Champions Online Power Interview #3 - Fire, Ice and Electricity

[Cody Bye]

The standard four-color comic book has its essential powers. You need your super-strong individual, a toon that can be acrobatic in some way, a foxy super heroine, and the brash individiaul that wields the book's elemental forces. In our continuing series of power-focused interviews with Cryptic Studio's Bill Roper, the Ten Ton Hammer staff grilled the Champions Online developer on the Ice, Fire, and Electricity power sets. Keep reading to see his answers, including whether or not "Earth" is ever going to be in the elemental set!

Ten Ton Hammer: What gameplay archetypes do the elemental powers fall into. Are they all ranged DPS oriented? Or are there some powers within Fire, Ice, and Electricity that are more melee-focused, maybe in the DPS or Tank areas?

Roper: There's definitely a broad range of powers. There's offensive powers, defensive powers, ranged powers, point-blank AOE powers, and we even do things where you can take certain elemental powers and apply them to weapons. For example, you could have claws that are electrically charged. In this way, you can build a lightning martial artist that has a lightning shield and uses hand-to-hand attacks but has that with lightning powers tied in.

To read the rest of this Champions Online interview, click here!

[kyk2k1]

Was wondering about defenses in the game...

An avid mmo-player, a friend of mine raised the issues about the kinds of defense in the game.

Will there be specific defenses that outline weakneses/strengths in (N)PCs?

For example, if I created an ice-themed character, and I slapped a fire-themed character with my glove, won't I be at a serious disadvantage? That is, also, if i were stupid enough to base ALL my skills ENTiRELY on ice. But humour me...