On Friday, Cryptic Studios posted another edition of Ask Cryptic, where they answered fan questions about instances, custom powers, and various other Champions Online topics.  Today we're pleased to reproduce those questions and answers here.

Jackalope, Arkayne and Heretic are back and answering more player questions on everything from upgrades to balance issues in Champions Online:  

For those unfamiliar with Champions PnP, will the game interface be one that is intuitive and easily understood, or will we need to read through all sorts of source material to understand how to make a character effective? (French)

Jackalope: We definitely want people to make a hero and play without any prior knowledge of the Champions RPG or the HERO System. We have a saying (well, I keep saying it) – "zero to hero in no time flat." I want people to be able to get into the game and have fun as quickly as possible.

However, we are adding lots more knobs for people to play with, as opposed to our previous titles. We do adopt a lot of the Hero Games elements in character creation, but players don't need to crunch numbers in order to make their character.

Read more here.

As much as I am a fan of character customization I absolutely dread what a min / max person could do in a truely open system.

I'm hoping Cryptic does a good job at screening for those unexpected synergies and I'll guarentee I'll be one of the people laughing a few months after lauch when the "uber" combos get nerfed. I'm just hoping they have done enough screening to keep the number of nerfs to a minimum and that most of community will understand that it is necessary that game balance be maintained.

As far as all the add on spakle effects being optional, I applaud this decision. I find a lot of the glowies on my characters to be anything from annoying to downright out of character (does wolverine glow when his healing factor kicks in? does superman sparkle just because he is invulnrable?).

I'm not really into the super hero thing, but this game sounds like it has potential.