if we are going into instances where we scale up the encounters to the size
of your team, this is a really good way for a team to use the darkness guys.  So
darkness can work for both solo and for groups.

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Ten Ton
Hammer:
We haven't talked about crowd control much, is crowd control really
something that we will see a lot of in the power sets?  Obviously darkness has
it included, and I would assume that telepathy has some form of crowd control
but the rest of the power sets don't seem as focused on crowd control.  Is that
a correct assumption or are there select power sets that people can dip their
toes into if they want to use crowd control?

Bill Roper: 
There are different types.  We tried to put in crowd control skill in a broad
way like electricity has a cage type skill that will allow you to lock down
opponents.. Even in Might, we are adding some things where you can do a
hamstring like move to stun which was kind of already in there.  Really there
are different ways and almost all of the power sets have the ability to do
that.  Some power sets are more focused in that direction but the nice thing
about having open power set system is that if I want to do a little crowd
control you can get them through another power set.

Ten Ton
Hammer:
On that note, the open power set system feels a lot like a skill-based
game in that you can make a character that can perform one function really well
- almost to the detriment of other areas.  Is that something that players of
Champions Online should really do?  If a guild wanted a healer or a tank, should
players do that or does it take away from the pleasure of the game?

Bill Roper: 
That really is the real strength of the system; the fact that we are able to do
that to provide this broad-based feel and play for the game.  Which I think is
really great.  It's not unbalancing to do those things but it is nice that you
can get on both sides of the fence. The challenge to us comes in making sure
that we're making that work correctly.

Ten Ton
Hammer:
Supernatural kind of feels like a gadgeteering power set, because there
is a lot of different stuff in there.  Is that something that happened because -
kinda like gadgeteering - you needed lump all these different powers together or
is there some overarching theme to them being there?

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Bill Roper:  I
think that it does in some ways serve that similarity to gadgeteering where
there are a lot of different things that we want to do there.  Just the concept
of supernaturals seems to really fit across the whole idea.  The theme is the
same as gadgeteering where you can have a supernatural background and focus on
this or that being able to be kind of a catch all.  I think that's pretty
accurate.

Ten Ton
Hammer:
In this interview we have the magic theme going on; what kind of stuff
have you thought about for the future with other power sets where you might
introduce magic elements?  For example, you have a darkness power set; are you
ever going to consider maybe a divine power set where people are calling upon
divine magics or Norse magics?

Bill Roper:
Sure, I think that's totally possible.  We have some divine powers that are in
there right now, but I think that there are also other ways that we could do
it.  Something like a plant-based, almost more Druidic sort of set. We could
take a lot of these different power sets and put them into a magical feel. 
Definitely part of what we try to do is to know what players want specifically
and then provide that very specific sorcery set and things like that.  I think
that we're able to do some really fun stuff in that regard with other power
sets.

Ten Ton
Hammer:
  Do you have any personal favorite powers out of those three power sets
that you might want to tell the fans about?  Everyone wants to hear about the
specific powers so do you have a favorite one off the top of your head?

Bill Roper: I've
played darkness the most, about 18 hours with a custom build and everything. 
It's really funny that I happen to have just made a sorcerer so I want to go
through the game with the sorcery set because I haven't played a lot of that. 
The different power circles in the end mechanic are something I really want to
play with.  They also have some different pet classes in sorcery.

Ten Ton
Hammer:
  Is there anything else you'd like to talk about?

Bill Roper: 
We've got a lot of really cool stuff coming up for our beta players.  We've got
some really good ideas off of the boards for some different stuff.  We are
continuing to look at and listen to what our beta players are saying.  One of
the cool things we are working on right now is the "Danger Room" so when players
purchase powers they can actually try them out. They will have a place where
they can go in, get their power, try it out, and if it isn't what you thought it
was it's really cheap to put it back.  We haven't seen it done in any other MMO
where you can basically try before you buy.

 

We thank Bill for taking the time to talk with us about these powersets. 
Check back soon at Ten Ton Hammer for more Champions Online coverage!


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Champions Online Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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