Champions Online

[Don]

I picked this up and it feels like it's a Phantasy Star Online that came 7 years too late. I guess apparently you need to pay $15/month to make a PSO type game viable after all.

Just like the original PSO, there's a ton of customization and it's actually meaningful. Nobody will remains what your Orc looks like in WoW even if there are a thousand kind of faces (and there isn't) but people in Champions Online really stand out. Like PSO you can make your characters look like anybody you would want to. I saw a Blanka and a Raiden (of Mortal Combat) so far and they actually look like the real thing too.

The combat engine feels more like an action game compared to a MMORPG. There seems to be more movement involved in combat since 75% of the character can shoot while on the move (but then so can every enemy). There's also a block command that you have to physically hit (shift key) that will significantly reduce the damage you take (by 2/3 or more, it seems).

Right now I'm like level 9 and finally out of the two tutorial zones (not sure why Canada is one of them). There's a lot of stuff you can use your power/advantage/etc for but it is prohibitively expensive to untrain them so I haven't figured out what to spend them on yet. It looks like it's pretty easy to accidentally create a gimp character especially if you did something dumb like take two energy forms with 2 of your 14 power points (you can only have one energy form).

[Chris]

add @Derithian to you bddy list. I'm playing as Saturday once PAX is done.

[Shrinweck]

Been playing this as well - account name is Shrinweck. My main character is gadgets/supernatural/martial arts and I got him to twenty one.

[Don]

@Astarica here, though my computer sucks and I get very bad frame in the biger zones. I'm level 19 electric.

This game really feels more like an action game than a MMORPG. I like the boss battles so far, though it seems like I have more problem with a pack of villians than the super villian since you just have to block on the single target bosses.

[Shrinweck]

Packs of henchman are more easily dealt with once you get close range AoEs.

[Chris]

sorry I'm @Chris_Hansbrough

[Don]

Do you just add @whatever to your friend list? That dosen't seem to work for me. I'm level 28 now and might want to try some of those 5 man dungeons.

[Chris]

yes you can just add @GlobalName and when I cone on I can accept it or not

[Shrinweck]

I made a new character and just got him to 24 today. I got frustrated at how overpowered I felt with my munitions character (minimines) and made a dual swords/super natural character. I'm thinking of grabbing some ranged cold powers for when people run out of my range but I already have a lunge ability and an ability that pulls them towards me, so maybe I'll rethink that.

Looking forward to hitting 25 tomorrow (ugh, stupid job) and exploring the nemesis system. If it can't hold my interest then I don't think I'm going to be renewing my subscription after the free month.

Still, I feel as if I've got my moneys worth either way.

Also - fuck the Gadroon and their gravitational manipulations.

[Don]

Minimines is way overpowered. I don't think this game has very good longevity but it's just fun blasting stuff.

[Shrinweck]

Well, it's happened. I've sat down twice today ready for 2+ hour gameplay sessions and I've stopped less than an hour in. I might have to check out Aion next week or when the free month on this game is over. This is sad for me because I actually really loved City of Heroes, the other superhero MMORPG they did, and actually played for several months and had a character at max level and two or three mid-leveled.

[Don]

There seems to be a lack of quests at the 30 range.

I did some of the 5 man stuff and they're pretty fun just blasting everything, though it seems like it's really hard to survive anything if you didn't have Regen, and if you don't have maxed blocking you pretty much die in 3 seconds.

[Mental]

Fucking a. No direct purchase and download? I guess I could drive to EB today. I wasn't going to buy any more games, particularly MMOs, but this one hooked me for a purchase and trial, but when I heard you could design your own villain later, that hooked me ridiculously to see what it's all about.

[Mental]

Never mind, Gamestop actually does it.

It is the strangest thing, I am actually falling in love with Gamestop as a retailer, because all of a sudden every time I go to my local Gamestop I end up having a good experience, and I even (shudder) signed up for the card last time I was there. It comes with a free yearly subscription to Game Informer, which is actually not bullshit, in fact it seems to be really, really good and getting me genuinely excited about some games that are coming out - they had the balls to diss Muramasa, which I don't think a magazine truly run by corporate minions would have done.

I just tried "Direct2Drive" and their download was buggy bullshit, and Gamestop did exactly what was right and accepted lots of my money in exchange for a game I hope will be lovely, which is what a game store is supposed to do. It was just like Tycho's wonderful description of functioning e-commmerce: "Hi, I would like some of x product." "Okay, that will be money dollars." "Great."

It didn't hurt that the local Gamestop manager is twenty-one, the most adorable thing I've ever seen (sadly married, as I noted when I asked her out), and runs a damn tight ship as well.

Okay. I got four hours sleep last night and yet am wired as fuck, I need gaming therapy, so I hope this shit is good.

[Mental]

The Champions unlock site, however seems to be a frothing piece of shit.

They've now declined me the chance to unlock my CD key twice, claiming it to be declined, only they've apparently charged me a buck each time for the privilege? What kind of BS is this?

[Don]

Didn't have any problem with entering my account key though my brother had a lot of trouble trying to buy it online.

The Nemesis system is just like designing another character except you fight that guy instead of playing that guy. I was lazy with the character creators so my character and Nemesis are both kind of generic-ish. The Nemesis Minions really do a good job simulating someone trying to gank you PvP, since they always have a tendency to show up while you're in the middle of a bad fight. Yet it's somehow quite satisfying when you do win, assuming you're not just some broken overpowered combo that kills everything in sight.

Right now I haven't played since level 31 because I ran out of quests and they're supposed to add more quests in that range. I can grind like any MMORPG hardcore guys but figure why do that if they promise to fix things?

One thing I really like about this game is the pickup groups. People always claim pickup groups suck, but in this game it's because pickup groups suck that's why it's actually fun. You go to a dungeon with nobody who can really heal or tank, and still end up winning somehow after a lot of deaths. That's far more exciting, to me, then go with some tank-heal-DPS paradigm.

[Mental]

How can you decline me when I have money in the account and you're not even supposed to charge my account until my free month wears off? AND you charge me two dollars on top of it? So now, not only do I not have my game, I've been gouged two bucks and I want to punch somebody in the face? This is the kind of relaxing, escapist experience I want to have when I spend fifty-five bucks on a game. No, really...

[Don]

I don't remember they ask you for credit card number unless you want to subscribe. You can simply activate your CD-Key (type it in), and then decline a subscription, you'll still get your free month. I didn't want to mess around with any credit card number since the sites seems kind of buggy. I'll go back and add it when my free month is up.

[Mental]

Not anymore, I guess. They don't let you sign on without a subscription, at least as far as I can tell by reading some forum posts. I'd love to be proven wrong. My client just says "0 permission tickets".

[Kupek]

The $1 charge will probably be refunded. Many places do that to ensure you've provided a valid account.

[Mental]

Yeah, just frustrating. I still have high hopes for the game to some extent, it's just another lesson that with the industry the way it is, it frequently doesn't pay to join an MMO at launch. It also may be my bank's fault instead of just being Cryptic's fault (though Gamestop certainly has its act together about exchanging money dollars for x product, the way I noted, and they didn't decline me.)

I have no doubt that I will inevitably find a way to get my actual subscription and try it, just kind of gives me the "meh"s.

[Mental]

The sad thing is, I really want to play. The screenshots look to me like, if nothing else, you really can create a genuine avatar for yourself.

[Mental]

I hate this shit. I really want to play. Stuff like this is making me pretty excited:

http://www.champions-online.com/screenshots

But I hate fighting with my bank, and even though I bet this would be simple, their customer service isn't open at night, and I was asleep all day after a bout with severe insomnia the other night.

How is it going? I heard the character customization is good. That's really what interests me. Also, I plan to start a side project of creating real comics with screenshots and scripts in Photoshop, once I start, which I think would be totally sweet.

[Don]

Well the game gives you total customization so it is entirely possible you create a totally gimp character that is totally unejoyable in terms of being powerful. I think that usually only happens to people who really wants to go with a certain theme of powers, because if you do some minimum research you should at least be able to avoid picking all the wrong abilities.

I'm not a huge fan of picking costumes but this is, and Phantasy Star Online, are the only two games I didn't just hit 'give me a random face' as my character creation process. The character creator is cleraly one of the biggest things this game has going for it, and I think the pace of the game feels pretty superheroic. Unless you wimped out and went with regen, you pretty much always end a tough fight with less than 20% of your health.

[SineSwiper]

because if you do some minimum research you should at least be able to avoid picking all the wrong abilities.

See, this is what fucks up games like these: having "wrong" abilities. Diablo 2 was notorious for this. So was Dark Age of Camelot. You shouldn't have a game so fucked up that if you pick a few of the "wrong" skills, you can't really play.

[Kupek]

I think that calls back to the dozens of discussions Don and others have had regarding balance.

[Don]

Well I think Champion Online does a good job to make sure most skills are playable, though of course a lot of people think playable means 'overpowered' so if you compare a skill to say the pre nerfed mini mines where it just kills everything instantly, then no matter what you pick is pretty gimp compared to mini mines.

If you remember to pick at least one block power, one AE attack, and one or two offense/defensive passive, you'll be okay. Now if you used all 13 points for AE attacks, that's probably not going to work. I don't think there's a way for the game to stop you from making a decision like that.

Also they got a powerhouse where you can actually pick up the new ability and try it on dummy targets so you get an idea of what it can do. Though I suspect a lot of people just pick a random skill and didn't even use it on the testing dummy a few times to see what kind of damage they should be expecting.

[Shrinweck]

Balancing is exactly why I've stopped playing. I found that with both of the characters I got above 15 I was surviving and doing damage by using a single skill 95% of the time. Eye of the storm (martial arts (dual wield)) actually makes you pretty much invulnerable while in use. In conjunction with rank 3 regeneration things just get way too easy.

Overall what turned me off is that there were no end game "Holy shit!" moves to build up to.

[Mental]

I just called my bank and was told the charges were not declined, Champions' site "interrupted" them, every time.






I'm thinking of calling my bank and having the pending charge for the game denied and just saving the money. Problem is I feel bad because GameStop didn't do anything wrong - apparently even though it seems to be only a small number of users that experience this, there are some issues with Champions' account servers not knowing how to process transactions right. But still, this has been an awful experience. And I can tell from the fact that Champions' site has inactive listboxes showing up behind active ones that their website - ON the payment page, along with warnings about insecure transmission items - was either hastily or very sloppily designed.

[Mental]

I'm in! Squeee!

It's my bank's fault after all. Assbutts. They had an old address for me on file, and apparently whatever Champions was doing for validation was activating it.

Okay. Time to see what this is all about.

[Don]

I'd say Regeneration rank 3 is one of those overpowered skills that makes the game rather pointless. I can get pretty far in a 5 man dungeon solo with regen 3, and if I had some kind of attack that I can use between blocks I can probably solo it.

Regen 3 is what made you unkillable not the other skill. It seems downright impossible to die to regular stuff with Regen 3.

[Mental]

So, very brief impressions:

-I love the art style and the character creator. I could spend hours playing with the character creator. In fact, I did. It really allows for a stunning variety of options and customization. My first attempt at character creation started out as something like a Gray Fox-like version of myself, then got lost in a crosscultural meltdown and picked up angel wings and devil antlers in the spirit of Devil Jin as well as oversized mecha hands and feet. He's a pretty badass dude. Might be the best character creator I've seen in a game, up there with Soul Calibur 4.

-So far, I really don't like the game mechanics. I'm only in the opening dungeon, and already the random vendor trash drops have a page and a half of text? I don't want to spend my initial levels learning a massive set of rules and regs.

-I was saddened to see that the game runs at a passable level only with all the graphic finery turned down on my machine. My machine is not the newest, however Ian McConville of Mac Hall/Three Panel Soul apparently also bought Champions and is having the same issues:

http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2009-09-18

-I have realized what I really want from this game has nothing to do with playing it, which looks to be a chore and a drag. What I want is access to the character creator, a posing interface and a screen capture utility, and I will go nuts with the character creator and make comics. Shit, I would probably pay fifteen bucks a month just for that privilege. So far, the camera controls in-game do not seem to permit replicating this functionality...perhaps, however, I could go on the forums and then hope for a magical genie to grant me a wish from the dev team.

[Don]

I think you can download the character generator as a stand alone because they got a character making contest for people who don't have the game, though obviously you won't be able to do anything else beyond creating the character.

The text on the item is just flavor, you don't have to read them, but some are kind of funny.

The game runs poorly on my machine too.

I assume the game has ability to take screenshots but probaly can't get exactly what you want.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah when I was on my acrobatics character my computer chugged like crazy when I was running at full speed or I was in a busy area.

[SineSwiper]

Far too many developers think they can run by without optimizing their games, which ultimately denies them a larger audience.

[Lox]

I think you can download the character generator as a stand alone because they got a character making contest for people who don't have the game, though obviously you won't be able to do anything else beyond creating the character.

http://championsonline.ign.com/

The link is there, but the Champions website is down temporarily.