Champions Online

[Marine X]

Was bored at work waiting to head to a job, started surfing around online and found a Population Tracker for MMoRG Games. On the list was Champions Online, I don't know how accurate it is, but Homecoming has got way more population than that. How long can they go at those levels and be viable?

 

[Haijinx]

It always felt like a solo game to Mr, like most newer MMOs

[SuperPlyx]

I dunno but the 2 trackers I checked real quick both show Champions has average 1,500 daily.

 

[Marine X]

1 minute ago, SuperPlyx said:

Champions has average 1,500 daily

Like I said, no idea how accurate, but even 1500 is really low for a commercial venture. I can't recall, from when I played it, how their servers were set up, 1 huge server or shards, like COX and Homecoming. I don't really remember seeing many people except at the central area in the main cityscape. Seldom saw people in the Northern Wilderness or Desert areas. Never quite felt comfortable with the game play, so didn't play much.

[Sunsette]

19 minutes ago, Marine X said:

How long can they go at those levels and be viable?

 

As long as there are sufficient whales to justify the ROI. The game is viciously monetized, which is the drawback to its incredible character creator.

 

13 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

It always felt like a solo game to Mr, like most newer MMOs

 

Really? Because my main impression of Champions Online is that there wasn't a game worth speaking of. I am a perennial soloer and group content was about the only thing in CO worth doing at all; the solo content is just *that* drab (and/or terrible in the case of their redone starter missions). The comic arcs or whatever they call them are okay for solo stuff but a lot of 'too-little-too-late' for the game.

 

The combat system has promise and I think is a better framework than the mess that is CoH's but there's little content to support it and the freeform system makes CoX builds look quaint and simple.

  

3 minutes ago, Marine X said:

I can't recall, from when I played it, how their servers were set up, 1 huge server or shards

 

One server, as I recall.

Edited March 12 by Sunsette

[Haijinx]

I didn't say it felt like a good single player game...

 

SWTOR feels like a solo player game too, but at least the class stories are good.

[Sunsette]

 

10 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I didn't say it felt like a good single player game...

 

SWTOR feels like a solo player game too, but at least the class stories are good.

 

hah, fair.

 

SWTOR solo experience feels like a shell of itself to me, as someone who beta tested and launched the game. A lot of fights in the game as originally conceived were designed to reward mastery of your character and it made story-difficult missions feel rewarding. Between intentional reduction of difficulty and several class revamps that would have required complete reworks of encounters, all that's gone. Can mindlessly spam 1 to get through everything. Now all that's left are some steamroll fights between decent BioWare cutscenes, like it's the uncanny valley of RPGs.

 

I like that the game's accessible and I have a love-hate relationship with outfits in that game -- my Jedi is stylin', but I did spend a few dollars I shouldn't have to get her full ensemble -- but if they could ever do the story difficulty settings for the class stories the way that KotET and KotFE do for their chapters, that'd be the only thing that could really bring me back for another go. 

Edited March 12 by Sunsette

[Excraft]

2 hours ago, Marine X said:

How long can they go at those levels and be viable?

 

CO has been going for quite a few years now.  It wasn't a victim of the latest sale of Cryptic and from all reports, CO isn't going away anytime soon.  Apparently it's still making money for Cryptic.

[Captain Fabulous]

I think CO has a far more enjoyable solo experience than CoH to be honest. Unless you're really well-built, soloing in CoH is a slog IMO.

The only time in CO you have to team is for hard group content or alerts. In fact it's almost impossible to find a team to do anything else. It's just not worth the aggravation, as most characters are completely self-sustaining and the need for support characters is little to none.

CO has been in maintenance mode for over a decade. The only people playing are the die hards and/or whales. I used to play occasionally, usually during events, cause I have some nice characters that are genuinely enjoyable to play (and I have a lifetime). But after they decided to delete unused event credits at the end of every year that was it for me.

[Lunar Ronin]

1. MMORPG population sites are wholly unreliable.  I've seen some claim that City of Heroes had millions of players... back in 2015.

 

2. Champions Online has its whales and still makes money for Cryptic Studios.  Still, it's not as big as Homecoming.  Also, take this with a grain of salt, but I've heard from a friend who heard from a friend: Cryptic Studios had exactly one year to get Star Trek Online up and running after they acquired the license.  In true Cryptic style, they took a lot of shortcuts to get it done.  One of those shortcuts was to tie in Champions Online's global system like global handle, global chat, and such directly into Star Trek Online.  As a result, the two video games are inherently tied at the hip.  Star Trek Online cannot function without Champions Online.  Therefore, as long as Star Trek Online is around, so will Champions Online be.

 

How true that is... no idea.  But it being Cryptic Studios, it wouldn't surprise me.

 

 

22 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

SWTOR solo experience feels like a shell of itself to me, as someone who beta tested and launched the game. A lot of fights in the game as originally conceived were designed to reward mastery of your character and it made story-difficult missions feel rewarding. Between intentional reduction of difficulty and several class revamps that would have required complete reworks of encounters, all that's gone. Can mindlessly spam 1 to get through everything. Now all that's left are some steamroll fights between decent BioWare cutscenes, like it's the uncanny valley of RPGs.

 

I like that the game's accessible and I have a love-hate relationship with outfits in that game -- my Jedi is stylin', but I did spend a few dollars I shouldn't have to get her full ensemble -- but if they could ever do the story difficulty settings for the class stories the way that KotET and KotFE do for their chapters, that'd be the only thing that could really bring me back for another go. 

 

Yeah.  I started playing SWTOR at the game's launch.  I lasted for some months before leaving.  I keep going back to it every few years.  But they've nerfed the open world so much and revamped the character classes so much that there's no difficulty left at all.  I could solo everything in my sleep.  As a result, I quickly get bored and leave again.

 

People say that City of Heroes is a casual game.  And it really is.  But at the same time, playing red and gold sides' content solo feels like something of a challenge compared to SWTOR's solo content and the solo content of most newer MMORPGs.  It's what keeps me playing City of Heroes.  Well, that and no other MMORPG has anything close to the Mastermind AT.

[Sunsette]

16 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I think CO has a far more enjoyable solo experience than CoH to be honest. Unless you're really well-built, soloing in CoH is a slog IMO.

 

While I also have a lifetime subscription, it sounds like you've played CO more than I have, so I respect your evaluation. For me, I think both CO and CoH are equally dull in most of their solo experiences, but:

• I enjoy Praetoria and late issue mission arcs more than I ever enjoyed any of CO's Comic Arcs, and
• The notoriety settings in CoH allow me to tailor difficulty so I can get some self-directed challenge -- I never really felt that in CO

I will say that the Vibora Bay plotline was decent as a solo experience, so there is that.

 

I do think of CO as more of a teaming game though because the Alerts bar and Giant Monsters seems to be all the content anyone ever does. It was like pulling teeth the once or twice I got a friend to do a comic arc with me. I don't think I ever met one person who understood any of the lore except for people who played the TTRPG and spent their existence mourning what CO did to the setting. I did feel like Kaiserin managed to make the Giant Monster encounters legitimately interesting -- I prefer them to incarnate trials or the revamped Giant Monsters here -- and things like the tower of that weird cloning guy in Canada were pretty fun but accessible challenges that made use of the fact that CO's combat engine is much more responsive, with the block mechanic being a great addition. Unfortunately, it's just such a small spot of the game's content.

Edited March 12 by Sunsette

[RelativeQuanta]

I got lifetime to CO back in 2011.  Now, I wish I hadn't.  I logged on a couple of times in the last month or two and it was extremely buggy.  Many maps had invisible floors and a mission that was supposed to remove a force field after I shut down some generators didn't remove the force fields.  I couldn't complete it.  I don't know how they keep it running, honestly...

 

On a complete tangent, here's my rant about its freeform system.  😛   
Freeform is a cool idea, but there was hidden stuff I didn't like.  For example, Strength = melee damage and Ego = ranged damage.  Yes, it was modified by your "super stats," but those got to double dip.  You couldn't really make a blaster that was just as good in melee as at ranged with the notable exception of the Psy powerset that used Ego for melee too.  Certain sets benefitted directly from certain super stats too that made mixing stuff awkward. 

 

Then again, I've got this weird thing where I have to like the concept of the character to play them, but I get huge FOMO and stop playing if it isn't somewhat close to the meta...

[Sunsette]

2 minutes ago, RelativeQuanta said:

IThen again, I've got this weird thing where I have to like the concept of the character to play them, but I get huge FOMO and stop playing if it isn't somewhat close to the meta...

 

Eyyy, very relatable. I've worked on this part of myself the last few years to be more tolerant of not being peak performance -- but I still always want my 'main' to be high-performing and also a concept I appreciate and did not have to adulterate to pull it off. I managed a few non-psi mixed-range characters but it required literal weeks of pouring over builds each time to get the performance I wanted. 

Edited March 12 by Sunsette

[Excraft]

4 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

Also, take this with a grain of salt, but I've heard from a friend who heard from a friend: Cryptic Studios had exactly one year to get Star Trek Online up and running after they acquired the license.  In true Cryptic style, they took a lot of shortcuts to get it done.  One of those shortcuts was to tie in Champions Online's global system like global handle, global chat, and such directly into Star Trek Online.  As a result, the two video games are inherently tied at the hip.  Star Trek Online cannot function without Champions Online.  Therefore, as long as Star Trek Online is around, so will Champions Online be.

 

No salt required.  Cryptic getting STO launched within an impossibly short time is publicly known.  The part about STO requiring CO in order to function isn't true.  This was a rumor that was spread several years ago.  Cryptic Devs put that to rest a long time ago.  CO and STO might share a chat server, but were CO to get shuttered, STO will still work just fine. 

[Excraft]

7 minutes ago, RelativeQuanta said:

Freeform is a cool idea, but there was hidden stuff I didn't like. 

 

The New Dawn COH server has free form capability where you can mix and match from all primary and secondary sets within a specific AT.  You can make some very interesting concept characters with it.  I wish the people here would look at adding in stuff like that. 

[RelativeQuanta]

1 minute ago, Excraft said:

 

The New Dawn COH server has free form capability where you can mix and match from all primary and secondary sets within a specific AT.  You can make some very interesting concept characters with it.  I wish the people here would look at adding in stuff like that. 

That's cool.  What are the restrictions?  I assume I wouldn't be allowed to make a Dominator with nothing but snipe assault powers.

[Black Zot]

26 minutes ago, Excraft said:

 

No salt required.  Cryptic getting STO launched within an impossibly short time is publicly known.  The part about STO requiring CO in order to function isn't true.  This was a rumor that was spread several years ago.  Cryptic Devs put that to rest a long time ago.  CO and STO might share a chat server, but were CO to get shuttered, STO will still work just fine. 

 

That said, the fact that they share infrastructure effectively allows them to share the bills.  This means CO can turn a profit off even the most minimal revenue stream because STO prints money simply by virtue of being attached to a nigh-unkillable IP.

[Britannic]

Cryptic own the Champions IP so no cost there, and they've stated in the past that it shares the same servers/infrastructure as STO, so again not costing them to keep the lights running. So the better question is if/when STO shutters how long will it be before CO follows?

[High_Beam]

I and about a dozen Babes of War all jumped onto CO when CoH sunset.  We all played for a minute then realized it just wasn't good, not just not CoH, but not good (except for the costume creator, I would love to see some components of that in CoH, I miss my lateral rifle backrack).  I stuck it out a bit because I used to play the pen and paper RPG (along with MSH and V&V) but walked.

Edited March 12 by High_Beam
Spelling

[Frostbiter]

I played CO for about a year around 2014 or 2015 I think. I got two freeform characters Cosmic geared and just never felt like doing that slog again. I think if you yelled Dogs! in chat to this day I'd run.

[Excraft]

2 hours ago, RelativeQuanta said:

That's cool.  What are the restrictions?  I assume I wouldn't be allowed to make a Dominator with nothing but snipe assault powers.

 

You can only pick sets that are available to the AT of choice.  You are restricted to picking only one power per tier in each set.  So you couldn't pick all snipes, just one.  For example, you couldn't pick both Power Thrust AND Electron Shackles at tier 1.  You could only pick one or the other.  What this does allow you to do is mix and match from different sets into a very fun combo.  It's a lot of fun and definitely worth a try to play.  I highly recommend it.  Other servers are doing a lot of fun things. 

 

2 hours ago, Black Zot said:

That said, the fact that they share infrastructure effectively allows them to share the bills.  This means CO can turn a profit off even the most minimal revenue stream because STO prints money simply by virtue of being attached to a nigh-unkillable IP.

 

Amazingly CO still gets the occasional new loot box stuff every now and again, so there is some minimal development being done on it.  Beyond that, it hasn't been touched in years and has essentially been in maintenance mode for more than a decade.  As for Trek being "nigh-unkillable", the newer stuff is certainly trying it's best to destroy the franchise.

 

[Sanguinesun]

12 hours ago, Marine X said:

Like I said, no idea how accurate, but even 1500 is really low for a commercial venture. I can't recall, from when I played it, how their servers were set up, 1 huge server or shards, like COX and Homecoming. I don't really remember seeing many people except at the central area in the main cityscape. Seldom saw people in the Northern Wilderness or Desert areas. Never quite felt comfortable with the game play, so didn't play much.

 

 

You looked on Steamcharts which only tracks steam players and nothing else.  That's why the information is skewed.  Were the access to Champions solely through steam, then those numbers would be more compelling, but again most who play Champions do not do so through steam.

[Uun]

20 hours ago, Haijinx said:

SWTOR feels like a solo player game too, but at least the class stories are good.

The class stories were definitely designed to be soloed. When I played SWTOR (between CoH sunset and HC) I teamed quite a bit. I belonged to a guild that ran ops regularly and the team finder for flashpoints would generally place you within 5 minutes. That said, maximum team size (outside of ops) was 4, so the dynamics were quite different.

[Bastille Boy]

I played Champions Online a bunch about about a year ago. I got two characters to level 40. I didn't fully gear either of them. I got the sense that the game population was low, but there were still enough people for group events.

 

Things I liked about the game:

1. The combat mechanics are different from CoX in some interesting ways, at least at first...the block button, "hold" powers with a tradeoff between damage and animation time.
2. The character building system is flexible and allows possibilities you can't have in CoX, like a dual role healer/Melee DPS.
3. The old.school comic book style graphics are kind of cute.
4. The underwater zone was cool.

Things I didn't like:

1. The game mechanics strongly reward a repetitive attack or healing cycle focused on one main power.
2. It's a Holy Trinity game. You can have a dual-role DPS/healer character, but you can't rapidly switch between healing and damage. You have to decide which role you're playing and stick to it, at least for a while. Single role characters will generally be stronger.
3. The writing is not even trying to be good. It's all cops and robbers.
4. One of the voice actors really likes to portray villains with a lisp.

[Tiresias]

Champions Online is a truly fantastic game that would benefit from a "Homecoming"-like server where a group of passionate people are running the game in a similar way. I remember how much I enjoyed playing until the pivot to free-to-play (it may have been one of the first, if not THE FIRST, buy+sub game to make a F2P conversion). For a long time you could pay a monthly sub to keep playing the game as originally intended, but that wasn't making enough money so the sub went away.

 

This resulted in my many, many freeform characters being stranded, unable to be played unless I paid $15 PER CHARACTER to continue to play them. That was utterly unacceptable to me, so I haven't played the game since.

 

While the storyline was pretty simple, the gameplay was spectacular. In many ways it played like City of Heroes but with the system updates you would expect from a game 5-ish years newer.

 

If you have never played the game it's like worth checking it out, but I wouldn't get too heavily invested in it. Frankly, CoH has a better endgame on the Homecoming servers.