{"id":1266,"date":"2009-08-20T07:52:29","date_gmt":"2009-08-20T13:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/?p=1266"},"modified":"2009-08-20T09:48:41","modified_gmt":"2009-08-20T15:48:41","slug":"co-more-beta-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/2009\/08\/co-more-beta-thoughts.html","title":{"rendered":"CO: More Beta Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another night of running some toons through the initial invasion tutorial. (Hmmm … how are we supposed to be providing “beta” feedback to Cryptic?)<\/p>\n

LIKES<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I really like the Invasion environment. There’s just a lot going on. Consider the “Outbreak” environment in CoX — you spend a lot of time running down the street, but the “bad guys” are all safely off behind a fence — and, of course, in small mobs that stand there and don’t attack until you come within each of their aggro ranges. Heck, the same is true for CoX in general. On the other hand, there is stuff going on all over the place in Millennium City in CO — even the “safe areas” get groups of Qularr charging into them (with cops and soldiers shooting back). It feels more dynamic — and heroic.<\/li>\n
  2. I like the talking NPCs (limited, thus far, to two Champions). It’s a nice break from, and addition to, the voiceless dialog boxes and mute NPCs you get missions from.<\/li>\n
  3. I like that the Level 1 powers have, in many cases, different poses associated with them each time they fire. Since you use them so much, that’s important. Martial Arts is very nice, as is the Handgun. Others, there’s less difference.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    DISLIKES<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The 8-toon limit is going to drive me nuts, I assure you. I’ve already deleted off one just to try some other concepts. Bleah. I think this is an area where the “console” limits\/bias of CO shows, hand in hand with a “this is how people will play” bias toward single toon players. Regardless, it irks. And if the idea is that this will be expanded via microtransactions, it had best be a very small MT indeed — on the order of a buck — otherwise it will be even more irksome.<\/li>\n
    2. The invasion tutorial is very good. I think, though, it will become long and irksome with repetition — unless the idea, again, is that folks will take a single toon (or maybe two) through to level cap completion. For altoholics (though Beta further distorts this) it’s going to be a real pain sooner or later.<\/li>\n
    3. How the attributes (Endurance, Strength, Presence, etc.) tie into the powers and abilities is not very transparent; the tutorial doesn’t tutor on it. At least, I haven’t gotten it clear in my head, aside from persona RPG experience. Nevertheless, one is asked to choose loot based on attribute increases it gives, etc. That could all use some work. As could what the different screens do. There’s plenty of good info provided, but it’s a more complex environment than CoX, and needs more explanation therefore. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      OTHER NOTES, OBSERVATIONS, QUESTIONS<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Margie noticed last night, going through the log book for the heroes after we were done, that there were a few missions we had missed. She did some research, and discovered that, for example, Foxbat is buried under some rubble somewhere, and Sapphire, I believe, is also lurking around. We need to do a bit more exploration, but suffice it to say that you can’t just take the mission chain from one end to the other and hit all the content there. Which is a good thing.<\/li>\n
      2. If I had to characterize the feel of CO vs. the other two MMOs I’m familiar with, I’d say it has the “vibe” of CoX (through the super-hero genre) with the mechanics of LotRO (screen layout and controls, multiple trays of stuff, drops that boost attributes and sometimes require decisions about whether to use them and lose a lower-level one). It’s a nice combination.<\/li>\n
      3. I have yet to learn or have explained or figure out how the various drops work in the primary, secondary, and tertiary (I guess) attack \/ defense \/ utility trays. Loot just seems to go the appropriate points when clicked on, but I don’t know what pressing 8, 9, or 0 does (there’s no particularly visible effect or message). Are those active powers, passive ones, or what?<\/li>\n
      4. Took me a while to see how to customize the powers, but it can be done on the fly — right-click on the powers, I believe, and the list comes up with dropdowns for emanation points (where that applies) and sliders for color. Nice. And nice that it’s not a “tailor token” to do.<\/li>\n
      5. How do you toggle powers on? I’ve seen mention in a few places that the Level 1 attack power can be toggled on (to fire off whenever you select a target). That’d be nice, but there’s no obvious way to do it (though in some cases the firing seems to get stuck on).<\/li>\n
      6. There was a discussion about looting earlier. From my observations thus far, the only loot that can be kill-stolen from outside a team are the “inspiration” drops (which are immediate boosts) from kills (if you’re in melee or close blasting, you usually get it automatically because it spawns within range of you). Objects that drop are sometimes for individual heroes (the little “!” is formatted different), and sometimes for folks within the team. The team leader gets to decide on various strategies of how those get divvied up. Looting, beyond those “inspirations,” remains annoyingly manual.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Overall impression is favorable. It’s time to take some characters to the Desert and to Canada, to see how those environments play, but at the moment I am overall content with the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        Another night of running some toons through the initial invasion tutorial. (Hmmm … how are we supposed to be providing “beta” feedback to Cryptic?) LIKES I really like the Invasion environment. There’s just a lot going on. Consider the “Outbreak” environment in CoX — you spend a lot of time running down the street, but … Continue reading “CO: More Beta Thoughts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-champions-online","category-gameplay","category-resources-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1267,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions\/1267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/heroes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}