I've been playing CoH for five years, since its release, and i played the CO beta, Champions is a complete rip-off of Coh, the only difference is the gameplay, which in my opinion, sucks. The Lead Developer of Champions lonline is a dev that was fired from from the paragon team by the way.
They claim XP nerf was a test. That is link to developer post.
I've been doing Arenas today once the queue was fixed. Keep in mind you CANNOT listen to these newbies when they discuss PVP! Like EVE, you will die quickly if you are a scrub. And you wont kill a soul. I'm only L11 and I've been killing L20s. I've also been winning my duels bigtime.
Don't listen to the whine about regen/invul these are from noobs that cant pvp. If I'm a low Level killing 20s then that means something. Additionally I have regen on my character and you can surely kill us.
Just skimmed over the revierw. will try to read it fully later
Hell, it felt like grinding BEFORE they nerfed it. It's still a grindfest t0o me
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
OP Do yourself a favor and dont take part in any form of beta ever again. Because you're going to keep getting pushed off the fence as they.."test" things with you being the tester. Theres countless things they could be testing by tweaking XP during a beta, none of which means thats how they plan on keeping it post release.
these reviews make me uncomfortable so kudos to rayx0r.
if the open beta was near the finnsihed product i don't think they should release it sept 1.
they should keep working on the game and if they need money i don''t see why they and other companies don't have paid betas for like $5 a month instead of 15$. it supposed to go live in like a week and i felt liek i was playing an early beta class wise i mean they quest where good and the tutorial zone was really good but once i left the tutorial zone it went down hill.
To be fair to the game, I played this A LOT. Many, many, many hours
My comments are in ORANGE.
And I have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to the things in red.
Originally posted by holdenhamlet
I posted this on the main forums, but I'm posting it here because I think it may get deleted for being too critical of the game. I was on the fence about the game for the following reasons: - Shards- There's no sense of community. - It apparently was totally ripped off COH. I never played COH past a free trial, but a game that just totally takes everything from another game is sort of fishy.
How is this a bad thing? It took everything good about CoH, a great game- and took everything bad away, and then improved the game with its own unique blend.
Another game did this... what was it? Oh yea... the incredibly popular, best-selling video game of all time: World of Warcraft. They copied Everquest, but got rid of all the stupid, bad parts like XP loss and Mob camping, and improved it, plus added their own style to the game. Everyone likes it far more than Everquest. This is an example of taking something good, and making it BETTER. Far, far, far better. Champions Online copied CoH, but did a MUCH better job in almost every single way.
- Items. There's a ton of items and they all seem basically the same- a mixup of stats with better items being some decimal point better than the other. None of them really stand out and everything just seems like vendor trash. In one quest reward, there are two items with identical stats just different names. Why so many crappy items? There's no reason to use an auction house assuming I could even find one in this game. No player economy = a major facet of an MMORPG missing.
The items let you pick specific stats (just like items in every other MMORPG) and/or special abilities. For example: There are primary offensive items which give a Proc on your weapons. Some primary defensive items which give 5% extra hp. Also, there IS a player economy. There is crafting, an Auction House, etc.
- Powers. Although there are a crapload of powers, they are mostly very similar just with different animations. A ranged class plays pretty much the same as any other ranged class. Also, there aren't enough in a single tree to spend all your points on if you reach max level meaning you have to take from other trees. That's fine and might actually be fun if the stats weren't so messed up in this game and forced you to specialize heavily towards two stats, making abilities from other trees basically useless. For example, an ability that scales with strength is useless for a ranged caster that specialized in endurance and recovery. All around feels sort of thrown together and not thought through, which is not an uncommon feeling about an aspect of this game.
No idea what you're talking about. Every power does a different side effect- you just never looked. There are enough powers to basically give you a choice of ANY combination of primary/secondary effects. Want a high damage knockdown? There is one. Want a low damage knockdown that doesnt require 2 advantage points? One of those two. Want an AoE knockdown? Yep. Want a combo that gives a 100% guaranteed 1/2 knockdown to all in the AoE? There's one attack for that, and multiple attacks to give you 'Enraged' to do that combo. And limited to two stats? You obviously didnt play the game. You can spread your points through ALL your abilities- and it's still worth it. You may not have 100 str and 100 dex (with 10 of everything else) but you CAN have 70 of every abiilty. The Hero gives +6/8 to every ability. Then there's traits that give boosts to 5-8 abilities. When you calculate the amount of points you gain- the MORE you spread out your focus on Stats, the MORE points you get. Someone who focuses entirely on one or two stats will get only significantly less points than someone who focuses on having ALL stats balanced.
- PVP. There is no real point to the pvp matches I played in the first three tiers besides finding someone that didn't have invulnerability or regen (meaning their health actually went down when you attacked them) and blowing them up over and over. Also some abilities are just way too good (such as ice burst damage) and there is no successful attempt to compensate for the problems melee classes have fighting ranged. In other games, a ranged typically has really weak armor and if you can get close, he's easy. Not so in this game when everyone is basically equally strong regardless of style.
Granted people exploited the newbs who didn't know to get an overpowered defensive power... but you have to realize THIS IS BETA. Their primary focus wasn't on balancing PvP for one. And second, they actually DID change things constantly. I specifically remember one night being unable to kill ANYONE with a defensive power- and the next night everything changing to where they were nerfed and killable. Of course there was still exploitation of easy targets- but balance will come. You can't judge a non-essential part of a MMORPG during a beta- especially when they're CONSTANTLY changing things every single night of the beta.
- Music. There's very little music. Something I've noticed as a recurring theme with unfinished mmorpgs is they don't bother with music. Music helps with immersion and shouldn't be just totally ignored basically besides some random areas.
I didn't even notice. So I can't say anything against this.
- No apparent endgame.
What level did you get to? Seriously...
I guarantee it wasn't past 20.
You probably /level to 40 at the end of beta event and got lost, concluding in your 10 minutes of toil "NO ENDGAME!!!"
------------------------------------- Now, I was still almost willing to at least buy the game and try it out despite so many glaring problems because it was so incredibly casual. I leveled fast and at least I was doing different things and going to new areas as I leveled. I could possibly see it as a game I'd log in to goof around in and not really treat as a serious MMORPG. The xp nerf today eliminates that casual feeling, leaving very little left to actually appreciate about the game.
Agreed.
XP needs to go back to the way it was. Some people on the forum don't understand why it's such a big deal that you now have to grind on hundreds of mobs to level in the teens and twenties and maybe thousands in the 30s. The reason is that while maybe it's not such a big deal in itself, the game was already on very thin ice to begin with.
Thick ice or thin, it's irrelevant if the game forces you to grind. The Grind ruins the game for me, even if every other feature is amazing or not. Completely Agreed.
How is this a bad thing? It took everything good about CoH, a great game- and took everything bad away, and then improved the game with its own unique blend.
Another game did this... what was it? Oh yea... the incredibly popular, best-selling video game of all time: World of Warcraft. They copied Everquest, but got rid of all the stupid, bad parts like XP loss and Mob camping, and improved it, plus added their own style to the game. Everyone likes it far more than Everquest. This is an example of taking something good, and making it BETTER. Far, far, far better. Champions Online copied CoH, but did a MUCH better job in almost every single way.
Ahem, except grouping, which was one of CoX's great strengths.
Everything I've read and seen about CO makes me quite optimistic about it. I think it will be a fun game. But this downgrading of the teaming experience from CO is the one thing that really worries me.
For all its flaws, CoX is a great MMO, and one of the things that's made it survive for 5 years (apart from the obvious, like the great combat and character customization) is the SOCIAL side of it. How easy it was to form a PUG and do your own missions, with the incentive to group being higher, scaling rewards. The slick LFT system, the sidekicking/exemplaring - all these made CoX an amazingly social game, considering it didn't have such a great emphasis on SGs and raiding.
I'm hoping that the lack of this sort of thing in the CO beta is just temporary, while they sort out some problems with it. But my great fear is that this is the way teaming is going to be, because of the difficulty of doing a lot of the functional stuff necessary to form teams on a console controller.
That still won't be enough to put me off the game, since the whole idea of "build your own superhero of your dreams" is still the main draw. But the sad thing is, it will make CO like every other MMO I've tried - in every other MMO I've tried, unless I've joined a guild (which I seldom do, as I don't have the time to commit to a guild) I've had a very solo experience, with little grouping opportunities. In CoX it was the other way round - I hardly ever soloed, I always either joined teams or formed my own teams to do my own missions because it was so easy and rewarding. That meant I had much more time chatting and interacting with other people in CoX than in any other MMO I've tried. If this level of sociability is missing from CO, that will be one major way in which CO is substantially worse than CoX.
To be honest, think part of the grouping issue is the temporary-ness of beta. For instance, I am part of a large guild/ superteam, but we will not be doing invites until the headstart.
I actually think there are tools to promote this activity in place and a few that may detract from grouping a little as well.
Some think that the shards system detracts from group but I don't. When you pick the shard you want to be in it shows you if you have any friends or super team mates in it. Also, being basically one HUGE virtual server you can all join together in a single shard to group very easily. In addition, our super team has its own chat channel witch will lend to grouping with team mates.
The one thing I think detracts from grouping some is the fact you can jump in on any boss fight or quest and get credit for it most of the time. You don't HAVE to group to do it, just band together then and there. Now, that could be considered a form of grouping as well.
How is this a bad thing? It took everything good about CoH, a great game- and took everything bad away, and then improved the game with its own unique blend.
Another game did this... what was it? Oh yea... the incredibly popular, best-selling video game of all time: World of Warcraft. They copied Everquest, but got rid of all the stupid, bad parts like XP loss and Mob camping, and improved it, plus added their own style to the game. Everyone likes it far more than Everquest. This is an example of taking something good, and making it BETTER. Far, far, far better. Champions Online copied CoH, but did a MUCH better job in almost every single way.
Ahem, except grouping, which was one of CoX's great strengths.
Everything I've read and seen about CO makes me quite optimistic about it. I think it will be a fun game. But this downgrading of the teaming experience from CO is the one thing that really worries me.
For all its flaws, CoX is a great MMO, and one of the things that's made it survive for 5 years (apart from the obvious, like the great combat and character customization) is the SOCIAL side of it. How easy it was to form a PUG and do your own missions, with the incentive to group being higher, scaling rewards. The slick LFT system, the sidekicking/exemplaring - all these made CoX an amazingly social game, considering it didn't have such a great emphasis on SGs and raiding.
I'm hoping that the lack of this sort of thing in the CO beta is just temporary, while they sort out some problems with it. But my great fear is that this is the way teaming is going to be, because of the difficulty of doing a lot of the functional stuff necessary to form teams on a console controller.
That still won't be enough to put me off the game, since the whole idea of "build your own superhero of your dreams" is still the main draw. But the sad thing is, it will make CO like every other MMO I've tried - in every other MMO I've tried, unless I've joined a guild (which I seldom do, as I don't have the time to commit to a guild) I've had a very solo experience, with little grouping opportunities. In CoX it was the other way round - I hardly ever soloed, I always either joined teams or formed my own teams to do my own missions because it was so easy and rewarding. That meant I had much more time chatting and interacting with other people in CoX than in any other MMO I've tried. If this level of sociability is missing from CO, that will be one major way in which CO is substantially worse than CoX.
I disagree about the grouping. No offense but I think it may have been just where you were at in your life when you played CoH that lead you to make friends and group - that's more of a personal choice. All of the same mechanics are in CO and there was definitely no need to group in CoH. I almost never grouped in that game and most everyone I talked to has had the same experience - it is not at all like FFXI or LOTRO where you absolutely have to group to see 80% of the game's material. So I don't really think that calling CoH some sort of social mastermind is really accurate.
I'm seeing a lot of people on this thread who are hugely attached to CoH and don't want anything to replace it. Well, people still play EQ1 after EQ2 is out, so .. y'know. There's that.
I disagree about the grouping. No offense but I think it may have been just where you were at in your life when you played CoH that lead you to make friends and group - that's more of a personal choice. All of the same mechanics are in CO and there was definitely no need to group in CoH. I almost never grouped in that game and most everyone I talked to has had the same experience - it is not at all like FFXI or LOTRO where you absolutely have to group to see 80% of the game's material. So I don't really think that calling CoH some sort of social mastermind is really accurate.
I'm seeing a lot of people on this thread who are hugely attached to CoH and don't want anything to replace it. Well, people still play EQ1 after EQ2 is out, so .. y'know. There's that.
You might be right, and also about my view being subjective If you say the same mechanics are in CO, that makes me happy if it's true; however,I doubt it, judging by the general tenor of the comments I've seen coming out of the OB (e.g. on the main forums).
Plus, I've always seen "ease of teaming up for PUGs" listed as being one of CoX's strengths - it's not just me that noticed it because I wanted to team. Also, I've wanted to team in LOTRO, in WoW, in AoC, Vanguard, PotBS, EQ2, etc., etc., just as much as I've wanted to team in CoX, but as I said, I've always just found myself soloing more in those other games than CoX, because it was harder to build teams and harder to find teams - the mechanics just mitigate against it. Most of those games are built for guilding, not PUG-ing. CoX (whether by accident or design) is built for PUG-ing, and that's the kind of "team play" that's suitable for a casual like me - someone who enjoys playing in groups with others, but doesn't have the time to commit to a guild/sg. For me, and I'll wager people like me (i.e. people who like to team but not guild), CoX has been the most social of the MMOs, and in that sense is a masterpiece in just that area.
To put it another way: if you can build a balanced 8-man pick-up team with everybody hitting at the right level range for the mission as quickly in any other MMO as you can in CoX, you get a No Prize.
If CO lacks this feature, that's a definite retrograde step from CoX. (However, as I say, it won't bother me that much - I'm used to soloing in MMOs now, having played other MMOs since CoX )
- Items. There's a ton of items and they all seem basically the same- a mixup of stats with better items being some decimal point better than the other. None of them really stand out and everything just seems like vendor trash. In one quest reward, there are two items with identical stats just different names. Why so many crappy items? There's no reason to use an auction house assuming I could even find one in this game. No player economy = a major facet of an MMORPG missing. - Powers. Although there are a crapload of powers, they are mostly very similar just with different animations. A ranged class plays pretty much the same as any other ranged class. Also, there aren't enough in a single tree to spend all your points on if you reach max level meaning you have to take from other trees. That's fine and might actually be fun if the stats weren't so messed up in this game and forced you to specialize heavily towards two stats, making abilities from other trees basically useless. For example, an ability that scales with strength is useless for a ranged caster that specialized in endurance and recovery. All around feels sort of thrown together and not thought through, which is not an uncommon feeling about an aspect of this game.
The item system is actually pretty good. You apparently never played to a higher level where some of the items have unique effects, both passive and active. In fact once you start adding in devices, which can do a wide variety of different things, its one of the most appealing items systems I've seen.
Its hardly different than any other game. Fireball=Icebolt=Shadowbolt=Incinerate=Lightningbolt=Starfire=Wrath. I could do the same thing for melee. The difference is the secondary effects and the talents that modify individual powers. Its no different in CO, except powers are actually more flexible because of the Charge/Maintain/Toggle etc systems.
The stat design is very intelligent, but it has a few minor problems. Yes, you are encouraged to focus on two stats. This actually pushes your character in a "class-like" direction, without imposing hard limits. No, you can't be great at everything... that would make for a joke of a game. It's a good system, and very slick in the way it makes you make decisions. All offensive powers scale w/ your focus stats, only a few secondary effects do not (ie knockback)... that doesn't make those powers uselss. It just makes them better in the hands of someone that specializes in that certain aspect, and thats a good thing. I will agree some defensive/offensive passives probably need the ability for multiple stats to effect them so you aren't pigeon-holed into taking a specific stat for your build. It would have to be done intelligently... for instance taking DEX and making invuln scale with it would be very bad.
And they wouldn't delete this thread on the main forums.
I think the shards and the "freestyle" are a big step backwards in terms of gameplay and teamplay.
Part of COH's top ranking team tools was the clearly defined co-operative roles and team mechanic. Also the powers were better. I was able to think up a rationale for my hero and then recreate it from the available power pools in COH.
In CO, I'm just picked a powerpool that was melee. I've toyed with character planners too, but I have to say it's quite a loveless method and I'm not enjoying it particularly so far. I had hoped to be able to mix and match powers like in the pen and paper game, but as previously mentioned the power tree's are all over the place so to get sympathetic abilities for my build i must choose from independant trees and be shit at everything instead of learning new powers on a tree i like and mastering them one by one.
Shards? Pointless. Retarded. The only people shards benefit are the server providers who save much money on bandwidth. Might as well play Guild Wars. It takes all the Massive out of MMO. Unreal is more massive.
I won't be bumping into the same old faces at the same old quest givers again and agian and again unitl I am in clan with them. I won't be making friends on the basis of who plays the game at the same speed as me, who is the same level at the same time; who's gaming habits co-incide with mine at all. Because those random players who would one day become familar friends will almost never be in the same shard as me. They will never become that familiar.
This problem is doubly compounded by the lack of localised servers.
This is a total money scrimping cop out and a giant step backwards in MMO evolution. Typical Cryptic. Typical Bill Roper. $>gameplay $>customer satisfaction.
Guild Wars offers this type of thing for free. Why would I wish to pay a monthly sub for this? Not good value. Not good value for money at all.
The powers? I think that is a genuine response to player concerns about being forced into a specific role. How ever I think it was an error of judgement on their part. The shards though? That's just nerfed gameplay for increased profits.
I'll be playing the game through as fast as I enjoyably can, finishing the content and moving swiftly on to something else. It will be a good ride, but a brief one. I doubt they will see any subscription money from me.
yeah you guys are all funny. they just took COH and made it better. i thought COH was great but it lacked the exploration, i mean being stuck in a city gets old.
basically COH was just a very long Open Beta....lol.. so quit flappin the guns and scarin people....
THIS IS EXACTLY HOW ALL THESE MMORPG's do bad, its because of you guys. i mean its still in BETA, it has not COME OUT YET, their will be hundreds of PATCHES AND UPDATES as the years go by. so please don't ruin it already like all the others you helped out with .
plus if ya don't like it you don't have to play it....its so simple
Thank goodness there was another OB today... it cleared my mind to really NOT play CO. At least not for many months to come. I loved my chars, and the combat was nice and cool... but in the end, it's just a very consolish action pew pew with nothing else. Face it. I know, cool costumes and it makes you attached to the char and thus the game. But be honest with yourself, do you REALLY like the game that much? Or is it not merely the char design? I came to realize, there isnt really much in the game. Shoot 2-3 hours on those Destroid robots - it should heal most of the misperpections.
Oh well... tis a pity. I loved my chars too. But its just to lightweight a game. Mene mene tekel.
Thank goodness there was another OB today... it cleared my mind to really NOT play CO. At least not for many months to come. I loved my chars, and the combat was nice and cool... but in the end, it's just a very consolish action pew pew with nothing else. Face it. I know, cool costumes and it makes you attached to the char and thus the game. But be honest with yourself, do you REALLY like the game that much? Or is it not merely the char design? I came to realize, there isnt really much in the game. Shoot 2-3 hours on those Destroid robots - it should heal most of the misperpections. Oh well... tis a pity. I loved my chars too. But its just to lightweight a game. Mene mene tekel.
What else were you specifically expecting to be in the game? What areas of depth did you think it lacked?
They are nerfing anything that remotely stands out as decent above others.
How can they be nerfing things? The game hasn't even been released yet! The whole point of a beta is to obtain enough data to get a good idea of the best compromise between easy quick levelling and boring grind.
You do know that cryptic made COH right? So they were basically making COH 2.0 as some are saying. But the game is great to me, the end of beta event was insanely fun, the apocalypse PvP mode is insanely fun. Get this game regardless of what the trolls say, and the XP nerf was a test....
And I would think everyone has at least tried the game by now.... it has been in open beta, and was open to all since a few days ago....
See the porblem with everything this person is saying is completely false.
PVP, there is a point. You get acclaim, it gets you novelty items or pvp gear. Other than the same point in almost every mmo for ppv.... To kill other players.
Items, yes to an extent there are several items similar or even named the same with different stats. No mmo is perfect however where most items might be the same the item type is different .... i.e mysticism , science , or arms. So if you dont need the item you get the crafting type that you are so you can de aka research it.
There is plenty of economy going to be involved in this game as there are special crafting stuff which you can cuztomize. most people didnt level crafting to see what it is like but once you get to the tier 3 of crafting ie past 200 it starts getting fun.
As for the powers. There is a huge imbalance but in the end no one is unkillable if your team works together. Thats just how it is. And this game has clearly stated is is not like other mmos in several aspects. You can have ranged tanks in this game. You can have healers, or dps, cc, and you dont even need healers. Its not your normal mmo. Not even like CoH/V. Control style is different, story is different, powers different, gfx different. Other than the genre it is nothing like. EVEN THOUGH Cryptic was the developers of CoH/V So....
As for end game...
Hmm lets see there are several Lairs ie lvl 40 instances ie raids. There are 2 whole high lvl zones which arent even in the beta. Lemuria and Monster Island. SO please before you go off ranting. Do a bit more reading and stop crying because someone made a better build than you in pvp and stomped you or because your a auction house price gouging fool. It has all the things every game should Have and then some. It is Unique and if you get past its surface you would see that.
The game is very simple until lvl 25. You pick your powers, you pick your stats, you loot your gear and craft. Level. Once you hit 25 you start getting into group content and most importantly your Nemesis.
So again before you go off ranting you really should know more about what your ranting about.
Many of the posters here including the OP never left the crisis zones. Based on them thinking all zones have instances with a max of 30 players and other misinformed comments (no auction house, all items being only stats).
Basically its like reading posts from a player who started this massive rant about whats so flawed and missing from wow, when he only played wow to level 8.
The XP nerf isn't a nerf. It was a special accellerated rate of exp gain for the open beta in order to allow players to see more of the game. This isn't a new concept, and getting angry or worried about what is, in truth, exp returning to normal gains is just foolish. However, that doesn't address some of the larger issues with CO.
What he said.
ROFLMAO .... HAHAAA ... OMG ... are u guys kidding me, ...REALLY ? This much disillusion over a game that is just beginning? BWAHAHA ... unreal. Pls just leave now. Pls.! It took WoW five years to be polished and u wanna call Gloom and Doom on this game ... in BETA??? There is a reason they call it Beta "TESTING" grow up. Excuse me while I continue laughing
I was totally pissed off when I found out Blizzard ripped off elements from Warcraft to make Starcraft. That is totally uncalled for. I never played Chrono Trigger since Square Soft totally took RPG elements from the Final Fantasy series to make the game. Same with Xenogears.
There are a ton of games I refuse to play because of al these rip offs companies do to themselves. Skitchen with road Rash, Champions of Norrath with Baldur's Gate, Fallout 2 with Arcanum, and of course the last straw, CoH and Champions Online. How dare Cryptic use perfectly good elements fomr their own old game to put into a much better modern game.
Thank goodness there was another OB today... it cleared my mind to really NOT play CO. At least not for many months to come. I loved my chars, and the combat was nice and cool... but in the end, it's just a very consolish action pew pew with nothing else. Face it. I know, cool costumes and it makes you attached to the char and thus the game. But be honest with yourself, do you REALLY like the game that much? Or is it not merely the char design? I came to realize, there isnt really much in the game. Shoot 2-3 hours on those Destroid robots - it should heal most of the misperpections. Oh well... tis a pity. I loved my chars too. But its just to lightweight a game. Mene mene tekel.
What else were you specifically expecting to be in the game? What areas of depth did you think it lacked?
The fun I had, was despite these flaws, which I felt just mostly like the reviewer. It was cool action - for a while and I loved my chars because of the design, but all in all... its 6 months too early. Never grasped myself why they wasted time on twitter or winamp implementation when so much fundamental was flawed.
Yes, unfortunately it works like the real world in that EVERYONE gets to play in the same "World". God sucks because he is a poor MMO designer, he should have realized we couldn't have a sense of community if we all existed in the same world (reality).
Shards are just mini-communitys, perfect barriers so when you meet your friend you haven't talked too in 5 years and find out you play the same MMO butt he is on Steamwheedle and you are on Earthen Ring, you can't play your main characters together.
Now we have a BIG community, and you can build up your FRIENDS and SG members and get to know MORE, not less.
Now you don't run the risk like on COH of making all your high levels on a server that turns out to be the 'dead' server 5 years after game launch (like I did).
CO really pleases me on many levels. Removing the 'traditional' barrier of servers is a GOOD thing. Having not been able to survive in a guild in Warhammer Online because I've been 'merged' to four different servers with my launch characters, I love it.
That review is so flawed and plain ignorant I'd have to write an ever larger review just to correct all the nonsense posted in it. I'm just hoping he stopped playing several months ago... otherwise it just makes him look like an idiot.
Concerning the XP nerf I know it had alot of the OB players furious as there was multiple threads on the official forums blasting the devs for it after it was done. I agree they needed to do something to balance it out however with how extreme it was it left some characters were rendered completely stuck not being able to progress any further because of the mission(quest) level requirements and even then how low of XP they gave if you managed to group up and complete them anyway. The rate at which you leveled before the nerf was by far the fastest I've ever seen in any MMORPG or RPG for that matter. 1 Day of play from start to finish you could go from 1-22 easy without even trying to group up which basically lead to the Dev's decision to lower the XP like they did.
It probably wasn't the best idea to do such an extreme game change in the middle of OB with potential customers trying out your product before they buy it however they sort of redeemed themselves a bit when they had the "End of Beta Event" as they placed an NPC near the Jet that takes you to the different zones which when talked to leveled you to 40.
I don't think the XP nerf will stick because if it did they would have to add much more missions to the game and given the status of the current missions already in the game especially in Canada where almost all the post entry missions were bugged to the point you couldn't even complete them I just don't think they could pull it off before Friday. It will still be very fast to level but not as fast as it used to be at the beginning of OB.
That review is so flawed and plain ignorant I'd have to write an ever larger review just to correct all the nonsense posted in it. I'm just hoping he stopped playing several months ago... otherwise it just makes him look like an idiot.
I agree with you. Very innnacurate review. One example about not finding your friends and the single server. One of the NICE features is that if you open your map and select a different shard you can see which ones have your friends and super team mates in them. It is is actually very EASY to find and go adventure with friends.
Comments
I've been playing CoH for five years, since its release, and i played the CO beta, Champions is a complete rip-off of Coh, the only difference is the gameplay, which in my opinion, sucks. The Lead Developer of Champions lonline is a dev that was fired from from the paragon team by the way.
Hell, it felt like grinding BEFORE they nerfed it. It's still a grindfest t0o me
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these reviews make me uncomfortable so kudos to rayx0r.
if the open beta was near the finnsihed product i don't think they should release it sept 1.
they should keep working on the game and if they need money i don''t see why they and other companies don't have paid betas for like $5 a month instead of 15$. it supposed to go live in like a week and i felt liek i was playing an early beta class wise i mean they quest where good and the tutorial zone was really good but once i left the tutorial zone it went down hill.
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Ahem, except grouping, which was one of CoX's great strengths.
Everything I've read and seen about CO makes me quite optimistic about it. I think it will be a fun game. But this downgrading of the teaming experience from CO is the one thing that really worries me.
For all its flaws, CoX is a great MMO, and one of the things that's made it survive for 5 years (apart from the obvious, like the great combat and character customization) is the SOCIAL side of it. How easy it was to form a PUG and do your own missions, with the incentive to group being higher, scaling rewards. The slick LFT system, the sidekicking/exemplaring - all these made CoX an amazingly social game, considering it didn't have such a great emphasis on SGs and raiding.
I'm hoping that the lack of this sort of thing in the CO beta is just temporary, while they sort out some problems with it. But my great fear is that this is the way teaming is going to be, because of the difficulty of doing a lot of the functional stuff necessary to form teams on a console controller.
That still won't be enough to put me off the game, since the whole idea of "build your own superhero of your dreams" is still the main draw. But the sad thing is, it will make CO like every other MMO I've tried - in every other MMO I've tried, unless I've joined a guild (which I seldom do, as I don't have the time to commit to a guild) I've had a very solo experience, with little grouping opportunities. In CoX it was the other way round - I hardly ever soloed, I always either joined teams or formed my own teams to do my own missions because it was so easy and rewarding. That meant I had much more time chatting and interacting with other people in CoX than in any other MMO I've tried. If this level of sociability is missing from CO, that will be one major way in which CO is substantially worse than CoX.
To be honest, think part of the grouping issue is the temporary-ness of beta. For instance, I am part of a large guild/ superteam, but we will not be doing invites until the headstart.
I actually think there are tools to promote this activity in place and a few that may detract from grouping a little as well.
Some think that the shards system detracts from group but I don't. When you pick the shard you want to be in it shows you if you have any friends or super team mates in it. Also, being basically one HUGE virtual server you can all join together in a single shard to group very easily. In addition, our super team has its own chat channel witch will lend to grouping with team mates.
The one thing I think detracts from grouping some is the fact you can jump in on any boss fight or quest and get credit for it most of the time. You don't HAVE to group to do it, just band together then and there. Now, that could be considered a form of grouping as well.
My 2 cents!
Ahem, except grouping, which was one of CoX's great strengths.
Everything I've read and seen about CO makes me quite optimistic about it. I think it will be a fun game. But this downgrading of the teaming experience from CO is the one thing that really worries me.
For all its flaws, CoX is a great MMO, and one of the things that's made it survive for 5 years (apart from the obvious, like the great combat and character customization) is the SOCIAL side of it. How easy it was to form a PUG and do your own missions, with the incentive to group being higher, scaling rewards. The slick LFT system, the sidekicking/exemplaring - all these made CoX an amazingly social game, considering it didn't have such a great emphasis on SGs and raiding.
I'm hoping that the lack of this sort of thing in the CO beta is just temporary, while they sort out some problems with it. But my great fear is that this is the way teaming is going to be, because of the difficulty of doing a lot of the functional stuff necessary to form teams on a console controller.
That still won't be enough to put me off the game, since the whole idea of "build your own superhero of your dreams" is still the main draw. But the sad thing is, it will make CO like every other MMO I've tried - in every other MMO I've tried, unless I've joined a guild (which I seldom do, as I don't have the time to commit to a guild) I've had a very solo experience, with little grouping opportunities. In CoX it was the other way round - I hardly ever soloed, I always either joined teams or formed my own teams to do my own missions because it was so easy and rewarding. That meant I had much more time chatting and interacting with other people in CoX than in any other MMO I've tried. If this level of sociability is missing from CO, that will be one major way in which CO is substantially worse than CoX.
I disagree about the grouping. No offense but I think it may have been just where you were at in your life when you played CoH that lead you to make friends and group - that's more of a personal choice. All of the same mechanics are in CO and there was definitely no need to group in CoH. I almost never grouped in that game and most everyone I talked to has had the same experience - it is not at all like FFXI or LOTRO where you absolutely have to group to see 80% of the game's material. So I don't really think that calling CoH some sort of social mastermind is really accurate.
I'm seeing a lot of people on this thread who are hugely attached to CoH and don't want anything to replace it. Well, people still play EQ1 after EQ2 is out, so .. y'know. There's that.
You might be right, and also about my view being subjective If you say the same mechanics are in CO, that makes me happy if it's true; however,I doubt it, judging by the general tenor of the comments I've seen coming out of the OB (e.g. on the main forums).
Plus, I've always seen "ease of teaming up for PUGs" listed as being one of CoX's strengths - it's not just me that noticed it because I wanted to team. Also, I've wanted to team in LOTRO, in WoW, in AoC, Vanguard, PotBS, EQ2, etc., etc., just as much as I've wanted to team in CoX, but as I said, I've always just found myself soloing more in those other games than CoX, because it was harder to build teams and harder to find teams - the mechanics just mitigate against it. Most of those games are built for guilding, not PUG-ing. CoX (whether by accident or design) is built for PUG-ing, and that's the kind of "team play" that's suitable for a casual like me - someone who enjoys playing in groups with others, but doesn't have the time to commit to a guild/sg. For me, and I'll wager people like me (i.e. people who like to team but not guild), CoX has been the most social of the MMOs, and in that sense is a masterpiece in just that area.
To put it another way: if you can build a balanced 8-man pick-up team with everybody hitting at the right level range for the mission as quickly in any other MMO as you can in CoX, you get a No Prize.
If CO lacks this feature, that's a definite retrograde step from CoX. (However, as I say, it won't bother me that much - I'm used to soloing in MMOs now, having played other MMOs since CoX
)
The item system is actually pretty good. You apparently never played to a higher level where some of the items have unique effects, both passive and active. In fact once you start adding in devices, which can do a wide variety of different things, its one of the most appealing items systems I've seen.
Its hardly different than any other game. Fireball=Icebolt=Shadowbolt=Incinerate=Lightningbolt=Starfire=Wrath. I could do the same thing for melee. The difference is the secondary effects and the talents that modify individual powers. Its no different in CO, except powers are actually more flexible because of the Charge/Maintain/Toggle etc systems.
The stat design is very intelligent, but it has a few minor problems. Yes, you are encouraged to focus on two stats. This actually pushes your character in a "class-like" direction, without imposing hard limits. No, you can't be great at everything... that would make for a joke of a game. It's a good system, and very slick in the way it makes you make decisions. All offensive powers scale w/ your focus stats, only a few secondary effects do not (ie knockback)... that doesn't make those powers uselss. It just makes them better in the hands of someone that specializes in that certain aspect, and thats a good thing. I will agree some defensive/offensive passives probably need the ability for multiple stats to effect them so you aren't pigeon-holed into taking a specific stat for your build. It would have to be done intelligently... for instance taking DEX and making invuln scale with it would be very bad.
And they wouldn't delete this thread on the main forums.
I think the shards and the "freestyle" are a big step backwards in terms of gameplay and teamplay.
Part of COH's top ranking team tools was the clearly defined co-operative roles and team mechanic. Also the powers were better. I was able to think up a rationale for my hero and then recreate it from the available power pools in COH.
In CO, I'm just picked a powerpool that was melee. I've toyed with character planners too, but I have to say it's quite a loveless method and I'm not enjoying it particularly so far. I had hoped to be able to mix and match powers like in the pen and paper game, but as previously mentioned the power tree's are all over the place so to get sympathetic abilities for my build i must choose from independant trees and be shit at everything instead of learning new powers on a tree i like and mastering them one by one.
Shards? Pointless. Retarded. The only people shards benefit are the server providers who save much money on bandwidth. Might as well play Guild Wars. It takes all the Massive out of MMO. Unreal is more massive.
I won't be bumping into the same old faces at the same old quest givers again and agian and again unitl I am in clan with them. I won't be making friends on the basis of who plays the game at the same speed as me, who is the same level at the same time; who's gaming habits co-incide with mine at all. Because those random players who would one day become familar friends will almost never be in the same shard as me. They will never become that familiar.
This problem is doubly compounded by the lack of localised servers.
This is a total money scrimping cop out and a giant step backwards in MMO evolution. Typical Cryptic. Typical Bill Roper. $>gameplay $>customer satisfaction.
Guild Wars offers this type of thing for free. Why would I wish to pay a monthly sub for this? Not good value. Not good value for money at all.
The powers? I think that is a genuine response to player concerns about being forced into a specific role. How ever I think it was an error of judgement on their part. The shards though? That's just nerfed gameplay for increased profits.
I'll be playing the game through as fast as I enjoyably can, finishing the content and moving swiftly on to something else. It will be a good ride, but a brief one. I doubt they will see any subscription money from me.
yeah you guys are all funny. they just took COH and made it better. i thought COH was great but it lacked the exploration, i mean being stuck in a city gets old.
basically COH was just a very long Open Beta....lol.. so quit flappin the guns and scarin people....
THIS IS EXACTLY HOW ALL THESE MMORPG's do bad, its because of you guys. i mean its still in BETA, it has not COME OUT YET, their will be hundreds of PATCHES AND UPDATES as the years go by. so please don't ruin it already like all the others you helped out with .
plus if ya don't like it you don't have to play it....its so simple
lol
Thank goodness there was another OB today... it cleared my mind to really NOT play CO. At least not for many months to come. I loved my chars, and the combat was nice and cool... but in the end, it's just a very consolish action pew pew with nothing else. Face it. I know, cool costumes and it makes you attached to the char and thus the game. But be honest with yourself, do you REALLY like the game that much? Or is it not merely the char design? I came to realize, there isnt really much in the game. Shoot 2-3 hours on those Destroid robots - it should heal most of the misperpections.
Oh well... tis a pity. I loved my chars too. But its just to lightweight a game. Mene mene tekel.
What else were you specifically expecting to be in the game? What areas of depth did you think it lacked?
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
How can they be nerfing things? The game hasn't even been released yet! The whole point of a beta is to obtain enough data to get a good idea of the best compromise between easy quick levelling and boring grind.
You do know that cryptic made COH right? So they were basically making COH 2.0 as some are saying. But the game is great to me, the end of beta event was insanely fun, the apocalypse PvP mode is insanely fun. Get this game regardless of what the trolls say, and the XP nerf was a test....
And I would think everyone has at least tried the game by now.... it has been in open beta, and was open to all since a few days ago....
Ok reading this post made me laugh.
See the porblem with everything this person is saying is completely false.
PVP, there is a point. You get acclaim, it gets you novelty items or pvp gear. Other than the same point in almost every mmo for ppv.... To kill other players.
Items, yes to an extent there are several items similar or even named the same with different stats. No mmo is perfect however where most items might be the same the item type is different .... i.e mysticism , science , or arms. So if you dont need the item you get the crafting type that you are so you can de aka research it.
There is plenty of economy going to be involved in this game as there are special crafting stuff which you can cuztomize. most people didnt level crafting to see what it is like but once you get to the tier 3 of crafting ie past 200 it starts getting fun.
As for the powers. There is a huge imbalance but in the end no one is unkillable if your team works together. Thats just how it is. And this game has clearly stated is is not like other mmos in several aspects. You can have ranged tanks in this game. You can have healers, or dps, cc, and you dont even need healers. Its not your normal mmo. Not even like CoH/V. Control style is different, story is different, powers different, gfx different. Other than the genre it is nothing like. EVEN THOUGH Cryptic was the developers of CoH/V So....
As for end game...
Hmm lets see there are several Lairs ie lvl 40 instances ie raids. There are 2 whole high lvl zones which arent even in the beta. Lemuria and Monster Island. SO please before you go off ranting. Do a bit more reading and stop crying because someone made a better build than you in pvp and stomped you or because your a auction house price gouging fool. It has all the things every game should Have and then some. It is Unique and if you get past its surface you would see that.
The game is very simple until lvl 25. You pick your powers, you pick your stats, you loot your gear and craft. Level. Once you hit 25 you start getting into group content and most importantly your Nemesis.
So again before you go off ranting you really should know more about what your ranting about.
Many of the posters here including the OP never left the crisis zones. Based on them thinking all zones have instances with a max of 30 players and other misinformed comments (no auction house, all items being only stats).
Basically its like reading posts from a player who started this massive rant about whats so flawed and missing from wow, when he only played wow to level 8.
What he said.
ROFLMAO .... HAHAAA ... OMG ... are u guys kidding me, ...REALLY ? This much disillusion over a game that is just beginning? BWAHAHA ... unreal. Pls just leave now. Pls.! It took WoW five years to be polished and u wanna call Gloom and Doom on this game ... in BETA??? There is a reason they call it Beta "TESTING" grow up. Excuse me while I continue laughing
I was totally pissed off when I found out Blizzard ripped off elements from Warcraft to make Starcraft. That is totally uncalled for. I never played Chrono Trigger since Square Soft totally took RPG elements from the Final Fantasy series to make the game. Same with Xenogears.
There are a ton of games I refuse to play because of al these rip offs companies do to themselves. Skitchen with road Rash, Champions of Norrath with Baldur's Gate, Fallout 2 with Arcanum, and of course the last straw, CoH and Champions Online. How dare Cryptic use perfectly good elements fomr their own old game to put into a much better modern game.
What else were you specifically expecting to be in the game? What areas of depth did you think it lacked?
IMO this review sums it up for me:
memetic-hazard.blogspot.com/2009/08/champions-online-review-part-1.html
The fun I had, was despite these flaws, which I felt just mostly like the reviewer. It was cool action - for a while and I loved my chars because of the design, but all in all... its 6 months too early. Never grasped myself why they wasted time on twitter or winamp implementation when so much fundamental was flawed.
"- Shards- There's no sense of community."
Yes, unfortunately it works like the real world in that EVERYONE gets to play in the same "World". God sucks because he is a poor MMO designer, he should have realized we couldn't have a sense of community if we all existed in the same world (reality).
Shards are just mini-communitys, perfect barriers so when you meet your friend you haven't talked too in 5 years and find out you play the same MMO butt he is on Steamwheedle and you are on Earthen Ring, you can't play your main characters together.
Now we have a BIG community, and you can build up your FRIENDS and SG members and get to know MORE, not less.
Now you don't run the risk like on COH of making all your high levels on a server that turns out to be the 'dead' server 5 years after game launch (like I did).
CO really pleases me on many levels. Removing the 'traditional' barrier of servers is a GOOD thing. Having not been able to survive in a guild in Warhammer Online because I've been 'merged' to four different servers with my launch characters, I love it.
That review is so flawed and plain ignorant I'd have to write an ever larger review just to correct all the nonsense posted in it. I'm just hoping he stopped playing several months ago... otherwise it just makes him look like an idiot.
Concerning the XP nerf I know it had alot of the OB players furious as there was multiple threads on the official forums blasting the devs for it after it was done. I agree they needed to do something to balance it out however with how extreme it was it left some characters were rendered completely stuck not being able to progress any further because of the mission(quest) level requirements and even then how low of XP they gave if you managed to group up and complete them anyway. The rate at which you leveled before the nerf was by far the fastest I've ever seen in any MMORPG or RPG for that matter. 1 Day of play from start to finish you could go from 1-22 easy without even trying to group up which basically lead to the Dev's decision to lower the XP like they did.
It probably wasn't the best idea to do such an extreme game change in the middle of OB with potential customers trying out your product before they buy it however they sort of redeemed themselves a bit when they had the "End of Beta Event" as they placed an NPC near the Jet that takes you to the different zones which when talked to leveled you to 40.
I don't think the XP nerf will stick because if it did they would have to add much more missions to the game and given the status of the current missions already in the game especially in Canada where almost all the post entry missions were bugged to the point you couldn't even complete them I just don't think they could pull it off before Friday. It will still be very fast to level but not as fast as it used to be at the beginning of OB.
That review is so flawed and plain ignorant I'd have to write an ever larger review just to correct all the nonsense posted in it. I'm just hoping he stopped playing several months ago... otherwise it just makes him look like an idiot.
I agree with you. Very innnacurate review. One example about not finding your friends and the single server. One of the NICE features is that if you open your map and select a different shard you can see which ones have your friends and super team mates in them. It is is actually very EASY to find and go adventure with friends.
Anyway, not a good review of the product at all.