Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Khaldun]

See, for me the worst thing about CO was the screaming incompetence of the live management starting about five days before launch and continuing well afterwards. I actually think this is where a lot of recent MMOs have taken their fatal wounds. You can recover from design issues if you put a lot of resources and tight organizational discipline into plugging the worst holes as they appear and moving quickly to give subscribers a calm, confident sense that the game is going good places. When instead a live management team doesn't seem to understand some of the most basic issues subscribers are seeing, stonewalls or denies on-target criticisms of the game's shortcomings, and actively makes some problems even worse, that's a pretty clear sign that it's time to abandon ship.

[Malakili]

Frankly CO is just a bad game.
 

I sort of disagree with this.  The idea of an open power system and tons of customization is just what I would want in a super hero game.   The gameplay isn't terrible, though shallow, and the content that is there is decent.   In my opinion the game felt more unfinished than "bad."

[Minvaren]

The gameplay isn't terrible, though shallow, and the content that is there is decent.   In my opinion the game felt more unfinished than "bad."

I'll second this.  My one-sentence review to a friend who loves the Champions IP: "Let me know when it's finished."

[Lantyssa]

I sort of disagree with this.  The idea of an open power system and tons of customization is just what I would want in a super hero game.   The gameplay isn't terrible, though shallow, and the content that is there is decent.   In my opinion the game felt more unfinished than "bad."

One follows the other, in my opinion.

"Wasn't that a GREAT game yesterday?"
"Uh, dude, they cancelled it in the 3rd inning."
"Yeah, but it was TOTALLY awesome until then.  I'm so looking forward to the first quarter of Saturday's soccer game before it gets rained out."
"..."

[Khaldun]

Yeah, it was unfinished in a way that went beyond, "Needs more content". They also just didn't seem to understand in any way what the consequences were to building an open power system would be in terms of gameplay. Or didn't care.

[Nebu]

They also just didn't seem to understand in any way what the consequences were to building an open power system would be in terms of gameplay. Or didn't care.

Not sure what you mean here.  It's a PvE game so there's really almost no need to balance power sets at all.

[Typhon]

[...]
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. [...]

Frankly CO is just a bad game.[...]

[...]You can recover from design issues if you put a lot of resources and tight organizational discipline into plugging the worst holes as they appear and moving quickly to give subscribers a calm, confident sense that the game is going good places.[...]

(yes, I snipped out the parts that I wanted to focus on, if someone wants the entire context of those posts... just look down the page two or three posts).

Lol, did you guys even play CoH in the first six month?  As has been said many, many, many times in this and other threads, CoH at launch was a different game than CoH two months in, 3 months in, 6 months in. 

Kageru, if I'm reading your post correctly, you are hinting that they made the right choice by having that slow leveling rate because it allowed them to milk paying customers for a longer period of time.  Ok, that's just fucked up.  A large portion of players on this site abandoned CoH (and never came back) BECAUSE of the punishingly slow leveling rate.

Khaldun, a sense of calm?  The live team for CoH fucked the game six ways to Sunday half a dozen times in the first couple of months by making frequent, sweeping and clueless design/balancing/etc changes.  They gave players of the game anything but a sense of calm or confidence that they had any clue whatsoever that they knew what they were doing.  I remember hoping that they'd just stop making changes so that I could enjoy what was left of the game.  For reference, I really like/liked CoH.  Queue conversation about UO, EverQuest, WoW at launch, EVE, etc.  MMO players will put up with horrid amounts of upset and stupidity if 1) something about the game speaks to them and 2) they think there is even the smallest chance that the game will get better (more stable, more content, more balance, more).

I feel like I got my moneys worth out of CO.  It's a good game, there just wasn't that much of it.  Ok, they had some oddities during the first couple weeks of launch.  They've been a bit slow about releasing new content - do you know how long it was before CoH actually released new content versus fucked with the leveling/combat mechanics/balance?  Longer than you think.

If/when CO releases new content that looks interesting I'll return - because the leveling was quick, there were a large number of customization options (including power set selection) and I could see most of the content without having to group with... folks that put WAY to much importance into what does or doesn't happen in a computer game - I don't want the drama or stupidity that comes with PUGs.  That said, I CAN group with friends that have the game without having to fight with peer-to-peer bullshit (like Borderlands).

To say that this game is "bad" is an affront to the games that were genuinely bad - a long and distinguished list that is chronicles nicely in the posts in this forum.  CO is a mediocre game that was very stable from launch but unfortunately lacked the spark of genius that would have launched it to 'great' or 'compelling'.  It's a fun diversion for a couple hours a week if you happen to like what it's offering.  Given the depths to which other MMO games have sunk, that puts this game solidly into the "good" MMO game category.

So the only thing that I can think is that you're mad at Jack & Co for a variety of reasons, or that the game just didn't have elements which appealed to your playstyle.  Neither of which means that it was a bad game.  So I'm left wondering, at what point do the "CO sux!" posters move on and find some other game thread to waste their time in?  I'm not playing anymore and only check this thread for any updates to the game from people still playing it... and yet I still see, month after month, the same names talking about how much it sucked.  Really?  You really feel this game sucked enough to waste your time posting the same exact viewpoints twenty pages later?  I'm certain it was neither good enough nor bad enough to warrant such slavish dedication.

We get it.  We really, really get it.  You didn't care for it.  Now, please, move the fuck on.

[Ingmar]

Speaking for myself, the changes to CoH in the first 6 months were what *kept* me playing it. It was an absolute balance/QOL mess before that.

[Khaldun]

Yes, I played CoH from launch. No, I didn't think they fucked the game nearly as badly as CO, in fact, I thought they did a decent job about talking about what they were doing and where the game was going and then delivered content at a reasonable pace. They fucked the levelling curve and that hurt the game bad, since it was already a bit grindy even at launch. So then the same people did it again and worse? Sorry, you get one free play and then you're expected to have learned something. Other than that, condescend much? If that's your money worth, so be it. I got more fun out of the Freedom Force games or Arkham Asylum as far as superhero hijinks go and neither expected me to pay a subscription fee. I have different expectations for an MMO. You don't, fine for you, but don't pull this, "Oh you silly newb, if only you had seen it back in the day." This is an old and tired schtick in these debates and it doesn't play well with people who were playing Gemstone III on GEnie and Adventure on college mainframes and so on.

[Kageru]

Kageru, if I'm reading your post correctly, you are hinting that they made the right choice by having that slow leveling rate because it allowed them to milk paying customers for a longer period of time.  Ok, that's just fucked up.  A large portion of players on this site abandoned CoH (and never came back) BECAUSE of the punishingly slow leveling rate.

You missed "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". Effectively you are aiming to have a slow burn so you have time to add more content (which people who quit due to repetition are in a position to use should they return) and use the fact that hitting maximum level is a powerful lure. Not my ideal of game design but a better survival strategy than CO's where you can see 100% of the content in the first month and realise there is no gameplay left and zero interest in more levelling content (like Vibora bay) being added.

I'd love to see the retention rate between the two games. I'm pretty certain CoH milked more months out of it's player base, thus earning some funds for repair work, than CO.

[Lantyssa]

Khaldun, a sense of calm?  The live team for CoH fucked the game six ways to Sunday half a dozen times in the first couple of months by making frequent, sweeping and clueless design/balancing/etc changes.  They gave players of the game anything but a sense of calm or confidence that they had any clue whatsoever that they knew what they were doing.  I remember hoping that they'd just stop making changes so that I could enjoy what was left of the game.  For reference, I really like/liked CoH.  Queue conversation about UO, EverQuest, WoW at launch, EVE, etc.  MMO players will put up with horrid amounts of upset and stupidity if 1) something about the game speaks to them and 2) they think there is even the smallest chance that the game will get better (more stable, more content, more balance, more).

I'm going to guess you played a Regen Scrapper.

CoH was much better in its early period.  I was in at beta until a month or two after ED.  Now that was a cluster.  And eventually they sorted things out, though by that time I wasn't really interested.  CO learned just about nothing from that time, and I don't see how they can be defended at all since it was made by the SAME company and didn't even earn being called CoH 2.0.

[UnSub]

I disagree with that - I think Cryptic learned a lot from CoH/V and tried to jam most of it into ChampO without having sufficient time to work out the kinks in all those systems.

Choosing your own powers is great, for instance, but a lot more testing was needed to make various combinations more viable or modify those powers that were demonstrably the best / overpowered.

[Ollie]

*snip*  CO learned just about nothing from that time, and I don't see how they can be defended at all since it was made by the SAME company and didn't even earn being called CoH 2.0.

I think much of the disappointment seeping through people's posts stems from Lantyssa's comment above. I'd wager that in their heart of hearts, CO's target audience secretly hoped for a game that would top CoH across the board; both qualitatively as well as quantitatively. Instead, Cryptic released a title that was more of a side grade than anything; a weird combination of poorly learned lessons and half-finished game systems tacked on to a new engine.

It's not that CO is even that bad of a game. It's not a triple-A title by any stretch of the imagination, but then again, it could be argued that it was never intended to be one. The reason behind some of the vitriol is the blatant lack of progress. Instead of even trying to offer players something new, Cryptic essentially just remade a game they had already released. For a player familiar with CoH, it's hard to look at CO and think of any justification for its existence, other than the obvious financial ones.

As it stands now, the sound of Roper and Emmert dancing to the jingle of the cash register is a tad too hard to ignore. Hence the grumpy posts.

[Typhon]

Khaldun, a sense of calm?  The live team for CoH fucked the game six ways to Sunday half a dozen times in the first couple of months by making frequent, sweeping and clueless design/balancing/etc changes.  They gave players of the game anything but a sense of calm or confidence that they had any clue whatsoever that they knew what they were doing.  I remember hoping that they'd just stop making changes so that I could enjoy what was left of the game.  For reference, I really like/liked CoH.  Queue conversation about UO, EverQuest, WoW at launch, EVE, etc.  MMO players will put up with horrid amounts of upset and stupidity if 1) something about the game speaks to them and 2) they think there is even the smallest chance that the game will get better (more stable, more content, more balance, more).

I'm going to guess you played a Regen Scrapper.

CoH was much better in its early period.  I was in at beta until a month or two after ED.  Now that was a cluster.  And eventually they sorted things out, though by that time I wasn't really interested.  CO learned just about nothing from that time, and I don't see how they can be defended at all since it was made by the SAME company and didn't even earn being called CoH 2.0.

This was my experience as well, sorry if my post didn't make that clear.  I liked CoH at launch (it was easy, but I thought that was the point).  With every patch I liked it less and less and I had the strong feeling that the team managing the game didn't understand what made the game fun, what the playerbase wanted, and definitely had no clue about how to communicate what they were trying to do. 

[played: Storm/Elec Defender, Fire/Energy Tank, Darkness/Reflexes Scrapper, Fire/Fire Blaster, Energy/Energy Blaster (aside, the lowest level blast animation and sound is still the best/most satisfying weapon effect ever)]

I was trying to point out how CoH's live team didn't instill a sense of calm.  But so what?  Almost every MMO that has ever launched took at least 6 months to smooth things out before the live team figured out how to manage the game and what their player base likes.  How many years did it take the EverQuest live team to figure that out?  Wait, did they ever actually figure it out?  So, saying that a live team being nimrods drives people away I think is over stated.  It might drive a few away, but if there are retention problems it's not because of jitters because the live team is thrashing.

They can be defended because the technical team making CO IS A COMPLETELY NEW TEAM.  Jack doesn't know shit about technology.  He happened to have a really good first team and trashed around a bit at the game design level (as opposed to the technical design/engine level).  All of those technical people stayed on CoH (probably because Jack is a douche).  The next team wasn't terrible, but they weren't as good as the CoH team.

[Typhon]

Yes, I played CoH from launch. No, I didn't think they fucked the game nearly as badly as CO, in fact, I thought they did a decent job about talking about what they were doing and where the game was going and then delivered content at a reasonable pace. They fucked the levelling curve and that hurt the game bad, since it was already a bit grindy even at launch. So then the same people did it again and worse? Sorry, you get one free play and then you're expected to have learned something. Other than that, condescend much? If that's your money worth, so be it. I got more fun out of the Freedom Force games or Arkham Asylum as far as superhero hijinks go and neither expected me to pay a subscription fee. I have different expectations for an MMO. You don't, fine for you, but don't pull this, "Oh you silly newb, if only you had seen it back in the day." This is an old and tired schtick in these debates and it doesn't play well with people who were playing Gemstone III on GEnie and Adventure on college mainframes and so on.

If you think Jack did a decent job planning and communicating for the first six months then I'm completely baffled as to where you are coming from.  They basically came out and said, "we've asked Jack to stop communicating with the player base because he's making everything much, much worse."

Jack DID learn.  CO has more player customization.  CO has more player powerset flexibility. CO has a much easier leveling curve.  Unfortunately for CO, it also has CO which doesn't have as interesting villains - but they bought the license, stupid not to use it.

I paid essentially the same amount for CO that I did for Freedom force plus $15.  I played FF through ONCE, total time played was about a month.  I liked it and felt like I got my money's worth.  I played CO about two months.  During that time I could play with friends without hassles.  That's worth $15 to me.  I see them as very competitive because I like playing with my friends.

I'm not trying to be condescending, I'm almost 100% certain that everyone posting in this tread was there for CoH early days.  There is no newb card to play.  I'm trying to say, "what the hell are you remembering?  I'm remembering something very different".

[Sky]

I have different expectations for an MMO.

/thread

[Malakili]

As an aside from our squabbling over the merits of Champions as an MMO,   Revelation has been released. 

http://www.champions-online.com/node/594900

Patch notes in the spoiler - The format didn't paste in well, so its a little messy.

[Bandit]

Started playing through Revelations last night.  So far, it appears to have better writing and a darker theme for quest lines.  Established heroes are actually dying.  Spoiler I know, but who really plays CO other than me    I haven't gotten out of the "Vibora Apocalypse Crisis" portion, so I have only really scratched the surface of the expansion.  The Villain groups introduced so far look pretty good.

They also added a back room to Club Caprice for Lifetime accounts.  It's actually more than I was expecting - with discount pricing on nemesis items, cheap heal/shield items, some exclusive action figure purchases, and a transporter that is not yet functional.  I am expecting this is not only a reward for current lifetimers, but an incentive for what I expected to be another offering of "limited time" lifetime accounts.

[Slyfeind]

I like the lifetime rewards. If people pay for some kind of thing, they should get lots of other things to go with it.

Looking forward to Revelations. Will check it out when I gots the time.

[Minvaren]

CO Xbox 360 port canceled.

Well, guess they only have one codebase to maintain going forward.

[Sky]

I launched CO once while my 360 controller was still activated. Some of the button commands showed up. It didn't seem like a very good setup. I even tried playing for a few minutes with the controller, just moving around was awful. Maybe it could be tweaked to be good, but I didn't bother.

[UnSub]

During beta, when the Xbox controller was better supported, a lot of people reported that playing with the controller made the game much easier to play. Targeting was an issue, but activating powers felt a lot more natural.

Not surprised they cancelled the port. Launch would have been the best time for it, but that didn't happen.

[Sky]

you couldn't use a respec to flick between them.

About this: I see that more as your willingness to game the system. I'd NEVER take another powerset with my robot guy, because he's a robot. He's got a little story and everything. With both games I'm all about the characters, and respeccing to an entirely new powerset completely destroys one of the coolest parts of the game. So I don't do it. But it's nice to have to undo things that didn't work out or try new things within the idealized version of the hero.

The only sacrifice to the game I've made in both games was taking flying as a travel power, because you know. But I always hated my badass military mastermind being able to fly, completely out of character.

[Khaldun]

you couldn't use a respec to flick between them.

About this: I see that more as your willingness to game the system. I'd NEVER take another powerset with my robot guy, because he's a robot. He's got a little story and everything. With both games I'm all about the characters, and respeccing to an entirely new powerset completely destroys one of the coolest parts of the game. So I don't do it. But it's nice to have to undo things that didn't work out or try new things within the idealized version of the hero.

The only sacrifice to the game I've made in both games was taking flying as a travel power, because you know. But I always hated my badass military mastermind being able to fly, completely out of character.

This was one of the things where I was kind of stunned at how weak the live management team's understanding of the game was. The design looked as if it was entirely aimed at people making thematic characters, and a really striking number of people did that rather than just construct a min-max tankmage. But a few people did min-max tankmages and raped the content in two days, so the devs started dishing out nerfs like drunken sailors grabbing whores from dockside bars. When people with thematic characters started complaining that the result of this was to cripple working if non-optimized builds, and to make certain powers nearly mandatory for survivability, the devs seemed to be clueless about this response. They had their fixation entirely on the problem of a small number of min-maxing powergamers.

Now this, I agree, was also an issue with CoH relatively early on, though the grindiness only really kicked up hard after the first few months. But this is precisely why I expected Cryptic to have learned their lesson. Who is your customer base, who are your targets for retention? Forget the people who blow through the content by making crazy-quilt tankmage power selections. Worry about satisfying the thematic character builders, because they're going to be the people attached enough to the characters that they make that they'll hang around for the long-term.

[Lantyssa]

To be fair, a lot of studios have made the mistake of worrying about the power gamers rather than the people just there to have fun.  Where I don't cut them any slack is that there is now an established history of how well this works out.

[Morfiend]

Not sure if this has been mentioned or not yet.

CO now has a unlimited free trial, ala Warhammer. Level capped at 15, and you can only have 2 characters. I downloaded it last night so see how much has changed since launch.

[Sky]

Look at Alkiera's steam stats for the CO trial 

[Nebu]

CO now has a unlimited free trial, ala Warhammer. Level capped at 15, and you can only have 2 characters. I downloaded it last night so see how much has changed since launch.

I may need to download that.  Level 20 is about where I always quit anyway. 

[taolurker]

You can only have 2 characters on the "trial" account and cannot leave the tutorial section (Millennium City under attack).

The character creator was the best part of the game IMO, which you can use multiple times if you delete characters and/or save costumes.

[Bandit]

If you can't leave the tutorial section, than it is pretty much pointless...with the exception of the character creator.  You won't be able to mix up powers too much, or use travel powers.

I think I have some buddy keys lying around still, if I can find them.  In addition, there is a referral system that you can play for free but I am not sure of the restrictions.  I can send out referral invites if you PM me, just not sure how it works exactly.

[taolurker]

I was actually wondering whether this upcoming "free play" weekend would allow trial accounts full access to the game, and might actually be testing that out.

I think I have some buddy keys lying around still, if I can find them.  In addition, there is a referral system that you can play for free but I am not sure of the restrictions.  I can send out referral invites if you PM me, just not sure how it works exactly.

I'm not sure, but I think the buddy keys also had the same restrictions, although I'd be willing to test this if you don't give all of them away.

[Redgiant]

So many things about CO parallel the Mythic mess.

CoX is a classic, and had a unique MMO position in its time and still holds up okay despite its age. A worthy successor would be great!
CO wtf?

DAOC is a classic, and had a unique MMO position in its time and still holds up okay despite its age. A worthy successor would be great!
WAR wtf?


Reminds me of many Hollywood movie sequels and remakes.
Some things you cannot improve on but try to anyway and fail. Other things might have an evolution potential but only if you do it from a certain angle and bring enough newness to it to get out from the shadow of its predecessor and make it stand on its own (see Aliens, T2, The Empire Strikes Back for examples of how to do it).

I still dont' get the graphics style, God I hate it.

[Nebu]

Let's not forget AC and ACII.  Also very similar.

[UnSub]

CoX is a classic, and had a unique MMO position in its time and still holds up okay despite its age. A worthy successor would be great!
CO wtf?

DAOC is a classic, and had a unique MMO position in its time and still holds up okay despite its age. A worthy successor would be great!
WAR wtf?

Both cases suffer from a second-systems effect and also from fans of the first game expecting a repeat-but-better for the second game while the developers wanted to fix their original perceived / stated mistakes.

Plus the market has changed dramatically. If CoH/V launched today it'd be crucified. Hell, even for being a classic, it's player base has been consistently shrinking for a long while now.

[Khaldun]

I honestly didn't see either WAR or CO as attempts by the devs of those games to fix their original perceived/stated mistakes. That's the thing--dig out Mark Jacobs' talk before WAR went live. He perceived DAOC's mistakes accurately, and they included most of the mistakes that they ended up making in WAR, including a punitive approach to levelling. CO doesn't strike me as being in any way a design response to "perceived mistakes" in CoH/CoV. Its relationship to the company's early work frankly seems kind of incoherent--a few small features polished here and there, but there doesn't seem to be any thoughtful sense of a response to CoH.

AC2 strikes me as a response by Turbine to AC--obviously a very screwed up response. As does EQ2. But WAR? The mystery is that Jacobs is on record during WAR's design process as describing some of the exact errors that DAOC made and saying that they'd learned their lesson. Which, evidently, they had not. CO? Don't see it.