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One full year of being a Champion
If you read about Champions Online in its first days, you would not have thought of it as a triple-A title. The game was full of bugs, the community management was not the best, and it just seemed like the devs were intent on shoveling out more broken stuff that barely worked. I think that, in particular, the first three or four months were the worst. If you were to go back in time and ask me about whether or not I thought CO would make it to its first anniversary, my response would have been: "Maybe, but it'll be bleeding subs if it even makes it that far." Since then, a lot of things have changed. I talked about the first six months of CO, but it's been a full year since that painful launch day patch. I'm not sure I'm even playing the same game anymore.
Behind the Mask: Two layers of toppings
"Microtransactions" is almost a taboo word in the MMO community. Everyone has a different opinion on it. Even here at Massively, our ideas on microtransactions vary widely. But perhaps even more frightening than the label of "F2P" is "double-dipping." Some games continue to charge a normal subscription, while still having some content featured as microtransactions. All of Cryptic Studios' current games support a double-dipping model, and Champions Online is no exception. A lot of players think this is a terrible, terrible thing. As a gamer, I understand that players want things to be free. I also understand that developers have to strike a real balance between content that's given for free and content that is sold as paid expansions or unlocked via microtransactions.
Play Champions Online for a week without paying a dime
How much of a game can you experience in a week? Do you think you could hit the level cap? Could you make a full army of alts? Could you make friends and have a reason to keep playing? As part of its anniversary celebration, Champions Online is inviting players to see what they can do with a week of unfettered access to the game. From September 1st to the 7th, anyone can register and play the game completely free, whether or not the player has purchased the game in the past. All that players have to do to take part is sign up on the official page, which means registering an account if you haven't done so previously. Then, for the whole of that week, you'll be able to access everything in the game as if you were a normal subscriber. To sweeten the deal for existing players, there will also be a promotion running in the C-Store, with nearly everything at a 20% discount. It's hard to say no to a free week of a game, so if your interest is piqued, sign up for a free week's worth of Champions Online now.
Behind the Mask: The keyboard is mightier than the text bubble
In roleplaying, everyone has his own preferences. Some people like simple, character-to-character interactions without a lot of heavy plot. Others love in-depth storylines and lots of character drama. One of the most heated preferences in roleplaying, however, is the way that characters should resolve conflict. Roleplaying is strange in that player characters get into fights about 3000 times more often than people do in real life. I'm a former US Marine, and I've been in less than a half dozen fights (including the kind involving guns) since I turned 18. On the other hand, my roleplaying characters tend to get into serious, earth-shattering battles involving guns, high-voltage electricity and psychic strangulation powers on an almost-weekly basis. Because I play Champions Online, this should be sort of an oddity. There are no playable villain characters in CO, so most characters should be do-gooding champions of love and justice. Even in comics, we rarely see heroes go up against other heroes except in strange circumstances. Isn't it a little odd that heroes would beat the heck out of each other all the time for no real reason?
Champions Online unveils plans to celebrate one year since launch
While it was discussed in passing with the last State of the Game address, it's well worth reiterating that Champions Online is going to be a year old in September. With the uncomfortable number of games who've fallen on hard times over the past year, it's well worth celebrating an anniversary in style. And Cryptic Studios plans to do precisely that, with their recently-unveiled anniversary plans running from August 27th to September 6th for all of the game's players. During the duration of the celebration, the Renaissance Center area will be decked out in all the celebratory finery, complete with contact NPCs wandering about. These NPCs will offer characters one gift per day, with more gifts available from defeating enemies in certain areas. Each gift works as a useful consumable item, and on top of those gifts there are new perks to collect and special anniversary costume pieces to collect. Champions Online players should take a look at the full rundown of events and take part in the near future.
Champions Online looks to its one-year anniversary and beyond
It might be hard to believe at times, but it's true: on September 1st, Champions Online will hit the one-year mark. The development team has been fairly quiet of late, but judging by the latest State of the Game address, it's just been focusing on several updates and improvements. The Summer Update, with several new costume pieces, bug fixes, and visual treats, is scheduled to go live on Monday, but there are even better things coming around the bend, including the game's second adventure pack. Dubbed the Demonflame and aimed at a late September release, the newest adventure is meant to incorporate several pieces of feedback from the Serpent Lantern adventure. The goal is to make the adventure less repetitive and easier to follow from point to point for all players. Beyond that, the team has a long list of issues they're looking into and planning to work on, starting with pet improvements and stretching to scaling instances and better difficulty slider integration. Champions Online fans should take a look at the full update, and while the first year has had ups and downs, the future seems to be on the upswing. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for our one one-year retrospective of the game around the anniversary, which should be coming right around the first of the month. [Thanks Clinton and Faryon for the tip!]
Behind the Mask: Play nice with others
If there's one thing everyone here at Massively enjoys, it's playing MMORPGs with other people. Teaming with people makes almost anything fun. I have friends who play EVE who somehow claim that even mining can be fun, if done with friends. Unfortunately, Champions Online has a big problem with team play. It's hard for a team to share objectives, and the rewards for teaming are otherwise horrible. It feels a bit like World of Warcraft, yet much worse. WoW has real incentive to get into teams and run instances at the lower levels, and although many of these dungeons are skippable, WoW's focus on loot advancement encourages players to team up and get the best stuff they can use at any given level. This is just not true for CO. Many players just skip lairs entirely, even though lairs give great rewards. There are no "random missions" like there are in City of Heroes, either. Still, lairs are fun, because you get to play with other people.
Behind the Mask: Focusing on characteristics
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I wrote an article about Champions Online's gear mechanics. That article kind of assumes a few things about how much you know about stats. Unfortunately, it doesn't go into great detail about what exactly stats do, or what are the best choices for your character. In other articles, I've made suggestions such as "stick with your passive" and "get END, REC, and CON, because they're good." Admittedly, there will be some of that here too. However, the focus this week will be on the best ways to make use of other stats, particularly STR, DEX, EGO, and PRE. I'll try to keep things simple. You don't need a lecture on exactly how Enrage works to know it makes STR a good stat. If you're having trouble with the stat system and the previous article on loot, this is your lucky day.
Behind the Mask: First look at pet update
Two weeks ago, we looked at some basic needed changes for Champions Online's pet masters. The first pet patch has finally hit the test server, and quite a bit of what was suggested happened. My prediction that the devs would do something completely different and strange has held true, and anyone familiar with most of the previous pet powers is likely to be thrown for a loop. In this issue of Behind the Mask, we take a look at the new face of pets, including their new energy and rank up mechanics. All of the stuff thus far is in a wide state of flux, so while I will make little comments on where the balance is right now, we can expect that to change quite a bit in the coming weeks.
Shannon Posniewski on the development of Champions Online's first adventure pack
It's been a quiet couple of weeks for Champions Online -- at least, from the news side of things. Players have had plenty to do in the form of the recent Serpent Lantern adventure, offering an experience for players of nearly any level and any group size. Shannon Posniewski sat down for a recent interview in which he detailed some of the work that went into the adventure pack, from the challenges in design to the lessons learned. The overhaul of the perks system and the changes made to VIPER are both cited as elements that the development team was working on without the adventure pack, both of which dovetailed nicely with the new content. Posniewski describes the biggest hurdle as the scaling issues, however, which doesn't simply translate to adding more hit points to higher-level enemies. It's part of what contributes to the four-month design turnaround he describes in the interview. If you've been enjoying the new adventure, it's well worth a look at the interview for a peek at what makes Champions Online's development tick.
Behind the Mask: I'd like to catch some of them
It's a little irony that pets have already been the focus of another column this week on Massively. Still, the "pet patch" is coming very soon for Champions and I'd like to go over what I think should happen to pets and what probably will happen to them. Pets have not been a big focus of the developers. Balseraph has publicly stated that "Pets are a big problem for a small number of players" and more dev attention has been pushed at fixing Force than making pets usable. In their current state, pet builds are unplayable. Pets deal poor damage, but that isn't the worst problem. Pets are extremely annoying to use and maintain. Fortunately, the devs are looking at some ways to fix things.
Behind the Mask: Pushing buttons is fun
Last week, I teased that this week's column would discuss Champions Online's energy mechanics. That, however, is only half of it. This week, we're going to discuss energy mechanics in general, player perception of resources, and the core central idea key to all video games: pushing buttons is fun. The actual concept isn't hard to explain. Doing things in a video game is entertaining and not doing things is boring. This is a simple, fundamental concept that anyone can understand. Resource mechanics like mana, energy, or Vespene gas limit the things we can do before those resources have to be replenished. Running out isn't fun, so we reduce our resource use or maximize our resource returns. The issue of CO's dreaded energy mechanics is only partially the developers' fault. The rest lies with us.
Champions Online tells players what not to expect
Sometimes it's very helpful to hear what you're not getting. It's never particularly pleasant, of course -- we usually like to hear about the cool things coming right around the bend -- but it's also useful to be told what isn't coming for your favorite game. The most recent installment of Ask Cryptic for Champions Online falls under that category, with several questions about upcoming features given a straight denial. There are no plans for four-armed characters, rotating and scaling tattoos, and a current push for more persistent content as opposed to zone-wide attack events. On the flip side, the answers do paint a few interesting pictures, such as talk about potentially adding a villainous counterpart to the game in the vein of City of Villains. The idea is discussed as something not in the immediate future, but on the list for future inclusion -- albeit with a much more sandbox style of gameplay, keeping in the vein of a supervillain romp. Champions Online is currently pretty well dedicated to getting its existing systems shored up and working well, however -- and while that might mean a few rejected ideas, it means that the team wants to build a solid foundation.
Behind the Mask: The exploiter's dilemma
It's tough being an exploiter, especially in a game like Champions Online. It carries a certain social stigma, somewhere above catgirls but below most other castes of players. I feel like the exploiters have a bad rep, because other players misunderstand and misrepresent us. Exploiters are the players who find bugs and ultimately discover FOTMs or gimmick builds and strategies. Because most people consider bugs and "flavors of the month" to be bad, the people who work to discover these things tend to be treated badly. This is unfortunate, because exploiters are basically explorers. One might think that they are achievers or killers (as the end result of finding exploits is granting unfair advantages), but exploiters are explorers at heart. While other explorers journey through lands that have been charted by other players (except in the case where the game or feature is new), exploiters explore the landscape searching for things that other players haven't discovered and might never look for. The thrill of learning something new drives the exploiter, rather than the material reward of an imbalanced build. After the jump, we'll talk about some previous exploits in Champions Online and the ways they impacted the playerbase.
Behind the Mask: The plight of a healer
Last Sunday, I got to meet up with some of our awesome readerbase and try out the Serpent Lantern adventure pack with them. We also made the Massively supergroup, originally named "That One Massively SG." If you'd like to join, send a message in the Massively chat channel (titled Massively); everyone in the SG has invite privileges. As always, you can also send a message or friend request to me at @Auspicious. Either way, our run through Serpent Lantern was cut a little short, mostly due to personal stuff (people have lives too!), but it let me make a lot of observations about the team dynamics in Champions Online. I'm not new to teaming in CO, but even I was surprised by the way the Serpent Lantern handles big teams. The short answer is that playing with other people is fun, but feeling like I have no control over whether or not I die is not fun. After the break, we'll go through the long answer.
Behind the Mask: Some things experience points can't buy
Last week, I talked about survivability in Champions Online. I mainly talked about passive defenses and stats -- things you can plan for. Anyone can adjust a stat build to be more effective, and anyone can get a defensive passive to adjust survivability. This week, I'm going to talk about something you can't get from a drop or gain when you level up. I'm talking about player skill. CO is one of the few MMORPGs out there that rewards player skill greatly. The game engine itself is reasonably well-suited to tactical decisions made in the heat of battle. Being able to react quickly to things occurring in a fight also often means the difference between taking an opportunity to attack (thus ending a fight) and having that opportunity wasted by standing around and blocking. How do you measure up? We're going to explore an issue that persists between MMOs and even between genres. The magic that can be produced by dexterous bashing of keys is obvious, and yet often overlooked. Hit the jump, and we'll figure out why.
Shannon Posniewski talks about CO's plans for the summer
Not to be outdone by the recent launch of the Serpent Lantern adventure pack, Shannon "poz" Posniewski released a new State of the Game, outlining the final tweaks to the Serpent Lantern launch and what is in store for Champions Online over the summer months. The first thing on the discussion list is some big tweaks to supergroup functions, including a place to put news, a roster, and an interactive guild calendar that officers can post events on and players can leave feedback for. It's the first announcement for this new feature, and players are already excited. Poz also announced plans for redesigning the look and feel of Renaissance Center, giving the central player hub a needed facelift. Pet powers, also a major issue for many heroes, will be getting a look in the coming months as well. All in all, it looks to be a very exciting summer for heroes protecting the streets of Millenium City!
Behind the Mask: A glass jaw is not an advantage
Last week, I asked you guys if anyone was interested in a Massively SG. Well, the comments and emails seemed pretty positive, so I'll be forming one up; send a PM or friend invite to @Auspicious if you're interested. I also made a Massively chat channel, creatively named Massively. Feel free to hop in and use it to socialize with me or other Massively readers while you're smashing down villains! I'll be on this weekend and we can think of a suitably "super" SG name. This week, we're going to be talking about survival. A little bit of tanking info will be included, but I am hoping that Cryptic changes the currently screwy aggro mechanics. Right now, they require tanks to constantly attack everything in a given room at the same time -- certainly a difficult prospect even at the best of times. Staying alive, however, is universal. Everyone hates dying, even in Champions Online. Not everyone has to take hits all the time, but when those hits come, a little bit of survival sure helps. A lot of survival helps even more.
Behind the Mask: Taking a knife to a gun fight
In the long history of MMORPGs, there have been two mighty class divisions vying for supremacy. The melee damage dealers, lead by the mighty rogue (and in the olden days, the monk) showed us that the raw speed and power of melee damage output was of dire importance. The ranged damage dealers, led by the mages and wizards, did not have the staying power of a rogue who might be subject to random AoE at close range. They had to rely on the incredible fury of their spells and the relative safety that distance brings in a battle. In Champions Online, that division is magnified. Ranged and melee characters can select all the same defensive powers, meaning that melee characters must, by the very nature of close combat, expose themselves to more risk. The advent of superhuman mobility multiplies the divide even further -- while a ranged character can flee at incredible speeds, melee characters require special advantages to get in close and stay there. The Super Power Pack came out a while ago and while I talked a lot about it in its early stages, I didn't get a chance to cover how the devs' final answer to these problems worked out or what the landscape of melee is today. That's changing now.
Illuminating answers about the upcoming patch for Champions Online
The first adventure pack for Champions Online is due out this month, although we don't know quite when just yet. But there are a lot of things coming along with the new pack, such as the promised return of Blood Moon and the addition of a difficulty slider. If you're curious about what all of this means from a gameplay perspective, you're coming to it at the right time, as the most recent Ask Cryptic has just been released, covering most of what players might be wondering about. The difficulty slider will be responsible for improved drops, but costume pieces are likely to remain just as frequent (or infrequent) as they currently are. Players who have watched the development of Star Trek Online might be saddened to know that the resistance bonuses and such coming with the Accolade system in that game will not be copied for Champions Online's Perks system. But there's also the prospect of expanding smaller regions into full-sized explorable zones, and some details on the next few adventure packs heading down the pipeline. It should be good news for the game's players, and it certainly helps keep the interest stoked for the coming release of Serpent Lantern.
