I had an interesting conversation with Zoot in a different thread. He was comparing CO and STO, arguing that he couldn't believe that the same teams of devs occupied the same building, considering that ground maps in CO are big, while mission objectives are interesting and overlapping... i.e. a far cry from scan 5/5 or kill 5/5. Apparently, there are multiple objectives and the gameplay in CO is more dynamic and interesting.
I've not played CO, so I'd like to hear from other CO vets out there.
How does STO compare to CO?
With a focus on STO's future, how does our first 3 months of STO updates compare to the first 3 months of CO updates?
How does STO's population at 3 months out compare to CO's at the 3 month mark? I imagine STO is larger given the IP, but what is your impression?
Basically, if you compare the two games, how do they stack up against each other in terms of gameplay? Since both games use similar engines for ground combat, are there elements in CO that simply aren't in STO? What explains that?
CO comes out ahead of STO from the moment you complete the starting area, in that you have the option of going to the American Southwest or to the Canadian Wilderness, with each location having it's own set of unique missions - so if you like rolling alts (and I do) you have some variety pretty much right off the proverbial bat.
Once you complete the initial series of missions in the location you chose, you can go to Millenium City and start doing missions there (MC area can get a little repetitive, and not just because there are 'repeat-able' missions there) - but there will be more missions in the desert and in the north that you can do, and you'll be able to jump back and forth between those three areas as you please. There are other locations that open up later - Lemuria? - but I didn't make it that far before canceling.
My only major problem with CO was with certain aspects of the game mechanics - blocking and energy building, specifically - and I won't say anything 'bad' about them beyond that I just didn't enjoy them.
Sometimes I kinda wish I could transfer the remainder of my year's sub to CO...
CO comes out ahead of STO from the moment you complete the starting area, in that you have the option of going to the American Southwest or to the Canadian Wilderness, with each location having it's own set of unique missions - so if you like rolling alts (and I do) you have some variety pretty much right off the proverbial bat.
Well technically untrue since you really don't have a choice. You have to do both unless you want to end up with some weird level gap. (talking about the starter missions and not just in general)
But anyways...
Vastly different games and setting and can't really compare it.
I only played CO for a few hours during open beta. At the time it was not much more than kill 5 of this, mission grinding....Industry Standard for an MMO.
I did not buy into it because it was too similar to COH, but I thought COH played a lot better when it was launched. I could not tell you more about the comparison.
I do believe that the ship vs. ship combat is far better than the combat in CO.
i played co when it was released and am playing it now but im no expert, so here is my comparison
the missions are mostly short, like wow or warhammer dotted around large ground maps. most are actually click 5 of this, kill ten of that, find 10 of this. so in a way the mechanics are similar but they are fun to do as you are always doing something quickly and can jump from one mission to another easily without having to change screens.
i have never really understood why people complain sto is click five and kill five because every mmo follows a similar path, its just how well they hide it. sto story missions are much longer and do a better job of hiding the clicking and killing, but the exploration missions and patrol missions are much more generic and not as interesting as co, but you still have to do the same things.
co missions are quite fun and as they are quick you can get through loads of different ones very quickly keeping it fresh.
most of co missions are combat, where with STO people want no combat missions which i why they put the scan 5 of this missions into the game. this is one of the problems with the star trek label, because people expect lots of content that is non combat which is something most if not all mmos dont really do outside of the odd carry this object to someone.
you also have massive freedom in co to make what ever hero you want, this is good because you can go back and make 12 different characters all different and bad in that chances are you have made the ideal character the first time round
co is completely ground combat involving your hero, where star trek has to split itself over ground and space so you will end up with a less polished game as a result. in co you have every super power imaginable and can go completely fantasy, where sto has to keep it self grounded in its own canon.
of the two the best combat is still space combat, although naturally co ground combat is miles better to play but less action packed with less people on screen (no bo's etc)
also simulating one large ground map is much easier than trying to dot missions over space, hence the need to put missions into isolated systems.
co is also less limited by the franchise, again there are less need for people to say something is braking canon
there is only one faction, where sto has 2. again sto often gets penalised for adding klingons when maybe they should have concentrated solely on the feds then added a full klingon faction later.
pvp was pretty dull, not sure if its improved
the game is still quite short and as far as i know has little endgame.
there is more customization with co character creator but again they are not limited by star treks IP restrictions. Just about anything in co can be made as the super hero image in much more versatile.
champions had a very very buggy launch and did lose people but seams to have found itself recently. recent patches appear to have gone down well and people are enjoying themselves.
in saying that i have seen plenty of people in sto and as much as people like to quote the game is dying the numbers ive seen in game have been steady since the initial expected drop off.
co is very fun and worth playing but they are two very different games, but in saying all that i did get bored of champions after a month and am yet to get bored of STO.
co feels more 'complete' at the moment
I hope that helps and i do recommend giving it a go but remember that one is a comic book where good guys fight bad guys game and one is about space/wars/exploration/diplomacy/first contact/personal relationships/strange anomalies etc etc with a forty year history with hundreds of hours of tv and as a result tried to cram far too much into one game for everybody to be happy with it.
I have been playing both games since their betas. I have trouble comparing the two, because they are just totally different games. I think the biggest difference is that CO has a lot more of a "sandbox" feel. There are some instanced missions, but there are also quite a few missions just out in the open. The stories in both games are good. The missions in both are pretty much "go kill X and bring back Y". Now that it has been mentioned, CO does feel like a larger universe that STO does. CO has "Open Missions" that kind of compare to DSE's but they are out in the open. CO has the Nemesis System which is freakin' awesome. You get to create and battle your nemesis. I'm not sure how that would work in STO.
The first 3 months of CO's life was a trainwreck, and I don't recall too many updates in that time. It seems like they worked mostly on bug fixes. Getting disconnected several times a session wasn't uncommon. For a month or more after launch you could count on a server crash every Sunday that would bring the game down for a few hours and erase the last several missions that you completed.
IMO the population of CO has never been anywhere near STO's population, but not all of that has to do with the game itself. The Launch Day Nerf drove a ton of players off. Horrible server stability drove a bunch of people off. When they pulled the CO team over to help get STO ready for launch a bunch of people quit because CO was being totally ignored and things were falling apart. The announcement that we would have to pay for all expansions was almost the nail in the coffin. At that point CO became a total ghost town and it was unusual to see more than one shard of any map. Thankfully Cryptic managed to pull it together and CO is getting much stronger and the population is growing.
I'll be specific later. ( seeing as It was you and I kicked this off I ought to expand upon my thoughts ) But right now I'm actually playing CO again and enjoying it so no time for a big speech.
So you have not played it? Mail me your address and I'll send you a new copy, 30 days 400 c points
Played CO during, and since beta, although not had alot of time for it lately. What has been said earlier is true, it's very hard to compare the two games as they are totally differenct settings. But, here are the variations as I've seen them.
--the top in each category is my opinion, and everything is compared from memory
Character creation - CO comes out on top, as it has a far greater customisation capability. You have a number of overall syles to choose from for each body location (head, chest, arms, legs), but you can have, say, the right arm look different to the left arm. That, and backpacks. STO gives you the choice of head accessories, and a number of preset uniforms, which if you ask me, is more in character than designing your own. Scaling options are prety much the same
Missions - I feel that STO just peaks out ahead due to the exploration missions. It has a tad more varety, but you have to know where to look, and get lucky. Both have the "Kill X" types, and while STO has you scanning things on planets or in space, CO has you collecting drops from kills. I suppose it is true that CO missions can be more fluid, and like several different objectives together, as you're never quite sure what's going to happen when you're asked to help a granny get her kitten out of a tree whereas STO tells you from the outset what your objectives are to complete the mission. From memory, the missions boil down to:
CO: Go to new contact, kill X, collect X, rescue X, use X (examine, destroy, etc)
STO: Go to contact, Kill X, scan X, go to location, deliver supplies, collect X (anomolies, usually)
Environments - Difficult to decide this one. CO has about 4 or 5 really large and wonderfully designed environments, with each one having little sub-environments in them. For example, Millennium City not only has the central hub, but also a chinatown district, parkland, docks, mayoral offices, and residential blocks. The desert has a research base, militia camp, radioactive dump site, a wild west theme park, and a terrorist base. STO, on the other hand, has very small instanced sectors, but each one has a different look (think Starbase 01 -> Andoria -> Vulcan -> Risa, and so on). All of these are encompassed in one much larger sector of space, where you zip around at warp speeds. And, of course, in addition to the ground maps, there is variety in the space maps, too, albeit with an alarmingly large number of planets with rings around them, and asteroid belts
Character enhancements - Quite similar in their effects, if I recall, but quite different in what you do with them. STO has your consoles, giving you fixed bonusses to stats and skills, and kits, giving you the power to do more than shoot or punch your opponent. CO gives you three categories, each with 3 slots in, in which to place your chosen enhancements. Like STO, these can affect your skills or abilities, but unlike STO, tend to work on two or three at once
Graphic wise, they both use the same basic engine, and I even recall seeing the NPC's in STO performing the actions of the NPC's in CO when it was still in beta!.
My opinion on lengeivity? STO has the edge. It's based on a very well known and much loved brand, whereas Champions seemed at the time to be a superhero MMO, competing with City of Heroes. In it's defence, it did have some unique points to it, like the mobile combat, being able to choose where your various powers eminate from, and choosing their colour.
More stuff in the C-Store that has any sort of relevance.
Also, the communication between players and devs in STO is better, more consistent, and much more informative.
The testing procedures at CO were nightmarish.
Things may have changed since February, but STO simply has more backstory to draw upon so has more stuff.
With a focus on STO's future, how does our first 3 months of STO updates compare to the first 3 months of CO updates?
Pun intended ... LIGHT YEARS ahead.
How does STO's population at 3 months out compare to CO's at the 3 month mark? I imagine STO is larger given the IP, but what is your impression?
I was there. The population here is much larger. The population here started much larger. It has lost some subs. But it's still much larger. There was a time where CO's population prior to the free weekends and the halloween event ... that things were horribly bleak.
Basically, if you compare the two games, how do they stack up against each other in terms of gameplay?
The strength of Champions Online is that its combat is fun. Very action packed. Very dynamic. You are a super hero. And the game lets you feel like a super hero quite easily. It's hard to really make a fair comparison between "ground" combat here and combat in CO. Even if all you do is spam Gigabolt, that is ultimately more satisfying an experience than firing phasers here.
However, this game does a similar thing. It captures the fun and feel of space combat that is very "flavorful" and "immersive" in the context of this game's IP. Champions makes super hero combat feel very much like super hero combat. STO makes space combat feel very much like space combat.
Champions had a lot going for it. But it was thin. Very thin on content. The levelling process was monotonous. The bugs were horrendous. The nerfs were ... excessively heavy handed. PVP was in a state that you would absolutely loathe. And getting anyone oustide of Poz to even talk to you about the game was like pulling teeth. Getting Poz to talk was easy. Getting Poz to change direction on something was nigh impossible. But at least Poz would give you any and all relevant information when talking about crafting.
Oh yeah ... they had a grandfathered issue. Their crafting system had similar issues.
You want to know where much of my posting style, demeanor and attitude comes from?
Champions.
You want to know why I am far more patient, and hopeful with this game?
Champions.
I've been down that road before. I see the devs working very hard here. Being very open and communicating. I see the limitations they have. I understand a lot of the obstacles, beacuse it's the same obstacles the other game had. I am more patient with this because I see more work done here and more progress made here.
I haven't played since February. But Champions did next to nothing to make me regret leaving.
I quit champions because my main character was stuck in Lemuria. For two weeks. The fix to unstuck him did not work. The progress made to fix this bug was too slow. And I realized I lost the desire to log in.
I no longer cared that I couldn't access my main character. I did not want to. I had no real desire to play my alts past the 30s. The game lost my interest.
So none of my criticism stems from any sort of resentment from the issues of development communication, heavy handed nerfing, disastrous Q&A, or dead-end test server participation. Those were all just problems I had with the game when it was young. And solutions I did think were possible, but weren't being acted upon seriously enough.
I come to this game and I see some of the same problems. But I see so many more things being handled ... better. Is the only way I can put it.
The grass may seem greener on the CO side of the fence.
But it wasn't. Not in 2009.
Since both games use similar engines for ground combat, are there elements in CO that simply aren't in STO? What explains that?
Please be constructive.
The differences stem from the IPs themselves. Champions makes an effort to design super hero style combat. STO makes an effort to design Star Trek style combat.
It's going to be much more action packed and dynamic to be Spider-Man or Bat Man beating up thugs or whatever ... than it is to be even Worf with a Bat'Leth.
CO was designed to appeal to people with shorter attention spans, thus the shorter missions, fast paced fighting, the cartoon look and feel. Everyone can be everything (tank, dps, heal) through the use of blocking, attacks and regens/heal abilities.
Everybody can choose skills from the other archetype sets, so you can design the character to be very unique in their powers, but it seems ( at least it did 4 months ago when I last played), that most settle in with the FOTM format - you will see this in the PVP arenas.
As far as CO having larger open areas than STO, that is just a perspective difference. When you only fly at 25mph, it will take you a long time to get to the ends of the map.
Nothing wrong with the game (if you like wearing tights - *grin*), but it really needs a "Villains" add-on before I would resub.
Oh, and the Champions forum was nearly as bad as the STO forums, during the first few months, and amazingly enough the "doom and gloom" folks were wrong, since the game is still running.
I enjoyed CO for a bit, but was put off by so many power changes and content gaps at mid levels (don't miss any quests, you will regret it), it was so bad that some folks made web sites that would examine your character and tell you what quests you missed so you could go back and do them to keep the content gap as small as possible.
Yeah. See. I read a thread in here talking about how STO needs to be more mature in its content. And all I could think of was ...
"You poor soul. You've never freed Hurley in Canada ... Ron Burgandy from Foxbat ... or heard the voice acting in Champions Online."
WE'VE GOT TO SHUT DOWN THOSE BEACONS! ALL OF THEM! EVERY LAST SINGLE BEACON! BACONS! SHUT DOWN THE BACONS! YOU! NOOB! STANDING THERE IN THE CORNER OF THIS MAP LAUGHING AT ME, THE GREAT DEFENDER, HAVE YOU SHUT DOWN THE BACONS? IF NOT, GET SOME CRISCO AND COME WITH ME!
Yeah. See. I read a thread in here talking about how STO needs to be more mature in its content. And all I could think of was ...
"You poor soul. You've never freed Hurley in Canada ... Ron Burgandy from Foxbat ... or heard the voice acting in Champions Online."
WE'VE GOT TO SHUT DOWN THOSE BEACONS! ALL OF THEM! EVERY LAST SINGLE BEACON! BACONS! SHUT DOWN THE BACONS! YOU! NOOB! STANDING THERE IN THE CORNER OF THIS MAP LAUGHING AT ME, THE GREAT DEFENDER, HAVE YOU SHUT DOWN THE BACONS? IF NOT, GET SOME CRISCO AND COME WITH ME!
Indeed. Biggest difference could be that...
STO is the uptight sister that never goes out and parties and has a set routine every day. (this would be following canon etc)
CO is the wild sister that crawls up the walls and wears neon pink with green and feels no shame... That and she makes jokes about bacon. Lots and lots of mind altering dru... bacon.
Yeah. See. I read a thread in here talking about how STO needs to be more mature in its content. And all I could think of was ...
"You poor soul. You've never freed Hurley in Canada ... Ron Burgandy from Foxbat ... or heard the voice acting in Champions Online."
WE'VE GOT TO SHUT DOWN THOSE BEACONS! ALL OF THEM! EVERY LAST SINGLE BEACON! BACONS! SHUT DOWN THE BACONS! YOU! NOOB! STANDING THERE IN THE CORNER OF THIS MAP LAUGHING AT ME, THE GREAT DEFENDER, HAVE YOU SHUT DOWN THE BACONS? IF NOT, GET SOME CRISCO AND COME WITH ME!
That is so true lol. To be fair, as bad as Defender is in that scene, it does kind of fit in a corny, campy kind of over acted way. It'd be awful here, but then we have the guardian of the portal!
Champions is ok as far as it goes, but the levelling is very monotonous. Even with varied areas to go, it all feels somewhat the same. What's different in Champions compard to STO is the abundance of multi-objective quests.
Whereas here, we enter a system, do a single thing, then warp out, in CO, very often a single location has a chain of events for that one area. It's something that would make the systems here more worthwhile. After you finish a mission here, you always get the option of 'keep exploring'. For what? If you already picked up the anomalies, you're done with the place. I digress....
CO is decent, but it just doesn't hold my attention like STO. You can literally spend hours in the character creator on CO though.
That is so true lol. To be fair, as bad as Defender is in that scene, it does kind of fit in a corny, campy kind of over acted way. It'd be awful here, but then we have the guardian of the portal!
Champions is ok as far as it goes, but the levelling is very monotonous. Even with varied areas to go, it all feels somewhat the same. What's different in Champions compard to STO is the abundance of multi-objective quests.
Whereas here, we enter a system, do a single thing, then warp out, in CO, very often a single location has a chain of events for that one area. It's something that would make the systems here more worthwhile. After you finish a mission here, you always get the option of 'keep exploring'. For what? If you already picked up the anomalies, you're done with the place. I digress....
CO is decent, but it just doesn't hold my attention like STO. You can literally spend hours in the character creator on CO though.
Just a note...
But the job ad Cryptic placed to fill Gozer's slot on the content team says they're looking for someone who can add more objectives to existing maps in STO.
Agree with Superchum's post on the comparison but it's way to big to quote.
I left CO in late January/early February. The game has level gaps to the point someone made a site called Crime Computer 2.0 to help people get through all that.
No game should call itself ready for market having as many gaps as that game did.
However, there are a few things better there than here too.
Demo - Here new players get a 1 hour demo. At the time I left CO, players could demo a bit longer with the tutorial and there was talk of expanding their demo to the Crisis desert and/or Crisis Canada. If I never played either game and just tried both demos, I'd buy CO and never look at STO again. I'd consider STO's demo a slap in the face taking all that time to download the game. And there the tutorial will take you at minimum to level 5. You could farm the PQ at the end for a few levels but 5 minimum with their level cap at 40. STO the demo is capped at 2 or 3 and level cap is 45. Seems backwards.
Bank - Not only do you get to buy more space, but I liked the right-click and choose "Deposit" option there. With the crafting items, very handy to get them stacked like kind. I looked for that here and surprised it wasn't available.
Offline Guild Invite - There it's called Supergroup and here Fleet so titled this one Guild to cover both. STO had it when you could even invite your own alts with this function. And CO has it too. I don't know if they killed it in both games but they did in STO.
But other than that, comparing STO at 3 months to CO at 3 months, STO actually wins in other areas. I would call crafting a tie because they are both a waste of time. But people who complain about content in STO didn't live through CO's first 4 months or they would have known it could have been a lot less. And CO's claim of adding content, well the first "added content" was fixing a mission that was first in a series of missions where the door entrance was bugged so you couldn't even start the chain. They fixed the bug then claim they added some content. Sorry, that was a bug fix not a content addition.
And when they tried to pull the Vebora (or however it's spelled) Pay, that's when it was time to go because that shows they weren't really wanting a replayable game. Which brings me to ENDGAME.
CO had NO Endgame at launch. Sounds familiar? And the Unity missions they added a few months after launch were the dumbest missions in the game. Hell, the tutorial where you have to open doors for the so-called Greatest Champion of them All and then he's too stupid to press a button to launch his friend through a cannon at a space ship was better than Unity. Then they added Nemesis Confrontation. I expected it to be tougher and it was a joke. Never had a problem with it.
I hear it's better now but CO has seen enough of my money already.
CO does not have level gaps. It hasn't had any for several months, and its come a long way since February.
They are to totally different games though, with at the moment CO being much more polished than STO. However, its also an indicator that things can improve. CO was in a sorry state, but its not anymore.
CO does not have level gaps. It hasn't had any for several months, and its come a long way since February.
They are to totally different games though, with at the moment CO being much more polished than STO. However, its also an indicator that things can improve. CO was in a sorry state, but its not anymore.
Howdy Pardner! If you have spend a single second in Snake Gulch just to level up efficiently, CO still has a very narrow levelling path.
Although I'm a fan of the superhero genre, I decided not to buy CO, while I bought a lifetime subscription for STO.
I don't like the graphics and character models in CO. They just don't look right to me. I'm very picky about character models. I couldn't play WoW because of the goofy looking characters. Meanwhile, I love the graphics in STO, and the character models are pretty good.
I'm still concerned that I would encounter level gaps in CO. Mind you, what amount to level gaps for me might not be level gaps for many others. I play solo and I don't do any missions that require teaming, and I don't do PvP. Grinding enemies for XP is not a practical alternative to getting through level gaps in CO (or STO). In any case, I knew that the content would be stretched extremely thin. Meanwhile, there are no level gaps in STO. If all else fails, there are always exploration missions available. (The content shortage in STO is that you get to the maximum level too fast, not that there are content gaps.) I still don't see CO getting enough content to satisfy me any time soon.
I'm also not fond of open zone missions. Strangely enough, I like instanced missions, so the STO mission format works very well for me.
CO does not have level gaps. It hasn't had any for several months, and its come a long way since February.
They are to totally different games though, with at the moment CO being much more polished than STO. However, its also an indicator that things can improve. CO was in a sorry state, but its not anymore.
Although I'm a fan of the superhero genre, I decided not to buy CO, while I bought a lifetime subscription for STO.
I don't like the graphics and character models in CO. They just don't look right to me. I'm very picky about character models. I couldn't play WoW because of the goofy looking characters. Meanwhile, I love the graphics in STO, and the character models are pretty good.
I'm still concerned that I would encounter level gaps in CO. Mind you, what amount to level gaps for me might not be level gaps for many others. I play solo and I don't do any missions that require teaming, and I don't do PvP. Grinding enemies for XP is not a practical alternative to getting through level gaps in CO (or STO). In any case, I knew that the content would be stretched extremely thin. Meanwhile, there are no level gaps in STO. If all else fails, there are always exploration missions available. (The content shortage in STO is that you get to the maximum level too fast, not that there are content gaps.) I still don't see CO getting enough content to satisfy me any time soon.
I'm also not fond of open zone missions. Strangely enough, I like instanced missions, so the STO mission format works very well for me.
The open missions. Oh, I had forgotten how funny it was when I was fighting a mob over a blinkie and some kid ran up and grabbed it while I was fighting the mob. So I followed behind him and repaid the favor and he got on zone chat crying about it.
And to show I had to complete every mission just to hit cap:
There - Every level capped toon has no waiting missions because I had to complete everything to reach cap back then. And that's with using crime computer 2.0 site.
Here - Every level capped toon has an open mission if not many in the log not counting STFs. I just decided to hold them for when they raise the level cap here.
Look, I don't mind if people slag or praise either STO or CO. Not getting facts stright really bugs me. Again, CO has no level gap these days. There are way more missions than that's needed to reach level cap.
Thats not remotely the same as a level gap though. Besides, why would you want to skip Snake Gulch? Love that place.
But it does tend to send you there a wee bit early ending in a horribly slaughter where you are the star.
Here we get it served on a silver platter. In CO... CC 2.0 if you want any chance to find new missions sometimes. Like those in the far north in MC... Yah those took 2 level 40s before being found.
Look, I don't mind if people slag or praise either STO or CO. Not getting facts stright really bugs me. Again, CO has no level gap these days. There are way more missions than that's needed to reach level cap.
At the 3 month mark it did no matter how much you try to sugarcoat it. That's why www.crimecomputer20.com was created because of that. Or otherwise it wouldn't have been necessary. And said in every post "back then" or something similar since I also stated I cancelled back in late January/early Feb. And that was one of the many reasons for the cancel. So that facts are correct.
Comments
In terms of 'replayability' -
CO comes out ahead of STO from the moment you complete the starting area, in that you have the option of going to the American Southwest or to the Canadian Wilderness, with each location having it's own set of unique missions - so if you like rolling alts (and I do) you have some variety pretty much right off the proverbial bat.
Once you complete the initial series of missions in the location you chose, you can go to Millenium City and start doing missions there (MC area can get a little repetitive, and not just because there are 'repeat-able' missions there) - but there will be more missions in the desert and in the north that you can do, and you'll be able to jump back and forth between those three areas as you please. There are other locations that open up later - Lemuria? - but I didn't make it that far before canceling.
My only major problem with CO was with certain aspects of the game mechanics - blocking and energy building, specifically - and I won't say anything 'bad' about them beyond that I just didn't enjoy them.
Sometimes I kinda wish I could transfer the remainder of my year's sub to CO...
But anyways...
Vastly different games and setting and can't really compare it.
I did not buy into it because it was too similar to COH, but I thought COH played a lot better when it was launched. I could not tell you more about the comparison.
I do believe that the ship vs. ship combat is far better than the combat in CO.
the missions are mostly short, like wow or warhammer dotted around large ground maps. most are actually click 5 of this, kill ten of that, find 10 of this. so in a way the mechanics are similar but they are fun to do as you are always doing something quickly and can jump from one mission to another easily without having to change screens.
i have never really understood why people complain sto is click five and kill five because every mmo follows a similar path, its just how well they hide it. sto story missions are much longer and do a better job of hiding the clicking and killing, but the exploration missions and patrol missions are much more generic and not as interesting as co, but you still have to do the same things.
co missions are quite fun and as they are quick you can get through loads of different ones very quickly keeping it fresh.
most of co missions are combat, where with STO people want no combat missions which i why they put the scan 5 of this missions into the game. this is one of the problems with the star trek label, because people expect lots of content that is non combat which is something most if not all mmos dont really do outside of the odd carry this object to someone.
you also have massive freedom in co to make what ever hero you want, this is good because you can go back and make 12 different characters all different and bad in that chances are you have made the ideal character the first time round
co is completely ground combat involving your hero, where star trek has to split itself over ground and space so you will end up with a less polished game as a result. in co you have every super power imaginable and can go completely fantasy, where sto has to keep it self grounded in its own canon.
of the two the best combat is still space combat, although naturally co ground combat is miles better to play but less action packed with less people on screen (no bo's etc)
also simulating one large ground map is much easier than trying to dot missions over space, hence the need to put missions into isolated systems.
co is also less limited by the franchise, again there are less need for people to say something is braking canon
there is only one faction, where sto has 2. again sto often gets penalised for adding klingons when maybe they should have concentrated solely on the feds then added a full klingon faction later.
pvp was pretty dull, not sure if its improved
the game is still quite short and as far as i know has little endgame.
there is more customization with co character creator but again they are not limited by star treks IP restrictions. Just about anything in co can be made as the super hero image in much more versatile.
champions had a very very buggy launch and did lose people but seams to have found itself recently. recent patches appear to have gone down well and people are enjoying themselves.
in saying that i have seen plenty of people in sto and as much as people like to quote the game is dying the numbers ive seen in game have been steady since the initial expected drop off.
co is very fun and worth playing but they are two very different games, but in saying all that i did get bored of champions after a month and am yet to get bored of STO.
co feels more 'complete' at the moment
I hope that helps and i do recommend giving it a go but remember that one is a comic book where good guys fight bad guys game and one is about space/wars/exploration/diplomacy/first contact/personal relationships/strange anomalies etc etc with a forty year history with hundreds of hours of tv and as a result tried to cram far too much into one game for everybody to be happy with it.
hope that all makes sense
The first 3 months of CO's life was a trainwreck, and I don't recall too many updates in that time. It seems like they worked mostly on bug fixes. Getting disconnected several times a session wasn't uncommon. For a month or more after launch you could count on a server crash every Sunday that would bring the game down for a few hours and erase the last several missions that you completed.
IMO the population of CO has never been anywhere near STO's population, but not all of that has to do with the game itself. The Launch Day Nerf drove a ton of players off. Horrible server stability drove a bunch of people off. When they pulled the CO team over to help get STO ready for launch a bunch of people quit because CO was being totally ignored and things were falling apart. The announcement that we would have to pay for all expansions was almost the nail in the coffin. At that point CO became a total ghost town and it was unusual to see more than one shard of any map. Thankfully Cryptic managed to pull it together and CO is getting much stronger and the population is growing.
I hope this is what you're looking for.
I'll be specific later. ( seeing as It was you and I kicked this off I ought to expand upon my thoughts ) But right now I'm actually playing CO again and enjoying it so no time for a big speech.
So you have not played it? Mail me your address and I'll send you a new copy, 30 days 400 c points
STO: You get a vehicle you can completely customize and adventure both in and out of.
Champions: You can pick up the nearest vehicle and smash someone repeatedly in the face with it.
Global@Chat away! *flies away*
--the top in each category is my opinion, and everything is compared from memory
Character creation - CO comes out on top, as it has a far greater customisation capability. You have a number of overall syles to choose from for each body location (head, chest, arms, legs), but you can have, say, the right arm look different to the left arm. That, and backpacks. STO gives you the choice of head accessories, and a number of preset uniforms, which if you ask me, is more in character than designing your own. Scaling options are prety much the same
Missions - I feel that STO just peaks out ahead due to the exploration missions. It has a tad more varety, but you have to know where to look, and get lucky. Both have the "Kill X" types, and while STO has you scanning things on planets or in space, CO has you collecting drops from kills. I suppose it is true that CO missions can be more fluid, and like several different objectives together, as you're never quite sure what's going to happen when you're asked to help a granny get her kitten out of a tree whereas STO tells you from the outset what your objectives are to complete the mission. From memory, the missions boil down to:
CO: Go to new contact, kill X, collect X, rescue X, use X (examine, destroy, etc)
STO: Go to contact, Kill X, scan X, go to location, deliver supplies, collect X (anomolies, usually)
Environments - Difficult to decide this one. CO has about 4 or 5 really large and wonderfully designed environments, with each one having little sub-environments in them. For example, Millennium City not only has the central hub, but also a chinatown district, parkland, docks, mayoral offices, and residential blocks. The desert has a research base, militia camp, radioactive dump site, a wild west theme park, and a terrorist base. STO, on the other hand, has very small instanced sectors, but each one has a different look (think Starbase 01 -> Andoria -> Vulcan -> Risa, and so on). All of these are encompassed in one much larger sector of space, where you zip around at warp speeds. And, of course, in addition to the ground maps, there is variety in the space maps, too, albeit with an alarmingly large number of planets with rings around them, and asteroid belts
Character enhancements - Quite similar in their effects, if I recall, but quite different in what you do with them. STO has your consoles, giving you fixed bonusses to stats and skills, and kits, giving you the power to do more than shoot or punch your opponent. CO gives you three categories, each with 3 slots in, in which to place your chosen enhancements. Like STO, these can affect your skills or abilities, but unlike STO, tend to work on two or three at once
Graphic wise, they both use the same basic engine, and I even recall seeing the NPC's in STO performing the actions of the NPC's in CO when it was still in beta!.
My opinion on lengeivity? STO has the edge. It's based on a very well known and much loved brand, whereas Champions seemed at the time to be a superhero MMO, competing with City of Heroes. In it's defence, it did have some unique points to it, like the mobile combat, being able to choose where your various powers eminate from, and choosing their colour.
Well, that's my thaughts!
STO has more content.
More to do.
More stuff in the C-Store that has any sort of relevance.
Also, the communication between players and devs in STO is better, more consistent, and much more informative.
The testing procedures at CO were nightmarish.
Things may have changed since February, but STO simply has more backstory to draw upon so has more stuff.
Pun intended ... LIGHT YEARS ahead.
I was there. The population here is much larger. The population here started much larger. It has lost some subs. But it's still much larger. There was a time where CO's population prior to the free weekends and the halloween event ... that things were horribly bleak.
The strength of Champions Online is that its combat is fun. Very action packed. Very dynamic. You are a super hero. And the game lets you feel like a super hero quite easily. It's hard to really make a fair comparison between "ground" combat here and combat in CO. Even if all you do is spam Gigabolt, that is ultimately more satisfying an experience than firing phasers here.
However, this game does a similar thing. It captures the fun and feel of space combat that is very "flavorful" and "immersive" in the context of this game's IP. Champions makes super hero combat feel very much like super hero combat. STO makes space combat feel very much like space combat.
Champions had a lot going for it. But it was thin. Very thin on content. The levelling process was monotonous. The bugs were horrendous. The nerfs were ... excessively heavy handed. PVP was in a state that you would absolutely loathe. And getting anyone oustide of Poz to even talk to you about the game was like pulling teeth. Getting Poz to talk was easy. Getting Poz to change direction on something was nigh impossible. But at least Poz would give you any and all relevant information when talking about crafting.
Oh yeah ... they had a grandfathered issue. Their crafting system had similar issues.
You want to know where much of my posting style, demeanor and attitude comes from?
Champions.
You want to know why I am far more patient, and hopeful with this game?
Champions.
I've been down that road before. I see the devs working very hard here. Being very open and communicating. I see the limitations they have. I understand a lot of the obstacles, beacuse it's the same obstacles the other game had. I am more patient with this because I see more work done here and more progress made here.
I haven't played since February. But Champions did next to nothing to make me regret leaving.
I quit champions because my main character was stuck in Lemuria. For two weeks. The fix to unstuck him did not work. The progress made to fix this bug was too slow. And I realized I lost the desire to log in.
I no longer cared that I couldn't access my main character. I did not want to. I had no real desire to play my alts past the 30s. The game lost my interest.
So none of my criticism stems from any sort of resentment from the issues of development communication, heavy handed nerfing, disastrous Q&A, or dead-end test server participation. Those were all just problems I had with the game when it was young. And solutions I did think were possible, but weren't being acted upon seriously enough.
I come to this game and I see some of the same problems. But I see so many more things being handled ... better. Is the only way I can put it.
The grass may seem greener on the CO side of the fence.
But it wasn't. Not in 2009.
The differences stem from the IPs themselves. Champions makes an effort to design super hero style combat. STO makes an effort to design Star Trek style combat.
It's going to be much more action packed and dynamic to be Spider-Man or Bat Man beating up thugs or whatever ... than it is to be even Worf with a Bat'Leth.
CO was designed to appeal to people with shorter attention spans, thus the shorter missions, fast paced fighting, the cartoon look and feel. Everyone can be everything (tank, dps, heal) through the use of blocking, attacks and regens/heal abilities.
Everybody can choose skills from the other archetype sets, so you can design the character to be very unique in their powers, but it seems ( at least it did 4 months ago when I last played), that most settle in with the FOTM format - you will see this in the PVP arenas.
As far as CO having larger open areas than STO, that is just a perspective difference. When you only fly at 25mph, it will take you a long time to get to the ends of the map.
Nothing wrong with the game (if you like wearing tights - *grin*), but it really needs a "Villains" add-on before I would resub.
Oh, and the Champions forum was nearly as bad as the STO forums, during the first few months, and amazingly enough the "doom and gloom" folks were wrong, since the game is still running.
I enjoyed CO for a bit, but was put off by so many power changes and content gaps at mid levels (don't miss any quests, you will regret it), it was so bad that some folks made web sites that would examine your character and tell you what quests you missed so you could go back and do them to keep the content gap as small as possible.
Yeah. See. I read a thread in here talking about how STO needs to be more mature in its content. And all I could think of was ...
"You poor soul. You've never freed Hurley in Canada ... Ron Burgandy from Foxbat ... or heard the voice acting in Champions Online."
WE'VE GOT TO SHUT DOWN THOSE BEACONS! ALL OF THEM! EVERY LAST SINGLE BEACON! BACONS! SHUT DOWN THE BACONS! YOU! NOOB! STANDING THERE IN THE CORNER OF THIS MAP LAUGHING AT ME, THE GREAT DEFENDER, HAVE YOU SHUT DOWN THE BACONS? IF NOT, GET SOME CRISCO AND COME WITH ME!
STO is the uptight sister that never goes out and parties and has a set routine every day. (this would be following canon etc)
CO is the wild sister that crawls up the walls and wears neon pink with green and feels no shame... That and she makes jokes about bacon. Lots and lots of mind altering dru... bacon.
I, for one, love Champions and can see where STO could go during the next year.
I have two characters:
The Scotsman (Clan Gordon kilt)
Jesus (with the power of flight, kung-fu, and gunplay)
That is so true lol. To be fair, as bad as Defender is in that scene, it does kind of fit in a corny, campy kind of over acted way. It'd be awful here, but then we have the guardian of the portal!
Champions is ok as far as it goes, but the levelling is very monotonous. Even with varied areas to go, it all feels somewhat the same. What's different in Champions compard to STO is the abundance of multi-objective quests.
Whereas here, we enter a system, do a single thing, then warp out, in CO, very often a single location has a chain of events for that one area. It's something that would make the systems here more worthwhile. After you finish a mission here, you always get the option of 'keep exploring'. For what? If you already picked up the anomalies, you're done with the place. I digress....
CO is decent, but it just doesn't hold my attention like STO. You can literally spend hours in the character creator on CO though.
Just a note...
But the job ad Cryptic placed to fill Gozer's slot on the content team says they're looking for someone who can add more objectives to existing maps in STO.
I left CO in late January/early February. The game has level gaps to the point someone made a site called Crime Computer 2.0 to help people get through all that.
No game should call itself ready for market having as many gaps as that game did.
However, there are a few things better there than here too.
Demo - Here new players get a 1 hour demo. At the time I left CO, players could demo a bit longer with the tutorial and there was talk of expanding their demo to the Crisis desert and/or Crisis Canada. If I never played either game and just tried both demos, I'd buy CO and never look at STO again. I'd consider STO's demo a slap in the face taking all that time to download the game. And there the tutorial will take you at minimum to level 5. You could farm the PQ at the end for a few levels but 5 minimum with their level cap at 40. STO the demo is capped at 2 or 3 and level cap is 45. Seems backwards.
Bank - Not only do you get to buy more space, but I liked the right-click and choose "Deposit" option there. With the crafting items, very handy to get them stacked like kind. I looked for that here and surprised it wasn't available.
Offline Guild Invite - There it's called Supergroup and here Fleet so titled this one Guild to cover both. STO had it when you could even invite your own alts with this function. And CO has it too. I don't know if they killed it in both games but they did in STO.
But other than that, comparing STO at 3 months to CO at 3 months, STO actually wins in other areas. I would call crafting a tie because they are both a waste of time. But people who complain about content in STO didn't live through CO's first 4 months or they would have known it could have been a lot less. And CO's claim of adding content, well the first "added content" was fixing a mission that was first in a series of missions where the door entrance was bugged so you couldn't even start the chain. They fixed the bug then claim they added some content. Sorry, that was a bug fix not a content addition.
And when they tried to pull the Vebora (or however it's spelled) Pay, that's when it was time to go because that shows they weren't really wanting a replayable game. Which brings me to ENDGAME.
CO had NO Endgame at launch. Sounds familiar? And the Unity missions they added a few months after launch were the dumbest missions in the game. Hell, the tutorial where you have to open doors for the so-called Greatest Champion of them All and then he's too stupid to press a button to launch his friend through a cannon at a space ship was better than Unity. Then they added Nemesis Confrontation. I expected it to be tougher and it was a joke. Never had a problem with it.
I hear it's better now but CO has seen enough of my money already.
They are to totally different games though, with at the moment CO being much more polished than STO. However, its also an indicator that things can improve. CO was in a sorry state, but its not anymore.
Howdy Pardner! If you have spend a single second in Snake Gulch just to level up efficiently, CO still has a very narrow levelling path.
It did, past tense. MMOs change. CO certainly has. Right now you end up dropping missions, as there's to many.
I don't like the graphics and character models in CO. They just don't look right to me. I'm very picky about character models. I couldn't play WoW because of the goofy looking characters. Meanwhile, I love the graphics in STO, and the character models are pretty good.
I'm still concerned that I would encounter level gaps in CO. Mind you, what amount to level gaps for me might not be level gaps for many others. I play solo and I don't do any missions that require teaming, and I don't do PvP. Grinding enemies for XP is not a practical alternative to getting through level gaps in CO (or STO). In any case, I knew that the content would be stretched extremely thin. Meanwhile, there are no level gaps in STO. If all else fails, there are always exploration missions available. (The content shortage in STO is that you get to the maximum level too fast, not that there are content gaps.) I still don't see CO getting enough content to satisfy me any time soon.
I'm also not fond of open zone missions. Strangely enough, I like instanced missions, so the STO mission format works very well for me.
The open missions. Oh, I had forgotten how funny it was when I was fighting a mob over a blinkie and some kid ran up and grabbed it while I was fighting the mob. So I followed behind him and repaid the favor and he got on zone chat crying about it.
There - Every level capped toon has no waiting missions because I had to complete everything to reach cap back then. And that's with using crime computer 2.0 site.
Here - Every level capped toon has an open mission if not many in the log not counting STFs. I just decided to hold them for when they raise the level cap here.
Thats not remotely the same as a level gap though. Besides, why would you want to skip Snake Gulch? Love that place.
Here we get it served on a silver platter. In CO... CC 2.0 if you want any chance to find new missions sometimes. Like those in the far north in MC... Yah those took 2 level 40s before being found.
Then don't say it like there never was one.
Had the weirdest type of level gap on the main... No missions at her level. Only missions +2-4 to her level for about 20 levels.
At the 3 month mark it did no matter how much you try to sugarcoat it. That's why www.crimecomputer20.com was created because of that. Or otherwise it wouldn't have been necessary. And said in every post "back then" or something similar since I also stated I cancelled back in late January/early Feb. And that was one of the many reasons for the cancel. So that facts are correct.