Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
CO: a mixed bag
Yunbei
Member Posts: 898
Ok since everyone else has an opinion about CO, I thought I add mine here as well. Keep in mind, this is MY opinion; you don't have to share it. 
There is much to say, but instead of boring you with detailled whatsoever, I will refer only to those handful of things I found most striking/deciding for me.
THE GOOD
I found the char design great. No doubt the way you can make your char look is diverse and fun. Something I would love to see in more MMOs. All MMOs. ^^ Of course adapted to the theme of the game. I just so have enough of cookie cutter looks aka WOW or what.
The game world is nice. Not a killer design, but nice. Its a bit smallish, but that was LOTRO as well when it started, so I hope they expand it like LOTRO gets constantly expanded. It takes some time to get used to the style, but overall it was ok.
I generally like the fast paced action combat, not dull hack on one mob for minutes. That is a really pleasing way to make combat, and I hope future MMOs develop more along those lines. In the broadest sense.
Finally, also the choice to select from any powerset was really cool. Its fun to really tinker your own char together.
THE BAD
Bad No.1 is clearly the downside of the class-less design, it is IMO a big warning why in the future no developer will ever make class-less MMOs ever again. IMO. The idea is cool, but in reality you have dozens of chance to pick inferior powers, within each set, not to speak of the vast differences between the sets. Some are piece of cake (Ice), some are so tough to play you cry tears of frustration. (Sorcery)
A real gripe for me is, that at level 18 or so you more or less have all powers of your set. Some powers you may leave out. Like CC and mezz, who are quite superfluous in this fast action combat. At least thats what I felt trying out CC and mezzes. So lets say you make a Wolverine like claws set, so with 16 you have all you need/get, and nothing new of claws EVER comes all the way up to 40, unless you pick alien powersets. Which is lame, and useless, since in a way you have all you need with 16/18. I found that quite a letdown, when in a MMO the fun is for me, to enjoy looking forward for the cool new powers I get later on. And you don't. At least not in your set, and I find this quite a letdown.
PVP is IMVPO a borefest. I have not seen anything but arena 5 VS 5. The arena is tiny, and due to the power imbalance it can be quite frustrating. There isn't really anything new, its pew pew endless. But then, I never was much of a PVP nut, tbh. I get this sense many powers were nerfed for this tiny PVP portion (despite Cryptic denying it, I don't believe them).
THE UGLY
The nerf bat was swung mecilessly. Some powers were stronger than others, but all of them are constantly nerfed down to the lowest common ground. Once the 4 martial arts powersets were cool and distinctively different, but now they are all mostly a mishmash of the same and way too weak. Esp. if you go into the PVP arena with martial arts, where everyone else is flying and shooting from 100 metres distance, and stim spamming like there was no tomorrow, and you try to make 1 or 2 hits. It's NO FUN! *shakes fist* XD
I expect the game will have serious nerfs. XP has apparently been reduced, dmg and range of most powers. It's just hilarious to be Archer like Green Arrow and stand toe to toe with your enemy to hit. Quite uncool. My guess is they want to enforce grouping, because there is otherwise no reason to group in most quests. And grouping is very odd, to say the least. With no defined classes everyone soloes within the group. I never had this feeling of real cooperation. And with the various travel powers, it is quite a thing to keep the group together, when some fly away and other are stuck of superspeed or acrobatics. Or teleport!
Ugly in the long run... while the action combat is fun, I can't really imagine anyone playing this longer than about 3 months, and then the air is out, so to speak. It is VERY repetitive and single minded. Reminds me a bit of Tabula Rasa in its narrowing down to action action, hyper hyper combat, but no real RP or world or social aspect. There is no Atlas Park or any place where people get together, and with only 1 servers and 100s of shards you rarely get to meet people you know accidentally in some social hub, and I greatly missed that in CO.
Bottom line: Nice fun for 2-3 months, but I seriously fear this might be another TR candidate. It's a pity, since I like the concept, but in detail it is just lacking. Dunno how to rate. Maybe 65 of 100. I will buy it, but I am damn sure it does not keep me longer than 2-3 months, then I hop to the next best thing, since I have "been there, done that", as they say.
Comments
sigh, another long winded review written by a biased Class based fanboi. Horrible wall of text of DOOM.
Please guys just list pros and cons of the game. You are not a professional reviewer very few will take the time to read a novel!
Tip for your future MMO career: LEave out the personal bias when you write a review. Many people will stop reading right there because they will figure you are just another wow-fanboi that only likes WoW clones
I can tell you right here you dont know what you're talking bout. EVE Online is a classless game and very deep. I promise there will be more classless MMOs in the future
This review was utter crap 1/10.
I think the OP makes some good points about some very real problems with CO and for the most part I agree with them.
But I'd stop shy of saying class-less design is bad and other mmos would do well to avoid it.
I completely understand why you've said it. Not all powers are equally useful and especially for your first few powers, there are some which are so much better that you'd be a fool not to take them. And some of them are so awful you can't get back to the training room fast enough to swap them out.
But I think the class-less design is fine. Eg. as a sorcerer picking up either block or bind as your first new power is extremely helpful. Either can be used as a good defence against special attacks. As a telepath I found that personal force field, all by itself, was more defence than I needed - so I skipped block (for lower levels) but still picked up the mez, which I did occasionally find useful on extremely tough mobs.
Please stay clear off comparing Champions Online to World of Warcraft.
The only comparison that has a meaning is CO versus City of Heroes/Villains.
I played both, CoX since 2005, CO since May this year.
Also I'm playing classic and electric guitar for 15 years and then got Guitar Hero last year.
CO to CoX is like GH is to a real guitar player: a play-along tool: limited and frustrating. You put it down after you realize it's not *the real thing* even if it gots flashy colors and crazy sounds.
Actually, I agree with most of your feelings. I've been playing OB and the game is just action-action-action...nothing but. That's fun in a consoley, arcade-type way..but it definitely doesnt feel like an MMO. Funny you mentioned TR in your post because this game reminds me a lot of that.
What are you guys doing in these other MMOG's besides fighting stuff? I guess I don't understand what you're getting at.
I fight stuff in CO just like any other MMOG. I fought stuff all day every day in EQ, AC, DAoC, WoW, Aion, EQ2, Spellborn.
Well, I am speaking of an opportunity to do things outside of kill-kill-kill. These days, it's a make or break feature (AoC, TR, WAR).
UO..god there were so many things to do outside of fighting..I recall just logging in sometimes to socialize and wander about. EQ when it launched had a great roleplay feel to it (at least on my server), and SWG had an incredible amount of things to do outside of kill-kill-kill.
See, this genre originally evolved from the RPG-CG, which evolved from the PNP RPG....so rolepay and living outside of combat is a necessary ingredient for it to surive..otherwise, it just becomes an arcade game..which to me is a very shallow experience.
Nice post OP. It's pretty much how I felt about the game while I was in beta. I gave plenty of good suggestions, top of which being the capability of dodging ranged attacks, which would have IMO made the drastic imbalance between ranged and melee focused sets a little better at least. But I'm sure by the time I got into closed beta 6 months ago the 'auto hit' system was pretty much baked in. To me it's the biggest flaw in the game, and probably the one thing that keeps it from being a good action game.
They sat on the fence between being an action console game and a traditional MMO and what they made was a poor excuse for either.
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
.jpg)
Well, I am speaking of an opportunity to do things outside of kill-kill-kill. These days, it's a make or break feature (AoC, TR, WAR).
UO..god there were so many things to do outside of fighting..I recall just logging in sometimes to socialize and wander about. EQ when it launched had a great roleplay feel to it (at least on my server), and SWG had an incredible amount of things to do outside of kill-kill-kill.
See, this genre originally evolved from the RPG-CG, which evolved from the PNP RPG....so rolepay and living outside of combat is a necessary ingredient for it to surive..otherwise, it just becomes an arcade game..which to me is a very shallow experience.
I think this may be the problem for older players or players who actually do PnP stuff. Even the more social games feel lacking in comparison to that. Last week two of us spent 5-10 minutes just sorting out a quickish pickpocketing session in order to fund my character's need to stay in a smart hotel in order to con a wealthy heiress he was worth knowing. A lot of fun for us but doesn't translate well into the computer rpg world because of the general lack of emotional context. I think a well written MMO might be able to approach this but certainly not the more recent crop of games which seem more about twitch than RPG.
I don't mind twitch games but they get boring for me quite quickly and anything that was made as a hybrid console/pc game is likely to feel that way. That said plenty of people do wnat to play them and if there is a market then I say good luck to them, I shan't play and they probably won't wat to play my games either. Not a problem for me so long as this doesn't become the model for all games.
I could not disagree more. I love not being locked into a class and none of my characters are close to done by level 18.