What grade would you give Champs?

thetruthurts

I have 3 questions for the forum community:

1) How long have you been playing?

2) What grade would you give Champs?

3) Why do you feel that way?

Thanks in advance for sharing your opinions

polishlightning

thetruthurts wrote: »

I have 3 questions for the forum community:

1) How long have you been playing?

2) What grade would you give Champs?

3) Why do you feel that way?

Thanks in advance for sharing your opinions

I bought the game at launch, and fooled around for about 2 months with it. When F2P launched (1/2011) I bought a Lifetime sub and have played pretty consistently since then.

I'd give Champs a 'C'.

Champs is a pretty middle of the road MMO, the only thing that makes it stand out from other MMO's is the character creator. It fills a niche for many Super Hero fans that lets us bring our characters to life. With that said, the rest of the game is pretty average or below. Once you've played through the content once, there's not to much else to do but min/max your characters. But for those characters there's not much to do to give you a challenge because most of the content is has to be balanced for casual players.

cptmillennium

1) Since beta.
2) B
3) Phenomenal character customization. My characters can look the way I want and have the abilities I want, which is a key draw for me. Each character is my creation, not another cookie-cutter Necromancer with the same spells, stats and gear. Fun combat system. On the down side, Champs needs more content and improved team dynamics, as well as more reasons TO team. New zones, new rewards, especially at the endgame.

roughbearmattach

1. Since Jan 2011

2. B

3. Character creator is awesome. FF builds are also amazing and cool. Gameplay is quite fun.
Content is often too easy.
No factions.
Alerts are a great, but poorly implemented idea.
Not enough new zones/adventures.

itsbrou

A C...

For Championsy!

nepht

I wouldnt give it a grade I'd give it a ticket for all the awful traffic in Mill City.

championshewolf

nepht wrote: »

I wouldnt give it a grade I'd give it a ticket for all the awful traffic in Mill City.

Well if you would stop trying to set up toll booths at every odd corner, traffic might be better.

xgco

1) How long have you been playing? Since beta

2) What grade would you give Champs? C+

3) Why do you feel that way? Champions does a lot of things right that makes me keep playing it, but it does need a lot of work. So many systems in the game (*cough* Nemesis *cough*) are so horribly underutilized it is sad. The game also had a really rough time switching hands twice since it launched that it has lots to catch up on. Lastly, recent patches have broken the game a bit more than it should be.

klitty

1) Since feb 2011. I'm a squeaky new toy :B

2) I would give it a C

3) Because of all the potential this game has, but really nothing changes much, and the little that changes is content like costume pieces, crafting, perks and other things removed or broken with bugs. I love this game very much, I love creating any character I can think of and have fun with it*. There is still a lot of things to improve, fix, and somehow I come back almost always. Because the other game with the horny kitties got no heroes and capes

*That's a personal issue I have with freeform. I feel that you can either play with an awesome buid, a themed build or a gimped build. I don't want to be punished for "wrong" choice of powers/stats, feels like there is not many ways to play this game. It's just a personal thing I wanted to get out of my chest, of course I could be wrong and is just a preception, not a fact :* xo xo.

ventani

thetruthurts wrote: »

I have 3 questions for the forum community:

1) How long have you been playing?

2) What grade would you give Champs?

3) Why do you feel that way?

Thanks in advance for sharing your opinions

1) Beta, on and off
2) B, simply because I've seen the face of terrible game companies, and Cryptic isn't anywhere near the worst.
3) The game is flat out fun. Yes it is buggy at times, all games in an online environment are. I've worked on the development side of them before and I'm pretty sure the recent rash of bugs stems from the live and test versions of code being considerably branched apart. That is generally caused by some significant changes to the test base that haven't made it live yet. My initial guess as to the nature of the bugs is the impending code to move the affected missions into a 'queue' system similar to On Alert.

Sorry for the tangent :redface:

flyingfinn

1. Forever. And ever after. Day 1 represent, yo.

2.0. B.
2.1. C-.

3.0. B is for 'But mostly because of the Character Creator'.
3.1. C- is for 'Content wise. It lacks. This includes the forgotten AP's, CS's, Nemesis System'.

man515drake

thetruthurts wrote: »

I have 3 questions for the forum community:

1) How long have you been playing?

2) What grade would you give Champs?

3) Why do you feel that way?

Thanks in advance for sharing your opinions

1/ 2 years approx

2/ B

3/ The game is fun and I can create endless types of characters and costumes. It would have gotten an A or B+ if it had fewer bugs and more levelling content. The main reasons for the high mark apart from those already mentioned like it being fun and having great customisation are the community and the contact and support from the devs. I know dev communication can vary but lately the communication has become much improved ( Thanks TT). The last game to hold my attention this long was BF2 and that wasn't without it's problems. I think CO is a great game could it be better YES is it unplayable well after playing it for almost 2 years I would say definitely NO.

Keep up the good work Cryptic but could do better.

bluhman

A: March 2010
B: C+/B-
C: This game is so 'diamond in the rough' I do not believe it. If the developers would at least try creating honest-to-god content for a few months or something, I'd be happy, because the actual engine, mechanics, and costume creator are all quite good already.

pion01

1) Beta

2) B-

3) Above average but not great, enthusiastic but inconsistent performence, shows improvement but at a slower pace than would be expected from such potential. In areas where performance is not an issue there is consistent excellence - were it not for this, grade would be much lower.

zahinder

Played about two months when it first came out, a few months here and there, and then more frequently since f2p.

I give the game a C. Bugs, content, and graphics hold the game back (in order of importance, IMO).

If the game was a lot more polished and had a little more content, I'd consider giving it an 'A.'

xgco

Call me crazy but I don't mind the graphics, but everyone has their tastes I guess.

zahinder

I like the graphics, they could just be BETTER. IMO.

Consider:
Champions Online
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/563535_3826140845977_714941692_n.jpg

The Secret World
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/180279_3846185987093_142572627_n.jpg

Guild Wars 2
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/247646_4209812397526_1591823633_n.jpg


I mean, all in all I'm happy to trade some graphics fidelity for the sheer range of options, but ... still.

neuraldamage

zahinder wrote: »

I like the graphics, they could just be BETTER. IMO.

Consider:
Champions Online
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/563535_3826140845977_714941692_n.jpg

The Secret World
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/180279_3846185987093_142572627_n.jpg

Guild Wars 2
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/247646_4209812397526_1591823633_n.jpg


I mean, all in all I'm happy to trade some graphics fidelity for the sheer range of options, but ... still.

You're comparing 2 brand new games to an (at least) 3 year old graphical engine???

I call foul, go sit in the penalty box. :rolleyes:

zahinder

Ok, how about STO?

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/551101_3185477669798_777276360_n.jpg

jorifice1

1)How long? 1109 days officially, with about another couple of weeks thrown on due to a foul up shortly after launch that ended up with me having to have my subscription reset (don't ask).
2)Grade? This is a tough one...... I'd give it a solid B.
3)a)Character Creator gets an A-, but only because of the Level Gating thing that they . . do now.

b)Powers get a B+. They look COOL and do awesome things. What's not to like? . O.K., the constant changing and tweaking of the powers needs to at least slow down . a bit. It you want to make a power do something completely different, MAKE A NEW . #@$A%^&@$#%^ POWER.
c)Gameplay gets a solid B. I LIKE the casual style in this game. When I need a super
challenge fix I play another game (or go fly fishing). With Champs, you actually feel . like an A list superhero.
d)Bugs get a D-. These things languish FOREVER.
e)The Chat/Ban System gets an INCOMPLETE. It would take vast improvements to . . get this monstrosity all the way up to an F.
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flyingfinn

Secret Worlds character models looked crap.
GuiltWars. Holy clipping trenchcoat. Looks even worse than SW.
Again. Comparing games that look "realistic" to a game which has comicbook art feel to it.

xgco

I think the only thing that bothers me graphics wise is the character model faces in CO. I like the cartoonish look but the faces don't really get all that varied in my experience. Then again I guess that is why most Superheroes wear masks lol.

jorifice1

zahinder wrote: »

I like the graphics, they could just be BETTER. IMO.

Consider:
Champions Online
http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/563535_3826140845977_714941692_n.jpg

The Secret World
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/180279_3846185987093_142572627_n.jpg

Guild Wars 2
http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/247646_4209812397526_1591823633_n.jpg


I mean, all in all I'm happy to trade some graphics fidelity for the sheer range of options, but ... still.

The Secret World is an awesome game, no doubt (lifetime subscriber here) but seriously, they have what, maybe 50 or 60 costume items TOTAL? And nearly every one of those is just a slight recolouring of maybe 10 or 15 basic costume pieces? You have that little material, of course every piece can get extra love and attention
.
.
.

hubrix

1. since FFA's launch
2. hate numerical ratings system but if I had to, it wouldn't be a high one, it wouldn't be that low either
3. I love CO, I love the setting and theme, I love the freeform system, I love the customization but that's it. Mission variety is crap, the lack of end-game, the recent emphasis on alerts instead of making said end-game content, and bugs everywhere. I can't imagine the uproar if say the Dark Portal suddenly stopped working and Outland was cut off but in CO, losing access to Vibora is just business as usual. People on my Steam friends list chide me about my time spent playing on CO all the time and while ultimately it's what counts, my only defense is that I still like it despite everything.

nepht

championshewolf wrote: »

Well if you would stop trying to set up toll booths at every odd corner, traffic might be better.

Its not toll booths its SAFETEH BOXES!

Magical boxes that when you pay them they make sure you dont get a hammer to the spleen.

Though some of my employees need some moar orientation .

biffsmackwell

flyingfinn wrote: »

Secret Worlds character models looked crap.
GuiltWars. Holy clipping trenchcoat. Looks even worse than SW.
Again. Comparing games that look "realistic" to a game which has comicbook art feel to it.

Exactly. Champions has never tried to look realistic. It's one of the reasons I like it so much.

So here's mine.

1 - Since open beta.

2 - A, maybe A-, but definitely A (you knew it was coming! :P )

3 - I like the game a whole lot, obviously. I like it so much that I can usually always say that the good outweighs all the bad. Lack of content isn't a big deal to me. With each character I play (and I have lots of them) it feels like a new experience to me. Bugs have never bugged me very much. I understand that things break, and can usually brush them aside. Alerts really seem like they were custom made just for me. I love most of them. Months before they came out, I asked people if they thought the comic series took too long to complete, because I thought they did. I wanted smaller content. So bam, there it is.

I understand that the game isn't perfect, and wish things like the Nemesis system would be expanded upon. And yeah, I want more more more of it all around! Who wouldn't? But I still get a whole lot joy playing it, more than any other game. So yeah, my personal score for the game is an A.

People will say that I'm a fanboy, or whatever. But you know what, when it's the game I enjoy playing most out of all the games I have, how could I give it any lower of a grade?

zahinder

flyingfinn wrote: »

Secret Worlds character models looked crap.
GuiltWars. Holy clipping trenchcoat. Looks even worse than SW.
Again. Comparing games that look "realistic" to a game which has comicbook art feel to it.

IMO, co doesn't look cartoonish, it just looks low quality. The pants are blocky, the textures are often unpolished (not cartoonish, just... rough).

I have nothing against cartoonish, but other than 'outlines', I don't really see the cartoonish element.

The faces seriously lack character and expression, too. Thankfully, most of the characters I play have weird heads.

ashensnow

1) Since headstart.

2) C-

3) Character creation is quite good, when pieces and sets are not bugged out. A general lack of polish, balance, challenge, or interesting mechanics for fights...combined with current direction (alerts, vehicle implementation, PvP rewards, etc) all bring the grade down for me.

haleakala

1. Since beta; off and on since, currently mostly off.

2. B+, C, F.

3. B+ is for character customization, with my only reservation being the sameness of faces. C is for playable content. F is for the chat ban system, because any game system that can be abused, will be, and "Power to the people" should not mean griefing.

zahinder

And again, just to be clear-- I'm willing to 'put up' with graphics I wished were better in exchange for the HUGE range of options we have in co, parsecs more than any other game.

If everything else was good, the graphics might lower the game from A to A-.

jonsills

1. A couple of years, apparently (got the two-year reward; might be based on one of those "free weekends" I tried out back before F2P).

2. A-

3. I have a lot of fun playing this game. Even using ATs, the experience is different enough that it feels new every time I bring another character through Westside. Compare to WoW, which gives you enough character slots to try to encourage altoholism - but a gnome wizard's starting experience is almost identical to a dwarf ranger's, for instance, as both start in the same small valley and the special powers that set them apart aren't really that special. (The basic difference graphically between a wizard's starting attack spell and a ranger's gun is that one involves shouldering a steampunk rifle first.)

The character creator is just astonishing. I'm glad I got involved before this "level 10" nonsense started, because it wouldn't have seemed anywhere near as awesome if my first character, the Behemoth Meteor, hadn't been able to be made of glowing reddish rock with yellow in the cracks...

And the community, while not perfect (nothing involving humans is), is still lightyears ahead of the communities in, say, WoW or EVE. If I have a question, I can ask it in Chat, and be almost certain not to get anyone telling me, "L2P, n00b!", or giving deliberately wrong answers because they think it's funny. Instead, the majority of the players in here are genuinely helpful (a tendency I try to emulate).

hubrix

Speaking of graphics, I'm also one of the 10 or so people that love the Comic Outlines.

kelplankton

I've been playing CO on and off since the early beta I'd say. I was confident enough in the game back then to buy a Lifetime sub, but never to stick around very long at any point thus far. Starting about a month and a half ago I really got into the game and this is the longest I've stuck with it.

I'd give it a C overall. A solid C, though.

Champions Online is good, but flawed. It's main draw is the huge amount of customization, and it's main issues are a lack of versatility in character roles and a glut of technical issues and bugs.

No other MMO out there, save Second Life(which barely counts) allows for as much customization as CO. You make your physical build, your outfit, choose any combination of powers you can imagine, even make your arch-nemesis to fight on a regular basis. CO lets you be a psychic bear in power armor that summons velociraptors and the undead. That is crazy, in the best way. But for all this versatility, player roles are kind of limited. If you're not either a Tank or a DPS, you're just ineffective. Support is practically nonexistant, regardless of the game's sets allowing for it, and Control just simply does not work, enemies shrug off any attempts at control or debuffing like it's nothing. I'd love to see this fixed, going forward, because the Control style of gameplay is not only a lot of fun, but an important archetypical style of superhero as well.

Lack of content comes up a lot in these discussions, but I think what people mean by this is really "lack of content I have not seen yet" or "lack of content for my lv40 character". The endgame is unquestionably sparse, with a grand total of 2 legitimate endgame things to do(Nemesis Confrontation and Gravitar) and the only goal being "get the best gear". Within the first year of the game's lifespan this would be understandable- but we're three years in now, and there's still just not much to do. Luckily, you can make varied enough characters that just making someone new is an option, but, when you invest enough time to hit lv40, you really want there to be something to do once you get there. But as for the rest of the game, I think it just needs an alternate early-game path to the current westside progression, and some alternative to monster island, and then it'd be alright. Every other level range has at least two options to work with(Canada/Desert and Lemuria/Vibora, correct me if I'm wrong since I'm only lv30) and the Alerts are definitely an alternate progression path if people are just looking for speed, but they're less satisfying than real story stuff generally. Vehicles could fix this, depending on how comprehensive the amount of content they bring with them is. Sidekicks could also fix this, depending on how viable they are as an alternate progression route like the officer system in STO can be.

Also there are a lot of bugs all over the place. It is gross and I am pretty sure they crawl inside my mouth while I'm sleeping every night and I might have accidentally swallowed some of them. So that is a thing that needs to be fixed too.

I got kind of long-winded here but, yeah. That's why it's only a C. It could easily be an A by the end of 2013 though! Just needs a little work!

pion01

hubrix wrote: »

Speaking of graphics, I'm also one of the 10 or so people that love the Comic Outlines.

You heard 'im.

String em up, get the torch.

zahinder

hubrix wrote: »

Speaking of graphics, I'm also one of the 10 or so people that love the Comic Outlines.

Actually, recently I've started playng with outlines on and brightness set down a few notches.

It creates an interesting and different feel, and helps make up for what I see as lapses.

kelplankton

I love the comic look on the characters in particular, but feel like some aspects of the environments end up looking too flat and samey. This has been a longstanding issue in lots of comic-shaded and cel-shaded games though. It's hard to make concrete interesting when it's so simplified.

But the mix of the outlines with the softly detailed textures looks really good sometimes. The bagginess/folds/creases you can add to clothing and spandex in particular looks really nice. I like everything about the character options except the faces.

jorifice1

zahinder wrote: »

Actually, recently I've started playng with outlines on and brightness set down a few notches.

It creates an interesting and different feel, and helps make up for what I see as lapses.

If you want to try something AMAZING, fool with the colour sliders with your Graphics Card, setting them to override the game. You can get the entire game to match the colour scheme from Steve Ditco or even Watchmen with a bit of tweaking.
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xaogarrent

flyingfinn wrote: »

Secret Worlds character models looked crap.
GuiltWars. Holy clipping trenchcoat. Looks even worse than SW.
Again. Comparing games that look "realistic" to a game which has comicbook art feel to it.

Then how about we compare it to the original Borderlands?

http://s3.amazonaws.com/gearboxsoftwarecom/images/_/9/af31920406bf84e594586ec496f28091f5dce7cf.jpg

Or are you going to say it's unfair to compare it to a game where every texture was hand drawn? Cause that my friend, is what you call "a love for what you do."

Also, if CO's comic book outlines looked anywhere as good as Borderlands, I'd have them still turned on.

ashensnow

xaogarrent wrote: »

Then how about we compare it to the original Borderlands?

http://s3.amazonaws.com/gearboxsoftwarecom/images/_/9/af31920406bf84e594586ec496f28091f5dce7cf.jpg

Or are you going to say it's unfair to compare it to a game where every texture was hand drawn? Cause that my friend, is what you call "a love for what you do."

Also, if CO's comic book outlines looked anywhere as good as Borderlands, I'd have them still turned on.

Wow.

Ive never played Borderlands, but that looks amazing.

biffsmackwell

Yeah, I think they rely way too much on bump mapping for detail. I would have loved actual lines penned in instead.

But still, I don't think Champs looks bad by any means. It's stylized. For some reason people seem to think that more realistic means better. For me, personally, it's quite the opposite. I enjoy looking at a game way more if it's got some sort of style to the graphics (I LOVE Borderlands, and Crackdown's style, and WoW's as well (yeah, more polygons does not always mean better :P)). Know which game bored me to tears? Conan. Technically, a very beautiful game, but, it was so plain that I was just all bleh all over it.

So yeah, while I prefer how games like Borderlands and Crackdown look, I wouldn't say that Champs looks bad. It's just different.

biffsmackwell

ashensnow wrote: »

Wow.

Ive never played Borderlands, but that looks amazing.

Yeah, it is. People often see screenshots of the game and say "Yeah let me see an in-game shot."

Still to this day I'll stop every so often and just look around at characters and the environment and guns and just admire it all. Really, really great work they do.

jorifice1

Borderlands II (JUST released) looks even better.
So far I have restrained myself (just barley) from using the Champs Character Creator to make a pony made out of diamonds.......
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forutnefire

1) 2+ years.

2) B-

3) The story is incredibly fun and versatile. The character creator is unparalleled. The community (for the most part) is incredibly fun and creative. The game play is user friendly, but there are bugs and glitches in every aspect of the game. Pushing out new content which may contain more glitches before fixing the ones you have is not a smart idea. The mechanics are somewhat user friendly in that game play is easy to learn, but less gracious to those who have invest time and money into it (i.e. report spam feature).

canadascott

1) How long have you been playing?

Since late closed beta.

2) What grade would you give Champs?

Pass. I'm still logging in, and still paying for my sub. If letter grading it, it would have been a B, but the plethora of bugs introduced in the Nighthawk patch has sharply reduced that for me. It's hard to recommend the game to others in its current condition, I'm hoping that this will change within the next month.

xaogarrent

ashensnow wrote: »

Wow.

Ive never played Borderlands, but that looks amazing.

In all seriousness, pick up both Borderlands and Borderlands 2 if you haven't played them, you wont regret it. The second game, as stated, looks even more amazing, and the entirety of both games has that same high level of detail all the way through. Both of them have some of the most hilarious and awesome characters in any game I've played to date. Oh, and the weapons, especially in the second game, get progressively more insane as it goes along. You'll eventually get stuff that makes you just say "wut."

Also, grab the DLCs too. Borderlands takes the old approach to DLC, which is to say an actual expansion pack with hours of playable content. Knoxx's armory felt like it was over half the length of the original game. The first expansion pack for BL2 is rumored to have at least 10 hours of playable content.

biffsmackwell

xaogarrent wrote: »

In all seriousness, pick up both Borderlands and Borderlands 2 if you haven't played them, you wont regret it. The second game, as stated, looks even more amazing, and the entirety of both games has that same high level of detail all the way through. Both of them have some of the most hilarious and awesome characters in any game I've played to date. Oh, and the weapons, especially in the second game, get progressively more insane as it goes along. You'll eventually get stuff that makes you just say "wut."

Also, grab the DLCs too. Borderlands takes the old approach to DLC, which is to say an actual expansion pack with hours of playable content. Knoxx's armory felt like it was over half the length of the original game. The first expansion pack for BL2 is rumored to have at least 10 hours of playable content.

While I could talk about Borderlands all day, and agree with everything you said there, let's get this thread back on track! :biggrin:

keikomyst

1) 1 year

2) A+ at the beginning, C now

3) When I first started up CO, I loved the character customization and how easy it was to just get in the game and play, solo or with a team. The RP community was and still is great today! I got the feeling of playing a character rather than a toon. To the point where I am actually a fair bit emotionally invested in my characters and other characters. I had a grand 'ol time taking out any villains that dared get on the wrong end of my many guns and doing missions of all varieties.

After I subscribed, the game got better. Yes, I had a few craptastic builds but I became competent at making a good, but still conceptual, build. Possibilities were opening up, and it was totally awesome. I also loved, loved, LOVED the flavor text of the items. The game had more character and personality than any other MMO I had played.

When On Alert came around, at first I was excited, but with the advent of the Alert system came my waning enjoyment of the game. Yeah, it was fun to get a team together and just beat up Black Fang for an hour, but it was more fun assembling that same team for Therakiel's Temple and stopping the apocalypse... and getting some GOOD STUFF out of it! Yes, I am a reward-driven player. Give me something cool for doing something epic. This is what drove me to keep trying in PvP: I wanted to get better at the game and also grow stronger, and those PvP purple primaries? Those used to be great! The power replacers? The VB-A1A Eagle Blaster Rifle? I grinded for that TWICE. One for my Soldier and one for a friend's Soldier. You know what? I felt good after I finished. I got something for working hard and doing something I enjoyed.

Also, the sore lack of permanent content! We've just had events and alerts... to what end? I can't go back and do Frank Stone again, despite that being a cool (if terribly short) mission because it was an event. The Mega D event is off until that pesky level 1 bug is fixed, along with the many other myriad bugs (that graphic driver thing is STILL happening, Stronghold turrets are still going invincible, among a whole other laundry list of bugs) All that's left to do is alerts, alerts, more alerts, maybe run the Monster Island crisis, maybe get enough Questionite for obnoxiously expensive purple secondaries from the Q-store, and RP. The old content is still there, but you can only run through it so many times...

secksegai

1) Just shy of a year
2) C-
3)

I'm still around for the moment, so it would definitely have to at least be passing. But it's also been the least professional MMO experience I've had. Wow, CoH, and even SWG set the bar higher.

Rampant and persistent bugs are so frequent it's amazing I made it this far.

Customer service is abysmal, to the point I expect any ticket response to either be you're SoL or being told to reset the instance.

Pvp is on life-support, yet PVE these days primarily consist mainly of just farming alerts for xp and costume drops.

The combat system is what keeps things interesting, but it needs so much improvement it's downright frustrating.

Things like that.

iamrune

1; I've been here since closed alpha, a year before launch.

2; A for potential, B- currently.

3;

Where to begin? Character creation [costumes] is outstanding, graphics stylized but amazing*, and gameplay is flat out stellar. Character freeform development is a big plus as well, and the zone design is for the most part way above the curve, we just don't have near enough of them.

*I have done a number of close side by side comparisons of faces, and I don't see that many close resemblances between my alts and others, and my alts are all ordinary human in looks. Sure, zoomed back a fair bit they look samey, but so do real people.

The things that detract from a perfect score for me are the numerous bugs, very slow development and sheer unmet potential this game has yet to come close to fulfilling.

Still no level cap lift, we've been capped at 40 since the game went live, many hitting it the very first week, and only gear advancement [and now build tweaking via Specs], and I'd like to see the game finished and level 50 done with an extensive time to reach it, as much time to go from 40-50 as it took to go from 6-40. Even if it was that long, it's still on the short side to cap for a typical MMO, and too short = a joke, ala DCUO.

No new major zone since Vibora Bay, although it seems to me that the Qliphothic zone map used for two adv. packs could have been fleshed out into something more like the Shadow Shard in CoH, it's large enough.

Still no foundry but I know the intention is to let it get properly polished and 'done' in Neverwinter then port it to a Champions Specific version.

All in all I love this game like no other, I log in daily most weeks and still play my numerous alts, but with little new to do beyond Unity gear grinding, Alerts / Questionite grinding, and old story arcs, Adv. Packs, Lairs and Comic Series that I know backwards and forwards, the prime enjoyments are the builds I made and the people I role-play with.

monaahiru

1) How long have you been playing? Since beta

2) What grade would you give Champs? S

3) Why do you feel that way? Only game I do.

agentnx5

thetruthurts wrote: »

1) How long have you been playing?

Well over a year now, not entirely certain and it's not important to me at all. LTS Veteran benefits fall under the category of "a watched pot never boils", for me at least.

thetruthurts wrote: »

2) What grade would you give Champs?

3) Why do you feel that way?

Overall grade is a bad benchmark. There are somethings this game is VERY good at, others that are failing pretty bad as of recent months.

Time frame reference also matters A LOT. I'm going to consider from past to present.

Customization:
10/10

reason = on of the best on the market, especially with regards Freeform design

Originality:
8/10

reason = Champions Lore is solid if a bit clique at times. Major props to the environmental artists to made the Zones and the costume designs, but losing more than a point here due to the campy style and generally terrible voice acting (worst of all being that of Red Snake) that I've never liked.

Audio:
8/10

reason = most sound effects are good, and to be honest some of the music is actually quite fitting and good (the problem is there are only a few tracks so they get overused a lot)

Visuals:
6/10

reason = the special effects generally look dated, some of it is glitchy, most 2D textures are kind of blase... Also there are glitches with appearance stuff.

Stability:
3/10

reason = Champions runs stable most of the time, but there are crashes and some stupid ones at that. Bugs however are RAMPANT in this game, especially after a major patch. Some of them are flat-out game breaking and could have easily have been prevented with proper QA (quality assurance, testing). F*** gameplay glitches, especially those that aren't getting addressed. This isn't the most unstable MMO I've played, but it's a major detractor for what could otherwise be a superb game. Also, the timing of some of these bugs have been notoriously bad.

Popularity:
2/10

reason = not many people know about this game. I can introduce people on the street and friends to it and 99 times out of 100 they've never even heard of this game. That's pretty sad and shows the atrociously poor job Perfect World is doing to advertise & market. To be clear, when I say popularity, it means how well know the game is OUTSIDE of this insular community. The answer is not at all really.

Customer Service:
7/10

reason = it has been very piss poor in the past, but it starting to show genuine signs of improvement. Perfect World is at least doing this right more often, and people like TrailTurtle and Nisdums communicating on a semi-regular basis is definitely improving developer-user relations. Understanding of one another can only be granted though effective & prompt communication!

Price:
10/10

reason = Absolutely brilliant here! You can play 100% free if you have the time. You can buy stuff and support the game and get things easier, but NOT pay-to-win. And there's all sorts of options in between. Cryptic did this right!!! (that said, they're missing out on opportunities to improve their profit margin and reduce loss from customer turnover rate)

Mechanics & Gameplay Balance:
6/10

reason = It used to be one of the strongest but has been slipping further and further... Energy supply from unlocks isn't what it used to be and it feels like we're CONSTANTLY plagued by some sort of game-breaking bug or loophole of some kind. Whether it being Imbue or the new Backup devices or whatever. There's a whole history of this I could go into but would rather not. Also, blocking isn't doing crap against enemies that can one-shot you no matter what. Not that that's bad per se, but it kind of makes the whole "mandatory block" mechanic and wanting to stay alive pointless. I've said before the "stars" system for staying alive is a joke of an incentive/disincentive. That said, the game feels much more balanced than it has in the past. We're actually at a point where most things in the game should be left alone and not changed. There are a few glitches and some underpowered powers and advantages that need to be cleaned up, but on the whole it's above average.


Overall score: B+