Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Malakili]

Is AoE in general ridiculously powerful in this game or just sparkstorm?  I can burn down like three or four mobs to nothing in a second or so with that power. 

Sparkstorm is amazing.  I really can't say much about other AoE from lack of using it.

[Sky]

Well, AoE is good for henchmen, anyway. With my power armor I usually open with a swarm of micromissiles to clear the chaff and then use my beam weapon to finish (still working up the railgun).

Can't wait to play again, been without a tv for over a week, dammit. And that was a four day weekend for me. My house is clean as hell.

[ghost]

Try Spark Storm, Sky.  It does ridiculous amounts of damage so far for me.  I've screwed around with some of the other AOEs.  The darkness one (I forget the name) is pretty powerful too, but it has a crazy cool down.

[Sky]

Sub lapsed, free month is up. I mentioned in an EQ2 thread that LotRO charged me $30 as I forgot to cancel it in December, so my mmo budget is gone for a couple months.

Definitely going to be back for more CO, it's a fun game.

[UnSub]

AOE is a centrepiece of ChampO. Playing a munitions character and Mini-mines followed by Lead Tempest can melt a lot of opponents at once.

[Kageru]

My beta character was ego sprites, the nano-something power that put a DoT on next attack and lead tempest to do that next attack on everything in range. AoE DoT so I can basically move on to the next clump of mobs while the current one melted. Trying to kill one mob at a time just made it too tedious.

[UnSub]

Bill Roper moves onto "other projects" within Cryptic, replaced by long-term Cryptic developer Shannon Posniewski aka poz.

[Falwell]

Holy shit he's on the move again. The transient of the MMO scene, Boxcar Willie Roper. Somebody cue Roger Miller.

[Goreschach]

The most disturbing thing about that statement is that it would seem to imply that they're working on yet another new MMO.

[Tannhauser]

Well of course they are.  Kick one MMO out a year, grab box sales, a few lifetimes and move on.

/full disclosure:  I like STO.

[Malakili]

The most disturbing thing about that statement is that it would seem to imply that they're working on yet another new MMO.

I thought the rumors were a D&D or Neverwinter nights MMO.

Either way, I don't know if Roper is to blame for HGL, but he definitely didn't take Champions in a great direction, though I doubt new leadership is going to do much for this game at this point.

[UnSub]

Well of course they are.  Kick one MMO out a year, grab box sales, a few lifetimes and move on.

/full disclosure:  I like STO.

Can't be 100% sure, but it really looks like Cryptic / Atari is trying to adopt the SOE multi-MMO strategy in about a 1/3 of the time SOE did. Having John Needham, ex-SOE, as one of the major management people at Cryptic at least lets me think they have some knowledge there.

Next up would be Cryptic / Atari publishing and supporting other studios' MMOs.

[Malakili]

Well of course they are.  Kick one MMO out a year, grab box sales, a few lifetimes and move on.

/full disclosure:  I like STO.

Can't be 100% sure, but it really looks like Cryptic / Atari is trying to adopt the SOE multi-MMO strategy in about a 1/3 of the time SOE did. Having John Needham, ex-SOE, as one of the major management people at Cryptic at least lets me think they have some knowledge there.

Next up would be Cryptic / Atari publishing and supporting other studios' MMOs.

Followed by Cryptic Pass?

[koro]

Lifetime Cryptic Passes, a steal at $999.95!

[Tannhauser]

Who's stealing from whom? 

[Kageru]

Not sure what's surprising there. The Atari financials made it crystal clear they intend to push out a new MMO ever 1-2 years, so I'm sure they are well on the way towards their next Champions mod MMO.

[Ard]

I thought the rumors were a D&D or Neverwinter nights MMO.

That one is probably going to highly dependant on the lawsuits both Turbine and Hasbro have going on with Atari right now regarding their treatment of the franchise.

[Shatter]

Maybe the next one will have enough content for 5 weeks!

[Threash]

Contrary to popular opinion they just might get better at it over time.

[Ard]

Their track record so far hasn't exactly proven any sort of upward trend.

[Goreschach]

Their track record so far hasn't exactly proven any sort of upward trend.

What is it with so many mmo companies and the big names tied to them seemingly becoming less competent with each game they release?

[Threash]

Their track record so far hasn't exactly proven any sort of upward trend.

I played neither game but people seemed to be a bit more positive about Star Trek than Champions.

[Ard]

We can argue all day about the reason why, but the simple fact is that they had completely different built in customer bases, comic book nerds vs trekkies, and one of those is significantly larger which means more word of mouth while at the same time having much lower standards than the other.  Even with those lower standards, some pretty significantly large bridges were burned with their special offer for Star Trek that came less than a month after release.  I stand by my statement.

[Malakili]

We can argue all day about the reason why, but the simple fact is that they had completely different built in customer bases, comic book nerds vs trekkies, and one of those is significantly larger which means more word of mouth while at the same time having much lower standards than the other.  Even with those lower standards, some pretty significantly large bridges were burned with their special offer for Star Trek that came less than a month after release.  I stand by my statement.

The reality is that neither game is very good.  They both moments of being good, but over all, the experience is extremely lacking.  Their games take nice screen shots, are very marketable, etc, but when it comes to the actual MMO, they just aren't very good games, they don't have enough content, and they don't have robust non combat systems (like housing or economies), that get people to stick around for the metagame of it.    Maybe shiny screenshots is all they need to sell enough boxes to keep afloat though, who knows.  I'm definitely not buying any more Cryptic games, I'll tell you that much.

[Sky]

If you expect a game where you play for years, maybe. I'm kind of glad that's not their model. I've enjoyed both CO and CoX, feel I've gotten my money's worth out of both. I'm certainly not mainstream mmo, I don't want to be subbed year-round, I don't want to grind for achievement/raid/etc. A game is fun for a while, then it's not. It's really a question of "Did I get my money's worth when weighed against other games on the market for X dollars?" And the answer with CO and CoX has been hell yeah.

[Shatter]

Their track record so far hasn't exactly proven any sort of upward trend.

I played neither game but people seemed to be a bit more positive about Star Trek than Champions.

No I think its more the Star Trek name if anything that is keeping it afloat(but barely), if that wasnt there this game would of tanked as fast as CO

[Malakili]

Incidentally, there is a new promo video for Revelation.  It actually looks kind of neat. *shrugs*

www.champions-online.com/revelation

[Typhon]

I agree, I think it looks good.  Also, it didn't look like the five new villain groups were re-using other art, which is cool.

[Slyfeind]

Yeah, I think they'll get a month out of me on that. Then I'll likely go back to WoW.

[Minvaren]

I got an email late last night indicating a free-to-play weekend the weekend of the 26th - anyone else?  I might try it out for a bit if I have any free time.

Also, it seems like the board forgets my "last read post" settings for just this thread...

[Lantyssa]

I get that, too.  It goes back a page, like it lost thirty or so posts in its count.

[taolurker]

Also, it seems like the board forgets my "last read post" settings for just this thread...

I get that, too.  It goes back a page, like it lost thirty or so posts in its count.

I was having this occur not only in this thread, but the other Cryptic thread (for STO) as well. I even tried clearing my cache and deleting cookies for F13, but it is still happening.

At first, I wasn't sure if it was because of the number of pages, but other threads (with more pages like the SWTOR thread) do not do this.

I got an email late last night indicating a free-to-play weekend the weekend of the 26th - anyone else?  I might try it out for a bit if I have any free time.

I also got the free weekend email... (link version) and I never purchased the game.

[UnSub]

One thing that CoH did (less so CoV) was hang onto players for a lengthy period of time, despite having all the same complaints levelled at it that ChampO and STO now do regarding content and diversity of experience. One of the lessons Cryptic may have learned was that they can ignore those complaints for a bit, provided they can add in new zones / areas post-launch and have a fun 30-day experience off the bat.

I'm not sure that maxim, if it is something Cryptic took on board, holds in 2009/10 as strongly as it did in 2004.

[Malakili]

I'm not sure that maxim, if it is something Cryptic took on board, holds in 2009/10 as strongly as it did in 2004.

Well, it also works a lot better when you're the only Superhero MMO in town too.  Now you are competing with that game that has years of post launch development.  Sure, shiny graphics and particle effects that come with a new game are going to draw people's attention, but if they realize after a month that they actually have more fun with the other game, they aren't going to stick around, especially when they have well established communities and characters in the other one already.   

Truth be told, Champions neede to launch with another 15-30 zone and it would have been fine,  because there would have been a lot more stuff to do, and a lot more replayability, as it was (and is) though, they might hold people for a single 1-40, but then you realize the end game is basically non existent, and that you are going to have to do the precise same content is pretty much the exact same order on subsequent characters and it'll suck your will to play very quickly.  It isn't that this is less acceptable now than it was the, but then there was nowhere else to go.

[Kageru]

I don't agree with that at all. Champions did launch with a paucity of content ensuring that the second play through would be identical to the first which guts re-playability. But there are other mechanical faults that make it a lot worse than it was for CoH. Having a class structure in CoH meant that you could make a number of characters who played quite differently, especially in a team environment, and you couldn't use a respec to flick between them. The gameplay also encouraged people to team (CoH is probably one of the best MMO's for this, without being totally punitive to the soloist) which gave more possibilities for imaginative power sets and gameplay variety in terms of team combination. In the absence of this the CO powersets are almost entirely built around solo DPS. Team powers are rare, underpowered and not valued because the game has weak team gameplay and content (accentuated by mindless idiocy like DPS focused contribution calculations). CoH also had a better model for widening the pool of missions (city as base, door missions, re-use of assets) that allowed it to launch with survivable content and expand it... if they had cared to. CO tried to do WoW quest progression on a budget and it showed.

And lastly CoH was a lot slower paced for character development. If you know in advance your game is going to have low replayability and no meaningful end-game then the levelling has to be meat of the gameplay. Sure, that means it's going to be ultimately repetitive but that can be fixed with expanding content and earn you some returning subscribers. A Player who has reached max level, and knows there is nothing there, is going to write the game off as "completed". CoH progression through improving power enhancements is also more complex, open ended and has a tactical element compared to CO's model of upgrade your powers or buy one enhancement, and most of the enhancements are crap (or brokenly good).

Frankly CO is just a bad game. They got the graphics engine done, a really simplistic powers model (spam 1, then 2!) and then tried to do wow-like quests on a show-string budget. Terrible use of beta in that they were struggling to make the thing sellable rather than considering balance and gameplay. Follow that up with more or less abandoning the game on launch, after a last minute nerfing, and I'm not surprised if their retention is well under that of CoH which frankly should embarrass the hell out of them.