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Posts Tagged ‘Champions Online’

My look back at 2009

January 1st, 2010

I thought a lot this week about my 2009 games of the year, as I saw gaming sites all over the internet posting their lists in various different formats.   I was going to skip the whole thing, because I did not want to be a “me too” poster.  Then I took a pause today and remembered this site is not for anyone else but me, and I a post about my thoughts on 2009′s game is something I would like to read later.  And thus I bring this post.

How this works is I am going to list games that I have memories of , along with a bit of commentary.  This is not a best of list by any means, just me thinking back on the year.  It’s also not in any particular order.

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MrAnderson Games, Musings , , , , , , , ,

Alyxa “Patience” Marks, Champion

August 29th, 2009

I have little back stories for almost all of my MMO characters rattling around in my head. This time I thought I would take a quick bit of time and record a rough idea I have for my first Champions Online (retail) character.

Captain Alyxa "Patience" Marks

Captain Alyxa Marks, code named Patience for named for he ability to wait her enemy out, is a reluctant resident of our world.

On Atheria she was Captain of the skyship Remorse, a pirate hunting ship of the Imperial Navy, and one of the most fear ships in the criminal world. She was the youngest appointed captain in the fleet and quickly earned her crew’s respect during an amazing action capturing a pirate vessel on her first sailing.

That was ten years ago, since then the Remorse has captured or sank more enemies than any ship in the Empire’s history. Such actions have made the Remorse and her captain targets of the entire criminal underbelly, and in particular a man known only as The Doctor have vowed unspeakable things be done to Patience, her crew, and anyone they care about.

Patience and her "Twins"

Patience and her "Twins"

That vow led to an incident, one in which saved her world but should have killed her and her nemesis, that landed Patience on earth. She does not speak of what happened, only that her world was saved. Of course if she is alive then so is the one she has spent many years and many of her crew trying to stop. Not only alive but one again free.

Lucky for Patience, the transportation to this world did not disrupt her power boots allowing her to fly.  More importantly she held onto the trusty twins, her father’s specially designed pistols given to her as a child when he was lost in action, with out them she my have have had the will to once again stop The Doctor.

She misses her world, her ship, and her crew, but she can only worry about returning after The Doctor is found and dealt with once and for all.  Until then she will play her part as one of this planet’s ‘heroes’.

MrAnderson Champions Online, Games , , ,

Cryptic Restocks

August 27th, 2009

It appears that Cryptic is going to do the “right” thing and reinstate their pre-order specials until the previously announced deadline. This time with no supply limit.

After further consideration, and to meet the needs of our community, we have decided to reinstate the Lifetime and 6-month subscription promotional programs with no supply limit until 11:59 p.m. (Pacific time) on August 31st.

I would still have liked to see them give people some time in the actual retail product before pulling the promotion, but at least now they are honoring their original offer.

Good.

MrAnderson Champions Online, Games , ,

Cryptic sold out.

August 25th, 2009

I was not actually considering a lifetime subscription to champions, but the six month offer was tempting. Apparently Cryptic made the decision for me, since they forgot to tell anyone until last night that there was only a limited supply of the special offers.

Asking people to commit to something before being able to take the actual product (nonbeta) out for a test drive was a bit of a stretch, felt sort of slimy to me.  But they one upped themselves by pulling their offer a full six days before its scheduled end; which comes off to me as smelling really bad. I mean if you knew you were only going to be able to offer, for whatever reason, a set number of specials then you should have let people know that up front.

This whole makes me think that they are covering for someone, somewhere screwing up and it does not cultivate a happy community.

Oh, and as of last night resource drop nerfs are still in effect. This coupled with the current (high) repec costs has basically killed one of my favorite aspects of the game.   I really enjoyed being able to test power combos , while out doing real game activities, and I was (and still am) advocating a the ability to undo all my choices. Yet the very low resource drop rate, and the high cost of undos have made that testing of powers something of the past.

Edit: Cryptic responds on Massively about the issue, and refer people to an original forum post made about the offer, where they mention limited supplies.

Both of these offers are only going to be around until supplies last, so sign up while you still can.

I don’t recall seeing that post before, and I don’t recall seeing that line about limited supplies mentioned on the actual promotion page or on any of the news stories about it. For grins I thought I would do run some google news searches and none of the stories I saw (granted I did not search that long) quoted, linked, or mentioned that forum post. Instead they linked to the promo page; which is where I believe any limitations should have been posted.  But in the end I guess Cryptic covered themselves.

To me I still think the whole promo offer a bit slimy from the start.

MrAnderson Champions Online, Games , ,

Weekend Roundup

August 24th, 2009

There were a few big things that caught my attention this weekend.

Champions part 4

There have been some significant changes in Champion Online over the course of the last four days. First it appears that they fixed the teleport Travel Power bug, which makes it usable. Yay. Second there have been many quest bugs addressed, along with some passes on balance, and corrections to UI issues.

Those were all fairly welcome, but there have been two changes, which in some ways baffle me. They adjusted the experience point curve lowering quest reward rates and increases xp needed to level. The result is much slower leveling, which I guess they needed to do a little bit but this was a bit harsh. Apparently this was just a test and they “plan” to make further adjustments, I sure hope they do. Leveling was a bit too fast, but now its WAY to slow.

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MrAnderson Uncategorized , , , , ,

Champions Online Open Beta Part 3

August 20th, 2009

Day 3

Again with Costumes

I started day three of the open beta with an attempt at recreating another one of my City of Heroes characters. It was… interesting. I find in many ways the Champions Costume editor to offer a broader variety of piece types, while at the same time feeling as though it is missing many of the pieces that were in CoH at launch which I have come to expect.

The good news is CO looks to have the system in place to add new pieces, patterns, difuses, emblems, etc. easily.

The bad news I suspect there will be few free additions of such pieces, instead I suspect most will be offered by DLC.

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MrAnderson Champions Online, Games, beta , , ,

Champions Online Open Beta Part 2

August 19th, 2009

Day 2 Continued: Costumes

The champions character / costume creator has a lot of options, but it also has some quirks I just don’t understand.

For example I select Robotic with both arms as my overall chest type, then under chest and arms I have several “material” options; cloth tight, leather tight, metal tight, and cyborg specific. Those all open up other options. Great, I continue on picking options , but then decide I only want one arm to be robotic.

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MrAnderson Champions Online, Games, beta , , ,

Champions Online Open Beta Part 1

August 18th, 2009

Day 1

A patching nightmare. While I want to take Cryptic’s response at face value, I know how much spin happens in the industry; particularly when something bad happens.  The good news it happened in the beta, and they have a couple of weeks to try and fix it.

Yes the latest installer from Fileplanet will work without patching now, but that just bought Cryptic some time. They need to address the real problems before launch.

Day 2 – quick character creation

I finally get to get in and play again.

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MrAnderson Champions Online, Games, beta , , ,