State of the Game d'avril 2011

Hello Heroes!

It’s that time again. Let’s take a look at where Champions Online is since the last SotG and get some updates on our future plans.

Champions Online is doing great! We are on track to give you a terrific summer of updates.

We are kicking everything off with the Heavy Weapon Framework, following up with Resistance and bringing you our first Comic Series. Along with the content updates we will continue to bring you new and interesting C-Store devices, costume sets and Archetypes. Let’s take a look at some of the details.

Content Updates

Lair Reviews

Our initial Lair review of Project Awakening and Stronghold Prison are complete. These two lairs are LIVE and ready for you to play. This first review is a functional review and we have updated the boss fights and improved some of the back end functionality of the missions. Project Awakening has also been updated to scale with a team size of 2 but will not scale higher. The Lair PVE Queue is not included in this round but will be included with the next Lair review. Lair Queues should be on PTS later this month for wider testing. We look forward to your feedback.

On the topic of rewards...

We have received a tremendous amount of feedback about making Lairs more attractive for replay at higher levels that has included suggestions for reward and difficulty updates. We are discussing how we can improve Lairs and provide a greater challenge with reward to match. There are currently no solid dates for level 40 or elite versions of our current Lairs but it is something we want to get for you.

Instance Updates

With our next LIVE update, nearly all instanced missions in the game will be able to scale to team size similarly to our Adventure Packs. If you want your mission instances to scale with your team size you can set your difficulty to “Difficult” or higher. This will increase the size and strength of the encounters in the mission instances. If you do not want mission instances to scale with team size you don’t have to do anything. Mission instances, which previously didn’t scale with team size, will play the same as they always have on the “Normal” difficulty setting. Keep in mind that some rewards and drops may only be available at higher difficulties or team sizes.

Adventure packs are not affected by the Difficulty Slider change. They will continue to scale with team size.

I want to take a moment to talk about rewards for difficulty and team size. We are very keen on adding new rewards and reviewing existing rewards to add more incentive to teaming. Over the next few weeks we will be doing a lot of testing on the basic mechanics of standard rewards like exp and resources to make sure the teaming bonus still makes sense. When everything checks out we will move on to an upgrade to rewards at various team sizes and difficulties. There are no quick fixes for a change like this and we are excited to work with you on PTS to make teaming better.

Adventure Packs

This weekend we are opening up Serpent Lantern to all Silver Players to play for free.

In addition to the weekend pass we have added an Experience and Resource boost for the adventure pack. Critters in Serpent Lantern will reward bonus exp and resources when defeated. Look for details to be posted on Friday.

Resistance

Our latest Adventure Pack will take you on a journey through a parallel universe where you will need to work with the resistance forces to liberate their world from Shadow Destroyer. Resistance offers a different type of gameplay that is sure to make this adventure pack a favorite in Champs.

Resistance will be on PTS starting this week. If you want to be a part of making our next adventure pack the best it can be, head on over to PTS, play and give us your feedback. The Dev team will be playing and testing on PTS regularly so if you see us on grab us for a pickup group.

Resistance will be LIVE in MAY. We are currently targeting May 17th for the launch day.

PvP

Our new KotH map in the VIB cemetery is not quite ready for PTS testing. There are a number of Art fixes we need to get in and the UI needs a little more polish. Our hope is that we can start testing on PTS soon and work out any balance issues with the help of the PVP community in time for a summer launch. We are also looking at a number of reported PvP issues and are dedicated to working with you to address them.

Hideouts

In July we are launching Hideouts!

These are personal spaces for players to hang out and socialize in. Players will be able to customize their hideout in a number of ways and can have more than one. At launch we will have 4 different hideouts. They are Mom’s Basement, Cave, Arcane and Moonbase. Hideouts will also have some basic functionality that includes a Tailor, Crime Computer and Personal Bank. We will be posting more information about hideouts as we get closer to their launch as well as a hideout Q&A in the forums. For now please enjoy these preview images.

C-Store Updates

We have just added a new Archetype and next week we are adding Rainbow flight. May includes a new costume set and more devices like Be Vampire and Robot Sidekick. We will continue to keep you posted on what’s next in the Calendar. Look for a full May update next week.

Costume Sets

We are going to continue to add more costume sets. Some of the sets we are planning for and working on right now are classic while others are more modern. Here is some concept for our Golden Age and Pulp Costume Sets. These sets are in the concept phase but we are really excited to start working on them and getting them to you as soon as possible.

For a more modern costume we have the Harajuku Set.

We are currently working on this set and hope to have it LIVE this June. The set will feature two outfits complete with accessories for both with a ton of mix and match potential.

These are just a few of the costume sets we have planned. Keep an eye out for more sneak peeks of our planned costume additions in the forums.

Powers Updates

Heavy Weapons Framework

The Heavy Weapons Framework is LIVE. We are really excited to bring this framework to you. Along with the new framework we have added the heavy weapon powers to numerous critters in the world. These critters also use some new weapons that they have a chance to drop. We have even added Therakiels Sword to his lair as a rare drop.

Framework Reviews

We are still on track to review Telekinesis followed by Martial Arts. We have just about locked down our review schedule. The TK review should be complete and the update should be LIVE in June.

Updates and The Future

Comic Series

Our first Comic Series is in development and we are currently working on our 3rd issue. The Comic Series is comprised of 5-6 issues that are released on a weekly basis. Each issue tells a part of the overall story and by the end of the Series you have an entire story that makes for a really cool adventure.

The first issue of our Comic Series is currently scheduled to go live the last week in May. The rest of the series will play out through June. Keep an eye out for more on our first Comic Series in the coming weeks.

PvE Challenge

We are going to put the PvE challenge on hold for a bit. While we really like the idea we currently have a lot on our plate and we want to be able to give this feature the time it needs to be really cool.

The feature was already pretty far out on our list of things we wanted to add and it just makes sense for us to hold on to it a bit more and plan it out.

SotG and Ask Cryptic

I would like to make a change to the schedule for the SotG and Ask Cryptic. Going forward I would like to alternate the two. There is some crossover with these two items and with the addition of dev chats, interviews, live streams and other community plans in the works I think we can cover a lot in a variety of ways. In May, we will have an Ask Cryptic followed by the next SotG in June. The community team is working on scheduling a number of dev chats and interviews in the coming weeks so let’s give them a chance.

Ask Cryptic?

I wanted to take a moment to let you know that a revised Ask Cryptic for April is complete and has been posted. Going forward I will be taking care of the AC, picking the questions and writing the answers.

WoW that was a lot!

I hope you enjoyed the look at what we have planned. We are all really excited to bring you Comic Series, Lair Reviews, Hideouts and more.

See you in game!

Rob Overmeyer
Producer - Champions Online