Category: MMO

Always interesting to see what’s being fixed in Beta … (My notes in italics.)

——————

General

• Fixed flickering of logo splash screen. — I’d noticed this before. Glad it’s being fixed.
• Fixed not being able to throw objects while in range of another type of interaction. — Esp. since it’s so easy to inadvertently pick up an object instead of interact with a contact. Glad this is being fixed.
• Fixed ability to hue shift some powers.
• Destroids was mis-typed in several places as Desdroids. This has been fixed.

User Interface and Chat

• Added long descriptions to the tooltips for buffs and debuffs, if available.
• Fixed a bug in the global UI scaling that was causing some elements to be larger or smaller than intended.
• Retcon UI can now be closed with the Esc key and has a close button.
• Fixed issue with incorrect icons showing on some interact prompt list rows.
• Improved layout of delete character dialog and inventory discard UI.
• Perk icon shows center screen when received.
• Can’t drag from empty bag slot anymore; bag slot stays looking disabled when bag moved out of it.
• Clicking an emote will no longer click through.
• Trainer UI will now display the Powers menu if you have an energy builder point.

Powers

• Invocation of Storm Calling debuffs now improve as you rank up.
• Sigils of Ebon Weakness now improve as you rank them up.
• Sigils of Radiant Sanctuary now use the same recharge rules as the other Sigils.
• Binding of Aratron custom advantage now drains energy from your target instead of restoring it.
• Arcane Vitality’s self heal now ranks up.
• Eldritch Blast – Sorcerer’s Whim advantage now works against all held targets.
• Eldritch Shield’s release effect now ranks up in effectiveness.
• General fixes to Fire and Gadgeteering powers.

Missions/Environments

• Fixed open missions: Burden of the Beastmen and Undead on Arrival.

Hero Games

• Moved items on the Hero Games vendors around; now one vendor sells all Primary upgrades, while the other sells only Secondary upgrades. This should make it easier to find the pieces you want.
• El Gato Rojo in Westside (next to Kountry Komics) now sells Hero Games action figures! Dominique Ducard outside of Renaissance Center still sells Hero Games costume unlocks.
• Fixed a bug where prices in the Hero Games store were 1/10 what they should be (sorry, PvPers!).

Key Known Issues

• The Powerhouse will allow retcon of up to the ten most recent powers changes to your character.
• When repurchasing abilities with your existing character you may need to pick up an endurance/free power (Sparks and Dark Bolts are examples from the electricity and darkness trees). These powers are labeled as “Auto” in the power description and do not cost any of your power points to purchase. Please note, you can only have one of these powers.
• If you do not see powers when you try to purchase them, make sure to click on the show available button and one of the orange boxes at the top of the screen.
• Some users with old AMD Athlon XP CPUs may encounter an “auto-runs not functioning” crash after starting the launcher.

Known Issues – Powers

• Due to changes made to how powers are constructed, many of the advantages for powers are currently broken. We will be making an effort to get these fixed as quickly as possible. Please bug any broken powers you come across to help us insure we get each and every one fixed.
• Powers descriptions are not showing the correct values from Rank 2 to Rank 3.
• Engaging a character’s travel power will increase the energy cost of all other powers. This might make some powers too expensive to use while the travel power is active. This is as designed. — This has always bugged me a bit in CoX, too. It’s a game balance mechanic, not something you see in comic books.
• Power House: Last window to be accessed for training opens and closes rapidly when selected.

Known Issues – Character Creation

• The UI does not update for the Ragdoll or the Portrait window. — Not sure I understand this.
• Female avatar has an unusual stance. — Huh. I’d agree, but assumed that was as designed.

Known Issues – UI

• UI is under construction. If you see anything that overlaps or is not viewable or accessible, bug it. — Ah! Bug it!
• When using Need/Greed loot mode, defeated mobs turn into shark models. — That’s ironic.
• Scoreboards are not appearing in PVP matches.
• Millennium City map art is not appearing.
• Task windows for the Crime Computer and Missions occasionally pulsate.
• Dragging a bag icon to a new slot leaves a copy of the icon; dragging it back leaves a “?” in its place.
• Tooltip: Secondary offense tooltip is showing up improperly.

Known Issues – Gameplay

• Not all sound effects are in the game. If you feel an element is missing sfx, bug it.
• Occasionally, after exiting water, a character will still appear to be swimming. Sometimes, if you move your character back into and out of the water, the “swimming on land” effect goes away.
• Sometimes, if a character breaks aggro with an enemy, that enemy will not re-aggro the character.

Known Issues – Chat

• Chat window freaks out when user tries to resize it.
• Clicking Reset All on chat options deletes user-created tabs.

Resolved Issues

• There is no icon for selecting a female character.
• When in the Powerhouse, spending all available points in a category closes the window instead of returning to category select window.
• Powers bar in Build choice window only displays for Build #1.

———————

The Top Issues list is here. An interesting note on how TP works — infinite uses outside of combat, but a 15 second cool-off while in. Clever.

“… The second five million years of patching were the worst, also …”
— Marvin, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Champs Online 

Got home. Clicked on the FilePlanet link Yay! Unlocked! Downloaded the client/patcher.

Login. Um, what was my password again. (Figures out what it got set to.)

Start the download. 

Margie (doing the same on her machine) suggests this will go really fast because she’s already at 18%. I note that in the CoX world, multiple patches may apply (so to speak).

Head out to Back to School Night.

Two hours later …

Both our patchers have hung up with a disconnect error. I click [Patch]. It seems to start things over again. Mine goes a very short way, then stops.

I get an email from Lee:

De said you were downloading the Champs beta. Dunno if you’ve gotten this far yet, but once you’ve got the beta client installed, if you have problems with the patcher, I’ve found that closing the patcher (not cancelling the download, but clicking the red X of the patcher) and then restarting it, makes it chug along. Mine stopped at 9% then 15% then 51%, and each time I close/open it zips through the previously downloaded file and continues on. 

I take his advice. My client seems to start over again. Though the numbers look different. There seem to be different numbers for Patched vs. Received.

Margie tries this. She goes 47% to 0.7%. But it’s not the same numbers a I have — “Patched X Mb / Y Mb – Received Z Kb – N %.”

And when it froze again, when I tried the same way, it ended up with a loarger X, a smaller Y, and a much smaller Z, but a larger N.

(“It’s beta, Dave. It’s beta, Dave, It’s beta, Dave …”)

Actually, that’s a fair thought. All those pre-orders trying to patch essentially the entire system at once. 

And now stuck at 45%. Or, not, it just paused a bit.

Margie notes: “I expect this. I just don’t expect dead silence on the boards.” That’d be dead silence from the CO folks, not from the many, many people bitching about the download setup.

Someone suggested creating a torrent of it, but in one of the few official responses was asked not to post it — because it would removing the testing of the download process. Um, yeah. It would, but … well, unless they’re running around like crazy behind the scenes, then the testing is pretty clearly not very good for today.

Hey, here’s the official article. Sounds like a number of errors (plus load) causing the problems. Though, guys, if you’re going to say something like, “this should take about six hours to clear up,” you might want to put timestamps as well as datestamps on your posts.

Checking out the forums – lots of very confusing advice, which the above article seems to indicate is now obsolete (as far as moving files around). Waiting for something more officialler that either says, “Stick to it” or “Delete it all and start over again.”

*sigh*

Posting this, and moving the narrative to Comments.

 

Interesting article today on how the UI director for Champs Online was one of the designers of the GMail interface. He describes some of the challenges in creating an game interface that is quick and easy to use but still provides the info that some folks want to see.

There are many times in Champions where I want to give the player every last piece of functionality but I also know that such a thing is detrimental to the overall experience. You get to a crossroads, a certain point when people can no longer find what they’re looking for. Microsoft Word is a notorious example of that crowding of features. It’s an incredibly powerful application but because you have so many features, all the really useful ones can get hidden.

In Champions Online, or any other game, you have to make sure that discoverability is not so much of a problem that you can’t actually play the game.

Attempts on CoX to add additional info (and additional ways of getting to it) have been a mixed success. Getting something that scales info from the get-go would be pretty cool.

Of course, I’m also impressed how WoW has had an extensible UI, so that people can add on things to it. I think that’s a great idea, but I don’t believe CO will be set up that way.

Wow — Convoluted Process Much? Including using the beta key three different times, the third of which r(on the Fileplanet download site) equires taking out the hyphens from the code (though it doesn’t mention that). Bleah.

I’d forgotten I had a Cryptic account already (from CoX). Which meant having to get a new password sent. Etc.

Then downloading the Download Manager.

Then waiting in line for the download to begin. Unless you want to become a paid subscriber.

Jeez — makes CoX look straightforward by comparison. Not the best introductory experience. “You never get a second chance for first impressions.”

Bits and bobs from relatively recent official CO Dev Blog posts (which am way behind on reading). Not complete by any means — I skipped over stuff I wasn’t interested in.

First off, the 10 July Dev Blog:

When your hero levels up and has a new power slot available, you can go to the Power House to train up. This area has a number of rooms where you can test your new power and try out different combinations of power colors and emanation points in safety. If you decide the new power is not for you, you can easily retcon it and try a new one.

[…] Characters [when they level] can go to any of the conveniently located entrances to the Power House. This facility is designed to allow heroes to try out their new-found powers in a test environment loaded with specialized equipment. What this means to players is that they can try out powers before they become an ongoing part of their character. There are stationary and mobile targets, and different levels of offensive weaponry to test defensive powers against.

Nice — with power customization it’s important to be able to “try before you buy.” I look forward to learning more about this. I’ll be curious to see how CoX handles this as well.

On the subject of melee heroes against ranged attackers (esp. those that can fly):

We’re going to crazy lengths to make sure that players have every tool we can think of available to them to balance the scales. Lots of power sets have travel power disables, or lunges, or roots, or stuns, or some other mechanism that aids melee characters in dealing with speedy or ranged opponents. Additionally, there’s thrown objects. Hitting a flying guy with a flung park bench or a truck or something tends to disrupt any and all travel powers for a few seconds. Finally, there’s teamwork. If you really want to be melee master we suggest you get some friends who can balance your weaknesses vs. their strengths.

The “team up with someone” part of the answer is both obvious and not very satisfying. But the other elements are promising.

On mission difficulty and scaling:

Most of the persistent world missions have a fixed difficulty, but villains in combat with three or more heroes often send one of their number to get reinforcements and even up the battle. The opposition on many of the instanced maps does scale in number and power to the size of your team.

I like (conceptually, not as a hero) the idea of guys running for help.

“Retcon (or “retroactive continuity”) has a progressive cost based on how far back you want to roll back your character. If you don’t like a power you just bought, it’s relatively easy to retcon. Changing powers that were established earlier on in your character’s history gets more expensive. Of course if we make changes to powers we plan on providing full or partial retcons to characters with those powers.

So it’s more expensive than a CoX respec — but also more powerful (in that you’re not trapped with the same power sets). Honestly, in CoX the price for respecs has become virtually nil (between vet awards, issue respecs, etc.). I do like the scalability here where they can give retcons for individual powers that have changed.

What’s the deal with auras and the like? I’ve seen screenshots of characters “bathed” in fire or surrounded with coloured energy fields – does this mean we can make our heroes look as though they’re made of pure fire, or pure ice, or pure electricity and the like? – Sammu 

These are power FX, which can happen several ways. It might be something like fire flight, where your character engulfs themselves in flames to fly around and thwart evil, or it might be that once your energy bar hits max level as an electricity user, your body changes into an entire being of electricity!

In general, Auras only turn on when you’re actually in combat, and automatically turn off when you’ve been out for a few seconds. Additionally, Auras, like almost all our powers, have Master Ranks. Generally at Rank 1, the aura is transparent effect that is mostly visible at the edge of your character (this is called a Fresnel Effect). At higher ranks, the Aura becomes more saturated and full.

That’s pretty cool. Esp. if it means you won’t have the added lag of a common location where everyone’s got all their powers toggled on.

As a point of policy, we don’t believe in obscuring or obfuscating the numbers that drive our powers. That being said, we need to hide a lot of the depth in our interface, because the actual complexity of what’s going on “under the hood” is absurdly complicated. We’ve tried exposing the totality of the mechanics in the tooltips, and the result was a twisted mass that has broken the sanity and will of our testers and has not once but twice nearly allowed the great old ones to break into our world by riding a stream of shattered minds and hollowed out souls. So, yeah. The best answer we can give is “we’re working on it.”

There’s definitely a sweet spot in showing the numbers, esp. of you’re doing comparisons. They also make up for the fact that we don’t live the game world and therefore miss some of the nuances of that experience. I’ll be curious to see what they come up with.

Will there be any kind of journal that records your super/hero/villain adventures (Number of kills, stories completed etc)? – Fhuzzy 

Yes! In Champions we call these Perks, and they are recorded in a special tab of a player’s journal. Perks are records of heroic deeds and accomplishments that a character has done such as defeating a large number of VIPER agents or bringing a Super-Villain, like Talisman, to justice. They’re called Perks because as a result of their heroism, player heroes are awarded benefits including titles and Perk points. Perk points can be spent at a special vendor who sells capes, costume pieces and even some special gear items.

I like the idea of a character journal. I never quite got the hang of the one in LotRO, but I find the “history-less-ness” of CoX (except for badges) disengaging.

Moving onto the State of the Game for 22 July:

On the “classless” nature of the game, CO seems to be fudging this slightly with “roles” — which are less flavor/power-centered and more, well, what you do and how your character is run:

Guardian (Balanced)

• Standard Damage
• Standard Bonus Hit Points
• Potency of Healing powers are standard
• Potency of Hold and Root powers are standard
• Resistance to Hold and Root powers are standard
• Power decays at normal rate
• Energy generated when blocking incoming attacks is standard
• Standard Threat generation
• 1 Versatile Passive slot

Avenger (Offense)

• + All damage is increased by 20%
• – Bonus Hit Points are reduced by 50%
• – Potency of Healing powers and effects are reduced by 20%
• – Potency of Hold and Root powers are reduced by 20%
• – Resistance to Hold and Root powers are reduced by 20%.
• + Power decays at 50% normal rate
• – No energy generated when blocking incoming attacks
• Standard Threat generation
• 1 Offensive Passive Slot

Sentinel (Defense)

• Standard Damage
• + Bonus Hit Points are increased by 25%
• Potency of Healing powers are standard
• Potency of Hold and Root powers are standard
• + Resistance to Hold and Root powers are increased by 20%.
• – Power decays at twice normal rate
• + Energy generated when blocking incoming attacks is doubled
• + Bonus to Threat generation
• 1 Defensive Passive Slot

Protector (Support)

• – All damage is reduced by 20%
• – Bonus Hit Points are reduced by 25%
• + Potency of Healing powers are increased by 20%
• + Potency of Hold and Root powers are increased by 20%
• + Resistance to Hold and Root powers are increased by 20%.
• + Power decays at 50% normal rate
• Energy generated when blocking incoming attacks is standard
• Standard Threat generation
• 1 Support Passive Slot

It’s unclear if these are fixed for the character, switchable on the fly, or something in-between. You could argue that these serve as “classes” but are a lot more flexible and not tied to specific power sets, which I think is the important thing.

On soloability:

There was a BIG miscommunication in a recent interview where the writer made it sound like there wasn’t enough content for solo players to get to the level cap. While we have been putting a greater emphasis on getting group content into the game, players can easily solo their way to the level cap if that’s how they want to play. We hope this clears things up.

That’s good to hear. It will be even better to see.

In the State of the Game 6 August:

Crafting specialization:

Heroes enter into the research and development in one of the three crafting schools by talking to a trainer. After this, they also now choose which of three specializations within that field they want to pursue. There are different items available to craft within each specialization, and even some of the items that are similar across specialization may have different visual effects that players can choose to display.

A hero can change specializations at any time. To change specializations within a school, simply talks to the trainer and choose to switch to the new specialization. Be forewarned that there is a cost, however. All accumulated skill points will be lost when switching to a different school OR a different specialization within the same school. The skill point cap will also be set back to 100 in both cases. And don’t worry, blueprints are not be lost as a result of changing schools or specializations. They can, however, become temporarily unusable if your skill points are too low. Also, you can only buy blueprints that are in your field of specialization.

You can manufacture any item that is in the same school, even if it is a different specialization, as long as you have the blueprint and you match or exceed that blueprint’s minimum required school skill points. This means that you never lose the knowledge required to craft an item, but if you want to hold more than a single specialization, you will need to rebuild your overall ability to create items within that school. Dedicated crafters can learn all three specializations within a school and then be able to craft everything within that field of research and development.

Ugh. I mean, it makes sense (more than the highly-abstract CoX crafting system), but it’s still a drag. I’ll be curious to see how “necessary” it is.

Big colors and comics-style outlining are in. I’ve heard some complaints about it, but so far I’m pleased with what I see.

On colors:

Cryptic’s chief creative officer Jack Emmert says Champions Online’s palette of bright colors will help the game stand out against other MMOs and videogames on the market. He said picking comic-book colors was one of the starting points of the whole project.

He said, “When you look at this game it’s not 50 shades of gray or brown. In general, this is an incredible battle with artists, as anyone will know from seeing other videogames, but we decided on bright colors from the beginning. So why did we go so vibrant? Because we wanted to make sure that the comic books that many of us read during the 80s and 90s would come alive. Any superhero you can imagine and create and customize you can sit down night in and night out and live those adventures and feel like you are part of that colorful comic book world.”

I think this is a good idea. It will set the game off from the more muted CoX, as well as lend it, yes, that 80s-90s look. (Do we have to wear jackets then?)

On outlining and cell shading:

We’re trying to go for the look you get in a comic book. But comics don’t transfer directly to real time 3D very well. Cell shading often looks really bland and has very little detail in it so we have decided on a more realistic lighting model.

If something is bumpy you’ll see the bumps and you’ll get highlights and shadows and that kind of stuff. But on top of that we have an art style that’s similar to comic books with bright colors and things that aren’t necessarily realistic. And then also we have an outline effect that outlines things that are near to the camera and adds to that comic-book feel.

[…] Practically it refers to a specific way of doing the lighting. So on a round object you don’t get a smooth transition from dark to light on one side, you’ve got a white and then you’ve got a harsh edge. It’s similar to how you shade something in a comic book but we wanted to bring realistic lighting and a comic-book look.

The outlining feature can be shut off for performance (or aesthetic) reasons. Personally, I like it.

AJ Glasser at Kotaku does some more hands-on review of the Champions Online combat system. Some notes, first on things the writer feels need improvement:

Targeting Gets Tricky: You can change between targets on PC by just left-clicking a target with the mouse and on the controller, you tap the left bumper. However, the frenetic pace of combat makes these simple controls tricky, especially on PC if you’re holding down the left mouse button to adjust the camera while running to one side to avoid an attack. I’m hoping that on the controller scheme they work it out to where you could tap the left bumper repeatedly to change targets among a mob – that would really smooth things over.

Hmmm. Targeting via mouse can indeed be tricksy (since reticling can be dicey). I’m hoping there will be some sort of tabbing to go from target to target.

The Picky May Not Be Pleased: There are things you can do in Champions Online combat that single-MMO players may not be used to; however MMO connoisseurs probably won’t be surprised – or impressed. For example, a WoW devotee may not be used to the idea that you can dodge any attack (even spells) by moving out of range and an Age of Conan fan might not be used to the idea that bosses and mini bosses have specific tells that require you to block or dodge, depending on which attack they’re signaling. If you’ve played both of those games plus a dozen other MMOs besides, however, none of this will sound especially new, different or special and you’ll probably stay skeptical while the less picky players are enthralled.

Some of this sounds interesting (which is why I quoted it) — but the paragraph is kind of a jerk backslap because there’s nothing that is new to MMO uber-vets like the writer. Okay, fine, moving on …

Btw, the idea that you can avoid an attack by getting out of its way is, to my mind, a cool one. Until the bad guys do it, of course.

Still Feels Like A Cool Down: Technically, the spells in Champions don’t need cool down periods after you cast them. However, you can’t cast higher level spells without building up endurance with low-level attacks. It’s a little bit less boring to mash the X button over and over than just sitting there and watching the timer on your best area-effect spell expire; but it still feels like a cool down period just the same.

This doesn’t bother me at all.

Ranged Combat Is Cheap: This is actually a plus for a jerk like me – but I think it’s cause for complaint. Emmert says that the tradeoff between a ranged superhero who can just spam a single fireball attack while flying around in a circle is that a melee superhero’s attacks are more powerful. He says that this makes it more rewarding for the melee character if he or she can just get to that fireball-spamming jerk and execute an attack. But if the jerk is me, I’m telling you right now, you’ll never catch me. You’ll die cursing me for the cheap jerk I am.

Again, kind of a jerk paragraph (literally) — but since this fits my preferred play style, what it’s about doesn’t bother me at all.

And on what he thinks are good things:

There’s Always Something To Do: To quote Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw’s review of Eve Online, MMO combat works like this: “You click on an enemy and start kicking his shins. He then starts kicking your shins. Then you take it in turns kicking until one of you falls over.” Champions Online shakes that up a bit by giving the player more to do than just stand there and kick. At any one point during combat you could be kicking someone’s shins, raining fire down on them from the air while you hover overhead with your fiery fairy wings, dodging an attack with a well-timed mashing on the A or S button, or waiting for a command to pop up and tell you to mash a button to collect an item drop or escape an enemy attack or hold. You’re always moving in Champions, always changing targets and never not mashing on an a button once combat gets going. Big plus.

It’s Console-Oriented: What makes Champions feel action-y to me is the fact that everyone is moving all of the time and you’re frantically pounding on attack keys to keep up. It’s more like Marvel Ultimate Alliance than WoW, and that’s exactly the feel that Cryptic was going for, according to Emmert. He says that the future of MMOs lies in consoles, so their goal was to get an action RPG experience inside ofa persistent, well-populated MMO world that worked just as well on console as on PC. To that end, Champions was planned with consoles in mind all along, with none of the built-in “latency” of other MMOs where you have to wait for a spell to cool down simply because the technology on which the MMO is built cannot handle a bazillion particle effects at once.

It will be interesting to see how this actually works out. On the one hand, interesting times and frenetic fights and a variety of tactics. On the other hand, sometimes all you want to do is to kick someone on the chins.

After the much-longer hands-on, I’ve changed my mind. Combat in Champions Online does feel different than combat WoW because of how fast everything moves – including you. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a revolution in MMO gameplay, but the quick combat is going to go a long way toward making the jump to console smoother and more fun. My only conflict now is deciding whether or not to wait for the 360 version.

Not being a console gamer, I’ll confess that some of the writer’s glee escapes me.

—The biggest criticism Emmert fears hearing is from superhero players who want a purely solo masked avenger experience. That’s just not what Cryptic is out to do with Champions Online – so if any potential reviewers are reading this, think Justice League instead of Dark Knight going into it.

So does that last item mean that you can’t do solo play effectively? Because, if so, I can guarantee it will not last long on our family machines. Though I’ll note one commenter adds:

There’s been a lot of criticism from beta players that the game is TOO solo-friendly, and that there is little to no reason to group up right now. Apart from the “Lairs” which are made with groups/raids in mind, the typical overland questing is relatively easy to solo.

On the plus-side, if you do decide to group up with people for soloable quests, they keep it challenging. Depending on how many in the group, your foes will run for backup, aggroing other mobs a ways away. It sounds bad in theory, but it works great when you’re playing