Champions Online Weekend Round-up
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 945
First, Voodoo Extreme brings word that the game has been delayed several weeks:
We wanted our fans to hear this from us first... We're changing our Champions Online launch date from July 14th to September 1st of this year.
Why? Here's what our own Bill Roper, Design Director and Executive Producer on Champions Online, had to say about it:
(It is critically important for an MMO to be as good as it possibly can be at launch. Through our constant dialogue with our vocal and supportive community of beta testers, we quickly realized that in order to implement certain features that we all considered important the development of Champions Online would require more time. So that's what we're going to give it. Cryptic has a proven track record of releasing solid games and we want to maintain that with Champions Online.)
What does this mean for you? Simply, more beta play time right now and a better, more polished game at launch.
Then IGN hits us with a new developer diary written by content designer Kevin Stocker:
The meat in every game (in my opinion) is the boss fights. The boss is the guy who can break the rules in order to defeat you, and you might have to learn a few new tricks to put him in his place.
What kind of tricks, you ask? Well, that can vary greatly. Because of the vast number of options that players are given in customization of their characters, we can guarantee very few concrete things about the group makeup. Where in other games you might count on the group having a Priest, Warrior and Rogue, we simply can't design encounters around those constraints. So the goal is to develop an interesting gimmick within the encounter that doesn't rely on a particular group makeup.
One example of how we do this is in Andrith Ruins. The main boss, Vikorin the Blind sits immobile on a temple in the center of the room. Without getting too specific (you've gotta figure it out yourself!), the positioning of your team can affect what powers he uses. There are several environmental hazards in the room that turn on and off and get more and more hectic and difficult as the fight progresses through three distinct phases. This creates a fun and dynamic fight without being centered around, "the mage needs to decurse."
And we conclude with a hands-on preview at Eurogamer:
The Qularr also serve as very numerous but still quite easy fodder for your hero (and other beginners - this isn't a solo instance) as you learn the basics of combat. This is something you'll actually have to do, as Champions has a striking, charge-and-release energy-based system that's unlike most MMOs and, for that matter, the majority of RPGs.
You still have skills, just a couple to begin with, but there's an important distinction between them; one does mild damage and charges up your energy, and the other expends energy for heavy damage. Also, rather than clicking these skills and waiting for predetermined cast times and cooldowns to play out, you're modulating the energy gain or cost, and how long the skill is effective for or how powerful it is, yourself. This is done by tapping or holding down hotkeys, or joypad buttons - Champions has been designed with the Xbox 360 controller in mind, even if the console version is currently off the radar. There's also a highly effective block that you won't need much in the early stages but will clearly be very important later on.
It's a flexible, rhythmic and satisfying scheme. It's easy, cathartic and fun to deal with large groups of enemies, even if the target selection is a little clumsy - and that's greatly assisted by the fact that enemies drop health, energy and power buffs. These really reduce downtime and keep the pace of combat high, close to hackandslash action-game levels, and in their way are just as satisfying as filling a bag with loot (although there's some of that, too).
