Champions Thoughts As I Near Level 40

[Kaos Arcanna]

1. If at all possible, get a Freeform Character. ATs are pretty limited. The flexibility of Freeform is one of the main sources of entertainment in the game to me.

2. Teaming is  needlessly complicated. On the one hand, everyone can get mish reward because the missions can be shared. On the other hand, I STILL don't know how to do someone else's missions without giving them the star.

3. Yes, tongue is firmly planted in cheek in a lot of the game. Personally, my own sense of humor is such I do get a chuckle out of it.

4. The graphics are deceptive. The engine can actually do a fair number of things COH couldn't. On the other hand, their animations ... walking and turning your character body is awkward at best. A NPC escort character actually walks faster than I do without using my travel power. Casual movements are clunky and awkward.

5. You have hands ... hands that can open and close. Eyes that can blink. You can even choose your own eye color.

6. I have been invited to PVP several times ... I ignore it. No one has said anything to me or if they have I haven't noticed.

7. The story-- and zones-- get better.

     A. There's an underwater zone!
     B. Monster Island has dinosaurs! A few LARGE dinosaurs and lots of raptors.
     C. Vibora Bay Crisis has a compelling story and the Champions Team does not treat me like an errand boy. (Defender even calls me "old friend" several times. :D)
     D. There are robot cowboys and dance hall girls! :D

8. Some of the travel powers are a lot of fun. Swinging on my ape character truly looks awesome. Teleportation in this game is great for traveling in a mission.

9. There are some nice people there. Even people who never played COH. :D

10. The tutorial is actually the worst part of the game IMO. Once you get past that, it's more fun. And I THINK that even FTP people only have to do it once.

[Omni-Nogard]

I wish i could get into CO so that Lifetime i bought way back when it started didn't go to waste, i got a Toon for each year and only one is cap level. Not saying the game is bad but it "feels" lifeless to me even if the chat is abuzz nonstop. Doing the Alerts which are way to short and little to none dose anyone say anything.

But i'll give the game another go when my new PC gets here, my current was only able to play CoH at a decent rate. (Aka No Drop in FPS unless in Events or ITF)

[dwturducken]

I bought a month of Gold, just to see what it was like, and I'll admit that some things are better, probably as intended. My impression of the tutorial is much the same as yours, but I have run it more than once to try out freeform builds before taking them out "into the wild." :)

The additional available travel powers are nice, and the swinging animation is cool, but the rocket boots animations are much more annoying than I thought they would be. I haven't decided, yet, if I want to respec or delete and rebuild, since that character is still under level 10.

It's not a replacement, but I agree that some things are done a little better. The fingers and eyes, though, does not mitigate the cartoonish look that everything has, and the movement takes a little getting used to.

Bottom line: I haven't made up my mind, yet, but I can tentatively see paying for this until Plan Z bears fruit or CoH comes back.

[corvus1970]

It's not a replacement, but I agree that some things are done a little better. The fingers and eyes, though, does not mitigate the cartoonish look that everything has, and the movement takes a little getting used to.

To me the addition of eye color adjustments and separate fingers doesn't overcome the fact that the faces are the same unless you mess around with the sliders.

[dwturducken]

Actually, now that you mention it, that's probably the only thing, visually, that WoW has over CO. :)

[Kistulot]

To me the addition of eye color adjustments and separate fingers doesn't overcome the fact that the faces are the same unless you mess around with the sliders.

Even if you do, most characters wont look very different. Sure in CoH we had fun things happen, like one of my SG seemingly now operating portal tech for Vanguard all over, or randomly meeting someone with your face, but it wasnt an every single toon has a 95% chance to resemble you heavily situation.

[JaguarX]

yeah I wish CO had more face options while keeping the slider thing. That would be awesome.

But I think three years in COX faces were pretty limited too especially compared to the bunch of later addition faces. But even now I wish COX had a bit more, and CO too, more options for ethnic faces. It seemed 90% of the faces were aimed at caucasians, with a couple of Asians, and one with standard African American features for each sex.

[sinister8088]

To me the addition of eye color adjustments and separate fingers doesn't overcome the fact that the faces are the same unless you mess around with the sliders.

To paraphrase NIN, "Every face is exactly the same."  That bugged me too.  Messing with the sliders helps, but not by much.  Star Trek Online has many races to help overcome the "sameness" problem (and a lot more sliders).  Champions, if you don't like the two faces (male/female), learn to love masks, hoods and helmets.

[Thunder Glove]

Don't forget — CoH had different faces and face sliders. Not quite as many as CO, but most of the same ones.

I hate speaking about CoH in the past tense.  I just played Champions for a couple of hours and it did nothing but frustrate me.  It was extremely jerky even when nothing was happening (I'd tap left or right and the camera would swing around 90 or more degrees).

It doesn't always do this, usually running much more smoothly, but I can't find any rhyme or reason for when it does.  It was not only the only program I had open, but it was the first program I opened after restarting the computer.  (And I have graphic settings turned all the way down all the time)

Then, fighting the game itself all the way, it took me a half-hour just to complete the one Smash alert I needed to finish an Alert Mission (Three Smashes; I also have missions for Three Bursts and APB, but I couldn't get any Bursts to show up at all, just Smash after Smash after Smash).  Yesterday I got a new defensive power (Inertial Dampening Field), but I seem to be somehow taking more damage than ever.

Got to create my first Nemesis, though, which was fun.  (My "main" is based loosely on Dr. Sivana; naturally, his Nemesis is based loosely on Captain Marvel, with his reptilian minions based on Hiss-Men)

Mostly, though, it's characters with powers that aren't as cool in practice as their description makes them sound (the opposite of how I felt in CoH), and gameplay that's just frustration and hectic missions with way-too-narrow a time limit (plus a mission where I have to collect 78 drops from random enemies) when I just want to relax and enjoy myself.

[Kaos Arcanna]

Champions isn't going to be for everyone.

And if you go in expecting COH or COH Part 2 you're going to be disappointed.

On the other hand, I am having enough fun to get a character to 40 there and I will play around with the other power sets.

The main thing it needs for me is more content. This character has gone through a good chunk of it already and I'm not sure there's that much replayability in a lot of it.

On the other hand, I'll actually wanting to cut down in how much time I game so that may be a good thing.  8)

[General Idiot]

On the other hand, I STILL don't know how to do someone else's missions without giving them the star.

I on the other hand, do know how to do that. And since I'm a generally cool guy, here's how: Hit L to open the mission window (Actually L opens the lore (Equivalent to CoH's souvenirs) window, but it's a different tab in the same window so it works) then, when you're on a team there'll be another tab at the top of there labelled team. In that tab, it'll show you all missions held by any member of your team. It'll even show you who has it, who doesn't, and who has the crossover version. More on crossovers in a moment. Anyway, you simply pick the mission and rightclick on it then go 'set primary' in the menu that comes up and it'll set the mission and automatically share it to all teammates. A little more convoluted than how CoH did it but it's there.

Anyway, crossovers. Eseentially, crossovers are what happens when someone shares a mission you're not eligible for - you've already done it, you're too low level, you haven't done a prereq mission, etc. They're the same mission, but they give less xp than the normal version of the mission. Also if the normal mission rewards an item (gear, recognition, loot box, etc.) the crossover version won't, just xp and resources at a reduced value.

[Kaos Arcanna]

Thank you for that mission, General! :D

[General Idiot]

You're welcome.