Massively goes to Dragon*Con: Cryptic Studios Q&A Part 2
What you see here is Grond. He is one of the Zone Events for the Southwest Desert. His schtick, as we call it, is that he basically goes around beating up people in various neighborhoods and after a few minutes he just jumps to the next neighborhood, so you could be in the middle of fighting stuff and this big 25-foot tall green monstrosity jumps down. Grond is one of the things designed for 20 players to fight.
Q: Has Marvel seen him?
A: I don't know what you're talking about. He has 4 arms and his pants are brown. (laughter)
Q: Will you have to buy special effects?
A: There's two distinct systems in the game. One is the power system, where powers are purchasable. The tailoring, or power customization, is a different system. So without affecting the mechanics of your power, or the damage of your power, we certainly know you will be able to hue shift. We're experimenting with other things, like emanation points, so you could have a fiery projectile from your hand, as well as a fiery breath. In addition to the power system and aesthetics, we are incorporating a number of the Champions character customizations, one of which is Talents, which are things that are purchased and character-specific, and the other is Advantages. Each power itself can be customized in different ways. Those are things that you can purchase.
There are Zone Events that involve more planning, like the Rikti event. There is an event on Monster Island, there is a volcano that will periodically erupt and spew lava and fiery boulders all over the island, and you have to go around and rescue people and stuff like that.
Respawn times will exist. If someone comes along and defeats a villain before you get a chance to, you will have to wait for the respawn.
Q: What about endgame?
A: We have a system called the Omega System. So when you reach Max level, there will be a number of things you can do with your character. It includes a separate currency where you can purchase items that are only accessible at that level. There is a loot game that you can continue to play. There is more of a focus on certain instances, so there will be Omega Level instances, only available for that high-end player. There will also be factions. Champions, Project Mongoose, all the Champions IP organizations actually exist in the Champions universe. There is a special Omega Faction that you will be interacting with. Between interaction with the factions and the loot-based system, and additional instances, there is a lot of endgame replayability planned. There is endgame content for solo players, and group players, with a definite commitment to solo players.
There are going to be two distinct character type benefits, in addition to the powers. The Talents are holistic, and character-wide. Advantages and Disadvantages are things that affect powers.
(Regarding the UI): In the upper corner, you have the green bar, which is the avatar's health; the yellow, which is their experience; the blue meter, which is the endurance meter; and the little white pips are the equilibrium points. Your endurance automatically decays to your equilibrium point over time. The decay is slightly slower than the fill, but the general idea of gameplay is that you use your light attacks to increase your endurance, which allows you to use more powerful abilities, which drain your endurance. Quick access buttons in the upper right. Power tray at the bottom. On the right hand side, is the mapping for the xbox controller; it won't show up if you don't have an xbox controller set up. It corresponds to your face buttons. You can drag and drop powers around to map to different buttons. Macros are not decided at this time.
Q: How destructible is the environment? How interactive?
A: All objects in the world, as many as possible, will be classified as interactable objects. This means they can be picked up, they can be thrown, they can be destroyed. They can not only be picked up by hand, they can be picked up by telekinesis. Some of the things that you see are not fully interactable. Some are for combat, and some are for immersion, for exploration. We will have "pick up and wield" as well as "pick up and throw".
You will be able to create your nemesis. There is not only a number of gameplay mechanics involving you fighting with your nemesis, but there will be missions and scripted stories that will evolve, in terms of the nemesis that you've created. We're incorporating both into a fighting system, but also into the story systems.
Q: What is the level of customization going to be for costumes?
A: The costume is pretty much blows away what was done in City of Heroes. We've expanded beyond the parts and pieces you can use. There's also morphology, size, shape, actual geo modification customization systems that we're gonna have in Champions. Color and the linking of color. It's pretty powerful.
Q: Capes?
A: Capes to start. As you go up in level, you will be finding additional pieces that will potentially be cooler capes. But we don't want to limit the character creation at all in terms of pieces. Masks, capes, boots, pretty much everything will be available to start. The deeper you go into the game, the cooler, more animated and more elaborate pieces you'll find.
We have 3 different tracks for items. Science, Arms, and Mysticism. Science might be cosmic particles, or cosmic radiation. Arms would be something like shoulder cannons. Mysticism would be something like magic wand. Our items system is devices, things that you can make and use. Clickable, triggerable, actionable things that you can have in the context of missions or just to build your character. Or the other kind of items that we're calling Upgrades. They could be a new piece of armor, if you were a munitions character, but if you are a more cosmically-powered character, then that upgrade might be a serum that you inject yourself with. It can be various other ephemeral types of upgrades.
