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Topic: Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition (Read 822653 times)
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Pendan
Terracotta Army
Posts: 246
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My 5 word review: It failed to grab me.
Slightly more words: CoH was appealing immediately to me. For some reason CO is not. The costume varieties along with travel power choices are very impressive. The neon colors while playing bother me. The learning curve is much steeper for CO than CoH.
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Signe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 18942
Muse.
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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. Send me $200 and I'll draw you a picture of a guy in a keep standing on a street with generic faceless enemies running around like a chicken with their heads cut off. I won't even spend much time on it, just like Cryptic did with this. Take him up on it! You know, Schildy IS an artist. He has the papers and everything to prove it. |
My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
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UnSub
Contributor
Posts: 8064
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Just tell me if it's just like CoH with different tile sets!
It's not really CoH v2.0. There are a lot of disappointed CoH/V fans that Cryptic just didn't "take the good bits" of CoH and add in everything else they wanted. |
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Signe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 18942
Muse.
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I don't know if that disappoints me or not. I guess I'll see. It's unlocked and installing right now. (although you probably can't actually play yet)
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My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
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Amaron
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2020
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Why should I care about this game? In five words or less.
No god damn holy trinity. Seriously though what others said. It's freaking holy god levels of fun if you like super heros. Otherwise it might be dull. If you pick the wrong power set it'll be dull too. Probably a lot of people go in and pick munitions (dual pistols) and consider it a yawn fest. If you really want to give it a try pick force or might (super knockbacks 4tw). Everyone who's been desperately waiting for min/max character building goodness UO style should try it too. There's no skills and it does have levels but it's still yummy in that regard. |
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kildorn
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5014
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Hrm, I will try this, CoH was always fun to me, but got old fast, and was grindy as shit at the post-30 range.
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Lantyssa
Terracotta Army
Posts: 20848
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[To add my own long impressions]
My newb impressions through a couple of characters up to level 11. Alternate title: The Good, the Bad, and the Hideously Ugly.
Point of Order - This is NOT CoX 2.0. It might qualify as an alternate-dimension CoX 1.0.
While there are some simularities being a hero game from the same company which uses a costume builder similar to the original, they are different games. Comparisons are because of these factors, but in making a decision it is important to remember I do not consider this CoX 2.0.
The Ugly:
Starting with this first, as it was my greatest barrier to my enjoyment of the game. It's fucking UGLY. I will state up front that I am not a fan of the cell shaded look, however they managed to take the concept and make it worse. Their lighting does not help, as there is a high contrast which caused me significant eye-strain, and any shine on a texture makes the object look like it has been coated in highly polished glass. The style of the game does not feel like a comic book to me because they have over-done it.
My other huge gripe is their character creator. If you've played CoX you know the concept. They've made a bad knock-off of it, which is impressive seeing as it's the same company who designed both. Where the joy of the CoX creator is to see how awesome a character you can make, the bane of this game will be that its creator's goal is to see how not shitty looking a character you can make.
I wish I was kidding. The facial and body tweaks usually cause a hideous distortion rather than an alternate but just as good look. Do you like button noses? I hope so, because you can make a small button nose, or extend the tip to look like a character from Doonesbury. Those are your choices, despite four nose sliders. There are perhaps a similiar number of costume parts as CoX at launch. Unfortunately, they're not competing against CoX at launch, and many of the parts only work if you have a very specific concept in mind as they will not blend into other costumes or work on a "hey, it might be cool if..." random try.
If character creation is a big deal to you, this is a step back. I almost uninstalled the game after several abortive attempts to make a decent looking hero because the costume is that important to a hero's identity. That's not a good first impression, and I'm usually one willing to overlook something like this for gameplay. The problem I think is too many options given and none of them seem to help improve the "Oh wow. Awesome!" factor.
The Bad:
As of last weekend, the game was still buggy. I had two sub-10 quests that could not be completed. Some of the powers taken in the Power House could not be respeced. It ran like crap on a system that makes AoC its bitch. (Note: Turn shadows from their fancy setting to simple. Helps a bunch.) There were none which were excessively upsetting, however it felt like it had a ways to go for release and that was only in my 1-10 experience. With other new games coming out (or being revamped) in September which run smooth, it's hard to accept the quality we're used to seeing from MMO releases of yesteryear.
Some zones have mobs of wildly different levels. I was fighting level eights and ran smack into a group of twenty-nines. The only barrier was a crossed 100 feet of a frozen lake. As I only know of three zones (Canada, SW Desert, Detroit), it makes me wonder how much time you'll be spending in these areas.
Last Wednesday they patched all mobs' health. The pace had felt fine to me, and the challenge was about perfect. My roommie was killing a lot faster with a munitions powerset, whose description specifically says it's the highest damage in the game. After the patch the character died to henchman a level below. I did not get to try it, however seeing how the two performed a few days before, I'm pretty confident I would not have done well. TWO days before open beta, and a week and a half before release. We've seen it before with Emmert and CoH and WAR with the xp bump heading to open beta, and it does not instill me with confidence. <Insert rant about feeling super-heroic.>
The Good:
I really like the power system and I almost did not get to see it. You start with two powers, an energy builder and a heavy attack. The energy builder you can use as often as you want, and for many attacks actually functions as an auto-attack. The power attack generally does more damage, often has additional affects, and in some cases can be charged up for an even bigger whollup.
Additional powers are restricted in a system of "Can be taken with two powers from this set, or three of any set" or "Three of this set, five of any set". You can build pretty much whatever you want. Taking a munitions power does not prevent you from taking a sorcery power, which does not preclude you from taking an elemental power. You can change power colors at any time with a color slider. For each power individually.
Travel powers are mostly what you already know from CoX, with additional flavor. Flight can be what you already know, human torch, or rocket boots. Jump has a couple of variations. Webslinging which is kind of fun. There is acrobatics which gives you some benefit of speed, jumping, and cool backflip animations. Most of these increase the cost of your attack powers and decrease in effectiveness while in combat.
Teleport is simply awesome. No energy to activate. You pop into an alternate dimension where everything becomes hazy, however creatures show as blobs of light. You can move in any direction at a high rate of speed. When it times out or you deactivate it, your character pops back into the real world in a semi-unsubstantion form which slowly glides towards the ground (occasionally you'll get sling-shotted after which is fun in itself). You can teleport again instantly. The downside is that if you start your teleport in the aggro radius of a creature (radius, not necessarily aggroed), your teleport is locked out for fifteen seconds. It's still incredibly powerful as an escape tool, unfortunately if you don't know about it you could pop out at a very bad place, like 500 feet up.
The Power House allows you to test out a power before permanently selecting it. Respec for it is free until you leave with it slotted. They need to make the testing chamber a little larger to let you really try some out, however it is still a great option. Respec for money is possible.
The Indifferent:
Questing feels like much more of your standard DIKU. You have a hub (Canada or the Desert) with quests that show as you get into their level range. There are some quests you'll find out in the world by doing something like saving a civilian.
There are lots of exploration items. Some for visiting a location, reading a sign or plaque, completing a mission, or talking with a person. If you like these things, be sure you check your lore & perks tab before leaving the tutorial to grab all that you can. You will miss some if you are not very thorough.
At the end of the first tutorial zone you will have a choice between the Desert or Canada. This is still the tutorial, so if you want to group make sure your friends make the same choice if you want to play with them at this stage. Otherwise you will have to finish the main plot to reach the real zones, at which point you can switch freely.
The tutorial zones are limited to 24 players, and you'll instantly think "War Walls again!?". The real zones hold approximately 110 people. In beta, at least, there is only one server. You can switch freely. They are much more open to exploration, but as I said earlier, contain a large range of levels.
You do not pick a role such as tank, dps, support at creation. These you can switch on the fly, which affects your damage and defenses, as well as which passive powers you can have slotted. I do not know their values, as there was no tool-tip help on their affects.
Crafting has three specializations: Arms, Science, Mysticism. The problem is each excludes certain stats. Want to be a magical tank? Take Arms or Science. You can slot gear from any type, so pick the field which will benefit what you want to do with the character most. Each of these has three sub-specializations though I am not sure what, if any, effect they have. Harvesting gives you a little skill. Breaking down gear gives a lot of skill, some items, and a chance for learning a recipe.
Gear. You have a Primary Offense, Primary Defense, and a Primary Utility slot. Two secondaries for each, and five device slots. The only limiting factor I came across was level. Although these tended to favor the flavor of the slot, the stat bonuses could very widely and you can get 'defensive' Offense gear or 'offensive' Defense. Devices are used in quests or to give you additional powers.
In summation: It's a super-hero game, however it is not CoX 2.0. For good or ill, keep it in mind. I highly recommend getting a trial before buying, when they release one, or into the open beta if you can. This is not a game you really need to be there at release for.
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Hahahaha! I'm really good at this!
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42639
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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I'll be blogging a review later, but the gist of it is this:
It's City of Heroes. Only the art design SUCKS MONKEY ASS. The UI is cluttered to the point of confusion, there's way way way too many numbers and stats thrown at you. It plays like a less optimized version of City of Heroes with a few tweaks and no classes. Some powers you can hold down the hotkey for and it charges up the power for EXTREME DAMAGE. Some mobs show signs of performing crits on you which you can block by hitting the shift key, but it really doesn't work well. The graphics engine is sluggish and the cel-shading works well on some things and sucks on other things. I've been in the beta most of '09. I've started 3 characters. None have made it past level 10 because it bores the fuck out of me. I don't think I was able to string together 2 hours of play at any one sitting because even with the changes in gameplay, it felt exactly like City of Heroes. The GRIND was even there because leveling felt horribly slow.
You've seen this game. It doesn't suck (other than the UI design) but it couldn't hold my attention for free.
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Amaron
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2020
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You've seen this game. It doesn't suck (other than the UI design) but it couldn't hold my attention for free.
I thought I'd point out they made huge leaps with the UI in the last week and a half. All my objections with it are pretty much taken care of. |
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Signe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 18942
Muse.
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I'm so glad I bought it with a credit from EB. Since I never buy games from them anymore, it won't pinch too much when I don't like it. Will nothing I really like ever be released again? Maybe I should take up crocheting doilies.
PS Servers are open now.
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My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42639
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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You've seen this game. It doesn't suck (other than the UI design) but it couldn't hold my attention for free.
I thought I'd point out they made huge leaps with the UI in the last week and a half. All my objections with it are pretty much taken care of. Oh, they definitely improved it from the start. It was nigh unreadable when I first began closed beta. But I played it last week, and it's still a goddamn mess. Seriously, it's like all the menus, tooltips and power descriptions are in an oversized, black-stroke version of Comic Sans font on neon colored backgrounds, a garish nightmare. |
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koro
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2307
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Last Wednesday they patched all mobs' health. The pace had felt fine to me, and the challenge was about perfect. My roommie was killing a lot faster with a munitions powerset, whose description specifically says it's the highest damage in the game. After the patch the character died to henchman a level below. I did not get to try it, however seeing how the two performed a few days before, I'm pretty confident I would not have done well. TWO days before open beta, and a week and a half before release. We've seen it before with Emmert and CoH and WAR with the xp bump heading to open beta, and it does not instill me with confidence. <Insert rant about feeling super-heroic.> Not just health - damage too. I think the amount I've been hearing is "triple." My girlfriend's martial artist was taken down pretty handily by two low-rung thugs that she plowed through as cannon fodder just a few days before. Hearing about that made me remember the old "Mega Man" story Emmert told once, and I'm not sure I'm willing to do that rollercoaster of nerfs and de-powering in a Cryptic game again. |
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Brogarn
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1372
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Got it. Skipping. Thanks.
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Signe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 18942
Muse.
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Well, it looks like this will take at least a week to download so I might just skip open beta altogether. It has been at 3.7 percent for about an hour and a half. And no one seems to have bothered to plant their seed and give birth to a torrent. I guess it's true that no one cares.
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My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
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Threash
Terracotta Army
Posts: 9170
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Well, it looks like this will take at least a week to download so I might just skip open beta altogether. It has been at 3.7 percent for about an hour and a half. And no one seems to have bothered to plant their seed and give birth to a torrent. I guess it's true that no one cares.
The fileplanet download is going extremely fast for me. |
I am the .00000001428%
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ezrast
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2125
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The Fileplanet download was fast for me, too (thanks fuser!) but now I'm patching and it's absolutely glacial. KB/s in the double digits (if that) and the thing is over 3 GB...
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« Last Edit: August 17, 2009, 12:05:56 PM by ezrast »
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fuser
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1572
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The Fileplanet download was fast for me, too (thanks fuser!) but now I'm patching and it's absolutely glacial. KB/s in the double digits (if that) and the thing is over 3 GB...
Are you kidding me 3623mb patch after the fileplanet download  |
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Nonentity
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2301
2009 Demon's Souls Fantasy League Champion
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The Fileplanet download was fast for me, too (thanks fuser!) but now I'm patching and it's absolutely glacial. KB/s in the double digits (if that) and the thing is over 3 GB...
Are you kidding me 3623mb patch after the fileplanet download Lovely. |
But that Captain's salami tray was tight, yo. You plump for the roast pork loin, dogg?
[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.
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Signe
Terracotta Army
Posts: 18942
Muse.
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Sorry. I meant the patching, not the download. The download was fast.
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My Sig Image: hath rid itself of this mortal coil.
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Ghambit
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5576
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Wow... I was JUST about to start a rant about the patch-size/speed and I see you guys beat me to the punch. LoL This has to be the worst beta DL implementation I've seen in a long time. They let you pre-load the client, but lock it, and only unlock on the same day of Open Beta (probably the busiest day they'll ever have), only to shuffle you to a 3+GB download at dial-up speeds, with no alternate site to patch with.  This is primary school shyt here. Anyone have a patch mirror? post-script: Oh, and you better hope the patcher doesnt fail (which it will) because it doesnt save your progress and you have to start all over. Calculations reveal a 30hr. download time. Enjoy! |
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« Last Edit: August 17, 2009, 12:20:26 PM by Ghambit »
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"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom." -Samwise
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Big Gulp
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3275
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Not just health - damage too. I think the amount I've been hearing is "triple." My girlfriend's martial artist was taken down pretty handily by two low-rung thugs that she plowed through as cannon fodder just a few days before. Hearing about that made me remember the old "Mega Man" story Emmert told once, and I'm not sure I'm willing to do that rollercoaster of nerfs and de-powering in a Cryptic game again.
Did I not warn you people? Emmert taint? Beuller? Beuller? This man is MMO poison. |
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Shatter
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1407
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Wow... I was JUST about to start a rant about the patch-size/speed and I see you guys beat me to the punch. LoL This has to be the worst beta DL implementation I've seen in a long time. They let you pre-load the client, but lock it, and only unlock on the same day of Open Beta (probably the busiest day they'll ever have), only to shuffle you to a 3+GB download at dial-up speeds, with no alternate site to patch with. This is primary school shyt here. Anyone have a patch mirror? Really, I thought it was standard :) |
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kildorn
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5014
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3g patch on day 1? Yeah, that's become the gold standard for "we uploaded a five month old copy of the beta client, what could go wrong"
Also known as someone in a meeting saying "hey, howabout we stress test the patcher!"
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Ghambit
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5576
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Wow... I was JUST about to start a rant about the patch-size/speed and I see you guys beat me to the punch. LoL This has to be the worst beta DL implementation I've seen in a long time. They let you pre-load the client, but lock it, and only unlock on the same day of Open Beta (probably the busiest day they'll ever have), only to shuffle you to a 3+GB download at dial-up speeds, with no alternate site to patch with. This is primary school shyt here. Anyone have a patch mirror? Really, I thought it was standard :) Hell no it's not standard. Sure, I've had to patch huge files into alphas/betas before, but not at the level of this asshattery (I dont mind the size, but I do mind just the stupidity of the implementation). Not even their ingenious "workaround" helps. Not a good sign... just not. |
"See, the beauty of webgames is that I can play them on my phone while I'm plowing your mom." -Samwise
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ezrast
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2125
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News update: Workaround for the 3GB Patch Issues
Posted by Rekhan
We know that some players are experiencing issues with downloading and patching the game client.
We're working on a resolution to this now, but the workaround we have is as follows:
1. Delete everything inside the Program Files/Cryptic Studios/Champions Online/Live/prepatch/piggs folder.
2. Move all the *.hogg files from Program Files/Cryptic Studios/Champions Online/Live to Program Files/Cryptic Studios/Champions Online/Live/prepatch/piggs
3. Restart your patcher
I tried it. No noticeable effect, and when I restarted the patcher it immediately got rid of everything in the prepatch folder. Although I copied the files instead of moving them. FP and Filefront have a client version that appears to be newer than the one FP gives you by default. Looking into that; will update presently. Edit: Just for kicks I threw the files into live\piggs instead of live\prepatch\piggs and the patch size shrunk to less than 1GB.
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« Last Edit: August 17, 2009, 12:43:47 PM by ezrast »
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kildorn
Terracotta Army
Posts: 5014
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Really, they should just post that villains have taken over the patcher, and as soon as you get in game, your first mission is to restore order to the server farm.
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taolurker
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1460
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MMM Patch FAIL!  |
I used to write for extinct gaming sites
details available here (unused blog about page)
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Nonentity
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2301
2009 Demon's Souls Fantasy League Champion
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I'm redownloading the new client off of Fileplanet.
I started downloading the 'pre-load' this morning, and as of 5 minutes ago, it's a newer version.
Fucking... fucker fucks.
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But that Captain's salami tray was tight, yo. You plump for the roast pork loin, dogg?
[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.
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JWIV
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2392
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Why does she have rhinestones glued to her belly?
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Nonentity
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2301
2009 Demon's Souls Fantasy League Champion
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Why does she have rhinestones glued to her belly?
It's the source of her power. |
But that Captain's salami tray was tight, yo. You plump for the roast pork loin, dogg?
[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42639
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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Why does she have rhinestones glued to her belly?
Because stripper glitter doesn't channel mystical force as well as cheap costume jewelry. |
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Nonentity
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2301
2009 Demon's Souls Fantasy League Champion
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Your answer was better.
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But that Captain's salami tray was tight, yo. You plump for the roast pork loin, dogg?
[20:42:41] You are halted on the way to the netherworld by a dark spirit, demanding knowledge.
[20:42:41] The spirit touches you and you feel drained.
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taolurker
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1460
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PS the frontpage of their site melted down too, so hopefully everyone here already registered and consumed their Open Beta key by logging into their website before it took a crap.
There also was something showing on the patcher briefly before it responded with that error, saying to copy all the .hogg files from the "Live" folder into the "Live/prepatch/piggs" folder. I have no idea if that will help in any manner though, because I did that and since then haven't had the patcher even completely load.
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I used to write for extinct gaming sites
details available here (unused blog about page)
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ezrast
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2125
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There also was something showing on the patcher briefly before it responded with that error, saying to copy all the .hogg files from the "Live" folder into the "Live/prepatch/piggs" folder. I have no idea if that will help in any manner though, because I did that and since then haven't had the patcher even completely load.
It doesn't help. What it does do is overwrite all those files you just copied with fresh new 65kb files. Confirmed by quite a few users on the forums. What does seem to help is copying them to live/piggs instead of live/prepatch/piggs. This shrinks the required download to 983 MB down from 3623 MB. I got the later version of the client from Filefront and have noticed nothing different between the two except that this one is buggier. |
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Numtini
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7675
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I got in the bata back when there was snow in the ground. I've probably put in less than 10 hours total. I thought the game was terrible. My longest stint was last weekend. Before that I couldn't even tolerate it enough to get out of the tutorial.
Like Lantyssa, my big comment is OMG UGLY. I'm just shocked and dismayed at exactly how horrible this game looks. The lines around everything that are supposed to emulate comics just make everything look like it's a sprite. The oversaturated colors aren't anything like modern comics, more like junk superhero cartoons from the 1970s. COX looks far better. The much vaunted ability to customize your powers did nothing for me. I changed the color, but my little blogs that shot out were pretty much the same thing.
I found the character creator a lot less complete than COX. There were a lot of options, but after tinkering around, I finally settled on the singular goal of making a character that wasn't so ugly I couldn't stand to play it. That was difficult. In contrast, with COX I was able to make some really niced themed characters right off the bat including a punked out villain, an amazing golden ager complete with a skirt that was obviously fabric and genre appropriate, and a 1970s supergirl inspired monstrosity of miniskirted bad fashion.
I found the gameplay to be very meh. First, the quest thing just feels wrong in general. It felt like questing in War. Ie, not very interesting. And it just didn't feel appropriate to the setting. Combat didn't grab me. The block might be nice, but either I didn't understand it or it wasn't working correctly. There are public quests that work exactly like War. No idea how the difficulty is or whether they scale as I only did the tutorial one--it was easy enough for me to solo.
The level of polish is very low. A lot of stuff took me forever to figure out even though I was going through the tutorial. As of last weekend, it was a bugfest--even the character creator had bugs and the client was crashy for me.
I really can't think of anything I ran into that COX didn't do better, but my guess is the game will kill steal enough players from COX to assure that a year or 18 months from now they're both dead.
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If you can read this, you're on a board populated by misogynist assholes.
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