by Danny Gourley on Apr 10, 2008
Over the last few weeks, excitement has been building concerning
style="font-style: italic;">Champions Online, the
latest massively-multiplayer online game (MMOG) by Cryptic Studios
style="font-style: italic;">.
style="font-style: italic;">Champions Online
will
be a superhero-oriented game with a new twist on
the old combat system by eliminating the "hit-a-button-and-wait"
mentality that still rests with
many older MMOGs. To learn more about Cryptic will achieve that plan,
Ten Ton
Hammer is proud to present a Cryptic-organized Q&A with Geoff
Tuffli, Combat Systems Designer for
style="font-style: italic;">Champions Online.
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Geoff Tuffli, Combat
Systems Designer
Q: What do you do as a combat systems designer on Champions
Online?
We adjust overall balance tables, build player and critter
powers,
design and implement the mechanics for customizing players and their
powers, set up critters and put together environment effects. On top of
all this, we design PvP mechanics and handle all the generic combat
mechanics.
A great deal of our work crosses over to other areas of development
our balance work causes us to work with QA, setting up powers requires
that we coordinate with art to hook up the correct assets with the
correct timing, linking AI to critters means cooperating with the
Software and Content teams, and so on.
At the moment, most of my time is divided between removing any
roadblocks for my team, maintaining lines of communication between the
combat systems team and the other teams, and designing and building
player powers.
Q: How long have you been
working in the gaming industry, and what did you do before working on
Champions Online?
Before Champions Online, I led an
internal balance assessment team for City of Villains,
which involved a great deal of datamining and statistics-crunching,
along with more subjective methodologies. Before I joined Cryptic, I
was a producer at a mobile game app developer, and I worked at Sony up
in Foster City.
Q: How does someone get from majoring in Aztec Cultural
Linguistics to making videogames?
I decided I wanted to do interesting things with this
new-fangled "web"
everyone was talking about, write professionally in some capacity, or
design games.
Since that point, I have worked professionally in the web application
industry, as a technical writer, and then I managed to land a job at
Sony doing quality assurance (QA). From there, the rest, as they say,
is history.
Q: What aspect of Champions Online
are you most excited about working on?
Player customization is something that most MMORPGs shy away
from, and
with good reason it's expensive, very difficult to balance, and
creates entirely new challenges for almost every other system in the
game. That being said, it is also the aspect of a game that can be most
personally felt by a player and give a player the greatest feeling of
investment in a game.
PvP, on the other hand, when designed correctly offers constantly
changing and evolving gameplay that can provide some incredibly
memorable encounters. There are PvP encounters I still remember five
years or more after the fact. What I like about Cryptic's approach to
PvP in Champions Online
is that instead of being afraid of it, we're leveraging it where it
makes sense to make a better game for those who choose to participate
in it.
Q: Who is your favorite Champions
character?
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Combat in
style="font-style: italic;">Champions
Online could feature laser swords!
Q: You have said you're big into PvP. What kind of
characters do you like to play in PvP? Any favorite tactics?
I played PvP Masterminds in City of Villains
until my fingers bled, a Melee Priest in Shadowbane,
a Survival Hunter in World of Warcraft, and
innumerable other "impossible" builds in every game I have tried.
Q: What do you like to do in your free time?
I also write incessantly. Some of what I write is fiction,
mostly
science fiction and fantasy. Some of what I write is non-fiction
mostly research on memetics and sociodynamics with some philosophy
thrown in occasionally to spice things up.
And finally, I play games. A lot. Not just MMORPGs, but also RTS, RPGs,
even board games.
Q: Who are your favorite authors?
Q: What videogames do you think have amazing combat?
Q: What is an interesting
fact about you that players would be surprised to know?
Q: What are three things you would take on a desert
island?
Q: What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a
game designer?
Play games, but also try to train yourself to think of a game
like a
designer. What is fun? Why is it fun? What would you better? What don't
you like? How could it be improved? What are the problems and risks
with each approach?
While it isn't impossible to get a job out of the gate as a game
designer, it is about as common as getting a job as an entry-level
corporate vice president. Expect and look for jobs in QA and
customer service, as well as any other kind of job that will put you in
contact with development. If you have talent as a programmer or artist,
try getting a job doing that first, and then work your way laterally
into design.
It will usually require persistence, patience and being in the right
place at the right time. When the opportunity does present itself, show
that you are as practical as you are creative and know how to check
your ego at the door in favor of the success of the product. If you can
do that, you'll have a much easier time cracking into the industry.
Q: Do you have anything
else to add?