City of Heroes vs. Champions Online

While I have absolutely no doubt at all that there are a huge number of blogs, reviews and general discussion about the virtues of Champions Online compared to the virtues of City of Heroes, I feel it's time to put my view across.

A bit of background, for everyone who's not bothered to read my profile on this site: I am, first and foremost, a roleplayer, but I've been playing City of Heroes for 4 years, now, on the European servers, and I've been roleplaying there for about 3 1/2 of those years.

I really enjoy superheroes as a concept, but I'm not really much of a comic reader - I'll buy the odd graphic novel, but that's about it.

Superhero roleplaying, though... that's where it's at!

I have a character for superhero games. He's a sort of Batman/Ironman character in terms of motivation and apparent power, but his true source of power is the ubiquitous "radiation accident". I won't bother describing him in too much detail, for now. He's my character, and while roleplayers love their own characters, I know that most don't really enjoy listening to other RPers talk about their characters.

Character Design

Now, I've been playing Shadowe (that's him, the "e" is silent) as a character in City of Heroes very solidly while I've been there. I have a number of different costumes for him: Casual Civilian, Smart-Casual Civilian, Formal Civilian, Spandex (really leather, but who's checking?) and Battle-armour. Each gets pulled out depending on his current RP situation, and whether he's in a fight. His appearance has been fine-tuned to an art - he looks exactly the way I want him to. As a City of Heroes character, he is an Energy/Energy Blaster, meaning he does insane amounts of damage, but is squishier than an overripe melon. All of his powers and attacks are based around the ability to project and manipulate energy, which is perfect for his core concept.

Part of me judges games on the basis of how well I can fit it to Shadowe's concept, and City of Heroes scores very highly, there. Essentially, even within the constraints of the Archetype/Powersets system, I've been able to get exactly what I want, in terms of appearance and powers, and on those few areas where the game-world doesn't match his original concept, there are things I can fudge for RP purposes.

Champions Online, on the other hand, doesn't have the restriction of archetypes. Power Frameworks of linked powers exist, but it's possible to pretty much make a character have whatever powers you want him to have. Now, my current version of Shadowe was only created last night, and is only 6th level. He has one costume, and I elected to go for the Battle-suit version (for concept reasons), with flight as a travel power. So far, it's working out very well. During Beta, though, I got a very similar character up to about 15th level (I wasn't trying very hard), and some of the things that happened to him didn't really match the concept perfectly. I think that's mostly due to my lack of knowledge of the game and the options, so I'm not going to penalise it too heavily. However, despite all that, the "non-heroic" costume options are rather primitive, so I'm not sure how likely I am going to be able to get his civilian side working correctly.

CoH has lower-quality graphics, and really needs an upgrade, soon. That said, though, the character models, poses, stances and actions are very good, very polished, and I really can't fault them.

CO has significantly improved graphics (my slightly-older machine's graphics card is on the low-end of supported cards, in fact), but I find myself wincing slightly whenever my character runs or fires off his attacks, because he looks like a lumbering, thudding moron. He's designed around the "heroic" pose, which looks awesome when he's idle, but the instant he moves, he hunches over and lopes along like an ape. While CoH doesn't have similar poses, at least all the heroes stand up straight and proud. Whenever I'm playing my CO character, my camera angle naturally elevates until I'm looking down at him at a 45-degree angle, because that's the direction his head is pointing! Female poses seem much better, but I want an upstanding, proud man, and I can't seem to get one.

I read one commentary on CO that implied that the villain models and textures are on the most part very poor, but I haven't seen it, myself. Perhaps it's that my card doesn't support the whizziest graphics options, so I'm not getting the real impact of it all. I'm due for a graphics card upgrade myself, soon, so I might get to see for myself. Millenium City looks and feels more like a real city than Paragon City does, and I hope that Paragon Studios are paying attention, because there is a lot of good stuff they can do to make CoH even better.

CoH: 8/10
CO: 7/10.

Gameplay: Controls.

I tend not to change default keybinds for games. There are a couple of reasons for this: Firstly, because I want to see how the developers think the best way to play the game is. Secondly so that other people can intuitively use my PC to play games without having to learn a whole string of new keys that might differ from their setup at home.

There are a couple of significant problems with this, pretty much all of which can be explained with the following statement: I'm left-handed. I mouse left-handed. I don't reverse my mouse-buttons, for exactly the reasons given above. This means that I WSAD with my right hand on the keyboard, left hand on the mouse, and I adapt. I have to.

Both CoH and CO use a right-mouse = turn mechanic, which I now find completely natural, tab to cycle through targets, and the number keys to trigger powers. So far no difference. Where they do differ, though, is in the activation of powers. I'm going to have to change the defaults in Champions. A lot. Whereas in CoH you hit a power, that power goes off, then you wait while it recharges before you can fire it again, CO is a button-masher. You target a foe, hit "1" to activate your "Energy Building" power, and then mash the other buttons whenever you have sufficient energy. Okay, so I know that situation isn't going to continue forever, since in a few levels I'll be picking up "Maintained" combat powers that you just hit once and they annihilate everything until you run out of Energy. They're awesome. But the ability to mash buttons to trigger a more powerful attack is... annoying. It means that, unlike CoH (where there are two types of powers you can activate: Click-powers and Toggle-powers), CO has three - Energy-builder (toggle), Damage Click-powers (button mashers) and Damage Toggle-powers (toggle). It's just an added level of complexity, and I'm not sure it works. I'm also not sure it doesn't. Right now, though, at the low level I'm at, I click on my Energy-builder (I need to switch it to automatic), and mash my clicky-damage power as often as I can. My poor finger starts to ache in big fights.

Hmm, fights, that brings me to another thing. The standard control options for CO result in your character automatically turning to face their target, regardless of what you're telling the character to do. Ranges close down very fast, since almost everything prefers melee to ranged combat, and that frequently has meant that I've missed blocking opportunities because the taller bad guys have displayed off the top of the screen. I'm sure that's a settings problem, and not a problem with the game itself, but when the default display and camera motion options actively interfere with my ability to fight, it puts me off a bit.

CoH: 7/10
CO: 5/10 - might go up to 6 once I've tweaked the controls.

Gameplay: Rewards

City of Heroes has an almost insane number of reward types. I mean it. It's too much. Here's the list of possible rewards from defeating an enemy: Experience Points, Influence, Prestige, Inspirations, Salvage, Recipes, Vanguard Merits, Architect Tickets, Enhancements. I don't think it's possible to get all of them from a single foe, but the first four drop from any foe, anywhere in the game, as long as you haven't outlevelled them.

Scarily, I understand why each of them has been introduced, but I'm really not kidding: It needs simplifying. There's just too much complexity in the different reward systems, and I'm certain it could be reduced.

Champions Online might be even worse. There are "pills", which amount to power-ups, you earn "Resources" (more on those in a bit), and sometimes "Equipment". Depending on your current missions, you might get specific drops of the things you need to complete that mission. You can also find things that help with crafting skills. Okay, so that's a lot less than City of Heroes has, but it's not the variety that's the problem. It's the implementation. And it all boils down to this: Whatever developer came up with the "Resources" implementation needs to be taken out into a dark alleyway and SHOT. I'm not even slightly joking. It is such a ham-handed, obvious, crass, pathetic excuse for a game-system that my rage once I figured it out was unspeakable.

Here's why. You earn Resources for defeating foes. A varying number, depending on the type of foe, probably the level of the foe, and so forth. All good so far. The problem comes with how they are displayed to you as a player. The units and tens are grouped together, and symbolised by an orangey-brown disc. The hundreds and thousands are grouped together and symbolised by a grey disc. The tens of thousands and above are symbolised by a yellow disc. Yes, everyone, Champions Online has Copper, Silver and Gold coins! WHAT THE HELL?!

Bear in mind, this is a game that is set in the modern day. It is not a fantasy game. The standard monetary unit in the places where the majority of the game take place will be modern day currencies like Dollars. So WHY AM I COLLECTING COPPER COINS? The developers need to just have done, and call them Dollars. It would make so much more sense. As far as I can tell, it's just a way to make Fantasy MMO players comfortable with the standard unit of currency. There is no game-world reason for it, and there is no excuse.

City of Heroes gets away with things by not including a currency that is effectively "money". Yes, Influence does the same job, and Influence as a concept is a bit ridiculous in the implementation, but at least they don't artificially quantify it as the gold coin. I'll be honest - ANYTHING other than the coin system would be better. Because it just makes me think that COs developers are trying too hard to make the game something it isn't.

Other things seem to be okay, though. Crafting is fairly easy, though there are some issues relating to the restrictions you're under about what you can and can't take apart and build. I get the differences between Arms, Science and Mysticism, but since drops seem to be completely random as to the type of reward you get, it's a little draining to realise "Oh, look, I just picked up another Bind-on-Pick-up Mysticism item that's not quite as good as the one I have, so I can't trade the blasted thing". Bind on pick-up? I will never understand how something that is a representation of an in-game-world item can't be given to other people. Suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

CoH: 6/10
Champions: 5/10

Gameplay: Missions

Okay, this is where CO really comes into its own. The variety of missions I've seen so far is pretty staggering, and the choices for how to complete them are useful, too. It's not simply a case of "kill ten rats", with three variants of how to go about it. The game uses instances and deliveries sensibly. It uses open-world-spawn events sensibly. The only downside to this is that it can lead to spawn-camping of the particular foe you're looking for, which can get rather annoying. In CoH, once you've seen "generic warehouse map 5" for the twentieth time, it gets frustrating. In CO when something spawns right on top of you for the twentieth time, and you get suddenly hit by five enemies who simply weren't there two seconds ago, it gets frustrating. And the place where both games fall down worst is that enemies in open zones pretty much just stand there. Some form of semi-random walking AI for enemies would make some sense. Move them off their spawn points, please!

CoH: 7/10
CO: 7/10

Fluff: The world

In CoH, you're just one of thousands of heroes wandering around Paragon City. You're really nothing special. You work your way up from being "newbie pleb" to "hero of the city", but you don't really feel massively valued.

In CO, you're one of thousands of heroes in the world, but the end of the tutorial actually makes you feel a bit special. It gives me a buzz to see the military saluting me, the mayor giving me the Keys to Millenium City, and to actually feel like I've achieved something. It's a little thing, but the little things count.

The City of Heroes zones are artificial, and while there's a game-world reason for them, you can't help but feel tied down. I want to be able to fly from one end of the city to the other, without hitting a wall that prevents me from going any further.

CO zones, while also artificial, are very large, and the views are phenomenal. I love flying my main character up into the sky, and just barreling along, coasting over the wonderful terrain below me. Also, the city seems crowded, whereas in CoH the population seems a little sparse at times, depending on where you are.

CoH: 5/10
CO: 7/10

Roleplaying

I've not tried RPing in CO yet. I've been RPing in CoH for a long time. I'm not going to slate something I don't know about, yet, but I will say that the emotes system in CoH is pretty clear (once you know where to look), and so far I've not seen any indication actually where emotes might be in CO.

The biggest problem with CO for RP purposes, though, is actually the chat box. I've not explored all of its functionality, so I'm not going to talk about that, but here's something that leapt out at me: If you click and drag on the top edge of the chatbox, you don't extend it in that direction. You can drag the box up, and then drag the bottom edge down but that seems decidedly silly to me. Also, dialogue boxes are displayed on a layer behind the chat box, so if you've made the chatbox a half decent size, you can't click on dialogue box options if the chatbox obscures them. CoH allows you to select which box has focus, just by clicking on the box, and neatly sidesteps that problem.

CoH: 7/10
CO: 4/10

Overall

I love CoH. It's my first MMO, and it's great fun. I still play it an awful lot, and I love RPing there. I'm looking forward to trying to RP in CO, and for a new game, it really has a lot going for it. But it also has some glaring problems that I thing could be addressed to make the game better from an immersion perspective, and thus allow it to reach its potential.

CoH: 40/50
CO: 35/50

Considering that CoH has 5 years of polish, while CO is less than a week on general release, those numbers are pretty close, but CO has a lot of work to do to make up the difference, because while it's trying to reach the same level as CoH, that game will also be improving, and tweaking. It's an exciting time for online Superhero RP, and I for one welcome the variety and challenges.

Weekly Games: M&M

I've been on holiday, and have just finished my marathon "re-read Questionable Content" stint, I have half an hour until I finish work for the day, and figured I'd take a stab at writing a quick blogpost. I'll let you know if it gets done in the half hour, or if I have to finish it when I get home tonight.

So, the weekly Mutants & Masterminds game.

Last night was another "talky", moving the plot along a bit. Everyone headed to the school (leaving the police to deal with the crucified gardener), and there was much exposition.

It was kind of slow going, really, and not a lot actually happened... in the plot anyway.

New character: Burned Ice, played by my good buddy Floating Fat Man - teenaged, full of herself, ice and fire powers.

While I was busy undertaking the extensive and deep plot-related conversing involving my current whiny NPC and most of the characters, Burned Ice decided to spy on everyone and listen in. She got noticed, and a couple of the characters decided to go and have words with her.

I'm not overly ashamed to admit that I pretty much ignored that whole side-conversation. The players were self-managing inter-character interaction, and I really didn;t need to get involved. There was some dice-rolling, though, when it came to use of powers (I'd better read the logs and make sure nothing overly naughty happened), but I was busy on the plot side of things, and really wasn't needed for that particular conversation.

Until, that is, I come back from one of my occassional cigarette breaks (please, don't smoke. It sucks), and was asked to adjudicate things regarding one character attempting to persuade another character to do something.

And thus we come to the real point of this post.

Every RPG should have this rule explicitly stated somewhere: Social interaction skills can NEVER be used to influence the actions of another Player Character.

I'm not talking about powers, or spells, or Force Powers or whatever "supernatural" abilities are present in the game - when you use those, you're using special abilities - I'm talking about skills: Bluff, Persuasion, Diplomacy, Social, whatever it's called in whatever game you're playing, no GM should allow those skills to affect player decisions. Social skills are for use on NPCs. They're a way for the GM to quickly determine NPC responses, and are never a straitjacket for players.

Here's an example or two, to illustrate:

1) NPC Assassin uses the Bluff skill to attempt to convince one of the PCs that he didn't kill the Prince. PC fumbles up Sense Motive, Assassin criticals Bluff. However - the crime has the Assassin's MO, and he was caught stepping out of the Prince's bedchamber where the Prince was found dead moments later... The GM will tell the PC that they believe the Assassin's story, but there is no way the Player should be forced to be constrained by that limitation. The phrase "bang to rights" springs to mind. I'd suggest that the PC be lenient, perhaps just capturing and imprisoning the Assassin, rather than allowing instant justice, but there is no way on Earth that I would force the PC to just let the Assassin go. If that's the Player's decision, then fine. It's not my character, so I'm not going to make that decision for them.

2) PC 1 uses their Persuasion skill to attempt to convince PC 2 to let them out of the room they've been shut in (for good reason, as far as all of the characters except PC 1 are concerned). Ahem. NO. As GM I would never require Player 2 to submit to this. It's Player 2's character - if they want to keep PC 1 shut in that room, then fine, and if Player 1 comes up with a convincing In-Character reasoning that Player 2 decides will sway them, then that's fine as well, but there is no way that I would force Player-vs-Player social interaction to be resolved that way. If Player 2 decides to take the roll anyway, to help them make that decision, then that is fine, but they are not constrained or bound by the results of that roll. It is their character, and they can make their own choices.

This all comes down to the most contradictory aspect of RPing - Shared Storytelling. It is not one person telling a story. It is several people all telling their own stories that happen to all be happening at the same time, usually in the same place. It's tricky to manage, but very fulfilling when it works.

Edit: Awesome. Under 30 minutes.