Cryptic Studios - Bill Roper Interview
MMORPG.com's Garrett Fuller recently interviewed Cryptic's Bill roper about Star Trek Online, Champions and the future for Cryptic Studios.
Interviews By Garrett Fuller on May 04, 2010
| MMORPG.com: | Cryptic is fresh off the heels of Champions Online and Star Trek Online, do you have plans to continue with patches and expansions for these franchises? |
| Bill Roper: | Absolutely! We have very dedicated and zealous communities for both games that are excited by the updates and ongoing content we're providing. Champions Online has the Super Power Patch currently in test which addresses numerous game play and balance concerns with the Melee and Supernatural Set, as well as some quality of life fixes to several missions, the Tailor, and overall UI. Star Trek has just launched the Season 1.1 update which adds a difficulty slider and injury system for advanced players, an optional auto-fire system, and new high-end ship weaponry. More updates and content is planned for the upcoming weeks and months, and the vast majority of what we're doing is being driven by player desires and feedback. |
| MMORPG.com: | How hard is it to maintain end game content for MMOs? Is the studio in full support and expand mode for both games? |
| Bill Roper: | MMOs are hungry beasts in that you constantly have to keep feeding them with new content. This is especially true for players that have reached the level cap and want more to do with the characters they have built up. With Star Trek we've been releasing Special Task Force (STF) missions that are designed to be a challenge for groups of five top-level players. We're also creating a lot of new goals for players of all levels to reach that will be unveiled in the coming weeks, and of course, new content for both our Federation and Klingon players. In Champions, we're publically testing our UNITY 2 missions that are end-game content found in Vibora Bay and we're internally testing our first Adventure Pack titled Serpent Lantern. The Adventure packs are designed to be playable by heroes no matter what level they are (above a certain minimum) and will be a great addition to both end game and providing alternate leveling paths for newer heroes. |
| MMORPG.com: | Checking out your concept art under the In Development tab on your site there is some interesting stuff there. Lost City, grave robbing, Indiana Jones kind of work. Can you talk about the art and what project it is for? |
| Bill Roper: | That was a slew of art we did for a project that was being pitched a couple of years ago that never took off. But we love the look of the artwork so much, we've left it up. I think it's probably time to add some of the amazing things we've generated over the past several months to fuel more speculation as to what we may be doing next! |
| MMORPG.com: | Champions and Star Trek were both popular IPs when being made into MMOs for Cryptic. Are there plans to do an original IP game? |
| Bill Roper: | We're very fortunate to have some great franchises to work with, but we're also very interested in creating our own new worlds and universes for players to explore. One of the great things about being able to create within the Star Trek and Champions franchises is that there is such a massive body of work to draw from, but still room to be creative and innovative within it. It's my hope that in the future we can have a mix of established and new universes with which we can create more and more games. |
| MMORPG.com: | Of all the genres you have worked on, what is your personal favorite? |
| Bill Roper: | Champions Online was the first time I was able to step outside the fantasy and sci-fi universes, and it was a great challenge and a lot of fun. After being away from it for a while, I'd love to get back to a more fantasy-driven world - but with some kind of twist. Warcraft was high fantasy, Diablo was gothic fantasy, and Hellgate: London was a fantasy/sci-fi mashup. I'd love to be able to create another world that has a fantasy element, but tries to bring something else to the genre at the same time. |
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| MMORPG.com: | Do you think there is room for an intense Isometric View MMO? Or should everything be in third person? |
| Bill Roper: | As an industry we need to keep trying new things, so yes, I think that a massively multiplayer isometric game could be very successful. In fact, there have been several in Asia that have done extremely well. I'm excited to see what the team at Petroglyph pulls off with End of Nations. If Champions and Star Trek has shown me one thing, it's that we need to be branching out from what has become the standard MMO model and focus on creating fun online experiences that aren't concerned with crossing off checklists of expected genre-specific features. |
| MMORPG.com: | Is Cryptic looking at Facebook games? ...along with everyone else. |
| Bill Roper: | While the casual game space that is attracting a lot of players via social outlets like Facebook are definitely interesting on many levels (I play a few myself), that style of game doesn't fit well with Cryptic's core competencies. We have an amazing toolset that ability to produce large amounts of solid multi-player content in shorter timelines. We also have a very stable publishing, billing, and support infrastructure that is integrated into our games. We are looking to build from this foundation while looking at new game styles, scope, and quality. |
| MMORPG.com: | How can you make a casual game appeal to hardcore players? |
| Bill Roper: | I don't know if you can make a really casual game appeal to a hardcore gamer. The real goal is to create a game that is simple to learn but difficult to master so that players of different levels of expertise can enjoy the game. It's obviously an incredibly difficult balance to strike. There are certainly design principles to follow, but in the end, it comes down to making a game that is fun and easy for players to get into from the beginning. Extensibility is also key - making sure that there is always something just around the bend that a player of any level will want to achieve or collect. The Pokemon games are a great example of this, as are the Diablo titles. |
| MMORPG.com: | Do you have anything to say to the D&D Forgotten Realms MMO rumors? |
| Bill Roper: | I can't speak to the specifics of what we're doing, but it's true that we have another game in the works. We won't be making an announcement until late summer, and we're still a ways off from launch. I can say that this is a game and a franchise we're very excited about. I think people are going to pleased and a bit surprised with what we're doing in terms of the game, how we make it, and even how we sell and support it. The game is being developed around new design principles merged with Cryptic's community-first approach to ongoing development. |
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"More updates and content is planned for the upcoming weeks and months, and the vast majority of what we’re doing is being driven by player subscription numbers falling off a cliff."
Fixed.
STO is CO with a trek skin, therefore subs are going into free fall by now as the miniscule content that was there is no longer enough to support enough players. The deception clear for all to see and Bill decides to try and put something in there to justify a sub to a trek MMORPG, too little too late me thinks Bill!
Contents over rated.. obviously no one truly cares about it or the MMO developers would make some. They all have stated many times they listen to their community and make changes or place additions to increase the consumer enjoyment! So obviously no one likes content or requests it... Duh
I remember I was excited about Champions but when I played it just didn't work out. Has the game improved any since launch ?
I got tired of companies like this back in EQ1 over 7 years ago. They talk about whats coming more then actually producing anything tangible and continually carrot dangle the sub base. How bout the fact that most of what is coming or came just after launch SHOULD of been in at launch in the first place.
I like the bit about "I think it's probably time to add some of the amazing things we've generated over the past several months to fuel more speculation as to what we may be doing next!"
Go, hype train, go. Bring us more investors!
I think people are going to pleased and a bit surprised with what we're doing in terms of the game, how we make it, and even how we sell and support it.
= FTP
Personally I haven't seen much degradation of traffic in STO. My guild keeps growing and I never have much of a issue getting a pvp match or a team for a pve misson. Perhaps in the higher end teirs I've seen some shifts in population but that seems fairly irregular at best.
I do however think they will have to keep making changes to keep what people are in the game and we all realize that. As does Roper.*Shrug* I have no plans to leave any time soon though.
Someone PM me when STO goes F2P because no way will i pay 15 a month to do nothing.
Is it just me, or does Roper's picture have him looking like the villain he truly is?
Also:
"While the casual game space that is attracting a lot of players via social outlets like Facebook are definitely interesting on many levels (I play a few myself), that style of game doesn't fit well with Cryptic's core INcompetencies"
I can't imagine how horrible a Forgotten Realms MMO would be if produced by Cryptic. Certainly can't say much about their current games, pretty much no content.
is bill roper actually on the same planet?
Rant alert:
I am so tired of people bashing Bill Roper, I find it ironic that people bash him and praise Pos for what is happening in CO all the while the Supernatural, and Might changes, Vibora Bay all started when Bill Roper was in charge of development. Pos' creativty and knowledge will be in full control of the next adventure pack.
Also why are people bashing Roper for what happened to STO he was working on Champions Online. That was not his cluster****.
Another Cryptic MMO on the way? Ill definately be buying that.
/sarcasm.
People 'hate' on Roper because hes the face of the company. If he werent so obsessed with being a rockstar developer, then nobody would mention him.
I saw the title and thought....Hmm the comments will be nothing but bitching about Roper, STO, CO, Cryptic. And what do I find, 2 pages of exactly that.
Interesting to see exactly what's next from cryptic ~ it's their business to run, if some don't like it good for them, I'll keep an open mind and see when it comes.
How can they even talk about the Champions IP when they took the PnP setting and ran it over with a mulching lawnmower? It doesn't even use the Hero system and half the characters are virtually unrecognizable.
Bad interview, it doesn't ask any difficult questions and all of them allowed the guy to respond in platitudes, so basically nothing was accomplished and there were no answers I couldn't have imagined the answers to myself.
The entire read was a bit boring until I hit the bit about DnD: Forgotten Realms. Please God tell me that Cryptic doesn't have DnD rights.
Bill Roper , took a game that was impossible to fail with : Hellgate London
And he did unthinkable, he ruined it. And he ruined it so much that his company even lost rights to the game. They didnt just bankrupt.
And again - HGL was a sure shot. It was like Having Michael Jordan play for your highschool team , and than loosing the game.
So yes, People tend to associate Bill Roper name with failure
He sucks at Management that is for sure, but failure not by a long shot.
Also of course he is the face of the company he is Bill Roper he was behind some of the gaming worlds masterpieces such as Diablo, and StarCraft. After that he doesn't even need to try and be a rockstar developer, he became one overnight.
EDIT: I hate the new comment system on this site, stick to forum.
Corruption has a face. Guess which one?
It's sad when money takes over all other motivations in creating something you really love. It is usually the death of things. At least Cryptic is earning the repuation they deserve and I couldn't imagine a better place for this hack to work. I have more fun reading about their failures than playing any game they've worked on in the last 5 years.
There is nothing Cryptic could do at this point to make me pay them another dime.
Their games are always the exact same crap in a different skin. Garbage is garbage no matter how you package it...
Wow, and all anyone has to do to see how far fetched you're being is to just go look at their fleet recruitment sections and see all the dead and inactive fleets that used to have thousands and thousands of members, especially Klingon fleets.
Or ask anyone else that logs in regular about the hours long waits to get enough players for PvP matches.
Or just how empty it looks flying around Sol sector space.
"The game is getting to be a ghosttown" is kind of cliched these days, but the rate it got to that point with STO was clearly a new record, and it's only getting worse day by day.
The Cryptic line about "player driven content"? Ya, total horsepucky.
What it is is poor rubes paying for Cryptic to develop the game for 9 months to a year to get it to a point it should have been at release. They don't listen to the players at all. They just throw up what they were going to anyway, and since the game is so devoid of content, and thus the few people left playing are desperate for anything and are telling them what is needed, it's very easy for them to cite some thread that had requested something like it. There ya go! Player driven content!
I have heard Cryptic describe their toolset on numerous occasions as "amazing". Well that is kind of a false claim "amazingly simplistic" may seem to fit the description of what they produce, either that or again they have the most unimaginitive people in the industry when it comes to actual dynamic, interesting, and varied content. Both STO and CO as I know them are by far the most simplistic of any mmo out there, there are no different ways to play either game than what would be considered the standard casual playstyle and that is pathetic given the claims we are so often forced to listen to from them.
Wrong. He took TWO games that were impossible to fail with, Hellgate: London and Mythos, and lost the rights to BOTH IPs. That turns a simple failure into an epic one. To say the man is incompetent would be akin to calling Caligula 'slightly eccentric'.
He should be cleaning bathrooms for a living, not developing games. In fact, I don't think I could trust him to do THAT properly.
I think people are going to pleased and a bit surprised with what we're doing in terms of the game, how we make it,...
Sure sure... big surprise *cringe*
A Forgotten Realms MMO in the hands of Cryptic, this can not be happening ;(
actually my first reaction to seeing him try to reach thru the screen was looking to see where my wallet was.
Yeah, I didnt even read the above interview, why? because cryptic puts out trash , and never come thru on anything they say, or if they do its like 5 months later...
I was looking forward to STO, but after sadly spending 50 bucks on CHampions online.. I will never, ever in my entire life buy another Cryptic game, and Ill be keeping close tabs on sisters developers and or team member side projects, to make sure I don't throw any more of my cash at these trash men.
Every time a see a pic of Bill Roper it is such a cocky, self centered portrait I just wanna smack the arrogance off his face. He all talk, all steam, no substance.
I loved CoX. But the last two games Cryptic have put out bored me to tears. Please for the love of all that is holy, don't let them touch Forgotten Realms!
Way to ask the tough questions.
"Why did you release STO in a failure state?" is all that really needed to be asked.
"I think people are going to pleased and a bit surprised with what we're doing in terms of the game, how we make it, and even how we sell and support it. The game is being developed around new design principles merged with Cryptic's community-first approach to ongoing development."
New design principles, huh?
Let me guess.... heavily instanced random encounters with little-to-no open world, horrible crafting, and a subpar combat system that is designed to be soloed until you realize how shallow the game is and quit.
At least CoH had one thing going for it, it was group based. Other than that CoH was exactly the same as CO and STO. Apparently Cryptic can only remake the same game, only making it worse every time.
It's like when you make a copy of a copy, the copies will never be as good as the original.
I just can't wait for cryptic to take another rich IP over and slap it's skin on champions enging, churn out another shallow mmo in two years while leaving its two previous projects in the project stage. Heck DnD on Crypitc's watch probably has 3 classes 3 races and everything else thrown in the store to charge 5 bucks a piece for. I can hardly contain my excitement at getting ringed dry by Cryptic as they create their new cash cow, rake in a milion suckers in the first month and then move on to their next project, notch in their belt. Sign me up!
its not going to be a copy. the box will say dungeons and dragons - nwn.
TOTALY different!
/sarcasm
Most devs listens to the part of community that say what they want to hear, just like most other people.
If you have 3 people, one saying that you totally messed up and should change the entire game (costs $$$$$$$), one that the game needs 500% more content (costs $$$$) and one asks for a new kind of spaceship (costs very little), which one would you most likely listen to if you were the boss of Cryptic?
I like the picture of Roper however, at least he must have some self distance... Oh, and did he ever say anything without mentioning Diablo?
Still, is it really even possible to mess up a Forgotten realms MMO? I think any studio can make that fun, even Cryptic.
Yes, it is possible to mess up Forgotten Realms.. and if anyone out there could mess it up.. it would be Cryptic..
It disturbs me that Atari has supposedly given Cryptic the deal for the NWN mmo instead of Turbine. But as Bill Roper's pic shows, he makes a convincing "used car salesman". He probably bid to make the game for free just to have a chance at redemption after the CO and STO debacle.
I'll give anything a chance.... CO, just wasn't my thing, it seemed like CoH reskinned, from what I experienced in Beta, just more solo accessible... So I wasn't going to waste money there. Does it mean I think it's a bad game, no, I actually have no opinion for it, it just wasn't my game.
As for STO, during beta I only saw one quest that wasn't a shoot first ask questions later type quest, and that was the quest where you had to talk with the miners... It would have been nice to have more variations of this quest, where you have to reason things out... But alas what I saw it wasn't to be! So once again, I didn't waste money on this one. Does it mean I think it's a bad game, no, I actually have no opinion on that matter, it's just not my game...
As for a D&D title, like I said in the first sentence, I'll give anything a chance... Would I want it to be Forgotten Realms, nope! We've had far too many FR titles, give me Dragonlance.
I will be interested to see what they are going to do next. Maybe they will actually make something that is worth playing long term. I mean, maxing out a toon in STO of 3 weeks of casual play is just so wrong. I was looking forward to months of play. Frankly I've seen more play time in single player offline games than these guys are churning out. So fingers crossed they aren't going to be allowed to butcher forgotten realms. Saying that, I like what they do but it's no way detailed enough to warrant a monthly subscription. There are F2P games with more detail and deapth. I may give STO a try again in a years time when it actually has some content.
I cry a little bit inside when I hear that Cryptic is the company that will be developing the new D&D Forgotten Realms MMO.
After Turbine's DDO, hearing that Cryptic is getting the chance to make a D&D online world next time... well, let's just say it doesn't fill me with confidence.
At least my wife and I enjoy our weekly D&D tabletop game. Shame that Cryptic is the one that will be developing the D&D game; the 4th edition D&D rules are simply *made* for MMO-style play. The classes are balanced right off the bat and fall into easily identifiable fantasy MMO roles - defender(tank), striker(DPS), leader(healer) - etc.
A turn-based online-strategy game based off 4th edition D&D rules - think "Age of Wonders 2" maybe - would make me absolutely swoon with joy. :)
its alright adding all that crap to startrek, but when are they going to turn it into an mmorpg like its supposed to be and when are they going to fix the massive problems with the orriginal content and when are they going to make it less instanced and more persistant.. jeesus christ!!! i could go on all day about this game. when are they going to make it feel like a startrek mmo. when will they bring in the crafting and the exploration. oh hell!!! why dont they just pull the game and hand it over to some one more qaulified for redevelopment.
oh and if you complain about what cryptic has planned on their forums, if they are not happy with your complaint they close and remove your posts. that means you have exactly what they want you to have.
im fairly confident when i say this, when i go shopping, i buy what i want to buy based of what i like. by no means will any sales men sell me something i dont want!
starterk is great, startrek online is crap.
what scares me the most is ... He looks just like the guy that was killing everyone in the World of Warcraft episode of South Park. He is just missing the glasses.
Just like the games he produces. All hype all fluff but once you get past that to the bones of the games their is nothing their.
I will never spend another dime on anything this company makes.
Cryptic has set a new level for MMO Epic Fails as far as I am concerned. Anyone that is happy with the crappy no content games they have made lately are underachievers.
Does anyone take him, and Cryptic, serious anymore? I quit taking Cryptic serious a long time ago.
nah only the Lifers and they have to do it to defend their investment. The rest of the MMO world is having a good laugh at their expense though.
Nice review, nice responses to read.
Thumbs up!
I couldn't get past that stupid picture of him doing a force choke or whatever the eff he's supposed to be doing to read his canned answers to softball questions. I take it I didn't miss much?
"Champions and Star Trek were both popular IPs UNTIL being made into half baked MMOs for Cryptic. Are there plans to do an original IP game so you can stop ruining other peoples GOOD ideas?"
There, fixed.
Yep, very much a puff piece. Roper laid on the icing pretty thick there.
Cyrptic's recent failures don't appear to be experimental failures, but are very much by design. Bad design. None of my gaming friends have much regard for them now, and none are playing any of their games. Well, except City of Heroes. But it is telling that that game got better when Cryptic got 'divorced' and then bought ought.
And when are we, myself included, going to stop bitching about what we feel people did wrong and create games the way we want them... since we know best.
Not looking forward to Cryptic doing the Forgotten Realms at all. WHY?!? Arrrgghhh!
A part of me wants them to be successful because we always need good games but its hard to ignore all the issues they been having.
Why ignoring them? There is no game without issues, there is no game that is perfect and suits to everyone.
Obviously Garrett Fuller was either told, or deceided himself not to push the envelope and limit this interview to 'coming attractiions'. No mention of reviews, subscriber levels, or any sort of insight on how those things may (or may not) impact their decisions for content.
The success of CoH/CoV is still the primary driving force behind the studio, and they seem terrified to break away from the conventions of that game- hence the CO and STO 'clones'.
Still, one of the great thing about MMO's is that they evolve with time. I still hope they can lay some content down in CO that will draw me in. I still hope they can do something with STO that will make it not feel so much like CoX or CO in space.
But I'm not holding my breath, or paying for scrips to wait and see. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one...
When we have the money to do so.
What you are missing is that we are the ones who buy this stuff. It is up to the devs to produce games worth paying for.
I don't think they're terrified to break away from the CoH game world design. I think it has more to do with their business model, which is to put out MMO games as quickly as possible with a popular IP attached to them to bring in the initial revenue and then move onto the next game while their previous games flounder.
I'm not even joking either. An interview before CO came out talked about Cryptic's future development plans and the reply was that they wanted to have a 3 year development cycle per game and had 2 future games with popular IPs behind them in the works while CO was being developed.
Unfortunately Cryptic's underlying problem is their initial game design. It's not fun, it's horrible and if their next game is just another solo-combat based CoH clone I hope the company goes under so they can't destroy any more IPs that could have possibly been good MMO games.
Good point, Dameonk. I agree.
Cryptic is a huge failure of an MMO maker. Financially, they were successful in cheating CBS out of 25 million dollars, but that being said, STO is a massive, and embarassing failure. Space, the final shoebox!
Cryptic insulted the intelligence of the player base and will never again see a dollar from these players. STO is currently populated by people who will play a broken, shallow, idiotic game just because it has the name Star Trek in it. Pity.
Cryptic will soon go out of business as they just can't make MMORPGs. They just don't have the talent or knowhow. Good riddance.
NWN style MMO is most likely what is coming. I just hope and pray every night by my bedside that they do not use saturday morning cartoon colors like they did in STO.
Today I signed in to the game to do my daily B'Trans missions and half way through the first contact I just said to myself, Why am I doing the same thing over and over again for the last 3 months, I am just going through the motions to get badges that I can't use anymore because I already have all purple stuff on my character and ship, I feel like a guy who has a dead end job and just waits for the 5 o'clock whistle to go home and start the day over tomorrow. Well to make a long story short I just stopped half way through the first mission and told my 5 year old son to finish it for me. What does this have to do with the interview? I don't know but after reading it all I could think of was how this game just realy is lacking in everything.
Rofl, I don't care what cryptic makes nowdays. All I know is I have a dislike for what they did to STO, and after that mess they will no be allowed access to my wallet any more.
I cant belive they are already making a new mmo, but considering the fact a lot of folks have left sto, they are trying to shoot another lifesaver to them and try and win them back.