What do you really think of Champions Online?

[Lord Liaden]

The forums at the Champions Online website have become top-heavy recently with complaints, criticisms, and general expressions of dissatisfaction; and the recent announcement of the Vibora Bay expansion having to be paid for seems to have brought all that to a frothing head. Of course, that's the nature of most online communities. Since folks here on the Hero Games forums probably have less of an emotional investment in the MMO, and mostly come to it from the background of PnP Champions gamers, I have hopes that discussing the subject here might be more balanced and constructive. (I apologise if that sounds naive.)

So, what has your experience of Champions Online been? Overall enjoyable, or disappointing? Sufficiently challenging, too much, or not enough? Are you satisfied with the amount and variety of what's available? What stands out in your minds as particularly good or bad: graphics and sounds, gameplay, character creation, zones, missions? Have you had many technical problems? Anything you would change if you could, and if so what and how? Do you feel you've gotten your money's worth? Do you intend to keep playing?

I just ask that we try to keep this civil. Anyone who wants to vent their spleen, there are plenty of threads for that already on the CO forums.

[drsid]

Quite clearly, one of the biggest strengths of the game is the character creation system. In fact, I came to Hero System after playing Champions Online as I had never really even heard of the Hero System before.

Overall, I find the game to be a fun, amusing diversion. I tend to play solo and the game, so far, seems to be fine for that.

Aside from the creation system, there really is nothing particularly special or gripping about the game. I rarely have a strong desire to really play the game unless I'm just bored. I avoid the MMO forums, generally, however, as there tends to be excessive negative and complaining. Sure, the game could be improved but some of it just gets silly.

[lemming]

I checked out CO and decided not go thru with it since I'm fairly happy with the progress of CoX, but if I hadn't had a mental investment in CoX, I would of probably switched over because the creation portion was more custom. (That and the Hero link) I didn't like the play style at least the late Beta version. It's probably improved.

[McCoy]

Inferior imitation of CoX

[incrdbil]

It suffers from a bad case of coming second-itis.

[Lord Liaden]

Inferior imitation of CoX

It suffers from a bad case of coming second-itis.

Could you perhaps be a bit more specific?

[incrdbil]

Could you perhaps be a bit more specific?

second-itis:

CoX has the content that it does have after many, many years of development. Sadly, man of CO's players expect the same content amount from a much younger game. Some seem to want the same play experience (more dependancy on the old tired class structure, the need to team as opposed to the ability enjoy more casual solo play).

Just by deciding to do things differently, raher than follow the path of CoX gets criticisms..even I'm subject to it. CoX established an expectation that extra zones should be free upgrades, but, really, there's no reason it has to be free. Given that CoX has been engaging in microtransactions for costume sets and minor powers..charging for a zone expansion really isn't so heretical now that I relfect on it.

[Celt]

In short, I think it was worth the price of a console game, not that price plus a monthly subscription. As bugs do not seem to be fixed in a timely manner and new content requires payment, I don't think it is worth a monthly subscription after the first few months.

Edit: see my post here for more details.

[Rapier]

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]

- 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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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