Vigilante Justice
Jul. 17th, 2011 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofelevenSo, I’ve finally given in to temptation and broken my strict ‘no MMO’ rule to try out Champions Online. Admittedly, when describing Champions as an MMO, I suspect the first M stands not for ‘massively’ but for ‘marginally’ – the game seems to be built around soloing, and actually interacting with other players seems to be very much optional.
Which, honestly, is what I want – as far as I’m concerned, it’s a free single player RPG where occasionally you see other people fly past and can admire their costumes. On the other hand, I can see why the game wasn’t that successful…
The free-to-play aspect is very nice – the only real limitations are only having two character slots, and being limited to pre-built classes instead of freeform character creation. There’s very few points where I felt I was limited by not being a subscriber. The developers obviously realise all computer games eventually become elaborate games of dress-up, and thus most of the premium content is alternate costume parts rather than useful in-game abilities.
On that note, the costume creator is fantastic; even without any of the premium costume parts, pretty much any superhero costume I could think of was easily made. My own character was built around the concept of ‘what would be the most awesome to a ten-year-old’, and is thus a super-hero version of Dale Russel’s hypothetical sapient dinosauroid, and I was able to create it without too much trouble – the hardest part was deciding which of the ridiculous number of horn and tail options I should use…
The real negative is the other players, honestly. Between the random people wanting to team up with you but who refuse to ever actually communicate with you when you accept them, the people who somehow made it through the tutorial without learning the most basic controls, the misogynists filling up the chat channel despite my best efforts to put them on ignore, and the scores of players whose superhero concept is some minor variant on ‘grim faced loner with a gun’… well, it all adds up to remind me why I’m unwilling to pay money for real MMOs...
On the other hand, if it wasn’t for other players, I’d have missed out on the guy whose entire character bio consisted of “BAD GUYS KILL MY PARENTS. NOW I SMASH THEM.” Unfortunately, having created such a work of genius, he somehow dropped the ball, as his actual costume failed to be a hybrid of Batman and the Incredible Hulk. Pity, really. Maybe that should be my second character...
Which, honestly, is what I want – as far as I’m concerned, it’s a free single player RPG where occasionally you see other people fly past and can admire their costumes. On the other hand, I can see why the game wasn’t that successful…
The free-to-play aspect is very nice – the only real limitations are only having two character slots, and being limited to pre-built classes instead of freeform character creation. There’s very few points where I felt I was limited by not being a subscriber. The developers obviously realise all computer games eventually become elaborate games of dress-up, and thus most of the premium content is alternate costume parts rather than useful in-game abilities.
On that note, the costume creator is fantastic; even without any of the premium costume parts, pretty much any superhero costume I could think of was easily made. My own character was built around the concept of ‘what would be the most awesome to a ten-year-old’, and is thus a super-hero version of Dale Russel’s hypothetical sapient dinosauroid, and I was able to create it without too much trouble – the hardest part was deciding which of the ridiculous number of horn and tail options I should use…
The real negative is the other players, honestly. Between the random people wanting to team up with you but who refuse to ever actually communicate with you when you accept them, the people who somehow made it through the tutorial without learning the most basic controls, the misogynists filling up the chat channel despite my best efforts to put them on ignore, and the scores of players whose superhero concept is some minor variant on ‘grim faced loner with a gun’… well, it all adds up to remind me why I’m unwilling to pay money for real MMOs...
On the other hand, if it wasn’t for other players, I’d have missed out on the guy whose entire character bio consisted of “BAD GUYS KILL MY PARENTS. NOW I SMASH THEM.” Unfortunately, having created such a work of genius, he somehow dropped the ball, as his actual costume failed to be a hybrid of Batman and the Incredible Hulk. Pity, really. Maybe that should be my second character...