Plusses: gorgeous, lots of character creation options, a power-switching mechanism that makes gameplay a bit more easy and varied.
I have to say here that of all of the MMORPGs I’ve played over the years, Champions Online has, hands down, some of the most stunning graphics I’ve seen in an MMORPG. The team decided to go for a cel-shaded comic book style with this game, and let me tell you, it works.
[…] In combat, players can ‘charge’ their attacks to make them do more damage, or gain extra utility in their execution. Not only this, but the game utilizes a form of ‘endurance,’ that goes up as players use light damage ‘charging’ moves, and is then expended when the player uses a heavy damage ‘draining’ move. Think of it like the Warrior’s ‘Rage’ system in World of Warcraft, or the Warpriest / Disciple of Khaine in Warhammer Online.
Interestingly, the game only allows players the ability to use seven abilities in any given scenario. Players can switch between three ‘roles,’ each with a customizable ability toolbar of 7 abilities. This effectively gives players a total of 21 powers to use when switching between one of their three stances, although switching stances comes with a yet to be determined cooldown. What this effectively does is allows players to break out of the one-character one-role cliché, and it doesn’t clutter up combat with 50+ skills.
Minuses: Clunky and not-yet-terribly informative UI, some repetitious content early on
All in all, Champions Online is shaping up to be a solid MMORPG, even if it is in beta, and for anyone interested in non-stop action and incredible character development depth, I’d highly suggest this beautiful MMORPG.
Sounds like Guild Wars style character style.
I love what I’ve seen of the character creator (CoX has its work cut out for it to catch up) and I’m a fan of the cell-shading (CoX never feels much like a comic book inspired game to me). And no running out of Endurance is just brilliant.
The 7 powers at a time thing gives me pause, as does this “active blocking” thing (I play MMOs not fighting games).
I must admit I rather hated the character creator.
One thing that really annoyed me was that the left and right arrows strafed rather than turned, and I myself using the mouse much more than I would in CoH.
The UI is plain awful and rather intrusive (the yellow theme gets in the way), and needs a lot of work to make it useable, tool tips would be a start.
All in all, I’m not surprised that they put the release date back, as it really isn’t ready yet.
I added a few other bits and pieces here
http://www.eparsnip.com/blog/archives/175
Judgement reserved as I work through it.
Interesting observations, Grepppo, thanks. I think it was the right decision to push the schedule back in order to do it “right.”
My biggest worry comes from your observation that all the PvPers and Farmers are planning on jumping to CO. That might be a great reason *not* to.