Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Malakili]

I was looking forward to this, but the griefy objective-stealing is a game breaker for me. Is there any way around those kind of quests, and still have a meaningful play session?

Not really at the moment sadly.  The exp is slanted WAY towards quest rewards instead of killing, so if you want to advance at a good clip, you really need to be doing quests, and those do appear somewhat often.  I don't think it will be SO bad once we get past a few weeks in and things start to spread out a little.  In OB you have tons of alts, most people are in the 1-15 level range, and everyone is fighting over the same quests, but that isn't going to last forever.  So you might want to come back in a month or two and check it out, cause I see this is as a problem in any launch of new content or game that chooses questing as a main form of advancement.  If questing itself is a breaking point for you, then you're unfortunately out of luck on this title.

[chargerrich]

OK so I have read through 44 pages of this thread and still HAVE NO FLIPPING IDEA if I should buy it or not 

So some questions for your beta testers:

1. Is the game better than COH/V from a character creation standpoint?
2. Is the game better than COH/V from a combat perspective?
3. Is the game better than COH/V from a PvP standpoint?
4. How is the leveling curve compared to say WoW on one hand and Vanguard on the other?
5. Is the lifetime sub still available? If so how much?

Thanks all...

[Sky]

I don't think it will be SO bad once we get past a few weeks in and things start to spread out a little. 

Otoh, there will be less people for the open quests. That's just poor testing and design, having one set of objectives that punishes having too many players and another that punishes having too few.

1. Is the game better than COH/V from a character creation standpoint?
2. Is the game better than COH/V from a combat perspective?
3. Is the game better than COH/V from a PvP standpoint?
4. How is the leveling curve compared to say WoW on one hand and Vanguard on the other?

1. Yes. I'm bummed beta finished before I could make the other hundred ideas I had for characters. More slots for costume pieces, more options for each piece, color range upped to a max of 4 per piece, support for non-human heroes.

2. Dunno, I'd say about equal. Nice to have a power that charges your energy, but sucks that you need a power to charge your energy. Some builds it works great, others not so great.

3. Didn't PvP in either game.

4. I've only played it to around level 8, but level 8 about ten times in a week, plus a ton of time in the character creation playing around with ideas. I imagine it's like CoH, starts out good and slows down later on until you hate the game.

[Montague]

OK so I have read through 44 pages of this thread and still HAVE NO FLIPPING IDEA if I should buy it or not 

So some questions for your beta testers:

1. Is the game better than COH/V from a character creation standpoint?
2. Is the game better than COH/V from a combat perspective?
3. Is the game better than COH/V from a PvP standpoint?
4. How is the leveling curve compared to say WoW on one hand and Vanguard on the other?
5. Is the lifetime sub still available? If so how much?

Thanks all...

1. COH has more aesthetic options but not by much. Powers wise Champs has much more customization. They need to get rid of the last 10 ability respec limit though.
2. I like the combat but others think its spammy. If you hate cooldowns you'll like it.
3. Don't play this game for PVP.
4. A bit steeper than WoW, but they supposedly have tweaked it.
5. It was $200 but is sold out for now.

Bottom line, I like it and have 2 copies preordered but no idea how long we're going to stay subscribed. It's worth the box purchase but the real question is how much content they'll have in 2-3 months. There doesn't look to be a whole lot to do at 40 ATM.

[Morfiend]

1. Is the game better than COH/V from a character creation standpoint?
2. Is the game better than COH/V from a combat perspective?
3. Is the game better than COH/V from a PvP standpoint?
4. How is the leveling curve compared to say WoW on one hand and Vanguard on the other?
5. Is the lifetime sub still available? If so how much?

1) I personally feel there are slightly less costume designs, but they have added some nice touches to customize your character. Like being able to choose where some of the powers come from, IE, do your lightning bolts come from your Palm, Fist, Forehead, or Chest. Also, the different "stances" are really nice. 4 stances ranging from normal, heroic (standing with chest puffed out and arms slightly bent) to Beast, where you are hunched over and run on all fours.
Also, you dont have to pick an existing template at creation, you can mix and match powers, even at the start.

2) I think the combat is a little more interesting. I am not a big fan of "cooldowns", and CO has less cooldowns than CoX. Also, the energy generation vs energy spending is an interesting idea. I think its really a personal opinion type of thing. I liked it.

3) I didnt get to do to much PVP, and I only got to level 10, but it seemed fairly unbalanced with some builds just being really hard to counter. But we will have to see how it works out in the end.

4) They nerfed EXP like 2 days before the end of beta, and this could really be the thing that stops me buying the game right away. I felt that during the open beta the leveling curve was just right. But after their EXP nerf it really messed up the flow of the game. When coming out of the tutorial, you are given a level 6 item, but you are only just level 5 after the nerf. Also, prenerf I felt like I was just the right level for the quests, after, I started having to do higher and higher level quests to advance cause there wasnt enough quests to keep you at the correct level for them.

5) It was $200, not sure if there is any left.

[tazelbain]

For Jack Emmert, the character creation screen and the end game are the same thing.

[Sky]

I don't understand why people feel there are less costume designs. Did you dig through all the drop-downs? There's a ton of new shit. So much more than in CoH.

[Montague]

I don't understand why people feel there are less costume designs. Did you dig through all the drop-downs? There's a ton of new shit. So much more than in CoH.

I'm not counting the furry and monster crap. 

[Malakili]

4) They nerfed EXP like 2 days before the end of beta, and this could really be the thing that stops me buying the game right away. I felt that during the open beta the leveling curve was just right. But after their EXP nerf it really messed up the flow of the game. When coming out of the tutorial, you are given a level 6 item, but you are only just level 5 after the nerf. Also, prenerf I felt like I was just the right level for the quests, after, I started having to do higher and higher level quests to advance cause there wasnt enough quests to keep you at the correct level for them.

5) It was $200, not sure if there is any left.

4) - They are unnerfing it, there were some posts saying they wanted to see what would happen and were working on fine tuning exp gain, and they over shot.  In fact, yesterday or today's patch notes mentioned they upped exp gain again.  I'm not sure if it is quite to pre-nerf levels.

5) They are out of them.

[ezrast]

From an "is it better than CoH" perspective, there's only one important question: do you prefer to group or solo? If the former, don't play Champions. If the latter, try it but wait for the trial if you don't want to risk wasting money.

[Kageru]

CoH is more interesting. CO's mechanics are under-developed and simplistic. Though the CO for solo and CoH for grouping is actually a really good guideline too.

The other advantage is that the CoH team is committed to developing CoH. Cryptic is very likely to be distracted by ST:O and other games they're working on for Atari and discouraged by the average reception CO is getting. That's assuming it's not an out and out cash grab. Then again CoH have a lot to prove with their next expac.

The CO costume creator is much stronger in terms of adding 3D aspects to the base model and changing the surface effects. It has two new effect points (upper arm and thigh) that CoH doesn't and lots of 3D objects to put in them although the models are often really basic (and sometimes really limited, especially for females). So it's fantastic for robots and furries. If you wanted a human in an outfit then CoH has a lot of nice outfit designs and textures which are much more subtle. Since I favor the latter I always found CO really disappointing and ended up re-using the handful of options that actually looked good to me.

The CO creator used to have the option of adding glowing colors to items but I think that all got removed. The stances are cool but they get over-ruled by the fact there's only one set of power animations. It would be more sensible to have them as an emote (even a default idle emote) or travel power animation.

[UnSub]

Personally I think ChampO has more potential () than CoH/V and although Paragon Studios is focused on CoH/V, it is a game with a shrinking player base. All of Paragon Studio's eggs are in one basket. Recent content updates for CoH/V have been lackluster and / or mishandled.

A lot of CoH/V players are putting their faith in the Going Rogue expansion to do something new for CoH/V. I'm waiting to see what happens and I also remember that this wouldn't be the first time CoH/V had a paid expansion announced, only to be cancelled.

ChampO is flawed, but has some great ideas and is just starting out. CoH/V is 5 years old and its last big new trick saw the devs remonstrate the player base for exploiting it and banning a number of them (including incorrect bans).

Sad thing is that I'm on the fence about ChampO and inertia is pulling me forward for CoH/V.

[Modern Angel]

Thinking about it, I think I know their rationale between the last ten respec decision. Your character has access to ALL powers as he levels. That pick two thing at the beginning means nothing. Want to be a straight Might hero with one Gadget power at random? Go for it. If you can respec anything you can make any hero you want at any time at any level. Meaning you would never have to level another toon again. No alts. No need for alts.

Which is not to say that I agree with that but there it is.

[tmp]

Meaning you would never have to level another toon again. No alts. No need for alts.

Could be argued alts would still be there for people who want to vary their playtime between different distinct characters with certain established power sets, looks, gender etc -- even if all this could be refedined without creating new character doing the undo/redo dance 30+ choices deep every time you want to switch to another playstyle could get old very fast.

So with such setup the alts would be turned into option for people who truly prefer to play with multiple characters, from the necessity they currently are in your typical MMO. Which is in my eyes a plus for the game rather than a drawback but then the devs quite obviously see it different.

[Kageru]

Personally I think ChampO has more potential () than CoH/V and although Paragon Studios is focused on CoH/V, it is a game with a shrinking player base. All of Paragon Studio's eggs are in one basket. Recent content updates for CoH/V have been lackluster and / or mishandled.

I have no idea how this could be interpreted as being true. The CoH mission architect is a novel and useful addition to the game and genre. Sure they should have been much smarter about spotting exploits and the willingness of players to use it. It's still a lot more interesting than any game mechanic CO has. Meanwhile they're adding things like alternate animation sets which CO could really use.

As to the future... well in practice both of them are probably going to be in trouble. CoH is old and their player numbers are probably too low (merge servers!) to really do a meaningful refresh while CO is just an idiot child. I'd predict that DC online is going to steam-roll both into the ground, though it competes more directly with CO, but that would require me to have hope for an upcoming title. Let alone the fact it's SOE.

[Malakili]

[

So with such setup the alts would be turned into option for people who truly prefer to play with multiple characters, from the necessity they currently are in your typical MMO. Which is in my eyes a plus for the game rather than a drawback but then the devs quite obviously see it different.

From what the Devs have said about the game, they seem to want it to be about creating and realizing super hero characters.  The ability to totally change 100% of your abilities at will basically dismantles this entire notion, because the character becomes effectively meaningless.  At least, I'm guessing that is their reasoning.  I actually don't mind it too much.  It would kind of be like being able to switch from  any class in WoW to another class at will for the cost of a respec.  I guess it COULD sound kind of nice, but hell at that point lets just quit with the leveling all together and just give everyone an account full of max level characters.   

Of course, also assumed in your line of reasoning is that the end game is all that matters.  Maybe it is, I dunno.  But there is probably some value in playing say, the level 25 content as an archer, and as a fire based hero, for instance, rather than just leveling through the content once, and switching between whatever you want for the max level content.

Meh, i have no idea where I am going with this anymore.

[tmp]

Of course, also assumed in your line of reasoning is that the end game is all that matters.  Maybe it is, I dunno.  But there is probably some value in playing say, the level 25 content as an archer, and as a fire based hero, for instance, rather than just leveling through the content once, and switching between whatever you want for the max level content.

Nah, i'm including the levelling process in there. But i do think it's quite neat to be able to switch from the archer to fire based hero while going through that level 25 content just to see how it differs at that stage, if the player happens to feel like it... without having to park the archer character and go through the previous 24 levels with the fire-based guy. It's not about removing the leveling process itself, but rather the redundancy from it.

To put it differently i don't think the logical conclusion to that is to allow everyone start with maxed out characters and fuck the levelling process altogether. Being allowed to make the maxed out characters once the player goes through their themepark trip would be a bit closer to it. But even then it doesn't cover the whole thing and so just being able to change character's setup at any point offers superior flexibility imo, because it allows the player to adjust the whole experience to their whims, not just certain parts of it.

The alternative to that is of course to provide enough content so that the players can realize their multiple characters without having to go through the same stories with every single one of them. But if i understand it right, this is really not an option for ChO in its current shape

[Ghambit]

Of course, also assumed in your line of reasoning is that the end game is all that matters.  Maybe it is, I dunno.  But there is probably some value in playing say, the level 25 content as an archer, and as a fire based hero, for instance, rather than just leveling through the content once, and switching between whatever you want for the max level content.

Meh, i have no idea where I am going with this anymore.

If the level "grind" was entertaining I'd say you were right, but it's not.  So why someone would want to subject themselves to repeated forays into the mission-grind of ChampO is beyond me.
The only reason is if one REALLY just wants to experience another type of hero, or perhaps they have guildies they want to level with.  But personally, I wouldnt subject myself to that kind of torture.  If it was WoW, AoC, LOTRO, n' such I wouldnt mind.

Not to mention, the entire grind is totally cloned no matter which hero you design.  The only mission difference is in the crafting missions.

[Lantyssa]

... although the models are often really basic (and sometimes really limited, especially for females). So it's fantastic for robots and furries. If you wanted a human in an outfit then CoH has a lot of nice outfit designs and textures which are much more subtle.

The bolded would explain why I wasn't seeing all these varied costume options people keep mentioning.  I only play female characters.

[Morfiend]

Thinking about it, I think I know their rationale between the last ten respec decision. Your character has access to ALL powers as he levels. That pick two thing at the beginning means nothing. Want to be a straight Might hero with one Gadget power at random? Go for it. If you can respec anything you can make any hero you want at any time at any level. Meaning you would never have to level another toon again. No alts. No need for alts.

Which is not to say that I agree with that but there it is.

I agree with you thats why they do it, but I do NOT agree. I mean, if I get to level 40, and find half my powers dont scale, ill probably just quit. What they should do is put like a month cooldown on full respecs, or hell, make it $5.

[ezrast]

Not sure if anyone cares, but they're offering lifetime and 6-month subs again. If I had to guess, I'd say that limiting them in the first place was mostly to create an excuse to make more news posts that mention how popular their game is.

[ezrast]

Oh, right. Scarcity.

I need to stop posting so late.

[Modern Angel]

I agree with you thats why they do it, but I do NOT agree. I mean, if I get to level 40, and find half my powers dont scale, ill probably just quit. What they should do is put like a month cooldown on full respecs, or hell, make it $5.

The cooldown on full respecs seems like a good solution. I do have sympathy for that and it brings up an interesting long term problem with full skill/zero classes systems. Players want respecs. Alts are a viable playstyle. If you have a full skill system where any skill is available and you offer full respecs you've essentially made sure nobody ever has to level more than one character. I'm not sure of a terribly elegant solution to that problem beyond the obvious and huge "make games that have fun endgames so nobody wants to level an alt" but this isn't really going to happen tomorrow.

[Jimbo]

1. Is the game better than COH/V from a character creation standpoint?
2. Is the game better than COH/V from a combat perspective?
3. Is the game better than COH/V from a PvP standpoint?
4. How is the leveling curve compared to say WoW on one hand and Vanguard on the other?
5. Is the lifetime sub still available? If so how much?

1.  Yes and No.  Yes in that you can spend hours creating all kinds of hero's but they have a diffrent graphics, so you can make a really detailed hero but when you zoom out it look sort of like a retro 80's comic (and all that work for not...can't see it unless your rig is smoking and you are zoomed in).  But I still play CoH and buy there booster packs, so I'm biased to them...

2.  They tried to get a mix of CoH and Marvel Ultimate Alliance and it doesn't appeal to me, would rather they stuck with one or the other, but the hybrid mix isn't that much fun.  The powers are cool, I was playing ammunition a lot, and my hero would do some killer moves with her two pistols and hell she could pull out other weapons that looked cool.  Some powers with Super stats are over powered and some suck (but of course I needed to "learn to play" and not take those powers...).

3.  PvP is a ranged game, that tends to work the best, but I only did it at level 10 a couple of nights...can't really say how but seems to be pretty spotty.

4.  CoH is the better group game, better alt game, better solo game, and faster leveling game.  You won't get the flashy colors and costumes shows.  Pet classes are better controlled by masterminds on CoH, otherwise they tend to be the same, plus CO will let you pick up a pet power even if you aren't in that class.  Pets have been on a rollercoaster from sucking to overpowered to sucking again.  Never played Vanguard, but it levels slower than CoH and WoW...way slower.

5. No clue, I'm not buying it.

Final note, it is a cool looking game, but it seems rushed out the door, half finished and not a lot of fun to play.

[UnSub]

Personally I think ChampO has more potential () than CoH/V and although Paragon Studios is focused on CoH/V, it is a game with a shrinking player base. All of Paragon Studio's eggs are in one basket. Recent content updates for CoH/V have been lackluster and / or mishandled.

I have no idea how this could be interpreted as being true. The CoH mission architect is a novel and useful addition to the game and genre. Sure they should have been much smarter about spotting exploits and the willingness of players to use it. It's still a lot more interesting than any game mechanic CO has. Meanwhile they're adding things like alternate animation sets which CO could really use.

I find MA to be a river of drek that you might find the odd rare gem... but I expected it to be like that. But I didn't expect the devs to pop out and admonish the player base for doing exactly what the player base was expected to do. Player made PvE content might be a good idea as a concept, but it really hasn't been a game saver for any title that had it introduced (which includes SWG and Ryzom).

I15 was weak while I don't see a lot in I16 to grab me (I don't really care about colour customisation). ChampO is going to be releasing the content from lvl 40 - 50 and whatever else wasn't polished enough for launch.

[Typhon]

1. Is the game better than COH/V from a character creation standpoint?
2. Is the game better than COH/V from a combat perspective?
3. Is the game better than COH/V from a PvP standpoint?
4. How is the leveling curve compared to say WoW on one hand and Vanguard on the other?
5. Is the lifetime sub still available? If so how much?

Here's my take.  In the spirit of full disclosure - I really like super hero games.

1. Draw.  CoH has more model/texture options currently.  CO has a better engine, with each individual costume peice having more configuration ability.  Powers, via replacement powers, can also be modified.  E.g. if you were a munitions here, you could get a different gun to replace you energy-building power.  Frequently these replacement powers are pretty cool looking.  Long term I'd say that if CO can stay in business, it will dominate in this category.  That could take a year though.

2. Advantage CO.  I was always very frustrated with the misses in CoH.  If you know all your players are going to alot something for accuracy to floor the miss rate, why put miss chance into the game?  Also, energy > cooldowns.  Where CoHhas the advantage is in using the environment to impact combat (e.g. hiding behind a wall).  CO seems like it's trying to have it, but it's not as crisp as CoHs.

3. No clue.  I thought the PvP was broken in CoH.  Suspect that the PvP is largely broken in CO, thought I only played one match.  That said, if they can get the power balance down a bit better, it seems like two groups that play often going head-to-head might be fun.

4. Only played into the mid-teens but I thought it was significantly faster then the first year of CoH.  I haven't played CoH in about 9 months, so it might have improved.  Yesterday's patch ramped the xp back up - I made it to level 6 in about a half an hour last night.  Actually it felt pretty quick.

5. Apparently it's available again, I think it's $200.

6. Travel powers - advantage CO.  There are 5 different fly abilities alone.  Given replacement powers and the earth version of flying easter egg*, it seems like there is the possibility to change the effect that comes with any particular travel power.  E.g. a replacement power might change flame-flying into something like "air form", making you look like you are made of air.  Another example - magic carpet model could replace the "hover disk" flying ability.

earth version of flying easter egg* - if you are in mid-air when you activate this power it changes into a storm cloud instead of a block of earth.  Pretty cool

[Triforcer]

Is your last point about travel power replacers speculation or is it in-game?  That's be pretty cool, but I haven't heard anyone mention anything like that. 

[Typhon]

Other then the earth flying easter egg, it's speculation.  There are replacement powers though, so the speculation that they are able to create a replacement power for a travel power didn't seem that far out there.

[kaid]

I don't think power replacers for travel powers exist yet but they would be pretty darn simple to add for them the frame work is there just need to add some art and bang you are a genie.

[Sky]

They are unnerfing it, there were some posts saying they wanted to see what would happen and were working on fine tuning exp gain, and they over shot.  In fact, yesterday or today's patch notes mentioned they upped exp gain again.  I'm not sure if it is quite to pre-nerf levels.

Seems like it. Yesterday evening I hit level 7 by the end of the tutorial, I had been hitting 6 pre-nerf and 5 (barely) during the nerf. Although pre-nerf I had been doing the open quest a couple times.

Is there a color slider for travel powers? I saw someone that looked like they were in fire form but a blue color last night. Looked pretty cool.

Still find the game fun and bummed I won't be able to play at launch.

[Tmon]

I found the beta fun enough that I bought a copy of the game.  I'll consider it money well spent if I get a month's worth of fun out of it.  I never played CoH and am not really a super hero or other comic book fan but I do like the character generator and the ability to choose any powers you want.  The thing that sold it for me was when I accidentally went out the window of heroes inc and as I was falling to my death I realized I could just activate my teleport and glide in for a landing.

[Malakili]

Is there a color slider for travel powers? I saw someone that looked like they were in fire form but a blue color last night. Looked pretty cool.

Still find the game fun and bummed I won't be able to play at launch.

I haven't played a character with fire form, but I have been able to change the color on the travel powers I have had. Usually it isn't a drastic change in the way the power looks though, so I'm not sure what you saw.

Also, I don't think fire form is tied to a travel power directly, so it also could have been a normal power replacement thing.

[Typhon]

There is a travel power called "flame flight" or something like that.  You burst into flame when flying.  I haven't tried it either, but wouldn't be surprised if you could change the color of the flame.

[Lantyssa]

You can.  It's the most dramatic chagine of color amongst the travel powers.  Teleport is probably the next, though it's more noticable for the player when phased than onlookers.

In regards to the respec silliness, the goal of any game is to retain players.  Telling someone they can respec the last few choices but not the early ones on a character which has advanced far in the game is akin to poking them in the eye.  They've enough time invested in the character that forcing them to make a new one to correct past mistakes, especially given the complete lack of useful tooltips, is stupid.  It will drive more players away than retain.

If you want retention, a better choice than forcing them to reroll to correct mistakes is to make your content compelling enough that they want to do so.  Otherwise they're doing it wrong and deserve every customer they lose.

[Triforcer]

Well, you could look at it from the point of view of "Complaining about no full respec is like complaining about not being able to respec a Warrior into a Mage in WoW."

I think the people who will be bothered by this the most are not the people who want to full respec, but want to change 1 or 2 powers they foolishly took at level 20 and now they are 2% less effective in raiding or PvP.