The mother of invention: Innovation in MMOs at NYCC - Part 2

DC Universe Online wasn't the only MMO featuring capes and cowls at this year's New York Comic Con. Also on floor and playable was the latest effort from Los Gatos, California based Cryptic Studios, Champions Online. If DCUO brings the general MMO experience and long history of developer Sony Online Entertainment, then Champions brings a very specific sort of familiarity. After all, Cryptic brought together MMOs and superheros for the first time with their 2004 release City of Heroes (and it's pseudo-sequel City of Villains.) But that released before World of Warcraft, and as online gamers emigrated en masse into Azeroth, Cryptic began to develop their next project: Marvel Universe Online. When this project was eventually scrapped, its resources and dev team were eventually incorporated into Cryptic's new superhero MMO, Champions Online. Champions would be based on the 28 year old tabletop role-playing game of the same name, which will conveniently be releasing its brand new edition in August of this year.

This might seem like a long, unnecessary history lesson, but in this case it is very important to understand the structure of Champions Online in order to differentiate how Cryptic wants to beat out WoW from how SOE plans to. After all, playing the demo at NYCC and speaking with both a content creator on the game and Design Director (and industry icon) Bill Roper about the game's direction and feature set brings to mind three very familiar words: Action, Physics, License. (If these don't strike you, be sure to check out my preview of DCUO.) Much like DCUO's creators, Cryptic claims that their game will draw people away from WoW, or into MMOs for the first time, because unlike their primary competition they are offering a fast paced action RPG instead of a stand-and-watch affair. Still not sure why knowing the timeline matters? Then take a look at how Cryptic fufills these promises and compare them to SOE's outing, and see if you can connect some of the dots.

To some degree, Champions Online feels very much like the sequel to City of Heroes. Perspective, costume design, animation, user interface: even where improved, they feel just like home to someone who's spent some hours cleaning the streets of CoH's Paragon City.

The aspects that do feel different do so substantially, and are all grounded in game design. Where CoH forced players to pick an archetype and then a pair of power sets at the beginning of play (a Scrapper with fiery fists and invulnerability, for instance), Champions offers players a long list of powers to build their character with. How would someone like Superman (with his super breath, super strength, heat vision, etc.) fit in to a class system, right? Well, to anyone who's played a console or computer or pen-and-paper RPG, this might send up warning flags: classes and archetypes and the like exist in order to make the game fair. After all, without balancing, some of us might make power choices leading us to be Superman, and others, well, how is Stilt-man doing these days?

Bill Roper, Design Director on the project, was vocally confident that Cryptic could build a system that works, and maybe more telling, he insisted that this was the only way to do it. "Superheroes don't always fit into those sorts rigid classes. Here, we let players really create the sort of hero they want to." 

Roper, a long time player of the PnP version of Champions, also explained that their game would allow players to specialized. Called the "Role System," players will be able to pick out a sort of temporary class. This changes the way they recover power-enabling endurance points, gives bonuses to stats, and allows a group of players to better make up for each other's weaknesses.

"Plus," Roper says, "It solves that old MMO debate: 'You're an awful tank! I could tank better than you!' Now you can say 'Oh yeah? Prove it.' It just works." By pitch alone, this sounds reminiscent of games like Call of Duty 4 and the Team Fortress series. By allowing players access to numerous powers, but then suggesting temporary roles, there seems to be a lot of possibility for some really unique characters.

As mentioned, Roles help define how you recover endurance points. Endurance, was a large element of CoH, but was barely different than any other RPGs mana, or magic points, or ability points. It was just the 'stuff-I-know-not-what' that a hero needed to fire laser blasts or fly through the air. In practice, it still does the same things in CO. But unlike City of Heroes, WoW, and many other MMOs, Cryptic aims to change the way Endurance is gained, and in turn change the way MMOs are played.

Roper explains, "It just doesn't make any sense. A hero doesn't sit down an take a knee when he's fighting his nemesis and say 'Oh man, I'm too tired to shoot another energy ray. I better rest up.' He fights. And we're looking to emulate that feeling here." Instead of taking a potion, or a break, to regain Endurance, you get it back through two methods. First, every character begins the game with a special power that they can use at any point at no cost. In fact, it generates endurance, powering the rest of your abilities.

Whether or not they meant to, this design choice really summarizes the way that Cryptic is handling "The WoW Problem." They're not looking to simulate being a extra-normal hero, they're making an amalgamation of what it feels like to read a superhero comic book with what it's like to play a game. Comic heroes are physical, frenetic, active beings. They are not, except in times of human weakness, passive creatures. There is never a time when you aren't doing something, even if it's just your basic punch combo or power shot. Plus, the abilities don't require you to remain in a single place while they activate, allowing you to bounce from place to place, taking on enemies from all angles. You know, the way a superhero might.

Maybe Cryptic realized that a license can be a weight around your neck when they lost the work they put into Marvel Online, but whatever the case it's clear that they are making a game here before they're making a Champions game. And that's why, despite being a licensed game, they are in an advantageous position creatively to DCUO's dev team. Sony Online Entertainment needs to focus on creating a world that's believably one-in-the-same with their weekly releases. Cryptic only needs to make a world that feels comic-y. As far as the license they do have goes, they also have the advantage that the Champions table-top RPG is being relaunched and they don't have to worry too much about stomping on the feet of long time fans. 

I'm not about to go easy on them, despite my own being a long time fan, though. The fact of it is, it still feels too familiar. If DCUOjust fails at feeling like an action game, then Champions Online didn't even show up to the test. Yes, you CAN run around while psi-blasting people, but it just isn't intuitive to do so. Time and time again the people demoing the game had to remind players not to just stand there and take it on the chin. It feels awkward to run and gun, and comfortable to stay rooted to the ground. Likewise, some of the new ways to deploy your powers (charging up shots for more damage, for instance) make it a little more complicated to juggle between powers, but I believe that will become easier with time and practice. 

Just like DCUO, Champions doesn't yet fulfill the promise of being an action-rpg hybrid. For some players, used to WoW and CoH, that might prove a good thing - but it won't draw in the untapped market that Cryptic is aiming for. That said, the design changes that they've implemented are impressive and forward thinking. Even if they only mean being a more interesting, complex MMORPG, they're a welcome addition. Champions online is already in a closed beta, but history shows that it's never to late to fix things with an MMO: Just look at WoW.

The fact is, this preview is a publisher's nightmare. No where did I mention the numerous, varied areas of the game, the nemesis system, or the any of the other  long list of bullet point features that they want to get the word out on. The reason? Because those don't matter. Time and time again those cool features fall by the wayside to a new WoW Expansion (or sometimes even a new WoW patch.) What Cryptic is really trying to do with their eschewing of the class system is simply more, well, revolutionary.

 Both SOE and Cryptic are looking to build in new areas, but neither seems willing to go all out and ditch the standard RPG raiments all together. Nor should they necessarily do that. But there was a game showing at NYCC last weekend that did take that step...