Rerollz recently received the opportunity to ask some questions of Bill Roper the Design Director and Executive Producer of Champions Online. Champions Online is an upcoming MMOG from Crypic Studios. We wanted to see how Roper views ChampO in the marketplace with other super hero games and some general design theories.

Read on to see what we found out.

If I’m an equal fan of DC Comics and the Champions Universe, make your case why should I play Champions Online over the other upcoming title DC Universe Online.

The core essence of the Champions game mechanic and universe is customization. Being able to create the hero that you envision is more than using our amazing costume creator. Players can take customization to the next level by being able to build their heroes by using and combining all of the powers in the game as opposed to being locked down to a class or theme. They can even choose the emanation point of the power! Force bolts don’t just have to come from their hero’s hands. They could come from the eyes, or chest, for example. All of this is designed to allow players to truly create the hero they envision.

Also, Champions has been around since 1981. We literally have decades of the world, characters, and game mechanics that have been played and refined by hundreds of thousands of players at our disposal. The Champions universe is every bit as rich and detailed as any you’d see from traditional comics, with the added advantage of it being a game from the very beginning.

If you had to list 3 things, what are the largest differences between Champions Online and the “City of ” games other than IP differences?

Customization
From the look of your hero to what powers and how they function are all up to you. This is an amazing leap beyond what players are able to do in City of Heroes / Villains and is designed to bring four-color comics to life. Whatever hero you envision, we work to make real in the Champions universe.

Nemesis
Just as you can make the hero of your imagination, you can also create their arch-enemy – their Nemesis. Using the same in-depth tools, the ultimate villain can be crafted by the player. And this isn’t just the costume and thematic power set, but also the personality and minions of your Nemesis. The ultimate challenge is the one you make for yourself.

Breaking Free of the City
While heroes commonly have their roots in major cities, they also go to the ends of the Earth to fight for justice. From the frozen tundra of Canada to the wilds of Monster Island to the irradiated wastes of the Desert to the undersea kingdom of Lemuria, heroes can explore and fight in more varied locations than ever before. And, of course, they can always return to the biggest, brightest, and most dangerous metropolis in the world – Millennium City.

Regardless of the differences do you see City Of games as direct competition? What are you planning or actively doing to make sure you have the majority of the market share?

We’re excited that both MMOs and Superheroes have become such a huge part of our social consciousness because it really sets the stage for the launching of Champions Online. We know that gamers who play the City Of games love both of these elements, and we hope that they’ll come and help build a great new universe with us.

How would you categorize Champ-O’s theory of game progression i.e. sense of accomplishment per hour(s) played? World of Warcraft? Everquest? Call of Duty?

Progression in Champions Online is very mission-based, meaning that there should be little to no grinding required to get to the initial level cap. With over 900 missions available at launch, there’s an amazing amount of story to go through and things to accomplish. Even though our combat is more action-oriented, we’re definitely providing a deep, rich MMORPG experience for our heroes.

Piggy backing off of the last question what types of things are people feeling good about as they play through your game. Are abilities getting noticeably more powerful with each increment of advancement? How are you awarding your players by putting in hours? What are players collecting? What is your short term and long term carrot?

There are a large variety of rewards for characters as they grow in experience. Hundreds of new areas to discover and explore, new powers and associated advantages, hundreds of perks / achievements, origins and talents, items, crafting, super stats, PvP game types and rankings, and of course the Nemesis system – and that’s just off the top of my head.

Champions initially has 40 levels and some may draw a relationship with Warhammer Online since they have the same number. In their game there was a large consensus that players in the range of level 20-30 felt like their progression slowed down incredibly leading to dissatisfaction. Mark Jacobs said that it was all perception and that if they had more levels and kept the experience curve the same so players got more “ding”. How will you combat the leveling curve? Will you slow it down or speed it up?

The overall leveling curve we have wouldn’t be any different if we had 30, 40, 50, or 100 levels. The curve is designed to make each level more difficult, but also more rewarding to advance through. Obviously the time to go through each level increases, but we don’t artificially increase this beyond our defined curve because of the total number of levels we have on release.

Customization is huge for players. After your initial character creation segment how are players further customizing the appearance of their heroes?

There are numerous ways for players to continue to customize their heroes. In terms of just appearance, every new power you gain can be tweaked and tuned in terms of either hue, emanation point, or both. You can also always visit a tailor to change the look of your costume, or create entirely new ones as you unlock more costume slots. You’ll want to do this as you gain more and different costume pieces as mission rewards, created items, rare drops, and hidden rewards for completing perks or competing in The Hero Games.

A player’s first impression is key to retention. How are you designing your UI and are you allowing players to customize it?

We’re focusing on making our UI not only intuitive, but also able to handle the complexities involved with allowing players to do as much customization in so many areas of the game. Being able to properly build characters within a system that doesn’t require defined classes is challenging, so our first push has been to create the UI that makes that work. We can then look at how we allow players to create their own custom UI.

One thing many online games get wrong off the bat is social tools. How did you prioritize your chat system, friend system, clan system and grouping mechanisms? Can you describe any of these tools right now?

We make sure to prioritize chat by definable channels, as well as present general, guild, and private chats. We also have a full-fledged friends system that will have an outward-facing web component so you can easily see if your friends are online and contact them.

You discuss the freedom of character development where you can choose from many different power combinations. How do you plan on balancing this and not creating a min/max effect where certain combinations are powerful and others are lacking?

We’re spending a huge amount of time balancing the powers of one thematic set against the others. We’re also working on the “cost” structure of powers between themes to make the builds as interesting and flexible and balanced as we can. Obviously this is an ongoing process and we’ll spend tons of time during beta and post-launch watching how powers interact to do our best to reduce the min/max effect.

How would you describe the mechanics of your combat system?

The combat system is designed to be more action-oriented than other MMOs. We take the spirit of four-color comics – the high-energy, explosive combat where heroes can face numerous henceman and then square-off against a master villain – and turn that into our combat system. Heroes can run-and gun or plant their feet and get into a slugfest as their concept and power-sets dictate. We want our players to feel as heroic in battle as they characters they design.