Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Kageru]

I'm not going to end up subscribing to either game, mind you, but CO isn't getting the props it deserves for the class system, which is ambitious and cool and perfect for a superhero game.

... What class system? Giving the player a large number of powers and allowing them to pick freely doesn't seem to be that interesting. It allows both FotM minimax builds, tankmages and hopelessly weak builds depending on how good the player is at understanding the game mechanics. Meanwhile the powers as a whole are massively redundant, those who try and stick with a theme are often penalized and the replay value is reduced because there's no strong sense of class personality.

[Khaldun]

Getting to pick and choose powers is interesting and great, but only if that was the whole point of the game. E.g., if they understood what would happen (stark divide between concept characters and minmax characters) and had a plan for making at least one of those populations happy. Concept characters/players you make happy with innovative content (not Kill X of static spawn quests, but quests aimed at individual characters and backstories), plus working social tools. Minmax characters you make happy with a fuckton of endgame/challenging content. Cryptic has done neither while designing a character engine that has almost nowhere to go and nothing to do that's actually suited to it.

Time for Fallen Earth, I think. I'll stay subbed for another week so my kid can play with the character design system and then off with its head.

[Valmorian]

I tell ya' I'm also pissed that a product involving Savage Worlds is so crappy.  Although ironically, SW is losing street cred. these days (big surprise).  Both suffer from being Fast, Furious, Fun with no persistent depth... and are unable to give long-term compelling play along with gritty content w/o a dickless simple-nerf.

There's an MMO product involved with Savage Worlds?  Which one is that?

[dEOS]

What do you spend resources on in CoX? I still need to play that.

CoX has a real economy now, sadly. Basically after nerfing the hell out of everybody they created an invention system that lets you get back the what was nerfed (plus a lot more) in exchange for having to grind and grind and grind and grind and grind for "money" (there are various forms of "currency" in the game, too many actually) and drops.

Your post is full of wrong but since it's a CO topic I'll address only this point.

CoX had a serious problem. No economy was possible in a world where powers+basic enhancements would make you overpowered. So they nerfed. But did so intelligently so that there was room for improvement. Currently, when you look at invention sets and game balance... everyone (and not just a few AT) have benefited from the invention system. Amazing work, amazing modelling of the combat powers. I am still impressed by how it was well designed.

And money to get what you want is not really a problem. Another game has panned out inside CoH and that is trading or playing the market. You can become rich at level 10 to buy whatever you want simply by playing the market (buying low, craft and sell high). I am a particularly casual player and I have all the purples I need on my main.

That said.

My personal take on CO is that Jake Emmert finally did the game he couldn't do with CoH. Free power choices was possible in the early beta version of CoH. That was deemed impossible to balance. Guess what's the problem in CO: everyone flocks to the overpowered powers. Retcon is so high because otherwise people would play min-max all the time. Today you get nerfed, you have to reroll. Great way to keep your playerbase.

[Khaldun]

See, I really think that at launch they also had a sizeable population of people who wouldn't flock to the overpowered powers, who would build concept characters and as long as the character wasn't utterly shit they'd play that. The powersets were pretty good for building concept characters. They needed to just shrug and figure that minmaxers would find FOTM combinations and beat the content easily, and maybe make an instance or two designed to be tough for FOTM builds as an endgame activity. In the meantime, build a lot of a very different style of quest for the concept characters, moving away from WoW-template quests.

But they've managed to totally alienate and annoy both populations at this point.

[March]

See, I really think that at launch they also had a sizeable population of people who wouldn't flock to the overpowered powers, who would build concept characters and as long as the character wasn't utterly shit they'd play that. The powersets were pretty good for building concept characters. They needed to just shrug and figure that minmaxers would find FOTM combinations and beat the content easily, and maybe make an instance or two designed to be tough for FOTM builds as an endgame activity. In the meantime, build a lot of a very different style of quest for the concept characters, moving away from WoW-template quests.

But they've managed to totally alienate and annoy both populations at this point.

Agreed.

Purely as a semi-open concept game, I happily would (and did) give them $50... It honestly is fun to build concept characters around, say, the detective Poirot who uses his grey-cells (telepathy) to down the bad-guys.  I personally don't give a rats ass about mini-mines or whatever is FOTM.  The other flaw that I see here is that there's not nearly enough server/community cohesion to consider paying a monthly fee.  Seems to me that they should have copied their own GW model and enhanced the game through paid content.  They got me for the initial box (but hey, I'm rich compared to the average gamer) but no way I'll pay a sub for this... and thus will eventually drop it completely.  If they had used the GW model, I'd happily bounce in and out to work on my concepts.  They would have gotten more $$ out of me in the long run.  But, hey, I'm just one statistical blip.

[Typhon]

I'm not going to end up subscribing to either game, mind you, but CO isn't getting the props it deserves for the class system, which is ambitious and cool and perfect for a superhero game.

... What class system? Giving the player a large number of powers and allowing them to pick freely doesn't seem to be that interesting. It allows both FotM minimax builds, tankmages and hopelessly weak builds depending on how good the player is at understanding the game mechanics. Meanwhile the powers as a whole are massively redundant, those who try and stick with a theme are often penalized and the replay value is reduced because there's no strong sense of class personality.

Having been stuck with a DAOC Thane and CoH Elec/Storm defender when what I really wanted was a electricty/storm melee/caster dps hybrid, I find the chance to define my own "class" very interesting. 

[Slyfeind]

The minmaxers are always going to find the most optimum ways to tear through the content. You can't design for them. By the time you've caught up with them, they're already done, and may very well be experimenting with non-optimal gameplay. And by then, you've made non-optimal gameplay impossible. Meanwhile, high-concept players and roleplayers are slowly climbing up the ladder, and they get hit by the nerfbat around the mid-levels, which are traditionally the slow point in most MMOs.

This is not news. And that makes me sad.

[trias_e]

Having been stuck with a DAOC Thane and CoH Elec/Storm defender when what I really wanted was a electricty/storm melee/caster dps hybrid, I find the chance to define my own "class" very interesting.

I'm with you.  I'll probably pick up this game at some point simply for character creation.  And not the visual kind.  As long as their respeccing system isn't too brutal and the leveling curve not too harsh, it should be a very fun kind of mini-sandbox to play in for me.

As for over the top nerfs, I've always been somewhat baffled by them.  I think they are caused by one of two things.  Either an out of touch development team who doesn't realize the effects of their actions on the people actually playing the game, or a tyrannical development team who is obsessed with a vision they have for their classes and refuse to adapt that vision to any sort of in game realities.  Thus nerfing a skill into oblivion because it wasn't meant to be a primary focus for the character.  You know what, if it's a fun skill to use, why not make it a primary focus and balance it with that in mind?  Instead of totally ruining or at least massively altering players' game play experience.  Adapt fuckers!

[Malakili]

Well, some of their nerfs I agree with, mini mines being one example (though it might have been TOO severe).  it was doing HUGE amounts more damage than anything of a similar level.

[Khaldun]

Again, sure, nerf it, but compared to content creation, getting social tools into the game, and so on, balance doesn't quite deserve the exclusive attention it's been getting. But boy howdy, if you are going to pay that much attention to it, do it right. Minimines went from the FOTM best to being kind of pointless. A 75% nerf in effectiveness? Srsly? You can tell me all you like that it's hard to do balance in beta and I'll agree with you, but nothing should be going live that you end up feeling is 75% too effective, or that is radically different in effect than the design doc says it should be.

[Malakili]

Again, sure, nerf it, but compared to content creation, getting social tools into the game, and so on, balance doesn't quite deserve the exclusive attention it's been getting. But boy howdy, if you are going to pay that much attention to it, do it right. Minimines went from the FOTM best to being kind of pointless. A 75% nerf in effectiveness? Srsly? You can tell me all you like that it's hard to do balance in beta and I'll agree with you, but nothing should be going live that you end up feeling is 75% too effective, or that is radically different in effect than the design doc says it should be.

Wel, it was probably over done, but the one of the CMs said something like it wasn't simply overpowered, but there was a bug in power that was making it do literally 4 times the damage it was intended to do in design.  Now I agree with you that they have bigger fish to fry than balance right now.  More content needs to be their highest priority, by a long shot.

[Ingmar]

You'd think everyone on f13 would understand this fallacy by now. How long have we all been playing MMOs?

The people who work on class balance are not the same people who build content except for the very smallest games.

"OH GOD THEY SHOULD BE WORKING ON CONTENT NOT BALANCE/ART/MONEYHATS" is WoW general forum talk, we should be smarter than that here.

[Malakili]

You'd think everyone on f13 would understand this fallacy by now. How long have we all been playing MMOs?

The people who work on class balance are not the same people who build content except for the very smallest games.

"OH GOD THEY SHOULD BE WORKING ON CONTENT NOT BALANCE/ART/MONEYHATS" is WoW general forum talk, we should be smarter than that here.

I wasn't suggesting that they aren't working on content because of this, I was saying that content is a way bigger problem than this.

[Cyrrex]

You'd think everyone on f13 would understand this fallacy by now. How long have we all been playing MMOs?

The people who work on class balance are not the same people who build content except for the very smallest games.

"OH GOD THEY SHOULD BE WORKING ON CONTENT NOT BALANCE/ART/MONEYHATS" is WoW general forum talk, we should be smarter than that here.

It's also about where they are putting their resources.  Pouring money into balance when you could be funneling it into content is certainly a legit gripe to bring up.  Though I'll admit that a large part of my opinion is driven by the fact that I think "balance" is a retarded concept. 

[Slyfeind]

The people who work on class balance are not the same people who build content except for the very smallest games.

They could shift some people from their balance team to their content team, couldn't they?

/ducks

[Lantyssa]

Or not shift people to other games...

[Khaldun]

You'd think everyone on f13 would understand this fallacy by now. How long have we all been playing MMOs?

The people who work on class balance are not the same people who build content except for the very smallest games.

"OH GOD THEY SHOULD BE WORKING ON CONTENT NOT BALANCE/ART/MONEYHATS" is WoW general forum talk, we should be smarter than that here.

It's not that the same person has to choose between two jobs. It's that the lead designer should make a decision about where to allocate resources and put emphasis, especially for live management. Content creation and balance take place at different time scales no matter how many resources you put into one or the other, but if there is a lot of balancing/class redesign happening and not much else, someone didn't get the right live management recipe down. The live management recipe, notably, is not the same as the pre-alpha to alpha build recipe. Right now from what I can see, Cryptic has very few resources in the content management bin and most of their resources in the game mechanics/balance bin.

It's also a question of pace. They are pulling a lot of triggers very quickly with balance, and some of them don't make much sense unless they're designed to interact with some kind of upcoming content changes, but I see no sign that said changes are imminent in any respect.

You can also have a problem if the balance/class design people aren't talking to content people much, which again is a lead designer/manager's responsibility. Or if you've got individual live management staff who have separate responsibility for one aspect of the class mechanics or balance who don't talk much to people with proximate responsibilities. That's been a problem on a number of MMOs and I think it's a problem here.

[MisterNoisy]

Champions Online $30 at Amazon Today

[Ingmar]

Right now from what I can see, Cryptic has very few resources in the content management bin and most of their resources in the game mechanics/balance bin.

So basically your beef is with their marketing people not telling you what content is coming down the pipe? Unless you have some extra visibility to what their team is working on, you're just speculating pointlessly. We don't know how much of their team is working on balance and how much is working on content.

[Slyfeind]

I'd hope their code is being written by programmifiers while the content is being done by level-designomers and wordsmithiers. Maybe even get one of those lead-o-matics to coordinate them all.

[Khaldun]

Right now from what I can see, Cryptic has very few resources in the content management bin and most of their resources in the game mechanics/balance bin.

So basically your beef is with their marketing people not telling you what content is coming down the pipe? Unless you have some extra visibility to what their team is working on, you're just speculating pointlessly. We don't know how much of their team is working on balance and how much is working on content.

Now who's playing the WoW-general forum game? Come on, most of us here have some knowledge of this industry and experience in watching these things develop. Do you seriously think Champions has a significant set of content additions coming down the pike in the next three to four months? Even games that have struggled a bit at launch like Warhammer and DDO have been able to describe and execute some content expansion not long after launch. Sure, I'm reading the tea leaves, and so are you, but that's what we're here to talk about, in part.

[Ingmar]

The game has been out for just over 3 weeks. How long was it after launch before those other MMOs announced any significant new content? I understand we all get more impatient with MMOs the more of them we play but no content expansion announced in the first month isn't the sky falling.

Have you actually hit a point in the game where you are out of content yet? I don't mean "there's no more stuff in Canada so I had to go to the city/desert" I mean literally out of content, nothing to do for your level?

Frankly it is a bit surprising to me there are fairly large scale balance changes this quickly, seems to me the first month of most MMOs is usually given over primarily to fixing stability issues.

[Malakili]

The game has been out for just over 3 weeks. How long was it after launch before those other MMOs announced any significant new content? I understand we all get more impatient with MMOs the more of them we play but no content expansion announced in the first month isn't the sky falling.

Have you actually hit a point in the game where you are out of content yet? I don't mean "there's no more stuff in Canada so I had to go to the city/desert" I mean literally out of content, nothing to do for your level?

Frankly it is a bit surprising to me there are fairly large scale balance changes this quickly, seems to me the first month of most MMOs is usually given over primarily to fixing stability issues.

The game is actually quite stable from what I've seen, not perfect, but good.

I ran out of content a  couple(like, 0 quests available to me at any quest hub I could find, and nothing in the crime computer) times when leveling my first character to 40, but I guess there were some things I must have missed, especially the "hidden" quests that don't show up in the crime computer, like random escorts, quests that pop up when you walk into a zone, etc.  I ended up grinding a total of about 2 levels in the 30s through PvP and Master Villain grinding.   

There is a guy putting together a leveling guide, which I haven't been using as such, but has a list of all quests for given level ranges, including all the "hidden" that I've been using to make sure I do all available quests this time through with my next couple characters and its been going well so far.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Having been stuck with a DAOC Thane and CoH Elec/Storm defender when what I really wanted was a electricty/storm melee/caster dps hybrid, I find the chance to define my own "class" very interesting.

I'm with you.  I'll probably pick up this game at some point simply for character creation.  And not the visual kind.  As long as their respeccing system isn't too brutal and the leveling curve not too harsh, it should be a very fun kind of mini-sandbox to play in for me.

Um, have you read anything else in this thread?  "Retcon" is this game's term for respec. Search the past page or two for that term and see what's going on with it.  It's deliberately horribly brutal.  Yet with nerfs to powers coming right and left and still having a huge range of power/survivability/usefulness between the various powers, the odds of your initial character design being worth anything by the endgame is minimal.  The game system and environment SCREAMS for easy respec, yet deliberately denies it.  Yay for The Vision 2.0.

Picking this game up for character creation of any kind EXCEPT the visual kind is prety absurd.

[UnSub]

It's hard to argue that easy respecs would be a good thing for ChampO. Are they overpriced now? Maybe. I've noticed (in the times I've played where I haven't crashed) that resource drop rates have been increased quite a bit, so that might make things more affordable on characters created / playing from this point on. But I don't think it is a good idea to let players flip a single character from being Batman to Superman to Spider-Man at the drop of a hat.

I get it from a player point of view - wanting to be able to flip between powers easily. But that just raises the issue of power flipping to the 'best' between certain level sets. As I understand it, Lightning Reflexes (a DEX-based dodge defence) sucks at lower levels, because characters don't have the DEX values to get the best benefit (and Dodge's effectiveness is greatest versus slow, more powerful attacks, which are rare at lower levels). However, at higher levels it can be among the best defences in the game. So there would be sense in taking regen / inv at lower levels, then flipping it to something like lightning reflexes later on when you have the stats to support it.

The major issue right now is consistency - there is no guarantee what the powers are going to do one patch to the next. I certainly hope Cryptic are going to settle down on this soon as right now they've not only dropped the ball, they are currently kicking it round the room in a bad vaudeville sketch.

Oh, and another free retcon is on the way.

[Malakili]

It's hard to argue that easy respecs would be a good thing for ChampO. Are they overpriced now? Maybe. I've noticed (in the times I've played where I haven't crashed) that resource drop rates have been increased quite a bit, so that might make things more affordable on characters created / playing from this point on. But I don't think it is a good idea to let players flip a single character from being Batman to Superman to Spider-Man at the drop of a hat.

Yeah with the new "economy" patch they are definitely way more affordably.  Items are dropping like crazy, and you can earn a lot of money fast.  I have about as much money on my level 19 character as I did when I was around level 30 on my first character, and this is just a couple days past when this new patch went live.

Also, I agree this is why you shouldn't be able to flip around so much.  They are giving free retcons after major balancing patches so that people can choose to redo their builds if they are that dead set on it.   To be honest, it is admittedly nigh impossible to do a full retcon from level 40 all the way back down to 0 right now if you were to do it without the free one they give out with the patches, but that isn't a bad thing, for the reasons Unsub gives.

[Khaldun]

Again, people making concept characters are unlikely to flip around even if they're given free retcons every other day. The only reason they need retcons is when a power is so utterly changed that they either don't like it any more for the concept or it simply has no utility. Or because balance changes gimp their concept character so bad as to make it unplayable.

Minmaxers will use affordable retcons to flip from Batman to Wonder Woman, certainly. But visually they can do that now anyway, pretty much, plus there's so few social tools that it hardly seems to matter if the electric-looking guy you were in a group with last night has turned into the Edible Bulk in looks the next day. The radical flipping matters only inasmuch as it makes it easier to move to a FOTM build and whup the crap out of the content, as well as causing PvP to be nothing but one or two viable builds.

But: as always, there are more strands to the Gordian knot. If you're a dev, you don't want FOTM builds to appear literally every night after you try to balance something. That is, if you're trying to protect some kind of content from being eaten up too quickly. That has already happened, though. Whether or not you had enough quests in round 1, you're doing the same exact ones, all of them, with a second character. There are virtually no "surplus" quests except for crime computer/civilian quests. Contrast that to multiple-faction, multiple-race MMOs, which at least have some branching content paths that might make creating an alt marginally more interesting. So the only thing to protect really is some sense of challenging PvE gameplay. I also think the horse is long since out of the barn on that one. Unless you're a concept character or you're doing a heavy-melee character, you're going to find it pretty easy most of the time. Changing that in a substantial way just by tweaking powersets down and mob attributes up is just gonna piss people off and drive them out, whatever their playstyle.

[Trippy]

What do you spend resources on in CoX? I still need to play that.

CoX has a real economy now, sadly. Basically after nerfing the hell out of everybody they created an invention system that lets you get back the what was nerfed (plus a lot more) in exchange for having to grind and grind and grind and grind and grind for "money" (there are various forms of "currency" in the game, too many actually) and drops.

Your post is full of wrong but since it's a CO topic I'll address only this point.

No I'm not but thanks for playing!

[Khaldun]

Have you actually hit a point in the game where you are out of content yet? I don't mean "there's no more stuff in Canada so I had to go to the city/desert" I mean literally out of content, nothing to do for your level?

It's hard to quantify, but I think Champions has by far the least of the vanilla PvE content of maybe any comparable MMO at launch. It's got no multiple-faction, no multiple-race content. It has very very little group content or endgame-raid content. It has a rudimentary PvP side game. It has almost none of the timesink-type content that MMOs often have even at launch. Crafting is of negligible importance, and you get pretty much all the materials you need by breaking down items: there's not much need to hunt nodes. There's some public quests but some of them are on long time delays like Destroids Rise Again, and others of them frankly blow like Reign of Frogs.

So the first time through into my 30s, have I ever had an empty quest log? No, but I have pretty much had to do every conceivable quest that I could find, and most of the time, I've been doing quests 3-5 levels above current level. That's ok, but it means you've got nothing left to discover on an alt except maybe some of the possible synergies between powersets.

Even other games that had notorious content gaps in the mid to late levels like AoC and War had multiple factions and some branching choices about where to go up to the mid-levels that might get you to wonder what it would be like to go to another zone or place the next time through.

[Malakili]

Unless you're a concept character or you're doing a heavy-melee character, you're going to find it pretty easy most of the time. \

Hell, I have a heavy-melee concept character and it still isn't hard.  The game isn't hard, even with "bad" powers.  I suppose the game could be hard if you were entirely designed towards support and tried to solo with basically no damage abilities besides what you start with, but other than that, I have to imagine pretty much every build in the game can get to level 40, and that a TON of the complaining comes from 1) people who had obviously OP stuff before, and think the game is hard now because they are still trying to AoE down 20 guys at a time like they were pre-nerf or 2) just plain suck at the game (read: don't block enough, charge abilities when tapping would be better, etc).

[UnSub]

I think that there are plenty of players out there who might start with a concept, but look to make an effective character at the same time. Not minmaxing, but not ignoring powers that might be off core concept but make the character more effective.

But, yeah, content. Halloween will be the first event and I'm expecting  some major content before Xmas - maybe that lvl 41 - 50 stuff, maybe another zone for the mid-levels. ChampO needs to keep up offering content to players so they don't stop to think about what little else is on offer outside of combat.

[Kageru]

New content is a direct function of how much money is coming in. And given the game didn't generate much interest and the developers are attempting to patch it to death I wouldn't get too hopeful. In addition with no interesting grouping or progression mechanics how long would any content take to be consumed?

Reading the forums at the moment is interesting. I've never seen a MMO develop such a hostile atmosphere while still in the first month.

[Khaldun]

Unless you're a concept character or you're doing a heavy-melee character, you're going to find it pretty easy most of the time. \

Hell, I have a heavy-melee concept character and it still isn't hard.  The game isn't hard, even with "bad" powers.  I suppose the game could be hard if you were entirely designed towards support and tried to solo with basically no damage abilities besides what you start with, but other than that, I have to imagine pretty much every build in the game can get to level 40, and that a TON of the complaining comes from 1) people who had obviously OP stuff before, and think the game is hard now because they are still trying to AoE down 20 guys at a time like they were pre-nerf or 2) just plain suck at the game (read: don't block enough, charge abilities when tapping would be better, etc).

Right. But I have to say that I just jumped in at launch and didn't RTFM (not that there was one to read), and precisely because you don't really need to block until the mid-teens or twenties, I didn't pay much attention to it at first. The tap/charge mechanic also took a while to fully understand, particularly because there are some powers that charge-down. It's a very busy UI with lots of stuff going on on top of very "loose" and forgiving combat mechanics, which is something of a mismatch. Especially if they have attracted some folks who just like comic books who weren't really around for the CoH/CoV launches, which is possible. I've run into a few people in the game who really seem new to MMOs and a lot of the mechanics are confusing to them.

It is possible to inadvertently create a pretty gimped character who will have trouble by the early 20s, because in the early 20s you're having to do quests several levels above your current level and sometimes against slightly more difficult mobs like the Gadroon. Someone who didn't really get the game but was just following a concept might not take a defensive passive at all, or a weak one like Defiance; might pick several redundant offensive powers or not pick an AOE at all, etc. I've been trying to work up a munitions/darkness hybrid who is a concept character and it's easy because  munitions is a very strong powerset, but I was a bit stuck for an AOE until I got Lead Tempest, because I did not want the character to be pulling rockets or assault rifles out of nowhere. (I did take Shotgun, though.) (I also tried Condemn, which is pathetically weak.)   But for the most part, most combinations of powers are not going to meet with much of a challenge.

The thing is, you cannot make a challenge simply by nerfing powers down and buffing mobs up. You have to build it into the basic mechanics and concept from the outset.

Actually, one thing that can be challenging is grouping in the outdoors, because of the bring-a-friend chain pulling mob AI. I understand what they're doing with that, but the effect is to further dis-incentivize grouping. Rather than getting some missions done more quickly, it actually makes some missions longer and more difficult because you can end up pulling 5-6 spawns worth of mobs for just one target, with a much higher risk of one toon getting overwhelmed if the group isn't careful and coordinated.

[Malakili]

Unless you're a concept character or you're doing a heavy-melee character, you're going to find it pretty easy most of the time. \

Hell, I have a heavy-melee concept character and it still isn't hard.  The game isn't hard, even with "bad" powers.  I suppose the game could be hard if you were entirely designed towards support and tried to solo with basically no damage abilities besides what you start with, but other than that, I have to imagine pretty much every build in the game can get to level 40, and that a TON of the complaining comes from 1) people who had obviously OP stuff before, and think the game is hard now because they are still trying to AoE down 20 guys at a time like they were pre-nerf or 2) just plain suck at the game (read: don't block enough, charge abilities when tapping would be better, etc).

Right. But I have to say that I just jumped in at launch and didn't RTFM (not that there was one to read), and precisely because you don't really need to block until the mid-teens or twenties, I didn't pay much attention to it at first. The tap/charge mechanic also took a while to fully understand, particularly because there are some powers that charge-down. It's a very busy UI with lots of stuff going on on top of very "loose" and forgiving combat mechanics, which is something of a mismatch. Especially if they have attracted some folks who just like comic books who weren't really around for the CoH/CoV launches, which is possible. I've run into a few people in the game who really seem new to MMOs and a lot of the mechanics are confusing to them.

The tutorial really has a wealth of information, but I'm guessing that most people simply don't read anything, and then complain later.  I mean, the first quest of the tutorial teaches you the main mechanic of building/expending energy by letting you attack things that don't even fight back, and the SECOND quest teaches you to block.  That should pretty much clue you in on the 2 most important combat mechanics in the game.

I agree there should be a better manual.  The hardcopy one that comes with the game is nothing, and even the online one is pretty mediocre, but the game DOES have all the information available in the tutorial.  People just need to actually read it.  I read it the first time through because I figured the developers wouldn't waste their time putting it in there unless they thought I should know.  

I can see where you are coming from though, because last night I saw in chat someone saying that bullet ballet was crap because all it did was elbow the enemy in the face.  Then I kindly informed them they needed to HOLD THE BUTTON DOWN to make the entire attack go off.