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A History of the Champions (current team)
Archived Post
Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
There's a lot of talk in-game about the Champions "never actually having done anything". I thought it might be useful to provide some context for the Champions team, who have they've faced, and what their major achivements are. So I went through sixth edition books (Champions Universe, Champions Villains 1-3, and Champions Beyond) and compiled a timeline. There may be more info in 5th edition books, but I wanted to keep it to canon sources approved by Cryptic. Events in CO are marked with an asterisk (*)
Champions (superteam) history:
1999
Defender debuts as a part-time superhero in New York.
2001
Defender moves to Millennium City and founds the Champions. Nighthawk and Sapphire join the team soon after.
In March, Ironclad crashlands on Earth, diverted into Lake St. Clare near Millennium City. He makes contact with the Champions, and joins the team.
The four Champions battle Takofanes on Halloween. The intervention of Witchcraft saves them, and Witchcraft joins the team.
The Champions join forces with other heroes to defeat Glacier, one of the monsters involved in the Battle of Detroit. He is sent to Stronghold.
2002
The Champions join forces with several independent heroes to defeat the plans of Mechanon in Millennium City. The Engineer is probably created shortly after this battle.
The Champions distract Isthvatha V'han's plans to conquer Earth by travelling to several dimensions under her control and fomenting dissent.
2003
Black Paladin attempts to resurrect his long lost love Chantel, but are defeated by the Champions and sent to Stronghold.
An extra dimensional energy blob attacks Millennium City, until lured home by a beacon created by the Champions and Dr. Silverback.
Interface uses the supervillains Mirage and Utility as part of an elaborate plan to defeat the Champions. Despite the intricate master plan, the heroes defeat the cybernetic villain and expose his ties to ARGENT. The company is nearly wiped out; it takes over five years for ARGENT to fully recover from the scandalous revelations.
2004
King Cobra attacks Millennium City with the Ophidian Plague, but are defeated in the nick of time by the Champions (Note: There is a contradiction here between CO and the PnP source, as Timothy Blank is still with VIPER as of the start of the game in 2009 and has not yet become King Cobra.)
The Champions vanish for an indeterminate period of time to fight alongside heroes from another dimension in "the Reality Storm". Other heroes pick up the slack. The Champions release the imprisoned cosmic entity Entropus, who sets things right and sends our heroes home.
Utility lures the Champions into an elaborate death trap and nearly defeats them.
The Champions join forces with Dr. Ka to prevent the supervillain Anubis from summoning Set in Vibora Bay.
The Champions prevent splinter factions of PSI from tearing the city -- and each other -- apart.
2005
Gravitar attacks Seattle. The Champions battle her, but Defender's agreement to take her on a date settles the conflict.
2006
Holocaust puts together a team of minor villains (Ankylosaur, the Basilisk, Esper, Fenris, Frag, Freakshow, Leviathan, Lodestone, Ogre, Riptide, Tesseract, and Thunderbolt II). Calling themselves "the Alliance", they try to take out the Champions, but are defeated.
Nighthawk leaves the team, replaced by Kinetik.
Slug's attempt to transform the population of Millennium City into Elder Worms is defeated by the Champions.
Cybermind figures out Defender's secret identity as James Harmon and launches a takeover of Harmon Industries. He suffers a major setback when he tries to control Defender's armor and the cybernetic feedback puts him in a coma.
2007
The Champions fight Shadow Destroyer and his Shadow Colossi in Canada (Note: In CO, it's arguable that neither Destroyer makes an appearance until the Qularr invasion of 2009, as "some say that Dr. Destroyer may have already returned" in the Milllennium City cutscene at least heavily implies that it's not yet a widely accepted fact. A good compromise might be that they fought Shadow Colossi, and Shadow Destroyer was secretly involved but remained undetected).
The Champions defeat Mechassassin and throw him in Stronghold,.
2008
The Champions prevent Mechanon from using a nanotech weapon from converting the entire population of Earth into a machine state.
2009
Mechanon tries to take over Silicon Valley, but is defeated by the Champions and the Freedom Patrol.
The Qularr, lured by Shadow. Destroyer, take over Champions HQ. A plucky hero assists Defender in shutting down the beacons and defeating Black Talon and the Qularr.
*Defender takes a mentorship role for many new heroes flooding into Millennium City in wake of the Qularr Invasion.
2010?
*The Champions are killed by Valerian Scarlet during Therakiel's attempted takeover of Millennium City, but another hero uses Juryrig's time machine to undo their deaths.
2011
*The Champions assist a hero in rescuing five UNTIL soldiers from Luther Black's "Gateway Between Worlds", a bizarre safe zone between our world and the Qliphothic, and preventing the Kings of Edom from seizing avatars in order to manifest themselves on earth.
Other reported incidents (no date assigned):
The Champions encounter one of the Gods Celestial, a cosmic entity of enormous power.
The Champions form an auxiliary corp, consisting of Dr. Silverback, Nightwind, Ultratech, Blockhead, and Crusader.
The Champions rescue the FBI operative Tecknique from the supervillain Automaton, blowingup the villain in the process.
The Freedom Patrol asks permission to become the Champions' west coast team.
Champions (superteam) history:
1999
Defender debuts as a part-time superhero in New York.
2001
Defender moves to Millennium City and founds the Champions. Nighthawk and Sapphire join the team soon after.
In March, Ironclad crashlands on Earth, diverted into Lake St. Clare near Millennium City. He makes contact with the Champions, and joins the team.
The four Champions battle Takofanes on Halloween. The intervention of Witchcraft saves them, and Witchcraft joins the team.
The Champions join forces with other heroes to defeat Glacier, one of the monsters involved in the Battle of Detroit. He is sent to Stronghold.
2002
The Champions join forces with several independent heroes to defeat the plans of Mechanon in Millennium City. The Engineer is probably created shortly after this battle.
The Champions distract Isthvatha V'han's plans to conquer Earth by travelling to several dimensions under her control and fomenting dissent.
2003
Black Paladin attempts to resurrect his long lost love Chantel, but are defeated by the Champions and sent to Stronghold.
An extra dimensional energy blob attacks Millennium City, until lured home by a beacon created by the Champions and Dr. Silverback.
Interface uses the supervillains Mirage and Utility as part of an elaborate plan to defeat the Champions. Despite the intricate master plan, the heroes defeat the cybernetic villain and expose his ties to ARGENT. The company is nearly wiped out; it takes over five years for ARGENT to fully recover from the scandalous revelations.
2004
King Cobra attacks Millennium City with the Ophidian Plague, but are defeated in the nick of time by the Champions (Note: There is a contradiction here between CO and the PnP source, as Timothy Blank is still with VIPER as of the start of the game in 2009 and has not yet become King Cobra.)
The Champions vanish for an indeterminate period of time to fight alongside heroes from another dimension in "the Reality Storm". Other heroes pick up the slack. The Champions release the imprisoned cosmic entity Entropus, who sets things right and sends our heroes home.
Utility lures the Champions into an elaborate death trap and nearly defeats them.
The Champions join forces with Dr. Ka to prevent the supervillain Anubis from summoning Set in Vibora Bay.
The Champions prevent splinter factions of PSI from tearing the city -- and each other -- apart.
2005
Gravitar attacks Seattle. The Champions battle her, but Defender's agreement to take her on a date settles the conflict.
2006
Holocaust puts together a team of minor villains (Ankylosaur, the Basilisk, Esper, Fenris, Frag, Freakshow, Leviathan, Lodestone, Ogre, Riptide, Tesseract, and Thunderbolt II). Calling themselves "the Alliance", they try to take out the Champions, but are defeated.
Nighthawk leaves the team, replaced by Kinetik.
Slug's attempt to transform the population of Millennium City into Elder Worms is defeated by the Champions.
Cybermind figures out Defender's secret identity as James Harmon and launches a takeover of Harmon Industries. He suffers a major setback when he tries to control Defender's armor and the cybernetic feedback puts him in a coma.
2007
The Champions fight Shadow Destroyer and his Shadow Colossi in Canada (Note: In CO, it's arguable that neither Destroyer makes an appearance until the Qularr invasion of 2009, as "some say that Dr. Destroyer may have already returned" in the Milllennium City cutscene at least heavily implies that it's not yet a widely accepted fact. A good compromise might be that they fought Shadow Colossi, and Shadow Destroyer was secretly involved but remained undetected).
The Champions defeat Mechassassin and throw him in Stronghold,.
2008
The Champions prevent Mechanon from using a nanotech weapon from converting the entire population of Earth into a machine state.
2009
Mechanon tries to take over Silicon Valley, but is defeated by the Champions and the Freedom Patrol.
The Qularr, lured by Shadow. Destroyer, take over Champions HQ. A plucky hero assists Defender in shutting down the beacons and defeating Black Talon and the Qularr.
*Defender takes a mentorship role for many new heroes flooding into Millennium City in wake of the Qularr Invasion.
2010?
*The Champions are killed by Valerian Scarlet during Therakiel's attempted takeover of Millennium City, but another hero uses Juryrig's time machine to undo their deaths.
2011
*The Champions assist a hero in rescuing five UNTIL soldiers from Luther Black's "Gateway Between Worlds", a bizarre safe zone between our world and the Qliphothic, and preventing the Kings of Edom from seizing avatars in order to manifest themselves on earth.
Other reported incidents (no date assigned):
The Champions encounter one of the Gods Celestial, a cosmic entity of enormous power.
The Champions form an auxiliary corp, consisting of Dr. Silverback, Nightwind, Ultratech, Blockhead, and Crusader.
The Champions rescue the FBI operative Tecknique from the supervillain Automaton, blowingup the villain in the process.
The Freedom Patrol asks permission to become the Champions' west coast team.
Post edited by Archived Post on
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Comments
I like his style!
I'm pretty sure this was years before they cared for one another.
On a side note, I love the official mention of the Reality Storm in 2004, it's the excellent crossover adventure Between the Champions team [of the Champions RPG] and the Guard team [of the Silver Age Sentinels RPG] and was wonderfully written to be like a DC style Cosmic Crossover team-up adventure. Felt a lot like JLA/Avengers or the classic JLA/JLS annual events in pre-crisis DC.
It featured writeups for all SAS heroes and main villains into Champions stat blocks, and SAS writeup for the Champions and many major Champs villains, including classic Dr. Destroyer [not Shadow D], and conversion rules and guideline between the two games!
Plus, you can get a good look at the designs of the Champions before Cryptic redid them for the MMO on it's wonderful cover.
Left side, top to bottom
Sapphire
Witchcraft
Nighthawk
Defender
Ironclad
Rightside, top to bottom
Slipstream
Mother Raven
Caliburn
Red Phoenix
Sentinel
If only Guardians of Order hadn't gone under. It was a great game and a fine company. You are missed, O great Canadian RPG company.
I'll be honest. I like the CO look of the Champions better.
Except for maybe Sapphire.
Sapphires is changed the least, but I like both designs. Defender certainly looks a lot better now than he did before his recent redesign though!
I never liked that version of Ironclad though, looks too 90s image alien to me.
Thanks for posting! always good to get perspective...
Too bad they look like such wimps in the current game.
How about have a super-mega-villain and a less impressive one at the end of a Series, they would fight the humongous threat while we battle one at our level?
At least that way we would see them accomplish something?
Cause right now, in-game, all I remember is:
- Defender unable to take on a simple gang reunion by himself
- Sapphire getting nearly wed if it weren't for us
- Witchcraft trapped by her twin
- All of them dying (and stupid deaths at that: haven't they heard of BLOCK?)
I just wish they'd impress me, somehow...
The funny thing is that, by the standards of the PnP game, they are the equivalent of AT's. They are meant to be examples of workable, "builds," not high end heroes.
I would love to see them get a better treatment in CO.
Good call! I was just thinking about something like this: a mission where you were called upon to secure points on a map (or something) and battle a succesion of villains while witnessing a "be all and end all"cosmic battle raging overhead.
wow! didn't know that, but it leaves me to wonder...if they're more like AT's, who are the really superpowered heroes in the universe?
The Justice Squadron and the Sentinels, both long-standing New York based superteams, are considered the front runners in the PnP Champions Universe. A case can be made for China's sixty member official superteam, the Tiger Squad. London's New Knights of the Round Table also have a good reputation, as does UNITY. There are also some very formidable solo heroes, of which Celestar is the probably the most powerful that you've seen in game.
The Champions' profile as iconic heroes of the setting have also increased over the years. They may not be the premier powerhouses that CO claims, but they've taken on Mechanon, V'han, and Gravitar. No one who has that rogue's gallery is a lightweight.
Id love to have a time travel adventure where the heroes are transported to some of these events as some supervillain is attempting to change the outcome so that The Champions lose. Perhaps, to take Meredy_Redleafs suggestion, our characters are battling whoever is trying to change events whilst The Champions, obvlious to our presence, are in the background.
I like the Champions a lot and wish they came off as somewhat more competent in CO, but this game isn't about the Champions. It's about MY characters (OK, your characters too) and how they continually save the world.
Uhm. Vanguard..but he's dead..and not the same anymore.
There are a few other heroes in the setting whose game stats or reputations put them at or near that level, though. They include the aforementioned Celestar of Canada; Tetsuronin of Japan, the world's premier powered-armor hero; two superheroes of Britain, the mysterious Albion who claims to embody the nobility of the British people, and the light-wielding Hyperion who once fought Firewing to a standstill; India's six-armed supermage Rashindar, and Ushas who claims to be an avatar of the Hindu goddess of the dawn.
Like the guy with "eyes-glow-through-my-head" in Lemurian Antiquities that doesn't lift a finger?
Or that poor helpless guy in "All that glitters..."?
Really?
Hmmmm ok, so... either they like to play cute and let us think we save the day (thereby allowing innocents to come to harm till we do our stuff), or they are just plain underwhelming!
I reiterate, please if possible show us (in a CS, a stand alone mission or whatever) what the lore heroes are actually made of.
Didn't they punch several Chtulhus in the face in Aftershock 6?
What do you mean, it doesn't count because half of them still get knocked if you don't help?
... After I took down both Defender and Witchcraft alone?
And yeah, leave them to their devices, BAM, bye bye Champs.
That's certainly a sweet looking cover; I think I actually prefer Witchcraft in blue rather than green.
Actually, no. If you stand there and watch, Defender pretty much mops the floor with everything in that room by himself. It's actually makes you feel like he invited you along only so you could see how awesome he is. I usually make it a point to attack the three Red Banner members near where Hi-Pan was standing while Defender handles everyone else. By the time I defeat those Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtle rejects, Defender's already cleared the rest of the room.
Unless you're doing it on Elite difficulty. Why you're doing a level 6 or 7 instance on Elite is beyond me.
It's always tricky to use powerful NPCs in an RPG (either MMO or PnP) without having them completely outshine the PCs. DCU Online has often been criticised for leaving players feeling like their characters are mere sidekicks to the big names of the setting. Champions Online often seems to takes the other route in order to let PCs look (and their players feel) like important players in the world, making the NPCs appear either ineffective or uninvolved.
But I agree that CO, while generally based on the letter of the PnP lore, doesn't always convey its spirit.
This is a serious problem in any RPG. If the heavy-hitter NPCs are too effective, then the PCs feel like bench-warmers. Many people registered precisely this complaint in City of Heroes and (especially) in City of Villains.
CO has taken the approach that the PCs are there to save the day after the NPC heavy hitters have failed. On the whole, I find this philosophy more satisfying, but no doubt it creates a different set of problems.
There may not be an ideal solution that will satisfy everyone. Who would want the Champions to save the day if your team is failing? How many times would you want to sit through a cut scene where Ironclad solos Dr. Destroyer?
Ironclad gets fired via cannon into a spaceship where he procedes to solo the entire crew and ground the vehicle.
Defender holds his own against a mixed invasion of destroids and Qularr. True, that Black Talon Pilot takes him down a notch, but that tanglecoil could have been a specialized EMP attack designed to nullify a power armor user like Defender. It makes sense to specially equip to take out The Champions if you are raiding their HQ. He probably didn't expect the PC and therefore didn't have a countermeasure.
After the invasion, he looks pretty darn busy, like he's directing a lot of stuff at that little HQ in the ren cen. I wouldn't be surprised if he delegated some ganger issues in the rencen to the new blood who proved himself in the qularr incursion.
Or how about Aftershocks? I don't care how many casualties you get, those are avatars of the Kings of Edom. That's Cthulhu right there. I've heard that whole fight termed to as "jumping the shark". I took them as a team, there were casualties as our avatars got pummeled. The fact that we didn't roflstomp The Champions more then testifies to their power. Of course then you fight alongside them on round two, I'm rather thankful when I'm playin ga squishy against those 5 big nasties that I got those big burly allied NPCs to hide behind while I whittle away. Sure, a few champions fall over, but as I said, this is Face Punching Cthulhu, this goes beyond epic.
UNITY missions? They way they used to be was horrible initially. Defender used to prattle on about reading the mission text and sending text messages to witchcraft before stumbling into a pool of magma and turning into slag. He now avoids lava and has some sensible lines. Of course he's only as strong as the AI behind him, and CO is not known for it's AI.
If anything I could argue that the PC is too strong.
That we're meant to pick up where the big ones failed, ok, it's designed to make us feel accomplished.
But that they fail every time and that they seem unable to stand on their own... kinda too big a contrast with how everyone reveres them.
Examples:
- Defender: True he can do that room... But he couldn't blast the door open with a Chest Beam? How come I had to muddle through 10 rooms full of henchies to let him enter? How come my hacking skills are superior to his? For that matter, back in tutorial, versus the Black Talon: we get hit by the same hold, his life is still above 90%, but he just drops there leaving me to struggle in the middle of a huge crisis? It's not like he has the luxury of testing my mettle at that time...
- Witchcraft: is just held prisoner by her sister, apparently unable to struggle against her... Yet a lowbie hero faces her and all her cohorts head on and saves the day?
- Kinetic: the worst of them all. I have yet to see him do anything, anything at all. Tutorial? Captured. MC? Standing there with cops, not doing a single thing. VB apocalypse? Takes a blast in the face when he could have dodged with his speed, not to mention removing us from harm's way since he saw the danger come...
- Sapphire: at least she put on a good show for the anniversary! But that's about it.
- Ironclad: pulls some weight in the MI crisis, and the tutorial... Perhaps the one I'm the less disappointed in.
(Some will say it's cause I have a weak spot for skimpy dressed muscle heaps, LIES!)
Now look at Resistance: when we get caught in the jail, we do get rescued by those 3. Yes we help them escape, but we can also see that they can actually do something without us.
And that's my whole point: here, the Champions are just victims for us to save. I can't even bring myself to consider them the equal of my hero.
I know some people won't like that, but I think they need to upgrade / introduce some unbeatable villains.
There's a time when you have to stop and say "Ok, now this one is just too big for me to handle, much less alone."
Let's drop the good ones' side for a bit, let's talk about old Albert!
In resistance again (about the only place we REALLY meet the guy, not a robot, not an usurper), he is back, he's got his armies back, his top-notch armor back, the exact same guy that battled a shipload of heroes FOR DAYS!
Yet.... He falls to his knees against the Endbringer when I can just stand there and laugh at the pathetic damage?
COME ON! Is he the "Butcher of Detroit" or some small fry wimp???
See there it goes again: the bad habit of having a huge lore reference sitting idly doing... nothing while we save the world.
And worst!!! Shadow Destroyer, THE other bad guy... well, he does exactly the same, sits there, enjoying the show... What is this, reality TV? Where are the hidden cams????
Why couldn't they just place good Albert and his evil twin (wait, is that even possible?) inside the central room, battling each other to epicness, while we tackle the rubble?
Sigh, sorry for the rant, but come on... the guy needs a breather every 2 minutes, but still gloats about how magic is weak? WTH!? I just saved your decrepit evil behind with it!!!!
And I could carry on, like how Celestar... quite a whiner that one: does nothing to save his friends, despite the fact they might be out there, since the 3 stories high demon IS FREE!!! Ok, he didn't even try to save them cause they were trapped with him and he was afraid to release Kiga... But now? What's his excuse? And don't get me started on how he sends us after the "Rudolf Demon", rather than the big one!
Anyway, I have yet to feel overwhelmed by those "heroes".
They let me do all the work, then steal all MY glory. I saved the world, citizens all around should worship ME!
-cackles manically- Mwahahahahaha!!!
(And that's how, underwhelmed by her fellow heroes, she turned to a life of crimes... After all, who's more fit to rule over those tiny insects?)
They are magical sisters, so each knows the other's weaknesses because they have a magical bound. This new hero? Talisman doesn't know him/her and he/she is probably just a weakling, so she's not gonna exhaust her magic by using her stronger powers at the risk to cause the hold on her sister to weaken and leave her surrounded by 2 heroes.
True, he hasn't done a lot, but he still quite resilient against the Avatars.
And she is incredibly annoying to fight if your STR is low, so does her evil multifarian counterpart.
He has a nice gladius, too.
Say that to the squishies who don't block its attacks.
There was a thing in one of the sourcebooks, I forget which one, where basically every female character involved had romantic leanings towards Defender. It was basically just ONE step away from being a harem.
Something that seems to be missing in that timeline (although I did skimread...) is the original Dr D's major intro. There was that thing where he intended to literally decimate (kill 1 in 10) all the most useless people on Earth so that he can maximise their efficiency, a plan which I must say made me think of Dr. D from then on as being a rogue economist or social engineer without any morals.
(All fear... THE DESTROYER WHO HAS A DOCTORATE IN MICROECONOMICS!)
The Champions were involved in that a bit, as the scenario it gives as an example in the book for that thing had a bit of a dialogue between Defender and some of the other Champions, although they sound, based on their vocabulary and whatnot VERY young, so it might've been in their earliest days. I need to have a look for my copy to see if it gives any clues to where it fits in the timeline.
From what I heard, I expected some (Spoilers) kind of epic battle between the champions and destroyer who swept in during a raid on Therakiel, but what I got was basically Valerian killing Witchcraft in a single strike, followed by "Woops, Kinetik is dead! Woops, Defender and Ironclad are dead! Woops, Sapphire is dead!".
I'd really have preferred some kind of sacrifice of the champions to protect the player character during the whole 'Leeching off Therakiel with a hair dryer' thing.
Which is probably why the nice, smooth approach leaves more than enough time for Hi-Pan to teleport, along with the gang leaders in a nice puff of blue smoke? Hmmmmm? What was the idea again? Ah, yes CATCHING THEM! Something I do... alone, as usual... a few levels / missions later. (And it doesn't feel like it's thanks to intelligence gathered here, since we have to do plenty of missions for monkey-man, I mean Kodiak, before we get there...)
And what exactly is the result? Oh, yes, she flees, leaving me to break her sister's bind... Very effective method... (Again, granted, Villains tend to be stupidly overconfident. Imagine in Goldorak, if instead of sending 1-2 saucers, King Vega had build up 2-3 dozens? He'd have wiped the floor with it... XD)
Yeah, but we were talking about their sweet nice counterparts here... ^_^
Which he gladly imparts on us every single run (and I did a few to get the costume parts XD), unlike his @#}{^[ AXE!!! (If anyone is considering a sale btw... /end_shameless_commercial_ad)
Which is why we are taught to block charged attacks in the tutorial...
(Luckily, or not, the mobs don't have shield-breakers, this ain't PvP ^_^)
Considering he's German, that he worked with and for the Nazis...
Article: here.
See where I'm going there, right?
Untermensch? Die Endlösung?
As such also, that younger team of Champions as described in that adventure aren't really even the same characters as the fifth and sixth editions Champions, despite some of the same names here and there. Forth edition had Defender, Jaguar, Quantum, Solitaire, Seeker and Obsidian, fifth edition and sixth have Defender, Ironclad, Witchcraft, Nighthawk and Sapphire instead. Nighthawk left and was later replaced with Kinetic.
From the Hero Games website;
Scott Bennie
Scott Bennie is a long time Hero contributor, whose first Hero work, "Nova," was published in Adventurer's Club #4 in 1984. Since then his Hero work includes editing and developing Villainy Unbound and Classic Enemies, co-authoring VIPER with Cliff Christiansen and VIPER: Coils Of The Serpent with Steve Long, and writing Day Of The Destroyer, Villainy Amok, and Champions Of The North. He's also written and produced Gestalt: The Hero Within, a Champions campaign setting published by BlackWyrm Games.
As I recall, in the adventure Destroyer wasn't just going to decimate the human race, he was going to do the opposite.. Kill off 90% and only leave 10% alive, "the best stock" as he sees it, as only the strong survive.
In current continuity, Zerstoiten debuted as Dr. Destroyer in 1975, with an attempt to conquer California.
Day of the Destroyer...
So many fond memories. One of my all time favorite champions supplements.
Also:
DCUO sucks cause you feel like a weakling compared to superman.
CO sucks cause the champions feel like weaklings compared to you.
People should consider what they are saying...
Hmmmm who said C.O. sucks?
What I said is: if the Champions are Millennium City (a.k.a. super-heroes city) top team, could they, once in a while, do something without our help? Or even better: for once, in a scripted event, save our hides from something / someone...
I mentioned the Resistance Jail part, where we can be rescued if we mess up, already.
Except that it never happens with the Champions.
Once. In. A. While. (Or even just once, in fact)
Even in comics, they tend to save each other's lives but taking turn, not always hero A saving hero(es) B...
As for people considering what they say...
You quote the 2 extremes...
How about somewhere where PC and NPC heroes are on-par?
Is that so impossible to think about?
In fact, they did just that in Whiteout 3!
Justiciar doesn't fall into a trap, nor is he controlled, nor is he incapacitated by a weak attack.
No, he holds his ground. Yes the fight is sadly very short, but he's still standing at the end of it...
In how many major fight does this happen with the Champions?
Like on pts, theres quite a few people who rather than being glad the wind set is being released, are actually calling the devs out on realeasing it, saying it was a bad business move etc etc.
One of the biggest things about dcuo release was that you felt weak compared to the big three. Yet here I constantly see complaining that the champions are just poster children which don't do anything or when they do, they are quite feeble.
Personally, I thought the dcuo ones were more like poster children, but then I only got to level 20 in that. At least in champions you get to fight along side them a fair few times.
I had a theory a long time ago, spawned of some of the more Wild Mass Guessing (note to self, add some of my other theories to the Champions TVtropes' WMG page) bits of the pre-Resistance 'Defender is Destroyer' rumours (... close, past-people... close.)...
Basically... Everything that is going on in the actual game is the result of one or more major Big Bads that we haven't yet seen puppeteering us into becoming a worthy adversary for them. After all, once you've reached the top in terms of sheer power, you might as well have the world run as it used to, and reap from the profits, meaning that ultimately, you're going to be VERY bored, as there's nothing for you to do. So, what do you do? You mess with various entities and try to engineer reality to the point where there is someone opposed to you but with equal power.
I predict that at some point there will be a character in the game who has discretely been pupeteering various events that have happened in early missions, and is effectively the cause of all resurgence of all evil that is currently active in the world as we know it.
Then people will grind him for lootz. ... Okay, maybe that kind of epic unseen puppetmaster boss wouldn't work in an mmo and still be intimidating. That's more of an idea for a single player superhero game...
I think what we want is a comfortable balance, we want to outshine them but not by a glaring margin. But as it stands I'm not one of the people who particularly cares.
Now, with the new tutorial on the PTS, they do feel like they pull their own weight.
Kinetic isn't a helpless bird in a cage, Witchraft is defending the building and, oh God, Defender doesn't even get held by Black Talon! Wow, I just might think they are super-heroes too! (just joking ^_^)
Well, thanks for giving them a shinier armor, now I can finally have a bit of respect for the team.
(And thanks for listening to the feedback, as cynic as it may be. :-p)
PS: sorry for the near-necro (31 days instead of the 30 allowed... Can I plead timezones? :-p)
The time between Christmas and New Years should not count anyway. You are fine in my book
My reasoning for the Champions 'not doing anything' is because now they are in more of a management role. I see their concerns shifting from 'fighting bad guys' to 'making sure these new heroes are doing what they are supposed to do and not doing anything insane like drunkenly flying around with a jetpack to take photos of Sapphire in her apartment"...
I said too much already DON'T YOU JUDGE ME.
I like it how You're saying that they are not doing anything because they are management
On the other hand, they could mention small events in some sort of in-game newspapers.