There’s a lot of Champs Online criticism below. It’s leavened by some positives at the end, but it comes from a few days of fairly intense play (mostly on Margie’s part), and a variety of frustrations.
Once upon a time … before zone remixes, and early travel powers, and early radio contact with contact, and police band missions, and a variety of content …
,,, The Hollows was the bane of CoX experience. A huge zone. Missions assigned willy-nilly across the whole map. Endless nasty mobs that you had to run past or dodge around. And no hospitals in the zone — you die, you go back to Atlas. No trainer in the park — how many groups lost all their momentum (and often members) because people had to run back to Atlas for leveling — “GTL BRB.” No stores in the zone, either.
And it was the only game in town. From 6 to 15 or so, that’s where you had to go, sooner or later. Yeah, there was some Kings Row stuff, and if you really were desperate you could go into Perez (which was where all the I1-3 content for that level was — The Hollows was a late addition).
There’s a reason why the Chamber of Transcendence was the epitome of the Hollows — hard to get to, lots of mobs, a pain in the bitch of you get killed (or need to level) …
There’s also a reason I don’t go to the Hollows much any more, even though it’s been much improved as a level,
Champions Online feels, sometimes, like I’m stuck in the Hollows. At least in the Canada / Desert zones. Huge zones, Missions scattered around. Contacts that you always have to go back to. If you need to level, sell, or craft, you have to go all the way back to the beginning of the zone. Dying (respawn points) aren’t as bad, but it’s still annoying.
Part of this is travel power selection. Flyers and TP are pretty much golden, though they miss some of the ground content and “treasure” — and there are AA guns in some areas. But Superspeed, Acrobatics, and even Superjump are problematic — especially since even just being aggroed will immediately slow you down (and draw fire for seemingly 30 seconds, even if you break LoS).
(Irradiates plasma bolts remind me of the old-style ToS Romulan fireballs — faster than you and unevadable.)
Much of this is due to the relative immaturity of the game, sure. There’s a lack of content, and the Devs are still tuning the XP curve and how aggro works and all. I’m sure that, in the future, we’ll probably be able to call contacts (realistic), and pick up mission rewards (um, okay, that would be unrealistic). We’ll know about the best paths through the terrain, the relatively safe points — using meta-knowledge to counter lack of world immersion.
But it’s still annoying.
I hate inventory issues. No, really.
And CO has them. Not a lot of them immediately, but we started to see it last night.
You have basically three sets of things in your inventory:
- Widgets / power-ups. Some of these you use, in which case you swap them for something else in your tray, which doesn’t help the overall inventory problem. The rest you either sell (if not of your craft school) or deconstruct (if they are). You might also auction them, but we haven’t started doing auction stuff yet. That means these things do, with regular maintenance, get taken care of.
- Resources / raw materials. These are used for crafting, so it’s unlikely you’re going to use them up as fast. They become a real problem as you advance in crafting tiers, and suddenly open up new types of raw materials. There may be a more efficient way of dealing with them, but at present they aren’t too bad.
- Mission items. These are the real PitAs. They can fill your tray in nothing flat — and sometimes they end up staying there. (Do I ever really need the Key to the City? Like, ever? Inquiring minds want to know and/or clear their inventory). Given that you can stack several missions and be working on different ones, it’s irksome — especially with missions that involve several items (e.g., four different keycards takes up almost 15% of your inventory right there).
I’ve gotten past being irked about how you have to handle drops (wait, there’s a bang! no, that’s yours. wait, I opened it up, but then forgot to choose Take all …) I just find the growing inventory problems a pain.
My solution: Treat mission objects separately. They simply exist.
Another solution: Treat resources separately. I mean, my guy isn’t really carrying around a locker full of Argent Arms on his back. We assume they exist in katanaspace, and move on.
Another solution: More places where you can sell stuff.
Ironically enough, the one place that you don’t run into inventory problems is with stacking of stuff, e.g., heal patches. Except, when they are down in your actual “usage” tray, you can’t see how many you have. Rrg.
Other gripes:
- There’s a lot of interesting “read this” content … Viper plans you run across, taunting letters from mysterious enemies, arcane tomes stashed here and there, etc. Unfortunately, those items stay “stuck” wherever they are; read them while you are standing there (hopefully not in an area where bad guys are about to respawn). That’s both silly and a lost chance for immersion.
- Is anyone taking active use of the “multi-build” capabilities? I’m not — it’s all I can do to track what I have and can do, let alone creating specialty versions with different powers available.
- A group of -5 cons should not be able to take me down. Or even slow me down. If i can’t get XP for them, I should not be be in danger or affected by them. Or, conversely, if they are a risk, I should get XP.
- The current XP curve is wonky. Characters are ending Canada and Desert content around levels 12-13 … but MC is really designed for 14 and above. And you can’t just go out at that point and punch out some baddies — they’re all conning so low that the XP is worthless. So I’m finding myself taking maxxed-out chars in one place and hopping over to the other to grab a few more missions in the hinterlands.
All that said, it’s clear that CO’s biggest “problem” is that it is an immature MMO. There is nothing fundamentally wrong here that can’t be fixed by time and tweaks — as demonstrated by CoX having overcome most of this stuff. Which begs the issue of, aside from volume of content, why should the CO devs have to relearn some of those lessons that CoX already lived through.
There are still a lot of positive that get lost in the above. The gameplay is fun. The travel powers are cool. Things could just be better than they are. Being able to be a totally custom framework character is very, very cool. But the learning curve remains high, and the documentation remains scanty. As Margie puts it, she feels “inefficient.”
An example problem — I was agonizing over a power to take last night. I finally took one. Um … hey, what happened to it? Wasn’t it supposed to show up there? Ah, it’s a slotted passive power. And I already have one. Um … then why was it being offered to me? Oh, I could slot it in a different build. Hrm. Okay. A warning that, “Hey, dummy, you already have one, so you can’t have another in your currently active build” would have been nice. For that matter, realizing that I was going to be offered one later on would have been nice, too. I suppose I could use my freespec on the character to fix that (the button is finally there), but I’m not sure I want to.
Meanwhile, Margie discovered that she had a slotted passive power that hadn’t gotten slottted. So she was operating at a disadvantage for the last couple of sessions of gameplay. Irritating.
I like it that the sound quality in certain settings changes — sounds (powers, etc.) start to echo. I like the number of objects that can be affected. I like the animation and art style, still.
Interestingly, for a character who’s traditionally been (in CoX) a Controller/Defender, or sometimes a Blaster, I’m finding myself most enjoying melee characters that just hop in and start wailing.
I like that there is a dedicated “T” key to toggle on Travel powers. I don’t like that my toons keep getting bugged back to CO button layouts (using C1-5 for the usage items) rather than the “Other Super-hero Games” (snort) (using F1-5).
Margie says: “I don’t think it will replace City of Heroes for me — but that’s okay. And it will take a while for me to get tired of picking up Humvees and throwing them.”
That’s not a bad place to be a couple of weeks post-game start.
I dropped my Key to the city off at the bank in Millennium City yesterday, so it’s not hogging a slot. I’m trying to get the rest of the resources I need to create a new 8-slot bag, too.
Powers are confusing. Until I read this post, I had no idea there was a limit on slotted passives. I’m not even sure how to tell if a passive is slotted or not.
During beta, I was able to buy some health boosts that saved me several times. I can’t find them for sale anywhere now that the game is live. 🙁
Still, an occasional change of pace from LotRO doesn’t hurt. It’s nice to be a superhero again.
You’ll see a little box appear above your power matrix. If you hover over it (or something) you’ll see what’s slotted there (the little picture). You may also need to drag a passive-slotted power from your power box over into that box, if it’s open/empty.
You can build health patches once you get about 45 skill or so.
CO reminds me a lot of LotRO — but I like being a super-hero.
Hmm. I now see powers in my toolbar that weren’t there before. That should help.
Oh! It has something to do with the different builds. A power was not in one of my builds. :/
I’m not sure what you mean by “power matrix.” Is that the Powers window, wherein I can change the colors and such for my powers?
No, I’m talking about (and not using an approved term for) the power trays in the middle of the screen. Right above the Alt trays you should see a smaller slot for your slotted passive — about the same size (though on the other end) from your build slots.
Re Inventory Issues: Dude, welcome to a grown up MMORPG. =P
That said, It can be dealt with better. AoC has the best sytem I have seen regarding Inventory:
Panel/bag one – Drops, goodies, potions, food.
Panel/bag two – Items needed to complete your quests. So that “go and give X letter to Bob” quest, the letter goes here and does not take up valuable storage space.
Panel/Bag three – Resources for crafting. Again, so that it does not take up valuable storage space.
It was a bit off putting for me to to have the wonderous AoC bag system after having it for a year. Also, I haven’t seen any sort of bank in the game, which is a bit of a suck moment is you are going to have a Resource system, but then again I have yet to find the auction house either.
–%–
The little bits and things that you come across are interesting, but there is no way of accessing the info at a later date. They give you a badge for the thing, so it would not be too hard to do what they do in EQ2 and give you floaty text to explain the title/trophy you have and why.
–%–
All of my toons are “Hero” multi builds:
Cuinas is Sorcery/Dark, which seems to give access to all of the Sorcery powers, not just those two. Tricky for PvE but great for PvP.
G’i is Force/Telekinetics, which is wonderful. Great for both PvP and PvE.
Gaz is Munitions/MA, which is great for PvE, and not so good for PvP.
–%–
One thing I do like in CoX is that grey’s run away from you, which is as it should be. AoC and EQ2 have it that Grey’s do not attack you unless you attack them. CO is using the WoW model in that everything attacks you, which is one of the manu stiupid things about WoW.
Also, you may want to tweak your build if grey’s are killing you, I have not had any issue with grey’s except for the Elites, which is pretty standard.
–%–
As I Said friday, I found it odd that G’i could get to 14 just doing Canada, but Gaz and Ciunas had to do the Desert and then Canada to get to 14.
Wacky.
–%–
The build thing is odd and not properly explained anywhere, I will have to play around to see if I can slot different items to different builds (It implies you can) just like the powers.
–%–
Ooooh, Avo says that there is a bank! ~swoon~
Wow, I wish that something in the game explained that.
–%–
So, all in all CO is a bit of a failure in my eyes.
Horrible graphics.
Not enough wonderful QoL things brought over from other games.
A craptacular respec system (again, spoiled by AoC’s).
No way of planning or seeing what the bigger better powers are so that you can plan your build (this is a great big freaking huge minus in my book).
That I have to run the file verifier every time I try and log into the game is just silly, and I shouldn’t have to do this.
The really nasty Memory Leak that hits every so often.
So, there are a ton of things that CO needs to fix, but I have no idea how long they have to accomplish this before they start loosing players. In AoC, it took allowing the original game director to “move on to other projects” and a new game director to spend 6 months fixing all of the issues that it had.
So, it will be interesting to see what happens.
I’m well aware that this is a “feature” elsewhere in the MMO world. That doesn’t make me any happier about it. 😛
Banks and Auction Houses are off in Millennium City (at the Renaissance Center). I suppose one could just jet over there to drop things off.
I’m beginning to dabble conceptually in some multi-framework stuff, mostly to add some defenses when the originals aren’t very good.
CoX grays don’t run from you unless you attack them. The problem with gray death is not in any sort of 1:1, but in aggregate; packs of anything (esp. if they’ve run after you across a zone) can be deadly.
I like the LIFO style respec system; I’d even be willing to see it charged for (in reason). I found it odd that when I hit the full respec button for one of my toons, it came with all frameworks accessed, rather than asking if there’s one I wanted to start with. You’re correct that build planning (and getting info on what does what, and what sort of power it is, or even being able to say, “Hey, what are all the slotted passive powers in the game and which can I presently access?”) is woefully lacking. It’s obviously a much more flexible system than CoX, but nowhere near as documented nor as self-explaining. The power descriptions (summary or detailed) are laughably confusing and uneven. This is an area where there’s a lot of improvement possible; it’s an area where I would be pouring more resources than some others.
Haven’t had your Memory Leak or File Verifier problems. I do have (much less than originally) a problem where my FPS suddenly drops to a crawl in the game; it takes a reboot to get back.
I, frankly, love the graphics. I grow more fond of them, in fact, the more I see them. There are definite areas for improvement, but I like ’em a lot.
I agree that they run the risk, if some of these QoL issues are not resolved, of losing players and momentum and gaining a persistent bad rep. Folks are not as patient (and there are more alternatives available so that they needn’t be) as they were 5+ years ago.
The thing I do not like about the respec process is that you have to pay for each and every power to be removed to get to the one that is the problem power/ability….and then work your way back up.
And yes, the whole passive power per build thing is not explained and not very well applied either.
AoC’s is simple, CTLR click on the ability you want to modify, a pop up asking you if you want to spend X to redo the points spent in the ability, a click on yes and all done.
For redoing feats, pop up for spending X to redo all your feat points and it’s off to the races, and the cost is almost nothing (the starting is = 1 resource point, and last time at the 10th respec it was equal to 100 for the whole thing).
FYI- there IS an out of game character builder. Since I’m at work I don’t have the address, but it’s out there.
I think we’ll see more of these QoL things get added quickly. I’m shocked that radioing contacts wasn’t in at launch, since it was such a big add to CoX and the CO dev team were still with CoX when it was added.
I don’t mind the bag system, and I’m kind of enjoying the crafting, but might get tired of it after a while. The fact that I can craft my own bags is pretty cool. I made the small one for cool goodies like Foxbat’s gun, etc.
Margie note, correctly, that in your various power screens when buying them, there’s a filter that allows you to show Unavailable powers, so you can see what lies ahead. There’s not an easy way to easily show all of type of power, but you can, for example, collapse everything down but the “Buff Self” category in each of the tabs and easily switch between to see what’s there.
None of that’s ideal, but it’s doable. There’s starting to be some good conversations on the boards, too, e.g., this one on Passive Defenses – http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=65492
I noticed last night that the game has started showing me all my available choices from the two pools I’m using (Power Armor/Gadgeteering) without my having to switch back and forth manually. This was a very nice QoL item.
It’s also doing a better job, when multiple you hover over a device you are thinking of using (or that you might take as a reward) of flagging the other boxes that come up as things you already have equipped in that category.
Woot!
I found the Bank and Auction house last night, though they are not marked on the map, nor is there a way for me to mark them myself.
In fact, they don’t even seem to have signs out front. Goofy.
Kitsune’s Key to the City is safely locked away in her safe deposit box.
Yeah, this is odd, even RL banks have a sign out in front.
At least they are right next to each other, so If I see the one I can find the other.
Are they one of the buildings facing onto the plaza with the power house?
Yeah, both of the buildings are around the Plaza Ring, next to the dance club I think.
The “Ren Center” — pretty much everything is there (without signage — talk about harsh coding regs!).
Except for all the giant floating billboards – there is a badge that awards if yu fly into 5 specific boars. I am missing the last billboard
Which 5 Boards? The ones around the RC? Any type or just random ones? Do you get any sort of “Ding” saying you found one of the five while doing this?
I don’t think there is a ding. I found out when I looking at my perks in progress. I then flew around and touched all of the floating signs around plaza. I could see some added to the perk others did not. (Sorry I didn’t note the perk signs). As I said, I am still one short so there may be another area in Millenium city that has floating signs.
Okay, just did it.
I started at the “Royal Burger” and headed left next to the “Speed-E” and continued left to the “Darren’s Pizza” sign.
Mmmm … hungry …
Yeah…
Too bad there are no signs allowing you to find a the bank to get cash dollars to buy the foody bits. =P