Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I was reading about champions online and how it was being produced by cryptic studios and ncsoft. Will this games lead to the death of CoX or will the city still remain?

Considering Cryptic and NCSoft are responsible for CoH/V I doubt they are to worried. The servers for CoH/V will be up for some time considering that older MMO's are still up and running.

They had a demo of Champions Online at GenCon. It wasn't to shabby.

I guess but I just got sucked into the game and I will be pretty ticked if I am doing a mission and no one else is in the game except me because they are all playing champions

Seriously, there's basically no reason NOT to switch to Champions Online, once it finally comes out. City of Heroes/Villains has become so watered down by the NCsoft crew as it is that it's just not the same thing anymore (Champions Online is not being produced by NCsoft, Cryptic Studios is responsible for all of it). Don't know how much you know about it, but I might as well fill you in.

If you're not familiar with Champions, it's a pen and paper game that's been around for a while, based on being able to create your own Superhero (of course). Cryptic studios has used the money that they received from selling the City of Heroes license to buy out Champions completely, giving them complete access to everything the pen and paper license has to offer. Originally, Cryptic Studios had completely finished an engine to create Marvel Universe Online, but due to a legal fallout with Marvel, Cryptic had to discontinue the game. That's when they decided to buy the Champions license to continue using their already completed engine.

Champions Online will use basically the same character creation system as City of Heroes. Jack Emmert (Statesman; Creative Director for City of Heroes) has been quoted as saying that the costume creation system will have more unique pieces than ever (which is impressive, since City of Heroes had different costume combinations that numbered in the millions). On top of that, you will be able to change the color and style of each individual power (a feature that City of Heroes sorely lacks), and will also be able to choose from a variety of movement animations (floatation, robotic movements, bounding forward on all fours, etc.). If that's not enough, you can customize an alter ego (which you can eventually choose wether or not will remain secret), and you will be able to completely customize your own Arch Nemesis (which you may eventually be able to defeat and then create a new one).

Of course, you've probably seen the game already, but to those of you that haven't, it uses a completely uniqe form of cell shading, which the team calls "Comic Shading". Though the characters are depicted in extreme detail, with nice lighting and bump mapping effects, everything is outlined in a thin black line. I think this gives off a better comicbook feel than City of Heroes ever will.

If all that's not enough for you, Champions Online is basically the first MMO to have a completely real-time combat system (besides Planetside, but who's counting that?), and I'm sure it will feel right at home on the X-Box 360. Instead of using the industry standard of an "action bar", the setup is quite a bit different. As it stands now, here's the current setup for the X-Box control scheme: Left analog controls movement, and right analog controls the camera (obviously). The A button functions as a jump button, while the X, Y, and B buttons function as attack buttons. Holding down the left trigger turns the X, Y, and B buttons into another three ability keys. While you have one regular attack (which you get to choose from), you can map special abilities to the other buttons. The right trigger blocks attacks, and every time you give or receive damage, your energy bar goes up. You use your energy bar to initiate your special attacks. Oh, and did I mention that there's absolutely no delay in combat? Push a button, and you get an instant response. In this way, it's been cited as playing a lot like Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

While City of Heroes was limited to, well, a single City, Champions takes place across an entire world. Though I have no idea the scope of this actual world, you can only imagine the implications of this. Loot and Gear are present, unlike City of Heroes, but if you don't like how something looks in conjunction with your costume, you can toggle every individual gear slot off. Soloing will be just as easy and viable as teaming, unlike nearly every other MMO. To quote Jack Emmert: "I think we're sort of past the point of forced teaming". Amen. Though many missions are instanced, so too are they in City of Heroes. Cryptic has said that there will be an absolute wealth of cutscenes within missions, as well as actual voice acting, this time around. PVP is available as well, and like many of the PVP-core MMOs, PvP actually rewards you with XP and loot on par with the rest of the PvE game. There are factions around the game world that you can join, which give you access to special stores, costume items, insignias, and crafting stations.

Now if that doesn't sound like City of Heroes on steroids, I don't know what will. Though I don't see much of a reason to stick with CoH after Champions Online comes out, neither will anyone else. I'm expecting a good 80% of CoH's population to shift over to Champions Online sometime close to it's release.

Don't be sad, though. Doesn't Champions honestly seem like the better game?

Everquest 2 was billed as Everquest with expanded gameplay and better graphics and we've seen how well that went, not to mention all the improvements since Ultima Online and people still play that. Hell, people play Runescape and in plays and looks like crap. Different is different and some people are to invested in their characters or just like the combat the way it was. I should also mention part of CoH/V's appeal is the low requirements to run it. People may not want to run out and get a new PC just to run a game.

No, CoH/V isn't going to disappear.

Real-time combat + Xbox 360 = No thanks

I could kind of see Everquest II failing from a mile away. Why? The development team were obviously more focused on graphics than absolutely anything else, as the graphics back then were the most incredible to ever grace a computer screen, and even hold up as some of the best today (in fact, back then, no computer on the market could run EQII at full specs). Obviously, when you're THAT focused on one thing, everything else (especially content) will suffer. Since the focus of Champions is to improve the actual GAME (the graphics kind of seem like an afterthought), I guess we'll see, won't we?

The reason that people play Ultima Online is because nothing even comes close to matching the scope of it, nor the near infinite options you have for your character. The only leveling system in any MMO that even comes close to it is runescape, and the only reason people play runescape is so they don't have to pay for Ultima Online. Who cares if it's old as hell, as long as it offers something you can't even come close to getting anywhere else?

I didn't say that City of Heroes was going to disappear, but I did say that I think the population will take a very significant hit. Why? I don't even think it's because the game seems better (as for some people, it might actually not). I think it's because all of us City of Heroes veterans, which have been around since the beta, sincerely miss Cryptic Studios. No other company treats their players that well, giving us so much in the way of free content, a free comic book sent to our door, and even live costume contests that give your character a chance to have a cameo in said comic book, among other things. It's stuff like that, among all these other MMOs, that seriously makes a difference. It's pretty easy to see exactly how badly NCsoft is fething up CoH, by implementing things that were never meant to be in the game in the first place, just to try and push sales up a little (NCsoft is a publisher first and foremost, and this makes it obvious).

So, again, in my opinion, CoH won't die. It will just be severely crippled.

As long as Champions Online doesn't always have the martial arts character (named Seeker IIRC), knocked out on the cover of every release, I'll give it a look.

Playing Champions without all the P&P hassles sounds attractive to me.

Thanks for all the answers, I guess I should go on a frenzy and go to level 50 in one week before any champions pre-order things come out so to make sure I didn't waste 39 dollars on City of Heroes

You spent 39 dollars on City of Heroes? Recently?

That sucks, because I could've sworn that I've seen both CoH and CoV packaged together for just 20, all over the place.

Ah well. If I'm not mistaken, you should have all summer before you see a mass migration. I'm fairly sure that the release date for Champions is in the fall of this year.

Don't feel so bad. I've bought two copies of both City of Heroes and City of Villains, both at full price.

It is in Australian currency and that was the city of villains pre order pack which contained both city of heroes and villains strangely the art collection a deck of the now OOP card game, a coupon for the comic that expired three years ago, the seven exclusive heroclix free trials to other games and the exclusive in game badges and items. The game is really rare here in Australia and I asked several retailers on it and they said whoa there is an MMO about superheroes? There was one shop though that sold COV/H together for 50 dollars

I guess I would try Champions out. There is one thing though that will hook me to it is if the pre order pack has heroclix like CoV because that is what got me first interested in the game. One question though does cryptic still own a percentage of CoX? If they do They could reason with Ncsoft and actually fuse together the two games possibly like Champions is the outside world while Paragon is the central super zone in the world. I mean most if not all the characters of CoH were champions characters like positron. If not then I guess I might as well look forward to City of Heroes 2 that is coming out aswell

Aye when I was playing CoH/V a few months back there was a fair bit of talk about folks planning to jump to Champions as soon as it came out.

As for myself I'm tempted to get it on the 360 just so I can slouch in my armchair and play an MMO in proper comfort on occasion.

Cryptic has completely sold the rights to CoH to NCsoft (for quite a bit of money, I might add. Enough to completely buy out the Champions pen and paper game, so they have complete creative license with it, unlike all of that legal crap with Marvel). So I seriously doubt they will have any thought of a collaberation.

The reason that Champions now has some City of Heroes characters is because those were the characters that the Cryptic Development team originally used when they logged on to the game. They probably had an agreement with NCsoft to be able to take that property with them.

I can almost assure you that the special edition of Champions Online will come with SOME kind of figurine, because Champions is a pen and paper game foremost (in the same vein as Dungeons and Dragons). Though I seriously doubt it will be a Heroclix figure, and probably something that could work more along the lines with the actual game. If all else fails, you can always convert the figure onto a Heroclix base and write up your own rules for it, because I'm guessing that the figure will be somewhere around the same scale.

Champions is one of the biggest reasons that I even bought a 360. Also, for those of you that didn't know (I forgot to mention this), Champions Online is available for both computer and X-Box 360, and the servers for both computer and 360 will be interconnected (much like Final Fantasy XI). So, you will be able to play from your 360 with anyone who has a computer account, and vice versa. Also, if you plan on buying two copies of the game, you can play the same account from both your computer and your 360.

Champions is kind of sounding like Phantasy Star Online but with a jump button. The control layout was exactly the same. I loved PSO, so I might give it a whirl on the X-box.

Hm....except that PsO was on very small-scale servers, and didn't have nearly the character customization offered up by Cryptic (nor the completely awesome leveling system found in Champions)?

I guess I'll concede that you're right. Just feels like this has so much more potential. Then again, I'm a tried and true City of Heroes fanatic that is looking for something to compare with that initial experience of CoH.

To anyone really interested in Champions Online: On your next trip to your FLGS, ask someone there if they have the Champions PnP rulebook. If they do, read it (even just a little bit). Champions has such an amazing leveling system that it would be hard to beat when it's implemented into Champions Online. I mean, seriously. It's worth taking a look at.

Also, just to let people know...Cryptic is already at work with two more MMOs on the table. Not that they look all that great. One is like a prehistoric-era fantasy MMO (they likened it to taking Tolkien's world back thousands of years). Hopefully it doesn't turn out to be a WoW...with cavemen...but I guess you never know. Another one is simply in concept, but all of the rendered artwork depicts Mayan architecture in the middle of dense jungles. Neither one really appeals to me, but it's interesting enough to see Cryptic's dedication to the genre.

Oh yeah, they also have some other obscure IP called Star Trek they are working on an MMO for as well.

Champions appeals as I fan of the genre, although tbh the only other MMO's in production that have a slight potential for me buying them are Bioware's Old Republic based game, Star Trek and 40K.

All three being reliant on the possibility they even get released as most of us know the MMO market can be fragile and all three are really early in their devolpement.

The only other possibility would be WoW 2 if it ever happens.

Holy crap, seriously? I mean, I never read too far in to the Star Trek MMO (Star Trek isn't really my thing), but I had no idea that Cryptic was responsible for creating Star Trek Online.

They must be reeling in cash from the sale of CoH if they can afford a license like that.

Rolled a Scrapper Dual Blades w/ Willpower on the justice server. Fun.

So wait positron, statesman, manticore etc are no longer in city of heroes?

I'm not absolutely certain, but I'm fairly sure that CoH keeps Statesman, no matter what. He's basically the flagship hero of the game. He's just not controlled by Jack Emmert anymore.

oh ok then I guess everything is alright then