Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Morfiend]

The travel power Teleportation is really well done.

[Morfiend]

When does the game start to suck or get boring? Up to level 10 I am enjoying it.

[UnSub]

When does the game start to suck or get boring? Up to level 10 I am enjoying it.

It depends who you ask.

Some people claim that by about lvl 20 they've got all the powers they really want and things become linear from there. Others find nothing really new to do from lvl 30 - 40 and that the UNITY missions really don't offer anything different other than reward points. Then there are those who find it fun from start to finish.

[tmp]

When does the game start to suck or get boring? Up to level 10 I am enjoying it.

At lvl.10 i've realized the "undo" for decisions you make when picking powers and such only works 10 choices deep or so, and anything past that you're stuck with apparently forever. That kind of sucked and since i really didn't feel like redoing the heroic tutorial areas having done them just a day before, that was it for me.

[Triforcer]

The limited respec system is something people will bitch about for two years, then suddenly it will get changed to full respec long after the game has blown its chances of top-tier success.  But I guess that would be the death of alts, so maybe not. 

[Kageru]

The game starts to suck around high teens IMO (obviously a personal choice). The XP slows down a lot, mobs have a lot more HP, you probably have your core powers and have been using them long enough for the novelty to wear off and the game wants to send you back to Canada or the Desert. I could keep the motivation to go to 40 since there were new quests and two new maps but the idea of levelling an alt to that point again was just forbidding.

And apparently they've now done a noticeable XP nerf. I fully understand the temptation to slow down levelling. They're no doubt terrified at how fast people are blowing through the levels when they have a half-baked end-game. But given how sparse levelling content was you can't simply do something like that.

[Malakili]

And apparently they've now done a noticeable XP nerf. I fully understand the temptation to slow down levelling. They're no doubt terrified at how fast people are blowing through the levels when they have a half-baked end-game. But given how sparse levelling content was you can't simply do something like that.

Yeah, they definitely nerfed the XP gain across the board, pretty noticeably.   I really hope they rethink it, because I felt like the pacing before was actually really pleasant, and afterwards I was starting to feel the slowness of the pacing baring down on me.  Hopefully they will rethink the decision before launch.  Not holding my breath.

[Lantyssa]

Considering they buffed mob health right before open beta, and now they're decreasing XP, don't hold your breath.  They're basing rate of gain on catasses in an open beta.  It's going to be WAR with a little TR thrown in for good measure.  Good concepts killed by devs who don't understand basic psychology nor the importance of fixing bugs.

[Margalis]

I dont' understand the logic in testing a game, then at the last second totally invalidating the testing by changing something fundamental like mob health or XP. It smacks of fear and indecision and all the feedback you got on overall pacing, enjoyment and difficulty can be thrown right out the window.

[Triforcer]

Hasn't pretty much every MMO ever done this about a week before release?  We never, ever learn 

[UnSub]

I dont' understand the logic in testing a game, then at the last second totally invalidating the testing by changing something fundamental like mob health or XP. It smacks of fear and indecision and all the feedback you got on overall pacing, enjoyment and difficulty can be thrown right out the window.

This.

If there was any one point my meagre voice warned them against, it was nerfing XP at the end of beta. This act is enough to put me off getting the lifetime sub.

I'd actually thought that the changes to mob difficulty at the end of closed beta were going to be enough and that Cryptic wouldn't do the stupid thing. Consider me an optimist.

There are some indications that the XP rates might be upped again to a point below where they were but above where they are now. But I'm going to wait and see.

Although I can see their point about having limited testing times to better test server load (as well as that did so, anyway) not having the servers up 24/7 when they had 10k new testers ended up with them nerfing XP during open beta. It's not a good look.

[Trippy]

I dont' understand the logic in testing a game, then at the last second totally invalidating the testing by changing something fundamental like mob health or XP. It smacks of fear and indecision and all the feedback you got on overall pacing, enjoyment and difficulty can be thrown right out the window.

Part of it has to do with their testing methodology. Another is just the typical "ZOMG we don't have enough content! Nerf the EXP!".

For the longest time the server was only available twice a week and only a few hours on each of those days as others have said earlier. To actually test any content they had NPCs that would level players to the level of the zone(s) that needed to be tested at the time. It's hard to judge the full game progression when you are testing like this. I had assumed they did some measurements of the regular level progression at the end of closed beta but apparently they either didn't or didn't get enough good data.

I was never able to play the game long enough to see the "end game" stuff (I'm one of those that gets eye strain and a headache from the graphics and the fucked up controls) but judging from the comments here it sounds like they didn't really have any.

If the majority of people can blow through the content in less than a month and the non end game content isn't interesting enough (or at least tolerable enough) that people are willing to do it over and over again on alts they are basically going to be in the same position as games like AoC and WAR where they get some decent initial box sales but most of those people don't subscribe or stay subscribed for very long.

[Rendakor]

A lot of the "Nerf XP" probably stems from intentionally inflated beta-XP. I.e. we will allow players to level at 3x XP to test content faster, then just reduce it to 1x for launch. The problem with that is perception; to a player, that looks like "ZOMG XP WAS NERFED TO ONLY 33% WTF!?!?"

[Trippy]

That's fine if they nerfed the XP at the start of "open" beta. Waiting till this weekend to do it, though, just gives everybody the impression they either don't know what they are doing or panicking or both.

[Morfiend]

A lot of the "Nerf XP" probably stems from intentionally inflated beta-XP. I.e. we will allow players to level at 3x XP to test content faster, then just reduce it to 1x for launch. The problem with that is perception; to a player, that looks like "ZOMG XP WAS NERFED TO ONLY 33% WTF!?!?"

I dont think this is what happened though. From what I can tell, on a new character I created  after the XP nerf, I found that I was constantly under leveled in quests and items, where as before I was right on the money.

[Kageru]

It was definitely not boosted XP during beta. Firstly, that's an idiotic way to test, if they wanted high level characters they would have (and did, for a bit) just put level boosting NPC's. More importantly the rate of progression pretty much perfectly matched the amount of content they had. You'd need to do pretty much every quest, maybe miss a couple, to level but there wouldn't be long gaps of "there is nothing for me to do". With any sizeable XP nerf, and it sounds like this is really aggressive, there will be gaps where you are grinding mobs for pathetic amounts of XP.

I did beta feedback a number of times stating they had no "slack" in content to slow levelling. But they must be desperate.

And unlike CoH rolling alts isn't going to be quite as addictive. The powers are narrower in scope, many of them are redundant or underpowered and by the time you reach 40 you've probably got anything that interested you. On top of that levelling will be painful and identical thanks to this xp nerf.

[Cyrrex]

Installed and played just past the tutorial.  Initial impressions, some of it undoubtedly repeating what has already been said.

-Performance is pretty laughable, considering the graphics.  I can get it to run smoothly at max settings, but only because I have a monster card.  They better have a magical release day patch to squeeze out 50% more framerate.  It's not like the graphics are anything to write home about (I turned off bloom and outlining as suggested, which does make it look nicer).

-Some of the interface stuff is just ass.  I don't intuitively understand their inventory and equipment system, which is unusual for this sort of game.  I'm sure I'll figure it out, but it looks dumb.  It also looks bad.  Games like these, where you spend so much damned time in your journal, your character screens, your skillls screens, your talents, your inventory, etc....it needs to look slick.  This doesn't.

-I get the comic book visual style, but I think it could have been done better, somehow.  It's just...cheesy.

-Character creation is predictably cool.  I'm sure there's tons they left out, but still.  There's a whole game just in the character creation.

-I still love this idea of public quests.  Only did the tutorial one so far.  Hopefully they will make it work.

-Customizable powers is FUCKING AWESOME.  I hope they expand further on this.  I mean, I can make my lady shoot blue fire out of her chest.  Or yellow fire out of her forehead.  That's sweet.  I don't know what it should be, but they need to come up with more options.

-Travel powers are also FUCKING AWESOME.  My fire lady can burst into flames and fly around at a good pace at level 5?  Sweeeeeet.  I will create alt after alt just to see how all this plays out.

I haven't yet figured out what this all adds up to in terms of fun and a potential purchase.

[Modern Angel]

I don't mind the look depending on where I am in game. Characters almost always look decent, wilderness okay, city looks like ass. ASS. I've had zero performance issues on a 9800GT, Quad Core but noting Vista32 with only 2G of RAM.

I really can't overstate how important those travel powers are. Compare to the bullshitty way CoX did theirs. Oh look! I get flight! Wait! It's only the first level of flight. Which is more like a slow hover. What the fuck? None of that. Here, have a super good travel power within thirty minutes of playing.

I think there's a month, maybe two, of play here. I'm going to get it. Tutorial is still godawful, though, and it didn't hook my wife because of its awfulness. The xp nerf worries me because that's exactly what WAR did and they're still paying a price for it but with me only setting out for a month or so of casual play I don't know if it's ever going to really hurt me.

[Typhon]

I'm thinking the same.  Enjoying my electricity char enough to buy it and assume it gives me a month or two of enjoyment.  Then quit and let it settle for six months or so and then test the waters to see how they are doing on balance and endgame and maybe then resub.  They are definitely benefiting from the current lack of competition in the MO market, but at the same time I am having fun in the game so it's all good.

[Modern Angel]

Let me add that I have more fun with this off the bat than I ever had in CoX. It's not even close.

[Malakili]

Let me add that I have more fun with this off the bat than I ever had in CoX. It's not even close.

This is how I feel as well.  Its a new MMO, and there are problems with it, but I have more fun, straight up, with it than I've had in any other MMO recently to be honest, thats enough to warrant the sale to me.

[tazelbain]

How is CO doing their publlic quests?

[Cyrrex]

How is CO doing their publlic quests?

On the surface, it seemed fairly similar to WAR, but I'm sure other's have had loads more experience than my single attempt.  It was a quest in the tutorial that I had to complete...I just went to the area and the objectives popped up.  I helped complete the objective.  What I was totally unclear on was how any loot or rewards may have been divided up, and scoring completely confused me.  Despite slaughtering tons and tons of bad guys, my score remained at 1 the whole way through.  I didn't seem to get anything for the effort, other than a completed quest.

[Numtini]

I think the only real problem with PQs in War was that War was a PVP game and the PQs took too long for people who were interested primarily in PVP. If you stuck the same ones into WoW or EQ2, I suspect they'd be incredibly popular.

[Montague]

How is CO doing their publlic quests?

When you get into a PQ area, the quest requirements pop up in the lower right hand corner. I've only done the tutorial one, but that one was 3 phases - phase 1 kill x monsters, phase 2 collect boxes, phase 3 defend the cannon. After its done, a scoreboard pops up showing you how much xp you got in relation to everyone else, then an item you can loot spawns next to the cannon. I never played WAR so no idea how that's different.

The combat system is a blast. There's no "fighting underwater" feeling like I got in COH or LOTRO. The crafting system is pretty cool too, as you can break down your own creations to get more skill points and you can create some useful powerups and single shot items.  A solid buy, but no idea how long we'll be playing. Depends on how much content there is at 40.

[chargerrich]

OK I have a dumb/easy question that I am sure all of you can answer, but given that I am not playing the beta I would have no idea.

Regarding naming your character; do you get a first and last name (ala AC) or a single name (ala WoW). And if it is the latter, can you have spaces? For example if I wanted to be "The Hulk" instead of "Hulk" or would it be "Thehulk" which would suck (BTW my names will be original, but that was a good example).

Thanks.

[Montague]

OK I have a dumb/easy question that I am sure all of you can answer, but given that I am not playing the beta I would have no idea.

Regarding naming your character; do you get a first and last name (ala AC) or a single name (ala WoW). And if it is the latter, can you have spaces? For example if I wanted to be "The Hulk" instead of "Hulk" or would it be "Thehulk" which would suck (BTW my names will be original, but that was a good example).

Thanks.

It's a single name with spaces. They also have the obligatory titles as well.

[Triforcer]

This is done well enough to make my not regret my Gamestop preorder- I'll get a month out of it, maybe more.  PvP is a hopeless clusterfuck through- defense abilities (combined with stim heals) are WAY fucking overpowered.  Obviously broken stuff like thunderbolt lunge will get fixed, but right now PvP is just 10 people running around for 10 minutes without any kills by either side. 

[Montague]

This is done well enough to make my not regret my Gamestop preorder- I'll get a month out of it, maybe more.  PvP is a hopeless clusterfuck through- defense abilities (combined with stim heals) are WAY fucking overpowered.  Obviously broken stuff like thunderbolt lunge will get fixed, but right now PvP is just 10 people running around for 10 minutes without any kills by either side. 

I think Cryptic is being careful with the power advantages. I noticed several new offensive-sounding advantages with no descriptor text in the latest patch so I wouldn't be surprised to see some defense-lowering debuffs/damage enhancing abilities in the near future.

[Morfiend]

Another thing I REALLY like is the Power (Place)? I dont remember the exact name. But letting you try out all the different stuff before making a decision is awesome.

What is NOT awesome is the only respec 10 last power choices. Thats just retarded.

[Cyrrex]

I wanna say it is called the Powerhouse.  And I didn't know you could test it out.  Curses! 

[Threash]

I think the only real problem with PQs in War was that War was a PVP game and the PQs took too long for people who were interested primarily in PVP. If you stuck the same ones into WoW or EQ2, I suspect they'd be incredibly popular.

Also there was just too many of them so it was rare to find other people doing the one you needed, plus you had to farm them for influence if you wanted the rewards.  In this case the lack of there being a lot of them actually makes the few they have work better in CO than they ever did in WaR.

[Nebu]

WAR, a self proclaimed PvP-centric game, had it's greatest innovation with a PvE mechanic.  I think that says it all.  Had WAR spent its energy on making a better PvP experience, I'd still be playing. 

As for CO, the complaints that I hear repeatedly are of forced grouping to complete content in the later aspects of the game.  While I understand the drive toward socialization in an MMO, it will kill their numbers if they stick to it.  WoW's success is due, in part, to its balance between solo and group play.  The ability to reach the endgame effortlessly solo is a huge selling feature to the more casual gamer. 

[Modern Angel]

What is NOT awesome is the only respec 10 last power choices. Thats just retarded.

Word is that this is a bug

[Kageru]

The patch notes disagree

"The Powerhouse will allow retcon of up to the ten most recent powers changes to your character. This is by design."

And things like talents and power advantages count as well.

The PQ idea is still cool in theory but suffers in two ways. The first is they tend to involve killing a fair number of mobs and mob XP is really low, making the end result generally un-rewarding for the time invested. More seriously the game is broken up into quite small shards (~100 players in practice) most of whom are doing XP quests. So a lot of the time the PQ's were sitting idle.