Blue Kae

Making a new hero in Champions Online usually happens for me in one of two ways: either I have an idea for a name and then build a costume and powers around it, or I have a costume in mind that suggests a certain power build and a name.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about a new hero, but so far I’ve not been able to come up with either a name or a costume that I like. His powers will be primarily from the Archery but with some Supernatural additions, so far including Command Animals and Soul Mesmerism. I’ve gone through the character creator several times hoping that something would click for me, but no luck.

If I can come up with a good name then the costume should come to be pretty easy. So, I’m crowd sourcing my imagination. If you have any ideas, please leave it in the comments.

While Cryptic did have a high-level departure, they’ve also added a new designer, named Jesse Heinig, to the STO team.

Not a name I recognized, but based on some Googling and forum diving, he was a designer involved with the original Fallout games and worked on the Trek RPG for two years. Sounds like an excellent addition to the team.

So this little bit of news just came across my Twitter feed: Bill Roper is leaving Cryptic (or the Champions version). It was only a few weeks ago that Craig Zinkievich resigned as well. Does this mean bad things for Cryptic?

Of course there’s a lot of speculation about an exodus of people from Cryptic, and what it might mean for the company’s future. So far, I think all of the personnel changes have been very positive. I’ve been much happier with Champions since Shannon took over, and while I was happy with Zinc’s tenure at STO, I’ve been even more impressed with Stahl.

Like anything that happens within a private company, we’ll probably never know for sure. Personally, I’m much less concerned by this than I was by Zinc’s departure. First, Roper left his position as Executive Producer of Champions back in March and Shannon Posniewski has (for whatever reason) done a much improved job. Second, Bill has been a lightning rod for bad press since he started as Cryptic. A lot of that is fallout from the failure of Flagship Studios, but the launch day nerf and Vibora Bay announcement also contributed a lot of bad PR. So, while his departure may impact whatever Cryptic has in development, I don’t see it having any impact on their released games. Deserved or not, Roper’s name comes with a lot of baggage attached, and it can only help Cryptic not to have to deal with that anymore.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Star Trek Online Season 2 was released yesterday. Tipa has a good overview of the update, and there’s a lot of detail in the release notes, so I don’t want to rehash it too much.

Two of the big highlights: skill cap (level) increase and diplomacy.

The skill cap was increased allowing for new ranks of Rear Admiral Upper Half (yeah I know but it’s canon) and Vice Admiral. In WoW-terms that’s a level increase from 45 to 51. There’s also new high level content to match, but I haven’t done any of it yet.

The big feature I’ve been excited about is the addition of the Federation Diplomatic Corps. Cryptic has added a diplomatic rank system to the game. There are seven new non-combat missions to Memory Alpha, Vulcan, Bajor, and Starbase 39 that are quite good (and include some branching). Unfortunately I haven’t gotten a chance to do any First Contact missions on the live server (Holodeck) since that requires the Attache diplomatic rank, which I haven’t earned yet. I have played a few of those on Tribble though and they were interesting, although I’ve enjoyed the investigations on Bajor and K7 (one of the missions that starts on Memory Alpha) more.

I also spent a lot of time scanning anomalies, which is not something new for me, but now that there’s a signal matching mini-game, those missions are a bit more interactive.

I’m planning a few non-spoiler, in character, write-ups of those episodes. Hopefully the first one will go up on Friday.

As Anjin noted recently, Cryptic has been very quiet about Champions Online since the Serpent Lantern update last month. I don’t mean that I was expecting another update, but just that it would’ve been nice to have an idea of where the dev’s were focusing for the next major patch to the game.

Thankfully Poz has released a State of the Game that outlines the planned Summer Update for August 17th and a sneak peak at the next adventure pack, The Demonflame.

Summer Update

• Super Groups are getting a revamp of their UI that looks very similar to the Fleet screens in Star Trek Online.
• The Renaissance Center is being remodeled to provide better feng shui for social activities.
• New emotes (20+) and a better UI screen.
• C-Store UI update, there were no screenshots included but I’m betting it’ll match the recent update in STO.
• Costume creator will have more tights options in the costume creator (something I’m looking forward to) and more high heeled shoes and boots for females.
• A new difficulty setting above Very Hard, I vote for Are You Happy Yet?

Like the recent melee powers update that took place, Cryptic is also working on a revamp of the pet systems. This includes a more explicit way of controlling pets, an increase in the damage they do, and a new mechanic for keeping them powered.

I’ve not played with the pet powers at all, but I’ve heard that there are also problems with the pathing and having to resummon all pets when one dies. Hopefully these changes will help with those problems as well.

The Demonflame

Scheduled for the end of September, The Demonflame focuses on DEMON similarly to how The Serpent Lantern focused on Viper. We’ll be going to the Qliphotic realm and battling a new monster group. Check out the screenshots on the site.

Bullet points provided courtesy of Anjin, Inc.

I got a little shock today from Twitter. Craig Zinkievich, the Executive Producer and a seven year veteran of Cryptic Studio, is leaving. In the full announcement, Craig basically says he’s taking the summer off to spend time with his family; although, he is planning to continue playing the game (I look forward to him posting gripes at the devs).

I was completely caught off-guard by Zinc leaving, and initially very concerned at what his departure might hint about the game’s future. Unlike with Roper’s management of Champions, overall I’ve been very happy with Zinc’s tenure as EP. Still, that initial fear reaction was just  my normal reaction to change. After reading the announcement twice and heading over to the forum thread, I was much less concerned.

Daniel Stahl, formerly a Producer on the game, is taking over for Craig and has brand new Twitter account, Cryptic_dStahl, if you’re interested in following him. Daniel is very active on the forums and well respected by the community, at least for now. MMO forum communities being what they are, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.

If you want an idea of what kind of person is taking over management of the game, just read Stahl’s awesome response in the forum thread about Zinc leaving. There’s also a good follow up by Zinc to some of the comments in the thread, and an additional post by Daniel to address some of the conspiracy theorists. My cynical side suggests that all of this is exactly what Cryptic would post, but given the number of dev posts I’ve seen by Cryptic staff I don’t think that’s true.

Of course how this will actually affect the game is any one’s guess, we’ll just have to wait and see.

There are some aerial billboards in the Renaissance Center in Millennium City. I’m not sure if it’s new, but this one caught my eye.

I may be switching to console mode again for a few days. Why?

• Transformers: War for Cybertron is on it’s way from Amazon and should be here by Thursday.
• There’s the freshly downloaded Crackdown 2 demo on my Eilte’s hard-drive begging to be played.
• Mass Effect 2 has three DLC’s piled up that I’ve barely touched.
• Red Dead Redemption has some new and free CO-OP maps.

There’s lots to do on the Xbox 360.

Then again, poor Cimmerian Brynulf has been trapped in Tortage for weeks longer than he should have been, and he’s only one quest away from escaping.

Bullet points provided courtesy of Anjin, Inc.

Serpent Lantern, the first Adventure Pack from Cryptic Studios for Champions Online, came out last week. I’d been looking forward to trying out the new content, even though my level-capped Silver Hunter still has quite a bit to do in Vibora Bay. I’ve been spending more time in the Alpha Quadrant and Middle-earth than Millennium City, recent and I was looking to SL to reawaken my interest.
Continue reading ‘Silver Hunter and the Serpent Lantern’ »

One of the coming features that was included in last week’s free-to-play announcement by Turbine was the wardrobe. A twenty slot container for cosmetic items. I’m really looking forward to this, but for it to be really useful I’d like one additional feature: a way to convert quest rewards into cosmetic items.

I have quite a few bank slots dedicated to old quest rewards that I keep because I use them for cosmetic outfits. I would much rather keep these items in the storage chest in my home or in the upcoming wardrobe, but I can’t because they are bound items. These items are also impossible to share between characters, even though I just want to use them in cosmetic slots.

So to get the most use out of the wardrobe, I would love to see Turbine add a way to convert an old quest item into a cosmetic item. The type of the time would change to cosmetic and all of the stats and bonuses would be removed, it would also no longer be bound.

While I’m asking for stuff, I would love to see additional cosmetic slots made available, either as paid unlocks like vault slots or as level/quest/deed rewards.