Anti-Aliased: It pays to be paranoid pt. 2

I actually enjoyed my free weekend. The problems I had in beta with performance were fixed and I was actually able to play at above 6 frames per second. In fact I was getting over 30 with most things maxed.

I still feel like the average player will be sort of lost when making power decisions, and the power rooms are not good enough to give an accurate assessment of an ability. The tutorial only teaches you what you can learn in 3 minutes of screwing around with the controls, and it doesn't even allow you to purchase powers till after the tutorial.

The effects got some much needed changes and balancing to them, at least the ones I saw. Teleportation still needs some work, but at least its not the obvious choice for min/maxers that it once was. Gadgeteering still feels woefully underpowered to me when compared to the mass damage that Munitions can do, or the AOE powers of several other sets. Pets feel like a liability... I mean more so than in other games.

I did not experience the server lag that some people are reporting, but I guess my playing was past prime time. Grouping, communicating, and getting things done seemed very easy. Given I never got past 20 during the weekend, so I guess I can't really talk about the later game. It felt more like a 2006 era game and less like a 2001 era game(in beta I called it outdated).

I will not subscribe though because the C-store is still a Micro-trans, and I will not pay a subscription for a game that has both. I couldn't give a crap less on who's stores are what and blah blah, the fact is the amount for a retcon is stupidly high, and I feel it shows how Champions is going to treat their C-store items in the future, its not a good trend. They should break up what a Retcon is and charge a smaller proportion so that players can fix specifically what they want to fix.

Then again, if they kept the prices the same, but made the game free to play, I'd probably play AND buy micro-trans items.

I was surprised at the system requirements for Champions Online. I was really looking forward the free weekend to try out the game. I can run WoW and Aion and a few other games no problems. I could not log into Champions, as my video card was not up to the minimum requirements, and apparently, even if I chose lowest settings, I could not run the game. Very disapointed. My fault, not Champions, but wish I had realized in advance it required higher technology than any other game I've played so far.

You really do seem to enjoy attempting to get a rise out of some of the people that frequent Massively. Nothing wrong with that though, it makes for entertaining talkbacks. Keep it up.

This was pretty much the last straw for CO for a great many people. It's crossed over the Vanguard Line, where as you said, it doesn't matter how Cryptic is at improvements and response to the playerbase, the word of mouth alone has killed it this holiday season.

My SG channel was a ghost town before I left. If anything, the folks I hung out with made an effort to avoid last weekend strictly because it was free. The patcher incident was the end for a lot of them, and nearly all chose not to re-up for November.

Besides, I'm too busy playing Dragon Age to miss Champions. Those who aren't playing DA are playing Borderlands, and when Modern Warfare 2 is out, well...who cares?

I applaud you for sticking with CO for this long, Seraphina.

Last weekend was definitely a disaster. Not only did things go bad for the new people they were trying to attract, the game and patch server was down for long periods on Saturday and Sunday for their subscribers as well. It even effected things in the patcher for their other games as well.

I know they're getting desperate for subscribers after the post 30 day players made their exodus, but they really should have waited till around the six month mark before they hosted a free event. This is now three weekends in a row CO had major problems and downtime for subscribers. So it's not just the word of mouth of the freebie players that was effected, many of the current players have been angered as well.

Performance-wise the weekend wasn't too bad for me (subscriber, so I didn't really have to patch during the heaviest periods), though the downtime was a bit annoying. The *truly* annoying part of the whole weekend was not stability, but the Takofanes event and having to camp the change instance screen to get into as many rounds as possible... Then wait another 6 hours to camp it again. (finally got the Foxbat Zombie action figure though, so it was worth it)

I finally got a good 90 minutes of play on Sunday morning after about 26 hours attempting to patch from 10pm Friday night to midnight Saturday. Once in however I had no problems with lag, the character creation was good but obviously there's not as many choices as CoH but I'm sure they'll add extra stuff over time like NCSoft do. I liked the choice of screen layouts and of course as a big CoH fan I chose "paragon". The game ran well, the quests were easy to understand and complete. Overall though I just wasn't impressed. It all seemed too busy, stuff popping up everywhere, busy interface, cluttered information boxes despite the collapsable panels that just seemed to make things more cluttered, weird targetting, and everything looked small. After 20 minutes or so making my new hero I realised I could barely see him on screen so the details I'd picked were fairly pointless. I didn't like the cell-shaded graphics much either. There wasn't much of a sense of depth to the screen, it didn't feel immersive and sprawling, dirty or dangerous despite the civilian casualties lying around. I did like the ability to pick up random bits of street furniture though!

I also agree with the earlier comment about the item system, for a newbie it didn't really make sense and wasn't that well described. I was literally just slotting things in where I could (oo-err!) and had no idea what actual effect they were having on my character. Makes me realise how right the same developers got it with the Outbreak tutorial on CoH and how good the new Warhammer tutorial system is.

So I'll be sticking to patrolling Paragon City although I may crossover to CO next time they have a free weekend.

I had never played the game before the free weekend but decided to give it a go. Steam user here who had zero problems starting up the game. The launcher did take a good, whole day to install, which was a little annoying, but I was trying the game for free so I didn't complain that much. I got to play Saturday night and all of Sunday, which was enough to make a first impression.

I really enjoyed playing the game in that time and have already purchased it and have been playing all this week. I never experienced any lag, even during the free weekend. The game runs 100% perfect on my system, no issues with hardware.

Some things where poorly explained about the gameplay/items, if explained at all, which made things hard to understand for a newbie, but I am figuring out a lot of stuff and have gotten all my questions answered by friendly people in chat as I play. So the lack of a good tutorial hasn't been a big issue for me, though it definitely would of been helpful.

Wow, didn't even know there were issues. I spent most of the time around MC doing the zombie hero PQs and the crypt missions, along with the Zombie Apocalypse PvP stuff. The crypts are dull (you can skip all the mobs though), but the PQs were nice. Lots of PUGs going on. And the new PvP stuff (which is staying) is very nice.

The game still has issues (skill balancing, needing to spend hours upon hours pouring over the forums to decide on builds), but I don't see why this weekend would put so many people off. They should just add a regular 14 day trial though.

This all really surprises me. I didn't realize that there were any problems at all. I downloaded the game just fine and it played like a dream. It was exactly what I needed to see whether or not to play the game, and most of my friends that tried it bought the game.

Now the only problem I have is making up my mind between Champions or Fallen Earth....

Am I playing the same CO as everyone else? I've had nothing but fun since buying the game when it came out. The graphics are great, the game play is great larks (especially with the control options changed to be more like an FPS). And there seems to be no shortage of other players, even in my distant timezone (though the instancing helps there, I suppose).

Could do without Grond's new invisibility bug I admit

The technical issues that CO faced on Blood Moon weekend were really odd. One of my friends had no problems whatsoever with the Steam client - same geographical region, same ISP, same OS, only dissimilar computer hardware and I had the more advanced graphics card.

(Patcher download was painfully slow for both, but it's one minor roadbump for a free trial, so ok, forgiven.)

Meanwhile, I had numerous patcher crashes and log-in issues, and was making a game out of searching for the error code/phrase and finding the relevant thread on the Cryptic forums. Somehow, after updating graphics card drivers and clicking on various quick-launch and use proxy server options, I managed to limp my way into the game itself.

Which wasn't too bad, in my book. Just seemed patchy and incomplete in places.

Combat was fun. Some animations were a dream come true (but some were quite lame too.) Power selection was a matter of running back and forth between the danger room and trainer testing out the power that gave the most bang for the buck. Build, specs, talent and gear looked like interesting systems to delve into, if eminently breakable into tank-mage capable specs.

I don't have major issues with a microtransaction system, but I do wonder if Cryptic has a grasp on technical competency and good game design principles. Server and client stability are important considerations for me in taking up an MMO subscription. Game system improvements and regular -good, working- content updates are too.

If CO suffers regular nerfing of min-max builds, forcing optimizers to pay for a retcon, that's not a good game design principle. Balance really should have been built in from the start. If unlocking a special powerset involves having to repeat 13 identical miniquests, contingent on being able to find a group, that's not very fun game design either, and so on.

Ultimately, CO to me has been very sine-wave in their showings. They've got some spectacular good bits. They've got some spectacularly bad bits.

I would like to pick up the game someday and play for a few months to enjoy the good bits, but I rather give it some time to let the bad bit-fix/nerf cycle fallout settle. If it burns out before then, it'll be a shame I never got to enjoy the good bits, but that's life. There's no time to play all games possible, so we have to prioritize.

I enjoy CO, but I hope they add more depth to it. All these MMOs out there following the "WOW" model are also somehow missing out on the depth of the experience.

The WoW model has a nice balance of questing and exploration. Exploration is missing from CO in big ways. Similar to WAR, the zones feel like large rooms we are trapped in. Open world technology isn't something new, so why are MMOs moving to smaller and smaller zoned maps??

Also, the 100 person limit in a zone sucks. I get that lag can happen with more, but again, how does WoW pull off so many people in an area? With most zones being 30-50 people, the world can sometimes feel rather empty.

But most of all, MMOs keep replicating and loosing something from their roots. Go back in time and you will find more and more immersion into the world. Everquest was huge, you really felt like you were there. Ultima Online still has the richest Role Play community, it's nuts. Go back father to MUDs and MUSHes and you will find they are still out there with a small playerbase but very fun and immersive.

It is similar to fast food vs. fine dining. Modern MMOs are all fast food with no taste.


Oh yea, nice call on the WoW fans that seem to be totally ok with all WoW's ridiculous not-so-micro transactions and yet bash any other game with them.