behind-the-mask
Latest
Behind the Mask: It's all about the DPS, baby
There is a lot of pressure on me right now to write a review for the May 4th melee patch, but I want to delay it because the developers are already tweaking things. So instead of hearing a rant about how sad I am that Psi Lash is nerfed, I will talk about the toughest, most challenging role in Champions Online -- the Avenger. The Avenger is the "glass cannon" of CO. Avengers have fewer hit points than their Guardian counterparts, and far less than the tank-like Protectors. Avengers cannot use defensive passives, or even support passives to increase their survivability. The last straw is that Avengers cannot heal as rapidly as other characters. These tradeoffs come at a massive benefit: the Avenger deals far more damage than other characters. What's even more awesome is that the Avenger's role bonus multiplies on the effects of other damage buffs, meaning that extra 20% damage never goes out of style. This guide won't be covering just the Avenger, though. It'll also cover Avenger's new cousin, the Brawler, as well as all the other ways to play a DPS machine in lairs and team content.
Behind the Mask: I lost my best friend to Gigabolt
Powers in Champions Online vary widely in the eyes of the playerbase. Some powers, like Mind Lock and Arcane Vitality, remain mostly unknown, while other powers, like Regeneration and Haymaker, take center stage. Sometimes this reputation is due to a present or former imbalance like Collective Will, and sometimes it's due to an unknown combination of factors, like Roomsweeper (probably because Might is the most played powerset in the game). And sometimes, like in the case of Gigabolt, it might just be something else. Powers are balanced in CO according to a variety of mathematical factors, such as activation time, range, energy cost, and damage dealt. But the devs also try to have their powers balanced around another factor: Fun. On a 1-10 scale, most powers in Champions hover around a 3-4 on the fun scale, with the standout powers pushing up to a 5-6 and possibly as high as 7 or even 8 for good synergies between several powers. When a power gets too fun, like the Incisive Wit advantage for Kinetic Darts, the devs make sure to issue a patch to fix the imbalance. Except for Gigabolt.
Behind the Mask: The Ironman Challenge
Back in the ancient days before real mainstream gaming, there was a dearth of good titles to play. It was a cultural phenomenon at that time to extend gameplay for the few good games that existed by creating emergent challenges for themselves. This is where the concept for the speedrun came about, although the speedrun changed dramatically after that time into something very unique. Still, gamers have been artificially injecting challenge into games ever since the '80s. A game like Champions Online has a fair number of factors, including a smaller endgame and a lower overall difficulty level, that make it ripe for injecting some artificial challenge.
Behind the Mask: The best kind of loot
Loot feels like a controversial thing in Champions Online. It's an odd feeling to have your character's super strength be powered by Qularr Mutagens or an ARGENT Dimensional Shunt. It's not strange to see a fantasy character loaded down with epic gear, but when a mutant superhero gains a majority of his attributes from magic headbands, tech wristbands, and radiation-emitting devices rather than his own superpowers, it sort of makes him feel a little less super. From my experience with the roleplaying community, most players ignore gear from an IC perspective because it just doesn't make sense. Personally, I have mixed feelings on gear. I like having things to do in the late game, and while grinding Nemesis merits for top level gear is a chore, at least it gives some sort of incentive to do things in the end game besides roll alts. Without the promise of character advancement of some kind or another, it's hard to convince players to keep playing their favorite characters. On the other hand, gear creates imbalance between players. As a PvP type of player, I like it when everyone has a fair shot. The one thing that most people can agree on about CO is that the gear system is downright confusing. Most people just pick the items that give them the most points in their superstats and move happily along. Even though I have a fairly in-depth understanding on how the gear system works, distilling it into an easily digestible form is no easy task. Hit the jump and you'll see what I mean.
Behind the Mask: The Melee Conspiracy
The controversy never seems to end in Champions Online. The big changes to the Might, Martial Arts, and Supernatural frameworks went live last weekend, and people just can't stop talking about them. There's also been some general changes to melee outside of those frameworks as well. As one might imagine just by a cursory glance at those threads, the forums are quite abuzz with opinions on these changes. There is quite a bit of positive things to be said about the changes, but the overwhelming feeling one gets from reading the forums is that the changes are horrible. Everyone has something they don't like about them, myself included. Still, we can't help but wonder: is it a step in the right direction? Is the doomsaying as bad as people make it out to be? Hit the jump, and we'll look at things from a different avenue.
Behind the Mask: Finding the Holy Trinity
One of the common statements made among the newer MMO generation is the idea that a game "abolishes the holy trinity." It's the idea that their game has evolved to the point where labels like "tank," healer," and "damage dealer" aren't as relevant when talking about a character. This idea isn't particularly new -- the first big RPG with mass online support to break this trend was probably Diablo 2, which actually predates most of the mass-market MMORPGs available today. Champions Online definitely takes a step in this direction. In fact, it was a suggestion on the forums and the overwhelming player response against the holy trinity that gave me the idea to write this in the first place. Champions is very solo-friendly, and a character can build to be pretty self-sufficient -- one can build for tanking, damage dealing, and self-healing all in the same package. This lends some pretty big weights to the idea that the holy trinity is a thing of the past. But Champions Online has a few things in its design that maintain the "Holy Trinity" design concept. Hit the jump, and I'll talk about why, contrary to popular belief, I think that keeping the holy trinity around is a good thing.
Behind the Mask: A community guide to Champions Online
Behind the Mask is the new Massively column devoted to everything you might want to know about Champions Online. Fortunately for Massively readers, the guys at UNITY have given me the go-ahead to declassify my stories as a super-powered operative. As a result, we'll be giving you the down and dirty facts that you'll need to make it in the superhero world, as well as bits of news you won't hear anywhere else. Behind the Mask will cover issues related to life in Millennium City as well as detailed info about criminal hotspots around the globe. Our first column will be a community resource for Champions Online. While there were a fair number of community sites at launch, most of them have suffered from a lack of new content in recent months. The ones that continue to be updated are the best of the best -- ranging from community hubs for roleplayers to detailed info on the game's many missions. If there's one thing to be said about the fans of Champions, it's that they are devoted to their game and eager to put out new content for it.
CoH's City Scoop drops player written news
One of Paragon City's best-kept open secrets is that its heroes - everyday people who put on their spandex and weapon harnesses just the same as you and me -- are pretty incredible folks, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the pages of the City of Heroes player-written City Scoop.What do we like most about the Scoop? It's not just the consistently high quality of the writing, the in-depth retrospectives of the individuals Behind the Mask, or the artwork, but it's all of those elements combined with the passion put into it by the people behind the project. The pages show that real thought is put into layout and leading, that each person cares about the final product, and that everyone wants to make -- and succeeds in making -- the Scoop fun to read.
