[CO] State of the Game: April 5, 2010

Executive Producer Shannon Posniewski checks in with April's State of
the Game.

Greetings, Fellow Champions!

Since the last State of the Game, Revelation went live. Revelation
has a new zone and a bunch of new content for players level 37 and up.
The overall reaction to it is pretty positive. The Apocalypse! Time
machines! And Foxbat! We think it's some of the slickest looking and fun
content we've built.

In the meantime, we've been doing our best to keep communication open
on the boards and on the website. Internally, we have also made process
changes in an attempt to improve our response times to support tickets.
And now that I've been reminded that I'm supposed to be writing the
State of the Game reports, I'll keep those coming too. :-) I also hope
to get you a calendar for our future updates soon.

The next Dev Event is planned for 30 April 2010, from 4-7 p.m. PDT.
We'll be playing through Therakiel's Lair with anyone foolhardy enough
to team with us. StormShade will have more information on that as we get
closer. Also, keep an eye out for anyone in the Cryptonauts supergroup
(we have the great big Champions "C" on our chests), since we're playing
on our own too!

Coming Soon ...


Before I jump into what's coming up, I wanted to give you an idea of
our plans in general. We expect to make a significant update once every
four to six weeks - approximately monthly. Every other update will be
focused on content such as an Adventure Pack or other content increases.
The other updates will be largely system, powers, and quality of life
related. That's not to say we won't sometimes mix these together, but
it's the general rule of thumb we're planning with. In addition, all
updates get bug fixes, and we'll also patch important bugs between
updates.

All of these updates will be free. We will also continue to add
costume sets and other things to the C-Store.

So, that's the general plan. Let's talk specifics.

Super Power Pack (April)


The next big thing coming up is the Super Power Pack, coming in late
April. The most obvious parts of this update are the updates to the
Supernatural and Melee Frameworks. If you are a fan of those sets I urge
you to check out the posts Ame (Supernatural) and
Akinos (Melee)
have made on them. Because of the power changes, there will be a free
respec given out for this update. So, if you have a free respec already,
make sure you use it before this update goes live.

Also for this update, we'll be improving the feel of teaming in the
game. The big item is modifying the Journal interface to let you see all
of your teammates' missions. We're doing some other minor things that
go a long way too, for example making the primary mission more obvious.
We will absolutely be changing rewards as well, but we're still
crunching numbers to figure out exactly how much. Midnight oil is being
burned to get these in so you can try them out on PTS soon. Teaming will
remain a focus of ours even after this update.

Here's what is planned for the Supernatural Punch Pack:

• Melee update
  
• Supernatural update
  
• Offensive Passives update
  
• Weapons in the tailor (woot!)
  
• Teammate missions in Journal
  
• Blood Moon recurs on the full moon (spooky!)
  
• and many bug fixes and UI tweaks
  

You can also take a look at PatchworkCat's great big set of patch
notes for PTS for a preview of exactly what changes we've made.
There are also feedback threads in the PTS forum on the Melee and
Supernatural changes once you've tried them out.

The Serpent Lantern (May/June)


All of that is for late April. The update after that is our first
Adventure Pack: The Serpent Lantern. We expect that to be ready in late
May or Early June. It's one continuous adventure that takes you from
Millennium City to the jungles of Africa to investigate VIPER and the
source of its power. I don't want to give too much away, but it has
something to do with a big serpent. And a lantern.

An Adventure Pack is constructed as a great big story arc, with
multiple missions, locations and bosses. Any hero level 11 and above can
go on the adventure. Adventure Packs will scale to the team's level and
size, so everybody can have fun with it. We're really excited about
this, and look forward to seeing how you like it.

That's it for this episode. Let us know how we're doing, and if
there's anything you'd like to see in a future State of the Game.

Now get out there and bash some heads for great Justice!


Link
to the forum post