I was recently given an opportunity to ask Cryptic’s Bill Roper some questions about Champions Online’s powers, data mining and the infamous “Launch Day Nerf”. Check out the Champions Online interview and see what he had to say.
The original design of Cryptic’s original game, City of Heroes, was supposed to have open power choices, but the design fell through and we ended up with the archetype and power set system. What do you think was learned from that first outing that allowed Champion’s character system to be a success? Does the character progression in CO draw from any other games?
The open power system is incredibly flexible and players can create the hero of their imagining without feeling “locked in” to a specific class or set of powers. While the Custom Framework option can be somewhat overwhelming in sheer number of options, we’ve tried to make it more user-friendly by organizing the powers into sets. We’ve continued to work to make it more comprehensible and easier to use through tips and better descriptions and we’ll continue to tune this to make it easier to understand and navigate.
When you look at the powers in Champions Online in terms of balance and fun, what three powers really hit the mark and why is that? Now, what three powers miss the mark and need work?
I went straight to the powers team with this question so you’d get the pure, unfiltered answers. They’re crawling through every power in the game a second time right now looking at just these issues, so here we go!
Powers that Worked
Force Cascade
It looks great. It hits hard. It’s incredibly expensive unless you play its internal schtick and use it in conjunction with a field power, in which case it’s a great and efficient engine of destruction. It’s a bit complicated to use, but the reward of getting it right was sufficient that players experimented, figured it out, and bought into it. Overall it’s a win. Gigabolt is very similar, but I’m happier with Force Cascade.
Secondary Energy Mechanics
Killer Instinct, Thermal Reverberation, and the other similar powers worked out well, I think. They’re a cheap investment that reward and incentivize otherwise different game play. I feel like they’re beefy enough that many players are happy they have them, but not so overpowering that they’re “must haves” or limit your valid options.
Uppercut / Haymaker
Melee has its issues, and having a long charge up get wasted because your opponent moved out of range at the last second is frustrating. That being said, though, the risk vs. reward on these attacks is great, and when you can get off a full charge, the visceral impact is amazing and rewarding.
Lackluster Powers
Offensive Passives
In a game where encounter groups are four or five at a time, a passive that lets you do MORE overkill versus a single target doesn’t feel nearly as useful as a power that provides substantial protection versus all enemies you’re facing simultaneously.
Possible Solution:
An idea we’ve discussed is having all of the offensive passives grant a bit less bonus damage per attack, but add a small AoE component to all of your attacks. This would help the value against large spawns, where powers like Electric Form feel weakest.
Chain Lightning
Most other powers do more damage when they’re charged. Chain Lightning doesn’t; when charged, it instead hits progressively more targets for the same amount of damage. In theory, this makes it a great bread and butter power – when taking on a large group, full charge for the pull and then just tap for rapid DPS. In practice, players always do full charges, even against single targets, because that’s what the other powers teach them is the “right” way to use them.
Possible Solution:
In the future, we’re probably going to make the damage versus the primary target scale up slightly as the power is charged, so that charging the power is no longer a “strictly worse” choice.
Rituals of Summoning
One of the people on our team (Antiproton) summarized the problem with these well during a playtest a few weeks ago: “You mean I have to sit here, just standing in this circle, watching while my pet runs off and get to play the game and have all the fun? That’s lame!” Champions is an extremely mobile game, and we’re very happy and proud that it is so. None the less, we know that some players may not appreciate all the frantic run and gun elements. The Sorcery tree, in theory, was supposed to be for them; it rewarded you (significantly) for picking a spot, standing there, and making the rest of the world come to you. I think the set, as a whole, succeeded well enough at rewarding you with power for standing still, but it completely fails to make the enemies come to you, and this issue is most pronounced, I think, with the summons.
Possible Solution:
First, Pets in general need a review. The ones summoned by Rituals don’t have any benefits to offset their drawback (that you have to stay in the circle). Second, Sorcery needs better techniques to “herd” and control enemies, bringing them into your reach, but keeping them from standing on your head. Finally, they need to be faster to create; it can’t feel like a chore to bring them out.
Regarding the infamous Launch-Day Nerf, I think a lot of people believe the changes were necessary for the good of the game, but many others are skeptical about the timing. Was the possible impact on preorders and lifetime subs a factor in the timing of the nerfs? What is your take away from the players’ reaction to the changes?
The conspiracy theories that have found their way into the gaming space can be pretty amazing. There was no element of “timing” the difficulty and experience curve other we saw the game had become trivially easy and we needed to address that before we had all of our players online. Unfortunately this didn’t come to light during the beta and we only really saw it happen with the numbers of players we got during the head-start period. Interestingly, anyone not in the head-start period didn’t come in and complain about the game being too hard, and once the initial shock of the shift subsided (less than a day) the vast majority of head-start players even said the game felt better. The biggest impact was that there was a lot of outcry when it happened and this leaked into reviews – even from editors that never played in the head-start time period. It was something we had to do for the good and longevity of the game, but trust us – with Star Trek we’ll have a LOT more people in the beta near the end to better test the global experience and difficulty curves.
From gamers’ point of view, there have been aspects of the launch that have gone smoothly, and other aspects that have been pretty ugly. In your mind and the minds of your team, how has the launch gone? Is there anything to the negativity on the forums and in the press and what can Cryptic do to turn that around?
We definitely needed more time on balancing the game overall, and that bit us when we had to do a large shift in the experience / difficulty curve after the head start program ran. We had the experience curve very close to where we wanted it by the time the game launched wide, but this definitely caused some of our early adopters to be upset that the game play changed after it went live. We also should have done a better job with balancing powers before launch. We’ve been chasing this ever since, and have made strides to making it much better, but this will be an ongoing project as with any MMO. Finally, after adjusting the experience curve, we had some content holes that we had to fill. This didn’t take us long, but it did mean that the game launched with very thin content.
As for what went right, the game was incredibly stable. The only real down time we had was one 8-hour period due to human error on our end. The game servers never had a catastrophic failure, we never lost character data, and we really breezed through a lot of the technical issues. We also had a wide variety of systems in place a solid foundation on which to build moving forward – an open power system, vast customization, Nemesis, PvP, Open Mission, Crisis Zones, and Lairs.
When City of Heroes came out, it had the advantage that it was the only game in the superhero MMO space. Champions Online was launched with established competition, and more coming relatively soon with DCUO. Does that competition change how your game is managed and how it is developed? For instance, is there a need to match features with CoX, or a plan to have x number of updates before DCUO releases?
We’re in a very different market than it was 5 years ago when City of Heroes launched. MMO players are educated and discerning set of gamers now. Our biggest challenge was in getting in a solid, broad foundation that we could build upon while still delivering a solid, quality game. We delivered in some areas and fell short in others, but no matter what you do you’re going to be compared to games that people are playing right now, no matter when they came out. Obviously a game with several years in post-launch development is impossible to equal, so while it does affect our development strategies, it’s more about making sure gamers know we’re able and willing to keep growing the game just like those games did after they launched.
Certainly CO has room for expansion with regards to new powersets and missions, but are there any more “killer features” coming down the pike? Also, are there any features that needed to be cut from the original release that you feel have to get in at some point?
We’ve added quite a bit into the game that is far beyond just new missions and power sets, although we added those, as well. Crossover Missions allow players to share any mission with another person, even if their character isn’t eligible for that mission. As opposed to the helper getting the same Primary version of the missions, they get a special Crossover version that has all the same goals, but a different reward scale. This gives them incentive past just being a good person to help out someone, even if they have already completed the mission in question.
Next week we’re opening the doors to the Nemesis Confrontation lair that combines the UNITY and Nemesis systems. Top level players will be able to get a UNITY mission that end up with a team of 5 heroes battling against their Nemeses and a villain powerful enough to draw such a conglomerate of evil together. We always wanted to be able to have multiple Nemeses in a fight against the heroes that created them, and now we have it.
In December, we’re going to be launching some new technology that allows players of any level to fight side-by-side against a common enemy. This is huge because it allows us to balance an encounter for a number of heroes regardless of their level.
Moving forward, we have a few systems on the drawing board that will allow players to investigate and find their own crimes to combat, as well as a few other surprises to really extend the life and fun of the game.
We see a lot of MMO companies talk about how “data mining” helps them determine what is going on in their game. How does Cryptic use data mining in CO? What types of data do you gather and how does the data affect your decision-making? What types of information does data mining fail to get you and how do you fill that gap?
We have some amazing tools to gather and sift through the massive amounts of data generated in the game. This is everything from player leveling curves to various levels of enemies defeated to heat maps that show where players congregate in each zone and on and on. All of these data points can be used to better tune the game. For example, we can see how many heroes use what powers and for how long. This allows us to investigate powers that may be over or, more importantly, under-powered.
There are some things that we’ll never get form data-mining. It’s impossible for us to pick up combinations of powers that result in unexpectedly high damage or over-heightened defenses just by looking at numbers. This is where our forums and community feedback come into play as our gamers let us know the issues so we can get them into the correct parameters.
One knock against Cryptic is that when it is time to take out the nerf bat, you guys pull out the nerf BFG 2000 and crush the offending power into uselessness, perhaps buffing it back over time. Is this a fair criticism? Is the harsh nerf/buff slowly a deliberate design decision, or is it the result of mistaken over-nerfs?
I don’t think this is fair as a global statement, but it sure sounds like what you get from forum posters. We did take some grossly over-powered powers and push them down pretty hard, but that ignores the very slight modifications we’ve made or, more importantly, the large number of power increases we’ve made. The only large nerfs we do are against egregious aberrations, and if you really pour through the powers and items section of our forums, many of these changes are at the behest of our players who are smart enough to know when something is simply so good it’s obviously broken.
I love CO and i still play it. But I was outraged by this answer concerning the launch day nerf. The fact that you dismiss it so casually now scares me to think that you will repeat the same mistakes again. the fact of the matter is, after the launch day patch, alot of people stopped playing because it caused very thin content and an obvious imbalance in the powers that still continues today.
“The conspiracy theories that have found their way into the gaming space can be pretty amazing.”
How condecnding can you be to your players who have vocalized the negative aspect of this decision.
“Unfortunately this didn’t come to light during the beta…”
The answer your looking for resides in the fact that for months, with a very limited playbase you held beta for only two days a week for 5-6 hours a piece. Of course your not going to get the data you need. Even when open beta came into the picture you didn’t react fast enough. That is where the timing complaint came from. Who cares if people never exposed to the game before offical launch day never complained. the fact of the matter is this company loss a number of subscriptions (that I know of personally) because of it. Stop trying to put a spin on this and just admit there was a mistake on your part and continue forward.
“…and once the initial shock of the shift subsided (less than a day) the vast majority of head-start players even said the game felt better.”
The shock was not less than a day. How would you even measure something along these lines, much less put this forward as truth? I know gamers who still do not play this game because of this “shock”. The forums were split quite evenly on this and most of my in game friends were split on this as well. It lasted more than a day. The game did not feel “better” it felt challenging. But even to this day, the balance issues and the thin content that resulted in the launch day patch is still prevailant and the complaints for that are sitll promeninent. The fact that these out right lies were given in this article greatly undermines confidence in this company for me.
Amen to the poster above.
I have a very simple theory when it comes to MMOs. Once a game has been out for a few months, the developers should have had time to make a number of significant changes and drastically improved the game. Therefore, the game is almost always greatly improved a few short months after launch. But that isn’t always the case. So before you plop down $60 for a one month trial of an MMO, how can you be sure the game is actually better?
The answer is simple: free trials. If a development team strongly feels that their own product has improved enough to bring new players into it, they will offer a free trial period. If they don’t, it means the game isn’t “fixed” yet.
Considering CO still does not offer a free trial period, I conclude that the devs do not feel the game has evolved to the point where they are confident that they can bring in new players. Simply put, you don’t want someone to spend 10 days trying the game only to be disappointed and never actually buy it.
When CO offers a free trial period, I’ll be happy to come back and try it again (I was in the closed beta from April onwards). I simply won’t dump $50 into a one month trial.
I agree with Derek’s comments. Out of the 12 friends that started playing this game with me, my wife and I are the only one who have come back to this game. We liked it in beta and during the head start subs but the lauch day patch soured us on it. The playstyles that we enjoyed were gone, there was no respec available at the time create new builds since our “concept builds” were now resulting in frequent trips to the rez pad and we were burnt out of rolling new alts. If we hadn’t gotten our lifetime subs (we really did enjoyed the beta and headstart) i don’t know if we would have come back.
Force Cascade? REALLY!!?? Thats the ONLY power in the force powerset I WON’T take because I feel its worthless.
Rather than fess up and admit the serious flawed thinking putting that launch day patch in place, he essentially blames the dissatisfaction many players had with it on the people who complained about it. He neglected to mention the patch was a stealthed in (nobody saw that big change coming), they ignored numerous broken powers and went after working ones with a big nerf hammer, decided to beef up mobs substantially and essentially cut the XP by 40% thus opening up a big content gap. I can’t tell if it is just salesman PR or delusion, but Roper continues to demonstrate why I won’t be playing another game he has his fingers in without waiting for a year or so after release. I can say that amongst my group nobody is left playing CO and no plans on coming back. That is the first time that has happened in our group.
Wow, Brandon its like the best power in the entire forceset, if you can afford the power, then its worth it. I could hit for 2500 dmg without a crit in T2 PVP and no stacks either :D
Also, sounds like he chalked up the Nerf BFG to exaggeration, right after he said they listened intently to the forums in the other interview…
Now here is a question for you guys: Let’s say the Launch-Day Patch didn’t happen and the difficulty was left as it was in Beta. How many people would be playing now?
.
Would the game have kept more people by remaining trivially easy?
.
Was the patch necessary for the game’s long-term health and it is just the timing that you take issue with? Or do you think the game should have remained as it was in beta?
I saw the screenshots for the second “expansion”….horrible..they look like mad max 2 clones…is this a superhero mmo or a fruity post-apocalyptic-soft-porn mmo?…..who deesigns these things and creates these lame characters for you and who hired them and o-k’s these lousy creatively bankrupt additions???????…you people are morons….what a waste of what could have been an excellent mmo…did you hire friends and yes men and not people with actual skill and talent???…i belive you did…BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..you people are bums!!!
I agree with the first poster.
I used to be a keen RuneScape player for a while. I enjoyed the game, but ultimately it was the creators’ hubris that made me leave. Jagex simply refused to deal with certain issues and dragged their heals needlessly, improving things that weren’t broken and breaking things that worked fine, whilst leaving the economy pretty much borked for a long time.
I had hoped CO would be a breath of fresh air. It was at first, but in the end it was just repeating the same content over and over. It was fun at first, but then it just became a chore. Furthermore, the inability of Cryptic to listen to the beta testers is just a joke. The beta testers have pointed out flaws and lack areas repeatedly, but their observations have fallen largely on deaf ears.
If this game is still around in 6-12 months, which isn’t all that certain given the game’s current state, it’ll probably lose a lot of players to SWTOR. In the meantime, since my best mate in real life quit CO, I’ll be joining him in LOTRO. It’s not quite the same as bashing keys in CO, but I have managed to get it working perfectly with a 360 controller via xpadder. That’s one thing CO did get right until one of their more recent patches: the ability to use the 360 controller was just fantastic…until they messed around with the function of B/start and messed it up!
There are more than enough suggestions to fix the powers in the suggestions forums, but there are lots of simple ones Cryptic should heed:
(1) Make NO power useless. If there’s a better power you can take over another, you’ll take the better one. If it’s a matter of different uses, then that’s another story, but some moves are simply unusably weak. The inability to use grasping shadows in combat, for example, makes it useless for most players. Many players feel forced to take ego hold.
(2) Give every single power set an amazing offensive passive AND a defensive passive. Regeneration gets so much use because there aren’t any decent alternatives (whilst levelling to 40 in PvE) for most character types. Others need to be made good from level 5+ rather than level 30+.
(3) Splitting ego and dexterity annoys so many players. I can understand your reasons behind it, but there are good reasons why other MMOs don’t do this. You’d be wise to learn from them.
Other than that, stop being arrogant. If you make a mistake, own up. Players are customers and will vote with their feet. You need to show them respect or they’ll walk. If you talk bull, they won’t put up with it.
cmagoun: How many people would be playing? Don’t really know but neither do they despite what the sales pitch says. I know the game was more fun for me and my friends pre-patch. I played nearly two months before that patch and loved the game. Post patch, it played like many other MMOs only without as much content and in most cases not as fun. AoC was a better game by comparison after that patch. I wouldn’t have said the same thing before it.
Trivially easy? I don’t think it was. At the high end the game was still challenging in a fun way aside from a few builds that were significantly OP. When they “rebalanced” the content you pretty much needed to min/max to handle the high level content with some exceptions. The way the game is now builds for fun and not DPS just aren’t fun to play. I would have played more of the game with more alts. I finished playing with two chars at 40 and two more that I stopped in the 20s due to content gaps. It was also frustrating to have to reroll constantly due to “balancing”. Rarely a week went by without a patch “balancing” one or more major abilities on one or more of my characters.
Patch necessary for long term health? Possibly, but the way they put it in the game is what pissed off everyone I know. It went in without any notice or announcement, it buffed mobs by 20%, decreased player damage by that much maybe more and cut the XP substantially all at one time. The game felt completely different from one day to the next.
What is frustrating is that Roper trivializes the negativity on the forums while conveniently pointing to the forums as to why they made the changes they made. He really should be a politician with those rose colored glasses he is wearing.
Only time will tell if they ultimately made the right decision or not, but I can speak for at least a dozen players who won’t be playing CO again or STO thanks to the CO decisions made along the way.
I think the game balance patch was needed. I think the game was too easy prior to the patch and I think leveling was too fast. Getting to 40 in a couple of weeks is not sustainable for a MMO. But, I think the timing of the game balance patch was terrible. It should have been done in closed or open beta. If you can’t get good game balance data in your beta prior to launch then your beta period is too short or you development team sucks.
Denzibar: There was a free trial weekend recently.
I have to agree with Derek.
Along those lines, the xp change crippled the players like me. In closed and open beta, I never reached the cap. Even now, I am level 36 and cant see getting to 40 with the current content.
It is funny, on the offical forums, if you mention a “content gap” there will be several people agree with and then there will be the people that say “no there isnt, did you use the crime computer? I bet you missed alot of missions, go back and do them, then you wont have a problem.” My issue with that statement, is I should not be forced to use an outside source to find content (do I want it spoonfed to me? no, do I want guidance like..”You should go see so and so they might have some work for you”…yes)
My Character is currently doing content that is 2-3 levels higher then me as I have exhausted all the content of my current level. In my opinion, there should always be more then enough missions (that are the same level as you) to get you to the next level without being forced to do missions that are 2-3 levels above you. Besides, by forcing you to do missions that are 2-3 levels above you, you are just perpetuating (delaying) the lack of content. I am scared for when I reach level 38 and 39…I can forsee a TON of grinding mobs to get to 40. By changing the xp it screwed up any chance I have of getting to 40 in a “reasonable” amount of time (different for each person, for me it is a period of time, where if I play regularly it doesnt feel like I am “working” to gain my next level, I want to be shocked and amazed that I leveled up not looking at my xp bar “oh did it move? no…dang…back to killing for another 1M xp”).
I realize you cant have a game where people are at the level cap within a week of release. Yet there will always be those players that dedicate the time and effort to be the “first” to reach the cap. They will always be the ones that take the best powers not care if they are from across the spectrum…they want that high level to show off and say “look what I have done.”
But reading Roper’s comments makes me angry, he is trivializing all the heavy handed things that Cryptic has done. Do I expect him to come out and throw the company he is working for under the bus? No, of course not, I am not naive enough to think that. But Cryptic and Roper should take a little more responsibility for what they do.