Champions Online Review
It wasn’t that long ago when I wrote up my early impressions on Champions Online. They were based on the open beta and I was very optimistic about the title. To ensure I had an appropriate amount of time to play the release version of the game, I’ve held off doing an actual review for awhile. Given the time under my belt and the fact that reviews tend to fall early on a products release cycle, it seems that now would be appropriate to do a write up on Cryptic’s Champions Online.
Leveling Content
There has been a lot of forum and blog activity lately regarding the pace at which you level in Champions Online. In the beta some players felt that the game was too easy and the curve too flat. It was not uncommon for individuals to max level in only a week or two of play. I always had the understanding that this was the point. Champions Online is not a raid game. It is the sort of game that you enjoy playing through and making multiple alternate characters to experience all of the various powers. My expectations were evidently wrong as Cryptic immediately reacted to these outcries.
On release day Champions received a patch that, for the most part, completely changed the leveling curve of the entire game. My once awesome fun and fast paced hero MMO turned into something far more grindy over night. This change seems rather ill-conceived as there is not enough content to fill in the gaps that have been opened. Instead of a smooth progression you can often be dumped into areas where you’re npc errands are in short supply. Players pretty much need to do every quest in all the content areas to move their character forwards without frustration. This makes starting an alt painfully repetitive and less than appetizing. It is my hope that Cryptic turns the clock back a bit and at least finds a middle ground. The game needs to be easier than it is now not because it is “difficult” but because it is diminishing the available content. Killing your replay ability immediately is never a wise decision in my book.
Turning away from the actual level progression I still have to stick to my original assessment that the content in Champions Online is well designed and fun. The three zones in game are incredibly different and previously offered a choice of location. There is no “copy and paste” going on here! You can visit a desert, tundra or city and do the various quests related to those areas. Beyond looking aesthetically different, the three areas have separate minion gangs. This leads to a very different feeling in each of the areas. Cryptic has done a wonderful job with their zone implementation.
Character Appearance & Gear
I will not spend too much time discussing the character creation and appearance system as I did so in the original review and it can be found in numerous other places. I don’t think I’ll get much disagreement by saying it is the most detailed, intricate and robust of any game I’ve ever played. You are really only limited by your own imagination. There is plenty of room to grow and add more details, of course, but the “out of the box” options are insane and widely varied.
Champions Online does not focus on gear like many MMOs do but the nine items slots are by no means token. One of my biggest complaints about CoH was that there were no items whatsoever. CO amends this issue and gives the player three primary slots and six secondary ones. Due to how important statistics are you can really make a difference in your character by picking your gear carefully. The system ends up working incredibly well and I am a huge fan of it. Gear isn’t the focus of the game but it is important enough to make a difference.
Powers & Retcon
When it comes to power options Champions Online is really strong. Players are given the opportunity to pick from almost any heroic power set you can imagine. Characters are also not locked into a particular frame-work. If you decide mid-career that you want your fire character to learn how to use dark magic, you can. Virtually any build is possible as long as you follow the basic rules of needing a certain number of prerequisite powers. This massive degree of customization is a boon to players who are fatigued with the cookie-cutter class systems that have proliferated the market. It can also be a curse, however.
Without the clear guidance of a class system, picking a new power can often feel overwhelming and frightening. Will your new power be the right one to help advance your character? Cryptic has done an exceptional job by letting you try out a power a bit before making the choice final but the Power House is very limited. It doesn’t quite work like the “real world.” It is a very real possibility that a player who is not careful will gimp their character and make them virtually unplayable. This is the cost for having more options. In a perfect world this should be easily corrected with the retcon system but thus far it has not proven that useful.
Retcon in Champions Online lingo for re-specialization. The problem with this is that you can’t remove something specifically. The system only allows you to “undo” the last choice until you get to what you’re after. Beyond powers, this list includes specialization choices, statistic increases and basically anything that progresses your character. With the system as it is it is prohibitively expensive to undo “mistakes” you make. I barely have enough money to go back seven steps. The idea of going back 20 is laughable. Given how easily you can ruin your character the best way to retcon right now is to reroll.
Stability
In my experience Cryptic has done an exceptional job of keeping the Champions’ servers online and running smoothly. There was one minor issue not long ago with the patcher but beyond that I do not lag and I am not disconnected. With the heavy use of instancing I always enjoy a wonderful play experience that rivals any game that has been out for years.
Judgement
I’ve certainly focused on a lot of the negative in this review and I have to apologize for that. It was not my intent to paint Champions Online as a poor title. These are just the biggest issues facing it at this time. The game still retains the feeling of “fun” that I experienced in beta and continues to be quite beautiful. The abilities are interesting, the ability to customize your character is immense, and the progression is not the standard. I applaud Cryptic for taking some risks in that regard. The game also suffers from “new MMO” syndrome, however. We’ve got some content holes, some early development mistakes and frame-work balance to attend to. That is to be expected with any new game, of course. Champions Online is a solid title that will only improve with time. I can’t call it a “must play” right this moment but I think six months down the road it will be. Is it a “good buy?” Absolutely yes, as long as you’re not expecting to treat it like a hardcore raid focused MMO.
| Content: Beautiful and different per area. Not a lot of it. |  |
| Character Appearance: Astounding. Best ever. |  |
| Fun factor: Fun yet sometimes frustrating | |
| Grind Potential: Too grindy, content gaps | |
| Over all: A safe buy. Will be “must buy” soon. | |
Tags: Champions Online, Cryptic, PvE
Can I ask at what level you start running out of content at? You’re not the first to voice the concerns you have with leveling speed and grindiness but *knock on wood* so far I haven’t encountered it. The other night I went from 16 to 18 in a couple hours, which felt speedy to me, and this character has never taken a quest in Canada so I have that whole zone to head to if I run out of quests.
But maybe I haven’t reached the gaps yet, or maybe I just lucked into a powerful build? (Munitions/Telekinesis with a touch of Supernatural [Regeneration]). I am commonly soloing quests a few levels above me, so maybe that’s helping me ‘keep up’ with quest content? I also, I guess, ‘grind’ a lot in the form of chasing down craft skill items, which usually have a mob around them. Not sure what kind of exp you get from grinding mobs though…
It seems like CO is a hard game to compare experiences in since, as you point out, it’s easy to gimp your character (and if its your first character you might not even realize it is gimped). I used the free Retcon to ditch some powers I wasn’t using any more and so get new ones I didn’t have pre-retcon and I can surely feel the difference in power.
I started having trouble around 17 or so. Each quest just didn’t seem to reward me that much anymore and I had to bounce back and forth to make any progress. I didn’t invest much time in mob slaying for exp (which is semi-effective).
I can do some of the higher level quests as well as I’m a similar build as you but I always worry that if I do that I’ll run out of quests later on. I basically consider it a gap if you have to take quests outside of your range to move on. That is something I should have defined.
OK so it sounds like I’m just getting to the problem areas.
Dang, I was hoping I’d somehow missed it.
Thanks for the clarification!
I am currently at 23 and had to throw myself at red quests to get there. I have done all of the “Help a Citizen” quests, the normal city quests, the desert, and Canada.
I am sure I could find a quest here or there to do, but I am definitely in a tough spot right now. I have only a couple red quests left.
A lot of the comments so far have been on questing and leveling. I’ll give a quick glimpse of my experience (seewhatididthere?). I hit a slight wall at level 26-27. Then I got mail from Socrates that told me I had a mission I could access via my “Crime Computer”. My howzie-whatey? Yes, my crime computer. In my journal, on the bottom left hand side is a button to access it. This brings up waypoints to every NPC that has quests available to me in every zone I have access to. So far, I have not run out of quests that I can easily do solo, and I’m half way to 31.
That said, I have done EVERY quest I can possibly find or get my hands on. This means replay value is tanked to the absolute bottom, which is bad news on a game that is so insanely alt-friendly.
Of course my idea of a content gap is different from yours. I don’t care if I have to do a quest a level or two over me, as long as I can reasonably solo it, or complete it with the suggested number of players. If I had to do a 29 quest at 28, and didn’t even notice the difficulty, it doesn’t exist for me as a content gap. This might be an issue at the higher levels maybe where I run out because of my outpacing the current quests, unless they have a sring of 40+ quests for me to do there as well.