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The differences between Champions Online and City of Heroes
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I can appreciate your point. To be honest the only game I've played that had mirrored instancing was guild wars (not really an mmo) and I didn't like it, but at least when I played it there were lots of players in each instance, so the game world still felt 'full'.
There was some an in development a few years ago - which sadly seems to have dropped off the market - which claimed it was developing dynamic server resource allocation software that would theoretically allow for an entirely uninstanced game where all players could gather in the same location without any slow down in performance. It was supposed to track player locations and re-allocate server resources accordingly - i.e. it would literally turn off empty areas of the game and re-assign those resources to more crowded ones. It was a sci-fi title and the only other thing that I can remember about it was they were going to offer some very unusual classes - including allowing players to play an energy being that could possess mobs and hack computers in-game.
And yes, CO has those sparkly little microtransactions.... and who knows what other surprises may be in store?
Quoted for the Nontruth.
Played CoH since Beta, been on the boards since Rhyno and Macarthur was on. The nerfed what needed to be done. One of the biggest complaints was due to people feeling useless. ED was probable the best thing they could of done. At release certain characters felt SUPER. Most characters felt useless. I know so many people DIDN"T quit because of ED. Yes some stupid people couldn't get it through there heads and quit. 20k to be exact. Easily in the long run it saved the game.
Only 20k you say, like that's a small thing...
It was an exodus (chart) that they took a long time to recover from.
I don't know anyone who felt "useless" pre ED other than some toons with 'defence' based defences. So I don't know how you can say "most characters felt useless". Everyone in my SG loved CoH until ED - and then a near unanimous decision was made to up and leave after it. I stayed on a little bit longer but... ED really robbed fun factor.
The actual nerf part of I4 (making characters weaker) was stupid and they paid for it - and even now the game is less fun than it used to be. Once upon a time I'd happily go up against +4 or 5 con groups including bosses with a decent chance of winning - but one little mistake or bit of bad luck and I'd be dead. There was more risk and excitement than there is now, and that was fun.
The encouraging players to slot enhancements in more powers (i.e. enhancement diversification) was the good part of I4, not the nerfing.
Age of Conan was about land control, clan structure building, immersion and warfare. Persistent strategy. No wonder the layers sucked.
Guildwars was just basically empty everywhere except the hubs so that sucked.
I don't think Champions will be comparable. I think it'll be like playing a light hearted action game on a "server" and when that "server" becomes too empty or has the wrong crowd, I can cross over to another "server" and it will be a good thing.
Unless I see something much more on actual depth and game content.. I will be passing on this title. Every interview/review i see of this game talks at length about setting up how your character looks, and how their powers will look.. and then... what?
I see no depth in this game, no reason to log in and play at length, or often. Comparing this to current MMO's, this game appears (so far, and I'd love to be proved wrong) to be a 2/10 on the depth scale.. whereas Eve/WoW/EQ are hovering around an 8+.
To me, this game looks like CoX redux, slightly better look, more character options/more power options..and that's it.
Someone make me feel better about this game, because all the previews I see now from gamers I trust tell me to steer clear, this game is devoid of content.
Devoid of content might be an exaggeration but I know where you're coming from. The alarm bells are definately going off for a number of reasons. Still..
Me, I'm gonna get it anyway cuz I think it's just gonna be too much fun to create heroes and check out their powers to pass up. It's strictly a childish thing and the cost of the purchase is a non issue for me personally.
If I get a good action game in the sense of good pvp and/or group combat dynamics, I'll see it as a bonus and consider a continued sub but I don't expect it.
BTW, how again do they do both this and star trek at the same time?
Hadn't heard the one server thing but instancing of zones is definitely in. Personally I would rather see a good number of servers than one instanced to all hell. Getting the names you want will suck if you have 1 million+ toons trying find unique names.
I don't think people care if its instanced though, GW isn't exactly a ghost town because of it.
Actually they've made it pretty easy to keep up with everyone and where their at. Massively.com has an article on it. For names you have an invisible domain tagged to your name so if more than one person has that name your friends simply type <name>@domain for tells. BUT here's the good thing the game remembesr who all you've previously spoken too and will fill it in for you. I'm assuming they wouldnt' be crazy enough to put that @domain stuff next to your name for everyone to see while playing since it would make things a jumbled crazy mess. (just an assumption since they haven't said on that part).
When changing zones it'll list which instance of a zone have your friends & guild mates in and their population so you can easily move through the world without a whole of "where you...is this you?!" bs that could of happened.
I'd rather have a single server regionless (yes the Server is Regionless!!) game with constant population then a game thats so heavily spred out you're pratically playing the game alone (coughs Warhammer / AoC).
Everyone on the same server is a very good choice.
Many players tired of Eve Online for instance often say they cannot find another option in the mmo scene where they can all play in just 1 server. Now there wont be that excuse anymore :]
Beeing in 1 whole server with people from all over the world adds a special flavour to an online game.
There are advantages to a setup like this, though.
Eg., look at City of Heroes. They have 8-10 servers, but only 2 of them have reasonable levels of activity on them these days. If you have characters on one of the other servers, you're kind of doomed to spend a lot of time solo'ing. And because most players know which are the two most populated servers, this is where most new characters are created.
The advantage of a single server with mirrored instancing is that no-one ever needs to worry about things like this, and it's also one big community. You'll never be in a situation where you eg. find a friend has started playing but they're on a different server, etc. etc.
Obviously a single server without instances would be better, but I'd rather mirrored instancing than lots of separate servers.
Course the downside to this is that they will have to have very restricted chat channels which will likely make the game feel rather antisocial and quite. I'm thinking something like warhammers was at release. You logged in and nobody was talking and it felt pretty much like a single player game....
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Ethion
Warhammer was over zealous with their chat restrictions everyone knows that. You should of been able to hear the whole zone and not just the small portion you were in...even when they opened it up more channels for talking people didn't talk and when they did it was alot of BS smack talk that actually made the community unfriendly and anti social. You can't force people to be nice and you certaintly can't force them to talk so in the end it comes down to the the Community just as much as it does the Developers when it comes to talking.
Personally I could do without seeing GrabblerX from Zone 1 bitching about Player B stealing his mob or causing him to lag. I'd rather only hear chatter from the people in the zone / instance I'm in so my screen isn't cluttered with alot of BS talk about X STat and Selling X Potion in Millenium city at the bank.
Every game has Chat restrictions even WoW your point really isn't valid. Warhammer's restrictions were admitedly over zealous you should been able to hear the whole zone not just portions.
btw Ethion your assumptions are just that Assumptions most likely if they're Smart atleast you'll be able to hear the Entire Zone Instance your in instead of a Portion of the zone. Warhammer was the only game I ever experienced that was that restrictive. Even Everquest 2 that had zone instancing didnt' ahve the chat problems Warhammer did. You could always hear people talking if they were in the Same Instance you were in which Makes sense. It doesn't make sense to hear people that aren't even in the same instance babbling along about how cool they are.
AoC had a lot of problems on it. I would expect this to be more like EQ2 or CoH, where I hardly noticed it because each zone had 100-200 people in it before a second instance was created. It seemed like there were never more than 20 people in each zone in AoC.
I still don't think Champions Online is like CoH/CoV, maybe it's more like WoW than CoH/CoV.
I agree.
In CoX, mana automatically regenerates to a sufficient level to use your biggest powers, without you having to do anything.
In CO, mana only regenerates to a sufficient level to use your biggest powers only if you keep firing off endurance-building powers.
In one game, you have to do nothing to regenerate mana to a sufficient level to use your biggest powers, in another game you have to do something to regenerate mana to a sufficient level to use your biggest powers.
How is the latter game not more action-oriented than the first?
(Note: someone above said endurance starts at zero. I'm not sure if that's not a bit misleading: there's always a little "starter" chunk of endurance that does regenerate automatically, but all endurance above that, everything to use your coolest powers, has to be achieved by button-mashing.)
That's a good question I thought to myself. A while ago, Bill Roper explained something of it - CO and STO share the same game engine (a development of the CoX engine), with a section of staff dedicated solely to it, so that's part of it. They also have a system whereby if someone figures out a neat trick in STO, an analogue of it can be done in CO, and vice-versa.
There is no button mashing. It's a toggle on power that runs non-stop on that target. You don't need to keep hitting it--in fact, you can't, because it just turns it off.
It's an auto-attack essentially, and the novelty wears off quickly. It adds nothing to the combat, imo.
The zones are huge compared to most games and you don't stick to one, you tend to hop back and fourth between them a lot.
The edurance bar fills up part of the way while out of battle and fills up so quickly you basically never have to be worried about not being able to use a skill. The battles are very smooth though and fast paced. (oh and you can do basically any skill with the chunk of endurance that regenerates out of battle).
The spell animations are fantastic and the ability to customize how you use an ability (do you cast a spell with your palms, fist, head, or chest) is pretty cool as well as being able to change the color of spell effects.
The biggest difference I feel between CoH and CO is that the city feels like a city. Everything doesn't look the same. That and the vistas are gorgeous. Best I have seen in an MMORPG ever.
Travel powers are more then just cosmetic and have their strengths and weaknesses. Ice slide has some of the fastest speeds, yet is not as maneuverable.
I am not a big fan of instancing but this game uses it (at least at the lower levels) really well. Unlike in most games when you defeat an instance you have changed nothing in the world, in this game say you defeated the mastermind behind an attack on a military base, when you leave the instance you enter a new instance of the base where all the enemies have been cleared out. I don't know how often they use this throughout the game, but it is a great storytelling mechanic and should be used alot more. It makes you feel like you made a difference in the game world.
I was not a fan of Champion Online, I can honestly say I down right hated it for most of the development. This is due mostly to me prefering an open world to a theme park game, but so far it seems they are doing everything right.
I might not get it because I don't really want to get involved with a game, but it's still looking like a good game.
The world doesn't seem to be huge to me. At least it feels smaller than City of Heroes.
I wonder players would still be able to distinguish any differences one year after CO has released.
If too many players are in a particular zone, then a second instance of the entire zone is created - which is what happens in CoH.
so they have that mirrored instancing of zones like Age of Conan does ? very lame
guess cryptic doesnt pay attention to other mmo's that fail. mirrored instancing of zones was one of the chief complaints about AoC.
People want to play massive mo's not multiplayer games
There are no downsides to mirrored instancing, outside of occasionally having to coordinate w/ your friends and switch channels... which is done automatically via the grouping system. It's better than having 30 separate servers, with populations varying from sparse to overcrowded. You also never run into a situation where you and friends are on separate servers and can't play together.
There is no button mashing. It's a toggle on power that runs non-stop on that target. You don't need to keep hitting it--in fact, you can't, because it just turns it off.
It's an auto-attack essentially, and the novelty wears off quickly. It adds nothing to the combat, imo.
It's a resource system, and it works fairly well. It's better than any resource mechanic that exists in any other MMO, and its incorporated fluently into combat. There is plenty of button mashing because endurance charges very quickly and you are almost always using your other powers.
Too much information is being leaked out.
This game is still under NDA people. Let's move on to a different topic. Thanks for your understanding!
MMORPG.com Staff
Derek Gordon