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

Champions Online brings you this classic moment in Looney Toons history.

Ten Ton Hammer: With UTC, do you anticipate doing in-game events around it, since it is a sanctioned thing? Get some true tournament action going?

Rob: We plan to support the community as much as the community grows and wants to be supported. I know that’s a pretty generic statement, but we want to have organized games and reward players that take part. Not just with UTC, but with BASH and Apocalypse too. It’s fairly easy to build.

Ten Ton Hammer: So you mentioned PvP-based item rewards. What are these items, and what makes an item awesome for PvP in Champions Online?

James: So in low levels of a tier, you want PvE drops, in high levels of a tier, you want PvP drops, so you get this back and forth. Even if you’re just doing PvP, it’s still worth your time to duck into PvP for some good gear. The costume unlocks - the luchador pieces - are what you get for costume pieces.

Rob: Essentially, what we wanted to have was gear only attainable through PvP and that gear unlocking things that are only attainable through PvP. That’s the luchador costume sets, and past that is vanity pets and perks. So maybe you get a thousand kills in PvP, then you get a think which you can turn in for another thing. One concept I was working with just recently was luchador action figures. I want little action figures that follow you around. (laughter)

One of the concerns from the boards was that players would have to have a set of PvP gear and a set of PvE gear. I think they’re 100% interchangable. We do want you to PvE and then PvP and then go back to PvE. It’s better if you do that. But there are no PvP stats, there’s character stats and power stats.

James: One thing I’ll mention is that Apocalypse has a lot of PvE elements. So if you’re more comfortable taking on stationary enemies, you can work on the NPC enemies and turrets and let your teammates handle the other players to an extent.

Ten Ton Hammer: So tell us a bit about Apocalypse, since that’s also something we’re seeing for the first time tonight.

James: So Apocalypse is a kind of map, the Apocalypse instance that we’re playing is in Stronghold.

Ten Ton Hammer: Stronghold was a sort of supermax for supervillains on the PvE side, right?

Stronghold hasn't been holding so strongly these days.

Rob: Yes, so Stronghold was a lair where you go in and Menton was taking over everyone’s brains. Think of the Apocalypse instance as sort of a training exercise (with really realistic supervillain sigs [signature characters - i.e. from the Champions lore] where the heroes are practicing to prevent the villains from escaping. You dealt with Stronghold at level 20ish and this you’ll get to around 31. Both sides can summon other sigs. Heroes have Ironclad and Witchcraft, but can summon Justiciar, Kodiak, and Sapphire. Villain sigs are Talisman and Medusa, with the ability to summon Black Dog, Mindslayer, and [unintelligible from the recording, if you know, email me!].

You can summon them every three minutes from a console. The more of those summon consoles you control, the more you can summon. I think the normative gameplay will be that players rush to get their first summon in, find someplace to fight, then fight over control of the other consoles and try to get the big whammy in.

I think what James said is exactly right: PvE players are going to go in and encounter these NPC sigs that they’ve encountered before and think, “Hey, I’ve fought Mindslayer before, I know what he does, I know how to beat him.” We want to make players feel comfortable and come in and test the waters.

James: And if you have a PvE team that works well together as a lair team, as a raid team, they’re going to do well at PvP. Those same roles are going to translate well into PvP.

Rob: Since it’s skill and stats and gear and power choice and grouping ability, I think PvEers can jump right in. One thing the community brought up is - how are they going to compete with a 14 year old that plays 80 hours a week. We flatten the levels by tier, so if you’re level 12 you’re going to play as level 20. There’s no gray ganking, there’s no you’ve been playing for 30 days and look like a luchador and I’ve been playing for one day and only have mission gear. Through practice and sort of crossing that line, I think people will realize that and step over that line.