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Infinite Crisis' Superhero Origins Story 50

An anonymous reader writes A new interview published this week looks at the creation of Infinite Crisis, one of the slew of Dota 2/League of Legends team multiplayer competitors currently under development. What makes this one stand out however is not only its use of DC Comics heroes like Batman and Wonder Woman, but the experience of the studio behind it, Turbine, in massively multiplayer online games and punishing abusive and toxic players, something League of Legends developer Riot has serious struggles with. Turbine was the studio behind the popular Asheron's Call, and is applying many of th same policing techniques it used in RPGs to the growing MOBA genre. Of course, they still have troubles with the inevitable: balancing Superman as a playable character. it's a challenge, Kerr admits, especially when you're having to nerf the Man of Steel as a result. "Yes, we redid Superman three times, because, and I know this is going to be a surprise, he was super overpowered," says Infinite Crisis creative director Cardell Kerr.
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Infinite Crisis' Superhero Origins Story

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  • /vertise much?
  • by Anonymous Coward

    He's just living in a world of cardboard. Always taking constant care not to break something, to break someone. Never allowing himself to lose control even for a moment, or someone could die. But you can take it, can't you, big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for him to cut loose and show you just how powerful he really is.

  • One of the reasons I don't play Wow or LoL is the lack of fine tuned character control. This looks like just another version with different characters. Besides, I can already get a DC fix with DCU Online.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Turbine is NOT known for handling abusive players. Players of DDO know them for not being able to fix exploits and doing nothing to the utterly rampant exploiters. About the only action ever taken is manually by the otherwise hamstrung GMs to people shouting racism in public channels, and then only if enough people complain.

  • Turbine's biggest property isn't mentioned in passing? Heh. Lord of the Rings Online is still going strong.

  • MOBAs are easier to make yes, but to attract a player base, you need to be special, have flair, and a little luck. I think Turbine should have just made a new MMORPG as they're skilled at to play it safe. Can you really make a MOBA attractive when there's only like a dozen or two DC characters to select from, and you still have to unlock a majority of them? To me, it seems like Turbine is attacking the MOBA scene like it knows what it is doing, but they probably don't. I'd like to be kindly surprised
    • Asheron's Call (the first one) was great. I really wish they hadn't wasted so much the time and so many resources on a sequel. AC had a good loot system, crafting, genuinely novel lore, real PKing, a full open world, in game guilds, in world housing, a functioning economy (ok sometimes money was worthless). I moved onto to WoW and it was much more polished but didn't have that wide-open, it's your world feel of AC. WoW felt like running around Disneyland. You could get lost in AC.

      You haven't lived unti

  • Does there come a time in a nerd's life when s/he just doesn't care about yet another "origins" story?
  • Do today's gamers really care about being called 'fag' on the internet? I'm not much of a mmo player, but back in the quake days, the problem was dealt with by keeping the few who did whine to a minimum instead of pandering to them. They were unceremoniously booted from servers, laughed at and kicked off irc, and, otherwise, mocked and ignored. While some of them did persist, the community was healthy and stayed healthy for a long time because of that. Irrelevant complaints about 'mean words' and social

    • Since new accounts can be made in minutes, there's very little disincentive for toxic players. Voice is much harder to police than text.

      S2's new MOBA, Strife, even goes to the extent of banning both (an exception is made for friends and party).

      You're right that prominent voice/text toggles are a big part of the solution.

      • by epyT-R ( 613989 )

        Have separate chat channels for public and team/squad that are independently mutable for voice and text. It shouldn't be hard. Really, though, the cultures need to toughen up again. I think there are bigger problems when we have 16-30yo players crying over trashtalk or 'mean spirited' tactics. If the game allows it, then it's ok. If the fact the game allows it is not ok, patch the game.

  • - Ultra-premium AKA ultra-high-priced franchise, DC superheroes, check!
    - Massive committees in charge, check!
    - Done by Turbine, part of Microsoft, check!
    - YADC (Yet Another DOTA Clone) in an aging genre with a saturated market, check!
    - DC's move belatedly into "action" MMORPGs, and Marvel's into "action" Diablo-clones both flopped miserably, check!

    What could possibly go wrong?

  • The motto of people playing their MMOs has ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS been "exploit early, exploit often." That was true in 99/2000 with Asheron's Call just months out the gate, and it was(/is?) true two months ago as it got put out to pasture (one-time-fee-to-play, no new dev work).

    Turbine will patch the hole but only once in a blue moon will they even consider taking action against paying customers, and usually even then only a slap on the wrist 1-3 day ban. The macros, duping hacks, speed altering programs (ge

  • by Anonymous Coward

    hes too powerful. He is "I can do every fucking thing man"... if he doesnt get to the damsel in time, he can just reverse time & try again.

    The dude doesnt have a weakness.

    "Oh, but what about kryponite?" Someone is going to chime in.

    I dont believe he -does- have a weakness to kryptonite. If you watch you'll see that hes never weakened by kryptonite until the badguy opens up the briefcase & shows it to him.

    I think the kryptonite thing is just an act.

  • Whine whine... the people complaining this character or that character is overpowered. Quit whining that everything has to be NERFED just because you suck and you lost the battle. The Superman character comes with a sysop root account on the game server. So what? Deal with it and quit whining.

    -

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