Champions Online dev Brian Urbanek discusses combat mechanics

by William Dobson Jun 23rd 2009 at 3:00PM

Filed under: Super-hero, Game mechanics, Interviews, New titles, Champions Online

The folks at Champions Online Daily News recently interviewed Brian Urbanek, who works with combat and related systems on Champions Online. The interview is full of juicy information regarding various aspects of the game's combat mechanics, and how the developers have sought to make Champions different from other MMOs in this particular area. The idea of a long fight meaning increasingly diminished resources was thrown out in the early stages of development, before Urbanek had arrived at the team. There will be a lot of strategy in using build-up attacks "that create energy so that during the combat players can moderate their own actions to their own advantage."

As well as this, each power set will have a unique secondary mechanic that advanced players will be able to use to gain an edge in combat. Using the fire set as an example, Urbanek explained that ambient heat sources could be absorbed by this type of character, providing self-heals and a constant feeding of energy for bigger attacks. The heat sources will be made by the player themselves, by lighting up an enemy or the environment. Urbanek also gave a detailed description of how an electricity character's secondary mechanic would work. For that and more, be sure to check out the rest of the interview.

Tags: atari, brian-urbanek, champions, champions-online, combat, combat-mechanics, combat-system, cryptic, cryptic-studios, electricity, energy, fire, powers, secondary-mechanic

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Stark1 said on 3:04AM 6-24-2009

That is awesome news. While there is a lot of suspension of disbelief, it was always a disappointment when fire-based characters took fire damage albeit minimal in CoH. At the very least seeing Fire Imps, beings composed of nothing but fire, take fire damage made you scratch your head. This sounds like a nice mechanic.

Hopefully, there will be other tactics we can use like knocking a foe into a wall and it collapses on them or knocking them off a building. If so, hopefully you will not be penalized like you are in CoH when you don't personally deal the damage.

Keep it up...more tactical gameplay plz!!!

Kat said on 11:40PM 8-17-2009

Glad to see Brian is still doing well in the gaming biz. I guess this is where I should say "I knew him when...". He's a talented guy and deserves his success.