Champions Online at level 6

[pinballdave]

1. Way too complicated and uninviting
2. Animations for DoTs are way too long
3. Totally a gankfest. Everyone kill steals and thinks nothing about it.
4. Inferior to City of Heroes in every facet.
5. I will never waste another minute on this feces.

[Tenzhi]

Complicated.  Ha.

[JaguarX]

Well CO isnt for everyone, but that can be said for any game.

[Thunder Glove]

Wait, what DoT power with an overly-long animation do you have at level 6?  One of my pet peeves with the game is that all the low-level attacks (and most of the higher-level ones) are nothing but short animations of flailing limbs, to the extent that I can't tell one attack from another for many powersets.  There's barely any DoTs at all at level 6, let alone any with long animation times.

I'd love to have a long dramatic animation for something (other than Orbital Cannon, which is possibly my favorite attack animation out of a mostly-bad bunch, but it's not an attack you'll have as soon as you leave the tutorial).

(Bear in mind that I ask this as someone who has a love-hate relationship with CO at best)

[SARobb]

1. Way too complicated and uninviting
2. Animations for DoTs are way too long
3. Totally a gankfest. Everyone kill steals and thinks nothing about it.
4. Inferior to City of Heroes in every facet.
5. I will never waste another minute on this feces.

Ok, so far every post you've made is openly hostile toward CO.  It's not for everyone, without a doubt and it can be uninviting.  TBH though I don't think your giving it a fair shake.  But to address each of your points:

• yes, at times it can be uninviting but it's far from complicated if you take the time to read everything.
• sorry, those aren't DOTs, those are either Charge animations or Maintains... either of which only take as long as you hold the button down
• If your having trouble with kill stealing, change instances, there's bound to be one instance where you'll be left alone.
• It's not CoH, nor does it even attempt to mimic CoH.  CO does it's own thing and you have to take it as it is.  We all miss CoH but repeatedly trying and bashing another game for being 'Inferior to City of Heroes in every facet.' is a bit...i donno...just strikes me as odd
• Then why bother posting all the negativity?

[Tenzhi]

I don't think I can say I've had any kills effectively stolen.  If I attack something and someone else finishes it off, in my experience it counts for whatever quest I'm on and I get the loot.  The XP may get divided, but that's pretty negligible anyway - the real XP lies in mission rewards (and possibly alerts).

[JaguarX]

well I can agree about the kill stealing. Even on low pop map instances, people still kill steal. It seems to be the norm, but it dont bother me much. Slight annoyance on a gnat level but nothing serious. Then again, I came across more instances of kill stealing, many cases of blatant doing it just to be doing it to see if they can get a rise out of someone kill stealing in COX than CO.

Given that the greater portion of xp is in mission end bonus, it's probably safe to assume that the annoyance of kill stealing is not always about xp, at least with me it isnt. More of in the line of principle and respect for other gamers, but many dont share that view and some will kill steal just to do it. At least in CO though, it seems I dont have to deal with drive-by buffers, which was highly annoying in COX, especially the ones that change the character movement characteristics. I heard they came out with a feature that nullified many of those effects and ended drive-by buffing grief. Cool stuff. 

[pinballdave]

Ok, so far every post you've made is openly hostile toward CO.  It's not for everyone, without a doubt and it can be uninviting.  TBH though I don't think your giving it a fair shake.  But to address each of your points:

• yes, at times it can be uninviting but it's far from complicated if you take the time to read everything.
• sorry, those aren't DOTs, those are either Charge animations or Maintains... either of which only take as long as you hold the button down
• If your having trouble with kill stealing, change instances, there's bound to be one instance where you'll be left alone.
• It's not CoH, nor does it even attempt to mimic CoH.  CO does it's own thing and you have to take it as it is.  We all miss CoH but repeatedly trying and bashing another game for being 'Inferior to City of Heroes in every facet.' is a bit...i donno...just strikes me as odd
• Then why bother posting all the negativity?

Ingame documentation is scant, and if it's a "maintain" shouldn't it describe somewhere how to use this?
I don't know what you mean by changing instances, there are no doors to missions and I don't get a choice of servers.
I am bashing in-game peculiarities that are not intuitive
I am warning others off from wasting their time as well.
The gear takes some reading I understand that. It's the interface with contacts. Is this an option? If I hit go ahead, why doesn't something get selected? The missing dialogue or background so if a players knows if it's an instanced mission, an outdoor event or just a fed ex. I especially hate the blue diamond pointer that sometimes shows up and sometimes leaves you hanging. I can't distinguish what con the foes are either without getting killed first.

[General Idiot]

That's odd, because Champions does pretty much exactly what CoH did for enemy cons. Their name will be in a colour relative to their level, just like in CoH. It even uses the exact same colours as CoH did.

No offense, but you're starting to sound like you just don't pay attention and want everything spoonfed to you with zero effort on your part.

[Thunder Glove]

Maintains are explained (and demonstrated, via a fully-voiced video) in the Powerhouse - you know, the place you first appear when you leave the Tutorial and have to select new powers for the first time.   In fact, as I recall, there's even a mission to watch all the videos if you go to the Powerhouse out of the Tutorial.  (It's not there if you skip the Tutorial, but the Tutorial is not optional on your very first character, so you have to have done it)

So it sounds to me like you just skipped past all the basic explanations, and then ran here to complain that nothing is explained.

And I don't know how you can not tell what enemies are higher-level than you are.  Their names are color-coded, as General just said, plus it shows their actual level next to their portrait.  That's not even something that needs to be explained.  Their level is visible right there.

Some other things - like changing instances (done by clicking on the Instance name at the top of the mini-map) - are not very well-documented, it's true.  But not everything.

[pinballdave]

That's odd, because Champions does pretty much exactly what CoH did for enemy cons. Their name will be in a colour relative to their level, just like in CoH. It even uses the exact same colours as CoH did.

No offense, but you're starting to sound like you just don't pay attention and want everything spoonfed to you with zero effort on your part.

I was level 6, it said it was level six, but the reticle was red. It didn't make sense to me, inconsistent.

[pinballdave]

Maintains are explained (and demonstrated, via a fully-voiced video) in the Powerhouse - you know, the place you first appear when you leave the Tutorial and have to select new powers for the first time.   In fact, as I recall, there's even a mission to watch all the videos if you go to the Powerhouse out of the Tutorial.  (It's not there if you skip the Tutorial, but the Tutorial is not optional on your very first character, so you have to have done it)

So it sounds to me like you just skipped past all the basic explanations, and then ran here to complain that nothing is explained.

And I don't know how you can not tell what enemies are higher-level than you are.  Their names are color-coded, as General just said, plus it shows their actual level next to their portrait.  That's not even something that needs to be explained.  Their level is visible right there.

Some other things - like changing instances (done by clicking on the Instance name at the top of the mini-map) - are not very well-documented, it's true.  But not everything.

I didn't skip all the explanation, but I did think the movie cinema was a PvP thing.

[dwturducken]

It took me a while to get past the fact that it wasn't CoH. I'm still not happy with it, but it and Secret World are keeping my attention better than anything else out there. I may even continue Gold, but I'm still on the fence, there.

I have had kills stolen that didn't count in my tally for the mish, but there were never a shortage of other kills to get. It's annoying, but it isn't unique to any one game.

As for the rest, well, there are things that can be done in settings to correct a few of the annoying things. I'll just tell you to browse around the other threads for those, since most of them have been cover far better than I could do here.

[AlphaFerret]

Once you begin to no longer compare it to coh, it does get better.  Have to agree with the lack of intuitiveness...

[tigerbaby]

Ingame documentation is scant, and if it's a "maintain" shouldn't it describe somewhere how to use this?
I don't know what you mean by changing instances, there are no doors to missions and I don't get a choice of servers.
I am bashing in-game peculiarities that are not intuitive
I am warning others off from wasting their time as well.
The gear takes some reading I understand that. It's the interface with contacts. Is this an option? If I hit go ahead, why doesn't something get selected? The missing dialogue or background so if a players knows if it's an instanced mission, an outdoor event or just a fed ex. I especially hate the blue diamond pointer that sometimes shows up and sometimes leaves you hanging. I can't distinguish what con the foes are either without getting killed first.

I might have felt this way at level 6...but iirc I hadn't yet left the tutorial.  The tutorial is a counter-intuitive hot mess, yes - but if you soldier thru and keep hunting around it is worth the going.  I haven't found all the tutorial side-quests yet, I don't think, but maybe i will on my next toon.

I've played my first roll (tigerbaby, of course) to level 32, and it's not as bad as you are making out.  The thing is, Champions came out *after* CoH, and there are many aspects of gameplay where they couldn't use the simpler, more elegant solution CoH did because they had to make it different.  Adding to the problem is that the tutorial tries to explain every single thing at once, instead of giving the 'need to know' basics as CoH did, then introduces additional features through progressive gameplay and mission-based tutorials. 

There are tons of useful menu options buried in the interface, and it is well worth your while to click on every single thing and see what it offers.  Did you know there is a button that pulls up all the missions currently available to your toon?  It's one of those glowy icons arranged on either side of the small map (one of those is also a larger map, which also shows currently active missions, very useful).  It's also incredibly important to read through the mission briefings carefully as there seems to be no way to call them back up once you've accepted (that I have found yet, anyway).  Hitting 'Esc' brings up the 'Options' menu and there are tons of adjustments that can be made that makes the whole game a lot easier on the eyes - turning off the black outlines enhanced my experience hugely.

Once i got over my disappointment and decided to think of 'figuring out this game' as a kind of meta-game, my enjoyment increased greatly.  Maybe that's intentional...only 8 levels from 40 and I *still* don't feel I really understand CO 

On the upside, adversaries are much easier and if you have some skillz it is entirely possible to solo mobs that are lurid purple and not faceplant.  Levelling is super-fast (*too* fast, imho).  Going to Lemuria and fighting underwater is a hootski, Verbona Bay is a very beautiful zone, and fighting dinosaurs in the snow in Canada is hilarious (the landscape lacks some authenticity, imho, but maybe it's modelled on someplace out east I don't know about).

It's not CoH, it's not home, but it fills in the gap a bit, and has given me a new appreciation for the finer points of Paragon (and the Rogues, and Praetoria) that I'd maybe taken a bit for granted.  And -ye gods- do I miss my Inspiration tray!!!

[Empyrean]

I am warning others off from wasting their time as well.

Well, I'm glad you didn't warn me off- I'm really enjoying it.  It takes an open mind and a bit more patience leveling that first toon all the way than CoH did (well, unless you go way back to when getting to 50 was like the trail of tears), but for me and my son and wife it paid off and it's our new home unless CoH returns in some form.

Warn people, but don't "warn them off"- you can't know what's right for others.

PS- Just to clarify, I've had my frustrations with CO,  but in my case I'm glad I stuck it out.  And CoH was a hot mess way back when I started- glad I stuck that out too.

[Hyperstrike]

4. Inferior to City of Heroes in every facet.

I'll disagee here.

There's a few things about the game and some of its systems that actually are better than the corresponding systems in CoH.

However, taken as a whole, yeah.  CoH had it whipped hollow.

My only advice is to stop expecting it to somehow BECOME CoH.  And learn it as a completely different game with occasional mechanical similarities.

[Hyperstrike]

I was level 6, it said it was level six, but the reticle was red. It didn't make sense to me, inconsistent.

There are many more classifications of enemy in CO than there are in CoH.  Master Villains and above can be quite QUITE dangerous.

Also, there's no "level past and then sweep".  Enough enemies, even L1, can shut you down via cumulative effort.  Found this out when trying to take a L36 through a L32 mission  that's mean for teams.  They just nuked the crap outta me because I couldn't kill enough of them fast enough to stop from being overrun.

[Hyperstrike]

Ingame documentation is scant, and if it's a "maintain" shouldn't it describe somewhere how to use this?

They have a Wiki.  It's nowhere NEAR as in-depth as ParagonWiki is.  But it's useful.
http://www.champions-online-wiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

I don't know what you mean by changing instances, there are no doors to missions and I don't get a choice of servers.

If you're in Millennium City/West Side, and your objectives keep getting overrun by kill-stealers, hit M to bring up your main map.
You'll have a button there that allows you to flip over to one of the other running instances.  Just pick one with fewer people in it.

It's the interface with contacts. Is this an option? If I hit go ahead, why doesn't something get selected? The missing dialogue or background so if a players knows if it's an instanced mission, an outdoor event or just a fed ex. I especially hate the blue diamond pointer that sometimes shows up and sometimes leaves you hanging. I can't distinguish what con the foes are either without getting killed first.

This is what your main map, and minimap are for.

To select a mission and get the mission indicator (the blue pointer), click on the mission in your mission list.  When it turns blue, it jumps to #1 on your list and you'll normally get a pointer.

If the mission is instanced or a talkie (talk to contact), you'll get a little blue circle with the number in it on your map.

If the mission is a hunt, you'll get a section of your map given a blue area overlay.

If your mission has multiple objectives, you'll get multiple areas and can attack them, USUALLY, in any order.

Now, SOME outside missions (especially on Monster Island and in Lemuria) happen over an ENTIRE section of a map.  As such, you have to expend some brain-power memorizing which area is what.

Some in-instance missions will have an NPC calling off objectives to you.  You'll also see "helper text" pop onscreen to tell you as well.

In Resistance, you have one section where you're assisting in the hacking of a security system.  The NPC calls off the server bank you need to click on and the helper text floats up.

In one of the Vibora Bay missions, there's a given mission (that's actually required to access other stuff later), that gives you a timed mission to create a potion.  Same thing.  It tells you the component, you go get it and dump it in.  Then get the next component.

Doors into instances aren't always very obvious until you're almost right on top of them.

However, after a little while it's fairly easy to anticipate where the doors are.

[General Idiot]

I was level 6, it said it was level six, but the reticle was red. It didn't make sense to me, inconsistent.

Another thing exactly as CoH did it. Mobs have ranks in addition to their level, and higher rank enemies will con as one or more levels higher than they actually are. Henchmen (Minion equivalent) will con as their actual level. Villains (Lieutenant) will con +1 to their level and master villains (Boss) will con two levels higher. All exactly as in CoH. Super villains and higher also con higher levels but I don't remember exactly how many off the top of my head. I think legendaries (Archvillains) and cosmics (Giant Monsters) always con purple regardless.