Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Kageru]

I still think their retention rate is going to be pretty bad. The casual players are going to be scared off by all the nerfing and frequent death if they chose the wrong powers or didn't divine the game mechanics. Meanwhile the more hardcore are probably hitting the end-game content and realising there's not too much there. And of course reducing population will cut into the money they need to actually flesh out the game in a reasonable time.

How are the populations looking in game anyway?

[Lt.Dan]

 so , what did I do wrong?

I rolled a Might power set and stacked str and con.  I levelled through canada till 13 when I ran out of quests and went to the desert.   I start questing only to get my arse handed to me by 3 level 8 irradiated zombie guys.

I've got the Might defensive power and only generally block against boss special attacks.  I've got the str and con super stats and a full set of enhancements.

Any suggestions?

[Malakili]

so , what did I do wrong?

I rolled a Might power set and stacked str and con.  I levelled through canada till 13 when I ran out of quests and went to the desert.   I start questing only to get my arse handed to me by 3 level 8 irradiated zombie guys.

I've got the Might defensive power and only generally block against boss special attacks.  I've got the str and con super stats and a full set of enhancements.

Any suggestions?

When I see stuff like this I'm really perplexed to be honest.  I have a level 40 might character already, and even "post nerf" he was always able to take at least 2 groups of henchmen at a time, and can usually take 2 groups even if they both have a villain in both.   In the scenario you gave, you should be able to kill those henchmen using just clobber (your end builder), and beatdown, the first power you took. 


If you want to try a different style of play, use protector (assuming you've got access to "stances" already, I can't remember what level that happens at), just come in blocking to build energy, then unleash on them when your energy bar is full.

[Tmon]

Block from time to time even when they aren't launching specials.  Stock up on healing stims from the vendor in MC and whenever possible start the fight off by chucking a heavy item at one of the mobs.  If you're concentrated on str and con you can lift some seriously heavy stuff.  I've outright killed henchmen by throwing a truck at them to start off a fight, and it seems like there's an aoe effect as well.

[kaid]

Yes if you are strong enough throw shit at mobs to start a fight. My friends str character often kills a couple henchmen instantly at the start of a fight by throwing trucks at them or other huge objects. Its great spike damage and its totally free so no reason not to throw stuff. Hell even small stuff is a decent opening move specially things like explosive barrels.

[Bandit]

so , what did I do wrong?

I rolled a Might power set and stacked str and con.  I levelled through canada till 13 when I ran out of quests and went to the desert.   I start questing only to get my arse handed to me by 3 level 8 irradiated zombie guys.

I've got the Might defensive power and only generally block against boss special attacks.  I've got the str and con super stats and a full set of enhancements.

Any suggestions?

You shouldn't be having any problems at all.  What attacks are you using?  I would recommend uppercut (knock up) and shockwave (frontal cone).  You could get by with just these two attacks in my opinion.  I found that room-sweeper/haymaker were just messy chasing down knockbacks.

Slot up uppercut and defiance early.  At rank 2, your uppercut should one shot or come close to one-shotting henchman. I found taking out at least one henchman quick was easiest.  You can basically juggle 2 opponents with the knock-up as well.  I try to rotate the juggling with the villians to keep them relatively quiet during a fight.  Obviously when an AoE would be effective use shockwave (always try to be at full power as it will run until power depleted).

Defensively (with the exception of defiance), I went to the power armour powerset beacuse it fit my concept - but I have found it to work quite well as well.  Energy shield slotted to "knight shield" or whatever the upgrade is called is spectacular.  Basically, it pulls up your shield when you melee attack - it does however cost 3 points to upgrade, so you would have to do some saving.

[Khaldun]

I still think their retention rate is going to be pretty bad. The casual players are going to be scared off by all the nerfing and frequent death if they chose the wrong powers or didn't divine the game mechanics. Meanwhile the more hardcore are probably hitting the end-game content and realising there's not too much there. And of course reducing population will cut into the money they need to actually flesh out the game in a reasonable time.

How are the populations looking in game anyway?

It's hard to tell because of the instancing/single server structure. Which is another of the game's major liabilities: I have never felt more anonymous or alone-in-a-crowd than in this game. It's never the same group of people in your instance server and zone, really. In a normal server-based structure, you get a feel over time for the cast of characters: who's a ninja, who's a griefer, who's a reliable guy, which guild is a bunch of asshats and which guild is pretty damn cool. In EVE, obviously, it's a *real* single-server architecture, with all of what comes with that. In this game? Some dude follows me around and takes some blinkies from me three or four times while I'm clearing mobs? In WoW or LOTRO or AoC, I'd take a note of the guy's name. In this, there's no point to remembering him at all.

About the only sense you get of other people playing that's memorable is costume design, good and bad. When I see a great one, I remember; a few truly awful ones I remember. Pretty much the same as in CoX.

My guess is, though, that they'll see a pretty big population drop-off in the next three months, heading rapidly towards ghost-town. I can't see the casuals who like superheroes staying long, and the hardcores are already done and bored. (I gather the endgame missions with the Champions are the serious failboat lulz in terms of NPC AI.) I can't imagine what Cryptic could do to improve retention in either population.

[Khaldun]

so , what did I do wrong?

I rolled a Might power set and stacked str and con.  I levelled through canada till 13 when I ran out of quests and went to the desert.   I start questing only to get my arse handed to me by 3 level 8 irradiated zombie guys.

I've got the Might defensive power and only generally block against boss special attacks.  I've got the str and con super stats and a full set of enhancements.

Any suggestions?

I did the same and was having some issues, I eventually figured out a few things. First, the Might-based defensive passive (Defiance, I think?) sucks. Regen or Invulnerability are way better--my Might character got way better when I shifted to that. Blocking is important, too, and I did better when I did it more. Check your stance and make sure you're not in the DPS stance, you're more fragile that way. I also didn't realize until level 12 or so how to use charge-based powers--there's a big damage attack in the Might powerset that isn't worth it unless you charge it fully, and then it lowers the damage resistance of baddies by quite a lot.

Other issues. Stupidly (but they're not the only ones to do this), Cryptic has made a lot of the melee attacks do knockback, and Might especially does this. This is not a good thing at all, because it knocks your enemies out of your range AND because of the often-freakishly big aggro ranges in Champions, you'll end up with another spawn on you. A Might melee character loses about three attacks getting back to a knockbacked-enemy.

Also, some Might powers don't affect anything *but* henchmen except to do marginal damage, like Thunderclap. Havoc Stomp does a lot of damage, but yup, knockbacks. So you'll have to gather up a crowd *again* after doing it.

Don't stack just con and str. There's some talk that the tooltip is wrong and strength doesn't actually add to melee damage. But you'll want some dex and ego to improve crit frequency and size.

[Yegolev]

That reads like patch notes from a beta.

They aren't patch notes?

The fact that it's a wish list is even worse than if it was a list of changes.  Agreeing with you, by the way.  I would like to give this game a try at some point but it apparently has a long way to go before I take time away from LotRO, Fallen Earth and DDOU.

[UnSub]

so , what did I do wrong?

I rolled a Might power set and stacked str and con.  I levelled through canada till 13 when I ran out of quests and went to the desert.   I start questing only to get my arse handed to me by 3 level 8 irradiated zombie guys.

I've got the Might defensive power and only generally block against boss special attacks.  I've got the str and con super stats and a full set of enhancements.

Any suggestions?

Are you able to show us your build? On the ChampO site, under 'My Champions', click on your character.

I don't know if you can; here's my main to see if it works.

[Sky]

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.

Welcome to the mmo genre.

[Khaldun]

Yeah. Fucking depressing to see again and again, isn't it? It's like watching some dude with a truckful of money show up in the town square, unload it with pitchforks, and light it on fire.

The more I know about behind-the-scenes, the more I'm just baffled that the money hats tolerate this, because for every really great dev who has a big-picture understanding of what they're doing with an MMO there's four devs who barely have the technical skills to do the nitty-gritty stuff and who have zero vision for the genre as a whole. They've just learned to do a certain kind of patter-puffery whenever someone with a checkbook gets near.

[Bunk]

Well, this thread to a frick of long time to plow through. I actually picked up the game more than a week ago.

I have to say, I was suprised at all the complaints around launch - I didn't have the beta to compare to, and I really found it to seem quite solid at launch. My only real gripe was lack of detail on what powers and stats did what.


I made a variety of characters, but the one I'm enjoying right now is a STR/REC Supernatural, with Regen. I'm only 14th, but I think I've managed a pretty balanced and effective build.

Single Blade for power gen (Angels use swords, not claws)
Lash (base supernatural followup attack) (hmm, chain attacks - ok a Fallen Angel then)
The chain swingy in a circle power - speced to Vortex which makes it a knock-in instead of a knock-back, which is awesome to setup...
Condemn - Boom!

Added in aspect of the inferno just because I felt I needed a self buff. With the super high Recovery, my regen is huge, and my power equalibrium is always high enough to get off fully charged power up attacks. The high strength is just because super heroes are supposed to throw trucks at people.

[Sky]

Yeah. Fucking depressing to see again and again, isn't it?

I guess. I gave up on the genre years ago, which is why I mostly just play EQ2. Not much reason to bother with anything else, since I'm invested in the one already. Unless it's something like the $12 month of AoC, which was fun. It all basically boils down to the same old shit, though. I can't believe so many people keep on trying the NBT but I'm happy because if someone ever does break tradition and make something fun and non-hardcore-centered, I can hear them bitch about it and check it out.

[Typhon]

so , what did I do wrong?

I rolled a Might power set and stacked str and con.  I levelled through canada till 13 when I ran out of quests and went to the desert.   I start questing only to get my arse handed to me by 3 level 8 irradiated zombie guys.

I've got the Might defensive power and only generally block against boss special attacks.  I've got the str and con super stats and a full set of enhancements.

Any suggestions?

As mentioned previously, Might has a pretty crappy defensive power, but my Might character had an additional problem in that the passive defensive power didn't automatically load into the passive slot.  Make sure the passive defense you selected is in the passive slot.  Also, if you changed your role, make sure the new role has a passive slotted, that isn't automatic either. 

All that said, Might is currently by far the hardest spec that I've played, from a survivability perspective.  If you aren't having fun you definitely should roll another char until they work the kinks out of Might a bit more.

Also as mentioned previously, Strength allows you to throw trucks.  Fortunately trucks and other heavy objects do a nice amount of damage, which seems to be what you Str/Con hero excels at.  You just need to get into the habit of picking up anything and everything and smashing people with it.

[Khaldun]

Might is a good example of a powerset where the devs just turned off their brains both in game-mechanical AND genre-evoking terms.

Game-mechanical, because the best tanking/survivability defenses are in other powersets and because most Might attacks have effects which are actively bad or frustrating for melee players.

Genre-evoking because some glass-cannon builds are more survivable than a muscular brick shithouse pounding on bad guys. I have no problem if the Juggernaut goes down to psionic attacks or Mr. Hyde gets his carotid arteries squeezed by Captain America holding on to his neck or Thor gets taken down by gas. It invokes the genre. It doesn't feel nearly so right when my wimpy sorcerer can take a beating from henchmen's fists better than a character with straight up Might powers.

But just mess with the build a bit and it works pretty well--I'm still whaling on bad guys with the basic Might damage attack, I just took defensives and AOE attacks from other sets.

[Glazius]

so , what did I do wrong?

I rolled a Might power set and stacked str and con.  I levelled through canada till 13 when I ran out of quests and went to the desert.   I start questing only to get my arse handed to me by 3 level 8 irradiated zombie guys.

I've got the Might defensive power and only generally block against boss special attacks.  I've got the str and con super stats and a full set of enhancements.

Any suggestions?

I did the same and was having some issues, I eventually figured out a few things. First, the Might-based defensive passive (Defiance, I think?) sucks. Regen or Invulnerability are way better--my Might character got way better when I shifted to that. Blocking is important, too, and I did better when I did it more. Check your stance and make sure you're not in the DPS stance, you're more fragile that way. I also didn't realize until level 12 or so how to use charge-based powers--there's a big damage attack in the Might powerset that isn't worth it unless you charge it fully, and then it lowers the damage resistance of baddies by quite a lot.

Other issues. Stupidly (but they're not the only ones to do this), Cryptic has made a lot of the melee attacks do knockback, and Might especially does this. This is not a good thing at all, because it knocks your enemies out of your range AND because of the often-freakishly big aggro ranges in Champions, you'll end up with another spawn on you. A Might melee character loses about three attacks getting back to a knockbacked-enemy.

Also, some Might powers don't affect anything *but* henchmen except to do marginal damage, like Thunderclap. Havoc Stomp does a lot of damage, but yup, knockbacks. So you'll have to gather up a crowd *again* after doing it.

Don't stack just con and str. There's some talk that the tooltip is wrong and strength doesn't actually add to melee damage. But you'll want some dex and ego to improve crit frequency and size.

Man, I forget how long it took for them to take most of the knockback out of super strength, axe, and stone melee in CoH. Well, not exactly take it out. You could still knockback stuff that was low-con enough, or if you slotted the attack for knockback - which was great crowd control once they introduced ragdoll knockback, the recovery time is a lot longer than just falling down in place.

Must have been some fun times at launch. Half the tank melee sets knocking dudes around left right and center, and there was that thing where it was pretty much impossible to land a melee attack on a running dude unless you could guess where they were going to go and set up there.

Anyway, I'm surprised they didn't learn. Does stuff at least take a while to get back on its feet when you connect with a knockback hit?

[Valmorian]

Anyway, I'm surprised they didn't learn. Does stuff at least take a while to get back on its feet when you connect with a knockback hit?

They do, and I use the knockback mechanic as my damage mitigator for combats with large numbers of mobs.
It's nice to knock back a bunch of guys and then concentrate on who is left..

Also, I've yet to aggro another group by knocking a mob into them.  They tend to just sit there unless YOU get close enough or attack the mob close to them while they're beside each other.

[Typhon]

Anyway, I'm surprised they didn't learn. Does stuff at least take a while to get back on its feet when you connect with a knockback hit?

They do, and I use the knockback mechanic as my damage mitigator for combats with large numbers of mobs.
It's nice to knock back a bunch of guys and then concentrate on who is left..

Also, I've yet to aggro another group by knocking a mob into them.  They tend to just sit there unless YOU get close enough or attack the mob close to them while they're beside each other.

This has been my experience as well, both with Might and Force - a fun way to juggle enemies while you whittle them down... as long as you aren't grouped with an AE specialist, who tend to get pissed off. 

Ditto on the aggro, it's not the knockback, it's the chasing down that gets you killed.

[Sky]

I played as an energy blaster slotted for knockback and always got bitched at when we were grouping. Eh, I mostly soloed and it was great for soloing :)

[Khaldun]

Anyway, I'm surprised they didn't learn. Does stuff at least take a while to get back on its feet when you connect with a knockback hit?

They do, and I use the knockback mechanic as my damage mitigator for combats with large numbers of mobs.
It's nice to knock back a bunch of guys and then concentrate on who is left..

Also, I've yet to aggro another group by knocking a mob into them.  They tend to just sit there unless YOU get close enough or attack the mob close to them while they're beside each other.

Really? I had this happen a lot with the cowboy robots and Viper guys in Snake Gulch--the knockback aggroing other groups even before or whether I chased someone down. But aggro mechanics in the game strike me as being really really fluky anyway. I often feel I have no idea whether or when something's going to aggro on me.

[Morfiend]

If you are a melee character, your energy builder move is also a ranged taunt, so it you target a mob and turn your builder on, you will aggro him and his friends. This happened to me all the time, as I use the "Toggle, never off" setting for my energy builder.

[UnSub]

Knockback is a fantastic example of how comic book tropes that don't work under MMO gameplay mechanics. Punching someone hard enough that they fly back 10m is superheroic, but it pisses off the AOE MMO player or requires the single player to chase down their target.

[Lt.Dan]

Thanks for all your comments on my build.  I'll post a link to my toon when I get home from work.  However, I think I may have to reroll since retconns are sooo damn expensive.

On the subject of knockback and chasing down mobs - that's certainly why I retconned out of Roomsweeper.  It's not too bad on bosses since they can't be knocked back and it does more damage but chasing down mobs gets old real quick.  To be fair to Cryptic the knockback system is a fundamental part of the Champions PnP game.  In one play session my character took a VIPER rocket launcher shot to the chest, got knocked back through a wall, and subsequently made the front page of the newspaper as a destructor of public property.  Now that's some fun knockback!

[caladein]

Knockback is a fantastic example of how comic book tropes that don't work under MMO gameplay mechanics. Punching someone hard enough that they fly back 10m is superheroic, but it pisses off the AOE MMO player or requires the single player to chase down their target.

Admittedly, PvP is a total clownshoes at this point, but I'm definitely enjoying Force's knockbacks in PvP.  I've found it to be only way to whittle down teams that are 5/6th made up of people who just Block and sit on their Defensive Passive.

Now, you get someone with: a bullshit hold, Teleport, a good Defensive Passive, a Block Replacement, and I'm pretty much ready to throw my mouse out the window.

In PvE, I do feel like a total badass, but it does introduce the problems you mention even as a ranged character.

[Lt.Dan]

so , what did I do wrong?

I rolled a Might power set and stacked str and con.  I levelled through canada till 13 when I ran out of quests and went to the desert.   I start questing only to get my arse handed to me by 3 level 8 irradiated zombie guys.

I've got the Might defensive power and only generally block against boss special attacks.  I've got the str and con super stats and a full set of enhancements.

Any suggestions?

Are you able to show us your build? On the ChampO site, under 'My Champions', click on your character.

I don't know if you can; here's my main to see if it works.

Here's my offending Might build.  I've got the polaser sword from power armor as a bigger damage power and I need to retcon the last power I acquired at level 14 (Enrage is a joke).  But aside from that I don't see that I've done anything too dumb.

[Khaldun]

The retcon costs are driving me nuts, because the only way to really learn what all this stuff does, given the documentation, is to take it for a test drive. The way it's priced now, you can only that once per toon, effectively, unless you do it right away (go out, level for a while, undo it if you don't like it.)

[Typhon]

[...]
Here's my offending Might build.  I've got the polaser sword from power armor as a bigger damage power and I need to retcon the last power I acquired at level 14 (Enrage is a joke).  But aside from that I don't see that I've done anything too dumb.

I have a powered armor alt and the sword seemed like it sucks a very large amount of energy, which is a problem for a str/con hero because you levels are so low (an End/Rec or Int/End hero would be able to swing the sword a great deal more - effectively changing you hero into a DPS hero, which I don't think is what you are looking for).

Unfortunatly I think uppercut is kind of a must-have for might.  The knock-up knocks them WAY up, and they take damage while they fall, and they aren't doing damage while they fall.  It has modest buildup time and modest end use.  Which is a shame, because it's a slow power, while the sword is very quick.  Might doesn't seem to have a quick attack (other then clobber jacked up with ranks) that I've seen yet.  My hero is in the mid-teens though, so I'm not an expert.

[Khaldun]

Beatdown is pretty quick and does some steady DPS.

[Malakili]

Beatdown is pretty quick and does some steady DPS.

I use beatdown a good deal on my might character.  Also, the "tap" Haymaker very rarely does knockback, and does a lot of damage, it is end expensive though.

[ghost]

Okay, went through both campaign sides up to level 10.  I'm officially bored now.

[Valmorian]

Okay, went through both campaign sides up to level 10.  I'm officially bored now.

I prefer the Millennium City stull at around 14.. but it IS an MMO, it's not like you're going to find anything other than your standard MMO quests.

[Lt.Dan]

Looks like Cryptic are looking into making retcon more accessible in the next patch:
- doubling the drop rate of white enhancements
- flattening the resale value of enhancements, increasing white and decreasing blue/purple
- maybe reducing the retcon costs for recently purchased powers (although deeper retcon will still be expensive)

Oh, and free retcon to everyone!

[Slyfeind]

Yeah, I'm of two minds on this. They're increasing the money players get, but it could lead to MUDflation...which is likely to happen anyway, and doing it sooner could catch problems quicker, so...at least they're working on it!

[Khaldun]

The increase in the money supply, as far as I can tell, is pure stubborness/ego from Roper and/or other devs. E.g., they don't want to admit they screwed up pricing and availability of retcons in relationship to a character engine that people are accidentally gimping themselves with. So there's a kind of hilariously incoherent babble about how they always intended to have more affordable retcons but needed to study the economy first to see where money was moving and now they're ready but they're not just going to fiddle with the price of retcons, they're going to put more money into the economy because, you know, they have PLANS, they're getting that money out there because you WILL WANT TO SPEND IT SOON on many fabulous things. OO! Really? Such as? <crickets chirping>

Dudes. If you want to change availability of retcons, lower the price, you dumb monkeys. Raise it later if there are too many retcons. You're not fooling anybody but the idiot fanboys with all the double-talk. Using the money faucet to alter the pricing on a sink is pure retardation. You change the valuation of a sink by changing the valuation of the sink.

The other hilarious thing about the adjustment to white values/deflation of purple values is that this is said to be the way they're going to get trade going on the AH. Because, you see, the reason people aren't trading now is because the purple and blue items have such good money values that it's better to just vendor them. 

No, the reason people aren't trading those items now is that they don't have any real need to spend money on an item that they'll level out of in about twenty minutes or so, and which scarcely alters the effective power levels of toons anyway. Either you have a build that's kicking ass or you have a build that's gimped: nobody has a build which is doing just barely fine but oh my with purplez will be ass-kicking. Nothing about the game is heavily item-dependent, hence, little market for items. You don't even need to buy to get your crafting up: you can level it easily with just your own supply of drops/quest rewards.

I can't decide whether they're throwing this stuff out there as a smoke screen for the fannish or whether they actually believe in it. The latter is way more worrisome.