Champions Online post-mortem interview with Design Director and Executive Producer – Bill Roper for Dutch community MMOZone.nl / StarTrekOnline.nl

1. Champions Online has now been available for a little over three months. How is the game doing?

We’ve got a fantastic community that gives us some incredible feedback. We’ve spent the vast majority of the past three months looking into and addressing the issues they’ve raised, as well as building new content and making changes to existent areas based on their feedback and desires. We’re constantly working with them, letting them know what’s coming up, what changes we’re making, what we’re adding, and having them play through everything on our Public Test Shard. It’s been a great partnership between our developers and our community.

2. In what ways is post-release development different from pre-release development? Which is more challenging?

You have to be much faster in your planning and execution while staying incredibly connected to the community. I think that both pre and post launch development present different challenges, but I like the pace of supporting a launch because you have to think on your feet and be very responsive. To be honest, I’d like to find a way to have that sense of immediacy with the longer test times afforded during main development.

3. What are some of the key lessons that you have learned from the release? Is there anything you would have done differently, or that you guys are doing differently for the next major release (STO)?

We had our share of bumps when we launched on the content side of things. 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, we 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.

As for how this translates to STO, it has been with putting more time into the right areas of development and testing, ensuring there is enough content on launch to allow players to easily and smoothly level, and to put more of a focus on the end game from the start.

4. How will the launch of Star Trek Online affect Champions Online, if at all?

There is an entirely separate team on Star Trek Online, so it doesn’t affect us from a development standpoint. We’ve known that they are going to need a lot of QA resources between now and launch for some time, so we’ve scheduled our planned updates for the next couple of months with that in mind. I think that we’re in a great place on Champions to be able to help support the Star Trek launch and pass along any things we find that can help them in terms of online services and so on.

5. There have been a couple of Free Weekends now, are these successful in bringing in new players and do you plan to have more of these in the future?

We’ve found these to be very successful in not only bringing in new players, but in offering a way for players that may have dropped out of the game to come back and see the amazing amount of work we’ve done in three short months. Moving forward we’re going to be introducing some new programs that will give gamers the opportunity to check out the game for free, as well as incentivize current players to bring in their friends.

6. Obviously, one of the major features of CO has been the sheer amount of customization that players can do, both in skills and appearance. How have you guys dealt with balancing issues, or the fact that certain power sets are a lot more popular than others?

No matter how balanced powers are, there will always be favorites - especially in a game as customizable and thematic as Champions Online. What we have been doing is focusing on each power set in turn, making sure that the powers within are balanced amongst each other and the enemies in the environment. We’ve also been going after balancing specific egregious powers that have been called out by our community. Finally, we’re taking a look at certain combat systems over all, such as working to improve how melee combat feels.

7. How important is feedback from the players? Have there been any changes (or are there any coming up) that were given a higher priority after listening to player feedback?

The feedback from our community is vital to the directions we take with the game and how we approach those changes. Many of the changes and additions we’ve made are in direct response to their interests and desires. The creation and subsequent alterations to the Powerhouse (where players can try powers before they buy them) was all based on player feedback. We work closely with interested members of our community on our Public Test Shard as they see the changes we make before anyone in the Live environment and can help us do the fine tuning at the end.

8. Will you ever add new features for supergroups, like supergroup bases?

Absolutely! I don’t have a definitive timeline for these features as we want to make sure they’re well supported and will add benefits and game play elements for supergroups.

9. What can we expect in terms of downloadable content through the Cryptic store?

So far, most have been costume additions, but are there any plans to add other stuff (such as new areas or new power sets) in this way? We’ve been creating what our players have told us they wanted first, but we’ll definitely be expanding the offerings in the store in 2010. In addition to costumes, there are account and character enhancement options such as retcons, character rename, and additional character slots, & costume slots.

10. The Xbox 360 recently celebrated its fourth anniversary. I don’t think that in that time there have been any console MMO releases, even though there are quite a few in development (seemingly stuck in development hell). The same seems to apply to Champions Online, with reports coming in about Microsoft being the major obstacle in getting the game released. What is the appeal in continuing to develop a console version of Champions Online?

You answered your own question with your opening statement. There is a huge community of gamers on consoles that have yet to get into MMOs, and we’re excited about bringing them one that plays GREAT on their preferred platform. We’re doing a lot of work right now on the Xbox 360 version of the game, making it feel exactly right for console players. I think Champions has a fantastic chance for success because it is a superhero themed game, and we’ve seen how popular that genre is on the consoles.

11. Can you tell us something about some of the major features in the works for the next couple of months?

We just launched our Attack of the Misfit Toys even t that will take us into the New Year.

• A Special Holiday Event! Confront and defeat Black Harlequin to save the holidays for everyone. But beware, where Black Harlequin goes, the dreaded Clarence is sure to follow.
• New Costume Pieces! New robotic costume pieces, including a steampunk monocle.
• New Action Figures! Travel around outdoor zones and assemble eight new action figures.
• New Perks! Complete them all to earn special costume upgrades.

In 2010 we’re going to be doing a LOT of upgrades to the game, re-introducing some popular content, and opening up some surprises. We have a lot in the pipeline for our players as we continue to make the game bigger and better!