Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Slyfeind]

While drudging through WoW, I've often thought it would be neat to have more content in existing zones, instead of constantly propelling the player into new areas. Now in CO, I've gone to level 18 in the same three zones, and it's interesting. I'm fairly bored with it all, but I don't think it's the environment. I think it's the travel time. If we were jogging along a path like in WoW, it wouldn't be super-heroic, so it needs to be all quick-travel. Maybe if more character were given to different areas, it would take out a lot of that humdrum. But when hovering over the city and you can see everything at a glance, it's just...city. No slum neighborhoods, no rich areas, just one city. I guess I'm just saying make the slums more slummy and so forth. And a bit bigger, but not much.

[Kageru]

Actually I thought Millenium city was ridiculously slummy as it was. The (east?) side you start out in first is all cheap looking housing, trashed or half constructed... Which is really sort of odd considering the lore says the entire city was razed and rebuilt as a symbol of human resilience. Strange they'd be so keen to build brand new slums for all the silly looking street gangs to occupy. Then again, they can't be bothered getting the sunk and rusted hulks out of the river.

I still think a modern day world is better done by having zones. You can't really replicate the entirety of Canada, let alone a modern metropolis, but you could have sections of it. And since the section could spread out a bit it would be more believable and better able to contain a personality and stories that explore and re-inforce that personality. As it is, especially with re-using the same zones at different levels and lots of short stories, it all feels a bit muddled. Then again the real issue is probably just they've been cheap.

[Sjofn]

While drudging through WoW, I've often thought it would be neat to have more content in existing zones, instead of constantly propelling the player into new areas. Now in CO, I've gone to level 18 in the same three zones, and it's interesting. I'm fairly bored with it all, but I don't think it's the environment. I think it's the travel time. If we were jogging along a path like in WoW, it wouldn't be super-heroic, so it needs to be all quick-travel. Maybe if more character were given to different areas, it would take out a lot of that humdrum. But when hovering over the city and you can see everything at a glance, it's just...city. No slum neighborhoods, no rich areas, just one city. I guess I'm just saying make the slums more slummy and so forth. And a bit bigger, but not much.

This sort of happens in CoX, but mostly because most missions are instanced, so it's no big deal to send your level 35 ass back to a level 10 zone. I did like being sent back to earlier zones for missions (except fucking Perez Park) because it was all "ha ha, I remember when I was scared of Clockworks" for me, but I like that I don't get sent into faceless warehouse #25834535 in CO though. I keep getting to level 12 or so and deciding to try a NEW combination (I do this in practically every game so it's not a knock against CO when I say this) so I don't know how I'll feel about it around, say, level 20 yet. :P

[Khaldun]

I just wish they'd come up with SOME other model for gameplay besides "hai guys there are spawns of 3-4 baddies around for you to use in kill x quests". It's so screamingly unsuperheroic. This always bugged me about CoX too. Yeah, sure, sometimes in the comics we see heroes "on patrol" and they find clumps of villainous minions, but that's usually tied to a crisis or a nefarious plot or something, not just business-as-usual. A city with this many heroes in it and there's still 5 gangs worth of bad guys just hanging around on the corner all over the place? Why am I worried about a jailbreak if that's the case?

The game is already heavily instanced: why not have a series of phasing triggers that move you into different metastates for the city, each of which has its own narrative or plotline about the bad guys you're seeing? If you sidekick or exemplar, you'd move into another phase.

The travel time within the desert/Canada/Millennium City is also starting to get tedious.

[Slyfeind]

On the one hand I agree, but strangely I don't have that much of a problem with it. While it's not perfect, I feel like it's "good enough." Sad that my standards are set so low these days. What would I want to make it better? Hm, maybe more ways to rescue people from disasters; catching falling girders before they crush people or something, dragging cars out of the water, etc. I want to rescue a cat out of a tree!

[Malakili]

On the one hand I agree, but strangely I don't have that much of a problem with it. While it's not perfect, I feel like it's "good enough." Sad that my standards are set so low these days. What would I want to make it better? Hm, maybe more ways to rescue people from disasters; catching falling girders before they crush people or something, dragging cars out of the water, etc. I want to rescue a cat out of a tree!

The "pop up missions" in Millennium City are nice in this regard, especially becasue they are random, and because they have a time limit, which makes it feel a little more like you saved the day in the nick of time.  The problem is that from a game mechanics standpoint, they give crap experience compared to normal missions, and they don't pop up nearly as often later in the game.

[Khaldun]

I agree...good enough. Just, eh, is that what I've come to? More than any other genre, I say to myself inside, "There's something better than can be done with this basic idea". And then I say, "But I haz cool superhero, time to bash Viper baddies".

I actually have some Champions rulebooks somewhere deep in my RPG closet. I always liked the flexibility of the rule system (which grew in time into many other things). But the actual characters and stuff? They're pretty embarassingly thin Marvel reskins in most cases. (Canada = Alpha Flight circa Guardian's first death; Desert = Hulk). I also wish they'd said, "Ok, we own the IP, it's a loincloth to keep the lawyers at bay, but srsly, let's not have people dealing with Grond/Hulk, k?"

[Slyfeind]

The "pop up missions" in Millennium City are nice in this regard, especially becasue they are random, and because they have a time limit, which makes it feel a little more like you saved the day in the nick of time.  The problem is that from a game mechanics standpoint, they give crap experience compared to normal missions, and they don't pop up nearly as often later in the game.

Those are pretty neat, though a bit annoying if you're doing something else. I'm sad they don't have more later in the game.

[Ratman_tf]

They need to make it so I can kill the NPC's that run up and offer you a mission. Because the little fuckers camp questgivers and only do it when I'm turning in a mission. It's FUCKING ANNOYING because they can interrupt my quest turnin.

FUCKING ANNOYING.

[Khaldun]

Yes. It's actually confusing until you figure out what's happening. One also did it to me in the middle of a fight, which was even worse.

[Glazius]

However, Cryptic did the same thing originally with CoH/V too - I don't think it launched with respecs, then the respec trials came in so that there were only 3 possibilities in-game for any kind of respec, then came the single free respec that wouldn't stack. Today, there are respecs everywhere - you can repeat the respec trial if you want - and you can even buy them from the NCsoft store for rl money.

You can repeat the respec trial, but just for the experience. You can only get one respec from each tier of trial. (24-33, 34-43, 44-50) You can hold one "we changed the powers, here's a respec" respec per character -- usually there's a system popup warning you that a new free one is coming down the line (it just hit, next issue's coming and there are more changes to ancillary pools) -- and you can get one at 9 months of veterancy and every year thereafter, per character.

That's in addition to the extremely rare "respec recipes" that cost lots of in-game cash and the respecs you can buy from NCSoft.

But unlike your ChampO retcon, you're still stuck with the archetype and primary/secondary mix you picked at character creation. Otherwise you'd end up with people being DM/Will scrappers, or whatever the soloist's flavor of the month is, turning into whatever they really wanted to play at 50.

Presumably ChampO has a more even power progression among the available sets, so widely available retcons won't result in people going munitions 1-20, sorcery 20-40, power armor endgame, or whatever some guy with a lot of spreadsheets deduces is the "most efficient progression".

[UnSub]

However, Cryptic did the same thing originally with CoH/V too - I don't think it launched with respecs, then the respec trials came in so that there were only 3 possibilities in-game for any kind of respec, then came the single free respec that wouldn't stack. Today, there are respecs everywhere - you can repeat the respec trial if you want - and you can even buy them from the NCsoft store for rl money.

You can repeat the respec trial, but just for the experience. You can only get one respec from each tier of trial. (24-33, 34-43, 44-50) You can hold one "we changed the powers, here's a respec" respec per character -- usually there's a system popup warning you that a new free one is coming down the line (it just hit, next issue's coming and there are more changes to ancillary pools) -- and you can get one at 9 months of veterancy and every year thereafter, per character.

That's in addition to the extremely rare "respec recipes" that cost lots of in-game cash and the respecs you can buy from NCSoft.

And here was me thinking the respec trials were now repeatable for respecs.

Progression in ChampO is pretty smooth from a powers point of view - you have powers in 'tiers', so that to unlock a tiered power you need (say) 3 powers from the right pool or five powers in total. There isn't really that much level-locking on the system for powers and the only way to really speed it up is to stick to particular powersets to get the 'right' powers.

[Bandit]

New "State of the Game" post..(for the five or so of us playing)

Greetings, Champions!

There’s a lot to cover this week, so let’s just dive right in like Armadillo tunneling his way into a bank vault.

More Content!
Monster Island has three new repeatable mission chains to help bridge our content gap there. These are unlike any of our other missions in that they’re designed as destinations you’ll revisit and will change over the course of several missions. Here’s a sneak peek!

The Hidden Base
Heroes discover the entrance to a secret base in Well’s Pass. None of their contacts know anything about the entrance so it’s up to the hero to check things out. What secret project lies deep within the VIPER base?

The Lost Caves
A series of lost caves has been discovered by the intrepid Paleontologist and television personality, Professor Plummet. His early reports have come back, stating that Elderworms have also found a way into the labyrinth of caves, and are using them as hunting grounds. Contact has been lost with the professor, and help is needed in finding him.

The Manimal Lab
A group of Manimals are behaving strangely and are guarding a nearby cave complex. Further investigation reveals a hidden laboratory that also acts as the prison for a highly intelligent rat Manimal named Professor Ratso.

We anticipate these mission chains will make their way to the Public Test Shard next week and we’ll need your help making sure they’re ready for release to the live servers.

Adding Some Meat to Team
We’re working on several new additions to the teaming system. We’re currently testing new UI that allows players to see the state of team missions even if they don’t have them. Upcoming additions (in development) include showing your team members’ current objectives on active missions and adding rewards for heroes that assist on missions, even if they don’t have the mission themselves.

Do You See What I See?
Graphics performance should be better overall for players. Some high-end users have experienced what appears to be a reduction in performance. But this is actually due to us fixing a bug where sliders that were set all the way up in certain categories weren’t actually providing that level of increase. Players with top-end graphic cards should retune their settings for maximum performance.

The Mail That Ate Sheboygan
Many fixes to our mail woes have already been pushed to the live servers, but one big one is currently on the Public Test Shard and will be pushed to the live servers ASAP. We also currently don’t have a way for players to send resources to other heroes. This is a known issue, and requires a tech solution to implement. I don’t have an ETA, but it’s on the list. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

The Balance of Power
We’re currently making passes on all the powers in the game and will be making changes designed to not just bring aberrant powers into line, but increase the effectiveness of those that need it. We’re also examining the best ways to inject more resources into the economy. Our top concerns are what are concerning you as players. We're working as fast as we can to address issues, work on the overall balance of the game, and be as responsive to possible. Keep hitting the forums with solid, constructive comments and we’ll keep working to make the game better and more balanced in both the PvE and PvP arenas.

Powers Aren’t Black / White – Yet…
We’re big fans of being able to shift the hue of powers into the realms of black and white. The issue is that these aren’t hues, but tints. This means that with the current way our color system works, you would see pure black or pure white colors as opposed to the grayscale subtleties required to give you the look you actually want. Basically, it requires some new engine technology, but we’re looking into how to make this happen.

Celestial Power Set
Along with some incredible events and rewards, there’s a new power set coming out with the Blood Moon event. The Celestial set is designed to provide assistance to allies and destruction to enemies. The power effects are amazing and the versatility of the set makes it both compelling as a single-focus set and also as supplementary powers to other builds. We’re going to be doing a special feature on the website in the upcoming weeks showing off the powers, so stay tuned for a detailed look.

Tutorial? We Don’t Need No Stinking Tutorial!
While it sounds simple, there are few things we had to design out to allow players to be able to skip past the tutorial if they’ve already done it once. It’s next up on the list for our content lead, and we’re hoping to have this onto the Public Test Shard as soon as next week.

Where the Duels Are(n’t)
We’ve heard your requests for our more social areas like Club Caprice and The Powerhouse to be duel-free zones. Both our content and programming teams are combining efforts to get this in as soon as possible.

A Room of Danger in the House of Power
We’re designing a new room for the Powerhouse where you can try out your powers against automated enemies. We’ll be sure to inform you when this moves to the Public Test Shard so you can help us test it out!


See you online, Champions!

[Khaldun]

It's so depressing. I can just feel the accelerating tide of bad decisions being made behind closed doors, to defend somebody's Vision or someone's bad received wisdom about how to maximize subscriber retention. I think the biggest eyeroll for me was the dev chat transcript where one of the devs said that the reason retcons are priced so that it's literally impossible for most characters to afford rolling back all their powers is not that they don't want people to retcon, it's that they have a much more fully realized economy completely ready to implement and deliberately chose not to implement it at launch so that they could watch economic activity for a month or so and catch any dupe bugs that they missed in beta. So in this claim, the high retcon costs are intended to flush out possible dupers who somehow seem able to afford frequent retcons when there's hardly any other way they could raise the cash.

Either that's true, and if so, so amateurish that it really boggles the mind, or it's conscious CYA bullshit to stall for time until they can implement a microtransaction model for retcons and additional character slots. Bad management in either case.

The business model for MMOs at this point is:

a. Raise capital, develop game.
b. Launch with half-implemented WoW clone that has one or two mild innovations or variations on the WoW template.
c. Make some of your costs back on box sales.
d. Turn game over to inexperienced, underresourced live management team, and make sure you have poor documentation on prelaunch dev work to pass on to them.
e. Get money from venture capitalists, develop next game. Old game limps along and maybe makes back your costs, settle into minimal profit position, consolidate servers, frequent free trial/resubscribe offers, figure out where you dip below break-even and cancel if you hit that point.
f. Blizzard harvests your one or two mild innovations and incorporates them into WoW, thnx!
g. Repeat.

[Malakili]

New "State of the Game" post..(for the five or so of us playing)

Greetings, Champions!


The Hidden Base
Heroes discover the entrance to a secret base in Well’s Pass. None of their contacts know anything about the entrance so it’s up to the hero to check things out. What secret project lies deep within the VIPER base?

Ooh, that sounds neat.  I've been eager to have some viable non quest oriented content.  Though I do assume there will be some quests inside this place.  Still, I'll be interested in checking this out.

Looks like some good stuff coming our way.  The Celestial power set could be good, I'll be making a character based on that straight away when it comes out.

[Yegolev]

That reads like patch notes from a beta.

[Malakili]

That reads like patch notes from a beta.

They aren't patch notes?

Regardless, I think you might be saying it because they made several references to working on new technology to be able to accomplish something.  In this case, i can't disagree, especially w/regards to the mail system.

[Lantyssa]

It's so depressing. I can just feel the accelerating tide of bad decisions being made behind closed doors, to defend somebody's Vision or someone's bad received wisdom about how to maximize subscriber retention.

That's part of the reason I've been so critical of CO.  I'm not afraid to support a tiny project, but there are some approaches I just cannot accept.

[Typhon]

It amuses me more and more that I'm still having fun and liking each patch that comes along, regardless of how much fail! the posts in this thread say otherwise.  Lol, if I'm broken, I don't want to be fixed.

[Ratman_tf]

I'm having fun with it. I wasn't even remotley interested in WAR or AOC, but ChampO kinda snuck up on me. Haven't been this interested in a new MMOG in years...

[Ingmar]

I haven't really felt a need to retcon anything yet. I thought I needed to, because I was getting my ass kicked all the time, but then I discovered I had my role set to 'avenger' (dps basically) and it had lowered my hit points well past the solo danger zone. Once I set myself back to the neutral setting I started kicking everything's ass all over the place.

So my big complaint is that roles are under-documented. 

[Bandit]

Aye agreed, I haven't been able to play as much as I like thus far....but I do always have that itch to log in.  Most of the issues have been a non-factor for me as I haven't leveled past 23 yet.  There is more than enough content pre-20 as I try to do everything and at points my mission book is full.

I don't give a shit about balance (only the in the facet of making useless powers useful) and I do PvP.  My straight-up gadgeteer has been mowing down the PvP-clones with their teleport and ice-walls.  I think cryptic (and other MMO) companies worry to much about balance. Balancing all the potential combination of powers that CO offers? Impossible.  I understand general balance, but otherwise it takes up way to much development time.  Let the kiddies play the overpowered FOTM, it must get old.

Respec/Retcon issues?  Understandable, but I have been playing as a matter of fun and not a matter of min/maxer.  I have purposely went out of my way with this game to build on concept and fun.  Have I made choices that where underwhelming? for sure, but I will get over it and I suspect they will address retcons a little more efficiently.

I think it fell flat with a lot of F13ers because CO is more of a game than a sandbox-world. There is little persistence and the world is definitely disjointed by the heavy use of instancing.  I am fine with that, but I can understand what some may be missing in the true sense of a "massive" world.

[Ingmar]

I do agree that it feels tiny, because I keep comparing it in my head to Paragon City, which, even with the big silly zone walls, feels like a HONKIN' BIG CITY.

Millenium City needs way more random pedestrians and traffic, that would help.

[Khaldun]

Post-22 or so, I started to feel bigger and bigger consequences to bad character design. Those alien frog guys are the first who give you some inkling of what's coming.

I'm having fun, but I've been here before--knowing what I know about how these things evolve, seeing what I'm seeing in terms of the signs out of the dev team, I'm very aware that they're very likely to piss all over what they've done right while ignoring what they've done wrong.

[Slyfeind]

Those patch notes are definitely encouraging. The trend there seems to be, Players: Plz remove tutorial? Devs: K! Players: My power sux. Devs: K it's better now! I agree the sit-back-and-wait approach to the retcon was a bad decision, but it didn't get in the way of the game. At least they said why they were doing that. Time will tell if they accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. There's a definite danger of them missing the point, but at the same time, they've proved fairly responsive so far.

Edit: clarification.

Also, I agree, world too small. I'd prefer a half-assed world that's twice as big, but I understand why they polished what they had rather than stretching too thin.

[March]

I have purposely went out of my way with this game to build on concept and fun.  Have I made choices that where underwhelming? for sure, but I will get over it and I suspect they will address retcons a little more efficiently.

This alone impresses me the most.  I haven't been this excited about a character since, ever.  Admittedly I haven't really played the game, well, other than the character design meta-game, but in my mind I'm having lots of fun.

My biggest complaint so far echoes what Lum posted on his site: it's one thing to have an open system, but it is quite another to have an open system that has hidden dependencies that you can overlook through no fault of your own.  By this I mean the utter confusion over the relationship between Stats, Damage, and Powers.

It seems to me that the system can be understood eventually, but it really suffers for not being accessible at a first, second, third or even tenth look.  Just when I finally figured out that the SuperStats (note: NOT the first set of stats that you pick) give you the flexibility to chose what type of damage hero you want to be (YAY CHOICE!), I realized that some of the Powers (Esp. Defensive Powers) REQUIRE particular stats to improve their function... FUCK.  That's not flexibility, that's a viper pit covered with bamboo and straw.

To me, that's a UI failure... if your system has hidden inter-dependencies that Choice A irrevocably impacts Choice B - AT LEVEL 5 MIND YOU - then you need to give your newbie players some visual cues.  I'm ok if you want to let players gimp themselves by choice... but some sort of designer or pop-up that says: Your superstats are DEX/STR, chosing power X requires PRE/CON to scale - do you wish to proceed?  Seems a must.  That or free/cheap Retcons.

[Morfiend]

I enjoy the game, but I am getting lonely by myself. Hence I havent been logging in as much. I think my highest guy is only like 14 or 15.

A flaw I found in the game is their Sidekick function. Sure, its fun to be sidekicked by someone higher and help them with quests, but the exp rewards are just painfully low. Since you cant get the quests usually due to level restriction, you are stick gaining exp only from mob kills, and its really low.

[Valmorian]

I enjoy the game, but I am getting lonely by myself. Hence I havent been logging in as much. I think my highest guy is only like 14 or 15.

A flaw I found in the game is their Sidekick function. Sure, its fun to be sidekicked by someone higher and help them with quests, but the exp rewards are just painfully low. Since you cant get the quests usually due to level restriction, you are stick gaining exp only from mob kills, and its really low.

I have a number of characters ranging from 9-16.. @valmorian is my ID, but I think you're already on my friends list.

[Morfiend]

I enjoy the game, but I am getting lonely by myself. Hence I havent been logging in as much. I think my highest guy is only like 14 or 15.

A flaw I found in the game is their Sidekick function. Sure, its fun to be sidekicked by someone higher and help them with quests, but the exp rewards are just painfully low. Since you cant get the quests usually due to level restriction, you are stick gaining exp only from mob kills, and its really low.

I have a number of characters ranging from 9-16.. @valmorian is my ID, but I think you're already on my friends list.

I think part of the problem is that my friends list seems not very accurate. Some times its completely empty even.

[Khaldun]

The game as a whole feels empty because of the way they've done instancing. You're never in a server with the same group of people, really, so even when there's Zone chatter, it's not a group of people you've come to know (for good or bad). Also players do a fuckton more sniping of each other's quest objectives in this game than I've seen in a long time--it can be really cutthroat. I think again, that's because they feel there's not much chance they'll "see" you again. Whereas even on a PvE server in WoW, I think twice before sniping a node from someone clearing a spawn, even if they're from the other faction. I don't want to get the rep for doing that kind of thing.

[Slyfeind]

To me, that's a UI failure... if your system has hidden inter-dependencies that Choice A irrevocably impacts Choice B - AT LEVEL 5 MIND YOU - then you need to give your newbie players some visual cues.  I'm ok if you want to let players gimp themselves by choice... but some sort of designer or pop-up that says: Your superstats are DEX/STR, chosing power X requires PRE/CON to scale - do you wish to proceed?  Seems a must.  That or free/cheap Retcons.

Yeah, the trade skills already do this. When you go to pick your skill, it says right there: If you are a POWERSUIT, you want Science or Arms, and not Mysticism, because of These Stats. I like the discovery of new stuff, but hate the ferling of "Oh damn, my fun discovery made my gameplay suffer."

[March]

To me, that's a UI failure... if your system has hidden inter-dependencies that Choice A irrevocably impacts Choice B - AT LEVEL 5 MIND YOU - then you need to give your newbie players some visual cues.  I'm ok if you want to let players gimp themselves by choice... but some sort of designer or pop-up that says: Your superstats are DEX/STR, chosing power X requires PRE/CON to scale - do you wish to proceed?  Seems a must.  That or free/cheap Retcons.

Yeah, the trade skills already do this. When you go to pick your skill, it says right there: If you are a POWERSUIT, you want Science or Arms, and not Mysticism, because of These Stats. I like the discovery of new stuff, but hate the ferling of "Oh damn, my fun discovery made my gameplay suffer."

But doesn't that simply assume that you took the PowerSuit suggested superstats?  What if, instead of STR/INT I took DEX/EGO?  At some point folks who stick with the game will internalize all the stats and their relationships... but as far as helping you connect the dots the first time, I think they fail.  To me it seems a failure of being too close to the system... like they can't see that all the cool choices require an understanding of the system(s) that beginning players simply cannot have -- and I say this as someone who took the time to read the forums, download a 3rd party character builder and try to, you know, learn the system.

[Khaldun]

Exactly--they built a character design system that seems to invite players to create an ideal character *concept* that mimicks the source genre, and then built a munchkin-nightmare system of underlying mechanics that has extremely non-intuitive interactions, THEN they balanced the game at launch around the most overpowered FOTM builds that beta munchkins had discovered. And then to top it off, they made it essentially impossible for players who were experimenting or who had just built a character concept without thinking much about functionality to undo or adjust their choices--the retcon pricing from what I can see is deliberately designed to keep a complete redesign unaffordable. And then they made the earliest choices you make, the expensive ones to undo, be some of the easiest to gimp by accident.

Which pretty much amounts to a perfect storm of "Go AWAY, casual players who are just trying to make a superhero which immerses you in a comic-book universe". Not  that it makes the munchkins any happier, for different reasons.

[Malakili]

I think their goal was to make a system that you could min max if you dive in, but that you could just sort of coast along if you didn't want to pay attention to that stuff.  The problem, of course, is that right now you CAN unintentionally gimp yourself.  I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually see every power scale with whatever your "Superstats" are, which would solve the problem, at the cost of people diversifying gear outside of just stacking for their superstats.

[UnSub]

The first run of powers and superstats didn't have any dependencies at all, so players complained that it made no sense that a superstat in strength didn't boost their melee damage, and so on.

Then the devs dropped in stat dependencies for powers, didn't tell anyone until after the fact and suddenly we were in open beta.

I think the State of the Game notes are great in that they show that Cryptic are hearing players. However, what will really matter is what they do and how long it takes to actually get those systems in place. For instance, black and white power colours were asked for as soon as power colourisation was added to beta, so it isn't exactly a new idea.