Champions Online: The Thread

[Oskuro]

Since the game has gone retail already, I though about starting this thread as follow up to the previous beta thread.

Now, I've had the chance to tinker a bit with the game, and these are my first impressions:

Character Creation: They've gone very far with the customizability of their character creator, not only are there many features you can fine-tune, there are textures, sub-textures, glow level, and a myriad variations. Additionally, the parts make for some interesting looking costumes, each having its own personality, not to mention the ability to set your character's mood.

Still, compared to City of Heroes, there's a feel of there being few options. This isn't bad by itself, CoX has been running for several years and has amassed many upgrades to its character creation system, so CO can and probably will add new options as time goes on. A good thing compared to CoX though is that each piece, by virtue of many of them being actual 3d models instead of just textures, has a more unique feel, and thus leads to more distinctive costumes.

All I can really say is that I managed to create an undead gunslinger that I just wanted to take home and place on a shelf or something, so good. But it needs more robot parts.

Powers: I'm digging the mix'n'match possibilities. I'm also liking that there are stats (unlike CoX and that these have visible effects. For example, strength allows you to pick up and use as weapons even larger items, and FSM knows how I've wished to pick up and throw a car in CoX), as well as the whole power customization, although I have to complain that travel powers feel a bit awkward. Most are reskins of Flight, with little variation in their function, and they could have been made as different customization options of the basic flight power. Still, they feel more immersive (you hear wind gushing by while flying) and the whole "charge up" mechanic is cool.

Oh, and web slinging is very fun to play, although a bit tricky to get the hang off. Pity they didn't do the same for other travel powers, that is, make them more interactive, for example, having super jump allow the character to jump off walls, or wall-run with super speed, oh well. As for TP, it's nice, but I would have called it Planar Shift, and would've retained the point-and-click TP from CoX as an alternative.

But anyway, all complaints became moot when I saw there is a GUNKATA power!

Environment: The maps look gorgeous, and better designed than the bland CoH maps (or the depressing CoV ones), although I find it a bit sad that, being the web-slinging one of the novel travel powers, they set the starter missions in a desert and artic tundra, thus making it obvious your character is hanging from nowhere. But it's a nitpick really.

I haven't payed too much attention to quests yet (I breezed through the tutorial to try things at the powerhouse), but the interface feels more WoW-ish, and thus more intuitive. I'm undecided about the gear system though. We'll see.

As for the server distribution, there are no realms, each zone is hosted in a set of low player density servers, wich I think is a smart move (better do this than go bankrupt due to having too many realms) wich will only become a problem if there are 30+ player associations (although I'm not sure if there are larger hub areas afterwards). It can also be an issue with the limited number of character slots, since alt-holics like myself will quickly run out. Guess they expect to offer extra slots through money paymenty, like in CoX, thus causing me to hate them forever. At least this server distribution will reduce latency, wich is essential for what I consider the best part of the game.

Gameplay: Finally! A Superhero MMO that feels active! I love how they've made the powers work. It makes sure you're paying attention, and draws you into the action, instead of having you just pressing keys with a bored look on your face. The whole energy buildup mechanic is very interesting, and both the charge and combo powers are fun to play (I refer to as combo powers to those who need you to keep tapping the key for further effect, like the GUNKATA power). And there's blocking, although it cannot be customized (to my knowledge) wich is a bummer seeing how visible and interesting were the defense powers from CoX.


Oh well, I'm still not sold on the idea, specially since I still have gameplay time left on CoX, but it looks like CO will evolve nicely to succeed CoX, although I wish it went into a different direction, earning it's own personality, and thus being something more than a sequel to CoX. Let's hope they iron out the quirks currently present, because the whole thing looks very tasty.

Bottom line is, one of the loading screens has a GIANT FLAMING GORILLA. Can't go wrong with that, or GUNKATA.

[Mr Bean]

I'm liking it. I already have five alts past the start areas hanging out between 11-13 with my main edging past 16 now that I'm committed to playing up to 40 on one. Champions has serious growth room as show by the starting zones at present you can go 1-20 without ever seeing the Canadian Wilderness if you want to spend your time only in the Desert and Millennium City. Or vice versa. There are three solid zones to go fighting, questing and exploring in. The wandering cosmic monsters like Grond are a nice touch and the almost total lack of death punishment is good.

Missions are the way to gain XP at present, and just because you out-level a mission does not mean you can't do it again if you want the rewards. Crafting makes sense once you get the ideas down. Pick a path(Does not matter except flavor and unless you want a specific consumable) then pick a specialty which won't matter until you get above 100 skill.

Which is pretty easy to do. Each item breaks down into enough parts to let you craft three similar strength items until you get higher up. Once higher up you might need two or three to make one item which as pointed out, each craft piece of equipment is just as good as what you can find out in the world or as rewards. The exception is crafted items have much lower level requirements. For example I have a primary offense weapon I made via crafting that boosts my damage by 6.7 adds to my strength and constitution by 19 and 6 respectively and requires you be level 14 to use. A similar item found in the wild is more likely to have a level requirement of 19 or 20. So crafting gets you better equipment but not massively better as a decent level 14 pickup might be +15 +4 with 5.8 to damage.

Costuming rant
How the hell this thing got out of Beta with you being unable to see what your custom weapon looks like I don't know.

For those that don't know, there are things in the world called weapon replacer's. By default ever gets the same Katana for example for single blade. By level 16 however I have access to that Katana, Two Fantasy type swords, A Cutlass type, one crazy looking Tech sword, A Mace, a classic Axe or a Fantasy axe to pick from in addition to a baseball bat.

However to see what any of these look like I have to add them on, exit the costume creator, find an enemy or an object I can attack, hit it, then look at my new weapon. Which is just dumb. They promise us they have it planned to be fixed soon but that's a serious wtf on my part.

/Rant


OAN, this world is interesting and since it is a new and shiny world I can't wait to go out and look at everything.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I am not really a fan of superheroes, comic books, "graphic novels" and what-have-you. They've never been my thing. So believe me when I say this game is awesome. For once, it's nice to sit down and play an MMO at release that actually feels finished and polished.

More later, but WRT blocking: You can customize it. Several of the frameworks have various special blocks which are more effective, and can be customized to your liking.

[Joviwan]

I've been giving it a run around to see what I think.

The animations are atrocious, the oversights are hilarious (bean's post re: costumes), and the bugs are maddening. Like "Every time the game changes instances or forces a cut-scene, I lose all my keybinds."

Combat is essentially exactly the same as City of Heroes, except for the entirely aesthetic movement mechanics. Oh, yes, you can move around, jump like a monkey, duck, dodge, juke... Except it does absolutely nothing except look cool. There's no reason to not just stand there with a bored look on your face mashing power buttons that doesn't equally apply in other MMO's. "Oh noes, someone's moving into melee. Back up." "I need to get into melee. Move closer." "I need to stay ranged. Back up." "I need to get out of aggro. Run 2 miles away." Honestly, the movement mechanics are what piss me off the most about this game, because it SEEMS to give you action/adventure 3rd person precision controls, but nothing you ever do with them in any way contributes to the success or failure of your character. It's still just a numbers game with the illusion of freedom.

Additionally, most of how the game's mechanics actually function are either completely inscrutable or were so easily missed on an NPC in the mandatory tutorial that it's functionally identical. There's no way to tell how your numbers actually interact with the game world, half if not all defense powers only activate under mysterious, unknowable circumstances that you can't actually research or look into inside the game, item crafting is poorly explained, there's no semblance of balance between a myriad of power choices, and no where does it tell you how your base statistics function on your character, save for generic explanations and unhelpful percentage numbers that have no meaning when "100% defense" translates into "You take most of the damage anyway."

I'm just really not all that impressed. If I ever pay the game's monthly fee, it's going to be six months down the line and done exceedingly tentatively.

EDIT: Oh, and the game desperately needs a page dedicated entirely to definitions. It uses a myriad of key-words to describe how mechanics function, and then gives you no way to understand beyond experimentation or inferring what those words actually mean.

[Oskuro]

I forgot to mention something else I liked from the game: the motherfucking MUSIC! It's there, and it rocks!

I guess I'll get fed up with it after a while (although I've been told a future patch will integrate winamp controls into the game), but at least it is not the same bland, low key and appalling music from City of Heroes (City of Villains had a better soundtrack during character creation at least).

Except it does absolutely nothing except look cool.

Then it does do somehing, it looks cool. For many players (myself included) being able to do cool things is a big draw, so if I have to put up with the usual MMO combat system, having the possibility of making it look cool is a welcome change. Of course I agree it'd be better if it had more uses, but that use is fine by me. And who knows, they might improve it (it's a young game after all).

I have to complain though about the graphics. It's a general complaint because many current generation games suffer from this. I don't know what they do to the textures, but they look like they are made from wax, or even play-doh, and colors go funky on the models when self-shadowing applies, specially when you use bright primary colors (as any self-respecting superhero should). But I guess this won't be fixed anytime soon.



Apparently, it's been stated that munitions heroes have a harder time soloing, specially when fighting super-villains. Any tips for a fledgling GUNKATA hero from other munitions players?

[Mr Bean]

Apparently, it's been stated that munitions heroes have a harder time soloing, specially when fighting super-villains. Any tips for a fledgling GUNKATA hero from other munitions players?

Level and make sure you have both dodge powers. Both Lightning Reflexes and later Masterful Dodge. Both are Tier 1 under Martial Arts so by the time you hit 11 you should be able to pick up Reflexes, later you need Masterful Dodge. (Edit Masterful is tier 2 so you need to have five of any old powers before you can pick it)

All of the click defense powers are 10 to 20 second get out of jail free cards. Masterful dodge is the best as it's 15 seconds every 90 seconds of "you can't hit me" with nearly all attacks doing 1 damage. The only exceptions are the "POW" and "BLAM!" attacks you see above Master villians or higher. And even then you doge some of the damage(Like 2/3rds) so if your at 1/3 heath left, pop your masterful dodge and start shooting henchmen and hope a few green's drop for you to use. As well look into crafting arms to get the HoT patches for true oh-shit moments.

[Joviwan]

Then it does do somehing, it looks cool. For many players (myself included) being able to do cool things is a big draw, so if I have to put up with the usual MMO combat system, having the possibility of making it look cool is a welcome change. Of course I agree it'd be better if it had more uses, but that use is fine by me. And who knows, they might improve it (it's a young game after all).

Which is fine, except I personally find the mechanics to be fundamentally dishonest. There's been so much pomp and circumstance about the game being a tactile action adventure thing, designed for action junkies, and then the reality is that it actually serves no functional purpose other than looking pretty. If a game implies that my ability to maneuver will have an immediate and noticeable impact on my performance, I expect that to actually be true.

Apparently, it's been stated that munitions heroes have a harder time soloing, specially when fighting super-villains. Any tips for a fledgling GUNKATA hero from other munitions players?

You've got me. I'm playing a munitions gun-kata person, and I only just today learned that Gun-kata could be mashed repeatedly for more effects.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I agree that some of the mechanics are a little too obfuscated, and I gimped my first couple of characters because of it (I had no idea your damage was not based off the usual stats, but rather the stat you pick for your super-stat!). That said, it isn't that bad. The tooltips in your character screen explain most everything a given stat does, including how much damage a super-stat contributes to your abilities.

Also, movement does matter to some degree. Without even getting into the various travel powers and their effects on a fight, with all the knockback, knock-up, etc. that gets flung around, it pays to position yourself accordingly. It's fun fighting a Master Villain on top of a car park and killing him in one hit - a full charge Haymaker, appropriately positioned, sends him flying off the edge and plummeting to his doom.

Movement and travel powers pay off big-time in PvP. Currently, teleport is pretty cheesy so a lot of people use that, but plain old flight can work well - most people shoot and melee around on the ground, so it's very easy to overlook all that DPS that comes flying down from the rafters. One of my characters is mostly ranged, so I just hover well above the fight and fling damage down from above, and I very rarely get noticed. When I do, I just fly off and move somewhere inconspicuous while my regeneration does its work.

As for Munitions: I've had a lot of success with Assault Rifle. Level that sucker up - it puts out some pain. Works like Two-Gun Mojo, but lots more damage and more range to boot.

[Mr Bean]

Let me just say FYI on Munitions
Rocket looks great, you pull an RPG-7 out of somewhere and send a rocket down range with enough knock back attached to knock them around like bowling pins. Long charge up time and you can't move while using it. Again looks great.

It's DAMAGE and compared to other AOE munitions attack is terrible. You get it, it get's good damage, but by your mid twenties your other AOE powers do almost twice as much in half the time. The only thing it has going for it is looks. Time wise you can throw three grenades for four times the damage in the time and energy it uses for example.

[Oskuro]

Which is fine, except I personally find the mechanics to be fundamentally dishonest.

I don't think they are being deliberately dishonest, but rather that it is the best they have come up with (considering they are working with an upgraded City of Heroes engine).
Hopefully we'll get more tactics out of the system, but I bet it will depend on how people play, thus prompting developers to enhance things for the majority (as has been done once and again in WoW). Only time will tell.

You've got me. I'm playing a munitions gun-kata person, and I only just today learned that Gun-kata could be mashed repeatedly for more effects.

Yeah, same happened here until I carefully read the tooltip and found out there are these "combo" powers. Of course then I found the gunkata to be so awesome I almost pissed myself, that is, until I realized I had buffed my strength to ungodly levels to try picking up heavier weights in the power house, and I'm guessing that's why my gunkata combo was capable of almost instakilling henchmen (Haven't checked this yet).


Regarding the progression of munitions, I'm a bit wary mainly because of what happened in CoH (I don't know if they've changed the system that much). Back in that game, rifles were awesome at first, but at high levels enemies became more resistant to physical damage, thus making things harder for rifle users. I'm wondering if they'll play the same cheap trick in this game.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Everything is less effective as you level up. I'm starting to notice it at level 18 - where my Eldritch Blast power used to 2-shot villains, now even at full charge it struggles to do much damage. The trick is finding a good, high-damage power and sticking with it and getting all its upgrades.

[SylasGaunt]

I've got a couple alts, big altaholic so I just know I'm going to run out of slots before too long.

The might power set coupled with some high strength really does make you feel like the big mighty hero though, like when you haul off with roomsweeper and send a whole pack of villains flying through the air (and in one case right over a nearby building).

Also they've announced the upcoming Blood Moon expansion/event. New power set, zombies, and werewolves oh my.

[OmegaChief]

I don't think they are being deliberately dishonest, but rather that it is the best they have come up with (considering they are working with an upgraded City of Heroes engine)

I was under the impression they were running with a new Cryptic Engine or some such, the same one they're using for STO.

[Mr Bean]

They are under a new engine which they created for the now canceled Marvel MMO. And while they do retain all of the sound library's they used for Champions Online the Engine itself is new. There are a dozen things it does which even a upgraded City of Hero's engine could not manage, the main one being the ability to customize powers. The old CoX engine had all powers tied to animations on the base level to save resources which when they wanted to customize powers made it nearly impossible. It took them sixteen issues to pull it off and from what I've read CoX's version is just a cludge, they duplicated most of the power sets several times and recolored them then gave you the option to pick from the identical but colored differently powers.

Sooner or later some CoX power is going to get nerfed or buffed but they will forget to do that to the blue version of the power or red or something similar.

[Joviwan]

It took them sixteen issues to pull it off and from what I've read CoX's version is just a cludge, they duplicated most of the power sets several times and recolored them then gave you the option to pick from the identical but colored differently powers.

They only recently had the man-power to afford to be able to go into the game and recode things from the ground up to allow you to change your power colors. You get to use the same basic color selector that the rest of the game's costuming features use, so whatever the power is, you can get up to two different hues. They're introducing some alternate animations for the hand to hand sets as well, though they mostly look cobbled together from existing sets.

Sooner or later some CoX power is going to get nerfed or buffed but they will forget to do that to the blue version of the power or red or something similar.

That's already happened a bunch of times. They generally tend to fix it eventually.

[Oskuro]

I read somewhere that it was an updated CoX engine, and some things are suspiciously similar, but I can't find the source, so my bad, probably the place I read it from just assumed it was the same engine without checking.

[OmegaChief]

Probably! The reused sound library doesn't help, if I hadn't read about teh new Cyriptic engine while browsing for info about STO I'd probably think the same!

Though once i16 hits it'll be hard to judge which of them has better power customisation actually, or at least in my opinion.

[GuppyShark]

I was surprised by how story driven the game was, I was expecting CoX style "Here's a zone full of bad guys, hit them to level".

I've picked the game up and intend to play at least one character through to the level cap by the end of the included month.

Whether I continue to play will depend on how well it goes over with my mates - I have to admit I'd like to try raiding as a superhero instead of the usual fantasy tripe.

[Oskuro]

I was surprised by how story driven the game was, I was expecting CoX style "Here's a zone full of bad guys, hit them to level".

What are you talking about? City of Heroes is very story driven. The problem is you can't tell the story missions appart from mindless grinding.

[White Haven]

@whitehaven here, and I've been having loads of fun. That's not to say the game was ready for launch (lol one week open beta), but it's still fun in spite of it. The current biggest problem I've run across is the lack of content. From the twenties on up, I was doing mostly +2 and +3 quests, clearing out just about everything along the way. Then I hit 30, and there's a huge content hole in Monster Island. Cryptic simple didn't make enough quests to get from 30 to 31 if you've been riding the curve the whole time; there's a ton and a half of people grinding one PQ in Monster Island to make up the missing ~2/3 of a level. That was a major bummer, but I finally hit 31 late last night, so we'll see how it goes from here. I hope they did a better job with quest density in Lemuria.

Oh, and regarding movement, line-of-sight IS breakable even mid-channel on attacks, so that's saved my ass on some serious, serious villainy.

P.S. Condemn is overpowered as all hell. Get it, love it, use it, expect it to be nerfed.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yeah, word is that it's been nerfed on the test build already. Which is a shame - I picked it up on an alt and love it, and it fits well on my main so I thought about getting it, but given the absurd respec issues right now I really don't want to blow a power on something that's just going to get nerfed.

[White Haven]

Don't stress power choices too much, you get WAY more powers than you really need for any one build, so it's not at all hard to just shrug and pick something else to fill the role. My levelling partner always bitches when he gets a new power choice, because he has a hard time finding things that fit.

[Rahvin]

CO feels like MUCH less of an endless grind than CoH/V to me. The number of power choices is definitely overwhelming at times, but it also helps with the inevitable cookie-cutters that CoH/V had - when you have enough power selections to take all but jsut a few powers in a set, you used to wind up with very common builds with no real variety.

My biggest problem was defense - after 20, I started to face tougher enemies, and I couldn't quite burn them down fast enough. I played with a few of the defensive passives in the Powerhouse (the awesomeness of being able to try out as many powers as you want for free before finalizing your selection cannot be understated) and on a few missions, and found that Regeneration while in the defensive role may gimp my damage, but I'll live longer than the other guy nine times out of ten.

Whitehaven brought me along on a 5-man instance, and despite some significant bugs, it was a blast. I was sidekicked up from 20 to 29/31 at the time, and the sidekicking function is as good as I remember from CoH/V - I wish WoW had a similar function while leveling up, or a way to sidekick down for helping friends through a lower-level instance. The bugs we experienced were mostly due to scripted sequences that we fouled up by running ahead of where we were supposed to be. Nothing game-breaking, and we finished the instance just fine. I very much look forward to going back there in a few levels, knowing what I have to do.

I popped to 23 last night. I'm starting to see what Whitehaven mentioned about quests - I'm typically running level 25s while I'm at 23. I don't seem to have missed many sub-20s, either - up to 20 seems fine, but there's definitely a gap here. I'll probably try to fill it with the repeatable quests (there are several) and instance runs once I'm over 25.

Still, the most important thing is that the game is fun - and judging by the fact that I've been playing it exclusively since open beta, obviously CO is meeting that requirement for me.

[White Haven]

One good trick for when you do need to grind (and you will at some point, until they fix the fucked-in-the-ear exp curve) is to instance-hop open missions. Finish one, and then rather than wait out the ten-minute (or however long) reset timer, hop to another instance of the zone and get in a shorter leftover time.

[Oskuro]

I wish WoW had a similar function while leveling up, or a way to sidekick down for helping friends through a lower-level instance.

Either on the next major patch or upon release of Cataclysm, your wish will be granted.