Champions Online: just doesn't cut it.

I'm not talking about running into buildings and such (troll much) I'm talking about how the characters look when the move. It's not as fluid as CoH. And the one uniform pose for flight looks silly. Just because I don't like the game doesn't mean I want to keep people from making it their choice game. Just stating my opinion. Like it or not CO won't measure up to everyone's standards. No amount of trolling (something I find very lacking about their community toward CoH players I might add) will change that viewpoint. And thank YOU for making it that much easier for me to uninstall it, again.

I've been playing CO a couple of days after black Friday and here's what I have to say about it:

The Pros:

-As mentioned before, the travel powers are a plus
-Freeform (create a hero with any mixture of powers you want (imagine a tank that uses blaster attacks)
-Canada at night (if you love Tron, youll understand it when you see it )

The Cons:

-Yea, teaming doesn't happen much (though us refuges need to make it common)
-It's sometimes hard to know if you pick up a mission that requires a team or not
-Bugs galore in the APs

Please remember that the first thing that everyone mentions is to turn off the outline on the characters. It does look a lot better with it off (I don't quite understand why a small change like that does make a huge improvement but it does).

Also remember (and we can't stress this enough), IT IS NOT COH!!!

I think COX is it's own animal and going to just about any MMO, especialy one that is super hero themed and expecting it to be like COX or play like it or do things like it is a setting up for failure as no game will measure up and be a clone of COX.

One thing I do like about CO though is that if you are talking to a contact npc, especially one that is "hero" they dont just stand there and let you get ya face smashed in. They actually react.

Defender--lol. yea, he is one goofy character and the tutorial I actually liked because it actually prepares you for what to expect when coming in contact with tougher opponents. I hate tutorials that is all easy, nigh waste of time, only to get in game and things are nowhere near in the same league of difficulty as the tutorial.

Black Talon is a challenge at firts but once you done it, he's fairly easy and simple to beat. Dont be too proud to block and move around is the main thing and if needed, by that time there should be a heal thing in the inventory.

Not sure how some people as they posted get choppy movements. CO plays smooth if not smoother and more fluid than COX. Did they try to check and adjust settings?

And the lack of teaming here is kind of a pro for me. It's nice being able to actually play just about the entire game and not worry about "peak time" or slow days, or if people are interested or just did it, or waiting for people and etc. Just log on and go. Wanna do an Alert and team, the que in the game actually works and not much wait time. Then if a perso nwant to team it's easy to do to. In COX, there are times where teaming takes way too long but progress cant be made towards the goal without a team. Spend more time forming a team then doing the actual event.

The main though is people have to realize that Champions Online is not COX and never will be nor any other game will be unless it is The one and only City of Heroes and or Villians.


Oh yea like the fact that the CO enemy actualy prefer to fight instead of seeing most of their backsides running for the hills like in COX.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!

ive never tried CO and dont plan to, from what i seen in screenshots, the graphics are just eye burning to me

and compared with all of the other stuff ive heard of it, i dont think i would ever like to play it either as it would just be the pale unloved stepchild of coh

I dusted this off over the last week (played it for one whole night when it launched). General thoughts:

1. It's not CoH. That doesn't make it unbearable. Given the choice I'd play CoH, but come December 1 that's probably not going to be possible, so I'm trying to judge this one on its own merits rather than comparing it to CoH. It can't live up to that just because we all have too much history invested.

2. Graphics are an eyesore on the defaults, but the two biggest things that can help are turning off the godawful outlining (which improves performance to boot), and spending time with the sliders in the character creator. Shorten up those Gumby arms, shrink the basketball head and the pie plate hands. Lengthening the legs a tick also gets closer to the CoH proportions we're used to. Remember to check out the face sliders and squint the eyes unless you're an anime fan.

3. Once you get used to the graphics, the fact that it's five years newer than the original CoH zones becomes apparent. The city architecture for instance - it FEELS like a city, or at least a comic book version of one. It feels much closer to Nova Praetoria than Steel Canyon.

4. The tutorial is longer than the "new" CoH one but there's a lot of the same feel - that you're being led around by the nose. Once you clear that and train up it's starting to feel more like the sandbox we're used to, though there does seem to be a shortage of contacts compared to the KR-Steel-Sky range. Again, a Praetoria feel.

5. The character creator is a bit counter-intuitive but there's some good stuff there. For some reason they retain the ancient CoH model (when did it go away - issue 3 maybe?) of having to scroll through an ENTIRE list with a mouse instead of giving us clickable arrows. And if you choose something, it resets to the top of the list which is annoying if you're fiddling around. The free to play costumes are a bit limited on the armors and wacky stuff, but there's a good selection if you're into spandex and capes. And considering where we're coming from...

6. The big one: The free to play archetypes are really, REALLY limited. If you want to play a scrapper you'd better like swords, for instance. The freeform ATs, and most of the flavor on the basic ones, are all behind the paywall.

Like I said, if City stays, I'm staying here. But at least at the low levels, it's not bad. A few of us tried running the first post-tutorial missions as a team the other night. It went surprisingly well in the sense that it passes the test of being decent interactive social media; giving your fingers and eyes something to do while you're chatting with friends. And personally I've always been more into the social aspects of gaming than min-maxing anyway. I'm not saying it's great. But I'm hoping it will be "good enough."

I think the biggest problem is the cognitive dissonance of trying to play it and thinking about CoH. I hear a sound effect, see a costume piece, or get a feel that is almost like City of... but not quite... and then comes flooding in all the flaws I see. Like many, graphics style is one of them (though turning the black lines help, it's still... not as good as CoH in my opinion).

Everyone in my SG felt it when we tried a few weeks back. We are pretty much decided not to settle into any one game again to keep from getting so attached (only f2p or purchase once to play options are the current goal). I'm sure we'll find a few to settle in to after Nov 30th.

Champions Online will most likely be one of them, but only after a long break after the close of CoH. Then maybe it won't be so much like "This isn't like CoH" rather than "This is how it's similar to CoH".

I have the feeling a lot of people are in the same boat, so I'm tossing it out there for consideration.

Wait a while before trying to jump in. It's only been up for what, 3 years compared to CoH's 8? Besides, who knows, some folks from Paragon will (and are- coughcoughBack Alley Brawlercoughcough and who knows who else) undoubtably going to find their way over (or back) to Cryptic. Here's to hoping they take what they learned from CoH and apply it to Champions.

I hope I'm right about that. Only time will tell.

I prefer the combat in ChO, and I find my characters feel more powerful there. The latter was not true at launch.

Overall, I prefer character/costume creation over here, though there are some nifty options nestled in ChO's obtuse UI. And we certainly get far more slots to make characters in by default over here.

And I like Superspeed and Teleport better in ChO, but I prefer Superjump over here. And Flight is about equal for me, though I do like that in ChO we can stand on a flying object and still use powers. But with all the extra travel options and the fact that they're not taking the place of a standard power selection I'd have to say ChO wins for me in Travel powers, too.

Back when Champions launched I chose to stay over here because of the character creation and the fact that my characters felt just as weak (if not weaker) over in ChO as here. Were the characters as sturdy in ChO now as then I probably would've stuck with ChO.

Don't the fairly successful games Borderlands and Borderlands 2 also use a cel-shader with outlines style? So somebody must like it or choose to ignore it.

Personal opinion, cell-shading sucks for immersion. It's dulls the perception of being part of the game.

I tried CO a few days ago for the second time played for about an hour but just could not get a feel for the game unlike CoH which is why I have played it for over 6 years,yesterday I spent 7 hours downloading the free trial of Secret World, unfortunately I played it for about an hour and because of the controls all I could think of was GW1.It would seem all that time playing CoH has spoilt me as I just cannot get a feel for either of these games looks like my MMO play ends when CoH does,so I will have to find something else to fill the time until someone brings out something that has the feel of CoH ,even if its not a super hero MMO.Good luck to all in your search for a new MMO home

My biggest problem is the lack of concept variety in CO powersets. I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating.

Let me use two of my CoH characters as examples. One is an Elec/Elec Blaster, the other is an Elec/Inv Brute. In CoH, they are entirely different characters with entirely different playstyles.

In CO, were I to try to recreate these characters, they'd be almost identical, because there's only one Electric powerset in CO. They'd have different Roles and different Passives, but they'd have the same attack powers.

And it's not just Electricity. In CoH, if you want to make, say, "a fire-based character", there's still lots of choices for powersets and playstyles (Fire Melee, Fire Armor, Fire Blast, Fire Manipulation, Fire Control, Fire Assault, and/or Thermal Radiation, plus the half-dozen fire-based Epic powersets, Flame/Fire/Blaze/Pyre/Heat mastery). In CO, if you want to make a fire-based character, you pick the Fire set, and that's it. You shoot fire.

Admittedly, what CO does better is not single-element themes, it's mixing and matching. If you want a character who shoots fire, lightning, and ice, while summoning support robots and stone golems, with Invulnerability as a defensive power, you can do that in CO. (The problem with mixing-and-matching, however, is that then you have to worry about which stats support what attacks, and a jack-of-all-trades with stats spread thin is weaker overall than a specialist with one really high Super Stat supporting all their skills)

My thoughts.
I only just started playing this game for a month or so, and the only reasons I am is

a) it is F2P after all, so why not.
b) I think its a good way to keep in touch with other CoH players, after all there is a CoX channel with over 600 members. plus I have played STO on and off for years, and the games talk with each other, good stuff there.

Its free, might as well try and make something work, even if its just a temporary thing until CoH V2.0 comes out and we all go over there instead.

I am the first to admit that CO... needs help, it does, now those who like it don't get all defensive, I am enjoying it so far!

The costume creator gets you by, first time I started playing it though I was told that you get more options once you get a character up to lvl 10. not sure if that is still the case or not. DO use those body sliders, omg, I think i'm too used to CoH in that reguard

With the graphics, just turning off the comic outlines and ramping the detail up to max made it very nice to look at, something my machine actually struggled with on CoH.

The power choices do seem limiting, but I haven't looked at doing free form or anything like that yet.

Travel powers are quite varied, they at least got teleport right, and during flight characters banked while turning (something we only saw on the issue 7 test server)

I will never never ever ever, like the blocking mechanic!!!
Gahh that is annoying. I created a behemoth just so I wouldn't have to put up with it as much.

Teaming is a little light, but I enjoy duo'ing with the misses. she helps keep my behemoth in check and she loves that her 'healer' also puts out a lot of damage

I understand how some people say the animations are off. I think they are a touch, my character using a leap (which is like statesmans flying punch where you zoom towards your target, fist first) but in melee range, caused the weirdest animation i've ever seen, it reminded me of one of the moves from the Double Dragon game. Oh, and Jumping on a female character.. wtf O.o its like, oh look at me, im a dainty little flower!! (I keep the travel power on continuously just to get rid of that )

I guess, think of it as CoH's younger sibling. its going to be an obnoxious but parts of it will aspire to be like its elder. It still needs time to mature.

I wish more people were clear on the distinction between "this is bad" and "I do not like this." CO is not a bad game (although it is definitely below its potential), but disliking it for not being CoH isn't a mark of quality, but preference.