If I Could Fix Champions...

I know it's been over a year since I've lasted posted here. Believe me, trying to get my head on straight in the light of other issues causes one to stop thinking much about anything. Needless to say, I hope I am back, and boy I am back with a vengeance as I post up this little rant, but without further ado, here we go.

Ah, Champions Online; a continued shit stain on the existence of Cryptic’s record where they continue to pretend they still care about the game, meanwhile wishing they could bury it and forget it existed. A game that is a remarkable failure, sabotaged both by the development team and its player base. A game that continues to exist despite obvious facts that nothing is really being done outside of token updates that might add a new string of easily completed missions in a year’s worth of time, while the sister games continue to pump out much larger content. And a game that, despite the obvious signs on what it really needs to intrigue outside players, the imbecilic player base continues to keep denying as if Champions is some special niche game, and not just another unpolished turd like its predecessor, City of Heroes. And event though someone will be hurt by that remark I liked CoH to, it still was highly unpolished and it showed, heavily.

I could harp on this subject all day, but facts are facts. Champions Online is going nowhere in its current state, and the remaining player base, over at the forums, are oblivious to that fact. They keep demanding $100,000 dollar updates when it’s obvious, if not confirmed, that the game has a budget of $100 bucks at most. Many of them are so damned deluded they think the fact they buy something from the store that all the sudden the game has an influx of money and there for the developers now have the resources to make whatever they want. Never mind that Champions store the items made are made with the intent that they sell enough just to cover making said items, and never mind the fact that many of them obviously failed economics; the same people that kept claiming City of Heroes was healthy, yet anyone who actually looked at the books would have seen the real story without so much as batting an eye.

So, what is the point of me writing this blog update? None really, I just feel like I should finally put out what I would have actually done differently than what cryptic did to Champions Online to better monetize the game and continue inspiring people to further play, as well as get new content updates in. The current game is not even worthy of being called a shadow of the Champions PnP game, and I think that’s actually pretty sad. It’s sadder to me it takes Cryptic North a full year to make five new missions, and one event for the game, and yet nothing else is really done.

I fully understand that what I am writing is too little too late, but this I think should be a cautionary tale for the future for other developers who are looking at ways to avoid similar fates.

Free to Play was an Absolute Mistake

Let’s ignore for a minute that the majority of vocal people on the Champions forums are greedy, selfish and pretty much view anything that has a price tag on it as a slap in the face and too expensive. Let’s pretend that costume prices in the cash shop Cryptic are not making at a net loss either, as was stated some time ago. Instead, let’s look at what the real core of the problem actually was; The Free to Play model. Cryptic made the worst mistake in history by making a lot of their in game stuff unlock for an entire account, at too cheap a price. I know that will ruffle some feathers but just stop trying to pretend, these games need money to survive.

First and foremost they tried to remove freeform builds and make them some mediocre archetype system. That was a mistake. What Cryptic should have done is picked one power set from each of the individual trees, then locked the rest behind pay walls. From there players could unlock the powers sets individually per character, or for a larger sum of money, unlock a power set for their entire account. Lifers would have still received their free cash shop coins, and players could pick and choose their power sets with freeform. Some would have bitched, but it’s high time people grew up.

The same could have been done with costumes, buy for individual characters, or a much large fee to unlock a costume set for the entire account. They could have even gone the individual route. Not only would Cryptic be making more money for champions, but the economy would actually be thriving in game as well as items would not be unlocked for entire accounts making them completely worthless in a couple of months.

Secondly, I would have made Champions buy to play, and kept the refer a friend program. A small wall, but one that still earns the game money for the game, and anyone who is smart should know money is what keeps MMOs going. Free to play is a devastating practice both financially and on your player base. So many draconian rules have to be made to account for the bad practices out their such as god sellers and spam bots that it ends up hurting new players more than anything.

Third, I would completely change and revalue the Questionite system as a whole. I would lock it per account, and the quests would be on a per account basis, no more of the players over inflating the economy and ruining the trade and thus ruining how much money you take in. The way questionite has been handled has pretty much been bad. I would have also completely changed the lockbox system, reducing the chance of the boxes dropping at for those players that have subscriptions, maybe given them a number of free keys on top of their monthly bonus, to opening them. And stop making the loot of lockboxes so pivotal.

Finally, and this one actually matters more, offering up special packages that offer up power sets and costume sets together for discounted prices on steam or the in game store, or hell, better yet, your own web site. They could have bundled the rock costume pieces with the earth set, or the wind powers with the Arabian Nights set, as an example, or things like VIPER costume pieces with the Serpents Lantern AP, and so on and so forth. So many missed opportunities because of basic mistakes like these.

Reboot the Game Completely

Another fantastic blunder is just the simple fact that despite they've not only launched two other titles, but one of them they resurrected from the depths of oblivion, and have turned it around, and the other it’s obvious they at least paid respect to the source material. They made a big hullabaloo about revamping Champions Stat system but all they really did was make it worse. They could have, instead, gone to the source material and basically fixed it from the ground up. I know that would have cost money but investing in Champions would have shown something not only to the current player base, but to those people outside of the game to, and might have sparked interest.

This is where the armchair developers come in and demand that I qualify that statement, or tell me how much time it takes to do development, etc, etc, etc. Yes, I know, I am well aware of how long development takes and such. But this does not excuse the fact that what should have been done when they had the chance and what was delivered was two different things. Hell, as much as the whiny, pissy player base might have complained, I don’t think many of them would have bitched as much if the entire system was gutted, redone and built better taking everything they learned from their other games to make a better experience in Champions.

First problem up; the game’s engine. Champions Online’s engine is now seven years old, at the youngest potentially. It’s actually quite a bit older if you consider the engine was originally designed for Marvel Online (ironic bit of history there). The problem of character data, etc, would have cropped up in a nano second thanks to this but honestly, one of Champions worst problems and a problem to this day is the engine needs to be upgraded badly. Transferring all that data to a new engine structure would have been time consuming but it would have shown faith from Cryptic if they did so. That means they could have updated all the architecture, added in new effects and abilities and given new properties to the engine as a whole.

Second problem; the stat system is a complete shambles. In Champions Online, you have eight main stats and a bunch of sub stats. Yet in the PnP, you have 6 main stats and of course a bunch of sub stats. For whatever reason, Cryptic decided to take and make two of the sub stats main stats (endurance and recovery) when they should have stuck with the core 6. Furthermore, they gave the core stats unlimited ranges instead of just capping them off at 100. Endurance is what the Energy bar should have been (maybe Cryptic didn't want to deal with NCSoft trying to bullshit their way into a lawsuit because the stat name would have been the same as CoH or something I don’t know) and Recovery should have been a stat you gained to increase your endurance recovery and recovery time on powers, IE what is described on the tin.

As far as the stats themselves, they tried to come up with some convoluted system where everyone gets a fair amount of damage to particular types of abilities from their super stats. Problem with this is that it just isn't working right and it shows as you got super smart characters doing similar damage punching things with their fists instead of using psi blasts or something else. So, instead I would have had each stat boost the damage based on type. For instance Strength would have boosted physical damage, while Dexterity would have boosted finesse type damage. Presence would be summon damage, Ego would have boosted mental, and Intelligence would have boosted energy damage. Constitution would have continued to give more health and also given some defense on top of it as well, but I would have made stat points finite, of course, and players assign them as they see fit as they level. Thus building the character they want and opening up hybrid options much better. Further bonuses would also be opened up as each role would grant special bonuses from their respective trees.

The sub stats I would have worked out to be much closer than what was given, and I certainly would have done something about the dodge thing, instead changing that to deflect a chance to reduce incoming damage. And instead I would have implemented the ability for players to choose to block or avoid damage with dodge mechanics similar to Neverwinter. Thus players could build tankier characters and so forth.

And speaking of roles, yea, that dreaded roles that every idiot afraid of responsibility will claim is the worst thing for MMOs, yet it seems the successful ones actually have them, but I digress, I would have made the roles stronger thus the players could build with a purpose. The hybrid role would have been nixed, there wouldn't be two damage roles and there would also be the controller role to help out controllers. All these stupid toggles for damage would be removed and instead either temp or permanent buffs that actually go for the entire team, not just the one player.

Of course you can’t change most of the above without changing the gearing. Unlike the old system, gear in this new Champions would be focused on secondary stats. Things like Offense (physical, mental, energy), critical hit chance, Defense (physical, mental, energy), Deflection, Recovery, so much could be done with this it isn't funny. Where the stats on a character represents the things the player sees, the secondary stats would fill in the rest to augment the abilities that the players want, and thus power sets could be more universal, while separate.

This gear revamp of course would add more than the standard 6 slots. Maybe a relic slot or something legendary things of that nature and artifacts. And the crafting system could be revamped to make crafting more important, but not necessarily choose the stats you want except maybe through special mod slots.

And of course this would mean better mobs, bosses and retooled everything. Maybe even streamlined zones making Millennium City more of a city with more area to explore and making other zones more of adventure zones, separating them instead of trying to mash them together. After all, Snake Gulch should not be mixed in with the Atomic Wasteland or Stronghold prison. This also means the dungeons could get revamped, redesigned from the ground up, and stop catering to solo players and instead start catering towards groups. While the forums will make believe it’s not true, group content is a necessity for the health of a theme park MMO.

Change the Power System Completely

You keep making the mistake and trying to homogenize powers and forgetting a ton of others. The one thing people play super hero games for you haven’t bothered to actually make anything in the system other than small additions to existing power sets. I know there are more power sets out there, because I’ve physically seen the design notes for them. Hell, you got a goddamn book from Champions that lists hundreds of power sets for you, and you own that IP.

The first mistake you made with the power sets was allowing people near unlimited freedom in picking and choosing powers from every power set. This should have been limited with limited choice outside of their core power sets. I don’t care what someone says, most heroes are not made up of fire, ice, air, gadgets and so forth. They are usually confined to a core set of powers, and Champions fails to deliver that. They don’t feel like super heroes anymore. Restrict the power choices then flesh out the power sets more giving them the core things they need such as defensives, offensives, controls and healing abilities that allows players to fulfill roles they want to. Give them some ability to choose outside of their core power set, but maybe only into tier 1, 2 at the max, of another power set.

For instance with healing I would not have made targetted healing, instead make healing a bonus effect from offensively or defensively playing. While some players don't mind watching healthbars, many players hate that facet and prefer to actually heal as they play. Again this is something you've learned in Neverwinter and have yet to apply to Champions for some odd reason. The same could be done for tanking and such as well. Let the passives and role choice determine if the player is a healer, DPS controller, or so on.

Change the point buy system for powers completely as well. Currently you have dozens of these power points that people use to increase powers. Instead, players should have to make the choice to buy a new power or buff a current power. Look at your Neverwinter system for examples as this could have been used greatly in Champions to amazing effect. Passive effects could have also been peppered throughout the trees to help so that the players could build their trays as they like.

And let’s not forget the talent system in Champions was a complete disaster. It just added more power and freeforms just picked what they liked the most. Instead should have done this; Instead of the talent point system, the talents players pick in game, could have given the player a choice to pick talents say one every five levels and these talents give a small bonus to certain aspects. For instance, if a player wants to build a tanky character they pick things that help their defense and deflection while making their threat better.

Finally, cut the number of slottable powers at a time down significantly. The Batman arguments and such can go away, as the build slots could be put to great use this way. Characters could set up their tank, damage, healing or control builds and swap to them as needed. This every power is usable at once was one of the worst decisions forced into during beta of Champions and it saddens me that Cryptic caved to that demand.

Some method of taunting and removing threat also needs to be introduced as well. Finally, travel powers are getting bloated from just the skins of skins. Players should get the TP at level 1, and be able to re-skin it with the alternate skins, as long as they bought the skin.

So much could have been done and yea, people will say hindsight is 20/20, but we are talking about something that should have been done in a reboot of the system from the get go. Champions needs a huge reinvestment now, and cryptic needs to show that they actually care about the franchise.

Summary

In closing this is the short and sweet of it;

• Properly monetize the store

The game store is a disaster. Items that should have been on a per character basis are account wide. It’s obvious this store costs Cryptic more money than it makes even to a casual observer. I know most people would be against this because they think things are either too expensive already, or whatever excuse but then again most people think MMOs are charities and don't need money to survive. Takes money to make money, as the saying goes, and Champions made the mistake catering to the self-entitled crowd.

• Reboot the game

The game needs a complete reboot, revamping systems and items as well as entire maps and reformatting them to make logical sense. Attempting to remove the silliness wouldn't be a bad idea either. Follow more closely to the source material.

• Change the Powers System

The powers system in Champions is a travesty. It’s not a freedom of choice system as it doesn't even present the ability to make a super hero. Instead you have to follow exact powers and there is little reason to experiment. The fact new power sets have not been introduced in a very long time is also a travesty as well.

Now, the only problem, of course, is it’s very much too little too late. But, these are things I would have done ages ago. It’s just a shame that Cryptic doesn't want to invest and try to get champions to go somewhere, instead of letting it dwindle away and die. At the very least they could just reboot the franchise and start over from scratch, but I think they are gun shy about that and all things considered, what the player base is like from Champs and their former franchise, with the plethora of misinformation, I am not completely shocked it won’t happen. I just wish it would.

First Impressions of Champions PTS Overhaul

So, here we are the first major, major update to the PTS, the Alerts have gone out and with it some of their first changes to the game including a little bit of re-itemization. And all I can say is, eh…. They’ve been aping and hyping all this now for quite some time and the first experience with it has been exceptionally underwhelming. And I don’t mean from the unfinished, buggy reasons why. They are extremely underwhelming, the whole idea of them being “team” content got flushed out of the door when the team I was in pretty much ran over each group solo.

It just baffles me every which way that the same group that is making Star Trek Online, that not only has viable endgame content, can’t seem to tell their Champions group to get their act together. A statement from one of the devs said they were looking at it from an endgame perspective, to which I will add; No, you bloody well were not. Hell several of the groups I was testing with the exact same utterance of the lack of challenge pretty much was very clear.

And yet again, I can do nothing but facepalm as they’ve not only, once again focused on low level characters, they are, again for the third or fourth time now, redoing the starting level content of the game. The 1 to 15 level-range has received so many revamps and revisions now that a lot of the content is out of order. This is not smart design here. I can’t even begin to fathom what they are thinking. They are designing this game as if the levels did not exist and think that everyone can meet the exact same challenges on equal terms, but the team game is an appalling mess, the content is laughable, and they pretty much give things away to make any actual replay value pretty low.

Now while they say this is just foundation work so they can move forward, in the past 3 years now, there has been absolutely no forward momentum performed with Champions Online. In fact, the only thing to have received any significant updates has always been the level 1 to 15 range of the game. Anything for teaming or challenging content has not been added and has pretty much just been ignored.

So in short, what I am saying, this update is very thin and needs more to it. If this is all that’s planned, then there is already a huge problem. This level of mismanagement has always annoyed me, because it’s something that you have to go out of your way to mess up. Champions’ deserves better than this and it is appalling on so many levels how the game is being treated.

All I can say, if what’s on test is any indication of the potential future to be had, it’s extremely too little and honestly, I think it’s well past too late. But I guess I can check back each week to see if anything else has changed, but I honestly don’t feel it will. Cryptic seems content in appealing to the minority demographic that remains instead of actually building a game meant for the MMO world.

Reviewing Champions Online -- Schizophrenia Incarnate

Edit: I have just read that the F2P for DCUO will be on the 19th of October. So, barring anything unusual (such as the Missing Link actually launching the 18th) I should hopefully have an overview going out a week or so after. I am trying to go into the F2P of DCUO without the meh attitude I got during the beta.

Last time I talked about City of Heroes, and DCUO is still not on the horizon as free to play yet, I decided I am going to talk about Champions Online today. Champions Online is again another game from Cryptic and is actually the IP that City of Heroes was based on. That being said, everything that Cryptic wanted City of Heroes to be is not what Champions Online became. Instead it's just a giant hodge-podge mess of a game that doesn't know what it wants to be in the end, and the hardcore minority players do everything in their power to sabotage any future the game has.

Graphically there isn't much to say about the game. It's one of the best visual experiences out there with only a few minor quibbles here and there and perhaps the most robust and detailed character editor/costume creator you can find on the market (outside of spray painting your shirts in APB). You have a plethora of costume choices, a ton of locations an varieties you can actually edit said locations with many, many different color choices and mish mashes to come up with on top of the ability to control finer details of your character such as arm length, hand size, and many other features that are often over looked in face of generic texture skins.

But one cannot play a game based on Barbie Dress Up and outside of the awesome character creator, despite all feelings to the contrary, Champions Online offers painfully little to the actual genre that it is suppose to be appealing to. This is a glaring weakness that overpowers the sun and will immediately strike anyone in the face as soon as they enter into the world itself.

I have to say, Champions Online is a game trying too hard. They are trying to do so much to appease everyone and focus on the small group of vocalists they have forgotten they are trying to make a game that appeals to a much larger crowd and not the lowest common denominator minority group. They've appealed to the weakest link so much it's filled into the game as a whole, and the result is the game keeps losing the interest of the very people they keep trying to appease because they listened too much to them.

Champions Online is a game with too much going on and too little content. That's hard to quantify, but basically there is a thing that is too much of something but not enough. Champions has no endgame content, and again, like with City of Heroes, offers a ton of starter content but the middle and ending of it suffers all in favor of the alters who can't be bothered to play a character longer than 5 minutes until they make a new one.

The powers system itself is an abysmal mess as well, where there is no clear cut definition to help characters, and the one thing this system is crying for is constantly denied at every avenue to have it implemented. In this case dual power builds. The powers system in Champions is, to put it mildly, schizophrenic, it suffers from bloat but offers no clear, concise path to how a hero should be built. Powers are little more than a hodge-podge, at best, and while powers can be chained together, even if wildly different, there is little that actually synergizes. About the only real option you have is building a tank mage, as support characters are pretty much non-existant in this mess and any attempt to do so will be met with derision from the masses if you even dare suggest making the roles stronger.

In fact the entire set up is just bad. In comics and stories, heroes are a combination of things, but Champions took the route of listening to a select group of people and instead of sticking to their guns and actually putting some control in, allowed them to dictate that characters should be able to pick and get everything. Sorry, this is not how super heroes are actually created. Super heroes have their combat skill, or lack thereof, their powers, then they have a signature ability or abilities that define them. Sometimes two or three of these parts are all the same but that is always constant.

The powers system has to be one of the worst things about Champions. Because of how it works, people are forced into specific powers regardless of desire or intent, if you are freeform. Even if you had a concept build or something trying to stick with that build will be met with disdain and contempt from fellow gamers who spend most of their time meta gaming and basically doing everything they can to build the ultimate build, regardless of final intent of the user to actually have a character that might actually fit these powers and abilities. It's not so much build the hero you want as it is build a schizophrenic character that has no clue what they are.

Content here is lacking as well. Following the dogged WoW model of go to contact and get the dude smack down quota system, there is little that actually challenges many except the most inept of builds or players. While some will contest that heroes should be unstoppable, this is not what makes a hero. A hero and a badass are not just unstoppable forces that can finger flick things out of the way. A hero and or badass is defined by someone who can fight against the odds, rise to the challenge and overcome them through their tenacity, injuries and sheer intelligence. A character who can do everything, destroy everything or be unhurt by anything is not a badass or hero, they are a boring character, and this is the crux of another problem with Champions.

Champions is a boring game because there is no challenge. It's all single player style, and anyone who says that is a good thing doesn't deserve to play MMOs and should go back to their single player games. MMOs are defined as games where people join together to do things and be a community about them. This decided take from the idiot minority in Champions that heroes should never break a sweat against anything or never team up is both stupid and yet another thing that is killing the game.

When there is no challenge no one wants to stick around for an encore of the same thing and this is yet another problem with Champions; everything is handed on a silver platter. Any reward you want you can practically get without effort. This is terrible design decision because it bores people further and makes them not want to play because they have nothing to work for. This is something the lowest common denominator minority can't get through their thick skulls. They think people love this game style yet everyday you can see the numbers dwindling out of each of the zones. People want to feel they earned something and if it's handed on a silver platter where minimal effort is required, even on the most difficult setting, then this is terrible design decision

And that brings up the community. This is something I didn't touch on with City of Heroes, because it slipped my mind. However, to put a small blurb in, despite how dated that game is, the community is still top notch. There are the asshats, as expected, but for the most part people are genuinely trying to help other people or create events or just trying to be friendly.

Not so in Champions. Oh, regardless of how some people try to claim, Champions has one of the most egotistical communities out there. The forums are rife with it despite anyone's claims to the contrary and the if you aren't playing someone else's way, no matter how much they call freedom of choice and such, they will shoot you down. And if you even bring up endgame and raid content in those forums, or even in game, you will be met by the same people trying to tell you to go play some other game. It's the same attitude that games like WoW have, and the sad part is they try to sit there and say they are the superior community.

Overall, Champions Online is the victim of a lot of expectations that were never met. The super hero expectations were never met, the better City of Heroes expectations were never met, and the large world of Champions IP was never really met. There was a magic point in the beta where things were almost perfect, but then Cryptic started listening to a group of loudmouths to implement specific features. And as those features got added more people quit.

In the end, Champions is promising a lot for its future, but it has to get over the hurdle of listening too much to the minority there. The game has suffered for it and its constantly in an imbalanced state. The freeform combat system is nice and all, but you never feel challenged. Cryptic is stating that the level cap will be going up to 45 then 50 and endgame will be added, but somehow, considering they thought UNITY was suppose to be endgame, I have serious doubts about it.

DCUO will hopefully hit F2P soon. Honestly, I think they have the right ideas just poor implementation, and of course too few actual super powers. I guess I will see what the last 10 months have done for DCUO when I actually get into the F2P.

My first real blog here

Actually, my first blog here isn't exactly true. It has actually been quite some time since I've actually written a blog post. The last blog I actually wrote was back in January, but then again I don't think I would of actually wrote anything interesting if not sounding like it was just a rant to begin with, and mostly been spending the last few months trying to recollect my thoughts and get away from many things that were, in short, just annoying me so much that I was generally losing faith in the human condition.

Now the real question, has that helped. Not in the slightest really. The last three months have basically seen a constant and rapidly increasing decline in what I would consider people of upstanding character and places I use to consider to be repositories of sanity. And this decline is further accelerated by how the groups controlling these locations just turn them into asylums for the criminally insane, basically shutting up anyone with a bit of clout and ignoring the ones who are actually causing any problems.

Now, one of the first things I will need to do, of course, with this blogspot account, is actually customize the thing to my preferences. So an actual banner and such to this thing will be in order, but that will happen in due time. But I figured one of the things I should do is actually supply an actual blog and try to at least keep a weekly update and try and state my recent incoherent thoughts and ramblings out there for the world to see for those unfortunate enough to stumble upon these locations of the internet I carved out to call my own.

But in reality, those that actually follow me are probably here to listen to my rantings and ravings over, to be blunt, whatever is pissing me off at the moment about the gaming industry in general, or my jumping up and down about how a particular game I am currently playing just fell short by a mile of what they originally promised to deliver. So let's talk about that.

Champions Online

Anyone who's actually been around already knows I use to be a staunch supporter of Champions Online in the way beginning. But ever since the Vibora Bay update, I am sure many have noted I seem to be getting just a bit more cynical in my support and lately, if anyone's really noticed, I have actually been lambasting Atari/Cryptic for their actual lack of support for the game. Needless to say I have a lot of reasons why but I am sure that will bore most. So let's get right down to it.

Now I have mentioned this before but I have been with Champions Online since closed beta. November of 2008 to be exact. Those who were in beta will actually probably remember several of my posts that gave hints and suggestions on how to play since most were still wanting the game to be set up like a traditional turn based MMO. Unfortunately, my suggestions and such fell on deaf ears as the game slowly ended up becoming just that anyways with a slight few changes. Ironically, most of those people that forced for those changes don't even play anymore so it's comical in its own right.

Now what really annoys me and ticks me off is that during that beta, Champions Online and its dev team did extraordinary things and changes in rapid response to many things people were legitimately complaining about, and unfortunately changed things that didn't need changing thanks to people that should have never been there. I will keep those names off here but anyone who was in the beta is well aware who they were. If people ask I will elaborate later what should have never been added or changed because of those people, but suffice it to say I think the game would have been better if Atari/Cryptic never listened to those people.

Now, after launch there were some issues. They increased the game difficulty many fold and this was a bit too far, but when it came time to actually fix the difficulty they went too far in the other direction. Again from feedback of listening to the twats who didn't even bother buying the game or had publicly announced they would never buy it no matter what Cryptic did. Ironically one of them tried to lie her way and say she didn't buy it but her Grandma did.

Anyways, game launches, first major update was announced within weeks of Champions Online going live; The Halloween Event. I wasn't expecting much but honestly what was delivered right off the bat was pretty big at least for a game that just released. I've been playing MMOs for a long time and a first time update especially for an update that was one time and such were rarely this big. Not to mention it added a new power set. And I liked how it was being added. Of course I am pissed off they decided to just keep running the event over and over because that's a stupid idea. Events are memorable if they only happen once or twice not all the damn time. But that's a complaint for later.

Next up came the Christmas Event, not as big as the Halloween one, but people were thinking nothing was going on at Cryptic, mostly because of the development on Star Trek Online. However, people started finding files, and eventually it was let known that Vibora Bay was coming to Champions Online. A lot of speculation was going about on what was going to go into it, and of course, the one thing that should have been there that was promised to the players at launch and several months after, was the level cap increase. Vibora Bay, from my own point of view, should have been a level 37 to 45 zone. Instead it was made a level 37 to 40 zone and a lot of the content was cheapened for it.

We got some nice updates, including the melee pass, Bestial set added and such, but over all between Vibora Bay and now nothing has really been added. What is driving me up the wall, considering what people from launch have seen get added, and what has been added since I've seen it in closed beta, this is just shoddy and atrocious work. There is just no excuse for all of what is going on in Champions. They want revenue but it seems they forgot they have to put the money in to get the money. This is just subpar work they are doing and the really sad part is in the time it has taken them to release 3 Adventure Packs, 1 power set and several bug fixes including restarting a monthly Blood Moon Event, we could have had 3 more Vibora Bay sized packs, maybe 3 more seasonal events, and at least 3 new power sets if Atari/Cryptic continued to put that faith in and showing the rest of the world they were serious.

Quite frankly, Champions Online is being treated poorly by Atari/Cryptic and there is no call for it. They need to stop treating it so poorly and actually devote time to it if they are actually serious about what they claim. I know I am not the only one who feels this way, and I am sure there are many others who think the same thing. I just hope Cryptic is reading the outrage going on and realizes its mistakes and starts actually putting something into Champions Online again.