What is so horrible about the tab targeting? You can target neareast enemy with one keystrock then next enemy with another, previouse with another. None have to be the tab key. I dont see the difference in targeting in co than other mmo's. What would you like to see different? Im not disagreeing with you, I am curious to how it differs from other mmos. Is it because when you kill one mob it automatically moves to the next? That can be changed in options with a variety of options, including do not change automatically, target next nearest, furthest, attacking. I doubt thats it but what is it. For content gap between levels you find, That includes after you have done all the missions in crime computer as well? Like I said I am only 28 and using the crime computer which is updated all the time I have not run into lack of missions. If its the higher levels I am hoping they add stuff before I get there. Thanks.
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.
Whilst the review was fairly balanced, I would disagree about replay-value. I am an altaholic and have enjoyed levelling all my toons, though the linear nature of progression is a little retrograde when compared to the original City Of Heroes and it's multiple choices of areas in which to level. Effectively this comes down to the problem of too few zones in Champions Online at release. That said, the zone there are, are excellent, as are the implementations of travel powers and the inclusion of underwater areas. ......
Before posting my previous post I missed yours. And I could not agree more with you. And especially I love your expression "altaholic". :-)) Lol ... I never thought about ... but I'm also altaholic. :-) In any game I'm interested in all possible builds. Then I pick few that I love most ... when they are sufficiently leveld ... start with others. When i have enough I switch to another game. :-)) End game for me is when i have leveled all i was interested on. Of course when i have a lot of time and that was case because of one long term injury.
And as I said ... i stopped to play (for some time, despite I have still free time) because today I'm superhero, tomorrow I'm average pussy cat. And until they to not stop doing this i'm out. And I'm really sorry for this, because after first week of gameplay CO was already my game no.2. Never happend with any game so fast. Now my favorite list is wow, aoc, aion, war, lotro, .... champions online.
"Champions Online is very much a game with a lot of potential, but is currently plagued with a myriad of issues, many of which are often exhibited by newly released MMOGs, though the overall lack of content is simply inexcusable."
You can tell the reviewer talked to 1-2 level 40's and reviewed the game in his mid 20's to 30's. Lots of content in this game. I am not a fan of MMORPG.com reviews, they remind me of IGN.com MMORPG reviews = trash
Your opinion = trash. I have a level 40 in this game and wont be renewing my sub because I have little to do. Especially with PvP basically removed from the game.
Oh yeah, look at what other reviewers said about the game, read their own forums. CO is just below average and still needs alot of work.
"World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this genre." - Hilmar Petursson. CEO of CCP.
That is because in your list you only mentioned the cons but none of the pros. Any game where you pick out only the cons would seem worse than it actually is.
I release I completely cherry picked. But I did it to make a point. The point is that a game that has this many serious problems should not be 'rated' a 7.5. At least not in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I desperately wanted CO to be great. I'm a multi-year vet of CoH/V, and think that Cryptic can do great work. If they can stick at if for a year CO might be a great game. But there's no denying that the game needed at least a few more months in beta. I feel like they pulled a Vanguard, they released so they could get the $$ from the box sales and then thought they'd be able to plow that back into developement fast enough so that they wouldn't lose most of the players. I wish DC or Marvel had done the right thing and bought up Cryptic a few years ago, maybe given some more resources and an IP that most people actually know something about, they could have come out with a great Superhero game.
Its a fair review if a bit generous with its final mark.
Quest/mission variety is the key issue and is severely limited not just in terms of volume but more fundamentally by a mechanical limitation in the variety of tasks you can ever be asked to perform and as a direct result there's a complete and utter failure to involve or immerse the player in any substantial way.
Unless the design approach actually changes to convey some conviction in the comicbook theme or works to offer the illusion that the player has some degree of choice and consequence in the world, the bland generic 'meh' feeling will only get worse with each new addition.
The pedigree and experience Cryptic brought to bare is conspicuous by its absence, this is an mmo by people who dont quite understand the theme or actively don't care for it. Its functional and ticks the mmo staple boxes but like Hellgate it just lacks any real identity or soul.
After all the failures in the industry, you think Cryptic would know better. I would also say Paramount should take notice, however, I am now at the belief CO was released in this shape so more attention can be payed to STO. In other words its another repeat of what killed Perpetual when they had STO. The differance is Cryptic is further along in development and now has a game out the door. You watch as during this very important launch period for CO, little will be added quickly. STO will launch on time and more complete. Cryptic will then state they learned thier lessons with CO. pfft. The truth is they got Paramount breathing down thier neck anticpating an MMO success in league with WOW. Yah, right.
Thank you for the frank review, however the score is just not honest. I expect a re-review in a year.
got bank robbery in CO? what about collecting badges/achievement ?
Nope.
But every once in a while some NPC will walk up to you and say they JUST saw some robots going into a bldg (meuseum usually) 9000 miles across town. (remember the NPC walked up to you) so they give you a mission and when you go there there are no robots. Its just a bunch of Red Hat Ladies.. Only they are guys in purple.
This review was poorly thought out and written imo. It really is sad how it seems more and more sites seem to faun over companies allowing them to have acess to their game for a review and then the critics go and sugar-coat their review for compensation. I was in the CO beta and sadly, despite all the suggestions on the forums during beta by the majority of the testers, they got ignored. CO has turned out to be nothing more than a glorified button-mashing arcade game. It doesn't deserve to even be catagorized as an mmorpg. It repeats the same boring quest types CoX had and there is NO strategy to killing mobs. The same button-mashing works for every mob type.
I was really hoping CS would break the mould they had formed with CoX, thinking it was NCsoft's fault for it being so bland. But no, obviously CS are the ones responsible for turning out such 2d games in a 3d gaming world. There is no storyline, no fluidity between zones, no social aspect, the CRAFTING IS A JOKE, powers are only clones of eachother with diff FX colors, the list goes on because the game is only half-done at best. Not to mention there are only 5 zones anyhow and small ones at that. CO also has the smallest variety of mobs to fight, which between that and the limited attack strategies, gets old really quick.
Nevermind their mission system allows for kill-stealing from passer-by players because only about 5% of all missions are in an instance environment. yes, the system worked as intended for SOME, but not for all of the players and despite their repeatedly posting the bug that allowed kill-stealing, the devs continued to ignore the problem. The game is STILL full of bugs and the testers pleaded not to publish but thanks to capitalism and the almighty dollar, it seems with enough payoff even half-baked, clone games of CoX can get a decent review. (I admit it is speculation about any such payoffs, but speaking from personal experience being in the beta as well as how other testers reacted towards CO game content...makes one wonder)
I think a video review for that game is needed. I mean, 3 page for a review wtf??? I didnt bother to read. I dont think any review need 3 page to tell you how the game play unless you want to tell me about the whole game, tell me about each monsters and each boss, but then, it would just be a spoiled review and no one who plan to play the game would want to play it.
Sounds like the game hasn't improved much since the open beta.
In particular, the reviewers comment about power effects "+ enrage", etc. I remember also wondering what each effect actually did, and assumed that by the time the game hit the shelf, they'd have provided ways for you to find out. Sounds like they didn't.
I do recall alot of good things about the game, weaponization of environment, knockback, etc.
One poster talked about having to research to find out what powers compliment each other, otherwise potentially ending up with a "gimp" character. i guess I don't see the point in having such an open customization framework, then, as it doesn't really allow you to create what you want to play.
For example, if I want to create a guy whose powers are largely supernatural who wields his powers through a shotgun(think Johnny Blaze circa 1990's), and the shotgun power doesn't compliment the dark magic powers, then I can't really create the toon I want, can I?
They should have kept the root powers as basic as possible, while providing more ads/disads to "fine-tune" those powers to work together.
Once the box hits the bargain bins, or once they offer a free trial, I'll check it out again. I love the superhero genre, and I've had all the CoX tunnel instances that I could possibly take.
I think a video review for that game is needed. I mean, 3 page for a review wtf??? I didnt bother to read. I dont think any review need 3 page to tell you how the game play unless you want to tell me about the whole game, tell me about each monsters and each boss, but then, it would just be a spoiled review and no one who plan to play the game would want to play it.
got bank robbery in CO? what about collecting badges/achievement ?
Yes, the bank robberies are actually quite fun. Basically, there are three banks in Millenium City and you can tell if they're being robbed by whether or not they have cop cars surrounding em when you pass by. If they do, oftentimes you'll be able to accept a mission to stop the bank robbery and you go inside.
They do have "badges" and achievements in CO that give you titles and perks. Perks allow you to purchase special items (Costume pieces, other gear) from a perk vendor. You need the specific perk required and a certain amount of general perk points in order to get these items. I would've mentioned all this in the review but the thing was quite long as it is! The perk system has some issues though as unlocking a perk all too often requires way too many kills. In CoH you might have to kill 100-250 or so of a given mob group, in CO its like 5000. So you're really not going to get much mileage out of the perk system unless they tweak the requirements, or you love farming.
the review left out one very important point that would turn away many potential gamers.... sharding or mirrored instancing limiting the number of players per zone in an MMO is simply unacceptable for this genre. Its lame that a large guild or two will never be able to have an in-game meeting because devs want to port this game to console. it didnt work and was soundly rejected by Age of Conan gamers. And its not going to be accepted by anyone considering champions online. the first M in MMO stands for massive.
I believe that guilds (or supergroups w/e you wanna call them) are still limited to 200 players. So while sharding does suck for different reasons, I doubt they'll have that issue with SGs here.
"World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this genre." - Hilmar Petursson. CEO of CCP.
Well written review. Lack of content yes, some mission bugs holds the chain of that particular story lines and Monster Island lack of the omph in the missons. Hope the next up coming update fixes most of the gaps.
Alternatively, content gaps can be filled based on how you juggle your missions. I have yet to face any gaps since the beginning to my current journey of lvl 30 and closing to encounter the dreaded gap of 32 -> 34.
Despite all the whines and quit rage, i still find my fun nearly in everything i do with my theme based champion (Single Blade primary framework) I have yet to try on pvp since i am more on end-game pvp type of player.
Well written review. Lack of content yes, some mission bugs holds the chain of that particular story lines and Monster Island lack of the omph in the missons. Hope the next up coming update fixes most of the gaps. Alternatively, content gaps can be filled based on how you juggle your missions. I have yet to face any gaps since the beginning to my current journey of lvl 30 and closing to encounter the dreaded gap of 32 -> 34. Despite all the whines and quit rage, i still find my fun nearly in everything i do with my theme based champion (Single Blade primary framework) I have yet to try on pvp since i am more on end-game pvp type of player.
Dirk nothing against you specifically I just need to make a point. Alot of players of CO are saying they haven't hit the gap yet. or there is no gap. I haven't run out of missions yet either. However, "the gap" everyone speaks of doesn;t mean you'll run out of missions per say, it means you will have to play through all the content to level. People know this and thats what we are doing.
Try playing all the missions in CoX without having tog o back and play a TF or 2 with no XP. There is a tonne of content there. CO has limited replayability for me as I will onlky be willing to grind through all the same misisons so many times before I am bored out of my skull hearing Defender say;
"You'll have to defeat Black Talon on your own." and then 3 seconds later..... "You've shown great bravery today.....SHUT THOSE BEACONS DOWN!!!THE SIGNAL THEY"RE EMITTING IS CAUSING THE QULARR TO ATTACK!!! SHUT THIS BEACON DOWN!" I actually just turn off the sound now lol, that's pretty bad. There ought to be at least 1 different starting area for each group of powers or something.
I do NOT know why everyone is being so negative against the retcon system, I have retrained several skills and skillsets now after the patch ...
Doesn't players sell their loot, you get LOTS of money from the loot drops..And yes I also craft and experiment with gear..
I haven't tried to completly retcon my characthers but if you buy a new power and find it bad just go back and retcon it, it will cost you 20-40 silver coins or something, and that isn't much...
I hate to say it, but I'm not surprised at all by this review (and all of the others concerning Champs). I'm a 5+ year veteran of City of Heroes/Villains, and Champs is suffering the same short-sighted tendencies and bizarre concentrations on trivial (in the long run) details, as CoH suffered when it first hit. At least with Champs, PvP was introduced from the start, so I thought they might actually put some forethought into the process and get some of the ridiculous balancing crap out of the way before release, but apparently not... The same crew that screwed up much of CoH constantly, then sold it off to NCSoft, is doing the same "fix it as we go" stuff that infuriated so many of us players who wanted the PvE experience and could care less about PvP. Seems like everyone is saying that PvP almost seems like it was just slapped onto Champions as an afterthought, which is precisely what happened with CoH, so you would think they might have learned from their past mistakes...
It's sad that, in the opinions of myself and many of the long-time players I know on CoH, most of the best changes happened after the Cryptic crew disentangled themselves from the mix and let someone else steer the ship. Guess the Champs fans out there can hope something similar happens with CO before it tanks into oblivion?
I actually had very high hopes for Champions, it had the potential to alleviate a few of the little details and portions of the City of series that I would have liked to see changed. And, in a few cases, Champions has really come through. Too bad those few gems are the only shiny parts of what appears to be a lame duck package. It's rather telling that (from many accounts, and a little in-game polling) a large portion of the initial player base does not intend on renewing... And that some of the players who jumped on the lifetime sub thing are really pissed that they threw away all that money... Those types of things do not bode well for the future of a brand new MMO.
But, as I've said before, only time will tell. Maybe Cryptic can pull this one out of the fire before it gets scorched.
I am one who is enjoying the game but I think the review is accurate. Because of the points the reviewer mentioned one of which was doing the same exact content over with every alt, I do wonder however how long I will be interested in playing. Right now I don’t see this as being one of the MMOs I will play for a long time.
Some one else mentioned this as well but I would have liked the review to say something about teaming. Or rather the lack of. Teaming in this game is horrible, be it the lack of missions you can share, trouble keeping track of your team on the map, poor side kick implementation, to the all around reason that you just don’t need to, teaming is just off, to say the least. How this could have been messed up by the same people that made CoX is baffling. Even when you do team it’s just to add more offense, which you usually don’t need. So when you do team there’s no synergy needed at all. As one guy put it, it’s like soloing with other players. Yeah I like to solo, and there are times when I don’t have time to do anything else, but as other MMOs have demonstrated (such as CoX) you don’t have to abandon solo play for team play and vice versa. A MMO can have both.
And what other MMOs are we comparing too? WoW? Other successful MMOs . . . hmm . . . WoW?
WoW has been around for what, more than 5 years anyway, and when it first came out it was so boring leveling to 10 I quit playing. Only thier PAID expansion was done well enough to make me play long enough to get to the higher level stuff, there was still a 'gap' there with lots of content sure, but all over the place, with much potential to gimp my character at ever increasing costs.
Missed good points of CO
Travel powers at level 5, fun travel powers, because half the fun is the journey, right? Not in an MMOG
Characters not linked to server (This is good, even with sharding, I quote "sharding is unacceptable and automatically takes this game off my list to ever play" Why? Because of the size limit? What is more likely, CO will raise the limit, have special Guild zones, or that WoW will allow free server transfers? Or do you want to cause a lagfest by having 200 people storm a zone with 100 other people in it already?)
Side Kick system (allows people to play together and still get rewards)
No WAITING for mana, a train, your friend to take a taxi to where you are.
The ability to take any power you want (yeah, I'm sure fixing power descriptions will be an impossible task)
Stances ( you can set up for different roles, as early as level 10, sooner I think, without paying 1000g)
bag space not an issue ( I dare anyone to call me out on that)
It seems like the reviewer focused on the bad points, forgot many of the good points, and compared a new game to established games. CO has a lot of potential, they are taking the good things from other games, and adding their own great ideas on top of it.
All the problems mentioned are there, I didn't find tabbing to be that much of an issue, maybe the reviewer needed to tweak the settings. The game thinks about a lot of stuff when tabbing, threat, your point of view, many of these things can be toggled on and off. There will be more content, it's already coming, balance is something that will never be attained because min maxers like to do their thing too, and they pay money just like everyone else. Why else is there always an obvious flavor of the month, even in WoW? I'm curious what UI problems there were, I just want to make more chat windows, I'm sure that will happen soon enough too. After all, it is a new game bu a company that isn't Blizzard (with it's built in HUGE fan base), that was most likely hurried to market. It may still be like Beta, but my heroes won't be erased, they give out free respecs, and my max level guy will probably be quite different than anyone else, at the least in appearance.
If 5 people started playing WoW, and CO right now, (no WoW expansion) which game would they prefer? No one to give them any help outside their circle. I think the answer is CO. Any other game that would be more fun? I'd like to know about it.
And PvP, again, good framework is there. In WoW would you advise me to PvP at level 12? 23? 34? How about 45? What game has this good PvP and how does it work? Is it the content again? Content is easy once you have the framework.
That's about it for me for now.
Edit: And teaming, xp and mission sharing is top on their list too.
The game has been out one month and more content, and a new framework are coming soon.
Edit 2:
Another good point, the power house test area. You can test out your powers before locking them in. Sure, it needs work. And I'm sure it will get it.
Wow, anyone know how to do an impartial review? Review a new game on the fact it is a new game?
And what other MMOs are we comparing too? WoW? Other successful MMOs . . . hmm . . . WoW? WoW has been around for what, more than 5 years anyway, and when it first came out it was so boring leveling to 10 I quit playing. Only thier PAID expansion was done well enough to make me play long enough to get to the higher level stuff, there was still a 'gap' there with lots of content sure, but all over the place, with much potential to gimp my character at ever increasing costs. Missed good points of CO Travel powers at level 5, fun travel powers, because half the fun is the journey, right? Not in an MMOG Characters not linked to server (This is good, even with sharding, I quote "sharding is unacceptable and automatically takes this game off my list to ever play" Why? Because of the size limit? What is more likely, CO will raise the limit, have special Guild zones, or that WoW will allow free server transfers? Or do you want to cause a lagfest by having 200 people storm a zone with 100 other people in it already?) Side Kick system (allows people to play together and still get rewards) No WAITING for mana, a train, your friend to take a taxi to where you are. The ability to take any power you want (yeah, I'm sure fixing power descriptions will be an impossible task) Stances ( you can set up for different roles, as early as level 10, sooner I think, without paying 1000g) bag space not an issue ( I dare anyone to call me out on that)
It seems like the reviewer focused on the bad points, forgot many of the good points, and compared a new game to established games. CO has a lot of potential, they are taking the good things from other games, and adding their own great ideas on top of it. All the problems mentioned are there, I didn't find tabbing to be that much of an issue, maybe the reviewer needed to tweak the settings. The game thinks about a lot of stuff when tabbing, threat, your point of view, many of these things can be toggled on and off. There will be more content, it's already coming, balance is something that will never be attained because min maxers like to do their thing too, and they pay money just like everyone else. Why else is there always an obvious flavor of the month, even in WoW? I'm curious what UI problems there were, I just want to make more chat windows, I'm sure that will happen soon enough too. After all, it is a new game bu a company that isn't Blizzard (with it's built in HUGE fan base), that was most likely hurried to market. It may still be like Beta, but my heroes won't be erased, they give out free respecs, and my max level guy will probably be quite different than anyone else, at the least in appearance. If 5 people started playing WoW, and CO right now, (no WoW expansion) which game would they prefer? No one to give them any help outside their circle. I think the answer is CO. Any other game that would be more fun? I'd like to know about it. And PvP, again, good framework is there. In WoW would you advise me to PvP at level 12? 23? 34? How about 45? What game has this good PvP and how does it work? Is it the content again? Content is easy once you have the framework. That's about it for me for now.
Edit: And teaming, xp and mission sharing is top on their list too. The game has been out one month and more content, and a new framework are coming soon.
Edit 2: Another good point, the power house test area. You can test out your powers before locking them in. Sure, it needs work. And I'm sure it will get it. Edit 3 for horrendous spelling.
I don't think the reviewer missed the good stuff as you say. The reviewer and you differ on what the good stuff is. Travel powers are just that travel powers. I didnt find them all the great. They got clicked off in combat by foes so often that it became annoying. I agree with you that having a travel power at lvl5 was a nice touch but that certainly didn't help to make the game any less frustrating.
Sharding is not a good thing and I cant understand why you'd even think that. Any large super group on CoX has been alienated from this game for this reason alone. The server pops sit around 75- full all the time. If the SG pop cap is 200 how would you ever have a super group meeting of even half the SG? That's just poor planning on the part of the devs.
Side kicking is brutal compared to CoX. Not only that why would you want to team? You don't need to unless your fighting the odd overly tough boss, and you lose xp for grouping. Not to mention not being able to share most missions and not being able to see where to go on the map if playing another team mates unsharable mission. Teaming is terribly under tuned in CO.
I'll agree with you on builds that's a feature I liked too, but again mostly useless as most people just solo in the guaridan role for balanced play.
Bag space is not a make or break for most MMO players so who cares?
The bad points the reviewer focused on are the points most of us MMOers focus on when deciding to play a game.
I think the comparison was more between CoX and CO not CO and WoW since Cryptic developed both CO and CoX and alot of the same developers worked on both games. You would expect in this situation that they would be able to produce a very solid game with all of the good features from CoX and some new and improved stuff as well. You would expect a very solid game at launch..... it simply wasn't. I think you're mostly on your own with your opinion that this is the greatest MMO ever created.
I agree the game had potential but Cryptic's been shooting them selves in the foot for a month straight here. They need leadership and direction or this game will fail.
Wow, anyone know how to do an impartial review? Review a new game on the fact it is a new game? <snip>
This is, in fact, the second review of Champions I've read here on MMORPG, the first being a "just launched" first impression piece. If you had read this article, instead of sifting through it and only seeming to find the negative things the author mentioned (hypocritical much?), you might have noticed that there were a handful of kudos for different parts of the game system as a whole. But, as my grandfather used to say, slapping gems on a turd doesn't make it less of a turd, it's just a little prettier.
The main point is that, yes this game is new, but it doesn't feel like it has staying power. You seem to be willing to allow mediocre releases of software, then throw money at it month after month in the grand hopes that things will improve. Most people don't operate that way, and if an MMO can't hook them right from the start, they will move on - it's a very competitive industry, and there are plenty of alternatives ready to take their money. The fact that Champions released with such lackluster performance, particularly considering that this is the second take by Cryptic at an identical genre, is disappointing. They tried to one-up their initial success, but even with the new features and some (quite frankly) excellent innovations, they have tanked themselves by only playing the short game and rushing to market, rather than having the long game ready.
It is very telling that almost all of the gripes about the game at launch are still the ones being commented on a month into the game's life. An MMO has to hook you within that first included month, and make you want to pay to keep playing, or at least hook you with the impression that things are improving rapidly. Every honest review I've read (and my own playing experiences, as well as my friends' experiences) indicate that the hook isn't happening, which is really quite sad. It would be interesting to see how many stay past the initial month, or last just a few months total.
So, is this review impartial? It's stating what I'm seeing and experiencing everywhere else that the game is being reviewed, without glossing it all over and concentrating on the glowing positives, while sweeping the negatives under the rug. Seems to me, it's impartial and accurate, and anything else would just be a little too fanboyish for me to respect. I have come to expect MMORPG.com to let me know about the possible pitfalls coming into an MMO, not just be a running advertisement (like many review sites tend to be), and this review lives up to my expectations.
Wow, anyone know how to do an impartial review? Review a new game on the fact it is a new game?
And what other MMOs are we comparing too? WoW? Other successful MMOs . . . hmm . . . WoW? WoW has been around for what, more than 5 years anyway, and when it first came out it was so boring leveling to 10 I quit playing. Only thier PAID expansion was done well enough to make me play long enough to get to the higher level stuff, there was still a 'gap' there with lots of content sure, but all over the place, with much potential to gimp my character at ever increasing costs. Missed good points of CO Travel powers at level 5, fun travel powers, because half the fun is the journey, right? Not in an MMOG Characters not linked to server (This is good, even with sharding, I quote "sharding is unacceptable and automatically takes this game off my list to ever play" Why? Because of the size limit? What is more likely, CO will raise the limit, have special Guild zones, or that WoW will allow free server transfers? Or do you want to cause a lagfest by having 200 people storm a zone with 100 other people in it already?) Side Kick system (allows people to play together and still get rewards) No WAITING for mana, a train, your friend to take a taxi to where you are. The ability to take any power you want (yeah, I'm sure fixing power descriptions will be an impossible task) Stances ( you can set up for different roles, as early as level 10, sooner I think, without paying 1000g) bag space not an issue ( I dare anyone to call me out on that)
It seems like the reviewer focused on the bad points, forgot many of the good points, and compared a new game to established games. CO has a lot of potential, they are taking the good things from other games, and adding their own great ideas on top of it. All the problems mentioned are there, I didn't find tabbing to be that much of an issue, maybe the reviewer needed to tweak the settings. The game thinks about a lot of stuff when tabbing, threat, your point of view, many of these things can be toggled on and off. There will be more content, it's already coming, balance is something that will never be attained because min maxers like to do their thing too, and they pay money just like everyone else. Why else is there always an obvious flavor of the month, even in WoW? I'm curious what UI problems there were, I just want to make more chat windows, I'm sure that will happen soon enough too. After all, it is a new game bu a company that isn't Blizzard (with it's built in HUGE fan base), that was most likely hurried to market. It may still be like Beta, but my heroes won't be erased, they give out free respecs, and my max level guy will probably be quite different than anyone else, at the least in appearance. If 5 people started playing WoW, and CO right now, (no WoW expansion) which game would they prefer? No one to give them any help outside their circle. I think the answer is CO. Any other game that would be more fun? I'd like to know about it. And PvP, again, good framework is there. In WoW would you advise me to PvP at level 12? 23? 34? How about 45? What game has this good PvP and how does it work? Is it the content again? Content is easy once you have the framework. That's about it for me for now.
Edit: And teaming, xp and mission sharing is top on their list too. The game has been out one month and more content, and a new framework are coming soon.
Edit 2: Another good point, the power house test area. You can test out your powers before locking them in. Sure, it needs work. And I'm sure it will get it. Edit 3 for horrendous spelling.
Potential is one of those words that gets bandied about for Champions Online, much like Vanguard. The problem with the word is, we (players and developers) should only be talking about potential before a game (or a major patch/issue/expansion) is released. Really, who wants to pay for potential? If there is so much potential, why has the company left so much of it out so we can only talk about it?
So far as content goes, sure many games are light on content on release, some balance this throughout the level ranges, some hold back the endgame expecting to slip it in shortly after release. But, regardless if people are encountering an XP gap in CO, they're playing through basically ALL of the content -- there's no skipping areas that you might optionally visit with one hero or a different hero. And speaking of different heroes...rolling alts becomes painful because it is exactly the same content. In CoX, at least you can go through a variety of zones and a variety of mission arcs (even before the Hollows, radio missions, and MA were conceived). Since you bring up WoW so much, there are different starter zones for every race, like in many other games new and old. Because of this lack of content, CO feels like the very definition of treadmill and that is extremely disappointing given how much you can let your imagination go wild conceiving your heroes.
People are right, the game does have potential -- it's just a question of whether CO will live long to realize some of it.
Comments
What is so horrible about the tab targeting? You can target neareast enemy with one keystrock then next enemy with another, previouse with another. None have to be the tab key. I dont see the difference in targeting in co than other mmo's. What would you like to see different? Im not disagreeing with you, I am curious to how it differs from other mmos. Is it because when you kill one mob it automatically moves to the next? That can be changed in options with a variety of options, including do not change automatically, target next nearest, furthest, attacking. I doubt thats it but what is it. For content gap between levels you find, That includes after you have done all the missions in crime computer as well? Like I said I am only 28 and using the crime computer which is updated all the time I have not run into lack of missions. If its the higher levels I am hoping they add stuff before I get there. Thanks.
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.
Before posting my previous post I missed yours. And I could not agree more with you. And especially I love your expression "altaholic". :-)) Lol ... I never thought about ... but I'm also altaholic. :-) In any game I'm interested in all possible builds. Then I pick few that I love most ... when they are sufficiently leveld ... start with others. When i have enough I switch to another game. :-)) End game for me is when i have leveled all i was interested on. Of course when i have a lot of time and that was case because of one long term injury.
And as I said ... i stopped to play (for some time, despite I have still free time) because today I'm superhero, tomorrow I'm average pussy cat. And until they to not stop doing this i'm out. And I'm really sorry for this, because after first week of gameplay CO was already my game no.2. Never happend with any game so fast. Now my favorite list is wow, aoc, aion, war, lotro, .... champions online.
Your opinion = trash. I have a level 40 in this game and wont be renewing my sub because I have little to do. Especially with PvP basically removed from the game.
Oh yeah, look at what other reviewers said about the game, read their own forums. CO is just below average and still needs alot of work.
"World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this genre." - Hilmar Petursson. CEO of CCP.
Im glad MMORPG did this review.
The end of the first free month is coming and alot of us seem to be leaning toward not subscribing to pay2play.
It's too bad the game was launched so incomplete becasue it really does have alot of potential.
I think Cryptic may need to take a few lessons in sales and customer service before their next launch or start handing out the pink slips.
I release I completely cherry picked. But I did it to make a point. The point is that a game that has this many serious problems should not be 'rated' a 7.5. At least not in my opinion.
Don't get me wrong, I desperately wanted CO to be great. I'm a multi-year vet of CoH/V, and think that Cryptic can do great work. If they can stick at if for a year CO might be a great game. But there's no denying that the game needed at least a few more months in beta. I feel like they pulled a Vanguard, they released so they could get the $$ from the box sales and then thought they'd be able to plow that back into developement fast enough so that they wouldn't lose most of the players.
I wish DC or Marvel had done the right thing and bought up Cryptic a few years ago, maybe given some more resources and an IP that most people actually know something about, they could have come out with a great Superhero game.
got bank robbery in CO? what about collecting badges/achievement ?
Which FF Character Are You?
Its a fair review if a bit generous with its final mark.
Quest/mission variety is the key issue and is severely limited not just in terms of volume but more fundamentally by a mechanical limitation in the variety of tasks you can ever be asked to perform and as a direct result there's a complete and utter failure to involve or immerse the player in any substantial way.
Unless the design approach actually changes to convey some conviction in the comicbook theme or works to offer the illusion that the player has some degree of choice and consequence in the world, the bland generic 'meh' feeling will only get worse with each new addition.
The pedigree and experience Cryptic brought to bare is conspicuous by its absence, this is an mmo by people who dont quite understand the theme or actively don't care for it. Its functional and ticks the mmo staple boxes but like Hellgate it just lacks any real identity or soul.
After all the failures in the industry, you think Cryptic would know better. I would also say Paramount should take notice, however, I am now at the belief CO was released in this shape so more attention can be payed to STO. In other words its another repeat of what killed Perpetual when they had STO. The differance is Cryptic is further along in development and now has a game out the door. You watch as during this very important launch period for CO, little will be added quickly. STO will launch on time and more complete. Cryptic will then state they learned thier lessons with CO. pfft. The truth is they got Paramount breathing down thier neck anticpating an MMO success in league with WOW. Yah, right.
Thank you for the frank review, however the score is just not honest. I expect a re-review in a year.
Nope.
But every once in a while some NPC will walk up to you and say they JUST saw some robots going into a bldg (meuseum usually) 9000 miles across town. (remember the NPC walked up to you) so they give you a mission and when you go there there are no robots. Its just a bunch of Red Hat Ladies.. Only they are guys in purple.
This review was poorly thought out and written imo. It really is sad how it seems more and more sites seem to faun over companies allowing them to have acess to their game for a review and then the critics go and sugar-coat their review for compensation. I was in the CO beta and sadly, despite all the suggestions on the forums during beta by the majority of the testers, they got ignored. CO has turned out to be nothing more than a glorified button-mashing arcade game. It doesn't deserve to even be catagorized as an mmorpg. It repeats the same boring quest types CoX had and there is NO strategy to killing mobs. The same button-mashing works for every mob type.
I was really hoping CS would break the mould they had formed with CoX, thinking it was NCsoft's fault for it being so bland. But no, obviously CS are the ones responsible for turning out such 2d games in a 3d gaming world. There is no storyline, no fluidity between zones, no social aspect, the CRAFTING IS A JOKE, powers are only clones of eachother with diff FX colors, the list goes on because the game is only half-done at best. Not to mention there are only 5 zones anyhow and small ones at that. CO also has the smallest variety of mobs to fight, which between that and the limited attack strategies, gets old really quick.
Nevermind their mission system allows for kill-stealing from passer-by players because only about 5% of all missions are in an instance environment. yes, the system worked as intended for SOME, but not for all of the players and despite their repeatedly posting the bug that allowed kill-stealing, the devs continued to ignore the problem. The game is STILL full of bugs and the testers pleaded not to publish but thanks to capitalism and the almighty dollar, it seems with enough payoff even half-baked, clone games of CoX can get a decent review. (I admit it is speculation about any such payoffs, but speaking from personal experience being in the beta as well as how other testers reacted towards CO game content...makes one wonder)
I think a video review for that game is needed. I mean, 3 page for a review wtf??? I didnt bother to read. I dont think any review need 3 page to tell you how the game play unless you want to tell me about the whole game, tell me about each monsters and each boss, but then, it would just be a spoiled review and no one who plan to play the game would want to play it.
C:\Users\FF\Desktop\spin move.gif
Sounds like the game hasn't improved much since the open beta.
In particular, the reviewers comment about power effects "+ enrage", etc. I remember also wondering what each effect actually did, and assumed that by the time the game hit the shelf, they'd have provided ways for you to find out. Sounds like they didn't.
I do recall alot of good things about the game, weaponization of environment, knockback, etc.
One poster talked about having to research to find out what powers compliment each other, otherwise potentially ending up with a "gimp" character. i guess I don't see the point in having such an open customization framework, then, as it doesn't really allow you to create what you want to play.
For example, if I want to create a guy whose powers are largely supernatural who wields his powers through a shotgun(think Johnny Blaze circa 1990's), and the shotgun power doesn't compliment the dark magic powers, then I can't really create the toon I want, can I?
They should have kept the root powers as basic as possible, while providing more ads/disads to "fine-tune" those powers to work together.
Once the box hits the bargain bins, or once they offer a free trial, I'll check it out again. I love the superhero genre, and I've had all the CoX tunnel instances that I could possibly take.
This game required a 3 page review.
There are videos on MMORPG if you look for them.
Yes, the bank robberies are actually quite fun. Basically, there are three banks in Millenium City and you can tell if they're being robbed by whether or not they have cop cars surrounding em when you pass by. If they do, oftentimes you'll be able to accept a mission to stop the bank robbery and you go inside.
They do have "badges" and achievements in CO that give you titles and perks. Perks allow you to purchase special items (Costume pieces, other gear) from a perk vendor. You need the specific perk required and a certain amount of general perk points in order to get these items. I would've mentioned all this in the review but the thing was quite long as it is! The perk system has some issues though as unlocking a perk all too often requires way too many kills. In CoH you might have to kill 100-250 or so of a given mob group, in CO its like 5000. So you're really not going to get much mileage out of the perk system unless they tweak the requirements, or you love farming.
I believe that guilds (or supergroups w/e you wanna call them) are still limited to 200 players. So while sharding does suck for different reasons, I doubt they'll have that issue with SGs here.
"World of Warcraft is the perfect implementation of this genre." - Hilmar Petursson. CEO of CCP.
Well written review. Lack of content yes, some mission bugs holds the chain of that particular story lines and Monster Island lack of the omph in the missons. Hope the next up coming update fixes most of the gaps.
Alternatively, content gaps can be filled based on how you juggle your missions. I have yet to face any gaps since the beginning to my current journey of lvl 30 and closing to encounter the dreaded gap of 32 -> 34.
Despite all the whines and quit rage, i still find my fun nearly in everything i do with my theme based champion (Single Blade primary framework) I have yet to try on pvp since i am more on end-game pvp type of player.
Dirk nothing against you specifically I just need to make a point. Alot of players of CO are saying they haven't hit the gap yet. or there is no gap. I haven't run out of missions yet either. However, "the gap" everyone speaks of doesn;t mean you'll run out of missions per say, it means you will have to play through all the content to level. People know this and thats what we are doing.
Try playing all the missions in CoX without having tog o back and play a TF or 2 with no XP. There is a tonne of content there. CO has limited replayability for me as I will onlky be willing to grind through all the same misisons so many times before I am bored out of my skull hearing Defender say;
"You'll have to defeat Black Talon on your own." and then 3 seconds later..... "You've shown great bravery today.....SHUT THOSE BEACONS DOWN!!!THE SIGNAL THEY"RE EMITTING IS CAUSING THE QULARR TO ATTACK!!! SHUT THIS BEACON DOWN!" I actually just turn off the sound now lol, that's pretty bad. There ought to be at least 1 different starting area for each group of powers or something.
This review reads like the game should be rated 6, not 7.5,
Nice review..
I do NOT know why everyone is being so negative against the retcon system, I have retrained several skills and skillsets now after the patch ...
Doesn't players sell their loot, you get LOTS of money from the loot drops..And yes I also craft and experiment with gear..
I haven't tried to completly retcon my characthers but if you buy a new power and find it bad just go back and retcon it, it will cost you 20-40 silver coins or something, and that isn't much...
I hate to say it, but I'm not surprised at all by this review (and all of the others concerning Champs). I'm a 5+ year veteran of City of Heroes/Villains, and Champs is suffering the same short-sighted tendencies and bizarre concentrations on trivial (in the long run) details, as CoH suffered when it first hit. At least with Champs, PvP was introduced from the start, so I thought they might actually put some forethought into the process and get some of the ridiculous balancing crap out of the way before release, but apparently not... The same crew that screwed up much of CoH constantly, then sold it off to NCSoft, is doing the same "fix it as we go" stuff that infuriated so many of us players who wanted the PvE experience and could care less about PvP. Seems like everyone is saying that PvP almost seems like it was just slapped onto Champions as an afterthought, which is precisely what happened with CoH, so you would think they might have learned from their past mistakes...
It's sad that, in the opinions of myself and many of the long-time players I know on CoH, most of the best changes happened after the Cryptic crew disentangled themselves from the mix and let someone else steer the ship. Guess the Champs fans out there can hope something similar happens with CO before it tanks into oblivion?
I actually had very high hopes for Champions, it had the potential to alleviate a few of the little details and portions of the City of series that I would have liked to see changed. And, in a few cases, Champions has really come through. Too bad those few gems are the only shiny parts of what appears to be a lame duck package. It's rather telling that (from many accounts, and a little in-game polling) a large portion of the initial player base does not intend on renewing... And that some of the players who jumped on the lifetime sub thing are really pissed that they threw away all that money... Those types of things do not bode well for the future of a brand new MMO.
But, as I've said before, only time will tell. Maybe Cryptic can pull this one out of the fire before it gets scorched.
Sig? I don't need no stinking sig!
I am one who is enjoying the game but I think the review is accurate. Because of the points the reviewer mentioned one of which was doing the same exact content over with every alt, I do wonder however how long I will be interested in playing. Right now I don’t see this as being one of the MMOs I will play for a long time.
Some one else mentioned this as well but I would have liked the review to say something about teaming. Or rather the lack of. Teaming in this game is horrible, be it the lack of missions you can share, trouble keeping track of your team on the map, poor side kick implementation, to the all around reason that you just don’t need to, teaming is just off, to say the least. How this could have been messed up by the same people that made CoX is baffling. Even when you do team it’s just to add more offense, which you usually don’t need. So when you do team there’s no synergy needed at all. As one guy put it, it’s like soloing with other players. Yeah I like to solo, and there are times when I don’t have time to do anything else, but as other MMOs have demonstrated (such as CoX) you don’t have to abandon solo play for team play and vice versa. A MMO can have both.
Wow, anyone know how to do an impartial review?
Review a new game on the fact it is a new game?
And what other MMOs are we comparing too? WoW? Other successful MMOs . . . hmm . . . WoW?
WoW has been around for what, more than 5 years anyway, and when it first came out it was so boring leveling to 10 I quit playing. Only thier PAID expansion was done well enough to make me play long enough to get to the higher level stuff, there was still a 'gap' there with lots of content sure, but all over the place, with much potential to gimp my character at ever increasing costs.
Missed good points of CO
Travel powers at level 5, fun travel powers, because half the fun is the journey, right? Not in an MMOG
Characters not linked to server (This is good, even with sharding, I quote "sharding is unacceptable and automatically takes this game off my list to ever play" Why? Because of the size limit? What is more likely, CO will raise the limit, have special Guild zones, or that WoW will allow free server transfers? Or do you want to cause a lagfest by having 200 people storm a zone with 100 other people in it already?)
Side Kick system (allows people to play together and still get rewards)
No WAITING for mana, a train, your friend to take a taxi to where you are.
The ability to take any power you want (yeah, I'm sure fixing power descriptions will be an impossible task)
Stances ( you can set up for different roles, as early as level 10, sooner I think, without paying 1000g)
bag space not an issue ( I dare anyone to call me out on that)
It seems like the reviewer focused on the bad points, forgot many of the good points, and compared a new game to established games. CO has a lot of potential, they are taking the good things from other games, and adding their own great ideas on top of it.
All the problems mentioned are there, I didn't find tabbing to be that much of an issue, maybe the reviewer needed to tweak the settings. The game thinks about a lot of stuff when tabbing, threat, your point of view, many of these things can be toggled on and off. There will be more content, it's already coming, balance is something that will never be attained because min maxers like to do their thing too, and they pay money just like everyone else. Why else is there always an obvious flavor of the month, even in WoW? I'm curious what UI problems there were, I just want to make more chat windows, I'm sure that will happen soon enough too. After all, it is a new game bu a company that isn't Blizzard (with it's built in HUGE fan base), that was most likely hurried to market. It may still be like Beta, but my heroes won't be erased, they give out free respecs, and my max level guy will probably be quite different than anyone else, at the least in appearance.
If 5 people started playing WoW, and CO right now, (no WoW expansion) which game would they prefer? No one to give them any help outside their circle. I think the answer is CO. Any other game that would be more fun? I'd like to know about it.
And PvP, again, good framework is there. In WoW would you advise me to PvP at level 12? 23? 34? How about 45? What game has this good PvP and how does it work? Is it the content again? Content is easy once you have the framework.
That's about it for me for now.
Edit: And teaming, xp and mission sharing is top on their list too.
The game has been out one month and more content, and a new framework are coming soon.
Edit 2:
Another good point, the power house test area. You can test out your powers before locking them in. Sure, it needs work. And I'm sure it will get it.
Edit 3 for horrendous spelling.
I don't think the reviewer missed the good stuff as you say. The reviewer and you differ on what the good stuff is. Travel powers are just that travel powers. I didnt find them all the great. They got clicked off in combat by foes so often that it became annoying. I agree with you that having a travel power at lvl5 was a nice touch but that certainly didn't help to make the game any less frustrating.
Sharding is not a good thing and I cant understand why you'd even think that. Any large super group on CoX has been alienated from this game for this reason alone. The server pops sit around 75- full all the time. If the SG pop cap is 200 how would you ever have a super group meeting of even half the SG? That's just poor planning on the part of the devs.
Side kicking is brutal compared to CoX. Not only that why would you want to team? You don't need to unless your fighting the odd overly tough boss, and you lose xp for grouping. Not to mention not being able to share most missions and not being able to see where to go on the map if playing another team mates unsharable mission. Teaming is terribly under tuned in CO.
I'll agree with you on builds that's a feature I liked too, but again mostly useless as most people just solo in the guaridan role for balanced play.
Bag space is not a make or break for most MMO players so who cares?
The bad points the reviewer focused on are the points most of us MMOers focus on when deciding to play a game.
I think the comparison was more between CoX and CO not CO and WoW since Cryptic developed both CO and CoX and alot of the same developers worked on both games. You would expect in this situation that they would be able to produce a very solid game with all of the good features from CoX and some new and improved stuff as well. You would expect a very solid game at launch..... it simply wasn't. I think you're mostly on your own with your opinion that this is the greatest MMO ever created.
I agree the game had potential but Cryptic's been shooting them selves in the foot for a month straight here. They need leadership and direction or this game will fail.
This is, in fact, the second review of Champions I've read here on MMORPG, the first being a "just launched" first impression piece. If you had read this article, instead of sifting through it and only seeming to find the negative things the author mentioned (hypocritical much?), you might have noticed that there were a handful of kudos for different parts of the game system as a whole. But, as my grandfather used to say, slapping gems on a turd doesn't make it less of a turd, it's just a little prettier.
The main point is that, yes this game is new, but it doesn't feel like it has staying power. You seem to be willing to allow mediocre releases of software, then throw money at it month after month in the grand hopes that things will improve. Most people don't operate that way, and if an MMO can't hook them right from the start, they will move on - it's a very competitive industry, and there are plenty of alternatives ready to take their money. The fact that Champions released with such lackluster performance, particularly considering that this is the second take by Cryptic at an identical genre, is disappointing. They tried to one-up their initial success, but even with the new features and some (quite frankly) excellent innovations, they have tanked themselves by only playing the short game and rushing to market, rather than having the long game ready.
It is very telling that almost all of the gripes about the game at launch are still the ones being commented on a month into the game's life. An MMO has to hook you within that first included month, and make you want to pay to keep playing, or at least hook you with the impression that things are improving rapidly. Every honest review I've read (and my own playing experiences, as well as my friends' experiences) indicate that the hook isn't happening, which is really quite sad. It would be interesting to see how many stay past the initial month, or last just a few months total.
So, is this review impartial? It's stating what I'm seeing and experiencing everywhere else that the game is being reviewed, without glossing it all over and concentrating on the glowing positives, while sweeping the negatives under the rug. Seems to me, it's impartial and accurate, and anything else would just be a little too fanboyish for me to respect. I have come to expect MMORPG.com to let me know about the possible pitfalls coming into an MMO, not just be a running advertisement (like many review sites tend to be), and this review lives up to my expectations.
Sig? I don't need no stinking sig!
Potential is one of those words that gets bandied about for Champions Online, much like Vanguard. The problem with the word is, we (players and developers) should only be talking about potential before a game (or a major patch/issue/expansion) is released. Really, who wants to pay for potential? If there is so much potential, why has the company left so much of it out so we can only talk about it?
So far as content goes, sure many games are light on content on release, some balance this throughout the level ranges, some hold back the endgame expecting to slip it in shortly after release. But, regardless if people are encountering an XP gap in CO, they're playing through basically ALL of the content -- there's no skipping areas that you might optionally visit with one hero or a different hero. And speaking of different heroes...rolling alts becomes painful because it is exactly the same content. In CoX, at least you can go through a variety of zones and a variety of mission arcs (even before the Hollows, radio missions, and MA were conceived). Since you bring up WoW so much, there are different starter zones for every race, like in many other games new and old. Because of this lack of content, CO feels like the very definition of treadmill and that is extremely disappointing given how much you can let your imagination go wild conceiving your heroes.
People are right, the game does have potential -- it's just a question of whether CO will live long to realize some of it.