Today is the first day of the rest of July. And that means we’re turning up the heat here at Cryptic, both literally (our AC went out today – go heroic repair guy!) and in terms of getting more polish, balance, and final features into the game.
We’ve been getting some incredibly useful feedback in the beta forums that’s really helping us push forward in numerous directions. Our testers are going to start seeing some big changes in regards to balance and power sets in the next week or two, as well as tons of UI tweaks and tunings. As always, we’re incredibly grateful for the input, so please keep it coming!.

I wanted to address a couple of questions from the beta boards this week, talk about a couple of new features in the beta build, and tease some upcoming additions and re-introductions. So, without further ado, here’s the skinny.

Energy… Rising…

In most comic book fights, there are exchanges of blows leading up to the biggest attacks. Sometimes, heroes (and enemies) lead in with a huge strike, and then follow it up with other powers that take less of their personal reserves to accomplish. We’ve designed the combat system for Champions Online to reflect this idea. Different powers have different energy costs associated with them, and some are designed to increase the amount of energy have in reserve so you can employ impressive alpha strikes. By focusing on certain characteristics and types of items, players can design characters that rely less and less on the concept of using smaller attacks to lead to bigger attacks. We’re really starting to dive head first into the balance and pacing of this to make sure it’s both a good game play mechanic and also really fun. Our beta players will be seeing a lot more direction and outreach from the powers and combat team in the near future to really get this action-based system honed.

Translations, Anyone?

We’re currently getting all of our new power descriptions translated into French and German, so hang in there, EU players! We’re a US-based team, so we obviously do all of our work in English first. We haven’t forgotten about you – it just takes a little time for localization to catch up.

Thematic Crafting Resource Locations

All of the zones now have thematic items where heroes can find crafting components. These new resource nodes also cast a short range buff on the researcher, as well as any friends nearby. Different component resource nodes provide different buffs, so make sure you find out what gives what.

Twitter Away!

We’re really excited to get in-game tweet testing out to our beta players. This feature is in initial testing stages and will most likely have issues. Beta players, please keep in mind that you are still under an NDA while testing this feature! For more information on how it works, check this week’s patch notes.

Your Spawns are so… Dynamic

Most enemies and interactive objects now re-spawn faster as they become scarcer. This should reduce the wait time for re-spawns in popular areas. We’ll continue to monitor this server-side, and we encourage our beta players to let us know if anything seems off in terms of timing.

Nemesis Returns

Well, almost, that is. We’re finishing up the story-chaining and putting the last bits of goodness into the new content (as well as some of the old) and should be ready for a relaunch of this feature into beta next week. Beta players, get a character to level 25 so you can jump right in.

Patrol Mission in Desert and Canada

We’ll be adding more patrol-style missions into the post-crisis Desert and Canada zones next week, as well. The reception to these types of missions in Millennium City has been very good, so we’re extending their reach. We’re also working on the experience points and resource rewards given to address mission balance concerns.

See you online, Champions!