Confronting Nemesis

Cryptic has started to push the marketing buttons for a new lair that is being added to Champions Online next week, Nemesis Confrontation. This is a 5-man lair for max level characters (i.e. level 40) which as the name implies, includes confrontations with the Nemesis characters of all people in the team. There is also a trailer available – warning though that the speaker voice is a bit cheesy IMHO…

The new lair is available on the Public Test Server and characters less than 40 can be bumped up to that level for testing. Some feedback in the forums seems to give that it is overall a good one, although the Nemesis part does not play such a big role as the name would imply and that they Nemesis characters are a bit wimpy. The main encounter seem to more frustrating than challenging for some builds at least.

My highest is at 33, so there will still be some time before I get to try this one out – perhaps close to Christmas or something like that. The lair will be available in the regular Champions world on November 24th.

Games I pay

Instead of a games I play I wanted to do a games I pay, which are two different lists – only one game is currently overlapping those two, barely.

• Saga of Ryzom
  Paying the subscription fee for this game, although I have barely logged into to it in the past 2-3 months. I like a number of things about this game, but it has not been the right environment for me to disconnect from the real world in. Besides, it is a bit too much fantasy-like and I don’t really appreciate anything fantasy-like at the moment. But I do wish to encourage small developers like WinchGate, so I am happy to continue pay regardless of whether I play it or not.
• City of Heroes/Villains
  This has been my primary MMO since spring 2006, but lately I have been slacking in this area in terms of playing. Paragon Studios have added some neat things in updates, but seem to focus on the upcoming expansion Going Rogue, which looks promising.  Paragon Studios itself is not huge, but is still part of a somewhat large MMO company – NCSoft. So I am not paying because I want to support a small developer – instead it is to support a studio that make a good team-encouraging casual MMO with good stories. They also do seem to want to go in a bit new directions even after 5+ years with the game, as the expansion indicates. I simply like their ambitions and that they also seem to be reasonably good in execution, although not quite the top-notch that they used to be when they were a smaller group. I am happy to support them even though I do not play much at the moment.
• Champions Online
  This is definitely the MMO which I think has the most fun combat and is the MMO I mainly play if I get some spare time. I even like the PvP in the game, at least the types of PvP I have tried so far (Zombie Apocalypse, Hunters vs werewolves, Stronghold Apocalypse).
  I do not pay for a monthly subscription with this one, since I bought the lifetime subscription back in August. I have paid a little bit afterwards using the Cryptic shop to buy some costume pieces and a character rename. So I do pay here, but not at regular intervals. The reason for buying the lifetime subscription was simply a longterm investment in that I believe to be Cryptic’s ability to create MMOs that I like to play.  Champions Online has not disappointed me; but I do think Cryptic has been a bit sloppy in some areas of execution and the game still needs more good content – but which PvE-oriented MMO doesn’t?
  It is a game that works well to have in a mix of other games; but probably not something for those that want to focus on one single game for many hours per week over many months or years. For my casual approach it works fine.
• Fallen Earth
  I like the post-apocalyptic setting and the scavenging/crafting type of gameplay clicks with me here. The combat sucks IMHO, but thankfully this does not seem to be something that I have to endure too much. Again, this is a game from a somewhat small developer; I am quite ok with paying for this to support a small developer doing a non-fantasy and a bit sandbox:y game, even though I do not log in and play that often. More of those games.

I have played and play some other MMO games which do not require me to pay a regular fee; but that is for a different post.

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.