#devposts

Celestrata on Map Types and Laning Turbine Community Team member Celestrata responded to some confusion regarding the numerous references to "laning" in the Champion Profile videos. In MOBAs, laning describes the initial phase of a traditional tri-lane match, during which players focus on killing drones to gain credits and experience rather than attacking opposing champions or securing objectives. Laning occurs less frequently in capture-point matches, which tend to be more fluid and improvised.

Celestrata explained the laning references by confirming, as had been previously reported by JL∞ and other outlets, that Infinite Crisis will indeed have three game modes:

[T]here will be 3 maps. Right now, all of our footage is shot on our control point map. However, that will not always be the case. So, while the control point map may not have a laning phase per se, the other maps could... just sayin'.

ZombieColumbus on Last-Hitting and Credit Collection One of the more active threads on the forum in the past week centers around last-hitting and credit collection in IC. The thread began with a criticism of the mechanic from a self-described high-level League of Legends player, who argued that a de-emphasis on last-hitting was "a bad idea" and too much of a deviation from other MOBAs. After some back-and-forth in the thread, Character Designer ZombieColumbus stepped in to clarify the issue:

We are in the continuing beta process of making gameplay adjustments. Our model for credit sharing and distribution will change over time.

When I first played DotA, the last hit mechanic was rather difficult to understand, and that's before I even realized denies existed! Why does only the last hit on a creep matter? By contrast, seeing collectible coins drop on the ground is very clear. See coin, get coin, focus on making enemy creeps die in safe places, zone opponent away from his coins. These gameplay optimizations all flow cleanly and intuitively.

MOBAs have a cloud of features that make them unique. Each game that calls itself a MOBA will take some set of these features as canon, and others they will iterate on. We are currently iterating on credit collection.

As a long time MOBA player, currency dropping on the ground was odd at first, but it quickly became integrated into how I played and thought.

The be fully explicit, we are working on a IC version of last hitting and what it means.

And lastly, Is last hitting the only design model that allows players to express farming mastery in the laning phase? We don't think so. We WANT players to be able to express skill in the laning phase, but we are not convinced that there is one and only one way to do this.

It will be interesting to see what last-hitting looks like when the closed beta opens up next week.

Keth and Floon on Champion Design In response to a specific request for future champions representing Earth-2 (Golden Age) and Earth-3 (Crime Syndicate of America), Lead Content Designer Keth offered some insight on the thought process behind choosing champions for Infinite Crisis:

I've always enjoyed both the Crime Syndicate when it has appeared in the comics and the current Earth 2 run. . . .However, I would say that while those are awesome characters, they may not make awesome playable characters. To explain what I mean I'll draw an analogy to the old "Mirror, Mirror" Star Trek episode. I love that episode, but if I were to make a video game out of it, how would Spock's skills differ from Evil Spock's? I could probably come up with some, but visually, what is the difference between the two? Well, um, one has a goatee. We face a similar conundrum with some of the characters in the Earth-2 and Earth-3 universes. How would Owlman and Batman be different? Well, obviously Owlman is going to be much more vicious in his fighting and his gadgets will be more cruel, but overall, they would both be gadget deploying humanoids wearing capes. You don't get quite the exaggeration and variety you get with Batman compared to Gaslight Batman. Having said that, I could totally see us doing Earth-2 & Earth-3 characters in the future, but for the time being, we are focusing on get a variety of different character-types in the game, both in terms of visual style and play style.

I for one would be very surprised if we didn't eventually see champions like Power Girl, Huntress, Doctor Fate, and Mister Terrific in Infinite Crisis.

Keth went on to explain the criteria for new champions, adding that there are no plans to introduce thematically similar characters as skins:

I definitely agree that we could make the skill set of an Earth 2 or Earth 3 variant different from their Prime version. However, as I mentioned earlier, right now we don't feel the differences are significant enough to justify making that character over a more wildly divergent character. However, once we have our character roster more established, that could change! One other point I wanted to share regarding costumes (what we are calling "skins"). No matter what costume the character is wearing, they are always going to be the same person. . . . So in the above case, we wouldn't release an Owlman costume for Batman, because, well Owlman is a different person. There are a few reasons why that is the case, but the main one is that it does a disservice to the character. If we ever did Owlman, he should be his own unique character, not something tacked onto Batman.

Finally, Keth noted that if Earth-2 was to be represented in Infinite Crisis, it would most likely be the version featured in the current "New 52" continuity:

Although we are definitely not going to be a direct translation of the new 52, I'm trying to have us reflect the new 52 version of the DC universe, since that is the current continuity. However, that isn't always possible. If the new 52 version of a character varies wildly from the pre-new 52 version, and that previous version was made popular in other media, such as in animated features or movies, we'll likely do that version of the character.

In a separate thread discussing the new Wonder Woman splash art, Art Director Floon listed the design goals for each new champion:

We've set ourselves the objective, within our designs, of them all being: 1. Instantly recognizable as to who they are a variant of. 2. Instantly recognizable as to which universe they come from. 3. Instantly recognizable as to what they're likely going to do to you. 4. Be wildly different from the base character and the other variants. Those four areas of the Venn diagram overlap in a pretty small intersection. But we have some concept artists who are up to the task.

Keth on Bunny Suit Batman Finally, in what is surely the most devastating news this week, Keth crushed our dreams by revealing that a Bunny Suit Batman skin will not be making an appearance in Infinite Crisis:

[I]f we released a Bunny Suit Batman costume (which we totally aren't doing), it would be Bruce Wayne in a Bunny Suit Costume.

. . .

Hmm, I can just see the headlines on the sites now. "Bunny Suit Batman costume confirmed!"

If only, Keth. If only.