Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Slyfeind]

It's wearing off for me, too. I got my nemesis, which is a cool rock 'n' roll demon to go with my "accident with an electric guitar" hero concept...but life drain is way too powerful. My current nemesis mission has two villains casting life drain and insta-killing me. There's little else for me to do now.

I also like to make alts, but with only one quest line...meh. Oh look, there's that part, and that part too. Again. Woo. A desert.

They're making too many mistakes other companies overcame 5-6 years ago. "No srsly, we can balance powers for pvp and pve, even though nobody else could! Here we go! Oops our bad." Too many nerfs. Other games have made high levels hard, and they didn't turn out very fun. Yet other games made high levels easier, and those turned out fun. Zero sum has proven boring.

I'm glad I subbed for a month past the free one, but I shant be staying past that. Too bad.

[Sobelius]

I'm also feeling bad for the poor saps that take melee characters into PvP.

So what's the secret? I've had my ass handed to me by melee and ranged. I've played both melee and ranged. Every PvP fight seems different with one exception - if the other team has you 3 on 1, you're going down unless you can teleport.

[Typhon]

I don't think it's really a secret with the melee - they had some form of movement-mitigation in addition to their melee attacks.  A hold, one of the lariats, or probably both.  Melee needs to burn you down quick, or be very opportunistic (or both).  With a 2-3 second build up, they aren't burning you down quick unless you are held.

The real "secret" to PvP is to have a healing sorcerer on your team that doesn't try to do damage.  Probably next week's secret will to be to have a celestial powers hero on your team (they seem more mobile then the sorc).

[Khaldun]

Thing is, there's still a lot of almost-randomized missions even among the sparse ones, plus some template missions like "Kill X". The genuinely handcrafted content is pretty good to excellent, sure, but there really isn't anywhere near enough.

You having that opinion seems to imply that they made the right choice: if/when they are able to create enough content, you're likely to be willing to return and give them a little more money.

I'm not really having a problem with the amount of content (slower leveling, no doubt), but I'm beginning to chafe at the engine annoyances (tab-targeting blows hard) and the lack of same-set power synergies.  If I'm staying within a power set, powers should have some sort of synergy with each other.  Example: all the melee attack powers in Might are largely replacements of eachother - take one, don't take more then one.

I'm also feeling bad for the poor saps that take melee characters into PvP.

I'm still logging in and playing though, but the blush is off the rose.  They could make me stay longer if the Haloween event is fun.

Geez, no, not at all. See above where I talk about how diku-standard content and character-customization can never really be compatible even if you hand-design all the content and there's a lot of it. They needed to do something really different and they didn't and there isn't any way for them to clawback that mistake.

[Malakili]

To me its not even that there is much really that bad about this game, its just that it doesn't do a lot really well.  Character customization is great (both costume and powers wise), I find combat to be above average (I like the pacing and the blocking mechanic).  But after that, it starts to fall off.  The zones are nicely crafted for the most part, but the missions that inhabit them are generally extremely uninspired.  You've got this sort of fun art style, campy characters, a little quirky IP, and then they ask you "Kill 30 Purple Gang Members at the construction site," "Collect 5 of each color bandana from gang's around west side"   and then 15 levels later its just "Kill 20 Manimals on Monster Island"  "Collect 5 manimal collars of from cat and bear manimals on monster island."

The tasks just don't fit the setting.

[Khaldun]

Yup. And really, I don't think that's inevitable. I think there's a bunch of setting-appropriate quest designs that they could have come up with. They just didn't bother.

[Malakili]

They updated the Bloodmoon page with new info:

http://www.champions-online.com/bloodmoon

[Kageh]

"Bloodmoon 2: Revenge of the Door Campers". Anyone remember CoX Halloween events?

[raydeen]

Thrash of the Lich King: Drive off Takofanes during the Bloodmoon Event

I'm not sure if that calls for a  or a  . I'm leaning more towards 

[Malakili]

Thrash of the Lich King: Drive off Takofanes during the Bloodmoon Event

I'm not sure if that calls for a  or a  . I'm leaning more towards 

If there is one thing that has gotten my annoyed, its that they can't mention a damn thing about their game without going out of their way to make it a play on words, reference, or some kind of pun.

[Kageh]

If there is one thing that has gotten my annoyed, its that they can't mention a damn thing about their game without going out of their way to make it a play on words, reference, or some kind of pun.

Indeed, and it is so damn tiring to get all those pop culture references thrown at you without any measure. For every "serious" or "original" quest you find, you'll get ten lame references or nods to stuff most players nowadays probably have never heard of.

[Tmon]

Indeed, and it is so damn tiring to get all those pop culture references thrown at you without any measure. For every "serious" or "original" quest you find, you'll get ten lame references or nods to stuff most players nowadays probably have never heard of.

i don't mind the pop culture references cause really what are super heroes but creatures of pop culture, but I often wonder who the heck picks out the references to be used since many of them seem to be from my age range's childhood.  WoW had a few like that too though, I found the whole ungaro crater land of the lost thing kind of amusing.

[UnSub]

AFAIK, John Layman is responsible for most of the writing.

I'm interested that Emmert's "no camp" stance on a superhero MMO didn't extend to "no cheese".

[Khaldun]

Reading Layman's dev diary from April 2009 is  .

"Champions Online is going to take players across a vast and diverse world, a world of gleaming cityscapes, blistering deserts, relentless winters, lush tropical jungles, and frightening oceanic depths."

So vast and diverse that it has one city, one desert, one winter, one jungle, and one ocean. Done!

"A player's decision will have consequence and there is not always one right way to do things.  Not only that, but not every decision the player makes will be the right one. That is, certain decisions will have some moral ambiguity to them, so some decisions are grey. Just about everybody who's read a comic in the last 20 years can tell you heroes and villains have evolved beyond two-dimensional cartoon cliches, and recent Cryptic platform advances allow us to make missions to better reflect that. "

Whoops, forgot to patch that part in. Must not have left a post-it on the monitor when they finished that part.

[Malakili]

"A player's decision will have consequence and there is not always one right way to do things.  Not only that, but not every decision the player makes will be the right one. That is, certain decisions will have some moral ambiguity to them, so some decisions are grey. Just about everybody who's read a comic in the last 20 years can tell you heroes and villains have evolved beyond two-dimensional cartoon cliches, and recent Cryptic platform advances allow us to make missions to better reflect that. "

Whoops, forgot to patch that part in. Must not have left a post-it on the monitor when they finished that part.

Yeahhh, thats totally missing.  In fact, the game is almost the exact opposite of that.  I'm sure he thought it sounded cool when he said it though.

[Slyfeind]

Maybe he was reading a review of Ultima 4 and forgot what year it was.

[Kageh]

"A player's decision will have consequence and there is not always one right way to do things.  Not only that, but not every decision the player makes will be the right one. That is, certain decisions will have some moral ambiguity to them, so some decisions are grey. Just about everybody who's read a comic in the last 20 years can tell you heroes and villains have evolved beyond two-dimensional cartoon cliches, and recent Cryptic platform advances allow us to make missions to better reflect that "

Whoops, forgot to patch that part in. Must not have left a post-it on the monitor when they finished that part.

But then again, ChampO comes along to save the day and stand the test of time. To boldly go where comics in the last 20 years didn't want to!

[Modern Angel]

But the Champions setting is older than 20 years...

[Kageh]

But the Champions setting is older than 20 years...

Now that you put it that way, and after re-reading Khaldun's quote in that context, a lot of the lore is very believable all of a sudden!

[Malakili]

Power House 2.0 was released today.  Its nicer than the old one. 

http://www.champions-online.com/node/594583

The "battle station" (read: Danger Room) is pretty nice.  You can choose the difficulty of the mobs, some common types for your level (i.e. purple gang if you are in the level range for it), and the team size you want to fight for.   Its instanced, so you go in with just your group.  It seems to spawn 3 groups: 3 minions, 2 super villians, 1 master villain.  There is a console in there that lets you change the settings pretty easily.

I don't know if tis is the kind of thing that is going to really make a huge difference in retaining/attracting people back at this point, but it is nice.

[Kageru]

The power house is a very cool concept, especially in a game with power selection as open as champions (and respec costs as punitive).

Design credit is almost entirely due to the beta community. Their original design was a computer terminal where you fly back to "register yourself with the government" before you can use a new power, which got pretty immediate and continuous sledging. I assume the vestigial terminals are still in the game, I think you can check your forum mail on them.

[Malakili]

The power house is a very cool concept, especially in a game with power selection as open as champions (and respec costs as punitive).

Design credit is almost entirely due to the beta community. Their original design was a computer terminal where you fly back to "register yourself with the government" before you can use a new power, which got pretty immediate and continuous sledging. I assume the vestigial terminals are still in the game, I think you can check your forum mail on them.

Yeah, they are still around.   UNTIL terminals are in every zone, allow you to send items though the mail (you can send normal mail from anywhere, as far as I know). 

[Kageru]

So people guesstimating 5k online prime-time, and this is with not all expired accounts being terminated apparently. I've normally heard the metric of 4:1 for accounts versus active log-ins at prime-time. So the game is possibly at something like 20-40k accounts in its second month. The forum fanboys are all quoting Eve's growth over time figures in an act of incredible optimism. A game where there is emergent gameplay at the endgame versus a game that has nothing once you've run a single character through the content are not going to have similar growth rates.

I wonder if they have the resources and motivation to grow the game from that point. Far more likely they'll let it quietly slip into maintenance mode sooner rather than later.

[Numtini]

I wonder if they have the resources and motivation to grow the game from that point

No.

[Malakili]

So people guesstimating 5k online prime-time, and this is with not all expired accounts being terminated apparently. I've normally heard the metric of 4:1 for accounts versus active log-ins at prime-time. So the game is possibly at something like 20-40k accounts in its second month. The forum fanboys are all quoting Eve's growth over time figures in an act of incredible optimism. A game where there is emergent gameplay at the endgame versus a game that has nothing once you've run a single character through the content are not going to have similar growth rates.

I wonder if they have the resources and motivation to grow the game from that point. Far more likely they'll let it quietly slip into maintenance mode sooner rather than later.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see continued updates at least until the release of STO.  My guess is they will try to use the STO hype to try and generate some extra CO players, and they'll want to have something better to show for themselves.  I think if they aren't seeing a bit of a boost after that, it'll fall by the wayside.

[Kageh]

I cancelled my account still in the free month, can't bring myself to log in. I played beta since April this year, and truth be told I have the feeling the game is getting nowhere. It's all tweaks and small twists breaking and fixing about small parts of the game while fundamental issues like the lack of both depth and variety, the awkward and unresponsive controls or the abysmal engine performance remain. This is the only game this year that manages to bluescreen crash my PC with Windows 7 x64, and that is telling something. And I'm running it on a beefy rig that can crush everything else.

I wouldn't mind if they would have picked a clear stance on lack of content, like for example "Screw content variety and advancement options, let's make the best superhero combat simulator around!" and go twitch-based, except they didn't. It feels ambitious yet woefully underdeveloped and they don't seem to have the courage to go anywhere. I'd love a well done superhero-themed PVP game. Forget dominating all those dumb henchmen for 50 levels, just give us templates and powersets and let us at each other.

[Tmon]

I wouldn't be surprised if we see continued updates at least until the release of STO.  My guess is they will try to use the STO hype to try and generate some extra CO players, and they'll want to have something better to show for themselves.  I think if they aren't seeing a bit of a boost after that, it'll fall by the wayside.

I wonder if they'll offer some kind of all access pass for both games, it would be a handy way to puff the numbers for both games.

[Venkman]

I doubt ChampO is going to be worth talking about by the time STO launches. I imagine they've already shifted a lot of resources over to the latter. And the most recent interview features the EP of STO maligning the size of his post-launch dev team (which he seems to imply is 50 atm).

So the game is probably already is in maintenance mode. To say the least.

[UnSub]

I think it depends if ChampO ever makes it to the Xbox 360. It would probably have a better shot on that platform - an uncontested space, a design that is better suited for the console - than on the PC. If ChampO does launch on the Xbox 360, I think all of these kinds of odd implementation decisions (like the launch day patch, like the large changes post-launch that would have better fitted into beta) make more sense. PC launch as a paid beta for the Xbox 360.

Ultimately though that is some forum guesstimation going on soon after the launch of Aion.

[Khaldun]

I think was was said upthread is basically right: this is the new model for quickie MMOs. Develop cheap, make your money on box sales and the first 2-3 months subs, and see where you're at when you bottom out at the 25k-ish subs who seem fanatically devoted to whatever game they happen to have landed in, doesn't really matter what it is. Maybe if you're running on three gerbils, a server and one community management dev you make a small additional profit for six to twelve months. Close down--the game has only existed as a kind of resume builder designed to get you your next infusion of capital from investors stupid enough to think they can get in on the ground floor of the next WoW. Rinse and repeat.

[Bandit]

Cryptic just formally opened up their C-Store today.

http://www.champions-online.com/store

They are going to use it across Cryptic Games (CO, STO) and are basically offering cosmetic (costumes, emblems) or character enhancement items (retcons, character slots, renames).  Cryptic has stated that anything offered in the store that does give an play advantage, will also be available to earn in game.  A 1000 cryptic points is initially set at $12.50 US.

Halloween Costume Sets (3 sets) - 640 or 240/set
Cyborg Beast Set - 240
Epic Samurai - 240
Emblem Packs (Bestial, Sci-Fi, Weapon) - 80/set
Character Slots - 1200 per 4 additional slots
Retcon (Character power reset) - 1000
Rename - 280
Costume Slots - 400 per 2 costume slots
Action Figures - 80

Prices aren't too bad in my opinion, maybe a tad high for costume sets in particular with a subscription still in play.

[Malakili]

I know a lot of people that are going to be all over the character slots.

[Kageru]

12.50$ for a retcon when they break a power or invalidate a build? What a money spinner.

Those prices might make sense if the game was f2p.

[Bandit]

12.50$ for a retcon when they break a power or invalidate a build? What a money spinner.

Those prices might make sense if the game was f2p.

Pretty sure they are working on the ability to retcon specific powers if they have changed...still in the works though.  In addition, is $12.50 really that bad to COMPLETELY redo your character from scratch?

[Kageru]

When it's being broken by the developers doing beta balancing on a live game?

definitely.