Intervista di Stateman, Transcript

Inhibitor Interviews Statesman (Aug. 26, 2004)

[Inhibitor] In Paragon City, there are many names that are honored. Positron, Bastion, Ms. Liberty, Atlas. But even among this group, there is one name that is head and shoulders above all the rest. As far above them as they are above us. Statesman. Tonight, MMO Radio and Justice Radio have the extreme honor of a one on one sit down interview with the one, the only, Statesman, Jack Emmert, of Cryptic Studios. If you like City of Heroes, if you love Paragon City, you have one man to thank. It’s time for a one-on-one with the Statesman! On MMO Radio and Justice Radio!

[Inhibitor] It’s time to talk with the one and only Statesman, on MMO Radio. Ladies and gentlemen, we have on the phone with us, live now, the one and only Jack Emmert. Jack, thank you so much for joining us this evening.

[Statesman] Sure, good afternoon Paragon City citizens.

[Inhibitor] And, well, as it said in the info right there, there is only one person, really, that we need to thank and that we have to thank for having Paragon City to inhabit, and that’s you! So on behalf of everyone that’s not on the phone right now, thank you.

[Statesman] No, there have been ... Look, Paragon City is the work of many hard people, many people working hard here at Cryptic Studios, and at NCSoft, so really you’d have to take a look at all those great people in the credits in the manual, and they’re really the heroes, believe me. I just get to be the one guy doing all the interviews and all the fancy stuff, and I think, at best, I’m a conductor, just sort of helping keep things together. But really we had fantastic designers and artists and programmers that have just put together really a rock solid, great product.

[Inhibitor] Well, and I think that ... I know im a rabid reader of the gaming press, both online and in print, and I think it’s pretty much been a consensus that you guys really the best role-out and the smoothest roll-out of an MMORPG that we’ve seen so far. And you’re to be commended for that.

[Statesman] Yeah, certainly, compared to recent releases, definitely. We aspired to the success that Dark Age had with their launch and I think that we did an awesome job at setting the bar for future releases. And I think it kind of got lost in the shuffle, how solid the launch really was and how difficult that really is for an MMP, but I think that what will happen is that we now have expectations, and people who play City of Heroes ,or were there for launch, are going to go on to other games at some point and try them out, no doubt, and they’re going to be expecting the same great quality. And I don’t mind that, I mean, that’s terrific.

[Inhibitor] Well, that’s what you want to shoot for, of course. And talking about quality, and talking about setting the bar, I’ve heard that phrase used a lot in regards to the character creation system in the game, because it’s, I think, by far the best one that’s ever been implemented.


[Statesman] Well thank you. It’s certainly one of the things that both design and art have been working on for years. And it was something that we always wanted to make part of character creation. And really, I don’t know, there are a lot of people who play City of Heroes for their very first MMP, but this was a big risk we took. Traditionally, a person did not get visual differentiation until they start getting higher in level, it’s a reward, it’s a carrot. And even then, it’s a pretty limited amount of variation in order to save on our time. But in City of Heroes, we wanted every single hero to feel unique, just like in the comic books, from the very start. When you open the pages of a comic, almost every hero looks different, unless of course they are part of some super group.

[Inhibitor] Well, unless it’s Image.

[Statesman] *laughs* Or unless it’s Image And in our particular case, we just really wanted to make sure that we captured a unique feel. We also felt it just makes it for a more fun experience if you feel that you are an individual hero in a city that needs heroism, and that when you looked across at your friends, or your teammates, that they weren’t just mirror images of you. You have a greater identification with the hero that you’ve created, and if you did that, you’d be immersed in the game more, and if you did that, you would certainly enjoy the experience more.
[Inhibitor] And I think it definitely worked. And I want to get into a lot of the things about City of Heroes, and of course City of Villains, and Update 2, and some of the future things that we can expect from the game. But first, one thing that I want to do that I have yet to see anyone really do, is kind of get inside your head. Is there room in there? It seems to be pretty busy.

[Statesman] *laughs* Yeah, I dunno, I think according to some people at Cryptic and NCSoft it’s actually a pretty empty space, so feel free to rattle around.

[Inhibitor] *laughs* I have people tell me that all the time, and I just say “Honey, never mind.” First of all, you, from what I understand, speak five different languages?

[Statesman] Six

[Inhibitor] Six ... okay, I missed one. What six do you speak?

[Statesman] Well, I wouldn’t say speak as much as know. Italian, German, French, Latin, and Ancient Greek ... of course English ... supposedly at least English. Then smatterings of everything from Aramaic to Acadian, Canaanite, Middle Kingdom, Hieroglyphics, just a whole range of things.

[Inhibitor] I’m glad you mentioned that, I was going to hit that on the Hieroglyphics, because I knew you had some experience in reading and translating and interpreting Hieroglyphics. My question is, anywhere in Paragon City, in, say, some of the higher level CoT missions, or anywhere else, are there any little messages that you hid in there with Hieroglyphics?


[Statesman] No, no they’re not. The artists had pretty much free reign there. No easter eggs at that particular point. I didn’t want to be too obscure, you know, there are only, after all, probably, in the world a thousand people would appreciate them or something like that. So our easter eggs are a little bit more obvious than that.

[Inhibitor] Just a hair, and I want to talk about some of those as well, but obviously, this is your first online game, or even electronic game, really, that you’ve worked on, isn’t it?

[Statesman] Yeah, this is the first time that I’ve ever been in the gaming industry, was being lead designer on City of Heroes.

[Inhibitor] Now, of course, I have a broader definition of “gaming industry,” cause you’ve worked with Wizards of the Coast,.

[Statesman] Sure

[Inhibitor] You worked with White Wolf

[Statesman] Yes

[Inhibitor] For a while. So you do kind of have your toe dipped into the gaming experience before you got to this, but, the fact that you put so much passion into it is evident, and the reason why is, you are, and we’re gonna turn this into like a 12 step meeting all of a sudden, just go ahead right now and say “hi, my name is Jack Emmert, and I’m a comic book fan.”

[Statesman] Yeah, certainly I’m a comic book fan from a long, long, long time ago. Getting back to my previous experience, it certainly gave me a head start, working on role playing game products for FASA and Wizards and other things, but I think I overestimated how useful that would end up being. I was in, for pretty much a surprise, I mean, it was a huge learning experience, and thank goodness there were a lot of people who helped me grow into the role I have now, and could give me advice. Many people here at Cryptic were industry veterans, so they had a better idea of exactly how a game needs to be designed, and the demands that I needed to be able to fulfill, in terms of documentation and guidance and things like that.

[Inhibitor] Well let me ask you this. From the time ... let’s go back to the time when it became official, and they said “Ok, this project is a go. We’re going with this.” How long ago was that?

[Statesman] Well, Cryptic Studios was formed, really, to make City of Heroes, and that was back in July of 2000. At the time, there were 5 of us, and we slowly grew over time, but that at least gives you an idea, you know, it’s now 2004. Really, development time, about 3 years.

[Inhibitor] Is that average? Is that longer than usual?

[Statesman] That depends upon the game. Some games are done relative in a shorter window, some in a longer window. It goes really almost all over the map, but traditionally, MMPs fall somewhere between the two and five year range.


[Inhibitor] Well, you said that your previous experience, you really kind of overestimated your experience in pen and paper and card RPGs. In what way was it just radically different, just something that blind sided you, from coming up with something that really had never been done before or at least had never been done properly, which was a super hero MMP?

[Statesman] Well, some of the corner cases, it’s thinking out every particular step of the player experience, what a player could do or choose to do. And even then, we still made mistakes, but down to the subtlest thing of where do you place a spawn in a zone. That will effect player flow which then effects player load, which effects the number of special effects on the screen and any number of different issues, and that’s just placing a single spawn down. Every single element needs to be thought about, about how a player would do X, Y, Z, see, the difference is in a paper and pencil game, somebody can always just take out the rulebook. But nobody wants to open up their manual to figure out how to do something in an MMP. They want it to be intuitive and easy, because they are paying for that experience month after month after month. And so they really want the game to help them learn how to play the game, and that was something I needed to learn.

[Inhibitor] And I think you did an excellent job of learning it. It seems like, because it was, and I’ll be honest ... I’m going to make a confession here to everyone listening, City of Heroes is my first MMP that I’ve ever played or been a part of. And I’ve been a gamer for a long time, but I literally logged in, I was accepted into beta, back in March, actually, first week of March, logged in, and I think within about 15 minutes I was playing it like a pro. And I really think, from some of the stories I’ve heard, some of the horror stories I’ve heard, if I had logged into another game, and that had been my first experience, that might have also been my last experience. But the way it’s designed, it’s really kind of opened the door for a lot of people to this kind of thing. It’s also interesting, ok, let me ask you this, while we’re on the subject of the game, how many times a day do you have to stop and correct yourself or correct somebody and say, “No, it’s arresting them. You’re arresting them.”

[Statesman] *laughs* To tell you the truth, that’s actually not something that I’ve ever really tried to enforce one way or the other. We try to cloak everything in the grey area of defeat. You defeat villains. And it’s up to players to decide whether they are arresting them or killing them. After all, there are some vigilantes in the comic book world which are utterly ruthless and life or death just doesn’t matter to them when they are talking about criminals. And then there are others who are very protective of Human life. And so I’d like the players to make their own choice as to what they’re doing.

[Inhibitor] I have heard tell that, and there is not really a complete analog for this in City of Heroes right now, but, I have heard tell that one of your favorite comic book heroes is the Human Torch.

[Statesman] Yes, certainly, when I was a very young boy, the Human Torch was one of my favorites ... all the Fantastic Four, really, I loved the FF, but sure, yeah, the Human Torch.


[Inhibitor] And I have to ask you this, I had heard rumors that at some point, in the not too distant future, we may see some additional archetypes being introduced into the game.

[Statesman] Yeah, we are definitely going to be doing that, starting with expansion three. In fact, I was just writing up a bunch of stuff today on them, right before I talked to you. They are going to be ... we’re still toying around with the naming and terminology ... I have called them, in the past, prestige archetypes, or prestige origins, but I think but I think the best thing we’ve decided to call them are Epic archetypes. And the reason why is, not just because they open up at higher levels, but because they are related to the story of Paragon City. They are related to the mythology. It’s time that we started really exploring the universe that people are playing in. And hence, the word “epic,” who’s original meaning means story or tale, or saga.

[Inhibitor] So, now let me ask you this. With you saying that, is this going to be, are these going to be archetypes that anyone can choose in the character creation?

[Statesman] They will be archetypes that anyone can choose if they accomplish a certain goal. The first set of archetypes are going to be achievable if you can get a character up to level 50. Others might have other particular requirements. Whether it be badges or task forces or something along those lines.

[Inhibitor] So you are going to institute something like a badge or something along those lines then.

[Statesman] Yeah, yes, yes, that’s completely possible, although right now I’m only focusing on the first set of archetypes. The other ones are kind of ... pie in the sky right now.

[Inhibitor] Let me ask you this. How much, because there are glimmers of some very recognizable heroes in some of the power sets, and some of the things that you can choose. I mean, when you choose the scrapper archetype and you wind up popping three claws out of each hand, there is one character everyone thinks about, let’s be honest.

[Statesman] Really?

[Inhibitor] Yeah, I know that’s a shock to you, but they do. How much did you guys rely on comics and on source material, not to copy the characters necessarily, but to make sure that some of the favorite powers and abilities were going to be included?

[Statesman] Well, that was the expressed goal when I created the archetype system, was to capture the essence of comic book characters across a wide variety of mediums. I guess I should say super heroes really. Whether it be novels or comic books or movies, things which, or television shows, what were the powers and abilities that people could recognize and readily grasp hold of, so that when they got into our game everybody would have a certain set of expectations of what should be in a super hero game, and we really wanted to focus on those. And we’re going to be adding to those power sets, as I said before, there were some ones that were missing that are pretty important. Sonic powers, shield, bow, quarterstaff, they are some of the things we need to add in there.

[Inhibitor] Ok, and it’s so funny, cause at that point, everyone just thought of Banshee, Captain America, Green Arrow, you know, you run down the list in your mind. You can’t help it, because if you grow up like we did reading these things, you want to emulate them, you just do. And I think that’s great. But let me ask you something. Is there one particular power set, is there one particular that you really, really wanted to get into the game that didn’t make it for whatever reason?

[Statesman] Shape shifting. That was probably the number one thing, and we’re working on it. Just the ability to change into different shapes, that was kind of a big one. An under water world, really my favorite character of all time is Namor, so, being able to swim underwater, having the powers which made you better underwater, superhuman strength, that kind of thing. Those are probably the things I was most disappointed in.

[Inhibitor] Well, let me ask you this. Will we ever see maybe an underwater sector of the city?

[Statesman] Yeah, definitely. You might need a vehicle to get there, but sure.

[Inhibitor] And again, it depends on who you are and what your power set is. Now you said that Shape shifting was on the drawing board, was possibly in the works. Was that under the category of pie in the sky? Or was that under the category of “Yeah ...”?

[Statesman] It’s under the category of we’re working on it.

[Inhibitor] Ok. Well, and I think that will excite a lot of people. I’m looking at the IRC channel right now and a lot of people just immediately just went, “Ooo! Shape shifting!” Because that’s one of things that a lot of people have been wanting to see for a long while in there. Another thing that a lot of people have talked about is some of the community aspects of City of Heroes as far as making it easier to communicate. Now I understand, in the next update, there are some changes coming to the chat channels.

[Statesman] Yeah, we’re adding a brand new chat functionality where you can create your own chat channels, as many members as you’d like, so you could have several hundred people in it. That would be used for those super groups who want to create their own alliance. It will be across shards, it wont be limited to just the server that you’re on, but rather other servers. It’s a really great setup that was championed and designed by Brice Rogers of CTO and of course Mike Parent, one of our junior programmers, who did a terrific job working on the UI.

[Inhibitor] Ok, see, I’ve got to clarify this, cause you just tickled me to death. I am excited about this. So what you’re saying is ... is it going to be an unlimited number of people? Or is it going to be a definite number, just a very high number?

[Statesman] It’s going to be a very high number, no doubt there is a number in there. I’d have to actually look at the documentation, I don’t have it in front of me, to figure out what is the maximum number, but it’s a very high number.


[Inhibitor] Several hundred at least.

[Statesman] Yes, exactly.

[Inhibitor] And you say that it crosses servers ... in other words, if you have a super group on Pinnacle and you want to form an alliance with a super group on Virtue, you can create a channel and bring them all together.

[Statesman] Yes

[Inhibitor] Now that’s going to excite a lot of people.

[Statesman] Yeah. Anything that allows players to communicate more easily with one another should get focus right away. And it should get into the game as soon as we can get it, because that just makes the experience that much better.

[Inhibitor] Exactly. And speaking of the experience being that much better, I tell you what, let’s take a quick break for just a second and regroup. But when we come back, I want to talk to you ... we’re going to take some questions from the listeners, we’re going to do that in the IRC channel by the way, so if you’re not in our IRC channel, go ahead and get logged in right now. If you don’t the instructions, if you don’t know where the channel is, visit our website at MMORadio.com, we have the information on there as to how to join us in IRC. Please do, we’re going to be taking some of your questions in just a few moments for Jack Emmert, Statesman, from City of Heroes. And when we come back I want to talk to you about several things, including Update 2, that we’ve heard so much about but haven’t seen yet. Also the subject of super group headquarters we need to talk about as well. So hold on the line for just a second, you guys stick with us, we’re going to be right back with more, with Jack Emmert, Statesman, on MMO Radio, and also joining us on Justice Radio tonight for our simulcast interview with Statesman on Statesman Day here on MMO Radio. We’ll be right back.

[Inhibitor] Well I tell you what, you guys have done an excellent job as I've said many times before and I'm not going to say it again as I'm starting to turn into fanboy geek man. One thing I wanted to ask you about when we came back, you mentioned City of Villains, I wanted to get into that as well, but one thing everyone would be able to have is headquarters for the Supergroups, and that's been asked for for a long time, it's been rumoured, it's been talked about...all the way back in beta, that was talked about. What are the plans? Is that on the drawing board, so to speak? Is that in the works?


[Statesman] Yeah, we're working on that, and that will definitely be a feature in City of Villains, for both heroes and villain groups to create their own customized base, which will have lots of special features available, as well as there's going to be the base invasion game play, where both heroes and villains will be trying to possess items of power, which are essentially creations which are so powerful they could rock the very foundations of the cosmos, and in fact they kind of act like keys to the universe, and whoever possesses the most can end up controlling the fate of the world, and so naturally both heroes and villains have a vested interest in getting a hold of these items and storing them safely in their base, but of course then the base can be invaded and objects can be stolen and so forth.

[Inhibitor] So it's not just going to be a place to congregate and sit around and hit the boombox emote, it's actually going to be a very active part of the gameplay then.

[Statesman] Yes, definitely. I'm a big fan that every feature in the game has to have gameplay associated with it. I don't care what it is. Even social areas should have something for the player to do there. Because after all, there's already social areas in the game, in the safe areas of zones. So I'm a big fan of making sure that gameplay comes first. Nothing should be put in City of Heroes, or City of Villains for that matter, just 'cause. That's bad game design. Everything has to have a point, and all these points have to all link together. That's just a basic rule we have here.

[Inhibitor] And you're not fooling me, you just wanted to make sure the Infinity Gauntlet ended up in the game. But, and I've got a million questions coming in, but I do want to clarify something you just said there. You did say that starting with City of Villains, we would have the Supergroup headquarters, which sound like they're going to be a very integral part. Is that going to be specifically associated with City of Villains? In other words, are you going to have to buy the box in order to get an HQ?

[Statesman] That's kind of a business question, which I'm not sure I can answer at this moment. But certainly it's a feature that we know that we want in that box set. As for whether it would be available to heroes even if they never bought City of Villains, I couldn't tell you right now. I just don't know the answer to that.

[Inhibitor] So that's something that we'll address in the future. Just the fact that it's coming, I don't care. I'll be honest with you, it doesn't matter to me. I did see one question here, and let me see, because I just jumped from no private messages to about eight billion. That's what happens when you ask for questions. But JackofBlades just sent me a question, he wants to know, will the HQ's be customizable?

[Statesman] Oh, definitely. Exteriors, interiors, the layouts. Yeah, everything. Because...well frankly, that's what makes sense. And it also fits the feel we're trying to get. We like customizability a lot. And obviously it's held us in good stead so far, and I think we're gonna continue with that.

[Inhibitor] Well, before we go to the questions ? and I certainly have enough questions to go to ? lemme ask you one more thing, that I touched on very briefly, I mentioned it earlier, but I want to get a clarification if I can on this. Update 2 we've been hearing about, we've seen some awesome screenshots on the City of Heroes website of the Lava Monsters, basically is what everyone calls them, that are going to be in The Hollows. When are we going to see the second update on the test server, do you think?


[Statesman] I would guesstimate right now, early next week. Naturally, people have already been able to download it for a while, but we're going to put that switch on probably early next week. Assuming there are no bugs. You know, the crack QA staff at NCSoft is helping test test test and our software engineers have just been working extra hard to shake out all the bugs so we can get this baby live as soon as possible.

[Inhibitor] So about how long do these things ? and we've only had one experience so far ? so on average, how long do you see these things staying on the test server before they do actually go live?

[Statesman] A couple of weeks. I think that anywhere between 1 and 4 weeks. I think it's just going to depend on the number of bugs we get, the amount of people that get on the test server and just help put stress on any features. I think that, really, because we've only been through this one time, it's very difficult to say there's an average yet. I think this time next year we'll be in a better position to give more precise estimates.

[Inhibitor] All right. Well, let me go to some of the questions here, because I have a bunch of 'em that I need to get to, and I wanna try to make sure that the fans, that the players, that the heroes of Paragon City get the opportunity to ask some of the things that are on their mind. For example, Kinae off the Freedom server asks "will there be any backpacks, oxygen tanks, wings, anything like that. A back addition for the character design at any point?"

[Statesman] Eventually we'll be doing jetpacks and things like that. There's some technical difficulties, because of the different avatar sizes, and the different textures and things like that, but we'll eventually be doing that, and of course, I discussed about the fact that we'll be doing a winged archetype, probably that will be an epic archetype of some sort, that players will be able to get their wings if they acheive, if they open up this archetype, they get to play it. It will be an archetype that is linked, again, to the mythology of the city. Eventually we will put more wings into the game. But that's a very long term process, because of the number of animations we have. We have to make sure each animation can go with the wings that we're creating. We have to do a flying version of the animation, we'd have to do on the ground version, and also underwater (swimming). It's really just a ton of work, that we will eventually do, because wings are a staple of the superhero world. But we definitely wanted to do was get wings in earlier rather than later, and the best choice was to create an archetype whose sole role really, or sole function is to have wings.

[Inhibitor] Ok, I’ve got one here from Zerrast, who actually asked me to ask you five questions. We’re going to pick one of them, but I’ve got to pick one because Zerrast offered to have my babies if I asked you, and you know that’s an enducement. Especially since I think male, I’m not sure. Several things, one a more general question about ... I know that the Update 2 that’s coming out has some lower game content in it, correct?

[Statesman] Yes, defiantly. The Hollows, in fact, are level five to fifteen, if memory serves.

[Inhibitor] Do you have any plans to add any additional late game content?


[Statesman] Sure, obviously we have a 40 to 50 level zone going in. We have several trials going in, the Terra Volta trial in addition to an Eden trial. And the Epic Archetype will be going in ... oh no, im sorry, that’s in Expansion Three. That’s it for Expansion Two.

[Inhibitor] Now let me ask you this, something that Zerrast touched on, and I’ve seen several other people here that have asked this question already. Are there any plans, and if so, what plans can you tell us about, or even touch on, for possibly having in-game events in Paragon City?

[Statesman] In-game events? We’re defiantly ramping that all up since we’ve been working on event technology for quite a while. So I would really request or recommend that all the heroes in Paragon City keep their eyes open as this expansion goes live.

[Inhibitor] Well, as someone who got smeared by the Rikti about eight billion times at the end of beta, yeah, you kind of sneak up on us with these things. Lets go through and ... oh here’s one, let me ask this. Let me get this out of the way. Sev said hello, first of all, and then “Im wondering if you can give us any more clues as to what the non combat system is going to be.”

[Statesman] Well, the riddle that I’ve been telling for quite a while, in fact I spent all morning working on the design dock on this, is that if the heart of the hero is his powers, and the soul of the hero is his costume, then this system would certainly be his mind.

[Inhibitor] Oh great, now I won’t sleep tonight.

[Statesman] *laughs* So, certainly you’ll see more little bits of information come out as time goes by, but we’ll defiantly be doing ... definitely before the expansion goes live, some sort of preview on the system, but that’s not going to come any time soon.

[Inhibitor] Here’s a good question. Riccochet Rocket, and in-game friend of mine off the Pinnacle server, has a very good question here, and I hope I’m not giving anything away when I say this, but this should be an inducement to level up guys! At some point in the higher levels, we have an evil version of Statesman. Are we going to see Statesman himself in the game at some point in the future?

[Statesman] Yup, yeah, definitely. There are some technical problems, because if I appeared on any server what would inevitably happen is that all the players would want to get into that zone, and there are only “X” amount of players that can get into a zone that I ... that a character appears in. So I want to make sure that if I do it that everybody gets to enjoy it and not just a few.

[Inhibitor] Well that certainly would be a technical challenge to make sure that everyone got able to participate in it. That brings up an interesting question I want to ask. You’ve been asked this a million times, so I’m going to make it a million and one. I know when you get a chance, you play, and even if you volunteered I don’t want to know what your character’s name is or anything like that, because if there is one thing you want it’s some privacy to actually be able to play the game instead of being pestered with questions like this. What is your favorite archetype out of all of them?


[Statesman] I don’t really have one, obviously because I designed them. Usually I’m bouncing around a lot between archetypes, I kind of go through stretches to get a feel for what’s going on in that archetype and I make usually three or four different levels in different power set combinations, and I try to get a handle on what the issues are. I think now, I’ve mostly been playing controllers for a while and I’ve been playing scrappers for a while, and tankers I’ve been playing. Most recently I’ve been playing with tankers, because there are some outstanding issues I want to check in to.

[Inhibitor] Oh, and I was just told, “my name is Cun Eye,” the one that asked the question earlier about the wings, so let me get that straight, so that we don’t insult anyone there. Here’s one that a lot of people have been asking for a while. Is there anything in the works, have you thought about this, I know it’s been suggested on the City of Heroes forums for quite a while. Is there any plan, or even a pie in the sky option, at some point down the road, to possibly have the option to pay back debt with influence, instead of with experience?

[Statesman] In fact, we’re going to have a system that’s going to be all about paying back your debt. In fact, the very first aspect of this is reverse sidekicking, so that if you are a high level person, you can drop your level down artificially to a lower level person’s level. And when you adventure in this fashion, you pay off your debt at one hundred percent, rather than splitting it.

[Inhibitor] Oh really. See, I knew you had done that to ... I had heard that system mentioned as a way to go and clear out storylines and allow friends to team with their lower members and clear out their storylines and still get some benefit from it, but I had not heard that particular detail of it.
[Statesman] Yup

[Inhibitor] That’s a good one. As someone who stays in debt on a regular basis, ...

[Statesman] *laughs* Yeah, that can happen.

[Inhibitor] I’m a good friend of debt. My supergroup actually had a person, we’ve tried to get it to stick, in Army of Heroes on Pinnacle, Exile. We have tried to name the standard unit of debt “The Exile.” Make it 1000 debt equals one Exile, because he tends to wrack it up by the tens of thousands, about every fifteen minutes it seems. That’s a great bit of news for a lot of us, I know, especially at the higher levels when you have one death, and all of a sudden you are looking at quite a lot of debt.

[Statesman] Yeah, definitely. You kind of get something unique from doing reverse sidekicking, and especially at the later levels, I just think it’s kind of fun.

[Inhibitor] Ok, I’ve got one here ... that was Electric Medic, by the way, that asked that question. A good question there, thank you. The next one that I’ve got is from Fighter, who I think has a good one here. We mentioned the PvP aspects when we were talking about super group headquarters a little while ago. Fighter wants to know, “is player versus player combat going to be limited to base raids, or duels, or will it be more of an open ended PvP system?”

[Statesman] Well, I think whatever system we have should include an open system. In other words, there should be open areas of the city in which you can just, you know, have at it in an open area. Because that can be a lot of fun, but again the key words are “optional consensual.” We never want to force people into those situations, because its not a lot of fun if you just want to do a mission that particular evening and another player kind of prevents you from doing it. That’s just not fun. But on the other hand, there are a lot of people, and I certainly enjoy the time I go into essentially a killing field and there’s tons of people around and its just a huge frantic melee, that can be fun.

[Inhibitor] You’ve been to Perez Park I see.

[Statesman] *laughs* yeah, I certainly have been to Perez Park.

[Inhibitor] Mysterio has a good question I believe here. Says “hey statesman, will we be able to transfer characters server to server in the future at some point?”

[Statesman] That is 100% certainty that we want to do that. That is a feature of several MMPs which is just excellent, and I definitely want to do that.

[Inhibitor] So that is definitely on the drawing board for the future at some point.

[Statesman] Yeah.

[Inhibitor] Fantastic. That’s a very good one. Again, we are talking to Statesman, Jack Emmert, on MMO Radio and Justice Radio as well. We are simulcasting on both stations tonight. If you’d like to ask a question we’ll try to get to them. We’ve got a million of them right now to try to get through, we’re not going to be able to get to all of them obviously. Still, join our IRC channel, you can go to our website, MMORadio.com, we have instructions there for how to join our IRC channel, and then you can send a private message to me, and we’ll go with that. Tankman, I’ll bet you’d never be able to guess Tankman has a question about tankers. He says, “Will the changes to tankers that have been talked about, such as the increase in knockback for super strength, and endurance reduction for some of the attacks and what not. Is that going to be a part of Update 2?”

[Statesman] I believe it is, or it is part of a patch that will be shortly after Expansion 2. Our powers guy, Gecko, is at home sick today, and I’m not exactly sure what version he’s put it in, but I’m almost sure that it’s in Update 2.


[Inhibitor] I have a good one, and if you just want to say no comment because it’s classified, tell me this. And this very well may be classified, because we don’t want anyone to know his weaknesses, but Frank Castle, and considering who’s asking, we might not want to tell him ... Frank Castle wants to know what the archetype and origin of Statesman is, specifically the archetype.


[Statesman] Well, right now he’s an archetype that you just haven’t seen yet. He is one of the planned Epic Archetypes that you’ll soon see appearing in Paragon City, but probably not for a couple more expansions yet.

[Inhibitor] Ok. So we will be able at some point be able to choose the same archetype as Statesman down the road.

[Statesman] Definitely.

[Inhibitor] Fantastic, that’s going to be a lot of fun for everyone. Pixie ... Pixie, bless your heart. Pixie says, “I would like to know if we can have a bit more variety on body sizes. Some of us girls would prefer not to look like we’ve been surgically enhanced.”

[Statesman] That is certainly funny... just had a young lady, talking to her at GenCon in fact about this very issue. We are going to be introducing, for instance, a “teen” body type, which is, let’s say somewhat thinner than our current body types. And easily it could be an adult, but it’s someone more “lithe” if you will.

[Inhibitor] Something a little closer to reality.

[Statesman] You could say that.

[Inhibitor] Closer to the Olympic athletes than to say, Pamela Anderson.

[Statesman] Yeah

[Inhibitor] Ok, ok. Just making sure I was on the right page, and I take every opportunity possible to say “Pamela Anderson.” Let’s see here. Here’s a hot button question. Dangerguy wants to know will we eventually be seeing some form of equipment or crafting systems?

[Statesman] Eventually. I think it makes best sense once we get bases in, because in a base you can have laboratories, and with laboratories you can put things together. I think that makes perfect sense, but I think, again, it’s not going to be the way people think. I think a much better way to look at it is that such a person would be more geared to building equipment that is specific for certain sets of missions, rather than something that persisted or boosted another character for ever and ever.

[Inhibitor] Almost like building a specific piece of equipment or a specific thing to help out, say, with a task force.

[Statesman] Yeah, exactly. That would be more likely than anything else. That would be the direction I’m leaning.


[Inhibitor] And that makes a lot of sense as usual. That brings me to an interesting point here. I want to take a break here for just a second, I know you have just a few minutes left, but I do have a couple more things that I do want to ask you, if you don’t mind. You said you had an hour, I’m going to keep you for the next twelve minutes anyway. I’m going to get every last second out of this hour. We are talking to Statesman, Jack Emmert of Cryptic Studios, the creative director of Cryptic Studios. When we come back I want to talk to you ... we had the announcement here on MMO Radio this past Saturday from your own mouth from GenCon about a couple of exciting new additions. I want to talk to you about that when we come back. We’re going to be back in just a second with Jack Emmert on MMO Radio and Justice Radio.

[Inhibitor] Welcome back. On MMO Radio and Justice Radio, thanks for joining us this evening. We’ve got ten more minutes of Statesman’s time, Jack Emmert, so we have some things we want to get to. One of the things that I want to bring up is the announcement that we got from the floor of GenCon from you this past Saturday. You have made a couple of very, very exciting, very nice additions to the Cryptic staff, haven’t you.

[Statesman] Yes, we certainly have. We’re proud to announce that Dave Cook, the creator of the Planescape campaign settings, the author of D&D second edition, will be joining us as the senior designer on City of Villains. And Shane Hensley, creator of Deadlands, Weirdwars, and Savage Worlds, will be the senior writer on City of Villains.

[Inhibitor] And that has immediately led to a lot of people assuming that that kind of news means we’re about to see more of the RPG aspect of the MMORPG kick in.

[Statesman] Definitely. It’s a focus, especially on a project like City of Villains, where we really want to make sure that the players feel like they are a bad guy. We really need to consider all aspects of that. Also now that we have a good foundation in terms of gameplay, I want to make sure that we keep expanding the storylines of the city. And we have terrific missions and terrific stories and tales, but I want to keep going in that direction because I think that the great twists and turns, as I think many people have discovered at the higher levels, become a world almost unto themselves.

[Inhibitor] Let me go back to some of the questions, because I do want to try to get in as many of these as I can. DC Tiger has a question, and I’ve got to ask this one because this is one of my favorite comic heroes, will there be any Green Lantern type abilities later on?

[Statesman] Yeah, definitely associated with the Epic Archetypes, but finding a way to create objects and place them into the world in a way that’s fun and enjoyable is something that we talk about from time to time. Nothing imminent, but something that’s in the back of our minds.

[Inhibitor] And on that, as a related question, I just have to ask you as a comic book fan ... are you excited or just throwing your hands up that they are bringing Hal Jordan back?


[Statesman] I have to say I’m a little disappointed to be honest. I admire DC’s courage that they are willing to pass the torch to a new generation. They were willing to have a new Flash come aboard. They are willing to have a new Firestorm. They constantly praise the Justice Society of old for being the forerunners, and the JLA took over for them, and now we have the Teen Titans, a new Teen Titans group, I mean there is a new Superboy, there is a new Wondergirl, they’re passing the baton down and I think that’s terrific. Robin growing to be Nightwing, and now there is a new Robin. And sure, it’s happening slowly over the point of decades, but at least it isn’t a snapshot. And I think that it was an incredibly gutsy move to make Hal Jordan into the Spectre. I just thought it was tremendous, that it made sense given the context of the story line. And so I’m a little disappointed, of course I loved Hal Jordan, but I am a little disappointed that they are backing up on that now.

[Inhibitor] Me too, well, especially because I thought they did a great job closing out Hal Jordan, so to speak, and at the end of the Death of Superman story, but I am a little disappointed, like you, that it turned out that he’s only been Superman dead and not Bucky dead.

[Statesman] Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of a shame.

[Inhibitor] While I’ve got you on the subject of comics, for just a second, just off the top of your head, putting you on the spot here, what’s a comic book character you’d love to see have a game that has never had one, or that doesn’t have one?

[Statesman] ...

[Inhibitor] Told you I was going to put you on the spot.

[Statesman] I’d probably say the Flash.

[Inhibitor] Thank you, I love you.

[Statesman] Yeah, I’d say the Flash. Nobody’s really done those powers well yet. Certainly we have a lot of those powers in our game, but there are some other things that the Flash can do that I’d love to see.

[Inhibitor] And that’s by far my favorite comic book character of all time, so I can definitely agree with that. Here is a good question from Black Diamond on the Pinnacle Server, is there going to be a task force that would need two or more teams at any point?

[Statesman] Nothing soon.

[Inhibitor] That’s under the pie in the sky heading almost?

[Statesman] Right now pie in the sky.

[Inhibitor] Of course A-Zay from Pinnacle also asked, “Who thought Perez Park was a good idea and how do I egg their house?” But we won’t go there.

[Statesman] *laughs*


[Inhibitor] We’ll leave that question alone. We have a lot of things going on, one question that I wanted to ask you, the information terminals. Now those of you that were in beta, way back when, at one point they did sort of actually function, but there were some problems with it ... they had to disengage it, they had to push in the clutch and kick it out of gear. Is that ever going to be put back into working order inside of Paragon City?

[Statesman] Yeah, eventually, it definitely would be helpful, because we designed it that way. We just had some issues with the database, but we’re working on it. It’s not a high priority, because it’s not as if, frankly it’s not a necessary element of gameplay. It’s neat, but we definitely want to get that functionality back in as soon as we can.

[Inhibitor] Here’s an interesting thing. With City of Villains, since we already have established villains inside Paragon City, once City of Villains pops off, Cristof I think has an excellent question, are there going to be some transition storylines, some crossover storylines almost, where once City of Villains launches next year, will have villains that have always been around and are just now coming to prominence? Is it just going to be a bunch of novice villains coming out of the woodwork and that’s it? Or are you going to work it into a storyline? Or is it going to be in a lot of ways an almost separate thing?

[Statesman] No, it’s really going to be the growth of the super villain. We aren’t chock a block with them right now. Obviously there are villain organizations, but there will be an explanation for why the City of Villains is becoming so prominent at this particular point, and why there are the costumed super villains appearing on the streets in numbers that they just hadn’t before.

[Inhibitor] Quick rough guess, we are of course about to get capes here, I believe with Update 2, correct?

[Statesman] Right

[Inhibitor] At what point will we be able to see things like trench coats as a selection?

[Statesman] I don’t know exactly when, it’s really next on the list, as well as other variations of capes, but trench coats are I think probably the single most requested item, aside from Spawn capes *laughs*

[Inhibitor] *laughs* There is a limit to how much animation you want to do on one character though.

[Statesman] Yeah, the Spawn cape, that’s just not really feasible, but definitely more batmany type capes, that’s possible, wider capes, that’s certainly possible. The trench coats, yeah, definitely. Long skirts, anything along those lines, yeah.

[Inhibitor] Let me ask you this, I’ve got a question here from Phototaker, will there ever at some point be an animal body type?


[Statesman] Yeah, the problem is just the animation time.. You know, four legged characters, you know, being able to go backwards, forwards, sideways, be able to use powers if it’s a player, or to attack if it’s a villain, those things just take a lot of time. But as we’re hiring up to City of Villains and hiring more animators, in fact we have a notice up to hire an animator up on our website, I think, that will certainly enable us to do things like that.

[Inhibitor] Here’s one from The Brutus, he wants to know, are we pretty much going to see updates roughly running about every three months or so? Are they going to be on a regular schedule? Is it just going to be kind of when they’re ready they’re ready?

[Statesman] Well we released April 28th, and our first update was June 29th, so that would be 2 months. It is right now the 26th of August, which would again put it at about 2 months, so I think about every two to three months is about, although we haven’t hit three months or gone beyond it, but I think that’s basically the pattern that we’re setting.

[Inhibitor] Well, I know you’ve got to go, we’re sneaking up on seven o’clock eastern. I’ve got one question here from FighterCC that I’ve got to work in. At some point, and this is a body type question, so bear with me, don’t think this is, like I need the porn music running or anything, Fighter CC wants to know, will we ever get to see our fat hero fantasy come true?

[Statesman] That is probably something that we’ll do eventually, just because it’s a lot of fun. The demand obviously, is not high for such a thing, so it’s not a priority.

[Inhibitor] I can’t imagine, you know, everyone just sits around and fantasizes about being The Blob.

[Statesman] *laughs* Well, its just because, even though we have record breaking character diversity already, you can’t help but wonder, “well, what if? What would even increase the diversity of the players?” So it’s natural, it makes sense to me, but I’d like to get the “teen” models in first and then go from there.

[Inhibitor] Just one more thing, and this is a personal question from me. Is there at some point ... we’ve seen at the upper levels we have alternate versions of Statesman and some of the other things. Is there going to be an option down the road to have a sort of an Earth three version of your hero?

[Statesman] It’s something we’ve toyed around about. In fact, whole story arcs about you encountering a mirror-mirror version of your character. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see something like that eventually arriving in Paragon City.

[Inhibitor] And I guess the only other question is, would you like to join a supergroup or a team at some point, because I’ll be playing later.

[Statesman] Well, you never know, I might be the player next to you. So be friendly to everybody in the game because you never know who’s watching.


[Inhibitor] There’s a stealth-Statesman floating around out there somewhere!

[Statesman] Yeah, that’s certainly true.

[Inhibitor] Jack, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. We all do here at MMO Radio and Justice Radio, and talk to the fans, and it would tickle us to death if at some point in the future you’d be able to do it again.

[Statesman] Sure! No problem, no trouble at all. The radio stations are all a terrific way of helping build our community, reward our community, and making the game the success that it is.

[Inhibitor] Well, we really appreciate everything that you’ve done so far in the game, everything that you are doing, how responsive you and the staff at Cryptic are to everything that everyone says. I’ve seen you guys be very responsive and very kind on the CoH main forum boards, to what I would consider to be some really, really stupid people, and it really shows a lot of character on your part.

[Statesman] Well, look, all of our customers are customers, and frankly they pay my salary, why shouldn’t I be diligent, why shouldn’t I try to do things for them, why shouldn’t I listen to their complaints? And if ever I get too high and mighty and I’m not willing to listen to my customers, I hope that’s the day that I’m not in the industry anymore.

[Inhibitor] Now, you have played some of the other MMPs, haven’t you.

[Statesman] Yes, I certainly have.

[Inhibitor] Ok, then you know where that question came from *laughs* Because it’s really a step up from a lot of the customer service that we’ve seen in other games, and you are most definitely, in my opinion, to be commended for it.

[Statesman] Thank you.

[Inhibitor] Jack, we appreciate your time. Go play man, go have some fun, go have something to do and hopefully we get to talk to you again a little bit down the road about some of the things coming up in the future in Update 3, Update 4, Update ... 18, whatever, and we’ll see you on the streets of Paragon City man.

[Statesman] Terrific, and heroes get out there, because while you’ve been listening to this great radio broadcast, crime has been out there taking advantage of this momentary weakness, so go to it!

[Inhibitor] That’s it! Jack Emmert, The Statesman from Cryptic Studios the creative director, we thank him so much for being with us here tonight on MMO Radio and on Justice Radio as well, we have been a simulcast tonight with these great guys.