Champions Online, the Super hero MMORPG?

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This game is great if you like the genre. I simply loved City of Heroes before ED and tbh, villains and the horribly designed pvp zones.

The content is lacking atm and with that in mind i would like to discuss what exactly it is that makes this game better than City of Heroes?

I can't help but think this game is better looking graphics, its up to date but at the same its not making too many ground breaking leaps forward. I mean look at a game like WoW for a second and you will see things like "Block" are in the their game already, albeit automatically and part of their combat damage system.

The other thing which this game seems to revolve around is this idea of equilibrium and energy bars which again because every character made in CO has to use this energy/equilibrium style of play there is really not much diversity in core game play mechanics.

I am all for ground breaking game play mechanics, such as having brand new character game play styles and power sets, however what i would not pay for is a rehashed design of a game i have played for years and years.


With this in mind i would like to end on one point, that is this game has potential to be bigger than CoH, all it has to do is equal what was done in that game and then carry on.

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I think you have 2 of those points bacwards there. Equilibrium was done by WoW and other games as "rage" where you build up energy as you go with other skills that allow you to have a small buffer of rage when the fight starts, while blocking is a new concept for MMOs. The only similarity between CO's block and WoW's is that they are both called "block." WoW's block works the same as CO's "dodge" but you ahve to have a shield equiped for it to work. CO's block is an actual skill that significantly increases all forms of your character's resilience as long as you hold the skill.

The only real complain I have other than a few of the sorcery pwoers is that the shards can only hold 100 people. For an MMO this is a really small number of people. Every time someone is runnign a costume contest you have to sit and wait for a spot to open up on the shard to compete. On average a MC server has between 50-70 people in it so that just leaves 30 spots for people who want to compete or even just observe. They should either stabailize the servers more so they can raise the zone caps or they should add a new zone for socializing that doesn't have other things in it to drag the performance down such as mobs. Kinda like an oversized version of the Club but with a significantly higher population limit.

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You have that backwards still. The Equilibrium thing was done in the old console games, appeared in fighters,a nd has even apepared in PnP games. WoW was no where even near the first to use that mechanic.

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Most of us agree the content is lacking - but, you know, MMORPGs grow. It's practically all they do. If it was released with a ton of content, there'd be nothing for it to grow into.

I once thought the game's diversity of gameplay was lacking as well, but after getting deeper into it I discovered that the interplay of unique specializations of Advantages offer powers within powers, and that helped to dissuade my fears a bit.

Still, they need to add a lot more powers to the game, and balance (read: made appropriately viable - not just nerf) the ones they've got already. Crossing my fingers they're able to do that. That they're already working on one new power set is a good sign: a new power set every quarter year would certainly flesh things out nicely.

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"Kinda like an oversized version of the Club but with a significantly higher population limit."

This would fix so many of the SG, social, and other soft problems that the shard system creates.

/sign

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I agree with the point made about MMOs growing and thats all they can practically do with the right developers, If you notice thats what i was mentioning in my original post, in such a way that i want this game to grow in the same direction as CoH, (minus the bad pvp zones and enhancement diversification) instead of trying to follow in WoW's footsteps.

There are systems in CoH which i loved for example, which are not in this game, paper missions is one example and trial missions for respecs is another.

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EVERY MMO under the sun is unoriginal. They all take the bulk of the mechanics, gameplay and style from someplace else. The difference is in how the hodge podge of MMO tools is presented, and how neatly it all fits together.

WoW stole the majority of it's additions from other MMO's before it, and a huge portion of new features were originally mods that they more or less stole and incorporated into the default UI.

MMO's aren't about originality, they are about content, presentation, balance, and fun factor.