TenTonHammer got a chance to sit down with Bill Roper recently for an interview entitled "Sidekicks, Supergroups, and Supervillains". The interview, as you would imagine, focuses on those three aspects of the game, and touches on a few other things as well.

From the sounds of it, the sidekicking system sounds almost exactly like the one implemented in City of Heroes. Hey, why reinvent the wheel, right? You can sidekick down and sidekick up. One key difference is the ability to set a player of your group as the groups champion, and then everyone who sidekicks is brought up (or down) to that players level. City of Heroes required a mentor for each sidekick.

Groups is another hot topic issue that Mr. Roper touched on in the interview. There will actually be considerable incentive to group in Champions Online. For example, there will be a good amount of group instance content, and normal content will scale for groups. One way the game does this is with the Reinforcement system. If you approach a group of VIPER enemies in the wild with a group of 3 or more members, one of them will actually run and call for help, returning with a more appropriate force to handle your group. Also, much of the instanced content will scale based on group size as well.

The Death penalty was also touched on in the interview, it actually sounds even less penalizing than the XP Debt of City of Heroes. Basically, each player will earn stars as they accomplish tasks, or defeat mobs in the game world, the stars will add bonuses to your characters abilities, and should you die, you basically lose one of these stars. It's in your best interest to keep your momentum going, but you won't be set back by suffering a death.

Supervillains in Champions Online seem to be arranged similarly to Giant Monster-class creatures or characters in City of Heroes. They will exist in the game world either at certain times or are brought out by players who satisfy the required triggers. Mr. Roper says there should be about 12 of these types of characters at launch.

For the full interview, head on over to TenTonHammer!