Champions Online: just doesn't cut it.

Well she has made some remarks that did seem to tear into CO (GG that is).

Actually quite a bit of remarks.

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!

The forum community has their heads up their ***** and are quite hostile when it comes to villains (the desire for a redside, roleplaying as one or seeking other like-minded players). Some going so far as to say "If you want to be a villain so bad, go play CoH... oh wait you can't lol"

In-game, people don't seem to care much either way.

I recently defeated a whole room of enemies by blocking.

And while blocking can be essential, it's generally an intermittent thing rather than a constant thing.

Luckily, you don't have to go through the tutorial repeatedly. That fight didn't used to be so rough, but since they took equipment out of the tutorial that fight just got downright mean. "Skip Tutorial" became my new best friend.

Reminds me of when I wandered into the pit of the Hollows and suddenly got dogpiled by animated bits of rock and lava.

It does a lot less when you don't have a Block power. And some of those do more than others.

Incidentally, while in the Powerhouse did you complete the mission (by choosing a primary Super Stat) with the Head Trainer and get (and equip) your starting gear? I didn't get it when I went through the Tutorial again for the first time and I've found it makes a big difference. Unfortunately, the mission seems more obvious when you skip the tutorial and get immediately placed in the Powerhouse with that mission already accepted.

New players could try looking. That's what I do when I'm new to a game - explore the options. When I get to select a power for the first time past character creation I notice there are tabs on the top of the power selection window with various icons, and clicking them opens up a string of other icons. I see there is a "Filter" option for the powers and that I can have it show me "unavailable" powers. I notice that clicking on a power gives me a description of what it does (with an option to open an advanced description) and when I click on a greyed out power it tells me what I need to have before I can select it.

During character creation one can open up a complete list of powers for each of the Archetypes, too. I think each of the powers listed has a brief tooltip description of what it does, but I don't exactly recall.

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Thanks for advice Dr Harmony, it is nice to hear from you again since our last trip to Shadow Shard.
I would give your suggestions a try and see where that takes me. And if that toon works out and the game is fun to play I may try to port over my other 23 characters from COX.

Still... I wish CO adopted an Archtype system similar to COX as it certainly makes things easier to grasp. Blaster = range DPS, Tanks = well..tanks, Scrapper = melee dps and etc etc...
One more question though. How does CO handle falling from a great height? I know toons in COX take alot of damage if they fall from great height but they would not die from it. Does that work different in CO? I like the idea of KB punting baddies off a cliff/skyscraper and seeing them fall to death.

That's okay, my main hero Destructeon was a Invulnability/Super Strength/Energy Mastery Tanker with Flight and Super Speed. I think it's pretty obvious he was inspired by that guy with the cousin. When I port him over to CO after the servers here go dark, he'll finally have super breath too like he's supposed to.

Honestly I don't remember names that well. I'm not infuriated with anyone.
I guess I'm sorry for being snippy with you, but the experience you were communicating really struck me as probably not true since my own has been so vastly different. I did join the cox channel as soon as I got there, and that could be a lot of why my experience has been so different than yours.
I was being condescending because you were being combative and insulting.
Yeah, alright.

That darned Canada clone problem has been happening off and on since around launch.

And there was an underwater event mission thing, centered around the wreck of a giant submarine IIRC, that often bugged out and couldn't be completed.

Mind you, I've never played an MMO that wasn't plagued with some manner of bugs, but when they happen in ChO they *do* seem to be rather glaring.

Apologist is such a pejorative term. How about "people who enjoy CO?"

I remember the clone mission being bugged in beta. I think I annoyed someone when I commented it was broken that way in beta. Broken missions frustrate me more than anything in CO.

Hi. PM'd you my global in CO.

Knockback does do damage to bad guys when they land. I'd opften punt someone over the horizon with Roomsweeper (a superstrength punch) and get an Xp notification and they wouldn't come running back.
I find knockback has a bit more joyful abandon in CO is that you're typically only facing a handful of enemies, so theres less stress about splitting up a group with knockback.

The closest equivalent to CoH archetypes really is your role and slotted passive I guess. If you choose a defensive slotted passive, you can go Tank role and pick up more hit points on top of your Regen/Force Field/ whatever.
If you pick up an offensive passive you can go Melee Damage or Ranged Damage role for extra damage and so on.

Of course, its trickier because you can have different builds on the same character at higher levels, and switch between them on the fly. I havent tried that out yet.

People don't do that anymore, in general. In games and in real life.

It's kinda sad, actually. If it's not shoved right in their faces with blinky arrows they don't seem to see it. Even if it's really right in front of them. They need to be hand-held through the learning process like children. I weep for the future.



-np

... okay?

I understand this conceptually, but I simply can't apply the mechanic of blocking intermittently. If I'm not blocking when my opponent attacks, I take a lot of damage.

Yeah, I was ecstatic when I found out I could skip the tutorial and hit level 6 with no fuss after completing it once. I promise you that if I'd had to fight Black Talon and his Bullsh*t Artillery™ every time I wanted an alt I'd have A) only made one character and B) quit.

Yes, but those were level 10-12's versus level 5-8's. Getting buttstomped by something ten levels your senior in any game is never fun, but it seems especially painful in CO since there's really no 'barrier' between the level ranges in Canada. Directly outside of the Canadian Wilderness base are level 16's. Further out are 22's. But if you go out of the CW base and hang a right and go 100 yards, bam, level 30+.

Chalk that up to another thing that irks me: Why are some blocks significantly better than other blocks? They're functionally the same power. I get that each 'flavor' of Block has its own special perks consistent with the theme of said Block, but you can get more mileage out of a few Block powers than you can the rest of them, and that doesn't sit right with me since they should all be doing the same thing. If you buy a car for $15,000 and find out there's a car with better horsepower and better fuel economy for the exact same price from the same manufacturer, I'd feel gypped and confused.

This is honestly solid advice, but even when you look at the detailed information of powers you don't know what's going to suck. I thought some powers from Unarmed would be powerful from the hard numbers and description-- wrong. I thought some powers from Force would be helpful in my survivability-- wrong. I'm still getting used to the CO forums so I'm not quite settled in enough to hunt down all the info I need, but the trial and error of picking powers in the Powerhouse and hoping they're useful outside is a big turnoff.

I really hope you browse by reading the files you manually download using the command line. (Even Lynx might be a bit too hypocritical).

UI (hopefully) advances. I weep for the future when UI regresses.

This is absurd, this is true for basically every game that ever existed including COH. Eg. Broadsword and Ninja Blade. There's always going to be skills better than other skills, other wise everything would be the same.

Broadsword was still usable though. It could still stand on its own and while NB was faster, the numbers were functionally the same when it came down to damage, debuffs,etc. Head Splitter and Golden Dragonfly did the same damage unenhanced, both were cone attacks, both had the same crit chance. NB was just faster. It wasn't marginally better and it came down to personal choice. Blocking in CO? Not so much.

Wut? They all do as advertised, which is block attacks. You're talking about side effects that give 1 an advantage over another, much like all the dps sets in COH. They all dps, some are just better than others eg. TW because of momentum

Eldritch Shield gives 300% Resist to all but Physical (250%)
Telekinetic Shield gives 300% to Physical, and 250% to all others
Electric Shield gives 200% Physical, 250% to all others
Energy Shield (Power Armor) gives 270% to all
Most other shields are 250% to all.

These shields are most certainly not created equal as far as hard numbers go, and some of the advantages they get are miles better than others.

More effects exist than the ones listed. Some linger even after you release the block button. The secondary effects are a factor.

I'm aware, and those Secondary effects are nice and varied-- some of them are more practical than others, though, and some of the purchased Advantages are significantly more desirable. Compare Energy Shield to Force Shield in purchased Advantages: Force gives a few seconds of block after you stop blocking. Energy gives block every time you attack. That's a pretty big difference, and it makes Energy WAY more practical.

IF... you are using melee attacks.

Which makes it very impractical for its own themed set, Power Armor, which is largely ranged attacks. Bizarre.