Also, this is coming from a large portion of the same people who made CoH, and they got the whole stable and smooth MMO thing down pretty well. They’ve have their rough patches, the occasional rubberbanding and lag during stuff like the invasions or a slow patch server, but crashing servers and mysteriously vanishing character data is something you wont find there. You’d think they would have taken whatever they learned there with them to Champions, but time and time again they manage to prove they’ve forgotten everything.

And no, they’re not new issues for a new MMO. And that’s the problem, MMO after MMO has come out buggy, full of holes, exploits, server issues and everything else in the way of technical problems, and MMO developers and/or their publishers don’t seem to even want to try and do a better job of ensuring a smooth launch. This is going to hurt in the long run, as more and more MMOs launch like this and less and less people are willing to put up with it, we’ll end up seeing more and more MMOs crash and burn out of the gate.

Really, it comes down to one of two things: Developers not knowing what the heck they are doing, or greed. In this case, Champions seems to have suffered from a combination of the two, and in all honestly if one or the other wouldn’t have not been an issue, it would have launched much smoother. Unfortunately, the Champions devs made a bunch of rookie mistakes, and the game was pushed out early, probably by Atari, and it’s lucky it’s servers are as stable as they are.

Balance and bug wise, on the other hand, not so much: The nerf bat didn’t’ stop swinging for a full month and a half, they still haven’t gotten around to buffing the powers that were under performing in the first place, and there are still dozens and dozens of bugs that were known about since beta (alpha if you believe some of the people on the forums) that haven’t been fixed yet. Really, if they would have just waited to launch till the Christmas season, and ran some full scaled closed beta testing followed by a longer period of open beta, they would have had a more solid launch and would have turned a bigger profit.

Thanks 4 taking the time 2 read & respond 2 the post…..

But… who are you to state that I did not play CoH at launch?

Were you monitoring the programs on my computer?

CO at the start is excellent, up to about level 20 I loved the game but then I realised there wasn’t really anything else. Up to 30 you have just three zones to explore and the difficulty of finding content will lead you to dispair. Replay value is nil as there is only enough content to play through once, you will do nothing different playing through again and cant explore anywhere new.

As for the powers there aren’t as many as people claim most are exactly the same only the animations change depending on your powerset. For example a fire attack does no more damage to an ice monster than an ice attack, no effect is taken into account for the type of attack this is bizarre and simplistic. Most powersets simply have an AoE that you spam to kill weaker enemies outright, your playstyle as a munitions expert is no different from your playstyle as a gadgeteet or an archer. likewise while there are many melee powersets you just spam one attack style no matter what weapon you are holding.

Also the ability to pick from more than one powerset is deeply flawed, PvP for a casual gamer is impossible as hardcores simply have PvP designed characters with powers from maybe half a dozen different skillsets. A normal person set up to play the actual game with a themed character cannot win in such a contest unless very very good or very very lucky. This means PvP is a barren wasteland at higher levels as the only people in there are people who have spent all their time levelling through PvP and have about 12 different powersets reflecting this. You will never voluntarily enter a PvP zone as a result as you know you simply cannot win.

The most annoying thing about this is, rather than acknowledge that maybe allowing people to pick and choose is causing abuses and a problems Cryptic keep nerfing the individual powers that are abused in PvP. This doesnt hurt the PvPers as they simply change to what is next best they only care about winning in PvP. The only person it hurts are those playing the actual game as they find with every few weeks their character are made weaker and weaker and so the game gets harder and harder. Some powersets cannot solo at all anymore and so to play the game at all one must compromise their character style and take on one of the overpowered powers simply to survive not because you want it.

When I say abuses what I mean is a shotgun weilding alien with dark sorcery attacks, a bicycle chain, a sonic bow and arrow, web grenades, regeneration powers from a demon and pyshic healing powers topped off by the abilty to teleport and a chainsaw. What i have just described is a normal build in PvP it makes no sense whatsoever but if you dont have it you are in for a headache.

In six months time if content is added and powers are developed/balanced a bit better then buy this game it will be excellent. If this hasn’t happened get it anyway but only expect to play it for a month, 2 tops before dropping in frustrated.

Just give us a god damn release date and stick to it. Or better yet why not just tell us its never going to happen and stop pulling on our dicks. The 360 thread in the forum was removed ..GASP.. and there is no information regarding the developement. Big mistake guys there are a lot more dedicated console players than PC these days and its moving in that direction. PC gaming is doing the slow die thing arcades did. Dying but twitching and still fighting for life..hahahaha

If the issues this game had at launch bothered you that much, you definitely would not have loved it.

The leveling from 1-50 in CoH within the same 3 mission maps doesn’t bother you – then by all means please go back and play ‘mission architect online’

Enjoy yourself!!

However, I do think they missed the mark on a couple of key principles of mmo games.

1. Players need to know their role. Class role or primary skill helps us know what our primary function is to the team. Champions allows us to choose the best of the best powers and allows us to customize our role… guess what. Unless your teaming with a regular group. We all choose a DPS build for soloing and most players never change from “balance” stance.

2. Teaming up is a KEY principle that should be fun in a MMO. Provide an incentive to teaming!! However, Champions has poor teaming mechanics. The LFG interface was pretty much non existent because teaming wasn’t required. No Voice. If missions aren’t designed to need a balanced team with Support / Healers /& Tanks then why even have the stance system.

3, The experience gain is too heavy on missions which makes it difficult to team up because it guaranteed that someone is getting screwed out of the optimal xp rate. As far I as knew the sidekick system allows a higher level player to move down, but you can’t upgrade a lower level player and play in zones outside your level? For example a lvl 10 toon can’t team up and go to Monster Island.

4. Balance. If the game is going to have PVP then it has to “try” to balance the powers. Otherwise, it causes too many issues. In my opinion they should have focused more on teaming and mid-high level raid content and not even bothered with PVP.

2cents and still xing my fingers

In the game the uniforms and bodies look a lot better because of the reflections and effects and so forth. And because they are bodies in motion and you aren’t zoomed in 20X looking up the nose.

I also usually run at least 2 mmo accounts at once to keep from getting bored with any particular game.

I have one now. It is Champions Online.

However, I will keep my subscription going for the simple reason of I have gone back to WoW 3 times since I officially quit and I just can’t do it again. Having lost my subscription I don’t even want to think about leveling to 70 again (I realize its 80 now). Champions can give me a short burst of fun for an hour or so, something that WoW could only achieve by PvP’ing and leveling (which is SOOOOOO BORING). Hell logging on and creating a character gives me great satisfaction especially when you want to just sit down and get some quick playtime in.

Champions Online can and I think will be better than CoH (if it already isn’t) it just needs some time. When Bill talks about responding to what the players request, for the most part is VERY important. Now all they need to do is give healers an incentive in PvP. Seems like dps gets way more of an experience and acclaim bonus.

Pardon my grammar and spelling, I just got off work and its 2:00 AM.

BEDTIME!

Seriously though if you have that high of expectations for MMO’s out of launch you should stay away from them altogether until the companies can get their shit together. Its just the way it is, take it or leave it.

I can’t say I have ever liked WoW, it was the worst of grinds and leveling was the most boring in that game than in any I’ve played. And I didn’t even pick up that piece of junk until after WOLK. WoW is a great game if you can’t afford a decent CPU to run a better game (IE every other MMO). I did enjoy Everquest 2 which I did not pick up until the ROK expansion.

I do realize most games will be lacking in terms of content at release. In honesty will probably cancel my subscription to this game even though I really want to support it and I think it has great potential, it is not worth $14.99/mo when I don’t even play it at the moment. The game is really lacking exciting events and zones. The Blood Moon event was horrible and possibly just as rushed as the release of the game. The event is centered around freeing 13 heroes who have no background or meaning, they all say essentially the same thing when you rescue them, you fight the same boss for every hero you rescue and the instance is almost exactly the same except for one variation. Couple that with the fact that the instance doesn’t even scale with your level so if you’re a level 30, you can basically just fly by all the trash mobs and go straight to the name. And you had to do the same instance, kill the same boss, and free the same hero (with a different name) 13 times. I was really disappointed in the event.

I hate missing out on any new content and testing new powers but the sub fee each month isn’t worth it for me. I have stayed optimistic about this game for a very long time really vouching for it and recommending it, but playing the game has really become a bit of a chore. I think anyone who leaves this game should definitely return like I plan to in a few months, but I don’t blame anyone for leaving right now as I don’t feel this is a finished game at the time either. Bugged quests and long patches are the least of my concern. I just want content and replay ability. Cryptic can expect me back in a few months to check out what improvements they’ve made, and I really hope they take this project seriously and do their best to perfect it. I wish my pockets were deep enough to keep supporting the game at this stage. That’s my two cents.