Champions Online Preview & Interview

[GameBanshee News]

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is continuing their coverage of Champions Online by previewing character customization, giving away a rather odd goodie, and interviewing lead designer Randy Mosiondz.

RPS: Having that amount of freedom is tricky. If someone’s choosing a set fantasy archetype, they know vaguely what it does. But to have that much freedom to pick and choose powers, how are you going to avoid them being overwhelmed?

Randy: It’s an interesting challenge. How do we make it so it’s not confusing to certain types of players, while still trying to promote global customisation? Being able to create your own role in terms of gameplay is interesting. For example, having different power groups means they’re better at certain things – however, being able to mix the power groups means you can get the best of both worlds. The question is how do you prevent players tripping themselves up? We have some guidance systems in place (but we don’t want to STOP people from doing something they want to try). But a certain combination of powers may just work…

RPS: Especially if you’re playing in a group. If you know your team-mate blast-o-man will deal with that stuff, you can specialise elsewhere…

Randy: Exactly. And really, we want players to experiment and play with their own versions. We have systems in mind which haven’t really been done before that allow players to choose different types of build of the character. It’s really interesting, and we’ll be releasing more information in the future.