Champions Online Bill Roper interview

Cryptic launched their latest superhero MMO, Champions Online, in August. While showing a lot of promise, part of the fanbase was angered by what was perceived as lack of content, balance issues and changes to the XP curve. Here at Boomtown we liked the game, but felt it needed more polish in terms of combat and teaming mechanics. Now three months later Cryptic has changed literally thousands of things and content has been added. Both in terms of new powers, new missions and the first Halloween event.

We had the chance to talk to Bill Roper, Executive Producer of Champions Online, about the launch, the game and not least the future.

Bill Roper

Boomtown: First of all please give us your inside take on the game’s status right now. How does the Cryptic team think the game is doing?
Bill Roper: We’re very happy with the interactivity and passion coming from our community. We had a great time this past week on our Public Test Shard running a costume contest while testing out some new player load optimizations. The game is running very smoothly, our first big event since launch (Blood Moon) went incredibly well, and the upcoming events and content releases through the rest of the year are really exciting.

We’ve been dumping in loads of content and changes based on player feedback, and are putting the power sets through their paces right now, with Archery getting a lot of attention this week on the test servers. All in all, we’re moving ahead full steam while looking to bring more and more players into the game because you can never have enough heroes around!

Boomtown: Since the launch you and Jack Emmert have been under very personal attacks from the players. Not least your time with Hellgate London has been used a lot in the criticism. How do you deal with that on a personal level? Does it affect you at all?

Bill Roper: When Hellgate: London launched and didn’t meet the incredibly high expectations of gamers, it was actually quite disheartening at how personal the attacks became. I can understand being upset that a game isn’t what you hoped it would be. As a gamer, I’ve felt that way myself. But I have never then turned that into the vitriol that was spewed out against me and the crew at Flagship. It may come as a surprise to those vocal few that use forums as a means to hurl insults and make inflammatory statements, but no one in the industry is out to get you, make your life a living hell, or mistreat and lie to you. If any game isn’t what you hoped it would be, then don’t support it – or wait to see if it becomes what you hopes (in the case of MMOs). But to make personal attacks against anyone that worked on the game is simply childish.

I will say that while it was an incredibly dark chapter in my life, my hide toughened up a lot after the Flagship days. With Champions, we’ve had our detractors, but we focus on making the game better and working with those players that take the time to give us constructive, rational feedback. I appreciate players that are vocal and have a passion to see the game evolve.

Boomtown: Speaking of the launch – what would you say went wrong and what went right?

Bill Roper: We definitely needed more time on balancing the game overall, and that bit us when we had to do a large shift in the experience / difficulty curve after the head start program ran. We had the experience curve very close to where we wanted it by the time the game launched wide, but this definitely caused some of our early adopters to be upset that the game play changed after it went live. We also should have done a better job with balancing powers before launch. We’ve been chasing this ever since, and have made strides to making it much better, but this will be an ongoing project as with any MMO. Finally, after adjusting the experience curve, we had some content holes that we had to fill. This didn’t take us long, but it did mean that the game launched with very thin content.

As for what went right, the game was incredibly stable. The only real down time we had was one 8-hour period due to human error on our end. The game servers never had a catastrophic failure, we never lost character data, and we really breezed through a lot of the technical issues. We also had a wide variety of systems in place, a solid foundation on which to build moving forward – an open power system, vast customization, Nemesis, PvP, Open Mission, Crises Zones, and Lairs.

Boomtown: One of the points that got some criticism was the lack of teaming purpose. It seems odd that a MMO developer would put so little effort into group mechanics and only begin adding them weeks after the launch. Why was this?

Bill Roper: The goal was to create a game that players could go through solo, but then to provide incentives to play through in a team format, such as with patrol missions and lairs. Player feedback has asked for more team-based content, so we’re adding it. As with a great many things in the game, as our players have expressed interests and desires, we’ve worked hard to begin accommodating them as best we can.

Boomtown: How do you plan to strengthen the team features in the coming months in order to make teaming beneficial and fun for everyone on the team?

Bill Roper: We’ve recently added Crossover Missions which allow players to share and gain rewards for missions even if they do not meet the requirements to actually obtain the mission on their own or have it shared as a primary mission. We’re also adding scaling into more instances and working on plans for increased super group support.

Boomtown: What kind of content can the players look forward to in the coming months?

Bill Roper: Nemesis Confrontation is a vast 5-hero Lair that combines both the UNITY and Nemesis systems coming in November. There is also another special event planned for December that is based around a new play mechanic which allows players of all levels to fight side-by-side. We’re also working on new systems that allow players to put together their own missions in a new way than we’ve previously done, but details on that are still ways off.

Boomtown: The UNITY system is your take on high level content. What can we expect to see from that feature in the future?

Bill Roper: As I noted before, we’re combining UNITY and Nemesis in the Nemesis Confrontation. We’re also creating more end-game missions and repeatable Lairs in the coming months to expand the system.

Boomtown: Will you expand the Nemesis feature? For instance making your Nemesis respond more to their origin and the players?

Bill Roper: This is another area we have designs for and will be working on in the near future. One thing we’ve noticed is that while players love making a Nemesis, they aren’t making others to fight. We’re not sure that it’s clear they can, and there are alternate paths through the Nemesis chain, especially if you bring along a team of heroes to help!

Boomtown: During the Halloween event the first new power set was added to Champions Online only 2 months after the launch. What kind of pace do you plan to have for new power set releases?

Bill Roper: We built the Celestial powers in response to the feedback of players and a need in the system for a healing-focused set. We’re now doing a comprehensive review of all the power sets in the game, as well as looking at more high-end choices to give increased options and focus for our set-thematic heroes.

Boomtown: To an outsider it seems like Champions Online did not expand the total player base but took from the existing market. How do you see the future for this kind of MMO given that next year a third superhero game (DCO) will launch?

Bill Roper: The console market is an entirely different set of gamers, and that’s why we’re excited to be working on the Xbox 360 version. It’s really fun to play with the controller, and we’re putting a lot of different attention there while still supporting the PC version of the game.

Boomtown: What is your vision for Champions Online? Where is the game headed and where will it be in 6 months time?

Bill Roper: We’re going to keep making the game bigger and better. Being more focused on what works while ironing out what doesn’t. Maintaining and growing the interaction with and attention to our community. Basically, we want to continually build the Champions Online experience and universe and reach out to more and more players. We’re doing a lot of things to bring people in and let them experience all the wonderful things about our game.