Super-hero

As the groundhog pops up to see his shadow, so too do the devs of Champions Online pop up with their monthly UNTIL Field Report, dishing out the plans and proposed future updates for the game. This month's report is rather lengthy and kicks off with a promise about upcoming "ambitious" re-itemization of all items and rewards in Champions.

Currently in testing and on deck for the near future is a '90s Iron Age costume set, alerts, zone balancing, and a look at why them women folk walk so dang funny (apparently arms and legs are moving out of sync on female characters). Players also have a new travel power -- Distortion Acrobatics -- and specialization trees to look forward to.

There's also some good information in the report as to why some features and concerns have yet to move from low to high priority, such as the "lukewarm" feedback of team duels and the difficulties of balancing XP gifting.

As the next update for Champions Online nears, Cryptic promises a more in-depth series of dev diaries detailing the changes.

It's hard to believe that it's already February and that spring is now within striking distance. City of Heroes feels the season coming on strong, which is why it's bringing back its Spring Fling holiday event from February 8th through the 27th.

The event this year will be a mix of the old and the new. Returning from the past are tangles with Arachnos, quests to fetch underwear for Eros, and a smackdown of Snaptooth. New for the 2012 season are a couple of additional missions for the restless hopeless romantic in all of us -- Widow in Red and Valentines -- with accompanying badges.

The former quest will have players looking into the love life of Lord Recluse (Match.com has no entry for "super-villain," much to his dismay), while the latter will send heroes all across the game world looking for valentines to deliver or redirect. The Valentines missions reward players with temporary powers such as Arrows of Romance and Arrows of Jealousy.

DC Universe Online's Game Update 9: Assemble For Battle is now live and operational, and it brings with it a few very interesting features, especially for players interested in group content. One of said features is the addition of role-optional alerts. As any MMO player knows, there's often a rather large population disparity between various roles. Generally, there's a ton of DPS with much lower numbers of tanks and healers, which can make finding a group a PITA if you're in the former camp.

As of this update, all alerts are considered role-optional, which means the longer a group waits in the group-finder for a certain role (such as a tank or a healer), the less picky the group-finder will be about filling that role. For instance, if a healer can't be found after a substantial period of time, the role will be filled by another available role. This is possible thanks to the team buff. Any time three or more group members are within range and line-of-sight of one another, the whole group will gain a buff to compensate for missing roles. For instance, a group missing a tank will get a damage mitigation buff, a group without a healer will get a health regeneration buff, and so forth. The official post notes that "the buffs are by no means a replacement for having the actual role in your group. But with some self-reliance, it will... allow you to complete the Alert successfully." For the full details on the new system, plus other features such as Novice Raids, click on through the link below to the official site.

Although Champions Online's most recent State of the Game has been out for a while, I sort of avoided talking about it in previous editions of Behind the Mask. The main reason was because I really wanted to cover the new powersets. However, that doesn't mean I don't have any comments on it.

If you look at the history of the State of the Game and Ask Cryptic entries, they fluctuate quite a bit between good information and annoying PR. The January SOTG was full of annoying PR, and it bothered me greatly. It felt dishonest. I saw a lot of hype on little things that no one wanted and very little on what people really wanted.

This week, I'm going to talk about the real state of the game: where CO is and where it needs to go. I'll also talk about some of the future stuff that Robobo mentioned in the SOTG. Is it good or bad? We'll see!

Continue Reading

It's been a little over two years now that I've been writing a regular column on City of Heroes, and in one sense that still feels very strange to me. I'm guessing that the novelty of doing this for a living is never going to entirely go away, for reasons that really have nothing to do with the topic of this column. But I'm not going to dwell on the more meta facts here; I'm going to focus instead on the past year of the column.

This year was a try for something slightly different in both the tone and approach that I'd been taking with these columns. I finished off one major project, started another one, and along the way, I found that I gathered a very different attitude over time. In relationship terms, the first year of A Mild-Mannered Reporter was apparently still the "gushing" phase of a new relationship. This year has been much more about the flaws that City of Heroes has, both in structure and in design choices.

Continue Reading

If you've been enjoying DC Universe Online ever since the game switched business models, odds are good you're looking toward the endgame by now. Game Update 9, which is coming soon, will make getting into that endgame even easier via the addition of Novice Raids. This new difficulty setting still allows players to experience all the storyline of Fortress of Solitude, Kahndaq, and the Batcave, but the difficulty will be notched down so that players can get a better feel for what they're doing.

Of course, if you're not into the endgame rush, you've still got something to look forward to with the new role-optional alerts system. In essence, players will now be able to queue for Alerts without needing to put together a balanced group; in the event that a role is missing, a team buff will be applied to ensure that the area can still be cleared. That means that even with nothing but Damage characters, you can still explore all of DC Universe Online's group content, something that should allow for some novel player approaches once the update goes live.

[Update: SOE has also issued a statement about plans for the game's PvP in 2012. The full quote is after the cut.]

Continue Reading

This week on Behind the Mask, we're going to take an in-depth look at Champions Online's new Earth powerset. It took me quite a while to review Wind, and Earth is relatively new. Why the time disparity?

The real answer is that I looked at Wind long before last week, but I didn't really find anything fun or exciting at a first look. Earth is a lot different. Earth has a lot of potential for combining powers between the set; it can Stagger enemies and then exploit that Stagger for damage or bonus effects. Because a lot of the Earth tricks eat your Stagger stacks, you have to choose between keeping Stagger on your targets for the debuff or eating it for the bonus power effects. On top of that, it has the first viable Brick archetype heal, making the Mountain the second reliable Archetype tank. Earth is a lot of fun.

Continue Reading

Roses are red, violets are blue, Valentine's Day will be back eventually in DCU... O.

Fortunately for those disappointed with the lackluster event last year, SOE agreed with the general sentiment and promised that the future version will be the snugglebunny event of the season. However, it looks like the new, improved Love Day feats won't make it to the game in time for February 14th.

That said, the team is already focusing on several upcoming events to coincide with each of the major seasons. "Over the next cycle, starting with summer, we will be adding the following: Boss fights to Summer, Winter, and Spring, and open world content to Fall," Creative Director Jens Andersen writes. The next scheduled event in DCUO is for March's St. Patrick's Day.

Hopefully, by this time next year DCUO will be in a more loving mood with Valentine's Day 2.0!

A year after making the switch to decaf, er, free-to-play, Champions Online is livelier than ever. To celebrate the super-powered boost that F2P gave, Cryptic Studios is hosting special events both in and out of the game.

From today through the end of the month, players can enjoy a hefty 20% discount on anything in the C-Store (excluding grab bags). So if you've been eying that special outfit or archetype, now might be the time to nab it.

If you're not looking to spend any money but don't mind partying with the stars, there's plenty of fun to go around. For the rest of the anniversary event, characters can fly through the levels due to a double XP boost at their backs, courtesy of Witchcraft. Another hero, The Mountain, will be selling Halloween and Winter Gift Bags with in-game currency. Mr. The Mountain also has a special mission for those who want to earn his trademarked Mountain Costume pieces.

On Christmas, Ms. Lady and I received a power juicer.

This wasn't a bad present by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a present that left us momentarily baffled. We hadn't asked for a power juicer, we didn't feel a great need for a power juicer, and we weren't even sure exactly what to do with a power juicer. (Make juice, obviously, but beyond that?) It was a great present but one that struck us as so far out of left field that we really weren't quite sure how to use it at first, much less what it would offer us.

Issue 22 of City of Heroes strikes me in much the same way. It's not that the update is bad or unwanted or unnecessary; it's that the entire thing is essentially aimed in a direction away from my own playstyle. I imagine a lot of free players are going to run into the same issue because even though it's being touted as the game's newest free update, there's precious little in there that's actually changed on the free side.

Continue Reading

While Paragon Studios is being tight-lipped about exact numbers since City of Heroes' free-to-play conversion, Lead Designer Matt "Positron" Miller has said that the company has been "blown away" by the results.

According to an interview at GameZone, City of Heroes has witnessed not only an "incredible number" of subscribers, but also a tidal wave of returning and first-time players curious about the new model. Miller cites the popularity of the Paragon Rewards program as a key factor in Freedom's success: "We've really broadened the idea of what a free game can be to a lot of people."

On a more somber note, Positron delivered a touching eulogy for the recently departed Statesman on the City of Heroes website. "Statesman's hand was a hand that lifted us up with inspiration," he wrote. "His back was the strong back of a sheltering protector. His wisdom, that of an insightful teacher and leader. His confidence, driven by a profound optimism about the human spirit."

Massively recently spoke with Paragon Studios about this momentous in-game event.

Statesman has been the face of City of Heroes since the game has launched. He's been the man at the forefront of the game's lore and the setting-defining hero for players. He earned a lot of ire from some players due to the designer who had chosen him as his avatar, but that didn't diminish his importance to the game as a whole. But after surviving war against the Rikti, the machinations of his rival Lord Arachnos, and the invasion of his alternate self from Praetoria... Statesman has finally fallen and is no more.

Of course, this brings up some pretty hefty questions about the future of the City of Heroes setting, since such a death is about as high-profile as in-game-deaths can be. We had the opportunity to ask Matt Miller a few questions about the ramifications of Statesman's death, the team's motivation, and what players can expect in the wake of his passing. After all, even though the hero is gone, the villain responsible is still out there...

Continue Reading

Unless you live in South Korea or are a massive fan of the F.E.A.R. series, chances are you haven't heard much about Korean studio Inplay Interactive. That's going to change right now, so prepare yourself.

Inplay is a developer that's worked on F.E.A.R.: Origin Online and SNK All Stars Online but is now poised to rapidly expand its portfolio. Today, the studio announced that it has inked a deal with Warner Bros. to develop two of its most significant IPs into MMOs: Batman and Lord of the Rings. In turn, Warner Bros. will be both an investor and a shareholder of the company.

[Update: We've learned that our original source was mistranslated. Warner Bros. has indeed invested in Inplay Interactive with intent to "strengthen the Korean development capability of online games to the world." The partnership "Intend[s] To Co-Develop Certain Other Online Games by utilizing Warner Bros. Properties," but the specific properties have not as yet been disclosed as originally reported. We apologize for the confusion.]

Champions Online has a new protector in town, and he's about as subtle as Gregor Clegane (though quite a bit nicer). The game's newest archetype is called The Mountain, and Cryptic has revealed all the vitals on Champions' official website.

The Mountain is "an embodiment of the rocks and earth that surround us, standing firm in the face of [his] foes," and Cryptic says that the archetype boasts knock-downs and considerable damage-soaking abilities.

The devs have also provided a handy power listing that details everything from 1 to 40, as well as a few concept phrases -- like rock golem, earth elemental, and primordial entity -- to give you an idea what you're in for if you make a Mountain.