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Busy, But Not Too Busy To Be Bitchy About Games
So as I’m sure everyone noticed (or failed to, if you haven’t seen anything in your RSS reader) I’ve been neglecting this blog. This is 100% due to my day job going into overdrive; we have a pretty major milestone coming up (and in fact I’ll be giving AGDC a miss, though I’ll be cadging beers in the evening; if you have beers to cadge, hit me up!) and it has been keeping me focused.
However I did pick up Champions last week. I like superhero games – I played City of Heroes since it launched, and still do, on and off – even though I’m not really a comic book guy. Plus, I have a sort of history with Paragon (CoH’s current developer) and Cryptic before that, given that I worked at their publisher, worked for years with one of their lead writers/designers, and once had Jack Emmert lecture me at Gen Con about my Latin pronunciation while wearing a silver lamé cape.
So, I really wanted to like Champions. I even had a hero all ready to go.
The Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. He specializes in dark, fell sorcery. And robots!
Unfortunately, there was a few things to harsh my buzz.
First, apparently the entire game was nerfed on launch day. It wasn’t technically a nerf unless you pre-ordered. I did pre-order, but apparently not soon enough to play during the pre-order, so I didn’t play in the blissful 3 days of pre-nerf nirvana. However there was, as you might expect, a bit of a community explosion over changing the balance of the entire game overnight. Or, to quote a community person who was the first to announce the news:
Good news! Defensive passives are getting a decrease in their effectiveness very soon. That’s all the detail I have for now.
This is quite possibly the most awesome post from a community person ever. “Guys! Guys! You’re going to be weaker and take more damage soon! Isn’t that great? Talk to you later!”
But, really, that didn’t bother me either, because I didn’t play during the pre-order phase, and the board explosions didn’t bother me because, well, I didn’t read the boards.
What did bother me was the character skill system. And my reaction to it I actually find kind of interesting. Normally I’m pretty hardcore about character builds. I like analyzing things to death – it’s why I constantly reroll new characters. Well, that and I get bored.
With Champions, I felt as though I wasn’t qualified to do that. It was too complex and opaque to me, despite most things having liberal tooltip explanations and the developers helpfully supplying a “danger room” where you can test new skill purchases for free. Thanks to the ridiculously expensive respec costs, I felt as though every decision I made about my character was final. And I resented it. Perhaps I was spoiled from WoW, where a talent respec cost maybe a day’s worth of daily quests. I didn’t feel like I really knew what I was doing – which for a game like this, with a rich skill system like this is normal. Yet I felt like not knowing what I was doing was critical. I made characters which rapidly were unplayable. Kim, for existence. Turns out mixing robots and sorcery doesn’t work well. Guess he’s shelved. As was my fire blaster. As was my dual blades guy. I would plow through the tutorial, whose corny jokes and earnest Golden-Age-of-Comics demeanor wore more and more on me with each repetition, get to the first real zone, and fall flat on my face if I pulled more than one enemy. Clearly, this was not City of Heroes, where you plow through dozens of henchmen while laughing loudly. The game was letting me fail.
This is a necessary evil of a rich, classless skill system – the game has to let you fail. And it irritated me. Probably because of the punitive respec costs. I’m thinking that a cheap and available respec is a necessity for a game like this. Sure, you can fail, but the cost should be going to an instructor and saying “I’m sowwy” while pawing the dirt with your shoes, not shelving your character as Failure #12 after going through yet another session of Captain Stupendous intoning that you have to deactivate ALL the consoles!
The lack of content at release bugs me as well – it means that every character goes through the same content every time without fail – but realistically, that always gets fixed if the game gets successful. Content is easy. An interesting, yet essentially forgiving skills-based system? Not that easy. And Champions is almost there.
But not yet. And that frustration, at least for me, is a learning experience.
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about 11 months ago
dear leader looks a lot like half the cast of The Sopranos.
about 11 months ago
It appears that Champions is answering the “did we really need another superhero MMO?” question with a tentative “no.”
about 11 months ago
Easily available respec is mandatory. The only conceivable argument against it is “we want people to roll alts.” People will roll alts anyway, and every time you force someone to roll an alt you create a point where that person might stop playing instead of creating an alt. That’s a pretty dangerous choice to create.
about 11 months ago
Well, given “The great round of fail of 2008″ (and early 2009, but it doesn’t sound as cool), I’m not surprised that games like Champions Online and Aion are floating in cash.
I knew that theres was a reason why people did so many characters in their reviews, and also I was RIGHT:
http://brokentoys.org/2009/03/19/cryptic-marcom-malreported-verify-ungood-rectify-candygive/#comment-23404
The Champions Online forums are fun (if you like drama) and they earned another mention in here.
Well, and there’s the failure to learn lessons from other games(Put a respec, for god’s sake), but thats common in this industry.
about 11 months ago
I don’t care what your game is like, in the early game respec’ing should be free or close to it. Save the punitive costs until mid- to high-level ranges, where a character has survived long enough to be feasible.
That’s just basic, no one should be failing that design test.
about 11 months ago
I blame tiers. Of course, I was in the beta early enough to marvel at the joys of having orbital cannon during the tutorial. I also enjoyed leveling up without a trainer, grabbing new powers during the tutorial (especially a travel power), having robots that were crazy offensive dumbfire pets… I could go on.
They literally had one guy balancing all the powers in the last few months of testing. I think his name was Balseraph. His views on game balance were… well, let’s just say that early in the beta, he had no idea other MMOs were using dodge as a means of negating damage. I don’t know if he’s just that new at video games or if he’s got some mental disability.
about 11 months ago
I enjoy reading this blog- for the thrills of the composition alone- as well as finding a true like mind (which worries me, but that’s another story): However, this time I’m not sure I’m going to wholly agree; on the other hand, I can’t fully disagree either, not just yet. I too found my early dual-blades character feeling gimped and lost, but then, with a few (quick) levels later and a re-slot of some easily available stat-builders, she went from barely able to shave her legs to auto-ginzu babe, slashing her one-framework build through mobs of mobs a few levels above her; and this post the pre-launch nerf also (I too came in late). Only once did I back out (retcon) a skill, that being her acrobatic travel in favor of flying (for thy aggro many when only merely jumping over them- one of the games few true *fails* that needs a *fix*). Overall, I am enjoying the game more than I did WoW or LoTRO or EVE at the same point- which happily surprised me. And the game’s character creation ability is outstanding. That being said- you speak truth in terms of the epiphany curve; it’s somewhat mystically steep although I’m getting insight into it as time goes on. I also agree the opening “tutorial” needs a button for any second or later character. Twice through it is probably what drove Dr. Destroyer to level the joint in the first place.
about 11 months ago
Wearing a silver lamé cape screws up your pronunciation of Latin? Interesting.
about 11 months ago
Yeah, this has been kind of a weird launch. They did some things that make the game fun, which is why I’m still playing it, but then there’s mistakes that people learned ten years ago that they seem to want to retread. For some weird reason. Design Choice A makes a game fail. Design Choice B makes a game succeed. But…let’s try Choice A one more time, just in case it works out for us! Um…what?
about 11 months ago
A funny thing I’m noticing about a lot of the angst on the Champions Online boards is that it’s born from a certain desire to be spoon-fed. World of Warcraft raised most of these players, and failure really isn’t an option in World of Warcraft. The players don’t need to take responsibility for how they build their characters – they expect all their characters to work the way they intended them to work without bothering to do any experimentation to find out how to make them work right.
That’s really a shame. A gamer should relish a game that actually asks them to play it – where success or failure is based on their abilities as a gamer, which should improve in time and practice. Instead, these poor fools had been conditioned to believe that grinding is all that’s really needed. They’ve been neutered of their responsibility as players, and it seems they genuinely prefer it that way.
about 11 months ago
That said, the retcon system does need some further balancing. You can afford to retcon back a few levels, but any more than that is indeed a “restart from start” scenario.
Part of the trouble is that the balance seems to be set in such a way that you pay for your retcon twice. The price increases because the further back you recon the more the individual step costs, and the price increases because you have to pay for all previous steps. The developers need to figure out that what they’ve accidentally set up is an exponential cost mode.
You can use the current retcon system to your advantage, bu it doesn’t beget a lack of experience. You actually have to take things very carefully, understand that there’s a certain need for offense and defense in any character, and avoid taking too many attacks because they’re generally red herrings because your first few attacks will get you through the game. How you retcon is usually over the past level if, after giving the power a test run in the power house, you still decided to take it because after getting into the field you decided it’s really not going to suit your tastes.
It is good, at least, that characters created over the 3-day head start period are going to be given a free complete retcon. Eventually.
about 11 months ago
I, too, kind of agree, but would offer my own experiences. I was in for the head-start days, and did get to run around a little bit with one of the broken defense powers (Regen, specifically, and I mean come on, CoH once had a standing policy of nerfing Regen in each and every patch, so I saw this coming).
First, I came in having played Hero system and with an eye toward really dissecting the available power choices. To me, the system wasn’t too opaque, but it was a lot to keep track of all at once (Powers, Traits, Perks, etc.) plus it was very difficult to accurately guess what worked well and what didn’t. While most powers show decent detailed info, quite a few apply effects that aren’t explained, which sometimes masks power data completely.
My main went the dark sorcery route too, with the Shadow Form offensive passive, and did start to struggle in the teens. The Regen alt I then rolled, a crit build taking the full suite of pistol-based powers, did much, much better (partly due to being unkillable pre-patch). But, I’ve since gone back to the dark sorcery character and bought the perk that gives a knockdown to his AoE cone along with the life-drain power, and suddenly that extra bit of mitigation has him working very, very well again.
I’ve also swapped Regen for Lightning Reflexes post-patch on pistol-dude (found out Regen relies on a stat, and one I wasn’t gonna raise). The defensive powers do still grant a noticable difference while feeling a bit more in-line with each other, but at the same time there are more “Oh, come ON!!!” moments.
Thing is, I was actually very underwhelmed with the game at first. The thing that made it fun was only using my XBox 360 controller and setting up the controls somewhat close to a Youtube video about making it control like an FPS. If it wasn’t for the fun control schema, I’d have skipped actually buying the game. In that respect, I otherwise can’t help but agree with Zuzax.
about 11 months ago
…a certain desire to be spoon fed, like WoW? Really? That’s the argument? We’re not taking responsibility as gamers?
Please. You SHOULD be spoon fed at the low levels, that’s the time to learn the game – or wait, is this supposed to be hard core for the elite few?
I didn’t think so. I am tired of the WoW is so easy – you walk into ToC /dance and epics fall from the sky – argument for explaining why it’s the players fault for not getting an unnecessarily complex/punitive gaming system the moment they log in.
I played Champions during the early beta and throughout. I gave my feedback, and then I stopped play the beta and clearly didn’t buy it.
I didn’t feel like a hero – that’s where it failed in my mind. In CoH/V I felt like a hero (or villain), even a fledgling one at the beginning. In Champions I felt isolated (tiny zones with many instances in some cases), and very weak. Part of it is personal preference (or not) for the Art style – I felt pasted onto a backdrop and not particularly epic. But a big part was the powers… that’s where the biggest failure is.
They don’t feel impressive to me… and yes the speccing or how to in the open ended system is just too open ended and you can destroy your character completely by taking “the wrong” choices.
As an example – in late beta I took “gadgeteering” or whatever it was called. You start with two powers… I couldn’t use my second one until level 6 because I didn’t have energy. So the first four levels were me using my “power up” pew pew power… that was painful. I thought – oh this is clearly a balance issue – nope – notice on the boards was that this was intended – you may not be able to use certain powers when you get them (or for a while) and you will have to build your energy. Whoops!
They have a LONG way to go – honestly I think they made some critical mistakes.
about 11 months ago
The costs for “retconning” (read: respeccing) went WAY up just before live – from ‘probably too cheap’ to ‘I’m gonna need Barack Obama’s stimulus package to finance a full respec at level 40′. I don’t like respecs to be too cheap – if they aren’t limited then every bugger under the sun goes with the overpowered fotm build and then hops to the next one without so much as a shrug. On the other hand, when people reach level cap with about 30 [gold piece equivalents] and a full respec would cost about 1000, that’s just crazy.
The live day patch reduced the effectiveness of the defence passives, which probably needed doing – some people with stacked defences were unkillable in the PVP arenas. The nerf probably would have encouraged players to be more diverse in their builds, because it made defence passives like regeneration less of a ‘gimme’ but…
… the same patch fixed some bugs which had been making the mobs underperform. All of a sudden a lot more damage was coming the players’ way and you now NEED a boosted defence, a self heal ability or an ungodly amount of luck given how thick on the ground mob spawns are in CO.
The forums for the game are a whinefest of epic proportions, which isn’t really fair to what is a fun game. I’m still happily taking on supervillains with my characters, but I can see why others have problems. CO is best played as more of an action game than other MMOs – for best effect you need to be staying on the move in combat, shifting out of the AoE of the big attacks and grabbing the heals and power ups that drop like candy. If you think in terms of standing there and pressing buttons in your “skill rotation” a la WoW or CoH you will get your head handed to you by supervillains or decent sized pulls with villains in them.
about 11 months ago
Challenge as a gamer is definitely desirable, almost necessary for a game’s success. However, this challenge should not come so early, so abruptly and without warning, and with such stringent punishments for failure.
about 11 months ago
And you know, I choose not to play Champions Online because it had no resemblance to the incredibly detailed character creation system of the PnP game off which it is based. The Champions RPG is merciless for character creation, but allows for so much more flexibility.
I agree with the spoon-fed-ness of the WoW crowd though. Unfortunately, that’s one of the few reasons it is so successful.
about 11 months ago
The interesting thing about the WoW influence being behind a lot of the complaints about Champions Online is that it transcends merely having a more difficult learning curve. We’ve actually quite a number of people complaining that the game plays differently, at all.
For example, the other day I read a fellow saying he had “lost faith in” the developers because they decided to have an aggro system that didn’t simply involve the mobs jumping on the first person to attack them. The way Champions Online is doing it isn’t inherently wrong, just different, but he was used to that from World of Warcraft.
There was one thread that was complemented by a forum admin for being a bit more coherent of a complaint than most. The basis of the complaints outlined were that roots didn’t break when the monsters were attacked – making crowd control too powerful, that area of effect seemed too powerful, and that passive defenses were too powerful. The reason for all three complaints? Because that’s not how World of Warcraft was balanced.
I’m not saying Champions Online is perfect. I agree that the retcon prices are set a bit unforgivably high for newbies, and the freedom to pick powers is somewhat problematic given that most people won’t understand what taking those powers really means until a few dozen hours into the game. However, the vast majority of the complaints you hear on the board can be easily attributed to a bunch of self-indulgent WoW players refusing to broaden their horizons.
about 11 months ago
I rember reading, before WoW launched, the City of Heroes forums and how they scrapped their very open character and skill creation system because players were gimping themselves. The anti-bois are worse then the fan-bois.
The fact is with an “open system” and unlimited skill resests it’s only a matter of time before almost all players convert their skills to whatever works out to be the most sucessful mixes… which will in-turn be just the same as having official ‘classes’.
Ofcourse their will be a couple of unique snowflakes who run their gimp specs and love their characters… but won’t play them since they are gimp and instead spread negativity across the forums arguing why their gimps skills should be bolstered. Or worse, they’ll just unsubscribe.
about 11 months ago
As a long time COH player I have been watching Champions very closely from closed beta up to now and while it seems that CO has to offer much more than COH, it has some things that really put me off, enough to never even consider to subscribe.
To mention a few, ugly graphics choices (fixable with turning some options), drunk and unresponsive keyboard controls (it was designed for Xbox controller), no way to fix gimp choices like picking melee power builder power in the beginning and then having you butt kicked by everyone with ranged powers, the bait and switch with lifetime sub option, the list can go on and on.
All those issue can be fixed and probably will be, but I am not going be playing a game that intentionally trying to test those design/marketing grounds and expect me to pay for that with my time and money.
about 11 months ago
“All those issue can be fixed and probably will be, but I am not going be playing a game that intentionally trying to test those design/marketing grounds and expect me to pay for that with my time and money.”
I think this perspective, just by itself, is a damaging one to take. For all their problems, I DO want game companies to test new design/marketing grounds and expect me to pay for it, because innovation is what leads to the few gems in a sea of obscurity. The alternative is to use “the usual template” and just tweak the minor things.
about 11 months ago
“The fact is with an “open system” and unlimited skill resests it’s only a matter of time before almost all players convert their skills to whatever works out to be the most sucessful mixes… which will in-turn be just the same as having official ‘classes’.”
This has so far proven not entirely true, as evidenced by the cooks and tailors in UO, all the way to the frost mages raiding in WoW. A LOT of players will copy optimum builds, but I don’t think it’s so many as to say “almost all.”
about 11 months ago
“This is a necessary evil of a rich, classless skill system – the game has to let you fail.”
Not sure if i agree with this concept — there is no reason for a game to have “fail” state for the custom-built character, short of it being a result of having some skills which fail to provide enough utility compared to what the game expects any and every character to have. But that’d seem more like failure to properly design the pieces, than a necessity…
about 11 months ago
@Slyfeind, true, but one problem that I actually raised on the CO boards is one encountered in the original Asheron’s Call: you don’t want some fraction of your selectable powers to in fact be very cleverly disguised “Make My Character Suck” buttons. (Assess Creature, anyone?)
AC had/has de-facto classes within a relatively short amount of time, and new players were given no hint as to how strict their build would need to be in order to be effective by even mid-game.
It’s funny, in a way, that the CO game is running into the same problems between concept-builders and powergamers that the HERO System rules are pretty notorious for. If I decide to build a classically-styled mage in CO, I’ll perhaps take the Eldrich Blast, Fireball, Lightning Bolt, and one of the summoning spells. This character will pale in comparison to someone who stuck to a single powerset (Fire or Lightning only rather than mix-and-match, for example), preferably one known to be powerful, and makes the additional choices that are known to increase the potency of the build settled on. This is (highly) similar to a concept character in the pencil-and-paper version who dilutes his or her character points over multiple powers versus the one who just maxes out a V.P.P. of RKA- *ahem* stuffs them all into one deadly blast of doom (or god forbid just maxes Strength).
Now, that characters will have varying effectiveness isn’t automatically bad, if it’s even bad at all. But the size of the gap needs to be kept relatively small, so that non-ideal builds are still effective enough to be fun and worthwhile. Doubly so in a game whose main selling point is being able to envision and create *YOUR* hero, without these sorts of pitfalls. THAT’s what a lot of the whining on the boards is ultimately about.
about 11 months ago
I haven’t played Champions, but I disagree in principle. If you can freely change your character, then choices are meaningless. You might as well just create character classes that are all the same and be done with it.
I don’t mean that you should never be able to change your mind, but it should really require more effort than doing an hour’s worth of brain dead daily quests.
about 11 months ago
@Arkazon “I think this perspective, just by itself, is a damaging one to take”
Like many other COH players I really wanted CO to succeed as the next main superhero MMO, but I also did not appreciate being conned and treated as if I do not understand what Cryptic was doing with CO and why it is the way it is.
Breaking new grounds is fine, but doing it in a subvertive manner, hiding the game’s arcade roots under NDA blanket almost until 2 weeks before its release, selling open beta keys through fileplanet and pre-order only, trying to sell the game lifetime subscritions before anyone had any chance to play it, changing game mechanics on the day of the release after selling those lifetime subs, promising the means to respec the character and then pricing the respec too high in order to hide the lack of content. I am not even going to dwell into dubious issue of MT paired with monthy sub model (maybe because of Xbox live?).
I would even bet that the entire Xbox control schema is only there because of the code salvaged from the Marvel Universe Online that Microsoft pull the plug on and not because they really wanted to develop an MMO for console users. Like i said, breaking new grounds is fine, doing it the way they did, is not.
about 11 months ago
Looks like the free reset is coming in tonight, and apparently it’s extended to all players – 3-day or otherwise – so if you were concerned about how badly your character was built, you’ll have a chance to rebuild it wiser for your mistakes.
It’s generally a good line of reasoning that templating is inevitable in an open-ended system – you don’t avoid a class-based system by having no classes, so much as you invite players discover how many viable classes there are in your game (usually far less of them than a class-based system) or be a gimped lesser.
Champions Online does have a fairly unusual balance in that there’s technically several “classes” in the various templates that, after leveling for awhile, everybody can borrow from the other classes what they want. It lends to a balance where you can be an incredibly powerful generalist — and probably should be, if you expect to be able to solo.
So, in this, I would say that instead of having the players gravitate to a few basic templates of effectiveness, we may actually see the opposite: over-generalization. If nothing else, it does make it much harder for the nerfhammer to slaughter you by killing the more overpowered power you may be leaning overheavily upon.
about 11 months ago
Once again, the difficulty of a skill system its that you need to stop people to: a)Become gimped and b)Become god of the tank-mages. I think that Lum said it once, cant remember where.
A its easy: A respec can be more exponentially expensive, but it must be tied to the number of uses or to the character level, not to the level of the skills. Punishing people for being new to your game it’s, well, stupid.
And yes, it needs a check for avoiding everyone to swap to the flavor of the month. As long as you got a cap for skills, you need let people reset said skills.
B it’s more difficult, but it comes with being in a MMO. Players will always find the loophole that allows them to be overpowered, the designers will nerf it, and players will whine about it. It’s unavoidable.
about 11 months ago
@Luk: Sorry, but I have to comment on your perceptions:
“Breaking new grounds is fine, but doing it in a subvertive manner, hiding the game’s arcade roots under NDA blanket almost until 2 weeks before its release, selling open beta keys through fileplanet and pre-order only, trying to sell the game lifetime subscritions before anyone had any chance to play it, changing game mechanics on the day of the release after selling those lifetime subs, promising the means to respec the character and then pricing the respec too high in order to hide the lack of content.”
1) ChampO has been called an ‘action MMORPG’ for a long time with several devs commenting on it being more like MUA than a typical MMO. This wasn’t hidden at all.
2) There were a number of paths into open beta. Fileplanet and pre-order weren’t the only way.
3) The end of the lifetime sub coincided with launch. So those people who played it in alpha / closed beta / open beta / pre-start had the opportunity to play and decide if they wanted a lifetime sub. Cryptic could have possibly offered it in a better (or at least different) way, but it’s an over-generalisation to say that people didn’t have a chance to play and decide first.
4) The launch day patch was a stupid move. It should have been made back in closed beta, but not all the systems were implemented until late in closed beta – that issue is certainly Cryptic’s fault.
Those people who felt aggrieved enough with the changes were offered refunds on those lifetime / 6 months subs.
5) A full respec went out for free in a recent patch. Respec prices are being looked at and it has been recognised that they are too high.
It’s not a flawless launch and ChampO has a ton of issues about it – agree with Lum’s concerns about the opaqueness of the systems, which comes from them coming together as a package only about 2 weeks prior to the end of closed beta – but it certainly doesn’t need misinformation piled on top of it.
about 11 months ago
I’m actually enjoying it loads. Bought a lifetime sub during open beta and haven’t regretted it a second. I do agree that mostly the stats work weird tho and I think that most of the confusion arives from that. They’re working very different from the usual MMO’s. However, there’s a bunch of very good guides about them on the forums.
about 11 months ago
The free respec they’re giving now will help some but still won’t change other major issues with the game that were introduced or highlighted with the 9/1 patch. And Roper’s statement about the ship rudder needing to be turned full to the left when making changes in MMOs (not the exact words) is damn sure coming back to haunt him… daily.
CO is another MMO I’ve found to be very disappointing. I really liked the game in beta and into headstart (except for the XP fiasco in OB), but for some reasons devs have developed this habit (Mythic and FC did the same thing as well) of making sweeping game impacting changes real close to release or at release, that just aren’t proving to be healthy for the MMOs success.
I really believe Gamers solidify their interest or non-interest in an MMO in a short span following release. Major game changing patches at release really put a lot of players off. It gives the impression that your beta was a waste and you really don’t know what you’re doing. Do your major changes well into beta where they can be tested and given proper attention without turning your paying customers off, then do your minor (MINOR!) tweaks near the end.
about 11 months ago
I also think Cryptic have confused a lot of players by making all of the stats useful. MMO players are used to characters having about 20 different characteristics, only 3 of which are of any benefit to their class. This allows them to stack their chosen stats to high heaven and indulge in ritual whining about idiotic devs putting “useless” stats on an item “clearly intended for class X”.
In CO you pretty much get good use out of every stat (maybe you can get away with ignoring Presence if you don’t heal and never group and so don’t care about raising/lowering threat). If you stack one or two stats exclusively you’ll gimp yourself.
about 11 months ago
I don’t see what is so horrible about people recreating classes inside a open skill world. Ideally the developer will then take the popular “classes” and fold them into the intro as ready-set skill sets.
Cheap respec and open systems basically crowd-source your balancing. If the warlock “class” is crap, you just will end up with no one playing it, rather than 1/8th of your player base permanently gimped because they thought it sounded cool on character creation. You also have no need love all “classes” equally, like you do in a class based system. I think a lot of mileage could be achieved by being more explicit about not loving all skills equally in a skill based system. Have skills auto-rated by players use, and visible to players, so they can tell which skills are gimped.
Players switching to the build-of-the-day is a good thing. It keeps them active in optimizing and looking for the new build-of-the-day, or understanding why the new spec is better. It also seems odd that anyone should support the opposite position, that players should be forced to play bad configurations in the hopes that the devs will some day come down and make all configurations equal.
Free respec can also help *prevent* players from flocking to the same build. You will be much more willing to experiment on unusual configurations when you know you can safely respect back to the herd, but if this character is locked forever, I’m going to follow the board’s recommendation blindly.
about 11 months ago
So there is the danger room where you can try out stuff before you spec into it, there are character planners and there is the web where you can gather some info on what is a viable spec and then there is this blog entry.
I am confused
.
Transparency sucks as do class based systems, give it a break please. I am sure there is some good way to play the non-cookie-cutter-specs for hardcore pleasures, even if it decreases the character’s overall effectiviness.
about 11 months ago
@UnSub
You are right those were my perceptions only, I am not close to Cryptic and have no insider information about why they did what they did, but everything I stated did happen and this is what it looked like to me.
1. NDA did not drop until Aug 17 so nobody was talking about it until then, so expecting people to buy lifetime sub to cat in the bag was what it looked like.
2. The closed beta was not available to everyone.
3. The lifetime sub offer was pulled off the table several days before launch initially, reinstated afterwards until Sept 1 since it generated a huge uproar in the community, it did look like bait and switch to me.
4. Saying that launch day patch was stupid doesnt justify why it was done and the reasons behind it.
5. They will continue fixing things and eventually find some kind of balance within the game, but that is what beta was for.
CO is not a bad game and it will get better with time, but the simple fact is that it is a console to PC port of an action game and not an MMO at all.
about 11 months ago
@EpicSquirt
You need to take in account that people NEW to the game don’t know about character planners and/or web sites.
Besides, the pressure of having your options permanent really kills the fun of a game.
@Luk
You know, people could always just connect an Xbox 360 controller or whatever hardware they want to their PCs. They can be connected to an USB port, if the game allows it just configure your buttons. I don’t know if CO allows that.
about 11 months ago
The power house does not live up to its purpose. The test dummies are only good for putting out numbers as they relate to the dummy. They don’t fight back and they don’t move or use powers like mobs do, nor do their defenses match that of the average mob. Not even the dummy running track is any better. The travel power training room is redundant as you’ll get a good idea of which travel powers are better just by running around inside the rest of the room as that’s far more accurate as to the kind of obstacles you’ll run into in the real game. The only decent part of the center is the laser room, and even then the lasers don’t put you into combat which messes up the results of some defensive power testing.
The whole power house idea was a total misfire based on terrible feedback interpretations. Whoever was in charge of community feedback severely screwed up the message we were saying in beta, which was we didn’t like using UNTIL databases because grabing powers as we leveled were far more convenient. They took it to mean that UNTIL wasn’t offering anything different than what we had before and the cost to our playing time to constantly go back to it was unjustified. Their answer? A fucking fitness club. One that doesn’t reflect actual playing conditions and time completely wasted that they could have spent making the end-game actually matter or perhaps had more than one guy balancing powers.
I hate to break your NDA virginity, but various gaming sites have NDA breakers all the time. Hell, I broke the NDA on the initial lead-up to the june release on corpnews. I still openly broke it afterwards, too. There were several sites that were mentioned in the closed beta forums where internet gumshoes tied closed beta participants to these forums, yet cryptic didn’t do anything most of the time (nobody ever caught me though, because no one reads corpnews anymore). Youtube had plenty of in-game clips from various NDA breakers, yet cryptic could not be bothered to have them taken down.
about 11 months ago
@Freakazoid
There is nothing new about gaming sites breaking NDA, however, the sources that I and most gamers actually monitor and trust with valid opinions about games usually do not break any NDA and for good reasons.
about 11 months ago
An interesting collections of half-truths, this.
The lifetime subscriptions weren’t even available until later in August, open beta had been going on for quite some time, so you definately would have had an opportunity to get a good general idea how the game played by then.
By the open beta, that had been going on well from about mid-August was.
This was primarly due to them circulating emails saying it was “limited time” offer when it was supposed to be a “limited number” offer in their mind. Seeing how the offer was re-opened, it’s not bait and switch. Bait and switch means you put a different offer on the table instead.
The developers actually outlined their reasons when the patch went through:
“The changes were PVE driven, there were issues with Passive Defenses being massively overpowered in PVE from where we wanted them to be. Basically folks were aoe farming mass piles of critters with no danger of ever dying, basically people were able to handle more than 2x the intended sized encounters, which obviously breaks the game because instead of things being challenging and fun fights people could just plow through everything without having to look at their life, consider tactics, escape from time to time, etc.”
So the reasons were explained, but the Champions Online complainer in general either did not understand these reasons or simply decided to reject them.
There’s always a bit of ambiguity here with an MMORPG, you know?
Champions Online was always developed concurrently to be an XBox360 and PC Game. It’s not a port job because port jobs are where something is developed exclusively for the console before being moved to the PC.
about 11 months ago
I’ve enjoyed Champions so far, honestly.
I didn’t find the skill system intimidating, and really my random choices have worked out just fine. The quests are standard leveling faire, they found a way to incorporate crafting and loot better than CoH did, and I think visually the game is pretty stunning (admitedly I’m on a high end system running @2560@1900). Also the inclusion of low level pvp was a good call, and even if it’s just team-deathmatch at the moment.. it’s pretty fun teleporting around and pewpewing people.
I’m so bored with WoW, it’s a nice paced change that I hope they can do something with. Time will tell I spose.
about 11 months ago
Worth repeating, since it was mentioned: the game CAN be played with a 360 controller plugged into your PC, and played quite well. (In fact, that really is THE reason the game feels fun and different to me.) There are a couple of quirks, where you’ll still be reaching for the mouse fairly often (for menus, inventory, etc.), but the running around beating up bad guys works great.
I liken it to playing FFXI: if you’ve never tried playing it with a controller, you’ve never had the full pleasure of the game.
about 11 months ago
@Luk
I’m a bit confused by your statement that Champions Online is “not an MMO at all”. CO has an open, persistent world, full chat options, a guild system… what is it exactly that you think is missing that would be needed to qualify as an MMO?
Also, as Geldonyetich has already pointed out, please stop referring to the lifetime subscription offer as a “bait and switch”, or at least go and find out what the phrase actually means instead of parroting some troll post you read on the forums. If they’d taken your money and given you lifetime access to Evony instead… THAT would be a bait and switch!
about 11 months ago
Having played a few weeks, I feel like they don’t give me nearly enough information to make good choices about powers, then punish me for misunderstanding their descriptions. Many powers scale in ways that aren’t obvious, or have synergies that only appear when certain advantages are taken. Rather than let people respec freely in the Powerhouse, they should simply put it on a time limit. Let players try a new power for an hour, then lock it in.
I also can’t believe how generic the setting is. I know that Marvel pulled out, but they created something much better in City of Heroes. A witch called “Witchcraft”?
about 11 months ago
@Tremayne
according wiki:
“A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMOG or simply MMO) is a video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously.” CO can only support up to 100-125 of players per instance, that is not massive, it is a MOG: Multiplayer Online Game. I realized that the moment when I was trying to team up with a friend and we could not find each other even in the same instance just because we were in a different part of our levelling arcs in different instance within an instance with only around 90 players around us.
Also you are correct that I should not use “bait and switch” to describe what happenned to lifetime subs, because it was just a “bait”, since they pulled it off the table and then reinstated again so that everyone who thought they missed out grabbed as soon as they could.
Everything that i posted here is my personal opinion and I am not “parroting” anyone else’s ideas. I just feel very strongly about a game that i had huge hopes for and was in the end disappointed. I expected COH2 and what we got was Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 only without “Marvel” in it.
about 11 months ago
@geldonyetich
Half-truth, huh?
I have an email sent to a friend dated on Tuesday, August 04 with info about $200 lifetime offer, so do not tell me that it was available much later than that.
about 11 months ago
@Joho,
Please understand that some of that generic-ness comes from the Champions setting from LONG before the computer game. Most all of the official characters are in some sense or another gleefully made knockoffs or send-ups of the “real” comic hero characters, and even then we’re often talking the heros of a good two decades ago or so. Witchcraft (since you mentioned her) has been around, as a Champions-setting character, for a long time. And yes, her evil sister is named “Sinisister”. Comic book characters were often that corny back then.
about 11 months ago
I’m not sure which of those half-truths you’re objecting to, but if it’s in regards to when the open beta took place, a simple net search reveals a link (which I can’t post here lest it be auto-moderated) showing the open beta began on August 17th, and the game as released September 1st. So they had a good two weeks to try before they buy.
Even then, nowhere is it said that a Lifetime Subscription offer has to be a good game. People are free to jump in and waste their money on something they don’t enjoy all the time.
It’s to Cryptic’s credit that even knowing this and having their Terms of Service agreement clearly state that there will be no refunds for canceled subscriptions, they have apparently been giving refunds to unsatisfied lifetime subscription customers.
So, what are you complaining about there, again?
Another thing I didn’t mention earlier was that I was in closed beta about 3 months before the game’s release. It was pretty feature complete at that point, and they said they were going to release the game at that point.
They didn’t – they pushed it back 3 months and took this time out stitching up a bunch of bugs, balancing the powers, and adding a few unnecessary extra features (such as the power house). So your “they will continue fixing things and eventually find some kind of balance within the game, but that is what beta was for” complaint is a half-truth, too.
It’s also pretty damn pretty to say that re-opening a special discounted offer, because people asked for it, is a bait tactic. If they had decided not to, they would have made even more money, as it costs about 20% more for the non-discounted prices. (At least for the 6-mo offer – the lifetime offers were not available, but it was mentioned they would be made available later some time after release.)
about 11 months ago
I thought Witchcraft’s sister was Talisman and the mission to save Witchcraft from her was called Sinisister.
about 11 months ago
Luk, by those standards I’m kind of at a loss as to what would actually qualify as an MMO. Are you saying that games need hundreds of people per instance/zone to count as massively multiplayer?
about 11 months ago
I half-agree with the instancing argument against MMOs, but I’d say there’s a certain level in which you’ve got enough players. Are you really going to meaningfully interact with 100 players, right now?
Another interesting tangent to consider it with is that there’s no multiple shards in Champions Online. All players of Champions Online can play with any other player, without having to hop servers. So, along these lines, it’s actually more MMO than a classical MMO.
about 11 months ago
It’s interesting to think about, really. Champions Online, despite being heavily instanced, pretty much replicates the behavior of a non-instanced MMORPG perfectly. You can and will run across other players by chance — usually killing the snagging your quest goal out from under you. If being inconvenienced by other players you bump into isn’t the essence of true massively multiplayer online gameplay, what is?
about 11 months ago
I’m really enjoying it, but to be fair I got a really good handle on the character development system before I rolled my first character. That made it a lot easier for me as I don’t deal well with “frustratingly hard frustratingly early”.
I really think that us players are 90% of the problem. We are so used to how the last huge batch of games did it (and especially WoW) that anything different must be broken, too hard, unfair, or poorly balanced. I don’t mean your post, but just the comments I have seen in game.
Take today for instance. I made a character specifically for PvP inthe Hero games. I saw several players over and over again throughout the day. Many of them were very upset with my power selection and ranting about my liberal use of them the entire time. So, here are some other folks who made characters apparently just for PvP like I did, played them all day, and they PURPOSELY messed up their characters? I mean they weren’t out in PvE, they were standing there just like me queueing for match after match. You can have ANY power you want, and still complain that some power is unfair? These weren’t roleplayers with fancy costumes or character bios… they were generic looking heroes with nearly leetspeak names.
So the people that know a little are upset they are getting knocked back and held, and sadly the people who know VERY little are getting clobbered because I read up on what would make me successful in that specific area of gameplay. I feel really bad for that latter group, because it IS very easy to mess up your character early on to the point that the game becomes frustrating.
I do really enjoy the game though. It’s entirely possible to make character of any gaming style (caster, meleer, support, healer, hybrid, etc) and be successful. We, the players, seem to be getting more upset with abilities and mechanics based on their titles than how it makes the game play for us and I don’t really get that.
For instance to the above: I tried helping some folks easy ways to immediately improve characters that were having trouble. One such way was taking Invulnerabilty when out soloing. The straight answer more often than not was “I don’t want to because my character is a an Offensive class”. And there’s a skill that, if you take it, is completely transparent to your gameplay experience save for it helping you take less damage when hit. What can you do when we, the players, become that hooked on labels?
Anyhow, I’m venting a bit ( a lot). Really has nothing to do with your points as I know you fully realize what you need to do to make the experience easier. It just amazes me that we are seeing games making even small attempts to be different and players are still trying to squeeze it into a box. If it doesn’t fit in the box the Devs must surely hate them
about 11 months ago
@The Alien,
You’re right, sorry, it is Talisman. I’m so used to people asking for help with Sinisister that I assigned her that name, I guess.
about 11 months ago
Just blame Bill Roper for everything!!
At least that’s what one thread on the forums did when the nerf was released. I think it was titled something like I got flagshipped again.
about 11 months ago
@geldonyetich,
The downside to the instancing is that the odds of running across the *same* other players by chance becomes phenomenally low, meaning that you don’t build the casual familiarity with the other players the way you tend to in other MMOs (the “Hey, I remember running into that name back when I was grinding in X zone” or “I’ve seen this Bard that’s usually on the same time I am, I think his name was X, let’s see if we can find him for the group”). Personally, I think this aspect will end up doing a lot of harm in the long run, as fewer and weaker social bonds end up being formed.
about 11 months ago
Maybe the spoonfed approach that WoW gives players is right. This spend hours figuring out combat, gear, skills etc – on top of a game with little/buggy content could be a major turnoff. I found WoW to be easy to play, but difficult to master – thats probably the sweet spot for a mmo since it helps ramp the player up (hopefully – I’m still trying to master it, and I’ve met plenty who are terrible at it).
This isn’t 1995ish everquest anymore. Champions online – while it was fun and everything really didn’t hold my attention for some reason… I’ll keep playing around with it – but for some reason its probably not going to having any staying power.
about 11 months ago
@Angelworks
Funnily enough, I found WoW easy to ‘master’ – ‘mastery’ defined as “go to Elitist Jerks and read up on the One True Way to play your class”. The difficulty lay in doing all the grinding required to have optimum gear.
about 11 months ago
Er… Where did all the previous comments go? They're not lost, are they?
about 11 months ago
Nope. Being imported into new system. Should reappear in an hour or so.
about 11 months ago
Haven’t played Champions but this instancing system sounds like a great idea. It always sucks when people you know play on completely different servers and there’s no good way (or an expensive one) to team up with them. Is it like Guild Wars in that you can hop between european/american/asian instances as you like?
about 11 months ago
“Is it like Guild Wars in that you can hop between european/american/asian instances as you like?”
Sort of, in that everyone ison the same server. They are not differentiated by region (that I am aware of). You get a list of instances, with indication of how many of your Supergroup members are in each, and can swap to whichever you wish. Max is about 100 per instance.
about 11 months ago
The best part of CO that I’ve seen thus far — it’s a game in active development. It should probably still be in beta, arguably, but it DOES feel that people are working on things, and that every day, things are a bit better. Problems DO feel like they’re being looked at, and even if every response is a form letter, the problem-ticket mechanism is such that I want to buy an account for everyone at work, point at it, and say “SEE?! THIS IS WHAT WE NEED.”
So I has hopes.
Granted my build kicks ass, but it’s one of three that all seem to be doing pretty well.
about 11 months ago
They do have one hell of a robust /bug system, in that you can actually look up and see previously submitted bugs and see if there’s been an official response on them. Most of these responses are not personalized, but the most prominent problems are stickies. If you can measure the future quality of a thing by its underlying support mechanism, that Champions Online’s /bug mechanism may well be supercharging its potential.
about 11 months ago
Whatever it is that WoW does, it grew the Western MMO market by an order of magnitude. Of course there are many other ways to make an MMO, but so far, in ten years, there are a bunch of Western MMOs with a high-water mark measured in hundreds of thousands of subs and one that measures in millions.
Until a game company comes up with a Western MMO that attracts and holds a similar subscriber base, all MMOs will benchmark against WoW. There would only appear to be two routes to breaking this pattern: a game that does what WoW does better than WoW, or one that finds a new paradigm that equals or betters WoW’s.
Until that happens, all games are going to have to put up with their systems and gameplay being held up to the WoW standard. Of course, that doesn’t mean the designers have to copy WoW. They have the choice of settling for a much smaller subscriber/revenue base or having better ideas. The former isn’t attractive to the people paying the bills and the latter requires talent, imagination and maybe genius that can’t just be bought off the shelf.
I don’t think superhero fight games with ultra-modifiable costumes/power sets are set to be the future of MMO gaming, somehow, no matter how much the respecs cost.
about 11 months ago
Awesome character
Not quite sure the resemblance is perfect but a brilliant idea!
about 11 months ago
He needs less hair and the fat prune cheeks.
Example:
http://www.insidesocal.com/tomhoffarth/North-Korean-leader-Kim-Jong-Il.jpg
Let me know if there is a way to unsee it.
about 11 months ago
I hope everybody reads Brask Mumei’s post twice, because I believe this is bang on about respeccing, and would have been exactly what I wrote, down to the last word.
If you assume that there *is* a “cookie-cutter” build that is superior to all else, then why are you purposely gimping people by making it expensive to switch to it? And why did you create such an unbalanced opportunity to begin with?
If you assume that the cookie-cutter build *is NOT* superior to everything else, then why do you care if people switch to it? Why not let them try it cheaply and then move away when they realize there’s other options?
I’m gonna quote Brask’s last paragraph again:
“Free respec can also help *prevent* players from flocking to the same build. You will be much more willing to experiment on unusual configurations when you know you can safely respect back to the herd, but if this character is locked forever, I’m going to follow the board’s recommendation blindly.”
Hear that? Expensive respecs make people *more likely* to rely blindly on board recommendations. Reward experimentation!
about 11 months ago
The good news is, they’ve clearly stated that they need to rebalance respecs. (Although they think what they need to do is pump more money into the economy rather than lowering the price of them, which has the same effect)
They also seem to be talking about expanding the Powerhouse to simulate actual combat, which should be awesome.
about 11 months ago
Look, they just CAN’T give away respecs. It’s never going to happen. There is even less of an end-game than CoH had when it launched. The end-game is to roll and alt and explore another powerset. But folks were grinding their way to the level cap in four (4) days during the headstart.
If your end-game is exploring powersets, and you can try them all out over a weekend with cheap respecs, then you have no reason to stay subscribed. It’s really as simple as that.
about 11 months ago
“If your end-game is exploring powersets, and you can try them all out over a weekend with cheap respecs, then you have no reason to stay subscribed. It’s really as simple as that.”
@Theocrat,
Quoted for truth.
about 11 months ago
Some are missing one element that mitigates some of the ‘build trauma’: the powerhouse has “danger rooms” where you can test out your builds before leaving. if you don’t like them, any newly-purchased elements can be respecced away for free.
So far, I find Champions promising… Yes, the build system could use more clarity, but I’d much rather have to stumble through an open system than be constrained in the normal narrow MMO way.
about 11 months ago
I like how airtight the logic is… however, it seems to me that Champions Online is rather complicated in that there is no cookie-cuter build. It’s something to do with the awkwardness of transitioning between sets on the onset and the way the statistics are balanced to bring everybody to focus on different paths.
Roper has either somehow managed to evade templating entirely (which is a formidable game design feat I thought beyond him) or it’s so deeply buried that it will take some time for “perfect builds” to surface.
At least, my investigations into finding such a build seem to be digging me deeper in the opposite direction. It’s odd, but Champions Online seems to reward a generalist more than it does a specialist. Characters which attack, defend, and support seem to be able to do these things more effectively than one who is built entirely to do one of the three. Focusing on just two stats is sure to result in a dead-end character.
If you’re going to declare absolutes, you should probably not refute the existence of things that clearly actually happened just a few days ago.
That was about the same way I treated CoH’s end game, actually.
I hear they’ve got some interesting end-game content in Champions Online with these “UNITY “missions — I’ll have to really give it a spin to tell for sure.
about 11 months ago
@Chas: As was already mentioned, the Powerhouse lets you check out your choice of powers, but does not give you the combat experience you’d get from going up against actual mobs. The blobs in the Powerhouse are just not what you see in actual combat. Sure, changing the Powerhouse to reflect that will help… when they do that, but really does nothing for players now.
Expensive respects aren’t the real problem with this game and neither is their stat system (as in how their stats are applied), or blocking, or this phantom WoW mindset (cause yeah everyone in the world plays that game). The devs just seem to be all over the place with their adjustments which has dramatically changed the game just since OB. They seem to be relying on data mining to tell them what powers to adjust. ie 2000 players use , to produce X damage to Y enemies thus gaining them N XP so OMG it’s OP!! ADJUST! ADJUST! Next Patch notes: has been adjusted. Players: Are you joking? Why didn’t you fix it this way or that way? Or how bout fixing the real problem with this core mechanic? Now the power is useless. Fan: Spoiled WoW noob stop complaining!
The truth is Cryptic’s adjustments go way the hell off from where they need to be. I just don’t get it. They did fine until the big XP nerf at the start of OB, then things have just gone downhill from there with their decision making process. I don’t think they’re really looking into where the real issues are in terms of why a power is showing as OP thus are shoving out bandaids or flatout screwups instead of real fixes.
And for the record, I’m doing fine with my builds, but I can still see the problems this game has.
about 11 months ago
When they stop using examples out of WoW to explain to Cryptic why they’re doing it (the “it” will vary) wrong, I’ll stop saying this.
Apparently, that’s the way Roper rolls. I’ve an interview where he describes the process of balancing like steering a ship, and the further off course you are, the further you need to overcompensate to eventually put the ship back on course.
about 11 months ago
Whoa now, Scott. Let’s not pull quotes out of context. Wasn’t that forum post in a thread all about defensive powers being way overpowered and needing a nerf? Sure, the post could’ve used a bit more tact, but it was wholly appropriate within the context of the thread.
about 11 months ago
A long note on defensive powers…
From the time defensive powers were roughly in the shape we see them now, to the end of open beta, there have only been two overpowered defensive passives: regeneration and invincibility. Invincibility was overpowered for the longest time, only being nerfed just as open beta began (I think). Regeneration was never nerfed, because somehow, it flew under the radar while everyone bitched about invincibility actually making you invincible. Of course, after invincibility was nerfed, regeneration was the go-to “best defensive passive” and now everyone finally got to see why.
Personal Force Field, Defiance, and Lightning Reflexes were always shitty in some fashion. LR did not become acceptable until you had over 150 dex and were at level cap, and even then the rates were slightly worse than regeneration. Defiance blows, unless you have an endurance problem but no defensive problems (lol right), in which case the end boost is really good. PFF had a brief stint where it was overpowered according to some, but ultimately it never overcame the massive drawback of losing the shield in either a long fight or a fight against multiple foes.
The big “if” here is the bigger picture. As it was, having a defensive passive was seen as necessary. It’s been that way for a long, long time, even when defensive powers operated much differently half a year ago. Offensive and utility passives never, ever, EVER matched the significance of a defensive passive.
So, if you need to make a balance issue out of it, what are your options? The logical path would be to improve all the offensive and utility passives until players feel they can give up the defensive passive without gimping themselves. The other path, less obviously logical, is “bringing defensive passives in line with other passives” by nerfing the fuck out of them. The former is awesome and maintains the status quo of being able to pick some crappy powers and make it to 40 in a few days. The latter brings a whole new shift in the way the game plays, as now you’re going to die a lot and spend more time being careful now that defensive powers don’t improve your character anymore than an offensive or utility would.
It’s quite possible I’m giving cryptic more benefit of the doubt than I should. If it helps any, I personally think much of cryptic staff is god awful at planning ahead and their design philosophy is both highly ignorant and self centered. What we see now are the results of no real communication, no solid plan, and blissful inexperience, all of which I have witnessed and inferred during the long closed beta process. It was obvious to me just what a terrible mishmash of drama and broken mechanics this game was headed into as early as late febuary.
about 11 months ago
“If your end-game is exploring powersets, and you can try them all out over a weekend with cheap respecs, then you have no reason to stay subscribed. It’s really as simple as that.”
If a game is not deep enough or long enough to get players to keep playing without resorting to rolling alts just to explore alternate builds, then I suppose that’s an incentive to make respecs expensive. But it’s also an incentive to create more content or a deeper game.
However, if respeccing in Champions Online is like being able to switch classes in WoW (which obviously you can’t do, unless they’ve offered some pay service to do so), then I can see that there might be a problem with full free respecs. I admit I’m thinking of talent trees in WoW or attribute adjustments in Guild Wars when I think of respeccing, so those two games do indeed have a build in hard restriction. However, they do differ from CO in that you can’t seriously gimp yourself by bad design, given that the basic skill progression of the classes is designed to “work”.
If CO truly avoids cookie-cutter builds, then that’s pretty interesting. It does sound like there are definitely “anti-cookie-cutter” builds though, ie. builds that don’t work and that you don’t want.
about 11 months ago
Generally I agree with what you’re saying here, although you did omit that the idea behind the different defensive passives were that they operated on different mechanics:
Invulnerability is meant to blunt a series of smaller attacks.
Lightning Reflexes is meant to avoid larger, more ponderous attacks.
Personal Force Field is meant to provide protection for shorter engagements.
Regeneration becomes stronger the longer an engagement lasts.
It’s an ambitious focus that’s naturally quite tricky to balance because you’re coming at the question of defense from two tangents both ways: size of attack and length of battle.
A lot of the reason why Regeneration is currently the best overall defensive passive is because you can always block, severely blunting incoming damage. If you’re regenerating while blocking, this can functionally make you invincible. In PvP, you can break blocks with taunts, but in PvE there’s very little of that going on (outside of high magnitude holds). It’s definitely a newbie favorite for this reason.
All the rest of the passives are now working-as-intended in that they’re not supposed to be 100% of your defense. You’re supposed to supplement them with an active defense (a tap power like Unbreakable), heals, and/or crowd control. Even a lot of firepower can do the trick, as defeated enemies tend not to be much of a threat.
It was definitely a bit of a rude shifting of gears at release after playing 3 days of a pre-order when a defensive passive was all you needed to convert the game into superheroic/easy mode, but they’ve given everybody a free retcon, so people who are capable of not living in the past have adaptedby now.
Though most of my comments here have somewhat been on the side of Cryptic and Champions Online in general, I have to agree somewhat with the ‘no real communication’ and ‘no solid plan’ aspects of this critique in that there have been signs of communication issues and in that the game was largely in flux pretty late into development.
However, maybe it’s not “blissful inexperience” we’re seeing here so much as Champions Online is attempting experimentation in the direction of something new and interesting. In a genre full of clones, this is highly commendable, and have next to no sympathy for the casual WoW player demanding the game conform more when there’s 1001 titles already happy to do that for them.
I think a power gamer like myself can always pick out something that’s wrong with their character, and if we dwell overmuch on these flaws then our characters will seem like an “anti-cookie-cutter” build after awhile — better off rerolling than dealing with it.
However, even in these cases, we do have a considerable amount of flexibility. It’s tricky when we’re talking about something we took back at level 5 and we’re no level 20 – there’s no retconning that out. However, if I take a few more levels, good investment of advantage or power pints and smooth out the kinks. In the long run, if I take my hero to level 40 and I have something back at level 5 I don’t like about them, I’m not necessarily SOL – technically, what else is there to do at 40 but grind influence I can spend retconning back to level 5 with, anyway?
about 11 months ago
[quote] A long note on defensive powers… [/quote]
The Defensive Passives weren’t the only issue, or even the main issue. As noted by the devs themselves, the game was heavily weighted towards defense [i]in general[/i]. CON was the best stat you could raise. The defensive stance was the best stance to be in (which right away rules out the use of offensive or support passives, which can only be used in the appropriate stance or the Balanced stance).
The rebalance to the defensive passive powers was seen as a relatively(!) small change that could quickly be made in that context, to address the larger problem of offense versus defense. It was also paired with a reduction of the bonus CON gives and a few other tweaks. Honestly, I thought the situation and their reasoning was adequately explained. And rather than it being about powers, really it’s about the game being designed for four styles (offensive, balanced, defensive, support) and one being so much better than the others that it devalues those approaches.
I do agree that of the passive defenses only Invuln and Regen really stood out as problematic. Invuln was straightforwardly too strong, while Regen was both powerful and had (has) a strong synergy with Block that no other defense did. PPF’s issue is actually a negative synergy with Block: PFF is applied first, meaning that the first blocked charge-up attack will have decimated your PFF for that fight, leaving you with effectively no defense (particularly if the enemy opens with such an attack, which many do). LR, meanwhile, is too heavily reliant on DEX, or needs the scaling factor of DEX to reach a point where it’s really appreciable. I have it at Rank 3 on a high-DEX character and it feels like anything less wouldn’t quite be enough.
about 11 months ago
Gah, could someone helpfully tell me what the right tags are for this board?
about 11 months ago
It’s blockquote instead of quote and inequality signs instead of brackets.
about 11 months ago
I haven’t played CO yet, although I’m sure I’ll give it a try eventually. None of my statements are a critique or commentary on Champions Online specifically, just comments in this post and on classless skill systems.
With that said, I think some of the observations that “the players” are the problem is laughable. I’m sure game developers around the world wish they could say “Oh, the players just don’t get it” and pretend like there isn’t a problem. You can’t ignore your player’s expectations; they are your customer base. Dismissing them leads to pain and subscriber loss.
If everyone in the world played WoW and expect something a certain way, you need to understand that in advance, and even if you make different design choices, you need to actively design something that converts people. You can’t ignore the elephant in the room and expect that it won’t break your china set.
Honestly, expecting your game to be intuitive to play without stereo instructions isn’t really much for players to ask for. Requiring research and spreadsheets to make character decisions is going to naturally attract a niche, not a mainstream audience.
With that in mind, any open, choice-centered skill system need to be designed with the following in order to be effective:
1. A clear and effective method in game for conveying enough information to players to make informed decisions, regardless of their out of game research habits.
2. All powers should work effectively enough that you can’t gimp yourself. Yes, balance is tricky, and it may be impossible to make every build combination as effective as every other, but there should be obvious effort on the part of the development team. Variety builds and focused builds should not be so different in power that only the most hardcore with spreadsheets are having fun.
3. Experimentation should be encouraged early on among new players, with an easy method for new players to undo a bad decision. Let the people who are learning how to play learn how to play without punishing them, and create a clear transition for them so they know when the game means business.
Now, from the feedback I’ve seen, they fail at 1, they’re half there on 2, and they’re deciding whether to do 3. That doesn’t bode well, but until I play it myself, that will be the extent of my observations.
about 11 months ago
I would argue that a game in which the players need learn nothing to play is begging to be boring and derivative. If that’s what the player’s want, there’s plenty of clones available to service them.
Let there be at least one game that isn’t so very mired on the beaten path to be completely intuitive, and any who come there to demand it conform to simply be told to leave for the ample offerings already available to them.
Champions Online’s character decisions do not require research and spreadsheets. They require experimentation and a crystal ball.
In other words, they’re not complex so much as they undocumented.
For example, I advantaged Eldritch Bolts with the chance to proc a hold. The hold Eldrich Bolts procs is a kind of hold that expires faster if the target is taking damage, but nowhere is this mentioned. If I experimented with this in the Power House, I might have noticed that. If I had a crystal ball I might have had the clairvoyance needed to figure that out. (No, not really, I’m saying they need to document better.)
So don’t think EVE Online difficulty curve when you think Champions Online character development. Think more along the lines of streets in dire need to street signs.
about 11 months ago
Ahh, so more traditional tag formats. I can live with that.
On topic, since WoW keeps coming up, does anyone remember just how bad WoW’s talent trees were on launch, particularly compared to what they were two years in? I played a feral Druid, myself. You’d have a hard time convincing me that CO’s launch is somehow worse than typical for the genre.
If anything, I’d call the speed of CO’s responsiveness frightening. People are certainly freaked out by it, right?
(The Powerhouse does need a basement level with one room with mobs who fight back, and another empty one for duels, the first room much more than the second, I’ll strongly agree there.)
about 11 months ago
I need to ease off on my replies a bit, but I thought this needed to be put on the table.
I don’t now about a basement level, but according to the recent developer Q&A session, they are now in the process of adding actual mobs that fight back to the Powerhouse, as well as places where people can duel without interrupting other players. (Good luck enforcing that.)
Good summary here — assuming this doesn’t trip the spam filter to post it thusly.
about 11 months ago
No problem. Just expect it to be a nice niche game.
about 11 months ago
In an MMORPG genre as glutted as this, I expect them all to be niche. They just need to recognize it instead of gutting the appeal of their niche in hopes of pleasing everyone. Name one non-F2P World of Warcraft clone that captured even a tenth of WoW’s subscribers.
about 11 months ago
@geldonyetich: WAR.
But then it let them go.
about 11 months ago
I’d say it’s less a matter of letting them go and more a matter of a faulty trap. A WoW player who wants to play WoW will be caught by WoW, not a game that wants to be WoW.
about 11 months ago
On the subject of WoW, I’m increasingly thinking that what bothered me so much about that game was not so much that it aimed at the casual market, but instead that it turned every casual aspect of the game into a repetitious treadmill to achieve some further aim down the road. In other words, you had to do that raid, even though you had run through it a dozen times. Extremely successful as a business model, but not so much as an MMO.
On the other hand, I’m playing Dungeons & Dragons Online these days, now that it has gone semi-free, and I can see why it was mostly a failure as an MMO. The over-instancing of everything, and a rather bland game world where even the most epic quest lines, in the larger scheme of things, seem to have barely more importance than brushing your teeth. It never felt *massive* in any way. However, to quote a friend also playing it, it was the purest multiplayer experience he had seen in a long time, and at that level, the game is a success. Certainly the most fun I’ve obtained from any MMO in over a year.
about 11 months ago
It was a clever bait and switch, really. When a player first enters World of Warcraft, they’re given a very casual game. The first 40 or so levels are just this. However, such a game is doomed – it’s far too shallow, it won’t be a long-lasting success.
World of Warcraft then undergoes a sudden transformation to the same old EverQuest inspired grind (with ample DAOC RvR offerings) after level 40 or so because they’ve set the hook. The casual-friendliness as just the bait.
The Free 2 Play model really suits it, doesn’t it? DDO had more in common with Guild Wars than EverQuest. The gameplay wasn’t bad, but the “massive” wasn’t there.
about 11 months ago
At the same time, I’m not sure the F2P model will be successful in this case, as it has been implemented on an existing game rather than built into it from the start. So far, to be honest, I have seen no compelling argument to spend money on it.
Quite a coincidence that this has been brought up just before Mr. Jennings posted news of Dungeon Runners’ closure.
about 11 months ago
That’s true. But then, the Free2Play business model isn’t about getting you or me to spend any money on the game. It’s about seeing if they can entice in 100x more players to try it, because it’s free. If just 1 out of 100 players decide to subscribe to the game, they’re making as much money as if they were a regular subscription game.
Does making a game F2P really entice in that many more players? Maybe. Free Realms passed the 5 million mark just a few months after it’s release — granted, they had television commercials going for them. Maple Story has about four times the players as World of Warcraft, and I wouldn’t say it’s a superior game.