Champions Online Interviews
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Could we talk a moment about customization in Champions, I imagine it's something you've carried forward from City of Heroes.GameSpy also offers an interview, same guy, same topic.
Yup, it's from City of Heroes - we learned how successful a game can be if we just give players options. And people may forget - or maybe they haven't, I don't know - in an MMO, that had never been done before. Nobody gave players those customization opportunities right off the bat. Quite frankly, we're going to continue to do that, and we'll do that in Star Trek as well.
Would you explain what you're doing with the character development skill system in Champions? It's not a class based system like we're used to, is it?
You'll level up, and as you level up you'll get access to things and spend points in that fashion. So you'll have a certain amount of points to buy power advantages, a certain amount of points to buy powers every level. It might not all be the same economy; in other words, it might not all be hero points in Champions. We might be breaking it up between, you know, these are your talent points, these are your power and advantage points, these are your powers points, but we're still working on that.
There are no distinct classes; pick any skill you want. We've got a really cool methodology that takes the place of classes that we haven't discussed yet. I'm really excited; I can't wait to show it off. I think it's something off-the-wall that hasn't been tried before. It's a twist on something that's familiar.
While not dwelling on the past, Emmert believes that it would be foolish for the Champions Online team to not learn from it. As such, he's not shy about pulling examples of both successes and mistakes that he believes have ultimately benefited Champions Online. "I was really surprised at the way people latched onto the costume creator in City of Heroes," he says. If anything Emmert is understating the case. The character-customization systems in City of Heroes is still cited as one of the best in any MMO ever made. Players would often spend hours getting their characters just right and there were frequent player-sponsored events in the game in which players would simply congregate to have "fashion shows" displaying the latest costume design produced by a combination of clever players and the powerful customization tool.
