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Previous in Pictures: Heroes of Champions Online | Next in Pictures: Can I Take Your Order? |
I’m afraid I’ve let you down again. No Fuel / procedural content post today. No good excuse, really, except that I’ve been playing a grotesque amount of Champions Online. Here, let me show you:
This is Concealed Carrie. Her bio: My mommy says it’s wrong to hit people. So I shoot them. I’m also not allowed to talk to strangers. So I shoot them, too.
Are you a stranger? |
I’ve spotted a few other people going for the “cute little girl superheroine” concept, although most people mess it up and just make their character small. She ends up looking like a tiny adult. If you want a little kid:
The common approach is to have a little kid with a really violent superpower like swords, claws, dark magic, or somesuch. Concealed Carrie is a munitions character, and she became my main the moment I discovered the joy of the Lead Tempest power. Did you see Christian Bale in Equilibrium? How they did that gun kata thing? Well, you get to do that. And it is awesome. Especially as a twelve year old girl.
I’ve pretty much built the character around leaping into groups of guys and then shredding the group from within in a fountain of bullets. I also use the assault rifle for when someone gets ornery. A lot of people swear by the minigun, but I haven’t run the numbers to see which is better from a time / power drain / damage output perspective. And even if I’m not getting 100% combat performance out of her, she’s still a lot of fun.
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Thematically, she should absolutely use speed or (even better) acrobatics as her travel power, but I learned the hard way that the designers of Champions Online have a cruel and malignant hatred of non-flying characters and have designed this world in order to torment them. The guys on buildings, the inexplicable cliff in the middle of the city, the rat-maze canyons in the desert, and the un-scalable mountains in Canada: These are things that will impede you on the way to fun if you cannot escape the embrace of gravity. Really, they should give speed runners the ability to run up walls for a short distance, and acrobats should get some sort of Prince of Persia style wall jump that angles upward. Both types of travelers need a way to move without needing to wade through every damn mook in the world while their flying compatriots effortlessly cruise by overhead. If you’ve never tried to go up six flights of spiraling steps in a third person game just so you can see if the guy you’re looking for is up there, then you’ve never really understood what it means to suffer. The camera doesn’t know what the hell to show you.
For Carrie, I compromised and went for swinging. Swinging is still slower than flying and is useless indoors, but at least I can get over the walls of the maze without straying too far from my character concept.
I’m not sure what inspired me to make her. I think after going through The Path I wanted to balance things out and play a little girl who could kick some ass.
And speaking of Little Red Riding Hood, here is someone Star on Chest ran into in the starting zone:
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And here is someone else, in the same zone at the same time:
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And here is the conversation they had:
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The puns on these two made me laugh:
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I love these wings:
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You have to see them in motion for the full effect, but I think they’re magnificent.
EDIT: And here is the world’s most awesome tooltip:
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Yeah. “DSP” turns “DSP” mode on and off. Awesome. Good thing every single person in the world will instantly know what DSP is and why they might want to make it on or not on. I mean, naturally I know what DSP is. Naturally. I’m not some rube who goes around being ignorant of important things like DSP. But what if – and I’m just being hypothetical here – what if you met someone who didn’t know what DSP was? I mean, that would be hilarious, right? But how would you explain DSP to that person? Not that I’m asking. I mean, there’s no need, since I already know all about DSP. But I’m just wondering how some people would explain it using plain English.
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We've got 82 comments. But one more probably won't hurt.
I love Huggernaut, but I don’t get Tai Li.
Tai Li’s name isn’t funny, but she’s from the group “Fawlty Powers”.
Wow, am I correct in thinking that you’re in EST, Shamus? You’re up early. If I hadn’t gone to bed early I couldn’t hope to function enough to post at this hour. :-)
My sleep schedule is a complete wreck right now. I’m sleeping in random little 2 and three hour blocks. This happens to me sometimes, and I’m never sure why. At some point this weekend the chaos will suddenly stop and I’ll crash for ten hours. At which point I’ll learn what my new bedtime is. :)
I’m impressed with the variety of the character costumes you can come up with
Are Concealed Carrie’s glowing arms a costume part or a power effect?
I really dig Carrie – reminds me of this 28mm hasslefree mini:
http://www.hasslefreeminiatures.co.uk/pack.php?pack=1647
I guess that’s what she’ll look like all grown up.
Oh yeah. Of course I know what DSP is. I mean, who doesn’t? Some kind of NOOBLET? Srsly.
About Flying, I find that the one issue with it and other high-flying powers tends to be the Anti Air batteries scattered around some areas. Ow.
I love Acrobatics in general because while it lacks the vertical mobility (and has a dozen aggro problems) of other travel powers… its so COOL to look at the character move around.
… but then there’s the issue of some exploration perks being only available for those that have FLYING POWERS! :|
Those black outlines are forever ruined for me by the terrible array of code known as Silverfall.
And hehe @ 2 Red’s!
But man, n00bs who don’t know what DSP is. Geez, what’s the world coming to!
I think that there are lots of Little Red Riding Hood characters around because there are so many wolves. I’ll admit to making a wolf character, Big Bad. I fail at names; I admit it. I even had my own encounter with a character dressed up in a big, red, hooded cape and (of course) skimpy bikini — L’il Red was the name. It was amusing for 30 seconds or so, then I got tired of hearing about grandma.
It sounds kinda like adrenal fatigue, Shamus. Have you ever talked to your doctor about sleep?
Direct stock purchasing? Is that what DSP means? Your heroes can buy stock direct from the issuing corporation?
Just a not you do get a second travel power at like level 35 or so.
I’m really liking CO and I’m not normally into MMO’s (and I don’t read comics but its just good general fun and stylish as all hell.
Say Hi if you see either of my characters
Lady Defenestrator:
http://www.champions-online.com/character_profiles/979368/biography
or Lord Defenestrator:
http://www.champions-online.com/character_profiles/1085122/biography
Should set up Twenty Sided Superheros or something
sounds like you’re on your way to discovering your own brand of polyphasic sleep. Cyclical polyphasic sleep? Hmmmm….
I don’t suppose they have a trial out of this yet? If it’s good enough, I bet I could convince my roommate to switch with me from CoH to this one….But I’d need to try it out first.
Unfortunately my experience with MMOs is that the trial doesn’t come out until months after release…
ok, I’ll bite. What is DSP?
I feel your travel power pain. I’m operating two “mains” right now; Doylo my winged supernatural flyer (I am just waiting for a deeper Regeneration nerf, It still seems awesomely overpowered) is my solo play main, and Special Force my axe wielding military Dwarf tunneler is my playing with wife main. Sadly…. HER main can fly, and moving as a team has gotten so frustrating that I am using my free respec to give him Earth Fly, the very tenuous connection to his Dwarf concept that still allows actual enhanced travel.
I’m glad you took swinging, my alt “The Jedi Ape” with swinging is my favorite character to just go exploring with. It is so much fun to let go on the upswing and catch yourself as you flail through the air…. none too precise for maneuvers, though.
As an aside; Tunneling seems to be bugged anyway, it is supposed to make you invisible to enemies, but I have noticed Super Villain and Purple mobs frequently are happy to open fire on me as I dig my way past them.
I am all for a Twenty Sided supergroup, or at least friends list, you can find me @Adidasu
ah woops im @TheTallest
The irritating thing about googling for DSP is discovering how many people can’t spell DPS.
The more I hear about this game the more it sounds exactly like City of Heroes…
So what are the differences between them? Assuming there is more than one — the name.
There are quite a lot of differences, depending on what you’re looking for. You could also compare this game to World of Warcraft (especially the quest structure), but it also has differences from that which would take longer than one comment to list out.
Even the parts which seem similar may not be so: for example, CO and CoH seem to share the Character Creation praise, but the customization goes in different directions: CoH is Barbie with a huge wardrobe, while CO has much fewer outfits but is made of plasticine.
It’s like the differences between, say, Fallout 3 and Fallout 2 (or Oblivion). Or Final Fantasy 6 and Final Fantasy 7.
If I had to sum up the differences: CoH is an old game on an old engine that has had most of the bugs and kinks worked out, has had time to build up both reputation and capital, and is very comfortable with where it is at the moment, although it’s still looking to the future. (Much like WoW.) CO is a brand new game on a new engine, and it shows very painfully at times. It has potential, but that’s all it has right now.
Dynamic sound processing or some such, I think.
That Huggernaut guy is awesome :D
So… what is DSP now, Shamus?
DSP = Digital Signal Processing. Basically, what that does is implements real-time effects on the audio, like reverb and echo. If the game is more modern and sophisticated, it will have many different types of these, so a wide-open forest won’t have the same reverb as the inside of a submarine. It may also include things like sound occlusion. Many games these days have different effects applied depending on the speaker setup as well, and provide 3D positioning specific to each configuration. Some games go as far as to having proper 3D positioning with headphones, where an algorithm known as the Head-Related Transfer Function is used to simulate how sound in a 3D space enters the ear (“virtual surround” essentially, similar to Creative’s CMSS-3D technology).
But yeah, I can understand why most people wouldn’t know, if they’re not into audio mixing or programming.
DSP Stands for Digital Signal Processing:
It’s a very wide ranging field that encompasses everything from speech recognition to audio filtering during the digital-to-analog conversion process as you output to your speakers.
Even KNOWING what DSP means I still don’t know what turning it on or off would actually do.
My best guess would be that since this is an MMO it almost certainly has a built in voice chat system, yes? DSP is probably used to filter background audio out of the mic input.
One of my biggest problems with Champions online is travel. I created a gorilla – I took acrobatics – I find it almost impossible to get anywhere without getting beaten half to death.
I know travel agro is a feature of about 90% of games – but given that anybody with flying can just ignore it – why they left it in is a mystery to me.
The differences between Fallout 3 and Fallout 2 are a bit more prominent than the differences between the Myth and Oblivion.
Shamus is making CoH and CO seem similar because he is concentrating largely on the part that really draws him – character creation and the flexibility afforded there – which is probably the one part where they differ the least. His review of CoH centred largely around the creator as well.
Another meaningful difference between CoH and CO as I understand it is that CoH runs on a Mac.
I tried making a little avatar for my daughter on the 360, but there’s just no avoiding the breasts. And certain clothes just make it all too obvious that the avatar is not actually a little girl and then all I can think about is in ten years when she’s out in the Wild on her own and the boys are all trying to get around her defenses and I forgot to renew my concealed carry license and her brother is in college and not around to take the fall for me beating the crap out of said boys and how am I going to pay for her wedding when I’m in prison somebody please write to Oprah so this kind of tragedy never happens again!!
I’ve been having a great time making heroes in this game.
When you buy a new car, you have to say what make it is. When you buy a new computer, you have to say its specs. When you buy a hero game, you have to show your heroes.
It’s just…mandatory.
Some may remember that I asked if you could make a character with a top hat, handlebar moustache and monocle. On hearing that I could, I set out to make my main: Lord Weathertail.
http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-15-53-56.jpg
His bio looks like this:
“Lord Weathertail is a man who knows honor and virtue when he sees it. Which is why when villains began to fight near his home – disturbing his weekly peruse of Butterflies Today Magazine – he decided that what this generation needs is honor applied to the face, and virtue crammed up their backside.
With a steady hand and calculating mind, which could only have been honed through years of stamp collection and model assembly, he began to build the tools with which he would teach kids of today.”
The word count limit kills me. :(
I then decided to try my hand at another hero. I had a plan of action, but that went quickly down the drain when a combination of an admirals hat, and the perfect pirate beard, snowballed into Captain Dreadclaw.
http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-15-58-37.jpg
He’s a Might character, and owns what I call the ‘Super Mario Power’ – Super Jump. It’s the most fun travel power I have come across. Add to that the fact that Dreadclaw has the ability to either…
– Deal massive damage to anyone in front of him and send them flying 50 feet, or
– Deal MASSIVE damage to one person in front of him and send them flying 50 feet
…means he’s quickly becoming a favorite. :D
And finally, I just had to give the Hero creator to my older sister, who spends more time designing, creating, and writing backstory for Sims families than actually playing the game. Upon utilizing the Hero creator, she felt it was her duty to ensure that every single drop down menu had an option in it. Bracers, Back, Arm Accessories, you name it: it had an option in it. ‘None’ was another way of saying ‘Boring’. As a result, she finally accumulated an hours-worth of tinkering into Theia.
http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-15-59-29.jpg
Dear lord. :P
You got your desired definition of DSP, but in case it happens again… Their first result for DSP is the one given here.
Star on Chest is still the soul of awesome.
Even KNOWING what DSP means I still don’t know what turning it on or off would actually do. ,/i>
I noticed this when googling to figure out what it was.
(From the other explanation comment above, it does seem surprising that they didn’t just call it “echo and reverberation” or something along this lines)
“I tried making a little avatar for my daughter…but there’s just no avoiding the breasts.”
This, even on CoH. I swear if either of the two games (or even DCUO) puts models in for children, they’ll have me for life.
I guess boobage is what you need to expect when your target audience is pre- and pubecent boys (yes, even us 38-year-old boys). ;)
I see you still have comic outline on. I cannot recommend enough that you atleast try the game with that option turned off. I thought the graphics on Champions were terrible until I discovered they were intentionally spitting in the face of their graphics with the intention of making it more comicy.
chabuhi: My daughter developed at about 12. And she is, as my wife delicately puts it, “big up top.” She’s also a gamer. I have lived in mortal fear for 3 years. Luckily, she still thinks “dating” means setting facebook status and then hanging out for an hour at school after classes are done.
I had one char with Acrobatics because it’s awesome. Everyone else is flying, swinging or tp because they work.
I think CO and CoH are really very different. They start from the same base but go off wildly. CO is mostly open world. CoH is mostly instanced missions. CO is hugely (often painfully) flexible. CoH has Archetypes, which are constricting to a degree, but help define you.
CoH is about sight lines and grouping (friendly and enemy). CO is about action, blocking, and self-sufficiency.
I can’t see a rad/dark defender ever existing on CO. Or rad/anything really.
CoH and CO both have no children in the games. Well, that’s not quite accurate: Penny Preston in CoH is supposed to be a little girl, but she ends up looking like a slightly creepy mini-adult due to early limitations on textures. She’s also the only (non-player) character who can be considered a kid. (I think the next-youngest would be the teenage Penelope Yin.)
I strongly suspect that this is because they’re not allowed to show violence (even cartoony) to children and still maintain a Teen rating.
One thing which irks me is that CO is quite bad at documenting stuff, including their metaplot. They bought the IP for the Champions tabletop game, but then changed it quite a lot.
I suspect my view of Champions Online compared to the Champions tabletop game metaplot is very similar to krellen’s view of Fallout 3 compared to Fallout 1 and 2.
Wow, this game gives you access to the US Department of Defense’s satellite network?
I guess the Huggernaut is there for when something DOES hurt the Blob.
I think you’re looking at a fundamental design flaw in games that have flight capabilities. No matter how hard the designers work to make things equal for players who can and can’t fly, there will inevitably be more difficulties for players who can’t, including situations that are insurpassable/unreachable for earthbound players.
One thing that reminds me of this was X-Men Legends, where certain areas of the game required a flying character to reach a switch, ferry characters across a gap, etc. Especially onerous were secrets, which almost demanded that you always bring certain characters along. Puzzles requiring Nightcrawler were especially annoying, him being the only character who could teleport through doors and certain walls.
Galenor:
http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-15-59-29.jpg
More screenshots of that please! Seriously… that’s an amazingly well built character from the looks of it. I mean seriously. You should hand over the character creator to your big sister more. =P
*froths at the mouth, runs down the Red Riding Hoods and smashes them into the ground*
@betty
Ask and you shall receive. :P
http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-18-43-25.jpg
http://i574.photobucket.com/albums/ss184/Galenoreon/screenshot_2009-09-24-18-43-39.jpg
Another note on boobies. When you go to custom body type, all the sliders are around the middle. The breast slider is maxed out by default. In joke? Or selling point?
Selling point. Remember our target audience. ;)
@RandyJohnson: From the screenshots, I think the comic outline looks great. Of course, I haven’t seen the game in action, and it’s entirely possible that it looks terrible in motion.
RichVR: Only on the “Vixen” body setting (I think that’s the name). Which is default. But there are other body types that start at different places.
My wife did comment that the largest breast size was not as obscenely large as CoH’s….
Maaaan, I want to just fiddle around with the character creation menus rather than play the game.
Also, “Huggernaut” = awesome :P
@Drew To me it makes it really difficult to distinguish anything while you are moving.
If you continue this, I’ll have to buy this stupid game… Curses!
Everybody knows what DSP is. DSP is the feature of the year. You’re just behind the times, Shamus. (“Shame-us.”)
“Debilitating Sex Persecution?”
This game has an option for DOUBLE STUFFED PIEROGIES?
What are people talking about, acrobatics and swinging?
They’re AWESOME. No, seriously. AWESOME. I don’t just mean for fun factor.
Acrobatics: You can just leave it on. Flying or whatever adds a huge energy cost to powers (like 15% or more). Acrobatics is essentially negligible – a cost of 50 vs 49 is not noticeable. Grab the additional power so that you SPEED UP when you TAKE DAMAGE, and BAM. AWESOME. Yeah, sheer walls are annoying, but they’re not too too bad.
Swinging: OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU HATE THIS? Chilled? Held in mid-air? Rooted? No, you’re not, you can COMPLETELY IGNORE THESE THINGS. It’s amaaaazing. With some practice you can be as precise as a flier, and you actually DO move faster than them. Quite a bit faster, as flying is basically the slowest power in the game. If you’re indoors, tap jump and then tap it again, and suddenly you’re swooshing through the hallways at improbable speeds that NO ONE ELSE CAN ACHIEVE. Well, maybe teleporters, but not if they’re shooting you or something.
Munitions characters are especially painful with swinging in pvp, as they can hit you, you cannot stop them, and you cannot get away (unless you can teleport and they didn’t see where you went, which if you know what you’re doing you can still get a porter).
Superspeed has.. issues, though. Get agro and you instantly slow down, which is a little… uhm, dumb. I’d recommend it for a second power (as that impact can make a nasty difference, believe you me) but yeah, levels 5 to 35 with superspeed will make you abandon that character. Guaranteed. I know I did.
Teleport: Ultimate escape power, but keep in mind it cannot chase a guy. Something goes wrong and you’re stuck travel-power-less for 10 seconds, which is a big deal in the game’s action-oriented gameplay.
Superjump: I can’t say I’ve tried these. They really don’t seem too impressive, though. Way too vertical, I think.
Flying: Is lame, actually. It’s the slowest travel power, doesn’t work well AT ALL if you’re fighting, and is all-in-all boring. People take it because it’s thoughtless, or because they want to fly up and rain death on the poor ground-bound inhabitants. Way, way, WAY overrated.
Tunneling: Haven’t tried it. Haven’t seen many that have.
Seriously. Swinging is teh win. Acrobatics is good but not too good. Why the hate?