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Shannon Posniewski on the development of Champions Online's first adventure pack
It's been a quiet couple of weeks for Champions Online -- at least, from the news side of things. Players have had plenty to do in the form of the recent Serpent Lantern adventure, offering an experience for players of nearly any level and any group size. Shannon Posniewski sat down for a recent interview in which he detailed some of the work that went into the adventure pack, from the challenges in design to the lessons learned. The overhaul of the perks system and the changes made to VIPER are both cited as elements that the development team was working on without the adventure pack, both of which dovetailed nicely with the new content. Posniewski describes the biggest hurdle as the scaling issues, however, which doesn't simply translate to adding more hit points to higher-level enemies. It's part of what contributes to the four-month design turnaround he describes in the interview. If you've been enjoying the new adventure, it's well worth a look at the interview for a peek at what makes Champions Online's development tick.
A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Places to go, questions to answer
It's hard to believe that in just two weeks, all of the debates about whether or not Going Rogue will revitalize City of Heroes will be out of the land of theory and into the realm of practice. And while we've still got another week in the land of theory, right now we're taking a trip... well, still into the land of theory, but into the land of theories you asked for. Which is different, in a way! I have a hard time writing these introductions. Haggs asked: "...now that you're getting new lower-level content, why would you want to go through it as fast as you're going through the old content?" It's not always a question of "want." Levels 1-20 in City of Heroes are not nearly as slow as the later levels -- they don't start to really feel long until you reach the 30s, but it's much faster to go from 1-20 than from 20-30 even if you're just playing casually. The flow of leveling appears to be tuned so that players will be able to hit a level of moderate competence fairly quickly, spend a bit of time fleshing out their powers, and then spend quite some time filing off any rough edges via the 40+ powers.
