Some more assorted answers from the old, locked Ask Cryptic thread.


-Rorachach: I am sorry if this has already been asked. Is there any prospective plan to create a villain type expansion? (EG: City Of Villains)

There are no plans for a villain-ish expansion. However, an upcoming Adventure Pack has you lead a resistance force somewhere... so you'd be a villain in someone's book.

Void-Locke: (paraphrased) What about a harsher death penalty?

I can't say we were planning on one. I suppose we could approximate the real life chances of superhero survival by letting you create a "Hardcore" hero. If you're defeated, your character is permanently deleted... :-)

Spiritbrand: Will Adventure Packs be a series of instanced missions or an instanced series of zones? Will anything bind teams playing through Adventure Packs together? May team member leave or join at any (every) point during the Pack?

Adventure Packs will vary in their construction, but in general they will take place on a combination of exterior and interior instances. Teams are not forced to stay together. They can add in at nearly any point. Adventure Pack progress is checkpointed, so you can leave an adventure pack and come back to it later if you don't have time to finish it in one sitting.

SGT-ROUGH: (paraphrased) How do you keep PvP fair when hardcore people have all the great gear?

Although great gear is part of the equation, your character's build is much more important. I suggest asking in the forums here about how to tweak your build to be more effective in PvP.

Several people: Will we see a shapechanger set soon?

Sorry, not soon. Of course, you can take advantage of the costume system to role-play one. I saw someone doing this in-game recently. They set one of their costumes as somethimg beastly and switched in and out. They used melee when in beastly form, and guns when in human form. It was really neat.

DEMarq: O.k my question is will there be any plans to make costume change emotes and key binds for those costume changes, For the hero on the go.

You can use the /setactivecostume [number] command to change costumes. So if you wanted a bind, you could, for example:
/bind shift+f11 setactivecostume 2$$/me says I'm prettier like this!

Rockrage: Since the beginning of champions there has been record amount of early morning maintenance down times, im just wondering when will these persistant 3-6 hour downtimes stop or at least move to shorter times?

We keep a window open every morning, but it's not often used. Most downtimes take between 45 minutes and an hour unless there is also a patch. Patches take a bit extra because we have QA/CS log in and make sure it is all working before opening it up to the whole world.

Artisean: I would just like to know if Champions Online will ever be availible to play on a Mac Computer?

There are no plans for a formal port. I have heard through the grapevine that it works well under emulation, though.

Thanks for all your questions!

Pretty cool to take the time to do this on a Saturday, poz. Leading a resistance sounds awesome. That's not part of the Serpent Lantern, is it? And Shadow Destroyer won the poll, making it likely the 2nd adventure pack, and that doesn't sound like it would be there either. So would that make the resistance one the 3rd? Just how many of these are already being worked on? Pretty exciting stuff.

And honestly, I'm glad there's no villain expansion being worked on. I'd much rather see a fully fleshed-out and awesome Nemesis system and other new systems come to Champions. Villains would just split the playerbase.

That might be the next one - the poll that we took spoke about fighting a team - maybe we have to go to China and fight the heroes there. A classic - hero vs hero fight like the comics. All speculation though

That would be awesome!

As for the resistance you're likely helping an African resistance against Viper.
(Hardcore!)

So no new power set of shape shifting... okay I can bare without that.... And the new of Dem Destroyers adventure pack makes me wounder if we FINALLY get his wings other than a shredded cape... But over all, good asking!

What I see is:

Question 1: No.

Question 2: No.

Question 3: Maybe.

Question 4: We don't.

Question 5: No.

Question 6: Technical answer.

Question 7: Maybe.

Question 8: No.

Wine Is Not an Emulator.

Sorry, it had to be said. ;)

Thanks for this: "Adventure Pack progress is checkpointed, so you can leave an adventure pack and come back to it later if you don't have time to finish it in one sitting."

I was very happy to see that, as my play time can optimistically be described as "episodic."

As an African History major...I just have to say....if that happens can you PLEASE show different aspects of Africa. Not just jungles, deserts, mountains, huts, and villages. Show the metropolitan areas too (yes they exist). Video games are typically horrible (as well as most western media) at portraying Africa.

I like this. U should do this after every dev answer session ;)