Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Slyfeind]

This really has the feeling that it used to be easier, but they made it harder for the optimum builds. Sad. That's a 1999 mistake there. WoW Was Right when they said not to design for the hardcore.

[Kageru]

And if you are going to do something drastic then do it during beta or on a test server. Going live with a massive and untested game rebalance is 

That said they intentionally left power and challenge balance in the "do it later" category in favor of making the game look shiny enough that they could get initial sales. Thus I'd imagine there's still a fair bit more nerfing to come.

[Ratman_tf]

Hm. I'm playing it and having a bit of fun. I don't see it as very sticky though.

I saw an ape in a powersuit called Monkeywrench. I loled.

[Malakili]

Hm. I'm playing it and having a bit of fun. I don't see it as very sticky though.

I saw an ape in a powersuit called Monkeywrench. I loled.

This is a big part of why the game is fun if you ask me.  Sure it isn't serious business, and there are some legitimate concerns about content, but I have a lot of fun with it.

[Khaldun]

The character creator (as with CoX) is fun and it's often fun to see what other people do with it. There's more of an economy/drop mechanic built in from the outset: Cryptic learned (in a sort of half-assed fashion, imho) that chasing drops, along with achievements and rares of various kinds, is something that makes a game sticky.

Given that the creator is the biggest asset, I'm really shocked at how few character slots you get. Priority #1 from a revenue standpoint would be to implement a microtransaction system to let people buy another eight slots.

The content so far is, hm. Well, I don't quite have that feeling of grindy "this is the 5,000th time I've been in this warehouse, killing these bad guys, searching for the glowy box" that was CoX levelling. I've gotten five toons to level 9 quickly and it was reasonably fun. My level 17 main is starting to feel as if it's in a levelling "hole", on the other hand. Nothing impresses me too much about the content, on the other hand: it's MMO-standard and much of the time not especially like the genre itself in its feel. Given how extensive the instancing is, I don't know why more of the game isn't phased in some respect--it's quite weird to come back to Millennium City and fast-travel around to find that there are purple con mobs just sitting around waiting for you to get up to their level so that their part of the game gets rolling. I'm working with a jailbreak while demons are raping the city somewhere else? Well, someone has to deal with muggers while everybody else fights Galactus, I suppose.

The interaction of powers, gear and so on is actually pretty messy--one reason that the day 1 nerf seems a bad idea to me is how incredibly busy and redundant some of the underlying mechanics seem. They need to clear out some of the underbrush, or make it easier for your average non-minmax players to figure out cause and effect *if* they're going to try to create some sense of challenge in the PvE. When everyone could run roughshod over everything, there wasn't much need to get people to actually figure out the specifics or fine-tune a build, but I think at least some of the players Cryptic has attracted really don't *want* to fine-tune their builds, they just want to do something that feels superheroic in a loose way. Maybe more than with some other MMOs, you have people playing who probably want this to be more twitchy, and to have the situation dictate the pace and character of play, rather than to have to minmax a build so that it can have a proper rotation to sustain PvE at the most rapid or efficient rate.

I don't know that I understand in the long term what Cryptic is thinking. You take another pass at a genre you know better, it's time to innovate in the most basic ways, to really move the MMO bar, OR you do something that's incredibly polished. This is neither. It's fine, it's CoX with some graphics changes, an even richer character-creator and a bunch of game-mechanical adjustments. If that's all Cryptic wanted or was capable of doing, fine, you gotta make your money somehow, but move on to another genre where the reskin/redesign issues stand out a bit less obviously. (Without moving to a genre where your basic designs are totally fucking inadequate to the IP, e.g., Star Trek.)

[rk47]

Hey, does this game has a quick costume swap key like COH? I like to keep my guy in street wear before transforming into a superhero. Preferably after running into a back alley or something.

[Slyfeind]

That's a good analysis, Khaldun. If the forums and in-game chat are any indication, most players just want to have fun with the different options. There's always someone online going "Why is this game so hard," and others respond emabrassingly, "You need to play with this-and-that-build."

Hey, does this game has a quick costume swap key like COH? I like to keep my guy in street wear before transforming into a superhero. Preferably after running into a back alley or something.

Yep. I think you need to get to a certain level, like after the tutorial sometime, but you get a second slot you can swap at will.

[Ratman_tf]

Right now Sly gets to hear me bitch about the interface and game design. (Why oh why aren't quest interactables phased?) But I'm gonna stick it out for the free month to see how close to the genre they get. So far, it's WoW style bashing mobs with a superhero skin. Which isn't bad but it isn't great when I've already got WoW to scratch that itch, and I'd like to see more comic book hero conventions modeled in gameplay. (Alternate identities, personal goals related to character concept, etc...)

[Malakili]

and I'd like to see more comic book hero conventions modeled in gameplay. (Alternate identities, personal goals related to character concept, etc...)

At level 25 you get the nemesis, whichi s one of the big name features.

[Ingmar]

The game is pretty fun. It doesn't set the world on fire innovation-wise, but I'll probably get my $50 worth of fun out of it in the first month and then re-evaluate from there. I do like that they stole PQs from Warhammer but they don't overuse them like Warhammer did, and giving the travel powers at level 5 is great. The game still looks weird to me, though, and the performance is kind of poor on my machine.

[Sjofn]

I'm enjoying myself, the only problem I have is that lag makes travel powers that aren't flight really blow it out the ass, and I tend to make characters that flight doesn't make sense for. 

On the other hand, I have a gunslinger lady that leaves Tick craters behind her as she spaz jumps across Canada, so that has to count for something.

[Typhon]

I'm enjoying myself, the only problem I have is that lag makes travel powers that aren't flight really blow it out the ass, and I tend to make characters that flight doesn't make sense for. 

On the other hand, I have a gunslinger lady that leaves Tick craters behind her as she spaz jumps across Canada, so that has to count for something.

It's not exactly lag.  It will get you killed with teleport and super jump.  It IS annoying as fuck.  For teleport, it seems like there is a check that is supposed to occur when you come out of tp that makes you float.  It works... occasionally.  Mostly you slam into the ground for a couple hundred points of damage unless you are careful to only come out of tp high in the air, or low to the ground.

I think that whatever does the check for "too high" in super jump also suffers from the same bug - frequently you'll slam into the ground for a couple hundred points of damage.  Even more frequently when you are trying to escape from mobs.  And then you die.

And still I'm having fun.  Can't really put my finger on why.  Can't say that it bothers me.

[Sjofn]

Well, some of it is definitely lag on my end, but yeah, I noticed that occassionally I would take a crap ton of falling damage for no good reason as I lept across Canada. It was annoying!

[Trippy]

I'm enjoying myself, the only problem I have is that lag makes travel powers that aren't flight really blow it out the ass, and I tend to make characters that flight doesn't make sense for. 

On the other hand, I have a gunslinger lady that leaves Tick craters behind her as she spaz jumps across Canada, so that has to count for something.

It's not exactly lag.  It will get you killed with teleport and super jump.  It IS annoying as fuck.  For teleport, it seems like there is a check that is supposed to occur when you come out of tp that makes you float.  It works... occasionally.  Mostly you slam into the ground for a couple hundred points of damage unless you are careful to only come out of tp high in the air, or low to the ground.

That's hilarious. They didn't learn from their exact same design mistake in City of Heroes.

[Malakili]

Well, some of it is definitely lag on my end, but yeah, I noticed that occassionally I would take a crap ton of falling damage for no good reason as I lept across Canada. It was annoying!

You probably got tagged by a stray attack,and it turned off your travel power.  Some attacks will cause your travel power to turn off, and some won't, which explains why it doesn't happen all the time taking hits.  I've had this happen to me before, and I'm pretty sure this is the source, but I could be wrong.

[Sjofn]

It's not exactly lag.  It will get you killed with teleport and super jump.  It IS annoying as fuck.  For teleport, it seems like there is a check that is supposed to occur when you come out of tp that makes you float.  It works... occasionally.  Mostly you slam into the ground for a couple hundred points of damage unless you are careful to only come out of tp high in the air, or low to the ground.

That's hilarious. They didn't learn from their exact same design mistake in City of Heroes.

It's totally why I didn't take teleport this go around. I KNEW THAT PAIN.

[Morfiend]

Well, some of it is definitely lag on my end, but yeah, I noticed that occassionally I would take a crap ton of falling damage for no good reason as I lept across Canada. It was annoying!

You probably got tagged by a stray attack,and it turned off your travel power.  Some attacks will cause your travel power to turn off, and some won't, which explains why it doesn't happen all the time taking hits.  I've had this happen to me before, and I'm pretty sure this is the source, but I could be wrong.

Maybe for super jump, but the teleport bug is there for sure. It was only introduced in the last patch. It used to work fine, now its about a 50/50 chance I will get the feather fall buff or not.

[Malakili]

Well, some of it is definitely lag on my end, but yeah, I noticed that occassionally I would take a crap ton of falling damage for no good reason as I lept across Canada. It was annoying!

You probably got tagged by a stray attack,and it turned off your travel power.  Some attacks will cause your travel power to turn off, and some won't, which explains why it doesn't happen all the time taking hits.  I've had this happen to me before, and I'm pretty sure this is the source, but I could be wrong.

Maybe for super jump, but the teleport bug is there for sure. It was only introduced in the last patch. It used to work fine, now its about a 50/50 chance I will get the feather fall buff or not.

Yeah, i was talking about super jump, i don't have experience with teleport personally.

[Lantyssa]

My beta experience with Teleport was that just being in aggro radius was enough to turn it off.  Didn't even need to get tagged.  At least I could stay in the air most of the time, unlike Super Jump.

[Kageru]

and I'd like to see more comic book hero conventions modeled in gameplay. (Alternate identities, personal goals related to character concept, etc...)

At level 25 you get the nemesis, whichi s one of the big name features.

If you are playing think carefully about whether you actually want a nemesis. It will involve you getting ambused randomly which can include when you are already in combat. If you are finding the gameplay challenging with your build you might not actually want to increase the difficulty in this fashion. I know the random ambushes began to annoy me even when the challenge was trivial. Actually wiping to them would probably make me quit.

It's a degenerate form of the CoH's MA anyway.

[UnSub]

Hey, does this game has a quick costume swap key like COH? I like to keep my guy in street wear before transforming into a superhero. Preferably after running into a back alley or something.

Costume changes are tied to builds and you unlock your first build slot at lvl 8. Press 'B' to bring up the screen (or something like that).

[rk47]

This Nemesis is a PVP feature, correct? I'm curious about the longevity of this game. My friend and I played COX for a month before dropping it, but we had fun and it was on bargain bin price, so we're planning to wait a bit till the box price drops and play again.

[Kageru]

No, nemesis is a PvE feature. Design an opponent by choosing name and power-sets and then get randomly ambushed by his minions in the game world and get some missions with your villain as the boss mob.

[Bzalthek]

But it's an annoying process.  First you have to contact the guild of calamitous intent and they set up a meet and greet with potential villains, and when you finally pick one you have to go through this 30ish page long questionnaire.

[rk47]

You're joking right 

[Khaldun]

It's hard out there for a supervillain in this recession.

Tunnelling isn't bad as a travel power. It doesn't ever get turned off by attacks, though I've occasionally taken damage.

People are saying that teleport is overpowered in PvP as it is hard to root or snare someone who has it. I'm hoping that they pay little or no attention to PvP issues for now: they're done the usual stupid thing of having PvE and PvP abilities be the exact same thing, which guarantees endless bickering about powers across the two designs.

Again, just...come on, guys, if you're going to bother making another version of your previous design, move the ball a *little*.

[kaid]

It's not exactly lag.  It will get you killed with teleport and super jump.  It IS annoying as fuck.  For teleport, it seems like there is a check that is supposed to occur when you come out of tp that makes you float.  It works... occasionally.  Mostly you slam into the ground for a couple hundred points of damage unless you are careful to only come out of tp high in the air, or low to the ground.

That's hilarious. They didn't learn from their exact same design mistake in City of Heroes.

It's totally why I didn't take teleport this go around. I KNEW THAT PAIN.

The teleport implementation is WAY better in champions online than it was in city of heroes. That said you do have to be a bit careful of falling but only if you are very close to the ground when coming from high up. Easy way to get around it is to cancel teleport as you start getting close to the ground then pop back into it right away so you can get to the ground land and then pop back out. It is a minor annoyance I take as much or more damage using super jump or web slinging than teleport. Teleport has the added advantage of AA turrets for the most part can't lock onto you fast enough to shoot you. I flew through an area to a mission that got everybody else in my party killed because while the AA stuff did not attack me it RAPED them.

Teleport is a hella good escape power you can just jet out of an area you really should never die if you can teleport unless you are stubborn like me.

[kaid]

My beta experience with Teleport was that just being in aggro radius was enough to turn it off.  Didn't even need to get tagged.  At least I could stay in the air most of the time, unlike Super Jump.

They changed it now teleport only goes on cool down if you actively attack something. Since most of the travel power supression abilities by NPC are charge up attacks it should almost never be a problem for a teleporter.

[Yegolev]

But it's an annoying process.  First you have to contact the guild of calamitous intent and they set up a meet and greet with potential villains, and when you finally pick one you have to go through this 30ish page long questionnaire.

So... why would a superhero with Super Jump take falling damage?

[Kageru]

I prefer CoH teleport (I vanish from here, I appear there). CO teleport is really just stealth flight. Which is of course part of the reason it's so difficult to balance in CO PvP.

[kaid]

But it's an annoying process.  First you have to contact the guild of calamitous intent and they set up a meet and greet with potential villains, and when you finally pick one you have to go through this 30ish page long questionnaire.

So... why would a superhero with Super Jump take falling damage?

It seems to be a combo of two things. Super jump seems to protect you from falling damage if you land on a roughly level area to where you started at altitude wise. It seems that if I jump from something really high and land at something way below that I start getting dinged for damage.  Also jumping around you are likely eating some random bullets from mobs shooting you a few times and AA guns shooting at you.

Also word to the wise whatever you do DO NOT EVER hit block when super jumping. Blocking has a specific minus to jumping and it basically will not only cancel your jump but often causes you to eat even more damage than you otherwise would have. This is kinda annoying as flying folks can block while flying but if you try it while jumping bad things TM happen.

Teleport pretty much is a modified stealth flight it has a few odd aspects but its one of the best travel powers in the game currently. The only thing it really lacks is an easy ability to loiter over a target to scout for mobs you are hunting for.

[Jamiko]

Teleport pretty much is a modified stealth flight it has a few odd aspects but its one of the best travel powers in the game currently. The only thing it really lacks is an easy ability to loiter over a target to scout for mobs you are hunting for.

That is where the level 1 flight device that came with my GameStop preorder comes in handy. I teleport to where I want and then pop the jet boots and I can hover as long as I wish.

[Typhon]

I think the problem with Jumping is mostly related to: in-combat jumping your max height < out-of-combat-1 max height  < out-of-combat-2 max height <  out-of-combat-3 max height.

Max height is used to calculate how far you can fall without taking damage.  When you jump with out-of-combat-3 jumping and get hit (or block!) while in-air, your "how far can you fall" calculation now uses the in-combat max height, not the "out-of-combat-3" max height, causing you to hit the ground uncomfortably fast.

Using block automatically puts you "in-combat", even if you don't take damage.

Another interesting note: you can be hit by AA while teleporting.  All sorts of fun bugs.  Lol, yes, I'm still having fun.  Lol, no, I have no idea why.

[Slyfeind]

Again, just...come on, guys, if you're going to bother making another version of your previous design, move the ball a *little*.

Yeah, this just seems weird. If CO does well, it could set a precedent for new untold levels of recycling game design, which could be...good and bad. It's nice that they had the framework to build on, but even better would have been actually building on it.

Is CoX still run at Cryptic? So they're doing two superhero games that are competing with each other, in the same dev house?

[Ard]

Is CoX still run at Cryptic? So they're doing two superhero games that are competing with each other, in the same dev house?

Cryptic sold it to NCSoft and bailed, so no.  They're instead competing with the game they already made once that has an existing fan base and more features.  Seems like a good idea to me.