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

Ten Ton Hammer: How does that leveling to the top of the tier work in PvP? You don't get any new powers, right?

James: You don’t get new powers, you keep the powers you have, but they’re scaled. You get sidekicked up to the level of the map. The level 20 still has the advantage of more powers and playing time, but there’s no artificial level disparity.

Ten Ton Hammer: One difference I’ve noticed between PvE and PvP in Champions Online is that in PvE, villain and super villain characters have very visible “tells” that tell you when it’s a good idea to block or move. Are there plans to integrate this concept into PvP?

Crowd control works well in all situations, unlike purples and reds.

Rob: That’s actually come up a couple times whether we’re going to have the freems, the power tells, for players. But I think everyone’s going to know, like with the might powerset chunk of rock throwing thing, when a player stoops to tear up some ground, everyone knows what’s coming. When the mental player puts his fingers to his temples, you know there’s a mental blast around the corner.

James: A lot of the really powerful powers have the really long chargeups. So you’re going to learn that when the archery guy strikes a pose for three seconds, you need to block. You will see the chargeups visible.

Ten Ton Hammer: This is a little bit off-topic, but with the blocking mechanic, I’ve noticed that sometimes there seems to be lag between when hit shift to block and when my character appears to be blocking.

Rob: It’s the animation, block is in effect as soon as you hit the shift key. Smart players will use block in conjunction with swapping roles. So you can swap real quick if you need to be more defensive because everyone’s attacking you.

James: I’ve noticed that I use block a lot just to get out of a fight. If I’m taking all the aggro from enemy players, I just block and back up so my teammates can cover me.

Ten Ton Hammer: You mentioned that all powers can be used in PvE and PvP. Crowd control abilities are either gimped or all-powerful in MMO PvP. Is CC useful in Champions Online?

Rob: Crowd control is 100% useful in Champions Online, to a fault I think.

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James: That’s something we’re looking at in our focus testing. Players are complaining that it’s too effective.

Rob: Coming from the group that’s putting together the PvP stuff in the game, we’re all pretty hardcore PvPers and have been for a very long time. We’ve all played the games where the CC war was just insane - when your a melee DPS guy and you’re like, what am I going to do? That guy has 500 yard roots or mezzes or stuns. We went in and said, well, let’s just take really hard chops at this, 5 minute cooldown timers for every power that’s called a hold. and that kind of thing. That was a little bit brutal, but what we can’t have is a PvE mechanic for powers and a PvP mechanic for powers. That’s death for any game.

So I think what we do is, like James said, we’re continually looking at it and trying to come up with a better solution. We have a resistance buff that’s applied to you when you get held to make the effectiveness of the next hold applied to you reduced. But there are holds that are charge holds and if they charge up all the way, it’s math.

James: I’ll also comment that a lot of holds are really useful for players with melee powers. In the builds we’re playing today, you’ll notice that all of the melee characters have some kind of hold that allows you to run up and beat on an enemy. The holds don’t last a long time, but it’s long enough for them to get in a good gauntlet chainsaw or what have you.

Ten Ton Hammer; So I’ve got to ask, when I’m being held (that sounds funny), a UI element tells me to press F to break the hold. So I press F, angrily, repeatedly, and nothing seems to happen. The countdown timer doesn’t accelerate. What am I doing wrong?

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Rob: It does. I don’t think the UI is representative, just like shift and blocking. You don’t have to hit F, you can hit any of your attacks. It’s really misleading; maybe that bar is ticking down a little bit and maybe it increases a little bit too. But it actually works.

James: I think it builds endurance too.

Rob: It does. When you attack the holds, you’re building endurance so right when you break free, you can lay out a big huge attack.

James: By the same token, there are some effects that reduce the effectiveness of holds, or increase the effectiveness of holds.