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[Champions Online] Psychic zombies, robot pirates, and Killdozer. 'Nuff said.

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Posts

  • Fartacus_the_MightyFartacus_the_Mighty Brought to you by the letter A.Registered User regular
    You only need one Crippling Challenge power so long as it's not something with a cooldown.

    Otherwise, that looks pretty good. If you wanted, you could take one rank out of Ebon Void and put it in something else, since that much damage resistance is gonna run into some heavy diminishing returns.

  • ShawnaseeShawnasee Registered User regular
    Really? Don't max out your block?
    Or is this something special to do with Ebon Void?
    Is there a better block?

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    edited October 2012
    Shawnasee wrote: »
    Do I need to have more than Tremor slotted for Crippling Challenge? Also, Tremor has a very satisfying animation.

    I presume you mean to get Crippling Challenge for Trmor, but powers either have Crippling Challenge or Challenging Strikes, not both. And, as Fartacus said, you only need one power with Crippling Challenge if it's one that doesn't have a cooldown.

    As for not maxing out your block, when you have something like Invulnerability at max rank, plus a block at max rank, plus all the other damage-reducing powers you have...Champions Online, like many RPGs, has a system that provides diminishing returns. I'm sure you've noted that when you go from, say, 10 to 30 Con you get a massive boost, but if you go from, say, 200 to 220, the bonus is rather minor? This applies to a lot of stats, including damage resistance. Otherwise, it's no doubt mathematically possible to build a character that would take only 1 damage from any attack as long as it wasn't a Crippling Challenge. At least it's not as bad as it used to be; the On Alert update expanded the "ceiling", as it were. For example, I'm pretty sure that having more than 100 in a super-stat was kind of pointless.

    Shadowen on
  • ShawnaseeShawnasee Registered User regular
    Ok, thanks you two. Gonna go test him out.

  • vamenvamen Registered User regular
    Man, I haven't played this in forever. I just fired it up and there's like 15 new travel powers since I last played. And vehicles, whaaaaat?

    Probably a silly question but does anyone know how you unlock some of the newer powers? Stuff like "snowball" and "ooze tunneling" and such isn't buyable in the store, and it doesn't give me a "only available via crafting" notice like a few of the newer powers.

    Also, if you grab a vehicle from the store (I have tons of coins from being a lifetime member), does it give it to all characters or just the one?

    Thanks.

  • OwenashiOwenashi Registered User regular
    Some of the travel powers can be unlocked by earning tokens from dropped enemies or mission rewards based on the typical law-enforcement group your character would be interacting with at the level he's at. So like Lv1-10 would be M-City cops while a higher level would net you ones from UNTIL. You also can exchange higher-level tokens for lower tiers in order to buy the powers and anything else from vendors that only accept those early tokens.

  • DigitoDigito Registered User regular
    Ok so after putting it off for awhile I just had a thought. How viable is mixing powers from dramatically different sets? Like say, the powered armor stuff with some of the overtly magic things? Is it practical to combine wildly differently themed abilities? In this case I was thinking of essentially a mage in powered armor or a high tech holy knight or something to that effect, at least in this example.

  • Fartacus_the_MightyFartacus_the_Mighty Brought to you by the letter A.Registered User regular
    Digito wrote: »
    Ok so after putting it off for awhile I just had a thought. How viable is mixing powers from dramatically different sets? Like say, the powered armor stuff with some of the overtly magic things? Is it practical to combine wildly differently themed abilities? In this case I was thinking of essentially a mage in powered armor or a high tech holy knight or something to that effect, at least in this example.

    A dude with mage powers and a laser sword would work fine. Stay away from the PA ranged powers, though. They're good, but most of them use a slot-based system that's exclusive to PA. You can activate several of them simultaneously and they're balanced around that feature; they're rather lackluster individually (and you'd have to use them individually if you're mixing with other sets).

  • DigitoDigito Registered User regular
    Aww man, those were the powers I was rather drawn towards as well. Taking them all doesn't really allow for taking many other powers huh?

  • OwenashiOwenashi Registered User regular
    edited October 2012
    It looks like trial-runs for the basic Vehicles are kicking off over in the test-server along with a new mission.
    CO.com wrote:
    Vehicles are on the horizon for Champions Online, and we’ve got your first look at the new vehicles. Plus, we’re pulling back the curtain on the Carrier Defense mission, built with vehicles and flying heroes in mind!

    You got a taste of vehicles with the prototype Hawkwing fighters, and you’ll be able to try out the full version, aimed for launch later this year – probably after first snowfall but before the holiday season.

    One of the new vehicle chasses is the flying Hover Tank, coming in two versions that are specced for either damage or tanking. Hitting enemies with the Hawkwing’s missiles was satisfying, but we’re building the Hover Tank’s powers to feel like demolition. There will also be the Grav Bike. In addition to the vehicles themselves, we’ve got some great missions planned to let you showcase your new rides. We’re going to keep one of these under wraps for the moment, but you can jump in on the new UNTIL Carrier Defense mission right now on the Public Test Server.

    Dr. Destroyer’s invasion of Millennium City may be over for now, but his master plan has only begun. The UNTIL Sky Carrier is under attack by swarms of flying Destroids, and only your team of 8-10 heroes can stop them.

    Take to the skies in your vehicle (or with a flight power) and defend the carrier’s engines and repair teams. For 15 minutes, you’ll need to survive waves of Destroids – and if you thought you’d seen the last of the Mega-Destroids, you might be in for a surprise…., coming in damage or support flavors.

    This mission is available now on PTS. If you’re a Gold subscriber, go to the PTS page and transfer your character to PTS. You’ll be able to get a loaner Nighthawk vehicle on PTS from the debug NPC, near the Powerhouse.

    There are also early versions of the Hover Tank and Grav Bike on PTS, so you can start playing around with the new vehicle system – but remember that these are early versions, and your feedback is invaluable in improving their gameplay and their looks. As with everything on PTS, Carrier Defense is a work in progress. Art assets in particular are being added as they’re completed, so please pardon our dust and placeholder FX while it’s under construction.

    Owenashi on
  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    edited October 2012
    Digito wrote: »
    Aww man, those were the powers I was rather drawn towards as well. Taking them all doesn't really allow for taking many other powers huh?

    Yeah, that is the sticking point with powered armor. It's got decent flavor, looks good, works really well with itself...but most of its abilities really don't play well with others.

    Shadowen on
  • ShawnaseeShawnasee Registered User regular
    What powers that do work well with others are Gas Pellets and Strafing Run(or whatever it's called) and Implosion Engine.

    Good lord that's devastation.

    Which brings me to something I have been looking at when building toons.

    Click powers.

    Like Gas Pellets and Implosion Engine and Flashfire.

    I'm finding this to be an efficient way to put out a few AoE's and then being able to stick a maintain or charge on top of it. Does some really nice damage.

    Also, the grav "bike" on test, is that a place holder?

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    So, Blood Moon is back on.

    And either they changed the leveling for crafting back, or during Blood Moon it reverts, but you can now level up your crafting skill by finding nodes like you could before the On Alert update. None of this stupid gamble-fusing shit, at least not to actually get ya skillups.

  • DigitoDigito Registered User regular
    edited October 2012
    Well this is annoying. Trying to activate gold on my account is proving to be a pain in the ass because after forgetting my password and changing it, the username and password that work just fine for logging into my PW account everywhere else won't work for trying to sign in to go gold. Anyone know why that might be, or do I have to wait more than a day from when I changed my password or something?

    EDIT: Disregard, turns out my braincells checked out for the evening. Username and display name are two different things. Problem resolved! Let me ask a different question instead then, do I need to worry much about making an optimal character design or is making a reasonably strong character basically "Take a good AOE, take a defensive power, be awesome"? I don't know the first thing about character building. Come to think of it, is there a tool kinda like Mids' for CoX? That'd probably help me design a character or something.

    Digito on
  • ShawnaseeShawnasee Registered User regular
    I have asked the question about the CO Mids equivalent before but to no avail. I did find the old thing that I used to use but it didn't look like it had been updated.

    Also...there are these Takofanes lockboxes that are dropping now. In an hour of playing a new character I have got 13 of them. However you need a special cosmic key to open them.

    They can only be bought from the C Store apparently.

    How much do they cost you ask?

    100zen...

    900zen for 10 of them...

    I hear there is something similar in STO?

    Sounds off the charts ridiculous to me.

  • Fartacus_the_MightyFartacus_the_Mighty Brought to you by the letter A.Registered User regular
    Shawnasee wrote: »
    I have asked the question about the CO Mids equivalent before but to no avail. I did find the old thing that I used to use but it didn't look like it had been updated.

    Also...there are these Takofanes lockboxes that are dropping now. In an hour of playing a new character I have got 13 of them. However you need a special cosmic key to open them.

    They can only be bought from the C Store apparently.

    How much do they cost you ask?

    100zen...

    900zen for 10 of them...

    I hear there is something similar in STO?

    Sounds off the charts ridiculous to me.

    Yup. Gambling mechanics that involve real currency are PWE's bread and butter, as far as revenue is concerned. They've also combined this with some rather blatant pay-to-win in the form of 4-slot gear that's only obtainable via the grab bags.

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    edited October 2012
    Shawnasee wrote: »
    I have asked the question about the CO Mids equivalent before but to no avail. I did find the old thing that I used to use but it didn't look like it had been updated.

    Also...there are these Takofanes lockboxes that are dropping now. In an hour of playing a new character I have got 13 of them. However you need a special cosmic key to open them.

    They can only be bought from the C Store apparently.

    How much do they cost you ask?

    100zen...

    900zen for 10 of them...

    I hear there is something similar in STO?

    Sounds off the charts ridiculous to me.

    Yup. Gambling mechanics that involve real currency are PWE's bread and butter, as far as revenue is concerned. They've also combined this with some rather blatant pay-to-win in the form of 4-slot gear that's only obtainable via the grab bags.

    I don't have the money for that now, but which ones?

    EDIT: Just checked the site. Dick move, PWE.

    Shadowen on
  • Fartacus_the_MightyFartacus_the_Mighty Brought to you by the letter A.Registered User regular
    edited October 2012
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Shawnasee wrote: »
    I have asked the question about the CO Mids equivalent before but to no avail. I did find the old thing that I used to use but it didn't look like it had been updated.

    Also...there are these Takofanes lockboxes that are dropping now. In an hour of playing a new character I have got 13 of them. However you need a special cosmic key to open them.

    They can only be bought from the C Store apparently.

    How much do they cost you ask?

    100zen...

    900zen for 10 of them...

    I hear there is something similar in STO?

    Sounds off the charts ridiculous to me.

    Yup. Gambling mechanics that involve real currency are PWE's bread and butter, as far as revenue is concerned. They've also combined this with some rather blatant pay-to-win in the form of 4-slot gear that's only obtainable via the grab bags.

    I don't have the money for that now, but which ones?

    EDIT: Just checked the site. Dick move, PWE.

    All of their games have these mechanics. STO is/was utterly obnoxious about it, with lockboxes dropping from fucking everything (including destroyable projectiles). The initial STO forum response was that Cryptic could shove the lockboxes back from whence they were pulled, and Cryptic's excuse was that CBS wouldn't let them make non-Fed/Klingon ships playable unless they had a means to make them super rare. They just happened to choose the most annoying means possible. They don't have that excuse here.

    STO also featured a (until they added an option) text popup letting you know every time somebody won a rare prize from a box, thus spamming the entire game population, and I believe the boxes still only stack 10/slot so you can't horde them.

    edit: there are also reports that drop rates from the boxes are borked. I highly recommend stating this in global chat whenever someone asks about the boxes, along with the idea that Cryptic tells us that shit is fixed when it's still broken all the time, and we won't know that it's really fixed unless they post the drop rates publicly so players can verify it on the test server.

    edit 2: Heh, looks like the drop rates for the non-shit items is a whopping 2%. GG, Cryptic.

    Fartacus_the_Mighty on
  • ShawnaseeShawnasee Registered User regular
    So one superhero MMO is getting canceled and the other is trying to join them.
    Do people actually pay for this stuff?

    I mean, how much were the keys in STO?

  • Fartacus_the_MightyFartacus_the_Mighty Brought to you by the letter A.Registered User regular
    Shawnasee wrote: »
    So one superhero MMO is getting canceled and the other is trying to join them.
    Do people actually pay for this stuff?

    I mean, how much were the keys in STO?

    $1, same price as CO. They made bank on the first couple of boxes. I can't say what their numbers look like now, but judging by the infrequency of popup messages, people have gotten wise to the scam.

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    Think I'll stick to saving up for the purple recog gear, thank you very much.

  • Fartacus_the_MightyFartacus_the_Mighty Brought to you by the letter A.Registered User regular
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Shadowen wrote: »
    Think I'll stick to saving up for the purple recog gear, thank you very much.

    The 4-slot gear isn't even that impressive. It comes with a tiny amount of base stats, but none of the special perks from the silver champs gear. If they wanted people to really be chomping at the bit for this stuff, they'd have offered something like secondary gear with stats and a core mod slot.

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    edited October 2012
    That is the flaw, isn't it? The problem with putting pay to win gear in Champions is that, while gear is important, it's nowhere near as critical to enjoying the game as it is in a lot of other MMOs, unless you plan on doing a lot of PVP or higher-difficulty instance runs. The primary draw of the game is customizable powers and appearance. (Like I think I said before, I use it more as a superhero CAD program than anything else. And addendum to my earlier comments: players are also into things that can't be done with normal power sets, travel powers, items, or costume designs, like the infinite-use shrink/enlarge devices.) People will happily pay monies for those, and since there is no such thing as a perfect representation of the mind's eye, endless slight varieties on old parts with shiny new parts to grab attention will be a viable design method for a long time to come. (They still don't have, for example, a bull/minotaur head.)

    Shadowen on
  • vamenvamen Registered User regular
    edited October 2012
    Does anyone have a good suggestion for getting Questionite? I'm level 17 and I was doing a few...Adventure Packs? I can't recall. Whiteout and a Harmon Labs portal thingy.
    Whiteout took FOREVER to do, and Harmon I simply couldn't beat. There's a part where you have to escort some guys to a plane to repair some stuff, but between the giant Destructoid and the normal mobs, I could never get them to survive. I tried everyway I could to train that damn giant robot, to no avail.
    Anyhoo, I'm saving up for Vine Swing, which is just perrrrrfect for my character Bubbles (who is a monkey). I didn't know if there was a more ideal way to save up or if it was just going to take a while.

    I was hoping there was Questionite in the store since I have tons of cash in there from being a lifetime member, but it looks like it's not something you can buy.

    vamen on
  • Fartacus_the_MightyFartacus_the_Mighty Brought to you by the letter A.Registered User regular
    vamen wrote: »
    Does anyone have a good suggestion for getting Questionite? I'm level 17 and I was doing a few...Adventure Packs? I can't recall. Whiteout and a Harmon Labs portal thingy.
    Whiteout took FOREVER to do, and Harmon I simply couldn't beat. There's a part where you have to escort some guys to a plane to repair some stuff, but between the giant Destructoid and the normal mobs, I could never get them to survive. I tried everyway I could to train that damn giant robot, to no avail.
    Anyhoo, I'm saving up for Vine Swing, which is just perrrrrfect for my character Bubbles (who is a monkey). I didn't know if there was a more ideal way to save up or if it was just going to take a while.

    I was hoping there was Questionite in the store since I have tons of cash in there from being a lifetime member, but it looks like it's not something you can buy.

    You can use the Questionite Exchange to buy it from player sellers (via opening either the Q store or Zen store and hitting the QE button).

  • vamenvamen Registered User regular
    edited October 2012
    vamen wrote: »
    Does anyone have a good suggestion for getting Questionite? I'm level 17 and I was doing a few...Adventure Packs? I can't recall. Whiteout and a Harmon Labs portal thingy.
    Whiteout took FOREVER to do, and Harmon I simply couldn't beat. There's a part where you have to escort some guys to a plane to repair some stuff, but between the giant Destructoid and the normal mobs, I could never get them to survive. I tried everyway I could to train that damn giant robot, to no avail.
    Anyhoo, I'm saving up for Vine Swing, which is just perrrrrfect for my character Bubbles (who is a monkey). I didn't know if there was a more ideal way to save up or if it was just going to take a while.

    I was hoping there was Questionite in the store since I have tons of cash in there from being a lifetime member, but it looks like it's not something you can buy.

    You can use the Questionite Exchange to buy it from player sellers (via opening either the Q store or Zen store and hitting the QE button).

    Oh really? I must have overlooked that. I thought you could only use Questionite to buy Zen.

    Edit - ahhh there it is. Much appreciated.

    vamen on
  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    edited October 2012
    I'd also suggest the Serpent Lantern adventure pack if you don't mind grinding. You can pretty reliably get ten boxes of Q in a single playthrough. You will at least get seven. In fact, when I grind Q all I do is Serpent Lantern, since the Nighthawk and Destroid dailies dropped off the face of the Earth. (I don't have the money at the moment to buy it direct from the exchange.)

    EDIT: Also, Fartacus, it seems those Takofanes Treasure Chests can now stack to 999.

    Shadowen on
  • vamenvamen Registered User regular
    Shadowen wrote: »
    I'd also suggest the Serpent Lantern adventure pack if you don't mind grinding. You can pretty reliably get ten boxes of Q in a single playthrough. You will at least get seven. In fact, when I grind Q all I do is Serpent Lantern, since the Nighthawk and Destroid dailies dropped off the face of the Earth. (I don't have the money at the moment to buy it direct from the exchange.)

    EDIT: Also, Fartacus, it seems those Takofanes Treasure Chests can now stack to 999.

    Some googling earlier provided me with similar suggestions (doing SL over and over). I just did that one for the first time earlier. It wasn't too bad, though yes quite long. I am now up to 97,000...though that's after trading in quite a bit of of my zen.
    I saw a lot of suggestions for doing the first two bosses in SL, leaving the mission, then dropping out of the game for a few minutes until it resets, then repeating the process.

  • Fartacus_the_MightyFartacus_the_Mighty Brought to you by the letter A.Registered User regular
    Shadowen wrote: »
    I'd also suggest the Serpent Lantern adventure pack if you don't mind grinding. You can pretty reliably get ten boxes of Q in a single playthrough. You will at least get seven. In fact, when I grind Q all I do is Serpent Lantern, since the Nighthawk and Destroid dailies dropped off the face of the Earth. (I don't have the money at the moment to buy it direct from the exchange.)

    EDIT: Also, Fartacus, it seems those Takofanes Treasure Chests can now stack to 999.

    Yeah, that's a goddamn blessing. I should check and see if they updated the boxes in STO, too.

    Also, I am pleased that the loot boxes just show up in the normal loot list, instead of popping out as a gigantic space-crate that blocks your vision (like they used to in STO).

  • vamenvamen Registered User regular
    Wow..the ending of SL really needs a "confirm to leave". I hit Z right when I killed the boss and it took me out of the zone...didn't get to loot him. Doh.

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    edited October 2012
    He generally only has 1 box of Q, some recognition appropriate to your level, and an item or two appropriate to your level. But yeah, I've done that before. What it really needs is just a fucking door or ladder you have to be close to in order to trigger.

    As for SL, if you're really in a grindy mood, play it up to the very last segment--kill 10 Serpent Mages--and do the log out trick. Your progress will remain saved, up to the last check point, so you can whack a whole mess of Serpent Mages. (Serpent Mages sometimes dropping Q boxes is what makes it such an effective farming method.) This is really simple to time if you have more than one character and get them both/all to the same spot.

    Shadowen on
  • DigitoDigito Registered User regular
    Are there any especially noteworthy guides out there? Mostly because it's pretty hard from here to tell if any given power is good or not, and I'm paranoid about picking bad powers by mistake just because they sounded cool. Like Wrist Bolter, which sounds cool but is apparently pretty bad?

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    If you don't mind wading, the official forums have some good threads, like this one.

  • DigitoDigito Registered User regular
    Ah-hah! Thank you!

    I do think the biggest thing is that I'm just not used to having such a dizzying range of options, although as I understand it sticking mostly to one framework can work perfectly well. Pick a defensive passive I like, stick mostly to one framework and probably still do quite well? I get the feeling going all fancy and complicated for my first character might not be a good idea.

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    I'd suggest, for your first character, sticking loosely to one of the archetypes, making subs when you don't like your current options.

    And it looks like even Perfect World thinks that their new devices and so on have made the Questionite-to-Zen exchange rate a little crazy, as they're having a sale on the Q-store travel powers. (Last time this happened, the exchange rate dropped from about 180 to about 140 on average.)

  • ArchArch Neat-o, mosquito! Registered User regular
    re-downloaded, reinstalled

    game keeps crashing trying to launch the updater

    WELLLLLP

  • ShawnaseeShawnasee Registered User regular
    ooh, there is a psuedo fix for that somewhere on the official forums Arch. I had the crashing too when I reinstalled and I can't remember what I did.

  • ShadowenShadowen Snores in the morning LoserdomRegistered User regular
    edited October 2012
    On the one hand, only four costume drops from trick or treat bags?

    On the other, at least there aren't parts with an effective drop rate of <1%, anniversary gifts I'm looking at you.

    Shadowen on
  • OwenashiOwenashi Registered User regular
    An article on PC Gamer's website says that the vehicle update (called Reloaded on CO.com) is dropping this week. Better get your driver licenses ready.

  • HallowedFaithHallowedFaith Call me Cloud. Registered User regular
    edited November 2012
    I created an account to check out the combat and see how the game feels, the combat feels like trying to thread a needle under a waterfall of sloppy wet shit.

    I got to level 9, which really isn't saying much since you basically get a free level 6 after the tutorial - I have 22 boxes in my inventory.

    What the fuck.

    HallowedFaith on
    I'm making video games. DesignBy.Cloud
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