After announcing the spiritual sequal to their City of Heroes MMORPG, Champions Online, on Friday Cryptic gathered some questions from their official forums…and answered them. While providing information on an in-development MMO may seem to be a radical, risky move by some (at this point, I’m not even sure BioWare has announced to BioWare what their MMO is going to be), Cryptic’s head hero Jack Emmert provided some very interesting information.

Will we be told what decisions were made based on drawing Inspiration from the HERO system? HERO’philes want to know what parts of their beloved system to expect. (Drakos)

Our inspiration from the Champions RPG is to allow players to customize their powers. Rather than trying to copy the specific power advantages and limitations (and the +/- fractions), we’re trying to achieve the same goal of power customization. So yes, we’ll have advantages and limitations, but they won’t be the same type in the HERO System core rulebook. They’ll be different…

That’s one nagging question answered, at least…apparently power customization will play a part. This doesn’t clear up the question of whether or not the game will be class-based or skill-based (since you could be customizing the powers only in your chosen archetype), but it’s a good sign.  Of course, this on the CO forums is an even better sign:

Posted by Jackalope: Remember that players will be able to select ANYTHING in the way of powers. A class gives some added advantage to some powers, but otherwise, you’re free to select anything you want. And, given the way our design is going, that just might be a good idea…

Okay, so much for ambiguity…sounds fairly skill-based to me. But what about the unpopular stepchild of “getting your butt whupped”, XP debt?

What will the “death penalty” be? (Hythian)

Regardless of what the player chooses to do, they have to pay a small price for defeat: upgrade degradation. Upgrades are pieces of equipment, imbuements, special training, etc., that players use to make their character more powerful. Every upgrade has a condition associated with it. Whenever a player is defeated any upgrades the player has slotted degrade. If the condition of an upgrade is reduced to 0, it stops providing a benefit. Upgrades can be restored to full effectiveness for a resource cost at most hero safe areas throughout the game. This represents items being repaired, re-exposure to experimental rays, combat technique montages, etc.

From this, I take it that XP debt will not exist…the death penalty will be item decay (of a sort).

 

Verrrrrrry interestink.

Will non-combat skills come into play? (rabb1t)

There are skills you can learn, develop, and use to affect your environment. For example, while raiding a VIPER base you may come across a team of VIPER agents accessing a Draysha Gas station to make themselves more powerful in combat. If your Science skill is high enough, you may be able to shut down the gas vents or reconfigure it so you can gain the benefits (and drawbacks) of the gas! We have a good distribution of Skill-based interactions throughout the game so players will have lots of fun figuring out how to turn an environment to their advantage or unlock bonus elements.

To be honest, just from this one simple Q&A, this is looking less and less like a clone of CoH/V, and more and more like the game CoH/V could have been.

Let me put it like this…I’m not getting less interested as more information’s released.

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Tags: Champions Online, Cryptic, games, gaming, mmo, mmorpg