Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Musashi]

Hay Guise.  I'm pretty sure this thread is a rerun.

[Triforcer]

From Qt3 - apparently the patcher is borken.


IF YOU SEE THAT THE LAUNCHER IS TRYING TO PATCH 3.6GB THEN YOUR INSTALLER PUT FILES IN THE WRONG PLACE. YOU CAN REDUCE IT TO A 950 MB DOWNLOAD

To fix this shut down the launcher, then go to your Champions directory. In the /Live folder there will be a bunch of .hogg files. Simply move those to the /Live/piggs folder, overwriting old files when prompted, then restart the launcher.

Details: http://launcher.champions-online.com/node/172959

Thanks for that- it reduced patch size for me.  Patch still won't come, but I suppose I am making progress  

[kildorn]

http://www.champions-online.com/node/172973

Standalone patch available now.

[Lucas]

But seriously, I totally overlooked this open beta, and your posts are convincing me that I wrongly did so. I can't let this trainwreck bonanza slip by.

Currently downloading from FP, at "maximum speed" with spikes between 30kb/sec and 120kb/sec

Ahh, teh FuN 

[Ghambit]

Patching is totally borked per the devs.  Here's the latest possible fix (also per the devs):
http://forums.champions-online.com/showpost.php?p=714084&postcount=1

I've got insomnia, so I'm gonna get this bytch installed (I've gotta DL another FP client though, since I was working from the original one... which is lawl)

[ezrast]

Sigh, I've been torn away from my desktop until tomorrow night.

Maybe the will still be going on then!

[fuser]

Finally patched.. the graphics is making me sick, something about the movement and the cel shading is just "wrong".

[Kageru]

There's a nasty sort of disconnect between the button press, the action and the animation which also makes combat feel really clunky.

[Ghambit]

Juuust as I get the thing installed, I get stuck at chargen and the servers go down early... hilfuckinlarious
(just stayed up for no apparent reason)

[Kageru]

Servers are up as I'm playing now. I think they said they were taking down the login server for a bit (15 minutes? didn't pay attention).

Ignore me... They must have gone down while I was zoning, as the game is currently very confused.

[nurtsi]

So, is there any way to get a beta key now without paying some filethingy something? MMORPG and TenTonHammer are out at least.

[Feverdream]

I am not entirely clear how the decision gets made, but I suddenly have to ask...is it possible to consign a game to Gaming Graveyard status around here before it's even officially released?

It just seemed like a good time to inquire.

[Kageru]

It would have to get it's own sub-forum first I think. I can't see that happening.

[Lucas]

No doubt they're going to put out a press release or newsletter about TOTALLY UNEXPECTED OVERWHELMING RESPONSE TO THE OPEN BETA where the patch server just couldn't keep up with demand! But they'll get that fixed, just you wait! So that when the game releases, they'll have enough bandwidth for 10x what they need.

 

(spotted the following on Voodoo Extreme, but they don't hyperlink the source. Bold text is mine)

The biggest issue we’ve had today is that getting into the Champions Online open beta was more popular than even we hoped for. While I know this doesn’t make the people who have been going through the challenges of getting online today any happier, it has been a great test for us in terms of diagnosing and working to fix problems on numerous fronts. In short, here’s what happened:
Our game and account servers were thoroughly tested with up to ~40,000 concurrent players. Unfortunately our game patching software was dependent on being able to ping the website to generate a dynamic information page, and it stopped updating when we experienced downtime from massive amounts of players hitting our web servers.

Concurrently, our installer had an error where it placed certain file types to an incorrect directory. When the patcher ran, it didn’t find those already downloaded files where they were expected to be. This caused the 3.6 GB patch to occur.

We quickly released an interim patcher that moved the already installed files to the correct folders. But as we had no way to message this through the patcher, this was incorrectly displaying as it being a 2 GB “patch.” It actually took only as long as moving the files, but unfortunately caused more confusion. The amount of data transferred by the patcher is the "Received" line.

There is now a new build of the installer at fileplanet.com that addresses the incorrect file placement and patch size, as well as a known Windows 64 Bit issue. We tried to keep the new install a simple single-file .exe autoextract, but those can't be bigger than 2GB in size. This requires players to do a second ~300MB patch after newly installing the game. If you previously downloaded the game from fileplanet.com, you do not need to do so again. The latest version of our patcher will move the incorrectly installed files and not require the previously massive patch.

Some players are currently experiencing issues where the Patcher can “freeze.” The main problem is we’re delivering a 400 MB patch to ~20,000 people simultaneously. At the current speed, the patching crush should clear up in about six hours. We are also currently working with our hosting partner to deploy more patch servers.

We appreciate the patience of our testers and hope that you’ll all stick in there as we go through our first day of getting the huge number of moving parts that is putting an MMO out there meshing together.

[Aez]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azV5bC2br-Q

[jason]

No, seriously. What? You can't DO that! You can't just put bots on there to simulate concurrency! That's not even some theoretical stuff. It's not even running a simulation. That's lunacy.

That would depend on how your bots were run, from the server or from a scripted client running on a separate machine.

[NiX]

That would depend on how your bots were run, from the server or from a scripted client running on a separate machine.

No, you just don't do that. How many machines can you possible have with a scripted client? This is what open beta is for. You want to see what roughly 40,000 people will do to your server when they all come crashing in.

[Malakili]

That would depend on how your bots were run, from the server or from a scripted client running on a separate machine.

No, you just don't do that. How many machines can you possible have with a scripted client? This is what open beta is for. You want to see what roughly 40,000 people will do to your server when they all come crashing in.

Yep.  And yesterday was a resounding success in that regard.  It was a terrible day.  And people have the right to get scared way from the game because of it, I suppose, but to me a craptacular first day of open beta isn't a deal breaker.  Granted, it wasn't just server load the, fileplanet patch was borked as well. 

[Nevermore]

Impressions of a disgruntled tester.  This guy is obviously biased against the game, so keep that in mind.

He writes like a toddler, biased or not. Also, since when is not liking a game having bias?

It seemed like the writer was personally offended by things he shouldn't have been (bad game or not), but since so many people are agreeing with his assessment I suppose it wasn't as biased as it first appeared.  Which is a really bad sign for the game.

[UnSub]

Impressions of a disgruntled tester.  This guy is obviously biased against the game, so keep that in mind.

He writes like a toddler, biased or not. Also, since when is not liking a game having bias?

It seemed like the writer was personally offended by things he shouldn't have been (bad game or not), but since so many people are agreeing with his assessment I suppose it wasn't as biased as it first appeared.  Which is a really bad sign for the game.

I disagree with some of his points and think he's factually wrong about a few things - yes, one of the ChampO CSRs went to another Cryptic title and another went to STO but this isn't exactly STO stealing all of ChampO's resources (I think we went through 6 CS reps in about 12 months during the ChampO beta), the Emmert hate is mis-focused, the trouble finding your friends bit is wrong - but he's probably the perfect example of a CoH/V player's general criticisms of ChampO. Some of it is valid - teaming UI needed work, some enemies are cheap (but they might have been patched down - some were), ranged is better than melee - and some of it is petty - the tells over the heads of enemies are meant to be cues to block.

Some of the bitterest venom towards ChampO is coming from current and ex-CoH/V players for a variety of reasons. Although true that ChampO isn't the superhero MMO I'd create if given the chance, I think they've taken a step forward with some good features... even if they've currently fallen on their face for day 1 of open beta.

[fuser]

Granted, it wasn't just server load the, fileplanet patch was borked as well. 

(not directed really at you Malakili)

What I don't get is that a lot of people were blaming fileplanet on the official forums. Fileplanet (besides obvious gripes) is just a content delivery with secure options ie: the file locking. What happened was they released a fscking broken client and something was outside their baseline and it obviously fscked up when it communicated with the patcher. Who ever was the build engineer was partially to fault and the company was out to lunch for not doing a simple "dose this client install properly" QA.

The CSR response was horrible, 6pm posting of what was going on, what file to download on your "soft launch" day is totally unacceptable. I really don't care if there was a post in thread xyz inside of the forums because the dev tracker didn't work, they never updated the main site which 90% of people would read, and the patcher status page didn't say squat that was helpful.

No stress testing BS as there still was post client patches (400mb as stated in the last post as they hit a 2gb installer limit), but try to explain that to people on the official forums and you get a standard response "ZOMG ITS BETA", "WoW's launch was worse then this", "your playing for free!!!!". There was the total mistake of treating this as a beta when honestly an open beta is now a first look by your paying public and critics.

Oh well after getting in and trying it out I will be staying away from this. If it was even mediocre I'd give it a whirl but it honestly wasn't.

FYI the canardpc.com site ran out of keys but I hope anyone was on the fence got one to at least try the game.

[Modern Angel]

I got to deal with a spawn camp within twenty minutes of firing it up. I logged off. I will log back on eventually. Maybe.

It really doesn't look bad and it runs okay. But Jesus Christ it's average.

[Sky]

FYI the canardpc.com site ran out of keys but I hope anyone was on the fence got one to at least try the game.

Yeah, I am on the fence and got one. Hopefully they'll get their shit straight in time for me to actually play it in beta...

There was the total mistake of treating this as a beta when honestly an open beta is now a first look by your paying public and critics.

There's not a whole lot that can be changed at this point to impact how it will be at release. This short of an open beta is basically a stress test to test the infrastructure (fail).

Relying on the live team to fix the game isn't a great recipe...but then, my favorite mmo to date (EQ2) did pretty damned well in that respect. My advice to Emmert: hire Scott H.

[slog]

That would depend on how your bots were run, from the server or from a scripted client running on a separate machine.

No, you just don't do that. How many machines can you possible have with a scripted client? This is what open beta is for. You want to see what roughly 40,000 people will do to your server when they all come crashing in.

I disagree completely.  Open beta in MMOGS is now  a marketing tool, not a testing tool.

[sam, an eggplant]

My advice: go free, sell boxes retail for $9 (with $10 ingame credit) or free attached to another high-margin purchase like a magazine subscription, and add lots of hybrid DLC.

[kildorn]

So I got through the tutorial with one character last night.

Impressions:
It's.. average. Every attack seems to home, so all the movement is just a  pretty interface over what amounts to the same old combat.

Stats are a mystery. Seriously, what the shit do half these numbers do, and why is it so hard for it to inform me the net effect. This isn't even touching the equip system, where somehow various items could only go into certain slots, but the slots are not labeled in any understandable manner.

I got to train my powers! I couldn't undo anything in the power training room. I also couldn't use the power I selected. It cost 17 more than my max energy. I managed to stat stack to get it down to 2 more than my max energy. Now from a customer interface standpoint, it makes no sense to give me access to a spell I cannot cast upon gaining it. That's terrible. No matter how much you want to reward min maxing or whatever, that's just leaving a bad taste in my mouth at level fucking FOUR or some shit.

[Signe]

The new file worked and I got in this morning.  It doesn't look all that different than CoH - more bright and cartoon-y, I suppose.  A bit more like Slog's avatar, maybe.  I haven't really played it but I don't get any great vibes from it yet.  I kind of hope it's not all frantic feeling like in the beginning.  It's something I didn't like about WAR.  So far it makes me miss CoH, although I played that game to death and simply can't get interested enough to play it any more.   Character creation was good fun.  I made a metal lady with Psi powers and named her Psigne.  I so boring.

[Kageru]

You should be able to respec from the power trainers in the power house. You can respec up to the last 10 selections at increasing prices. The last pick should be free to undo as long as you didn't leave the power house.

And yeah, it was frequently bugged in beta that some powers took more endurance than the character would have. The response from the developers was that this was by design and the character would have to be specifically built for energy use (endurance for max pool and int for cost reduction I guess). Each time I heard it I thought that was pretty loopy logic.

[Hawkbit]

So far it makes me miss CoH

That sums it up.  I don't know why I'd play this over CoX, not that I've played CoX for any length. 

Champo is the first game to actually induce a headache from it's graphics.  The cel shading looks... off.  It also hitches from the GPU when turned up high.  I turned it down to low but now it looks like dogshit. 

Unimpressed. 

[Sky]

I made a metal lady with Psi powers and named her Psigne.

[Modern Angel]

I disagree completely.  Open beta in MMOGS is now  a marketing tool, not a testing tool.

That's got nothing to do with the fact that trying to emulate server load with bots is grade AAA stupid.

[Signe]

I made a metal lady with Psi powers and named her Psigne.

Yeah, but I didn't like her much so I made a short martial arts character named Fat Bottomed Girl.  I would have liked her fatter, although her bootie is gigantic, which is nice for a change. 

[Montague]

I made a metal lady with Psi powers and named her Psigne.

Yeah, but I didn't like her much so I made a short martial arts character named Fat Bottomed Girl.  I would have liked her fatter, although her bootie is gigantic, which is nice for a change. 

If only they had a bicycle as a travel power.

[Pennilenko]

Hahahaha

[Draegan]

So what's the proper course now for downloading this game with all the different versions?