State of the Game - 02/09/10

[Chronomancer]

Greetings, Heroes!

We have a lot going on right now at Cryptic, and with Champions Online in particular. There are huge changes afoot, and rather than spend a lot of time with the preamble, let’s sink our collective teeth into the meat of the matter.

Scrubbing the Kitchen Sink
As we all know, the Kitchen Sink patch had numerous issues that made it onto Live. The reasons for this boil down to two key areas:

Things That Used to Work Stopped Working
Basically, there were changes to the core code that automatically merged with our older code and we didn’t see all of the effects of these before they went Live. Token changes, for example, caused a lot of things to stop working properly in Champions. We use tokens for a lot of things in Champions and when the token system was recently optimized, it caused any token-based missions to stop working properly - namely UNITY and Patrol missions. There was also the AI fixes which were made which affected the attack rates of every enemy in the game that slipped past us all.

Lack of Comprehensive Testing
There were only a few players on during the time the Kitchen Sink Patch was on the Public Test Shard, and we simply didn’t allocate enough QA testers. There were so many issues we were anxious to address, that our desire to get fixes out to the players as soon as possible completely backfired. There are truly an astonishing amount of changes in this patch, and we simply should have spent more time testing them before pushing the build Live.

Moving forward, our updates will spend more time in internal test before going to the Public Test Shard. We’ve already increased the size of our Champions QA group, and the designers have been playing much more on the internal servers. We are also much more aware of the changes coming into the core game engine through other projects and have taken steps to increase communication internally to avoid being surprised by those changes.

Currently, we’re putting new builds up on the Public Test Shard, addressing the current reported issues with the Kitchen Sink patch. If you’d like to help us make sure we’re getting it all, play on the PTS and provide us your feedback in this thread.

Improving Communications
We’ve had a real failure with communicating to our community over the past couple of months. You’ve been vocal about it, and we hear you. In fact, we’ve taken some pretty big steps to fixing this, and I wanted to share our goals with you to address this. There are a lot of things we used to do that fell by the wayside, and now that we have Stormshade back on the team full-time, we’re going to be bringing back a lot of the things you have always told us you look forward to seeing and hearing:

Ask Cryptic
Bi-weekly posting by the developers answering your questions as compiled by StormShade

GM Blog
A general support-oriented Blog where our Game Masters discuss what's being done to address your concerns, talk about bug status, and so on

Developer Chat
A monthly live IRC chat with developers from the Champions Online team

State of the Game
Bi-weekly posting by me (Chronomancer) to provide insight into the high-level vision for the Champions Online universe and address hot-button issues

Game with Cryptic
We’re putting together a new all-company supergroup so you can find us in the game and share adventures. We’re also going to do more PVP events so you can pit your skills in The Hero Games against the devs!

The Champions Universe
Add more Champions Fiction to the website on a monthly basis

New Fan Art
Post new Fan Art to the website on a monthly basis

New Screen Shots
Post new screen shots for use by community sites on a regular basis

New Wallpaper
Post new wallpaper images for use by community sites on a regular basis

Developer Special Features
Everything from what builds we use to tips on how to get through Lairs to, well, whatever we can come up with so you can see how we see the game.

Website Overhaul
The Star Trek site is awesome, and next up for the web team is an overhaul of the Champions Online web page. We can’t wait to see what they have up their sleeves!

You can also expect to see a greater presence in the forums by the developers overall. We’ve been really nose down working on the game for quite a while, but we recognize the need to stick our heads up and at least just say hello!

Champions Online - Revelation
In my last State of the Game, I talked about how we’re adding a whole new area to Champions Online. The expansion formerly known as Vibora Bay (always our working title) has a new, more descriptive name: Champions Online – Revelation. The half-angel / half-demon Therakiel is bent on bringing forth the end times. Now, it is up to you to join a team of the greatest heroes the world has ever known to stop him.

We’ve had continuous discussions for many weeks regarding the Revelation expansion and how it should be delivered to our community. I am very glad to announce that while we built Revelation to the quality and expectations of a paid expansion pack, we are making it available for FREE to our players.

Revelation represents some of the best work to date on Champions. The expansion features an epic storyline filled with noble heroes and terrifying villains and is set in stunning new environments. We've incorporated many suggestions from the community as what they want from the game - new game play areas, new powers, new rewards, and greater challenges are just some of the additions.

I'd like to reassure everyone we consider Revelation to be of a quality and quantity that is very worthy of a price tag. It is still legitimate expansionary content, the same as it was designed to be. But our community means everything to us and we’re incredibly excited to be able to get this massive update out to you all.

We're working on a full package of Revelation screen shots, write-ups, item and costume descriptions and images, a teaser video, and much more that will be released very soon. Revelation is designed for levels 37 – 40 and will have an all new, absolutely staggering level 40 repeatable Lair with all new high-end rewards for our most experienced players.

See you online, Champions!

[Allstar]

Thank you very much for Listening. I can honestly say I'm getting excited.

[FenianB]

Thank you for this update. I look forward to seeing the results.

[Dr.Sage]

...you listened.

I'm shocked, and happy.

Thank you.

[Dardove]

Originally Posted by Chronomancer

Lack of Comprehensive Testing
There were only a few players on during the time the Kitchen Sink Patch was on the Public Test Shard, and we simply didn’t allocate enough QA testers. There were so many issues we were anxious to address, that our desire to get fixes out to the players as soon as possible completely backfired. There are truly an astonishing amount of changes in this patch, and we simply should have spent more time testing them before pushing the build Live.

Moving forward, our updates will spend more time in internal test before going to the Public Test Shard. We’ve already increased the size of our Champions QA group, and the designers have been playing much more on the internal servers. We are also much more aware of the changes coming into the core game engine through other projects and have taken steps to increase communication internally to avoid being surprised by those changes.

Currently, we’re putting new builds up on the Public Test Shard, addressing the current reported issues with the Kitchen Sink patch. If you’d like to help us make sure we’re getting it all, play on the PTS and provide us your feedback in this thread.

I want to comment on this briefly. Now, you want more eyes on the builds on PTS, which is a good thing so now probably the right time to bring up something that was talked about a couple months ago. Back in early December, when the bonus costume items from previous PTS tests appeared on the C-store, several of us expressed our concern about that and how it would hurt future testing events. To this Daeke said he would look into a new reward system for PTS for those who put their time in there helping the game get better. Last we heard was it sounded like the ball was getting rolling and he would have something to announce about it back In December. Since then we have heard nothing. Maybe now is a good time to dust off that idea and work on implementing it.

[Gage27]

...and there was much rejoicing.

[FearAlice]

Thank you for listening to the community. You have renewed my faith to a degree, though the burn doesn't just heal with a bandaid. This is the right direction and i am elated to see the company take it. If content of the caliber you claim is released free, and more content of the same quality is released free consistantly where paid expansions are reserved for things on scale of stand-alone content like CoV was then you will have my money for that, as well as my continued support through the C-Store.

Thank you again.

[Wolf Riot]

Nice work guys. Definitely looking forward to this!

[GeneralFreedom]

...

...

Awesome. I'm at a loss for words.

[clariondelaffalot]

Really, very very nice news.

Time to say thank you.

I'm happy resubbing.

Se you all ingame