Not every superhero was bitten by a radioactive arachnid or born with jacked-up genes; some heroes must pull themselves up by their boostraps and a whole lot of weaponry. That’s where DC Universe Online’s new munitions powerset comes in, for the masked vigilante who would rather rely on raw firepower than a bag of mutated tricks.
We sat in with DCUO Senior Creative Director Jens Andersen to get an in-depth look at what munitions looks like in a live fire environment. While we don’t know when munitions will go in the game, Andersen said that it will be released as a purchasable standalone power as part of the team’s new piecemeal approach to updates.
Munitions was inspired by comic book characters that don’t have innate abilities but rely on weapons to get the job done (such as Deadshot and Arsenal). While some of the weapons can be a little futuristic, the idea is to take a regular hero and give him or her enough firepower to go toe-to-toe with superpowered beings. It’s a separate type of powerset than gadgets, which Andersen says is the difference between Sgt. Rock and Batman.
The powerset has a wide variety of weapons with which to play, starting with shotguns, sniper rifles, and rocket launchers, and then going to near-futuristic toys such as lasers, particle guns, and rail guns. Players can specialize by investing traits into the two munitions trees: guts (conventional weapons) and glory (futuristic weapons).
Munitions heroes can function in a DPS or a controller stance, with the latter contributing to a group by crowd controlling adds, debuffing enemies, and providing power back to allies. They can get a damage increase by continuing to use one type of weapon for several seconds in a row, triggering what’s called bullet frenzy.
Some of the fun tools that munitions has to offer include a mini-nuke, a rocket jump, and an active suppression system that raises a shield when the hero gets hit.
We did ask whether DCUO has plans to synergize with the growing line-up of DC movies coming out over the next few years. Andersen said that Daybreak is keeping it in mind but didn’t want to share any specifics.
