Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Sky]

I played the f2p CO a bit but didn't like my awesome subscriber characters staring me in the face as I played a limited character. Still like to go back and play a bit, I had some great characters.

[caladein]

I actually resubbed to CO for a bit, and had some mindless fun with it. But now CoX is free to play, and they're doing it right, so now I'm back there. It is a bit more sluggish, and the graphics aren't as strong, but there's more to do, and I don't feel so constrained.

I installed CoH last night to try the f2p and get some nostalgia, but wow you understaed the sluggishness and graphics being way subpar.  I'm going to uninstall it tonight.  It was just too bad to care about anymore.  CO feels a lot better of a game even with the issues.  Now, I haven't played anything past the f2p portion, so my opinion may change over time. 

Yeah, I definitely forgot over the many years (1900+ days apparently) since I last played CoH how unresponsive it was.  The graphics aren't particularly bad, but I'm generally not a snob about polys so much as I am about design.

That tutorial was pretty cool but man, I just can't play something like that anymore.

[Dren]

I put some more time into this game over the weekend.  Now I'm getting a hang of things and it is fun.  My son is playing too and enjoying it.  I'm going to try to do some coop with him sometime this week and see how that goes.

The game does get better at higher levels and I feel a lot more heroic.  At first I was discouraged because it almost looked like you had to buy content to get anywhere.  That doesn't seem to be the case quite yet. 

I did look further into pricing and what you get for your money and didn't like what I found.  The content they are selling iis too expensive, in my opinion.  I was willing to throw them some money for some bling, but not at those prices.  I'll get what I can for free I guess.  Maybe later I'll fall in love with the game so much I won't care about the prices anymore?

I was willing to sign up for a premium service if the price was right, but couldn't find this option anywhere.  Can anyone fill me in on this?  I saw mention of this here and there, but nothing specific.  I'm wondering if this is just left over from the people that actually paid a box price when the game first launched?

[Lantyssa]

Yeah, I definitely forgot over the many years (1900+ days apparently) since I last played CoH how unresponsive it was.  The graphics aren't particularly bad, but I'm generally not a snob about polys so much as I am about design.

That tutorial was pretty cool but man, I just can't play something like that anymore.

Weird, because I've never found CoX to be unresponsive.  An ATI card maybe?  They've always had trouble with those.

CO always feels like I have a second of lag after any action, and turning down the graphics to useless levels only helps a little.  I find it worse than LotR, and theirs is at least intentional.

Edit: Whoops, fixed quote.

[Dren]

I installed CoH last night to try the f2p and get some nostalgia, but wow you understaed the sluggishness and graphics being way subpar.  I'm going to uninstall it tonight.  It was just too bad to care about anymore.  CO feels a lot better of a game even with the issues.  Now, I haven't played anything past the f2p portion, so my opinion may change over time.  

Weird, because I've never found CoX to be unresponsive.  An ATI card maybe?  They've always had trouble with those.

CO always feels like I have a second of lag after any action, and turning down the graphics to useless levels only helps a little.  I find it worse than LotR, and theirs is at least intentional.

You misquoted.  That was me.  All I know is I went and got the new free client.  I played with graphics settings for an hour to improve.  It never did.  Everything was herky jerky and I didn't feel connected to my character at all.  The installer said I had a really good video card and could make use of the newer super fantastic video settings.  So I did that.  They still looked worse than CO, but really the gameplay and animations were what killed it for me.  Really really dated.

In CO, I have zero persistent lag (sure some lag when transitioning areas, etc, but not anything constant.)  Controls are very reactive and this is with all the graphics pumped to max.  The original settings were at min and looked terrible.  Now, they are acceptable, but nothing spectacular.  Again, not really a gripe on graphics, but animation/fluidity/gameplay, etc.  My biggest gripe is probably the "Tab" feature for next target, but I have yet to play an MMO that has done this right yet (including WoW.)  It is on par  though.

Most of what has defined my "bar" for this is coming from the FPS games I've been playing lately.  While MMO's can't always take it to this level, there are some already out there that come close.  Global Agenda is one of my best current examples.  Very reactive.  I seldom have a feeling that I wasn't able to do something in the game because the controls didn't react well with my intent.  

The less often I have to think "That's NOT what I wanted you to do!" the better a game scores with this regard.

That's just my objective reivew.  I have no love or hate for either game.  I just wanted to get some super hero gaming on and for a free start like both provide.  YMMV.

*Edit:  I immediately stopped playing LoTR for this reason.  Even with all its good ideas, cool lolore, etc., I couldn't get past the disconnection between my intended gameplay and what came out on screen.  It just felt terrible to me.

[Valmorian]

My biggest problem with Champions Online's F2P model is that they've taken a game where the biggest draw is to be a superhero of your own creation and transformed it into a model where you can only make a narrow set of superheroes. 

At least in CoH as a free player I still have a lot more variety as to the kind of characters I can make.

[Malakili]

OTOH, the only redeeming thing I can say about CO is that it allowed me to make a frog in power armor called Frog of War.

This sort of thing is basically what CO has to offer.  Honestly, I wish they made more full zone add ons like Vibora Bay.  I got frustrated with this game mainly because lack of content and insteresting meta game, neither of which they have seriously addressed since F2P in my opinion, from what I can tell.   The few times I've tried to go back I just think "ugh this again" and quit.

On the question of combat, I actually did like CO, more than CoH.  It felt much more actiony and faster paced to me - especially because you could customize the controls to be almost third person shooter-esque.

[Dren]

It felt much more actiony and faster paced to me - especially because you could customize the controls to be almost third person shooter-esque.

Exactly.  I set the controls like this myself within 5 minutes of starting it up.

I forgot to mention this also killed it for me in CoH.   I just could not set the controls up how I wanted.  At least, I couldn't easily figure it out and I've never run into that in any other game. 

As for endgame content, I'm not even close to that yet.  My perspective is only from a newbie.  I'd imagine CoH has this in spades by nature, but it doesn't really matter.

[Typhon]

I had the same issue going from CO back to CoX for going rogue, controls were just no where near as fluid as CO.  I couldn't get used to it, ended up uninstalling as well.

[Kageru]

CO had console ambitions so there's lots of button spamming, especially when the end-builder wasn't auto-repeat, to keep people busy. Then again pretty much all the powers were different flavored attacks so I got bored of it fast (though I did level-cap in the beta). CoH is very strict about animations and button refresh so I find it ends up being more about a rhythm and watching the animations. They really are quite different games, with CoH being almost the product of a different age of MMO's.

[UnSub]

Of course, CoH had complaints of being "too twitchy" at its launch, so it's funny how time changes things.

[Spiff]

Content-wise there is very little added value in paying for CO, some of the extra missions are somewhat interesting (they've revamped them a little recently), but way too short for the price and too bland to run multiple times imo.

Their f2p scheme is all about limiting character development (by far the biggest draw for the game).
I did sub for a few months to get to play around with free character builds (and open up most costume options) which was quite fun, perhaps not €15 a month fun though.

[Dren]

Their f2p scheme is all about limiting character development (by far the biggest draw for the game).

I've been trying to see the downside of not paying anything and haven't found it yet.  Maybe I'm missing it, but what do you mean by "limiting character development?"  I see where you have to buy many things at character creation if you want something other than vanilla, but within the vanilla classes/powers it seems pretty much complete.  The one thing I noticed that might be cool are those special "chang-into-something-else" powers.  They might be fun to play with, but you can't use them for PvP so I'd imagine the novelty would wear off pretty quick.

I still haven't found a reason to pay for anything yet.  As I level there turns out to be a huge amount of content to burn through and the crafting is keeping pace quite well.  Am I missing something?

[Lantyssa]

If you pay, you do not have to follow an archtype.  You pick and choose your powers from any category.  (Higher tier powers still require having a few lesser ones, but you're not locked in.)

[Malakili]

If you pay, you do not have to follow an archtype.  You pick and choose your powers from any category.  (Higher tier powers still require having a few lesser ones, but you're not locked in.)

Yeah, this, combined with costumes/look are the best parts of the game.  You can pretty much come up with any super hero concept you want and make it work (Early on I made a character using the Force and Darkness sets that was based around the idea of manipulating gravity...sounds cheesy, but it was super fun, if not the most effective thing ever)

[Dren]

Ah, ok, I didn't know about the forced archtype thing.  For now, I'm liking what I'm limited to, but I can see later that might get old.

I couldn't seem to find a one time fee to step up to some premium service.  Is that possible?

[caladein]

If you're happy with the archetypes available (or the ones you can buy access to) there's really not much that's "missing" while you're leveling up.  Technically, free-form characters do get more powers at the end and maybe more upgrades for them, but that's not a big deal.

[koro]

Ah, ok, I didn't know about the forced archtype thing.  For now, I'm liking what I'm limited to, but I can see later that might get old.

I couldn't seem to find a one time fee to step up to some premium service.  Is that possible?

Any amount of money you spend on the game, whether for the smallest denomination of points or a monthly sub, gets you Premium status.

[Dren]

Ah, ok, I didn't know about the forced archtype thing.  For now, I'm liking what I'm limited to, but I can see later that might get old.

I couldn't seem to find a one time fee to step up to some premium service.  Is that possible?

Any amount of money you spend on the game, whether for the smallest denomination of points or a monthly sub, gets you Premium status.

Ok, they are going the TF2 route basically.  Got it.

[Amaron]

Any amount of money you spend on the game, whether for the smallest denomination of points or a monthly sub, gets you Premium status.

I think you meant to post in the CoH thread.  If you want free form you have to have gold which requires the monthly fee or the lifetime subscription.   Lifetime is 300 bucks.

http://www.champions-online.com/f2p_matrix

There's several other reasons than just free form in there.   For every level 40 you get in gold you get a new char slot / respec for instance.   It's not required though if you like the archetypes.

[koro]

Any amount of money you spend on the game, whether for the smallest denomination of points or a monthly sub, gets you Premium status.

I think you meant to post in the CoH thread.  If you want free form you have to have gold which requires the monthly fee or the lifetime subscription.   Lifetime is 300 bucks.

http://www.champions-online.com/f2p_matrix

There's several other reasons than just free form in there.   For every level 40 you get in gold you get a new char slot / respec for instance.   It's not required though if you like the archetypes.

No, I meant to post it here. I thought there was a level in between silver and gold, but I may be remembering wrong, since Champions is kind of shitty regardless. If there IS no intermediate level, then it's just further proof that Cryptic are still a bunch of Don't Get Its.

[Amaron]

Why?  The whole "premium" idea is smart for basically getting you to put your credit card on file but it's not actually something for consumers.   You can just call ChampO's basic level the equivalent to free premium from our point of view.

[UnSub]

Hmm, I'm sure there was a more recent thread for this, but anyway:

Cryptic appears to have picked up most of the former Flying Labs (Pirates of the Burning Sea) team and have turned them into Cryptic North. No idea what this means for whoever is still propping up POTBS.

Cryptic North is working on Champions Online and a Massively poster made the good point that they'd be well placed to help get that Torchlight MMO up and running too since both studios are located in Seattle.

[koro]

I was under the impression that the Torchlight MMO was a no-go, after seeing how the MMO space has changed in the time it took to develop TL2.

But more people working on Champions is good, since the game hasn't had much of any new content in two fuckin' years.

[Scold]

But more people working on Champions is good, since the game hasn't had much of any new content in two fuckin' years.

Champions: On Alert?

[koro]

"Much." The alerts, from what I saw, were pretty much nothing but "A boss is attacking, so here comes a bunch of people to beat it up and then immediately leave."

[Fordel]

Of course, CoH had complaints of being "too twitchy" at its launch, so it's funny how time changes things.

There were? My first impression of CoH was I couldn't fucking attack and move at the same time, something even bloody DaoC managed.

[Trippy]

Yes there were. Lots of people starting out were used to the EQ auto-attack style of game play where you occasionally mash your taunt/beg/kick/whatever buttons and the rest of the time you read a book.