1961

It’s not constant. If you make your legs longer, you’ll be taller, although the height slider will say the same thing. You can sort of fudge it by having normal proportions, or compensating for funky ones, but the listed height doesn’t mean much.

Hmmm, or at least it looks so in the costume editor. I never did a comparison outside.

1962

There isn’t really one AFAIK.

1963

Sure there is. You just have to read the mission text and click on all the lore items.

1964

There isn’t a coherent overall story though as far as i can tell, Just lots of what i would consider “side arcs.” It isn’t wow quality where everything was leading up to nef in the original for example.

p.s. the prison stronghold quest, although often times buggy and unresponsive (HINT if you want me to go down to the next floor without you while you hold off the bad guys, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE at least tell me that so i don’t waste a bunch of time helping you defend!) was very fun. The whole prison area was pretty decent as well.

1965

So after making alt#6.022x10^23 and playing for about 8 levels or so, I realized that pure Supernatural kinda sucks. It just seems underpowered compared to every other powerset, and a bit unfocused in general. It’s loaded up with tier 1/tier 2 powers, with very few tier 3s, and the powers tend to overlap in generally utility, which could be good in that it encourages branching specialization, or bad in that it implies that Supernatural is designed to work with other powersets instead of standing on its own.

I can see what they were doing with the knockback vs knocktowards chain powers that differentiate the hold/ranged style powers versus the melee style powers, but a lot of their key powers don’t seem to work that well. Condemn really has been nerfed into uselessness (massive End cost for little damage), which is sad as it’s the only ranged area attack available to the powerset; Bite is its most powerful melee attack, but it’s a charge-up move that theoretically would allow an enemy to simple move out of range; and the Soul-drain (can’t remember the exact name offhand) attack+heal move also has a very high cost for relatively low healing, and is also melee only.

I ended up rerolling this character, designed to be a Ventrue-esque vampire lady, as Darkness, and found it to be a much better choice with a somewhat similar theme. Shadow bolt, while a charger instead of the instant attack Chain lash, is often a one-shot kill on henchmen; the dark tendril close area attack seems more powerful than the chain tornado attack, and only loses the knockback/knocktoward aspect, and Lifedrain is more useful than the Supernatural souldrain because it’s ranged. And because Darkness scales with Endurance, you both gain more energy for Darkness’ array of press-and-hold powers, and you do more damage with each attack. OTOH, Supernatural’s primary stats are Con and Rec, and I couldn’t see which stat, if any, improved the damage output (with Darkness, the tooltip for Endurance on the character sheet shows the +damage% bonus provided due to that stat).

The only minor gripe I have with my Darkness character is that Lifedrain makes her skin glow green to show the healing, and that color can’t be changed to the red color scheme of her other powers (although it shows a red trail of life flowing from the enemy to the character during the Lifedrain).

1966

I think the color change looks awesome on Shadowfire, but I think it only changes her costume colors (not skin). I’ll double check though. Still, it would be nice to change the color of the costume change.

1967

Really? Give me a one paragraph plot summary.

1968

I know when I tried out Shadow Form, it changed her dark-red outfit to black with a reddish aura (I believe I changed the aura color), and her skin to grey, but Lifedrain only changed her skin color, IIRC.

1969

I still find it surprising that so few people understand that not all sets (in fact most sets are not) are designed to be played with only powers from that set. With some sets it’s impossible to even pick only powers from that set to level 40.

the sets are not designed to be equal or all-encompassing within the framework. You are supposed to be able to or even encouraged to mix and match.

1970

But the requirements design (1 power from same set, or 3 from others; 3 from same, or 5 from others, 5 from same, or 8 from others) seems to encourage powerset specialization to attain the higher-tier powers. Granted, hybridization can be more viable, but at the same time would create a slower power tier growth. It’s akin to the AD&D 3d edition with multi-classing, only you’re saying in Champions Online the use of some powersets require multi-classing to work. That just seems like unbalanced/broken design.

1971

That just seems like unbalanced/broken design.

BRILLIANT INSIGHT!!!

1972

USEFUL CONTRIBUTION!!!1111

1973

Uh i liked that kind of multi classing personally.

It is a trade off though with getting some of the higher levels earlier or spreading out earlier. Every hero is a hybrid to some degree though as there generally aren’t enough good abilities (if there is even enough abilities at all) to focus on entirely. Generally on my characters, i tend to stay mostly pure until i get the tier 3 stuff though, unless i’m taking a passive or a block skill, those i tend to make exceptions for.

In the end it doesn’t really make any difference, only affecting leveling up until the mid 20s or so. This is really the difference between D&D. In D&D you could go pure class and do just fine, here even if you go pure class, you run out of abilities and need to spread out.

I don’t really work with the system too well though i guess. All of the characters i’ve played have heavily focused on one power set and used other solely to support it. Generally i just take defensive abilities or things like sonic device.

1974

BTW, the My Characters page on the Champions Online site seems to be working better now. You can view any of your characters’ profiles, update their individual status, and adjust their portrait/pose/background. You can also see what powers they have and their ranks, their inventory, and what quests they currently have and what they’ve completed.

Here’s my aforementioned Darkness vampire, Crimson Queen:

1975

Here’s Black Planet. I’m doing pretty well with only 6 lightning powers right now.

Edit: hah, the mouseover on the items is broken. I’m not really equipped with level 1 offensive items and level 50 defensive items at character level 26.

1976

My melee munitions hero. Doesn’t seem 100% correct as i am almost certain i dropped the Two Smoking Barrels advantage a long time ago and i have the aoe advantage for sniper rifle.

The picture also doesn’t seem to capture eye glows sadly. Also doesn’t seem to capture facial expressions settings.

It would be nice if they showed nemesis info/stats there as well.

1977

Here’s Shadowfire. My friends list is still buggy through the site. I think they didn’t really think through what information to provide and how it would be useful. The layout and functionality are terrible, let alone accuracy being terribly inconsistent.

Why do I need to see what’s in my inventory? Why does there need to be current missions or missions completed list? Especially listed like that, with no search or sorting functions? They should have left it at picture, stats, powers, equipped items, and biography. And then maybe add builds later if they end up turning the build slots into mini-inventories.

They need to seriously ask themselves how is this serving the player playing our game, because I don’t see it. WoW’s armory offers looking characters, equipment, and builds, as well as NPCs, and items and upgrades and where to get them. It allows players to plan their play sessions and inform them. None of that is really applicable to CO because so much is in flux.

1978

Yeah the number one function i had with armory in wow was playing in windowed mode and every time i’d try to start a group, armory’ing people before inviting them to check if they were in all greens. The CO armory doesn’t serve any purpose that i can think of other than looking nice, kind of like a computer case made out of solid gold.

1979

Shadowfire looks like she could belong in The Incredibles universe of supers.

1980

Yeah. That’s my favorite costume for her. It has a very classic look to it, like should be friends with Robin. She looks much better in-game with the facial expression I gave her. If I were going to leave her face on normal, I would have made some changes like making the eyes a bit smaller, changing their position and the mouth likely as well.

Here’s a montage with a better look at her face, her other costume, and her in action.

And you’re right, it turns the skin green as well.

I really wish the pecs on guys and the limited options didn’t keep me from making one of her nemesis a teen villain as well.