Peek at Borderlands

I realized this is not my type of game, so I decided not to play again after 1 hour. I liked the art style and the setting though.

Blood Moon flawed event design?

Having played a bit more in the Blood Moon event I am left to wonder what happened during the design of the fallen hero/Takofanes part of the event.

• Defeating fallen heroes commanding hordes of zombies and then save their souls? Check, good piece
• Have a bit more special apperance of a representative of the Big Bad Guy, Takofanes? Yeah, can work
• Have the fallen heroes appear all over Millenium City? Probably a good choice, it is a zone pretty much anyone can get to, there are vendors and many other facilities here
• Have the fallen hero enemies spread out from level 14 to 27? A logical choice to make them be at about the same level as the surrounding area. This was later changed so that the instances scaled with the level of the character. That was a band-aid change, not necessarily a good choice in its context.
• Have a timed open mission as first part and then an instance? Yeah, that in itself works well I think
• Have a 2 hour reset timer on the Open Mission? Far too long. Many of my game sessions are probably less than 2 hours. Jumping instances to try to find a shorter timer is not fun gameplay. Later this was changed to 30 minutes. Again I think this was a band-aid solution. Better than the original timer, but still flawed given some other design choices.
• Have a crypt-like instance, mostly beating up zombies popping up? So-and-so, too long with not enough variation
• Have 13 almost identical crypt instances? Not a particularly good choice. The big flaw here though was to tie some rewards to it (perks and unlock of celestial powerset). If there were no incentives to actually get people to do all 13 of them it would be ok – people could sample one, get some reward and then get on with their game.  With 13 available there would be a better chance of finding one that might be activated soon.
• A 6 hour timer for Mr Taco representative to show up and tie a rare loot drop to his defeat as well as the major event perk? Big flaw. In practive even encountering this villain has been ruled out for casual players – more obsessive and achievement-hunting players will have him killed in no time after he appears.

I would have liked to see less of the fallen heroes – 5 or 6 at most. Defeating and saving the souls of 2-3 of them would have been enough for any perk. Doing that should also trigger the opportunity to encounter the Taco guy also. Of course, then the PvE part of the Blood Moon event would have been completed much sooner and people would have complained that there were not enough content.

I do not see why there was an unlock mechanic for celestial powerset at all. If they had to have one I think saving the souls as described above would suffice, possibly also defeating Taco with the changed suggestions above, or as an alternative participating in a few of the different event activities. I.e. one can focus on PvP activities and get it or do the PvE stuff and get it or do a mix of it and get it.

Cryptic has obviosuly done some good missions and arcs in the game. I think content creation probably was a bit rushed and they did not have time to do a good job with lots of content. Since there was a fixed deadline for the event they likely had to make a number of compromises.

Hindsight is of course the best way to find flaws and I am sure they have very good and competent people in place for mission design which do a great job and much better than I could ever hope to do – other parts of the game has proven that. Reality tend to screw up good design intentions in various ways though.

I just hope that Cryptic will continue and put enough effort into new content to let it have a high quality without too much interference from reality and commercial conditions.

I also want to point out that I think the PvP elements of the event are quite good and fun and much of the setting in general is quite nice. It is just the fallen hero part that does not make me shout out in joy.

The joy of death

A post on the Champions forums titled Do you die…and love it? prompted me to do this post.

One reason that I do not follow MMO forums that much is that I find that there is sometimes too much min/max kind of talk going on for my taste. Thus is very encouraging to see threads like the one above! It is about the the exhilarating fun of just jumping into a fight which may very well end up in a death and even frequent deaths. But it does not matter, because it is so much fun to play a bit on the edge!

One may go down in flames - but it can be so much fun!

I very much agree with the spirit of the posts in that thread. I do not really care if I have an optimal power selection and I am fine with going down somewhat often – I go down in flames and biting, clawing, kicking while doing it. Champions is one of the few MMOs where I enjoy playing melee characters – it is great fun! Min/max:ers think they are gimped and some of my melee characters do have it tougher in general compared to some other characters. But they are fun!

My chef wanted to be in Hell's Kitchen and all he got was this Canadian crisis

In the long run I rather have characters that have to struggle a bit to win, because that makes the combat more fun. Too stable and safe and it becomes boring. So I do not mind that my characters are not invincible or super heroic like Superman or some other superhero – that may be cool to read about and see in the  movies, but actually play? No, I prefer my odd characters who may have to struggle a bit in their fights.

Even the bad guys realize that melee can be fun

Blood Moon second run

I am not a PvP player usually in MMOs – pretty much the only game where I liked to play PvP was some of the game types in Guild Wars. I have also avoided the PvP part in Champions Online – until now.

With the Blood Moon event Cryptic introduced a new PvP map/game – Zombie Apocalypse. This will be a permanent addition to the available PvP games. They have also added some open world PvP, werewolves vs hunters aka BITE, which is just running during the Blood Moon event.

Zombie Apocalypse is a small map with some cottages, presumably in the Canadian wilderness. On this map one of the participating heroes will start as a super-zombie, which can fight the group of regular heroes on the map. The zombie player is assisted by a never endiong flow of NPC zombies of various types. As soon as a regular hero is defeated, he/she is turned into a zombie as well. This means a zombie outfit, but the same powers as before the untimely death (or rather undeath).   The zombie players can then attack the remaining regular players. This continues until there are no regular heroes left.

Player and NPC zombies all swarm to defeat the player heroes

I found this to be quite fun actually and the mix of player zo,bies and NPC zombies attacking worked out well – the attack waves started slow and then the intensity increased steadily as time passed. A game takes maybe 5-10 minutes, so it is quick and easy to jump in. And since you can join from anywhewre in the world, it is quite easy and convenient to jump in for a few minutes of apocalypse. The Zombie Apocalypse is available to players from level 5. It seems that everyone’s levels are adjusted to a common level for the map, so that everyone  is at the same level.

I played about 6-7 Apocalypse games today at various times, quite neat to jump in for a short play every now and then.

The BITE event is something that was described as “Open World PvP”. To me that is something I have had bad experiences with, sinc eit has seldom worked out well if one is interested in doing both PvP and PvE in my experience – at least not if the focus is PvE still. But I must say that I do like how Cryptic has handled it here.

In BITE a player can be either a werewolf or a hunter – the player can choose to play as either a hunter or a werewolf. There are contacts for each side in certain areas of the Desert, Canada and Monster Island zones. The contacts are located in certain werewolf-infested areas of these zones.

As a player hunter, the only other player that I can fight against are the werewolf players and vice versa. This means that the fight can go on in open areas, but without necessarily disturb/annoy people that have no or little interest in PvP. However, the NPC werewolves can still attack regular players. And if you get defeated while you are infected with Lycantrophy, you become a werewolf!

Our werewolf team hunting down some hunters

Werewolves and hunters also get a fixed set of powers – everyone is the same.   I think this is a fair approach. Today I played for a while as a werewolf – fighting the hunters was good fun and something I will very much consider to do again.  The waves of battle went back and forth in the werewolf-infested area of the map, as people joined or left either of the two sides.

I also did some of the PvE missions in werewolf form, which worked out fine. As soon as one changes zone the effect wears off though. All in all I enjoyed this session, which was mainly PvP for a change.

Blood Moon first run

The Blood Moon event started today – zombies, werewolves, fallen heroes and darkness all over the zones.

The first thing I had a look at was the mission to defeat the 13 fallen heroes that the big bad guy, Takofanes, had brought back as undead to let them smack around some heroes. In Millenium City there are now 13 different gates spread out all over the city – each an entrance for a fallen hero and the zombies he/she control. Each gate works as an Open Mission, where 50 zombies has to be defeated first and after that the fallen hero has to be defeated.

Defeating these heroes are just the start of it though – completing the Open Mission provides access to a mission. This mission is about to enter the gate and go save the soul of the fallen hero. On the way there there are hordes of zombies/undead to beat the way through, plus some super villains to defeat.

It was a bit of a shock initially though to see that each Open Mission was on a 2 hour reset timer! And many of the gates in the same instance activated almost at the same time, so one could not go from one gate to another and get all 13 of them. Switching instances helps to find shorter timers, but doing it this way would be very time consuming.

Wating to beat up fallen hero Amazing Grace

In a way I think it is ok to have it all on a timer – that will not disturb people who want to do normal missions in these areas too much then. Two hours might be stretching it though. Fortunately there is a much easier way to get the missions – sharing them. All these missions are shareable, so it is just a matter of teaming up with someone with the missions and get them shared. Much quicker and easier. We did a fair amount of sharing among each other in the super group, so people got the mission quickly.

The fallen hero missions were all at reasonably low levels – ranging from level 14 and up to 27, with the bulk of them being between 14 and 18. So anyone that would be in Millenium City anyway with their characters could jump in. And anyone in some other level range could be sidekicked anyway. All the missions were quite similar in the layout of the instances – not identical for all, but only with small differences. So the path to go through became familiar quite quickly.

Rescuing the souls of all 13 heroes, plus completing a mission to collect celestial essence is the criteria to unlock the new Celestial powerset, which is a dual-purpose healing/damage dealing powerset (heal your allies or hurt your enemies with the same powers). For those that do not complete these missions the powerset will be available on November 10th.

A few of use in the supergroup completed all of these missions. Since most of us did this with 30+ characters the missions themselves were pretty easy. The recommendation if they are played at the appropriate level is to be 3 in a team.

It was a rather ok evening to go through it – not challenging though since we were a bit high level. I did manage to get killed once though, in a moment of hubris… Next will be to explore and try out the other events happening during Blood Moon and of course set up a character with the Celestial powerset. Good times!

(I forgot to take screenshots, which is why there is only one not-very-good screenshot in this post)

Free trial for Champions during Blood Moon

Cryptic is running a free trial offer for Champions Online during the Halloween weekend, starting from Friday October 30th to Monday November 2nd.

To sign up for the trial and download the client (can be done right away), follow the link here.

Although a limited free trial, I think it is still good that offer something like that – I wish all pay-for-the-game, subscription-based MMOs would do that right from the start. Especially if you are not in the mainstream MMO segment (Elf fans) you need to lower the barrier of entry nowadays.

First view of Going Rogue

A thread on Champions Online on Massively had a link to a keynote speech at HeroCon where the City of Heroes/Villains Going Rogue expansion was presented (thanks to backlash for that link). The presentation talks a bit about what is in the Going Rogue expenasion:

• A number of new zones for Praetorian Earth, a parallel universe which is ruled by emperor Marcus Cole (the evil twin counterpart of Statesman in the regular City of Heroes).
• Heroes can become Vigilantes, gradually becoming more evil – if he/she chooses. A vigilante can visit the Rogue Isles and team with villains.
• Villains can become Rogues, gradually becoming more good – if he/she chooses. A rogue can visit Paragon City and team with heroes.
• New characters can start in Preatorian Earth as well and choose to align themselves with the Loyalists (villains) or the Rebels (heroes) – or somewhere in between, it seems.
• Travel back and forth between Preatorian Earth and Primal Earth (our Earth) is possible.
• Two new powersets, dual pistols and demon summoning
• Dual pistols is a blaster/corruptor/defender powerset, with selectable ammo choices – standard, cryo, incendiary and chemical.
• Demon summoning is a mastermind powerset, also includes flaming whip (!) as personal weapon for the player
• A couple of new enemy groups in Praetoria and a graphic refresh of a number of characters from Praetorian side.
• A new graphics setting – Ultra Mode

The Ultra Mode graphics setting is what the majority of the presentation covered, with in-game display of a small part of Praetoria. They have done a number of improvements in terms of shadows and reflections and other bits and pieces, making the game look better. The quality of the YouTube video is not the best, but the differences are very much noticeable, especially when they did turn on and off this Ultra Mode.

The good thing is also that this new settings works for all content, both old and new. They showed some views from the old/existing zones with Ultra Mode turned on/off  - quite nice.

They also had a combat demo with dual pistols – certainly fit with the notion of a super gunslinger.

Release date for Going Rogue is preliminary set to some time in the second quarter of 2010, with closed beta starting in early 2010. 5-year veterans, those that are in the loyalty program and HeroCon attendees are going to be invited in waves to the beta.

I think it looks promising so far. I will certainly turn my villains and heroes to rogues and vigilantes – my view of them in general has always been somewhere in between pure villan and pure hero anyway. And this also has the bonus of being able to travel anywhere in the game. Good work, Paragon Studios!

Flying robots

The Champions Online store has a few more items now, as mentioned in a previous post.  I decided to pick up some more costume parts, with the first update being the Cyborg Beast costume set.

My first costume change here was to use the beast wings on my Soviet war robot. The rest of the robot uses generally available costume parts in the picture.

Flying Soviets in Canada

It is a nice addition, although not always optimal if you combat flying – the large flapping wings can block the view of some enemies from time to time.  I like to use flying when combatting with ranged attacks, even though it uses up a bit more energy – the added mobility is nice to have. So I will have to see how it works out.

Going to Monster Island

This past weekend my highest hero in Champions Online, Ais Kreem, decided to visit a new zone – Monster Island. Up to level 30 the game content is pretty much alternated between three big zones – Millenium City, Canadian Wilderness and Southwest Desert.  Monster Island provides content starting at level 30.

Stop the evil clones!

But before being able to go into the real zone, one has to complete the Monster Island Crisis Zone. This is similar to what was done early in the hero’s career where there was a crisis zone right after the tutorial, before being allowed into the real zones.  The crisis zones of Canadian Wilderness and the Desert were however built up similar to a mission hub with a number of missions received from NPCs. The Monster Island crisis zone is different.

Go. Hunt. Kill VIPER.

It is instead pretty much a big Open Mission area (public quest for you fantasy types) with a story progressing through multiple stages, each new stage being revealed after the previous one has been completed. This was a very fun experience! The crisis zone has all the good stuff – hordes of henchmen, good guys to rescue and which will assist you, big robots, evil scientists, super villains, legendary villains, giant dinosaur and a King Kong-lookalike.

So which King Kong movie do you guys like best?

It is definitely an experience that is aimed for teamwork. When accepting the mission to go to the crisis zone, one is placed into a queue. I suspected it waits until there are enough players and then creates a new instance of the crisis zone – thus there should be enough people to complete it and everyone can be part of it from start.

I think the Monster Island crisis zone was very good and if Cryptic keeps introducing new zones this way I will be a happy player.

New items in the Champions Online store

Since the release of Champions Online, the only items available in their game store has been a few action figures. Not it seems that the store has expanded with a few more items.

Payments are made with Cryptic Points, where 80 points correspond to 1 USD currently.

There are a number of costume sets available, including a few Halloween costumes. Each costume set costs 3 USD basically. There are some emblem packs which are 1 USD per pack. These packs unlocks the costumes and emblems for all characters on the account.

Additional character slots go for 15 USD for four slots.

Two additional costume slots (for all characters) cost 5 USD – you can get up to 4 costume slots normally in the game – 3 individual and one supergroup.

There are also character rename and full retcon (a.k.a respec in some other games). The rename seems to cost less than in other games who provide this (3.50 USD). The retcon feels a bit expensive to me at 12.50 USD – especially since it is just to use with one character.

I have never used a full retcon myself yet, not even the ones thay have given for free in the game during power changes in the game. And the limited (up to 10 choices) retcons can still be made in game without any real money input. So it may never come to that I would buy a full retcon. Still, my gut reaction was that the full retcon was expensive.

As it is now there is nothing that immediately strikes me as something I would want to buy – maybe 1 or 2 of the costume sets. I do think it is good that they have expanded the store beyond the action figures now and get a better understanding of what they will offer and what it will cost.