A post on Bio-Break turned my attention to the latest Ask Cryptic feature for Champions Online. I am glad I saw that, I needed a few good laughs today, it has been a tough day at work.
So, that you do not have to go to all the trouble to click on the link yourself, I just copy/pasted it here…with a little bit of my input mixed in. Bet you can’t tell which is which!!
Halorin: Where does Champions Online fit into Cryptic’s plans a year from now? Two years? Three? And what resources are Cryptic willing to invest in the game see those plans to fruition?
Jackalope: We’ve just started working on the next step of widening the Champions Universe and we’ve nailed down our ongoing content plans and how much we can get away with charging for it. In short, you can expect to see new adventures and additional charges every other month (roughly). The content will be far more story based and focused on the background of the game on charging you players more. Meanwhile, we’ve got some other things afoot (and some of you might be able to deduce what that is)[edit–ooh, ooh!! Me! I can guess!!] and we’ll talk about it more soon.
So, the first question was pretty good and the answer was what we have come to expect from Cryptic. (Snicker…) Next question is another tough one, let’s see what they have to say!
Darth-Log: How confident are you that Champions Online can succeed considering its current lackluster performance and in lieu of upcoming competition? What have you learned, what are your short term considerations and long term goals?
Chronomancer: We remain dedicated to the Champions Universe as long as we can sucker players into spending more money, and we have plans to continue to grow it. While our numbers of players is less than we would like (cause we realllly want more money!), it is also more than several other MMOs that continue to service their communities. The upcoming expansion is an excellent example of our plan to make the game bigger and better while also addressing the desires of our players. to milk the players of as much money as possible.
We learned a great many lessons from Champions on how to milk the players of their hard earned cash, and I think you can see some of that knowledge expressed in how we ran our beta testing and approached content creation in Star Trek Online. Game development is continued learning, iteration, and alteration to fit the needs of an ever-changing market. A game that was a huge hit five or ten years ago probably wouldn’t do anywhere near as well today. The interests and demands of gamers have changed. So we have to learn from our mistakes as well as our successes and move forward.
In that regard, we’re going to be focusing more on creating content to provide multiple paths of advancement within ways to charge players for stuff in Champions Online. The plan is to create more of what you want in makes more money in smaller bites so we can do them on shorter timelines. We also want to provide more ways and reasons for players to group, which is what much of the Flashback and Difficulty Slider work has been focused on.
In the long term, we’re working on creating new stories, game play mechanics, and locales for the Champions universe and, of course, charging for them. We’re increasing our presence in the community and being more open and communicative with you so you know what we’re thinking and working on think we actually give a damn. And perhaps most importantly, we’re continuing to look for ways that we can make Champions a better game. more money.
Aaah, more honest answers from Cryptic! They are really taking on the tough questions! Good for them! Next question please!
FongSolo: What is Cryptic doing, or even planning behind the scenes to rebuild good faith in the company and this product that many of us paid the lifetime subs for?
Arkayne: Aside from a ton of things that we just can’t talk about right now (because we have not figured out how to charge for it yet), but will be very soon, we’re actively making a couple of changes around here: We’re stepping up the communication, again, to make you feel like we give a damn. We’re going to do more Ask Cryptics (I think we may charge for the next one), more Dev Chats (First one is free, .99 cents a pop after!), we’re going to be in-game, playing with you more (looking for a good time, honey? $2.00 for a real good time!), Our GMs are going to start letting you know the status on the current bugs, and the entire development team is going to start being more active on the forums. On top of that, we also moved Stormshade back to Champions. We know you don’t know him well yet, but believe us when we say, he gets really loud when you guys aren’t happy we start charging too little! Oh, and that “soon” we’re talking about up there, that’s not a “soon(tm)” that’s a soon, as in as soon as humanly possible soon.
I loved the part where he talks about Cryptic giving a damn….so insightful!
Derangement: Are there any plans to eventually include more non-seasonal content as part of a free update, or will you be focusing the revenues from monthly subscriptions on bug fixes and otherwise upgrading the game’s core, while relying on microtransactions for added content?
Stormshade: We have plans to add more free content to the game very soon, not seasonal stuff, and we’ll be talking about that shortly. Are you f@$king kidding me? (Sorry gang, you’re not getting a Valentine’s Day Event, that sh@t costs too much but we do still love you.)
Hrm, well that was straight to the point. Gotta love Cryptic, such a straight forward company! Next Question please!
Heathenish: I’d like to know what the relationship between STO code and CO code is. Because this past patch seems like you guys just dropped the “improved” STO engine right back into CO. Seems like a crazy thing to do, but for instance the direction-reversing and crazy camera bugs seem to have come straight from STO beta. Also, are both games sharing the same server? It doesn’t seem fair to have login problems because some other game is flooded.
Poz: Champs and STO share Cryptic’s global services: the chat and mail server, the account server, and proxy servers. The games themselves do not share any servers. As you noted, the account server is what we’ve had some problems with due to Star Trek. Unfortunately, we couldn’t safely change how our system works and split the two games apart there. Many of the load issues are fixed already, and we have programmers whose highest priority is keeping the account server working smoothly. Meh, both games use the identical engines. We did it that way so we could be cheap and get around to the important part…your wallet!
Another great answer! Fabulous job, Cryptic! Well, the rest of the AskCryptic segment is some mumbo-jumbo about balance and lack thereof and was, frankly, pretty boring. So, I won’t post the rest here.
I have to say though, it was refreshing to see a company lay it all on the line like Cryptic did in this segment. Such a great company, that Cryptic!!!
(Disclaimer: This was a parody. Cryptic did not really say these things (though I am willing to bet they thought ’em!), so don’t get your feelings hurt!)