It could be One Million and One if they would sell me one on my X-Box 360. lol. I'm still itching for MMO action on my X-Box. I know I have some prospects for my PS3... but the 360 seems to have trouble actually getting MMO's onto the market. FFXI aside. True Fantasy Online was a victim last gen. This gen we lost the Marvel MMO, the Conan MMO, and Champions is being held up for whatever reason... and Old Republic, an I.P. that started on X-Box, is going to PC first with no word on a console release yet... A.P.B. hasn't hit the PC yet, so no telling if the supposed X-Box version will make it. Word was they wanted to put Star Trek Online on 360 too, but if they don't handle Champions well, the studio may have second thoughts on that. Is it too much to ask to get some X-Box Live MMO loving? :) #championsonline
Best P2P MMO out there right now, despite its occasional server issues. I wish WoW wasn't digital cocaine for some reason, and people could give a good game a chance. #championsonline
Still trying to figure out how cryptic runs their game. I've seen more high level characters with vulgar names and racist names then anything else. And I don't mean minor things, I mean names like "HANGALLNI**ERS" and "IRAPEKIDS", of course fully typed out, not the stars. I played for a few weeks to give it a fair try, but the community is somehow below WoWs. #championsonline
@Nulls: Name me one word that uses the letters n-i-g-g-e-r all in a row that ISN'T offensive. That should have been caught by a program used to prevent the creation of offensive usernames. Regardless of whether or not Cryptic can stop every offensive name from being used, it would not kill them to make a simple effort at banning the most common ones. #championsonline
@msimmons: Okay, I feel like I'm missing something. I got the key, activated it...but I still have to download the actual program from Fileplanet? For 15 bucks?
The industry needs to redefine "Open Beta" and "Closed Beta" if you really think this is an "Open Beta."
Requiring to pay money for a beta is a "Payed Beta" not closed because anyone can get in but not open because it still has a requirement that is not free.
Please, stop calling this an Open Beta, because it is NOT.
@DaveKap: THIS. There is nothing open about this beta, and it pisses me off that they would call it that.
And I wouldn't call the majority of your playerbase not being able to download the PATCH let alone try the actual game "minor snags". I'm a WoW player, I've seen worse. But let's not pretend this is going smooth. My official Champions Online patcher has idle disconnected me five times now... and I tell you with no hesitation that my connection is NOT the problem.
Dangeresque (Kojima-san doesn't have to make Metal Gear any more) was starred
Dangeresque (Kojima-san doesn't have to make Metal Gear any more) was unstarred
Cataclysmic open beta launch. Sure, it's really easy to say, "don't complain, it's just open beta," but that's a lot like asking a person not to complain about a car's wheels falling off during a test drive.
Perhaps once the wheels are back on, the car will run fine, but it sure doesn't promote confidence.
@GuardianOfChaos:
I'll give you that if by "not-quite complete" you mean, missing a racing stripe and license plate. After 2-3 years of work, how much do you think they'll get done in 12-14 days?
What you are playing is basically a demo that's missing a bit of polish.
That's not to say that the game can't improve significantly after launch, and in truth, it is more like a completely unfinished car, but it is the product their going to be shipping all the same.
@Thut:
I think a proper analogy would be that this is a highway, and we're trying to pile on as many cars as possible.
The gameplay was tested in closed beta. This is a stress test to see how well the servers hold up under pressure. Apparently not so well, it seems, but that's exactly what they wanted to find out before the real launch.
@Xagest:
Well, we can continue to exchange analogies all day, but the crude truth is that the problem today was not merely a gross underestimation of the required bandwidth.
I'm not blaming any specific person, but the preparations they had made to expedite the launch completely failed.
A summary of the problem is as follows:
- They had people download a 2 gig "preload" to avoid the problem that occurred today.
- The preloader didn't work, presumably due to some issues with file structure.
- The workaround they offered hours after this problem surfaced caused people to actually delete the 2 gigs they had already downloaded.
- Now it seems the way to go is to re-download a new client from fileplanet entirely, follow a workaround posted by a user on their forums, and still have to suffer a patcher that is notorious for disconnecting half way through.
And there you have the unbiased facts, draw your own conclusions or metaphors.
The beta's a fucking mess. Even after doing the fix and getting the smaller, 'correct' patch, the autopatcher still freezes up constantly and sometimes doesn't even load thanks to me being in Windows 7.
Can't believe I skipped out on a trip to the beach for this. Ugh.
@VergessenHeld: This generation sucks, what can I say. But seriously, this is a legitimate complaint as I've been waiting to try this game for a LONG time and now I can't even boot the patcher half the time, but even when I do it freezes after downloading a few megs.
@Archaotic: Your using beta software on a unreleased beta OS and your complaining about stability issues.
I don't think beta testing is for you.
I have also seen you do nothing but complain. If you want to do that then that is fine. But I think it is a load of BS for it to be rewarded and given preference over other commenters.
@Nulls: So, I'm having problems running a beta that everyone else is also havingg trouble running, and somehow my opinion isn't valid?
In any case, I don't complain all the time. Look deeper. It's easy to assume I complain all the time because I don't buy into publisher hype and expect results instead of promises, but I do make good points a lot of the time. :P
@Archaotic: Actually I patched and loaded the game without a hitch. I have been playing for over 3 hours without a single issue other than one bugged quest.
@KillerBee: I'm going to hurt you. The patch has downloaded about 90MB total and just won't work anymore. It just stalls out after downloading 200-300kb. I've restarted it a bunch of times with no luck. ;_;
As stated before, I don't think my problems are because of Windows 7, but because Cryptic shipped a broken beta. Windows 7's instability just isn't HELPING.
@VergessenHeld: I've never used Vista before, so I can't compare the two; I would say 7 has a lot of cute, bonus features that I like more than XP, but it's also a lot less stable.
It doesn't help that I installed Win7 32bit on a 64bit system, so it's slower than it should be. D'oh. When I get a new hard drive, I'm going to install Win7 64bit on that, though.
I can't say I hate it, it's incorporated a bunch of features from OS X that Windows sorely needs, but I think I'd rather have XP installed at the moment, since it's just an unstable beta OS.
@Invisible-Echidna: I wholeheartedly disagree. It's better that this happens now than in the actual release, yes. But the goal is NOT for things to screw up. By the time you get to Open Beta... things should be more or less golden. This patch deal is amateur hour.
Dangeresque (Kojima-san doesn't have to make Metal Gear any more) was starred
Dangeresque (Kojima-san doesn't have to make Metal Gear any more) was unstarred
@Adhominem: It hasn't been officially announced yet, but Cryptic has been hiring PS3 programmers to port the Champions engine to PS3. It might not happen, or it might happen very LATE, but Cryptic's obviously THINKING about it.
@Archaotic: When it was first announced, wasn't it supposed to be for the 360 and then they decided to just start on the PC?
Any word on whether or not the characters from the console versions will be able to interact with the PC? PS3 might be a stretch, but Xbox could work (XBL & Games for Windows play nice on some games).
@ChickenPawks: It was first announced as a PC/360 MMO, but the 360 version faded into the background and hasn't been focused on for a while.
There probably won't be cross-platform play if they are planning to bring it to PS3 as well, but it might happen. Who knows.
@Archaotic: Someone somewhere knows and I expect the good folks at Kotaku Towers to find out for us.
I'm both worried and excited about the console version of an MMO, though. It seems more conducive to my lifestyle, but I don't want it to just be a crippled or less usable version of a great PC game.
@ShoyuRamen: The similarities are purely visual. Champions is a much deeper gameplay experience than CoX and most other MMOs as well. Once you get into customizing and upgrading powers and getting powers from other power sets it is a min/maxxer's wet dream.
@ShoyuRamen: Champions Online is a MMORPG port of the established Champions pen and paper RPG. As such, it will utilize the pen and player rule set allowing for a greater character creation system then that of COH. As such it will also be include a wide range of powers not seen in COH, such as "web slinging" and teleporting.
Further more the game will include a create your own rogue gallery feature as well as item crafting, and etc.
A little history:
Rewind back to 2002-ish: Cryptic (the original creator's of COH) originally wanted COH to have no classes but rather a complete power system that users could pick and choose from to create a player that best fit their needs. However this proved to be too difficult and the system was altered to group a list of powers according to 4-5 archtypes (blaser, tank, scrapper, and etc). IIRC, the Champions rule set allows for mix and matching so you'll be unrestricted by class type when it comes to power selection in Champions Online.
@TaggarT6: "As such, it will utilize the pen and player rule set ...."
Oh, man that is so not true. Don't get people's hopes up like that. I was once had a character in the PnP Champs that had the power to change people's names to Bob. Seriously. There is no way a computer game will ever allow for that level of freedom.
@worsethannormal: With all due respect you have to use some common sense. Champ Online will utilize the Champ RPG ruleset the same way NWN utilized the 3ed D&D.
There are many things you can do with a pen and paper game that are aren't re-creatable in a video game version. However the core mechanics and general structure will be copied over.
@TaggarT6:
"...the creators of Champions Online were the original creators of COH and COV"
Not exactly. The entire development team of COH/COV left and formed Paragon Studios under the NCSoft label for a few years ago.
@IcyM: Correct, however my understanding was that it was the ongoing support team and not the original creators.
IIRC, the original creators of COH are still wit Cryptic.
@TaggarT6: Consider, 90% (or more) of all game mechanics in an mmo are abstracted to the players. No game has ever released the complete rules set for their game. And for good reason, the rules are constantly in flux. What might be true in one patch is not true in another. So as far as core mechanics go, how do we know? All we can judge are the parts of the game that are player-facing.
So lets look at one of those player-facing mechanics: Power Generation. In Champie-O's, Power is used for throwing every superpower except one. Each character starts with one power that regenerates this Power. So you use one power to build up Power and then other powers to spend that Power. Sorry that sentence is a little confusing, hope the caps helped.
In Champs PnP though Endurance is where the cost of throwing powers comes from. Every player gets to add their Recovery attribute to their Endurance at the end of Segment 12 of each turn or they can choose to take Recovery as a turn in combat.[www.herogames.com]
How is that even similar?
Now, I'm not trying to rag on this game. I'm not a fanboy on many topics but Cryptic and Jack Emmertt are 2 of those. I was on the COH boards back in 2000 and CO looks to be everything COH was promised to be. But they had to back off from the a lot of their promises. And for good reasons, which I don't have time to go into now. But we are close to launch and they aren't pulling back from those same promises, so I have a lot of hope for this game.
But what I object to in your OP is the assertion it will be anything really like Champs PnP (Thank, gawd). The PnP version offers complete customization of powers, anything you want you can get if you have enough points. Champie-O's will allow this but within the a set structure that, obviously, can't handle something like 'changing people's name to Bob (which I did to compliment my buddy's 'instantly kill anyone named Bob' power, which we did to prove a point, but that's neither here nor there).' Also, the combat is fun and fast paced. If I never have to dust off my Calculus skills to run 3 hours of a game that covers 30 seconds of combat, again, I'll die a happy man. I just don't want people to get their hopes up too high or be scared off by what they know about the Champs PnP.
@That mop mutant from NES.: Champions is nothing like CoX as far as gameplay is concerned. It my look similar on the outside, but it is MUCH more in depth once you get into the game mechanics and power upgrades and management.
@That mop mutant from NES.: I'm just gonna assume you haven't had the pleasure of playing CO. It is nothing like CoX except that they are both superhero games. CO is WAAAAY more complex than CoX ever has been or ever will be. I played CoX for 2 years at launch and about 6 months a year ago. CO is just flatout fun and very well made.
As insightful as these diaries may be, MMO's are an uphill battle given the plethora of MMO's already on the market, not to mention the giant elephant in the room that is WoW...
@Rampage: True, but there's definitely room for a few more good ones. I'll never play WoW simply because I can't stand the whole "swords & sorcery" thing, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that. If you're after a sci-fi MMO then currently the only real option is the half game / half spreadsheet EVE Online (at least until the new Star Wars and Star Trek options become a reality).
10/29/09
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10/29/09
If you reported those people like you should have, then I am sure they would have been forced to change their name or banned.
I think it was probably worse at launch with the wow tourists. I haven't seen any offensive names in a while. #championsonline
10/29/09
10/29/09
10/29/09
A program filter at this point is more of an annoyance than effective at enforcing rules to prevent offensive names.
Such obscene names like these deserve to be handled by an GM and not a program to enforce. #championsonline
08/17/09
Second answer is the one it wants. Enter your email. Worked fine last night for me, and quite a few others.
Patcher is totally broken, and so on. Haven't heard much good about the game - nothing good actually, but I'd like to see for myself. Good luck.
08/17/09
Forgive me, this is my first time at the rodeo.
08/17/09
08/17/09
Requiring to pay money for a beta is a "Payed Beta" not closed because anyone can get in but not open because it still has a requirement that is not free.
Please, stop calling this an Open Beta, because it is NOT.
08/17/09
And I wouldn't call the majority of your playerbase not being able to download the PATCH let alone try the actual game "minor snags". I'm a WoW player, I've seen worse. But let's not pretend this is going smooth. My official Champions Online patcher has idle disconnected me five times now... and I tell you with no hesitation that my connection is NOT the problem.
08/17/09
08/17/09
Perhaps once the wheels are back on, the car will run fine, but it sure doesn't promote confidence.
08/17/09
08/17/09
I'll give you that if by "not-quite complete" you mean, missing a racing stripe and license plate. After 2-3 years of work, how much do you think they'll get done in 12-14 days?
What you are playing is basically a demo that's missing a bit of polish.
That's not to say that the game can't improve significantly after launch, and in truth, it is more like a completely unfinished car, but it is the product their going to be shipping all the same.
08/17/09
I think a proper analogy would be that this is a highway, and we're trying to pile on as many cars as possible.
The gameplay was tested in closed beta. This is a stress test to see how well the servers hold up under pressure. Apparently not so well, it seems, but that's exactly what they wanted to find out before the real launch.
08/17/09
Well, we can continue to exchange analogies all day, but the crude truth is that the problem today was not merely a gross underestimation of the required bandwidth.
I'm not blaming any specific person, but the preparations they had made to expedite the launch completely failed.
A summary of the problem is as follows:
- They had people download a 2 gig "preload" to avoid the problem that occurred today.
- The preloader didn't work, presumably due to some issues with file structure.
- The workaround they offered hours after this problem surfaced caused people to actually delete the 2 gigs they had already downloaded.
- Now it seems the way to go is to re-download a new client from fileplanet entirely, follow a workaround posted by a user on their forums, and still have to suffer a patcher that is notorious for disconnecting half way through.
And there you have the unbiased facts, draw your own conclusions or metaphors.
08/17/09
...
BUT I AM WEAK! Best 6 dollars I'll spend. I'm downloading it right now with great anticipation.
08/17/09
Can't believe I skipped out on a trip to the beach for this. Ugh.
08/17/09
That said, yeah, I'm gonna agree with you and say this launch is a fucking train wreck.
08/17/09
08/17/09
I don't think beta testing is for you.
I have also seen you do nothing but complain. If you want to do that then that is fine. But I think it is a load of BS for it to be rewarded and given preference over other commenters.
08/17/09
In any case, I don't complain all the time. Look deeper. It's easy to assume I complain all the time because I don't buy into publisher hype and expect results instead of promises, but I do make good points a lot of the time. :P
08/17/09
I am on Windows 7.
08/17/09
As stated before, I don't think my problems are because of Windows 7, but because Cryptic shipped a broken beta. Windows 7's instability just isn't HELPING.
08/17/09
08/17/09
It doesn't help that I installed Win7 32bit on a 64bit system, so it's slower than it should be. D'oh. When I get a new hard drive, I'm going to install Win7 64bit on that, though.
I can't say I hate it, it's incorporated a bunch of features from OS X that Windows sorely needs, but I think I'd rather have XP installed at the moment, since it's just an unstable beta OS.
08/17/09
If you patcher stops, just click cancel and then click patch again......it may take a few times but it will work.
08/17/09
Good job, Cryptic! Nice launch.
08/17/09
Too bad it has been rolled out so poorly, but I guess it's better to have it happen now than when the game actually launches.
...now if they can just make sure it's working well by then. September 1st isn't exactly a long way away.
08/17/09
If there is a problem, then the beta is doing it's job. If this was the actual launch of the game, then it would be a problem.
08/17/09
08/11/09
08/11/09
08/11/09
08/11/09
08/11/09
08/11/09
Any word on whether or not the characters from the console versions will be able to interact with the PC? PS3 might be a stretch, but Xbox could work (XBL & Games for Windows play nice on some games).
08/11/09
There probably won't be cross-platform play if they are planning to bring it to PS3 as well, but it might happen. Who knows.
08/11/09
I'm both worried and excited about the console version of an MMO, though. It seems more conducive to my lifestyle, but I don't want it to just be a crippled or less usable version of a great PC game.
08/11/09
08/11/09
08/11/09
Further more the game will include a create your own rogue gallery feature as well as item crafting, and etc.
A little history:
Rewind back to 2002-ish: Cryptic (the original creator's of COH) originally wanted COH to have no classes but rather a complete power system that users could pick and choose from to create a player that best fit their needs. However this proved to be too difficult and the system was altered to group a list of powers according to 4-5 archtypes (blaser, tank, scrapper, and etc). IIRC, the Champions rule set allows for mix and matching so you'll be unrestricted by class type when it comes to power selection in Champions Online.
08/11/09
08/11/09
Oh, man that is so not true. Don't get people's hopes up like that. I was once had a character in the PnP Champs that had the power to change people's names to Bob. Seriously. There is no way a computer game will ever allow for that level of freedom.
08/11/09
There are many things you can do with a pen and paper game that are aren't re-creatable in a video game version. However the core mechanics and general structure will be copied over.
08/11/09
"...the creators of Champions Online were the original creators of COH and COV"
Not exactly. The entire development team of COH/COV left and formed Paragon Studios under the NCSoft label for a few years ago.
08/11/09
IIRC, the original creators of COH are still wit Cryptic.
08/11/09
So lets look at one of those player-facing mechanics: Power Generation. In Champie-O's, Power is used for throwing every superpower except one. Each character starts with one power that regenerates this Power. So you use one power to build up Power and then other powers to spend that Power. Sorry that sentence is a little confusing, hope the caps helped.
In Champs PnP though Endurance is where the cost of throwing powers comes from. Every player gets to add their Recovery attribute to their Endurance at the end of Segment 12 of each turn or they can choose to take Recovery as a turn in combat.[www.herogames.com]
How is that even similar?
Now, I'm not trying to rag on this game. I'm not a fanboy on many topics but Cryptic and Jack Emmertt are 2 of those. I was on the COH boards back in 2000 and CO looks to be everything COH was promised to be. But they had to back off from the a lot of their promises. And for good reasons, which I don't have time to go into now. But we are close to launch and they aren't pulling back from those same promises, so I have a lot of hope for this game.
But what I object to in your OP is the assertion it will be anything really like Champs PnP (Thank, gawd). The PnP version offers complete customization of powers, anything you want you can get if you have enough points. Champie-O's will allow this but within the a set structure that, obviously, can't handle something like 'changing people's name to Bob (which I did to compliment my buddy's 'instantly kill anyone named Bob' power, which we did to prove a point, but that's neither here nor there).' Also, the combat is fun and fast paced. If I never have to dust off my Calculus skills to run 3 hours of a game that covers 30 seconds of combat, again, I'll die a happy man. I just don't want people to get their hopes up too high or be scared off by what they know about the Champs PnP.
08/12/09
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