Champions Online Beta Preview

The Champions Online open beta week just closed, and I have to say I was pretty impressed. As far as betas go, the game is very polished, and Cryptic is only dealing with minor tweaks and bugs. Here’s a quick run down of my thoughts on my in-game experiences:

Character Creation and Customization: Incredible. That’s really all I need to say. I could spend hours just creating characters and not playing any of them. Before you get into creating your costume, you can either pick from preset heads and bodies or take some time customizing every feature. That alone allows for a large amount of variation between players. But the fun starts next. With an extremely wide array of costume options to choose from, along with unlockable additions, the possibilities are endless.

Graphics: I really enjoyed the graphics. The cel-shading suits the game well without looking TOO cartoonish. The particle effects were great, especially considering the added layer of customization players are given for their powers. Occasionally it was difficult to tell if certain objects in the environment were cel-shaded as well, so the inconsistency was a bit strange at times (nothing serious though). I think Cryptic did a great job overall of making you feel like you’re running around in a comic book.

Storytelling: Well I only got 20 levels in, but Cryptic seems to be having fun with the story. It was too early to tell if there was an underlying epic story to the whole thing, but they referenced a lot of different super villains throughout. I think it’s hard to create a big story here as opposed to a game like WoW because WoW has the benefit of a huge amount of pre-existing lore. It’s not impossible though. Cryptic has done some very creative things, partially through the use of what I guess are mini-servers. Every time you enter a new zone, you have a choice of servers. For one thing, it allows the server populations to stay more balanced. But on top of that, they use it to advance storylines for each individual player. The early example is that in both of the two starting zones (after a tutorial zone) you quest for a while until you are told to enter an instance to defeat a super villain. Once the villain is defeated, zoning out of the instance gives you an entirely different set of servers for the starting zone. These zones are the same areas as the starting zones, but all of the destruction and chaos that you saw in the environment before is now restored to order, giving you a sense of accomplishment for beating up the bad guy. From there you can start exploring further outside of the starting area. I found it rewarding and effective for storytelling.

On top of that, it’s refreshing to see the designers and writers at Cryptic having fun with the game, as there are numerous references and allusions to both comic book history and pop culture. Discovering these little gems provides many nerd-out moments.

Questing and Leveling: In my experiences I never got bored with questing, and never had to grind at any point. Hopefully that’s how the game handles at higher levels as well. That’s not to say that there wasn’t a formula to most of the quests, but there are many different types and they never feel too much the same. You’ll definitely want to make or bring some friends while playing, because some of the quests can only be accomplished with multiple party members. CO will also occasionally have world events (near the end of the beta, giant robots attacked the city), which is a nice touch to rally the troops and strengthen the community.

One of my main beefs with City of Heroes was that finishing a quest offered very little reward besides XP. CO has improved there because you are often awarded choices of upgrades on offense, defense and utility. These are typically modifiers that you put into slots (9 total) that improve your various stats. You still won’t be able to use them as a major status symbol, as they are only stat boosters and not visible costume changes, but it does make questing feel more productive. Occasionally you will receive items that unlock extra costume choices (which you can change throughout your play experience through the use of tailors).

My only concern with questing involves starting zones. Most MMORPG’s benefit from having multiple races with separate starting zones, giving players varied experiences if they ever re-roll. CO provides the players with hundreds to thousands of variations on their characters, both in appearance and power sets, but only two options for getting your journey started. I have not heard if this will change at release, but if not it could put off players who want to try different characters but get tired of running through the same quests every time.

Combat and Powers: Combat was fast paced and fun. The powers were super creative, and I like that Cryptic emphasized the super hero aspect for players by allowing them to take on a number of henchmen at one time. They’ve also made combat a bit more dynamic by including active blocking and maintained and charged powers. Boss fights are fun because if you pay attention and react accordingly, you can have a very satisfying super-outcome. And I can’t go without mentioning how fun it is to throw a car across a parking lot at group of baddies before you rush in to finish the job. It’s super.

I didn’t venture too much into power set mixing, but the option is available, allowing players to really customize their heroes to their heart’s desire. On top of that, you also earn points that can be used to augment your current powers in creative ways. For example, in the telekinesis tree augmenting a minor power a certain way will proc the ability to temporarily fight with two telekinesis swords instead of one, increasing damage. You can really tweak your powers to play in a way you enjoy.

Travel powers are obtained early on, and they are awesome. Flying, jumping, running, and even tunneling all throughout the environments is just plain fun, and I spent a fair amount of time just exploring the areas.

PVP: I briefly tested out the PVP, so I won’t speak too much on it, but its was pretty frantic. The only thing I experienced was a sort of team vs. team cage match free-for-all. It was fun, but probably not something I would do too often.

Overall I would say Champions is a solid game going into its official launch. It’s a different style game from your Everquests and WoWs, so I think it has a good chance of seeing success. I’m interested to see what all Cryptic can do with the franchise going into the future.

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