Champions Online Interview

Massively interviews Champions Online systems designer Chris Matz on F2P changes, PvP and the future of Champions Online.

So, there were a lot of changes in the F2P launch, more than anyone so far has really had time to test. I’d guesstimate there are probably several hundred hours of testing left just for us to figure out the game again.

There are definitely a lot of changes. We spent many months working on it, we did a lot of stuff, and there was definitely more we wanted to do. Those changes are still on the way; there were a lot of changes to some of the frameworks, and we didn’t touch some of the others. And it wasn’t because we don’t think some of those don’t need some additional work, because a lot of them are going to be coming. For example, we did some on Darkness, but more is being done here with the Darkness review and the Void Archetype coming out. We’re doing a similar thing with Gadgeteering. In some ways we might be more aggressive with the changes we make, but one of the things that I’m trying to do less of is say “let’s massively change some individual thing.” There definitely will be a couple of those, and we had some talks when F2P launched about, say, Laser Knight being changed and reduced in “overpoweredness.”

It’s still pretty overpowered, really.

It’s still pretty strong, but we didn’t want to completely gut it and say “you never want to take this ever again.” We want all the powers in the game to be useful. I do feel a little bad for the people that absolutely have to test everything to see how it works, but I’m glad that we have the forums there so I can keep the communication open. I can’t answer everything there, but I do as much as I can.