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

Ten Ton Hammer: Speaking of moving forward then, how would you describe your long term strategy for things like content updates or possible expansions?

Bill Roper: You definitely have to start planning that stuff out in advance. We’ve already got an event planned for the end of October…

Ten Ton Hammer: Would that be the mysterious “Blood Moon” I just saw mentioned…

Bill Roper: In my latest state of the game discussion? *laughter* Yea, I did put that in there. We’ll be putting something official up on the site about that hopefully by launch. One of the things we really want to be able to do is communicate to players, so even if they get the game on day one they’ll already know we’re working on the next content that they’ll be getting. I think that’s a really important thing to put out there. I know that as a player of MMOs I like knowing not only that devs are working on something, but that they’re working on something they can tell me about.

So we’ve been getting some concept assets over to the marketing team so they can put together some pages that can get put up hopefully by the time the game goes live on the 1st. And that will talk about the Blood Moon event and what players are going to be getting. So that will be the first big free update that we do.

The upside is being able to get a good head start on that, especially with the art since the artists typically finish fist. By us having a longer beta period, that really allowed them to start working on new stuff in design and things like that. So the content guys, as we’ve been able to peel people off when their areas are done we’ve been able to move them over to do some different things. You always have to keep enough people on to fix the bugs and get corrections done, but as we were able to actually peel people off when they were completed – and art is a good example since they’re always the first done – we can get them to start working on some new things.

It’s a real balancing act, a lot of juggling where you’ll look at things like, “this is what we’d like to get done, so how can we schedule that?” But you always have to work on what needs to get done first. And this is the hardest time, because not only are you trying to plan for the future so there’s a good stream of content coming up for the players, but at the same time you’re actually finishing the core game. As I’ve had to assure all the devs, it actually gets easier once the game is out. You’re still always working and always making stuff, responding to players and fixing bugs but at the same time you’re not “finishing” the core game.

But yes, there are definitely plans for updates and ways that we’re going to expand the universe moving forward.

Ten Ton Hammer: As far as the core game is concerned, we’ve already covered quite a few of the major gameplay components in our interviews so far, though we haven’t really touched upon crafting as of yet. How essential would you say the crafting system will be for overall character advancement?

Bill Roper: I don’t know that I’d necessarily say that it’s essential. You certainly could go through the entire game without crafting or getting an item that was crafted, but I think the way crafting helps the most and can become an essential component is if you’re doing really interesting hybrid builds. All the crafting schools have different stats they focus on, so at the high end they tend to focus on a trio of stats. So you’ll find high end items that care about three different stats predominantly.

The reason I bring that up is that when you really get into some more advanced mechanics of character building, you’ll notice that at the basic level there two main stats that each power set cares about which you can then take a look at when you start mixing and matching. For example I made a character that was a mix of Might and Darkness. Might cares about Strength and Constitution, and Darkness cares about Constitution and Endurance. So by mixing the two I end up with three main stats that I’ll care about, and crafting is the place where I’ll have the best chance of getting items that focus on all three.

I could more than likely find some random, algorithmically generated items that could fall off of an enemy, but with crafting I can pick a school or specialization that specifically cares about those three stats. So if I’m getting into that advanced gameplay of creating characters focused on certain stats or characteristics, crafting is the best place to go to specifically get items that cover that end of things.

One of the other cool things with crafting is that each of the specializations has two unique action figures they can make, so for players that are into the collectible aspect of Champions I believe there are a total of 18 different action figures you can get through crafting. Even though we weren’t dropping the action figures during the beta, I know that a lot of players are really excited about that collectible aspect.

When we were at GenCon we were talking to some people who really love that kind of thing, and they were saying things like, “I really love getting all the badges in the ‘City of’ games, and these are like visible badges!” So they were making that kind of interesting comparisons. I know that I love collecting stuff in a game, so I think it’s a neat, fun extension of that. And we really do treat them like little action figures.

Overall I think crafting is not a requirement, but it’s cool to do and you can make some really specialized stuff. I think that for players that get more into the mechanics of the system that can become something that will really augment their character well.