Why I quit playing Champions Online

The title is perhaps a bit inaccurate, because as of right now, I am technically still playing it. However, I have already canceled my subscription, and I'm fairly certain I won't be changing my mind. So the lingering question: why have I done this? The answer: lack of content.

My main character in Champions Online is Scry of Newt, a healer/dps hybrid character that combines darkness/force/sorcery/telepathy powers to heal and buff and provide some minor dps required. He is just a couple bars short of level 28 right now (40 is the level cap), and has been played nearly exclusively as a duo with Draenoth's Dual Blade martial artist of death.

At this point, we have done EVERY quest in the game up to where we are (as far as we know anyway). Take a moment for that to sink in. We've gone out our way to look for drop quests, out of the way quest givers (which there are definitely WAY too many), and we've even completed all the group content up to where we are. So at level 27, we've completed all the quests the game has to offer, and all the rest of the quests in our list are level 29 (other than 2 level 28, 5 man group quests). If that seems a little broken to you, that's because it is. If you to start a character in WoW, you'd have a choice of as many as 4 different areas to level up in (per side!), although admittedly that number drops a bit as you progress. However, even in Northrend, an average character could get to level cap and have two full zones left to quest in. I should also point out, that this is not the first time while playing Champions that this has happened to us. At level 23, we were doing nothing but level 25 quests. I've also read that this problem actually gets WORSE in the early 30's.

In short, Champions has between 1/3 and 1/4 of the content that it should have launched with. While it is still new, and it'll *probably* get more content over time, all it will ever really do is get up to the amount that it should have had initially.

While the costly respecs are definitely something that still annoys me, they are pretty easy to get over in comparison to this. Not only do I not have content to do with my main, but I have no desire to roll an alt, as I'll have to do all the exact same quests over again that I already did.

Perhaps it'll eventually get to a point where there is enough content to not have leveling gaps and map alts viable, but by the time that happens, I'll have been long gone for quite some time.

Despite my quibbles, I've enjoyed the last few weeks I've spent playing Champions. Expect a full review in the next week or so.

Chronicles of Riddick Initial Impressions

Never one to pass up a good deal, I recently picked up the Chronicles of Riddick from Direct2Drive for $5 as part of their five-year anniversary sale. While my previous experience with Direct2Drive wasn't great, it really wasn't that bad this time. Turns out they use the Fileplanet download manager which I had installed to obtain the Fallen Earth and Champions Online betas. With that installed properly, I must admit the experience was much smoother. However, given equal pricing, it offers me NOTHING that Steam doesn't already provide, with a loss of a friends list. In fact, I enjoy the friends chat there so much, that I actually added Riddick into Steam so I could still use the overlay.

As for the game itself, I must admit I was pleasantly surprised. Movie-licensed games are often notoriously bad (as my own game, The Tale of Despereaux, can attest); however, I'd heard good things about Riddick. I was not disappointed.

The version I purchased came with the original game, Escape from Butcher Bay, as well as the sequel, Dark Athena. Escape from Butcher Bay is a five-year-old game at this point, nevertheless, the graphics have held up surprisingly well. I instantly turned the settings most of the way up and found the game to not only look quite nice, but also run smoothly. Furthermore, the game doesn't even have any annoying graphic glitches on my ATI card... something that has become increasingly common lately.

The basic premise in Escape From Butcher Bay is that you have been captured by a bounty hunter and are dropped off at the high security prison, Butcher Bay. The game plays from a first person perspective, with all the typical trappings you'd expect from a shooter. There is a decent variety of ranged weapons (shotguns, assault rifles, etc), as well as melee weapons (shivs, clubs, screwdrivers, knuckledusters, etc). Additional, there are some basic stealth elements in which you can sneak around and perform some "stealth" kills. I've been quite pleased with the combat variety so far, and the overall difficulty also seems pretty good.

The place the game really shines though, is in its "adventure" features. Besides being able to fight, you also get opportunities to talk to other inmates and guards, taking quests for them or just being snarky. You can collect cigarette cartons to unlock extra features, collect money from hidden caches, and even gamble in a simple craps game. My favorite thing so far is when one drug addicted inmate asked me to gather some moths for him that were flying around the yard. When I got back to him, he was VERY happy; I must admit I chuckled a bit. While it's certainly no Fallout 3, it does provide quite a few interesting diversions and even some alternate solutions at times.

I honestly can't think of any real complaints I have with the game so far, but will definitely point them out in my final review.

Scared to Choose

Another week has passed since I started playing Champions Online and while I'm still enjoying myself and think they did quite a few things right, there are still some lingering issues that are seriously detracting from my enjoyment of the game.

Without a doubt, the biggest issue in the game is the retcon system.

Champions Online offers the player a LOT of choices. In all honesty, it probably offers too many choices. If you had no idea what you were doing and didn't research your character at all, you could VERY easily make a character that would be completely unplayable. While this isn't inherently bad in and of itself, the fact that there is no way to undo these choices, is where the game is broken.

As mentioned previously, the respec system (retcon) in Champions is unbelievably expensive. While their last patch did make a change to allow people to respec more than their last ten powers, the price of doing so is so exuberant, that it's pretty much impossible to respec all but the last 3 at most. Furthermore, since the price to respec previous powers is a linear-ish increase, the cost of undoing a mistake made relatively early in the character build is astronomical. I wish I could throw some hard numbers around it, but it easily turns into 10-20x the amount of money a character at your level would expect to have. Also, the price of respeccing increases as you level and the respec costs are based on possible powers (meaning ones if you have an unused power point it still affects the price of respecs) rather than actual powers. The combination of these two things basically means that respeccing is just plain and simply impossible. Even if you spent all your time just grinding for resources (something I would NOT recommend) you would essentially be fighting an uphill battle as you would level up (thus increasing the respec costs) faster than you would be making money. The system is absolutely and completely broken.

The side effect of having a broken respec system is that I find myself terrified to buy any new powers. How do I know it won't suck in 2-3 levels? I literally spent over an hour in the power house last night trying to decide which power to take and eventually logged off not having purchased anything. At the end of the day, they have made the game less fun for me because of this limitation. That is honestly all there is to it.

I think the smart thing to do would be to price respecs based on overall number of powers respecced, rather than per respec. Let me see if I can explain:

The first time I respec any power (and I can undo ANY choice I made, even an early one) it would cost me say 1000 resources. Then, the next time I respec any power, it would cost me 2000 resources; similar to the way respecs in WoW cost 1g, then 2g, etc. The beauty of this system is that it allows a person to relatively easily undo a single bad choice. If I made a bad decisions 14 decisions ago, I don't want to undo the past 14, just that one. They could also implement a cool down on this so if I don't do any respecs for say a month or so, the price of respeccing halves. While I can't vouch for everyone, I don't think the general populace really wants to be able to afford to undo EVERY choice made; that would be analogous to being able to respec in WoW from a Rogue to a Warlock. That would be silly. However, if I took a Rogue skill at level 10 that I don't like, I shouldn't be forced to pay to undo 70 levels of good choices just to fix that one.

In its current form, the retcon system is enough to make me want to stop playing the game. Unless it changes, I will NOT be paying for a second month and that is the reason I will mark in the cancellation form.

Expect more of my thoughts on the game in the next few days.

Champions Online Initial Impressions

Draenoth and I preordered Champions Online last week and started playing last Friday as part of their head start weekend. I've now put in 4 evenings of play time and have leveled 3 characters all the way through the tutorial zones (takes a couple of hours).

While this isn't a review per se, I'm going to structure it similar to my reviews as it seems to make the most sense.

Love

• Being a hero. The game does a remarkable job at making you actually feel heroic... at least in certain builds. City of Heroes never really seemed to grasp this for me; I'm not quite sure why. I always just sort of felt like I was playing an MMO with super heroes as the characters rather than actually being a super hero. Champions definitely steps it up a notch and has some really heroic powers (the AoE force blast is definitely one of my favorites).
• Character creation. Champions is made by Cryptic, which is same studio (new name) that made City of Heroes. And it shows. They basically pulled every good feature from City of Heroes, especially the character creator. It is ridiculously rich in features and allows you to create all kinds of different looking heroes. Of the three I've made so far, one is a skeleton with wings (that actually flap when he flies!), the other is a very traditional looking hero with a cape, and the third is some sort of amphibian looking character than actually moves on all fours. I'm blown away by the number of different options there are (this coming from somebody who played CoH), however I will say that same categories are really limited, such as cowls and neck pieces. Generally speaking though, you can make a hero who looks like just about anything or anyone.
• Power house. The power house is one of those things that once you understand it, it makes so much sense that you wonder why nobody has ever had something like it before. Basically, when you need to level up, you go there and purchase your powers/advantages/stat boosts, etc. Then, you can test out your powers on various levels of dummys, lasers, obstacle courses, etc and decide if you like them. If you don't, you can undo the purchases and try something else out. Once you find something you like, you leave the power house and lock in your purchases. I can almost guarantee that this is a feature most future MMOs will borrow (if they're smart). It is amazingly good at helping you find things that work and are fun.
• Travel powers. The travel powers in Champions are excellent. There are also quite a few more than in City of Heroes. They range from various types of flight (normal, fire, hover discs/earth/ice) to tunneling and even include things like teleportation (my personal favorite) and swinging Spider Man style. Also, they give them to you at level 5, which means you only play the game for about an hour before getting them. I've never understand why games make you play for so long before giving you traveling powers/mounts. This is something that Champions definitely did right.
  

Hate

• Retcon (respecs). I have NO idea what they are thinking here. The respec system in its current form is completely broken. First of all, there are no full respecs. You can only undo the last 10 choices you have made. These include not only powers, but all stat and advantage choices. You can VERY easily mess up your build and not realize until it is too late. If that was the only problem, however, it wouldn't be that big of a deal though. The absolutely game breaking issue here is the cost. In my opinion, respec costs are about 10x what they should be. For example, you get new powers every 3 levels. I went to the power house at level 8 and checked the respec costs. Respeccing just one skill was 500+ resources. Then they increased backwards from there. At this time my total net worth was right around... 500 resources. Basically, in all the time I've been playing, I've never had a character that could afford to respec more than 1 to 2 powers. While I would hold out hope that I could do it later, the respec costs increase as you level, and you still can only go back 10 actions. Cryptic promised to drop the prices of respeccing when the game officially launched (yesterday), however the changes were so minuscule, most people couldn't even tell the different. The respeccing system is so bad, it makes every choice you make a time of actual stress and has actually caused people to call customer support and cancel their lifetime subscriptions. (NOTE: Looks like they patched this again just today. I'll write another post tomorrow with my new impressions on it).
• Tutorial zones. Every character you start plays through about 6 levels in the first tutorial zone, then the next 3 or so levels in one of two "Crisis" zones. While it is nice to have some option between the crisis zones, that very first zone gets old VERY fast. I've only taken 3 characters through it so far, but I'm already absolutely bored by it. When you compare this to a game like WoW that has so many different starting areas, it really doesn't stand up well. Also, Champions is a game that sort of begs you to make alts. The power sets are so different and the character creator is so fun, that I think everyone will have at least 3-4+ characters, even people who are generally anti-alt like me. They desperately need to give you some other tutorial zone options or at least let you skip that first zone altogether and spit you out in a Crisis zone at level 5.
• Where are my villains? It took a standalone expansion to get villains in the City of Heroes universe, and it was something I REALLY thought they should have done at launch here. It would have provided some more starting zone options, helped out the overly simplistic PvP quite a bit, and even just allowed for some variety in general. I've got a horrible feeling that they will add villains in an expansion, but quite honestly, I don't think I'll still be around when that happens.

Just some other things to note: there are a LOT of power sets. I'm actually kind of surprised by how many there are. Furthermore, Champions has a "classless" system which means that you don't create a tank, you just create a hero and then switch him to "sentinel" role. While some heroes would obviously be better suited to tanking than others, it is definitely an interesting idea. I've yet to see quite how it plays out, so won't comment on it much more.

So far, I'm definitely having a pretty good pile of fun with the game. Other than the retconning issue (which it sounds like they are working on), I don't have any big beefs with the game. I'm really curious to see how it progresses as I level up and will definitely be back here filling you all in.

Killing Floor

Sometime last week, my friend (Draenoth) and I, picked up Killing Floor on Steam. Killing Floor is a co-op zombie survival game that was originally a mod for UT2004. It's now a standalone game still using the UT2004 engine. As you'd expect for a mod turning full game, it isn't the most amazing piece of software. However, for what it is, it's surprisingly enjoyable.

The game play quite strongly reminds me of Nazi Zombies from World at War. Basically, you play through a set number of waves where each wave has a set number of zombies. Unlike Nazi Zombies, there are a variety of zombies in Killing Floor -- some of which are absolutely brutal. In the early waves, you see nothing but Clots (your basic plodding, melee zombie), Bloats (VERY similar to Boomer's from L4D in that they spray you with bile), and Goreclaws (zombies that plod along, get close, then rush at you with some nasty blades). As the levels progress, you eventually encounter Crawlers (spider looking zombies who jump on you), Sirens (slow moving but have a stunning "scream" ability), Stalkers (mostly invisible right up until they start swiping at you), Scrakes (similar to Goreclaws but instead of blades, they wield very mean chainsaws), and finally Gorepounds (very tough zombies who chase you down and have the ability to kill you VERY fast). The variety of zombies makes for some ridiculously fast paced matches that are often quite frantic.

Also different from Nazi Zombies is the fact that there are a set number of waves. Survive them all and you enter a final wave where you must take down a Patriarch (big, tough and has a chaingun, rocket launcher, and a serious melee attack). He's definitely nasty and requires some actual strategy to defeat. The patriarch battle is a good capstone to the rounds and has satisfying feel to it that Nazi Zombies lacks, even when you go through 20+ rounds.

As far as weapons go, Killing Floor has a pretty decent variety. There are a handful of melee weapons including an axe, a katana, and chainsaw. The guns include dual wielded Desert Eagles Hand Cannons, machine guns, shotguns, rifles, and even a crossbow, rocket launcher, flame thrower. Additionally, you have the ability to pull out a syringe and heal yourself (or teammates) and even a welder to seal doors to slow the flow of zombies. I'm pretty pleased with the gun selection in Killing Floor and find it to be substantially better than either Left 4 Dead or the Nazi Zombie mode.

The thing I most like about Killing Floor, however, is its perk system. You can choose from one of 6 (I think) different perks. Each of these boosts a specific weapon class. There is one for healing, one for the shotgun, one for melee, one for pistols/rifles, one for machine guns, and one for the flamethrower. They provide a boost to your damage, your reload speed, and even provide weapon discounts (you buy weapons from a trader between waves). Each perk levels from 0 to 5. To level them up, you merely use the related skill/weapon. The best part is that you don't need to be that class to level up the perk, e.g. if you are a Firebug, you still level up your medic perk by healing your teammates. The perks level up in a matter resembling a quadratic curve, i.e. they level a LOT slower after the first few levels. So far, they've started to get really amazing at just level 2, so we're pretty anxious to see how they end up.

My biggest beef with the game so far is definitely how buggy the graphics are. While Draenoth reports that things seem okay for him, I have some really annoying problems with textures that seem to disappear. I even filed a bug on the official forums (it's still in moderation, I'll link it when it's up).

The final, most interesting thing we noticed about the game is just how challenging it is. We started playing on Normal (2 difficulties above it, 1 below) and found ourselves dying quite consistently in only the second round. After spending some time in Beginner, with a mutator turned on that only spawns Clots, we managed to level up our perks enough so that we were able to finally get through a game on Normal. I think it's actually pretty cool that the game has such a wide range of difficulty options.

I'm going to wait until we play the game more to write up final thoughts, but so far I'm relatively pleased. It's not amazing, it probably won't be something I'll play for a really long time, but it was easily worth the $20 I paid for it. Oh, and if any of you pick it up, let me know as it supports up to 6 people.

The Path Review

The other game I played through this last weekend was The Path. It's a creepy adventure game based on the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Basically, you select from one of 6 different "Red" sisters. Each of them sport a unique personality: little Robin is young and naive, Scarlet is the responsible "mom" type, Ruby is the rebellious goth, etc. Regardless of your choice, you are dumped at the start of the path with two instructions:

1. Go to Grandmother's house
2. Don't stray from the path

Like any good little gamer, I walked straight down the path, entered Grandmother's house, navigated to her room (you just press a button and watch the girl automatically move through the house), and was promptly informed that I had failed.

I immediately started again and decided to carefully make my way off of the path. At first I was hesitant and kept the path in sight, fearing that I would be attacked by a wolf if I strayed too far. After I continued to encounter nothing, I decided I would just run directly away and see what I could find.

Before long, I came to a graveyard. I looked around and saw some objects I could "interact" with: a skull, a dead bird, and even a mysterious girl in white. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be doing, so I spent the next hour or so wandering aimlessly through the forest. I found various things strewn about, some of which I could "collect" and some I could not -- there was an obvious indicator on some that I would need to visit it with another girl. Eventually, I had an encounter with the "wolf," who was some sort of water entity or something. When I awoke, I was lying on the ground just outside of Grandmother's house. I limped inside and quickly discovered that the interior was quite different. Instead of walking peacefully to Grandmother's room, I went from room to room, each of which was like some sort of personal Hell for my "sister." Instead of arriving safely at the end, I eventually encountered a final room and I think I was killed somehow. I don't really know.

That's pretty much the whole game. I played through with each of the other 5 girls for good measure, each of which had a different feel and experiences, but were all pretty similar.

Okay, my final thoughts:

Loved

• Creepy. The game had great music and a great visual style. I also really enjoyed how the comments of the girls were written to the screen. In general, there always seemed to be some sort of danger lurking, even though there wasn't. I also thought the scenes in Grandma's house were both creepy and disturbing.

Hated

• WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!?! I basically spent the whole game asking that question. I figured it would become more clear when I starting playing with other girls. Nope. Then I figured it would become more clear when I played the Epilogue. Nope. Finally, I went and read a walkthough of the game hoping that would make it more obvious. Nope. I get that the game is dripping with symbolism (the wolves represent things like rape/approval/etc.), but it was WAY too abstract for me. There was just lots of stuff (read: pretty much everything) that there was no explanation for.
• Wandering in the forest. The game expects you to find various objects throughout the forest. Each girl has a subset of the overall group of items that she can find/interact with. These subsets overlap between the various girls. Each girl also has 2-3 "special" items that she finds that unlock extra rooms at Grandma's. Finally, each girl needs to find her "wolf." The forest is a ridiculously annoying place with visibility at only a couple hundred feet, sides that wrap (think Zelda Lost Forest style), and very few landmarks of any distinction. The only map you initially get (until you finish the game once) is a 2D overlay that shows up every so often on its own, indicating the path you have taken. Furthermore, I'm pretty sure the forest was different (at least slightly) for every girl. All of these things combined meant that I spent the VAST majority of my time just sort of wandering aimlessly, looking for things I could interact with. It was quite tedious and definitely sucked away from my overall enjoyment.

The Path is definitely in the "art as games" category. I'll be honest: I didn't "get it." That's not to say that somebody else wouldn't, but I'd have a really hard time recommending it. If you like weird, artsy adventure games, give it a try.

And make sure to come back and explain it to me when you're done.

Braid Review

I'm still playing through the games in that big indie games pack, and actually got through two of them this last weekend. First up: Braid.

Braid is a very interesting puzzle game, the likes of which I don't believe I've ever seen. At its core, it is little more than a simple platformer with puzzle elements. You move, jump, stomp enemies, and use keys to open doors while trying to collect puzzle pieces. In fact, the first set of stages are little more than that. However, the game has a hook that really changes its dynamic: time manipulation.

If you die somehow, instead of presenting you with a game over screen or similar, the game just shows you the rewind time button. As you hold that button down, time rewinds until you let go -- even all the way back to when you started the level. You can use the trigger buttons to speed up/slow down time, even reversing its direction and playing it forward again. While this does have a Sands of Time style usage as mentioned previously, it is a LOT more involved than that. For example, any item that has green sparkles around it is unaffected by time manipulation. You can jump down a pit, grab a "green" key, and then rewind time and watch the key come right out of the pit with you. It makes for some REALLY interesting mechanics. Furthermore, each level has a unique time related mechanic you use throughout its stages. I'll discuss those more below.

Intro done; here's the review:

Loved

• Time manipulation. I really enjoyed the time manipulation mechanic. It was very interesting and allows you to do all kinds of things you wouldn't even initially realize. The game also has some great graphical changes when you were manipulating time, with the screen becoming gray scale when reversing and oversaturated when going forward.
• Unique level mechanics. As I mentioned above, each level had a unique mechanic. There were 5 level in all (although for some reason the first one is level 2), and each played VERY different. Level 2 was merely a set of jumping puzzles. Level 3 introduces you to time manipulation and "green" items. Level 4 was probably the most unique in that as you move right on the screen time flows forward and as you move left, it flows backwards. It made for some super interesting solutions. In Level 5 you have a shadow that appears after you rewind time and carries out all the actions you yourself just did. Solutions here require you to actual work together with yourself. Finally, in level 6, you can erect a time-slowing bubble. Every level had a very different feel and it kept the game quite fresh.
• Logical solutions. With one relatively glaring exception (remember that enemies bounce up when they land on your head), all of the solutions actually made sense. There were not really any times where the solutions were ridiculous and they all generally just required some thought and a little trial and error.
  

Hated

• No "capstone" level. The game length really wasn't bad, but I felt like it could have used another level at the end that required you to use all or some of the mechanics together. Stages where you have to run your shadow through a time-slow bubble or something similar REALLY would have been cool. The final stage was actually relatively disappointing and required very little thought.

My quibbles with the game are definitely minor and I would recommend it to anybody. Even at the $10-$15 price point, I don't think you'll be disappointed. If you have even a passing interest in puzzle games, pick it up.