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Champions Online: Bill Roper Interview
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Dana Massey recently traveled to the Cryptic Studios offices and spoke with Champions Online's Bill Roper about the game, its launch and its future direction.
Champions Online has been on the market for three months, and during our recent trip down to Cryptic HQ in Los Gatos, CA we spoke to Design Director Bill Roper about the game's launch, and where it stands today.
Nemesis Confrontation was the game's most recent big push, which the developers hoped would make each player's created enemy a bigger part of their life. It includes a five man end-game mission where the player is captured by a Nemesis and locked in a super prison. The five man dungeon includes an encounter with a nemesis for each person in the instance as you try to break out. Finally, as you uncover who is behind it (and no, I won't toss in the spoiler!) there is an epic battle on a changing battlefield that Roper was quite excited about.
Read the Bill Roper Interview.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
I try most mmorpgs that come out. I level a while in each, take some screenshots, explore, report back what I know in conversation with other players. That, I guess, is why my opinion counts, perhaps, in this discussion, even though I haven’t even played Champions Online yet, and have no clue about its specifics.
Not knowing anything specific about Champions Online game play, I hope Cryptic Studios and the players are doing well. I’d be thinking about going out and getting Champions Online right now if it weren’t for the snag described below.
I’m writing a negative post, but really I wish everyone involved with Champions Online well.
I’m baffled as to why Cryptic used Bill Roper as a face of Champions Online. It makes me, my friends, and anyone like me, cringe.
Sure, his resume in gaming looks fantastic before Hellgate: London, but that was when he was surrounded by correcting influences that kept him from wrecking havoc. When he ended up at the top of a project with free reign, it was a disaster. Not only that, but he went beyond making mistakes, to acting in a dishonest, malicious manner toward his business partners and his players while at Flagship Studios working on Hellgate: London.
Believe me, I wouldn’t write if his history didn’t make a person who’s played Hellgate: London jump out of his seat and reach for a baseball bat when seeing his face.
Putting him in charge of anything is like taking Hitler or Stalin and saying “Oh well, he screwed up kinda, but everyone makes mistakes, let’s put him in charge again, I’m sure he’ll do better this time.”
I know how melodramatic that sounds. I realize it sounds like exaggeration and drama inappropriate for ‘just a game’ or ‘just games’, but my gosh, if you followed his business practices at Flagship Studios you’d vomit.
I’ll be super (bad pun) glad if people are having fun and Champions Online is working out, but man, it’ll take a lot of convincing for people who know Bill to ever touch Champions Online.
In fairness to Mr Roper CO's problems began before his involvement in the project. Nemesis encounter encapsulates issues that were acute during alpha phases of this game and that were extensively discussed throughout the beta.
What is evident is a frighteningly superficial approach to content design and total lack of conviction in the core theme - this time squandering a feature that really should be defining ongoing player involvement and interaction. Instead it sidelines any shred of player investment in order to promote yet another bland generic npc cull and more of the same few identical quest mechanics that you have been forced to use to 'resolve' every other mission/quest/event that the game has thrown-up all over you.
The game desperately needs an infusion of imagination and a re-evaluation of its core objectives.
One of the basic problems of CO - and STO - is: no one knows it. Whereever in German game communites I go and tell about CO (or STO) practically everyone asks me "what the heck is Champions Online?" They have a really bad PR managment, and with STO they make it no better.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
this game went to hell fast, they removed anything that made a character feel like a super hero and now is just a weak version of WoW spandex edition. They completly ruined anything fun in this game, what little there was.
in calmest breeze,
in tornadoes blast,
no evil shall escape my gas
let those who are an evil fink
fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
Interview? More like PR piece.
"By Roper's own admission, they simply did not gather enough data from their players on the experience curve of the game. They also just didn't let enough people in. Both of these are lessons that they hope to remedy for Star Trek Online."
I've got several guildmates who have admitted to being in the beta. They all disappear to a locked Ventrilo room twice a week for about 3 hours a stretch. When asked, they "just can't talk about it." If STO is really only testing twice a week, then I'm doubting that Cryptic is able to get much more data from those testers. Twice a week. Open beta in less than 6... and then there's holidays or some-such. I think Cryptic is going to blow this one. All I can say is that they please need to keep Roper as far away from STO as possible. Let him go down with the sinking ship that is Champions.
The "Dr. Newbton" thing sounded more like scapegoating than an admission that there are obviously some major issues in the QA testing of Champions' patches. I didn't have a lot of respect for Mr. Roper prior to this article and I have even less now.
(edit for my poor spelling!)
Sounds like the future of STO to be honest.
It seems to me that Cryptic squandered all of their imagination and ability while making City of Heroes/Villains (though I do like that game very much, it has its problems, but overall I think it's a solid title.) Or maybe Cryptic has become the same type of mindless corporate profit whore that simply doesn't have the imagination and artistic ability to make good games.
Bill Roper should not be in charge of dressing himself, never mind a multi-million dollar MMOG project... I weep for STO, I really hope it turns out to be more than it is looking like now, but as much as I want it and CO to succeed and as much as I wanted to love and play CO and play STO I am very wary about putting time and money into anything Roper is involved with in any sort of leadership capacity.
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"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places..." ~ H.P.Lovecraft, "From Beyond"
Member Since March 2004
That part left a bad taste in my mouth. I wouldn't want to work for Cryptic if they did things like that to me.
Bill should be the guy who they send out for coffee and snacks during late night worktime, not the guy in charge.
Good luck to anyone who plans on playing anything he is involved with, you will need it.
I think Bill is a bit optimistic about everything regarding this game. My personal opinion is that he should start putting together a new resume in another area of interest. Games just don't seem to be his thing. He's kidding himself if he doesn't realize the ship is sinking.
Bill's right about MMOs fitting into a person's lifestyle. I want to tell him very simply why I'm not playing this superhero game, even though I love superheroes and videogames. It's the business model, cut and dry. I simply refuse to pay a subscription fee and be encouraged to pay extra cash for online items, especially when they give me a performance advantage. This simply doesn't fit into my chosen lifestyle.
Also, when companies market their subscription plus RMT model, they almost always say that they are responding to "player feedback."
Let's be honest Bill, your company wants the additional revenue from RMT items. You know that making them both cosmetic and performance enhancing will generate more dollars. If you want people to spend more in the RMT store, you just make the ingame options a real pain in the ass--either too difficult, too long, or too repetitive.
What percentage of the playerbase is begging you to charge them more money for ingame items? I'll bet it's very, very small. I also bet you'd take one request for RMT from one impatient player, and put it on a billboard to justify the business model you chose before the game even went live.
Let's cut the crap and just call it like it is. The model is for your quarterly revenue charts, not for entertainment value, and you did not choose it based on player feedback; that's why I've chosen not to play.
Also, if you choose to charge me multiple layers of fees (subscrition plus performance enhancing RMT) for Star Trek, I'll give that one as pass as well. I also took note of how you handled RMT respecs in Champions, and didn't like the way that went down. I think you guys are putting short term revenue ahead of long-term loyalty, retention, reputation and long-term revenue. I think it's going to bite you. I think it already has.
"To him, the best indicator is retention. Their launch retention was within the projected parameters"
- So, they were shooting for a 7% retention rate?
I'd also like to point out that 86.4% of all statistics are completely made up.
Bill Roper, has anyone ever told you you look like KG from Tenacious D with a wig on? Just asking...cause if that's really you KG, I'd just stick with the awesome music. Your game-making skills are lacking.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
The article really doesn't say much about what's going on in CO. Let's put it this way, I just canceled and basically waiting for the time to run out. CO has many issues with it at the moment.
The Good.
1. Character Creator - simply excellent; I spent hours just building toons that never saw any game-time at all.
2. Game Concept / game Play - Quite a good idea but when you take a step back, I suppose it's the same as COH/COX; at least that's what people keep saying.
3. Dev team - I have to give kudos to these guys. They really do try to listen and then implement the suggestions and make changes for the good.
The Bad.
1. Technical - It is likely that some will flame me for this but...this is a mess with CO right now. Issues range from connection to servers, patcher crashes, server crashes (longest was 9 hours without anyone at CO even knowing that it had crashed) lag/latency, rubber-banding, sudden disconnects etc; There has been a lot of people with the same issues scattered worldwide but it seems that all anyone can come up with is the usual "It's your ISP". Admittedly this answer did not come from the devs for everyone but it's the general response from those who can play without issues. I would have thought that the basic principle for a service orientated business should be "Let's secure customers first" and not just retention. Kinda hard to retain anything/anyone when your customers are having problems just accessing your service.
2. Powers - This is a total mess too. Not that the powers aren't working, just that there is no balance. The initial nerfs that came out were just wild swings. The recent archery changes showed a more focused look at balancing and fleshing out the powers instead of just nerfing everything.
3. Content - Sorely lacking. Literally a linear progressing in terms of how you level up. I've leveled 2 toons to 40 and 1 to the 30s and 2 more to the 20s, all doing the same identical quests simply because there is no other alternative aside from grinding out mobs.
4. Crafting - No reason to do it at all other than to say you did it.
5. Items - gear drops are basically not of much use aside from adding stats. The power replacers are essentially just for you to take screen shots and throw away.
Bill may want Co to stay around for a long time but unless they take a serious look at whether or not the cause of the technical issues are all actually on the customer side, it may be just a pipe dream for him. After all, how are you going to keep a game in the market if people can't even play it. Or at the very least insufficient people subscribe enough to maintain your overheads.
The sad thing is that I REALLY enjoyed the feel and art style for this game. Just a shame that there was almost no depth or balance.
I wouldn't mind seeing the skill charge system used in some other MMOs though, it added a bit of variety allowing them to have multiple effects.
I've tried all the free trials that have come out, and I want to like it, but I never even finish the trials. I make lots of toons, no interest in actually taking them into the game beyond the first couple I did.
The heavy instancing, the lack of player villains, even the way the Nemesis scenario was described in the article all make it feel like a standalone-game-with-multiplayer, rather than a true MMO for my tastes.
I also admit I don't like the sub AND rmt combined. It does feel like a desperate ripoff.
Still, its close to launch so perhaps in a year if the game is still round i'll try another trial.
Interesting to read peoples opinions of Bill Roper. Note that Cryptic is more similar to Blizzard than Flagship in the sense that of the three only the latter was an independent studio. I'm sure we have all read the detailed post-mortem reports on Hellgate, and the problem of theirs which stands out at the root of all others is that they ran out of money. That is why the game shipped buggy, that is why promised updates never materialized, and that is why the game shutdown quickly. Phrased another way, Bill did a bad job managing the money and that killed the game. Cryptic is owned by Atari, but Bill never managed to get a publisher to back Flagship: that is a big difference.
Two quickies:
(1) Bill Roper is not significantly involved with ST:O, other than some minor advice he claims to toss them occasionally, he does not have a position directly controlling or influencing that game.
(2) Compare and contrast Richard Garriot with Bill Roper, if you care to share your opinion.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
Lol, I'm not ragging on you man but CO has launched already back in September. Although I do admit that right now it feels like beta. My personal joke on this is that, in game development, there's Closed Beta, then Open Beta and finally Paid Beta. CO feels like Paid Beta sometimes.
1st poster said it, why the hell would you want Bill Roper to be the face of Cryptic?
Children in my house are taught to spit after saying his name...what kind of unholy fascination with masochism could possess a person to the point they would want Bill Roper to be the public face of their company? It boggles the mind. Truly.
Wow, now does anyone have anything nice to say about CO?
Not one word about PvP and how limited it currently is. This game is finished.
My gaming blog
Uhm well, the character creation is very good. The game is not.
My gaming blog
"Part of this was caused by the company's own mistakes in Beta. By Roper's own admission, they simply did not gather enough data from their players on the experience curve of the game. They also just didn't let enough people in. "
I would also like to add to this from my own personal experiance of the beta;
"They also didn't bother to listen to the majority of the beta testers comments as to what the problems with the game where."
Anything negative written about the game seemed to be ignored. The feeling that the beta community had was that developers had their own agenda and screw what we thought. Well apart from the "fanboys" that insisted Cryptic could do no wrong to the IP.
Like another poster I really wanted to like this game and have tried all free trials/weekends that have been issued since release but each time the game bores the hell out of me after 10 mins playing.
Based on my CO experience I no longer look forward to the STO release, I have lost all faith in the developers.
So far I haven't found anyone who has.
I do like the game a lot. I dont know what the guy up there is saying about powers. I have no problem with the chars I built blowing away everything and anything 3 levels above me at least. Anyway, cryptic is either understaffed or needs management. CO still can not utililize the new Nvidia drivers. Now there the over 2 month old drivers. Who is running the place and setting the priorities? What are they going to tell everyone with the new machines they get for xmas? Usually first thing dev asks is "do you have the latest drivers installed?". It's gotten embarrasing for them now. Problem solved, blame Nvidia. Good move, instead of creating an alliance with the vehicle driving your product, blame your shit on them. Like I said, Who the hell is running the place? Not who is boss but who is running it.
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.