Champions Online

[JaguarX]

Love-

Combat system
The missions post level 15.
The power choices and freedom to mix and match. AKA customization
The Sliders in body/face.
Easy to play solo without feeling left out of the good stuff.
None or very little accuracy check. Don't have to worry about every single attack being accuracy checked and missing all the time.
Same for defense don't have to worry about defense rolls.
Decent gear drops from normal content.
The build a Nemesis concept

The feeling of being on par powerful a super hero in the game compared to feeling like a mere sidekick and having to either max out or special build or take 8 people to defeat one in game major NPC. They seemed to have kept that to a minimum.

Not much content gated behind team requirements.

Like-
Blocking mechanism. Even comic book heroes block every now and then.

Open missions although sometimes ya have to battle with kill thieves and vultures sometimes. Now I don't mind kill thieves so much as usually it's just coincidence that two people targeting same mob. But vultures...ugh. They are total cowards. They wait for you to grab attention of the mob so they can pick up the rewards with little risk to themselves because they cant survive on their own. How I combat them? I stop fighting and let aggro go to them and watch them die then resume killing. By the time they make it back I usually have moved out the area completed mish and moved on.

Foxbat- He's different and a breath of fresh air from the usual superhero uptight look down their nose at everyone else "I'm better than thou" NPC like in many super hero MMOs. Not sure if he's crazy, an imbecile, or some overzealous fan of comics but I like him.

Alerts-Quick easy to the point. None of that waiting for buffs, waiting for half hour to a couple hours for team to form and get to the zone to start. None of that "I'm the leader do what I say or I'll kick you. Now sit there and wait ten minutes while the tank try to heard the entire room or the invisible guy runs to the end of the mission to get glowie." crap. Just que and go, a que system that actually works. The downside that some find is that it means PuG. I dont mind PuGs though so it doesn't bother me. We succeed we succeed we don't we don't. Just que again.

The channels-About as far as I go on a social day to day basis while playing. I can interact and do what I have to do at my own pace and complete just about every mission every storyline there without having to actually team with them. Good to see some people on there. Interesting conversations, some people familiar some new. Usually it's laid back but sometimes things get a little tense like anytime when there is a group of human beings in one area long enough. I seen convos range from the usual "grrr hate NCSoft. Everyone hate NCSoft or you are with them!" to "what's ya favorite breast size." Luckily the first have died down a bit lately and increased in silly light hearted topics. Hell, there was even a civil discussion about politics one time. I never seen that before in any MMO I traveled to not even COX. Usually it gets to about two lines and people are at each other throat because the other person dont share their view. I couldnt believe it. I should have taken a screenshot because I'm not many people would believe me either. I hardly believed it. People are friendly on there over all though, especially on COX channel. I wont lie, I kind of expected the more "intense" group of COX players to show up and turn COX channel into end of days forum part 2 but it seems most have either stayed away or turned a new leaf. Either way, it's good. 

The neutral-

Art work graphic. I don't mind them but don't find it exceptionally appealing but them again, I dont care too much about graphics I look more at fun factor. Hell I still play original Doom series over Doom 3 even though Doom 3 is superior in graphics. I find Doom more fun. Same with Super Mario NES compared to the current offerings. Thus graphics is like a 0.0000000011% part of the equation.

Teaming-Contray to popular belief, you can team in this game. It's pretty easy to build a team. Although I havent teamed much. Got al ittle burnt out on getting on a team and spending most of my time doing map tours, building a team saying not doing a speed run just steamroll and within two minutes about one or two people say "Hey, I only have 20 minutes, can we speed run it?" My reply-"Uhh while we will skip uneeded stuff given the length of this Synaspe TF, I intend on killing things, you know for xp. But even if we do speed run it, you do realize there is a lot of kill alls and thus we probably wont be done in 20 minutes?" It got to a point to find a group that was as interested as I am in getting xp and murdering everything in sight in a quick manner and thus I mostly was on my own or stuck doing map tours for the accolades. In CO. No more worry about that. Mostly solo but team from time to time when I'm ready to put up with it although the people there dont seem to be in such a hurry where teaming with them is not fun and feel like they are in the mindset that killing things is a chore and doing missions is a chore and doing anything beyond grabbing a glowie is a chore when I enjoy defeating enemy mobs that the devs made for me to defeat. I understand people have different definition of fun but glad I found this game where I can have my fun without having to rely on possible other people definition of fun. When I do team, in alerts mostly, it's in, get it complete, out, done.


Don't like so much-

Bugs- It's not the fact that there is bugs in the game it's the fact that there dont seem to be any plan to fix any of them. Or rather to do anything to the game. Oh besides more lockboxes. They love those lockboxes. They say it brings in money then turn around and say that CO is not bringing in enough money to justify more attention. Hmmmm. Oh it couldnt possibly be the fact that permanent solid content havent been added in...I dont know...the past year at least :p. I mean who doesnt like doing "kill Poe" for the hundredth time. Cant get enough of killing Poe. :p.

Nemesis system execution-Nemesis as stated, very good concept but not exactly a nemesis. Feel more like a part time sidekick of someone that pop up every blue moon. Not really a thorn in the side at all. I dont know, maybe I'm crazy. When I think of a nemesis I think of something like what Lex Luthor is to Superman, what Joker is to Batman or hell even what Magneto is to Prof. X. In the game it's more like "who is this shmuck? Oh right that's the Nemesis I created about 10 levels ago. About time I got another mish." Theorectically the nemesis spawn is suppose to spawn by picking up orbs. A lot of time that dont happens. Many people have to resort to what is known in CO circles as the "chair trick". Guess all Nemesis are in the furniture business or something . And sometimes that doesnt even work. I have some toons that havent seen their nemesis nor spawn since after the first nemesis mission and they are going on level 38-40 and along the way picked up hundreds or rather probably closer to thousands of orbs along the way in the open. Then tying in with bugs, The Prison Break mission is buggy as hell. Apparently a common problem according to the complaints on the forum and the daily ones in the chat channels. And the nemesis storyline cant progress until this mission is past but many are stuck at this mission. But instead of fixing these things they rather release more lockboxes. Guess they figure people will spend hundreds on them in a game that dont seem to have any new content on the horizon. Rumor is that they might get back to it after NW releases. Optimistic side-sure, they will come back. Pessimistic side-They probably going to come up with another excuse to continue ignoring this game and let it fall to place so they can say "See I told you, there is no market for super hero MMO that can go beyond niche."

Overall-I enjoy the game even with the niggles. The ease of solo and not being gated or having to get a team often while having the option to form a team is what keeps me there instead of feeling like it's a requirement and having to time it around peak time. I can log in now at 3:52am which is my time now and do what I have to do and want to do. Instead of praying that I can complete some TF that I been itching to do for a while but cant find enough people logged on or interested. It'll probably hold my attention for a while until I find another solo friendly team optional game to play. I feel I have the best of both worlds there. I have a game I love, while still being able to chat with some old and some new COX friends.

While it's the main base now and has been for a while, I still have some game traveling and testing out to do. Never know might find a game I like better than CO and move there and make it new home. Never know if never seeked.

[dwturducken]

My feeling on the dev schedule as it relates to NWO and CO is that them getting back to CO after NWO releases is a player hope that grew into a rumor.

I haven't had the patience to get very far past level ten. I will give it that chance and see how the content is beyond level 15.

[JaguarX]

My feeling on the dev schedule as it relates to NWO and CO is that them getting back to CO after NWO releases is a player hope that grew into a rumor.

More than likely

[Lily Barclay]

My feeling on the dev schedule as it relates to NWO and CO is that them getting back to CO after NWO releases is a player hope that grew into a rumor.

I haven't had the patience to get very far past level ten. I will give it that chance and see how the content is beyond level 15.

It's not all that different, but a little better. Action packs are fun with a group. I unsubbed when I got to the questionite gear grind, but I still plan to play my silver character from time to time. I still like it. I might sub again when I see exactly how much they reduced the lockbox drop rate.

[JaguarX]

It's not all that different, but a little better. Action packs are fun with a group. I unsubbed when I got to the questionite gear grind, but I still plan to play my silver character from time to time. I still like it. I might sub again when I see exactly how much they reduced the lockbox drop rate.

Within a few missions you'll have about 100 or so on a slow day.

[Brou]

Lockboxes are less common. I cleared War on Peace and got one out of 80 or so slaughtered Lemurians.

[Kaos Arcanna]

The new drop boxes fall noticably slower. I have a character I've been playing a  lot this week and she's only got a total of 10 or so now.

[Tenzhi]

I enjoy the game quite a bit, but I think I'm sick of subscribing to games.  I cancelled my sub, and without it the game isn't worth playing to me, but subbing seems a waste since I only play in brief spurts.  And since I can only easily log into the forums from home, I can't even excuse the sub the same way I did with CoH.

[Thunder Glove]

You don't even have to be subscribed to post on the CO forums (at least, I've had no trouble posting since canceling my subscription).

I really wanted to like CO (after all, it's not CoH, but it's the closest thing around), but I just had too many problems with it.

[LaughingAlex]

My likes, well, not having to have a healer all the time.  Admittedly though, this only really applies to freeform players.  The free form system is the main thing I always liked about CO, it lets you make a "ranged scrapper" or "ranged tank" really easily.

The powers have oomph.  They look like they hit hard and hit as hard as they look, city of heroes often had the opposite in a way, the powers LOOKED like they hit hard, but many didn't in some ways.  There is nothing quite like sending baddies flying 100 feet with a force cascade, or frying them in seconds with gigabolt or lightning storm.  This does cause a dislike further down the line.  I also like that, if your freeform, you can easily design your characters to be able to change passives on the fly, so you can change whether you want more survivability or more offense.  The gameplay just lets you feel more super in many ways.

Dislikes; Content issues.  I get bored of doing alerts over time, but I also feel we need more level paths in CO.  Everyone has to fight Kevin poe, it's not untill level 15 that we can branch, and even then, we still have to take roughly the same level path, if we do not do the alerts.  I also dislike that CO continues to NOT have the foundary, when STO and now neverwinter online has it.  The lockboxes get to me somewhat, but I notice they aren't much different then the super packs in CoX, you still get alot of exp/resource bonus boosts from them at almost a discount nearly every time.  This content issue also hurts alot of the morale on the forums, I sometimes see "doomsday" posts on the CO boards again, which annoys me deeply as I feel that only contributes to subscriber number problems, which also cuts the games income and makes content even harder to develop.

The biggest bother though is, well, the archetypes dependency on others to keep them alive, not to mention alot of scrubs having seen no alternative to healing as a source of damage mitigation further hurting things for me.

Likewise the game can be to easy, even on elite mode for some who use freeforms.  If you have a defensive passive, any defensive passive, for the most part, henchmen will do nothing to you by the time you wipe them out, even using weaker attacks.  Villains and master villains often also feel more like meatshields designed to slow the pace down, rather than keep things flowing, at times.  This isn't an issue if you play an offensive passive, but in alerts the legendaries can often slaughter you if your not 30+.  There seems to be a lack of a grey area.

Other than those gripes I've had no major issues so far.

[0nehanklap]

Lots of dislikes in CO, but a few ideas I do like.  One tha I wasn't sure about is the way they do their DoubleXP weekends.  I didn't much like having to go back to MC for the buff every 4 hours, but as a casual gamer, I have flipped on this.  Once I realized the buff is persistent, I made a point of cycling thru all my toons to get the buff on all before the weekend was over.  Then I played my main on 2xp until the weekend was up.  Now I can still enjoy the 2xp buff on my other toons for 4 hours each, long after the weekend is up.  Very rewarding.

[Lily Barclay]

Lots of dislikes in CO, but a few ideas I do like.  One tha I wasn't sure about is the way they do their DoubleXP weekends.  I didn't much like having to go back to MC for the buff every 4 hours, but as a casual gamer, I have flipped on this.  Once I realized the buff is persistent, I made a point of cycling thru all my toons to get the buff on all before the weekend was over.  Then I played my main on 2xp until the weekend was up.  Now I can still enjoy the 2xp buff on my other toons for 4 hours each, long after the weekend is up.  Very rewarding.

I like that, too. It's nice.

[Thunder Glove]

The powers have oomph.  They look like they hit hard and hit as hard as they look, city of heroes often had the opposite in a way, the powers LOOKED like they hit hard, but many didn't in some ways.  There is nothing quite like sending baddies flying 100 feet with a force cascade, or frying them in seconds with gigabolt or lightning storm.  This does cause a dislike further down the line.  I also like that, if your freeform, you can easily design your characters to be able to change passives on the fly, so you can change whether you want more survivability or more offense.  The gameplay just lets you feel more super in many ways.

Really?  I had exactly the opposite problem: my characters felt like tissue paper (or, at best, rubber balls, being bounced around the room) and their attacks felt like hitting with wet noodles.  My Level 20 Staff/Dark Brute on CoH felt more sturdy and powerful than my Level 34 Might/Invulnerability Hybrid-Role Freeform on CO.

[JaguarX]

Really?  I had exactly the opposite problem: my characters felt like tissue paper (or, at best, rubber balls, being bounced around the room) and their attacks felt like hitting with wet noodles.  My Level 20 Staff/Dark Brute on CoH felt more sturdy and powerful than my Level 34 Might/Invulnerability Hybrid-Role Freeform on CO.

Just had flashback to my dark armor. It seemed squish against anything not dark energy while being an end hog. Managed to get it to 25 before putting it down and deletion and never looked back. 

But at same time seen some people do some amazing things. I guess I found CO to match my build skills more and playstyle than Cox as my Co toons feel way tougher than any of mine  Cox off just plain drops. I guess I build better in CO than I can build in Cox

[Thunder Glove]

Just had flashback to my dark armor. It seemed squish against anything not dark energy while being an end hog. Managed to get it to 25 before putting it down and deletion and never looked back. 

But at same time seen some people do some amazing things. I guess I found CO to match my build skills more and playstyle than Cox as my Co toons feel way tougher than any of mine  Cox off just plain drops. I guess I build better in CO than I can build in Cox

While I can't look at the DA character directly anymore, I ran some numbers via Tomax, and Dark Armor definitely has higher resists in Psychic, Lethal, and Smashing (just on three equal-level SOs, mind you) than my Invulnerability guy did on CO (about 46% damage resist), and that's before you take into account the constant regen that all CoH characters had, plus the full Mez protection, plus anyone close to me being unable to act due to fear/stun, plus the combination of To-Hit debuffs and Defense, plus stealth.

(On top of that, I had the full Overwhelming Force set in Death Shroud, so enemies around me were also being hit with a KD proc in addition to the Fear and Stun, and I had another four points of KD protection from another IO that I can't remember right now)

And since he was a Brute, he was an offensive juggernaut as well.  CoH's Enraged buff (+60% damage with a full 8 stacks) was nothing compared to Fury (+100% without even trying, +140-150% when in full swing), and of course Death Shroud ensured that everyone was taking damage just from being near me.

And he was one of my weaker characters, compared to my strongest CO character.

[JaguarX]

While I can't look at the DA character directly anymore, I ran some numbers via Tomax, and Dark Armor definitely has higher resists in Psychic, Lethal, and Smashing (just on three equal-level SOs, mind you) than my Invulnerability guy did on CO (about 46% damage resist), and that's before you take into account the constant regen that all CoH characters had, plus the full Mez protection, plus anyone close to me being unable to act due to fear/stun, plus the combination of To-Hit debuffs and Defense, plus stealth.

(On top of that, I had the full Overwhelming Force set in Death Shroud, so enemies around me were also being hit with a KD proc in addition to the Fear and Stun, and I had another four points of KD protection from another IO that I can't remember right now)

And since he was a Brute, he was an offensive juggernaut as well.  CoH's Enraged buff (+60% damage with a full 8 stacks) was nothing compared to Fury (+100% without even trying, +140-150% when in full swing), and of course Death Shroud ensured that everyone was taking damage just from being near me.

And he was one of my weaker characters, compared to my strongest CO character.

only 46% on an invul. in CO? That's kind of low.

Dang I wished I had my dark armor still (and COX).

This would have been one of those times we could exchange tips. I could tell you how to make that invul stronger and you could tell me how to build a monster dark armor.


But unfortunately I think some things are hard to compare between CO and COX. Like mezzes. While in COX melee mostly were immune squishes could find themselves perma held until death. In CO, there really isnt immunity per se but even squishes have chance to escape easily where it isnt death sentence.

And to-hit debuff or buffs are near useless in CO as there isnt much of a hit rolll unlike COX where everything was hit roll and luck based.


But going by death, and or near death, my dark armor died more times than all my CO toons combined within 25 levels. It just wasn't my cup of tea.

My invul vs my co invul, mty cox invul have way higher smash and lethal than my CO counterpart but overall the CO wins again because over all it have higher percentage of resistance not to mention more hp than the invul. It wasnt limited to smash and lethal. iT cover all damage with set damage decrease.


Wouldnt be nice to have a non-biased program that could translate COX data into CO data to help rebuild those COX toons in CO if someone was to choose to.

[Tenzhi]

My likes, well, not having to have a healer all the time.  Admittedly though, this only really applies to freeform players.  The free form system is the main thing I always liked about CO, it lets you make a "ranged scrapper" or "ranged tank" really easily.

The powers have oomph.  They look like they hit hard and hit as hard as they look, city of heroes often had the opposite in a way, the powers LOOKED like they hit hard, but many didn't in some ways.  There is nothing quite like sending baddies flying 100 feet with a force cascade, or frying them in seconds with gigabolt or lightning storm.  This does cause a dislike further down the line.  I also like that, if your freeform, you can easily design your characters to be able to change passives on the fly, so you can change whether you want more survivability or more offense.  The gameplay just lets you feel more super in many ways.

<snip>

Likewise the game can be to easy, even on elite mode for some who use freeforms.  If you have a defensive passive, any defensive passive, for the most part, henchmen will do nothing to you by the time you wipe them out, even using weaker attacks.  Villains and master villains often also feel more like meatshields designed to slow the pace down, rather than keep things flowing, at times.  This isn't an issue if you play an offensive passive, but in alerts the legendaries can often slaughter you if your not 30+.  There seems to be a lack of a grey area.

These are things I liked about ChO.  In CoH my characters always felt weak - they generally took too much damage and/or didn't do enough.  In ChO I almost always could mow through enemies and with a Defensive passive or the right Support passive setup I felt sturdy (in normal content, mind), and without having to dig into irritating markets or crafting systems - heck, without even having to buy something from a vendor.

[Captain Electric]

I came back from a sunny vacation in LOTRO and a violently disturbing vacation in TSW (not complaining, mind you) and am very pleased that they listened to players about the lockboxes.

I know that a lot of City of Heroes players have showed up and drastically changed their tune after a few days or weeks. It wouldn't surprise me if "I wonder how long that's going to last?" passes through some peoples minds when they see a smiling new arrival. Well I've been playing Champions Online for the last six months, alongside other games that were on my list to try out. I like the game. Yes it has warts all over. But I already knew that. Why act shocked and indignant about it?

City of Heroes had warts too. Some of my suggestions for CoH were never implemented or meaningfully responded to and some of them were. It was always my favorite game and still is, even though it's closed.

CO is never going to be as big and as filled with content and features as CoH, it is never going to get that level of support, Cryptic is always going to be juggling kids and CO is probably always going to be the oldest, least-spoiled one. This is quite a difference from our spoiled-rotten lives with Paragon. But so what? I also play Batman: Arkham X and The Amazing Spider-Man and Freedom Force and Marvel Heroes... none of those games are as cool as City of Heroes either. I still like them. I'm sure I'll play both of the Plan Z games when they release (especially Heroes & Villains, I just like the way the game world is shaping up, the fiction and signature characters and everything).

Truth be told, I don't really think about "how bad I have it" when I'm logged in and playing. I'm just thinking about the mission I'm on or friends I'm teamed up with. I think about it most when I'm in CoX chat and everyone starts talking about the lack of content. I start to pick up my pitchfork and then realize...I haven't actually run out of content. I'm kind of a slow poke in MMOs and like to explore around and look at things. I've never actually run out of content in an MMO. There are still dungeons I haven't gotten to the bottom of in UO. My account says I have 10 years of collective active subbing over the past 15 years.

I've decided that I'm not going to drive myself nuts being miffed about something like that. I'm right alongside those players who are reminding Jack Emmert that we want the Foundry; and I'm with Alleyne's Cryptic Mail Campaign in asking Cryptic for more dev love. But I will not join all the people being abusive every day on the forums. If I was a dev I would be filled with dread about opening those forums.

[JaguarX]

I came back from a sunny vacation in LOTRO and a violently disturbing vacation in TSW (not complaining, mind you) and am very pleased that they listened to players about the lockboxes.

I know that a lot of City of Heroes players have showed up and drastically changed their tune after a few days or weeks. It wouldn't surprise me if "I wonder how long that's going to last?" passes through some peoples minds when they see a smiling new arrival. Well I've been playing Champions Online for the last six months, alongside other games that were on my list to try out. I like the game. Yes it has warts all over. But I already knew that. Why act shocked and indignant about it?

City of Heroes had warts too. Some of my suggestions for CoH were never implemented or meaningfully responded to and some of them were. It was always my favorite game and still is, even though it's closed.

CO is never going to be as big and as filled with content and features as CoH, it is never going to get that level of support, Cryptic is always going to be juggling kids and CO is probably always going to be the oldest, least-spoiled one. This is quite a difference from our spoiled-rotten lives with Paragon. But so what? I also play Batman: Arkham X and The Amazing Spider-Man and Freedom Force and Marvel Heroes... none of those games are as cool as City of Heroes either. I still like them. I'm sure I'll play both of the Plan Z games when they release (especially Heroes & Villains, I just like the way the game world is shaping up, the fiction and signature characters and everything).

Truth be told, I don't really think about "how bad I have it" when I'm logged in and playing. I'm just thinking about the mission I'm on or friends I'm teamed up with. I think about it most when I'm in CoX chat and everyone starts talking about the lack of content. I start to pick up my pitchfork and then realize...I haven't actually run out of content. I'm kind of a slow poke in MMOs and like to explore around and look at things. I've never actually run out of content in an MMO. There are still dungeons I haven't gotten to the bottom of in UO. My account says I have 10 years of collective active subbing over the past 15 years.

I've decided that I'm not going to drive myself nuts being miffed about something like that. I'm right alongside those players who are reminding Jack Emmert that we want the Foundry; and I'm with Alleyne's Cryptic Mail Campaign in asking Cryptic for more dev love. But I will not join all the people being abusive every day on the forums. If I was a dev I would be filled with dread about opening those forums.

The forum seem to attract a dangerous mixture of those that are truely trying to help the community and those that are there merely to cause chaos. Unfortunately, the ones that are there to cause chaos are usually the ones used to define the forum community in games. You can have 100 nice helpful people and one nut case and people walk out saying "damn, that community is rude as hell I never want to go back to the forum". SMH. I guess negativity is 100 times stronger than positive which I think it should be the other way around. In general, people even online are senisible folks but I guess that is what is supposed to be normal, like breathing air, no one gives thought to it, but since nutcases are abnormal behvaior, it stands out more.