Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Since its launch, Champions Online has proven, to me, to be a solid game. I’ve enjoyed my time flying around Millennium City and bringing justice to those who would prey upon the weak and defenseless. There are a lot of things that Champions Online does very well (the character creation process being the top) and some things that aren’t done so well. Don’t get me wrong; I really like the game. That being said, there are a few things that I would have liked to have seen at launch, which is the purpose of this article. We’ll go through a variety of topics that I would have liked to have seen addressed by the time the game launched.

Missions
To start off with, let’s take a look at missions. The missions have been equal on par with the level that you receive them, and the missions have been the normal standard mission types (kill x number of bad guys or retrieve x number of items). I also enjoy the random missions in which a person runs up to you and offers you a mission. My big beef with missions is that there are too few. As I level my character, it seems that there are just enough missions to allow me to progress onward to higher levels. I’ve had to jump from Southwest Desert to the Canadian Wilderness then back to Millennium City grabbing all the missions I can to get to the next level plateau. Personally, I feel that there should always be more missions than needed to level your character. That way, I can skip some missions if I want to, especially if I find the mission too tough or just plain not interesting. It’s much better to have too many missions as opposed to too few.

Migration
What do I mean by migration? By that, I mean how the game steers you from one area to another. Normally, you get a few missions from a single source, which leads you to multiple other mission givers. Completing those missions allows you to explore an area thoroughly; after which, you move on to a new area and repeat the process. Champions Online has a very soft migration to it. For the first few levels, you’re steered into exploring an area, but after that, you’re more or less left to your own devices. Let’s say you finish all the 8-10th level missions. You would expect to perhaps been given a little mission to the chap giving out 11-13th level missions, but that happens very rarely in CO. While nobody wants to be hand-held by the game, it would be nice to urge players to a new zone in a gentler manner. Case in point: when I was hitting level 13 or so, I ran out of missions in Southwest Desert, so I began flying around looking for more missions. After getting shot out of the sky by level 24 AA guns, I decided that I should look elsewhere. It was only after consulting my missions log did I realize that I still had one open mission to talk to a guy in Millennium City. I had received the mission a level or two prior, so I had forgotten about it. Once I found the guy in Millennium City, I think he gave me one mission and that was it. I had to fly around till I saw an exclamation point appear on my map signifying another mission giver.  Personally, I believe that the game could have steered me a little better in going from one zone to another.

Map
While not huge in the grand scheme of things, the way the map is laid out bugs me in a few ways. Mainly, the map does not show important things in the zone such as the airplane to travel from one zone to another, the bank, or the auction house. (In fact, I still don’t know the location of the auction house.) The first time I went to Millennium City, I got lost trying to find my way back to the plane. It’s just a little thing, but certain things should always be marked on the map, in my opinion.

No Superhero Bases
Since Cryptic had done City of Heroes, followed by City of Villains, I had hoped that you would be able to design your own superhero base at game launch. Alas, however, that was not to be. While it’ll eventually come in the future, I had wished for it since the beginning as that they (Cryptic) had already done in another game. Champions Online should have the best features from COH/COV from the beginning. Why should something cool be left out?

Open Missions
While I love open missions (I adored them in WAR. Public quests was one of the great things about WAR), their design was not so great. A lot of the problem has to do with the migration problem I talked about above. In WAR, public quests were found in areas that were heavily trafficked, which meant that it wasn’t too hard getting a group together to beat it. In CO, the open missions seem to be in very low trafficked areas that are out of the way. I’ve tried my hand quite a few times to do them, but it seems that I was always there alone, or if I was lucky, one other person. This usually meant that I could do the first part, but never finish it. Overall, the open missions could have been placed in better locations and the game could have been designed better to draw you to those areas where they were located.

Documentation
I bought my game online as a download, so I don’t have a manual. Manuals usually aren’t that great for MMOGs as that they tend to be outdated about 15 minutes after launch with all the patches and updates. Therefore, I’m forced to turn to the official CO website for my game mechanic info. Sadly, the information given on Cryptic’s website is woeful indeed. My main character’s powerset, munitions, isn’t even listed on their powersets list! I have a lot of questions about my powerset and other aspects of the game, mainly about stats. Does strength do anything for my hero who uses pistols or should I just look for dexterity? While there is a game manual on their site (located under support), it only provides the bare bones and gives no real understanding of the game mechanics or other topics, such as crafting. There should be a complete hero builder application on their website so you can decide which powers to get at what time and how those new abilities affect your character (such as critical chance or hit points). There’s a disgraceful lack of helpful information on their website at this time. In the past, a game might have gotten away with this, but there’s no excuse for it today. If I’m playing WoW, I can go onto their website and see what abilities I get as I level up and see what combination of abilities to pick from on their various talent schools. Cryptic should provide something similar for the players of CO. There’s no reason why I should need to search through the forums to get answers to basic questions.

While my complaints, listed above, might seem that I hate the game, I do not do so. I really enjoy Champions Online, but I feel that there should have been a lot of things handled differently prior to launch. A game that expects me to pay $50 for the game and $14.95 a month should build upon previous games, not just maintain the status quo. While some features unique to CO are great, such as the Nemesis system, you don’t get to see them until higher levels. New players need to be grabbed within the first ten or so levels or play or else they’ll get bored and return to whatever game they were playing before. All in all, CO is a solid game, but it could have used a lot more polish at launch.