Agreed. I was a beta tester, and though I decided not to stick around after beta I still know this was a damn good game.
oh, and I beta tested for a few months... rather than those who went to OB.
I should also add that when I started beta everything was incredibly broken. Even basic things such as flight, and combat were basically incomplete. Within that time Cryptic managed to polish things up, fix MANY problems, and even add an astounding amount of content to the game. I don't know how much that will say about development, but if it's anything like the beta I know it will go far fast.
CO is a very good, very fun game. As a long time player of the Hero System I can tell you that you are dead wrong about the fezability of building a computer game around it. The hero system is a great system if if you have a person running it but it would be terrable as a bases for a computer game. There are nearly an infinate number lopholes and exploits in the system that you need a person to screen for.
ven with a "good" ratings system (one based on polls taking during login to said game) your personal opinion may differ from the "masses" and its still 100% accurate for you.
This is where we get into quantified opinions and statistics.
In example, Imagine if Burger King taste tested the whopper against the Big Mac. They asked 100,000 people if they liked Whopper better.
80,000 people roughly said "Yes".
That is a quantifiable fact. 80% of the people asked prefer it.
If your personal opinion is that it sucks, its "100% accurate to you" but doesn't change the 'fact' that 80% of those who were asked, preferred it.
So the rating system on this site, as limited as it may be, is still better (IMHO) than anecdotal "it's total crap" from OP.
CO may not be an exact reintreptation of the Pen and Paper game. I don't think the devs ever promised us that any more than a Wild West theme park can promise an authentic 1880s experience.
All I know is I can play a Gunslinger, a Webslinger, a Lightning Slinger or anything I damned well please and I enjoy it. Yes, there are a lot of areas/room for improvement but thats a good thing. I am looking forward to see where they go with it. I think the difference to me boils down to "Are you willing to pronounce it "Crap" because you played the beta and a few days of actual time and it didn't bang your bone" or are you willing to give it some time and see where they go?
Because I paid for lifetime subscription, I got time to see where they go with it. How long will new content come out every 3 months last for? hopefully at least a few years.
Balance in Champions was accomplished by limiting the total points on a character. Example a 12d6 Energy Blast would be 60 points. If you wanted the same blast to have an armor piercing effect it would be less than the 12 dice of damage. And you capped the points for attacks, defense, etc... Champions RPG was one of the best balanced game systems I have ever seen. And just like Battletech, you can't just convert it to a computer game without using the system it was based upon. That is where these games fail. The game developers (HERO) not Cryptic, had years to balance out their systems. The developers (Cryptic) ignored or did not understand these systems and thus created the existing piece of junk.
Not too familiar with Champions how did stats scale with items or was it all fixed value? One problem bringing over table top games over to MMORPG is the question of gear and how to scale them.
In Hero System, that's a distinction that make no difference because everything is built using the same sets of mechanics. A character with a sword and a character with claws might do the same type and amount of damage. The difference would be that the sword is "cheaper" than an intrinsic attack because it could be taken away by a grab or disarm. An ability can become more expensive because of an Advantage like armor-piercing or area-effect, or cheaper due to a Limitation such as delayed activation or a limited number of uses.
In Hero System, that's a distinction that make no difference because everything is built using the same sets of mechanics. A character with a sword and a character with claws might do the same type and amount of damage. The difference would be that the sword is "cheaper" than an intrinsic attack because it could be taken away by a grab or disarm. An ability can become more expensive because of an Advantage like armor-piercing or area-effect, or cheaper due to a Limitation such as delayed activation or a limited number of uses.
It is also worth pointing out why the Hero system is a wonderful PnP game yet would not work for a computer game at all, or at least a multiplayer one. To start with the book is full of warning and stop signs to denote powers, advantages, and limitations that are easily abused. The GM is meant to pay extra attention to any powers built with them because in some contexts they are fine but in others they will break the game or produce effects much more powerful then other comparable point cost abilities.
This is an issue in a computer game because no computer can yet evaluate the context of your powers and how they combine to decide if a particular combination is ok and no design team will ever be able to hand code in all of the possible permutations of abilities that are broken.
Another very important principle of the Hero System is that a disadvantage that is not actually a disadvantage is worth no points. Again the open nature of the system makes it very possible to come up with disadvantages or limitations on powers that are not really drawbacks. And just as before you need someone who can think to decide which are appropriate and which are cheesy point grabs.
Finally despite what some will say the system is very good but it is not balanced. Just one quick example, you can get more points by buying your Strength up and selling back all of the secondary characteristics then it cost to by the Strength. So you gain character points and the intrinsic advantages of Strength (Hand to Hand damage, ability to lift and throw things, breaking out of many grabs and entangles) that way. A human GM would make you take the no secondary characteristics disadvantage instead but again it would be very hard to get a computer to catch everything like that.
Honestly I rarely play this type of mmo's since I was'nt a big fan of CoX.
However playing this game I just bought it for the hell of it cause I was waiting for my other MMO to come out. All I can say right now is that I am enjoying it and I am not even a big fan of mmo's that have alot of loading screens. Maybe because this game isn't a fantasy game with fricken elves, dwarfs and orcs.
It is what it is, a super hero game, but at least I am having fun and so are my guildmates I am playing with. The people I have teamed up online seem pretty nice and helpful, but then again, maybe I am getting lucky.
Comments
Agreed. I was a beta tester, and though I decided not to stick around after beta I still know this was a damn good game.
oh, and I beta tested for a few months... rather than those who went to OB.
I should also add that when I started beta everything was incredibly broken. Even basic things such as flight, and combat were basically incomplete. Within that time Cryptic managed to polish things up, fix MANY problems, and even add an astounding amount of content to the game. I don't know how much that will say about development, but if it's anything like the beta I know it will go far fast.
CO is a very good, very fun game. As a long time player of the Hero System I can tell you that you are dead wrong about the fezability of building a computer game around it. The hero system is a great system if if you have a person running it but it would be terrable as a bases for a computer game. There are nearly an infinate number lopholes and exploits in the system that you need a person to screen for.
This is where we get into quantified opinions and statistics.
In example, Imagine if Burger King taste tested the whopper against the Big Mac. They asked 100,000 people if they liked Whopper better.
80,000 people roughly said "Yes".
That is a quantifiable fact. 80% of the people asked prefer it.
If your personal opinion is that it sucks, its "100% accurate to you" but doesn't change the 'fact' that 80% of those who were asked, preferred it.
So the rating system on this site, as limited as it may be, is still better (IMHO) than anecdotal "it's total crap" from OP.
CO may not be an exact reintreptation of the Pen and Paper game. I don't think the devs ever promised us that any more than a Wild West theme park can promise an authentic 1880s experience.
All I know is I can play a Gunslinger, a Webslinger, a Lightning Slinger or anything I damned well please and I enjoy it. Yes, there are a lot of areas/room for improvement but thats a good thing. I am looking forward to see where they go with it. I think the difference to me boils down to "Are you willing to pronounce it "Crap" because you played the beta and a few days of actual time and it didn't bang your bone" or are you willing to give it some time and see where they go?
Because I paid for lifetime subscription, I got time to see where they go with it. How long will new content come out every 3 months last for? hopefully at least a few years.
Not too familiar with Champions how did stats scale with items or was it all fixed value? One problem bringing over table top games over to MMORPG is the question of gear and how to scale them.
In Hero System, that's a distinction that make no difference because everything is built using the same sets of mechanics. A character with a sword and a character with claws might do the same type and amount of damage. The difference would be that the sword is "cheaper" than an intrinsic attack because it could be taken away by a grab or disarm. An ability can become more expensive because of an Advantage like armor-piercing or area-effect, or cheaper due to a Limitation such as delayed activation or a limited number of uses.
It is also worth pointing out why the Hero system is a wonderful PnP game yet would not work for a computer game at all, or at least a multiplayer one. To start with the book is full of warning and stop signs to denote powers, advantages, and limitations that are easily abused. The GM is meant to pay extra attention to any powers built with them because in some contexts they are fine but in others they will break the game or produce effects much more powerful then other comparable point cost abilities.
This is an issue in a computer game because no computer can yet evaluate the context of your powers and how they combine to decide if a particular combination is ok and no design team will ever be able to hand code in all of the possible permutations of abilities that are broken.
Another very important principle of the Hero System is that a disadvantage that is not actually a disadvantage is worth no points. Again the open nature of the system makes it very possible to come up with disadvantages or limitations on powers that are not really drawbacks. And just as before you need someone who can think to decide which are appropriate and which are cheesy point grabs.
Finally despite what some will say the system is very good but it is not balanced. Just one quick example, you can get more points by buying your Strength up and selling back all of the secondary characteristics then it cost to by the Strength. So you gain character points and the intrinsic advantages of Strength (Hand to Hand damage, ability to lift and throw things, breaking out of many grabs and entangles) that way. A human GM would make you take the no secondary characteristics disadvantage instead but again it would be very hard to get a computer to catch everything like that.
Honestly I rarely play this type of mmo's since I was'nt a big fan of CoX.
However playing this game I just bought it for the hell of it cause I was waiting for my other MMO to come out. All I can say right now is that I am enjoying it and I am not even a big fan of mmo's that have alot of loading screens. Maybe because this game isn't a fantasy game with fricken elves, dwarfs and orcs.
It is what it is, a super hero game, but at least I am having fun and so are my guildmates I am playing with. The people I have teamed up online seem pretty nice and helpful, but then again, maybe I am getting lucky.