Champions On-line review

Cryptic Studios’ Champions Online takes the best elements of superhero MMOGs and combines them with a beautiful graphics engine, the world's best character creator, and improved, modernized game mechanics to create a solid, engaging MMOG that's off to a  blazing start -- and will likely only improve in the months ahead.

Best. Costume.Creator. Ever.
The costume creator is hands-down the most sophisticated character creator -- not to mention one of the best looking -- bar none. Virtually everything about your character's size, features, stance, and costume – even the color of your powers -- can be customized. In addition, you can acquire and craft additional costume pieces as you progress through the game, so the vast array of choices you have in the beginning of the game is just the tip of the iceberg -- and will likely grow further with future updates.

Like  its progenitor, City of Heroes (also created by Cryptic Studios), you can visit a tailor any time to change your costume (for a price in 'resources' – the currency of the game). You also gain additional costume slots as you gain levels, and the first additional costume slot becomes available at level 15.

Character Creation
The character creation system used in the game is similar to the Champions pen and paper game that inspired it. Players of that game will recognize most of the characteristics, although the game system underneath the hood is much different that the tabletop RPG.

In addition, like the pen-and-paper RPG, there are no classes in the game. If you want to make a character quickly, you can start by selecting a pre-made power framework (like super strength, fire powers, etc.), select your starting powers and basic character build (stats), and get started.

But if you want to truly make a custom hero from the ground up, you can design virtually any character you can conceive, mixing and matching powers from various power sets. If you want a fire-shooting, flying-martial arts lizard man, you can make one.

With each level you gain, you acquire either a new power, a new power rank, a new power advantage (a special modifier for one of your powers), or a stat boost. This allows for a virtually endless variety of characters, and removes the tank-healer-mage-rogue dynamic still common in many MMOGs. If you discover a particular power set isn't working for you, however, you can spend resources to 'respec' your character later.

In addition to your  starting character build, you gain additional character “builds” as you gain levels. Builds basically allow you to assign different loot to your 9 inventory slots.

Builds serve as a way to tailor your character to particular roles -- offensive, damage sponge, etc -- but they don't change your character's powers and abilities. Certain passive powers are only available in certain builds, and each build has an innate effect on your character's combat abilities, essentially shifting their focus between defense, recovery, and offense. The Guardian build, for example, is a balanced build which evenly distributes offense, defense, and recovery. The Avenger build sacrifices defense to increase damage bonuses. You can switch between various builds by pressing the function key (F5, F6, etc.) for that build. 

The character and costume creation process is infinitely flexible, but it comes at a price. New players may find it a bit difficult to penetrate at first. As long as you're patient, however, the game makes changing your character fairly easy, and experimenting with different characters is pretty fun in its own right. And one other bonus -- you never have to worry about name duplication. Even if there's a another 'Captain Flatulence' on the server, the game actually registers you as 'Captain Flatulence@<account name>' -- but it will only appear as Captain Flatulence in the actual game.

Innovative Missions -- 85% grind-free!
One thing I appreciated from the very beginning of the game – and something that has persisted through the first 20 levels -- is that Champions Online clearly tries to avoid throw-away "grind quests" – you know, the "go kill 10 giant rat" quests. I'd estimate that less than 15% of the missions I've encountered through the first 20 levels have been grind-quests.

While there is no shortage of NPCs wearing exclamation points as hats (i.e. mission givers), Champions Online also offers a more 'organic' mission-giving system befitting the superhero genre. Sometimes, a citizen will just run up to you and ask you for help in stopping a crime. These are timed missions, but you automatically receive the XP reward at the end of the mission without having to 'turn in the mission'. In addition, there are regular ‘group instances’ that happen at timed intervals. These instances allow any nearby heroes to just jump in and take part – such as the jailbreak in Millennium City Jail (which must be the world's most unsecured jail, because there's a jail break every twenty minutes or so).

But before you get to the 'good stuff', you'll spend levels 1-5 going through the game's tutorial level, completing a variety of missions and learning the ins and outs of the game. You're pretty much limited to the powers you begin the game with at this point – which doesn't include travel powers, unfortunately -- so you'll be running everywhere at a rather slow clip. 

Completing the tutorial, however, ends with a nice in-game cut scene that really makes you feel like you've accomplished something. You'll also get to pick the rest of your 'beginning' powers – including the all-important travel power (flying, superleap, teleport, or whatever you decide upon).

After completing the tutorial, you have to make a choice: head to the desert and fight mutants, or head to Canada and fight hosers (er, zombies, actually, so Zombie hosers). Either way, the next part of the game generally spans levels 5-12 (or so) and essentially  serves as an expanded tutorial in which you have much more freedom and a much bigger zone to explore. This part of the game still goes fairly easy on the grind-quests.

About the time you hit level 10 or greater, you're pretty much ready to tackle the game wholesale and head to Millennium City, which is when the game really opens up, and you'll spend the better part of levels 10-17 in Millennium City, before eventually returning to Canada and new zones for more heroic pursuits.

Champions Online is also polite enough to warn you when you take a mission that requires more than one person to complete. Some missions will list a recommended number of players if the mission is intended for groups. Another good feature of the user interface is that it makes it easy to find your missions. After taking a mission, you can go to the world map. Areas on the map circled in green indicate mission destinations. Clicking on the circle will display the name of the mission associated with that circle.

Solo-friendly, but a double-edged sword
Champions Online is basically designed around the idea that everyone should be able to solo, and that superheroes should not be tied into a class-based system. This definitely makes the game feel more superheroic and is appropriate to the genre – but there are some downsides to this approach.

The biggest downside to Champions Online's mission system and character-creation system is that it's eminently possible to create a landlocked Aquaman—in other words, a crappy character. And even if you create a good character build, some character types will just have a harder time dealing with certain enemies (or other players in PvP). And as with any MMOG, you can bet there will be plenty of tweaks and changes made to various power sets in future updates.

Fortunately, if need be, you can always expend resources and respec your character's powers. And the grouping/teaming system in the game --which is very similar to City of Heroes in some respects -- is very robust and, in my experience, one of the better ones. In addition, because the game operates as essentially a bunch of very large 'instances', you never making sure you join the same server as your friends, or transferring to another server later. At any time during the game, you can change out of one "instance" of a zone into another instance of the same zone. (And the game will tell you if any of your friends are playing in any of the other instances.)

PvP -- Every hero has a weakness
At this point, PvP is largely limited to arena-style hero team vs. hero team beatdowns (called The Hero Games), in which two teams of heroes duke it out deathmatch style. The team with the most wins scores the victory and wins Acclaim -- another in-game currency used to purchase special items, costume pieces, and other goodies. Compared to other MMOs, PvP is definitely not Champions Online's strongest feature right now. (Maybe it will improve if Bastards On Line ships later and offers up lots of Supervillain content.) 

One nice feature of the PvP, however -- and this this seems to be another growing trend in MMOGs -- is that you can instantly join a PvP game at any time, without disrupting what you're doing. You can jump in a queue, wait for the next game to start, and once it begins you'll be instantly transported to the PvP instance. After the match is over, you are returned to whatever mission/location you were in when you joined.

Capital punishment -- aka the death penalty
Fortunately, the 'death penalty' (or 'defeat penalty') for PvP is zero, and the penalty for being defeated in a mission is minimal aside from the embarrassment of getting beat up by henchman. Don't worry, it happens to everyone once in a while. The game's more action-oriented style of combat is likely to throw some MMO gamers for a loop initially. You actually need to press and hold SHIFT to block incoming attacks, which reduces damage. This is vital to survival against villains, master villains, and super villains -- and even large groups of henchman (the lowest of the low) can be a danger if you just recklessly try to button-mash your way to victory. 

When you are defeated, you will return to the beginning of the instanced mission or the last re-spawn point you touched. Another nice thing is that if you're defeated in an instance, the mission doesn't re-spawn enemies -- you don't have to restart from scratch, so you can head straight back to the clown that waxed you and serve him a fistful of vengeance.

Fortunately, there is no 'XP debt' or item degradation associated with dying. In Champions Online, you  lose 'Hero Points' and re-spawn. Hero points appear as little stars beneath your character's portrait, and you begin the game with five of them --the maximum-- which grants bonuses to your overall combat effectiveness. If you're defeated, you lose a hero point. Completing missions and defeating enemies restores hero points, albeit slowly. You have to fall below 3 hero points to begin incurring combat penalties -- in which case a little time spent beating up henchmen or completing missions will restore you to your former glory (and probably make you feel a little better about yourself).

Making stuff, getting loot
You have a total of 9 slots (Offense, Defense, and Utility) that you can use to equip loot in the game. Items can be found on fallen foes or crafted from blueprints (recipes).

Overall, Champions Online offers a fairly typical MMO crafting system. It isn't particularly innovative, but neither is it grossly lacking. Basic crafting skills are divided amongst Science, Arms, and Magic, with subcategories of each. Ultimately, the crafting system just boils down to another way to harvest resources, make stuff, equip stuff to improve your character, or create nifty-in game items like costume pieces. Oh, and you can sell stuff to other characters if you're so inclined.

As in other MMOs, items enhance your character’s stats, and many have beneficial effects (knockback resistance, damage bonuses, etc.) and/or grant specific bonuses to particular power sets, such as items that specifically enhance sword attacks, or fire powers, etc. You can also gain or craft limited use items, such as a temporary force-field generator, for example.

If you're the type that gets off on skill grinding and virtual fishing, I'm not sure Champions Online is the MMOG for you -- but then again, there's not much call for Fishing Man or Raging Pie Cooking Lass.

Enemy mine -- make your own Nemesis
Once you hit level 25, you can make your own personal Nemesis supervillain, and this villain will make various appearances in mission and story arcs. Your Nemesis will level up as you do so as to provide a continual challenge (and pain in the ass).

The best part is that you have just as much freedom in designing your Nemesis as you do your own character -- so you can make your Nemesis as cool or as ridiculous looking as you want to. (Probably a better a idea to make them cool, because getting your butt kicked by a Clown man and his clownie henchmen might be embarrassing -- especially in public.)

Grouping, Superteams, and Lairs
Like City of Heroes, you can form supergroups and bases, pooling resources to outfit your superbase and buy that much needed 'Troubalert'.  Joining a super team also gives you a free costume slot, so you can coordinate outfits (if you're so inclined).

Much of this content doesn't come into play, however, until level 25.  (I'll be updating this section of the review after I see more of it -- but good or bad, it won't taint the overall score.)

And now, the Kryptonite
Champions On-line has enjoyed a solid launch -- generally devoid of embarrassing issues (such as the recently launched Aion's long login queues) or other problems that often plague fledgling MMOs. That said, here are a few niggling issues I encountered:

• Buggy missions, although not rampant, and likely to be fixed fairly quickly.
• Very Tiny Font – The default font size used to display your missions is far too small. On a 1680x1050 you'll be squinting to read the text. Furthermore, the tool for adjusting this is labeled under a relatively cryptic name in the Options menus.
• PvP – I wouldn't say PvP sucks, but it's not the game's strongest point.
• Complexity – There's nothing wrong with complexity, but it does make Champions Online more difficult to penetrate than City of Heroes – and even veteran MMOG players may take some time to adjust to its 'new paradigm' of character design and development.
• Inadequate manual/help. Champions Online doesn't always do a good job making certain things obvious enough -- or maybe I just missed some things because of Very Tiny Font (before I finally adjusted it). The crafting system and other elements of the game remained a bit cryptic to me until about level 15 when I finally did a little in-game digging to learn more about them.