You ask, Cryptic answers: Non-combat skills
There are many reasons why Cryptic Studios is awesome, one of those reasons is for letting us all live out our superhero fantasies -- the other is because of how involved they are with the community. When other developers are eschewing the very medium which subscribers and fans can get intimate with developers -- Cryptic is doing everything they can to make great use of it.
Recently, forum posters on the official Champions Online boards where given a stickied thread where they could hurl as many questions as they wanted at Cryptic. After the proper amount of question firing was complete (probably somewhere around or beyond the 100 range) select few questions were answered in length and the entire thing was posted to the main page on the official CO website. It's all very exciting!
What we're easily the most excited about is non-combat skills. Yep, Champions Online is aiming to give you the full superhero experience. It's not always about beating guys to a bloody pulp -- although it can be a lot of fun. Just think of classic examples like Superman stopping trains from speeding out of control or the X-men working together to get a huge bomb out of explosion range of innocents -- stuff that's heroic, but more than fighting. If Cryptic can pull this part off along with their promised hyper-customization then we're only that much more excited for the game.
Other subjects that were touched on were death penalties, of which there is very little. No XP-debt for Champions Online -- none! Although there has to be something and it's not time lost, actually. Not only are spawn points littered throughout the game itself, but apparently they're being planned for instances as well. Assuming you should die in CO, all you face is upgrade degradation -- or in other words equipment damage just like WoW. Simple, effective and no-nonsense.
Another question answered is in regards to Nemesis' and the trouble of making them health point juggernauts just to be a supposed challenge. The reason this won't be the case with any Super's Nemesis is because of special 'Showdown" scenarios that differ each instance with different objectives to keep things interesting. This ties into the non-combat skills, which means that Cryptic has put a lot of thought into making sure the skills get put to a good amount of use.
With so many questions, most people didn't see theirs get answered -- but fear not as Cryptic has said this is only the first of many more "Ask Cryptic" features.
