Here’s one thing I didn’t know about till yesterday — seems the discounted subs also bring early start privileges. Yup, if you’re living in the US and didn’t pre-order from Gamestop or Best Buy and wanted in on the head start… get one of the subs!

Something else I need to correct from yesterday’s Stat talk — Ego isn’t worthless… now that I’ve had some more in-game time I can talk about: Criticals. They’re different from the usual MMO.

There are two stats that effect critical hits in Champions Online: Dexterity and Ego. Dex gives you a higher chance to critical, while the critical damage is determined by your Ego. If you have high Dex you may crit more, but with low Ego it won’t be doing as much. High Ego could result in big crits, but without some Dex you won’t be seeing them as much. That’s a bit more complicated.

Also, it seems Telekinesis works on Ego for damage — at least it does Ego damage (I didn’t even really know that was a type). For anyone interested in the power set — here’s a brief explanation of what I’ve seen so far (I’m only level 10 on the character, so remember that): It’s a psychic melee DPS/Tanking set. If that sounds odd, it pretty much is. You have a ranged energy builder and some melee attacks mixed with melee/ranged AoEs — then some buffs a block… Others that I haven’t gotten to, yet. What surprised me the most about the set is the damage; I was doing enormous amounts of DPS with Ego Blade Frenzy when I had Ego Surge on. I’m not quite sure which tanking set I’m going to focus on now…

The Champions Online play continues for me this weekend. I’ve gotten another character leveled up to the teens — a Sorcery user, pure Sorcery. For anyone interested, this power set is focused on magic (duh, right?) with plenty of options to choose from. There’s direct damage, crowd control, healing, buffs… and the coolest part — pets!

There’s a few different choices here and they all have one thing in common — they are uncontrollable, without a certain upgrade. This isn’t much of a problem, but there is more — with the exception of the undead all the pets are very temporary and you need to stay within the summoning circle or they will disappear (after a short period of time). This may sound terrible, but it’s really not that bad. Summoning doesn’t cost much or take that long and the pets are quite effective on their own — typically they can easily take on henchman rank mobs solo.

The choices for pets are: a demon, angel, arcane construct (golem), mystic wolf, and undead. The undead are different in that there are no summoning circles and you summon three at once (think the basic undead summon in City of Villians), however, they do seem to be temporary and uncontrollable always. Instead of getting a talent to control them, you instead get one to increase the length of their summon — from 22 seconds to 45. Increasing the rank of the undead summon will increase their strength and change their appearance (they basically get a bit bigger and stronger looking, still zombies). Increasing the ranks of the others seems to increase the health, and possibly the damage — though when I tested this I couldn’t tell much much difference, apart from health. With the angels, at least.

As to the name of this post, I have spent some time in Millennium City — post tutorial. This zone is quite large and familiar — it feels just like the city zones in City of Heroes (no surprise there, huh?). Within the beautiful city is many, many dangerous foes and lots of citizens that need saving. This zone seems to be for levels 13+ as you get sent here after doing most of the beginner zones, however, I have had trouble finding a lot of quests to complete — that were level appropriate. It might be my lack of luck in finding them (no contacts is not that nice, nor is not having the newspaper missions from CoV). It really is a glaring difference between CoH and CO in this very similar zone, and not one that I like that much. CoH was great in that you always had some mission that you could do, that was level appropriate and as challenging as you wanted. The lack of instancing is certainly a personal taste, but I don’t enjoy it as much. Competition over certain quests and spawn camping has been pretty normal in CO so far. That’s not something I like. In a way it feels like Cryptic took a few steps back to make CO, relying on a more WoW-player friendly style of game play. This may cost them. Well, that and the bugs.

Yup, there’s quite a few bugs still in the game — in Canada especially. There’s several quests that can’t be completed because they don’t work properly — that’s frustrating, and a huge problem. This game is only a week or so away from launch. This open beta is what will determine people’s interest in purchasing. You can’t have bugs in the beginner areas that are this obvious. I haven’t purchased a lifetime subscription, and will likely pass on it and the six month option — I don’t know if they’ll be worth it yet.

With this negativity there is some positive. The powerhouse! This instance is where you train up your character and select your perks/powers. Here you can respec and test your character. Some tips: while in the beginner zones you can respec all your powers — travel and starting, it costs to respec powers that you have taken outside the powerhouse — but inside you can respec for free (as long as you don’t go outside), there’s several rooms within the powerhouse that allow you to test various things — there’s dummies to attack; lasers that harm you; throwable objects; and a large room to test travel powers — make use of these! If you want to try out all the different possibilities of your early character without making a zillion alts, go here and try everything. If you character changes drastically from what you envisioned and no longer looks like what you wanted — go to the tailor, you can change your look completely. Customization is a lot more accesible in CO than CoH, they got that right.

The last subject for now is going to be PvP. I’ve run a few matches in the Hero Games (CO’s arena) and had some fun with it. Here’s the low down: you queue up from anywhere using the handy interface located on your mini-map, you join a match, you’ll be on either the red or blue team, you kill the other team members in an arena style instance till one side gets 15 kills. This is how the lowbie PvP is, at least. I can’t say about higher levels or if it changes at all. Still, it is pretty fun and a good way to test your abilities. Also, there are rewards in the form of equipment items that give decent stats and costume pieces — Mexican wrestler pieces. It’s pretty interesting.

There’s one thing I don’t like about Champions Online so far… I can’t find any option to enable the UI to show while taking a screenshot! I’ll likely try again using windowed mode and doing a full screenshot, but that’s for another post. As I don’t have any shiny UI elements to show off or explain, I’ll just post some of the screenshots I’ve taken so far and a brief explanation of them.

Silia Wulfhart's First Costume

Gormlaithe's First Costume

Here is one screenshot option I do like. It seems during character creation if you save the costume the game will save it in this shiny comic book style picture.

Silia is a hybrid Munitions/Supernatural power set. I went with Gunslinger for my energy builder (dual pistols) and Lash for my ranged attack (you throw a chain). Having custom power sets is likely my favorite part of Champions Online. I love customization. For travel powers I went with Acrobatics — this is similar to Super Speed and Super Jump being used together, for those who have played City of Heroes. It’s not nearly as effective, of course, but it still looks cool. You get to do some flips. The other powers I have gained so far are Regeneration (passive heal over time, very very nice), Condemn (targeted Area of Effect, charge it up to stun and deal massive damage — huge energy cost), and Command Animals (summons two pet Wolves). So far I’m mostly Supernatural, and will likely pick up the other heal that set has before turning more towards Munitions.

Gormlaithe is my second character, and I went straight Power Armor for her. The starting abilities are both ranged, and both seem to be some form of wrist mounted gun. Not too terribly exciting but the damage is nice. The travel power I went with is the Jet Boots — the flying ones. The animations for flying with them is amazingly nice and having boots suited to it helps. The character is still very low so I’ve only gained one other power — Energy Shield. The shield replaces your regular block and looks pretty nifty. One feature in CO is coloring your powers and your shield can be any color on the rainbow.

Here we go again...

Champions Online uses the traditional quest hubs and NPCs we are all familiar with, and so the universal mark for quests — the exclamation point! The question mark makes an appearance, too. This shot is the very beginning of the tutorial — the first quest you get and the first NPC you talk too. Here you can already see the city is in bad shape — there’s an alien invasion going on, and you have to stop it!

Combat.

Combat is a bit different. You have an energy builder that works as told — you toggle it on, do auto-attacks and build up your energy. An interesting note — you often do not have a full energy bar. You have a soft cap that you’ll always regenerate or degenerate too. Stronger abilities require more energy, at times more than the soft cap allows — Condemn is one such ability. I cannot use it at the full strength unless I gain more energy first.

Smash!

This is in the desert, one of the two areas you travel to after you leave the tutorial. The big green thing is a sort of epic boss — Grond to be exact. He’ll jump all over, shout and kill you if you’re unlucky enough to be nearby. The two headed looking wolf is actually two wolves, the pets you get with Command Animals. They’re handy, can tank a bit and deal some damage — but they’ll die if they get swarmed. You may notice a drop in graphical quality — this is the low setting. The previous screenshots were of recommended, but I had to turn it down once I got into the larger zones and gained a travel power.

Gormlaithe

Here’s Gormlaithe posing. The graphics are really quite nice in this shot, I think. Really, if your system can handle it the game will look wonderful.

Public Quest.

There are public quests in the game, similar to Warhammer Online. The main difference is how scoring is done — it’s not random, it’s based on participation. Here I’m helping out Ironclad to defend and rebuild a cannon. There doesn’t seem to be nearly as many PQ’s in CO as in WAR, I’ve only seen this one and one in Canada — none in the desert so far (I’m up to level 12, so it’s likely there are some). Rewards didn’t seem that great when I got top score twice, but it was something.

Jet Boots

Lastly, I have the jet boots. This is also a picture of the start of the Canada zone — nice and cold. Flying around is fun, but it doesn’t have one advantage that acrobatics has — adjustable power strength. With acrobatics you can charge up the power when using it and get a stronger speed/jump bonus, or you can just tap it to get a smaller effect and still gain the defensive bonuses. That’s handy.

I’m working on a gadgeteering alt right now, I’ll see about trying them all out. Especially before making my mind up on the lifetime subscription.

More in the future.

I was hoping to have a post about Champions Online yesterday, but I couldn’t get the game to finish patching till then. So, I spent all yesterday evening and well into the night playing! As such I’ll see about getting screenshots posted later today — if I can stop playing long enough.

This is more of a heads up, but I’ll share a little bit of what I’ve learned. If you liked City of Heroes, you may like this. It’s not guaranteed — the game is different. But if you really like superhero themed games, I think you’ll like it.

Some of the differences I noticed: choosing powers not limited by set — can essentially craft whatever kind of superhero you want, travel power right out of the tutorial — level 6, combat is a bit faster — can move while doing a lot of attacks, I haven’t noticed any ‘casting bars’ but you can hold down some abilities to charge them up and get a more powerful effect, there are tons of zones but not nearly as many instances as in CoH — in fact there’s very few so far and the game play has taken place in the open world, you have equipment in the form of items that boost your stats/defenses, powers can have their colors changed on the fly, powers are customized differently — no enhancements — instead you buy different upgrades — these upgrades can be a higher rank of the same power or adding additional effects — for instance: Lash is a power that hits the target with some chain from a medium distance — it’s instant cast — but you can upgrade it to add a charged ability that increases damage and adds a knock-back at max power, contacts seem to be more traditional MMO quest givers — you won’t be building up influence with them, there is a central city — Millennium City — but the zones vary all over the world — the first two are a desert in the south western US or the frozen norths of Canada. If you made it through that piece of grammar hell, sorry! I’ll have screenshots later on to point out some of this.

As far as my liking the game goes: I’m really enjoying it. It is different from City of Heroes, but the customization and fun is there. If you want to feel like a superhero, this is the game for you.