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Superman is Ice?
skullkid128
Member Posts: 10
Someone showed me this story: DC Universe Online director Chris Cao on the balance of power(s)
"You have interesting cases like Superman," Cao explained, "where beyond his immunity to everything, the heat vision and the cold breath and the superstrength, and the flight, how do you translate that?" The answer is they don't. "We don't one-for-one translate that because we have the game systems involved, but we do make him an ice-based character, because then he's able to freeze things." Superman's heat vision appears as an "iconic" power, which players can earn over time. It's also included with the Superman character playable in a certain mode. The "real" DC heroes and villains can also be seen wandering the world, and frequently pairing up with players in missions.
What the heck? Ice-based character? There's not a super-strength or invulnerability set? What?
Comments
There's probably lots of missing context, there. It will probably make more sense, once you know how the power system works.
Or not, you never know. But when it comes to these interviews, sometimes they speak as though the audience knows as much about how their game works as they do.
Of course, when i see Superman the first thing i think is "He's a guy that manipulates ice."
W T F.
Well if you can play superman in certain game modes they cannot give him invulnerability (at least not without a heavy dose of Green Kryptonite). Probably same with super strength, too great an advantage.
What he's getting at is that there is no good way to make a Superman-like character without breaking the game. Superman is the be-all end-all of mage-tanks and having the ability to be just like him would cause havok for the balancing group.
Why they chose Ice to represent Superman's powers is beyond me. Some of his powers like heat vision and super-strength, as Cao mentioned, are available for training so that you can attempt to get close to his power set.
But yeah, a few thousand players running around with invulnerability, superstrength, superspeed, ice-breath, heat vision ect. would just be silly. They had to make concessions with this one.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
I understand you can't directly translate the Core heroes but c'mon their powers are pretty legendary
That's like saying if I was to choose to be a Batman Archetype I couldn't use batarangs or have his level of intelligence..
Or if I chose a Wonder Woman archetype and you couldn't have bracelets that deflected bullets or have Super Strength
It's a DURH moment when they say stupid things like this
The powers of the Justice League cannot be comprimised they ARE who they are and even Superman while seemingly 100% untouchable has actually had some close calls in the past.
I mean what next You have Darkseid in the game and tell players that whomever pick him as an Archetype they cannot have super strength or the ability to shoot lasers outta their eyes?
This is by far the DUMBEST thing I've heard about anything DC Related yet...
According to the backstory of the game Nannites are released worldwide to transform REGULAR People into SUPERHEROES
Well if they aren't too super then they aren't Superheroes
I can comprehend if the regular people that get transformed aren't 100% like their Archetype mentors but holy crap they need to be similar and the Core heroes need 100% of their powers
Ugh this is just giving me fits learning about this nonsense! Marvel would certainly not stand for this if it was their IP being used...DC You fail me yet again...first the cancellation of Batman Beyond then letting JLU to rot and the making some Crappy movies...If you screw up Green Lantern I will personally slap each and every one of you at the top lol
The game does seem to have a really limited selection of power sets. In this case with Superman, it appears they had to choose the one that was closest, and then had to fudge the rest with an "iconic" handwave.
My concern is that player characters, who will be forced to adhere to the strict letter of the law regarding power sets, are not going to have the latitude to create really different characters.
The game has some interesting things about it, but they are really coming up short in one of the most important areas for a game of this type - the superpowers.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
You need to look up how characters are built in DCUO, many classic super powers are part of a separate tree that all characters have access too. Naturally many of Supermans powers are in this tree.
Well for the invulnerability that's a different thing altogether
it has NOTHING to do with Superman's superpowers it's something that happened to him because of who he is which is a Kryptonian. All the Kryptonians are invulnerable to a point it's the benefit of a Yellow Sun on Earth
However the Heat Vision, the Flight, the Super Strength, the Ice Breath, and the Super Speed
All these things are his signature super powers and there's only one Superhero just slightly faster than Superman and that's The Flash
If they made it in game where you could be like Flash but not as fast THAT would be the defininition of completely bassackwards
And as far as the Lantern Core goes nannites couldn't replicate that unless somehow the Nannites replicated the rings and these once normal people were inducted into the Core. Same with Sinestro Corps
And all this talk about OH it's SO overpowered ot have this or that
Well riddle me this then if Superman is the end all beat all and Wonder Woman is right behind him how come they got the complete HELL beat outta them in the cinematic?
*slaps the devs around with a wet stinky trout* Use your imagination and stop trying to place DC Superheroes in a particular category when they're mixed breeds
I know that, but how can there not be a "strong and tough" set? Are there a bunch of strong and tough powers in the other tree? What if I want to make a dude like Hulk? He doesn't have ice powers.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Not sure if there is a base set that really fits a Hulk type character, the beast type powers from the nature set maybe.
As for the rest, like I said before you need to actually look up how characters are built in DCUO.
Might and Mastery powerset. It won't be ready for launch, but it is being worked on much like earth, atomic, and a few other powersets. They just won't be polished enough to make their way into the final game at launch.
member of imminst.org
You mean you can't make Superman when the game comes out, but maybe after? lol wtf
You can do it in CO. /Toggles on flame shield.
...while part of the fun of hero style games is the huge amount of customization. However, it has been almost impossible to balance for PvP in CoH and CO. While lore, RP, and creativity breaking, it may be better for that purpose.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
lots of complaints about that in the forums. Customization is definately a weakness
member of imminst.org
The thing I think people are missing, is that evey character in the DCU game has super-strength to some extent. From what I hear, and saw in demos is that any character can pick up a car and thorw it. Now, can you make a character with no super-strength like Bats or Green Arrow, I don't know. But there are ablitiy modifiers (loot, the Venum Syrum, etc...) that can increase strength even higher for the Hulk-like characters, which allows you to pick up even heavier objects. So "Super strength" doesn't get its own bucket because everyone has it to a cretain extent
This the same same story every time a fantasy or mythological character is ported into a game, be it tabletop or online. The character needs to be fitted into the rules of the game, and as a result of this he is suddenly heavilly nerfed or bound into limitations.
Like in Dungeons and Dragons, suddenly Drizzt shows up as a level 15 ranger something. Okay, we see what he can do, but more importantly we suddenly see all the things he can no longer do. And as the games wants to be part of lore, any character who is suddenly defined by a game set of rules, has been heavilly restricted in any further growth or storytale capability.
So the best chars show up in novels, they are limited by imagination, they are put into games, they are no longer anything but a stack of rules.
Putting Superman into a tier tree, is taking the Super out of him.
I'm pretty sure that super strength is a power option that players can choose to spend points on for their characters. Heavy objects can only be lifted after skill points (or whatever they are called) are put into the super strength power.
There are a few references to this in demos by Cao and other DCU team members.
Why would you want to? Superman is the ultimate Tank/Mage. No single character in an MMO (non-NPC) should have Superman's abilities. He is the best of the best, no player should be able to reach his level either. You should be able to come close, but this is still and MMO (even if it is an Action MMO) and a team dynamic is still stressed in end-game content from what the developers are saying. You also have to remember while they are kind-of funnling powers into groups (control, defender, healer) there are no defined "classes" so prevent the need for later nerfing, making the decision to not allow Tank/Mage characters makes total sense. Just my Opinion.
I don't care about that. I care about making my character like regular Superman and not ICE SUPERMAN!
Actually you have to spec your character for strength if you want to pick up certain items. In a video not too long ago they showed a character that could pick up a car but not a bus. They added points in strength and then they could pick up the bus and hurl it down the street. Pretty awesome video.
The thing is, what Cao was saying is that you CAN make superman, but if you think about it, his powers are somewhat limited. Ice breath, Laser eyes, Strength, Flight, invulnerability-ish? You can have ice breath with the ice set, laser eyes with the iconic powers, spec for strength, and use flight as your movement power... I mean he's saying that you *can* make it, but you'd just have a number of additional ice powers.
There are no specific sets that just allow you to be superman, nor are there ones that would allow you to be JUST Wonder Woman. You can get pretty close though. As far as tanking goes, supposedly there are different ways to create a tank, but I can't speak from experience. If and when I get into testing I'll do like I always do and get a fantastically detailed review out when the NDA drops, but right now I can't tell you how viable a tank set utilizing certain abilities would be.
Supposedly the two tank sets are fire and ice, we'll see though.
I hope I get to play in open beta or the stress test event to see just how these power sets pan out. I thought an invulnerability/ might set would be available like in all current superhero MMOs, but seems this is not the case
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If you haven't played the game how can you say with any certainty that the devs are coming up short in any aspect of DCUO?You're failing at your Superman Lore, comrade.
Most of what Superman does isn't ice stuff. Heck, the ice breath is a footnote in his powerset and isn't something he's shown have a great deal of versatility in.
What does define Superman a lot more is his speed and how he combos his powers together. Heat Vision might seem boring, but with microscopic and telescopic vision he can do a lot of amazing things with it. He also uses it to disarm villains and generally manipulate the environment. With his speed he has some of the same tricks as the Flash, but he also uses it all the time to chain attacks together (such as using heat vision on a lot of targets in a short amount of time). Of course, I don't think they have any system for chaining powers together in any fashion, unfortunately.
Frankly, making him fire based would make more sense. He doesn't do much with his ice breath beyond either make a little or big iced area. Pretty tame. Fire-based at least is more in lines with the lore of him having solar-based powers as well.
Eh, the more I hear about DCUO, the less I think it is going to be that great when it comes out.
I never said superman was an ice based character....
Supermans main powers are his super strength, speed and invulnerability (what he uses the most). As they don't have a set that deals with that specifically and instead have points that you can put into strength, its more of a roundabout way to get all (well, most) of supermans powers. Its not about Superman using Ice Powers, its about having ice breath, heat vision, flight, and super strength, all of which you can do with the ice tank build with the iconic set and flight.
This system isn't going to be so robust that you can do things like disarm other players using heat vision, or burn a lock off of a door. Its a very obtuse way to get the same basic power set without actually being the man of steel.
Using the fire set won't get you any closer to being superman unless they have an iconic Ice Breath power, in that situation it could go either way as long as one of the fire powers is heat beams.
If you truly wanted to be more of a superman character, you'd only use the ice breath power, the heat vision power, and the powers that go along with the flight power pool. The rest would be handled around the combo system and using your strength to utilize the environment around you. It makes sense to me.
I really don't think that has any sway on whether or not I'm going to play the game. Me personally, I'm creating my own hero, I don't want to be superman, so as long as the game plays well and is fun it doesn't bother me. For all those who want to be superman, you play with the hand you're dealt. Maybe in the future they will expand the power sets to allow for more of a strength based set. If you don't want to play the game until that happens because you are dead set on being superman, then I suppose thats.. somewhat understandable.