Loved
- Powers. Generally speaking, nearly all the power sets had something going for them. There were relatively few really bad powers (although definitely some where better than others). Additionally, the ability that the game gives you to choose powers from any power set really adds to the diversity of your characters. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out how different powers would go together thematically and even changed the core concept of my main character twice.
- Missions. While there certainly aren't enough of them (see below), the ones there are are actually pretty decent. While the majority of them are definitely standard MMO fare (kill x, collect x, take this to him, etc), they are decently varied and provide a pretty good amount of entertainment. Also, the drop quests are generally smart enough to give the drop to all party members. The only glaring oversight is when you need to pick up an item off the ground... this had us running around finding twice as many as we EACH had to collect the items.
- Solo Friendly. You can do pretty much everything in this game by yourself. While there are a few quests in the game that recommend groups, most of them become very solo-able after you pass the recommended level by 2 or 3. The game really does allow you to roll just about any character and run out and be a hero all on your own.
- Content. I have definitely touched on this before, but it bears reiteration here, this game does not have any where even close to enough content in it. Period. When you do EVERY mission in the entire game and you still don't have have enough content to stay the appropriate level as your missions, there is definitely a problem. That doesn't even bring up the fact that the game offers zero re-playability in its current form. If I could say one thing to the devs of the game it would be: ADD MORE CONTENT! Perhaps they'll get there in another year or two.
- Zones. For the first 30 levels of the game (and there are only 40 total), you spend ALL of your time in only 3 different zones. You travel between these zones multiple times and visit multiple areas, but it doesn't change the fact that by the time I was in the late 20's, I was desperately bored with the frozen landscape of Canada and the barren wasteland of the Desert. City of Heroes definitely did this better, as even though you were in Paragon City the entire time, each of the various zones of the city had a unique feel. I honestly don't know what they were thinking in having such few zones... it felt like they merely did it to meet a deadline.
- Respecs. I brought this up in my initial impressions post as the reason I would probably quit the game. While it was definitely atrocious in its original incarnation, they did make it better over time. As of this writing, you can respec all the way to your first power and you can even afford to do more than 2 of them at a time. Regardless, it is still a pretty dismal system and serves to curtail one of the best features of the game: the customization of your characters. It is far too easy to mess up a character in Champions and not realize it until many levels later. Since you need to undo all choices to get back to the one mistake, it essentially becomes impossible to undo a single bad choice you made early on. All they need to do is provide a way to undo single purchases and I think most of the respec complaints would go away real fast.
- Public Quests. I think the idea of public quests is a great one. Lots of people team up to do something epic. However, the implementation in Champions definitely left something to be desired. The rewards (both in items and experience) just weren't significant enough to warrant doing them... really at all. There was one we tried to do where a cosmic boss shows up at the end. There ended up being about 6 of us fighting him (only because we were yelling across the zone for help) and we ended up killing him only by employing "zerg" tactics (dying then running back to the fight). At the end, I received a single healing patch (like a health pot) as my "contribution" was the least, since I didn't actually damage the boss at all (I was healing). Even the person who does the most damage merely receives a dime a dozen item upgrade which is quickly sold. If they would make these quests rewarding enough that people were actually excited about doing them, then they'd definitely have something amazing on their hands.
- Too Solo Friendly. Perhaps this changes in the very last levels of the game, but there is essentially no reason to ever group up. Other than the few group quests (which are TRIVIAL even with just 2 people), there just isn't any reason to be in a group at all. In fact, it was often detrimental to our questing to be grouped when we each had to pick up 6 of something off the ground. Furthermore, the group mechanics don't feel very fleshed out to me. As a healer, I spent most of my time in a Sentinel role which sped up my energy recovery at a cost of damage output. This allowed me to heal ridiculous amounts. However, Draenoth took a crippling health hit when he switched into a dps role or a crippling dps hit when he switched to a tanking role. Also, I pretty much just pulled aggro ALL THE TIME as a healer, even though my highest stat was Presence, which is supposed to lower your threat generation. We never did any full group stuff (as there was NO reason to up the point we were), but I've read that threat generation and full group mechanics in general just don't work very well even later on.
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