Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[UnSub]

Most ridiculous rumour currently on the ChampO forums: that Marvel is speaking / has spoken to SOE about doing a joint Marvel / DC MMO. I can see Microsoft / Marvel getting together with SOE / DC to happily create one game together, can't you? Even is MS was cut out of the picture, I doubt DC and Marvel would get into bed together on this.

Slightly more believable rumour from the same poster: DCO will have a major announcement in April. It'll probably be "we're not dead, really".

[Velorath]

I can see Microsoft / Marvel getting together with SOE / DC to happily create one game together, can't you?

Yeah, that would be pretty rediculous.  Right now I think they still aren't even doing comic book crossovers with each other since Didio apparently can't stand Quesada.

[WindupAtheist]

Apparently after CoV didn't set the world on fire and NCsoft helped to cut the CoH/V dev team by 75%,

Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa didn't exactly pan out either.  Is it me, or is NC basically just using Lineage profits to fund failure after failure?

[Sunbury]

Why don't they stay true to comic books, and drop all this levels / classes / picking skills stuff?

You log on and are given a normal human character.  As you wander the game world, you get:

     zapped by radiation, bit by a spider, find / are given alien tech, research and produce super tech, etc, and pick up a random super-power.

You have to figure out by trial and error what that power is, and you have to decide what to do with that power.

Isn't that how super hero comics are for the most part?

Wouldn't it be fun to join a world and start playing without pre-planning all kinds of 'progression paths' and 'optimal skill sets' and correct stats?

[ajax34i]

You have to figure out by trial and error what that power is, and you have to decide what to do with that power.

And, and, you have to make yourself a costume!

[Sunbury]

You have to figure out by trial and error what that power is, and you have to decide what to do with that power.

And, and, you have to make yourself a costume!

That goes without saying. 

[Draegan]

Obvious MMOG design is obvious.

There must be a book of MMOG blueprints that are floating around among MMOG developers that reads like a checklist for boring, unoriginal gameplay.

I'm pretty sure you've argued this before so I won't ask you to write it up again, but do you have a link where you argued for and explained a better system for an MMOG?  I'd like to read it.

[Sky]

And, and, you have to make yourself a costume!

[Ratman_tf]

Jesus christ. That dude's camel toe haunts my nightmares.

[Mrbloodworth]

Classic.

[HaemishM]

Jesus christ. That dude's camel toe haunts my nightmares.

That's moose knuckle.

[Ratman_tf]

Jesus christ. That dude's camel toe haunts my nightmares.

That's moose knuckle.

We shouldn't even be having this conversation.

[Draegan]

I guess we shouldn't ask how you know those exist?

[Ratman_tf]

I guess we shouldn't ask how you know those exist?

An internet thread where someone posted Tronman, and another guy mentioned the dance belts, which were a part of the original Tron costumes.

What did you expect? 

[Draegan]

What did you expect? 

I'm not sure, and I'd rather not contemplate it. 

[Nevermore]

New Q&A

Some highlights:

• The power creation system might actually resemble the Hero System somewhat, but it won't be identical.
• There will be a skill system.
• The 'death penalty' was stolen straight from WoW.  In other news, having superheroes that dependent on 'gear' sounds like ass.
• The game will have standard MMO auto-targeting, so no dodging fireballs by strafing to the side.  Apparently there are 'charged' and 'maintained' attacks that a character can block or break line of sight with, though.
  

There's some other stuff in the article as well.

[Chenghiz]

Gear? Hero doesn't have gear. D:

[Venkman]

Prediction: they license CoX back from NC to create an Xbox 360 comic-based MMO.

You heard it hear first! 

[UnSub]

Gear? Hero doesn't have gear. D:

I like the idea of having separate gear to pontentially make up for gaps in your powers. Gear should never be as good as having actual powers, but there's no reason a melee based character can't carry an M60 in battle when the need arises.

[UnSub]

Jack Emmert wrote up a day in the life at Cryptic.

Of note:

 - ChampO seems to be in playable alpha

 - Cryptic has two other MMO projects on the boil, both in pre-production but no real further details exist

[Ragnoros]

Begin obligatory ED rant.

And I want to make sure it's fun enough. I can't spill the beans too much, but I was running around Slither Beach battling the hordes of VIPER.

(random font size changes mine)

Dunno Jack, not sure if fighting more then 2 mobs at once is balanced.
/EDrantoff

[DarkSign]

I was a long-time watcher and player of CoH, but havent until recently looked at Champions Online because I  didnt want to be disappointed from my tabletop days.

I havent read a stitch about this, but the pics look a lot like CoH to me. Perhaps thats just the intern-made coffee talking.

[Nevermore]

It's CoH meets The Incredibles.

[DarkSign]

You know, that's an even better description. Someone found the code (they've got it for Torque too) that surrounds a 3d character with a cartoony, black line to make it look like line art...and went nuts with it.

Grrrrr.

[Trippy]

Begin obligatory ED rant.

And I want to make sure it's fun enough. I can't spill the beans too much, but I was running around Slither Beach battling the hordes of VIPER.

(random font size changes mine)
Dunno Jack, not sure if fighting more then 2 mobs at once is balanced.
/EDrantoff

He never said he was

[Big Gulp]

I never played Champions, I was more of a V&V guy back then.

I like Villains and Vigilantes, but Champions was simply the best superhero system there was.  Hell, I still think the Hero System was better than GURPS when it came to baseline RPG rules.

There was one caveat, though, and that was that you had to lay down the "No!  Redo it!" stick whenever someone wanted to min-max the system.  If you were creative with disadvantages you could really make those character points go a long damn way and come up with a Galactus killer.  Without a fairly stern GM willing to call players on their bullshit during character creation that game system was way abusable.

[WayAbvPar]

As long as the GM made the player justify his min-maxing with a plausible backstory, you were usually safe. Not being laughed out of the room is important even to munchkins.

[Trippy]

The problem with that, though, is that with so many disadvantages piled on, all the adventures become about that player. In a group setting that's a problem.

[Lantyssa]

Well, in an online setting a few things can happen.  One, limit the number of disadvantages allowed to take.  Two, randomize the enemies for those disadvantages.  The baddies on the map happen to target six of your two dozen weaknesses?  Sucks to be you, but at least you're on a first name basis with that cute nurse at City General.

[UnSub]

Well, in an online setting a few things can happen.  One, limit the number of disadvantages allowed to take.  Two, randomize the enemies for those disadvantages.  The baddies on the map happen to target six of your two dozen weaknesses?  Sucks to be you, but at least you're on a first name basis with that cute nurse at City General.

I think this is one of the reasons that customisation is being built on several different versions of a similar power (e.g. ice blast, dark blast, fire blast, etc) rather than the Champion default 'energy blast'. That way the devs can tweak which blasts get access to which tweaks and how much they effect the power rather than having a much more abuseable open door policy.

I find it interesting that one stated tweak will be related to the time of day (e.g. night or day) that you use the power.

[DarkSign]

Morbius, anyone?

[UnSub]

In general news, ChampO's new community relations manager is Razor, best known from Razorwire on Warcry.

[Ragnoros]

In general news, ChampO's new community relations manager is Razor, best known from Razorwire on Warcry.

Good? Bad? Should I care?

[DarkSign]

Hey...

leave Ashen Temper out of this. 

[UnSub]

In general news, ChampO's new community relations manager is Razor, best known from Razorwire on Warcry.

Good? Bad? Should I care?

You can see his work on http://razorwire.warcry.com.

At the very least, you can chart the progress of someone who goes from fansite to official community guy.

(Full disclosure - I've written some things for Warcry in the past, but appear to have lost article privileges)