Posted on March 30, 2012, in Episodes and tagged champions online, superhero, superhero mmo. Bookmark the permalink. 23 Comments.
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Posted on March 30, 2012, in Episodes and tagged champions online, superhero, superhero mmo. Bookmark the permalink. 23 Comments.
MMO Grinder 
It’s about time for a Backtrack episode to the game, right? :)
Let’s see, all of the Adventure packs are free to play, instead of having to purchase them.
The Comic Series are also free to play.
Freeform heroes are still costs US$50 in the cash shop, and are the greatest feature of the game, which could allow you to make any kind of character you want. Martial Arts DPS, sure. Fire Tank, no problem. Battlesuit hero with a giant sword that does lots of melee and ranged AoE damage and heals the party, .
Also, the skill/crafting system has been removed and replaced with the Mod and Fusion system, which works a lot like enchanting items in Neverwinter.
They added Specialization points to customize your hero, which works like Neverwinter’s Feat Points.
A recent update last week balanced the attack and defense stats of all the loots, which won’t be noticed by new comers.
Aside from there, there hasn’t been much added to the game in the way of new areas, missions, or zones since the game went Free-To-Play. According the Cryptic Studios Wikipedia page, when Perfect World bought the studio “the game (Champions Online) was placed in maintenance mode, with no further updates planned.”
Oh, and there’s vehicles like hover tanks and fighter jets that you can buy for US$15 or hope to win through a lockbox.
I only played this once, back when the LordKat mafia was big into playing and basically just trolling the role players around in the main city. I loved the characters we all created, Arclight had said my character was basically a super saiyan Jay Leno, and he basically was. It was pretty fun, and I might play it again if I ever stop playing World of Tanks. I found the controls a bit wonky, but that’s probably because I was not really used to the style of control it used.
I just re-upped my CoH subscription and am sad to see you have to unlock your characters as well when you go from being a freemium player to a VIP.. Unfortunately they only give about 12 character unlock tokens for a server, with additional 10(?) Global unlocks, too. It sucks to hear that when your subscription lapses on Champions, you’re also locked out of your characters.
I liked this review, especially since Champions Online and Star Trek Online were two MMO’s I couldn’t really play on my old system due to the constraints of my video card (the best video card I could find for my old P4 processor, anyways). I think the show is well balanced, informative, and concise.
I was on the beta test for when they went to free to play. I played it for a bit as a solo, and then got annoyed that they basically make it specifically for teams. For a game about super heroes, they sure did their best to make you seem normal. Even if you are going tank, the enemies always seemed to do too much damage to you if you were on your own. there was a move that allows you to block (which didn’t work), and I ended up dying more often than not because the simplest mooks could take me to school if I was on my own.
The whole idea of a super hero game, in my opinion, is the ability to allow you to live the dream of being a solo super hero. making it so that you lose unless you have multiple people to back you up defeats that purpose.
With regards to the Adventure Packs:
Apparently Cryptic agrees that locking off these with a pay wall was a bad move as they’re not making any more and instead focusing on Comic Series, which are basically the same thing (I suspect Aftershock was originally meant as an Adventure Pack). Really, all they are short adventures, not entire zones or anything really impressive like that. Only one of them is worth actually getting, Resistance. It’s fast paced, has some decent rewards and drops, and is fun as hell. Serpent Lantern can usually be gotten via a promotion via Alienware (which also gives out the Devastator Archtype and Norse costume sets), but it was also the first and the dullest of the 3 and very repetitive. Demonflame tells a better story than Serpent Lantern, but is just as repetitive, if not more so in some ways.
Lai-Lai, yeah you did screw something up. There is no reason for you to ever have to grind experience in Champions, and missions show up easily enough. Aside from the highest level areas (the Lairs) CO is very easy to solo in, even on Elite level. I actually crippled myself with one character (only use the two base offensive powers) to see how hard it was, and it wasn’t hard at all.
High Priest Dre: The comic outlines are annoying as hell, I turned them off and the game looks much, much better (didn’t help that my computer really didn’t like them, caused all sorts of graphical glitches). It’s very bright and colorful, and the environments are spectacular. If you really want to see what people can do with the character creator, go to some of the Costume Contests they hold pretty much every day and you’ll be shocked at how good this game can look and be.
Finally, if you want to buy anything outside of additional character slots, costume pieces or archtypes, get a hideout. Just one, of course. Silver characters have an upper limit to how much gold (globals) they can store on their person (250), but hideouts have a bank on them where you can store a few items and all the gold you want. Trust me, it’s totally worth it.
I’m not going to lie to you, I sucked at this game. Hahaha. When your AADD (adult attention deficit disorder) is as bad as mine, your strategies are weak & your mind is easily distracted. That’s why I never play FPSs. II’d never played anything quite like it before & had a lot of “wtf am I supposed to do” moments. What I should have done is used a walkthrough for my first character.
I freaking loved the Ice archtype. For me, it was the perfect soloing class. Yeah its supposed to be a “tanking” class. But it also has the ability to deal massive spike damage, inflict CC debuffs, and most importantly, use interrupts that work on the SuperVillians. Better yet, this is all with the standard F2P archtype, so you dont even need free-form to gain access to all of it.
this game at least seeing you play looks remarkably like DCUO from ice being used to tank to using dual swords as fighting style choice,i never really cared much for Champions online thou,the only reason i did play DCUO for a little while is what i believe made that game a preferable choice over this game, at least and i believe would made over city of heroes as well was it not for the event,and that is the fact that you’re not dealing with very similar bot not really because o trademark characters,they use the batman,superman or whatever and if you’re into the comics but not MMOS it might bring you into that unlike CoH or Champions.
PS:hoping you’ll get into DCUO at some point as well,even if it is just to finish the hero MMOS subject,at least until marvel decides to release theirs(the real one)
I tried to get into Champions some point after it went ftp and was on Steam, but the art style turned me away. Even the UI repelled me. It seems like a silly thing to not like a game over, but it similer to why I don’t like WoW. If you don’t like looking at a videogame, you can’t really play it
On the subject of superhero mmos, I should get around to playing DCUO more. I like what I have played of it so far.
Too bad I can’t stand the way this game looks. Sounds like they improved in some ways on City of, which I played the Hell out of back when it was still sub only, which I may have mentioned back on that review.
I also dislike WoW design, especially the buff dragon-like male elves, though the main reason I won’t play it is because I can’t stick with an MMO long enough to justify even a one month subscription, I go BACK to games sure, but I like to circulate between a fistfull every 2 weeks.
Ooh, I’ve actually played this one before. I don;t know wtf I did wrong, but as soon as I left the tutorial area I ran out of quests in no time & tried grinding on thugs in the park, I was unable to defeat even 1 of the lowest level enemies. I can’t remember if they come at you like a mob, or if you just start off THAT weak. I guess it just really punishes you for soloing, but of all the MMOs that shouldn’t this was one of them. I hope I don’t get that shit in DCUO, Marvel Online, or City of Heroes.
So this is one of the few MMOs that actually starts off with the graphics set to low ahead of time. I leave the tutorial area & get to the city & it’s like “wow, these graphics are shit.” Then you crank up the graphics & it’s like “holy shit, what a difference.”
In DCAU, I’ve only gotten as far as character creation (not in the mood to play it just yet) & I think the Champions character creation is better, though on costume design they’re equally good.
I hated the skill research thing. If they’re replacing that with a skill tree, then I should try this game again.
DCUO is very good for making you feel strong against henchmen. In the tutorial you fight about 6-7 enemies in each group without a problem. Obviously once you get outside it’s a LITTLE tougher, but as long as you figure out your weapon’s combos and you figure out certain attacks you need to block or evade, it’s really easy to take out many enemies at once. That’s even without using powers. =P
Do people really bitch at you for mentioning WoW all the time? I don’t watch your stuff on other sites really. Seems silly. It’s just the graying 300 pound gorilla in the room, you’d think it would be weird not to mention it.
It’s partly because some people are simply sick of hearing about it, and then there’s brand pride combined with sour grapes that makes people bitter about how successful it is. Personally, I only really dislike WoW when it’s held up as some beacon of how all MMOs should be. Because that’s what most MMOs are trying to be, and it makes for a very dull selection.
Keywords that break into wars on gamer forums:
*Maple stroy clone.
*World of Warcraft.
*Halo.
*The ending to Mass Effect 3.
*”Diablo killer.”
*Modern JRPGs.
One other keyword pairing: “Soloable MMO”
I have this friend who doesn’t like grouping but does like chat and auction systems, but asking about soloability makes folks jump all kinds of ugly. Which is a little wierd since most MMO wikis I’ve looked at rate classes on how soloable they are.
(this should be a response to Lai-Lai, but that comment didn’t appear to have a “reply” button)
SQEEEEE new episode! :)
I always wanted to get into Champions Online… never got around to it. I was never really into subscription based MMO’s and even WoW started to soak up too much money after a while, mainly because I was busy with school and didn’t have time to play it. So after about 2 months of NOTHING I decided it would be best to cancel my subscription, but I still wanted to play MMOs every now and then. My cousin introduced me to City of Heroes, which I liked, but I really only played it on his account whenever I visited because it had a subscription at the time… damn.
I really gotta give you credit man, if not for this show I would still be MMOless… which might be a good thing, but oh well, it stops me from wasting money on mainstream gaming. I’ve been a stalker for this show since Maplestory and simply haven’t commented. Now that I finally have, maybe some pointless dribble, you might not even read, is in order. Just mostly wanted to say thanks for getting me into Eden Eternal, Rusty Hearts, and La Tale. Your reviews are pretty awesome, and I even got a couple of friends to watch your videos… my bud Skylar sent you a couple of lists I think, but I told him not to hold his breathe. lol. I’m always up for nations if you need any support, your pretty underrated in terms of Blistered Thumbs, and TGWTG staff members. i already invested to help out Double Fine, and Wasteland 2, so one more wont hurt. I’ll help pay for that “Horse armor” lol. God, I love Elder Scrolls humor. Anyway, wont hold my breathe for a response, but I just wanted to introduce myself for… whatever reason. Still, you seem like a cool guy. Maybe we’ll cross paths on a game sometime. Till then, you’ve got one more fan you can expect to comment on your videos.
Lol *Donations. My bad.
Fair review, no real complains here. The only thing which you mentioned yourself, is the timing of the review. A big game update is coming probably sometime next month and the specializations system is part of it. The update also contains changes to the stats, crafting system, powers, overall game difficulty and also adds new things like the alert system.
I’m a gold member and I have play tested most of it and yeah the update is big.
Heh, when I saw a review of Champions Online, I didn’t know what to think. I’m glad to say you’ve done a very fair job of it, though. Well done, Chaos.
Champions Online is, more or less, an attempt to make a new version of City of Heroes that had all the stuff the City of Heroes community kept asking for, but never got. It’s also Jack Emmert’s attempt to create a game that better matched his original vision after learning all the ways in which City of Heroes’ status quo got in the way. I personally found that the attempt stemmed from a flawed premise, as it added a lot of fluff, such as custom weapons, power customization (which did not exist in City of Heroes at the time), the personal nemesis, the large outdoor zones, gear and so forth. Pretty much anything you run across in Champions that City of Heroes doesn’t have but really should was deliberately added in response. I just felt they neglected the core game in trying to cater to superficial requests.
Nevertheless, I found your review to be fair and balanced. I’d gotten the impression you “hated” City of Heroes after that review follow-up, but you pulled off the comparison quite fairly, I’d say. And, yeah, it’s kind of impossible NOT to compare, considering both games are joined at the hip, more or less. Or were at Champions Online’s creation, anyway.
About the only thing I feel you should have mentioned is that Cryptic bought the rights to the Champions fictional universe, but NOT to the pen and paper game’s ruleset. This is, thus, a game set in the Champions universe, but it is not at all like the actual Champions pen and paper game.
All in all, well done. Glad to keep watching :)
I believe the G,N and L thing stands for “global” “national” and “local”, not sure why though.
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