The CO Community & You

r/e costume creator:

My extreme discontent with the options available to a new player have been assuaged by getting above whatever pointless level requirement they imposed on the 'full' tailor. Checked the tailor with Earth 2 Goat last night (he's level 8 now I think) and found all the options necessary to re-create him. Now he looks great.

From running around the game a few days CO's costume strengths are mech/power armor types and non-humans. I really dislike how straight up human superheroes turn out, but it has some really nice options for robots, animals, demons, etc.

I've played CO off and on over the past few years (I was actually in the F&F alpha; a friend of mine has a t-shirt won during that), and will probably step back in to check it out again soon since they were right in the early stages of a shift to the specialization trees when I got tired of playing this last time. That was, incidentally, to go check out Tera for a while; yet another wonderful example of a good idea that just didn't work out as well as it should have.

I don't consider it a bad game or anything, but I've never found it nearly as solid as CoX. It starts off with a more technically-advanced costume creator... then proceeded to give me nowhere near the variety of items as CoX does, even with a multitude of costume packs. It does do layering very well, however; I made some really neat-looking armors in the game by tossing things on top of one another. Body shapes are more varied, but the default "human" look is... well, it apparently defaults to Mr. Fantastic. Shortening arms, shrinking hands and lengthening legs is usually the first thing I have to do for any character.

Combat is interesting, in a way, with enemies dropping what basically amount to immediate-use inspirations. I was not too terribly fond of the equipment system (or crafting!) but it's gotten less broken over time. Unlike CoX, where I have a variety of attacks I cycle depending on recharge and available endurance-- or basically just recharge if I've built my character to my tastes at incarnate levels-- CO always seemed to be about finding two to three specific attacks and *breaking them like it was my job*. Of course, some came pre-broken, which made that part easy. Some characters had to use their basic attacks, others... well, I don't know if it's still possible, but I had a character who mostly used two attacks against almost any spawn: a targeting, following-with-perk beam from the sky, and a charge, massive damage line of electricity. I didn't use basic attacks; I didn't need them. I could recharge using another single-target damaging attack if I wanted. That was my biggest problem with it; while it was fun, it always felt a little less interesting that I was basically trying to make a couple of really important attack picks then figure out what all else I would be taking to make that character as survivable as possible.

Also, teaming was non-existent as others have mentioned. There's no reason to for most of the game. You could build a character capable of soloing the hardest modes of certain instances while leveling because how brutally powerful layering defenses was. I'm unaware of how possible this is under the new system.

Additionally, I found myself wishing I could turn off the talking animations in cutscenes. It reminded me of Mr. Ed. I ended up making most of my characters either robots or covering their faces or making them somewhat horrific to avoid how unappealing most faces were in the game.

Teleport is probably my favorite power in the game though, even if people have off and on considered it broken. I just wish I didn't have to waste already-scarce points on speeding up travel powers in general. Also the animation for flight looks painfully wooden.

I'm also not sure why all of the 28-35 content feels about as interesting as punching myself in the face, either; content up to that point isn't bad, and the Vibora Bay crisis is *great*, but I think I was sick of Monster Island and Lemuria within the first five minutes of either.

Will be honest if I play it will be to follow you guys - the game is very clunkly - however I do like the RPG so I was a bit disappointed may have to give it a go again.

First and foremost...thanks to the community there for the offer of acceptance. And yes....they're serious about it. I've made a character there.

However...the graphics look like 80yearoldass. And pretty much all the costume options are direct ripoffs from here. Which is to say a good thing...but when combined with those godawful graphics.....no.

Also...the tutorial....I must suckhairydonkeyballs because I cannot solo the last mission's bad guy. When everyone else seems to be able to.

Here...powersets galore. There....railroad "builds" with powers that -must- be taken or you've a gimped build.

For the most part....I can get past the graphics. And...if I want a superhero game..it's CO or the cesspool that is DCUO or Marvel's attempt.
No thanks.

So....bitter pill that it is, I'll take it. Until something else comes along.

The positive things I've heard about CO's community over the past week and a half have convinced me that, if I can't have my CoH, I will at least download CO and give it a whirl.

I'm not about to walk out the door voluntarily, though.

Some more help for you guys in the costume department.

I have put out a call on their costume thread for help in making proportional templates that more closely match the classic COH basic figures ( Male / Female / Huge ).

I've got some responses saying they'll be working on it. But in the meantime, someone reposted some already made templates that were made a few months ago.

OK, before we continue, I need to explain something about how the CO CC saves costumes.

It does not save it as a text file like COH does. Instead, it saves it as an actual PICTURE in Jpeg format with the costume info "baked" into the code. And then this image is saved in the screenshot folder where your regular screenshots go to.

In order to use the templates, you need to download the picture in the link, then go to:

(Wherever your Champions Online folder is - Mine is in the Steam folder)

-----Champions Online
----------live
---------------screenshots

And dump the picture into that folder.

Then start your game. Go to the costume creator, and at the bottom, you'll see a button marked "LOAD" and one marked "SAVE" (similar to ours).

Click "LOAD" and look for the name of the template in the menu. Click on it and bring it into the main viewer.

Voila! Now you have a pre-made proportional template that you can modify!

Here's the links in question:

Templates

Yeah. BLOCK. Which.....I'm still going WTF about. It's like.....they wanted to make it as different as they could and harder!!

Also...I've noticed that just about every costume piece is a direct port from here. They've got -celestial armor- pieces, for crapton's sake!!

Oh. And just passed by a billboard earlier that could've come STRAIGHT from this game except the name "Chris Jenkins" isn't on it.

It's a shoddy copy.....but...it might very well be all there is for a long time.