Am I just being picky, or is that character`animation' really jarring?
There was at least one I noticed of a guy that looked like he was doing the starting frame then jumping immediately to the ending frame (*arm at side* POOF *arm straight forward and blasting*), so there's definitely work to be done.
This new information makes me sad. I did not like it in GW, I'm pretty sure I'll hate it even more in this.
Players have four active and four reactive skills that they select to take into an encounter. The four active skills are accessed through the face buttons, and the four reactive will automatically fire and range from block to evade to buffs. As mentioned earlier, the GUI changes depending on the input devices. When using the PS3 controller, the four skill icons are shown in a circle on the bottom right of the screen, corresponding with the four face buttons. When using the mouse and keyboard, the four skill icons are shown in a line on the bottom left of the screen, corresponding with the 1 to 4 number keys. The reactive skills will also have a cool down period and both are represented much like the face of a clock with a second hand sweeping around it before it brightens up and the skill is usable again. So you just might want to pause a second until your evade and block skills come back up again before you engage Bizarro, for example.
This new information makes me sad. I did not like it in GW, I'm pretty sure I'll hate it even more in this.
Players have four active and four reactive skills that they select to take into an encounter. The four active skills are accessed through the face buttons, and the four reactive will automatically fire and range from block to evade to buffs. As mentioned earlier, the GUI changes depending on the input devices. When using the PS3 controller, the four skill icons are shown in a circle on the bottom right of the screen, corresponding with the four face buttons. When using the mouse and keyboard, the four skill icons are shown in a line on the bottom left of the screen, corresponding with the 1 to 4 number keys. The reactive skills will also have a cool down period and both are represented much like the face of a clock with a second hand sweeping around it before it brightens up and the skill is usable again. So you just might want to pause a second until your evade and block skills come back up again before you engage Bizarro, for example.
I actually liked that a lot in Guild Wars. And it worked wonders to balance PvP. Also, it lets you create some very impressive combos, being able to mix and match skills from your primary and secondary professions. Just as long as it doesn't get too repetitive in DCUO, I'm fine with it.
I bet I could create even more impressive combos by having access to all of my powers at anytime.
And then you end up with a billion of powers. Most of which are so situational, they might as well have been done away with or merged into something else. Not to mention it's much harder to balance the game for characters carrying several dozen skills instead of just eight to ten.
In Guild Wars, you could also switch your powers around in any Town or Outpost. So you had dozens of templates at your fingertips. Wanna spec for PvE? Easy and quite painless. Oh, now I feel like doing some Random Arenas. No problem, load a different template. Your can switch roles, but not during the action, which in my opinion helps with the gameplay. Need more damage skills? Sure, but you have to sacrifice some utility skills for it.
You also don't have to memorize an entire keyboard worth of shortcuts or have your screen littered with buttons. As an example, here's what it was like for my Druid back in my WoW days:
Not featured: The Druid buffs and forms, both sets invisible, and the powers that would replace some of the buttons depending on whether I was a Night Elf, Bear or Cat. I was even forced to have different ranks of the SAME ability on my screen.
Now, let's compare that to the Guild Wars' UI:
It's so clean, that I didn't even bother shrinking the UI scale. And this was just the default UI. I didn't need to treat my screen like some sort of precious real estate, downloading user mods and tinkering with them just to squeeze the most use out of every single pixel.
WoW is, without a doubt, too much shit. But lets not forget about CoX where I get the happy mix of a clean screen and plenty of powers. CoX would be even cleaner if they did away with defensive toggle powers and turned them into passives. If you like the GW style of having 800 skills but only being able to use 8 per mission, great. I hate it and find it to be far inferior than EQ/DAoC/CoX style stuff. I also hate it in Marvel:UA but that lets me switch powers mid game (though not terribly smoothly). I want access to my abilities at all times because they are part of my character.
Superman doesn't have to pick between taking laser eyes or cold breath into his next mission. It gets even dumber if you think about how much variety in power effects someone with seemingly one dimensional powers such as Cyclops has. In the comics he would have single target attack, cone attack, richotte attack, blunt stun attack, WTF HUGE OPTIC BLAST attack, piercing attack, hell even a snare if he aims for their feet. And that is before we factor in his "leadership buffs" or martial art abilities. Heroes don't have 8 abilities they take into combat, not with how abilities are made in games.
Now this might be dampened some in DC if there is more of a combo feel to regular, unpowered melee attacks instead of essentially an auto attack you hit the same button for but it might show different animations. I don't really know how that is suppose to work.
Accualt on
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited September 2008
FFXI also has a pretty clean screen:
I can't show you the hoy keys, because if I hold ctrl or alt down to display them I can't use Print screen to take the picture. The black box I drew on the top is where they show up when you call for them though.
The red box is where my party members would be if I had them, and the other two boxes is where alliance party members would show up if I had them.
Just_Bri_Thanks on
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
WoW is, without a doubt, too much shit. But lets not forget about CoX where I get the happy mix of a clean screen and plenty of powers. CoX would be even cleaner if they did away with defensive toggle powers and turned them into passives.
But then you'd lose the feeling of absolute terror whenever a Malta Sapper charges at you because you somehow missed him with your alpha. Ok, maybe you have a point...
GungHo on
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TavIrish Minister for DefenceRegistered Userregular
edited September 2008
Your WoW UI sucks. Mine is much nicer. It's all about how you make it. Gawd.
Your WoW UI sucks. Mine is much nicer. It's all about how you make it. Gawd.
I shouldn't HAVE to make it at all. The fact that their default UI is inefficient for their own content is retarded. I'd be fine with a little addon here and there... NOT creating the interface for Blizzard instead.
Also, that was from pre-TBC. I don't play WoW anymore.
I really like that games like RYL, Age of Conan, and DCUO are trying to move towards a more "real time" feel in MMOs, but I think a system more like CoX is the closest to compromise you're going to get.
The more you take it into the "real time" direction, the more you're going to screw it up. Knowing what I do about hardware limitations, latency, and the current generation of the internet and average connectivity of the user base: we're simply not there yet.
Sad truth, it's hard to get around. But that doesn't mean we should still stop trying. There are ways to make it work, but not on the scale that I would personally want. One day we'll have combat similar to Mount and Blade on an MMO scale, but it's not going to be soon.
zanetheinsane on
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TavIrish Minister for DefenceRegistered Userregular
Your WoW UI sucks. Mine is much nicer. It's all about how you make it. Gawd.
I shouldn't HAVE to make it at all. The fact that their default UI is inefficient for their own content is retarded. I'd be fine with a little addon here and there... NOT creating the interface for Blizzard instead.
Also, that was from pre-TBC. I don't play WoW anymore.
You don't have to, a lot of people only use Omen and DBM. Being able to make your own UI if you want to is what's great about it.
After about a year when they finished sticking in most of the basic functionality you used to need mods for I never found WoW's default UI lacking. Maybe you need it for hardcore raiding, but for the basic game, it works just fine. Never did like CoX's interface though; so many poor aesthetic and design choices.
Your WoW UI sucks. Mine is much nicer. It's all about how you make it. Gawd.
I shouldn't HAVE to make it at all. The fact that their default UI is inefficient for their own content is retarded. I'd be fine with a little addon here and there... NOT creating the interface for Blizzard instead.
Also, that was from pre-TBC. I don't play WoW anymore.
You don't have to, a lot of people only use Omen and DBM. Being able to make your own UI if you want to is what's great about it.
Trust me, I had to. I raided and PvP'd with a Druid. Raiding with the default UI was absolute hell back then. And PvP'ing with a Feral Druid pretty much required as many buttons as you could get in your screen, while still trying to get around the clutter via invisibility, functions changing depending on the form you were in, etc.
It might be different nowadays, but the UI was lacking.
I want to be able to punch someone in the face and have them fly to the fucking moon.
Every time I kill a guy in CoH, he just collapses, and not quickly either, but slowly, because I hurt him just enough to make him pass out in 5 seconds.
Seriously... hit 'em with a power with KB, especially the powers that are geared toward heavy KB, and they will go flying. And then the tanks and scrappers will scream at you.
GungHo on
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Just_Bri_ThanksSeething with ragefrom a handbasket.Registered User, ClubPAregular
edited September 2008
I played Energy/Energy Blaster. I loved the knockback, and to hell with anyone who didn't like it when I punched someone across a room for the indignity of trying to hit me.
Just_Bri_Thanks on
...and when you are done with that; take a folding
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I want to be able to punch someone in the face and have them fly to the fucking moon.
Every time I kill a guy in CoH, he just collapses, and not quickly either, but slowly, because I hurt him just enough to make him pass out in 5 seconds.
That works for an Elec/Ice Blaster!
"Oh hey he's convulsing on the ground! I musta hit the heart!"
I had previously missed this interview, which was published on July 23rd, 2008. What's important about this interview is that Jim Lee addresses an issue that I've seen many people complain about - the unrealistic model for the Joker. Read the excerpt below:
As far as the look of the game, for which Lee is largely responsible, we learned that some characters that we've already seen are undergoing visual refinements. "The Joker is one character I wanted to tweak," he said, noting that the Heath Ledger/Christopher Nolan take on the Joker from The Dark Knight may have been part of the catalyst for the change. Part of the reason for the change, however, was that the current model of the Joker simply didn't fit with the rest of the game's non-playable DC heroes and villains.
Also, Massively did a write up for the Austin Game Developers Conference DCUO art panel. Jim Lee, Jared Carr, Jason Smith, and Jens Anderson were there to answer a variety of questions.
How do you deal with these iconic silhouettes, translating them to a player experience?
Jens: Itemization is important, of course ... think of Batman with his gear. Sometimes he puts on different gear to deal with specific situations. You'll be able to put on gear over your costume, customizing it to your look. You'll look ready and prepared for your in-game situations, but will always be looking like your character.
With a license, with an IP, have you considered that you're getting too wrapped up in getting the IP right and short shrifting the players?
Jens: On the gameplay side things are as wide open as possible. We want you to make a character that is inspired by something. You can create a character that says "inspired by" Flash or "inspired by" Green Lantern. Or you can go totally freeform, picking whatever you want to make your totally new look. Then you have powers, a long list of superpowers. Then you have style; does your power come from your eyes, from a ring, from a pair of swords? Then you pick a movement mode and an origin. You level up, you specialize in very different ways, and so you might be totally different than the other 'ice guy' that's right next to you.
Will we see Vertigo or Wildstorm characters in the game at some point?
Jim: Not yet, but I'd love to see that. That would kickass.
Destructible environments, are those in the plan? Throw a car through a building?
Jens: Well, if all the buildings were destructible Metropolis would be a smoking crater. "There's a building, smash it!" There are things you can smash, but we also need stability and normalcy in some areas to make sure players have a place to play. There's an incredible amount of asset reuse, but it's almost impossible to see that because of all the customization the art team and Jarred do.
Is there any forethought on stopping other IPs from entering via your character customization?
Jens: "You can't put a web pattern on your costume."
Jim: "Four claws on each hand, two claws on each hand, but not three!"
You talked about the character origins - will secret identities figure into art at all?
Jens: I'd love to talk about that. We can't right now. But the first time we started talking to Jim we were talking about civilian clothes and secret identities. It's going to be really interesting.
Multiple costumes?
Jens: ehh... I don't see why not? But if a system is all about fashion you need multiple looks. You need to not get bored. If your system is all about function, you have no control. We're trying to blend that by offering tweaks and changes to your look while maintaining your own personal theme.
Will vehicles play a part in the game?
Jens: The batmobile will play a part in the game, and we'll have traffic in the city. We don't know about letting players have their own vehicles yet, but right now we're looking at players 'being' the vehicle. We want players to have fun and exciting ways to move around the space: running up the sides of buildings, running across the water, walltapping to get to rooftops. Compared to that we don't know if vehicles are all that important.
Are sidekicks or child characters at all in the plans?
Jim: One of the first things we did was think about what makes DC unique, and sidekicks are definitely one of them.
Jens: It's totally in the works, we just don't know how it will manifest yet.
Massively is doing a week long preview write up on DCUO, and some significant points have already come up:
* While traditional questing will be available (aka seeking out quests and building "to-do lists"), the DCUO devs are also looking to push the envelope with content that seeks out players. They will be called "encounters" instead of quests, and they will be affected by variables such as local conditions. "Encounters" will also have completion timers.
* They reiterate that there are no die rolls in this game. If you want to hit something/someone then you will have to aim and make contact. Also, just like with a FPS, if you gun-and-run then your reticle will widen, thus decreasing your accuracy, and it will be harder to hit your target. However, if you don't want to free-fire then you can choose to lock on to an enemy so that you can actually hit who you need to hit.
* There is no death mechanic, there's only "knock out". You can revive yourself if you feel it's safe enough to do so. You can choose to revive in the middle of combat if you want. However, there will be a timer restricting you from immediately reviving.
Massively is continuing their week long preview of DCUO, and yesterday's entry had some interesting tidbits.
Here are the bullet points:
* As the City of Tomorrow, Metropolis is very uplifting, shiny, and new. Also very art deco.
* Conversely, Gotham is very Gothic and oppressive.
* When creating a character you can opt to choose a powers template that is inspired by one of the universe's icons (Green Lantern, Batman, etc).
* The major movement power "buckets" as the devs see them are Acrobatics, Flight, and Superspeed. With Acrobatics you can leap across buildings, wall-tap off of skyscrapers, wall-crawl, and zip-line. Superspeed can run up the sides of buildings, and run upside-down beneath bridges. Flight is fairly self-explanatory. There was no mention of teleportation in the article, but the devs are still reviewing what movement powers they want to add to the game. However, there is a strong indication that there will be no player vehicles.
* You can change your power loadout (aka your "role") anywhere you want, as opposed to being restricted to a particular area like in Guild Wars. The only restricting factor is a cooldown timer.
* You can change your power loadout (aka your "role") anywhere you want, as opposed to being restricted to a particular area like in Guild Wars. The only restricting factor is a cooldown timer.
Then why not let us have access to all of our powers all of the time? I'm very lazy and this type of design decision in Marvel Ultimate Alliance drove me nuts...and that didn't even have a cooldown timer. It also bothers me in WAR but at least it only does it for tactics and moral abilities. You have access to every one of your regular abilities at all times.
Then why not let us have access to all of our powers all of the time? I'm very lazy and this type of design decision in Marvel Ultimate Alliance drove me nuts...and that didn't even have a cooldown timer. It also bothers me in WAR but at least it only does it for tactics and moral abilities. You have access to every one of your regular abilities at all times.
I'm doing my best to refrain from judgment until either an unbiased party tries out the controls or I try them out myself, but I agree that this seems like a frustrating and irritating design decision. It strikes me as an unnecessary limitation placed on PC gameplay resulting from their design decisions to accomodate console gameplay (four buttons on your controller = four powers at a time). This is the one aspect of the game that really has me wincing.
According to Wikipedia and this CNN article, the game is slated for late this year. Seeing as this article was written in August and I don't think there has even been an official hint as to a release date, did CNN lie to me? It's in the last sentence of the last paragraph.
It looks about as good as Champions; probably plays as good, but this video reminded me why I'm totally not looking forward to this game.
Basically there's no fucking way in the hell they're going to let us take out any of the major heroes and villians. They're always going to exist, they're always going to be better than you, and quite frankly they make me feel rather superfluous for that universe.
The thing is, I would never feel any motivation to 'beat' the joker. No matter what, he'll be back later. And preventing him from 'doing' anything is worthless, because he's never going to be able to successfully accomplish anything that the player would be able to stop. He's never going to successfully kill Batman; he's never going to successfully... well okay, he's a bad example as his motives are too wacky to pin down, but you get the idea. The world comes pre-stagnant.
It's like WoW, but with characters that are actually significant.
Posts
I was going to do something like "stopped reading here" but you guys basically covered.
Has SOE developed anything in the past decade truly worth a shit?
There was at least one I noticed of a guy that looked like he was doing the starting frame then jumping immediately to the ending frame (*arm at side* POOF *arm straight forward and blasting*), so there's definitely work to be done.
I actually liked that a lot in Guild Wars. And it worked wonders to balance PvP. Also, it lets you create some very impressive combos, being able to mix and match skills from your primary and secondary professions. Just as long as it doesn't get too repetitive in DCUO, I'm fine with it.
And then you end up with a billion of powers. Most of which are so situational, they might as well have been done away with or merged into something else. Not to mention it's much harder to balance the game for characters carrying several dozen skills instead of just eight to ten.
In Guild Wars, you could also switch your powers around in any Town or Outpost. So you had dozens of templates at your fingertips. Wanna spec for PvE? Easy and quite painless. Oh, now I feel like doing some Random Arenas. No problem, load a different template. Your can switch roles, but not during the action, which in my opinion helps with the gameplay. Need more damage skills? Sure, but you have to sacrifice some utility skills for it.
You also don't have to memorize an entire keyboard worth of shortcuts or have your screen littered with buttons. As an example, here's what it was like for my Druid back in my WoW days:
Not featured: The Druid buffs and forms, both sets invisible, and the powers that would replace some of the buttons depending on whether I was a Night Elf, Bear or Cat. I was even forced to have different ranks of the SAME ability on my screen.
Now, let's compare that to the Guild Wars' UI:
It's so clean, that I didn't even bother shrinking the UI scale. And this was just the default UI. I didn't need to treat my screen like some sort of precious real estate, downloading user mods and tinkering with them just to squeeze the most use out of every single pixel.
Superman doesn't have to pick between taking laser eyes or cold breath into his next mission. It gets even dumber if you think about how much variety in power effects someone with seemingly one dimensional powers such as Cyclops has. In the comics he would have single target attack, cone attack, richotte attack, blunt stun attack, WTF HUGE OPTIC BLAST attack, piercing attack, hell even a snare if he aims for their feet. And that is before we factor in his "leadership buffs" or martial art abilities. Heroes don't have 8 abilities they take into combat, not with how abilities are made in games.
Now this might be dampened some in DC if there is more of a combo feel to regular, unpowered melee attacks instead of essentially an auto attack you hit the same button for but it might show different animations. I don't really know how that is suppose to work.
I can't show you the hoy keys, because if I hold ctrl or alt down to display them I can't use Print screen to take the picture. The black box I drew on the top is where they show up when you call for them though.
The red box is where my party members would be if I had them, and the other two boxes is where alliance party members would show up if I had them.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I don't think you guys want to know how much skills my shaman had on the UI in WoW.
I shouldn't HAVE to make it at all. The fact that their default UI is inefficient for their own content is retarded. I'd be fine with a little addon here and there... NOT creating the interface for Blizzard instead.
Also, that was from pre-TBC. I don't play WoW anymore.
The more you take it into the "real time" direction, the more you're going to screw it up. Knowing what I do about hardware limitations, latency, and the current generation of the internet and average connectivity of the user base: we're simply not there yet.
Sad truth, it's hard to get around. But that doesn't mean we should still stop trying. There are ways to make it work, but not on the scale that I would personally want. One day we'll have combat similar to Mount and Blade on an MMO scale, but it's not going to be soon.
You don't have to, a lot of people only use Omen and DBM. Being able to make your own UI if you want to is what's great about it.
Trust me, I had to. I raided and PvP'd with a Druid. Raiding with the default UI was absolute hell back then. And PvP'ing with a Feral Druid pretty much required as many buttons as you could get in your screen, while still trying to get around the clutter via invisibility, functions changing depending on the form you were in, etc.
It might be different nowadays, but the UI was lacking.
Every time I kill a guy in CoH, he just collapses, and not quickly either, but slowly, because I hurt him just enough to make him pass out in 5 seconds.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
http://kotaku.com/photogallery/dcuonline915/
"Oh hey he's convulsing on the ground! I musta hit the heart!"
http://kotaku.com/5028451/jim-lee-dishes-on-dc-universe-online
I had previously missed this interview, which was published on July 23rd, 2008. What's important about this interview is that Jim Lee addresses an issue that I've seen many people complain about - the unrealistic model for the Joker. Read the excerpt below:
As far as the look of the game, for which Lee is largely responsible, we learned that some characters that we've already seen are undergoing visual refinements. "The Joker is one character I wanted to tweak," he said, noting that the Heath Ledger/Christopher Nolan take on the Joker from The Dark Knight may have been part of the catalyst for the change. Part of the reason for the change, however, was that the current model of the Joker simply didn't fit with the rest of the game's non-playable DC heroes and villains.
Also, Massively did a write up for the Austin Game Developers Conference DCUO art panel. Jim Lee, Jared Carr, Jason Smith, and Jens Anderson were there to answer a variety of questions.
http://www.massively.com/2008/09/16/agdc08-jim-lee-and-the-artwork-of-dc-universe-online/
Here's some interesting excerpts:
How do you deal with these iconic silhouettes, translating them to a player experience?
Jens: Itemization is important, of course ... think of Batman with his gear. Sometimes he puts on different gear to deal with specific situations. You'll be able to put on gear over your costume, customizing it to your look. You'll look ready and prepared for your in-game situations, but will always be looking like your character.
With a license, with an IP, have you considered that you're getting too wrapped up in getting the IP right and short shrifting the players?
Jens: On the gameplay side things are as wide open as possible. We want you to make a character that is inspired by something. You can create a character that says "inspired by" Flash or "inspired by" Green Lantern. Or you can go totally freeform, picking whatever you want to make your totally new look. Then you have powers, a long list of superpowers. Then you have style; does your power come from your eyes, from a ring, from a pair of swords? Then you pick a movement mode and an origin. You level up, you specialize in very different ways, and so you might be totally different than the other 'ice guy' that's right next to you.
Will we see Vertigo or Wildstorm characters in the game at some point?
Jim: Not yet, but I'd love to see that. That would kickass.
Destructible environments, are those in the plan? Throw a car through a building?
Jens: Well, if all the buildings were destructible Metropolis would be a smoking crater. "There's a building, smash it!" There are things you can smash, but we also need stability and normalcy in some areas to make sure players have a place to play. There's an incredible amount of asset reuse, but it's almost impossible to see that because of all the customization the art team and Jarred do.
Is there any forethought on stopping other IPs from entering via your character customization?
Jens: "You can't put a web pattern on your costume."
Jim: "Four claws on each hand, two claws on each hand, but not three!"
You talked about the character origins - will secret identities figure into art at all?
Jens: I'd love to talk about that. We can't right now. But the first time we started talking to Jim we were talking about civilian clothes and secret identities. It's going to be really interesting.
Multiple costumes?
Jens: ehh... I don't see why not? But if a system is all about fashion you need multiple looks. You need to not get bored. If your system is all about function, you have no control. We're trying to blend that by offering tweaks and changes to your look while maintaining your own personal theme.
Will vehicles play a part in the game?
Jens: The batmobile will play a part in the game, and we'll have traffic in the city. We don't know about letting players have their own vehicles yet, but right now we're looking at players 'being' the vehicle. We want players to have fun and exciting ways to move around the space: running up the sides of buildings, running across the water, walltapping to get to rooftops. Compared to that we don't know if vehicles are all that important.
Are sidekicks or child characters at all in the plans?
Jim: One of the first things we did was think about what makes DC unique, and sidekicks are definitely one of them.
Jens: It's totally in the works, we just don't know how it will manifest yet.
* While traditional questing will be available (aka seeking out quests and building "to-do lists"), the DCUO devs are also looking to push the envelope with content that seeks out players. They will be called "encounters" instead of quests, and they will be affected by variables such as local conditions. "Encounters" will also have completion timers.
* They reiterate that there are no die rolls in this game. If you want to hit something/someone then you will have to aim and make contact. Also, just like with a FPS, if you gun-and-run then your reticle will widen, thus decreasing your accuracy, and it will be harder to hit your target. However, if you don't want to free-fire then you can choose to lock on to an enemy so that you can actually hit who you need to hit.
* There is no death mechanic, there's only "knock out". You can revive yourself if you feel it's safe enough to do so. You can choose to revive in the middle of combat if you want. However, there will be a timer restricting you from immediately reviving.
I loved me some COV, more, more!
Here are the bullet points:
* As the City of Tomorrow, Metropolis is very uplifting, shiny, and new. Also very art deco.
* Conversely, Gotham is very Gothic and oppressive.
* When creating a character you can opt to choose a powers template that is inspired by one of the universe's icons (Green Lantern, Batman, etc).
* The major movement power "buckets" as the devs see them are Acrobatics, Flight, and Superspeed. With Acrobatics you can leap across buildings, wall-tap off of skyscrapers, wall-crawl, and zip-line. Superspeed can run up the sides of buildings, and run upside-down beneath bridges. Flight is fairly self-explanatory. There was no mention of teleportation in the article, but the devs are still reviewing what movement powers they want to add to the game. However, there is a strong indication that there will be no player vehicles.
* You can change your power loadout (aka your "role") anywhere you want, as opposed to being restricted to a particular area like in Guild Wars. The only restricting factor is a cooldown timer.
Then why not let us have access to all of our powers all of the time? I'm very lazy and this type of design decision in Marvel Ultimate Alliance drove me nuts...and that didn't even have a cooldown timer. It also bothers me in WAR but at least it only does it for tactics and moral abilities. You have access to every one of your regular abilities at all times.
I'm doing my best to refrain from judgment until either an unbiased party tries out the controls or I try them out myself, but I agree that this seems like a frustrating and irritating design decision. It strikes me as an unnecessary limitation placed on PC gameplay resulting from their design decisions to accomodate console gameplay (four buttons on your controller = four powers at a time). This is the one aspect of the game that really has me wincing.
Acrobatics and Superspeed both sound really fun and special, and I'm really looking forward to trying them out.
Edit: And wikipedia's source is that one throwaway line in the CNN article.
http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/59112
It looks about as good as Champions; probably plays as good, but this video reminded me why I'm totally not looking forward to this game.
Basically there's no fucking way in the hell they're going to let us take out any of the major heroes and villians. They're always going to exist, they're always going to be better than you, and quite frankly they make me feel rather superfluous for that universe.
It's like WoW, but with characters that are actually significant.