Game is great, fun, I love idea of super heroes, combat is incredibly fast paced, fluid, customizations that can entertain for hours and hours itself, start was incredibly problem free .... yet ... I have stopped (with great sadness) to play it after first 3 weeks and maybe I will return after half year or year if game survives at all. Fortunately there are many other interesting and fun games. There are two main reasons - imo - for this as for majority of players as I understand from forums and chat:

* at least every week they take some OVERpowered power and they make this power terribly UNDERpowered so one can forget anything about his character; they are constantly messing with all powers and builds; today you never know what will happen tomorrow; many heroes that were heroic yesterday can become more like pussy cats today.
 

* retcon cost is just a bad joke

About retcon price ...no, idea because of tankmages does not hold; if someone want to be can be from start, but great fun of some game is also to experiment various builds ... and I had enough to delete bunch of lv. 13-15 just to try another build because retcon is mission impossible. There is test area ... but it is mainly useless. Tooltips of powers are many times not really helpfull. Many times all stats from dummy say it did 1 damage, sometimes real. That dummies does not fight back. So there is only one way to test ... outside and for some time. But when you are outside ... retcon for few levels back become impossible. Unless someone want to grind for a month.
 

Maybe I will return when they finally made their mind about what they want at all with game. But not sure if they know at all. Maybe they just put ideas on normal paper, put in big box ... and then somebody randomly pick these pieces of paper to create powers and stats.

What is so horrible about the tab targeting?   You can target neareast enemy with one keystrock then next enemy with another, previouse with another.  None have to be the tab key.  I dont see the difference in targeting in co than other mmo's.  What would you like to see different?  Im not disagreeing with you,  I am curious to how it differs from other mmos.   Is it because when you kill one mob it automatically moves to the next?   That can be changed in options with a variety of options,  including do not change automatically, target next nearest, furthest, attacking.   I doubt thats it but what is it.   For content gap between levels you find,  That includes after you have done all the missions in crime computer as well?   Like I said I am only 28 and using the crime computer which is updated all the time I have not run into lack of missions.   If its the higher levels I am hoping they add stuff before I get there.  Thanks.

Originally posted by Roadshow

Whilst the review was fairly balanced, I would disagree about replay-value. I am an altaholic and have enjoyed levelling all  my toons, though the linear nature of progression is a little retrograde when compared to the original City Of Heroes and it's multiple choices of areas in which to level. Effectively this comes down to the problem of too few zones in Champions Online at release. That said, the zone there are, are excellent, as are the implementations of travel powers and the inclusion of underwater areas.

......

Before posting my previous post I missed yours. And I could not agree more with you. And especially I love your expression "altaholic". :-)) Lol ... I never thought about ... but I'm also altaholic. :-) In any game I'm interested in all possible builds. Then I pick few that I love most ... when they are sufficiently leveld ... start with others. When i have enough I switch to another game. :-)) End game for me is when i have leveled all i was interested on. Of course when i have a lot of time and that was case because of one long term injury.

And as I said ... i stopped to play (for some time, despite I have still free time) because today I'm superhero, tomorrow I'm average pussy cat. And until they to not stop doing this i'm out. And I'm really sorry for this, because after first week of gameplay CO was already my game no.2. Never happend with any game so fast. Now my favorite list is wow, aoc, aion, war, lotro, .... champions online.

Originally posted by Player_420

"Champions Online is very much a game with a lot of potential, but is currently plagued with a myriad of issues, many of which are often exhibited by newly released MMOGs, though the overall lack of content is simply inexcusable."

 

You can tell the reviewer talked to 1-2 level 40's and reviewed the game in his mid 20's to 30's.

Lots of content in this game.

I am not a fan of MMORPG.com reviews, they remind me of IGN.com MMORPG reviews = trash

Your opinion = trash. I have a level 40 in this game and wont be renewing my sub because I have little to do. Especially with PvP basically removed from the game.

Oh yeah, look at what other reviewers said about the game, read their own forums. CO is just below average and still needs alot of work.

Im glad MMORPG did this review.

The end of the first free month is coming and alot of us seem to be leaning toward not subscribing to pay2play.

It's too bad the game was launched so incomplete becasue it really does have alot of potential.

I think Cryptic may need to take a few lessons in sales and customer service before their next launch or start handing out the pink slips.

---

Originally posted by Yamota
 
That is because in your list you only mentioned the cons but none of the pros. Any game where you pick out only the cons would seem worse than it actually is.

---

got bank  robbery in CO? what about collecting badges/achievement ?

Its a fair review if a bit generous with its final mark.

Quest/mission variety is the key issue and is severely limited not just in terms of volume but more fundamentally by a mechanical limitation in the variety of tasks you can ever be asked to perform and as a direct result there's a complete and utter failure to involve or immerse the player in any substantial way.

Unless the design approach actually changes to convey some conviction in the comicbook theme or works to offer the illusion that the player has some degree of choice and consequence in the world, the bland generic 'meh' feeling will only get worse with each new addition.

The pedigree and experience Cryptic brought to bare is conspicuous by its absence, this is an mmo by people who dont quite understand the theme or actively don't care for it. Its functional and ticks the mmo staple boxes but like Hellgate it just lacks any real identity or soul.

After all the failures in the industry, you think Cryptic would know better.  I would also say Paramount should take notice, however, I am now at the belief CO was released in this shape so more attention can be payed to STO.  In other words its another repeat of what killed Perpetual when they had STO.  The differance is Cryptic is further along in development and now has a game out the door.  You watch as during this very important launch period for CO, little will be added quickly.  STO will launch on time and more complete.  Cryptic will then state they learned thier lessons with CO. pfft.  The truth is they got Paramount breathing down thier neck anticpating an MMO success in league with WOW.  Yah, right.

Thank you for the frank review, however the score is just not honest. I expect a re-review in a year.

Originally posted by binary_0011

got bank  robbery in CO? what about collecting badges/achievement ?

Nope.

But every  once in a while some NPC will walk up to you and say they JUST saw some robots going into a bldg (meuseum usually) 9000 miles across town. (remember the NPC walked up to you) so they give you a mission and when you go there there are no robots. Its just a bunch of Red Hat Ladies.. Only they are guys in purple.

This review was poorly thought out and written imo. It really is sad how it seems more and more sites seem to faun over companies allowing them to have acess to their game for a review and then the critics go and sugar-coat their review for compensation. I was in the CO beta and sadly, despite all the suggestions on the forums during beta by the majority of the testers, they got ignored. CO has turned out to be nothing more than a glorified button-mashing arcade game. It doesn't deserve to even be catagorized as an mmorpg. It repeats the same boring quest types CoX had and there is NO strategy to killing mobs. The same button-mashing works for every mob type.

I was really hoping CS would break the mould they had formed with CoX, thinking it was NCsoft's fault for it being so bland. But no, obviously CS are the ones responsible for turning out such 2d games in a 3d gaming world. There is no storyline, no fluidity between zones, no social aspect, the CRAFTING IS A JOKE, powers are only clones of eachother with diff FX colors, the list goes on because the game is only half-done at best. Not to mention there are only 5 zones anyhow and small ones at that. CO also has the smallest variety of mobs to fight, which between that and the limited attack strategies, gets old really quick.

Nevermind their mission system allows for kill-stealing from passer-by players because only about 5% of all missions are in an instance environment. yes, the system worked as intended for SOME, but not for all of the players and despite their repeatedly posting the bug that allowed kill-stealing, the devs continued to ignore the problem. The game is STILL full of bugs and the testers pleaded not to publish but thanks to capitalism and the almighty dollar, it seems with enough payoff even half-baked, clone games of CoX can get a decent review. (I admit it is speculation about any such payoffs, but speaking from personal experience being in the beta as well as how other testers reacted towards CO game content...makes one wonder)

I think a video review for that game is needed. I mean, 3 page for a review wtf??? I didnt bother to read. I dont think any review need 3 page to tell you how the game play unless you want to tell me about the whole game, tell me about each monsters and each boss, but then, it would just be a spoiled review and no one who plan to play the game would want to play it.

Sounds like the game hasn't improved much since the open beta.

In particular, the reviewers comment about power effects "+ enrage", etc.  I remember also wondering what each effect actually did, and assumed that by the time the game hit the shelf, they'd have provided ways for you to find out.  Sounds like they didn't.

I do recall alot of good things about the game, weaponization of environment, knockback, etc.

One poster talked about having to research to find out what powers compliment each other, otherwise potentially ending up with a "gimp" character.  i guess I don't see the point in having such an open customization framework, then, as it doesn't really allow you to create what you want to play.

For example, if I want to create a guy whose powers are largely supernatural who wields his powers through a shotgun(think Johnny Blaze circa 1990's), and the shotgun power doesn't compliment the dark magic powers, then I can't really create the toon I want, can I?

They should have kept the root powers as basic as possible, while providing more ads/disads to "fine-tune" those powers to work together.

Once the box hits the bargain bins, or once they offer a free trial, I'll check it out again.  I love the superhero genre, and I've had all the CoX tunnel instances that I could possibly take.

Originally posted by Realbigdeal

I think a video review for that game is needed. I mean, 3 page for a review wtf??? I didnt bother to read. I dont think any review need 3 page to tell you how the game play unless you want to tell me about the whole game, tell me about each monsters and each boss, but then, it would just be a spoiled review and no one who plan to play the game would want to play it.

This game required a 3 page review.

There are videos on MMORPG if you look for them.

Originally posted by binary_0011

got bank  robbery in CO? what about collecting badges/achievement ?

Yes, the bank robberies are actually quite fun. Basically, there are three banks in Millenium City and you can tell if they're being robbed by whether or not they have cop cars surrounding em when you pass by. If they do, oftentimes you'll be able to accept a mission to stop the bank robbery and you go inside.

They do have "badges" and achievements in CO that give you titles and perks. Perks allow you to purchase special items (Costume pieces, other gear) from a perk vendor. You need the specific perk required and a certain amount of general perk points in order to get these items. I would've mentioned all this in the review but the thing was quite long as it is! The perk system has some issues though as unlocking a perk all too often requires way too many kills. In CoH you might have to kill 100-250 or so of a given mob group, in CO its like 5000. So you're really not going to get much mileage out of the perk system unless they tweak the requirements, or you love farming.

the review left out one very important point that would turn away many potential gamers....

sharding or mirrored instancing

limiting the number of players per zone in an MMO is simply unacceptable for this genre. Its lame that a large guild or two will never be able to have an in-game meeting because devs want to port this game to console.

it didnt work and was soundly rejected by Age of Conan gamers. And its not going to be accepted by anyone considering champions online.

the first M in MMO stands for massive.

Originally posted by plaguess

the review left out one very important point that would turn away many potential gamers....

sharding or mirrored instancing

limiting the number of players per zone in an MMO is simply unacceptable for this genre. Its lame that a large guild or two will never be able to have an in-game meeting because devs want to port this game to console.

it didnt work and was soundly rejected by Age of Conan gamers. And its not going to be accepted by anyone considering champions online.

the first M in MMO stands for massive.

I believe that guilds (or supergroups w/e you wanna call them) are still limited to 200 players. So while sharding does suck for different reasons, I doubt they'll have that issue with SGs here.

Well written review. Lack of content yes, some mission bugs holds the chain of that particular story lines and Monster Island lack of the omph in the missons. Hope the next up coming update fixes most of the gaps.

Alternatively, content gaps can be filled based on how you juggle your missions. I have yet to face any gaps since the beginning to my current journey of lvl 30 and closing to encounter the dreaded gap of 32 -> 34.

Despite all the whines and quit rage, i still find my fun nearly in everything i do with my theme based champion (Single Blade primary framework) I have yet to try on pvp since i am more on end-game pvp type of player.

Originally posted by decoy26517

Originally posted by plaguess

the review left out one very important point that would turn away many potential gamers....

sharding or mirrored instancing

limiting the number of players per zone in an MMO is simply unacceptable for this genre. Its lame that a large guild or two will never be able to have an in-game meeting because devs want to port this game to console.

it didnt work and was soundly rejected by Age of Conan gamers. And its not going to be accepted by anyone considering champions online.

the first M in MMO stands for massive.

 

I believe that guilds (or supergroups w/e you wanna call them) are still limited to 200 players. So while sharding does suck for different reasons, I doubt they'll have that issue with SGs here.

the shard mirrored instances are limited to 100 players. so if a guild has 75 members who want to have an in-game meeting its highly unlikely they will manage that (unless by some miracle the instance has less than 25 other people in it).

sharding is unacceptable and automatically takes this game off my list to ever play

Originally posted by Dirktooth

Well written review. Lack of content yes, some mission bugs holds the chain of that particular story lines and Monster Island lack of the omph in the missons. Hope the next up coming update fixes most of the gaps.

Alternatively, content gaps can be filled based on how you juggle your missions. I have yet to face any gaps since the beginning to my current journey of lvl 30 and closing to encounter the dreaded gap of 32 -> 34.

Despite all the whines and quit rage, i still find my fun nearly in everything i do with my theme based champion (Single Blade primary framework) I have yet to try on pvp since i am more on end-game pvp type of player.

Dirk nothing against you specifically I just need to make a point. Alot of players of CO are saying they haven't hit the gap yet. or there is no gap. I haven't run out of missions yet either. However, "the gap" everyone speaks of doesn;t mean you'll run out of missions per say, it means you will have to play through all the content to level. People know this and thats what we are doing.

Try playing all the missions in CoX without having tog o back and play a TF or 2 with no XP. There is a tonne of content there. CO has limited replayability for me as I will onlky be willing to grind through all the same misisons so many times before I am bored out of my skull hearing Defender say;

"You'll have to defeat Black Talon on your own." and then 3 seconds later..... "You've shown great bravery today.....SHUT THOSE BEACONS DOWN!!!THE SIGNAL THEY"RE EMITTING IS CAUSING THE QULARR TO ATTACK!!! SHUT THIS BEACON DOWN!" I actually just turn off the sound now lol, that's pretty bad. There ought to be at least 1 different starting area for each group of powers or something.

This review reads like the game should be rated 6, not 7.5,

Nice review..

I do NOT know why everyone is being so negative against the retcon system, I have retrained several skills and skillsets now after the patch ...

Doesn't players sell their loot, you get LOTS of money from the loot drops..And yes I also craft and experiment with gear..

I haven't tried to completly retcon my characthers but if you buy a new power and find it bad just go back and retcon it, it will cost you 20-40 silver coins or something, and that isn't much...

I hate to say it, but I'm not surprised at all by this review (and all of the others concerning Champs).  I'm a 5+ year veteran of City of Heroes/Villains, and Champs is suffering the same short-sighted tendencies and bizarre concentrations on trivial (in the long run) details, as CoH suffered when it first hit.  At least with Champs, PvP was introduced from the start, so I thought they might actually put some forethought into the process and get some of the ridiculous balancing crap out of the way before release, but apparently not...  The same crew that screwed up much of CoH constantly, then sold it off to NCSoft, is doing the same "fix it as we go" stuff that infuriated so many of us players who wanted the PvE experience and could care less about PvP.  Seems like everyone is saying that PvP almost seems like it was just slapped onto Champions as an afterthought, which is precisely what happened with CoH, so you would think they might have learned from their past mistakes...

It's sad that, in the opinions of myself and many of the long-time players I know on CoH, most of the best changes happened after the Cryptic crew disentangled themselves from the mix and let someone else steer the ship. Guess the Champs fans out there can hope something similar happens with CO before it tanks into oblivion?

I actually had very high hopes for Champions, it had the potential to alleviate a few of the little details and portions of the City of series that I would have liked to see changed.  And, in a few cases, Champions has really come through.  Too bad those few gems are the only shiny parts of what appears to be a lame duck package.  It's rather telling that (from many accounts, and a little in-game polling) a large portion of the initial player base does not intend on renewing...  And that some of the players who jumped on the lifetime sub thing are really pissed that they threw away all that money...  Those types of things do not bode well for the future of a brand new MMO.

But, as I've said before, only time will tell.  Maybe Cryptic can pull this one out of the fire before it gets scorched.

I am one who is enjoying the game but I think the review is accurate. Because of the points the reviewer mentioned one of which was doing the same exact content over with every alt, I do wonder however how long I will be interested in playing. Right now I don’t see this as being one of the MMOs I will play for a long time.

Some one else mentioned this as well but I would have liked the review to say something about teaming. Or rather the lack of. Teaming in this game is horrible, be it the lack of missions you can share, trouble keeping track of your team on the map, poor side kick implementation, to the all around reason that you just don’t need to, teaming is just off, to say the least. How this could have been messed up by the same people that made CoX is baffling. Even when you do team it’s just to add more offense, which you usually don’t need. So when you do team there’s no synergy needed at all. As one guy put it, it’s like soloing with other players. Yeah I like to solo, and there are times when I don’t have time to do anything else, but as other MMOs have demonstrated (such as CoX) you don’t have to abandon solo play for team play and vice versa. A MMO can have both.

Wow, anyone know how to do an impartial review?

Review a new game on the fact it is a new game?

And what other MMOs are we comparing too? WoW? Other successful MMOs . . . hmm . . . WoW?

WoW has been around for what, more than 5 years anyway, and when it first came out it was so boring leveling to 10 I quit playing. Only thier PAID expansion was done well enough to make me play long enough to get to the higher level stuff, there was still a 'gap' there with lots of content sure, but all over the place, with much potential to gimp my character at ever increasing costs.

Missed good points of CO

Travel powers at level 5, fun travel powers, because half the fun is the journey, right? Not in an MMOG

Characters not linked to server (This is good, even with sharding, I quote "sharding is unacceptable and automatically takes this game off my list to ever play" Why? Because of the size limit? What is more likely, CO will raise the limit, have special Guild zones, or that WoW will allow free server transfers? Or do you want to cause a lagfest by having  200 people storm a zone with 100 other people in it already?)

Side Kick system (allows people to play together and still get rewards)

No WAITING for mana, a train, your friend to take a taxi to where you are.

The ability to take any power you want (yeah, I'm sure fixing power descriptions will be an impossible task)

Stances ( you can set up for different roles, as early as level 10, sooner I think, without paying 1000g)

bag space not an issue ( I dare anyone to call me out on that)

It seems like the reviewer focused on the bad points, forgot many of the good points, and compared a new game to established games. CO has a lot of potential, they are taking the good things from other games, and adding their own great ideas on top of it.

All the problems mentioned are there, I didn't find tabbing to be that much of an issue, maybe the reviewer needed to tweak the settings. The game thinks about a lot of stuff  when tabbing, threat, your point of view, many of these things can be toggled on and off. There will be more content, it's already coming, balance is something that will never be attained because min maxers like to do their thing too, and they pay money just like everyone else. Why else is there always an obvious flavor of the month, even in WoW? I'm curious what UI problems there were, I just want to make more chat windows, I'm sure that will happen soon enough too. After all, it is a new game bu a company that isn't Blizzard (with it's built in HUGE fan base), that was most likely hurried to market. It may still be like Beta, but my heroes won't be erased, they give out free respecs, and my max level guy will probably be quite different than anyone else, at the least in appearance.

If 5 people started playing WoW, and CO right now, (no WoW expansion) which game would they prefer? No one to give them any help outside their circle. I think the answer is CO. Any other game that would be more fun? I'd like to know about it.

And PvP, again, good framework is there. In WoW would you advise me to PvP at level 12? 23? 34? How about 45? What game has this good PvP and how does it work? Is it the content again? Content is easy once you have the framework.

That's about it for me for now.

Edit: And teaming, xp and mission sharing is top on their list too.

The game has been out one month and more content, and a new framework are coming soon.

Edit 2:

Another good point, the power house test area. You can test out your powers before locking them in. Sure, it needs work. And I'm sure it will get it.

Edit 3 for horrendous spelling.