Category: MMO

Two gripes on CO – Travel Powers and Talking

I love the Acrobatics travel power. It’s coolness in the extreme — the leaping, the tumbling, all that. It’s even better in a bestial stance, but even for normals it’s extremely keen.

I’ll never take it agan. Nor Super-Speed. Possibly not Super-Jump (on the principle that what goes up must come down), though I remain open on that; Teleport might be similarly of concern.

Here’s my problem. Aggro. As in, “there are angry mobs everywhere, you can’t avoid them, and as soon as they aggro you as you run / caper past, you slow down, and they shoot you from afar and follow you to the ends of the Earth.”

I was running Kitsune in Canada (Phase II) yesterday. We had fishy business up by the river, and it was a freaking epic quest for me to get from Steelhead to mission sites, time and again. I felt like I was infiltrating behind enemy lines. Meanwhile, Margie’s Surprise waggled her little fairy wings and flitted above the fray. “Do you need me to watch over for you?”

Feh.

If Travel Powers didn’t suddenly slow down when you aggro or when you’re aggroed, but only when you actually attack someone, it wouldn’t be a problem. As it stands, though, it’s a serious pain, and one that I can easily avoid by simply not taking some delightful powers.

Related to that — is it too much to ask for radio messaging with contacts? Even CoX realized a long time back that having to trot back to the contact every time is a real Quality of LIfe annoyance, and given the above concerns, it can be hazardous to one’s health, too.

Sure, the desert is subject to radiation interference, and the auroras in the tundra are something fierce … but surely we can get a secure radio contact with Dr. Fred or Lt. Joe-Bob after we run a mish or two for them. Not to mention Justiciar …

CoX: I16 Overview

Now at the CoX site:

New Character Creator 

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.

CoX: Guest Authorship in Mission Architect

After the initial horrific farming experiences in MA, and the discovery that Sturgeon was correct when it comes to user-designed content, I’ve just never spent much time there with any characters — especially since, well, it’s one more layer of unreality than my brain is willing to suspend disbelief for. 

That said, think this is an excellent idea:

Popular user-generated content system attracts industry and comic book notables to try their hands at mission design NCsoft and Paragon Studios™ today announced the Guest Author program for the Mission Architect user-generated content system in City of Heroes. This program invites influential writers and aspiring game or story designers to collaborate with the team behind the City of Heroes MMORPG and publish custom missions directly into the City of Heroes game using the revolutionary Mission Architect system. Participants in the Guest Author program will be announced on a rolling basis. The first participants of this program comprise notable industry veterans from the gaming and online comic industry:

  • Rooster Teeth (www.roosterteeth.com): The machinima producers that brought the gaming world the Red vs. Blue series and created a series of live-action shorts for City of Heroes and Mission Architect (starring Barenaked Ladies’ front man, Ed Robertson, as Captain Dynamic) is ready to put their designer skills to the test. Rooster Teeth plans to bring Captain Dynamic and his nemesis, The Great Face, from YouTube to City of Heroes.
  • Scott Kurtz (www.pvponline.com): The creator of the popular PvP web comic has already begun collaborating with the City of Heroes team on bringing LolBat to life within Mission Architect.

My only concern here is that we’re talking about humor / satire as the basis for MA missions, which makes them even less realistic (though ostensibly well-done). I will be curious to see how this turns out, though. More news should come out from PAX.

CO: Faces

There are things I like very much about how Champions Online has handled character looks vs. City of Heroes. In the former latter, you basically buy a mono-expression mask for your character. In the latter former, 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.

Now that would be pretty cool.

CO: Freespec!

They probably should have done it at the time, but credit where credit is due for responding to the furor because they didn’t.

Champions Online: Free Retcon to Early Start Players | Champions Online Official Site 

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.

CO: I see … Blood Moon a-risin!

Well, this looks like it could be fun …

There is a chill wind blowing through Millennium City. It’s late October and the moon has taken on a sinister aspect, staining the sky a bloody red. The superhero Witchcraft, of the Champions, warns that this is a dire portent of an approaching mystical threat. There have been sightings of strange creatures emerging across the world, those of savage werewolves and flesh-craving zombies. Even worse, they bear with them the tidings of a great evil returning to the world… Takofanes, the Undying Lord!

Eek!

When Takofanes last strode across North America he killed all who crossed him to swell the ranks of his undead army. The first attempt America’s superheroes made to stop him resulted in the death of half a dozen of them. A second more concentrated attempt managed to drive Takofanes from the battlefield, but he could not be defeated. Now Takofanes has returned once again with hordes of his minions, citing prophecies of doom and proclaiming his coming reign over humanity!

Gasp!

   * Explore the new Celestial Powerset. Use the power of the Seraphim to heal and strengthen your allies, or release the fury of the Nephilim in a battle against evil.
   * Beware the Zombie Apocalypse rising in Canada! Battle against zombies in PVP, but no matter what, do not fall there. Should you die, you shall return as one of the undead horde, bound to fight in Takofanes’ name.
   * Fight off ravenous werewolf packs, but be careful lest you get bitten and infected with their dark magic.
   * Stand against undead heroes who once fought in the Battle of Detroit, and do your best to free their souls from Takofanes’ necromancy.
   * Challenge Takofanes to drive him from our land, but beware – you must fight the dark sorcerers who serve him before you have any chance of facing the Undying Lord.

So it sounds like there are some lycanthropy/zombification aspects where you can be “turned” into something wicked this way coming. That could be very fun indeed, if (true to the comics genre) all is set right in the end.

CO: State of the Game at the Opening Bell

Bill Roper (Chrononaut) speaks on Champions Online on opening day (and beyond):

In reaction to concerns that things are “too easy” …

We reduced the effectiveness of Slotted Passive Defense powers, Active Defense powers, and Defense from upgrades. The total bonus of all combined defenses was reduced from a 75% net defense bonus to a 66% net bonus. The biggest change was made within the Passive Defense powers which our players noted were far too effective and trivialized the threat form Henchmen level enemies.

Well … I have still been dying. Though only when seriously ganged up on. Though that’s not difficult to happen when traveling through a Crisis zone.

We increased “non-shtick” enemy damage to compensate for AI / animation delays. This particularly affects Henchmen who did not attack at the expected rate on which other areas of combat effectiveness are balanced. The change represents a 25% increase in this type of damage.

We also increased “shtick-based” damage for Super Villain class enemies and above. They were incorrectly using the Master Villain class damage tables, making our most difficult enemies much weaker than intended.

Lower defense against more damage. Well, at least we can stock up on healing potions …

Finally, we have removed the consumable items that were giving a straight 33% increase to Health and Energy from vendors. These were artifacts of the beta test that were accidentally not removed from the live version of the game.

Yikes! Well, no, not a huge problem, I don’t think. We’ll see (esp. in context of soloing).

We’ve fixing a data bug where players incorrectly received 75% of an enemy’s experience amount no matter the disparity in level. More than a difference of 4 levels now gains the player no experience.

Oh, and less XP. 🙂

The top speed of travel power speeds has been reduced by 15% as part of how we’re addressing reported frame-rate issues because heroes are simply traveling faster than the server can update their position.

That’s unfortunate.

We found and fixed an error in the overall drop-rate tables that drastically reduced the number of upgrades coming from defeated enemies. This change increases the number of upgrades that drop from enemies in the approximately four-fold.

Woot! More loot!

Retcon cost has been lowered across the board, making alterations in your character’s powers and advantages much simpler to accomplish.

I haven’t done a lot of retconning, obviously, but I like that it’s cheaper. Having expensive or difficult retcons/respecs has always struck me as punishing the player for lack of in-game knowledge.

There’s other stuff mentioned, too, but I’ve included the items I was most interested in.

CoX: I16 Power Customization video

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.

CO: Bill Roper interview

Post-Open Beta, with Ten Ton Hammer:

On tweaking the XP curve.

You do have to really kick over hard in one direction. That’s what we recently did with experience. We knew that players are grossly outstripping content, to the point where players were able to basically skip entire zones, so it was really broken. We decided to swing hard in the other direction so it’s like now there isn’t enough content for levels, so we really made a big adjustment but we could tell we were close. From there we know we can go back in the other direction and ease off of those changes.

The goal is so that players are definitely above the par. We like people being above the curve so it’s not like you have to complete every shred of mission content to be able to hit level cap. It’s OK if somebody skips missions or doesn’t find some of the discovery missions and things like that – they should still be able to level without having to grind.

I noticed the change, but didn’t feel particular one way or the other.

And a note I hadn’t realized about a particularly annoying foe during the big event at the end of Open Beta.

We’re running our end of beta event – that’s actually running until about 5PM today – where we’ve got some giant Mega-Destroids cruising around Millennium City. We even have what we call Dev Suits, so if you see something that’s called a Cryptonaut that’s actually one of us. So it’s been pretty fun. I think players really like kicking down the devs.

Yeah, Cryptonaut(s) was really obnoxious — and fast and hard to draw a bead on. I think we got a couple of them down at times, between Mega-Destroid spawns. Though Margie (as Runt) had a few problems at one point.

On the upcoming event:

We’ve already got an event planned for the end of October…

Ten Ton Hammer: Would that be the mysterious “Blood Moon” I just saw mentioned…

Bill Roper: In my latest state of the game discussion? *laughter* Yea, I did put that in there. We’ll be putting something official up on the site about that hopefully by launch. One of the things we really want to be able to do is communicate to players, so even if they get the game on day one they’ll already know we’re working on the next content that they’ll be getting. I think that’s a really important thing to put out there. I know that as a player of MMOs I like knowing not only that devs are working on something, but that they’re working on something they can tell me about.

So we’ve been getting some concept assets over to the marketing team so they can put together some pages that can get put up hopefully by the time the game goes live on the 1st. And that will talk about the Blood Moon event and what players are going to be getting. So that will be the first big free update that we do.

Cool.

And the sort of answer I was hoping to hear about Crafting:

I don’t know that I’d necessarily say that it’s essential. You certainly could go through the entire game without crafting or getting an item that was crafted, but I think the way crafting helps the most and can become an essential component is if you’re doing really interesting hybrid builds. All the crafting schools have different stats they focus on, so at the high end they tend to focus on a trio of stats. So you’ll find high end items that care about three different stats predominantly.

The reason I bring that up is that when you really get into some more advanced mechanics of character building, you’ll notice that at the basic level there two main stats that each power set cares about which you can then take a look at when you start mixing and matching. For example I made a character that was a mix of Might and Darkness. Might cares about Strength and Constitution, and Darkness cares about Constitution and Endurance. So by mixing the two I end up with three main stats that I’ll care about, and crafting is the place where I’ll have the best chance of getting items that focus on all three.

I could more than likely find some random, algorithmically generated items that could fall off of an enemy, but with crafting I can pick a school or specialization that specifically cares about those three stats. So if I’m getting into that advanced gameplay of creating characters focused on certain stats or characteristics, crafting is the best place to go to specifically get items that cover that end of things.

[…] Overall I think crafting is not a requirement, but it’s cool to do and you can make some really specialized stuff. I think that for players that get more into the mechanics of the system that can become something that will really augment their character well.

So it’s a benefit, but not critical. Good to know.

As to putting off crafting until later, some more interesting comments.

There are two ways that you’re gaining skill points in crafting. One of the ways – if you want to use sort of a generic MMO term – is by finding resource nodes. In other words there are things you can find out in the world to investigate, but you gain the vast majority of skill points by deconstructing items.

The way our crafting system is designed, there is Research and Development. Research is actually taking things apart and looking at what they’re made of. With most fantasy MMO crafting you’re making a mountain of short swords before you can go up to the next level to make cutlasses or whatever. We wanted to make it so that the vast majority of your points come from tearing things apart to see how it works, so that you’re learning from the way it was constructed.

Which makes in-game sense.

We do a double duty with that, where if you have an item upgrade that can be taken apart, when you deconstruct those to do development you not only gain points from that in terms of learning how it was made but it will also give you the component parts that you can then use to make other items. You do get a little bit of skill from making things, but the system is definitely not designed to focus on that as the way you’ll be gaining levels.

So as a high level player, any items that are dropping for me are going to be a lot faster for me to skill up on, or I can always go to the marketplace and buy a bunch of cheap items from other players to deconstruct. Or it would also be really easy for me to fly, Superspeed or Superjump around the lower level zones and get resources.

Having done a lot of crafting in other MMOs, I find it’s not – I don’t know if “grindy” is the right term – but I don’t have to do a ton of travel. Using WoW as an example, if I decide to take mining I’ve got to go and start looking for copper in the newbie zones even if I’m level 50. That was the only thing that frustrated me actually about making a Death Knight. I wanted to start crafting but I realized I’d either have to buy all the stuff or I’d have to go and find all of it. So for something like herbalism you have to go find wild flowers and pick them to gain levels, and you really can’t do anything else to achieve that. It was like, “I’m starting at level 65, I can’t believe I have to do this” you know?

[…] The cool thing with our system is the fact that you’re basically just deconstructing stuff that’s really simple to go out and get. So I think it’s a really nice system; it’s definitely very different. You can make specific items, or you can even make algorithmically generated items where you’re basically deciding on certain parameters and telling the system that you want it to care about three specific things and it can make you a random item. Then there are also blueprints for exact items that you can get

Also good to know. Running around and farming equipment/materials is not my idea of a good time. What I’ve seen of the Crafting system thus far make it seem like I can spend as much or little time as I’m interested in it.

CO: More Social Gaming stuff

So I posted the previous message and realized immediately I’d forgotten about the Twitter connection, which I’ve seen only through a lot of awkward and overzealous tweets that Rey’s account generated while he was playing with this …

This thread is the main discussion of the social tools CO has built in, from the perspective of in-game play.

To start using this system, enter /socialmedia. From this screen you can control the operation of the social media tools. Use the settings button to enroll (or un-enroll) from each service. By default, all available activity types for each service are enabled once enrolled. Uncheck any of the boxes to disable that activity type for that service.

The Status activity type is initiated by the command “/social_status Your status here”. The plan is for this to be integrated into the status box in the chat context menu, but for now the command will work.

The Screenshot activity type is initiated by the commands “/social_screenshot <optional title here>” and “/social_screenshot_ui <optional title here>”.

The Blog activity type is initiated ‘/social_blog “Title” “Body”‘.

The Level Up activity type is initiated on natural level ups (meaning those from normal XP gains, not sidekicking). For Twitter and Facebook it will post items every 5 levels. For Raptr awards will be posted for every level.

The Perk activity type is initiated by completing a rank 3 or 4 perk (those worth more then 25 points).

The Item activity type is initiated by receiving a purple item.

The Supergroup activity type is initiated by creating, joining, or leaving a supergroup (including being kicked). The posted message with include the character and supergroup name.

Presumably this will, in fact, all fall into the UI much more cleanly soon, but … okay, it sounds like (I’m not sitting where I can play with it at the moment) you have (A) activities — blogging, perks, screenshots, items, SGs, leveling, status changes — and (B) services — Twitter, Facebook, and Raptr are mentioned. You can also (further in the thread) tune this to which toons get statused (though you have to control/restrict it for each toon).

I keep thinking there is the potential for some coolness here. There’s also the potential for some serious spewing of unwanted status onto these fora. Hmmm. 

I’ve toyed with the idea of getting a separate Twitter channel for gaming stuff. That could then get auto-updates from this Blog and consolidated Tweets from what (very limited) CO Twitter output I would do (I can imagine doing the Levels, and maybe the Perks — mostly as a journaling exercise — though being able to link to Screenshots would be kind of cool!). I will have to ponder that.

 

CO: Early Start and Social Gaming

Despite battling to find time around a good friend’s visit, we managed to play a fair amount during Early Start Weekend. We both got some alts generated (I went a bit crazy with that, of course) and pushed up through the Tutorial.

We also got Zebra (Martial Arts) and Finneas (Dark) up to Lvl 12, and finished up with the second half of the Crisis in the Desert work, winging our way back to Millennium City to park.

In retrospect, we kind of blew it — we should have hopped over to Millennium City a lot earlier and dealt with the Qularr event stuff going on there, since I now recall there were Unique Prizes and Stuff that will Never Be Available Again. Oh, well. I think Margie was telling me about that, and I completely spaced.)

I did make some moderate use of the Bug feature. I like that it lets you search for terms first, identify already-reported bugs, and flag that you have that problem, too. It helps consolidate bug reporting for the support team, and lets you know that “you are not alone.” That said, it would be nice if when a bug gets closed, that everyone who reported it gets a ping.

Overall, I remain pleased with the game. There are a few interface issues that Margie and I have chatted about, though no showstoppers (and they are matched by some nice features that I already take for granted). I do think the early mission tree is going to be something of a pain — it’s not just the initial Qularr invasion tutorial, but also the initial Crisis in the Desert / Crisis in Canada mission sets. That’s a lot of repetition before you get to a broader range of play options (continue where you are in various adventure trees, return to MC, or head off to the other crisis locale). Regular players with lots of alts (ahem) are going to find it something of a grind.

 

From a social standpoint, I got some Friends added to my list (with invites out for a few others). Interestingly, Cryptic’s trying to make the main web page for CO, when signed in, a social hub — you can see your friends and their status, you can go into “Cryptic Space” and blog, you can look at “My Characters” and see your characters in summary and detail. You can even blog as your characters.

That said, it’s not very robust or ready for prime time as of yet. “My Characters” shows serious lag in updates (it doesn’t yet show two characters I built Saturday, and the mission list is similarly behind for characters that were in place then). It’s also unclear how to share the character list with others (or how others might see your character’s blog). I can infer it from the URLs, but I have no idea if these show up for everyone — e.g., a character stream for Zebra (which seems to include all blog entries), or my User Profile, etc.

I’m sure it’s all going to get fleshed out, or at least I hope it is. There’s a lot of opportunity for socializing the game through the website, and not having it as polished as possible at launch would be a serious error.

Some Blog of Heroes updates

I’ve done some tidying up of BoH. 

  • Where applicable, I’ve noted sidebar stuff that is for CoX vs CO. 
  • I’ve updated the linklist to show both CoX and CO resources.
  • I’ve updated the About page to include some disclaimers.
  • I’ve now added a “City of Heroes” category. Previously CoX was the “default” context for posting here, with LotRO and CO getting their own categories. With the number of CO posts going way up, it made sense to add a CoX category. I am not going back and post-cateogorizing all of the past CoX posts — just working form today (more or less) onward.

Anything else folks can think of that would make this a better place to visit?

CO: They’re BAAAAAAAACK … CO reinstates special offers (for a few days)

Apparently Cryptic read up on customer service and public relations and why pissing off your potential client base before you’ve even opened the doors is a bad business and marketing strategy. So they’re bringing back the discounted subscriptions:

UPDATE: Due to the overwhelming response to this update, we’ve been experiencing some issues with our account server. We’re going to be working on the server throughout the night, and we plan to have everything solved by tomorrow. We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this as quickly as possible.

Earlier this week, we gave notice that we were running out of special Lifetime and 6-month promotional subscriptions. Within a day, the rest of our supply had been sold out, leaving a number of you confused and upset. The response to this promotion has been overwhelming and we want to thank everyone who posted on our forums, called customer service and sent e-mails over these past few days.

After further consideration, and to meet the needs of our community, we have decided to reinstate the Lifetime and 6-month subscription promotional programs with no supply limit until 11:59 p.m. (Pacific time) on August 31st.

At Cryptic, we are dedicated to our community. We look forward to seeing you when Champions Online launches this September!

Certainly better late than never, and the right move to make. Better than what I expected, to be honest.

Cryptic had already said that the discounts would come back later, though not with some of the bennies. The discounted packages here have all the extras that were originally offered … and the expiry date to finish them off is shown very prominently on the page. 

Now, will some folks continue to take pot shots? I, for one, am now willing to cut Cryptic a lot more slack on this, as they are making good on their error.

(Reading the comments at Massively, it seems there are still the “Oh, the game is broken, this was a publicity stunt in the first place, CO sux” folks around. Of whom there is no satisfying.)

(via Massively)

CoX: I16 Open Beta

NO! NOT AN OPEN BETA! NOT AN OPEN BETA! FOR THE LOVE OF —

Oh, it’s for CoX. That’s okay then.

(I won’t actually be doing the open beta for I16 because, well, I think downloading a separate version of the software to test stuff when there’s a perfectly usable I15 sitting there for play with characters that will actually advance from my investment in time is silly. But I couldn’t resist.)

CO: The Peasants Are Revolting! Part Dieux

Massively reports:

This last weekend was something of a letdown for Champions Online players waiting to get paid this week and purchase the limited time $200 or $60 special subscription deals, both of which came with goodies both in-game and out. What essentially transpired was that, well, Cryptic unexpectedly reached their limit for lifetime and six-month specials.

It wasn’t the best of situations, and many community members are understandably upset by the sudden retraction of the offer.

I’ll note that Massively’s linked announcement doesn’t say anything about a limited number of these seats, just that it was available only until 1 September. Which is, um, not yet.

And the email I got on 22 August, just three days ago, says “Limited Champions Subscription Deals!” but mentions neither a date nor a quantity cap. Same for the one I got on 5 August.

And Cryptic’s official response:

We’d like to take a moment and hopefully clear up any confusion regarding our discounted Champions Online lifetime and six-month subscription offers…

First, we do sincerely apologize for the rather abrupt end to the promotional offers. It was never our intention to spring that news on our fans or anyone else. In short, we had an allotment of special subscription packages to sell over a fixed time (ending September 1). When we began approaching the offer cap before the date cap, we had to message. Frankly, we never suspected our special offers to be so popular. 

Which seems like pretty poor planning on Cryptic’s part.

While we did mention that supplies were limited in an announcement post,  

Which cannot be read right now because the forums are down. 

we definitely should have emphasized our limits more explicitly in all our messaging.  

Yup. Though it’s still remarkable that no limit was ever mentioned except for the initial announcement. Having a limited quantity is a known selling point. Not mentioning it is at best grossly negligent, at worst highly suspicious. 

Again, we just never expected supply to be any kind of an issue. The community response to our offers has been… amazing.

It’s hard for all of us here at Cryptic to see outcry in our communities. We work day and night to create the best gaming experiences we can and any missteps – big or small – on the long, winding, and sometimes treacherous path of development are always regrettable.

We do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and we do sincerely hope you understand and come play Champions Online with us this September. 

So … “We made a goof, but wasn’t it for a wonderful reason?” 

Actually, the response should be, “Wow, we made a goof, and we realize that this has upset people, but we are so tickled by the interest in the game that this is how we’re going to make it up to you …” 

If the financial picture makes extending the offers unreasonable, there’s any number of other bonuses you can offer. Sign up for a 6 month plan and get X free alt slots, or some other no-money-out-of-our-pockets QoL tchotchke. Make the customer feel like you really do care.

Mistakes get made. The worst mistakes are not fixing the first mistakes.

CO: The Peasants Are Revolting!

I mentioned last night that all of a sudden there was an impending shortage of discounted long-term subscriptions. And then Margie read the comment from Solonor that, in fact, they had “run out” of said discounted 6-month subs.

Now on the one hand, these sorts of things are (or should be) carefully calculated as part of the business plan. We need Y money over the first six months, so we can afford Z discounted subscriptions. No problem there.

But … if that’s what you’re going to do, then you let people know. “Hey, everyone — we have a limited number of 6-month and lifetime subscriptions. Not only are they a great deal, not only are they available for a limited time only, but we only have so many so order yours today!”

On the other hand, if it looks like you’ve been sucking people in and all of a sudden are cutting people off from a deal before you said you were — well, if you’re lucky then all that happens is someone calls a state attorney general for false advertising. If you’re unlucky, then you alienate a whole bunch of your prospective user base.

Evidently the latter is what happened, as Margie reported that there was a metric tonne of protest on the game boards. I’d quote some of it personally but … mysteriously, and without any announcement or warning, the forums are down. In fact, “The Champions Online™ website is currently offline for maintenance and will be back soon.”

That seems … odd.

Oh, Margie wrote Cryptic:

Please honor your offers. I would like to enjoy this game, but with the extreme problems of the Open Beta download and your inability to communicate with customers timely and accurately, my trust in Cryptic is very low. I will suggest to my husband that we cancel our pre-orders and wait and see if Cryptic can get it’s act together. It is not the price or the product, but the policies that will keep me from signing up.

Heh.

CO: A Last Night of Beta Love

Did some casual reading pre-Beta Close Event this evening, and discovered that, hey, that giant aircraft would take us back to Millennium City and there would be special trainers who would bump up to 40 for the Big Destrobot Blow-Out.

So we did — CPO Sharon (Gadgeteer) and Fineas (Sorcery), and we went ahead and leveled up to 40 and power populated to 40 and …

… well, we were defeated a lot. But we also helped in knocking down several of the Giant Robots, as well as various ground troops of Dr. Destroyer. So that felt good.

(Margie notes that CO handled it as a level-up, vs. CoX events where all opponents are basically Bosses to you no matter what level you are. It’s not clear to me whether or not that was intentional so as to let people take all those Level 40 powers.)

We also ran a Level 40 Sewer Mish, just to see how that worked. (Answer — not very well, largely because it was really unclear how some of the powers worked — e.g., all my “bot” powers.) We eventually made it through with many Defeats and the help of my Orbital Laser (yes, in the sewer — it’s that powerful). It was living proof of the danger of “PL MEH!” — you end up with big powers and no understanding of how to use them.

As Margie noted, the Big Event didn’t really give you a good sense of what it’s like to be Level 40. Grinds against giant opponents, or dealing en mass with human (or robotic) wave attacks isn’t the norm. Thought it was fun, in moderation. I can now say, “I was there.”

So closes the Open Beta (it’s actually been extended to 5PM Tuesday, to make up for server problems earlier today). CO opens for business on … 1 Sep? Though it is open for “early play” (if you do something or another) on Friday.

I’ll actually be happy to take the rest of the week off. 🙂

Final verdict: it seems likely (pending a chat with Margie) that we’ll up for a 6 month sub. The CO folk warn:

Due to high demand, we’ve only got 1000 Lifetime subscriptions and 500 discounted 6 Month subscriptions left, so make sure you grab them before it’s too late! You can check out our current offers at our exclusive specials page. Once we’ve run out of 6 Month subscriptions, you’ll still be able to purchase them, but at their standard price of $77.94 (that’s a savings of $12 from the normal month to month rate). There are no current plans to offer another Lifetime subscription plan, so if you’ve been on the fence about it, now’s the time to buy it!

We’ll see.