Champions Online: Ask Cryptic

The latest edition of "Ask Cryptic" for Champions Online has been published. As always, there are tons of questions from fans of the game including a question comparing City of Heroes, Cryptics first superhero MMO, to Champions. Read on!

In COH/COV there weren't many travel powers that suited characters who had a natural origin (martial artists, knights, detectives etc.). Will CO have methods for travelling within zones for characters without super powers? (Dread_Arrow)

We're definitely going to have acrobatics. That's a mortal level travel power that is very close to simultaneously using half-strength super speed plus half-strength super leap at the same time. We'd like to have more in the future, but we will definitely have acrobatics at launch.

Okay, so we can choose the personality of our Nemesis, and that will affect their dialogue... will it also affect their behavior and attributes in any way, or will all villains and Nemeses behave identically? In other MMOs, regardless of inferred personality, all bosses are tough in combat and just run in and attack the hero as soon as they see them. I'd love it if we could have some Nemeses be thuggish brutes, but others are less physically powerful and rely on insidious traps to catch the hero, or compensate their personal weakness by having more/tougher minions, and maybe even try to escape from the heroes instead of confronting them. (CrashFu)

The personality doesn't dictate how the Nemesis will behave in combat. Combat behavior will be dictated by the power set. The personality gives flavor: it dictates how the voice-over will sound and how the dialogue is written for that Nemesis.

Has Champions looked at giving experience points to supergroups (like Warhammer Online has for guilds) to unlock cool things the supergroups could get or use? (Manchine)

While we won't have that for launch, a leveling system is something we're definitely looking into for supergroups!

How will you balance flight with other powers, particularly melee powers, in combat? I'm concerned about some Gen-con footage in which the giant metallic dinosaur that was previously owning the hero suddenly couldn't touch him after he took to the air. It doesn't really matter that your equilibrium is zero if your foes can't do any significant damage to you. (The_Dark_Lord)

Every creature in the game has a ranged attack: every creature in the game can hit flying people. In this specific case, the reason the dinosaur had no effect is that the player had GM powers turned on that made him immune. Normally, Mega-Terak has a power called static field which means that in a 200 meter radius around him, the faster you move the higher the electricity zap you get hit with. So, if you use super speed or flight around him, you'll explode violently. If you want to fight him, you need to tiptoe slowly. He'll quick flash fry any normal flyer.

Will there be a central storage system where different characters on the same account and server will have shared access instead of having to give an item to someone else to hold while you swap toons? (Man_With_10000_Volts)

There won't be central storage for characters on the same account. If one of your characters has an item that you'd like another of your characters to use, you have two options for getting it to them. The first is to mail it: we'll have a mail system set up at launch that allows you to mail items between characters. The other solution is to use the league vault: if you have two characters in the same league, you can leave an item in the league storage vault for your other character to pick up the next time you log them in. However, that does mean you need to trust your league.

Will respecs only reset certain aspects of your character's build or will it refund everything so you can re-choose completely different powers, etc.? (Man_With_10000_Volts)

Retcons (the Champions term for respecs) will respec almost everything on your character. A few things will not be changed by a retcon - origins, for example. Up to a certain level, retcons are fairly cheap, but the higher the level of your character, the more thorough the retcon, the more expensive. That, however, only applies to voluntary retcons. If we force you to do a retcon because of some change we make, we'll refund you the points spent.

How are environmental physics going to be implemented? For example: a character with super strength did like a 100 ton velocity punch/kick on a foe... How far can the victim fly or go hurling away? (Elixir)

The game uses physics on two levels. There's cosmetic physics - when something breaks there's rubble, when someone hits the rubble it moves in a realistic way, but that is purely client side aesthetics. You'll just see coconuts rolling down a hill, for example, but those coconuts have no weight or impact and won't slow you down. They won't affect game play.

On the second level, we can tag stuff in the environment and designate things that can be picked up and thrown. Each of those items has a weight/mass rating. Your character's strength rating determines which of these items you can pick up. When you hit someone, your strength rating also determines how far they get knock backed and how far you, in turn, would get knocked back if you were hit. Additionally, all movement powers have not only a top speed, but also an acceleration and a friction quotient. In the case of flight, one variation has better traction and control, but not that high a speed, whereas another might have a much higher speed, but it doesn't work well for fine maneuvering.

As flexible as the character creation system is touted to be, will it be possible to create characters whose main gig is crafting items that other characters can utilize? (belefauntes)

If you like crafting so much that you don't want to play the rest of the game, you can do so. However, there won't be crafting oriented powers. Crafting is a skill you learn, not a power. It also doesn't replace game activities. You don't earn XP or gain access to new drops that you couldn't access some other way by crafting. You will need to go do things in the game world if you want to advance your character. However, you don't have to do instances or join a guild to do crafting. There may be recipes that only come from doing some of those activities, but you don't have to do any of those things just to craft. If you, as a player, just want to hang out at the auction hall buying materials and crafting stuff and are willing to play the game to get to where you've unlocked the stuff you want to craft, you can spend all your time crafting.

Will there be ways for heroes to complete missions with little or no combat if they happen to be a more skill based hero? (cruciare2750)

This should come as no surprise: Champions Online is focused primarily on action combat. While we do have some missions at launch that are less combat focused, these are more the exception than the rule. However, we are looking at adding in more investigation-style missions in future content updates!

If you are completing a mission against your Nemesis, how will other players interact with him/her/it? Will they be able to take out your enemies, forcing you to wait for a re-spawn? Also, what will happen if there are multiple Nemeses in the same area and one of them kills its hero - will it attack anyone else? (MegaMatoran)

Whenever you fight your Nemesis, it will be in a specially crafted instance built for you. Your Nemesis won't just be wandering around the world loose, for other people to fight. No one can kill steal you. If you want to team up with other people to fight your Nemesis, you can do that and bring allies into the instance with you, or you can solo and face your Nemesis on your own.

Just as your Nemesis won't be wandering around on the loose, no one else's Nemesis will be doing that either, so you won't run the risk of getting attacked by any Nemesis other than your own. Of course, we might decide to change that at some future point, but we'll let you know if we do.

Will there be detailed "dungeons" or "lairs" throughout the leveling process and not just for end-game? Along with that question, will there be "epic" style quests and quest-lines throughout leveling, and also, not just for end-game? (Floored)

We have a number of villain strongholds throughout the game built for superteams to tackle. These have specialized environmental gameplay, powerful enemies, and special rewards. We also have a number of over-plots threaded throughout the game that players can uncover to learn more about the nastiest villains in the Champions Online universe!

Submit your questions at the official site.

Permalink