Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Tannhauser]

Not a good sign.

[Goreschach]

I'm predicting that within 5 years we'll see an MMO with an NDA up past release.

[Fordel]

That was WAR, no?

[Goreschach]

No, an NDA covering release.

[Nevermore]

You won't even know it's released because the release will be under an NDA.

[Goreschach]

Darkfall came pretty close.

[UnSub]

I don't think they'll be able to hold an NDA in open beta.

[Lantyssa]

They won't, the question is if they'll try.

[Pagz]

I don't think they'll be able to hold an NDA in open beta.

They've said that the NDA will be dropped when open beta begins.

[Malakili]

I don't think they'll be able to hold an NDA in open beta.

They've said that the NDA will be dropped when open beta begins.

Source please?

[Tmon]

They are demoing this at Gencon this week and it looks pretty good, no NDA just walk up to the booth and play.   Character creation is damn near a second game, the guy demoing at the station I wandered up to spent a good 10 minutes just running through the various functions.  He said some players in Beta spend over 40 minutes making a new character.  Fortunately for me there is a random button for every option so you can use random to flip through and then lock in by section what you like.  There are achievements that unlock additional options, what I didn't think to ask was whether he was showing the day 0 stuff or what a guy who'd unlocked every achievement and reward would get.  

Combat looked fun and appropriately super heroish, 3 types of PVP were mentioned duels, league play and scenarios.  There's a PVP advancement track separate from the PVE track but you will gain a small amount of XP from PVP.  He mentioned that some folks had already asked for a way to turn off XP from scenarios.  The thing I liked was no classes as such, you can take the powers you want, he also said you could pay a resource cost to respec at any time.  At level up you can try out powers before you keep them, he demo'd that with the travel powers, the teleport one was kind of funky, from your perspective you are a glowing mass flying around the screen, from the rest of the world's perspective you are invisible until you arrive.  The swinging movement looked the most fun, it's basically Spiderman style, but they did a good job of capturing the feel of it.  

He said there's a full crafting system and it seemed like player crafted stuff would be on par with drops since he mentioned that you could have someone craft a 3 stat boosting item if you weren't getting one through drops.   He also described being able to create your nemesis at level 25(?) and then running story missions as you leveled until you finally defeated him.  Once that happened you could build a nemesis gallery, your friends would be able to join you in nemesis missions.  Im not really interested in Super Hero games and haven't followed it other than brief dips into this thread but it looks like it might be worth playing.  

Oh the monthly fee will be $14.95.  One weird thing, character names do not have to be unique, instead you will have a unique chat handle.  He seemed to think that even though the game won't be sharded that the chances of running into someone with the same name would be low.   Also there will be an AH.


Edited to add paragraphs

[Trippy]

Paragraphs.

[Modern Angel]

"Open" beta for paid FP subscribers. Eh... I'm somewhat interested because I've been hearing good things through the grapevine. I just want to try it.

[Triforcer]

I've heard that if you are sent a beta code you can't cancel a digital preorder (at least through Gamestop), so the whole "pay $5 to play beta" thing won't work.  If you can get a physical beta card from a physical Gamestop, then you are only out five bucks if you don't pick up the game.

I digitally preordered from Gamestop and will take the plunge when beta starts tomorrow.  I, too, have been hearing surprisingly positive things through the grapevine.  There are some people nerdraging because their obvious broken power was made less obviously broken, but other than that I've heard enough to justify a box purchase and a month's tryout.  

EDIT:  I love how in superhero MMOs if a broken skill allows someone to gather all the mobs in a zone and kill them in one hit and its nerfed, people say "I NOW DON'T FEEL SUPERHEROIC ANYMORE!!! ISN'T THAT THE POINT OF THE GAME???"

[Nonentity]

They won't let me cancel my Aion preorder through gamestop.

This is a problem since I don't really... um... need it anymore.

[Signe]

So is this a you can start at midnight beta thingy?  (not that I have much chance of keeping my eyes open)  And will someone be starting a Bat Country guild at release?  Does one exist in beta?  Am I talking bollocks?   I'll be giving it a go tomorrow at some point.

[Malakili]

So is this a you can start at midnight beta thingy?  (not that I have much chance of keeping my eyes open)  And will someone be starting a Bat Country guild at release?  Does one exist in beta?  Am I talking bollocks?   I'll be giving it a go tomorrow at some point.

If the servers go up around the same time they have during closed beta, I'd expect them to get going around 10am Pacific.  Of course, its the first day of open beta, so I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some shenanigans, seeing as things are never as stable as people would like when they start.

[Hawkbit]

They won't let me cancel my Aion preorder through gamestop.

This is a problem since I don't really... um... need it anymore.

I cancelled mine through the B+M store I preorder at.  I had him roll the $5 over to Borderlands though.  I'd call corporate over it, since you haven't actually bought anything yet.

[Murgos]

Can't 'open' beta unless you are a Fileplanet subscriber?  Whatever, unless the hype-o-meter is rock solid on I'll stay away.

[Signe]

I did worse.  I preordered it not minding if it's just like CoH with different tile sets.   

[Triforcer]

NDA post:

http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?p=684383#post684383

Spill the beans, closed beta people!

[fuser]

http://www.canardpc.com/concours/champions/

I'll just leave this here (15,000 open beta keys)

[Malakili]

NDA Lifted.

Source: http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?p=684383#post684383

I'll make a separate post typing up some things.

[Threash]

http://www.canardpc.com/concours/champions/

I'll just leave this here (15,000 open beta keys)

Thanks for that, can you give me a hint as to where to get the download?

[tazelbain]

Why should I care about this game?  In five words or less.

[Sky]

Did you like CoH?

Same as Threash, need ze client!

[Malakili]

Closed Beta Review -

Instancing -  First of all, this game is heavily instanced.  This shouldn't be news to anyone following the game.  Its sharded somewhat like Guild Wars, although you don't get your own instance.  The tutorial (where you first spawn), has a very low limit, something like 15 players before it spawns a new instance, the conflict zones that you go to next are something like 25, and after that I think its something like 125.  On the closed beta forums, they've said they are still tweaking the exact number of people that will be max per instance, a lot of people have been asking for more.    From my experience, I generally didn't feel too lonely with the 125 limit, even though the zones are fairly large.   It also does help with performance.  I'm a really big proponent of open worlds in MMOs, so this is a bit of a down side to me, but within the context of CO, it actually functions pretty well.  You can change the "shard" you are in at any time, which should make finding and playing with friends somewhat easier.


Character creator - This is the big one I guess.  For my part, I think it doesn't disappoint.  There are a TON of options for creating your character.  In addition to costume choices, there are a lot of sliders for face and body shape too.    Some people that have played CoX more than me have said they are a little disappointed with the selection, however, I don't have that experience to compare to.  Also, CoX has been out a hell of a long time, so we'll see more costumes I assume.  When you create your character you can choose a prebuilt template like "Might" or "Fire", or you can choose custom framework (which I suggest doing), and then you can choose your energy building power, and one other power.   You also choose your starting stats during character creation, though you have to choose from available blocks of stats, rather than assigning points.  Overall, there is hours and hours of fun just to be had in the creator.  Once in game, you can visit tailors to change your costume, and you can change the color of your powers at any time you like by opening up your powers window and just changing it.

Combat - The combat is fun.  A lot more fun than most MMOs I've played.  In my opinion, the energy (actually called endurance, but i keep using the word energy) building and using mechanic actually keeps combat fairly dynamic, even at early levels where you only have a couple abilities.  It isn't totally revolutionary, but it is more interactive than the "kick each other in the shins until someone wins" variety.  You can also move and use a lot of abilities, so you can't going to get stuck standing still casting most of the time, though there are some abilities I've come across that make you stand still while casting.  Also, there is blocking.  it probably doesn't sound like much, but you hold down shift to actively block, which pretty drastically decreases incoming damage.  It helps to make combat a lot more interactive, as you learn when enemies are going to use their more powerful abilities, and can block the heaviest of their attacks.   Combat, in my opinion, is one of the stronger aspects of the game.  Its a pretty big selling point for me, because actually PLAYING the game is fun, it doesn't have to be about filling up a bar, or finishing a quest or whatever, because I often found myself just going out and killing random things because, darn, thats cool.

Crafting - I really haven't gotten into crafting much, so I can't comment too much one it.  There are 3 types of crafting, and 3 specializations  within each, I think.  The system seems fairly run of the mill from what I can tell, but you'll need to get someone else's opinion on this.

PvP - There are some major PvP balance issues at this point.  The actually PvP formats of (effectively) arena type combat aren't terrible, but there are some abilities that are just WAY better for PvP than others.  I guess that isn't really a problem, but its going to be a tricky balancing act if they want to try and balance powers for both PvP and PvE.  That in itself isn't really news in an MMO, however, without the class system, you are also dealing with balancing tons of combinations of powers that can't necessarily be predicted, so its going to be extra messy if you ask me.  Still, with combat itself being very solid, PvP is quite fun, as long as you aren't using gimpy powers.

PvE - This is a quest based game, big time.  Quests give large chunks of exp, while killing/ farming guys for exp gives very little by comparison.  The quests are generally of the normal MMO variety.  They story of each zone is told through the quests, so if you like story line, the quests are pretty good in that regard, but if you just view them as an exp treadmill, you'll probably find them very average.  I haven't done much grouping, only a couple times for some tougher quests (and i could have soloed those had I been so inclined), but my understanding is that it is a point of contention that there might not be enough "group content".  I can't really speculate, as I never got to a very high level in beta on any of my characters, as I preferred to make lots of alts to try out different power sets and play with the character creator, rather than spend my time leveling up one character.    Again, the combat comes into play here, as I find the combat fun, it carries the PvE content of the game, even when the quests themselves are fairly humdrum.  Oh, also almost forgot to write, there is a public quest system very similar to WARs, that works pretty well.  

Graphics / Sound -  Like both.  They do a good job getting across the feel of a comic book.  You've all seen videos and screenshots (probably), so there isn't a huge amount to say here, but the game does look darn nice in motion.  The game is a bit taxing on my 2 year old system, and I have to turn of AA to get performance I like, but newer computers shouldn't have a problem running this.  If you don't like the outline look, there is an option to turn it off, as I've heard some people really prefer the game without it.   The voice acting can be a little shoddy at times, but its forgivable as far as I'm concerned as isn't really a deal breaker for me at all.


Ehh, thats all for now I guess.   My opinion of the game is fairly high.  It doesn't do anything groundbreaking, but the game is plain fun to play in my opinion, and thats more than I can say of other MMOs that I've admittedly sunk many many hours into.  I have pre-ordered a copy and will be buying the game on release, if that is any indication of my opinion of my my closed beta experience.

[UnSub]

Fuck five words or less!

Conclusion:

- ChampO is a mix of CoH/V, Guild Wars, WoW and WAR and comes out sometimes feeling weird as a result, despite some great ideas. It is definitely a take-it-or-leave-it title.

- Someone on the forums described it as a massively multiplayer beat'em up where you build your own character. That's about right. Personally, I like this a lot.

- It falls down in teaching players how to play the game - lots of neat parts of this title are hidden / take time to figure out, so that some players might not see the best this title has to offer before they ragequit. Limited game content is going to be an issue at launch. Also, there will be bugs.

Combat:

- Generally pretty fast with few attacks that root and few attacks (at least at the lower levels) with long cool downs.

- Depends on building your Endurance up to a level where you can use your powers, but this can be toggled on against a target making your life easier. Taking specific power combos or certain advanages on powers can made Endurance building very easy.

- Run-and-guy and active blocking are key features; moving out of certain attacks when you see visual cues and blocking the ones you can't get away from are important to survival.

- Pretty flat power curve (or at least that's the aim) so that enemies that con grey might still pose a risk in numbers.

Crafting:

- 3 different crafting types (Arms, Science, Mystic) that each have 3 specialisations. You can only be the master of one crafting type and I think you can master all three specialisations within that type but it takes time. Specialisations were implemented very close to open beta.

- You collect the relevant resources from nodes, buy blueprints from vendors and click the button to craft (which uses up the resources but not the blueprint) at crafting tables.

- To gain skill levels in crafting you have to 'Experiment' on (i.e. disassemble) items as well as build them. The aim is that this removes trash items from the game since you may as well take it apart.

Character:

- Character customisation is fantastic. Character advancement is pretty quick (although just-prior-to-open-beta patching might have changed this).

- You can choose powers from any framework, although more powerful abilities require either specialisation (to get them sooner) or waiting. Defensive powers took a nerf just before open beta so the wripples of that choice are still being felt.

- There are talents (stat-boosting advantages with an RP flavour), powers, advantages (that are assigned to powers), travel powers and super stats. Good luck in fitting it all together on your first try unless you read a guide first.

- Power replaces let you change the appearance and effect of one power with another. Apart from at the tailor, good luck in finding them.

- Major point: character flexibility sees huge gaps between the gimped and the overpowered due to power selection. If you think one character is gimped, try another character.

Communication:

- System has some nice touches (linked to forum PMs, can be linked to Twitter) but these are mostly fluff.

- The core system is functional but it doesn't make it easy to communicate to others or to team up. A bit of a weakness.

Content:

- There are only 5 zones at launch. They are biggish zones and they do have instances / team-based sections, but saying "5 zones" is the truth. Especially since there are really only two options in going through them (do I go from the tutorial to Canada or to the Desert?).

- Missions are fairly standard, but their are some nice ideas like missions that come to you or ones that you can discover by clicking on items.

- Public missions are in, while each zone has a crisis mission that is about some kind of disaster in the area.

Collectables:

- There is loot. There are a number of different types of loot to try to make loot more thematically appropriate to a superhero MMO, but if you are just looking at their output you really won't care if you are using magic loot and science loot and arms loot together.

- Perks are ChampO's equivalent to CoH/V's badges.

- There are apparently power replaces you can find outside of the tailor that will change how powers look and what they can do.

Competition:

- PvP is scenario-based. You click on the queue and pop into the area when it is ready. PvP combat is pretty quick but there will be killer builds in short order.

Community:

- Those who wanted CoH/V v2.0 are disappointed. Overall the mood seems very optimistic, but we'll see.

Contingencies:

- Power Houses are fantastic ideas: they serve as instances where you can buy powers, test them out in a training room then respec them out if you don't like them.

- There is only one server, but multiple shards you can flip between for each zone map.

- Cryptic appears to have crunched on this title since December 2008. Major changes to systems were still being patched in just prior to open beta.

[fuser]

http://www.canardpc.com/concours/champions/

I'll just leave this here (15,000 open beta keys)

Thanks for that, can you give me a hint as to where to get the download?

fileplanet.com and input it as a preorder key

[UnSub]

Why should I care about this game?  In five worlds or less.

Okay, the five word version:

Wait unless you love superheroes.

EDIT: I enjoy this game for what it is and am thinking of buying a lifetime sub, but for veteran MMO players I think a lot of players are going to find it a bit spartan in terms of content. I'd suggest checking what Cryptic does with it in 3 months time. There are also unanswered questions about what Cryptic Bucks and the Cryptic Shop are actually going to offer.

[Nevermore]

Since people won't be locked out of getting names they want, waiting seems like a good idea.  If the game turns out to be good, there doesn't seem to be any downside to joining a month or two down the road.  At least, that's the way it looks from here on the sidelines.

[Signe]

Oh look.  There are open keys everywhere now.  I got one in the mail and sent it away.  Everyone should play for a day and then not care.  Or backwards that.  I love superhero games.  Well, the one I played, anyway.  Still, I'm not prepared to care.  Eventually, they all turn on you.

[Malakili]

Why should I care about this game?  In five worlds or less.

Okay, the five word version:

Wait unless you love superheroes.

EDIT: I enjoy this game for what it is and am thinking of buying a lifetime sub, but for veteran MMO players I think a lot of players are going to find it a bit spartan in terms of content. I'd suggest checking what Cryptic does with it in 3 months time. There are also unanswered questions about what Cryptic Bucks and the Cryptic Shop are actually going to offer.

Seconded.  If you fall within the specific target audience of this game, you will love it to death.  Otherwise, its a average to slightly above average MMO on its own merits.  It has a lot of potential though, and it could really take off depending on where Cryptic goes next.

[Signe]

Just tell me if it's just like CoH with different tile sets!

[jason]

One question: I know character names are not unique, and that only your chat handle has to be unique, however, can you have two characters with the same name on the same account?

Example - I create a guy and name him "The Muffin Man". I love the name, but I pick a bad combo of powers.  Can I create another "The Muffin Man" or do I need to delete my old one first?