Champions Online Article Round-up

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Written by BuckGB on June 29th, 2009

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We're getting some last minute tech in to kick things up with the Telekinesis Power Set. More specifically, being able to pick up and throw objects in the world with your mind. This wasn't as simple as it sounds (if that even makes sense to non-supers) but the basic mechanic is that you'll want to increase your EGO to lift heavier and heavier objects, just like you boost your STR to physically pick up things in the world.

You should also be seeing another related (and very nifty) bit of polish in the game. Enemies and heroes that use powers which grab chunks of the world to hurl at their targets, those chunks will be representative of where they are. Concrete with steel pipes in the city, brownish rocks in the desert, ice floes in Canada, etc.

We're still two months away from the September 1 launch of the PC game, so there's plenty of time to get things done. Within that time-frame, an Open Beta needs to be organized. I can say that a firm date has been penciled in and although it's not 100% confirmed it is slap bang in the middle of August.

My advice is if you have a vacation to Outer Mongolia, or maybe a fishing trip in the mid-Atlantic planned for central August, cancel it now!

As you're probably aware, lots of detail has to be finalized before final announcements are made, mostly technical and legal stuff, but also the partners who'll be involved in the Open Beta.

In many RPGs, wizards and spell casters and sorcerers tend to be the highest damage but least durable characters. But that kind of paradigm doesn't work in a superhero game. That's not the way superheroes are built. Dr. Fate or Dr. Strange aren't dealing out the highest DPS in Marvel and DC. Those come from people who throw energy around or have claws or are Superman.

So instead of building particular power-sets that are balanced between powerful DPS and weak resistance, we have built a system that is very dynamic and toolkit-like.

We're reshaping traditional roles - mage, pyro, tank - in unique ways. For example, the powers in the fire set make you a very high damage character. But throwing fire isn't very defensive, so in a traditional RPG model that might make you very much like a mage. Except when a mage in an MMO specializes in fire and comes up against a fire based enemy, well, they often just can't do anything. All they can do is resort to other spells, non-specialized skills, that do subpar damage and they just feel kind of useless at the fight.

We have a different paradigm. Let's say you go deep into the fire trees and take all those tools that give you fire damage. It's true that enemies that are resistant to fire will limit your effectiveness. But if they do mostly fire damage, you'll be highly resistant to them and as a result you'll be an optimal tank versus them. So the pure fire DPS blaster in our game is also an optimal tank for a pure fire villain. You can be the one who stands in the front lines and eats up all the damage. Your fire powers enable you to absorb, redirect, or just ignore all of this fire damage.

Characters don't get equipment, but you will often pick up augments for your offense, defense and support slots. These augments can be slotted and removed at will, allowing you to tailor your character's performance in a variety of ways. You will also get to utilize devices as temporary mission items and mission rewards, which have various effects, such as calming frenzied enemies.

Champions Online takes many cues from other MMOs in some of its quest designs, such as how any random Champions who wander near the Champions headquarters will take part in a public quest that consists of multiple waves of objectives followed by a scoring system that rewards the players who contributed the most. Quest areas show up on the radar as circles, with larger ones used for "Kill X" or "Find X number of Y" quests and smaller ones indicating when you encounter a specific NPC or enemy.

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