Friday, October 30, 2009

Played Lately: Champions Online

  • My Wednesday night gaming ended up going to Champions Online solely because of Blood Moon, the superheroic Halloween event. It might have been a coin toss, otherwise, since I want to spend time with both games and neither will be uninstalled any time soon.

  • Upon logging in, I poked around Millennium City to see what was up. The website told us that, in order to unlock the Celestial powerset early, each of the thirteen undead superheroes must be defeated and their souls redeemed. The only issue is that Millennium City is a big place even when you can rocket across the skies in a ball of fire. I found a couple of the crypts on my own, but the pull of the internet was too strong.

  • One of those beautiful people from the CO forums (you know, the ones that actually contribute to the community instead of complain) posted a map of Millennium City showing all the crypt sites. With that at hand (or in browser window, at least), I could fly into action whenever someone called out a new zombie heroes had returned.

  • I told myself I would do half and half: seven the first night and then finish the other six the second night. But after missing the mission on my first hero (since I didn't quite understand what I was doing at that point), I was constantly out of phase between vanquishing perks and crypt missions. I would make up another mission, but then I failed to get the perk for one hero. So I had to keep track separately of which missions and which perks I'd completed. I thought I could leave it and come back. But I was worried I'd lose track, so I pressed on.

  • Then it was 2am. Oops.

  • On the Van Hemlock podcast this week, Tim and John briefly discussed how much they enjoyed drop-in games (games you can pick up and put down easily) and how MMOs don't make that easy. I would argue that Champions is a perfect drop-in game. You can jump in, run a few missions, maybe track down another nemesis clue, then jump out just as easily. As you can see here, it's just as easy to be sucked in and not want to stop playing ever.


  • Here's my new hero, Steel Angel. I wanted to try out the new Celestial powers without resorting to white feather wings and a halo. She might need a few tweaks, but I liked the look at 2am.

  • Okay, I promise never to make a costume at that time of night ever again.


© 2009 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.
If you're reading this on a site other than Bullet Points, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.

6 comments:

  1. You should see the four armor variations I've done for my main :)

    I've only freed six heroes so far, soloing the crypts in westside. I'll look for a group for the Downtown ones.

    And for my upcoming Celestial hero, was thinking about using the mechanical wings for a fallen angel.

    Ducasmere

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  2. One of my favorite apsects of CO is that you can save costumes. That way, if you spend two hours tweaking out on a design and decide the next day that the seams on the gloves should have been a darker shade of mauve, you don't have to start from scratch.

    Not that I'm idiotically anal about my designs or anything . . .

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  3. @ Ducasmere - I was happy to see that the crypt instances could be soloed since I was level 36. The open missions outside were a bit harder, though. It was great to see a lot people joining together to help one another.

    @ Yeebo - I spend a lot more time in the character creator than I'd like to admit. Two hours, though? That's pathological! :)

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  4. Character looks good.

    But I would agree that CO is easy to drop in and play. The problem is the monetary investment on a monthly basis out weights the ease of play.

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  5. @ Jayedub - The lifetime subscription really makes this aspect shine. Paying $15/month for a drop-in/drop-out game wouldn't work as well. Maybe I need to reconsider my statement. Or maybe Cryptic needs to reconsider their price model. Hmm...

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  6. Cryptic just needs to keep releasing meaningful content and it will turnout to be worth the monthly charge.

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