Champions is so damn patchwork that it really grates at points like this.

Starting In Media Res: Cool idea
Being walked around a live battlefield: Stupid.
Saving People: Cool
Saving Passports: Stupid
Public Mission: Cool
Talking to the Ape: Stupid
Going to main base: Cool
Saving Main Base: Stupid
Fighting Black Talon: Cool
Being Coached into Firing someone into the ship: Stupid
Getting a Parade: Cool

Guess what's next.

Loving this series, Shamus.
The public events in CO are pretty awesome, but can be pretty frustrating if you just can't find enough people to help you with it.
Please refrain from any more hurtful comments about Detroit, if you could. I'm still ticked they blew up my town just to pave it over with that neon-infested cell-shaded city hub. Why couldn't they just go the City of Heroes route and just make up a city?

This is good stuff, keep it up!
I don't play any MMOGs so it's interesting for me to see what goes on in them.

lol, that's one efficient city.
When you stop to question the silly things the game tells you to do... It can bring you down faster than a falling star.

HAHAH this makes me want to see if they have a trial version.

Hey, don't diss ironclad. Anyone manly enough to get shot out of a ridiculously large and powerful gun to take over an alien mothership, alone, deserves some sort of badge of redundant awesomeness.

The_root_of_all_evil:
Champions is so damn patchwork that it really grates at points like this.

Starting In Media Res: Cool idea
Being walked around a live battlefield: Stupid.
Saving People: Cool
Saving Passports: Stupid
Public Mission: Cool
Talking to the Ape: Stupid
Going to main base: Cool
Saving Main Base: Stupid
Fighting Black Talon: Cool
Being Coached into Firing someone into the ship: Stupid
Getting a Parade: Cool

Guess what's next.

Ya but its more fun than WOW or AION or anything else I have played.

oranger:
HAHAH this makes me want to see if they have a trial version.

Yup starting level has endless time on it.

DaxStrife:
Loving this series, Shamus.
The public events in CO are pretty awesome, but can be pretty frustrating if you just can't find enough people to help you with it.
Please refrain from any more hurtful comments about Detroit, if you could. I'm still ticked they blew up my town just to pave it over with that neon-infested cell-shaded city hub. Why couldn't they just go the City of Heroes route and just make up a city?

Because that's what happened in the Champions setting. Most characters and places in CO comes from the Champions books.

Thorvan:
Hey, don't diss ironclad. Anyone manly enough to get shot out of a ridiculously large and powerful gun to take over an alien mothership, alone, deserves some sort of badge of redundant awesomeness.

Yeah... and a nice, padded room where he can admire it! :D

Loving this series, Shamus. I hope you can keep the humour running as long as LotRO!

Never did understand public missions though. Well... not exactly true. I understand them, I just haven't ever seen a good implementation of 'em.

The ones in WAR, for example, were awful. When they first came out, they were completely based on damage. If you were the tank or the healer (both seriously necessary), you were just SOoL when the reward bags came around. Then they added points for healing... but still left the tanks (and the primary buffers/debuffers) out in the cold. Then they decided to add a random element to the mix, so that your contribution (still based solely on healing or damage) only counted 1/3 of your score. Great. It was entirely possible (I know, because I did it more than a couple of times), to run the same public quest 5+ times, come top in contribution every time (or at least second), and STILL watch tossers that just stood on the sidelines walk away with all the loot.

So... do they do it any better in Champs?

Yeah... and a nice, padded room where he can admire it! :D

Loving this series, Shamus. I hope you can keep the humour running as long as LotRO!

Never did understand public missions though. Well... not exactly true. I understand them, I just haven't ever seen a good implementation of 'em.

The ones in WAR, for example, were awful. When they first came out, they were completely based on damage. If you were the tank or the healer (both seriously necessary), you were just SOoL when the reward bags came around. Then they added points for healing... but still left the tanks (and the primary buffers/debuffers) out in the cold. Then they decided to add a random element to the mix, so that your contribution (still based solely on healing or damage) only counted 1/3 of your score. Great. It was entirely possible (I know, because I did it more than a couple of times), to run the same public quest 5+ times, come top in contribution every time (or at least second), and STILL watch tossers that just stood on the sidelines walk away with all the loot.

So... do they do it any better in Champs?

Yeah, most point values for contribution are related to the individual tasks you complete. Like the jailbreak, you have to KO a certain number of prisoners, then KO all the leaders. Anyone can get points for the various prisoners, and there's enough leaders to go around for everyone to get some licks in.

Plus Champions is more.. offensively oriented. You can have healing abilities, but even the "healers" are going to be dishing out some meaningful damage.

ZippyDSMlee:

Ya but its more fun than WOW or AION or anything else I have played.

Play City of Heroes. It's much better.

I agree, CoH is better. If you're on the fence, wait a month and pick up the Going Rogue expansion.

You know with Silver Avenger delegating his assignments, Kinetic trapped in a Chinese finger puzzle, and Defender folding like something that folds really fast, it's no wonder they volunteered makes-them-look-bad Ironclad to get fired out of a cannon.

Anyway, the taxpayer jokes remind me that if they wanted to have clever writing (and this LP will clearly show that they don't), you could legitimately establish factions in a city instead of strawman bad guys. With a certain spin, the Champions position is "you will all work to support and glorify us, because it would be a shame if some giant robot came to enslave you..."

Having already read this whole series, this is nothing new to me, but I just want to say: Why the giant holographic projections of themselves? Who could have possibly come up with this?

It's like the whole game was thrown together with one person's design choices and they were never run by anyone else, and if they were nobody bothered to change the stupidity.
It's as if a one-man brainstorming session went overboard as he tried to think of ways to "improve" on the CoH formulae that both works and is better.
Guh.

...Entertaining series, though, Shamus. Thanks for the re-post.

V'icternus:
Having already read this whole series, this is nothing new to me, but I just want to say: Why the giant holographic projections of themselves? Who could have possibly come up with this?

The heroes decided that making up for their tiny metaphorical penises in public would make them look a lot worse than their idiocy already does. So said heroes decided to compensate indoors where they can all agree that yes they have large metaphorical penises and no they aren't compensating.

So they're showing off and flaunting to... their own team?

I'd mock this, but I've played Superhero RPGs where this would make perfect sense. Thank you for making the insanity make sense.

I love the way this series is written. Perfect sense of humour. Keep it up!

The_root_of_all_evil:

ZippyDSMlee:

Ya but its more fun than WOW or AION or anything else I have played.

Play City of Heroes. It's much better.

Oh really? I played COH for the first couple of years and it sucked(well it got reall bad after the first year) compared to champions online, even if they added more content and made it less restrictive its the same game type with the same 5 things to do.

ZippyDSMlee:

The_root_of_all_evil:

ZippyDSMlee:

Ya but its more fun than WOW or AION or anything else I have played.

Play City of Heroes. It's much better.

Oh really? I played COH for the first couple of years and it sucked(well it got reall bad after the first year) compared to champions online, even if they added more content and made it less restrictive its the same game type with the same 5 things to do.

You still played it for two years though...few MMOs can last that long. 10 separate character classes + goofing off (which is a lot harder to do in many of these other games) keeps you occupied.

The_root_of_all_evil:

ZippyDSMlee:

The_root_of_all_evil:

ZippyDSMlee:

Ya but its more fun than WOW or AION or anything else I have played.

Play City of Heroes. It's much better.

Oh really? I played COH for the first couple of years and it sucked(well it got reall bad after the first year) compared to champions online, even if they added more content and made it less restrictive its the same game type with the same 5 things to do.

You still played it for two years though...few MMOs can last that long. 10 separate character classes + goofing off (which is a lot harder to do in many of these other games) keeps you occupied.

I lased a few months with FF11 I just could not compute it COH lasted in 2 or 3 6 month sets, lasted 3 months on Champions online might get another 60day time card for 20$, its kinda neat but frankly most MMOs are barely worth 5$ a month if they gave me control over EXP,skill,money,stats and such ratios I'd be happy to pay 15$ a month.

ZippyDSMlee:

I lased a few months with FF11 I just could not compute it COH lasted in 2 or 3 6 month sets, lasted 3 months on Champions online might get another 60day time card for 20$, its kinda neat but frankly most MMOs are barely worth 5$ a month if they gave me control over EXP,skill,money,stats and such ratios I'd be happy to pay 15$ a month.

FF11 lasted about a week on my machine. Champions got 2 weeks. CoX got nearly 2 years.

Given I got 1000 hours of fun out of that, that makes it roughly 10 hours per £1 I spent overall. Only EQ/TF2 has come close to that.

And it's purely because I can go onto the game and. . . not actually play the game. I can just act like a fool and have fun.