Champions Online: Slurms’ First Impressions
The Champions Online beta got off on a pretty rough start. The problems with the patcher made some question Cryptic’s abilities. Others just dismissed it as new MMO jitters. It is, after all, still beta. So, even though I was very disappointed that I was unable to play on the first night, I got over it and decided that the game deserved to be reviewed on what the team actually worked hard on these past years, not a last minute screw up. Please take this as a “first impressions” write-up. I plan on still playing the game more, but here’s what I think so far.
The character creation screen is great, but I have to say not extremely more robust than the City of Heroes creator. You start by picking your base abilities, but more on those later. Then you move on to creating your characters image. This may just be me, but I felt this was somewhat backwards. I found a couple times where I would choose my abilities, then design my character, only to go back and change my abilities because of an appearance decision I made. Just me?
When you do move onto choosing your appearance, you first decide what your hero’s body shape will be. This is where Champions Online wins vs. CoX. You can adjust your body type a lot. You can change forearm thickness, height, foot size, chest depth, muscle definition, jaw line, and more. Simply put, this adds a sickening amount of possible differences you can obtain between all of your characters and fellow champions. After you shape your character up, you move on to the costume department. Although the layout is different from CoX, you have mostly the same options. The one thing that kept striking me as odd was the similarities between a lot of the piece and texture designs that you could choose from between CO and CoX. And by similar, I mean copy/paste from CoX. I imagine that you can’t (or at least NC Soft didn’t) copyright all those designs. I just think it was pretty dumb that I’m choosing from most of the same patterns that were available to me in a five year old game. But hey, maybe they wanted people coming from CoX to be comfortable, even at the cost of being pretty lame. Overall, the creator felt counter-intuitive to me. There were so many options tucked away that I’m sure I missed a bunch. But I chalked this feeling up to my being used to City of Heroes’ system. I’ll be spending a lot more time in the creator over the next couple days, so we’ll see.
After all was said and done, I jumped into the games tutorial. I was greeted by a nifty cinematic using the games engine to do a fly-over of all the damage being done to your fair city. The flyby went all the way to where your character stood, just like World of Warcraft. What we’re you flying over you ask? It’s an alien invasion! Neat, except that the other super hero MMO did the same thing, and their aliens were better looking (IMO). But okay, I’m sure the game will have various other baddies to choose from later once I get out of the tutorial, no need to jump to conclusions. Once I was past the intro and able to control my character, I took a moment to check out the graphics. I’m still absolutely torn about the look of this game. I love the style, and the graphics are “good”, but the look of this game loses most of its luster the second you start moving around. Things in the distance seem very blurry, the animations, while fluid, look almost overdone, and most of the character detail gets lost unless you are standing right next to them. The environment on the other hand, is fantastic looking. The very next thought that crossed my mind came when I began to run to the action. You run, so very slow. At one point I positioned my camera to the side of my character as he ran down the street and I thought, “Wow, I can seriously run faster than that in real life.” I figured Cryptic probably wanted your travel powers to seem that much more awesomer, so making people run slow for a few levels will make them appreciate it that much more.
Okay, finally, alien smashin’ time. The combat is mostly standard. But what’s not standard is that you get your “auto attack” which does damage, but at the same time it regains your action points. Then you have other moves that will cause more damage but drains those points you’ve charged. This was probably the single coolest idea I saw in my whole time playing CO, and possibly one of the worst at the same time. Abilities that do damage and in turn allow me to perform stronger abilities; sweet. Abilities that just make me stand there and pew pew pew while I wait for my bar to fill up; kind of boring. Some of your abilities that require AP can be “charged” to do more damage by holding down on the button that activates it. But I never seemed to be able to fully charge my blast on one character. I created another hero and had no issues. So when it works, it’s neat, but I didn’t think the game was better for it. That also goes with the whole “action game” feel that I’m really not sure works for an MMO. So, clearly I need more time with Champions to see if the combat feels right, but off the bat, I’m not enjoying it.
Hoverboards don't work on wat-oh wait, I guess they do.
There’s more I could go into, but this was my first experience in the game. I will give it another chance or three, but I just wanted to say that after playing for a couple hours, I really had a hard time getting myself to play more. That’s especially sad since I’m really playing a free game here. I love the idea of a super hero MMO, and I loved City of Heroes. Maybe there are just not enough differences in Champions for me to think its worth going to over CoX. I will say that the first time I stepped into City of Heroes, I was impressed. I am yet to be impressed with Champions.
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That’s unfortunate. =\
On a positive note, I’m confident things will improve over time. If not, Aion is all the sweeter right?
Oh, what power did you pick btw?
Went with the kenetic one for my build up and there was an arm beam for my second. Then eye beams later, and a hover-disk for travel powers. I’m gonna play with it more tonight, but it’s just not doing it for me.
I agree that the character creator can be a bit daunting at first, I’m sure even I missed a ton, but like you said, I suspect this is mostly because of my comfort with the CoX creator. However, I’m going to give a significant nod of depth to CO, the fact that you have a four color “set” AND a greater area of variable body type at the base makes it superior. Plus, you can throw in all the new costume pieces they included over their CoX days.
I love the combat myself, very action oriented. You can move around while useing your energy builder by the way. This game has grabbed me in a way that CoX never did.
I guess I’m not seeing what’s different about the combat that makes it more “actiony” other than the fact that you never stop attacking. You can move while you auto attack, but you can do that in most MMO’s. It’s not benefitting me to, or at least I don’t see that it is. Your character still holds still for the larger charge based attacks (just like casting a spell with a cast time).
I will say that after playing some more last night, I do like the game more than I first did, and I plan on writing a followup next week. I like how quickly it lets you get your travel power (effectively making me feel more like a super hero). I also like (and hope it stays) that you can change your look and abilities at any time, you’d never have to roll another character and go through that tutorial! But I still can’t see buying this unless I really get in the mood for that sort of setting. Maybe my mood will change when I get back to the city, because when I had to go on assignment to a non-city setting….I was not pleased.
[...] Slurms [...]
“Abilities that just make me stand there and pew pew pew while I wait for my bar to fill up; kind of boring. ”
– This doesn’t happen at mid to higher levels, You’re just seeing the effects of low END and REC stats at the starting levels.
“Some of your abilities that require AP can be “charged” to do more damage by holding down on the button that activates it. But I never seemed to be able to fully charge my blast on one character. ”
– What you were seeing there is that you were running out of energy in your energy pool before you got the ability fully charged. Again, this happens not at all once you get a few levels under your belt and your stats get higher. The character you didn’t see this happen on must have had a higher energy pool to draw from so they didn’t run out.
Thanks for the clarifications!
I did end up getting past those iritations and was planning on including them on the followup review. Still not super impressed with the game, but I’m pushing to get into the city and see how it changes.
I have to say that you need to try reassigning the keybinds. This will improve the combat and general game play alot. At least it did for me. For example I now have block as the mouse scroll wheel. I push and hold it to block much handier than shift which is just a stupid key assignment. In closed beta the interaction key was F I changed back to F from the current Z which seems very inconvenient to me, not sure why that change was made. You also have to remember that you need to be moving in CO combat to increase dodge chances and reduce damage taken. So while your standing there pew, pew, pewing, your foe is actually doling out a good deal of damage to you, and that style might get you whooped in a master villain or Super villain fight. It will definitely land you dead in the PvP arena very quickly.
I agree with your comment about creating the look first then choosing powers I do the same and often go back to change powers after the costume is done. I used to do it in CoX all the time. except now when you go back you are not limited to one class or one power set so your theme can really encompass powers and looks more fully with CO.
I miss the sheer number of option under character creation that there were in CoX and I think alot of them are missing in CO. There were alot more costume and new customizable body parts in CoX there are some very cool costume parts in CO but the sheer number under each heading is not as great as it was in CoX and I think they need to add more choices. especially for the lower half of the body, and the back.
I was hoping for a more robust tutorial/ game opener zone as well and maybe more than just one zone. In all the fantasy games you get a different starting zone depending on your race. Co and CoX need to create multipe starting zones for players (CoX technically has 2) but in Champions you get the alien invasion for at least 5 levels no matter what before you get to select a new zone then you have a choice of 2. Very limited IMO and really makes me not want to start alot of new toons because I wont want to play the same content over and over to get through the starting levels.
I bought a 6 month sub. I hope I haven’t made a mistake. I know I won’t go back to CoX since the invention of AE (Which totally ruined the game IMO.) I ure hope this game improves a great deal at launch and that new content is added frequently or I will be cancelling my sub and loking to DC Universe in pretty short order.
Why is it so hard to make a good online RPG?
9 comments
That’s unfortunate. =\
On a positive note, I’m confident things will improve over time. If not, Aion is all the sweeter right?
Oh, what power did you pick btw?
Went with the kenetic one for my build up and there was an arm beam for my second. Then eye beams later, and a hover-disk for travel powers. I’m gonna play with it more tonight, but it’s just not doing it for me.
I agree that the character creator can be a bit daunting at first, I’m sure even I missed a ton, but like you said, I suspect this is mostly because of my comfort with the CoX creator. However, I’m going to give a significant nod of depth to CO, the fact that you have a four color “set” AND a greater area of variable body type at the base makes it superior. Plus, you can throw in all the new costume pieces they included over their CoX days.
I love the combat myself, very action oriented. You can move around while useing your energy builder by the way. This game has grabbed me in a way that CoX never did.
I guess I’m not seeing what’s different about the combat that makes it more “actiony” other than the fact that you never stop attacking. You can move while you auto attack, but you can do that in most MMO’s. It’s not benefitting me to, or at least I don’t see that it is. Your character still holds still for the larger charge based attacks (just like casting a spell with a cast time).
I will say that after playing some more last night, I do like the game more than I first did, and I plan on writing a followup next week. I like how quickly it lets you get your travel power (effectively making me feel more like a super hero). I also like (and hope it stays) that you can change your look and abilities at any time, you’d never have to roll another character and go through that tutorial! But I still can’t see buying this unless I really get in the mood for that sort of setting. Maybe my mood will change when I get back to the city, because when I had to go on assignment to a non-city setting….I was not pleased.
[...] Slurms [...]
“Abilities that just make me stand there and pew pew pew while I wait for my bar to fill up; kind of boring. ”
– This doesn’t happen at mid to higher levels, You’re just seeing the effects of low END and REC stats at the starting levels.
“Some of your abilities that require AP can be “charged” to do more damage by holding down on the button that activates it. But I never seemed to be able to fully charge my blast on one character. ”
– What you were seeing there is that you were running out of energy in your energy pool before you got the ability fully charged. Again, this happens not at all once you get a few levels under your belt and your stats get higher. The character you didn’t see this happen on must have had a higher energy pool to draw from so they didn’t run out.
Thanks for the clarifications!
I did end up getting past those iritations and was planning on including them on the followup review. Still not super impressed with the game, but I’m pushing to get into the city and see how it changes.
I have to say that you need to try reassigning the keybinds. This will improve the combat and general game play alot. At least it did for me. For example I now have block as the mouse scroll wheel. I push and hold it to block much handier than shift which is just a stupid key assignment. In closed beta the interaction key was F I changed back to F from the current Z which seems very inconvenient to me, not sure why that change was made. You also have to remember that you need to be moving in CO combat to increase dodge chances and reduce damage taken. So while your standing there pew, pew, pewing, your foe is actually doling out a good deal of damage to you, and that style might get you whooped in a master villain or Super villain fight. It will definitely land you dead in the PvP arena very quickly.
I agree with your comment about creating the look first then choosing powers I do the same and often go back to change powers after the costume is done. I used to do it in CoX all the time. except now when you go back you are not limited to one class or one power set so your theme can really encompass powers and looks more fully with CO.
I miss the sheer number of option under character creation that there were in CoX and I think alot of them are missing in CO. There were alot more costume and new customizable body parts in CoX there are some very cool costume parts in CO but the sheer number under each heading is not as great as it was in CoX and I think they need to add more choices. especially for the lower half of the body, and the back.
I was hoping for a more robust tutorial/ game opener zone as well and maybe more than just one zone. In all the fantasy games you get a different starting zone depending on your race. Co and CoX need to create multipe starting zones for players (CoX technically has 2) but in Champions you get the alien invasion for at least 5 levels no matter what before you get to select a new zone then you have a choice of 2. Very limited IMO and really makes me not want to start alot of new toons because I wont want to play the same content over and over to get through the starting levels.
I bought a 6 month sub. I hope I haven’t made a mistake. I know I won’t go back to CoX since the invention of AE (Which totally ruined the game IMO.) I ure hope this game improves a great deal at launch and that new content is added frequently or I will be cancelling my sub and loking to DC Universe in pretty short order.
Why is it so hard to make a good online RPG?
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