Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[WayAbvPar]

Why does she have 4 GB of RAM to run XP 32?

[Trippy]

Why not? It's easier to order 2 2x1 GB kits than to go with 2x1 GB and 2x512 MB (I'm not even sure places like Dell offer a 3 GB RAM option).

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Emmert posts one new way Cryptic is trying to keep ChampO polished for launch. According to another dev post, the Champions team spent over 800 hours collectively playtesting the zone over two weeks.

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Continuing in my quest to post about MMOs no-one else cares about:

Gamespot gets an exclusive video to show off - looks like CoH/V, if a bit faster paced and with more enemies.

2K to publish ChampO - an interesting choice, after they made a big song and dance about self-publishing. No official comment as to why this decision was made, but the forums are thinking that ex-SOE now-Cryptic CEO John Needham has decided against the risk of self-publishing. Also interesting is that ChampO on the Xbox 360 isn't yet MS approved - I don't think I've ever seen such a disclaimer before.

Interesting, in that if 2K is bought by EA, ChampO gets WAR as a stablemate.

EDIT - Interesting point was made that 2K could give ChampO an easy entry onto Steam.

[UnSub]

We stopped by Cryptic's office to get a first look at Champions, which also happens to be the first-ever cross-platform MMOG.

What? No it's not.

Yeah, well, it is Gamespot...

[Trippy]

They must be losing people left and right.

[UnSub]

They must be losing people left and right.

Gamespot, Cryptic or 2K?

If you were talking about Cryptic: maybe. The forum mods for ChampO have gone dead silent. They are / were online, merging threads and such, but have said nothing. They didn't even create an official link for a forum discussion about the 2K announcement, which is the first time they've neglected such a thing. Katalyst, a mod / CM who has a thread devoted to what she is doing at the moment - twitter-like, I guess - hasn't said a word.

[Trippy]

I meant GameSpot.

[HaemishM]

Gamespot gets an exclusive video to show off - looks like CoH/V, if a bit faster paced and with more enemies.

That looks nothing like City of Heroes/Villains.

[Jimbo]

I'll be at GenCon in Indy, hopefully we can get to see some stuff.  Looks cool, but then again I love CoX.

[UnSub]

As an update, there's a huge press push covered on the ChampO site. From one of those articles, 2K's and Cryptic's relationship is meant to reflect that of Blizzard / Vivendi - Cryptic is full service, 2K handles marketing and distribution.

[WayAbvPar]

I love CoX.

 

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Fan videos of ChampO at GenCon in a thread.

Now, I've only watched the YouTube versions, but combat looked a lot slower than for DCUO, there are some obvious bugs (e.g. picking up a box left a copy of the box on the ground and another box in the hands of the character) and super speed really needed to be accompanied by Yakkity Sax.

I must admit I was expecting something ... quicker.

[Venkman]

PC Gamer this issue had a hands-on, and they said the combat felt more like Diablo 2 than CoX, both for the instantaneous response of actions and the ability to spam them. They also said the customization exceeds even that of CoX. Otherwise, everything else was a bunch of typical MMO stuff being quasi-marketed.

[UnSub]

Maybe the play experience is better than the videos show - we've had that discussion before on f13 - but I have to say that DCUO looks a lot prettier. The only way ChampO 'wins' in that regard is if it can play on PCs with lower specs than DCUO.

[Jimbo]

Quick stuff,
I spoke to two of the designers and got to play it a couple of times, really nice guys:

1.  Played more like Diablo II then click and attack/turn based.  You could miss if you didn't get close as you were swinging, more like X-men or Marvel Ultimate Alliance in how it played.

2.  No arch types or classes.  You can generalize and do a lot of everything, or go down one area and specialize, I suck at names but the two gentlemen I talked to said they have stuff for solo or groups, and that if you want to make it a healer, ranged, melee, go for it.  Specialization helps, but isn't needed.

3.  Loot, it will help but not be an end all, plus you can equip diffrent loot to do diffrent jobs.

4.  They want to make it for the xbox 360 and the PC and have that at release.  It is up to the xbox people on getting it a go, as they allready have it easy to play on an xbox360 controller.  I forgot to ask about voice over internet...

5.  The world will be that if you kill enough of one type, a boss will be triggered and come out to you.  The arch bosses didn't seem that hard, but we were set up on solo mode.

6.  They have a wide range of powers, with a lot of diffrent ranged, buffs, heals, melee, AoE, and Cone attacks.

7.  Group size is set at 5 now, not sure if they will make it bigger for grouping or if plans were in for raiding and how large groups would work.

8.  Super Groups and Bases are in, but they couldn't show us that.

9.  Customization of everything is supposedly in on your hero, but they couldn't show us that either.

10.  Travel powers for now are super speed, super jump, flying, and teleport.

11.  You will have cut scene loading between the areas, but the zones were pretty big.

I wish I had written down a lot of people's name, GenCon was fun and the playtest was pretty fun too.  We missed the meetings with Jack too...instead we were beating each other up with foam weapons we  made or playing some of the new card games (Call of Duty TCG was fun!).

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A better video at 10TonHammer. Obvious auto targeting has issues if the dev can't hit what he is aiming for reliably.

8.  Super Groups and Bases are in, but they couldn't show us that.

According to other info I've seen, bases aren't in at launch.

[HaemishM]

Fan videos of ChampO at GenCon in a thread.

Hmmm. What a surprise, it looks like City of Heroes with different skins. I think I could only be less enthused if we were talking about Star Trek Online.

[Nebu]

Hmmm. What a surprise, it looks like City of Heroes with different skins. I think I could only be less enthused if we were talking about Star Trek Online.

Make a spaceship tile set and put little A's on the uniforms in the character creation system... DONE!  They even have pointy ears for you vulcan lovers.

[justdave]

3.  Loot, it will help but not be an end all, plus you can equip diffrent loot to do diffrent jobs.

This covers so much unspecified ground that it might as well be the 'Miracle occurs here' box in the flowchart.

[Jimbo]

3.  Loot, it will help but not be an end all, plus you can equip diffrent loot to do diffrent jobs.

This covers so much unspecified ground that it might as well be the 'Miracle occurs here' box in the flowchart.

I found a glove that did 10% chance of root when landing a hit.  I took it off and killed baddies, I put it on and killed baddies, I guess it helped if I wanted to keep something at range, but I noticed I was pretty strong with ranged and melee attacks.  Basically they wanted another area you could customize your powerset, since you can build up with powers however you want, they wanted the gear to help customize in ways you would like to use them.

[Margalis]

Has anyone mentioned the fact that when you make a character you also create your arch-nemesis? Sounds pretty cool to me, especially because character creation is the most fun part of CoX.

[Jimbo]

They were talking about the arch nemesis, at level 30 (game will release with 40 levels--subject to change though) you get to set up the arch nemesis for you.  You will get to decide what he or she will do to you, from ambushes, trying to screw up your missions, breaking into your base, stealing your gear, etc...

[Ghambit]

They were talking about the arch nemesis, at level 30 (game will release with 40 levels--subject to change though) you get to set up the arch nemesis for you.  You will get to decide what he or she will do to you, from ambushes, trying to screw up your missions, breaking into your base, stealing your gear, etc...

Sounds like an auto-creating endgame mechanic produced by the players.  Interesting concept (if they get it right).  Conceivably you could have near infinite amounts of different group endgame oriented battles with peoples' nemesis's's's... er nemesi... wtf is the plural of nemesis?

[justdave]

3.  Loot, it will help but not be an end all, plus you can equip diffrent loot to do diffrent jobs.

This covers so much unspecified ground that it might as well be the 'Miracle occurs here' box in the flowchart.

I found a glove that did 10% chance of root when landing a hit.  I took it off and killed baddies, I put it on and killed baddies, I guess it helped if I wanted to keep something at range, but I noticed I was pretty strong with ranged and melee attacks.  Basically they wanted another area you could customize your powerset, since you can build up with powers however you want, they wanted the gear to help customize in ways you would like to use them.

Okay, I can see that...I just hope they successfully walk teh fine line of 'interesting but not mandatory'.

The arch-nemesis sounds like it has potential.

[Numtini]

You will get to decide what he or she will do to you, from ambushes, trying to screw up your missions, breaking into your base, stealing your gear, etc...

This sounds very cool, but the first thing that ran through my mind was D.E.B.S.

[eldaec]

They were talking about the arch nemesis, at level 30 (game will release with 40 levels--subject to change though) you get to set up the arch nemesis for you.  You will get to decide what he or she will do to you, from ambushes, trying to screw up your missions, breaking into your base, stealing your gear, etc...

Sounds like an auto-creating endgame mechanic produced by the players.  Interesting concept (if they get it right).  Conceivably you could have near infinite amounts of different group endgame oriented battles with peoples' nemesis's's's... er nemesi... wtf is the pural of nemesis?

Viewing this purely as 'CoX2', this mechanic has a lot of potential.

The elder game of CoX is raidiing ArchVillian missions with different heroes and groups. If it works this would be the closest anyone has ever come to 'design your own raids' ie. true player generated content. Perhaps the crucial reason this might work is that in the CoX concept, the reason you fight ATs is because it is fun, you don't do it for loot.

[SnakeCharmer]

Rawr.  Back to life.

Anyway, Cryptic is taking beta apps.

[WayAbvPar]

Thanks for the link. One of the app questions was how many hours a week you spend playing MMOGs. Pretty easy for me to estimate atm since I am not playing any 

[UnSub]

For those keeping score, beta at this point would make it appear that Cryptic is determined to get this title out in Q2 2009, as previously indicated.

[Sunbury]

I like the fact there are more varied zones now, but downer its still zones and not a 'seamless' world, I guess tech has not reached 1999 levels yet...

Also I don't like the move and click fest in combat in online games, the #1 reason I never bought DDO.  Unless you have very low ping, no packet loss, and a super machine, its just too irritating guessing where the mob is, where your char is, when to swing, etc with all the shifting and jumping around accounting for latency and server - client sync up.

If my command is:  select mob, attack mob, queue specials, the client - server can sort it all out for me, even with client lag, low ping, packet loss, etc.

[UnSub]

ChampO is using auto-targeting to pick up the target closest to you - you can see it in the previously released videos.

However, it is meant to be a more action orientated game, so we'll see how it plays out on lower-end machines.

[Nebu]

ChampO is using auto-targeting to pick up the target closest to you - you can see it in the previously released videos.

I can see the potential for this mechanic becoming very, VERY annoying.

[Trippy]

[Ghambit]

ChampO is using auto-targeting to pick up the target closest to you - you can see it in the previously released videos.

However, it is meant to be a more action orientated game, so we'll see how it plays out on lower-end machines.

Immensely disappointing.  I was hoping they'd use a mechanic similar to Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (or Diablo) where everything is directional.  Combine the DIKU method in with some actual situational awareness, ala Tabula Rasa or AoC and allow the ranged folks to exhibit some targeting skill and the melee folks to showoff their footwork and blocking.  (sigh)

another lost opportunity...

So, what we've got here is just another version of CoH right?  Just has the fancy PnP created Champions system lying underneath.

So I'll be holding out for JE and KOTORO.