Author Topic: "So What's the Deal With Champions Online?" New Mild-Mannered Reporter  (Read 3885 times)

dwturducken

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I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

JaguarX

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sums up my thoughts too and what I been saying in game chat.

I guess CO is what COX would have been like if left to drift off into maintence mode instead of yanking it. 

houtex

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All I can do is shake my head that CO is still up and CoH is not. 

I just... don't get it.  And yeah, pretty much nailed it, that article did.

Kistulot

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They pretty much gave up on CO as soon as they started developing for STO. Bugs have crept in that no one has the time or care or resources to fix. New content isn't anything that will actually breathe life into the game. It might lead to it dying faster than it might otherwise, but it would seem more honest to me if they threw up big flags everywhere going "this game is our lowest priority of anything ever so don't expect anything ever".

And maybe they have, but I still feel a bit meh about the time I spent trying to play again after CoH died.

CoH had a big advantage over CO that while it lacked an endgame, and maybe didnt have infinite content before the AE, it had a lot of landmass. They made some islands, a city, and their outskirts, take up a lot of space. CO by comparison feels pretty... cramped. For being a wider world, stretching from the frosty wasteland of Quebec to the nuclear desert of my back yard (both said perfectly wrong intentionally) there is variety in locales... but they seem empty. I spent a lot of time near the end of CoH just exploring, and I did while the game was vibrant too. Just flying around Overbrook, visiting the nooks and crannies of Steel Canyon, etc. It felt big, and with the exception of a few maps, big with stuff in it. And even most of the big maps with more space had plenty of interest.

Looking at CO now i dont know HOW they could fix it without essentially stapling another game on it like CoH did over the years... and while the foundry could come to them, I remember hearing it might hit them in february, and now its nearly april. If it does, it will help, but really by how much? Even with that the gameplay is rubbish once you team to the point where I wouldn't want to pay to have access to it, or to the character I have there.

I remember really loving it in beta, because it had promise. It had potential. But it became clear very quickly the more we neared open beta that Cryptic wasn't listening. Things were broken and that was okay, they didnt care, or they didn't feel it was worth focusing on. Then we found out why, and I agree with massively - they never really gave a full look back. CO got a bad rap from the start for very good reasons. A rushed game, an incomplete game, rarely stacks up to polished competition.

Fingers crossed I'm proven wrong and once neverwinter is out they at least go back to fixing frustrating bugs in a vaguely timely fashion.
Woo! - Argent Girl

JaguarX

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All I can do is shake my head that CO is still up and CoH is not. 

I just... don't get it.  And yeah, pretty much nailed it, that article did.
Different companies.

One have a history long history of closing games good reason bad reason neutral reason questionable reason justifiable reasons- still have history of closing games for years.


The other one not so much.

If CO was in COX hands it probably would have been cared for better but would have been closed while COX in cryptic/PWE hands would have been neglected after i5 or so but still running.

0nehanklap

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Sadly, this is another game that is a victim of poor management.  I suspect that, if not for the PR debacle of NCSoft, PWE would already be planning its closure.  It is evident that virtually all support has been pulled from the game, which is more bug-riddled now than at launch.  Design flaws that should have been fixed ages ago are simply ignored.  Contacting a "GM" usually only gets you a "helper" who can offer only basic game mechanics advice, then point you to the bug-reporting procedures.  Gone are the days of the ever-present Paragon Studios Devs who you could call with a problem mid-mission and realistically expect them to pop in and fix your problem with flair.

Though I subscribe, and have spent far too much in the Z-Store, I never felt that CO took itself, or the genre, seriously as a market contender.  Rather, I felt they found themselves holding the bag after Marvel bailed on them, and so they rushed to publish in order to financially salvage the studio.  If CoX had not been a factor, they probably would have made a bigger impact, and may have become the leader for several years, putting more emphasis on improvements/fixes.  As it is though, they have only tried to keep it alive as a life-support mechanism for their other projects.  While I am happy for the Cryptic team to have been able to continue as a creative force - I long for a real successor to our City franchise.