Behind the Mask: The Ironman Challenge
Back in the ancient days before real mainstream gaming, there was a dearth of good titles to play. It was a cultural phenomenon at that time to extend gameplay for the few good games that existed by creating emergent challenges for themselves. This is where the concept for the speedrun came about, although the speedrun changed dramatically after that time into something very unique.
Still, gamers have been artificially injecting challenge into games ever since the '80s.
A game like Champions Online has a fair number of factors, including a smaller endgame and a lower overall difficulty level, that make it ripe for injecting some artificial challenge.
The Ironman Challenge is my own special insidious brand of injecting challenge. It's not particularly hard, mostly because dying is trivial in CO. If you want to, you're welcome to include a rule such as dying means you've failed. However, the root of the challenge is more to get you thinking about how you play the game. The Ironman Challenge is more a test of player fortitude than anything else -- it's a test of whether you've got the courage to stick with it.
The basis of the Ironman Challenge is three tenets:
You may not use an energy building power, ever, for any reason
You may not respec out of any powers once you have exited the initial Crisis (either in Canada or in the Desert)
The first tenet is the basis of the challenge. Ideally, you respec out of your energy builder as soon as possible and never buy it back. While some people might buy an energy building power just to unlock powers earlier, I think the spirit of the challenge is that you do not have a purchased energy builder by the time you exit the first Crisis.
Not having an energy builder is a little crazy because it forces players to pay much more attention to their energy bar than before. Because you have to rely on blocking or other energy boosts to keep attacking, playing without an energy builder forces a hero to make hard decisions in combat about how energy should be spent.
The second tenet is because Gigabolt breaks the energy curve. I don't have a problem with using powers that deal a lot of damage or that are highly effective, but in this case, Gigabolt is very powerful and usually grants its user a huge amount of energy back at the same time. If the point is to make the game harder by making the player think strategically about energy use, Gigabolt simplifies things a lot. There are other "energy combos" that still work, so removing the best one shouldn't ruin people's overall strategy too much.
Defiance is much the same way. It dramatically breaks the energy curve and makes this challenge far too easy. It combines a lot of defense with a lot of energy gain while getting hit, which just makes things far too trivial when you pair it with any other sort of energy management.
The third tenet is because respecs make the game very easy. By using respecs at key levels, you can pick up powers that make the early game less hard, then respec out of them to use your "good" build later. The Ironman Challenge is about using what you have and sticking with it, possibly at the cost of late game performance.
However, a clarification should be made -- if you pick a power in the powerhouse, test it against some dummies, then respec out of it without leaving the powerhouse because you don't like it, that's okay. The no respec rule applies once you've left the powerhouse with your selections. They're final.
Although there is no rule specifically outlawing teaming, having a teammate complete your missions for you is not really the point of the challenge. It's fine to team up, but stick to the essence of the challenge and pull your weight.
Naturally, there are some ways of getting through this challenge a little more easily.
Blocking gives you energy back and is available to any character. Thus, no matter what kind of character you make for the Ironman Challenge, you'll have at least some way of getting energy back. Because getting health back is fairly difficult without energy (or Regen), blocking is only a stopgap solution. If you're Regen, you'll want to block a lot.
Support Role is another way of making the Ironman Challenge a lot easier. In fact, Support mode and a high Recovery makes the challenge sort of easy in terms of energy management. The problem of course is that you can't use defensive passives, which in turn makes the game harder, and you do a lot less damage. I recommend using Support mode for the early parts of the game, but unless you make your Ironman a healer, you'll probably want to switch out of it later.
Secondary energy unlocks are the main way most people get a little energy back in normal fighting, so they're a natural choice for this challenge. None really give you enough back to completely negate the challenge, although Thermal Reverberation comes kind of close. If you choose to only use powers from Supernatural, Supernatural Power makes things very easy -- although playing with an exclusively Supernatural build might just be a challenge in and of itself.
Circle of Arcane Power is another great way for an Ironman to get extra energy. Unfortunately, it requires you to stand still, but the energy provided is massive.
The focus of the Ironman Challenge is more about playing through the game differently than it is a real 'challenge'. I think that looking at the way we use energy is intriguing and lends to a new appreciation for that energy builder we take for granted.
If you've got some crazy other ideas about how to beat the Challenge, leave a comment and let everyone else know!
