Super
heroes are their powers. Without a super heroes powers or
gadgets, he or she is little more than a grown up toddler
that’s pretending to be the masked vigilante. So even though
there are plenty of initial customization options in href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/co" target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">Champions Online
regarding href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/67545" target="_blank">costume
and body type, it’s
equally as important for the developers to present gamers with a
extremely customizable set of options and href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/67553" target="_blank">initial
powers to choose from. As the
first in a series of exclusive interviews with CO’s Bill
Roper, we sat down with the Cryptic leading-man to learn more about the
powers in the game and what kind of options the gamers have in terms of
customizability and making the “best” super hero.
 

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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/61553" target="_blank"> style="width: 200px; float: right;" alt="Bill Roper"
src="/image/view/61553">

Ten
Ton Hammer: First off, why
did you guys decide to push back the release date? Obviously you felt
like the game needed some more time, but which areas in particular are
you focusing on with that extra time?



Bill
Roper: From the other side of
the fence, we really wanted to make sure we have the proper marketing
and PR so people knew more about the game and have the time for that.
But I think that the big deal really is that we have the time now to go
through and really get the game polished and have all those different
elements in that we wanted to get done so that we can launch as soon as
possible but get it as polished as it can be. And with that extra time
there are a couple things that were on the bubble of getting in that
now we can get in, so I think that’s really good too. We got
a couple of extra things in that we weren’t sure if they were
going to make it by the July 14th date, but can definitely be in by
September 1st so we’re finishing those up now, and then just
bug fixing and polish and polish and polish and polish. We really want
to make sure that when the game comes out that it’s as good
as it can be.



Ten
Ton Hammer: For those people
that aren’t familiar, the term frameworks, is that from the
original pen and paper version of Champions? And in that game do
players pick a framework like they’re picking a class, or do
you pick powers from different frameworks? How does that typically work?



Bill
Roper: The frameworks are
another way of thinking of how you’re building all the powers
for your character. The reason we use that is to give it some kind of
overall guideline on putting a character together, it goes inside of a
framework.



The presentation to players though is that there’s different
power sets. There’s 18 different power sets in the game and
those are all very thematically put together - like Fire, Lightning,
Archery, Gadgeteering, and Telekinesis – so they’re
very ‘4 color comic’, thematic sets of powers that
are together. If you wanted to you can stay within a power set to make
that framework usable and just fill in the framework for your
character, but any time you add a power you have the ability to choose
from every power that’s available.



So that’s what we mean when we say you have a
‘custom’ framework that you can build to. The
concept being that you’re not required to just stay within a
certain class or power set. Whatever you can think up for your hero, as
best you can and with the powers that we have available you can build
that hero out by creating this customized framework.

Ten
Ton Hammer: Would you say
that the power sets you’ve put together initially, from a
gameplay standpoint would you say that they’re mostly
thematic, or do they have some archetypes built into them too like
melee DPS characters, ranged DPS, support or tank?

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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/67406" target="_blank"> style="width: 200px; float: left;" alt="Champions 01"
src="/image/view/67406">

Bill
Roper: They’re
really mainly thematic. What we’re doing right now is filling
out all the power sets with at least some control powers, some utility
powers, so that you can really be able to pick and choose amongst the
different power sets. The goal of that will be thematic. Now, some of
them are going to lend themselves more to melee obviously if
you’re taking martial arts powers, or ranged attacks. But
really you can use any of the different power sets to construct
whatever type of character you’re trying to play, or whatever
role you’re trying to assume.



Like I built what you’d think of as more of a classic
tank-type character – so somebody who’s up in the
midst of a fight, controlling agro and does certain damage –
but it was all done with certain shielding, PBAoE and crowd control
powers. So I built a character that fulfilled that role in my head, but
it was around this thematic concept. It’s really one of the
biggest strengths of such a flexible system that you can fulfill a
classic MMO role, but you’re deciding what that is and
you’re building your hero the way people believe it as.



Ten
Ton Hammer: Let’s
look at, not necessarily the typical gamer but the more hardcore gamer;
the min/maxer to the extreme. Would it be possible for him if
he’s not interested in a theme at all, would he be able to
put together a really kick-ass super hero with a broad range of powers
from different power sets? Or is the game balanced enough that he may
not necessarily have the upper hand against somebody else who just is
sticking with a particular theme?



Bill
Roper: I always assume that
the min/maxer will find the optimum connection of powers, and finding
those emergent gameplay interactions between powers that we never
foresaw when making them, that’s always our fun challenge is
then saying “we’ve got to be balanced and what will
we do about that?” But really the game was designed to, for
example say I want to make a flying fire hero. Say that’s my
character, I can just stick to the power set for fire, I could take
Flight and I would a totally fun, confident, cool character to play. I
think there will always be combinations that will be a percentage
better, but really the goal is not to have it be where
there’s certain builds that just stand out head and shoulders
above anything else.



Ten
Ton Hammer: Are there easy
ways for players to find powers from a particular archetype of
character? For example if somebody wanted to play support, would there
be an easy way for him to figure out which powers would be best for his
character? Are the powers pretty much self-explanatory or is there some
other way that players could figure out which powers to use?



Bill
Roper: We’re
actually doing a lot of work on the UI right now to try to get that not
only explained really well in the power descriptions but also different
methodologies for sorting. Right now when you go into any power set it
will show you if it’s offensive, defensive or utility; it
shows you what type of power it is, so you could sort it that way.
We’d like to add just being able to say, “Show me
all utility powers across all power sets” so it could be
just, “oh, great, here they all are.”



We also actually just started this week going through and starting our
pass through on all the powers to write the descriptions better, make
sure things are looking correctly and making it really explanatory so
players will know what they are. But we’ll have at least a
couple of different ways that players can parse through the power list
– go through sets, go through functionality – to
find the exactly the type of power they want for their character.

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href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/66163" target="_blank"> style="width: 200px; float: right;" alt="Champions 02"
src="/image/view/66163">

Ten
Ton Hammer: Custom frameworks
weren’t available during the press preview a couple of weeks
ago, but are they available now and why weren’t they at the
start of the press testing?



Bill
Roper: Actually
they’ve been in for a long time, but there was a bug that had
it just not show up on the choice list. Custom frameworks have been in
forever but we had to fix this but that was allowing players to make
invalid builds using custom frameworks when they first created
characters so we had to fix that bug before we could turn it back on.



Really when you start playing, the big difference in starting with a
custom framework and a power set is just being able to change your
endurance builder and your next tier 1 attack power or defense power or
whatever you want it to be. So that will be in there from the get go so
players from the very beginning can be choosing a custom framework;
that was just a bug that it wasn’t in there.



Ten
Ton Hammer: I
haven’t messed around with powers enough to really see it
in-game, but I know in a previous interview that it was stated that
customizing different parts of your powers might be something that made
it into the game. Is that the case? Can players customize the colors of
their various blasts?



Bill
Roper: Actually
there’s a lot of customization you can do with the powers.
There’s a hue slider for any power so that you can go through
and change the color for any power basically. You can set emanation
points, so that means if I have Force Bolts for example that normally
come from my fists, I can have them come from my palms, I can have it
come from my chest or my eyes. And it depends on what the power is
whether or not they can use emanation points or which ones they can
use, but the vast majority of the powers have different emanation
points you can choose for them.



Then as you go through and are gaining levels you also start getting
Advantage points. Advantages are basically ways that you can augment
powers that you have, and there are usually numerous choices of
different ways to go with each power, but you can only put two
Advantages on any power so even that way there will be differences in
the same type of power.



So I think that’s pretty cool. You may have two heroes that
have taken Chain Lightning for example, but one guy’s is
coming from his palms and is blue and he’s just cranked up
the damage with two Advantages while another player may have gone
through and got it firing from a piece of chest armor that
he’s got on and it’s yellow because it’s
a different kind of electricity and he’s got the Advantage so
it jumps to more enemies. So you can even see where within the same
core power there’s big differences by the time players get
through with building up their character.



Ten
Ton Hammer: So pretty much at
every level or every tier players can adjust their powers and make them
really their own. Is that a correct assumption?



Bill
Roper: Yep.



Ten
Ton Hammer: Cool. How often
are we going to see new power sets and new powers within power sets
coming into the game once the title’s launched? Is that
something that you’ll do only every once in a while, because
introducing new powers always has a chance of unbalancing the game, or
is that something you’ll want to do all the time to really
give players the most diverse selection of powers that they can choose
from?



Bill
Roper: We’ll
definitely be doing new power sets and things to update if the players
want them on a fairly regular basis. I mean, they are expensive to make
– there’s a lot of powers that go into a power set
with the unique effects, sometimes they require a specific animation
– so they’re definitely a good chunk of work, but
they really have a lot of impact on gameplay. But we definitely are
going to be doing additional power sets after the game launches,
and then we’ll also of course look out there at the current
power sets and see if there’s holes we could fill.