New Champions Online Details

Eurogamer sat down with Bill Roper of Cryptic Studios to discuss Champions Online, their superhero MMO due out in a few months. Roper mentioned that the PC version of the game will be coming out well ahead of any console versions, and he provided some insight into the game's Nemesis system. "When you get around the mid-game, you have the ability to create your Nemesis... Then you start going on these separate Nemesis missions — you'll start getting ambushed by the minions of your Nemesis, and eventually one of these minions will kind of break down, and say 'oh no please don't, I'll tell you I'll you,' and you get a clue off him. You go through a whole series of these very Nemesis-specific quests which revolve around the things you put in about your Nemesis, but it's not always the same path that you take, there's multiple story directions that you could be going through." Examiner also spoke briefly with Randy Mosiondz, lead designer for the game, about the questing and the game environment. IGN got a look at Lemuria itself, and Cryptic posted some of the concept art.

City of Heroes

[Jamu]

Anyone know why Cryptic are realising a superheroes game that's going to be in direct competition with their previous superheroes game? Is City of Heroes dying?

Re:City of Heroes

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans have no problem understanding that. If it weren't so we wouldn't have a land rich in poor artists.

What you are probably missing (I'm betting completely) is that this is a question about a *company*, not a person. Corporations don't have passions, whims, or an artistic sentiment. It's a 100% legit question about a company.

Re:City of Heroes

[Renraku]

Actually, this is the successor for City of Heroes.

Successors must be made into successors before they become suitable heirs for the throne. The King doesn't promote the prince to king as soon as he is born. The prince must be educated and raised before the king will step down.

Re:City of Heroes

[dreampod]

The exact business dealings are not completely clear but the gist of it is that several years ago Cryptic started developing the Marvel MMO. Presumably because their publisher NCSoft was upset about the conflict of interests that could occur bought the City of Heroes franchise and brought most of the support team under their umbrella. Jack Emmert along with a number of senior developers and programmers took Cryptic studios and went their separate ways. For unknown reasons the Marvel MMO was cancelled, however since much of the engine and design work for a superhero MMO had already been completed, and the fact that the dev team were superhero fanatics they acquired another IP for the game. Champions was a big favourite from their old days and they were able to work out a deal to purchase it.

City of Heroes isn't dying per se. However it is quite dated graphically, gameplay has stagnated for a long time, and the new content doesn't provide any particular difference from the old. Their subscription numbers are around 100,000 players with significant spikes briefly after each new update. This income is enough to cover their expenses but not really do much more than that. As well many choices made early in the development have hamstringed their ability to improve the engine and gameplay.

Currently City of Heroes is trucking with a slow loss of players but maintaining historical averages. Once Champions Online and DC Universe Online release it is up in the air what will happen to City of Heroes. While the game has many loyal players, they could easily lose half their population which may make it unviable for NCSoft to continue supporting the game. Likely it would keep running, but all development would be mothballed.

Re:City of Heroes

[Chas]

Actually, this is the successor for City of Heroes.

Actually, no it's not. It's a competing product that just happens to be built on a newer version of the same engine.

That tired old line.

[KingSkippus]

He nearly ruined the original CoH before he left...

Prove it.

If you look at the actual numbers [mmogchart.com] , you'll see that City of Heroes had its highest subscriber numbers while Jack was in charge. In fact, the thing that he's criticized most for, Enhancement Diversification [slashdot.org], is widely regarded now as a necessary step for the game's gameplay systems to evolve as they have, and the game actually gained subscribers—that's right, gained subscribers—when it was released.

Jack-bashing is very popular with City of Heroes fans, but the truth of the matter is that City of Heroes was his baby and that the game's best years financially so far have been under his reign.

I don't mean to take away from Matt Miller's competence, because he's doing a fine job, and City of Heroes continues to be a great game. I also don't mean to imply that Jack was perfect, because I disagreed with him on one or two fundamental points. But this whole "Jack was destroying the company" line is so tired and really, it's always been nothing but a bunch of nonproductive BS propagated by fanboy forumites who don't know what they're talking about.

As for the whole "he didn't listen to the subscribers" crap, if developers listened to everything the subscribers whined about, we'd undoubtedly have a "make me level 50" button by now, complete with purple IOs, infinite influence, the ability to take all powersets on a single character, and a power that recharges instantly that immediately defeats all enemies. PvP matches would be won based on who could hit the button first. There's a reason that developers don't jump through hoops to do everything players ask for, why all games, even City of Heroes as it exists today, are the visions of their developers (duh...). If everyone got what everyone wanted, it would effectively destroy any game.

The funny thing is that I see plenty of posts on the City of Heroes forums making the same tired old claims that you're making about Jack about the current developers. Waaah.

Re:City of Heroes - Dev Exodus?

[Bieeanda]

The story I've heard is that virtually everyone stayed where the steady money was, and remained with NCsoft. The number of major developments to the game post-Cryptic don't really speak to a [skeleton] crew of new coders, especially given references to the crazy state of the code.

Regarding competition from Champions and DCUO, it's really hard to say. CoX is a traditional MMO-styled game in tights, but the other two are very much action-RPGs with a very stylized aesthetic. They're in the same theme, and arguably the same genre, but so were Ultima Online and Everquest. UO is still ticking along even now, because there is an intense sense of ownership among players of that game-- personal housing still magnetizes the player base, which is why the newer landmass expansions include space for it. Even if it's possible to duplicate a character's identity in another game, the psychological impact of virtual uprooting is a strong deterrent to making the move. For CoX, that sense of ownership is in the character avatars themselves, their Badges (analogous to Xbox Live Achievements) and Veteran Rewards, instanced Supergroup bases and to a lesser extent, the optional value-add costume packs. The added opportunity to purchase extra character slots (and free slots earned every year of subscription) indicates that NCsoft knows exactly where the strength of their City lies in the face of competition.