Buffed Interviews Bill

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Buffed.de sent some post mortem questions Bill's way this week. Check out the interview here (http://www.buffed.de/buffed/features/5681/Champions-Online-Post-Mortem-Interview-mit-Bill-Roper-englisches-Original).


Link to the news article. (http://www.champions-online.com/node/594724)

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Alternate paths would be a great way to get more people to play more than one character. ^^

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I really like that alternate path idea as well, sounds interesting. Looking forward to the Christmas event too! :)

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I really like that alternate path idea as well, sounds interesting. Looking forward to the Christmas event too! :)

Or even fixing the broken stuff in the game before adding more broken stuff would be awsome too!

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Call me slow, but post mortem? Who died?

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Call me slow, but post mortem? Who died?

This is internal terminology; we're saying that once the game is launched, afterthing before then died. It's very confusing, sorry we didn't clean this up better. We're all bouncy and well here.

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This is internal terminology; we're saying that once the game is launched, afterthing before then died. It's very confusing, sorry we didn't clean this up better. We're all bouncy and well here.

The news article is directed at normal people though, so why use game industry jargon, especially when it suggests the game has failed, the servers are shutdown and someone is reporting on how it died.

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Also i just checked out the meanings on wiki @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-mortem_%28disambiguation%29 and no where does it mention this game industry jargon. Strange, perhaps its not actually well known among the general gaming community.

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I'm a project manager in the science industry. We use the term all the time. It's not game-industry specific. It's an industry term used for projects. I'd agree that it sounds pessimistic.

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Really? Your upset about the lingo used? Come on. Also Its funny how you have the people who always whine about more content etc. then when, in an article, there is mention of upcoming events and ideas down the road, they complain bout that as well. Just no pleasing some people. Can’t wait to get home and see what that new patch just released today fixed, improved and added. Thanks Cryptic! :D

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buffed: How big is the staff that’s currently working on Champions Online? With Star Trek Online launching in February we’d imagine parts of the original CO-team have now boarded the Enterprise in order to aid in adding the finishing touches?

Bill Roper: We did shift a few folks over to help get Star Trek out the door with much more content than we had in Champions Online (learning our lessons, and all that) but the vast majority of the team is still hammering away, making Champs better and better.

So... The content producers are working on STO now. Expect real meat and potatoes style content to be thin at least until February, I guess. A balancing pass is probably being done because that's pretty much the only part of the development team that's still working on the game.

Or maybe I'm wearing a tin foil hat, but that's how it seems to be. I don't really equate one lair to say... The Hollows, or Striga Isle.

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Or maybe I'm wearing a tin foil hat, but that's how it seems to be. I don't really equate one lair to say... The Hollows, or Striga Isle.

You're forgetting the new PVP map, the holiday event, a new power set, and the extra missions Cryptic keeps sneaking into existing areas. Don't forget more costume options, both in and out of the store, which is something CoH didn't do much with for 6+ months into release.

You're also forgetting that the Hollows update was ~5 months into release, and Striga Isle was ~8 months into release. CO isn't even at the three month mark. There are plenty of valid complaints you could make against Cryptic, but saying they're ignoring CO and not adding new things is not one.

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So... The content producers are working on STO now. Expect real meat and potatoes style content to be thin at least until February, I guess. A balancing pass is probably being done because that's pretty much the only part of the development team that's still working on the game.

Or maybe I'm wearing a tin foil hat, but that's how it seems to be. I don't really equate one lair to say... The Hollows, or Striga Isle.
I agree that the content such as Bloodmoon or the Nemesis Lair aren't equivalent to full zones.

From other posts we there is good reason to believe that there are more zones in progress. What isn't clear is when they will hit the server. Based on various interviews and dev posts I suspect at least one new zone is being planned as part of an early 2010 release, although I have no idea how extensive it is, or for that matter if the timing may slip backwards to later in 2010.

Even so I'm mildly optimistic that we might see a new zone around Feb.

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You're forgetting the new PVP map, the holiday event, a new power set, and the extra missions Cryptic keeps sneaking into existing areas. Don't forget more costume options, both in and out of the store, which is something CoH didn't do much with for 6+ months into release.

You're also forgetting that the Hollows update was ~5 months into release, and Striga Isle was ~8 months into release. CO isn't even at the three month mark. There are plenty of valid complaints you could make against Cryptic, but saying they're ignoring CO and not adding new things is not one.

Valid points, sure. The holiday event, to me, was pretty thin. A few creatures made, 13 unique ones, pretty much the same instance inside, and a few pieces of voice acting. A commendable effort, sure, but it's not really something you need a full team to pull off.

That quote said to me that the content makers, and by content I mean missions, instanced and otherwise, were pulled to flesh out STO. In the meantime, CO gets other stuff, like a new powerset, a new PvP map, and additional costume options.

The stuff they've added to the game is cool. I don't mean to take anything away from them on that. But I feel like the game was too thin on content when it was released. That's a pretty hard thing to disprove. If the game was 100% and they added what they've added, I'd have no room to complain, and I wouldn't. But the game was released with -just enough- content to get you to 40, and not really even that much. At least CoX had different mission paths based on your origin.

To hear that the deficiency of real content in this game is taking a backseat to another game is disheartening. That's my point. They've added a solid amount to the game, but there are still big holes that never should have been missing to begin with that won't be filled until CO has a full, complete staff. Content that would be made for CO's being put into STO, pretty much.

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Also i just checked out the meanings on wiki @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-mortem_%28disambiguation%29 and no where does it mention this game industry jargon. Strange, perhaps its not actually well known among the general gaming community.

The term is used a lot in engineering disciplines (. We do post mortems (after death) in the IT field after hardware or applications crash (i.e. stop working). In the post mortem's we analyze the failure to find teh root cause of the failure, why it happened and what we can do to prevent it from occuring in the future. I assume that the use from the IT field has migrated into the game developers

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That quote said to me that the content makers, and by content I mean missions, instanced and otherwise, were pulled to flesh out STO. In the meantime, CO gets other stuff, like a new powerset, a new PvP map, and additional costume options.

The stuff they've added to the game is cool. I don't mean to take anything away from them on that. But I feel like the game was too thin on content when it was released. That's a pretty hard thing to disprove. If the game was 100% and they added what they've added, I'd have no room to complain, and I wouldn't. But the game was released with -just enough- content to get you to 40, and not really even that much. At least CoX had different mission paths based on your origin.

The biggest problem the game had at launch content-wise was the XP gain change during the open beta, I think. The zones are huge and there was a lot to do in each one, even before they started adding more things. What went wrong wasn't the content, it was the XP gain changing. It was a necessary change - leveling was too fast without it - but it changed the experience of leveling a lot. Instead of being able to reach the 30s just off of one or two zones (for example, leveling in Millennium City and the desert on one character, then the desert and Canada on another), leaving a large chunk of the game untouched, you have to juggle all three zones to get high enough.

Even after the change, it was released with more than enough content to reach 40, but it's easy to miss entire portions of it, even using the crime computer. My 40 hasn't even done Lemuria or part of Monster Island, though she would be an extreme example. I did a lot of exploring, did open missions whenever I found them, and spent a lot of time in the lairs because they were fun to me. On alts that I explore and goof off less with, I'm still staying around the right level for the content I do, just from the occasional open mission or helping civilians. However, I'm also finding that those alts are missing a lot of content just because I'm not exploring as much with them. Crime computer and "go to this guy" missions are leaving out things that you're meant to find along the way, and I definitely see it affecting the leveling curve when I miss them.

They're addressing this by adding more content to the zones, and in time I hope the original promise of not having to zone hop to level will be met, so that each alt I play can have a different path to max level. If/when they add new zones it will be nice, but I honestly like the approach they've taken so far, with fewer zones total but more to do in each one.

New zones make a better announcement, I suppose, but I like getting new content in the existing ones. It's probably easier to do, which means more content added with the approach, even if it doesn't sound as impressive as saying "we have 80 zones for you to see!" or something similar.

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If there's a large amount of hidden content (I have seen some of this, particularly on Monster Island), it seems pretty crazy to keep it hidden when the mass perception is that the game is short on content.

Overall I like the game, don't get me wrong. Increase the difficulty, and keep the content flowing in, and I'm happy. I don't like feeling like I can walk away from my keyboard, come back, and still not have a worry.

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If there's a large amount of hidden content (I have seen some of this, particularly on Monster Island), it seems pretty crazy to keep it hidden when the mass perception is that the game is short on content.

Overall I like the game, don't get me wrong. Increase the difficulty, and keep the content flowing in, and I'm happy. I don't like feeling like I can walk away from my keyboard, come back, and still not have a worry.

Yeah, that was what I was saying above: there are quite a few oddly placed missions that you can easily miss. A good example would be the level 18-ish VIPER in the center city area of Millennium City. Defeating the VIPER enemies that mutate into large irradiates eventually yields a mission starter item that makes you collect Grond serum, but there's nothing pointing you toward that area, so most people will never see it. I only found it because I leveled to 40 with acrobatics, which meant I often ran through enemies and I happened to choose to fight these. There's also a group of VIPER on a rooftop somewhere nearby, holding someone hostage. You get a mission to save the person if you stumble upon it, but most people probably miss it.

I don't think the difficulty needs to be increased, but I would love to see some sort of difficulty slider, not just for indoors, but outdoors as well. Make extra enemies spawn (like the outdoor nemesis missions) if you're set to higher difficulty or something. See, I don't find the game difficult at all and I'd like to increase the challenge at times, but I also don't want a global difficulty increase that makes it impossible for me to play the occasional gimped concept character, either. :p (All of my characters are concept ones, but some are more effective than others just by nature of the concepts)

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Oh, and vaguely related to the hard-to-find missions bit, there are also some nice touches in places most people will never find. The first one to come to mind is the DEMON members in the south central portion of the desert, at an oasis. It serves no purpose, but if you check, they're performing a summoning ritual. If you attack them, the one at the altar says something about using you as a sacrifice, and then when you defeat her, it completes the ritual: an elder worm appears and attacks you.

Or the hot dog cart and NPC in this little floating park in the downtown section of Millennium City (above the rifts you have to close for a mission, I believe). I'm not sure what kind of business he expects to get up there, but I do suppose it's safer than trying to work on the streets with all the destroids and demons wandering around.

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While there are a lot of hidden or hard to find missions the game would definitely improve from one or two complete zones. CO is very alt-friendly (I currently have about 10 characters, normally in other MMOs I play maybe 2 or 3) and having the same path through the game with each of those chars is just not that fun after a while.

But after the rough launch I'm quite happy to see that CO is slowly coming to it's own. I just hope that there are enough players around so that I can get my lifetime accounts worth ;)

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New content=good, fixing old content=better, but that's just my opinion (and yes, I know, "different teams", but I also know the phrase "allocation of manpower"). I'll manage to keep breathing either way.

What really struck me about the interview was that it seems, at least, that Roper had never played the P&P version. That never occurred to me. I know it's silly (and egoscentric) to think everyone's played all the same games I have, just as there are a myriad of games that I've never even heard of, let alone played. However, if you're working on an online "based on", shouldn't part of your research be at least one hardcore weekend of play, properly fueled, of course, with nachos, pizza, and copious amounts of Mountain Dew?

That the power selection and customization is impressive to him is disheartening, as it's pathetic compared to the P&P. Maybe somebody thought the original would be too confusing for us, and that it had to be dumbed down.

It's not the testing and balancing that made it necessary, since the original is actually much simpler in some ways. Basic, generic damage compared with basic generic survivability (including things like healing(generic), base health, and base resistance, etc.). Still a hellish equation to solve, but much simpler than testing umpteen powersets against themselves and each other. Once base damage vs. survivability is solved, the extras (range, area, speed and cost modifiers, special effects, etc.), applied to both with the same percent point cost will also be balanced. What I mean is;

* An attack is given a value of 1, a defense is given a value of 1, and the amounts each do are balanced to give a rewarding play experience. 1-1=0 (the goal).

* Then, values for range are worked out ( how valuable is, say, 50 feet of distance vs. melee range). Arbitrarily, we'll give 50 feet a value of .5.

* Next, values for size and shape of area (single target, cone, circle, sphere, beam, square footage and cubic footage). Shape and size are two separate values. Again arbitrarily, give circle and 20 square feet a value of .5 each.

* Last, special effects like fire, ice, holy, and the like. These are mostly cosmetic, as a 100 points of fire damage is pretty much the same as 100 points of holy damage. They may do more or less damage to mobs or players of a specific deffinition (fire vs. a magma beast might not be so great, but against a straw golem? Epic). They may have various "extra" effects, like clinging flames or chilled, but those are handled by buying additional advantage points.

So if the generic damage vs. generic heal are balanced (1-1=0), a 50 foot range fire attack with a circular area of effect of 20 square feet is balanced with a 50 foot range holy heal with a circular area of effect of 20 square feet ((1*2.5)-(1*2.5)=0).

I know it seems complicated, but that's exactly how it worked in the P&P, so most of the work has already been done. It's certainly much, MUCH, more simple than trying to balance 22 different power sets, as well as being vastly more flexible.

It's still dark in the morning here, and I've rambled longer than I meant to (and likely mis-typed a few things). It boils down to this, my wish is two-fold;

One, I'd love it if everyone involved in working on this game, if they haven't already, played the original, maybe as one of those team-building exercises corporations are so fond of.

Two, as a future "expansion", the option to create and shape our powers the way it was. That would make this the MMORPG I've been jonesing for for 15-20 years now.

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The term is used a lot in engineering disciplines (. We do post mortems (after death) in the IT field after hardware or applications crash (i.e. stop working). In the post mortem's we analyze the failure to find teh root cause of the failure, why it happened and what we can do to prevent it from occuring in the future. I assume that the use from the IT field has migrated into the game developers

I have worked in the engineering industry for 10 years, perhaps its a US only expression, since i have never heard of that term in my place of work and i have seen plenty of things go boom!