Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[HaemishM]

This all changes with the debut of Champions Online! Players instantly leap into action as soon as they hit a button. Once an animation completes, the player can attack again. There are no lengthy recharge times, and no boring auto attack. Instead, Champions Online has the fast-paced gameplay normally found only in fighting or action games. Years of work on the Cryptic Engine has allowed us to create combat unlike any other MMORPG on the market.

I've often thought that a Dynasty Warriors-esque battle system would be fun in a MMO. We'll see, of course.

Actually, that sounds EXACTLY like City of Heroes combat system.

[stray]

Uh... I'm not saying CoH combat is all that terrible, but it sure isn't "instant action" or Dynasty Warriors like by any means. Not sure what game you were playing.

[HaemishM]

The description listed sounds exactly like City of Heroes, not the Dynasty Warrior hope.

In COH, there is no auto attack. You hit a button, the animation plays out as the attack goes on, and you can't trigger another attack until the animation is done. The only difference is he said there were no recharge times, which I guess means no cooldown on certain powers. I'm sure if that's the case, it'll get nerfed as people do nothing but spam the same power over and over again.

But really, that describes the COH combat system (minus cooldown timers) to a tee. They can claim it's like a fighting game or an action game, and it may be, because COH wasn't that far from it.

[WayAbvPar]

Another feature of the CoH combat system- fighting the same 5 enemies on the same 5 maps until the sun goes cold. Or you manage to slit your wrists with your CoH DVD.



Yes, I realize they have added stuff since I quit, but the grind is still there in full force. Grindy, class-based system and no economy? Be still my heart.

[Murgos]

I'm not worried about the cell-shading, that stuff always looks better in motion than in screenshots.  However, the reskinned CoH environments seem very, very, meh.

The underground one?  Yeaah, I did that in CoH, 32000 times.

[Ingmar]

I'm not sure there's a whole lot you can do to make "modern world city" backgrounds all that different from each other. One alleyway looks very much like another in the US. I guess they could set it in Europe or something.

[Phred]

Yes, I realize they have added stuff since I quit, but the grind is still there in full force. Grindy, class-based system and no economy? Be still my heart.

When I went back last year one of the things that basically drove me away again was how little had changed about missions. I think I might have seen one or two new tile sets and partly I suspected they were already in the game, only showing up in the mid 40's.

[Aez]

CoH is the best mmorpg I played.

I have zero interest for that game.  Been there done that. 
The differences I saw between the two games from the official page :

- No recharge timer skill - replaced by combo.  Now you have to press hotkey 1 + hotkey 2 to get your big attack instead of having it on hotkey 3 with a long recharge timer. No real difference there.
- More customization - good but could have been achieved by an CoH expansion.
- A loot system that let you get new costume pieces has you grind missions - good I guess, still doable in a CoH expansion.
- Suckier lore.  Defender and Doctor Destroyer? Please.  The artwork for Defender is terrible.  He looks like a generic sidekick.

[Margalis]

Players square off not only against hordes of henchmen and their leaders, but also countless costumed villains drawn from the rich lore of Champions. Doctor Destroyer. Grond. Foxbat. Menton. Anklysaur. Mechanon. Firewing. And many, many more.

Hard to imagine someone writing this with a straight face. A few months ago it was Doctor Doom and Magneto, now it's Doctor Destroyer and Mechanon.

Rich lore? I've never heard of any of these guys. It smacks of utter desperation.

[stray]

I think Mr. Furious, the Spleen, and Casanova Frankenstein could actually be taken more seriously than any of that.

[Margalis]

What about Ms Indestructible, Deadly Girl and The Weevil?

Or The Evil Midnight Bomber, Barry and The Hotel Manager?

[cmlancas]

Peter Griffin? 

[Margalis]

I never played CoX so I'm kind of looking forward to this. Also I like cell-shaded graphics and these look pretty nice even in stills. I'm not sure how well a Marvel-based game would work anyway. "Professor X wants you to collect ten wolf hides!"

I think the IP is terrible but whatever, makes no difference to me, Marvel was never a draw for me personally anyway.

So despite all my mean words I'm kind of excited.

[Ragnoros]

Didn't see this mentioned anywhere. Another bullet point.

# Fat Lewt. With the ability to turn the graphics on or off.

Personally I'm stoked. The Marvel IP was meh for me. And with the DC MMO being total vapor having something on the horizon in tights is nice.

[Fordel]

I'm not sure there's a whole lot you can do to make "modern world city" backgrounds all that different from each other. One alleyway looks very much like another in the US. I guess they could set it in Europe or something.

Isn't that why people pay artists and shit? Style, Flair, Flavour? Maybe not have the game revolve around Caves, Alleyways and Warehouses?


Having to look at generic city scene 42 again will suck the life out of me incredibly fast.

[Sjofn]

Hey, if I had any programming skills whatsoever, then Bunnies and Burrows Online would already be paying for my villa in the sun.

I would be your most loyal customer ever.

[Trippy]

The description listed sounds exactly like City of Heroes, not the Dynasty Warrior hope.

In COH, there is no auto attack. You hit a button, the animation plays out as the attack goes on, and you can't trigger another attack until the animation is done. The only difference is he said there were no recharge times, which I guess means no cooldown on certain powers. I'm sure if that's the case, it'll get nerfed as people do nothing but spam the same power over and over again.

But really, that describes the COH combat system (minus cooldown timers) to a tee. They can claim it's like a fighting game or an action game, and it may be, because COH wasn't that far from it.

No it's not. The cooldown timers are what make it different. In CoH you spend a significant amount of time in your early levels standing around twiddling your thumbs waiting for your powers to refresh. Even Brawl the most basic attack that everybody gets has a 2 second refresh time. Eventually as you get enough powers to fill out an attack chain you can chain one attack after another without having to wait in between but even then you still have to wait on individual powers to refresh. The system that's described above is like the one used in the X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance games where you can keep spamming the same button over and over if you wanted to. In CoH if you tried that you would drive yourself insane listening to the "refresh" alert sound.

[Trippy]

They're up right now, including a number of screenshots.

Edit:  It's got sort of a cel-shaded look which I like, but the character designs themselves seem a bit awkward.

Right now I'm kind of "meh" on the whole cel-shaded look. While I do like the look when done well the style they are showing in the screenshots is seriously conflicting with all the eye-candy they are layering on top of it -- e.g. the bloom effects on Defender and the reflections on Doctor Whatshisname. When covered with all teh shiney the cel-shaded textures just look like somebody didn't spend a lot of time on the textures to make them look nice.

[Nevermore]

Everything they've talked about so far has been mildly interesting but you know the one thing that might actually get me to really take notice of the game?  If they vastly improve the npc AI so missions don't consist of repeatedly seeing a big group of retarded crash test dummies all standing around waiting for you to blow them up.

[Murgos]

Meh, when City of Heros went to City of Slightly Better than Normal People is when I lost interest.  Since it's the same people with the same concepts of balance and thoughts on what constitutes a 'fun' play session I doubt if this game will do anything I'm interested in.

I think I figured out that one of the things I like about Eve, at least for the moment, is that I can take my lone ship in and battle 40 or 50 baddies and with some prior planning and, admittedly, a bit of gameyness come out on top.  It's one of the things that endeared me to CoH at first and then completely sucked the life out of me when they changed it.

[Sunbury]

In CoH if you tried that you would drive yourself insane listening to the "refresh" alert sound.

Actually in LOTROL which I just played in late beta and 'friend key' mode for a month or so, I got so tired of staring at the little special attack icons to reactivate, I just stopped looking at them, instead just 'drummed' the 1-2-3 keys and let them take care of themself.  I was a warrior so they helped, but the specific timing was not that critical, at the low levels I was at.

Oddly, I didn't have that problem in CoH.  I played a fire-ice blaster until getting bored in the late 30s.  In combat, I mostly looked at the 3D display, not having to watch special attack icons nor scrolling damage screens to see what was happening.  I only had a couple of 'long timer' skills which I checked before starting the next fight.

My dream MMOG does not have icons that light up or with timers, and does not have the scrolling damage log windows, but you can play actually looking at the damn 3D graphics.  If there are game elements related to that, they should be reflected in a more 3D / Natural way, somehow...

[Trippy]

In CoH if you tried that you would drive yourself insane listening to the "refresh" alert sound.

Oddly, I didn't have that problem in CoH.  I played a fire-ice blaster until getting bored in the late 30s.  In combat, I mostly looked at the 3D display, not having to watch special attack icons nor scrolling damage screens to see what was happening.  I only had a couple of 'long timer' skills which I checked before starting the next fight.

You need to read what I wrote more carefully.

[Nevermore]

Interesting read.  Now the question is: Will he learn from his mistakes?

[Ingmar]

I'm not sure there's a whole lot you can do to make "modern world city" backgrounds all that different from each other. One alleyway looks very much like another in the US. I guess they could set it in Europe or something.

Isn't that why people pay artists and shit? Style, Flair, Flavour? Maybe not have the game revolve around Caves, Alleyways and Warehouses?


Having to look at generic city scene 42 again will suck the life out of me incredibly fast.

I guess superhero games aren't for you on some level. The City (...my "The City") is a central theme in the genre, it isn't really abandonable.

For all of the complaining about CoH's lack of maps, there are actually quite a bit more than 5:

office building (couple different wall types)
ruined office building
warehouse
ruined warehouse
sewer
rocky/wet cave
sandy cave
science lab
council base
oranbega
freight ship
arachnos base
rikti base
bank

There are also a bunch of 'special' villain group related updates to some of these, like the Freakshow warehouse, the Tsoo tattoo parlor warehouse, etc. I'm sure I left some other maps out as well. And that's not including all the 'outdoor' maps from train missions, mayhem/safeguard missions and the like. There are probably at least another 20+ of those. And then the newer zone TFs have special maps, like that giant robot council base one. And they've probably added more since I canceled like a year ago.

[Nebu]

Maybe it's the fact that you have to grind the selection of maps so many times to get anywhere that makes the selection appear more limited.  I also think that CoH is hurt by the fact that there are few different encounter types beyond: run to an instance, kill x/find x/escort x/clear.  Having to do these missions many many times to level after 35 makes the game seem a lot less varied than it may actually be. 

[Montague]

Interesting read.  Now the question is: Will he learn from his mistakes?

The net effect of the updates was high retention versus a "typical" MMORPG from month one to month two -- a rate of about 90 percent, Emmert said, high above his colleagues' two thirds loss on other games. The retention month after month continued to be static, moreover. "The people who remain, you can't get rid of them... it's absolutely impossible to do it because they're so used to the pain and agony of the gameplay that they love it."

Finally, consider player nature. "People will make it as un-fun as they possibly can if they think there's something to gain by that," Emmert added, concluding, “Worry about the players you've got. Don't worry about the players you don't have. You are what you are at launch," advised Emmert.

My guess would be that's a negative.

[Nebu]

Don't worry about the players you don't have. You are what you are at launch," advised Emmert.

Blizzard disagrees. 

[cmlancas]

So would Sony, I bet, with EQ2.

[Lantyssa]

So would Sony, I bet, with EQ2.

Or wouldn't, with SWG.

Some change is okay, and over years the playerbase will transform, but major changes for the sake of chasing new players will fail.

[Ragnoros]

Fucking interwebs ate my post.

Anyway I was going to make one about the lack of backdrops for missions, but when it comes down to it no one really gives a fuck. The problem is

<snip> missions consist of repeatedly seeing a big group of retarded crash test dummies all standing around waiting for you to blow them up.

NOTHING fun or interesting happens in missions. There are a couple exceptions, but we're talking a bit of dialog here, nothing ground breaking.
"Arrest" everyone. "Arrest" everyone. Click the box and  "Arrest" everyone. Click the NPC. are about all the variety you get. 
They need to spend a big fucking portion of their dev time making missions fun. They can take the easy way out and throw more dialog in and some cutscenes. Which from the article in GI sounds like what they are going to be doing. Or they can go the hard way and put some truly fun, dynamic shit in that makes you make decisions.

Arriving at the warehouse you got a tip on from one of your more reliable informants you survey the scene. Several startled and rather unpleasant looking thugs are pointing some high tech weaponry at you. Maybe crashing in on the party through the skylight was not the wisest of plans... The rest of the thugs - who are  less impressively armed - are making a run for the unmarked vans they were loading the equipment into. If they get out of sight and split up it's unlikely you will catch more then one or two of them, if that. And lastly, aww crap. Hostages...
Just as you begin to formulate a plan the wall next to you explodes into a shower of bricks and a large angry man steps into the room through the newly made door. Fantastic, they brought muscle. Whatever is in these crates must be worth a fortune to someone with all the effort put into this heist.

At this point you would have to prioritize between saving the hostages, catching the thieves, avoiding being shot, and dealing with the guy trying to rearrange your face.

Lastly they could put in some truly groundbreaking PvP with people playing heroes fighting other people playing villains in missions for rewards and XP as it SHOULD be in a superhero game. But that would be far to epic if done right.

Basically combat is fun. Be it watching the awesome particle effects as you blast your enemies into dust, sending your zombie horde to rip them limb from limb, or wading your skinny ass into a mob of a dozen guys (ED can suck my ass, but we are not talking about that here) and beating them all down with your bare hands is fucking fun.
Doing the same mission for the entire game is not.

(It's late I'm tired, forgive me now and I'll edit this into something coherent tomorrow.)

[Margalis]

Some change is okay, and over years the playerbase will transform, but major changes for the sake of chasing new players will fail.

Wow has barely changed at all since release. The main thing I gather is that world PvP got shafted in favor of arena-type stuff. But there haven't been any major system changes. And PvP was in at release, they just changed the focus. A lot of the growth has been new markets.

EQ is probably the best example of building an audience but that was done more with incremental improvements. I think the point he was trying to make is that adding new systems or dramatically altering old ones is typically going to do little to increase subs.

[Ratman_tf]

He's talking about that game with Dark Helmet. 

[Nevermore]

Here's another article on that Jack Emmert talk.  The Q&A at the end wasn't mentioned in the other article.  This quote boggles my mind.

Q: You admit that you aren't the most perfect designer... how do you get people to stick around in your games?
A: I had a vision for the game. In action/RPGs, there aren't any items with stats. Why do we need all of those numbers?

Which RPGs is he playing that don't have items with stats?  If he clings to that 'players don't need to see the numbers' crap in Champoins, it's going to suck.

Edit:

They have their first trailer already.  The bits and pieces of the actual game looks pretty.  That cell shading in motion does look better than the stills, which seems par for the course with cell shading.

[Ratman_tf]

Here's another article on that Jack Emmert talk.  The Q&A at the end wasn't mentioned in the other article.  This quote boggles my mind.

Q: You admit that you aren't the most perfect designer... how do you get people to stick around in your games?
A: I had a vision for the game. In action/RPGs, there aren't any items with stats. Why do we need all of those numbers?

Which RPGs is he playing that don't have items with stats?  If he clings to that 'players don't need to see the numbers' crap in Champoins, it's going to suck.

He might be talking about games like Zelda, where your bow and boomerang don't have "+100 versus Dodongos" on it.

[Nevermore]

I'll take a Mass Effect over a Zelda any day of the week, personally.  Of course, I also think items in a superhero game is stupid.  But I damn well want to see the numbers on my powers.