Ironically the "stat revamp" has killed my desire to ever play this game again. My main, which I have dutifully collected every costume piece and unlock I could, is a dex/ego melee, complete with the hardest to get gear for that setup.
Ego, in it's new form, will be basically unusable as a superstat for a melee because what crazy person would ever use a dex/ego melee combination (answer: quite a few of them actually seeing as all that meant up until now was a crit build).
Do I feel like taking the weeks or even months it would take to regear just that one character alone back up to par with a new dex/str build, nevermind any alts?
FUCK NO. This game is not worth that.
Dex/Ego/Str sounds like it'd be pretty smart. Not sure what the complaint is. There's three primary stats now.
STR is getting the cap on it raised. This is because, previously, the cap on STR was so low that you'd have hit it at the half-way point in leveling just by picking it as a super-stat, rendering it pretty much useless as a super-stat. Also all of the stats are playing less of an intense role in how well you do as role matters now over stats, apparently.
So switch to the brawler role, turn on the auto target controls that make the game into a brawler, and go nuts.
Ego's still important for critting the shit out of things and doing decent damage when critting. It's just that you can't use it along with dex to make horrifically broken dex/ego (With a bit of STR subbed in.) might and huge weapon characters that can literally one shot characters designed to be tanks anymore. Nor can you use the uppercut/forms/charge-up attack trick to lock someone down and kill them with no way to retaliate in about one blow.
Then again, if you're the kind of guy who went dex/ego on a melee build to break the game horribly and ruin other players PVP experiences by taking a series of powers designed to do upwards of ten thousand damage per second, then I really can't muster up much sympathy for you. It doesn't sound like you are, but those assholes are basically what killed PVP for both myself, and a great number of other players. They directly contributed to many people leaving the game by being griefing chucklefucks who relentlessly sought out ways to break the game and troll other players.
This new patch looks to be breaking that method of play (Or rather, offering potential counters.), as it was explicitly a mathematical exploit in the games mechanics that was ignored for a fairly long time due to people finding new ways to do it every time it was patched out.
Edit: Also, I should point out that the content isn't exactly hard by any means. You can run through most of the shit that's already on the public server with a character that's literally not geared at all.
Also, i'm counting upwards of ten/twelve instances added to the game so far through this new alert system. That's a fair amount of content for one update.
Edit: Make that much more then ten/twelve missions. Logging on a different character revealed that that character had an entirely different set of emergencies to respond too compared to my first character. Never even seen half of these before.
BURSTS also appear to reward "item modifications", which if another player testing is to be believed, let you modify existing items with stats. Apparently they did something to crafting too. No clue if that's true however.
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited March 2012
So, played a BURST. Kind of iffy on it so far. The alerts obviously aren't finished yet. Which is fine, so long as they don't go to live like they are now.
Main complaint was that my passive didn't scale up well. Which is something I noticed in the other team members too. Both the party and enemies were throwing out damage in excess of 5000 points per hit. Meanwhile, regen was only doing 900 or so regen per tick. May be due to the stat changes though, hard to tell.
The mission itself basically threw dozens of (tough) heavily amped up mobs at you all at once. In this case, it involved getting hit by lots of VIPER mobs, and Freon (Why is he in this mission? Placeholder?) was the boss at the end. Had two objectives. First was to clear out a bunch of mobs from a convoy that was attacked in Millenium City, then I had to protect the downed guards from groups of VIPER mobs.
My big complaint with BURSTS is that they could have achieved the exact same thing without the stat spike granted by a BURST. Bigger numbers does not mean something will be fun.
Looks like a sort of "queue up and do it in five minutes" quickie instance so far. Kind of disappointing given what their competition would do with something like this.
I was exaggerating just a bit. It's been a very long time since I played the character, but from what I remember he had all the Gadgetry pets (support drones, the assault bots, and the toys), along with a couple power armor abilities (chaingun and missiles, from what I recall). I had at that point started thinking about also picking up the wolves from supernatural, and then figuring out if I could add other things so that I could have an army following me.
His look was pretty badass too... basically a hulking mech with the "brain floating in glass dome" head.
I have a toon on test that I have been trying to tag an army to. But man, it is hard to do. You can get a lot of them but you can't rank them all up...which just has me resummoning most of the time.
And some of them to keep perma you need to rank them up.
I was exaggerating just a bit. It's been a very long time since I played the character, but from what I remember he had all the Gadgetry pets (support drones, the assault bots, and the toys), along with a couple power armor abilities (chaingun and missiles, from what I recall). I had at that point started thinking about also picking up the wolves from supernatural, and then figuring out if I could add other things so that I could have an army following me.
His look was pretty badass too... basically a hulking mech with the "brain floating in glass dome" head.
I have a toon on test that I have been trying to tag an army to. But man, it is hard to do. You can get a lot of them but you can't rank them all up...which just has me resummoning most of the time.
And some of them to keep perma you need to rank them up.
Did they ever do a pass over on pets?
Yes. They did a huge pass a while back. The biggest drawback to an all-pet build is that most of the awesome pets are trapped in a summoning circle. Sure, you can take the advantage that lets them follow you, but then they're not awesome anymore, and you need them to be awesome if you don't want to die horribly/kill things very slowly with a pet build.
Yeah that's basically what stopped me from going all the way into every pet ever... I realized the investment required and the fact that the Sorcery ones were probably not worth it unless I was totally going to be into sorcery. As such, I contented myself with focusing on the Gadgetry pets (and ranking them up) as well as some Power Armor abilities so far. The wolves seem like they'll be a fun investment at some point as well, if I continue on with that character.
Honestly I never found any pet more awesome than the Attack Toy, due to the way it replicates itself. That pet becomes an army by itself at times.
Ok well there is the 'Napolean Bear with rocket launcher' factor to consider.
ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited March 2012
The sorcery ones are worth it, you just need a certain build. Namely, one that will turn you into a tank while your horde of pets does your work.
It's important to note that the best thing for this is to pick up some primary defense items that completely eliminate knockback, holds, and roots. They do exist. And they pretty much turn you into a goddamn angel of death if you can find them. After that, you want a ton of healing to help stay alive.
A full pet build is probably the hardest of the bunch to play, all in all, but damn if it isn't obnoxious to fight if you have the intelligence to make one.
Not going to post the entirety of the text in the post. Too long for that. Here's the preface and some screenshots:
Hey Champs fans,
Coming at you this week with a very special inside edition, to disclose and discuss all manner of new aesthetic additions, imaginative improvements, and artistic advances in the world of Champions Online!
As I’ve mentioned in a recent Art Corner, our efforts early this year are all about making Champions better across the board, and especially at the fundamental level. On the art team, that meant taking a good, hard look at all of the existing art in the game, from environments to costumes to FX and even the UI. Leaving no stone unturned, we thought long and hard about what parts of the game were not up to the high artistic standards we’ve set recently with adventures like Resistance, or Comic Series such as Whiteout.
We singled out items both large and small and set to work on improving them all, always with the goals being consistency, quality, and ease of communication. With that in mind, let’s take a look at a few of the changes we’ve made, many of which you have yet to see in game for yourselves!
Environment
After delivering many key improvements to West Side earlier this year, we set our sights on the rugged landscapes of the Canadian Wilderness and the Desert.
Our first stop in the Desert was the abandoned Wild West amusement park - Snake Gulch! Previously, this area felt somewhat dull, drab and lifeless; it didn’t convincingly depict a once-attractive vacation destination. We committed the resources necessary to add color, vibrancy, and evidence of the infrastructure of a true theme park – signage, queue lines, landscaping, lighting, new rides and more!
Here's the new atomic wasteland. Complete with a new visual effect.
And here's Canada.
In addition to that, apparently a bunch of powers have received a visual effects pass. And more are being worked on right now. Here's some previews of the new scaled attacks.
Some dude kamehameha's a (very unfortunate) mob.
They also decided to add better visual indicators for when a character is effected by a buff or debuff.
There's also new debuff bar icons to make it more obvious who hit you with what.
And finally the big stuff. More costume info.
Our primary focus with costumes has been nothing less than converting or creating over 100 new parts which can be unlocked or earned as rewards in-game throughout all levels of Champions Online! Examples include the armor of Vikorin the Blind, Mechassassin and Armadillo, and even glowing, color-customizable, ethereal PSI armor!
In addition to these rewards, we’ve also begun to create brand-new sets of elaborately detailed, themed costumes which will be available at new in-game vendors throughout all levels.
Before we go, I’ll leave you with a closer look at just one of these sets, which features all-new cyborg arms, glowing tights, and a number of bionic accessories. I hope you’ve enjoyed this inside look at some of the new art coming your way. We look forward to seeing you in-game soon, enjoying these updates and much, much more!
These are some alphas of the new cyberpunk outfits that are coming out.
Apparently this is all part of the huge "March Update". Can't fault them for developing so much content. But I do hope they take this effort and keep applying it afterwards. Especially with the gusto with which STO went about designing some (insanely innovative) features.
Those designs look positively ME-inspired, which is a good thing. Except for the footwear, which is clearly meant to be worn by Quarians/Turians and not normal humans with five toes.
Those designs look positively ME-inspired, which is a good thing. Except for the footwear, which is clearly meant to be worn by Quarians/Turians and not normal humans with five toes.
Best marketing strategy ever! Let everyone make their own Tali!
You have a foot length slider though, so you can just adjust it to the point where the two prongs could be an extension of the boot, with a human foot inside.
Although I'm sure that would be silly since having something extending from the front of your footwear is only going to trip you the hell up and will not provide any meaningful advantage.
You have a foot length slider though, so you can just adjust it to the point where the two prongs could be an extension of the boot, with a human foot inside.
Although I'm sure that would be silly since having something extending from the front of your footwear is only going to trip you the hell up and will not provide any meaningful advantage.
Looks more like they might be robot feet to me.
There's a ton of other boots that'd fit the set, though. And that's just one costume. They make it seem like the set might have more.
There's plenty of suitable regular feet boots you could use instead that fit with that
They should flat out make a quarian for the marketing screenshots
This is basically how they roll anyways. "TOR is coming out? Oh shit, better make a force user archetype and take screens with him holding the closest thing we've got to a lightsaber."
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
There's plenty of suitable regular feet boots you could use instead that fit with that
They should flat out make a quarian for the marketing screenshots
This is basically how they roll anyways. "TOR is coming out? Oh shit, better make a force user archetype and take screens with him holding the closest thing we've got to a lightsaber."
That was more a joke, I think.
Granted, a joke that had some people rolling their eyes (As it's hard for some folks to take them seriously ragging on another game when there's an actual end-game to TOR.), but a joke nonetheless.
Either way, it could be worse. Whoever is on their art team and designs outfits actually seems to be paying attention and knows something about the medium, instead of snorting cocaine off of hookers asses and clocking out of work early, like the DCUO art team is. I've yet to see a single piece of armor come out of DCUO that didn't look like it didn't belong in an ultra grim dark dark ages comic that everyone makes fun of nowadays, or in an anime.
Which is ironic, because DCUO is apparently a huge success in F2P since they actually have an end-game, and produces some pretty shit costume designs (While their devs actively ignore requests for much requested armors, hairs, and skins.), while Champions devs seem to spend an insane amount of time on customization, and actively listen for ideas regarding customization.
There's literally almost no comic book tights in DCUO at all when compared against the vast number of robot pieces, and whoever does their costume design clearly doesn't even know anything about DC itself. Case in point, Down Syndrome Transformers Kryptonian Battle Armor (Now with random spikes and poorly designed asymmetry, because hey, that's cool, right guys?). Which was actually a thing that's rewarded at T2 raiding.
I need to dig up the preview pics of the end-game armor for that tier. That armor is quite possibly the most derpy shit ever put into a MMO. Half of them look like someone shat out an ice-cube and then chiseled it into awkward vaguely human shapes, all without understanding the basics of human anatomy.
Edit: Ah, here we go:
Compare these end game costume sets that are supposed to be highly desirable, in DCUO:
With this iron ages costume set in CO:
And you'll see what I mean. Even if you aren't a fan of the particular medium shown in both, whoever is doing CO's sets is obviously much better at designing modular armor that doesn't look like crap and fits with other costumes decently. They actually create from the medium they're meant to show, and from actual history in comic books, instead of binging on bad Korean and Chinese Transformer knockoff cartoons for twenty-four hours for inspiration.
The sets in the CO picture have a much higher level of detail too. Instead of taking a bland piece of armor that goes a few centimeters above the skin, there's detail to it, like ruffles in the cloth, and pouches which are part of accessory slots on the body that you can opt to add in. DCUO has nothing like that, and any detail comes with the armor itself.
Also, there's the whole issue as to how so many of DCUO's costumes are so specialized that they don't really blend with anything else. Which leads to people looking like Robo Hawk Girl in that DCUO picture. Disjointed and kind of lame. Compare that to CO, which has some pretty brilliant pics (Ice Cream Scoop Man/Three Flavors of Justice comes to mind. Which was a guy who had himself in a ice cream truck drivers uniforms, and giant scoops of what appeared to be vanilla, chocolate, and raspberry ice cream for his shoulders and his head.) come out of it when people actually bother to post them on the web.
No, you're absolutely right. Those DCUO costumes are ridiculous. It's usually a good idea to keep your smooth lines, busy cybernetics, and sharp pointy things separate from each other, instead of slamming them together in some kind of absurd clusterfuck of terrible visual design. Robo Hawk Girl would have an awesome costume if she dropped the stupid blades and got something closer to a bird wing.
And the grimdarkness thing is way overdone in DCUO, in my opinion. Somebody should tell the developers that this type of design is rather outdated.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
No, you're absolutely right. Those DCUO costumes are ridiculous. It's usually a good idea to keep your smooth lines, busy cybernetics, and sharp pointy things separate from each other, instead of slamming them together in some kind of absurd clusterfuck of terrible visual design. Robo Hawk Girl would have an awesome costume if she dropped the stupid blades and got something closer to a bird wing.
And the grimdarkness thing is way overdone in DCUO, in my opinion. Somebody should tell the developers that this type of design is rather outdated.
I keep waiting for the Circle of Liefield to complete, and for them to release a costume set or piece that makes everything below your shins invisible.
Once that happens, I would honestly not be surprised if DCUO gained sentience, cobbled together a ramshackle body made from the servers, various office supplies like staplers, pens, and keyboards, and proceeded to go on a hate fueled rampage through SOE's offices whilst howling to know why such a thing as he was allowed to be created.
I mean, damn. It's pretty firmly established and obvious that if you're going to have a customization based comic book MMO, then you should put some effort into the costumes instead of phoning it in.
I made a fairly detailed post in the DCUO topic explaining the funniest/saddest part of this thing, too, regarding this. DCUO has a ton of interesting costume pieces already in-game that players can't use. Why can't they use them, you may be asking? Because they're on NPC's.
They have some sort of phobia of allowing players to look like established heroes and villains in a comic book game. Based on a licensed property. With the premise being that the heroes and villains received magical nanite powers that make them better-then-the-original carbon copies of the heroes the powers came from.
Honestly, it's a bit of a cruel joke when you look at it. CoH has a filled out gameplay experience, but the game is so ancient that it's kind of hard to enjoy at times, given that it just can't do some of the more interesting things that modern MMO's are doing.
Champions Online has by far the best character creation/customization of the three MMO's all around. But once you hit the cap you'll quickly realize that they forgot to put in an actual game outside of the social parts of the game and unlocking new costumes to make new characters. It by far has the greatest potential of the three comic book MMO's out there, having a combat system that is customizable to work like CoH, DCUO, or some sort of crazy in between system. It also pretty much has no limitations on what they can do with the game in terms of content, as STO, it's much more developed younger brother, has demonstrated repeatedly.
DCUO got the gameplay down right, but forgot that somewhere in the midst of that the character creation, costume design, and socialization aspects need to not blow a pack of angry geese.
All in all, CO would blow CoH and DCUO out of the water if they could get their shit together. It's already gotten most of the requisites in to out-do them. The combat is interesting, the world is colorful, and it has the pre-reqs in to do a varied number of different activities outside of "grind mobs". They just don't seem to want to take that last step. Though some people are saying this upcoming update i've been show-casing is an attempt to finish filling out the early game before moving on to end-game content. The art update does seem to support that theory, too.
Still kind of absurd that it took them three years to make an end-game either way, if that's the case. And I have to wonder outside of communities like this that actively discuss games, how many people will give it a second shot since they already blew their "F2P!" announcement. Maybe they could re-release it or go on an advertising campaign or something.
Regarding your reply to my comment about "horribly broken dex/ego builds in pvp" or somesuch: While I haven't played CO pvp myself in about a year, I am in regular contact with those that still (for what reason I don't know) do. And those builds that have been destroying you? They weren't Dex/Ego. They were Dex/Int. The ego softcap is both low and easy to get to, min/maxers have never used ego as a superstat in either pve OR pvp. Putting a ton of points into Ego for maybe a 20% boost to overall damage when you average everything out isn't even close to cramming it into Int, throwing some extra points into Str for enrage, then run around with a 60-80% boost to damage at all times thanks to the Int effects on cooldowns, and then of course energy management being a breeze plus any self-heal cooldowns and clickies. (and ironically, there are still tank pvp builds that laugh at that, and pretty much everything else)
And that's a big part of my complaints about devwork on this game. The changes scream "I have no idea what the actual issue is and I'm listening to people on the forums that don't know either". And it's not like the people who DO know how the system works in practice haven't been talking about it forever in the forums. They've just been ignored over and over until the mass of people who don't know or care how the mechanics work complain changes need to be made. Then they just do whatever, usually doing their best to ignore any major issues and bugs being pointed out on the test server (haven't checked the current test forums for obvious reasons, but I'll be shocked if they aren't doing the same damn thing yet again).
It's absolutely maddening.
But to be honest I think any changes to powers and stats at this point is "rearranging the deck chairs". Something to keep the passengers convinced the crew is hard at work so they don't see what they're doing with the actual ship. Which to be fair, they're working hard on that "ship", and the new stuff might be interesting as far as content goes (might fall on it's face too, we'll see). But christ are they bad at game balance.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
edited March 2012
Dex/Ego works just as well. The soft cap on ego isn't at str levels. And mostly, it all depends on the type of skill you're using. Different combos have, in my experience min-maxing, worked best with different powers. This is something that's lost on most of the cookie-cutter FOTM insta-win build users.
Throwing a dex/ego super-statted munitions character makes for some ridiculous damage, for example. All you have to do is spam gatling gun and things melt in front of you (And you get aggro from all the damage.) as things crit for insane damage. This is due to how gatling gun doesn't strike once, but rather many times in one activation. Each one has a chance to crit, and stacking forms or enrage on it further boosts the damage.
It's also an excellent tanking tool, since noone can rip aggro off of you if you're critting five times per second on a group of mobs. Just nab regeneration and TK or Force Shield, and laugh as the entire team lays into something with impunity.
But see that's my point, that's not FOTM in pvp and in pve it doesn't matter because pve is so piss easy. If you mentioned munitions and pvp in the same sentence you'd be laughed out of the pvp forums. Unless you're talking archetype, which isn't min/maxing since you can't change your superstats or most of your powers anyways. But for "FOTM insta-win build users" the entire tree is laughable. Gatling gun? EVERY pvp build has stacked defenses that include a blanket reduction on each hit, some to the point gatling gun does 1 damage each hit. The only time ANY munitions power gets used is an incredibly buffed sniper rifle used from afar to knock out some pve builds in zombie apocolypse.**
Is a gatling gun dex/ego build going to destroy pve? I'd bet. I'd also bet an old-man-with-stick fart/fart build would do so too. Pve content in CO is, has, and probably will be until server shutdown, ridiculously easy.
And as such the problem with this game. You can't balance around pvp because frankly the devs and the "active playerbase" don't know how it works to any functional degree other than "I go in and die instantly". You can't balance around pve because the game is set up at a weird angle to begin with, you need to change many things about the pve, not just how player abilities and stats work.
Now that's not to say I don't think an overhaul is a bad idea. Hell, a fresh start is a GREAT idea.
My problem, as stated before, is that I can't keep my general concept (and I'd be fine with switching superstats if that was the only issue, big whup) without all my gear, which took quite a bit of time, a LOT if you consider all my alts as well, becoming bunk overnight because I have to change my base stats merely to work within the same framework I used to.
They need to offer a trade in function on any gear bought with their "special" currencies. Refunds on unity, pvp, and nemesis gear. RNG drops I'd be fine with being stuck with, as those weren't something I "chose" with earned points.
Without that they're shooting long time players in the foot though. Maybe they just don't care anymore. And as I said, I haven't played the game in awhile or dropped a single dime on it in well over a year. Perhaps they are "cutting their losses" and going for new players. I wish them luck with that, zero advertisements and a bad reputation is going to make that hard, but that could be what they want to do.
**(this is because of a current situation where pve people only play ZA and abuse a logout bug to reset to the survivor side if they ever die. some of the pvp crowd use these snipers to piss them off by forcing them to repeatedly relog, since they bring in pve toons that usually lack any pvp defenses or abilities at all and are easy to just blow away; it's been going on for months and months now without a single word from cryptic, suprise suprise. it's been an issue ever since they "fixed" acclaim awards to be as good as or better than the best things from elsewhere, with no months of unity farming involved, just weeks of ZA farming abusing the bug for more points instead!)
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MrVyngaardLive From New EtoileStraight Outta SosariaRegistered Userregular
Specialization info is now available, courtesy of Ame.
Hello again!
We’ve been busy working on further improvements to the game, many of which will be heading to the PTS shortly. Today, I wanted to talk about what Specializations are, and how they work.
A New Layer of Customization
Right now, an Archetype player can customize multiple levels of their character – from costume, to advantages, equipment, travel powers, and more. Free Form characters get even more customization, allowing them to completely change their power load out and their combat role. Specializations add another level of customization for both types of characters.
At Level 10, you will unlock your first Specialization, which is based on your Primary Super Stat. Points spent on skills in this section will further improve your character based on what that Super Stat represents and provides. For example, one of the skills in the Constitution tree causes your Secondary Super Stats to also grant additional health, and another causes your Dexterity to grant you a small chance to Dodge, while yet another increases the amount of Defense you receive from your items.
Every Level from 10 on will grant you one Specialization point, which you can spend in your current tree. When you have spent 10 points in that section, you can no longer spend points in it, and you unlock access to the next section.
At Levels 20 and 30 you will unlock the next sections of your Specialization Tree. For an Archetype, these sections are predetermined, and tailored to the Role of your Archetype. For example, The Inferno unlocks the Avenger tree at level 20 and the Vindicator tree at level 30, while The Behemoth unlocks Protector and Warden. Each of these sections will provide skills meant to enhance your combat Role, with the Protector tree providing you with benefits befitting a Tank, or the Vindicator tree providing you with benefits that work for Melee and Ranged DPS.
As a Free Form character, at levels 20 and 30 you will be able to choose from any of the 11 available trees. This will allow those characters that want to focus on a specific role (Melee Tank? Pick up Protector and Warden) to be able to get skills that work toward that goal, while a player that wants to have a Ranged Support Pet character (Overseer and Commander Specializations) or a complete Hybrid (Sentry and Vindicator) to also be able to do that.
Finally, at level 40, you will be able to spend your last point in a Mastery skill. The 3 skills available at this tier are determined by your previous 3 trees – in the case of The Behemoth, you will be able to choose between Constitution Mastery, Protector Mastery, and Brawler Mastery. These will be larger, more impactful choices to setup your character for high level play.
Fill Out YOUR Character
When designing the new Specialization system, we set out to make a system capable of supporting multiple styles of game play, and multiple types of players. From Free Form characters that wanted to be able to do it all, to Archetypes and Free Form characters with a more focused vision for their character, we needed a system that would work for all of them. In addition, we wanted to be able to allow a characters Primary Super Stat to feel more meaningful than just providing you with a larger amount of that Stat. With those two goals in mind, we designed a system that could provide more utility and character advancement based on your Super Stat while also allowing you to further define your character as fulfilling a specific role, or being the jack-of-all-trades.
In addition to the 8 Super Stat Specializations, we have 11 role based Specializations. Here’s a breakdown of those Role Specializations, along with an example skill from each:
Protector – The core Tank tree
Example Skill – Beacon of Hope: Increases healing received from others.
Brawler – The core Melee Damage tree
Example Skill – No Escape: Your Energy Builder has a chance (increasing per rank of this skill) to Daze your target for 4s if they are within 10 feet of you. Dazed characters move slower.
Avenger – The core Ranged Damage tree
Example Skill – Surprise Attack: Your Single Target attacks now have additional Critical Chance on targets above 90% Health.
Sentinel – The core Support tree
Example Skill – Sentinel Aura: You and your Teammates regain a percentage of their Max Health every 3 seconds.
Warden – Melee Damage/Tank tree
Example Skill – The Best Defense: Your Defense stat now also grants you some Offense stat.
Guardian – Ranged Damage/Tank tree
Example Skill – Make It Count: Increases the damage and decreases the cost of your Blast attacks.
Sentry – Support/Tank tree
Example Skill – Persevere: Single Target attacks made against you have a chance to heal you and your nearby teammates for a portion of the damage dealt.
Vindicator – Damage tree, suitable for Ranged and Melee damage
Example Skill – Merciless: Increases your Critical Severity.
Arbiter – Melee Damage/Support tree
Example Skill – Enforcer: The strength of your Combo Attacks, Heals, and Shields is increased.
Overseer – Ranged Damage/Support tree
Example Skill – Impact: Whenever you Critically Strike an enemy, you reduce the damage they deal.
Commander – Pet tree
Example Skill – Multitasker: Reduces the Energy Penalty incurred from having Pets out.
Let Me Sum Up
Every character will have access to the Specialization system as soon as it goes Live. You’ll be able to spend points every level starting at 10 to further advance your character. You’ll be able to pick from a variety of skills to develop your character the way you want.
Obviously, this new system will be infusing all characters with a lot more power. We’ve been planning for this with our revamp of the itemization system, while also reviewing critter difficulty. We’ll be making a few global changes to the game to compensate for this increase in power. First, characters will now only be able to equip one Secondary Upgrade of each type (one Secondary Offense, one Secondary Defense, and one Secondary Utility) instead of the two they can currently equip on Live. We’ve been discussing making this change for a while, and now, alongside Specializations and the upcoming Modification and Fusion systems, is the right time.
We’ll also be increasing critter difficulty. Critters above Henchman rank will now have some innate damage resistance, and starting at around level 12, critters above Henchman rank will have increased health. We’ll be paying close attention to all of these changes on PTS and making sure they have the desired effect before any of them go live.
Alongside the Specialization system, we’ve got another batch of big changes - including more buffs to starter powers (such as Two-Gun Mojo, Reaper’s Caress, etc.), fixes for a variety of other powers, more Alerts, further Itemization changes… Anyhow, that’s probably enough information overload for you right now. But if it’s not, you’ll be able to get a full look at all of these changes very soon on the PTS and give us feedback on the forums.
See you in Millennium City!
Chris "Ame" Matz
Lead Designer
Champions Online
MrVyngaard on
"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
Beating up mans in CO is still pretty satisfying and im looking forward to the events
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MrVyngaardLive From New EtoileStraight Outta SosariaRegistered Userregular
According to their calendar, it will hit on the 28th or so.
Here's to hoping it doesn't end up horribly!
"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
They just keep adding things, its really shaping up on the PTR. I'm surprised how much work is going into this patch, considering AAA MMOs seem practically unchangable (and it takes 3 months to get movable UI in SWTOR)
I'd like to see something tangible changed in the way this game plays, as I burned out pretty quickly upon my return. The first few days were, of course, spent joyously creating costumes and coming up with themes for heroes, but then I actually tried to play the game and it all fell apart.
I find this especially frustrating because so many people comment on how fun the combat is in this game, but I just find it tedious because the enemies tend to all be the same. It's possible that this changes at higher levels, but I just can't plod through to get there.
I kinda take the general deadness of this thread to indicate many others have/had the same issues, so it's gotta be a thing. Maybe I should just stop banging my head against brick walls. :P
MrVyngaardLive From New EtoileStraight Outta SosariaRegistered Userregular
edited March 2012
Speaking of brick walls, apparently their game update has run into a few of them itself and will not be going live until April 13th at this point.
Which is fortunate, as some of the issues on PTS are... special, like some forms of AOE being outright broken and other such wonderous and diverse entertainments.
At this rate, I'm eagerly looking forward to just about any other MMO and hoping that maybe someday Cryptic can make CO into a fun, enjoyable game with a good healthy future.
MrVyngaard on
"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
Yeah, apparently another thing I was completely unaware of is the changes also include turning gear into a carbon copy of asian grindfests complete with synthesis crafting that destroys the item on failure?
I don't have any idea of the details myself, I just know the (very slow speed) of posts in the CO forums are decrying how the game is about to adopt the asian style in the worst respects.
If anyone knows what the hell the details mean, the CO forum isn't clear, feel free to correct and elaborate.
Is the archetype system for this still ridiculously limited unless you pay monies? A few MMO's haven't figured out that you don't punish players for not paying by severly restricting choices. You make them -want- to pay by offering cool powers and costumes. See DCUO and even better, CoH for how it's supposed to work.
If it's still the same, I have no interest in playing.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
Is the archetype system for this still ridiculously limited unless you pay monies? A few MMO's haven't figured out that you don't punish players for not paying by severly restricting choices. You make them -want- to pay by offering cool powers and costumes. See DCUO and even better, CoH for how it's supposed to work.
If it's still the same, I have no interest in playing.
I believe they added in a bunch of new AT choices. I can't really say for sure, though, since as a lifetimer i've never actually really had a cause to use them.
That being said, most of the AT's I recall seeing going up on the C-Store were dirt cheap. And with a STO style Dilithium conversion system going in, you should be able to easily sell off earned in-game Questionite to buy new AT's fairly easily. STO has a market system where you can sell your earned Refined Dilithium off for C-Store points. This is very easy to do with an established character, provided you know where to get the most Dilithium at. Especially if you have a character at the cap.
Is the archetype system for this still ridiculously limited unless you pay monies? A few MMO's haven't figured out that you don't punish players for not paying by severly restricting choices. You make them -want- to pay by offering cool powers and costumes. See DCUO and even better, CoH for how it's supposed to work.
If it's still the same, I have no interest in playing.
I believe they added in a bunch of new AT choices. I can't really say for sure, though, since as a lifetimer i've never actually really had a cause to use them.
That being said, most of the AT's I recall seeing going up on the C-Store were dirt cheap. And with a STO style Dilithium conversion system going in, you should be able to easily sell off earned in-game Questionite to buy new AT's fairly easily. STO has a market system where you can sell your earned Refined Dilithium off for C-Store points. This is very easy to do with an established character, provided you know where to get the most Dilithium at. Especially if you have a character at the cap.
I think he has an issue with the lack of free-form characters unless you're a subscriber.
There was talk, and by talk I mean the "this is going in" (though I don't know if it's with this change-everything patch) type, of adding a purchasable freeform slot.
Which, since it's pretty much the only reason to sub to the game at all, promptly made a few people happy and a ton of people pissed off. It'll likely add a short term boost in sales then effectively kill off most subscriptions. I think this is deliberate actually, PW probably wants everyone just on the cash shop plan, given that's what they're used to.
Have they added gambling loot boxes yet? Because that is a heinous pox upon STO, and I would very much like it to not be visited upon this game too.
They sometimes have loot boxes in the form of extra additions to Holiday events.
Catch is, nine times out of ten, you can usually just buy the stuff individually. It's just you can gamble and potentially get it much cheaper that way.
Have they added gambling loot boxes yet? Because that is a heinous pox upon STO, and I would very much like it to not be visited upon this game too.
They sometimes have loot boxes in the form of extra additions to Holiday events.
Catch is, nine times out of ten, you can usually just buy the stuff individually. It's just you can gamble and potentially get it much cheaper that way.
It's fine if you can buy the stuff directly from the store. It's just the super-rare item with a 0.5% drop rate which is only available via gambling which bugs me.
Fortunately, CO isn't based on some hugely popular franchise, so they'd have to make any item dropped that way be massively overpowered to get people to buy it. Unlike STO, where they can just put up <insert cool ship from an existing NPC faction> and make millions.
Honestly I think you should be able to freeform as free with a very limited selection of powers, and buying an archetype adds its powers
This I could behind.
What I really hate about the game is that a significant part of what makes the game interesting is locked away behind the subscription gates.
There's no similar limitations in Cryptic's other F2P game, STO, which I enjoy greatly due to this.
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MrVyngaardLive From New EtoileStraight Outta SosariaRegistered Userregular
So, if I were interested in trying out this game, is there anything important I should know beforehand? Also...
1) Can I use my Cryptic-STO account for this game?
Also, the chat server between STO and CO is shared, so you'll still be able to access the Penny Arcade channel and your friendslist in STO should carry over to CO.
Weird, but neat. Freaked people out in beta a little when that fact was first noticed.
"now I've got this mental image of caucuses as cafeteria tables in prison, and new congressmen having to beat someone up on inauguration day." - Raiden333
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Dex/Ego/Str sounds like it'd be pretty smart. Not sure what the complaint is. There's three primary stats now.
STR is getting the cap on it raised. This is because, previously, the cap on STR was so low that you'd have hit it at the half-way point in leveling just by picking it as a super-stat, rendering it pretty much useless as a super-stat. Also all of the stats are playing less of an intense role in how well you do as role matters now over stats, apparently.
So switch to the brawler role, turn on the auto target controls that make the game into a brawler, and go nuts.
Ego's still important for critting the shit out of things and doing decent damage when critting. It's just that you can't use it along with dex to make horrifically broken dex/ego (With a bit of STR subbed in.) might and huge weapon characters that can literally one shot characters designed to be tanks anymore. Nor can you use the uppercut/forms/charge-up attack trick to lock someone down and kill them with no way to retaliate in about one blow.
Then again, if you're the kind of guy who went dex/ego on a melee build to break the game horribly and ruin other players PVP experiences by taking a series of powers designed to do upwards of ten thousand damage per second, then I really can't muster up much sympathy for you. It doesn't sound like you are, but those assholes are basically what killed PVP for both myself, and a great number of other players. They directly contributed to many people leaving the game by being griefing chucklefucks who relentlessly sought out ways to break the game and troll other players.
This new patch looks to be breaking that method of play (Or rather, offering potential counters.), as it was explicitly a mathematical exploit in the games mechanics that was ignored for a fairly long time due to people finding new ways to do it every time it was patched out.
Edit: Also, I should point out that the content isn't exactly hard by any means. You can run through most of the shit that's already on the public server with a character that's literally not geared at all.
Also, i'm counting upwards of ten/twelve instances added to the game so far through this new alert system. That's a fair amount of content for one update.
Edit: Make that much more then ten/twelve missions. Logging on a different character revealed that that character had an entirely different set of emergencies to respond too compared to my first character. Never even seen half of these before.
BURSTS also appear to reward "item modifications", which if another player testing is to be believed, let you modify existing items with stats. Apparently they did something to crafting too. No clue if that's true however.
Main complaint was that my passive didn't scale up well. Which is something I noticed in the other team members too. Both the party and enemies were throwing out damage in excess of 5000 points per hit. Meanwhile, regen was only doing 900 or so regen per tick. May be due to the stat changes though, hard to tell.
The mission itself basically threw dozens of (tough) heavily amped up mobs at you all at once. In this case, it involved getting hit by lots of VIPER mobs, and Freon (Why is he in this mission? Placeholder?) was the boss at the end. Had two objectives. First was to clear out a bunch of mobs from a convoy that was attacked in Millenium City, then I had to protect the downed guards from groups of VIPER mobs.
My big complaint with BURSTS is that they could have achieved the exact same thing without the stat spike granted by a BURST. Bigger numbers does not mean something will be fun.
Looks like a sort of "queue up and do it in five minutes" quickie instance so far. Kind of disappointing given what their competition would do with something like this.
I have a toon on test that I have been trying to tag an army to. But man, it is hard to do. You can get a lot of them but you can't rank them all up...which just has me resummoning most of the time.
And some of them to keep perma you need to rank them up.
Did they ever do a pass over on pets?
Yes. They did a huge pass a while back. The biggest drawback to an all-pet build is that most of the awesome pets are trapped in a summoning circle. Sure, you can take the advantage that lets them follow you, but then they're not awesome anymore, and you need them to be awesome if you don't want to die horribly/kill things very slowly with a pet build.
Honestly I never found any pet more awesome than the Attack Toy, due to the way it replicates itself. That pet becomes an army by itself at times.
Ok well there is the 'Napolean Bear with rocket launcher' factor to consider.
It's important to note that the best thing for this is to pick up some primary defense items that completely eliminate knockback, holds, and roots. They do exist. And they pretty much turn you into a goddamn angel of death if you can find them. After that, you want a ton of healing to help stay alive.
A full pet build is probably the hardest of the bunch to play, all in all, but damn if it isn't obnoxious to fight if you have the intelligence to make one.
Also, there's a new art corner update up: http://www.champions-online.com/node/595680
Not going to post the entirety of the text in the post. Too long for that. Here's the preface and some screenshots:
Here's the new atomic wasteland. Complete with a new visual effect.
And here's Canada.
In addition to that, apparently a bunch of powers have received a visual effects pass. And more are being worked on right now. Here's some previews of the new scaled attacks.
Some dude kamehameha's a (very unfortunate) mob.
They also decided to add better visual indicators for when a character is effected by a buff or debuff.
There's also new debuff bar icons to make it more obvious who hit you with what.
And finally the big stuff. More costume info.
These are some alphas of the new cyberpunk outfits that are coming out.
Apparently this is all part of the huge "March Update". Can't fault them for developing so much content. But I do hope they take this effort and keep applying it afterwards. Especially with the gusto with which STO went about designing some (insanely innovative) features.
Best marketing strategy ever! Let everyone make their own Tali!
Although I'm sure that would be silly since having something extending from the front of your footwear is only going to trip you the hell up and will not provide any meaningful advantage.
Looks more like they might be robot feet to me.
There's a ton of other boots that'd fit the set, though. And that's just one costume. They make it seem like the set might have more.
They should flat out make a quarian for the marketing screenshots
This is basically how they roll anyways. "TOR is coming out? Oh shit, better make a force user archetype and take screens with him holding the closest thing we've got to a lightsaber."
That was more a joke, I think.
Granted, a joke that had some people rolling their eyes (As it's hard for some folks to take them seriously ragging on another game when there's an actual end-game to TOR.), but a joke nonetheless.
Either way, it could be worse. Whoever is on their art team and designs outfits actually seems to be paying attention and knows something about the medium, instead of snorting cocaine off of hookers asses and clocking out of work early, like the DCUO art team is. I've yet to see a single piece of armor come out of DCUO that didn't look like it didn't belong in an ultra grim dark dark ages comic that everyone makes fun of nowadays, or in an anime.
Which is ironic, because DCUO is apparently a huge success in F2P since they actually have an end-game, and produces some pretty shit costume designs (While their devs actively ignore requests for much requested armors, hairs, and skins.), while Champions devs seem to spend an insane amount of time on customization, and actively listen for ideas regarding customization.
There's literally almost no comic book tights in DCUO at all when compared against the vast number of robot pieces, and whoever does their costume design clearly doesn't even know anything about DC itself. Case in point, Down Syndrome Transformers Kryptonian Battle Armor (Now with random spikes and poorly designed asymmetry, because hey, that's cool, right guys?). Which was actually a thing that's rewarded at T2 raiding.
I need to dig up the preview pics of the end-game armor for that tier. That armor is quite possibly the most derpy shit ever put into a MMO. Half of them look like someone shat out an ice-cube and then chiseled it into awkward vaguely human shapes, all without understanding the basics of human anatomy.
Edit: Ah, here we go:
Compare these end game costume sets that are supposed to be highly desirable, in DCUO:
With this iron ages costume set in CO:
And you'll see what I mean. Even if you aren't a fan of the particular medium shown in both, whoever is doing CO's sets is obviously much better at designing modular armor that doesn't look like crap and fits with other costumes decently. They actually create from the medium they're meant to show, and from actual history in comic books, instead of binging on bad Korean and Chinese Transformer knockoff cartoons for twenty-four hours for inspiration.
The sets in the CO picture have a much higher level of detail too. Instead of taking a bland piece of armor that goes a few centimeters above the skin, there's detail to it, like ruffles in the cloth, and pouches which are part of accessory slots on the body that you can opt to add in. DCUO has nothing like that, and any detail comes with the armor itself.
Also, there's the whole issue as to how so many of DCUO's costumes are so specialized that they don't really blend with anything else. Which leads to people looking like Robo Hawk Girl in that DCUO picture. Disjointed and kind of lame. Compare that to CO, which has some pretty brilliant pics (Ice Cream Scoop Man/Three Flavors of Justice comes to mind. Which was a guy who had himself in a ice cream truck drivers uniforms, and giant scoops of what appeared to be vanilla, chocolate, and raspberry ice cream for his shoulders and his head.) come out of it when people actually bother to post them on the web.
And the grimdarkness thing is way overdone in DCUO, in my opinion. Somebody should tell the developers that this type of design is rather outdated.
Once that happens, I would honestly not be surprised if DCUO gained sentience, cobbled together a ramshackle body made from the servers, various office supplies like staplers, pens, and keyboards, and proceeded to go on a hate fueled rampage through SOE's offices whilst howling to know why such a thing as he was allowed to be created.
I mean, damn. It's pretty firmly established and obvious that if you're going to have a customization based comic book MMO, then you should put some effort into the costumes instead of phoning it in.
I made a fairly detailed post in the DCUO topic explaining the funniest/saddest part of this thing, too, regarding this. DCUO has a ton of interesting costume pieces already in-game that players can't use. Why can't they use them, you may be asking? Because they're on NPC's.
They have some sort of phobia of allowing players to look like established heroes and villains in a comic book game. Based on a licensed property. With the premise being that the heroes and villains received magical nanite powers that make them better-then-the-original carbon copies of the heroes the powers came from.
Honestly, it's a bit of a cruel joke when you look at it. CoH has a filled out gameplay experience, but the game is so ancient that it's kind of hard to enjoy at times, given that it just can't do some of the more interesting things that modern MMO's are doing.
Champions Online has by far the best character creation/customization of the three MMO's all around. But once you hit the cap you'll quickly realize that they forgot to put in an actual game outside of the social parts of the game and unlocking new costumes to make new characters. It by far has the greatest potential of the three comic book MMO's out there, having a combat system that is customizable to work like CoH, DCUO, or some sort of crazy in between system. It also pretty much has no limitations on what they can do with the game in terms of content, as STO, it's much more developed younger brother, has demonstrated repeatedly.
DCUO got the gameplay down right, but forgot that somewhere in the midst of that the character creation, costume design, and socialization aspects need to not blow a pack of angry geese.
All in all, CO would blow CoH and DCUO out of the water if they could get their shit together. It's already gotten most of the requisites in to out-do them. The combat is interesting, the world is colorful, and it has the pre-reqs in to do a varied number of different activities outside of "grind mobs". They just don't seem to want to take that last step. Though some people are saying this upcoming update i've been show-casing is an attempt to finish filling out the early game before moving on to end-game content. The art update does seem to support that theory, too.
Still kind of absurd that it took them three years to make an end-game either way, if that's the case. And I have to wonder outside of communities like this that actively discuss games, how many people will give it a second shot since they already blew their "F2P!" announcement. Maybe they could re-release it or go on an advertising campaign or something.
And that's a big part of my complaints about devwork on this game. The changes scream "I have no idea what the actual issue is and I'm listening to people on the forums that don't know either". And it's not like the people who DO know how the system works in practice haven't been talking about it forever in the forums. They've just been ignored over and over until the mass of people who don't know or care how the mechanics work complain changes need to be made. Then they just do whatever, usually doing their best to ignore any major issues and bugs being pointed out on the test server (haven't checked the current test forums for obvious reasons, but I'll be shocked if they aren't doing the same damn thing yet again).
It's absolutely maddening.
But to be honest I think any changes to powers and stats at this point is "rearranging the deck chairs". Something to keep the passengers convinced the crew is hard at work so they don't see what they're doing with the actual ship. Which to be fair, they're working hard on that "ship", and the new stuff might be interesting as far as content goes (might fall on it's face too, we'll see). But christ are they bad at game balance.
Throwing a dex/ego super-statted munitions character makes for some ridiculous damage, for example. All you have to do is spam gatling gun and things melt in front of you (And you get aggro from all the damage.) as things crit for insane damage. This is due to how gatling gun doesn't strike once, but rather many times in one activation. Each one has a chance to crit, and stacking forms or enrage on it further boosts the damage.
It's also an excellent tanking tool, since noone can rip aggro off of you if you're critting five times per second on a group of mobs. Just nab regeneration and TK or Force Shield, and laugh as the entire team lays into something with impunity.
Is a gatling gun dex/ego build going to destroy pve? I'd bet. I'd also bet an old-man-with-stick fart/fart build would do so too. Pve content in CO is, has, and probably will be until server shutdown, ridiculously easy.
And as such the problem with this game. You can't balance around pvp because frankly the devs and the "active playerbase" don't know how it works to any functional degree other than "I go in and die instantly". You can't balance around pve because the game is set up at a weird angle to begin with, you need to change many things about the pve, not just how player abilities and stats work.
Now that's not to say I don't think an overhaul is a bad idea. Hell, a fresh start is a GREAT idea.
My problem, as stated before, is that I can't keep my general concept (and I'd be fine with switching superstats if that was the only issue, big whup) without all my gear, which took quite a bit of time, a LOT if you consider all my alts as well, becoming bunk overnight because I have to change my base stats merely to work within the same framework I used to.
They need to offer a trade in function on any gear bought with their "special" currencies. Refunds on unity, pvp, and nemesis gear. RNG drops I'd be fine with being stuck with, as those weren't something I "chose" with earned points.
Without that they're shooting long time players in the foot though. Maybe they just don't care anymore. And as I said, I haven't played the game in awhile or dropped a single dime on it in well over a year. Perhaps they are "cutting their losses" and going for new players. I wish them luck with that, zero advertisements and a bad reputation is going to make that hard, but that could be what they want to do.
**(this is because of a current situation where pve people only play ZA and abuse a logout bug to reset to the survivor side if they ever die. some of the pvp crowd use these snipers to piss them off by forcing them to repeatedly relog, since they bring in pve toons that usually lack any pvp defenses or abilities at all and are easy to just blow away; it's been going on for months and months now without a single word from cryptic, suprise suprise. it's been an issue ever since they "fixed" acclaim awards to be as good as or better than the best things from elsewhere, with no months of unity farming involved, just weeks of ZA farming abusing the bug for more points instead!)
Specialization info is now available, courtesy of Ame.
We’ve been busy working on further improvements to the game, many of which will be heading to the PTS shortly. Today, I wanted to talk about what Specializations are, and how they work.
A New Layer of Customization
Right now, an Archetype player can customize multiple levels of their character – from costume, to advantages, equipment, travel powers, and more. Free Form characters get even more customization, allowing them to completely change their power load out and their combat role. Specializations add another level of customization for both types of characters.
At Level 10, you will unlock your first Specialization, which is based on your Primary Super Stat. Points spent on skills in this section will further improve your character based on what that Super Stat represents and provides. For example, one of the skills in the Constitution tree causes your Secondary Super Stats to also grant additional health, and another causes your Dexterity to grant you a small chance to Dodge, while yet another increases the amount of Defense you receive from your items.
Every Level from 10 on will grant you one Specialization point, which you can spend in your current tree. When you have spent 10 points in that section, you can no longer spend points in it, and you unlock access to the next section.
At Levels 20 and 30 you will unlock the next sections of your Specialization Tree. For an Archetype, these sections are predetermined, and tailored to the Role of your Archetype. For example, The Inferno unlocks the Avenger tree at level 20 and the Vindicator tree at level 30, while The Behemoth unlocks Protector and Warden. Each of these sections will provide skills meant to enhance your combat Role, with the Protector tree providing you with benefits befitting a Tank, or the Vindicator tree providing you with benefits that work for Melee and Ranged DPS.
As a Free Form character, at levels 20 and 30 you will be able to choose from any of the 11 available trees. This will allow those characters that want to focus on a specific role (Melee Tank? Pick up Protector and Warden) to be able to get skills that work toward that goal, while a player that wants to have a Ranged Support Pet character (Overseer and Commander Specializations) or a complete Hybrid (Sentry and Vindicator) to also be able to do that.
Finally, at level 40, you will be able to spend your last point in a Mastery skill. The 3 skills available at this tier are determined by your previous 3 trees – in the case of The Behemoth, you will be able to choose between Constitution Mastery, Protector Mastery, and Brawler Mastery. These will be larger, more impactful choices to setup your character for high level play.
Fill Out YOUR Character
When designing the new Specialization system, we set out to make a system capable of supporting multiple styles of game play, and multiple types of players. From Free Form characters that wanted to be able to do it all, to Archetypes and Free Form characters with a more focused vision for their character, we needed a system that would work for all of them. In addition, we wanted to be able to allow a characters Primary Super Stat to feel more meaningful than just providing you with a larger amount of that Stat. With those two goals in mind, we designed a system that could provide more utility and character advancement based on your Super Stat while also allowing you to further define your character as fulfilling a specific role, or being the jack-of-all-trades.
In addition to the 8 Super Stat Specializations, we have 11 role based Specializations. Here’s a breakdown of those Role Specializations, along with an example skill from each:
Protector – The core Tank tree
Example Skill – Beacon of Hope: Increases healing received from others.
Brawler – The core Melee Damage tree
Example Skill – No Escape: Your Energy Builder has a chance (increasing per rank of this skill) to Daze your target for 4s if they are within 10 feet of you. Dazed characters move slower.
Avenger – The core Ranged Damage tree
Example Skill – Surprise Attack: Your Single Target attacks now have additional Critical Chance on targets above 90% Health.
Sentinel – The core Support tree
Example Skill – Sentinel Aura: You and your Teammates regain a percentage of their Max Health every 3 seconds.
Warden – Melee Damage/Tank tree
Example Skill – The Best Defense: Your Defense stat now also grants you some Offense stat.
Guardian – Ranged Damage/Tank tree
Example Skill – Make It Count: Increases the damage and decreases the cost of your Blast attacks.
Sentry – Support/Tank tree
Example Skill – Persevere: Single Target attacks made against you have a chance to heal you and your nearby teammates for a portion of the damage dealt.
Vindicator – Damage tree, suitable for Ranged and Melee damage
Example Skill – Merciless: Increases your Critical Severity.
Arbiter – Melee Damage/Support tree
Example Skill – Enforcer: The strength of your Combo Attacks, Heals, and Shields is increased.
Overseer – Ranged Damage/Support tree
Example Skill – Impact: Whenever you Critically Strike an enemy, you reduce the damage they deal.
Commander – Pet tree
Example Skill – Multitasker: Reduces the Energy Penalty incurred from having Pets out.
Let Me Sum Up
Every character will have access to the Specialization system as soon as it goes Live. You’ll be able to spend points every level starting at 10 to further advance your character. You’ll be able to pick from a variety of skills to develop your character the way you want.
Obviously, this new system will be infusing all characters with a lot more power. We’ve been planning for this with our revamp of the itemization system, while also reviewing critter difficulty. We’ll be making a few global changes to the game to compensate for this increase in power. First, characters will now only be able to equip one Secondary Upgrade of each type (one Secondary Offense, one Secondary Defense, and one Secondary Utility) instead of the two they can currently equip on Live. We’ve been discussing making this change for a while, and now, alongside Specializations and the upcoming Modification and Fusion systems, is the right time.
We’ll also be increasing critter difficulty. Critters above Henchman rank will now have some innate damage resistance, and starting at around level 12, critters above Henchman rank will have increased health. We’ll be paying close attention to all of these changes on PTS and making sure they have the desired effect before any of them go live.
Alongside the Specialization system, we’ve got another batch of big changes - including more buffs to starter powers (such as Two-Gun Mojo, Reaper’s Caress, etc.), fixes for a variety of other powers, more Alerts, further Itemization changes… Anyhow, that’s probably enough information overload for you right now. But if it’s not, you’ll be able to get a full look at all of these changes very soon on the PTS and give us feedback on the forums.
See you in Millennium City!
Chris "Ame" Matz
Lead Designer
Champions Online
Beating up mans in CO is still pretty satisfying and im looking forward to the events
Here's to hoping it doesn't end up horribly!
I find this especially frustrating because so many people comment on how fun the combat is in this game, but I just find it tedious because the enemies tend to all be the same. It's possible that this changes at higher levels, but I just can't plod through to get there.
I kinda take the general deadness of this thread to indicate many others have/had the same issues, so it's gotta be a thing. Maybe I should just stop banging my head against brick walls. :P
Which is fortunate, as some of the issues on PTS are... special, like some forms of AOE being outright broken and other such wonderous and diverse entertainments.
At this rate, I'm eagerly looking forward to just about any other MMO and hoping that maybe someday Cryptic can make CO into a fun, enjoyable game with a good healthy future.
I don't have any idea of the details myself, I just know the (very slow speed) of posts in the CO forums are decrying how the game is about to adopt the asian style in the worst respects.
If anyone knows what the hell the details mean, the CO forum isn't clear, feel free to correct and elaborate.
If it's still the same, I have no interest in playing.
I believe they added in a bunch of new AT choices. I can't really say for sure, though, since as a lifetimer i've never actually really had a cause to use them.
That being said, most of the AT's I recall seeing going up on the C-Store were dirt cheap. And with a STO style Dilithium conversion system going in, you should be able to easily sell off earned in-game Questionite to buy new AT's fairly easily. STO has a market system where you can sell your earned Refined Dilithium off for C-Store points. This is very easy to do with an established character, provided you know where to get the most Dilithium at. Especially if you have a character at the cap.
I think he has an issue with the lack of free-form characters unless you're a subscriber.
Which, since it's pretty much the only reason to sub to the game at all, promptly made a few people happy and a ton of people pissed off. It'll likely add a short term boost in sales then effectively kill off most subscriptions. I think this is deliberate actually, PW probably wants everyone just on the cash shop plan, given that's what they're used to.
1) Can I use my Cryptic-STO account for this game?
2) What's the best way to DL the client if one has a low (below 1.5Mps) DSL speed?
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
1. Yes.
2. It works exactly like STO: download and run the launcher, and the game will be downloaded as if it were a gigantic patch.
They sometimes have loot boxes in the form of extra additions to Holiday events.
Catch is, nine times out of ten, you can usually just buy the stuff individually. It's just you can gamble and potentially get it much cheaper that way.
It's fine if you can buy the stuff directly from the store. It's just the super-rare item with a 0.5% drop rate which is only available via gambling which bugs me.
Fortunately, CO isn't based on some hugely popular franchise, so they'd have to make any item dropped that way be massively overpowered to get people to buy it. Unlike STO, where they can just put up <insert cool ship from an existing NPC faction> and make millions.
This I could behind.
What I really hate about the game is that a significant part of what makes the game interesting is locked away behind the subscription gates.
There's no similar limitations in Cryptic's other F2P game, STO, which I enjoy greatly due to this.
Also, the chat server between STO and CO is shared, so you'll still be able to access the Penny Arcade channel and your friendslist in STO should carry over to CO.
Weird, but neat. Freaked people out in beta a little when that fact was first noticed.