Champions: Return to Arms Dev Diary #2

GameSpy has released their second (and final) developer diary for Champions: Return to Arms, once again penned by Sony producer Clint Worley. A little something to get you started:

Another addition to the Champions franchise was a verses mode. This is one of the most requested features that the players wanted that wasn’t in the first title. Adding it wasn’t much of a problem, actually. The real issue came up in the debates on how it would be implemented.

Should we introduce some type of handicapping feature? Should the players be able to create a verses player and assign ability points to any ability? The questions went on and on. Since our development time was extremely short, we decided that the best thing to do would be a straight arena mode. This would allow the players to fight to the death and let bragging rights determine the true champion. Adding in an artificial balancing system would have been disappointing to many of our players, and, well it would have felt . artificial.