Or Ms. Nice Guys, since so far our Praetorians have all been female.
Last night we wrapped up the Responsibility Loyalist arc with Ms. Crackle and Positive Force. The last mish with Inspector Kang felt a bit short (or shorter than I expected), before heading off to be a Praetorian Ambassador of Good Will to the folks on Primal Earth.
(It is interesting the differences and parallels in the motivations for sending Responsibility Loyalists vs. Warden Resistance toons over to Primal Earth, not to mention variations in the “what you can expect” briefings you get before you go.)
The send-off at the portal is similar — chatting with some (surviving) former colleagues and comrades before deciding on whether to head to Paragon City or Rogue Isles. For both of the “good guy” (caring about the People) series we run, the strong suggestion has been Paragon; I’m presuming the opposite will be true for “bad guy” (out for our jollies) folks we run for the next two series.
The Responsibility Loyalist arc ends with an interesting conversation (no spoilers) that highlights the limitations of CoX’s new (very cool) multi-path dialog trees. By simulating what responses you’re giving (even if providing you with multiple scripted answers to give), the sense of “railroading” dialog sometimes seems even greater than just clicking on an Accept button. I didn’t feel that any of the dialog I was choosing between in that final exchange was what Ms. Crackle would have said.
Anyway, that’s another pair back in Paragon City. We’ve been adding them to our SG already there (one reason we chose the Victory server), even though that makes them “Animaniacs” (sigh), but it does give them a base. And if the Loyalists and the Resistance end up running across each other, they’ve agreed to look in the opposite directions. After all, it’s all for the People of Praetoria.
Next up, our Crusader Resistance pair (otherwise known as “Anarchy for Fun and Channeling of Anger”). I’ve rolled up yet another rendition of Eliza Dee (my Power Girl / Galatea knock-off, 4th edition), a Super-Strength / Willpower Brute. Margie put together Fragile Package (mysterious Clockwork figure), a Rad/Kin Corruptor. While it’s obviously way too early to really tell, the first few mishes we finally ran (after much costume work) went pretty smoothly.
(It’s also a nice change of pace for us. I’m usually the ranged/support toon — Controller, Blaster, Defender, etc. — with Margie giving or taking the up-close punches. We’re changing that around a bit with this pair. We’ll see how that works.)
Actually, I’m not sure what the collective noun for a group of captains is, but since we have a Captain’s Table in STO, I’ll go with that.
Anyway, as BD pointed out to me this morning, the Captain Database is now online at the STO site, under “Community”. Woot!
Well, mostly woot.
Though the table you start with has Captains and Handles, you can only search by the former. Once you have a captain found, you can click on the @ handle and see all the captains that person has. That display gives a rather dim headshot of each captain, their short name, rank, current command/ship, and a link to their profile.
(You can also go directly to “My Characters“, which looks the same as drilling down to your own handle’s set of toons, except you’ll be asked to choose one as your “main” — what this means isn’t explained.)
The profile page gives a larger version of the headshot, short name, species / gender / class, and their current command/ship name. The biography section gives the online biography for the character, with a sidebar for the current ship (including name, class, registry, crew complement) and a list of bridge crew (but no info on them beyond name, rank, and class).
The captain’s log tab duplicates the online captain’s log, registering (with date stamps) all Missions and significant Activity (e.g., a bridge officer promotion). You can also put in manual Captain’s Log entries, and supplemental entries / comments on all activities.
The system is nice so far as it goes, but could use some improvements:
There’s no searching by @ handle. Hope you can remember your friend’s captain names.
The search is a bit wonky. One of Margie’s toons is “B-47” but that search doesn’t come up with anything (though that’s the name on her profile page, once I manually went to it).
There’s no backlink from the captain’s log to the profile page. Once in a profile, there’s no reference to the @ handle or way to get back to the captain list for that handle. If you’re going around inside your own toons, you can go back to “My Characters” from the Community menu, but, still …
The generated profile photos are awfully dark, to the point of being difficult to see in some cases.
The individual entries and logs and comments do not have their own URLs (let alone RSS), so it’s not easy to incorporate them into a creative activity outside the walled garden of STO.
Given the (creative) importance of Bridge Officers, there’s no reason why we should not be able to pull up more info on them — mug shots, at a minimum.
We should also be able to see a picture of the ship.
CO had a clever (but horribly implemented) profile picture generator/editor. STO should learn from that, rather than just creating a static head shot. We love our uniforms, not to mention stances.
Actually, I’d love to be able to do a “group picture” of my captain and his/her bridge crew, perhaps with the current ship in the background. Yes, I can do that manually. No, I don’t want to.
So, a good start, and an easy way to create a linked reference to your STO captains — but not much more than that. Kudos for what it is, and hopes for what it could be.
(If nothing else, this demonstrates how many bad captain names there are out there. And I’m not even counting the folks who have been forceably renamed “BadName 54123” and the like.)
I dinged from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander in STO yesterday with Bierzein, my Trill Science Officer. That’s my first LC — huzzah!
Since I haven’t talked about the leveling process in STO (and the rank promotion isn’t clearly laid out either) … let’s discuss it. If nothing else, it will give me some notes for when I do it with the next toon.
Leveling within a Rank
STO is kind of weird with the leveling bits. Each rank has 10 grades within it (tracked very efficiently across the top). But the grades (at least on the Lt level) don’t make that much difference — there are a couple of skills that come available mid-rank, but there’s no huge power ding.
(Actually, there is a “ding” — a visual effect, and a hearty “Well done, Lieutenant” from Leonard Nimoy. But it’s not a sudden massive and obvious empowering.)
Advancement in STO during a rank is through skills and skill points. The grades, in many ways, serve more to give a short-hand as to where you are. As it stands, every mission you get additional skill points for yourself and for your bridge officers (the latter share a pool). They can be applied at any time, but when they hit some sort of threshold a “Skill up!” small flasher appears in the upper left corner. Click on it and apply the skill points for yourself and for your bridge officers (one or more of them) and you’re done. (Be sure and click Apply!)
It’s very subtle in effect, but it’s a constant advancement, which is kind of nice. While the gaps between levels in CoX can drive one to despair sometimes, the constant application of skill points in STO gives you something regularly to do, even if you’re seeing more obvious changes from kits and drops and other externals.
Leveling between Ranks
It took me a bit of time to figure out what to do with leveling Bierzein between Lt and LC. It’s possible there are difference at other ranks, and, of course, Klingon (native) players will deal with something in parallel but with all the details different.
Actually Getting the Promotion: First off, I was on a mission chain when I got the big glowy-congrats. I decided to finish it up, just becauise of transit time. So I finished those missions as “Lt 11.” Right, until I actually get the promotion, I’m still a Lieutenant.
I knew I had to go back to Earth Spacedock for promotion (and picking up my New Ship!), so I transwarped back there.
No announcement.
I docked and went aboard.
Nada.
I trotted over to Admiral Quinn (putting away my phaser rifle into katana-space first, to be polite).
His tone of voice made it clear that he had no new missions for me and, in fact, was a bit peeved I hadn’t finished the ones still in progress.
I ran around a bit on Spacedock trying to figure out who I had to talk to. Despite the signs on the wall, the place is not as well organized as it might be (it would be handy if the map showed the various areas).
Finally I realized, “Hey, I never applied those last skill points I acquired. I wonder …”
Applied them to Bierzein, and, “Hey!” Admiral Quinn was suddenly hailing me, congratulating me, and summoning me “back to Stardock” (bugged) where I should meet with him personally and give me stuff.
Admiral Quinn has a short memory.
So I ran back to Quinn. Saluted. He congratulated me, and then handed me a plaque to turn in for One (1) Free Starship.
My New Ship: The gal I needed to do that with, Lt Laurel, was upstairs (up the ramp, up the turbolift) from the Shipyard section of Spacedock. I went up to her, got the lecture the different types of ships I could choose from …
… to makea long story short, Escorts are scrapper/blasters, high on lethality and speed and maneuverability, but glass cannons (to hear some) in prolonged combat. Cruisers are tanks/defenders, very tough, able to assist other ships, and pretty unmaneuverable. Science Vessels (Support Ships, some call them) have high shields, specialize in debuffing the bad guys, and are the controllers of the STO universe.
Any type of captain (tactical, science, engineering) can operate any type of vessel (indeed, if you strike it rich, you can actually buy additional ships to swap between, or so they say). The differentiator is less with the captain (who lends some skills to whatever ship they are on) than on intrinsic powers of the vessel class plus the bridge crew (different ships allow added bridge officers off the appropriate type).
Since Bierzein was going to be soloing, I decided to play it safe with a cruiser. (Margie and I have a couple of duos we’re running, and will likely be doing more mixed mini-fleets.)
All that Laurel gave me was a requisition slip for the ship of my choice. The rest of the room is full of educational displays about the ship types, plus guys who could sell me all sorts of ship goodies, but only if you had Yet Another Specialty Currency (one of my minor peeves with STO), or maybe vastly more of a currency I actually had.
From there I had to run downstairs and find the guy who does ship requisitions, Ensign Obin. There I actually received the new ship of my dreams …
… which I immediately renamed (both ship name and registration number) — once, for free. I’d now be commanding the USS Ad Astra, successor to the USS Per Aspera. (The renaming button comes up in the normal window that shows you and your bridge crew.)
I then turned around and talk to the guys (Golos Vell and Dirz Raxx) who let me design what my ship looks like. I love this particular STO feature.
Finally, I went over to Ensign Shalah to buy stuff for my ship. Her selection wasn’t very good, so I took the opportunity to run over to the Auction HouseExchange to buy (or sell) some swag. I decided, though, before screwing around with changing the default weapons config on my cruiser (phaser array and photon torpedoes fore and aft), I’d see how she flew.
My New Bridge Officers: My new ship came with some new bridge officer slots. You can requisition officers with Elsa Morel over in Personnel, or check to see if you have some still pending to fill in. With my cruiser, I got an additional engineering station for a lieutenant, so I promoted my existing Engineering officer to LT, and brought in a new ensign who’d been made available to me in the past.
My New Dress Whites: I also get a free costume token when I got promoted. That’s nice, too. I could get the new costume from Ghemik Telur (a simple tailor) in Requisitions, but decided to stick with what I had. Bierzein is not much of a clothes horse.
The Ceremony: After all the above (though you can do it at any time after the promotion, if you want), I ran over the Stateroom (auditorium) and talked to Commander Menn Hilo, the guy at the podium who’s usually droning on and on about astrophysics. He offered me formal congratulations and give a nice salute, as did other folks in the room. Pictureworthy (hence the picture at the top of the post).
And that’s it! I was now a Lieutenant Commander, and when I next beamed up to my ship — it was my new ship, but with all the familiar faces (and one more) around me. Ready for the next adventure! Huzzah!
Well, the STO discs arrived today, so after Kitten was to bed we fired things up and had at it.
I’m Lt. Rho Nyn, Bajoran, commanding the USS Audacious. Margie is Lt. Terry Chestnut, human, commanding the USS Rembrandt. Together, we fight crime! Um … if Star Fleet asks us to.
We’ve gone through the intro tutorial adventures, wandered around the Earth Starbase, and now are ready for adventure. And, ah, Starfleet Credits.
I have my account set up to shoot Accolade notices out to Twitter (for here). I need to set up Margie’s for same.
The only problem we’re having at the moment is that Margie’s sound isn’t working. Which is weird because it works for everything else, including Champions Online. But for Star Trek Online purposes, her computer is deaf. Or mute. Irksome, in any case.
At any rate — expect some Star Trek adventures over the weekend. Make it so!
UPDATE: To fix the problem, go into (on the login screen), go to Options, Advanced, and then indicate “Ignore X64 Check” … and it works. Of course! It’s obvious! “A child could do it!”
I’ve been thinking — really thinking — about Champions Online. And whether I’m going to play it any more.
Having been back with gameplay the past few days, I’ve done some CO solo … some CO in a duo with Margie … and some CoX in a duo with Margie.
Duoing with Margie is fun whatever the game. But I really had a lot more fun playing CoX.
There are things I like, really like, about CO.
The graphics. The look. I know this is hardly a unanimous opinion, but I really like them. They fit the genre. The characters also, for the most part, move well. And I think the stance stuff is a great further differentiator (Beast stance ftw!).
I like that many powers have multiple actions associated with them, esp. in the martial arts / swords categories.
Acrobatics is a great-looking “travel” power. Especially in Beast Stance. And Teleport is handled well. And I like all the flight/TK variants.
I like the idea behind a classless system. It promises flexibility to play the way you want, and create the character you want. You can make your concept character with minimum interference from the game.
The physical scope of the game is also neat. No War-Walled neighborhoods. Tundra, jungle, desert, urbanscape, etc.
I like the power-building mechanism, and, yeah, I think blocking is a cool thing. The concept behind the way powers in combat are handled is a serious step above the attack-chain-ridden CoX.
The shardless setup is also cool — no name contention, easy to join up with friends, no “deserted” servers.
So, lots to like. But it’s mostly lots to like in the concept, the idea, the presentation. The actual execution continues to cause me fits.
The execution of the classless system sucks. Powers and power sets are grossly unbalanced. If you decide to go for a simple class … well, you’re crippling your character from the get-go. Melee and ranged characters have differ severe disadvantages. Figuring out what a power actually does is like pulling teeth — copious notes online with poor explanations. And the complete flexibility of the system means it’s impossible to find a decent guide (assuming you can find anything on the boards). As a result, I always feel like whatever choice I make at each step is probably a horrible mistake that’s going to cripple my character.
Which I feel like. Honestly, I feel weak in any of my toons, solo or duo. Objectively, that may not be true, but I feel like too many battles (esp. solo) are life-or-death, and that the balance point can be tipped way too easily. I don’t want the game to be trivially easy by any means, but when I play a super-hero I would kind of like to feel … heroic. Is it build? Is it balance? Is it improper expectations? I have no way of knowing.
Acrobatics is the coolest-looking thing on 2-4 feet, unless you have to actually climb up anything. Sniper on the rooftops? Sorry, Kitsune — try the fire escape. Add the instant slow-down as soon as you get aggroed by someone (inevitable as you lope at ground level through the city), and travel is a real drag.
Trainers and stores (assuming one must have them) are annoyingly centralized, meaning you have to travel to them. (See above, though it’s an annoyance regardless of the travel power.)
I’d have explored a lot more of the system if I weren’t limited to 8 toons, total. Sure, I can buy more, but … no.
It’s not the limited content I mind so much, as that the content doesn’t do a great job (after the intros in both zones) of guiding you to it. What should I do next? Everything? Or a few things? Hit every contact you find, and it all starts to blur, story-wise. Just take a few at a time, and you discover that you have to re-clear zones because of mission overlaps.
The landscape maps may be War Wall-less, but the layout is as silly sometimes as a D&D dungeon module. Take the desert. You have a big research fortress next to a wasteland of radioactive mutants next to a haunted ghost town next to a camp of bad guys next to a bunch of lakes full of radioactive mutants next to an amusement park next to a missile silo next to a prison next to … There are no War Walls, but it’s still pretty goofy when the entire setting changes just because you went through a pass over over a ridge.
And goofiness is not restricted to geographical proximity. There’s a lot of damned silly writing. A bit of silly writing — well, that’s just witty. Too much, and it makes sure that it’s difficult to take the game itself seriously. Which I’d kind of like to.
So … lots of cool stuff that I desperately want to love. But some massive key frustrations that keep me from doing so.
Frustrating.
The question is, am I going to keep playing? Especially if I’m still playing CoX and start playing STO?
Not sure what the precise date issue was, but I got my 5 Year / 60 Month “City Traveller” badge this evening.
Which is kind of a cool QoL feature, basically letting you take at Lvl 6 a main Travel Power without the pre-req pool power. E.g., you can now take Fly without taking Hover or Aerial Assault. I suspect this will be most helpful for Fly and TP; most Super-Speed folks use Hasten as well (as do most supers, regardless of travel power), and Combat Jump is a reasonable power on its own, even if you’re angling for Super-Jump.
So I’ve been doing more looking at various builds, whilst playing CO solo (what little duo play we’ve been doing has been on a hypothetically mysterious and intermittent game that I can’t talk about). My current solo character is Force of Will, a TK blades character.
I’m reading through guides, and reviewing build suggestions, and making notes, and figuring out what I want to take at different levels. And I finally got to another power level with her, and glanced at those notes, and …
… and WTF?
All the guides are all, “Hey, gotta have that Passive Defensive early and often,” followed by bitter debates about which is best (which is, as far as I can gather from the tenor of the debates, Anything But Lightning Reflexes). Well, that’s all well and fine, but the TK Blades guides are also all full of debates about which is better, Ego Form or Shadow Form — most people prefer the latter, but there’s a vocal and vehement minority that argues the former. And, hey, there was Ego Form, ready for selection. I should give that a try …
… um …
It’s a slotted Offensive Passive … and I can have only one slotted Passive thing at a time. Which I choose depends on … which build I’ve selected.
So, to have both the oh-so-critical Defensive Passive, and the oh-so-critical Offensive Passive, I have to be also toggling between builds.
Let me say, that’s probably one of my least favorite bits of CO thus far. Okay, I like the variety of approaches you can have, both within a framework and from outside (vs. the comparatively much more channeled CoX power choices). But I find the Build mechanic to be one more decision point than I want to have to make. And so I’ve been basically ignoring it — only to discover now that, um, I actually need to make use of it if I’m going to achieve golden heroism?
Now, I’m sure that people do get soloing and making that choice. And I’ll get along without it. I just find it … annoying. Part is my own ignorance, part is the lack of decent player education. Yeah, if I was using a character builder program, I’d have probably figured this out, but …
High-speed jaunts down the highway! Improbably high leaps! Super-sonic fists! This is what SS should be like. Sadly, CoX only gives you running. And CO doesn’t even give you that if you get aggroed.
*Sigh*
Okay, and I confess on my few SS characters (CoX and CO), I’ve been known to hum the Danny Elfman TV series music, too.
Massively has a great article on folks learning how best to work MMOs and what the Devs end up doing to deal with those occasions (if they choose to deal with them).
All manner of such exploitation of the intricate game-mechanics of MMOGs have become institutionalized, leading to the general stratification of roles within the game, from Tank to Crowd-Control. Much of that is what is expected of us, even hoped for.
At the same time, you have 250,000+ players examining every possible combination of races, classes, powers, abilities, gears and buffs, looking for an edge. Looking for that combination that makes your Elven Rogue stand out from all the other Elven Rogues. The one that gets you picked for the A-team and not left behind when the guild goes raiding.
Eventually someone finds it. Usually a whole bunch of someones. Some combination of race, class, gear and skills transforms you from Neeshka to Prince Nuada, head and shoulders among the other characters of your type. That combination of Elf, Rogue, Flurry-of-Blades, and twin Spark Daggers seals the deal, and makes you awesome.
And you feel good. You’re playing by the game’s rules, and you’ve found an edge. You know a trick that nobody else knows, and that’s a great feeling. But someone else is going to figure it out, if they haven’t already.
Inside of a month, the developers/operators notice that half the server population are Elven Rogues with twin Spark Daggers, and pumping their Flurry-of-Blades skills. Most of the rest are healers, just so they get to go along on raids.
It’s not that the combo is overpowered, necessarily, but it makes everyone not playing that particular combo feel underpowered.
The devs are faced with a choice now. Either rename the game to World of Elven Roguecraft: The DaggerSpark Flurry, or change things up so that this particular combo doesn’t make every other combination seem pathetic.
Whether other things get boosted, or your things get nerfed, you’re not happy. All that special magic has gone, and your Elven Rogue is just another undistinguished character again.
The question is, were you cheating?
Generally, there’s stuff we know is cheating, stuff we’re sure is not cheating, and a whole lot of stuff in the middle that’s individually decided by millions of players per day, who each generally don’t think they’re actually cheating. They’re maximizing the benefits that they get from the game mechanics.
Hey, if I asked you to kill ten powerfully dangerous wolves with a bow and arrows, are you going to stand down there where they can maul you to kibble, or are you going to stand on something to prevent them getting to you while you pull off this undeniably dangerous chore?
Right. Because you’re not stupid.
The question is, most “fair” players understand the difference between cheating (if I do A and B in an unnatural fashion then I can get lots of XP for minimal effort — see Meow Missions in the early days of CoX AE — where “unnatural” means “not in keeping with the conventions of the genre), and simply optimizing play (“Hey, build X gives me a huge advantage over build Y, so I’m going to be an X”). Devs, though, see that on a continuum, and have to decide in every case hwne they are going to intervene with the nerf bat to “balance” things properly.
It’s always interesting — and rarely uncontroversial. Since even the most obvious “cheats” have their defenders (“Hey, I pay my $15/month, I’m entitled to get to the level cap in 12 hours”).
The problem being, of course, that we are incented to find ideals, and can think of ways that they are represented in-genre (both Blue Beetle and Superman are cool — but there’s no question that any Dev would consider the two unbalanced as character classes, and few players would choose the former vs. the latter). If the Devs spend too much time whacking on optimizations, then there’s no real incentive to excel.
What it comes down to is a every real-life conflict. We believe in equality of opportunity, but all the Devs (like the courts) can actually judge on is equality of outcome. If the latter is out of whack, then they assume (possibly rightly) that the former is messed up.
Not only does the newly updated Character Creator allow players to jump directly between Archetype, Powersets, Costumes and Character ID in any order without losing progress, but it also allows you to select your colors and theme for each individual power or apply it to the entire powerset. These themes will allow for color tinting of geometry and particle effects such as energy blast colors and force field colors. The primary and secondary colors of any power effect can be changed individually for each power in the set.
Being able to jump between customization areas is a great boon, and being able to test a name right as you start designing a character is way, way, way overdue. The color spectrum choices are well-integrated and versatile; within this area, at least, CoX has leapfrogged past CO.
Customizable Powers
Customizable powersets include Cold Domination, Dark Armor, Dark Blast, Dark Melee, Dark Miasma, Earth Control, Electric Armor, Electric Assault, Electric Blast, Electric Melee, Electricity Manipulation, Empathy, Energy Assault, Energy Aura, Energy Blast, Energy Manipulation, Energy Melee, Fiery Aura, Fire Assault, Fire Blast, Fire Control, Fire Manipulation, Fire Melee, Force Field, Gravity Control, Ice Armor, Ice Assault, Ice Blast, Ice Control, Ice Manipulation, Ice Melee, Illusion, Invulnerability, Kinetics, Mental Manipulation, Mind Control, Necromancy, Ninjitsu, Pain Domination, Plant Control, Poison, Psionic Assault, Psychic Blast, Radiation Blast, Radiation Emission, Regeneration, Sonic Resonance, Sonic Attack, Spines, Stone Armor, Stone Melee, Storm Summoning, Super Reflexes, Thermal Radiation, Thorny Assault and Willpower.
Super Strength and Martial Arts will each receive an alternate animation for their powers, and Stone Armor and Necromancy will include limited customization.
Customizable for most of these means, aside from color, you can choose the animation to use (i.e., don’t like the way Ice Assault looks? Use a different animation choice to cast it). Changes to MA basically let you do fisticuffs rather than kung fu kicks — excellent idea to get around that without having to design a separate power set.
Powerset Proliferation – More powersets are now in the hands of Archetypes who couldn’t use them previously! Blasters will have access to Radiation Blast, Brutes will get their Claws on, Controllers can now freeze it up with Cold Domination, and Corruptors get to feel the “twang” of Archery and Trick Arrow. Defenders can go high-tech with Assault Rifle and Traps, and Dominators can pulverize their enemies with Earth Assault. Masterminds heat things up with Thermal Radiation, Scrappers and Tankers get ready to fry their foes with Electric Melee and Electric Armor, and finally Stalkers get to swing their own mighty Broadsword.
I can understand why there was a desire, initially, to keep CoV and CoH as having separate power features — but that’s pretty much long gone now, and integrating the powers fully between the two is utterly sensible (and makes the Going Rogue work that much more straightforward).
Enhanced Difficulty Options – Players can now fine-tune their difficulty levels by telling the game exactly how they want to be treated. They can choose to be regarded as a specific size team (even if they are soloing), and even have control over the level they are detected to be when it comes to the dynamic spawn system. So if you ever wanted to see if your Scrapper could take on a map that is populated for an 8 person team, four levels higher than your own, now you can! The difficulty settings of the mission owner dictate how the mission is handled, just as before, and you can change your difficulty settings at any Hero Corp.’s Representative in Paragon City or Fateweaver in the Rogue Isles.
This is the one I’m least sure about, if only because I’m not certain the finer granularity will be useful for most people (me). I also think it’s a goofy conceit that you have to go to someone to change your rep/fate.
It’s not world-changing, but the I16 stuff sounds like some good, solid QoL possibiltiies for CoX.
There are things I like very much about how Champions Online has handled character looks vs. City of Heroes. In the formerlatter, you basically buy a mono-expression mask for your character. In the latterformer, you design your face, then you choose one of four or five expressions — Basic (neutral), Determined, Grim, Angry, or Pleasant (if I recall correctly — Courageous might be in there instead). These add scowls, smiles, eyebrow raising, etc. to the basic expression.
CO strikes me as a better way of doing things, in conjunction with the remarkable array of ways you can control how your head and face actually look. It’s not dynamic, but it’s, well, more organic.
Unfortunately, the results are less spectacular in at least one regard — lips. Or mouths. Or mouths with pouty lips. Which they all pretty much have. Even the guys. And which really stands out when there’s an overhead light source.
It may be the particular graphics tuning I have, but it’s darn annoying. They really need at least one, if not a couple of, mouth sliders in the face designer.
And then they need to come up with a way of making the emotion of the face — Grim, Angry, Pleasant, whatever — be dynamic, so that your character can look Pleasant while cheering, or after a mission, or when RPing, etc.
Due to the general balance pass on powers and difficulty that was made in the early morning hours of September 1st, we will be issuing a full retcon to early-start characters created before our launch day patch. As we did not anticipate needing to do such broad-based changes, we felt doing something extraordinary for our players was appropriate. Please note that this retcon will only be issued to characters that were created during the head start program.
We are currently working on a system to issue this retcon to early start characters. As soon as we have the technology in place to do so, we’ll let you know. Thank you all for supporting the game through the first few days of the launch.
Though, honestly, I don’t think they need to go to such lengths to restrict it to Early Start characters. I mean would it end the world if they just gave one out to everyone. Folks are still learning the game — cut them a break and earn some good will.
I watched Margie testing out the I16 power customization process, and it’s really very nice, as this new video shows:
What’s nice is also being able to see yourself casting the power, and what the power motions really look like. The color combos (and the ability to crank it all down to very dim on some powers) are all well-done.
In its own way, the color customization here is better than that in CO, which generally just has one color to slide around with (and doesn’t include black or white on it). On the other hand, CO doesn’t confine you to a single power set, and it has the Power Room to actually see (kinda sorta) what the powers do. So both platforms have some advantages.
I like the ability to have different default poses.
I like that the main display shows what level you are. Genius!
In answer to a couple of common criticisms, I did not feel that my powers were repetitive (vs., say, a low level CoX character), nor that the sharded zones were underpopulated.
Gameplay was very similar to CoX. Well, maybe even more similar (in my limited MMO experience) to LotRO.
DISLIKES:
The character design light source shines down on the chest awfully hard, making viewing of detail and true color difficult.
8 alts? 8 freaking alts? Very disappointing.
Shards/instances aren’t in numeric order, and aren’t consistently ordered in any fashion between two machines. So, “Okay, let’s choose shard 145” means the other person’s going to be doing some searching around.
Running animation (male) is awful. The lumbering gait resembles that of the Huge figure in CoX. Bleah.
Looting.
Waiting for things to repop in non-instanced missions.
Equpping stuff – very LotROesque, slotting various types of gear into different types of roles. I’m sure it will eventually all come automatically, but at the moment it’s sort of shrug and drag it. How different attributes affect different things is purely intuitive to me at the moment, and I’m sure I’m not maximiizing the potential of the character.
Okay, while there are some nice features, bits and bobs, as well as some interface improvements, between CoX and CO, I’m not all that wildly impressed (though having seen other systems character creators, I can understand the “wow!” factor). I liked being able to point to spots on the body to get to the parts there, but while the selection of pieces in CO was better in some places than CoX, it wasn’t as good in others.
Clipping, not surprising, remains a problem, but less so than in CoX because, frankly, they’ve cheated by not having anything baggy. Skin, tights, decorator accents, and that’s it. But shirts? Sweatshirts? Pants? Didn’t see any way to do it. Will that come later? Better not be a MT charge, or I’ll be irked.
(Yes, “skin and tights” is classic comic book wear. But I’ve tended to steer clear of that with my supers, for whatever reason. I can live with that, but I won’t be happy.)
Margie complained there was no way to do bare hands. I didn’t try that, but I probably will.
I do like the idea of a default “pose” for a character.
The power selections were — well, honestly, a crap shoot. A lot of info, but it’s not clear yet how it fits together. I went with a basic build for Fire, figuring I’ll learn more as time goes on, but an intro tutorial would be, well, handy.
I also had graphics problems — the game immediately told me that my card drivers were old. Eek! I went ahead and told it to use the default graphics anyway, and they were — pretty bad. Poor CoX quality. I’m tracking down the latest driers for the card (an NVIDEIA GeForce GTS 260M), and we’ll see if that makes a diffference.
Took me about 45 minutes for the first character, and I exited out as soon as I hit the first zone. More later …
BD found a video showing someone demonstrating all the travel powers.
CO, Oddly enough, has all the same travel powers of CoX, but as added the Batman/Spiderman swinging travel power (which will look silly when there is *nothing* to actually swing off of) and the Buggs Bunny Tunnelling Travel Power.
Well, yes and no.
First off, there are only so many super-hero travel powers — and most of them are “fly.” CO has plenty of added variants on that, though, including Ice Slide and Earth Flight (riding the rock), Hover Disk, and Fire Flight. Are they functionally the same as Flight? Sure. Do they have a nice character difference? Absotively, just as the Jet Boots do.
And Rocket Boots may be the same as Jump — but, again, I think it’s nice to have it as a separate item. (And let me say, I love making Tick-like crunch spots in the pavement.)
Teleport is teleport, sure — but I like the CO targeting mechanism.
I don’t like Super-Speed with trailing arms, though.
I concur that webslinging is goofy when there’s nothing to sling to — but, hell, that’s been the case with Spidey (and Batman, etc.) for years.
Plus, also via BD, some demos of the character designer. Wow. Looks great — lots of textures, logical organization and labeling — coolness. Nice addition of back items. And the body scaling controls look positively useful. I’ll be very interested in trying this out.
The videos I embedded yesterday, btw, seem to have gotten frelled up (in their embedding); I’ve traded them for links.
Not a triffically in-depth look, but still pretty cool. Interesting considering differences from (and similarities to CoX).
Next off, a lyrical essay on character creation in CO and why it’s so spiffy (per the author), plus how characters are brought into the game. This was written back in March, so it will be interesting to see what’s been cleaned up since then.
Good interview with Positron regarding Power Customization in I16. He basically says it came about due to the NCSoft’s acquisition of the whole CoX setup and the infusion of resources that followed — though it’s taken a year and a half to make it happen.
One (expected, but nice) tidbit — tailor tokens for each existing character slot when I16 came in.
Mostly we did low-level characters. Our new CoV pair — Allie McGordo (Rad/Pain Corruptor) and Widow Shade (Widow) got pushed up to 15, I believe. They’re a close-in pair (my two biggest Rad attacks at the moment are an AoE and a Cone), and tend to operate through “the best defense is offending them off the map” tactic. With double-XP, they were basically clearing up the map, quite successful. Allie’s my first Corruptor, and it’s an interesting variation on the concept.
We did a little work with Honey Gun (v.3) (AW/Gadget Blaster) and Red Hot Dream (Ill/Temp Controller), a squishy but thus-far successful pair. Lot of control going on with my Blaster, which helps keep us (so far) from being overrun. Got them up a level or two to 11.
And just to show that I can do the melee thing, we also played a bit with Shishiko (Kit/Regen Scrapper) and Arctic Sugar (Storm/something Def), getting them both up to 16.
So, a lot of lower-level play. We’ve actually got duos in each of the decades, though fewer up at the higher ranks. We’ll probably shift over to them sometime soon — if the CO Beta doesn’t distract us in a few weeks.
Apparently, though, there were enough connectivity problems over the weekend (which I encountered on a couple of servers) that they’re going to be repeating Double XP weekend shortly after I16 comes out. Which … well, I don’t know what their master schedule looks like, but I sort of expect these things to happen fairly regularly, anyway, so it’s not that big a deal. If they repeated it next weekend, on the other hand …
That would be my (gad!) 54 month vet award level, at which point I get to choose one of 12- or 33-month powers as an added bennie. So which ever of the two Sands of Mu / Ghost-Slaying Axe or Nemesis Staff / Blackwand powers I didn’t take.
Spiffy! I expect I’ll end up with both the Nemmy Staff and Blackwand on most characters — but given how annoyingly ineffective the Ghost-Slaying Axe is, I can imagine a couple where I’ve taken that and choose Sands of Mu instead (Leilah comes to mind).
Fifty-four months. Four and a half years. Amazing.
Or Ms. Nice Guys, since so far our Praetorians have all been female.
Actually, I’m not sure what the collective noun for a group of captains is, but since we have a Captain’s Table in STO, I’ll go with that.
I’ve been thinking — really thinking — about Champions Online. And whether I’m going to play it any more.
Not sure what the precise date issue was, but I got my 5 Year / 60 Month “City Traveller” badge this evening.
