What do you really think of Champions Online? [Archive]

Rapier

Jan 31st, '10, 11:50 AM

I was seriously considering purchasing a lifetime subscription. I had even saved and scrimped to get the cash to do so. Then I played the open-beta and not only did not purchase the lifetime, I cancelled my pre-order.

- I wasn't fond of the animation.

- The gameplay seemed difficult at time. I can't tell you how often I would have to make multiple attempts to lift a hunk of concrete off a bystander.

- I frequently found myself unclear on mission objectives (which, I will admit was partly my fault, when i first started the game I was clicking things to see what did what and minimized the 'mission objectives' window, but also no where was the interface described well enough for me to know better)

- The biggest problem for me was mission objective camping/griefing. I need to rescue this one guy for the mission so I'm standing there waiting for him to spawn. He spawns, and some jerk runs in and grabs him while I'm reading his text. This would happen multiple times so I would either need to ignore the story to rescue him or wait for an exteremly long frustrating time to complete the misison. Similarly this would happen with the loot found on the ground.

- I found the crafting system confusing and unclear as to the expected purpose/result.

- Having multiple instances of a map made it impossible to team. Even if you were on a particular instance, went into a door mission, when you exited we always ended up in a different instance.

- As many options as the character creator had, there was almost too many options. I wanted to create a powered armour character and never could seem to find the right pieces. And most of the faces had a rather simian appearance, which I found very unpleasing. It's nice and fun to have 4000000000 different possible combinations, but at the same time I didn't necessarily want to spend 20 hours creating a costume.

- The split between soloable and team necessary content was very spotty. Most of the mission I ran across were totally and completely soloable. Then all of the sudden WHAM here's a mission you simply cannot complete on your own. So you put up a team to complete that mission and the next missions are all soloable. The soloable missions were ludicrously boring for teams and did not scale up for the increased team size.

- I found the populace to be filled with griefing, kill-stealing, pre-pubescent, power-mad, power-gaming, teabagging assholes that I had absolutely no desire to spend time with.

incrdbil

Jan 31st, '10, 12:17 PM

- I found the populace to be filled with griefing, kill-stealing, pre-pubescent, power-mad, power-gaming, teabagging assholes that I had absolutely no desire to spend time with.

Well, it is an MMO after all.

McCoy

Jan 31st, '10, 12:26 PM

Could you perhaps be a bit more specific?
The only thing I found I could do in CO I couldn't do in CoX was take a piece of the landscape and clobber the bad guy with it. Very in genre.

Didn't find the controls for moving the character as intuitive as in CoX, never did figure out how to upgrade the powers, and on more than one occasion froze in the middle of combat, requiring me to reboot the computer. Not exit the program, reboot the computer; a problem I never experienced with CoX.

GamePhil

Jan 31st, '10, 02:02 PM

I, on the other hand, find the game to be in almost every particular superior to CoX except the polish. I have considerably greater control over what my character's powers are, have more fun with the crafting (not a lot more fun, mind, but more, and I don't have to scrounge for interesting recipes), like the graphics better, feel more like I'm teaming up with the world's established heroes rather than just doing jobs for them (that gets better in CoH in the later stages, though). The control scheme is slightly better.

None of which is really anything other than personal preference. CoX is the more polished game by far, and it shows. I simply think that should CO survive, I will find it an utterly superior game by the time it gets to an equivalent point in its life cycle that CoX is at now. At which point, if it is also still around, CoX will have progressed beyond that. So it goes, as he said, second-itis.

incrdbil

Jan 31st, '10, 02:40 PM

At which point, if it is also still around, CoX will have progressed beyond that. So it goes, as he said, second-itis.

By that point, it may be that CoX will be seen as suffering from 'first' itis, as CO has better graphics, powers, less antiquated character creation system tat doesnt force you into a few narrow roles. Grass is always greener etc., etc.,

AmadanNaBriona

Jan 31st, '10, 03:13 PM

I'm not really qualified to say, because I decided not to play it.

This was the first MMO that ALMOST broke through my "I ain't paying a fee to play a game I already bought" reluctance, then I read a few reviews and came to the conclusion that the above-mentioned problems, and more specifically the sub-par writing, wouldn't make it worth my filthy lucre.

Patriot

Jan 31st, '10, 07:37 PM

Anyone interested in buying a lifetime subscription and account?
Free time equals about 5 minutes more then zero.

Rapier

Jan 31st, '10, 09:35 PM

By that point, it may be that CoX will be seen as suffering from 'first' itis, as CO has better graphics, powers, less antiquated character creation system tat doesnt force you into a few narrow roles. Grass is always greener etc., etc.,

Well, perhaps, at least until Going Rogue comes out. It will be their first upgrade of the graphics engine which should put it on par with CO, if not beyond.

Rapier

Jan 31st, '10, 10:53 PM

Well, it is an MMO after all.

Well yes and no. MMOs are full of people, and I'm not so fond of people. However, not all MMOs are as liberally salted with the undesirable antisocial element. CoX has it's share, but tends more towards the lower end of the undesirable spectrum.

Other games, like WoW and CO and UO, tend towards the very top of the undesirable spectrum.

Zed-F

Feb 1st, '10, 12:28 PM

So, what has your experience of Champions Online been? Overall enjoyable, or disappointing?
Overall, an enjoyable time-waster, but not very intellectually challenging or deep. Mind you, it's really not billed as the latter.

Sufficiently challenging, too much, or not enough?
Too easy for my taste, but then most MMOs fall into that category.

Are you satisfied with the amount and variety of what's available?
I would say it's a decent start, and I enjoyed my time up until the point where I got bored with it, but there isn't nearly enough for me to be satisfied on a long-term basis.

What stands out in your minds as particularly good or bad: graphics and sounds, gameplay, character creation, zones, missions?
Character creation is rightly lauded as a strength of the game, but otherwise I wasn't really wowed by anything. Missions tend to be pretty samey after a while, as there are very few puzzles and everything rotates around 'find bad guy, beat him up, and go through his pockets for loose change.' The variety/challenge of play experience could use some work... but again, most MMOs have this problem, at least for solo-able content.

Have you had many technical problems?
Not many.

Anything you would change if you could, and if so what and how?
I would eliminate the subscription fee and move to a Guild Wars- style revenue model. ;) To me the subscription price is the biggest obstacle to continued play on a casual basis, and in my opinion, no game is worth the amount of money lifetime subscribers pay for the privelage. I'm the kind of person who will find the right game with a box purchase price and a free-to-play model, and then keep playing that game off and on for years with no additional dollars invested beyond expansion box prices. Subscription fees are anathema to my style of game purchase and play.

Do you feel you've gotten your money's worth? Do you intend to keep playing?
Yes, and no, respectively -- at least until I've gotten over the feeling of 'been there, done that' with respect to existing content, and there is a substantial amount of new content available at what I consider a value price.

Deadborder

Feb 1st, '10, 02:26 PM

So, what has your experience of Champions Online been? Overall enjoyable, or disappointing?

Very, very disspaointing. Oh, it started off well enough, and was defintely enjoyable to begin with. However, as time qwent on, it quickly became apparent that the game had more then is share of flaws. The wrtiting was, to put simply, terrible. Everything quickly degenerated into "Insert silly pop culture reference here", with shallow, one-dimensional characters who acted more like parodies then anything else. My inner Champions Lore nerd began to visibly wince as it went along.

The other thing was a problem was the content, or, more to the point, lack thereof. Not only was there not enough levelling content - there were long gaps where I had nothing to do bu walk around and hope I would stumble onto a citizen in distrees mission or a questgiver object/NPC/whatever that werre stupidly hidden and out of the way (and there were way too many of those). Then you get to endgame where there's nothing to actually do, save for horribly buggy UNITY missions. And even then, tose seem to recycle every decond day or so.

Oh, and then there's the much-hyped Nemesis content - or lack thereof. The missions didn't vary at all depending on nemesis type, and certainly with so few missions, there was very little incentive to do more Nemesis missions. It got so bad that in my gorup of fridnd, we were joking thet Nemesises just kept passing that Lava Lair and Death Ray around.

Sufficiently challenging, too much, or not enough?

In intentional difficulty? Challenging enough. In actual difficulty? Well, being pure Melee made the game incredibly frustrating at the best of times; being constnatly knocked back or out of range, or having enemies avoid my charged attacks by simply moving back half an inch.

Oh, and the five-man lairs were horribly broken and painfully unfun.

Are you satisfied with the amount and variety of what's available?

Chracter generation was awesome. The variety of evertything else was incredibly lacking. You've slugged one VIPER goon, you've slugged them all. The missions got very repeditive very quickly, the constant copypaste environments gave a great feeling of "been there, slugged that". And when you knew there was another terribad pop culture joke looming like a giant predatory bird (See what I did there?), there was little incentive to care.

What stands out in your minds as particularly good or bad: graphics and sounds, gameplay, character creation, zones, missions?

The good:

Character creation
The combat system (when it works right)
General gameplay
The graphics

The bad:

The lack of content
Repetition
The dumb pop cultre refs
Repetition
Having nothing to do at max level but roll another alt
Repetition
Lemuria
Repetition
Lemuria
Repitition
Oh yeah, Lemuria.

Have you had many technical problems?

Lots. Plenty of freezing, grpahical lag, glitching, stuttering framerates, terrible lag in 5-man lairs, Lemuria's generall rubberbanding, superlag and, well being Lemuria and disconnections. And constnat streams thereof. Some days it was easier to say hwne the game was working right.

Anything you would change if you could, and if so what and how?

Lots. Look at what I covered above

Do you feel you've gotten your money's worth?

Hell no

Do you intend to keep playing?

I cancelled my subscription. The rest of the SG I was in cancelled their subscriptions as well.

With all that being said, yes, I enjoyed elements of the game and certainly I had a lot more fun with it then I ever did with City of Heroes. I enjhoyed playing a Superhero game, and certainly felt more like a superhero then I ever did in CoH. That being said, with all the problems I was having, I found that I couldn't justify keeping the game; the minimal fun that I was having after a few months was being steamrolled by all the problems.

Enforcer84

Feb 1st, '10, 08:47 PM

Bought the lifetime sub. And initially I'm sorry I did. Game looks like crap on my machine. I'm considering upgrading my graphics card to see if that helps. The game is jerky and while It's cool to pick up debris and clobber with it, I haven't figured out how to just drop it reliably.

Oh and I constantly have to make selections twice because of lag. And nothing has stood out for me content wise.

But most of all, my online gaming buddies don't play and I'm lonely.

However, I'm in it for the long run and upgrades to my computer and periodic retries might change my mind.

GamePhil

Feb 3rd, '10, 10:19 AM

Well, perhaps, at least until Going Rogue comes out. It will be their first upgrade of the graphics engine which should put it on par with CO, if not beyond.

Possibly, though actually I rather doubt it. I still enjoy CoH, though, so it doesn't matter much, I'll get it and see. But for my personal tastes it will certainly not put it on par with CO or beyond, simply because I prefer the art style in CO, and that's very unlikely to change.

lemming

Feb 3rd, '10, 05:06 PM

Possibly, though actually I rather doubt it. I still enjoy CoH, though, so it doesn't matter much, I'll get it and see. But for my personal tastes it will certainly not put it on par with CO or beyond, simply because I prefer the art style in CO, and that's very unlikely to change.

I don't see the art style changing either (at least by the previews I've seen) Most of the new stuff sounded cool, but I don't know if my system will be able to handle them. We'll see.

GamePhil

Feb 3rd, '10, 07:03 PM

I don't see the art style changing either (at least by the previews I've seen) Most of the new stuff sounded cool, but I don't know if my system will be able to handle them. We'll see.

If it does what it sounds like it's going to, I'll buy it just to be able to play Professor Scarab as a hero.

lemming

Feb 3rd, '10, 08:14 PM

If it does what it sounds like it's going to, I'll buy it just to be able to play Professor Scarab as a hero.

A couple of my origins were based on being able to change from villain to hero, so for that I'm pretty excited. The reflection in windows, etc... of the graphics will be neat.

Catacomb

Feb 3rd, '10, 08:15 PM

As my side job has been video game reviews I'd like to take a crack at your question.

First off, let's go into the nuts and bolts of CO. One of my favorite sites to check before I load up a game is right here; http://cyri.systemrequirementslab.com/srtest/ - Can you run it? Its a great litmus test, and it lets you know exactly where you stand in the grand scheme of things. You'll notice right away that CO requires a massive amount of power when compared to WoW, the notorious resource hog AoC, and even CoX - the last of which should concern anyone looking to get into CO.

Why? To put it bluntly CO is graphically inferior to ALL of the above mentioned games, and its not even a close race. CoX has an amazing character creator as well(Arguably far superior), and it has another advantage over CO, multiple servers. This, of course, helps with resource allocation and allows for smoother combat in non instanced zones. So already CO has two strikes against it when compared to its direct competition, but that's not all by a long shot.

You would think that in a game like CO you could build a framework and then go from there(Since that is the very appeal of the Hero System), but that's not how it goes at all. Sure the bare minimum basics are there, but have you ever pvp'd? Anyone who has will know the following powers - bionic shielding, chainsaw gauntlet, regeneration, acrobatics, teleportation, laser sword, mini device - I won't name them all, but let me put it this way - you had better be rocking these if you want to be successful in any pvp combat. Don't believe me? Look me up, drop a duel, and I'll prove it. The imbalance of builds makes the game extremely frustrating for someone who actually wants character immersion. CO offers - in theory, infinite builds to explore and tailor to your character. Its only smoke and mirrors once you enter an arena.

"But I don't care about pvp!"

Then why are you playing CO? Seriously. The pve is a joke, and by no means a challenge. I understand you might not want the time sink that WoW is, but I have always seen games such as AoC as having a 'middle grounds' of sorts in this neighborhood. Sadly, there's just no meat when it comes to CO pve and that's just wrong. You cannot be completely imbalanced pvpwise and then offer nothing pvewise, it doesn't mean you cater to casuals. It means you have an unfinished game.

"I like being able to solo almost everything."

True, you can do that, unless you want to get into the one bright spot of CO - the depth of universe. The scripted uberboss fights are great; if unchallenging, and you lone wolf types will never know the most fun aspect of the game. As an aside, the universe is the ONLY aspect CO beats CoX - the only one.

Back to pvp and general balance issues. CO's devs need to understand that they have created an MMO in a world completely dominated by one product - WoW. You may hear how this class/build is dominating or OP, but to be honest it is probably the most balanced game - all around, ever created, which is a great reason for the appeal. So CO's devs look at that and they make sweeping changes to individual powers they see as broken; fair enough, but they make the greatest mistake of ANY dev team over the past several years. They overcompensate. This weakens a power in either pve or pvp, and in turn completely trashes a build someone may have been using for months... which alienates customers. It happened to WAR, it happened to AoC, it happened to Guild Wars, Shadowbane, and even CoX. Some survived the initial overcompensation, some did not. CO likely won't because rather than powering UP abilities to come in line with what was OP, they nerfed them to be either underpowered or worse - completely useless.

Don't take my word for it, just look at the boards.

At the end of the day CO is plagued with tons of problems and cannot compete with its opposite number - CoX, which is more entertaining, deeper, and much more likely to be here in the long run. Sadly, no one learned from Mythic's sad translation of WARHAMMER; you need more than just a property.

Rapier

Feb 3rd, '10, 09:18 PM

check before I load up a game is right here; http://cyri.systemrequirementslab.com/srtest/ - Can you run it? Its a great litmus test, and it lets you know exactly where you stand in the grand scheme of things.

I'm repping you for that. It's awesome.

antiklaus

Feb 3rd, '10, 10:24 PM

I tried to give it every chance to get better, despite the fact that it was a pale shadow of the pen and paper game. Sadly, in an attempt to 'balance' the game, they've resorted to putting every significant statistic on the "diminishing returns" model.

This model, as well as "rebalanced powers" has stripped away any sense of uniqueness in the characters and aside from visual differences made all of the characters into cookie cutter roles.

There are a total of 5 builds that have effective power sets, forcing a "class system" even when there isn't one.

Congrats on doing to me what I never thought was possible... make me associate the Champions label with something I truly despise.

I was fortunate enough to sell off my lifetime subscription at cost, so all I really lost was time and patience and the trust of friends who joined CO when I did.

Sadly, I see STO as following suit.

lemming

Feb 3rd, '10, 10:32 PM

I'm repping you for that. It's awesome.

*cough* I think you missed, but thanks for the rep.

GamePhil

Feb 3rd, '10, 10:35 PM

Why? To put it bluntly CO is graphically inferior to ALL of the above mentioned games, and its not even a close race. CoX has an amazing character creator as well(Arguably far superior), and it has another advantage over CO, multiple servers. This, of course, helps with resource allocation and allows for smoother combat in non instanced zones. So already CO has two strikes against it when compared to its direct competition, but that's not all by a long shot.

Interesting that I disagree with all of these points. Think it's a matter of taste. I can't see the graphics of WoW to be superior, and certainly don't find the character creator in CoX to be even arguably superior. As for multiple servers, they may help in some areas but they split up your player base, so it's a give and take kind of thing. So, we shall see.

Rapier

Feb 3rd, '10, 11:30 PM

*cough* I think you missed, but thanks for the rep.

So I did. Shrug!

Catacomb

Feb 4th, '10, 02:41 AM

Interesting that I disagree with all of these points. Think it's a matter of taste. I can't see the graphics of WoW to be superior, and certainly don't find the character creator in CoX to be even arguably superior. As for multiple servers, they may help in some areas but they split up your player base, so it's a give and take kind of thing. So, we shall see.

Respectfully, pure pixels per screen are not arguable. CO's kinda cell shading, kinda not - is a detriment to performance. Also, in CoX you have almost every creation option with one exception - an in depth weapon customization in comparison. CoX has the power aura creator though and so it evens out imo. In the end CoX runs on a superior engine and the game is almost five years older than CO. It should not only not be that way, it shouldn't even be close.

GamePhil

Feb 5th, '10, 02:23 PM

Respectfully, pure pixels per screen are not arguable. CO's kinda cell shading, kinda not - is a detriment to performance. Also, in CoX you have almost every creation option with one exception - an in depth weapon customization in comparison. CoX has the power aura creator though and so it evens out imo. In the end CoX runs on a superior engine and the game is almost five years older than CO. It should not only not be that way, it shouldn't even be close.

No, it's not arguable, but who cares? I like the look in CO. I detest the look in WoW. Guess which I'll pick?

I don't have almost every creation option in CoX, I am constrained by the antiquated character class idea. It's true that I have every costume creation option, however, but that's not the only thing that I want from the game. I'd actually prefer a game that was even more freeform than CO, but it's a step in the right direction, so I'm going to go with it, thanks.

But, whatever. The things you want out of a game are clearly different from what I want out of a game, and that's just fine by me. I just don't get why there is the need to try to prove someone that doesn't agree with your wall of text wrong. But that's just fine, I'll bow out now, since while you started with "respectfully", I'm not feeling it.

incrdbil

Feb 5th, '10, 02:42 PM

As
Why? To put it bluntly CO is graphically inferior to ALL of the above mentioned games, and its not even a close race.

What are you guidelines on that, out of curioisity?

CoX has an amazing character creator as well(Arguably far superior)[/QUOTE]

And others would say its far inferior. Sort of subjective wouldnt you say?

Sure the bare minimum basics are there, but have you ever pvp'd? Anyone who has will know the following powers - bionic shielding, chainsaw gauntlet, regeneration, acrobatics, teleportation, laser sword, mini device - I won't name them all, but let me put it this way - you had better be rocking these if you want to be successful in any pvp combat.

What, PVP leads to certain optimized builds? How this is different from CoX escapes me. But then, I despise PVP, and I dont care if the PVP experience horribly sucks.

"But I don't care about pvp!"

Then why are you playing CO? Seriously. The pve is a joke, and by no means a challenge.

yeah..I see where this is going.

Don't take my word for it, just look at the boards.

Sort of like the CoX boards. Whiners whining that their preferred play style/build isnt better than all others, and its just unfair....its eternal puberty. IOW, standard for PVP board in general.

EDIT: yes, there are exceptional scholars and gentlepersons among PVP'rs. Sadly, they are the definite minority.

Catacomb

Feb 5th, '10, 07:05 PM

xenobrain

Feb 6th, '10, 06:33 AM

I found the very flexible character creation to be a strong point, with some "kewl powerz" (particularly travel powers) that are fun to use.

That said, the overall design of the game, questing, grouping etc was simply not compelling for me. I lost interest before the first month was up.

Crimson-Hawk

Feb 9th, '10, 12:59 PM

Two things stop me from getting full-on into the game. One is finances. I'm a (retired) long-time player of both EQ1 and WoW, so I'm used to the pricing scheme that CO follows. Comparatively speaking, I feel it is fair. Sadly, I have only a part time job and need to support a wife and two children, so maintaining a subscription to the game isn't very responsible of me. More than likely, the wife will try to keep me from playing it anyway (she feels it locks my attention and keeps me from being a responsible father), so I wouldn't be able to get my full $15 worth out of the game each month, anyway.

The other thing preventing me from getting full-on into the game is the graphics engine. If the graphics engine were as light as the one used for DDO or Earth Eternal, I would be ecstatic. But I have a Compaq Presario v5000 laptop with 2 GB of RAM and an Intel graphics chip built into the motherboard. The one time I did install the game onto my own computer, I was able to get maybe 5 fps while in the Greenpeace headquarters. What times I have played the game, I snuck onto my mother-in-law's laptop to do so. I shouldn't have to do that.

Otherwise, I was having a blast with the game. I was able to build Crimson-Hawk and gallivant him about in the Southwest Desert zone for a little while before hitting Millennium City. That so much of that was solo'able was attractive to me. I had no problems following the storylines and achieving objectives. I even braved being in a group twice and found the experience very satisfying.

The one grief, if you could call it that, is one that someone else here on the boards has expressed (iirc). It does feel a lot like other, more traditional, MMOs as far as the grind quests and hunt for treasures are concerned. But the game does an excellent job of glossing over that with the Champions Universe flavor.

Tasha

Feb 15th, '10, 10:08 PM

Ok I have been playing CO since BEFORE Closed Beta. I was one of a number of players to catch the end of Alpha or was it Friends adn Family Beta. The game was so bad that I didn't purchase it at or before launch and recommended against purchasing the game. Though I kept most of my opinions vague'ish here out of respect to Hero Games (At least before it launched, I offered my opinion a few weeks after launch).

Combat is repetitive and not really that much fun. Though they did cut back on the end builder spam, the whole "Action MMO" concept was flawed right from the start.

The Costume Generator is nice, but missing some enchancements that were added after Cryptic Left NCSoft and split into Paragon Studios and Cryptic Games. In fact some of the best stuff that has been added to CoX came after Cryptic left NCsoft. Things missing from the generator, Presets (for getting all of certain costume pieces together), uncluttered interface (heck the CO interface for Costume Generation is a mess). Good lighting on the character model during generation (I hammered them for months about this in beta).

The stories are clearly, derived from when the game was Marvel Online. Just turned a bit to make some sense in the Champions Universe. The Zones are still a bit cluttered, and the stories after you get out of the starting zones (In beta we only really tested the starting zones and Monster Island) are quite lacking in depth and that something that grabs you and makes you care.

The graphics on my GeForce 8800GTX 768mb video card frankly stunk. Everything looked quite muddy with that card, it was like playing in the fog. Also the decision to put a hard black line around the models just ruined my immersion. It's another case of Cryptic thinking something was cool, when it was actually quite lame and caused their graphics to look VERY dated. BTW a new GeForce 275GT OC card cleared up the Graphics and the game no longer looks like I am playing in a foggy blurred mess.

When I got to Millennium City, I was annoyed with the lack of content. Also, I had issues finding where to go and what to do. Even those stupid circles on the quest maps didn't seem to help.

Also it took me forever to figure out how to get new powers etc. Crafting is ok , but not very exciting. I don't think that Cryptic really understands what Crafters want to see in a system or how to make one that is actually fun.

I think that CoX is a better game, not because of Cryptic but despite Cryptic's lazy game design. I think that Paragon Studios (formally NCsoft north), is doing a much better job with the game and actually care about the players and how to make their game more fun. The writing is much better on CoX than on Champions online. It's just a better game.

Now StarTrek Online is going to succeed despite Cryptic's ineptitude. The fact that it's Star Trek seems to make the lack luster game play and frequent bugs easier to over look.

Kisska

Mar 23rd, '10, 09:25 PM

Tried it didnt care for but then didnt care for CoX either didnt feel enough like champions to me but then neither does the new edition of champs pnp. Now character creation for Champs on line is fun though but not worth paying any money for.

Jagged

Mar 24th, '10, 07:29 AM

I only played in Beta but decided not to purchase for the following reasons:

1) Lack of content. I am a slow player, I like to take my time and it took me years to get through CoX content. But CO didn't seem to have enough at the start. Certainly less than its predecessor at launch.

2) Combat didn't excite. On paper I liked all the ideas as they described them. In actual play I found them wanting.

3) Didn't enjoy creating characters. Not sure how they managed to do that! I love creating characters! In CO I found it a chore. I also found it difficult to make my characters play differently. No doubt if you played them to higher levels you could make their powers extremely different but at the low levels I played before I got bored it was all too similar.

4) Cryptics attitude towards macro transactions. Didn't like the way this seemed to be going.

Derek Hiemforth

Mar 24th, '10, 09:12 AM

My "experience" has been null, because the decision was made to develop it solely for a platform that I don't own, and have no interest in acquiring. :( The game was initially announced for Windows PC and X-Box 360. I have a Windows machine, but it's not powerful enough in terms of graphics to run CO. I also don't have an X-Box 360.

However, I would have used the desire to try CO as the excuse to get an X-Box 360. There are also other X-Box 360 titles I would enjoy, and I wouldn't feel like I was buying new hardware just to play a single game. Of course, I could instead buy a new PC. Trouble is, other than the desire to try CO, I have absolutely no need for a new PC. I would literally be buying it just to play CO, as there are no other PC games that are both (A) too "advanced" for my existing PC to run and (B) interesting to me.

So once Cryptic went PC-only with the game, they lost me. That's kind of a bummer, because with the new Revelation expansion, some stuff that I created for the Vibora Bay book is now in the MMO, and it would be cool to see it in the game. But I'm not quite vain enough to drop several hundred dollars on a new PC just for that... :winkgrin:

pinecone

Mar 24th, '10, 03:22 PM

Killer Shrike

Mar 26th, '10, 06:18 AM

I like it ok, but I'm not compelled to play it. My highest level character has peaked; there's literally not one more additional ability I want for the character to the extent that I've run around with a power point for a couple levels now hoping they'll eventually add something I want.

I find the teaming or lack there of to be aggravating. If the game didn't insist on making all the key end of arc missions impossibly aggravating to solo I wouldn't mind but instead I blow thru the lead ups just grinding and then get stuck on the big end of arc missions. I've got a pile of them in my mission queue. CoX is the clear winner on teaming.

The replay value just doesn't seem to be there for me; I can't motivate myself to replay the early levels with a new character because there isn't enough variability to give me a different experience.

The "loot" and crafting aspect is not fun for me; there's just too much of it and most of it is drek. It takes to much diff'ing for me to determine what is better than I've already got, or not. Just a big distraction.

The place where CO wins for me is the setting. I mostly have fun seeing a visual representation of the Champions Universe, even if its a little skewed by the Cryptic changes to the IP.

Bottom line for me, I don't miss not playing CO, but I still fondly recall CoX and sometimes feel the itch to reactivate my sub and play it some more. My CoX characters have "soul" and I fondly remember them and how each of them "felt" different to play, while my CO characters are just pixels on the screen and all feel more or less the same to me - like an FPS spawned character. Despite the greater configuration options on picking powers, the characters seem to have little to no individuality.

However, I believe in the integrity and talent of DoJ and the quality of the IP, and I know that Cryptic can do great things (or at least has done so in the past). I'm a lifetime subscriber, and I'm comfortable waiting and seeing if Cryptic manages to pull their heads out and finish this game.

In the meantime I'm enjoying all the quality pen and paper RPG products DoJ's been able to turn out using the influx they've gotten from Cryptic. {Holds up beautiful 6e full color hardback} <- I consider this a win either way ;)

RexMundi

Mar 26th, '10, 06:39 AM

I've been wholly Underwhelmed with CO lately. I think mostly because of the typical MMO thing of pandering to the lowest common denominator. I did like the Lemuria Under Water area though, but I guess my biggest hangup is the WoW cartoony look. Doesn't work for me, even 4 Color Comics had more detail back in the day.

~Rex

Stormfalcon

Mar 31st, '10, 09:49 PM

Well, I took advantage of the recent free weekend to get a character up to 11. It's not bad, and I did feel more like playing a superhero than I did with CoX (actually taking on superhero-worthy opponents rather than random street thugs). A few quests felt grindy at times though (such as having to take down 150 mutates in Burning Sands). The environments were pretty good too.

However, I'm going to hold out a bit longer before activating my registration key. Yeah, I already bought it thanks to the big Steam holiday sale a while back. However, at the time I didn't have a system that could run it so I put it aside until I had one that does. My current system could handle it, but I want to get a better video card (probably an ATI 5750 or 5770) before fully diving in since it's currently running Intel G4x graphics, which does not do things justice at all. I'll at least enjoy the first month free at that point. Any further would hinge on their improving the content situation and hopefully seeing more options for character design (more costume pieces that'll let me get the characters closer to the concepts in my mind).

Checkmate

Apr 13th, '10, 04:41 PM

-I can take any of my five different builds in CoX and pvp with high competence. Those are just my five toons, its not limited to those builds.

-GFX in the games I mentioned are superior based solely on pixels per screen + FPS. A game can be drop dead gorgeous - doesn't make a bit of difference if you're running it at 4 FPS.

-CoX has more build options in the character creator. Fire them both up, try and build your 'ideal' super and see which game can get it closer.

This isn't subjective and I am by no means a hater, but it is an inferior product. Sad but true.
Really? That's interesting. I'm not sure I believe you, so prove it to me. Write a program that will add pixels to my screen. Gee why are you sitting there stumped? Oh right, there isn't a program in the world that can actually enhance my physical monitor is there?

The quality of graphics has absolutely NOTHING to do with pixels or Frames Per Second (FPS) both of which are dependent on HARDWARE. The actual quality of graphics for SOFTWARE comes from polygon count, which in all of the games you mention are INFERIOR to CO (especially WoW). The more polygons you have the more life-like the graphics, the more strain it puts on hardware, and you'll typically get lower FPS because the HARDWARE can't keep up. So from a purely fact basis CO is graphically superior to CoX or WoW.

Now I don't really like the style of the graphics in CO, which is purely subjective. IMHO I think CoX looks more like comic book heroes than CO. CoX also has less stringent hardware requirements because if their technically inferior graphics meaning the average PC will get better FPS using CoX.

RexMundi

Apr 14th, '10, 07:34 AM

Cox is more comic book looking, CO is more Cartoon looking.......CO still....HAS gotten a touch more interesting lately.....It's got me from Meh......to Meh +1.

~Rex

Certified

Apr 14th, '10, 09:34 AM

Cox is more comic book looking, CO is more Cartoon looking.......CO still....HAS gotten a touch more interesting lately.....It's got me from Meh......to Meh +1.

~Rex

Does that add 1 to both your attack and Damage with Meh?

Lord Liaden

Apr 14th, '10, 09:39 AM

Does that add 1 to both your attack and Damage with Meh?

A Staff of Withering Scorn. ;)

Mangle Paw

Apr 20th, '10, 03:18 AM

At this point, I like it very much. I bought into the lifetime and figure that between mo.s played and perqs like extra character slots, costume slots and the new VIP lounge, it has paid for itself.

I like the arcade feel of the games style. Blocking is critical, even for tanky brute types.

I love the costume creator and the open system of power picks.

I do feel that the game started with a load of balance problems, that would have been solved with a longer beta time frame, but I also see the need to get the game to a paying basis.

Just my 2 cents

MP

bobooton

May 5th, '10, 08:40 AM

I like the game, though it's been a couple months since I logged in. My wife and I both have lifetime subs. Unfortunately, she doesn't like the game much and strongly prefers COH/V. It didn't help that we had two grumpy old friends who just couldn't let go of COH long enough to give CO a legitimate shot. One hates cel-shading and stubbornly resists change, while the other takes to even small changes about as well as he'd take to someone kicking his cat. It also didn't help that my wife's laptop is a bit tired, but she has a new Asus on the way that should cure that.

Personally, I started avoiding CO due to my friends not playing it much, rampant imbalances, jarring changes that never seemed to target the real problems, and network issues. They're working on all that, but there are a lot of games out there that don't have those problems and I can play them right now while things get fixed on CO. When the fixes are in and the balance issues go from gaping chasms to cracks in the sidewalk, then I'll likely give it another shot. It's a good game with a chance at greatness, so I look forward to that day.

ChaplainAtheon

May 6th, '10, 05:56 AM

I played the beta and then a little after release and what I do like is the look and character creation processes. I was (and still am) a huge fan of the Hero System so I enjoyed the number crunchiness of the character choices and mechanics.

What I found when I played was definitely a very "new" game. Still had glitches, super running as a travel power suffered the same issues as CoH did in the beginning - any villain on the street you passed could hit you and knock you down no matter how much of a blur you were passing them, not all the character action and fight animations were appropriate for the move you were executing - I tried to make a mace wielding behemoth but he struck and leapt around as if he were a nimble ninja.

So I will see if it ever comes out for Xbox and try it there, perhaps back on the PC version in a year or so just to see what kinks they work out of it.

godfish

May 9th, '10, 04:52 AM

I've come back to it after getting a dose of it in the beta version. I'm really liking it right now, but to be honest that could be due to the utter dearth of 4-color superhero gaming in my current PnP queue (which only has urban dark fantasy and post-apocalyptia in it right now). I am still a little iffy about the "cell-shade" thing, but it's grown on me. I really like the character generation options, but I do find the interface for the creator a little unwieldy. I am a little disappointed that I can't change some of the colors on my power effects. For instance, on my gadgeteer's entangle grenades, the goop is always white, although my designated effect color is green. Being able to preview what some of the weapons (especially guns) look like would be a great option - maybe there's already a way to do this, but I haven't found it, and it's bloody expensive, especially early on, to change the costume. I can't explain how annoying it is to a superhero generation geek like me to see my undead gunfighter whip out modernized .45s.

I kind of accept the boss-poaching as par for the course, but it does get irritating. It's so easy to just group up quickly to snag the guy and let everyone get credit. **insert old geek grumbling here**

MrWolf

Jun 9th, '10, 05:19 AM

It's kinda fun for now. I signed up for a 3-month sub, after getting an impulse to try the free trial, aka the tutorial. Highest char is at 18. I still, mind you, have my CoX sub, but barely play - and LOTRO is the MMO that my wife plays with me.

When we have any time to do so... which is maybe about an hour a week these days, due to our 2-year old's current 10 pm sleeping time. After which I fall over, to be up when she gets up between 6 am and 7 am.

I will admit, I barely read the mission descriptions. Leveling is fast enough, though, that I'm enjoying the process of building the character(s).

Initially I thought the graphics were lame - on screenshots - but I'm okay with them now.

My only real problem with the game is that it's too freaking BRIGHT. If I play for more than an hour, my eyes hurt. Haven't had that happen with LOTRO *ever*.

dsatow

Jun 25th, '10, 01:34 PM

1) I dislike not having the "phone" system. Having to keep coming back to the contact is annoying even if I have a better travel power earlier on.
2) As having noted in other messages, the missions do not scale well to teams.
3) I haven't played other character types much, but there should be more team reliant powers. In CoX, the Controller and Defender classes while playable by itself, really shines in groups. It may be that these powers just aren't as prevalent in CO which indicates an issue in antagonist tactics or the fact that its playable by yourself. I am guessing that the best solution would be missions which require teams to complete at a moderate level. Tactical solution like agents who run up and need to be taken on by a tank with ranged support agents behind them. Even in the master villain scenes, ranged support would make the master villain solvable with only teammates.
4) CO would do well with a few complications. Players could have a vulnerability which increases damage to them or a psychological disadvantage which forces them to accept missions (must protect innocents, CvK, etc.). A DNPC would also be a nice hook for some missions. In exchange, the player could get one more power or talent.
5) While character design is OK, though some of the designs need work.
5a) The faces look too cartoony to me.
5b) The hairstyles don't look like comic book hairstyles. Most look flat and greasy to me.
5c) The shoes are fairly plain. Try making a female character with high heels.
5d) I don't know if its my graphics card but the clothing with skin options always seem jagged from a certain distance.
5e) The variance of weapons should be doubled.
6) Crafting seems useless and long. I tried to start with a crafting character but gave up quickly as blueprints and item acquisition seem to take too long.
7) I keep losing the placed powers. I play with a mouse on a laptop and rarely hit the number keys. Playing it in this style, I keep losing the power slotted to a number.
8) It would be nice if the mission trees actually "Y" branch every so often. Even if each branch would eventually end up at the same final mission. It would at least look like you had choice.

StormK

Jul 3rd, '10, 11:09 AM

I played City of Heroes/ City of Villains then got bored with it. Champions Online came out and I bought it and I loved it. The characters looked better, there were more costume options, and you could make a character that was very similar to, if not identical, your favorite Marvel or DC characters. Champions has a wider array of powers including movement powers that are unavailable in CoH. I created dozens of characters and played them up to tenth to sixteenth level. I really like the game-play and even though I am a strict solo player, the interactions with other players were always pleasant (surprisingly so). After a virus and reformatting of my hard drive, it was easy to get back into the game. I AM currently having a problem with my display driver not allowing me to update it which makes it difficult to play the game, but that is not CO's fault. I give it a 7.5-8 of 10.

Coolrush

Jul 13th, '10, 06:45 PM

Ive played 2 zones so far and I like it so far. The character design is interesting and I like the setting though I hate Defenders new look. Im considering trying out some new builds and powersets though I want to go through the game with my main character first.

Maelstrom

Jul 14th, '10, 05:14 PM

Gave it up. Not enough end-game content, and not enough variety.

TechKnight

Aug 10th, '10, 07:32 PM

Played the beta and liked it enough to buy a lifetime. Have to say I haven't logged on for a serious session in over a month. Hooked up with a supergroup, but never once ran any missions with any of them. Played solo for the most part with the occasional cooperative effort (not needed, but tried for the experience of grouping). I still like the game, but aren't really interested in repeating the same leveling path. Got the lifetime so I could check back in as new content develops...

Lucius

Aug 10th, '10, 08:12 PM

I almost never think of Champions Online at all.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary even wants to get one of those t shirts that say "What's Champions?" but have you ever tried to find a t shirt to fit a palindromedary?

ned-kogar

Aug 15th, '10, 07:52 AM

I almost never think of Champions Online at all.

Quantitative answer to a qualitative question. But still cute.

Lord Liaden

Aug 15th, '10, 10:04 PM

As I'm not a subscriber, don't have the computer setup to run Champions Online, and am not interested in MMORPGs generally, I have no experience with the game. However, as someone with considerable interest in the Champions Universe itself, I find it annoying that much of the evolution of the setting is now occurring through ongoing scenarios in the game to which I'm not privy. I'm also sometimes frustrated that non-subscribers can't post to the CO discussion forums. I often see members of that community asking CU-related questions to which I could happily supply answers if I could just get on the board. :(

RexMundi

Aug 16th, '10, 07:47 AM

Well, technically speaking it IS their setting now. Some back and forth would be nice. Honestly, the only reason I keep it around anymore is just for the character creater, then it's Print Screen, and some paste onto a character folder.

~Rex

Thunder92

Aug 19th, '10, 07:27 PM

I logged in to the game for the first time in months a week ago. Got a bunch of perks that they must have added. Also found some of my powers missing and other changes in my characters configuration. Must have been caused by one of the updates since I was last on.

I did enjoy the game. Maxed out my character and moved on to other hobbies. I have a lifetime subscription, so will probably return to it at some point in the future. I do agree that I can see myself using it as a character image creator for HD.

Was interesting reading Champions Universe and recognizing some of the online events.

Presbytier

Aug 27th, '10, 06:28 PM

I find it it considerably enjoyable. Being a big comic book fan growing up I am glad to finally see some of my ideas coming to life using their wonderful Character Creator; now if they can only get around to implementing an UGC system so I can create my own scenarios.:eg:

RexMundi

Aug 27th, '10, 09:09 PM

Presbytier

Aug 28th, '10, 01:53 PM

Starting to notice though that the folks that jumped in on the lifetime subscriptions, seem to have the better opinion of the game......methinks a trend, *shrug*........Could be worse I suppose. A UGC system would rekindle my interest and bolster my resistance to the things that irritate the hell out of me about the set up.

~Rex

The UGC would at least allow us to create our own scenarios, so we could essential create a good deal of content. Besides I am almost convinced that the players are capable of creating more compelling stories than the overly generic ones in the game.:thumbup:

RexMundi

Aug 28th, '10, 02:00 PM

Hell yeah, that's why I'd be interested in such a thing. The Generic got old before I burned up my second month of CO.

~Rex

Doc Shadow

Sep 5th, '10, 06:29 PM

Ok, I just got done giving it a try for a month. My impression is that it's pretty bland. Yes, there were some aspects that were enjoyable but by and large it was just blah.I find the crafting system to be just awful, and that goes for the dumba$$ equipment that I have to tack onto my characters in order to improve them. Something that I should be doing with with my XPs.

I'm sorry but this is not Champions except in the most superficial of ways. I'm done as of tomorrow and I won't be going back.

Descent

Sep 14th, '10, 09:59 PM

I played for a few hours in total. The char gen was very fun, and the game play was alright, but from what I heard, you only get a small handful of abilities, and that's it. Gameplay-wise, I felt like all I was doing was hitting 1-1-1-2-1-1-1-2 on the keyboard, with perhaps a third or fourth button.

After being told that was pretty much how the game plays through the higher levels, I cancelled my account about a week into playing. Maybe I was misinformed, but it just didn't sound engaging enough. I was hoping for more flexibility or variety I guess. I was somehow hoping for some magical marriage of pen and paper with MMO graphics and interactivity. If they were to add the Mission Architect feature from CoH, I would probably give it a try again. I'd love to somehow play pen and paper style with a game master, within the MMO. Why hasn't that happened yet?

flyingcircus

Sep 16th, '10, 02:54 PM

IMO the game should have used build for build, point for point the HERO system for character creation as is, it is lacking in power and character type builds. Example: No stretchy types, No Mimics or Power stealer types. They also need to add vehicles and the ability to travel through power-lines with electrical types. Just a few things off the top of my head.

RexMundi

Sep 18th, '10, 01:20 PM

I've noticed basically the single most common thing that the Pro people have, is the lifetime membership.....However since that's not available, I expect a few things coming up, to Kill CO, since it's not Champions enough to make the HERO folks happy, that just leaves the MMO folks, and that group, is very fickle. Attention Span of a gnat basically.

I expect a giagantic exodus for City of Heroes 2, DC Online, Knights of the Old Republic, then of course, what ever the only really successful MMO (WoW) comes up with as another chapter will draw even more folks away. Without something like UGC, or a real point build, or something different like stretchy characters, giant characters shrinkers and mimics etc.....It's just another MMO, and not a very exciting one for folks looking for Champions. It was cute for awhile, but it's basically, white bread mayo and bologna.....

~Rex

Patrick Mackey

Sep 22nd, '10, 12:08 PM

RexMundi

Sep 24th, '10, 09:12 AM

I actually kind of disagree. I write for the game (http://massively.com/tag/behind-the-mask) so I'm a little biased, but the game has come quite a long way since release. There's a lot of ways to build a character that doesn't cycle the same power over and over. The fact that the open character system is so open makes it a little unintuitive, but I feel it's worth the trouble to learn. After all, you guys learned how to play Champions, and that game has way, way more difficult nuances than CO does.

And that's very true Patrick, but unfortunently, much like any MMO, the game lacks the over riding controling influence of a GM that says, NO, that's just Stupid. While the open character system allows for a lot that is similar to the book game, it doesn't build the same way, to do the same stuff, and where it deviates it deviates so much, it actually irritates, especially to a lot of us that have been playing the Book version of the game, for Longer then what a lot of your typical MMO players have been Alive, or at least old enough to be outside past the time the street lights come on. It's not that we can't or don't want to learn it, it's that it's so simplified and easy it's like going back to playing chutes and ladders after you've been rated as a grand master in Chess or Go. The Lowest Common Denominator approach that any MMO takes to generating it's respective audience, bores the hell out me, probably a few others I can think of as well.

While it HAS come a long way, it's also exceedingly repetitive. Now that's not really fair to pick at since it hasn't been around very long yet, but it's still a point. As for the LCD issue, it wouldn't be a wise move on your guy's parts to crank things up to the level that I or others like myself would find enjoyable, because quite simply that would be to "Hard" for the general MMO grognard, making it feel like "work", and they would wander off to find something less thought intensive.

You made a good point there, coming from a computer gamer point of view about the Champions game book wise, having more difficult nuances then CO does. Here's the thing though. CO, Isn't the Book Game, and we that love the book game, don't find the book game difficult at all, it's vastly intuitive and instinctive for a lot of us. The CO game though, to us at least; well let's use an old example. A long time ago there was a toyline called The Micronauts. They were the thing to get for a christmas or birthday present back in the day. Lot of cool interchangable parts and what not. Lot of potential for good clean kid fun. Then one day, the LCD crowd got involved, and you opened up your cool box with Force Commander or Baron Karza in it, and the LCD movement, had GLUED all the parts onto the toy.

Looked kinda like a Micronaut....wasn't a micornaut anymore....That's what CO feels like.....Looks like Champions.....doesn't act like it or feel like it, doesn't let you do as much and what you can do, is repetative. Everything new is just MMO rewash (Pets....hmmm) that's been seen in every other MMO out there. What would have made it stand out, and unique, is if, just if, it had been structured like the book enough to where we that play and enjoy the book game, could feel that we had made a book character. It's just another Micro Transaction Driven MMO....which is fine, there are people out there that are happy with that. It's just missing things that would make me want to spend 15 bucks a month on it, and in todays economy, I can save that up for a half a tank of gas, or in two months time, have almost enough scratch to pick up another of the HERO system books. When it develops past ...."Talk to A, go to B, Beat up C, pick up D, take it back to A, get a GIZMO to add to my non gizmo using Mutant whatever...." Then I'll take another look. It has improved, I'll grant it that much.

~Rex

Nagisawa Takumi

Sep 26th, '10, 12:33 AM

Personally, I think CO should have been what CoX should have been. The current animations and power sets are PERFECT for Super's play. More than CoX Fantasy set up (Controllers, and Defenders? Really? Have you seen anything remotely like that in any comic book?) Unfortunately, CoX has momentum behind it, and CO has nothing, also the former management didn't exactly expand from the CoX formula, which cripples the game more than it should.

But the powers and the current animations, man... What it could have been... Pity.

Certified

Sep 27th, '10, 11:27 AM

To Patrick and Rex's points the Hero system cannot be translated to an MMO because there is no GM. However, CO is the most flexible game I've seen currently on the market the only game that was more flexible was Freedom Force but that was a traditional computer game not an MMO.

One of the things that has always bothered me about CO is the rolling puns and lack of quality writing. Honestly I think people, myself included, would be a lot more involved with the game if the missions felt less generic and drew more from the history of the setting. Actually this is something I think they tried to address with Serpent's Lantern and hope they continue to work on with the Adventure packs. Although I really wish they would go back and clean up some of the pitiful story arcs already in the game, give us a reason to read the mission descriptions.

Lastly, yes Pets are an MMO staple but in the Hero system you have both Summons and Followers and I'm sure there are people on these boards that can give you a list of Summoner type characters.

Nagisawa Takumi

Sep 27th, '10, 04:36 PM

Well Cert, seeing as Bill Roper is no longer the CEO of Cryptic (He worked on CoX, FYI) there's a chance it'll get 'better'. After all, they've been here ONE YEAR, which does say something of it's potential.

incrdbil

Sep 27th, '10, 05:38 PM

I would lik to see more serious Co content, and fewer pun-based missions. CO needs more zones, and more mission variety. What they have is fien for a one year old game, but they can't rest on that.

Things that need to come down the line--
More zones--
More power sets--
An option to play villains, or Dark Champions ( a vigilante style game, aimed more street level with low level powers..of course, that would be a seperate game really..so never mind)--
More big villain group debuts
More trully challenging lairs. I want to fight a true Supervillain Team--a team of all Supervillains. No more masterminds with minions, or the lone supervillain--a team designed to work together, with specific built AI instructions to make them work together.

Celt

Sep 28th, '10, 03:43 AM

More big villain group debuts
More trully challenging lairs. I want to fight a true Supervillain Team--a team of all Supervillains. No more masterminds with minions, or the lone supervillain--a team designed to work together, with specific built AI instructions to make them work together.

I did enjoy how they structured the Bunker Buster final showdown with the villain group led by Soviet Guard. How it scaled the number of enemies to the number of players workewd well (when the mission worked). I haven't played that mission recently but it was buggy as hell when I did. The structure of the whole mission was great, just the coding execution was flawed.

danbuter1

Sep 28th, '10, 12:53 PM

I just started playing again, after quitting in February. I think the game has improved a lot since then. I'm having fun.

Checkmate

Sep 29th, '10, 12:29 PM

Having followed MMO's for some time, there are things I've noticed: It doesn't really matter how good a game gets AFTER release. If your game isn't up to par on release, very few people are going to give it a second chance. What I call the WoW model is the way to go. Do not put anything into the game that doesn't work absolutely perfectly. If you want an option, but it doesn't work flawlessly, don't include it, add it later. It doesn't matter if one game has 5 options that work flawlessly, and another game has 100 options, but there are some bugs, the 5 option game will win every time (for another example, look at Apple's success with the iPhone. Less options and flexability than an Android phone, but FAR fewer bugs). You get one release, if you're not flawless there, people will move on.

Something else I wanted to mention was someone said that WoW was the only really successful MMO. I completely disagree. While I agree it is probably the most successful MMO, I don't think it's the only one. I mean the original Everquest has been making a profit for 11 years now.

RexMundi

Sep 30th, '10, 09:55 AM

Everquest is successful like the way a Rand MacNally road atlas series is. Been around forever, Makes money, will most likely be around for another forever because it makes just enough cash to keep itself going. WoW on the other hand is successful in the way of.....Harry Potter.....Lego Video games.....Twilight......

It plays to it's LCD model like a DJ at a Rave. Like was stated above though, the key to real MMO success, is to release nothing that is glitchy, At All. You only get a first impression with the majority of the folks that enjoy MMO's.

As for CO. It's about where I expected it to be at this time, it NEEDS, many things, most of which were mentioned here already in the last few posts. Those things would make it a true stand out at least. Unfortuently, it's going to have some serious competition coming up down the road, and it's going to have to do more then add a few bits of glitz here and there in order to stem the tide. Like I said before the primary good response comes from the folks that got in on the lifetime subscription. The negative responses come primarily from the pay to play crowd. Want more positive, bring back the life time deal.

~Rex

Bobby Walker

Sep 30th, '10, 06:03 PM

My CO experience was not fun at all. I went out and got the game, bought it at Wal-mart (because it offered 60 days instead of 30). Got home and played it for a few days before noticing that I only got a 30 day credit instead of 60. So I emailed support, they said if I could provide a receipt, they'd credit the 60 days. I didn't have it, didn't see a need in keeping it really. No refunds, no exchanges, and no CO.

I quit playing immediately and gave up the other 22 days along with that bonus time.

Tech

Jan 4th, '11, 09:20 AM

Wow. I came to this thread to see what the gameplay is like and found too many disappointed posters. It's January now - has anyone changed their mind for the better? Is the game better now?

incrdbil

Jan 4th, '11, 06:31 PM

Certified

Jan 4th, '11, 09:22 PM

As for DCUO..change its name to D(C)OA.

Why, do they have jiggle physics?

Checkmate

Jan 7th, '11, 03:18 PM

It has steadily improved. I'm eagerly awaiting the pretty significant changes coming along with the free to play option--the unlinking of many defensive abilities and superstats, power additions, long hoped for changes, interface improvements--I wouldnt go back to City of Heroes if you paid me. As for DCUO..change its name to D(C)OA.
Maybe, but I have a feeling you're VERY wrong. I bet a year after DCUO releases, it won't be going to a free to play model. Now I don't like either game, but having played both (yes the NDA was lifted a long time ago) I think DCUO will appeal to a much larger audience than CO. It is less bug ridden and will have a great release, both of which CO couldn't manage.

Starcloud

Jan 15th, '11, 12:05 PM

DCUO is very much a console game ported to the PC. As a result, there are many things it does poorly or not at all, that people have come to expect of an mmorpg. It won't be going free to play, mostly because of the All Access Pass Sony has, but I really doubt it will be much competition for either Champions Online or City of Heroes.

RexMundi

Jan 15th, '11, 12:36 PM

Waiting for the Free To Play format for CO to fire up. After looking at the structure for it I find it's to my liking as far as the character growth and ability. Fewels like a GM stepped in so to speak. Once it Fires up I'll hope back in to play more CO. Nothing could make me go back to COH at all. Ever. DC Online, had hopes but not interested in console anything for Multi Player. Multiplayer Console is without a doubt, the lowest of the LCD crowd. Simply excruciating.

~Rex.....waits for FTP.

MrWolf

Jan 15th, '11, 05:36 PM

I don't log into CO much, and COH only occasionally. I need to turn off the CO sub at some point, I think, after they go free-play.

LOTRO, lifer, and pick that back up occasionally also.

I played WoW for like a month 5 years ago, and just picked it back up... it's a lot different in that time, and I enjoy it when I log in.

Sooo... too many MMOs.

Zed-F

Jan 25th, '11, 11:30 AM

Originally played the game for about 4-5 months after release before getting bored.

Came back to it recently and subbed for 1 month to set up my characters for F2P and get a feel for archetypes, with the intent to lapse back to Silver status.

So far that plan seems sound. I'm glad I subbed for 1 month as it allowed me to sample the adventure packs and make sure my characters were set up for the upcoming changes. The game has had *many* quality of life improvements since I last played. The core issues that caused me to unsub in the first place are still there -- this will never be my 'main' MMO -- but it's fun enough to be a sideline MMO I can hop into under the F2P model whenever I feel like getting my superhero on. Also F2P allows me to set up a second account for my daughter and not worry about breaking the bank.

Thus I'm overall quite happy with the way things have shaken out for the F2P conversion. IMO you can't beat CO in the superhero genre, for the price. I'd recommend it for others to give a whirl, so long as you don't go in with inflated expectations or looking for a permanent home to spend all your free time in, you're golden (or silver as the case may be!)

Starcloud

Jan 26th, '11, 05:40 PM

"IMO you can't beat CO in the superhero genre, for the price."

Heheheh. Yeah. It's hard to beat Champions as a "free superhero game" when it's the only free superhero game.

Sketchpad

Jan 30th, '11, 07:56 PM

So I broke down and started playing CO once F2P came out ... I had beta tested it in the past, and started up two characters this week. So far so good ... both characters are just about 10th level and I've had a chance to play with a few of my friends here ... I'm VERY tempted to start working on sheets for my characters, along with some illustrations. We'll see what happens in the course of the next few weeks. I do have a few questions though ...

• I've seen gang member stats and, The Purple Gang? These are no normal gang! Between the 15" of combat leaping, the massive 12d6 Punch Attacks and the Detect: Hero 17≤, these guys are at least 250 pts. ;)
• So I was wandering around the Purple Gang camp and I ran into a Fire Golem and Hellhounds?! Could someone let Demon know where these guys are so they could pick them up? I tell ya, they can't hire good Morbanes these days!
• Um ... Poe is running the Purple Gang?! That could explain some things ...
• Has anyone found Kodiak's razor? He's been looking for it ...

On a more serious note though ... I'd say my one disappointment is that swinglines are a pay power ... I would've thought T-Porting would've been instead ...

Zane_Marlowe

Jan 31st, '11, 06:09 AM

I don't like that some content that was once available if you had a normal account at launch is now pay content. My toon was wearing the most RIDICULOUS headgear when I got him converted to silver.

RexMundi

Jan 31st, '11, 07:19 AM

Have to say I had a good time with the F2P launch, though it was a touch annoying, that though they offer an Ice Character, that Iceslide was a pay power. Still, I like being able to pay for only what I want, and what I want isn't much. The archetypes are pretty much built along the lines of what I would pick anyway for those types of characters and as you level up there are plenty of other options to add granularity.

Good move on thier part methinks though I would have tossed out 4 starting slots instead of two and not made the savage or specialist pay content.

~Rex

Certified

Jan 31st, '11, 12:06 PM

Good move on thier part methinks though I would have tossed out 4 starting slots instead of two and not made the savage or specialist pay content.

~Rex

Is that because you want them? While I'm not so sure about the 2 Character slots, seems a bit mean even as many alts as I have but the Savage and Specialist, they said from the start archetypes that were more nuanced would fall into Gold. That is what I think we have here.

Theron

Jan 31st, '11, 04:58 PM

I decided to take a look at F2P, figuring that even if I didn't play the game, I could at least play with the Character Designer and produce images for my tabletop game. On launch I had the choice of upgrading my video driver or playing with diminished settings. After nosing around a bit to see what the diminished settings looked like (lousy), I upgraded the drivers to nVidia's latest for the model, and relaunched. Apparently, the game hates those even more, because it either fails to load at all, or renders everything like I'm viewing it through blocks of leaded glass. My computer is fairly beefy for an off-the-shelf model, but it's apparently not up to the task, so, I think I'll pass.

Given my past history with MMOs, I figure I've saved myself roughly 80 minutes of actual gameplay I might have spent before finding something else that made it not worth my while.

RexMundi

Jan 31st, '11, 06:24 PM

Is that because you want them? While I'm not so sure about the 2 Character slots, seems a bit mean even as many alts as I have but the Savage and Specialist, they said from the start archetypes that were more nuanced would fall into Gold. That is what I think we have here.

Heh, actually I want neither the specialist OR the Savage, both of those types of characters being my least favorite thing in all of comic books as for what they represent.

At least 4 slots to start would have been nice but it's not like buying a few more slots is that hard. I figure in a week or so if I'm still interested I'll throw a few bucks at it and buy some slots.

Still not liking the look of the game, IN game. COH seemed to have a lot more visable detail on the characters once in play, while CO seems to go out of it's way to cartoon it up. Granted, I haven't tried to really crank up the grafics while playing to see if I get a return of the detail prevalent in the character creator, so maybe it's there, I'm sure someone will verify eventually.

Either or, F2P with buyable plugins when desired, good move, makes the game more interesting to me as a time killer. The real role players do seem to congregate around martial arts and mystic type characters/areas.....so maybe there is some potential there for entertainment beyond Talk to A go to B beat up C return to A.

~Rex

Scott Heine

Feb 2nd, '11, 06:37 AM

Still playing. Still loving it. Still having fun after a year. Leveled up a couple of more characters to 40, meeting some new friends in-game. Will be around for a while. :)

Sketchpad

Feb 2nd, '11, 10:40 AM

Hey Scott, what's your @name? I'll have to team with you at some point :)

SvZurich

Feb 4th, '11, 11:57 AM

I should fire CO up again. Picked up the LT for DCUO and like it too. There really are too many MMOs. In the Rift beta now, and dropping WoW after they stole the name of one of my characters "due to prolonged inactitivity".

Overall, DC/Sony did a good job making DCUO feel like you are a part of the action, but CO has improved nicely. Sadly, I log in so infrequently to CO that I feel lost at times with the power set changes to my tank.

Enforcer84

Feb 14th, '11, 09:26 AM

Well having logged in for a few hours after getting my new rig to work...

"It's pretty."
Some of the character models don't do it for me and some of the vehicles look really clunky. Effects are fabulous.

All i did was fly around and bust up some mobs but then I came across a burning building and with the help of a fire extinguisher and my super-strength, rescued 4 people...it was really kind of cool.

I'll probably keep trying. I do believe my name is @Enforcer84...but I'm pretty sporadic.

Celt

Feb 14th, '11, 11:33 AM

I log in sporadically myself still. @FenianB, friend invite sent, Enforcer.

baronspam

Feb 15th, '11, 05:34 AM

I tried the free to play version. Honestly, the most interesting element of the game seems to be the character creation system, which you don't have access to unless you are paying the monthly subscription. I tried all the free archtypes, and often found myself wanting to redesign some element of them. I settled on a punch-em-in-da-face flying brick character name Paragon.

Pros: Picking up a car and taking out a minion with it is priceless. There are several differnt adventure paths. You can stay in the city and do mostly (so far) door missions, or you can go off to Canada for more of a Hazard zone (to use the CoX term) experience.

Cons: Some minor gameplay elements bug me. On a door misson you have to find/run back to an exit once you finish it. It should just have an "exit mission" button. I spent half a hour or more running around an empty map after killing all the badguys trying to find the breifcase I was supposed to locate. It didn't appear untill I was right on top of it. Some of the Supervillian fights are very hard. I don't expect the game to be World of Warcraft easy, but I tried to take on Kevin Poe with a level 9 character (its a level 9 mission) and just flat cound not take him out. I just couldn't survive the damage he was putting out, even with my best efforts to block his heavy attacks and use good tactics. I jumped the superjet to canada and did missions there for a couple of levels and then came back and beat him, but that kind of things annoys me.

Personally, I find the city has less personality than much of CoX did. This game does have the advantage that it has non-city zones you can get to very early, but running around Atlas Park and Kings Row was a more immersive experience than fighting super-gangs on the West Side.

Certified

Feb 15th, '11, 10:23 AM

A couple of things to Baronspam's post. I would really like to see an Exit Mission button as well but I'm guessing there might be some legal issues behind that since well Cryptic developed CoH as well.

Fighting super villains, this is a trickier subject. While a well put together build can solo most super villains, good luck with Dr. Destroyer's lab, the Archetypes are meant to be solid fun builds but they lack a bit of the punch and finesse the free form characters can have. While I wouldn't be surprised if an Archetype character could take out Kevin Poe I don't think it will be easy.

Now, city stuff CoH broke Paragon City into distinct zones using the back story to explain why. As far as the layout of Millennium City goes, they don't have zones in a game sense it's one large map. However, there are very different feels from the Westside Docks to China Town much less the Renaissance Center, City Center and all parts East. While it would be nice to get a little more diversity in feel on the East side overall Millennium City has a more natural feel. Unfortunately this also means a blander feel since well most cities are fairly bland. Since Millennium City is built on the ashes of Detroit I'd like to see a Manufacturing District and some burned out suburbs. Although, the latter may be a bit to dark for the Silver Aged feel of the game.

Certified

Feb 15th, '11, 12:19 PM

So I put some of the ideas about Millennium City together here (http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=125010).

Enforcer84

Feb 22nd, '11, 09:38 AM

I log in sporadically myself still. @FenianB, friend invite sent, Enforcer.

Thanks!
That was you!?! :)

BobGreenwade

Apr 12th, '11, 07:43 AM

Maybe it has to do with the fact that this is my first-ever experience with an MMO, but I've been playing for the last couple of weeks and I'm finding it quite enjoyable.

I'm not saying it's without flaws. Some of it has to do with the system I'm using, which is just a low-end netbook; I have a lot of lag, especially if there's a lot of activity going on nearby, and it accumulates. Graphics limitations also mean that I can only turn in increments of 45, 60, or 90 degrees, depending on the location (at least, I believe the limitation is at my end; I've seen videos with smoother turns). That's especially bad when trying to move long distances, as neither of the characters I have can fly and much of the landscape tends to twist, turn, and be filled with obstacles. Thus, most of the time I have to leave my Travel Power off.

As to content complaints, I see little benefit in using an Archetype rather than a Freeform (higher starting Characteristics is about it). I'd really like to be able to go into more parts of Millennium City, and will probably feel the same about Vibora Bay when I get there. In some areas I've been finding it harder to go from the Contact to the Mission than to carry out the Mission itself. And I'm not the only person who's experienced key commands going into the chat box, or vice versa, with disastrous results.

But still, it's fun enough to me that I'm seriously considering becoming a subscriber once I'm able to get a computer upgrade, and for now the best birthday present I can think of (I'm turning 50 next month) is Atari tokens. ;)

dmjalund

Apr 12th, '11, 08:21 AM

I would like to be able to export the characters to Poser or similar - or at least to a higher res image.

Kraven Kor

Apr 12th, '11, 09:50 AM

BobGreenwade

Apr 12th, '11, 12:58 PM

Fun, if a bit 'shallow' - I'm trying to get to 40 before passing full judgement. I love the character creation and advancement so far, but am wondering if level 40 is just doing the same thing over and over again.Perusing the Wiki, I've seen that there are a lot of Level 40 only Missions, by care of UNITY. There are also ways to continue to advance the character by way of Devices and other equipment, and you can create some of your own variety by having multiple Nemeses.

(I've also seen hints of people asking for more content, mainly via more Millennium City neighborhoods, though the Moon has also been mentioned and China and England are a couple of other good possibilities. So hopefully the developers will get some of that together. Also there's been some talk from Cryptic about expanding and improving the Nemesis system.)

Brilar

Apr 16th, '11, 09:17 AM

I've been having a lot of fun with Champions Online. I don't play many video games, and even though I'm a big Champions fan I resisted trying the MMORPG until just recently when they went F2P. I liked it enough to subscribe. Between work, and family I have a tight schedule so, I appreciate that CO allows me the freedom to jump in, play, and then log off when I want. Many of the missions seem to be scaled for solo or team play which I like. Since I can't play as regularly or for long at a time as I would like, it's nice to play solo. Maybe when my workload lightens I can try joining a team.

One thing I absolutely love is the character creation part. I spent a longtime tweaking my character's look. This is something I longed for ever since the old Champions vaporware from the early 1990's was announced. I enjoy creating, and designing heroes and this feature hits the spot.

:cheers:

Nolgroth

Jun 22nd, '11, 03:22 AM

RISE THREAD RISE!

Recently downloaded and started playing the Champions Online Free For All through Steam. Keep in mind that this is my very first MMO that I have played for longer than it took to grimace and exit.

Character Creation
Hands down, my favorite part of the game. The obvious reason is being able to visualize the character. There is another, more subtle reason that has to do with game play. Anyway, my first character channeled all of the Dark Avenger look (though I played him as a Behemoth). I have since deleted him (and man does only having two character slots suck eggs) and built many other characters. Along the way came a techo looking martial artist named Emerald something-or-other. She didn't last long. She was soon replaced by my Inferno character, which essentially used the same design with an altered color scheme. Fun character. Then came my second Behemoth; a Warhammer 40K Space Marine looking fellow. Nice, but something was missing so he got replaced by She-Hulk. She in turn got replaced by a Grimoire character that I tried to make look like a stage magician. He in turn was replaced by yet another character. The cycle ended with the return of She-Hulk (as a Behemoth of course). Sadly I could not name her She-Hulk, but the visual is about as dead on as I could make it.

The Tutorial
Okay, we now start the game only to find that an insectoid alien species called the Qulaar have invaded Millennium City. Nice and epic. So you get to learn the basics of movement, combat, inventory, interaction and the whole enchilada while fighting space aliens trying to steal our chicks. Well maybe not. It was great with just about every character I played. The notable exception was the Grimoire character. Hated him. Probably the most fun I had was with the Inferno character (named Firelight because Firebrand was forbidden for some reason).

Getting used to the control scheme was tough. I am a PC gamer, so the mouse buttons are the obvious choice for bringing the smackdown to the baddies. Not so here. The default control scheme is "MMO" so I am guessing that other MMO games follow the same unusual scheme of using the number buttons to attack and activate powers and all that rot.

So I am not going to spoiler any of the specific quests, but eventually I get through the final segment of the tutorial and on to the freshly repainted Millennium City.

It's A Big World Out There
First mission? Power up of course. And here we get our super movement power. Let me tell you, Flight was worth the price of admission (which being a free game is admittedly not much). I especially loved just flying around Renaissance Center (sort of the safe zone of the game). Kudos to Cryptic for that.

Then it's off to do the post tutorial tutorial missions. Fun, but only distracting for a minute. Taking a tour? Sure, you want the players oriented but that was sort of tedious. The crafting thing was okay. Fallout New Vegas did it better.

Then I start my first "real" mission. It goes okay, leading me further into one of the big sub-plots of the game. After finishing a series of related missions, Defender no longer seems to like me and dumps me off on some guy in a monster truck. He gives me a mission which I do with little problems.

It is the subsequent mission where things start to go wrong. I wander down an alley where the primary antagonistic group awaits. All of a sudden (and for no apparent reason beyond "screw you player") a member of a whole other faction jumps out of a side alley. Despite blasting him with literally everything I had, the dude took me down with barely a scratch on his health bar. I even tried to fly away and to no avail. The bad guys have really long range attacks, superleap and your own super movement powers slow to a crawl when you are in combat. I came back and killed the guy, but that is besides the point. Why is a superhero getting owned by a frickin' common thug? It seriously felt like I was playing a street level hero (and a low point one at that) rather than a character worthy enough to stand next to the Champions.

Since then, I have (with my son and best friend or alone) taken several missions. They tend to be repetitive, but I liken the game play to Diablo II. One of the idiosyncrasies of the game that takes me out of the world is the presence of super powered characters everywhere. The abilities that the bad guys show, the sheer number of players, and the fact that my contact for missions can one shot guys that I have to wear down all lead to a little bit of a disconnect.

I was worried, at first, that all Behemoths (Bricks), Minds (Mentalists), etc would look the same at a given level. After I got to level 11, I realized that the customization truly begins. There will obviously be similar builds with a leveling class system, but at least you can tailor the character a little bit.

I was disappointed with the fact that I couldn't just build my character. I understand why class and level was used, but I really wish a Champions game would include a point buy system.

Thoughts and Review
This game is the first MMO that I honestly enjoyed playing. Character creation is fantastic, reminiscent of my favorite games like Mass Effect and Oblivion. My son and I (sometimes with the help of my best friend) have really taken Millennium City by storm. The graphics are pretty and there is shine of epic scale.

When you scratch the surface, the shine proves to be just glamor. Sure, your character can fly, but he also gets thumped on routinely by common thugs. It is a recipe much better suited to fantasy or science fiction genres than mighty superheroes.

While I like the buffet pricing for the add-ons, I don't necessarily agree with the rate at which some of the things are priced at. Additional character slots cost somewhere around $15? No thanks. I realize Cryptic and their publisher are trying to make money and I totally support that. As the discriminating consumer, I vote no. How about a single slot for $5. I would pay for that. And while I am on the subject, no matter what you call them, Atari Tokens, Bioware Points, Microsoft Points, I hate the concept. Give me a hard dollar amount, not this fooling around crap so that I always end up buying more points/tokens/whatever than I need.

Honestly, I would like this game a whole lot better if they developed and packaged it like Diablo II; something that I can start a server and take off with my close associations. I would actually pay the current video game rate ($50-60) for that. Heck, make those adventure packs an extra charge ($5-10 seems reasonable) and I'd buy those too. I know that I am not anywhere near being in majority. I can dig that. I will spend my hard earned bucks elsewhere, but I totally understand Cryptic's/Atari's need to cater to the majority crowd and their own business model.

Finally, I want to thank Cryptic and/or Atari for making Champions Online available for free. While I have some complaints about the pricing issues and some game play snark, I think it is incredibly kind of them to allow us to play for free. I hope this tactic garners them much business in the future.

Certified

Jun 22nd, '11, 04:35 AM

I was worried, at first, that all Behemoths (Bricks), Minds (Mentalists), etc would look the same at a given level. After I got to level 11, I realized that the customization truly begins. There will obviously be similar builds with a leveling class system, but at least you can tailor the character a little bit.

I was disappointed with the fact that I couldn't just build my character. I understand why class and level was used, but I really wish a Champions game would include a point buy system.

Thought I would comment on this point. Several people have commented that the Free To Play experience is like an extended tutorial. Not because you are limited in game play content, they give you virtually everything except 3 adventures, but because character creation is hamstrung.

As a Gold player you are not limited to archetypes and can freely choose your powers as the character advances. The do stagger power levels so you can't just start the game with a mega blast type power but this flows fairly naturally. Characters start with generally basic, straight forward, powers picking up more nuanced abilities along the way.

It seems that you're a fan of bricks so I will say that as a Gold member depending on your power selection you are able to make a tank in every power framework from fire to mentalist. Even more appealing is each of these characters will have their own feels as to how their defenses work and what powers interact with them.

Also, while this is readily available on the website I may as well include the following. (As it seems I'm the official Gold pusher.) Gold players have multiple character slots (8 to start). When you reach level 40 you get a free character slot so you never have to delete a level capped character. Lastly, Gold members also pick up 400 Cryptic points with their subscription each month.

Nolgroth

Jun 22nd, '11, 06:44 AM

Thanks for the information. I do not think that it will change my overall opinion, but extra information is always useful.

Jagged

Jun 23rd, '11, 04:14 AM

While I like the buffet pricing for the add-ons, I don't necessarily agree with the rate at which some of the things are priced at.

Interesting to read your thoughts. I've been thinking about trying this again now its free, but I am wary. I used to play City of Heroes and one of the things that helped push me away was the rise of macro transactions. It wasn't too bad because CoH started off with a very high degree of availability for things like costumes and such. And part of you has to accept that if they were not charging for new costume options then you probably wouldn't be getting any! But still, it slowly started to annoy. I am interested to note that City of Heroes is going to a free model as well, so I guess macro transactions are here to stay. :(

Nolgroth

Jun 23rd, '11, 06:21 AM

Interesting to read your thoughts. I've been thinking about trying this again now its free, but I am wary. I used to play City of Heroes and one of the things that helped push me away was the rise of macro transactions. It wasn't too bad because CoH started off with a very high degree of availability for things like costumes and such. And part of you has to accept that if they were not charging for new costume options then you probably wouldn't be getting any! But still, it slowly started to annoy. I am interested to note that City of Heroes is going to a free model as well, so I guess macro transactions are here to stay. :(I don't mind the concept really. For instance, I loved the official DLC from both Oblivion and Fallout 3. Yeah, it was like buying a whole new game when it was all said and done, but the extra content was welcome. Assuming it was handled right, I could actually see myself paying for extra content from CO:FFA. It's just that I am not particularly fond of the whole purchased character slot model. I totally understand why Cryptic/Atari chose to go that route but, personally, I love to create characters and the CO creator is one of the best I've seen so far. It is probably unfair to compare a standard PC game to an MMO, but I have created literally hundreds of characters for Oblivion. Sometimes just to make one. Similarly, I've made at least a couple of dozen Fallout 3 characters (character design not so fun with that one) and maybe a hundred with the Mass Effect series of games. I think that I just illustrated the reason for the limited slot thing, but this is the deal breaker for me.*

Still, the experiences I have had with Champions Online FFA have been pretty good. It certainly has held my attention for a lot longer than all of the MMOs (combined) that I have tried. It deserves some kudos for that at least.

* Not actually the only one. The other big deal breaker is the respawn thing. Yes, it totally needs to be there. It is just disconnecting to see the quest you just went through "reset" for the next group or character. I tend to buy games to immerse myself in a story. While there is a story there, I can see that everybody else is experiencing the same "assembly line" plot. It is jarring for me. Sure Oblivion and other single player games have the same story for every player, but I don't have to watch them do the story in real time either just before me or just after me. Sheesh. I tend to be long-winded don't I? :)

Jagged

Jun 23rd, '11, 07:34 AM

If your favourite part is creating characters then you should definitely try City of Heroes when that goes free-to-pay. Perhaps I should whisper it, but some think CoH has better character(appearance) creation than its newer sister, which is strange considering its the same dev team. But true or not, worth a try for free.

Nolgroth

Jun 24th, '11, 06:19 PM

Well, I may try out City of Heroes: Freedom just for kicks but I definitely will NOT be dumping money into Champions Online: Free For All. If the pricing scheme is similar for CoH: Freedom, then they will not get money for that either.

I was going to purchase one new "class" and one new character slot for CO: FFA. The problem is that the points add up to 2040. Just a little more than the $25, 2000 point mark. Really? From where I come from, that is what we called a hustle. Even $25 seemed awfully steep, but I was willing to toss some scratch towards Cryptic/Atari as a thank you/incentive. The pricing scheme is, IMO, outright crooked. I also noticed that almost every combination of additional upgrades tend to leave you with a few extra points. That pretty much settles the question in my mind. A la carte pricing is fine, just make each thing a specific dollar amount or forget it. I got caught in that whole scheme for Mass Effect 2 and it will never happen again.

Certified

Jun 25th, '11, 05:46 AM

This may be stating the obvious but all the archetypes are included with a Gold Membership along with 8 starting character slots.

When Champions Online went live me and a few friends did the Lifetime subscription. at this point or very soon, Cryptic will be paying me to play.

Nolgroth

Jun 25th, '11, 12:03 PM

This may be stating the obvious but all the archetypes are included with a Gold Membership along with 8 starting character slots. No offense, but not really the point. My main beef is with the way they (Atari) decided to price the a la carte add-ons. I am not opposed to paying them money, I'm just asking Atari (and Bioware, Microsoft and any other company that participates in this kind of scam) to stop it. Give us rounded whole dollar prices instead of using points that are deliberately priced to leave a few points extra. That model forces us to pay more than strictly needed for the upgrades that we want. If they didn't want to release the game for free, they didn't have to. In that case, because I never bought into the monthly subscription thing, I would not have even bothered to try it.

As to the Gold Membership, I just think $15 a month (or $180 a year) is about three times what I would pay for a new, non-subscription game. With Steam deals and less expensive games that could become as many as five or six games. So 3-5 games versus one per year and being as the shine of Champions Online has already severely started to fade, no thanks. Not to say that it isn't a game that isn't fun or worth paying Atari/Cryptic for. I just don't buy into the concept of monthly subscription to play a game. Maybe if there was something like Netflix, where I could log into a variety of sufficiently different games and play, then I might reconsider the idea.

Enforcer84

Jun 25th, '11, 12:16 PM

Certified

Jun 25th, '11, 02:04 PM

yeah but most of the free-to-play games run it this way do they not? Ah. Nevermind I see your beef. Well you could just play crippled for a long time. you do earn Atari Points for playing. And it's not an insignificant amount.

I noticed that my $15 a month sub game which I play all the damn time comes out to far less than a few cents an hour.

Lifetime Subs All the way baby!!! ... or something like that.

Anyway, aside from the first time completing the Tutorial where else can you score Cryptic Points in game? A friend of mine just started playing as a Silver Member and asked me if he could I didn't think there was any other way than that first Tutorial run.

Nolgroth

Jun 25th, '11, 02:28 PM

I noticed that my $15 a month sub game which I play all the damn time comes out to far less than a few cents an hour.That's good if you think you are getting your money's worth. I realize my argument regarding monthly subscription is entirely subjective. If YOU are having fun and think it is a good value, then it is. Period. For me it wouldn't be. So yeah, I get that.

And my beef with Atari goes with any and all game publishers that charge you for more points than you need to buy something and you always seem to have wasted money. It's not just Atari. And I will now stop flogging that dead horse. I think everybody gets where I am coming from. :)

Enforcer84

Jun 25th, '11, 03:31 PM

That's good if you think you are getting your money's worth. I realize my argument regarding monthly subscription is entirely subjective. If YOU are having fun and think it is a good value, then it is. Period. For me it wouldn't be. So yeah, I get that.

And my beef with Atari goes with any and all game publishers that charge you for more points than you need to buy something and you always seem to have wasted money. It's not just Atari. And I will now stop flogging that dead horse. I think everybody gets where I am coming from. :)

Totally
If it ever becomes unfun, I'm throwing money away. And not even getting fat like when I was a fast food addict. *cough*is*cough*

Nolgroth

Jun 28th, '11, 03:18 PM

Anyway, aside from the first time completing the Tutorial where else can you score Cryptic Points in game?I have not been able to find anywhere to earn them. On the other hand, there are power-ups that unlock costume pieces. That is sort of nice. An example is the Qulaar pistol from the tutorial opens up the Organic Alien Pistol (or similar) for the shooter archetype.

Certified

Jun 28th, '11, 09:27 PM

I have not been able to find anywhere to earn them. On the other hand, there are power-ups that unlock costume pieces. That is sort of nice. An example is the Qulaar pistol from the tutorial opens up the Organic Alien Pistol (or similar) for the shooter archetype.

If you don't mind the grind you can unlock all of the Steam Punk set. At some point I'll pite the bullet with one of my characters and go PVP crazy just to buy all the gear and grab the unlocks.

TotalerKrieg

Jul 18th, '11, 08:09 AM

Certified

Jul 18th, '11, 08:38 AM

I quit playing after they went FTP, they ruined my characters when they changed the power setup structure, I loved the freeform original system, the new system is way too liner and feels wrong. I really wish they would have used the actual HERO system with point building powers from the books, to me thats champions, not levels.

You know people with subscriptions still get to build their characters as before.

incrdbil

Jul 18th, '11, 05:37 PM

I quit playing after they went FTP, they ruined my characters when they changed the power setup structure, I loved the freeform original system, the new system is way too liner and feels wrong. I really wish they would have used the actual HERO system with point building powers from the books, to me thats champions, not levels.

How did they ruin your characters? The only way anything changed is if you quit paying, and went to the free to play platform, with the archetypes. If that is the case..what did you expect, going from paying to free?

Celt

Jul 18th, '11, 05:46 PM

lemming

Jul 19th, '11, 05:36 AM

My housemate has a similarly offended tone where he expects to play the characters with their freeform powers he had when he quit instead of retconning into an archtype. As he puts it, Cryptic gives him no incentive to return to playing for free.

Doi! :doi:
There's always some way to complain. I should see what complaints people have been posting about City of Heroes free option. Probably similar. "I can't play my 50 alts for free!"

TheQuestionMan

Jul 19th, '11, 06:18 AM

Too many Minions with Superpowers.

Cheers

QM

Enforcer84

Aug 1st, '11, 05:00 PM

I've played quite a bit more...it's fun most of the time but Enforcer was stymied in the Demonhame adventure pack due to being alone and...well I find the general chat to be so annoying...so I have my tiny friends list and no one was really on. I think I lost my Hooligan X window :) Poor guy waited for me to play and now he kind of ignores me.

On the other hand...there's a lot of content. Once you hit level 10ish you can start branching out quite a bit and the costume packs that come out are often pretty awesome.

There's some classic items I think they're missing and I've not been very impressed by their blunt weapons for the Devastators.

I was quite pleased with Maiden America's look when I finalized it. But...I have to admit it's still more fun to make characters than to play...

hooligan x

Aug 9th, '11, 02:53 PM

I think I lost my Hooligan X window :) Poor guy waited for me to play and now he kind of ignores me.

I don't mean to ignore ya, pal. Just shoot me a PM or a txt on my cell when you want to play. Heck, I'm playing alone right now.

BTW, has anyone gotten the voice chat to work?

Enforcer84

Aug 9th, '11, 03:57 PM

Hehe. Well I tend to play in the mornings as my wow group takes my evening time.
But I'll let you know next time I'm on.

hooligan x

Aug 9th, '11, 04:13 PM

Hehe. Well I tend to play in the mornings as my wow group takes my evening time.
But I'll let you know next time I'm on.

I tend to work or sleep in the mornings. Tomorrow, it will probably be both.

Nolgroth

Aug 9th, '11, 04:37 PM

BTW, has anyone gotten the voice chat to work?No. I just use TeamSpeak.

Pattern Ghost

Sep 26th, '11, 05:39 PM

I think I responded to this thread a looong time ago, about my experiences at launch. I guess I should give an update. I'm now playing as a Silver status account.

First, my impressions of the graphics for the character models hasn't changed. They still pretty much suck. However, since I'm now actually able to play the game, I've noticed that the MS that the females suffer from isn't quite as obvious when they're in motion, so at least that isn't too distracting. I was annoyed that when my high tech character whose costume took me a couple hours to tweak back at launch was converted to a Silver archetype, almost every single costume piece was removed from her model. With NO warning dialogue. Apparently, the parts I used are now parts of various costume packs. Since those were all parts that shipped on release, I call (NSF)bullshit on that. I paid for the box to subsidize the creation of those parts, they could have taken the high road and only put NEW pieces into their freaking costume bundles. I'm not going to spit out another twenty bucks worth of points to rebuild a costume. If I even could. Damned thing took a lot of digging through their menus to make.

It seems like some of the major game engine performance problems I experienced at release have been smoothed out substantially. I think they may have also overhauled the combat system, too, as it seems much more fluid now. Overall, a MUCH better experience in controlling the characters.

As a returning player, my character was moved out of the desert and into the city. (He was only level 6; the game was virtually unplayable for me before.) I really, really like the look of Millennium City. It looks BIG. Until you hit a wall and it all turns into black and white. Which is ALSO cool. I still don't like the models for the vehicles much, but I suspect if you get enough STR you can throw them around, and that may have been a concession for that purpose. CO does have a lot more diversity in vehicle models than CoH, though, and slightly more realistic numbers of them to give an impression of traffic. Overall, I like the graphics for most of the stuff in the world, and the impression of it being a world.

My current system is a 24" iMac that's going on 3 years old. It has a mobile gForce 8800GS with discrete RAM (I think 512MB), and an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8mhz. It's not exactly a beastly system, more like what used to be a beefy notebook, really. The video card is not as good as my now dead desktop PC, but the CPU is MUCH faster. So, I'm not sure how much performance to attribute to better hardware (i.e., whether this is a CPU intensive game or a GPU intensive game), but it's running quite well on pretty modest hardware.

I've heard the game still has some bugs that need to be fixed, but I haven't been playing enough to notice any. I'm pretty much still on the tutorial stage, running a few of the archetypes through the tutorial and a little in MC to see how I like them. (They all seem to play well enough, given they only have 3 active powers at level 6 plus the travel power.)

As for the free to play model: I think they may have screwed up a little. The only real incentive to go Gold seems to be free form characters. They already have sixteen archetypes available. Every archetype they release just gives casual players who don't want to learn the character building system another reason not to go Gold.

And going Gold is important in this type of hybrid model. Pure cash shop Asian MMOs get a good influx of money because of their HUGE player bases. Some of them make WoW seem puny by comparison. However, the hybrid model that was started (or at least started the trend of A-list games going hybrid) by Turbine is meant for games with a lot lower populations.

There's no way any studio can produce enough new content to satisfy its players. Once everything is bought, then the player is ahead of the subscription. Since companies live and die by repeat business, a game company with a smaller player base needs people to convert to subs. Players already know that it's more cost effective to buy up all the parts of the game that they want or need versus a sub. So the subscribers need to have a very juicy perk to get those conversions.

Now, Cryptic undoubtedly has the numbers on this, but my concern is they will reach market saturation with those who want free form, since the more serious or hard core players are usually the minority in an MMO population.

I think what they need is more gated content, as well as a perk or two more for going Gold. The reason I went VIP (sub) on DDO is that I like having access to all of the content. I could simply buy all the content packs, but it's easier on the budget to spread out the cost, plus I can get it all NOW. Maybe time will take care of that one, as it takes time to produce the content.

As far as the store goes, I'm kind of ambivalent. While on the one hand, they seem to be giving away too much (for example, the comic book missions could have been gated content), they also seem stingy. The example above about making costume parts that were available on release unavailable for a former box purchaser is one example. There is no middle ground between totally free player and subscriber.

Turbine has Free, Premium, and VIP. Once you've spent some real money on the game, whether by buying points or by buying a boxed product. That Premium status gets you access to more stuff than a totally free player, like lifting chat, auction, and e-mail restrictions, raising the money cap, additional character slots, continued access to content that shipped with your box purchase (!), etc. VIP gets you access to almost all gated content, all race options, and most class options. This gives people at least some incentive to make that first point purchase and spend real money on the game. CO lacks that.

Another peeve with the CO model is that they don't give any discounts for purchasing larger point bundles. Every point you buy will cost you $0.0125. I haven't been paying attention long enough to notice if they ever run sales on Cryptic point bundles. The lack of any level of bulk discount makes them look cheap, even while they're giving away the farm.

Overall, their cash shop system is kind of odd, and I'll be interested to see if they can make it work, or if they'll tweak it. On the other hand, they give away quite a bit for free, so there seems like plenty to do for a Silver account, which is nice. I do plan to spend at least a few bucks on the cash shop, because I still have some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, and because I'm pleased with the improvements that have been made so far, and hope they can fix anything else that needs fixing.

danbuter1

Sep 30th, '11, 10:26 AM

I had quit playing the end of last year, when there were some serious issues about things. I started up again last month, and I think the game has improved quite a bit since then. If the game was released today as is, it would have been a hit. Too bad it was only half-finished when it was released 2 years ago.

Peace

Oct 6th, '11, 07:01 AM

I like the game.

I started with the public beta and unless I'm away on vacation I'm in-game multiple hours a week and nearly every night. I am a pre-launch life time subscriber.

Strengths:
- Character creation from a powers point of view
- Character creation from a costuming point of view
- Cohesive content
- Solid look and feel in the graphics

Weaknesses:
- Redundancy of missions from a mutliple Alt point of view
- Challenge level of content is fairly low in most instances
- Limited differences in designing the facial look of human characters
- Lack of real archtypes limit need for teaming

Prior to playing Champions Online I had played City of Heroes for most of five years. I actually like the older game's character costume/look design system better as I could get a greater variety of appearances in human characters. However, the power set design in CO is far superior. Still with that superiority comes the challenge that a person can design a balanced character that needs no other to do the missions in the game. An MMO without the need of teaming is less multiplayer and more just a game with a chat system.

My thoughts. Your mileage may vary.

- Peace -

Tech

Jan 24th, '12, 09:21 AM

I haven't read every post - and I definitely do not have the time to dig through all the forums on the Champions Online forums - but I have a concern about the game: where's the marketing and publicity??

RexMundi

Jan 24th, '12, 09:29 AM

It's Cryptic. They don't do that. Now that Perfect World owns them, they'll do even less. BUT, you can play a Jedi clone there now on the f2p set up ....

~Rex....considering dumping his gold account...... may give it another month....

Alleyne

Mar 4th, '12, 03:19 PM

I think that Cryptic will start advertising for CO once all the new stat changes and such are done.

Really, I just wish that there was more HERO Lore and that the PnP guys would have more say in how things of that nature in the game are actually implemented :/

Vanguard was not an archer...that whole debacle could have been avoided with enough communication.

Pattern Ghost

Mar 4th, '12, 10:41 PM

The wiki says:

Explorer and anthropologist Jeffrey Sinclair discovered a mysterious Tibetan palace containing a strange golden statue which transformed him into the powerhouse superhero Vanguard. At one time leader of the superteam Justice Squadron and a partner to the mystic hero Drifter, Vanguard was considered the single most powerful hero in the world. He had also had several brutal altercations with Dr. Destroyer, and was counted among Dr. Destroyer's greatest enemies.

Vanguard died in the opening moments of what became the Battle of Detroit, using his great strength to stop an asteroid heading for earth, sacrificing himself in the process.

Did they have him as an archer at first and then change it?

Alleyne

Mar 6th, '12, 09:25 AM

The wiki says:

Did they have him as an archer at first and then change it?

The wikis are all fan run. As far as the actual NPC, of whom I've never seen since I didn't really try Blood Moon, I'm not sure if they have changed it or not.

sinanju

Mar 7th, '12, 06:14 PM

Well, I just started playing the FTP version. So far I'm enjoying it. I'm playing a Behemoth (Iron Maiden), and still figuring out what the heck I'm doing. (CO, like Star Trek Online, is severely lacking in useful tips on how things work. I went through the tutorial, but that only gives you the basics. When it comes to what you SHOULD be doing--what powers/etc to buy, when to buy them, what not to bother with, etc.--you're on your own.

After I finished the tutorial, I went to the Powerhouse and acquired some trinkets. Then went on a mission to deal with the Purple Gang and got my ass handed to me over and over and over and over and over. Eventually, thru the use of Google Fu and the CO Wiki, I discovered that I hadn't actually EQUIPPED the stuff I'd gotten from the Powerhouse. Once I did that, I did a lot better at surviving battles. Thanks for telling that, CO. Not.

Still, I am having fun with it. Playing solo, though. Teaming up might be nice, but I don't know any other players and don't pay much attention to the chat window.

Pattern Ghost

Mar 9th, '12, 05:35 PM

Here's a post on the Behemoth archetype in a Might (the power set the Behemoth uses) guide:

http://forums.champions-online.com/showpost.php?p=1769853&postcount=7

Should be a good starting point. Rest of the thread probably worth a perusal.

I wouldn't worry about getting into too much research at this point, as the stat system is getting a major overhaul soon.

Pattern Ghost

Mar 9th, '12, 05:36 PM

The wikis are all fan run. As far as the actual NPC, of whom I've never seen since I didn't really try Blood Moon, I'm not sure if they have changed it or not.

Still, they usually rip the flavor text right out of the game, so assuming it once said that somewhere. Or not. The CO wikis aren't the best out there.

Alleyne

Mar 11th, '12, 05:38 PM

Still, they usually rip the flavor text right out of the game, so assuming it once said that somewhere. Or not. The CO wikis aren't the best out there.

This is very true, and I have been doing the recent blood moon and no. No they have not. Vanguard is still an archer...

And Amazing Grace apparently saw a religious apparition in a piece of toast, and at that very moment a meteor fell to earth, thus causing a power surge, and thus causing the toaster to electrocute her giving her super powers...which she attributed to a miracle.
Thats, y'know, totally how Champions Universe said how it happened. :tonguewav

Certified

Mar 11th, '12, 08:53 PM

This is very true, and I have been doing the recent blood moon and no. No they have not. Vanguard is still an archer...

And Amazing Grace apparently saw a religious apparition in a piece of toast, and at that very moment a meteor fell to earth, thus causing a power surge, and thus causing the toaster to electrocute her giving her super powers...which she attributed to a miracle.
Thats, y'know, totally how Champions Universe said how it happened. :tonguewav

Alright, I'll bite, what was the pre-CO cannon on Amazing Grace?

RexMundi

Mar 12th, '12, 02:24 PM

I blame Cryptic. Also pretty sure it's gonna get worse.

~Rex

Certified

Mar 12th, '12, 03:44 PM

I blame Cryptic. Also pretty sure it's gonna get worse.

~Rex

For what and why?

RexMundi

Mar 13th, '12, 07:20 PM

Perfect World doesn't care about Champions. Folks playing that game are just another number generating micro transactions. Cryptic, never been impressed with even back when they were the driving force behind City of Heroes. To much Cookie Cutter stuff to get the LCD folks playing, then use that cash to go develop the next game, often sponging off the infrastructure of the game folks are already playing.

While I play CO, I spend more time on the costume/character generator then the actual game anymore. It's just gotten very watered down for me. Was hoping I could find an RP group but no such luck, and farming the grind all day bores me. Mostly I wish I CO was the character generator, attached to Hero Designer and poof, there's my guy and I got a HERO sheet to run with...

If it were closer to even the more disjointed CU stuff I'd probably like it more, but it still feels like what it is in reality. The Re-skinned Marvel MMO, with Viper instead of Hydra, and Grond living in the desert instead of the Hulk etc etc .....

I still play it though, even pay for it instead of the F2P, but the Cryptic Method of Making things better is just to add more Shiny twinkly bits and stuff that glows instead of fixing things like oh, The Tails on the Lemurians so they don't point straight up as they swim, things like that. Got my fingers crossed that the stat changes and stuff change up the game play a bit to make it interesting. Some of the newer changes have at least made me consider spending some of the pile of CP I have saved up but there's a lot of the same old boring repetitive drek and lack of interaction and well, the MMO crowd so mostly, I stick with the costume creator then try and figure out a way to get a good screen shot to use it as an art piece for a real HERO game....

I've said before. Ask for a Crayon, and we build them a Crayola Factory. That's the HERO way. Ask Cryptic for a Crayon, and they just give you the tip. Archer style.

~Rex