PC Champions Online In [email protected]

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Champions Online, a massively multiplayer online action game based on the popular pen-and-paper Champions RPG, will give players the power of total customization of their hero experience while they explore a vast universe of richly detailed 3D environments. Champions Online is all about total customization – it will offer a near infinite amount of character customization so that all players will have a unique game experience. Gamers will be able to create their hero’s name, back story, costume, powers and abilities as well as design their own personal arch-enemy and his or her back story, which will guarantee a truly unique experience.

Total Character Customization: The character creation system is bar none the most exhaustive and flexible system to date. With hundreds of unique costume pieces, the ability to alter and re-color each piece, the option to select which powers your hero will use and the ability to change the powers’ colors as well, there are limitless customization options in Champions Online. You’ll even be able to customize your own personal arch-enemy and customize his or her appearance and abilities as well
Genre Redefining Combat: Champions Online introduces an action-based combat system that redefines MMO combat. With an immediate and intuitive combat system, players spend more time engaging enemies and less time waiting for meters to recharge. The result is exciting and visceral fights while keeping the strategic element inherent to MMO combat intact
Cross Platform Gaming: Champions Online will be the first massive multiplayer online action title to allow Xbox 360 and Windows gamers to play online with each other simultaneously
Varied, Expansive Environments: Rather than taking place in a single city, Champions Online takes place over the entire Earth and beyond. Huge environments such as Millennium City, monster infested islands, creepy underground ruins, even outer space

Are you guys gonna sell game cards for this too? I would be interested then :D

I hope so - I will check for you tomorrow G -

shot man :D

Picking up my free copy on Saturday if all goes smooth (since this is my game of choice for winning last weeks PC competition). :D

Please tell us how the game is asap :).

hopefully bill roper don't f*** it up like he did with hellgate.

Hellgate London had so much potential. If it had maybe 6 more months development time it would have rocked. That whole subscription thing helped killed that game. No way you can charge that amount of money for a game still in pre-Beta phase >_<

As far as Champions goes, I will try give an update on what I think, but since it is new it will suffer I am sure from lack of content / balancing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tehNihilist

Hellgate London had so much potential. If it had maybe 6 more months development time it would have rocked. That whole subscription thing helped killed that game. No way you can charge that amount of money for a game still in pre-Beta phase >_<

As far as Champions goes, I will try give an update on what I think, but since it is new it will suffer I am sure from lack of content / balancing.

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i'm yet to see a game at launch that is perfect; give it 30 days before i try it , or at least when a trail thingy is availible :)

I've been follow ChO for a while... the character customization is really exciting - you can create pretty much anything!

Thanks for the post Moody

Good news we can start selling this from today

Gradius - I am just waiting for Megarom to get back to me about the time cards.

thanks for the effort :D

Playing Champions Online for 5 days now, so I will give you as brief a hands on of an MMO as I can for those of you who are interested:

It costs $49.99, it can be purchased over Steam (Steam is not a requirement) or over the shelf. There is the usual monthly fee ($14.99) and other recurring payment options, the first month is "free". You can pay via credit card or game card.

After creating your account, you open the game launcher and enter your account details, the game is then going to patch (100mb+- if I recall). After clicking the play button the game loads and asks which control scheme you would like to use, Champions Default, Fantasy or Typical MMO. The differences are the way the keys are laid out by default, but they can be rebound.

Character Creation
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On to the character creation! You are given a list of "powersets", to choose one for your character, with detailed descriptions of each. The following power sets are available:

Martial Arts
Supernatural
Gadgeteering
Sorcery
Ice
Force
Power Armor
Fire
Electricity
Might
Darkness
Telekinesis
Telepathy
Munitions
Archery
Fighting Claws
Single Blade
Dual Blades
Custom

Choosing a power set is NOT like choosing a class. It simply means, your initial powers, and powers displayed by default to you at the trainers will be from the same "school". You can deviate from this path and mix and match any power from any set any time you are learning new powers (provided you meet level requirements). This brings me to the custom power set, which lets you... custom select your first two starting powers right out of the gate.

Next you select your characters sex, followed by head/face design. It should be noted that at this point, in your character preview, your character will look pretty generic and be wearing blue and yellow spandex.... this is not the final result =). There are a few preset designs for your head/face, a randomize button (which can give some interesting results), and a custom button. After clicking the custom button, you will probably be a little overwhelmed at all the sliders and options, because they are EXHAUSTIVE, think Mass Effect.

Next, body design. Once again, there are presets, randomize, and of course, custom. Once again, the options are exhaustive for shaping your character, within a few limitations. Its not possible to make a "fat" character and you will be a biped with two arms, though they could be one zombie and one peg leg.... if you wanted....

Costume... There are no presets here, so you are going to be lovingly crafting your characters costume, or randomizing it. As you could have probably guessed, the customization options here are very close to overwhelming. Medieval helms, robotic arms, a satellite dish on your back, a zombie chest, rock skin, gloves, spikes, collars, capes, jetpacks, belts, the pupils in your eyes, your characters facial expression, stance etc. etc. etc. Every single piece can be custom colored, comes in cloth, leather or metal and in many different patterns.

You now name your character and optionally give him a storyline. As you might have guessed with all this customization, unless you are creating a tribute character (which is easy considering how good the character creator is), it is very difficult to come across someone just like you. This is an MMO where you feel truly unique and has the best character creation process by far, although the amount of options might be a bit much for some players.

Tutorial
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You can now start playing! The game starts with an ingame cutscene, hovering the camera over a battered and under siege Millenium City. During the custcene, the leader of the Millenium City Super Team, Defender, explains how Millenium City has been besieged by an alien race, the Qular. This is the games tutorial area.

The tutorial is well done and will bring you up to speed if you have never played an MMO before. It is short and concise, ending with a nice set piece with you teaming up with Defender to tackle the villains behind the invasion, so it won't get repetitive on your alts.

After the tutorial, you will go out to a celebration and have the choice to go to Canada or the South Western Desert to kick some more butt.

Phasing
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Champions frequently makes use of content phasing. The earliest example is with the tutorial, Millenium City being besieged for the duration and upon completion, is restored. The next early example is Canada, being ripped apart by a violent snow storm. Once you vanquish the villains behind the storm, Canada is also restored, but still plagued with problems. This creates a great feeling of progression, not just with your character, but with the world.

Travel Powers
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Immediately after the tutorial section, you receive a quest and are advised to go to the power trainer and get yourself a travel power. This is good advice because the zones in this game are absolutely frikkin ginormous, without a travel power, moving around the zones will take painfully long. Not because the zones aren't detailed, they are very detailed, but there may be a big distance between the quest giver, and the actual quest location, far bigger than your used to. Travel powers really take the tedium out of going from place to place, especially since you get one so early in the game. At level 35, you get to pick a second travel power.

The following travel powers are available:

Flight
Superspeed
Teleportation
Swinging
Rocket Boots
Fire Flight
Earth Flight
Superjump
Acrobatics
Ice Slide
Tunneling
Rocket Jump
Hover Disk

Your travel powers can be used during combat, however, there is a penalty for this. The penalty is different for each power, but is normally along the lines of a drastically decreased speed from the powers normal top speed and increased energy cost of powers.

Don't let this discourage you too much from using them and experimenting with them in combat though, they can play a major role.

Combat
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Your character in Champions has an energy bar. This is similar to mana in that a certain amount of it is required to use most of your powers, but if you are familiar with World of Warcraft, it is closer to a warriors fury bar.

Every character's first skill is what is known as an energy builder. There is an energy builder attack available to every power set. Attacking with this skill (you simply need to press it once at it "maintains" in between other attacks) refills your energy bar. Using most of your other powers rapidly expends your energy, but, your energy builder quickly refills it. Out of combat, your energy decays up to a point, indicated by two yellow arrows on your energy bar. This means you will have sufficient energy to dive into a new fight, but not enough to use your best powers immediately.

Effectively you never run out of energy/mana (like rage), meaning you can always fight, but you need to carefully manage your energy. There are many powers that will expend the entire bar, using them haphazardly will leave you vulnerable.

There is also something new, in that, by default when holding shift, your character goes into a blocking. When you are about to be hit by a powerful move, you should do this, as it will allow you to block a significant amount of damage. While in the blocking stance however, you move incredibly slowly and cannot use any powers, with the exception of the Might power, Defensive Combo.

Also new, is the ability to pick up objects (like cars) and throw them at your enemies for pretty explosive damage.

After you kill enemy NPCs, they will randomly, but frequently drop "powerups". There are a range of these from health restoration to damage bonuses etc. Combine this with the fact that when you are out of combat, your health rapidly regenerates, you have a fast flowing game with close to zero downtime.

Your character will also automatically face your current target, so you don't wind up with rogues circle sprinting you and you trying to spin your character like mad.

Against NPCs, Champions does a good job of making you feel tough, frequently having you fight packs of 5 or 6 NPCs, and you frequently grinding their faces into the pavement.

So much to talk about in combat... Ok, next, there is the actual act of performing your powers. You can perform any power while moving, no requirement of standing still. Some powers have cast times (can still be used while moving), some are instant with no cooldown and purely an energy cost, some powers allow your to charge them up. This means you can hold down the hotkey for the power, and the effectiveness increases the longer you hold it down, up to a point of course, increasing its energy cost.

In short, the combat in Champions is fast paced, actiony and goes well with its superhero theme.

Leveling
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When it comes to gaining levels, Champions doesn't bring much new to the table.

The level cap is 40 and to get there you are going to be doing much of what you have been doing in other MMOs. Quests, group quests, open quests, dungeons (know as lairs) and PvP (more detail later on that).

Champions does have some interesting set pieces to mix things up and tell some voiced over story, especially when closing off a "chapter". Fighting in some hilariously/ridiculous scripted set pieces against "super villains" like Foxbat (besieging a news station), or more epic sequences...

Champions also introduces a Nemesis system, which allows you to craft yourself a Nemesis and his henchmen with the character editor. I can't comment on this system thoroughly, as I have not reached this content yet, but from what the players have said, it is also a good source of experience for your character and their are many quests crafted around combating your Nemesis. Oh yes, you can have more than one Nemesis if you so desire.

Another nice touch, the area which you need to do a quest in is highlighted in a green circle on your map and minimap. This obviously removes the need to decipher complicated directions in your quest log.

PvP
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PvP is this game is totally off the chain, in a good way.

Unfortunately, there is no world PvP at present, as players do not choose a faction to associate themselves with, so effectively you are all allies. The PvP is similar to arena in World of Warcraft, fought in arenas.

It is fought in brackets, 1-10, 11-20 etc. the same as World of Warcraft battlegrounds, however, if you fight in the 11-20 bracket for instance and are below level 20, you will temporarily be raised to level 20 for the duration of the match, creating a nice even playing field.

As you progress in levels more arenas open up to you, at this time, I only have access to the "UTC Cage Match" arena. This arena pits 5 man teams against each other in... you guessed it, a cage match. To win, your team must defeat members of the enemy team 15 times before the enemy team does the same to you. So yes, you "respawn" and can rejoin the fight, your not knocked out once you are defeated, but it does mean the enemy team is one step closer to winning. This also mean there are second chances and your team does have some breathing room to adjust its strategy.

There are also random power ups, the same as the ones you get from killed NPCs. They regularly spawn throughout the match around the arena. Its interesting to see someone overreaching because they picked up the damage boost, only to dive into someone who picked up a defensive boost :D

Anyway, the real highlight of PvP in this game is not so much the arenas themselves, but the unique characters that fight in them and their unique set of powers. Champions being a classless game, means you never quite know what your up against, which adds a big element of surprise. You have to keep a close eye on what powers people are using throughout the match so they don't catch you off guard. Also, powers generally looking a bit over the top, being superheros and all, means PvP fights look great, with fantastic displays of ice, fire, sorcery, darkness and hulking characters leaping at and pinning their opponents.

Travel powers add something unique to PvP, with some fights taking place in the air, others swinging around from the ceiling, people skating around on their ice boards. It looks great, but it also greatly affects the strategy you need to use to take down opponents.

Bottom line, while I don't have enough experience to say if the PvP could be as competitive as WoW arena, it is a hell of a lot of fun. Its easy to forget about the rest of the game and sink hours into just doing PvP, even if your not very good at it.

Conclusion
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Ok I'm exhausted now =), writing a hands on for an MMO is no small task and there is still so much I have left out, but I hope you get a decent idea of the game.

I'm having a lot of fun with Champions and I am pretty unforgiving when it comes to MMOs.

It is ultimately the usual MMO formula at it core that we all know, but it does improve on quite a few things done in the past. It is obvious Cryptic have really given Champions their all and their description of it being an "Action MMO" is quite accurate given how fast paced and flowing the combat is.

Whether Champions can truly survive and shine, will depend on how Cryptic supports the game and if they manage to continue to entertain players in the endgame.

My main, "Frozen Fist":

http://i881.photobucket.com/albums/a...se-PROUDST.jpg

Screenies (not the greatest, just randoms):

http://i881.photobucket.com/albums/a...8-00-58-10.jpg

http://i881.photobucket.com/albums/a...02-23-25-1.jpg

Thanks for all that info :).