Looking back on launch day: Champions Online
by Tateru Nino 
Sep 3rd 2009 at 9:30AM
Filed under: Super-hero, Launches, Opinion, Champions Online
You won't normally find me anywhere near an MMOG on launch day. As much as I love our shared hobby, I'm usually one to wait six months or so for the operators to stop the servers from catching on fire, massage out the worst of the glitches and for the pack to spread out so that the low-level zones aren't packed shoulder-to-shoulder with folks hunting the same low-level spawns.
Well, I made an exception for Champions Online, which was unexpectedly available in Australia on the actual USA launch day. Considering how a lot of other launches have fared, I was quite pleased and surprised.
There was a launch-day patch, which either 'balanced' or 'nerfed' powers. Which word you choose will depend a whole lot on whether you were affected by it. Mostly this hit the pre-order customers, who had gotten early-access to the game prior to launch day. For those of us starting just after the patch, there doesn't seem to be a lot of impact yet.
Instances (Champions Online operates as if it is a single server with a variable number of instances of each zone) were busy enough, but not too busy. By comparison, closed and open betas were a whole lot busier. There were still a few issues now and again where a zone change or instance change would take a quite a while, leaving you wondering if you'd actually hit the key or not. Then you'd realize that it was just being slow again, and resign yourself to waiting a couple minutes before the system caught up.
Queuing for spawnable mission targets in the field was much reduced, and it looks like many of those missions have more of them than they had at beta, which is good. Not much makes you feel less super than standing in a queue waiting for a wounded soldier to respawn so that you can zap him with a medical kit or queuing for a target villain, especially when there's six or seven groups of you waiting your turn.
All in all, it's a fairly solid experience, unless you were an early-access hero and Doctor Developer's minions hit you with the immitigable nerf gun on launch day, or got hit by the emergency server maintenance just after midnight the following morning.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Final Fantasy360 said on 9:50AM 9-03-2009
Was an early starter and my characters fine. Hes not plowing through enemies with ease now and I'm actually having to actually try on missions now and team up at times. Which is fantastic I'm after a multiplayer experiance after all. I have batman for my single player fix.
I think the bitching right now is a bit over the top. I'm sure some moves need balancing and tweaking some more you can't expect them to get it perfect. It's an ever changing world you've gotta take the good with the bad.
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Arnie said on 9:56AM 9-03-2009
I actually got into the Head Start and there was for sure a lot of difference before and after the patch. However, it was not impossible to solo, at least for my character. I played around with Force powers and it actually interesting how the AI differs as you level up. Earlier goons used to swarm me and I could just spam my AoE attack. However later level goons would run away as I charged my AoE attack to just outside its radius. With the 'nerf' I need to pull my guys but the range of powers on both sides is so large and enemies clumped quiet a lot, its really hard to do it if not impossible. Invariably you end up aggroing another group.
One more issue I found was that I am constantly running out of missions and quests at my level without leveling up. I was stuck in 18 & 19 for a long long time & did quests 2 levels higher (with a lot of dying of course) just so that I could continue moving ahead. I dont know if this true for everyone but I did a majority of my quests in the desert and the city and then when I went to Canadian wilderness, the NPCs would not give me the low level quests anymore making me miss out on some much needed XP (at least at those levels). I have only hit 20 so far and I am pretty much done with almost all desert quests(upto level 21) & I have so many items which I cannot equip that its not even funny.
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Nimora said on 10:04AM 9-03-2009
I agree with the article! Champions Online is an amazing game so far, and I'm having so much fun. OMG the powerstation is sooo addictive, I can spend hours in there testing out all the different powers and just being creative.
I'm loving the new patch! The added difficulty is so much funner and I won't be getting bored any time soon....
Now back to my hero...
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Jason said on 10:09AM 9-03-2009
Not to go off topic but LOTRO also had an incredibly smooth launch. I think as time passes more and more companies are learning from past mistakes.
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Zheitgeist said on 10:24AM 9-03-2009
i played through the whole OP and headstart, and I was also hit with the "nerfgun" and really I like it better. I have 5 friends playing and none of them are really having any crippling issues, although one would like to get rid of the most recent power, but it is crazy expensive (a whole different issue they are working on). Personally I adore the new added difficulty. In OB and Headstart combined I only died twice the whole time I played, and after playing with the patches last night I died at least 3 times, which is awesome.
I love having to think "will this get me killed" when i walk into a fight, and many times I still plow through enemies, I just have to do it faster and with more consideration for my health bar. I love it.
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Celestian said on 11:53AM 9-03-2009
I am repeating this from another post but would batman see 6 thugs and say "Hum, I better wait for backup, these 6 henchmen look tough!" No we wouldn't have. Robin, yeah, he'd wait for batman. Guess we're relegated to sidekick status.
Aganazer said on 12:23PM 9-03-2009
I think Batman would first have to consider what level they were.
Even my support character can take on 5 even con henchman without any issues. The same character was STILL able to complete two player missions. The patch difficulty is fine.
There are still a few encounters here and there that could use some tweaking, but for the most part its not overly difficult. Challenging, yes, but that is what we want in a game.
Tateru Nino said on 12:26PM 9-03-2009
The Darknight Dreadnought himself does rather tend to rely on stealth and surprise, as tackling a group of prepared and well-armed henchmen toe-to-toe could easily turn him into The Batstain pretty quickly.
Celestian said on 1:45PM 9-03-2009
That's great, if you got "stealth and suprise" which the game has neither and auto-attacks you if the mobs are linked.
Do we all need CC and heals now too?
Seriously, we're sidekicks.
ian said on 11:02AM 9-03-2009
I just hope a fix is incoming for my Gadget man's pets.
How many times do they sit there doing F**k all when I am on the verge of dying, lost count how many times I have screamed at them to heal me.
Give us a decent pet UI, allow my munition bots to teleport in and out rather than me having to respawn them, every time I travel from A-B.
Oh I long for the day when I dont have to shout "Stop shouting the F*!ing boxes and shoot this villian who is opening a can of whoopass on me!"
Still a great overall, just a few teething problems I am sure.
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chriskovo said on 1:32PM 9-03-2009
Im sorry if i was playing for 2 or 3 days already and got up to around lvl 15 and then had everything be nerfed, with no free respec i would be pissed too. You dont just do this to people im sorry espeically when they are paying for the game. I am glad I stayed clear of this game, otherwise i would be demanding my money back at this point.
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Celestian said on 11:51AM 9-03-2009
I enjoy the game but the changes were to much. None of my "tank" characters can do much at all anymore. I die 4-5 times as much as I used to and it just gets frustrating.
For now I just do ranged dps like everyone else until they decide to fix the badly designed patch.
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Aganazer said on 12:29PM 9-03-2009
What powers do you have?
I was reading earlier about a Might character with STR/CON that was having problems. After digging into the issue, it turns out they totally gimped their character by taking Personal Force Field which scales based on END/EGO and were not using very good tactics in combat. Essentially they were using AOE's on single targets and would get bogged down trying to kill the two bar villain before the henchman.
There is nothing wrong with having to reroll because of mistakes you made in your character design. We are all still learning the ropes with this game. I've also been surprised at how much a simple change of tactics can make.
derella said on 12:40PM 9-03-2009
@Aganazer I think the problem is that before the patch it was hard -to- die, and so people never bothered to think about a fight before they randomly jumped 2+ groups of bad guys.
My Might/Invulnerability character is still tough, and hasn't died yet.
Celestian said on 1:38PM 9-03-2009
I am might, I didn't take invul I took defiance, you know the defensive passive in the might tree.
Invul is better, I know this now and unfortunately can't respec out of it because of the ridiculously overpriced retcon pricing. So either I re-roll to get back some semblance of the tanking I had at which point the badly designed patch 2 will hit.
The problem is they nerfed item defense by 50%, boosted henchmen damage by 2+ times and then nerfed the "tanks" defensive abilities 10%+ (that includes invul).
I feel more like a sidekick than a hero. Get more than 3 mobs and it's a wipe, get 3 and it's 50/50.
Aganazer said on 2:08PM 9-03-2009
You might want to give it another shot. They just gave your head start characters a free respec.
My might character with defiance has been doing fine, but I might take Invuln in the respec just because it will stack with the defiance given from Defensive Combo.
Nibbana said on 1:31PM 9-03-2009
Free respec for Head Start customers. Now please, less crying, more heroism.
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Aganazer said on 2:05PM 9-03-2009
Yay! Here is a link to the official announcement of the free respec for all head start characters.
http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=52880
Cyspeth said on 2:04PM 9-03-2009
Tech wise it was very smooth, the game was stable had no queue to log in. Game has great graphics runs well, from a tech level it's all superb.
But the patch was frankly a seriously poor decision by Cryptic. I have no idea why in 2009 a company would think it would be wise to buff mob's, nerf player defensive and offensive abilities, nerf many different player damage powers, as well as up respec costs to the point of being impossible to anyone with a job.
I'm not questioning that balance changes needed to be made, but they tossed the game on it's head. Champions for the 3 day headstart was a much different play experience. Now it would be different if they had given respecs or even just made them affordable so at least people wouldn't be stuck. But they haven't as of yet and people on forums and in game are arguing pro and con about it.
As someone thats been thru alot of MMO launches I have to say I haven't seen angst hit forums this fast in a MMO after launch. AOC's forums took 2 weeks to get to where Champions is on day 3.
I'm hoping that as I log in now that the respec will have gone thru and maybe it will calm down. It's a good game all it's problems are human PR errors for the most part.
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Celestian said on 2:40PM 9-03-2009
It's unfortunate we gotta take a defensive talent outside of our "tree" to tank but oh well. Hopefully it's not nerfed too.
Looking forward to the respec.
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