You had questions, and now we’ve got answers, heroes! You posted 14 pages of questions in our recent Ask Cryptic thread – we definitely can’t cover all of those here, but we’ve addressed as many as we can.

Producer Tom “Lord Gar” Edwards answered most of these, with a ton of help from the entire Champions dev team. If you’ve got further questions, feel free to chat up Iris Irregular@trailturtle in-game – that’s yours traily, the Community Manager.

(Psst — you can discuss these answers in the forums!)

Are Auras on the agenda for 2013?

Yes, we are planning to spend some time this year to get the Aura system finished. 

Telepathy review? Will it ever happen?

We are planning to take another look at Telepathy after Auras. There are some tricky technical issues to iron out, but we haven’t forgotten about it.

After the invasion event, what else can players look forward to in 2013?

We have story arcs planned out for 2013, so we know what we’re building towards. Our goal is to tell a complete story over a year, so while each story arc is a complete story on its own, taken together it points towards the story that we have planned to finish out the year. 

Why are Alerts set for Level 30?

You may have noticed that sidekicking provides only a rough approximation of actually being at that level. The extra powers/advantages/etc. when you sidekick down, and the missing powers/etc. when you sidekick up create a sort of accumulating error in the character’s effectiveness that grows larger the further a character is sidekicked from its natural level.  Alerts are set at level 30 to minimize that error across the entire range of characters who play Alerts.

Answering this question did set off a long’ish conversation about supporting different Alert levels. No change in plans, but we’ll continue looking at it in the background.

Land Vehicles? Ever gonna happen? Things with wheels are in high demand.

We are planning to do land vehicles as part of an upcoming story arc.

Is the MegaD event and the backups eventually coming back?

Yes!

Will we ever see the return of past Events such as the Nighthawk event as cycling events such as the Blood Moon event were?

You’re in luck. We’re planning to bring back certain “one-time content” events (such as Nighthawk) as recurring features.  We’re not ready to talk about specifics yet, but we don’t want scheduled events to vanish forever when they end.

Trailturtle is the best person to ever hold his current job by a margin too large to even remotely measure. When will you reward his hard work and excellent communication with the CO Playerbase with his own AF? How will we, the players, obtain it?

I love the fact that TrailTurtle highlighted this question for me! As it happens we added an Iris Irregular AF to the game along with the Lemurian Invasion. I suspect you’ll be able to get your hands on it as part of community-oriented activities such as organized playtests. 

Have you considered integration between the web-based community and the in-game community by showcasing things either on the launcher, or perhaps adding in-game system notifications regarding articles/press?

That is a very cool idea that we will look into.

The recent Bleak Harbinger PTS Event was great and offered a chance to obtain many AFs which were promised to be made available again. When will the next such event occur so that we can continue this?

The organized playtests for the Harbinger event were incredibly useful, and we’re planning to do similar playtests for future content. Expect similar rewards!

What's going on with the Foundry?

We would really love to add the Foundry to CO, but it’s a very large undertaking and we’re still figuring out if/how we could do it. 

May we have some Vehicle vs Vehicle team battlegrounds?

Cool idea, added to our list. We hadn’t previously considered it, but we’ll give it some thought.

Have vehicles reached their final stage or there are further plans for them?

We will be adding new vehicles as time goes on, and you will also see vehicle systems of higher rank.

When will CO get vehicles that look like they belong in CO and are more stylized versions of more mundane vehicles like motorcycles, Viper Quads, and such?

We’re going to add a variety of vehicle types, so you will be able to choose one that fits in with the aesthetic / backstory of your character.

Why are the current vehicles being pushed at players so enthusiastically even though I've seen relatively few people using them? It seems like almost 50% of dropped items lately are lockboxes for vehicles I'm not interested in paying to open unless I know for sure what I'm going to get.

The vehicle is system is new, and so it made sense for us to have a couple of vehicle-themed lockboxes to go alongside that. We will do more vehicle lockboxes in the future, but we will also put plenty of non-vehicle stuff into lockboxes too. 

Is there a chance to re allow the hood from the nighthawk set to be used by ALL types of heads? 

We will look into this and see if it’s possible.

Villain Contest Winners. Are they still getting their alert?

Yes, that is part of our plan for 2013.

Can you please fix the random powersets for the FAKE nemesis(s), they all come up as scourge. 

We’ll put it on the list of things to look into.

Are there any plans to put the various Nemesis Villains(Black Scorpion, Crucible, Greyskull, Gargoyle, Morticus, and so on) into the Nemesis Missions to replace the Generic Nemesis(Lilith, Deathmetal) for people who are under LvL 25 since Generic Nemesis are ALL Infernal and ugly? If no, then are there plans to LvL Restrict Nemesis Alerts so 25+? If not, why?

We don’t currently have any plans to change the Nemesis Alerts.

Will the nemesis creator be updated with the Earth and Wind Power sets?

We’re not currently planning to expand the Nemesis Creator.

Back at Beta the travel speeds were toned down because it was said that the system could not handle them and things like Super Speed were causing performance issues(and it was true). With the release of vehicles the speed bar has been raised. So, when will travel powers become as fast as vehicles? Also, when will the Hover Disk Travel Power be upgraded to the performance level of the Until Hover Disk?

We are not currently planning to upgrade travel power speeds.  High vehicle speeds are one of the reasons that vehicles are restricted from use in many environments.

Can the old Grab Bags (The Mountain Grab Bag, The Cursed Grab Bag, and the Drifter Salvage Box) be put into the Questionite Store alongside the Nighthawk Grab Bag (aka the Utility belt)?

We’re not opposed to it, but updating old items isn’t a priority for us right now.

I've noticed the game's tone becoming more serious(which to me is welcome, it’s a blast), Demonflame and Resistance come to mind, and while campiness is fun, are going to see more 'played straight' stories like Resistance or Demon flame, given your ownership of the diverse Champions IP?

We’re mostly looking at serious stories with lighthearted elements. The Lemurian Invasion is a good example of the mix we like.

Considering you have the Alert system, is there any chance another Burst type will be added? They tend to be rather hard to find when they're a daily and there's not much variety with only two there.

Adding more Burst Alerts isn’t currently on our schedule.  We’ll add “frequency of Bursts” to our list of things to think about for the future.

Will lockbox drop rates be adjusted? In a similar vein, will any storyline bosses like Zoe Loft or Gigaton gain appropriate drops on defeat?

We are looking at the drop rate of lockboxes, and are considering how best to adjust it. We don’t currently have any plans to adjust loot on storyline bosses

Why do I have to log off my account just to change to other characters? Is there a reason for this? It's pretty annoying sometimes… Could you make so that the Log Out Character option just led me to the char selection screen instead of the Login screen?

We will investigate the feasibility of this, and put it on the list if it seems like something we can do.

When can we take the fight to Destroyer?

:)

Any plans to add the C-store/Z-store back on the pts? If not, could you at least have the travel powers/devices/costume pieces unlocked so that we may test them properly. 

I am adding this to the list. I agree that it is useful for items to be tested by players in advance; however there are technical issues with doing it via the Z-Store on PTS. 

Have you tried that bacon jerky stuff yet? It's quite amazing.

Why would you do this to me?

Discuss this in the forums!