Anyone Playing Champions On Line?

[IggytheBorg]

I was a huge fan of City of Heroes when it 1st came out. Got bored w/ it before I max'ed out either of my characters, though, and the friends I joined up w/ stopped playing in favor of WOW (a love affair that burned bright for about a year & then fizzled, too). I've been getting kind of nostalgic for CoH lately, and was loking at the COL website last night. It looks kind of cool, and I've read some good stuff about it. I'm not sure I feel like paying a monthly sub fee for the privilege, but I am toying w/ the idea. Just out of curiosity: anyone playing COL? What do you think of it? Comparisons w/ CoH would be particularly useful.

[Abraham Smashington]

I know Matt was for a bit there but he had his issues.

[nerdious dorkus]

Igg, come play WoW with us instead.

[B_Metal]

Igg, come play WoW with us instead.

This.

[BillyG]

This.

x2

Champions is crap. They are working on a CoH2 already because the Champions name is ruined.

[Matt]

I played Champions Online for 4 months or so.

The good:
- the character creation is quite a bit of fun. Customizing the look and feel of your hero can provide HOURS of fun, seriously. It's the best part of the game.
- the comic-book 'look' of the game is cool. I really dug it.

The bad:
- the fact that you can totally customize your character from ALL of the available powers sounds like a great idea, but in actuality IT'S NOT. Why? Because everyone has figured out what the best powersets are now...that means that, regardless of what character 'class' you want to be, you're going to HAVE to take certain powers from other classes in order to truly be viable.
- melee powers are almost totally useless. Anyone with ranged powers will totally clean your clock WITH EASE. They may have done a class balancing by now to remedy this issue, but I doubt it.
- the missions are fairly boring and repetitive. Regardless of your origin 'class', you're going to be going through the same grind with EVERY CHARACTER with very little deviation. I got my electricity guy up to 40 and worked on my darkness gal...when I realized that I was covering the exact same ground, I quit. Why bother?

I never played CoH/CoV, so I can't compare the two. I found CO to be total and complete failure as a captivating game.

[IggytheBorg]

This saddens me. I was a comic book superhero geek as a kid long before I was a fantasy geek. Never had a favorite hero or anything, but will always have a soft spot in my heart for superheroes. The idea of a cool superhero game appeals to me a great deal. But a question: I thought, unless you were duelling w/ other players, that you basically went up against game generated villains? Surely they aren't munchkined in the same way asshole players with no sense of what it means to "role play" in RPG are? And what of the nemesis idea? That sounds really fucking cool.

[IggytheBorg]

Igg, come play WoW with us instead.

If you had asked me a year or two ago I might have considered it, but I have grown so disillusioned with this game. Well, more accurately, with the players. When all the game was was people teaming up to help each other do quests & level up, it was great. But when fuckers made a goddam science out of where & when to get all the fucking epic drops, and no one had time fo just leveling & questing any more(which, being a new parent, was all I really had time t do) b/c they were all too busy organizing raids & shit, it lost its appeal really quickly. I mean, I couldn't even find one person, in the beginner's areas, where you figure there's got to be people in the same boat, to help w/ questing. And doing it yourself SUCKS sometimes. My RL "buds" that were supposed to help me w/ this ("Yeah", they said, "Tuesday's gonna be Horde night! Log on about 9, and we'll just quest & level these characters we all started at the same time! And we won't play 'em without each other!" We played together maybe twice. And I checked once and found they had doubled in level in a week. Odd how that hapened, since I don't recall playing with them in that time). So thanks, but that ship has sailed for me.

[BillyG]

Ig, you need to come back. The dungeon finder has alleviated your worries.

[IggytheBorg]

explain.

[BillyG]

The dungeon finder has made making groups easy. Press a button, pick a dungeon(s), wait for group to form, usually less than 10-15 minutes. Also, the loot system has completely changed where collecting epics is incredibly easy. You earn badges from running the dungeons (plus gold) using the dungeon finder tool. Badges will buy you purples. If you want the absolute toppest of the top, yes raids will get those, but everyone is much less concerned about gear, and more concerned about quality players now.

[IggytheBorg]

Given my disdain for making it strictly a mathematical exercise, and my relative inexperence by comparison to most still playing the game, I doubt very much I'd fit anyone's definition of a "Quality Player".

[BillyG]

It takes time. At this point most people know whats going on, and one person learning won't hurt a 5 man group.