Champions Online

[JSPADES]

All this talk is making me want to reactivate my CoH account...grrr

Hey, you should totally do that

I play CoH/CoV rather regularly (although I'm not the avid PL'er), and I'm on Infinity and Virtue servers. If you get back on, just add @basilikon to your friends when you see me

While I've only been on this game since last Hallowe'en, I have heard from more than a few long-term players that NC Soft (a/k/a Paragon Studios) has done a much finer job of adding new content, squashing game bugs, and adding QoL and value to CoH/CoV than Cryptic ever has. In fact, some have even gone as far as to say that certain individuals at Cryptic were responsible for holding the game back (altogether ignoring playerbase wants/needs/suggestions in some cases).

Since I joined in early Nov 08 (less than a year ago for you math wizards out there), they have already rolled out 3 issues (updates), and they're poised to implement another (Power Spectrum, the power colour customisation issue) very soon (it's in open beta right now).

-b-

[MinisterofDOOM]

You can definitely play Champions solo and still have fun. I have only grouped up a couple of times and am still doing fine.

You just need to keep your solo style in mind when building your character. A lot of builds are NOT solo friendly and need to be supported by a group. But there are plenty of great solo builds, too. I've been wreaking havok with my Telekinesis character (named Rubber Spoon in reference to the Sea Lab episode with Stimutacs). My friend's sorcery character, however, gets mangled by newborn kittens and leaves blowing in the wind. There are TONS of build options within each power archetype and even each individual power allowing you to focus more on damage or defense or sustainability as you see fit. So you can definitely build a character well suited to solo survivability.

There are in-game quests that require multiple people, but they're usually at the end of quest chains so you can avoid them if you want (although the loot is often worth grouping up for them). If you just want to get your feet wet and avoid everyone else until you feel like you know what you're doing, you'll be totally fine go that route.

[Hijacker]

My might toon is a wonderful build for soloing. However, she's also great for doing boss damage.

I've pretty much solo-ed the whole game so far and I'm at 31. The only issue I'm running into is that I'm running out of quests to do. I would suggest that everyone should go back and do all the lowbie quests in Canada and the Desert. That way when you hit the 20s, you won't be doing quests 3 levels above you.

[Loki]

I joined in May '05 I believe but I've been inactive for a year now. Just plain don't have the time. They used to reactive old accounts when a new issue came out so I'd usually hop on for a weekend, but they stopped doing that...

All my characters were on Triumph.

[MinisterofDOOM]

Now a post about my biggest complaint with this game:

The completely useless and ambiguous tooltips for powers.At the trainer, you can view normal and enhanced tooltips. Both are generally useless. There's so much jargon that is never explained, or is out of context. Like "enables TravelDisablemode" and "Only occurs under certain conditions." Okay. WHAT CONDITIONS? And I can guess what TravelDisablemode is, but about the other 75 modeswithnospacesmodes that are less obvious.

Also, low-level tooltips often include references to higher level powers, the tooltips for which the player has not yet gained access to. So all I see is "activates [x power]" but I have NO IDEA what [x power] is. And even though the name of that power is in a highlighted color, it's not clickable to bring up more details.

Too much of the back-end of abilities is hidden. It makes choosing powers completely meaningless a lot of the time, because you don't know if one power is better than the other since half the power's description is indecipherable. I've been playing Diablo, WoW, NWN, and WoD for years and years, I'm no stranger to numbers and RPG math. But even so, I still have no idea what half of my character's abilities are actually doing because the tooltips are so poorly worded. I can understand things being that way during beta, but the game's on the commercial run now, and it's time to start showing me the DETAILS instead of jargon that obscures the details.

[Hijacker]

I was ok with the placeholder text in CB. I was hoping that during OB, Cryptic would fill in the powers descriptions better, but when it carried into live, I was definitely disappointed. Best thing I can say to you is the read the forums and get the champion builder program. They guy that programed the builder did what Cryptic should have done, made the math transparent and given better descriptions.

[positron1]

I went halfsies on this game with a bud and he loves it but me....meh. The character creator is excellent, I could sit there for hours just creating characters but when I get to the tutorial I didn't enjoy it so much. He said that the game gets much better after the tutorial so I'm gonna finish it and see if it's so.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I actually haven't played this in ages. I guess I'm just MMO'd out. But also, it's a fun game that is severely lacking in transparency. It really detracts from the feeling of character involvement. Too much of the mechanics are still nebulous or hidden. Most of the fun of an MMORPG is building your character, and with nebulous character stats, it's hard to have fun with that. I guess for me, the game is TOO arcadey. Which is kind of odd since WoW is too time-centric. But I don't see why we can't have a game that plays like Champions combined with transparent stats like WoW. The two are not opposed.

I'm hoping STO will be more transparent and involving.

[positron1]

This was my first MMO experience, I'm hoping The Old Republic, A.P.B. or that other one like A.P.B. will be better.

[MinisterofDOOM]

APB looks like crap to me. Old Republic looks excellent, but I'm not to pleased with the idea of the interactive cutscenes adding time and tedium to the gameplay when I just want to sever some legs.

[Hijacker]

I actually haven't played this in ages. I guess I'm just MMO'd out. But also, it's a fun game that is severely lacking in transparency. It really detracts from the feeling of character involvement. Too much of the mechanics are still nebulous or hidden. Most of the fun of an MMORPG is building your character, and with nebulous character stats, it's hard to have fun with that. I guess for me, the game is TOO arcadey. Which is kind of odd since WoW is too time-centric. But I don't see why we can't have a game that plays like Champions combined with transparent stats like WoW. The two are not opposed.

I'm hoping STO will be more transparent and involving.

Cryptic is trying to address some of the issues, but I'll be honest, stat transparency is low on their priority list from the looks of it. I love the game, and play it when I can fit the time in. However, the triage list for fixing things seems to be ordered oddly as they focus on implementing things like ragdoll physics when there are still broken quests abound.

I'm hoping that once the game finishes settling, they'll get around to explaining more about the stats than giving the generic (moved X power in line with others like it)

[positron1]

Like I said before me and a bud went half on this game, he loved it and I was like meh but the other day I played again after fixing the graphic and framerate issues and I'm hooked on this game it's awesome!

[positron1]

NICO SUPERTEAM UNITE! We need a team for those missions that require one, I've got no friends and everyone else seems to be out for themselves.

[positron1]

Anyone on here still playing?

[Hijacker]

I'm on occassionally. I've just been really busy and just got Borderlands and Dragon Age. Shoot a friend invite to @Brick_House

[positron1]

I'm on occassionally. I've just been really busy and just got Borderlands and Dragon Age. Shoot a friend invite to @Brick_House

To what hero @Brick_House? This game is sick man, sick!

[MinisterofDOOM]

Friends lists are account-wide with Cryptic games. All your characters share a friends list, both ways. So you'll be sending the invite to "Brick_House"

You can actually send invites right from the champions website if you're logged in...don't even have to be in game.

[Hijacker]

Out of quick curiosity, is hulkbuster77 you, Posi?

I do love the social integration of the game. Having out of game access to your lists is a good move on Cryptic's part

[positron1]

Out of quick curiosity, is hulkbuster77 you, Posi?

I do love the social integration of the game. Having out of game access to your lists is a good move on Cryptic's part

Yeah, I used my friends email thingy when we installed the game, I should have used mine(positron).

[Hijacker]

No prob! If you need any help on quests and stuff, shoot me a tell. I can RSK down for you.

I'm kind of at a weird point in the game as there are quests for me to do, but they're all 3 levels over me and I'm just grinding to the next level to make the available quests a bit easier and not to run out before I hit 40. It's part of the reason why I stopped playing in September (aside from moving twice and being generally really busy)

[positron1]

Cool thanks, I saw you were on this morning in the city and at like level 35.

[positron1]

No prob! If you need any help on quests and stuff, shoot me a tell. I can RSK down for you.

I'm kind of at a weird point in the game as there are quests for me to do, but they're all 3 levels over me and I'm just grinding to the next level to make the available quests a bit easier and not to run out before I hit 40. It's part of the reason why I stopped playing in September (aside from moving twice and being generally really busy)

Hey a friend of mine that uses my computer to play Champions says he ran into you on there the other day.

[Hijacker]

Cool! Which toon was it? I see you online most times when I log on, but I didn't realize you had a friend playing. Once I get Brick to 40, I'll probably start playing my alts, Buckshot and Stonewall Jackson, more. I'm just getting close to 40 now on my main, so I kinda want to hit that cap and then start leveling my alts a bit more casually.

[positron1]

I'm not sure which one he was using, he has like five champions where I only have one that I've been using since the beginning.

[Hijacker]

I usually see Move or Bombshell on the most

[positron1]

Move is mine.

[Hijacker]

Cool deal. I'm playing Parabellum, my munitions toon, right now