Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, style="font-style: italic;">DC Universe Online
has taken the superhero MMOG scene by storm. In this second part of our
exclusive interview with Game Director Chris Cao, Ten Ton Hammer
explores game issues that impact style="font-style: italic;">DCUO
players. (To read part one of our interview with Chris Cao, href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/dcuo/interviews/feb-update">go
here.)

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Ten
Ton Hammer: A lot of our PC
users feel that the UI feels a bit clunky – it’s
not as smooth an experience as they might be used to with other
MMORPGs. Text chat requires opening a separate UI element, for example.
Do you have any plans for general interface tweaks for PC users?



Chris
Cao: There’s
actually a whole new round of social fixes coming out with the February
update, so you’ll have more control over default chat
channels, how to set things up, etc. We’re going to continue
to improve that. I think it comes down to the type of game it is. I
think people want a free mouse to be able to click on stuff.
Fundamentally, that’s a different kind of game than what we
built, because you have to have control of your camera. By default,
camera is targeting in style="font-style: italic;">DCUO,
that’s how we get the action feel.



I think “clunky” is an apt term for first
impressions. People would like to click on a friend to trade with him
or her. We kept the audiences separate on purpose so we could address
these kinds of things. Right now, we’re trying to fix some of
the bugs we launched with and do the “next step”
obvious things, like default voice channel. I want to talk in league
instead of group, and I don’t want to be locked into the
group.

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Looks like some trouble is
brewing in the Batcave.

Beyond that, we’ll
continue to evaluate.  style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars Galaxies
is a good example of the targeting side of things – the more
you have a locked target and free mouse, the more people want to play
the interface. Understandably so. Traditional MMO players like myself
are used to clicking on the HUD. But since you have direct and
immediate control of your character, it’s actually a huge
jump because now, instead of a 3D plane, you’re on a 2D plane
with the interface.



All of those are kind of game designer-y reasons. Let me put it this
way: we’re going to keep making it better. I don’t
know if fundamentally the model will change right away, but
we’re going to see what people like to do, then
we’re going to try to find a way to accommodate that so it
doesn’t feel clunky.



What is interesting is how WASD targeting changes things.
It’s not set to “on” by default, but
it’s an interesting alternative too, because it gives you
precise targeting that is camera free. I wanted to bring it up for
people to try out – some might like it, some may not
– but basically you attack in the direction you move rather
than where you look.



I agree with you – it doesn’t feel as firsthand as
it should on the PC. But we’ve got to find a way to do that
that still supports the combat that we’ve built.



Ten
Ton Hammer: Right now only
two or so missions become scaled up for challenges at endgame. The
renown from these missions form the backbone of the game for players
looking to gear up outside the raiding game. Repeating two missions
every day starts to feel grindy, however. Do you have any plans to make
more of a variety of challenge missions available?



Chris
Cao: First off, the
Valentine’s Day content will help out with part of that,
that’s meant to mix it up on the daily side of things.
We’re also looking at adding some more interstitial content
in March – some more stuff to do like those Brainiac side
missions that don’t necessarily have an instance at the end,
but more stuff to do in the shared world.



We’re always going to be adding dailies every single month to
keep mixing things up, we’ll also be adding duos and alerts
to keep those lists fresh because it can start to get grindy. 
We want to keep finding new ways to do that, however, because
there’s already a breadth of them, from the acts of heroism
to the PvP dailies, to the Toy Man stuff. But we know we need to add
more of those, for sure.

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alt="dc universe online"
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Who says visiting the Gotham
Museum is boring?

Ten
Ton Hammer: Another common
worry among the more casual style="font-style: italic;">DCUO
players are the number of “gotchas” in the game.
Movement powers and weapons that turn out to offer bonuses power sets
other than what players originally chose and a need to respec power
tree choices for an ever escalating cost seem to top the list. Do you
have plans to maybe allow respecs for minor aspects of character
creation or maybe improve descriptive text to help with these gotchas?



Chris
Cao: I think it’s a
good comment. I think we have fewer gotchas as far as character
creation and classes than many other games. The movement one might be
more of a playstyle preference – I actually play with a melee
healer who likes to be in there because then his circles are dropping
around the target and he’s always around the fight. One of
the early YouTube videos came out of a bunch of ranged flight guys
taking out the Batcave.  Unknown to them, there was an
accidental exploit that you could sometimes deal more damage while
flying, so a bunch of people made a character like that. We fixed the
exploit and now people have found out that the factors have changed.



We haven’t had too many of those, but I think definitely in
the future we would look at possible movement respeccing and possible
power respeccing. We don’t want people changing their roles,
fundamentally, because it’s a skill based game and you have
to get good at it. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t
ever change it, it just means that the only one we’re really
looking at is movement, and not in the immediate future.



First, we want to see how this whole skill tree and passes play out. We
built a lot of flexibility into the system and only in a few cases
would I say that there’s a gotcha built in. But now that you
mention it, we will take a look at how we’re seeing it in
real play.

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More comic book mayhem in the
Batcave.

Ten
Ton Hammer: The Hall of Doom
and the Watchtower are big spaces, but it seems like endgame players
are missing a social hub at this point. Police stations and nightclubs
kind of become de facto gathering places as players level up, but are
you going to offer some reason to hang out in the Watchtower or Hall of
Doom?



Chris
Cao: I think adding the
auction house and the broker in next month will go a long way towards
that. The collection system, especially, hasn’t grown its
full legs yet because people have had to find collection items rather
than trade for them. Style trading really hasn’t happened
yet, either – there’s a huge number of feats based
on style, and I haven’t been able to find all the pieces. So
while it isn’t necessarily the classic tradeskill driven
social hub, the collection side of things will, I think, drive that a
lot more.



In the Hall of Doom specifically, there’s that great central
place where, currently, you don’t see a lot of people hanging
out because, well, you don’t yet have a broker or auction
house. Next month that will start to solidify quite a bit. Instead of
people just being someplace random to queue, they’re going to
want to go there to queue so they can watch what’s going on.



Ten
Ton Hammer: So the auction
house and broker will only be available in the Watchtower and the Hall
of Doom?



Chris
Cao: Yea.



Ten
Ton Hammer: And I’m
guessing that heroes won’t be able to trade with villains
using some kind of shared auction house?



Chris
Cao: Not at first.
We’ll look at it and see how it makes sense going forward
– we have the versus channel [which allows heroes and
villains to talk to each other], so we have more breadth to that
interaction. We just want to make sure it doesn’t become a CS
issue. We’re not going to be like other games where the sides
are entirely exclusive – obviously we let heroes and villains
talk to each other – so if it makes sense in the future to
trade, we will. We’ve just got to be careful because we
don’t want, for example, villains running around in a batsuit.



Our thanks to Chris Cao for the interview.