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

How do you duel other players in a game with flight and other travel powers? Why is player vs. player combat (PvP) relevant in an MMO where every player is, to some degree, a good guy? Champions Online Producer Rob Overmeyer and PvP Designer James Laird tell us explore these questions and tell us all about what makes player vs. player combat unique in Champions Online, before getting to the heart of the matter: how best to kick other players in the tights in Champions Online PvP!

Ten Ton Hammer: Cryptic Studios is unveiling several new PvP concepts tonight, one being dueling. Can you tell us a little bit about what makes dueling unique in Champions Online? You mentioned that dueling players would be able to see certain effects that other players wouldn’t?

All powers will be balanced for PvE and PvP, so feel free to bring a katana to a gun fight.

James: The people that are dueling see the boundaries - they see this big sphere that denotes the boundaries, becuase if you fly too high, you’ve left the duel as well.

Rob: You don’t want everyone to see these spheres all over the place. If every thirty feet people wanted to duel you’d see a world of these weird domes, like a moonscape or something.

Ten Ton Hammer: So I offer the duel, my opponent accepts. What happens next, aside from me getting my butt kicked?

Rob: A giant rocket shoots down and shoots this beam around the two duelers. We drop it right in the center between the two players so you’ll always know how far apart you are; it’s right in the middle. One of the coolest things is that you can duel in-air. A rocket comes in and hovers and spins and casts a full sphere.

James: If you fall to the ground, you lose.

Rob: So if you have duelers that have powers that knock people out of flight, you can use that to win.

Ten Ton Hammer: So the spheres are larger than what you usually think of when you think duel boundaries?

Rob: It’s big, I want to say its a 200 foot radius, but you can fly around and use super speed inside it easily. By the same token, you can accidentally go out of it if you’re not careful.

Ten Ton Hammer: Is there any reason to duel, other than bragging rights of course?

Accessibility is big for the Champs PvP team. No need for cold feet. (har har)

James: Nope, you don’t want to have to duel to do well. It’s a fun thing. You do get rewards through the regular PvP - the Ultimate Tournament of Champions [UTC - team based deathmatch by tiers], BASH [free for all PvP instances], and Apocalypse [objective-driven PvP event instances] - you get items and experience, acclaim, costume options, vanity pets, stuff like that. In UTC and Apocalypse, every time the match ends, you get scored based on how well you helped your team. A healer who did a lot of healing will get more points than someone on the other team that got a lot of kills but didn’t help their team.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are you going to do any stat tracking with duels, see a player’s win / loss maybe unlock some vanity perks or something?

James: Not with duels, currently. We should add tracking.

Rob: It’s an easy thing to add, actually. Where’s my laptop? (laughter)

Ten Ton Hammer: From the practical angle for players, do you foresee players testing out their PvP builds using this mechanic?

James: I hope so. There’s a lot of depth to the powers system. All the powers work in both PvP and PvE, but I’m sure people will find the ideal PvP build in time, and I hope they spend a lot of time doing that.

Ten Ton Hammer - Before we leave the dueling concept, is this “sanctioned” PvP? Is there a lore tie-in?

Rob: Yep, there’s a Hero Games logo on the rocket. It’s ostentacious, it’s out there in the open. The hexagon on the dome is actually the dome of the Hero Games logo.