Comments on: Champions Online Q&A Decoded

By: Colinmarc

Colinmarc — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:06:21 +0000

Champions sounds a lot like Green Ronin’s Mutants and Masterminds.

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Fri, 09 May 2008 04:54:24 +0000

I was going to talk about how Champions was originally handled, but then I realized that when I played Champions it was, I think, 3rd or at most 4th edition and the game’s had a couple of major releases since then that I didn’t bother with. I expect they’re using the latest version of the rules.

By: nick

nick — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:41:07 +0000

@Alex Hopkinson: More than you think... Cryptic reduced the CoH team from 60 to 15 people sometime after the launch of Villains. Those people were likely transferred to Marvel or other projects (including this one). NCNorCal is in the process of restaffing and ramping back up their production stuff.

By: mujadaddy

mujadaddy — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:34:10 +0000

@Shon:

#1: I apologize. It seems I colored your comments with my own prejudices.

#2: However, in an online world, the GM (“Initial Development Team”) has to make SOME rules structure so pointfuckers like ourselves can’t get away with murder. Therefore, I’m not too upset. The Champions team could have a WORSE paper to copy from than CoH.

By: MPK

MPK — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:36:34 +0000

So are we more likely or less likely to have a thousand Wolverine/Hulk clones? I must admit that I'm intrigued by the possibilities of the points system, but the class bonues (bonii?) sound analagous to EVE's ship bonus system.

By: MaW

MaW — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:34:46 +0000

Given that the last two years of CoH have seen some of the best additions that have ever been, this makes me worried about CO. Jake Emmert’s lead designer as he was for CoH, and it was a lot of his design ideas (hiding the numbers, the ‘power ten’ enhancements, his vision of what game balance looks like which disagreed with every single player’s vision of what game balance looks like) which caused the most frustration in the game.

Many of which have since been gently reversed. CoH appears to be getting significantly better in its new studio, so unless CO does something really really good – like an amazing freeform character system, which seems unlikely – I won’t be moving.

Of course it helps that the hook to keep me playing CoH works perfectly. I’ve got 45 months of veteran rewards, after all.

By: Evets

Evets — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:18:04 +0000

Actually Alex, a very good chunk of the initial designers from CoH moved over to this project after CoV hit. the people who are at CoH now are the “core team” in the sense that they have been responsible for the last two years of content. Lots of the people who were there for the first two years are still at Cryptic and now on Champions.

By: Alex Hopkinson

Alex Hopkinson — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:45:12 +0000

Not very much of it, Sp4rkR4t. Most of the core CoH team are still working on CoH, just not at Cryptic.

By: 18Rabbit

18Rabbit — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:00:04 +0000

I think they’re doing the archetype system to make it easier for people to get into. If you just throw people into a character generator and give them too many choices to make they’ll get frustrated without knowing enough of what to do. I remember spending hours and hours making Champions characters just because there was so much freedom (and I’m a min/maxer by nature).
The champions system had some cool features like the advantages/disadvantages system to allow you to tweak and fine tune your character. I wonder if they’ll incorporate the killing damage concept (my guess is no). Most damage only did damage towards knocking you or an opponent out but you could get killing attacks that were lethal (mainly only used by villains).

By: Sp4rkR4t

Sp4rkR4t — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:59:19 +0000

@Zuffox, These guys ARE the CoH team.

By: Shon

Shon — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:35:52 +0000

@mujadaddy I think I started playing Champions in 1991. I really liked the math and free form nature of the characters. I loved making gadgeteers and would make pages and pages of gimmicky gadget pools. Do not get me started on what I used to do with multipowers.

What bugged me about this Q and A is that I know that Cryptic made City of Heroes before making this game. Any comparisons between the two is fair. I’m not saying Champions is ripping off City of Heroes, I’m saying I have already played City of Heroes, please don’t remake it and call it Champions.

The use of archetypes bothers me because I don’t want to be pushed into class choices like they did in City of Heroes. Let me make my own hybrids. If I want a full on Brick with Energy Blast who can’t lift a car, let me. If I want a martial artist who has a crapload of gadgets, let me. Don’t tell me that ideally I should use their blueprint because the point of Champions was making your own glorious or disastrous characters.

By: James T

James T — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:00:24 +0000

Please; strictly group onanism for me, thank you.