Champions Online: The No-NDA Merged Edition

[Malakili]

After playing with access to all the powers and costumes, the free version sounds like CO without the char generation, and that's like half the game to me.

Thinking of resubbing this month, to see where the game is at and dink around with my chars some.

I don't know when the last time you played was, but the Vibora Bay content is arguably worth resubbing for if you have a character in the mid or upper 30s.

[Ratman_tf]

After playing with access to all the powers and costumes, the free version sounds like CO without the char generation, and that's like half the game to me.

Thinking of resubbing this month, to see where the game is at and dink around with my chars some.

I don't know when the last time you played was, but the Vibora Bay content is arguably worth resubbing for if you have a character in the mid or upper 30s.

I think my powersuit char is in the 30's.

[Tannhauser]

Hows the loot now?  Do they still drop a ton of useless stuff on you?

[Malakili]

Hows the loot now?  Do they still drop a ton of useless stuff on you?

Seems that way, which is sort of an issue with the limited bag space in F2P.  Though if resubbing is your aim you can get bags a lot easier.

[koro]

The main thing you have to keep in mind with F2P Champions is that the revamped re-polished content only extends to Millennium City's Westside and the Desert Crisis. Every other part of MC, (almost all of) the post-Crisis Desert, all of Canada pre- and post-crisis, Monster Island, Lemuria, and Vibora Bay? Completely untouched and still largely (with the exception of some of VB and some of Canada) horrible. Lemuria is a completely dead zone as well; nobody ever, ever goes there.

As mentioned, inventory space is going to be a huge annoyance for anyone playing F2P, since my character in the 30s is usually running with one or two rows of quest-related items at any given time and enemies also drop a ton of crafting loot relating to the craftable travel powers, so your inventory fills up even faster. I can fill up the main bag of my inventory in around ten minutes with minimal effort.

My worry with the F2P deal is that Cryptic won't re-invest in the game with the money they're getting from their horrifically overpriced C-store (a quick easy way to tell how much they're getting: look around MC at any given time and see how many people are giant or are really really tiny. Each one of those people has spent at least $12.50 for that ability; if they have both they spent $25). The only new content the game's seen since launch has been Vibora Bay (which as we all remember was going to be a paid zone), Serpent Lantern, and Demonflame; the latter two being little more than extended dungeons. The main game itself could probably use one or two more actual zone zones, some sort of new end-game PvE raid content (I'm sure people are sick of running Therakiel's Temple by now), and revamps of at least Lemuria and some of Monster Island.

I suspect we'll probably just see adventure pack after adventure pack instead though, since they can charge more for those.

[UnSub]

A lot of that probably depends on how successful the F2P switch is. Poz has been doing a good job in trying to fix a lot of the issues that earlier ChampO faced and now its a matter of seeing if Cryptic can earn enough money that reinvesting in ChampO is worthwhile.

Early signs are positive that F2P is at least attracting triallists who spend a few dollars, but we'll see in the longer term (which definitely requires more new content... and an undated Adventure Pack named Resistance is apparently in the works).

[Malakili]

A lot of that probably depends on how successful the F2P switch is. Poz has been doing a good job in trying to fix a lot of the issues that earlier ChampO faced and now its a matter of seeing if Cryptic can earn enough money that reinvesting in ChampO is worthwhile.

Early signs are positive that F2P is at least attracting triallists who spend a few dollars, but we'll see in the longer term (which definitely requires more new content... and an undated Adventure Pack named Resistance is apparently in the works).

I'd much rather see more Vibora Bay like content addons than Adventure packs.  Granted, I realize full zones are a lot more work than adventure packs, but the way I look at, the world feels a little too sparse in terms of zones, especially since you basically go to them all to level up, so there is no variation really.  They've hit all the staples really, ice world, desert world, city world, jungle world, water world, but I think they could add some more in.

Either way the biggest problem facing Champions long term is that the game lacks a real soul...its like...what am I suposed to do when I log in? If its just do PvE content, they have no hope of making enough to keep up with demand, but there aren't any real compelling meta games to keep you redoing stuff anyway.  As it stands, i'll probably play from time to time when I get the itch for super hero ass kicking, but it lacks that *something* that makes me want to make it "my game" so to speak.

[rk47]

I don't understand how can this game be so un-fun compared to CoH. It took me an hour to realize they deserve to fail when another random mob killed me in the streets.

[Malakili]

I don't understand how can this game be so un-fun compared to CoH. It took me an hour to realize they deserve to fail when another random mob killed me in the streets.

I've always thought that this was a lot more fun than CoH to be honest.  Granted, I always thought CoH felt kind of sluggish and slow, maybe because I got to it a little bit late, and it already felt a little dated to me.

[rk47]

I had subbed around 2 months in CoX and had fun trying out archetypes like ranged and melee. But upon starting a ranged hero in Champ O, and got gang-banged by 3 random same level mobs, I realized this game is just one of those 'party mmorpg in hero skin'

Picking mind archetype was a bad decision, I'm sure, but there's nothing heroic about investigating a sewer only to retreat knowing that it's impossible to take on 5 mobs in there at once. What happened to COH scaled content? I never had issues with soloing in there and it felt more rewarding going in there, mixing it up with 2-3 mobs at once and coming out on top compared to Champ O's 'u died coz u didn't party'

[Typhon]

I only had that issue with the mind and martial arts specs.  I never played the sorcery spec, and given that it has heals you might also have issues there.  Every other spec was easily able to take on 3-5 mobs.  Lightning can steam roll any number of mobs, pretty much.  But there were also spec's in CoX which couldn't solo as well as others.  I agree that it's very annoying if you had a great (insert weak soloist spec here)-hero idea that you wanted to play.

Definitely agree that CoX set the high-water mark in terms of allowing the player to set their own difficulty level.  Would love to see this in more games.  Agree with Malakili - I resubbed to CoX for another run and it hasn't aged well, the controls felt very clunky/sluggish compared with CO.

[Malakili]

I had subbed around 2 months in CoX and had fun trying out archetypes like ranged and melee. But upon starting a ranged hero in Champ O, and got gang-banged by 3 random same level mobs, I realized this game is just one of those 'party mmorpg in hero skin'

Picking mind archetype was a bad decision, I'm sure, but there's nothing heroic about investigating a sewer only to retreat knowing that it's impossible to take on 5 mobs in there at once. What happened to COH scaled content? I never had issues with soloing in there and it felt more rewarding going in there, mixing it up with 2-3 mobs at once and coming out on top compared to Champ O's 'u died coz u didn't party'

Frankly, if you pick an archetype that is based around party play, you don't have much ground on which to stand and complain that you need to party more.  CO is INSANELY friendly to solo play to the point where group/party play is barely needed at all.  I was playing the solider archetype and melting away groups of enemies at a time.   My old custom characters from pre-F2P could also take on tons at once.   It sounds to me like you like picked a bad solo archetype AND are kind of bad at the game....yea I had to throw that last bit in there because I'veliterally not ever had a hard time soloing in this game.

[Spiff]

I had a peek at this a few days after it went f2p and was pleasantly surprised tbh. Although I haven't gotten very far, so haven't seen any of the supposedly un-revamped crap areas like Canada.
Ironically I'm now considering picking up DCUO, 'cause this has awoken my latent dreams of flying through the sky in spandex once again, but it still feels a bit rough around the edges (the game, not the spandex, which fits as snug as ever).

About the archetypes btw, I played around with a few of 'em and they are wildly different in ability.
The Behemoth tank-type AT for instance is tough as nails straight of the bat and only gets better from what I've seen; 5+ mobs is a singe even 2-3 levels above.
The blade-wielder guy felt incredibly gimped in comparison. Why that is I'm not entirely sure, haven't studied their skill system yet.

It just fits what I want from a game now: bit of fun with the funky character creator and some quick zipping around and spanking baddies. No stress, no fuss (no depth  ).
If I played it for more than an hour or 2 once in a while it would get old fast I'm sure, but that's exactly what I want from an MMO atm.

P.S.: They went a little overboard with the puns and cheesy references though, I like a bit of quirkiness as much as the next guy but sheesh, it's like the Wayans brothers wrote most of it.

[koro]

Most of the Archetypes are actually quite nice, which is surprising. There are a couple real stinkers though, namely the Blade and Glacier. The Blade is nearly impossible to properly gear for due to having Strength and Dexterity, which share gear slots, as super stats. It's also an almost entirely single-target build; in Champions AoE is still king, so pretty much anything else will crank out more damage and kill things faster. The Glacier is just weird, being built like a crowd controller but with the defensive abilities of a tank. It's obviously meant to be a 'ranged tanker', which is a neat concept, but without the kind of aggro control a tank needs (and the Behemoth has), it doesn't actually fulfill its job well.

Pretty much everything else is more or less solid though, with a couple (mainly low level) issues. Both the Behemoth and Marksman are complete and utter bores until level 11 and the Inferno is perpetually squishy.

And yes, the pop-culture references are ridiculous. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is usually harder to find quests that don't, in some way, reference some kind of gamer in-joke or pop-culture thing. It gets very very tiresome and really kills questing momentum after a while when you discover that you're basically playing one giant Family Guy joke.

[rk47]

I had subbed around 2 months in CoX and had fun trying out archetypes like ranged and melee. But upon starting a ranged hero in Champ O, and got gang-banged by 3 random same level mobs, I realized this game is just one of those 'party mmorpg in hero skin'

Picking mind archetype was a bad decision, I'm sure, but there's nothing heroic about investigating a sewer only to retreat knowing that it's impossible to take on 5 mobs in there at once. What happened to COH scaled content? I never had issues with soloing in there and it felt more rewarding going in there, mixing it up with 2-3 mobs at once and coming out on top compared to Champ O's 'u died coz u didn't party'

Frankly, if you pick an archetype that is based around party play, you don't have much ground on which to stand and complain that you need to party more. 

Disagreed. I was under no impression that the mind role was support. It was nuke, nuke, nuke. Till level 8, where they gave me another AoE DoT. Are you telling me this game's caster is even too weak to solo? Because I can't even buff my party or heal anyone else for sure. But hey, it's F2P and F2Ditch.

[Malakili]

I had subbed around 2 months in CoX and had fun trying out archetypes like ranged and melee. But upon starting a ranged hero in Champ O, and got gang-banged by 3 random same level mobs, I realized this game is just one of those 'party mmorpg in hero skin'

Picking mind archetype was a bad decision, I'm sure, but there's nothing heroic about investigating a sewer only to retreat knowing that it's impossible to take on 5 mobs in there at once. What happened to COH scaled content? I never had issues with soloing in there and it felt more rewarding going in there, mixing it up with 2-3 mobs at once and coming out on top compared to Champ O's 'u died coz u didn't party'

Frankly, if you pick an archetype that is based around party play, you don't have much ground on which to stand and complain that you need to party more.  

Disagreed. I was under no impression that the mind role was support. It was nuke, nuke, nuke. Till level 8, where they gave me another AoE DoT. Are you telling me this game's caster is even too weak to solo? Because I can't even buff my party or heal anyone else for sure. But hey, it's F2P and F2Ditch.

Thats not the game's caster, its the game's healer/support archetype.   If you was a pew pew caster, choose the inferno archetype.

Also, I'm sure its *possible* to solo as the mind anyway, maybe I'll go make one today and try just to see, but my guess is that you are playing kind of bad. 

Edit: I guess that sounds a little harsh, but its kind of like someone making a priest in some other game and complaining that it isn't a mage. 

[Typhon]

But you only know that mind is a support class if you look higher up in the tree.  First three abilities are attacks.  If you are new to the game and you happen to pick Mind you're screwed.  As far as I could tell it doesn't get better all the way through level 14.  I re-rolled my Force char into a Mind char at level 14 and he just flat out sucked.  I was disappointed with Force until I rolled a Mind then I realized that Force wasn't the worst spec to solo.  Really couldn't finish the purple mobster boss quest line with this spec without a friend.  That is the only time I experienced anything like that in this game.

tl:dr; Mind blows in CO, don't use it.

Edit: fixed grammar

[Threash]

I had subbed around 2 months in CoX and had fun trying out archetypes like ranged and melee. But upon starting a ranged hero in Champ O, and got gang-banged by 3 random same level mobs, I realized this game is just one of those 'party mmorpg in hero skin'

Picking mind archetype was a bad decision, I'm sure, but there's nothing heroic about investigating a sewer only to retreat knowing that it's impossible to take on 5 mobs in there at once. What happened to COH scaled content? I never had issues with soloing in there and it felt more rewarding going in there, mixing it up with 2-3 mobs at once and coming out on top compared to Champ O's 'u died coz u didn't party'

Frankly, if you pick an archetype that is based around party play, you don't have much ground on which to stand and complain that you need to party more. 

Disagreed. I was under no impression that the mind role was support. It was nuke, nuke, nuke. Till level 8, where they gave me another AoE DoT. Are you telling me this game's caster is even too weak to solo? Because I can't even buff my party or heal anyone else for sure. But hey, it's F2P and F2Ditch.

I'm sorry but this was fairly clear in the archtype descriptions, i've never played the game until last night and it was pretty obvious to me.

[Valmorian]

But you only know that mind is a support class if you look higher up in the tree.  First three abilities are attacks.

If I remember CO correctly, isn't this the case for EVERY archetype?  The first two abilities are always attacks at least. 

[Typhon]

Yes, your first two are attacks.  After the first two you get a number of abilities to open up.  From memory, you can choose more attack powers for mind, so you can try to make Mind a soloist spec (I was).  But it just sucks.  Actually I remember being surprised that the spec had so much trouble soloing.  I played a lot of alts, and none of the others were at the Mind level of suck.

[rk47]

Yeah. I gave up and rerolled blade then tried might. MUCH better. It felt more like a superhero game. Mind archetype is just horrible for first timer.

[01101010]

Is this worth a download...the f2p version I mean. Till my bills come down I am going to freeload what I can and need something to screw around with. More importantly, how big is the download / patching?

[DaZog]

Just when things started to look like they were, if not turning around, at least righting the ship-

Paragon Studios releases the 20.5 content patch and the next day, Cryptic breaks CO to the point of unplayability! 

[caladein]

Those are some pretty awesome issues.

"Crafting not working"
"Flight Travel Powers: Flying UP/DOWN is borked."
"All mobs in the World instances (millenium city, monster island) do not aggro on anyone unless attacked first."

Sadly, I've been playing CO so hopefully they sort this out before the weekend when I can get free of Firelands.

[Slyfeind]

Wow. I was considering coming back to it, too. Not at this rate!

[UnSub]

ChampO gets character housing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBR0BpQz2Yc&feature=player_embedded#at=11

I'm not sure if Mom's Basement as an option is inspired, insulting to ChampO players or both.

[Typhon]

lol, that's awesome

[Amaron]

Edit:  I just logged in to try it out.  If you're gold you get to choose one of the hideouts for free.   I picked the moonbase and it's actually fairly cool.   You can't like move furniture around but they basically let you change several things by say picking the conference table and making it simple or some hologram table.   There's roughly 10 different things you can change with 3~4 options each. For outside my lunar base I could choose to have a landing strip, nuke silos, solar array, or humongous death ray.    You can even choose between earth/lunar gravity.   If they put in more functionality to get people to meet up in these things it will be a huge cash shop item for them.

I'm not sure if Mom's Basement as an option is inspired, insulting to ChampO players or both.

I wanted the command center from Live Free or Die Hard.  Would of actually been a fairly amusing choice that way.  

[Lantyssa]

I'm not sure if Mom's Basement as an option is inspired, insulting to ChampO players or both.

It was good enough for Alf!

[Typhon]

I follow all the instructions, hit "Travel", and nothing happened.  None of the planes are currently working either, so I'm guessing it's currently borked.  Will try again later, bummed I can't see my totally-unique-to-me moon base.

[caladein]

So, the only way I can log in to my "Gold" character without a sub is to completely respec it over to one of their fixed classes.  And if I decide to resub afterwards, I think I can change it back to a free-form character once.  (I don't know if you get one conversion per character both ways or just one period.)

To top it all off, it might wreck my costumes as they're a mix of MT pieces and stuff that comes with the subscription.

I can understand the logic of some of it, but I think I'd rather just play a new character (or something else entirely ) instead of faffing about with what would essentially be a new character anyway outside of level.

[Lantyssa]

CoX has that right.  Once you have a character, it's yours.  Only exception being IOs, but you don't lose them so much as can't use them.

[Slyfeind]

I actually resubbed to CO for a bit, and had some mindless fun with it. But now CoX is free to play, and they're doing it right, so now I'm back there. It is a bit more sluggish, and the graphics aren't as strong, but there's more to do, and I don't feel so constrained.

[Dren]

I actually resubbed to CO for a bit, and had some mindless fun with it. But now CoX is free to play, and they're doing it right, so now I'm back there. It is a bit more sluggish, and the graphics aren't as strong, but there's more to do, and I don't feel so constrained.

I installed CoH last night to try the f2p and get some nostalgia, but wow you understaed the sluggishness and graphics being way subpar.  I'm going to uninstall it tonight.  It was just too bad to care about anymore.  CO feels a lot better of a game even with the issues.  Now, I haven't played anything past the f2p portion, so my opinion may change over time. 

[Zetor]

I still play COH a lot, though its combatresponsiveness definitely leaves something to be desired -- it still has that crazy fully-scalable "bring anyone" team content, very cool "class" concepts, interesting story and enemy groups... not to mention player-created missions.

OTOH, the only redeeming thing I can say about CO is that it allowed me to make a frog in power armor called Frog of War.