Official Champions DevBlog: Jack Emmert on "Why do another superhero game?"

by Champions Developer Jan 21st 2009 at 10:00AM

Filed under: Super-hero, Culture, MMO industry, Opinion, Champions Online

Welcome, faithful readers, to the first of a series of developer blogs that will be hosted on Massively.com. In conjunction with the good people at Cryptic Studios, Massively will be playing host to insights directly from the developers themselves! We should be seeing a developer post about twice a month between now and the launch of Champions Online. If you're interested in following the insights straight from the team make sure to follow our very own Champions Developer blogger, who will be doing the honors of posting these interesting screeds.

This morning we present the first in our Champions DevBlog series, written by Mr. Jack Emmert. Mr. Emmert is head of Cryptic, the force behind not only Champions but the much-anticipated Star Trek Online as well. Our first DevBlog offers up insights into why the company has taken on 'yet another' superhero game. Mr. Emmert explains why they've chosen to don the tights again, and looks back to their work on City of Heroes for inspiration. Read on below the cut for our first official Champions Online DevBlog!

Gallery: Champions Online Main Gallery

by Jack Emmert
Why do another super hero game? I think that's perhaps the question I'm asked the most online and at conventions. Didn't Cryptic already do one? Why wouldn't you want to spread out and do something else? Like many questions, there are a variety of answers.

After we completed City of Heroes, we felt that we'd accomplished a lot, but we found that we had missed some really good opportunities. Fans immediately began requesting features that we simply couldn't deliver because of the way we had architected the game. Perhaps the most frequent fan suggestion is that we allow players to customize their powers. Unfortunately, we hadn't created the powers from the start to allow any sort of animation or color tweaking in City of Heroes. In Champions, from the start, we knew that players would want these features and I'm glad to say, they'll get them. Yep. Players can customize their powers to their heart's content.

Plus, there are a lot of things that we wish we'd gotten to, but never had the chance because of our resources; what's more superheroic than a Nemesis? What is Superman without Lex Luthor? Spider Man without Green Goblin? Batman without the Joker? Wolverine without Sabretooth? This was a sort of no-brainer that we never had the chance to do in City of Heroes, but we made sure to do in Champions. Players can not only design their own Nemesis but also the minions! Players need to keep their eyes open for sudden ambushes and act quickly to foil the Nemesis' evil plots.

Cryptic technology has progressed quite a bit over the past 5 years since we released City of Heroes. In Champions, we were able to create an "action MMO," which perfectly fits the style of comic book combat. In addition, we were able to put Champions on both the PC and the console. The latter, of course, is rare ground for MMOs, but we believe that consoles are the next logical step for MMOs. And what better game to trailblaze on the console than Champions Online?

Admittedly, our art team had grown pretty ambitious. City of Heroes, not surprisingly, was set mostly in a city. Certainly, a great deal of superheroics occur within the confines of a metropolis, but the game was pretty limited. In Champions Online, we wanted to stretch our horizons. We wanted to capture the world trotting feeling of the Justice League, the Avengers, and even James Bond. Certainly, Champions has its own urban setting, Millennium City, but players also travel to the windswept deserts of the Southwest, the steaming jungles of Monster Island, the frozen reaches of Canada and even the depths of the underwater realm Lemuria.

There are countless little things we learned in City of Heroes that we would have loved to have done differently. We spent years wondering, "what if...". We had a team that had been focused on making a next generation super hero game. We wanted the opportunity not only to improve on what we'd done, but also try something new. In the coming weeks, we'll be talking a lot more about what makes up Champions from the team. I hope you'll enjoy Champions as much as we do.

Did you enjoy this official Champions Online developer blog? Make sure to read back through our DevBlog archive for more! You can also check out our extensive Champions screenshot gallery, read up on our hands-on impressions with the game, or generally explore Massively's Champions coverage. Go get em', hero!

Tags: champions, champions-online, cryptic-studios, devblog, featured, jack-emmert

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Iokthemonkey said on 10:05AM 1-21-2009

I'll be interested to see how they can translate "action MMO" into something other than a button-bashing mess like AoC.

I really had high hopes for this game but the thoughts of it being twitchy in some way really make me wonder just how well it'll work...

BookhouseBoy said on 10:55AM 1-21-2009

The #1 thing that turns me away from CoH is the shallow-ness of the missions and game experience: the game only has so many area maps, and only so many variations on missions, and by the time I was in the high 20s, the repetition really got my nerves.

So, I would say to Champions Online... missions. Innovate in that area. Look to WotLK and DDO for examples of games that continue to come up with interesting ways to challenge the players.

brandon said on 12:50PM 1-21-2009

What??!! If they look at and emulate WoW or DDO, then they just lost my subscription for good. Those games are not something I'm interested in (I got to level 70, then what?)
City of Heroes, on the other hand, I've subscribed to for 3 years now, and loved every minute.

T said on 4:40PM 2-04-2009

@Brandon

How you can get to level 70 in WoW and ask "Then what?" is beyond me. There is PvP, there is end-game raiding, there are tons of quests to do. In CoH/CoV it was Hamidon. That was it. I've been gone 2 years from CoH, and I left due in large part to the very, very repetitive missions and level designs, and the fact that there was absolutely no end-game other than the one raid and some very unbalanced PvP. Hopefully they've added more by now. But WoW offered enough varied landscapes to make re-rolling something other than a chore, and there is so much end-game stuff to do, and if anything, the quests get more epic with level.

Never thought I'd ever see someone imply that CoH had more to do at the end game than WoW.

CCon99 said on 11:40AM 1-21-2009

I'm also concerned about many of the upcoming MMORPG's (emphasis on the RPG which many developers like Jack openly leave out on purpose anymore in favor of their coveted console market that may or may not exist). They're so worried about the console market they 'want', that they're forgetting about the MMORPG market they already have.

I keep seeing a lot of the marketing power words like "action", "fun", "exciting", but many of these games sell a lot of boxes, then they're dying out very quickly forcing server merges or even closing down a "fun", "exciting", "action" game in TR's case.

Wjowski said on 2:17PM 1-21-2009

That would be because most of these games are neither 'fun' or 'exciting'...and in some cases they're 'an obvious beta'.

Kira Blaize said on 2:41AM 1-22-2009

I don't see anything wrong with a console MMORPG. Especially on the 360. Live has a ton of people already. Plus, a lot of people like being able to game without having to worry about system requirements and such.

I think this will fit nicely into the console market as well as the PC market.

steve said on 1:45PM 1-21-2009

yep, city of x does have that problem with missions but as bioware said story has been missing from mmo's. i still like to play it but still a lot of room for improvement.

now will cham or dc beat up city of x only time will tell it hard to compare a 1 month game with a 4 year game

LaughingTarget said on 6:49PM 1-21-2009

Albeit I'm coming up with this conclusion from only three nights of preview play, Champions Online is no different than any other fantasy MMO, just with a different skin.

When I come into the game and immediately see my character dumped into a world where my main task is to beat up a bunch of guys milling about in a field, I'm immediately not impressed. Super heroes are more than just going out and punching things. There's a lot more depth to it. How about natural disasters like earthquakes or volcanoes? Getting together a balanced team to handle an instanced disaster, or much larger open one, would be a great deal of improvement over the whole "beat up enemies, that's all you're good for" angle.

There's just no creativity from what I'm seeing. Sure, the nemesis thing is cool, but that's a minor gimmick in an otherwise mundane game. Batman was far more than just hitting guys. He did far more effort in non-combat roles. Why can't we have an MMO that has that kind of aspect to it, especially a super hero MMO?

steve said on 10:36PM 1-21-2009

agreed that would make a intresting mmo

Chase said on 11:36AM 1-22-2009

what could be better than Supers running around.. How about the exploring Wild West? ;p

Played closed and open Betas for CoH/CoV, and live up until last year. What made it grow stale for me was the lack of mission updates/variety, as well as the "grind the same map at a higher level" carousel.

Now if Cryptic's Champions can keep things fresh, then they'll have my money for another 5 years at least.