Video Game / Champions Online

"Here to Save the World"

"How many times have you saved the world today?"

—Sapphire

An adaptation of the Tabletop Game Champions, Champions Online is a 2009 Super Hero MMORPG offering a wide variety of power and costume customisation options. While the storylines and environments are usually an Homage to a Silver Age style, light-hearted and brightly-coloured, occasional Bronze Age consequences and morals are hinted at. Player characters display a range of styles, from The Cape through The Cowl to the '90s Anti-Hero.

Various departures from the Pen & Paper game are noticeable, including the absence of the concept of acquiring character flaws in order to gain extra points. However, there is a lot more power growth compared to the Pen and Paper experience.

The intellectual property rights to the Champions setting are held by Cryptic Studios (themselves picked up by Perfect World Enterprises), the original developers of the MMORPG City of Heroes. They bought the setting outright rather than licensing it. The IP is licensed back to the original developers (who still own the underlying Hero System) for the Champions pen-and-paper game.

As a Superhero MMO with a sense of humour about itself, there are numerous references to other works. It features just about everything on the list of comic book tropes. True to the spirit of the setting, Required Secondary Powers are not addressed directly in-game.

As of January 2011 it is free to play, downloadable from its website; later in June it came to Steam along with a few other such games. Another fairly notable update came in the form of "On Alert" in April of 2012, which changed the logo, made more content available to everybody (and with it added more premium content) and added the titular alert system. The alert system is effectively a new type of mission, and one of several ways to gain the resource questionite, which can be used directly to buy some things, or traded player-to-player in an stock exchange type system for the cash store's currency, at this point Perfect World's ZEN.(In addition, several missions and bosses which were already present were edited to reward questionite—including the adventure packs, which as of that update became free for all.) In late 2012, vehicles were introduced, becoming a customizable feature in December with the Reloaded update.

The Champions engine was also used for Cryptic's other two MMORPGs, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter.

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This adaptation of the Champions Universe provides examples of the following tropes:

• Ascended Meme: The beacons in the tutorial. You have to shut them down because they are driving the Qularr crazy. Defender explains this over and over again in his hammy speech style, while you do the work. Hilarity ensued amongst the player community. About a year and a half later, the Resistance adventure pack was introduced, in which you travel to the Mirror Universe of Multifaria. Your first mission there is to activate four beacons to drive the Karkaradons crazy. And there is also a single Qularr beacon in that room. Activating it gives you the "Beaconizer" perk with the message; "The Qularr are already crazy!"
• The Alcatraz: Stronghold, which is designed to hold the worst of the worst among supervillains. When you go there during your run in the Southwest Desert, it's in the middle of a Prison Riot thanks to Menton breaking free from his Hot Sleep chamber and mind controlling nearly all the authorities in the prison.
• Allegedly Free Game: Zig-zags a bit — You can now play the entire game, including adventure packs, for free! However you can only do so using one of 12 pre-defined Archetypes (i.e., classes), which just by virtue of being rigidly defined will never be close to the power of a high-end freeform build (free-form builds also get to pick more powers over the same number of levels and get access to Tier 4 powers). For a while, there was a daily quest where you could win a freeform character slot, even as a Silver player, for nothing more than a short investment of time! It's over now, though. The only way to get a freeform slot for Silver is to buy the item from the Zen Store (whether with real money or Questionite), or claim the annual freebie during the anniversary event.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: You can get an edge in crafting by buying "rank up catalysts". Most players wouldn't recommend upgrading mods past rank 7 though, and spending cash for catalysts is only one of several options.
• Alien Invasion: Quite a few, from the tutorial onwards. One of the loading screens helpfully points out that some alien races have made contact peacefully. However, another loading screen mentions that Earth has successfully repelled several invasions, from as early as 1938.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: By the truckload. The Champions Universe used to be described as "Silver Age Marvel with the numbers filed off", adding "Not that it's a bad thing". Specific examples include:
  • Doctor Destroyer is blatantly Doctor Doom with an appearance suspiciously similar to DC Comic's Doctor Fate.
  • Defender is Iron Man, or at least Iron Man before he was an alcoholic Jerkass.
  • Sapphire resembles Dazzler. And has a liking for the word "outrageous".
  • Dr. Silverback is Beast, complete with his erudite speech patterns and, being a hyper-intelligent (albeit good) gorilla, takes influences from DC villain Gorilla Grodd .
  • Grond is Hulk/The Abomination.
  • Armadillo is Juggernaut.
    • Or possibly Rhino, background-wise.
  • Ankylosaurus (who has not appeared in-game yet) resembles The Scorpion, with his cybernetic tail weapon.
  • Volta is Storm, but she's a villainess...
  • Liberty Guard and Indy Kid are Captain America and Bucky.
  • VIPER is Hydra. It also resembles Cobra, but predates it. Champions, in 1981, included VIPER from the start. A year later GI Joe's newest version introduced Cobra. However, as time went on they seem to have been taking on more and more aspects of Cobra (not least with the Supreme Serpent).
  • The Black Aces are pretty heavily inspired by the Royal Flush Gang, with a smattering of Alex's Droogs from A Clockwork Orange.
  • Foxbat is often compared to Deadpool for his fourth-wall-breaking humor and lovable/laughably not-quite-evil-more-like-crazy personality, but lacks his Healing Factor, fighting skills and sociopathy and does not look one bit like him. His wacky personality predates Deadpool by a decade, though, and due to his costumes and abilities, he was seen as naughty Adam West Batman.
  • The robotic supervillain Mechanon is similar to Ultron
  • Mr. Gemini is Multiple Man, although his powers seem to vary slightly in that unlike Madrox, his "dupes" aren't always exact carbon copies of the original (some sport a more muscular physique, for instance).
  • The hero archetypes which a player must choose from make several, less-than-subtle parallels to other heroes, including non-Marvel characters:
    • The Marksman = Hawkeye
    • The Inferno = The Human Torch
    • The Glacier = Iceman
    • The Specialist = Deadpool
    • The Behemoth = Hulk
    • The Grimoire = Doctor Strange
    • The Mind = Jean Grey
    • The Savage = Sabretooth
    • The Disciple = Psylocke
    • The Tempest = Electro
    • The Devastator = Thor
    • The Impulse = The Invisible Woman
    • The Fist = Iron Fist
    • The Master = Daredevil
    • The Scourge = Spawn
    • The Cursed is actually just a color swap for The Scourge, which coincidentally makes him look more like Ghost Rider.
    • The Soldier = The Punisher
    • The Squall = Storm
    • The Inventor = Forge
    • The Mountain = The Thing
    • The Radiant = The Spectre
    • The Invincible = Iron Man. (Ironically, as a tank archetype, the Invicible generates less energy than other roles.)
    • The Night Avenger is specifically based on the Champions character Nighthawk, who is in turn Batman, although the character suggestions and powers (a vigilante/eccentric billionaire/vengeful orphan who prowls the night with gadgets) make it obvious that they're trying to make it Batman, as do the selection of jets that are CO's first available vehicles.
    • The Unleashed = Believe it or not, a Jedi Knight (or perhaps Sith Lord).
    • The Icicle = Introduced as an unlockable archetype during the Winter Event is basically Elsa.
  • There are also a number of Champions characters strongly resembling non-Marvel characters:
    • Kinetik is The Flash, freak lab-accident and lightning-themed costume and all. He is also similar to Synapse from City of Heroes, but Synapse is closer to Miles Teg of Dune, since his powers developed as a result of torture.
    • Background-wise, Doctor Ka is pretty much Doctor Fate. For the costume, Shadow Destroyer looks like an Evil Twin of Doctor Fate.
    • Amphibian is Aquaman (and he is just about as useless as he is in the Superfriends cartoon). The only heroic action you will presumably ever see from him is to keep a giant mutant shark from attacking you during the Lemuria Crisis. Mostly, he will only lament about his Psycho Ex-Girlfriend Stingray.
    • The Rocket Hawks strongly resemble The Rocketeer.
    • As mentioned above, Nighthawk shares a name with Marvel's Nighthawk, but was essentially Batman before appearing in-game. An entire update was themed around him, which in some ways separated him, but in some cases extends the similarities, especially Year One.
    • Bluejay shares some character and background traits with Catwoman: She was betrayed by her former boss and became a super-thief, but is even less evil than Foxbat and willing to team up with the player to fight a more serious threat.
    • Black Harlequin is the Joker, perhaps combined with Toyman's gimmick.
    • Kinda subverted with Psimon, who has the same name and similar powers as a DC villain, but his appearance and background are notably different. The fact that there is no copyright on the name Psimon certainly helped.
    • Crimson Serpent's backstory and powers curiously resemble Azula's.
    • Gold and Iron may or may not be based on Karai and Hun.
    • Taffy Winters, the Vampire Killer should be an obvious one
    • Ripper, VIPER's Brute, is quite similar to Bane. Except not as smart.
    • Overbrain, a Brain in a Jar, and his mutant gorilla partner Ape Plus are obviously a homage to the DC villains The Brain and Mallah.
    • Microman is The Atom
    • Hi Pan is pretty blatantly based on David Lo Pan.
    • Red Dawn is Crimson Dynamo.
• An Adventurer Is You: Not nearly as strict as in other MMORPGs, but technically, every power set or archetype is made for a certain playing style and/or role on a team:
  • The Tank - The Behemoth archetype and the "Brick" sets (Might and Heavy Weapons) are mostly made for this. The Darkness set with its life draining block and the Bestial set with its passive defense Regeneration allow them to become 'Reg Tanks', healing faster than enemies can damage them (doesn't always work, though, especially not in PvP). The Master archetype and the Martial Arts sets, especially Unarmed, have the passive power Lightning Reflexes, which can make them 'Dodge Tanks'. And aside from absorbing large amounts of damage, they all can dish out a lot too. The Mountain is something of a Stone Wall, with the ability to reduce the damage output of its enemies.
  • The Healer - The Mind archetype/Telepathy set has healing powers, but he can't stand up to a Celestial: all of their powers can heal allies and deal damage to enemies at the same time! The Radiant free archetype (added in much later updates than the other free archetypes), uses mainly Celestial powers, becoming the only viable healer for Silver characters.
    • The Support Drones power from the Gadgeteering set allows you to summon two personal healing pets and many experienced Freeform players will include it in their build. But while they are pretty good at continuously healing their owner, they are rather unreliable when it comes to healing others. When an ally is near death and their owner has only so much as a scratch, guess who the drones will heal first.
  • The DPSer/The Nuker - About any character with any power set can be this, but those with ranged energy builders and many ranged attacks are notably better in this field, actually capable of dealing continuous streams of damage while not taking any themselves. The Inferno (Fire set), the Tempest (Electricity set) and the Disciple (melee Telekinesis) are predestined to play this role, being downright Glass Cannons. The Scourge (Infernal Supernatural set) however, avoids being outright Glass thanks to Constitution being one of its super stats, while still being able to dish out a deadly amount of damage.
    • As well, the Marksman class fits the Archer class perfectly; same with the Soldier class ("Guns. Lots of guns."), though to a lesser extent.
  • The Buffer/Debuffer - Any branch of the Sorcery set can specialize in buffing and debuffing at the same time. Ironically, the Sorcery archetype, the Grimoire, is more of a Nuker/Mezzer.
  • The Mezzer - If a set has a power that renders the target helpless, it also has powers to exploit the situation by dealing massive damage. The best in this field are Electricity/The Tempest with Paralyze, Force/The Impulse with Hold and constant Knocks, Ice/The Glacier with Ice Cage, Telepathy/The Mind with Sleep and Sorcery/The Grimoire with Root. The Gadgeteer's Entangling Mesh and Tanglecoil Launcher and Dual Blader's stunning Dragon's Wrath are worth mentioning too.
    • Unfortunately, bosses are generally immune to any kind of hold, stun, or knock, making these Useless Useful Spells against them.
    • Though through the magic of specialization trees you can inflict a debuff to resistance on anything you try to control, succeed or fail. Take three such specializations and you can keep a pretty consistent -30% resistance on a boss by spamming otherwise ineffectual control moves. Great for maximizing team DPS in those timed alerts. And just as importantly, just because the Boss is immune to your toys, doesn't mean his backup is quite so resilient.
  • The Petmaster - The Inventor. His Attack Toys can even summon more of them on their own! Freeform Gadgeteers and Sorcerers can be build this way too and it's not uncommon for a Freeform Petmaster to have pets from both power sets.
  • The Jack - The Specialist was intended to be this, but fails terribly, ending up as more of a Spoony Bard. The Unleashed, however, does a much better job at this. And Freefoms, of course, which require the player to choose their powers and stats focus carefully to make the most of their potential. Indeed, with free-form, you can combine some of the basics of a DPS build with a mix of heals and defense buffs, or even use unorthodox methods such as Aura of Primal Majesty + Strength + Enrage, and you get a flat out Lightning Bruiser.
  • The Trapper - Mostly averted. Sorcerers can summon sigils and circles with a wide range of effects and Gadgeteers can lay mines and use their Munition Bots in stationary gun turret mode, but they can hardly specialize in this field alone.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Costume unlocks (account-wide now, for all costumes) are one of the main draws of the game. You can also get little 'action figures' (think WoW's vanity pets) to follow you around (account wide).
• Animal Motifs: Many, players and NPCs alike. And, of course, VIPER.
• Arch-Enemy: The nemesis system allows heroes to create a recurring enemy whose schemes they can foil again and again. However, with the current system this nemesis can suffer from Villain Decay, not growing significantly in power as the player does and merely sending occasional Mooks to annoy the player before having yet another plot foiled. It's also worth noting that each character on an account can have eighteen separate Nemeses with only one active at any given time, meaning that each hero can have a fully fleshed out Rogues Gallery of their own to prolong villain decay, if only because the player isn't necessarily beating the exact same villain over and over again in rapid succession.
• Area 51: Located in the Southwest Desert, right near Stronghold Prison and a Qularr crash site. VIPER has a base there, and among your enemies in that zone are VIPER Conspiracists, essentially Men in Black that work for VIPER and are quite interested in shutting you down for good.
• A Wizard Did It:
  • The very reason why superpowers exist in the Champions Universe. During WW2, Nazi mysticians tried to summon demons to help them win the war. But the ritual failed and caused reality-altering magical energy to leak into this dimension. This event is remembered as The Return of Magic. Not only can magic be controlled by gifted humans, but it can also cause a human to survive exposure to usually lethal materials, energies and radiation, granting them related or sometimes unrelated powers. But since uncontrolled magic is unpredictable, it won't always save you, or may even transform you into an insane monstrosity in the process. This is not explained in detail in the MMORPG, but in the Pen&Paper RPG's lore instead. Uncontrolled magic is also the source of totally random supernatural incidents, such as the dead rising or extradimensional creatures (demons) entering this world through dimensional rifts. This is often caused by the mere presence of a powerful magical being, as they tend to unconsciously draw energy to them.
  • Therakiel actually does it consciously. He is making Vibora Bay a Mecca for magic users and supernatural creatures, causing the energy level in the area to rise continuously in preparation for the apocalyptic final battle between Heaven and Hell.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Vehicles. They can potentially deal more damage than a character, but are rather squishy and far less versatile; requiring special "gear" and weapons, for which they have fewer slots than characters. They also have trouble dealing constant damage, due to their weapon's slow charge and reload mechanics. To be fair, they are good for moving long distances quickly.
• Badass Normal:
  • Depending on the player's vision for the character; other examples may include many of the security, police, and military service members seen throughout the game.
  • Also, a few civilian NPCs and contacts actually attack enemies that come close to them, usually by throwing bottles at them, which do a surprising amount of damage.
  • In the Resistance adventure pack, members of the eponymous organization will take on prison security (including destroids and even superhumans) with improvised weapons made from coffee makers, duct tape, road cones, and pens.
  • In many cases, as a player, you're far better off with a badass normal helping you than one of the Champions, who either get in the way, stay totally out of the way, keep telling you to wait for them to catch up, spend their time sending private messages to other champions, accuse you of hogging all the kills, or lie half dead on the floor. The one thing they don't actually do a lot of is help you. On the other hand, with non-superpowered schoolgirl Taffy Winters as your sidekick, all you need to do if you are so inclined is stand and watch her own every enemy in sight.
• Bad Guy Bar: Leo's Bar, in Millennium City, which is a hangout for the Maniacs gang. You can enter in disguise and quietly speak to your contacts, or simply pick up the pool table and beat up the patrons with it. And the Dog Pound in Vibora Bay. It's a werewolf bar.
• Bears Are Bad News: Several of the Manimals, including one named Bear who's causing trouble in the park.
• BFS: The Heavy Weapons powerset includes a couple of them. They're not quite as huge as some of the more ridiculous BFSes, but they're still pretty weighty.
• Big Bad: Dr. Destroyer is behind quite a lot of things, or at least making them worse. Later on, however, it's revealed that the "Destroyer" who's making the world panic at the thought of his return is actually Shadow Destroyer, a sorcerer from the local Mirror Universe... and then, as part of that storyline, you end up freeing the real Destroyer.
  • In Vibora Bay and the Vibora Bay Crisis; Therakiel, a half-angel half-demon who's decided to start the End of the World as We Know It and rule the ashes left over after the Legions of Hell face off against the forces of Heaven.
• Brain in a Jar: Several.
  • They occasionally appear as part of the scenery in science-themed areas.
  • A Brain in a Jar is amongst the five objects in jars found in Westside, Millennium City. Finding them all unlocks the "Jar Collector" perk.
  • The relatively weak but overambitious supervillain Overbrain is a brain in a floating glass sphere.
  • The mad geneticist Teleios uses oversized brains under glass domes mounted to floating machines as both combat drones and Wetware CPUs. Oh, and they are, like most of his Mooks, cloned from his own "perfect" DNA. One of them eventually becomes self aware and switches sides, becoming the contact for the final part of the Brain Trust mission arc, which ends with you saving this good brain in a jar from Overbrain, an evil brain in a jar. And finally, there is the final boss in Teleios Tower; an exceptionally large brain in a jar, named 'Perfection of the Mind'. It should be noted that Overbrain as well as Teleios' Cloned Brains attack with electricity instead of stereotypical Psychic Powers. But then, real brains don't have nebulous "psychic powers"; they use, among other things, electrical impulses.
  • The Retro Sci-Fi costume set adds a glass bubble helmet and a special head option that allows your character to BE a brain in a jar!
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Foxbat thinks he's in a comic book, TV show or Video Game. When saved in the tutorial he asks the player to talk to the GM about changing his spawn point, while one of the loading screens rambles on about how Foxbat is the 'best supervillain ever', with a bit at the end about how he's smart enough that he could hack into an online game's database and change around the profile information... "Not that he would ever do so, of course."
• The Cape:
  • Many player characters. Enemy NPCs will often refer to your character as a "Cape", even if that character isn't really an example.
  • Villains, especially most of the really high-ranking VIPER officers, tend to wear capes more frequently than heroes in the Champions universe.
• Cardboard Prison:
  • Both the main city prison and the super-prison Stronghold have 24-hour breakouts.
  • Citizen Harmon's "reeducation facility" turns out not to be the safest either. With a little help from the player, a simple riot eventually results in the breakout of the strongest imprisoned metahumans and even Doctor Destroyer himself.
• Cherry Tapping: Enforced. When your strong attacks exhaust your energy bar (which will happen quickly), you are forced to rely on your Boring, but Practical "energy builder" attack to replenish it. Pick an energy builder you like, because you're going to be seeing it a whole lot.
  • It is actually possible to avert this, for the most part. Freeform builds with energy unlock abilities and the right super stats rarely need to use their energy builder. Still, activating it will only hurt the target.
  • A special mention goes to Radiance, the Celestial energy builder. It doubles as a heal without energy costs when used on friendly targets, and even generate energy while healing them.
• Church of Happyology: Mind Inc. is a self-help organisation which tests every new member with an electronic reader. This is so that they can pick up on any latent Psychic Powers to exploit. Them being actually just a front for the psychic villain organization PSI, which is planning to Take Over the World certainly doesn't make it better.
• City of Adventure: Millennium City. Seriously, you can just be standing around doing nothing and a civilian will run up with a mission for you.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Foxbat. Dear god, Foxbat! Described as "an evil version of Adam West Batman". Sometimes Laughably Evil, sometimes an amazingly effective Diabolical Mastermind, Depending on the Writer.
• Create Your Own Villain: At level 25 you can make your character's first Nemesis. Up to 17 more may follow.
• Controllable Helplessness: At the end of Aftershock, you and up to four friends get to briefly play as a King of Edom as they curb-stomp Defender and Witchcraft, though if there's only one or two of you it's more of a fair fight. Don't worry, they get better.
• Cosmic Horror Story: The Harrowing.
  There are other Kings beyond those in the Cannibal Hall. All are trapped and imprisoned now, but those prisons are older then our world, and they creak and groan. Five-eyed Vulshoth lies chained within the Black Maze, and Those Who Dwell in Bleakness are chained within the Shining Darkness of a dying cosmos. Ptharr is buried at the heart of another world, and Diezzhorath is spread too thinly to act. There are others, but all share the same goal: To escape! They will claim to be demons, they will claim to be gods, but they are neither. They will promise power and anything that is desired, but all they grant is a slavery more horrible then can be imagined. For they cannot be bound by word or spell, and ignore the laws of magic and nature. They care only for their freedom and their hungers, and should they escape they will drag our world down their maw, where all that is will be devoured.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The loss of one of five 'stars', which can, at 5 stars, give about a 15% boost to healing and damage, in total.
• Death Ray:
  • The fitting name of an advantage (i.e. upgrade) for the 'Experimental Blaster' power, giving it a 1% chance to one-shot enemies not labeled 'supervillain', 'legendary' or 'cosmic' (i.e. bosses). It can affect even other players in PvP.
  • Nemesis mission arcs always end with your arch-enemy building a Doomsday Device called a Death Ray — and you having to trash it.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Lots and lots of destructible items, which can be picked up and used as weapons or thrown if you have a high enough Strength statistic (or the Telekinesis power and high enough Ego).
  • What's more, players will often 'farm' these chairs to trigger Nemesis minion attacks, which can happen whenever you pick up a "glowie" consumable, dropping either from combat or attacks on destructible objects.
• Dirty Communists: Red Winter was formerly the Soviet Union's official super team. Now they are mercs, selling their superpowered service to various villains, especially the players' Nemeses.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Defender's most famous quote:
  "I've penetrated the other side of the building! Let's trap these miscreants between us!"
• Doomsday Device
  • The Mandragalore; an ancient Lemurian Magitek cannon the size of a skyscraper, capable of sinking entire continents into the ocean.
  • The Ultra Coruscator. Never seen but is said to come close to the Mandragalore.
  • The Nemesis mission in which you catch your Nemesis and send them to jail for the first time is explicitly called "Doomsday device!" The actual device you catch them with couldn't even blow up your Nemesis, never mind the world.
• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • The player gets to pilot a Mega Destroid just before the final battle]] in Resistance.
  • The player is also turned into an Avatar of the Kings of Edom at the end of Aftershock, and gets to beat up the Champions!
• Emote Animation: NPCs have some that are unavailable for player chars though.
• Episodic Game: The Aftershock Comic Series, which released one installment each week over the month of June, is free to play for all, as is the Whiteout comic series, which debuted in winter of 2011. More recently, the Serials are a smaller scale approach.
• Escort Mission:
  • Ranging from tagging along while a robot dinosaur rips the enemy to shreds to desperately trying to distract gang members away from the fragile little policeman.
  • A special mention goes to Foxbat, who you can drag through Destroyer's Robot Factory as a bonus mission. An incredibly tedious one, that is! Foxbat is a highly squishy Leeroy, and usually needs at least one healer constantly watching over him to even have a chance of surviving.
• Eviler than Thou: Alas poor Kevin Poe. He's a competent Starter Villain, but even in the arcs he's a major part of, he's overshadowed. First by Hi Pan and the Cult of the Red Banner (Though Poe gets off easy compared to the other gang leaders), then by PSI, which he took over the New Purple Gang to fight in the first place.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: In one of the Nemesis missions, your Nemesis releases Ghost Veil and attempts to bargain with her. Needless to say, it doesn't work.
• Evil Plan:
  • Valerian Scarlet, herald of Therakiel, tricks you into bringing her the items she needs to start the Apocalypse, beating up the one person who might have been able to stop it and puts her in a position to steal his Flame Gem. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero indeed!
  • There's also Shadow Destroyer's gambit, which has allowed Therakiel to get this close to starting the Apocalypse...with the goal to intercept him at the last minute and claim rulership over this entire dimension...or at least the smoldering ruins thereof. Eep.
• Experience Points: The majority of which are awarded for quest completion, with relatively piddling rewards for fighting minions.
  • Now Alert grinding allows one to reach the level cap and buy purple quality gear without leaving Renaissance Center, let alone ever doing a single mission.
• Fake Difficulty: A rather ridiculous case: All NPCs, even civilians and mooks which are supposed to utterly lack superpowers, were given the Super Jump travel power, so players can't escape a battle by knocking them over the edge of a building or taking refuge on higher ground. Fortunately, Cryptic realized that this was not a good idea and removed the Super Jump shortly after. (Wolves (and a few other enemies) still do that; in their case, it's a jump attack, not a travel power.)
  • Unfortunately, Cryptic is infamous for not fixing bugs and design flaws. When it's done intentionally, to create "challenges", the result is Fake Difficulty at its worst:
    • Rakshasa has a power that summons a Mind Worm for every character (including pets) on the heroes' side — and also causes them to lose their target lock on him, for some inexplicable reason. It was handwaved.
    • Ao'Qephoth is nearly invincible due to his ridiculous regenerative abilities. These are the result of a passive power that heals 1.8% of the user's maximum HP per tick. Not much for player characters or regular bosses, but Alert bosses have over two million HP! Unsurprisingly, his alerts often sit unplayed at the top of the queue until they are randomly cycled out — and should players accidentally join due to inattentiveness, they usually all drop team the moment his name is announced during the preamble. He can be beaten, but doing so requires requires such careful timing, precision and powers, that in the "random PUG" setup of alerts it usually makes more sense just to quit and wait for a different boss.
    • Luther Black, the final boss of Demonflame, summons mooks and places a buff on them that makes them gradually stronger and bigger. The problem is; this buff has no upper limit. If the buffed mook is not defeated quickly, he will grow into a game-breaking combination of Invincible Minor Minion and Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever! On top of that, the resulting lag is most likely to crash the game sooner or later! While Cryptic has not shown any intent of turning this bug into a "feature", just as little intent was shown to fix it anytime soon.
  • Sometimes UI lag will cause your character to stubbornly (and generally fatally) continue attacking with their energy builder despite the block button being firmly depressed.
• Fun with Acronyms: Partially because of how many there are, it's a rather common thing among supergroups.
  • MARS: Metahuman Activities Response Squad
  • UNTIL: United Nations Tribunal on International Law
  • PRIMUS: Paranormal Research and Investigation Mission of the United States
  • VIPER: Venomous Imperial Party of the Eternal Reptile (although in the P&P game, apparently there are multiple possible meanings to the acronym)
  • ARGENT: Advanced Research Group ENTerprises
  • PSI: Parapsychology/Paranormal Studies Institute
  • LEAF: Logistical Emergency Assistance Foundation
  • HAIR: Hyper-Hirsute Action and Information Resource. They help people who suffer from super-accelerated hair growth.
  • RAD: Rapid Assault Deployment. Also a pun on the German word for "wheel".
  • No one seems to know what UNITY actually stands for.
• Fur Against Fang: Vibora Bay features a pair of rival gangs; The New Shadows are made up of vampires, while the Dogz are werewolves.
• From Bad to Worse: The Vibora Bay Crisis. It starts with you helping to cause the Apocalypse. Yes, the "end of the world as we know it", "final battle between Heaven and Hell" Apocalypse... And by the time it's over: all of the Champions are dead, Amphibian has been mutated into a bizarre homicidal fish-creature, and it's revealed that Shadow Destroyer helped engineer the whole thing to screw Therakiel out of his Evil Plan. Yikes!
• Gang of Hats:
  • The Westside gangs, which include the purple wearing Mafia New Purple Gang, the Cobra Lords Biker Gang, the Quincy Punk/Monster Clown themed Maniacs, the A Clockwork Orange inspired Black Aces and the Chinese mystical Cult of the Red Banner. It's lampshaded with a mission to literally collect hats (well, bandanas, actually) from each of these local gangs.
  • The gangs of Vibora Bay are like this too, with a Post-Apunkalyptic Werewolf gang (Dogz), a Vampire gang (New Shadows), a Voodoo gang (Sovereign Sons) and a dark magic using, demon worshipping gang (Trey Kings). The "Queen City" missions also introduced the Gemini Gang which is entirely made up of duplicates of the same man.
• Genius Bruiser: It is entirely possible to make your Nemesis this by giving him/her any physical powersets (especially any of the Brick powersets), a tough/bulky looking appearance and the Mastermind personality.
• Giant Mook: Most groups of Mooks are usually accompanied by a larger and stronger Mook, with a life bar divided into two parts. These Mooks usually measure at least 7 feet tall, so they are almost always taller than the player. (Not counting buffs, the max height for players is 7 feet)
• Ghost Town: Not one but two of them on the Southwest Desert map: Burnside and the remains of an unnamed town on the eastern slopes of Atomic Wastelands.
• Glasgow Grin: Black Harlequin will occasionally threaten to carve smiles into peoples' faces.
• Global Currency: Pretty much like in World of Warcraft; but named Global, National and Local resources. One guess at the colors. On the other hand:
• Global Currency Exception: In addition to Resources, players can earn Snakebucks (for the Snake Gulch amusement park), Acclaim (gained in PvP, used to buy items and rewards), UNITY and Nemesis Tokens (gained by completing UNITY and Nemesis missions, respectively, used for very high level, exorbitantly priced rewards), Recognition (randomly dropped by monsters of an appropriate level), Drifter Salvage (from Lockboxes), Questionite ore...there's a lot of alternate currencies, is what we're saying.
  • Your Money Is No Good Here: Naturally, for every currency, there are vendors that will accept no other.
• Harmless Villain: Foxbat, most of the time. His Fanboys and Foxbattle Bots are way fiercer than he is ("Foxbat says we're not to hurt you, but when the Fox is away, the Foxbattlebots will play!") and his actions are more public nuisance than super-crime. He steals ping-pong balls pretty early on. And Bluejay, who has absolutely no intention of harming people, but unfortunately happens to be terribly accident prone. And Lynx, who only works for Overbrain to pay her debts and quits the fight once you get her down to 1/3 HP. But despite them all lacking evil intentions, they can still be challenging opponents in battle.
  • A little piece of lore hints that Foxbat is doing all of this to "forge new heroes in fox-battle", either to indirectly help fighting serious villains or...just to have someone to play hero and villan with. Either way, he is just "playing his role".
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: A similar, chilling soundtrack while in the indoor areas of Whiteout.
• Herr Doktor: Doctor Ohm and Doctor Von Schultz both speak with a thick, stereotypical accent. And of course, Doctor Destroyer, though he lacks the accent.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: Lampshaded with Black Mist. He wears a black suit in the white wilderness of Canada and keeps loudly "whispering" to his underlings to be "Silent! And stealthy... Like the ninja..." while they don't say anything at all.
• Homing Boulders: Inevitable, as nearly all ranged attacks are homing, although at least you can block between the throw and the impact.
• Hostile Terraforming: The Gadroon, a frog-like alien species, want to xenoform Earth into a much warmer and swampier habitat for themselves, starting in Canada.
• Hulk Speak: Hulk-expy Grond, many of the evil Manimals, and the Irradiates speak like this. The latter even lampshade it in-game: "Grrr... Why radioactive mutants talk with poor syntax?"
• 100% Heroism Rating: Civilians will approach and mention your exploits. Sadly, this means thanking you for finishing the tutorial until the very end of your days. Over. And over. Again. Still, how would you react if you met someone who saved the world?
• Improbable Power Discrepancy: At the end of the series of missions that occur between levels 6 and 15. The villain summons a powerful interdimensional dragon that can kill all previous bosses at the same time with ease and is apparently so powerful that can take over the city. In the gameplay he is slightly more powerful than the bosses he killed and can be defeated by 1 or 2 level 15 players.
• Impossible Item Drop: "Hey, this radioactive shark dropped a combat vest upgrade!" Sharks eat anything. Now, when a school of piranha drop a large intact item of any sort...
• In Name Only: The game mechanics are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the original PNP game, having a fraction of its versatility and content. Only the NPCs are directly from the Champions tabletop RPG.
• Instant Runes: Magic practitioners can create these.
• Interface Screw: Some instances add a creepy border around your field of vision or other effect. Suitably atmospheric.
  • A more unintentional, but very annoying, interface screw comes from a combination of choosing the flight power and fighting any enemy that has knockback. You quickly get knocked to the ceiling if there is one, and then you can't see any enemies, so you have no idea where they all are until you either go back down or adjust your camera angle.
• Invincible Minor Minion: The Qularr Assault Ships in the tutorial. They can attack, but do it aimlessly and are no real threat.
• Knight of Cerebus: Similar how to the other game's later expansions had more mature plotlines, Vibora Bay has a pair of genuinely scary (and epic) villains: Therakiel and Shadow Destroyer. Even Monster Island and Lemuria Crisis are considered dark compared to the typical arcs in the game. NPCs you have met die, there are implications of cannibalism, and major betrayals occur.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Many. Burt Jackson, Rob Mahogany and his co-workers, Clayton Griswald and Oceanica Airlines, just to name a few.
• Light Is Not Good: The local Knight of Cerebus, Therakiel and his Nephilim minions, are certainly a bit uglier then typical examples of this trope... but otherwise fit completely, with Therakiel calling himself "The Bright" and all of them using light-based powers.
  • Similarly, you can give your nemesis the Celestial powerset, which uses a lot of light based attacks.
• Little Green Men: The Gadroon are green, frog-like aliens whose clothing and technology design couldn't scream 'Raygun Gothic' any louder.
• Lovecraft Lite: All over the game. Aftershock, Demonflame, any DEMON mission, and the Lemurian Crisis are all tied to the Lovecraftian horrors, the Kings of Edom.
• Mad Scientist: Teleios, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Destroyer, Dr. Talos, Several Viper leaders and many others. In some missions there are even 'evil scientists' as enemies.
• Meaningful Name: The comic series Aftershock deals with the aftermath of both the Serpent Lantern and Demonflame adventure packs.
• Mini-Boss: The master-villains, they are not as strong as a Supervillain, but they can represent a threat for a solitary player.
• Mirror Universe: The Multifarian Earth, with everyone who's villainous in our world being heroes, and everyone who's heroic in our world being villains. Its version of Destroyer (a.k.a. Shadow Destroyer) is the equivalent of the evil villain that destroyed Detroit, but in this world he took it over instead, and he relies more on arcane sorcery than his power armor. Oh, and underneath that costume is James Harmon IV, who is Defender in the Champions' Earth! However, Dr. Destroyer is a subversion, for he is the one and SAME Destroyer from the Champion's Earth, instead engaging in an Enemy Mine with the player.
• Money Sink:
  • Costume changes, extra bank or equipment slots and a variety of consumable devices...and, of course, the retcon system.
  • After Perfect World Entertainment took over as the game's publisher, Lockboxes which require Cosmic Keys to open were introduced. Keys can be bought with Zen or traded with other players. A March 2024 update added the option to buy unlocked Lockboxes with Drifter Salvage.
• Mooks: Supervillains need them, therefore most supervillains have them. Mooks are the majority of enemies in this game, reaching from ordinary street thugs over terrorist, mercs and evil cultists to Mecha-Mooks, Zombies and various kinds of mutants, aliens and demons.
  • A special mention goes to Foxbat, whose Mooks are Fanboys attacking with foam fingers and "Foxbattle Bots" carrying spotlights, cameras and speakers.
  • When creating a Nemesis, you also get to chose a set of Mooks for them and a set of powers for these. Most of the Nemesis Minions are recolored versions of regular Mooks.
• Moose and Maple Syrup: The real examples of this trope are the Hunter Patriots, an equally stereotypical and incompetent group of Anti-British terrorists. Their plans to take over Canada involve such things as bomb-laden Zambonis, questionite curling stone cannons, radioactive Loonie Coins, nanite-infused Poutine gravy and a maple-powered Death Ray.
• My Brain Is Big: The supervillains Menton and Brain Drain have both abnormally large, partly exposed brains and Psychic Powers. But they also subvert this trope; being actually not as smart as they think.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: While it hardly makes them unfair in terms of enemy strength or general difficulty, players can only envy the NPCs for their exclusive powers—and costume pieces. However, the cases that really matter in terms of gameplay are the following:
  • NPCs tend to have powers that don't match their level or power set. For example: the DEMON Maleficias, dark magicians, have the Chest Beam power from the Power Armor set and the aquatic Lemurian Broodmother can shoot Fireballs.
  • In some cases, a power works very different depending on if a player or a NPC uses it. For example, an NPC's Lightning Arc stuns the target, Mighty Leap becomes chargeable and Hurl goes as far as having even a different animation, in addition to gaining a knock back effect. The NPC version of life drain, helpfully lead into with the user yelling "Your soul will be MINE!", is a lot more powerful than the version players get; if unblocked, it can easily take out more than half of your health. ARGENT Cyborg chest beams restore their health if you don't block...the list goes on.
  • A number of NPC-exclusive powers, like the MP draining Neutralizer Grenade or the Empyrean Constructs' simple yet greatly envied ability to walk on the sea floor in Lemuria, are apparently "too useful" for players to have.
    • A blatant example is the fact that all NPCs have two basic attacks, one ranged and one melee, which the game explicitely prohibits players to have.
  • NPCs also get to wear a number of costume pieces — and even colors — that are not unlockable for players, and can combine them without the limitations of the player character editor. Most infamously, four arms.
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: Typified by VIPER, who hang around anywhere and everywhere.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The player might feel this way after releasing Dr. Destroyer in Resistance. Granted, it's the lesser of two evils, but you're basically releasing a German Osama Bin Laden to fight an American Hitler.
  • And then there is the prologue mission arc to the Vibora Bay Apocalypse.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: A combination of Shadow Destroyer's Magitek and Therakiel's own mystical energy was the key to avert the Vibora Bay Apocalypse. Pure irony!
• Nightmare Sequence: The player must save two NPCs from one in Aftershock #4. Unlike a lot of missions directly linked to a main quest in the game, you can fail and condemn them to a Fate Worse than Death...and the main mission will continue. Also, the players are thrown into one in Demonflame.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Rule of Cool applies: Radioactive Communist Zombies, Radioactive Sharks, Robot Sharks, Robot Pirates, Ghostly Pirates, Lizard-man Wizards, Demonic Fish-people... and that's all in one map! Another map contains both Cowboy Robots and Cowboy Ghosts. And yet another map contains Ninja Vampires and Two-gun rapid firing Werewolves.
• No Hero Discount: Averted: Currency isn't the traditional gold/silver/bronze fantasy coin, but instead Resources—which represent a character's influence on a global, national and local scale. A player character literally never pays for anything they get, instead trading favours and contacts for the goods or materials they need. However, since costs incurred by military operations are described in dollars, it seems muggles have to deal with paying the old-fashioned way. On the other hand, donating to charity means your reputation isn't as good.
• No OSHA Compliance: In the Lemurian Submarine area there is a glowing green radiation dump... surrounded by a number of important, unshielded contacts. A few metres away, the submarine bay doors have no safety rails. Handwaved by one of the contacts, who mentions the radiation dump has an invisible force field over it.
• Notice This: Mission items in Champions Online flash brightly. When they're not hidden in a corner that you miss.
• Only Six Faces: While averted (for the most part) with the males, due to the highly versatile creator, many female faces unfortunately tend to look alike without drastic measures. Barring the inhuman ones, of course. Though this is as much a result of Beauty Is Never Tarnished as anything else, as everyone will happily make ugly males and handsome males alike but everyone wants only beautiful females.
  • With the facial options in the creator, you can make some rather ugly women as well. And you don't even need zombie-faces (or an Elder Worm head) for it.
• Our Demons Are Different: There are Ice Demons, classic Fire Demons, Lava Demons, Water Demons, Chaos/Darkness Demons and Infernal (toxic) Demons, working for seemingly unconnected factions. Players can summon some of them via summon powers, items and devices. To be fair, most of those demons are enslaved by either DEMON or the Crowns of Krim. Or straight up serving the Kings of Edom.
• Perpetually Static:
  • There are the "Crisis" mission arcs you need to complete to unlock the regular version of the zones. The tutorial is actually a "Millennium City Crisis". The base you start in is pretty much in shambles until you manage to defeat the first main boss of the respective area. Once you do this, the most pressing of the locals' problems have been dealt with, the base is repaired, and the rest of the area opens up. The tutorial was eventually updated to be a virtual reality recreation of the Qularr Invasion, but the rest of the game still refers to the invasion as if it happened recently and the player character was involved.
  • Status Quo gets an enormous lampshade in the Vibora Bay television studio mission. In the washroom, an NPC called Aaron Coyle is washing his hands. Among his comments are "I always feel like I'm constantly washing my hands", "I'm surprised I haven't run out of soap", and "You would think after this long my hands would be clean."
  • Similarly, on the jet pad next to Renaissance Centre, a couple of staff are talking and one says "When does this shift end? I feel like we've been here forever."
• Player Versus Player: Combat between Heroes can be in the form of 'duels' or as part of organized 'Hero Games' team battles.
• Randomly Drops: Some missions require something which every enemy in an area will drop. Others require something which only some of them may happen to have. It gets ridiculous as one of the missions asks you to pick up a hat, a shirt and pants off a particular enemy group to use as a disguise... only to be handed a hologram device for the next mission involving Dressing as the Enemy.
• Religion of Evil: The DEMON cult, which seems self-consciously devoted to all things dark, fiery and evil. Even better, they think they're worshipping the equivalent of Satan. They're actually worshipping the anticreator.
• Retcon: The comic-book-appropriate term applied to the respec system for changing powers. Sadly changed though perhaps understandably so as non-comic book fans were getting really confused. Then it was retconned back in, with helpful little hints on the loading screens.
• The Roleplayer: The game has a surprisingly active and well-organized roleplaying community, and non-roleplayers tend not to mind roleplayers and vice-verse unlike a certain other game with a divided fanbase. Roleplaying hotspots include Sherrera's Bar, Carl's Gym, and Club Caprice, though it happens most anywhere. Roleplaying is even a preset Super Group (read: guild) description.
• Run, Don't Walk: Can be bypassed by using a slash command or setting a key for walking, but player characters do run by default.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: The newly added alerts suffer from an instanced version of this. Since alerts choose the members of a given team randomly from all the players queued, it's entirely possible to play the same alert multiple times with the same character and be curb stomped half the time — and risk falling asleep at the keyboard the other half.
• Screen Shake: For earthquakes or particularly powerful attacks. Exaggerated when volcanoes go off on Monster Island, almost to an annoying degree. Thankfully, the effect can be disabled in the options menu.
• Scunthorpe Problem:
  • A game about superheroes won't let you use the fragment "hero in" in your biography because it spells "heroin".
  • Also, the language filter censors "puta", because it is a rather rude Spanish term for a prostitute. Which seems reasonable until an NPC runs up to your hero and exclaims, "The city owes YOUR NAME HERE a debt of gratitude after he %$&@ stop to the alien invasion!"
  • Many of these ridiculous cases of censorship have been fixed by now. But others remain, especially when it comes to the word ass, which is taken up to eleven, to the point were even NUMBERS get filtered. Just try typing 'as 5', 'a 55' or '455' and you'll see. Although, the filter still seems to be somewhat sporadic. A specific example being that Grasshopper is rejected, but The Grasshopper is accepted just fine, despite both containing the word ass.
• Energy Weapon: There is a mission named Sharks with Frickin' Laser Beams involving shark men firing laser cannons at the WORLD'S BIGGEST FRICKIN' LASER CANNON!
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The conclusion of the Vibora Bay Crisis has you go back in time to before you started it.
• Shoulders of Doom:
  • The Power Armor set takes it literally, with shoulder-mounted gatling guns and missile launchers.
• Shout-Out : Now with its own page.
• Special Effect Branding: The ships of the alien enemy Qulaar are insectile and highly organic, while the ships of the froglike Gadroon are sleek, shiny, have no visible engine or thruster, and apparently Bigger on the Inside — a cruiser large enough for a full terraforming force with dozens of Gadroon is barely half again larger than an F-22. On the other hand, player characters have a huge variety of armor, weapon, and even jetpack styles to choose from, and many will mix and match.
• Starship Luxurious: Averted with the Cherenkov and the Nautilus, which are suitably cramped and claustrophobic. Played so straight it hurts with the Aegir, which is the size of a skyscraper. And we only get to see a small part of its interior.
• Stripperiffic: Inevitable with a game whose level of character customization is equal to City of Heroes.
  • Choosing the same color and texture for both a character's skin and Spandex can result in outfits so skimpy they barely pass as outfits as well as fully "nude" characters, which are usually removed quickly.
  • Getting naked is especially easy for Furries (although you could call their fur clothes). There are tight-fitting tiger and leopard-print clothes just to start, and a 'fur' pattern for your tights but not your skin, but if you choose Beast legs you are automatically prevented from wearing any other pants at all.
  • The breasts slider is a sign of Fridge Brilliance though — the slider is set to max as default, but max is still a reasonable C-cup. Some fiddling with sliders can accentuate the size, however.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Every hero can breathe underwater. The soldiers with wetsuits, flippers and oxygen tanks on their backs often have no mouth-pieces. This is handwaved. Taken even further in the sewer escape in Resistance. Your in a lower level of a sewer that gets completely filled with water while your being attacked by shark-people and have to fix the pump to drain the water. The civilians are fine after, even though you spend more time fighting and fixing than most regular humans can hold their breath. Justified by Griz being a superhuman and the others being Destroids in disguise.
• Take That!:
  • Grond: You as uninteresting as rival MMO! Grond leave now.
  • There's a quest in Vibora Bay which has you searching a garbage dumpster to find a "Sparkly book about vampires."
• Tarot Troubles: A quest in Downtown Millennium City has you collecting the scattered cards from a tarot deck capable of actual magic from DEMON cultists and their demonic minions that have gotten their hands on them.
• Threatening Shark:
  • The Karkaradons are shark men, serving and created by Shadow Destroyer.
  • Sbuverted with Megalodon, a huge mutant shark, though. He only appears in the Lemuria Crisis, where he is friendly due to being under the control of Amphibian.
• Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Doctor Destroyer, in Resistance: "JAMES HARMON! FACE ME!"
• Timed Mission:
  • The boss battle with Luther Black at the end of Demonflame. Thankfully, you can't really lose, as Time Travel means that you can just keep trying until you win.
  • Defensive missions also tend to be timed.
• Training Dummy:
  • And one named Buster in Teleios Tower. He is actually a boss fight. Attack him long enough and he eventually begin to fight back with completely random powers. His health is crazy high too. But if you manage to defeat him, he drops some great loot. Teams will often enter Teleios Tower just for a 'Buster Run'.
• Transformation Trinket:
  • You can buy Devices that allow you to transform into werewolves, vampires, demons, robots, djinns ect., which swap all your powers with specific new ones, some of which are unique and not yet available for player characters to learn.
  • And now you can get Hover Tanks, Jets and Grav Bikes (Oh my) as Devices. All of which can be upgraded with weapons and mods.
• Treacherous Quest Giver:
  • There's also Professor Ratso, a quest giver you meet in Monster Island. He sends you out to a chemical lab owned by Moreau to gather some mutagenic chemicals so that he can start reversing Moreau's work, only for it to turn out that he wants to continue it instead by using the chemicals in question to devolve humans into more manimals. He promptly turns on you immediately after the quest has been completed, and in the quest immediately following, appropriately titled "I Smell a Rat", you have to take him down along with every one of his allies.
• Unblockable Attack: You can block all kinds of attacks to lower the damage and prevent side effects like Knockback — except grenades! Their knockback is unblockable! You cannot block off their knock! It is unknown if this is a case of Fake Difficulty or just a glitch, but it makes fighting certain grenade-spamming ARGENT Mooks horribly tedious. Some players love to exploit this with the Frag Grenade power in PvP. As of November 2011, ARGENT and Viper grenades now only cause pushback, rather than knocking you off your feet.
  • A more intentional example of this is the VIPER Brickbuster's Cannon, which severely stunts the effectiveness of healing on yourself and reduces your defenses, even if you do block the damage burst. Best thing to do is to knock them down or out before they fire it off!
• Underwater City: The city of Lemuria, surrounded by Underwater Ruins. It seems that many players are not fond of this zone, making it subject to 'Down the Drain'. Mostly because A: the constant need to watch out for enemies floating just above and just below you, B: the difficulty of finding what door on a reef wall a vertical marker points at and C: the lag partially caused by mob density mentioned in A. Also, most travel powers are useless while underwater, since to move you're relegated to either swim or swim a little faster. Running powers retain their high speed, even while swimming instead of running. Dark Speed and Light Speed even retain their aura. The best example, however, would be teleport, which works exactly like it does above-land.
• Unwitting Pawn: The leadup to the Vibora Bay Apocalypse arc has you as one of these. And Valerian Scarlet wastes no time in rubbing it in when her Evil Plan (see above) comes to fruition.
• Vapor Ware: Almost 20 years passed between the development of the never-released first computer game adaptation of Champions and Champions Online.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Roin'esh is an alien race with this power. There's also two human shapeshifters in the desert that uses it to hide among Qularr.
• We Buy Anything: Arcane, three-eyed crafting vendors will happily buy any science and arms items that you wish to get rid of.
• Weird Currency: Resources, a measure of a character's influence on a local, national and global scale. You may not get money from the psychotic insectoid alien you just defeated, but it does wonders for your reputation.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Floodgate, who is described as a violent eco-terrorist with 'hydrokinetic' powers. She is never fought or even shows her powers in-game, but becomes an ally and contact to the player instead, in order to protect her beloved ocean from reckless Lemurian rebels, the Karkaradons and the Bleak Ones.
• The World Is Not Ready:
  • Subverted. Impossible architecture exists in the center of the re-built Detroit, and one of the splash screens explains that super-science has eliminated many diseases and greatly boosted technology.
  • Played straight with the acceptance of artificial and especially mechanical lifeforms as equal to humans. To blame is Mechanon.
• Written Sound Effect: Above the heads of enemies about to pull off a powerful move. In addition, during the anniversary events you can get presents that give you a device which will create sound effect bubbles when your powers hit an enemy for five minutes.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The 'Bloodmoon' Halloween event. Also featuring werewolves. That's not to mention the Hero Games Zombie Apocalypse map. A cabin, heroes and a whole lotta zombies. Oh, and player zombies. With all their powers.

Player attacks are designed to emulate many offensive superpowers including:

• BFS: The Heavy Weapons Set lets you wield one. You can also wield an axe or a hammer, should you prefer those options.
• Blow You Away - Seems to be the Infinity +1 Element due to wielding Cold, Electrical and Crushing (kinetic force) damage combined.
• Dishing Out Dirt - This powerset is different from the other elemental powersets in that it is in the brick framework instead of energy projector framework.
• Dual Wielding: Pistols and whatever melee weapon you chose.
• Guns Akimbo: Characters that primarily use dual pistols are all about this, with Lead Tempest being probably the ultimate expression and looking like something out of Equilibrium.
• Gun Fu: A combination of the munitions powers and the Acrobatic travel ability leads to this, especially since you can fire your guns while running and jumping.
• The Gunslinger: As well as all the gun attacks, there are a whole load of ammo belts and holsters to choose from. Also, you can strap various guns to your back. There's also an AT called this that primarily uses stylish Munitions attacks like Bullet Ballet/Beatdown and Lead Tempest.
• Invisibility: The Night Warrior passive, which allows you to go invisible when you go into Stealth mode, and to unleash a devastating melee strike from stealth that does very heavy damage — enough to one-shot most players and single-player mobs and bosses. The word "Ninja" comes to mind when picturing this in action.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Micro Munitions power. Used a lot by ARGENT cyborgs and VIPER powered armor soldiers. Add a pair of rank 2 Munition Bots to triple the fun! Mega Destroids in Resistance have an exaggerated — or rather "actual Macross-level" — version of this!
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The shotgun, when fully charged, does fairly heavy damage, is an AOE, and knocks enemies down, making it a favorite power for Munitions players.
• Sniper Rifle: One of the most devastating Munitions powers in the game, which can hit for massive damage from farther away than other Munitions powers. Its main flaw is that you have to charge it up all the way before it can be used, and if it's interrupted, it doesn't work and the energy you devoted to it is wasted, making it undesirable for a heated battle. Its primary use is as an alpha strike to begin a major battle, major damage during boss battles, or to drop one or more tough enemies to make things easier on the rest of your party.
• Summon Magic: Demons, angels, animals, magical creatures, psionic constructs, golems, robots, toys and zombies.

Travel Powers include:

• Combat Parkour: What Acrobatics can feel like. It's a bit of Super-Speed and Superjump combined, and is the easiest power to just leave on all the time. True, you can't get away from enemies as easily. Instead, you get infinitely more interesting visuals.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: The 'swinging' power. It attaches to... thin air, apparently. It has also been suggested that there are simply a lot of invisible helicopters in the Champions universe. Considering not all zones are major metropolis' with an abundance of tall buildings to swing from, this is perhaps an Acceptable Break from Reality, but though the launcher resembles the one used by Batman, the 'swing anywhere' effect is a Mythology Gag homage to Spider-Man, who's been infamously noted in earlier years to webswing where there is nothing to snag on.
• In a Single Bound: The Acrobatics, Swinging, and Superjump powers let you jump over large items of varying height... and to survive the subsequent fall. Usually.
• Not Quite Flight: There is a number of flight powers that have the character "surfing" on flying objects. These are usually faster than the Video Game Flight powers, but tend to have bad cornering.
  • Earth Flight rips a chunk out the ground, which you can happily levitate under you. Alternatively, attempting earth flight while in mid-air or jumping results in a storm cloud.
  • The aforementioned Rainbow Flight has an alternate version based on this; riding a sparkling cloud and leaving a rainbow trail behind.
  • For a purely magical variety, there is the Magic Carpet, and for a purely technological variety, the Hover Disk.
  • There's also the Ice Board, which works a bit differently: It lets you slowly fall unless you hold down the jump button to gain altitude.
• Punny Name: "Rad" is German for "wheel".
• Super-Speed: There's a Light Speed variety, complete with light trails and the rare and hard to get device-based Dark Speed. Burning Speed leaves a trail of flames and fire off your body. Ü Contrary to Word of God, they are all equally fast.
• Tunnel King: Leaves a Wormsign behind you. Strangely, you can't tunnel upward or under ABOVE GROUND obstacles with it, but easily through thin platforms and glass while being not visible at all, except for a trail of rocks you leave behind regardless of the material you're digging through. If you move over an edge you could safely jump down above ground, you'll take a ridiculous amount of fall damage WHILE STILL BEING SUBMERGED! Popping the Ascension power — which is an ability that temporarily boosts your other powers and gives you flight — while digging allows you to dig through the skies at ridiculous speed. While remaining completely invisible to anything not explicitly anti-air. Considering the illogical flaws and the fact that you can't use it to escape from fights, because it takes to much time to burrow into the ground and you're defenseless while trying, it is not a surprise that Tunneling is the 'Heart' amongst the travel powers. With the addition of the Scarab Tunneling power during Halloween 2011, there is now a tunneling power with no activation period before vanishing.
• There is a set of three special device-based travel powers you can craft, depending on the crafting profession you have. In any case, the components needed to craft them are hard to get and in masses you would never even get to see if you don't go hardcore farming for them — or buy them for horrendous amounts of Global resources (i.e. Gold) you won't get an eye on without hardcore farming either.
  • Science allowed you to craft the 'Storm Rider' (a.k.a. Electric Flight); a Video Game Flight power with electricity arcing constantly over your hands and feet. NPC hero Celestar in Canada displays this power.
  • Mysticism gives you 'Etheric Flight'; another Video Game Flight power that has you surrounded by magic circles and leaving a trail of runes behind.
  • And Arms let you craft the 'R.A.D. Sphere' that allows your character to curl up and roll around. This is essentially Super-Speed, but also grants a defense boost.
  • These are all now rotated back into the Questionite Store on special occasions like the yearly anniversary event.
• Video Game Flight.: Leads to many Flying Brick chracters. There's also Fire Flight, the rather comical Rainbow Flight (leaving a rainbow trail), the Phoenix Flight (having the user grow fire wings and a huge blast-off effect), the Tornado Flight (having the user floating on a whirlwind) and the not chargable ones; the slow starting but in the end really fast Jet Boots and the average fast but good at cornering Jet Pack.

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