Champions Online

[Lightning Bug]

Yeah, I always thought that was pretty hardcore that they bought the IP outright and licensed the rights to publish RPG material back to DOJ, Inc.  I wonder if we'll see a Cryptic logo on any of the new Champions books?

[stumpy]

I am sort of psyched to hear some beta reviews of the Champions Online game. I played the paper-and-pencil game as a kid and I liked the Champions world, though I'll admit our little group only had a couple of the campaign modules. We mostly played in our own world, which was an amalgam of some comics and our own stuff. To me, the game was largely the HERO system for character creation and the rest was our imaginations. (Honestly, the point system for character creation was part of the initial appeal of Freedom Force.) But, if the online game can capture the feel of the p-n-p version, I would like to see more of it. I'd be nervous about the console aspect of it in terms of customization and game play, but I'm not a console gamer, so who knows?

As it is, I have never played CoX, though it is tempting. From what I have read, the lack of power customization would bug me. And, I have had the impression that it's basically mandatory to team to advance at a reasonable pace or to play some of the character types that are more interesting to me. I'm still tempted to give it a shot when I upgrade my PC...

BTW, welcome back, Lightning Bug! You probably don't remember me, but one of the very first things I read when I came to FR was a review you wrote of the CoH beta. That's where I learned what a 'tank mage' was. :)

[Lightning Bug]

BTW, welcome back, Lightning Bug! You probably don't remember me, but one of the very first things I read when I came to FR was a review you wrote of the CoH beta. That's where I learned what a 'tank mage' was. :)

Of course I remember you, stumpy. :)  Man, I forgot all about that review. hehehehe...glad you liked it. Thanks for the "welcome back," too. Hopefully I'll be able to stick around for awhile. 

On a Champions-related note...I stumbled across a site ( www.wowio.com ) where you can download free books and comics.  It's totally legit and paid for by having a few pages of adds inserted into the .pdf.  Anyway, they have the entire run of the Champions comic by HERO Game Comics, as well as a few other titles for individual characters from the team.  You can only download 3 titles a day, but I've been having fun reading them while waiting for more info on CO...they even have rules and character bios in the back (though for an older edition of the HERO rules...it's still cool though). 

[RTTingle]

Well, the end of the work week and the CO team has given us some more goodies.

You asked, we answer!
Here are a few of the questions submitted on our forums recently. Thanks very much to Jackalope, Arkayne and Heretic for their answers!

If we didn't get to your question, don't worry. We're going to be doing this frequently, and you'll have a chance to ask again. We're as excited as you are about Champions Online – it's just that there's a lot to talk about, so we can't get to every question immediately.

Will we be told what decisions were made based on drawing Inspiration from the HERO system? HERO'philes want to know what parts of their beloved system to expect. (Drakos)

Jackalope: Well, Drakos, some of the stuff will be pretty darn obvious! We're lifting some terminology straight from the HERO System and putting it into Champions. However, the HERO System and Champions Online won't be identical.

For those of you who don't know Champions – go out and buy it right now – and just settle for my very brief description. A player receives a certain amount of points at character creation and then allocates them into a variety of areas: characteristics, powers, skills, etc. There's a single commodity, these hero points, which players use in both character creation and advancement. The beauty of the system is its flexibility. You can create just about any power, any character you can imagine.

In terms of powers, you start out with a very generic description. Let's say you wanted a long range flame blast. First, a player selects "Energy Blast" (every blast in Champions starts out as an Energy Blast). Then he'd select a variety of advantages to simulate long range and damage over time. After applying these advantages, a player calculates the final cost. There's another step – what sort of power structure you can place the power in – but I'll leave that alone for the moment.

To compare this system to others, there is no such thing as a "Dark Blast" or an "Ice Blast" in the HERO System. Mechanically, everything is just an Energy Blast, but with different advantages and even limitations applied.

If we turn to Champions Online, we won't be using the exact same point system, power advantages, characteristics, power limitations or disadvantages (all of this is Hero lingo). We are using systems that are essentially the same, but fit the MMORPG genre somewhat better. In Champions Online, we will have Dark Blast, Ice Blast, etc. Now, a player will be able to affect how these things develop, but this won't be an orthogonal to the choices in the HERO system.

Our inspiration from the Champions RPG is to allow players to customize their powers. Rather than trying to copy the specific power advantages and limitations (and the +/- fractions), we're trying to achieve the same goal of power customization. So yes, we'll have advantages and limitations, but they won't be the same type in the HERO System core rulebook. They'll be different ...

   A little bit more in depth about how they're going to work the powers.  So its not quite as open as a lot of people thought it would be and it appears there will be some limitations to how customized you can get your powers.  It looks like it could still be a branching system for choosing powers and their effects, but not as restrictive as CoH.

Will non-combat skills come into play?

As an example, if a level has a reactor which may explode, blocking off entry to an area, can that reactor be set to normal with a 'Science' skill? Can a 'Security' roll be made to gain entrance to areas that you couldn't otherwise enter? (rabb1t)

Arkayne: Yes there is rabb1t! There are skills you can learn, develop, and use to affect your environment. For example, while raiding a VIPER base you may come across a team of VIPER agents accessing a Draysha Gas station to make themselves more powerful in combat. If your Science skill is high enough, you may be able to shut down the gas vents or reconfigure it so you can gain the benefits (and drawbacks) of the gas! We have a good distribution of Skill-based interactions throughout the game so players will have lots of fun figuring out how to turn an environment to their advantage or unlock bonus elements.

:blink:

   Now this to me was a complete surprise.  Skills?  And not in a halfassed, shoe-horned inventions kind of way?  I'm excited by this, but trying to be realistic about how minimal and small this system will actually be.  Still.  Skills! 

How do you intend to avoid Archvillain fights that are nothing more than high hit point slugouts? (Ex_Machina)

Arkayne: Excellent question, Ex_Machina! One of the things we learned from previous MMOs is that while a bag o'hit points villain is fun to take down once in awhile, you also need more interesting boss fights. As part of the Nemesis system, there will be special "Showdown" scenarios based on forced confrontations with your Nemesis and his or her minions. The scenario differs each time with different objectives so it'll keep your Nemesis fights interesting.

   I'm intrigued by that.  The idea of bosses being nothing but npc's with mega hitpoints has always disappointed me.  I likened it to the idea of the JLA in a full on assault on the Joker.  It just wasn't fun for everything.  Here's hoping they do find some interesting and unique ways to mix it up a bit.

What will the "death penalty" be? (Hythian)

Arkayne: The "death penalty" is fairly simple, Hythian. After a player is defeated, he or she can choose to wait until another nearby player with healilng powers puts them back in the fight. Failing that, the player can choose to go to a nearby recovery point. Those points are spread throughout zones and instance maps.

Regardless of what the player chooses to do, they have to pay a small price for defeat: upgrade degradation. Upgrades are pieces of equipment, imbuements, special training, etc., that players use to make their character more powerful. Every upgrade has a condition associated with it. Whenever a player is defeated any upgrades the player has slotted degrade. If the condition of an upgrade is reduced to 0, it stops providing a benefit. Upgrades can be restored to full effectiveness for a resource cost at most hero safe areas throughout the game. This represents items being repaired, re-exposure to experimental rays, combat technique montages, etc.

   At first upgrade degradation was equipment degradation.  The forums were about to drop into hell until the devs came back and clarified things a bit.  I'm still not quite sure how much I like it.  I always liked XP debt as an idea - there had to be some penalty to being defeated, I just thought it was a bit steep.
   So, I'm going to assume CO upgrades=CoH enhancements.  Instead of a 5 levels lifespan, they degrade with defeat.  Interesting.  No real opinion on this yet, I'll have to see how much of a benefit upgrades provide first.

I've got a question about the new combat system. In the newest Game Informer, it said that the combat feels more like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. So to touch upon a question from another thread, do we still auto-target our opponents and have a fireball follow them around corners and even through allies? Or can a selfless friend stand in front of you, defend you and take the hit? (Dusk)

Heretic: You will auto-target your opponent, but there are a couple of changes to how we are approaching player powers that should minimize the "fireball following them around corners" issue.

First, we have shortened activation times as much as possible. This makes the game feel faster and more responsive, but it also significantly reduces the frequency of projectiles following around corners.

Second, we are relying more heavily on charge-up and maintained attacks. The advantage of these type of attacks is that they give the player the opportunity to block or move to put walls and other objects in the way and close off line of sight from their attacker.

I'm still trying to understand the difference between activation time and charge-ups.  It seems they're saying this may actually encourage more interesting battles, by being able to use the environment to your advantage.  I'm all for that.

RTT

[Verfall]

One of the best things CoH did was the "AV's become EB's solo and on lower difficulties" thing. EB fights were way more fun than AV fights will ever be. You actually felt "super" when they had similar HP as you and didn't off you in one shot.

But this whole MUA with equipment and a monthly fee doesn't sound that great. And I swore I read that max team size was 5 people. Why not just pick up MUA at that point? You lose out on character customization, but you save the 15 bucks a month. and, while equipment and "loot" was inevitable, I much prefer the CoH system of loot. It's there, you can use it, but by no means do you need the uber loot to do anything. For a lot of players it just became a cash flow source at low levels. Add to the fact that CO is not going on a mostly instanced base, and will have outdoor mobs, how much of it is going to be standing around for hours waiting for a big baddy to spawn so you can maybe get that one uber helmet or something? Atleast with old school hami raids there was almost zero chance of your 2 or 3 hour wait being wasted.

[RTTingle]

    I keep getting this fear myself that CO is just going to be a really, really, really fancy version of Gauntlet.  I hope that doesn't turn out to be the case.
    You heard right, Devs said team limit is 5.  I don't care much for that either, but reportedly you can team up with other teams, so... take that as you may.

RTT

[Pyroclasm]

So far the power customization system doesn't bother me.  I'll just wait to reserve judgment until I see a more complete list of powers.  They say you can create any hero you want, but that isn't true if you still basically choose from a limited number of powers or power sets like in CoH.

Skills!  Yay!  I know I've been wanting other types of quests rather than beating up opponents.  Maybe we'll get to see some quests that will allow multiple ways of solving them, or perhaps quests that don't involve "defeating" a villain at all.

I'm still very keen on the Archvillains.  I do hope they will have something setup that will discourage players from gimping their archvillain.  I mean, if you create them, and you get XP or loot for defeating them or their plans, wouldn't many people simply make their archvillain weak to their hero's main method of attack?

The upgrade degradation sounds like the equipment degradation employed by WoW.  There your equipment suffers a condition loss when you respawn.  You then pay to get them fixed when they start to turn "red".  In WoW, this cost increases as you get higher and higher in level.

The instant and charging method sounds like that often used in platform shooters or fighting games.  Fighting game style might be something like holding the control in one direction then moving in the opposite direction with a button press.  It would be much like Guile's Sonic Boom or Blanka's tumble roll.  Shooter style might be like Megaman, tap the button for standard quick shot or hold the button down to develop a charge and then release for a big blast.  I'm inclinesd to think it will be shooter style.

Now when referring to team size, do they mean PuGs or Supergroups?  If it's just the play team, that's no big deal.  We've been limited before.

Unlike some people, I will not jump right into this game until I get a full understanding of how it will work and how it compares to other games.  I don't want to fall into the trap of buying the software and subscribing for several months only to find out how incredibly dull the game is. (Like CoH.)  Of course if they allow a person to use the character generator offline when you purchase the game, I will probably buy it even if the gameplay itself is bad.  It is worth it to me to buy the game if I can use the generator offline.

[captainspud]

WoW actually solves a lot of the problems you guys are bringing up, and you can guarantee they're going to be aping the best-in-the-industry MMO wherever they can.

One of the best things CoH did was the "AV's become EB's solo and on lower difficulties" thing. EB fights were way more fun than AV fights will ever be. You actually felt "super" when they had similar HP as you and didn't off you in one shot.

WoW has very few AV-level threats (final bosses in dungeons, and a very small number of roving giant monsters). Instead, most questline bosses have 1.5 to 2 times normal hit points, plus a number of unique abilities. The fights, instead of being "stand and smash" fights like CoH's AVs and EBs, are more like fighting Ice Mistral and Calystix-- the bad guys have interesting "technical" powers like summoning, debuffs, knockback, controls, final-fantasy-ripoff-invulnerability-part-of-the-time, or whatever else. There's no one single strategy for taking down Big Bads in WoW-- every one is different, and requires a different strategy. It's actually about ten times as entertaining as even the best CoH boss fights.

But this whole MUA with equipment and a monthly fee doesn't sound that great. And I swore I read that max team size was 5 people. Why not just pick up MUA at that point?

Everquest is almost identical to many RPGs that existed at the time. People play MMOs for the social interaction, not just for the game content itself. I played CoH for over a year after it stopped being fun just because I liked the people who played.

while equipment and "loot" was inevitable, I much prefer the CoH system of loot. It's there, you can use it, but by no means do you need the uber loot to do anything.

This is a common misconception about loot games-- generally speaking, loot is only really needed in the end game. When you're levelling, you just wear whatever you find, and you're fine. The loot grind in most games is simply a way to keep max-level players engaged, to keep their subscription fees coming in. But if, like me, you're not interested in the loot grind, you can just hit max level and start another guy. Or, you can do the end-game "entrance level" content which is still quite fun. Loot grind is there for those who want it, and it's skippable for those who don't.

Add to the fact that CO is not going on a mostly instanced base, and will have outdoor mobs

I'll come right out and say it: though I initially hated the all-outdoor style of WoW, ultimately it was only because it wasn't what I was used to. After playing through the game, I can say unequivocally that I much, MUCH prefer the all-outdoor style of gameplay. It just means that the game designers take what you would do in one of CoH's missions (run here, click these four glowies, kill this boss) and put it in a specific spot outdoors. All of the same varieties of gameplay are there-- a lot more, actually-- but you just don't have to wade through forty thousand goons to get to every piece of it. It's hard to properly stress how much I prefer WoW's levelling content to CoH's. In CoH, you basically do the EXACT SAME MISSION, over and over, from 1 to 50. Enter map, wipe out contents, [fulfill mission objective]. That's it. Over and over and over and over again. They put different enemies in it, and it changes as the players get more powers, but you're just doing the same bloody thing over and over again. With the outdoor model, they can strip out the mindless goon grind in every mission, and put more emphasis on making the mission objectives more challenging and interesting.

how much of it is going to be standing around for hours waiting for a big baddy to spawn so you can maybe get that one uber helmet or something?

Guys with loot tables don't spawn on the world map. Big guys on the world map have the same drop rates as every other guy on the world map. Only guys in instances have specific loot drops.

The point of this post isn't to say "WoW is t3h @w3s0m3!11!!". It's a very good game, and it was fun for six months, but it had just as many problems as any other game I've ever played. All I'm pointing out is that the specific problems that you guys bring up already have well-known solutions, which can be easily incorporated into CO if they want to.

[Verfall]

I despised WoW for the simple reason that if you pulled more than one mob, you were dead. You could run, and hope to make it away, but if you were in a cave environment, you often ran into another mob. Nothing like playing the Tank class of the game, and getting beaten down by 2 mobs.

Nevermind the fact, besides Spud, the one other person I ran into in the game said 2 words to me, "hey" followed by "arse". I expect CO to be way better than WoW, for me anyway. Even Guild Wars was better than WoW. But add the fact I'm a moderate CoH fanboy, and the fact I really dislike Statesdouche, I'm of course going to be skeptical to CO. But right now, all I'm seeing is a list of features basically stolen from the CoH whiteboard, mixed with generic MMO features and sprinkled with a pretty good background that I expect to be brutally mangled by their storyline dept.

But just pray gecko isn't handling powers in CO. Those of you who complain about CoH's powers system can only point your finger at that "genius".

[RTTingle]

I been meaning to get tot his the last few days...

WoW actually solves a lot of the problems you guys are bringing up, and you can guarantee they're going to be aping the best-in-the-industry MMO wherever they can.

Really?  I have had absolutely NO desire to play any kind of D&D game - I burned out on that genre before I hit my teens.  What you've said his piqued my interest in the game - I'd be interested and willing to give it a look if its, well --- fun to play.  Do they have any trial offers available?

WoW has very few AV-level threats (final bosses in dungeons, and a very small number of roving giant monsters). Instead, most questline bosses have 1.5 to 2 times normal hit points, plus a number of unique abilities. The fights, instead of being "stand and smash" fights like CoH's AVs and EBs, are more like fighting Ice Mistral and Calystix-- the bad guys have interesting "technical" powers like summoning, debuffs, knockback, controls, final-fantasy-ripoff-invulnerability-part-of-the-time, or whatever else. There's no one single strategy for taking down Big Bads in WoW-- every one is different, and requires a different strategy. It's actually about ten times as entertaining as even the best CoH boss fights.

And that is what COH so needs!  It's amazing and dumbfounding to me this isn't the norm in COH.  Slapping a gazzillion hp's on a boss does not a challenge make.  I'd love to fight baddies that required a bit of thinking, planning and strategy.  You know, say for example a character like Mynx who kept moving and jumping around and until you actually landed something that planted her --- could you then really damage her.  Other characters who are human, who shouldn't have a gazzillion hp's, but have an army of NPC's around them doing buffs and etc that you have to defeat first.  Stuff like that.  Does WOW really have that?  Damnit... why doesn't COH?

Whats your favorite example of that in WOW, Spuds?

I played CoH for over a year after it stopped being fun just because I liked the people who played.

Been there, done that.  Sad, isn't it?  I kept playing until I finally hit 50 with EC.  Soon after that, even the people couldn't keep me around.

Add to the fact that CO is not going on a mostly instanced base, and will have outdoor mobs

I'll come right out and say it: though I initially hated the all-outdoor style of WoW, ultimately it was only because it wasn't what I was used to. After playing through the game, I can say unequivocally that I much, MUCH prefer the all-outdoor style of gameplay. It just means that the game designers take what you would do in one of CoH's missions (run here, click these four glowies, kill this boss) and put it in a specific spot outdoors. All of the same varieties of gameplay are there-- a lot more, actually-- but you just don't have to wade through forty thousand goons to get to every piece of it. It's hard to properly stress how much I prefer WoW's levelling content to CoH's. In CoH, you basically do the EXACT SAME MISSION, over and over, from 1 to 50. Enter map, wipe out contents, [fulfill mission objective]. That's it. Over and over and over and over again. They put different enemies in it, and it changes as the players get more powers, but you're just doing the same bloody thing over and over again. With the outdoor model, they can strip out the mindless goon grind in every mission, and put more emphasis on making the mission objectives more challenging and interesting.

This is interesting.  It's different and less of a grind outdoors because you can avoid all the mobs.  I don't think that means COH instanced missions are bad, as just really poorly designed.  I like the idea of going into a building and having to accomplish a goal.  The idea of being able to avoid all the mobs outdoors and doing you're goal easily sounds like a swing all the way in the other direction where it is too easy.  I think there needs to be a balance between the two.  It would certainly be more interesting if the instanced missions were a bit more dynamic, for example having multiple entrances and exits.  I think that would help the problem a bit.

Again, I'm really curious about this.  Whats the best example you can give me of a WOW mission thats similar to a COH mission --- but better?

The point of this post isn't to say "WoW is t3h @w3s0m3!11!!". It's a very good game, and it was fun for six months, but it had just as many problems as any other game I've ever played. All I'm pointing out is that the specific problems that you guys bring up already have well-known solutions, which can be easily incorporated into CO if they want to.

You've actually made me very curious as to the game Spud and very tempted to try it.  You figure at this point, people would be able to take the best of other previous MMO's, and keep adding to it.  Yet they don't.  I would really like to see CO take the best of a lot of things and use it effectively.  Its a shame we won't see a lot of this in COH, of course, its an older game, but they've really backed themselves into a corner.  CO has a great chance to really take the genre and game in general and make it shine.  I hope COH can really do something as well.   I doubt it, I really, really do.  Hopefully NC Soft will apply the resources.

I honestly don't care which game is better.  I have no allegiance to either.  I just want to play a fun game and really, really enjoy myself.  Whichever one does it, gets my money.

RTT

[captainspud]

Whats your favorite example of that in WOW, Spuds?

A couple quick examples off the top of my head:

1) A miniboss in a dungeon who is a Shaman. Shamans in-game drop "Totems"-- basically DE Emanators. Some heal, some resist mez, some do AoE damage. For this boss, he drops five different totems-- three of them you can generally ignore, but there are two you need to keep track of. One causes him to heal at a rate far greater than the damage a five-man team can inflict. The other is an impact bomb-- it lasts for five seconds, after which it disappears. But if you shoot it, it explodes and takes your whole team with it. The fun bit? Those last two look exactly the same. :) So, there are two things you need to do. First of all, the tank needs to keep the Shammy constantly running back and forth up the hallway you find him in, so that when he drops a totem, you'll run him out of its radius within a few seconds. Secondly, you need to have one of the team's damage people on totem duty, watching for when the tall red totems drop, targeting them to see which it is, and if it's a healer totem, you nuke it. It's a really fun fight, as everybody has something to do and the fight is always moving, and there's always the tension that someone will accidentally hit a bomb totem by accident.

Really, I could pick just about any of the dungeon bosses or minibosses. They ALL have a trick.

2) There's a mission where you need to kill this weird giant ghost vulture... thing. It constantly circles the sky over the zone, but it never gets low enough to shoot. So, you need to lure it down. If you run across the zone, you'll find its mate, who is still alive. You kill it, and take its body. You bring it to the camp of these bird-people-things, who are also ghosts, and you sacrifice the body at a large totem. This pisses off the main ghost vulture thing, which swoops down and attacks you. Throughout the fight it flaps its wings and throws you around.

Quite a few mission bosses are summoned in one way or another; this reduces the amount of "crap, that team just killed him" waits.

3) There's this thing that walks around the first zone of the expansion world, called a Fel Reaver. It's basically a 200ft-tall walking steam train. It looks pretty sweet. It walks around, and you can tell it's coming because the ground shakes and it actually makes quite a bit of noise. If you DON'T notice it coming, or you do and don't get out of the way, it simply walks on you and you die. This doesn't happen terribly often, but rather just enough to make you wary. It's a constant fixture of the first zone, practically a part of the map-- you'll be fighting near the road, and suddenly someone yells, "REAVER!", and everybody just knows to scramble out of the way.

So it's with more than a little surprise that, once you hit 70, you pick up a quest chain to forge a key for a particular dungeon, and you're told that only one fire will do: the fire in the chest of a Fel Reaver. The monstrosity that was instant death 10 levels before, you now have to track down and topple. It's a huge task, requiring a full team and careful planning, but it's tremendously empowering when you pull it off-- it's one of a few things they get you to do at 70 to really make you feel that you've "arrived" and are just as powerful as the heroic figures you've fought along for your adventuring career.

Whats the best example you can give me of a WOW mission thats similar to a COH mission --- but better?

It's not really a matter of "this mission was similar, but better". It's more that the kind of missions CoH makes you do, just work a lot better with an open game world. If you need to recover an artifact, you can go about that any way you like-- enter the camp it's in by wherever you choose, kill as few or as many guards as you want, and then grab the thingie. But the nice thing is, if you've got four missions that tell you to do various things in a particular camp, you can do all of them at the same time. Enter the base, and fight your way to one end to click a glowie. Then go up into a treehouse to kill a boss. And all the while, you're doing kill quotas on the camp members, and collecting drop items ("collect 10 blue feathers") to advance yet another quest. In CoH, you'd have to run into (seemingly) the same map and kill the same guys, over and over again, to complete four different missions.

There's even indoor segments-- you'll often run into castles, or underground cavern complexes, or what have you. Generally speaking, these maps are logically laid out, with entrances and exits where it makes sense to put them. "Defeat All Enemies" is never a victory condition-- you're always there for a reason, accomplishing a specific task.

You can get a 14-day trial of WoW on their main site if you want to see how it works. I'm not a fan of fantasy settings myself, but WoW's interesting visuals (Omg, bright colours in a fantasy game!) and heavy steampunk influence make it relatively palatable for me.

That said: the wait for travel powers (mounts) is interminable. ;_;

[Valandar]

It's not really a matter of "this mission was similar, but better". It's more that the kind of missions CoH makes you do, just work a lot better with an open game world. If you need to recover an artifact, you can go about that any way you like-- enter the camp it's in by wherever you choose, kill as few or as many guards as you want, and then grab the thingie. But the nice thing is, if you've got four missions that tell you to do various things in a particular camp, you can do all of them at the same time. Enter the base, and fight your way to one end to click a glowie. Then go up into a treehouse to kill a boss. And all the while, you're doing kill quotas on the camp members, and collecting drop items ("collect 10 blue feathers") to advance yet another quest. In CoH, you'd have to run into (seemingly) the same map and kill the same guys, over and over again, to complete four different missions.

Yeah... about the only time you can get multiple mish's done at once in COX is if you have two different "Defeat X of Y Villains" where both have the same type of villain (and location, if applicable), or if you hace a "Defeat X of Y Villains" and a Door or Train mish (in the same zone, if applicable) against the same type of villain.

[BlueBard]

There really is no reason why CoX can't overhaul the way they do bosses and AV's in a similar fashion... other than development time and system performance.

And there's even precedent for the outdoors missions... the various 'train' missions that deliver you to an instanced outdoors map.  Granted, it's only in a limited way, but maybe could be leveraged?

Issue 10 was groundbreaking for CoX in the sense that a World event (Rikti invasion) could be triggered by one team taking on the TF.  Imagine if some of the 'monster' attacks could be triggered in a similar way?

Really, I think there's still room for CoX to make significant improvements in gameplay.  The real show-stopper is going to be whether they can get the development time and whether there are limitations in the engine/AI that can't be overcome without degrading performance or starting over from scratch.

The root problem that CoX cannot easily overcome is the inherent rigidity of the power system.  CO could conceivably eat CoX's lunch there.  But it sounds like issue 12 will be a step in the right direction.

[Pyroclasm]

I haven't played CoX for a long time (so I don't know if it was changed), but one of the inherent differences between outdoor environments in WoW and CoX is there are no loading times between world areas except between continents or dimensions or during a long distance port.  Since Champions Online is claiming to have a "world" environment, I'm expecting the seamless transition between areas.  Such a method of world delivery contributes to the immersion factor.

[Lightning Bug]

On WoW:
Not to derail the thread too much, but I really like WoW and have been playing a lot of it lately.  I have a level 70 blood elf hunter on Norgannon and some other alts I'm having fun with.  RT, if you want to pm me I'll tell you whatever you want to know about it.

On CoX:
I absolutely agree with everyone's comments on the rediculous difficulty of AV fights, and the lack of more reasonable costumed villains to fight.  It is the one single thing that detracts from the comic book flavor of the CoX universe...and I would venture to suggest that this is reflected in the miserable failure of the comic.  A hero is only as good as the villains he faces, and when you only have the Arachnos commanders and the evil Freedom Phalanx, well...

On CO:
One thing that really bugged me about CoX (and that I'm dying to have addressed in CO) is the "level 1" state of your hero.  It's annoying that you have to invest so many hours just to get a few powers and a cape so you can even begin to come close to matching your character concept...not to mention auras at 30?  Really?  Just to glow?  I would love to see CO address this in a similiar way to how it is done in the PnP game.  It is entirely possible to build a viable hero with multiple powers (and capes and auras!) from the start...advancement is all about increasing your powers, and perhaps discovering new ones, etc.  I'm not sure I'm communicating this clearly, but basically I want to be able to make Lightning Bug (with flight, a few electical abillities and WINGS without having to have Meej buy them for me for millions of millions of influence at the consignment house 3 years after I created the character) and have her rougly match the concept in my head when I first create the character.

[BlueBard]

Amen.  Level 1-2 heroes in CoH hardly qualify to be called 'super'.  I don't even start feeling 'super' until about level 10-16.  If CO fixes that, they'll be so far ahead of the game it won't be funny.

I'm sure they recognize that, to some degree.  Levelling in CoX at the lowest levels has never been faster than it is now.  Between nerfing XP Debt below level 10, the XP smoothing, better drops, 'bonus' powers for completing Safeguards, 'bonus' Veteran powers, etc., you can level up above 10 pretty quickly and start getting that feel.

I seriously doubted that CoX would ever get better, but the last few issues have progressively made me optimistic that they'll at least make an attempt to improve the game experience.  It's too much to hope that they'll chuck the AT system altogether, but the things they're doing now are certainly buying them time to do more.

[Verfall]

Amen.  Level 1-2 heroes in CoH hardly qualify to be called 'super'.  I don't even start feeling 'super' until about level 10-16.  If CO fixes that, they'll be so far ahead of the game it won't be funny.

I'm sure they recognize that, to some degree.  Levelling in CoX at the lowest levels has never been faster than it is now.  Between nerfing XP Debt below level 10, the XP smoothing, better drops, 'bonus' powers for completing Safeguards, 'bonus' Veteran powers, etc., you can level up above 10 pretty quickly and start getting that feel.

I seriously doubted that CoX would ever get better, but the last few issues have progressively made me optimistic that they'll at least make an attempt to improve the game experience.  It's too much to hope that they'll chuck the AT system altogether, but the things they're doing now are certainly buying them time to do more.

Just to drive the point home, why could CoX have gotten so much better over the last few issues? Could it be because a certain someone is long gone? And which game is that certain someone working on now?

Chew on that maybe.

[captainspud]

Um, I'd say the timing suggests that it's more because they got rid of NCSoft. Large corporations don't like big changes, and it's likely that the Suits locked down any changes that altered the game too dramatically, for fear of driving off the portion of the game who like it how it is. With NC gone, the developers were free to unlock the wish list and do the things that made the old higher-ups too nervous.

[Verfall]

Um, I'd say the timing suggests that it's more because they got rid of NCSoft. Large corporations don't like big changes, and it's likely that the Suits locked down any changes that altered the game too dramatically, for fear of driving off the portion of the game who like it how it is. With NC gone, the developers were free to unlock the wish list and do the things that made the old higher-ups too nervous.

Haha, you mean NCsoft got rid of Cryptic? Since NCsoft owns CoX now and all. The good stuff came under NCsoft's watch, not Jack and Cryptic.

I got to prove Spud wrong!

*does a happy dance*

[captainspud]

That still doesn't mean anything. Jack's been working on MUO for over a year, and had no further contact with the CoH team during that time. Posi had a year to make changes, and he didn't. Whatever happened to make the team go into overdrive happened because of the split, which did NOT involve the sudden removal of Jack. So actually, you're just as wrong as me.

So, updated wild guess: NC knew people would be hesitant at the split (which we were), and told the team to fire off some "wish list" items to keep the fans happy. They also knew at this point that Jack's team was making a superhero MMO, and that if they didn't get their crap together and fix CoH, it was going to lose its entire playerbase to the New & Shiny.

No matter how you slice it, the "new golden age" of CoH isn't about personnel shake-ups. The team of people who left, left way before the changes started happening. Whatever the motivation was, the new changes were due to someone's request/order to pour more money in. Either Posi requisitioned some funding and got it, or the higher-ups predicted the turmoil of the split and impending new competition, and pre-emptively fed money to the team.

It wasn't about "MWAHAHAHA JACK'S GONE NOW WE CAN DO WHAT WE WANT!". The CoH team is working at a disadvantage now that CO's been announced, and someone made the (very smart) decision to minimize the damage by overhauling CoH.

Hate on States all you want; Posi sat around like a useless lump for just as long as States did. States is not Dr. Doom, nor is Posi Superman. CO isn't going to be a festering turd just because Jack's at the helm, and CoH isn't suddenly going to become a superhero holodeck just because he's gone.

Shades of grey, my friend. Shades of grey.

[Verfall]

That still doesn't mean anything. Jack's been working on MUO for over a year, and had no further contact with the CoH team during that time. Posi had a year to make changes, and he didn't. Whatever happened to make the team go into overdrive happened because of the split, which did NOT involve the sudden removal of Jack. So actually, you're just as wrong as me.

So, updated wild guess: NC knew people would be hesitant at the split (which we were), and told the team to fire off some "wish list" items to keep the fans happy. They also knew at this point that Jack's team was making a superhero MMO, and that if they didn't get their crap together and fix CoH, it was going to lose its entire playerbase to the New & Shiny.

No matter how you slice it, the "new golden age" of CoH isn't about personnel shake-ups. The team of people who left, left way before the changes started happening. Whatever the motivation was, the new changes were due to someone's request/order to pour more money in. Either Posi requisitioned some funding and got it, or the higher-ups predicted the turmoil of the split and impending new competition, and pre-emptively fed money to the team.

It wasn't about "MWAHAHAHA JACK'S GONE NOW WE CAN DO WHAT WE WANT!". The CoH team is working at a disadvantage now that CO's been announced, and someone made the (very smart) decision to minimize the damage by overhauling CoH.

Hate on States all you want; Posi sat around like a useless lump for just as long as States did. States is not Dr. Doom, nor is Posi Superman. CO isn't going to be a festering turd just because Jack's at the helm, and CoH isn't suddenly going to become a superhero holodeck just because he's gone.

Shades of grey, my friend. Shades of grey.

Actually, MUO was announced on September 27, 2006. Issue 8, the first issue noted for starting to produce things players were asking for came out November 28th, 2006. Inventions hit the next May. So it took 2 months for Posi and co. to start tossing out the good stuff, and 7 months before a huge change came about. Not exactly a year now was it? The split was announced less than a month before issue 11 dropped. They had already delivered 3 solid issues that had been very well received, and issue 11 itself would have to have been in development for at least 4 months prior to the split announcement.

But I've never said it was a case of "Jack's gone" so much as "we're not tied to Jack's vision and ideas". Posi has proven to be a much better developer in regards to player satisfaction, and Castle and BAB's pay a lot of attention to the playerbase and admit when things aren't working. The Rage issue recently showed just how much they actually listen. Compare that to Geko and the broken regen numbers on their personal test server being used as the basis for nerfing the live version.

And from the forums, I'd say the majority of forum users were far from hesitant about the split. In fact, it would seem the majority were happy to toss Jack out on his keister by this point.

I'll say it again, CO will only be a good game if Jack's ideas are run through a strainer by someone with a good head for game design. CoV had Zeb Cook prior to Grandville and all its shortcomings. And when you get down too it, CoV is the better game. Unfortunately it suffers from CoH already being established, people having large amounts of funds over there and the odd moral conundrum some people have about playing a bad guy. But I'm willing to bet if you polled just the people here on this site, the majority would say they had more fun playing a villain.

Jack is an idea man who needs a publicist and a professional game designer to make his stuff work. By himself, you get nothing but feces.

[BlueBard]

Whatever the reason, it does seem that the old "Like it or Leave" mentality has departed the CoX team and that the changes that are being made are cumulatively making the game a better experience.

XP Smoothing or Inventions or Rikti Invasions alone wouldn't have been enough to keep me from leaving the game.  Even the addition of new powersets wouldn't have done it.  It's the intelligent evolution of the game that is getting my attention.  Whoever is responsible for that is the one keeping me playing.

It ain't States, might not even be Positron, but it's definitely good for CoX.

BTW... I'm one of those who doesn't have more fun playing as a villain.  I won't argue that Villainside doesn't look better visually or that the AT's are better designed in some ways.  Just can't be happy doing rotten things, even if it is just a game, unless I'm really really frustrated about something and want to take it out on something that isn't real.  It's not odd.  It's just moral.

[Dr.Volt]

I know.

But it mentions having a "points based system", and if those things aren't rigidly controlled... ouch.

BTW, I still have my copy of "The Island of Doctor Destroyer" module...

Those laser cages were nasty as I recall!  ;)  Great to see so many fellow vet Champions players.  I used to GM a Champions campaign back in the day.  Champions for me was always THE Superhero RPG of choice for the sheer fact of it's flexibility.  You could build nearly any power or hero you could conceive of if you had the know how.  And it was heavy on skills as well.  And if CO reflects that system of flexibility (and it sure seems so) it is something to be excited about!

I don't know about the game play...and I'll defer most of that to you who are more experienced.  I will say this, I hope that they allow characters to fly, teleport etc straight away.  I just don't like that COH limits movement powers to like level 14 or something.  And I concurr with everyone who say that is best to have costumed bad guys to battle.  I like the fact that solo play will be fully supported.  Iow, you don't have to join a team if you don't want to.  And I really do like the fact that players are going to be able to design their own arch enemy who "hunts" them.  With the pen, paper, dice game it was common for a hero to have the disadvantage "hunted".  Which brings up a good question, has any of the designers said if players will get more points for powers and skills by taking on various disadvantages???  That would ROCK!  I do have to say that the lack of capes is a bummer.  But COH didn't capes immediately either (or wings for that matter).  They added them in later.  So maybe it will be so with CO.

I have to say that I'm pretty stoked about this.  I've always enjoyed the Champions Universe.  For example, I was amused to read about "Stronghold" (the classic super prison) and that the most powerful character in there is "Mentor".  I remember that guy!!!  And I like Doctor D's new look.  As I recall Defender was initially a powered armored hero...this is definitely a new take for him.

I'm going to go dig out my old Champions characters and see if I can't replicate them.  Very exciting!

Does anyone know when CO is to be released and/or how much they plan to charge for it?

[Valandar]

Yeah, Defender was their take on Iron Man... Crusader was obviously Captain America. Grond was The Hulk, Brick was The Thing, Doctor Destroyer was Doc Doom, and so on. Almost all of the core Champions characters were either nearly direct ripoffs of existing comics characters, or were versions "through a mirror darkly". Rainbow Archer, for example, was an evil female Green Arrow, Mentor was an evil Professor X, and more.

[cripp12]

anyone know what the cost is for this.  Free would be great.

[captainspud]

anyone know what the cost is for this.  Free would be great.

I see no reason for it to break from the MMO model of a $50 boxed game and $10-20 a month.

[BlueBard]

anyone know what the cost is for this.  Free would be great.

I see no reason for it to break from the MMO model of a $50 boxed game and $10-20 a month.

If for no other reason than to recoup the initial investment toward getting the game off the ground.

'Free' MMO's are usually organically grown, web-based, low tech, and either ad supported or based on lots of mini payments for access to special gear and such.

Running servers costs money, even if the development was free.  Which it ain't.

[Dr.Volt]

I was reading somemore from the CO website.  I love the description of Millenium City: http://www.champions-online.com/worlds/millennium_city

It definitely has a Paragon City feel to it.  But then again, Paragon City doesn't have Viper Agents lurking about it's alleys! 

[Dweomer Knight]

Actually, I think CoH blows CoV out of the water in every conceivable way.  CoV is just a more linear, more repitative version of CoH with different dialogue where everything is shaded grey.  CoH is infinitely more replayble.

There was an interview with Jack on Game Informer about "what went wrong with CoX" and he was pretty candid about the mistakes he made.  And it's not like he's designing the game by himself.  The "Jack 1s suxxor!" arguement means nothing to me and I'm amazed and saddened at how many people on many different forums are actually hoping that CO will fail for no other reason than so they can say, "See!  Jack is the suxxor!"

DK

[Lightning Bug]

Part of CoH's problem for a player base like the one represented here is that there is a fundamental disconnect between the game world and what ostensibly are its 4-color roots.  As mentioned elsewhere, everything about AV encounters is wrong if you're looking for the most basic superhero genre convention...hero vs. villain battles.  Instead, the developers decided to create what is basically just another MMO, with scads of nameless foes standing around waiting to be defeated.  It shuns these conventions severely enough that a successful comic can't even be created based the CoX universe....in fact, read the final issues of the last failed attempt at a CoH comic and you'll see that the writers basically gave up trying to make the world make sense and broke the 4th wall, introducing game elements that make no sense in the context of a superhero story (I was appaled when the Freedom Phalanx discovered the badge on top of City Hall in Atlas Park).  While the backstory for the CoH universe is filled with really cool stuff that fits the genre perfectly, the present day Paragon City as presented to the gamer is essentially Generic MMO World 018 populated by superheroes with nothing left to do that fits the genre once they've saved the lady getting her purse stolen and stopped a gang from breaking into a warehouse/office building/car.  For pete's sake, heroes can't even interact with a burning building in a manner true to the genre...superheroes with innate powers more than suitable for handling the situation are forced to get (and keep refilled) water cannons Super Mario style and particpate in an immersion breaking mini-game. 

(Don't get me wrong...I love CoH and think it's a great game.  I just don't think it represents the genre well at all, and for players like us I think that makes a large difference in how much enjoyment we get out of it.)

In terms of the genre, CoV is even worse.  Once you've broken into the bank and had the hero show up to stop you, that's the last genre experience you're likely to have for the next 16 levels (which is as far as I've gotten as a villain).  Again, interaction and conflict with costumed heroes is missing almost entirely, and instead villains fight giant snake people inexplicably occupying tiki-themed casinos.  In other words, Generic MMO World 019.  Again I reference the last CoH comic series as an example of how awkward it is to work this setting into a traditional comic book superhero story. 

As far as the debate about Jack and company, let me remind everyone that CoH started with a character creation system essentially lifted from the Champions rule books.  The early alpha testers (friends and family of the developers I believe) were having issues unknowingly gimping their characters and being unable to have a satisfactory game experience...thus CoH was delayed and the AT system was forced on us.  If the developers had a little more experience, they might have figured out a way for the original concept to work (obviously, since something similiar will exist in CO), but basically we're playing what is Cryptic's Plan-B game.  The fact that it's as good as it is has to be proof that somewhere these guys have some talent doing this.  And if CO is allowed to proceed to conclusion from this point, without the entire character creation system having to be redone from the ground up, I think we'll see an entirely different animal than what we got with CoX.