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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

Inferior imitation of CoX

[incrdbil]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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

[Lord Liaden]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

Inferior imitation of CoX

 

 

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

 

Could you perhaps be a bit more specific?

[incrdbil]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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.

[Guest Celt]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

- 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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

At which point' date=' if it is also still around, CoX will have progressed beyond that. So it goes, as he said, second-itis.[/quote']

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

Anyone interested in buying a lifetime subscription and account?

Free time equals about 5 minutes more then zero.

[Rapier]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

By that point' date=' 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.,[/quote']

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

Well' date=' it is an MMO after all.[/quote']

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

So' date=' what has your experience of Champions Online been? Overall enjoyable, or disappointing?[/quote']

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

Well' date=' 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.[/quote']

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

Possibly' date=' 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.[/quote']

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

If it does what it sounds like it's going to' date=' I'll buy it just to be able to play Professor Scarab as a hero.[/quote']

 

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]

Re: What do you really think of Champions Online?

 

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.