The CO Community & You

I originally latched onto CoH specifically for the superhero genre, having played other MMOs set in other genres before. Champions (PnP) was the second superheroic-themed RPG I played, after having cut my teeth with V&V, and those original characters first knew digital life in CoH.

When CO came out, I got on board early, figuring that my characters would be even more ideally suited to that game than this one, which was pretty much squelched after realizing that the PnP and the video game don't share much in common mechanically, although they do in spirit.

Now I'm in the process of giving CO another look, since I haven't played actively in over two years.

Generally, I don't see CO as better or worse, just different. There are some aspects I like, some I dislike. There have definitely been changes since my last visit, so I'm enjoying looking around and exploring the gameplay.

I played Champions back when it very first came out. Instability and horrrrrrrrrrrible balance issues drove me away from the game, but I've heard that that's changed over the years, so maybe I'll give it a try again, whether or not CoH survives.

Thank you for the support, folks.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

I reinstalled CO yesterday and tried to log in to my old old account, but it seems all is not well with the accounts system. Tried to link it to an equally old old Perfect World account, and now it just refuses to accept my password, even after resetting it.

Still waiting on their support folks to reply to me. I might have a loooooong wait.

I initially did not like the graphics at all (and I think I posted that here; sorry if I hurt your feelings, Lokikin) -- but this weekend someone told me I could turn the outlines off, so I gave it another shot and now have a level 15 Inferno. It does still feel weird to me, and I have no idea what I'm doing, but I did have fun and the community has been just amazing.

Good points about Champions Online:

Looks-wise, Club Caprice blows Pocket D out of the water.

The Powerhouse is a great idea.

A green screen room in the tailors at the Powerhouse? It gets a thumbs up from me.


I bought a game box for £2 to use the code in there for 30 days of gold subscription so I can try something other than the Archetypes out.

Here's a post I've made on the CO forums that I'm crossposting back over here.

This is simply concerning the Graphics and Design issues.

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I've been a COH player of 8 years and a CO player off and on since it's launch.

It is both fair and unfair to compare the two.

Let me illustrate what I think are some strengths and weaknesses of both.

TECHNICAL:

In terms of engine. In terms of graphics - I think there's no question that Champions is the more advanced. The textures and the way it renders things is smoother and more detailed. It is very pretty. City of Heroes has been doing AMAZING things with an engine 3 times as old, no doubt. But there are limits. The actual polygon counts are lower and the effects aren't as detailed in some cases.

Mind you - this is on the HIGH END settings where the comparison is made.

You drop Champions graphics down to it's lower end, and it quickly loses a LOT of it's shininess. City of Heroes retains most of its detail and look down to less optimal settings than Champions does.

In other words - drop down City of Heroes from "Ultra Mode" graphics down to "Performance" mode and you will see less difference in the world and characters than you will in Champions.

To get the most out of Champions, graphically, you really do need to run it at maximum settings more than you do City of Heroes. City of Heroes still looks like itself at lower settings. Champions starts to look very "unfinished" at lower settings.

This may be why some COH players think Champions isn't as pretty. You may have more COH players who are still running on older machines who CAN'T run Champions at a setting where it really shines. But their older machines were able to render COH at levels where the graphics - if not ultra - were still looking pretty darn decent.

Or - to use an analogy. Take two nearsighted people. Me and my friend Dave. I represent COH and Dave represents CO. I'm nearsighted, but not nearly so much as Dave. But Dave has a better more up-to-date prescription, where I have let mine lapse a few years. So my eyesight is slightly fuzzier even with the glasses than Dave's are with his.

But when I take off my glasses, I can still see reasonably well. When Dave takes off his, he's at a disadvantage.

Put our glasses on and Dave sees the world more clearly than I do.

That's COH and CO in the graphics in a strict technical sense.

Design-wise, in terms of characters, people say CoH is more "realistic" than CO. Now that's not really fair. NEITHER are realistic AT ALL.

Now it's true that Champions characters are inherently more "cartoony" than COH characters are. That was by design after all. Turn off the outlining and a lot of this drops away. But it does still tend to lean more towards a look reminiscent of "The Incredibles" than, say - Jim Lee or George Perez. With proportion tweaking, you can alleviate that. But that's where the basic templates begin.

Character creators.

I've been playing both for a long time. I really can't tell you which has more options. Which seems more versatile. They each do things that the other does not. They each have strengths and weaknesses.

In terms of tights designs and things that have a more traditional "skin tight" or fabric look. I'd say City of Heroes is undoubtedly more robust and has more options.

But in terms of layered looks and armor pieces, I'd say Champions has it beat.

It is far easier to create a robotic looking character that looks unique in Champions than it is in City of Heroes. The tier 9 mecha costume parts in COH closed that gap a lot. But most people wouldn't have access to that.

Mecha and power armor characters honestly look more like they have METAL in them in Champions than COH does. Also the ability to choose textures in Champions outstrips that of COH.

Capes look better and flutter better in COH than CO does. Hands down. Sorry. But I don't make many characters with capes in CO compared to COH.

First, I want to thank the people from the CO community who have extended their warm welcome to CoX players.

Secondly, I played CO for several hours last night to get some basic first impressions. Note: I'm entirely willing to accept that some problems may have been due to user error. I tried my best to figure things out and set the game up correctly, but maybe I missed some configuration options. For now, though, I'll note what I found. Onward...

1. My experience so far with the CO community has been pretty positive. There were some people being very negative about 'refugees' in Zone chat, and one person who blamed a failed mission on me being from CoX (that was definitely not the problem), but most people were friendly.

2. As in the past, I ended up finding the combat mechanic entertaining. It feels more similar to playing an arcade game to me, and I thought that was pretty cool.

3. I'm less of a fan of the aesthetics than I was the first time around. Maybe it's just that CoX looks better now than it used to. Faces, in particular, I think are the major problem. "Vaguely bloaty snake descendant" is how I might describe the female facial geometry. Seriously, necks are absurdly long in CO. Since there isn't a lot of control over many aspects which tend to help visually individuate faces, everyone looks like a subtle to not-so-subtle variant of everyone else to me. I found that peculiar, considering that CoXers share faces and a handful seem to dominate selection, but it stuck out to me in CO.

4. The UI is better than it used to be, but still pretty underdeveloped. I was shocked to see that, when I right click on someone to get info, it still says InvalidUserName and I have to click on them, then point the cursor to the status module above, and get info that way. There were other bits and pieces that were just surprisingly clunky for a game that has been around this long now. The way that you acquire and dispense with missions, and navigate to missions, is also exceptionally cumbersome to me. They really need a solid visual cue for the location of your waypoint that works like CoX.

5. As far as I can tell, costume pieces are effectively unbelievably expensive compared to CoX if you are just trying to mix-and-match from different sets. It appears as though you have to purchase entire sets even if you want one piece; most of the ones I saw were 475 Zen, or $4.75. Considering the sheer mass of pieces that are behind the paywall (even for Gold accounts), I'm more than a little disappointed.

6. Despite the costume creator gripe, I did find I could make some pretty snappy outfits with the pieces that were available and I liked some of the points of differentiation from CoX.

7. The voice acting and scripting is absurdly cheesy. Defender chews the scenery like he's trying to fatten up for the long winter and we haven't got time to lose. It's so over the top it seems like it's intentional, but I have to wonder why someone would do it.

8. Power availability feels both more and less diverse than CoX. The defense mechanic takes some getting used to and tends to make things feel a little more one-note compared to CoX in terms of gameplay. However, that maybe just takes some getting used to. More concerning is that, while there are several sets of different types, the variety on the melee side in particular feels lacking. There isn't really anything like the Claws set, for example. However, some aspects of the powersets are appealing so far so maybe I'll just give it time. I like the tap/charge mechanic, and how that interacts with various sets.

9. General critique - The game is a lot less polished than CoX, and some of the QoL stuff we take for granted in CoX is outright missing in CO. To be honest, the state of development on some core features of the game makes me concerned about Cryptic's commitment to it. It also feels like it's going to end up being a more expensive game, with RMT ("Zen") seeming to factor in more conspicuously into customization and character development (unless you grind a lot) than it ever did for me in CoX. I'm still trying to figure out what's going on with that latter part since the gear system is pretty opaque to me at the moment. So far though, the pay-to-play element feels more overt.

10. Overall - For me, this is a fun game with some fun people on it, and I think it's worth trying. It's definitely not like playing CoX and I don't think it really serves as a replacement if you're looking for something CoX-like. So, it would take a lot of adjustment. However, I had a great time playing and I think it still felt like a superhero-oriented affair, though a very different one from CoX. I think the game would benefit tremendously from the kind of boost in development that CoX saw in its later years, though it doesn't seem like people are anticipating that sort of thing so far. Particularly if CO sees a boost in development, I think it has considerable potential. I do hope they fix the voice acting/scripting...sheesh.

Unrelated: Nethergoat - I am finding CO runs, generally, smoother for me than CoX as well (both at mostly maxxed out settings). Have you tried different drivers? If you have a lower-end video card, or especially an older video card, sometimes older driversets provide better performance than the newer ones (at least that's been my experience).

Tried CO the other night and just can't get into it , im sure some people must love it but I think im just walking away from superheroes after CoX turns off the lights , I've been rather enjoying my time on TSW (The Secret World ) though even as buggy as it is .

I d/l'd DCUO and am playing that for the first time since the beta. Ooough, grinding solos and duos for currency tokens to buy iconic powerarmor suits since the community doesn't want to float n00bs with weak combat rating...blurgh. It makes me miss having a whole ton of varied costume and appearance options...and a chat interface that doesn't suck...

Champions was CoH 0.5--it was like a downgrade from CoX.

Well I don't hate Co just wish there game play was better, it's getting there. I played Dc and Co and still they can't live up to what Coh is.

Some people can't give the RP life and others can't give up there Cape, So they going to play Co and DC once Coh goes away.

Lol co..