Death of a Game: Champions Online

[@lagbait3076]

Aww, I remember Champions Online, made a comically large chicken based hero named Bwok Bwok. He was fire powered, so I used to take him into competitions judging looks of heroes. When he was presented I would ignite his aura and by the time it died down changed his costume to resemble a cooked chicken...good times.

[@pocketheart1450]

Something specific that I wish you mentioned, is actually what drove me and most of my friends who played straight out of the game. You mentioned predatory monetization, but TBH the worst of that was freeform slots. When the game first came out, everyone could play freeform, it really was the way the game was intended to be played. It wasn't until later they added the archetypes that freeform wasn't the only option. Freeform slots always cost way too much, but if you subbed, you could get past that paywall because subscription players had freeform slots for free. Well, they took away your ability to sub a few years ago, so if you wanted that same benefit, you either paid $50 per freeform slots, or paid $300 for lifetime sub, which was the only sub option left. Basically, I was not willing to play archetypes cause freeform was the only way I found it fun to play the game, so I was effectively priced out of the game. This kind of predatory whale-centric pricing model is disgusting, It certainly loses them players in the short term, I have to wonder if in the long term it just loses them money because no one believes in the brand anymore.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Far more detailed explanation than mine, thanks

[@jgrizzle4166]

Same reason I left the game. I could no longer access my main because it ended up locked behind a pay wall.

[@LowbrowDeluxe]

@@jgrizzle4166 Same I tried to go back and my 10+ freeform alts were now completely unavailable unless I paid $50 a piece or bought lifetime. Honestly I would have got Lifetime on sale if I saw it come up, but since I couldn't play, wasn't paying enough attention and haven't seen a Lifetime sale come up in 3 years+

[@chubbubdreamer6904]

Are you serious? Christ, the only reason I have free-form slots then is because my partner and I bought lifetime subs when the game first came out, but we eventually just stopped playing. Only so much to do.

[@rentonroslin]

@@jgrizzle4166Wow, that’s insane. I hope you didn’t invest a lot of time in that character.

[@SoggySoup]

Great time to tell everyone that City of Heroes: Homecoming is now officially licensed.

[@DarknessInferno15]

Ah, a game I actually have history with. The character creator for this game was insane. While the actual game was very meh, it really presented a fantastic foundation for an actual officially licensed superhero MMO to build on. Marvel Heroes was announced and we all thought that was going to be said natural evolution of things. Nope. That was the end of the subgenre, really. Everything moved over to mobile in the following years.

[@craigwilde2162]

The character creator was great but I simply couldn't get on with the game's aesthetic, especially the faces.

[@boxtank5288]

City of Heroes was better in every way though Champions had the right idea with the costume customization (FUCK locking powers behind a premium account though honestly Champions should have taken a leaflet from City of Heroes and let those powers be free and the FREEFORMS be the 'Gold Account Only' Option.' like they already shackle your ability to make Alts, why shackle them further!?)

[@risel56]

It's so surreal seeing this game on the series now after spending too much free time in Millennium City. Along with City of Heroes, it was the game that cemented my love of freeform character customization. Being able to customize nearly every aspect of your character, from their costume to their powerset, was mind-blowing at the time. Even playing the beta on a computer that automatically tanked the graphics after an hour of play wouldn't dissuade me from devoting the time I did to that game in the long run. The highly mobile combat style made City of Heroes look like it had to catch its breath every few seconds, and it was unlike like any MMO I had played up until that point. The ability to dress up as a giant robot train and punch someone so hard that they _left your view distance_ was worth the $15 subscription fee alone. And the community, good lord, the community. I can't tell you how much in-game money I made just through costume contests alone, and how much more real-world money I spent on costumes just so I could win more costume contests. So many awesome people, supergroups and player-hosted events that I can't even remember who was who and who did what. It was the first time in an MMO I had ever seen someone I regularly played with work their way up to an actual developer position (hi, Kaiserin!) and turn the already insane customization options up to 11. However, that isn't to say that Champions Online was flawless in my eyes. The lack of content, often cheesy voice acting, its PvP community stripping the game down to a few choice abilities, PWE's buyout (and all the baggage that came with), and the money-hungry nature of the game left me with quite a few regrets, both in-game and outside of it. Seriously, I remember when 7-Eleven was running a promotion that basically awarded CO cash shop points for every drink purchased; I would go there every week _just to buy the cups they came in_ so that I wouldn't have to spend even more money on the game (yes, I did the math, it was MUCH cheaper). And the less I talk about the game's RP community, the better. Despite all that, though, this video has actually made me consider reinstalling CO for the first time in years - not just to see how far it's come, but how far it's fallen. No other episode of this series thus far has done that, which I feel speaks to the level of devotion I once had to defending Millennium City and beyond. So thanks for the memories CO, and thank you, nerdSlayer, for bringing them back. Now, if you'll excuse me, this detective's a cape and cowl to dust off.

[@Biouke]

Frankly the level of customisation I see in this video makes me sad I never gave it a try when it came out. It was much less advertised than Star Trek and Neverwinter, to the point I thought it was another random mobile game. I may try it out from curiosity because I like freeform character creation systems and I'm intrigued to see what the possibilities are.

[@Biouke]

@@marhawkman303 That's why I typed I may try it out. Unfortunately what I get from recent reviews is that the most interesting feature (the classless system) is now behind a rather steep paywall.

[@Biouke]

@@marhawkman303 Ok thanks for the info :)

[@benstone5895]

Some CoX/CO behind the scenes lore: Jack “Statesman” Emmert was the original game director for both CoX and CO. He was famously the villain of early days CoX with a flat refusal to listen to player feedback and perceived insistence that everyone have fun his way. Common opinion during the live CoX days was that the game only became as good as it was after he left the project. When CoX did the Death of Statesman storyline years later, sadly just before sunset, rumors persisted that it was a coded statement by Matt “Positron” Miller (the new, much beloved director) killing off the Emmert’s signature character. Of course everyone at Paragon Studios flatly denied the rumors. All this to say, CO attempting to poach players from CoX faced an uphill battle specifically because Emmert was the man in charge.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Thanks for the context, I have heard about a change in director but Emmert seems to have avoided largely any negative publicity surrounding it.

[@benstone5895]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss I blame that on the wiping of the old official CoX forums, which were every bit as cuddly as their reputation. Even the universal dislike for Emmert was pretty dang respectful. Not that more than a few thousand people ever saw them in the first place. Niche of a niche of a niche.

[@robsolf]

Yep, I remember him. And he "left" shortly after launch. He seemed pretty "griftery".

[@DezarasPrime]

@@robsolf He worked on DCUO too. I think he left that as well. I wasn't fond of the guy-too arrogant, condescending, generally a cock.

[@Zandock]

@@benstone5895 RIP kil skulls and jerk hacking.

[@CaptainChelo]

I do remember playing this game, and honestly my experience could be resumed as "so.. what now?". While the game did had a strong RP community when I played it, the game itself felt directionless. The pacing and the progression felt like I was constantly waiting for the meat of the game to show up but it end up being aimless. I remember some setpieces, but I didn't remember doing shit.

[@kyotheman69]

yeah same, it felt empty compared to City of Heroes, think that game did super hero gender the best, and felt i had more to do at lvl 50

[@craigwilde2162]

"Directionless" is probably the best term to describe Champions Online. Even when you found some direction it seemed to get randomly dropped and you weren't given much idea where to go next.

[@KertaDrake]

City of Heroes always had something for you to do no matter what, and if you somehow ran out you could just make a new character and have fun with a different build because there was a metric ton of ability combinations.

[@Thesavagesouls]

I don't know what you mean, it had some really fun quests/campaigns like the one in another dimension with cosmic horrors.

[@FiddlerForest]

"Developed by Cryptic" *inserts CLUE graphic*

[@silvermknight]

This one really stuck with me as I was a Lifetime Member from the launch of the game. However, the only reason I stayed with it as long as I did was because I joined an RP Super Group. The game eventually became a glorified chat room with an admittedly stellar avatar system.

[@TheSentry66]

Yes, I was also a Lifetime member. :/

[@boxtank5288]

About similar, and yeah that's the best way to put it. I did not like interacting with the content so much but the RP could be fun.

[@silvermknight]

@apatheticnoncombatant7750 It was $200 when the game launched. Then they brought back the offer shortly after it went F2P.

[@CaDragon]

Ooh, I love that classic intro. And I love a new video in general. Fascinating stuff, here.

[@kennethjacobs3198]

Ahh, Champions Online, remember playing this game in the Beta after playing CoH with my dad for years. We wanted to love this game so much but we just couldn't get past some of the major issues. It's a bad sign when the only time either of us had fun was creating a cool character but that only lasts so long.

[@boxtank5288]

EXACTLY my PoV too actually, me and dad played (and loved) CoH. When it shut down we wound up trolling about for MMOs to play, from Star Wars (Bounced right off just about) to Guild Wars (Doesn't retain attention long) to various others. We just could not find the one to scratch the itch. Champions was our attempt only for it to be, well as you said, ultimately boring except for character customization and as the wise man said quote 'That only lasts so long'. I dropped off around 2015 (desperation kept me going for so long) or so, then came back at like, 2017-2018. Then I started getting into TTRPGs with VTM (thanks to the group I was part of in that game) but my interest in this game waned until finally, a year later I dropped it for good.

[@robsolf]

Yep. I was a big fan of the PnP IP and its flexibility to create whatever you wanted. I hoped the game would carry that philosophy, and I guess it "kinda" did? But in the end, I couldn't create the character(in terms of powers) that I wanted without them also being super weak. You could also fly, but not without getting shot out of the sky. It seems like the whole game was a big "be careful what you wish for" lesson.

[@johnthompson8580]

What I find odd is their nemesis system could have been great, if they doubled down on that, so your player is constantly fighting their own rogue gallery of nemesis doing random story arcs you could've had an almost unlimited pool of content.

[@blckmtbd]

Its cool that i ran into this video right after i started playing Champions Online.

[@flaregamer64]

I've been catching with DOAG videos I missed so this is great timing for my little catch-up marathon.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Have fun!

[@PhriekshoTV]

Ayy, my name's there. This game is still one of my favorite MMOs, regardless of the obvious issues. Part nostalgia, part freeform heroes, etc. Excited for the new wave of superhero mmos

[@christianward4754]

What was saddest for me is that I was so excited for the game because the world it's based on is an RPG world that has a lot of lore spanning over a few decades, and that I had played in in my childhood. Getting to see it in video game format was so exciting and then... the result was so disappointing by comparison.

[@atlassarnosian555]

I think one of the biggest things that was missing as a clue was the Premium Pack update back on July 17, 2018 that would change the way how they did their subscription models. Monthly subs were no more, so the only way those who relied on that monthly sub had no other option than to outright buy the $2-300 lifetime subscription or live off of whatever the pack provided and slowly had to reunlock their characters, or force said characters in a downgrade to the free or whatever was bought archetypes; or just hope there was a special freeform slot they could acquire to transfer. Not to mention how an exploited feature, that since day ONE of it being introduced, had always been worked the same as it had before the update. How whenever you max leveled your character (to 40) as a subscriber, you were automatically given a brand new character slot to work with, and so you could theoretically continue the cycle of having new characters and playing the game over and over again. But according to the wording, this feature was only ever supposed to happen one time. So not only were subscribers out from playing their existing characters, but they couldn't freely make new ones either. It didn't help matters that also with this update it put a hard cap on the amount of character slots (and costume slots for each character, being 120 chars with 40 costumes each). So on top of everything, you were being limited on how much you could express yourself. I believe this was the utmost contributing factor as to why the current player base feels so small and why many had shifted over to those CoH zombie servers.

[@boxtank5288]

Honestly I would say CO is more the Zombie these days.

[@laughingalex7563]

I wouldnt call coh’s private servers zombie servers, i mean they get more content than CO and have more players for gods sake lol!

[@salmaniyabahrain1802]

The production value of this series is phenomenal.

[@ZanafarX]

Stopped playing over a decade ago but did put in over 3300 hours. 3000 of those hours were from RP, 200 from costume creation, and the rest from leveling alts. Good times.

[@markhalm9889]

I remember looking at this in Game Informer Senior Year of High School and looking forward to playing on 360. Christ I'm old.

[@johndoe-hr6vp]

As a lifetime subscriber who has played champions for all its 14 years since the open beta I can say definitively that: yeah, this is fair. Honestly I use the game more as a chat room with my friends I made playing the game then as an actual game, and as a chat room that character customization is great fun. But that's pretty much it.

[@jamesklee]

20:28 this (unbalanced) f2p symbiosis has such a strong pull on the player side of things. I think the worst part is that a studio can exploit this 'symbiosis' even in a buy-to-play or 'optional' sub model, not just f2p. I think the only difference is that f2p games can pull it off sooner, while sub/b2p probably need a bit more time and track record to tap into sunk cost fallacy for that to work. Either way the result seems to be the same: studio starts to deliver less but ask for more, and players excuse it for far longer than we should.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

This is really well put, and for some bonus info exactly why I created my channel and what attracted me to critical reviewing. I noticed devs not being honest (for obvious reasons) when games would reach maintenance mode, it's a big reason why I include such games that aren't literally dead.

[@GatorRay]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss Speaking of which. Do you have plans to cover Pokémon TCG Online? It's got a replacement in the form of TCG Live coming in the near future.

[@FusionArmorX]

As a long time player of Champions Online, the biggest problem with the game being able to keep players invested is the nothing of substance to do in endgame other than mindlessly grind currencies. Also, I kind of laughed when the first 'issue' of Death Rattle released and it turned out to be pretty much a single room encounter and then a run to a different spot and _nothing else._

[@robsolf]

That seemed like the big trend at the time: shipping with nowhere near an adequate amount of content. Tabula Rasa and Age of Conan did the same thing around that time: massive gaps in levelling, seemingly put there on purpose to keep people from getting to max level, where there was absolutely nothing to do. CO even had the audacity to nerf XP the day of launch. I almost forgot about that...

[@laughingalex7563]

Comment on death rattle….why do i think of my fav map review for a custom map of unreal tournament, ahe, “a redeemer heaven”. “Well, its a box, folks.”

[@bakaky0]

The IGN asking Steve Butts to cover the game was the first major clue

[@planescaped]

I remember when I heard this was coming out. As someone who played CoH very casually my reaction was just pure apathy. I honestly expected it to be DOA.

[@ageoftheatom154]

It's fun to see a game that I worked on get a video here! My inside perspective is that Cryptic was ultimately just stretched too thin. We were a mid size developer (about 200 people) trying to make things on some very short deadlines. At the time when Champions could have used some major updates, we were making 3 MMOs simultaneously. The revenue goals needed to keep the doors open meant we had to focus development time on things that were bringing in money. Champions never ended up doing as well as Star Trek or Neverwinter, so I think the higher ups had a hard time justifying investing much in it after the lack luster launch. It was still a super fun project to work on though, at least as a concept artist, and I'm happy to take this trip down memory lane. Bumps and all!

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Very brave and respectful of you to do that, and thanks for your perspective most of all

[@TasosEG]

Thank you for this game. Whatever you contribution was to it.

[@atlassarnosian555]

Thank you for helping to build upon the game that's made up my identity. This MMO is pretty much the first and only one of its kind I've continually been playing even now. Racking 17.8k hours on it!

[@ageoftheatom154]

@@atlassarnosian555 That's awesome! I'm glad to hear that you enjoy it so much.

[@diehorribly9333]

I am teetering on that lifetime sub ngl, just because i know there will never be anything like this in my lifetime.

[@theiran]

I recently came back and started playing CO again. I see hundreds of people in game every day.

[@Beowolf193]

Right it not dead, still active SG's and Im having a blast with it!

[@ar3klis]

with zero developer time and the server only needing to be monitored a drinking bird toy, the game is practically immortal cause it does *not* need any budget to run. I do love it thought, and still play it from time to time.

[@GMSquared]

Man, I was wondering when you were going to get to this gem of a tragedy.

[@fairlywren3664]

I thought it would be good to tell anyone watching late like me some up-to-date information on what's up with CO. Late 2023 Embracer restructured and moved Cryptic from Gearbox to DECA games, though nothing significant changed. What is most fascinating is that in early 2024, DECA games streamed on Twitch to announce that not only will Champions Online be supported for "several more years" but will also receive small updates throughout the year. It seems that perhaps they'll be phasing out Cryptic and passing on their titles to DECA. I can't say it'll be a good or bad thing yet, but it's a really interesting development that is relevant here. Will this be the game's big redemption? Probably not, but it's not quite dead yet.

[@tonybennett3]

I would play with the "Character Censors" and create the then-obscure Marvel characters like Super-Skrull. They would routinely purge all my costumes, I would come up with a hero with the same powerset. Rinse. Repeat. I won the Champions Online 2016 Halloween Costume Contest!

[@DmytroBogdan]

An old intro, yay! Death of the Game brought to you by Cryptic Studio

[@Paxchi]

I'm a tabletop RPGer, so the idea of a video game based on the Champions setting and engine had me pretty excited. However, I haven't touched the game in years because of a lot of reasons you mentioned. One hilariously tragic consequence of this game was what befell Hero Games, the company that created the Champions RPG. See, Cryptic didn't want to license the Champions setting, characters and IP from Hero Games, so Cryptic offered to just buy all of the IP from Hero Games with a clause that Hero Games would always be able to license said IP for their tabletop game. So now Hero Games has to pay Cryptic to use the IP they created from a game that almost no one plays anymore. This is what we call short term gain for long term pain. I don't know if Hero Games has or even can purchase their IP back. Hopefully they have some clause that if the game shuts down the rights revert back to them. All I do know is that they did themselves no favors with this deal.

[@marcmielke]

Oh shit, they were poor at business when they were just a role playing game studio. Don't appear to have gotten better in twenty years or something.

[@yokorose]

from when i played it . i feel what killed it too was when it was free to play as they wanted you to spend stupid money just to do what you could do before it was free . everything was locked and too over priced .

[@planescaped]

Free to play might as well translate to broken mess...

[@dolphinnnnn6318]

“DC universe online” is on its way out pretty much as well. They can’t even hold a dev team anymore steadily losing people while they can’t even fill in the previous positions. Straight up skeleton crew running the game now.

[@Warptrail]

There is a reason I call them "Crap"tic. The anti-midas hand, usually a middlefinger to fans.

[@beermuger8650]

A couple things i remember from back in the day that were not mentioned…. Cryptic wanted to try to release MMO’s in about half the development time that typical MMO’s took to develop. I think STO, CO, and Neverwinter were released in about half to a third of the time than some other popular MMO’s at the time, hence the lacking content and polish. Also, I remember really enjoying the Beta for Champions Online and was blasting through enemies which felt similar to heroes I played in City of Heroes. However, Champions Online released a day one patch that really upped the difficulty to try and slow down leveling and content burning, as a result heroes hit like wet noodles and felt very weak. I left shortly after launch and didn’t come back for many years.

[@RumpusImperator]

Yup, that's exactly the reason I left, too. I remember hearing that it was because somebody had found a combination of powers that had allowed someone to solo what was supposed to be the hardest raid dungeon a few days before launch. And instead of nerfing one or more of those broken powers, they cranked the enemy difficulty through the roof, so that if you WEREN'T using those broken powers, your character was suddenly non-viable. I would have been perfectly happy needing to kill 20x as many mobs to level, but getting consistently stomped by mooks isn't pretty much the antithesis of the superhero fantasy. After a few hours of that I uninstalled.

[@Sorain1]

That's what turned me off the game. I played a little of the beta with a power suit style set. Absolutely loved being able to fight hordes solo of lesser enemies or get in a longer slugging match with a tougher enemy. Cue the day 1 patch and suddenly the minigun that tore through bottom tier mooks barely scratches them and my defenses didn't mean squat. Tried the other builds I had slapped together out of intrest and saw it was all the same. Gave the game a month before saying 'they ain't fixin' it' and moving on.

[@robsolf]

Yep... upped the difficulty and cut XP. All to keep people from seeing the endgame that didn't exist. Some people still got to max within a few days and spilled the beans.

[@Sorain1]

@@robsolf The saddest part is I think a lot of folks would be fine with the cut xp, but they destroyed the big appeal of their combat system, that comic book feel of fighting hordes of enemies at once on even ground.

[@beermuger8650]

@@Sorain1 100 Percent

[@SoulStarSketchin]

I finally left C9 after almost 10 years once coh homecoming was launched. I didn’t know the last update was exactly the same year I dipped out. Such a sad sorry state.

[@Mystyx-Sama]

CO will always have a special placer in my hearty. I remember playing it when it launched and I was so thrilled by the amount of customization available. Like no other MMO at the time, CO made me feel like I was truly making my own toon, powers included and a backstory. I had a cool Power Armor/Strength build that was so damn cool. I miss all that :)

[@otaking3582]

Kinda surprised there hasn't been a tokusatsu-themed MMO or battle royale game, especially with Kamen Rider Geats currently airing in Japan (then again, Toei and Bandai never released a Megaranger game when that show was airing...)

[@BeyondDaX]

Rider stuff is still a very niche product outside of Japan despite its popularity over there

[@howardm2642]

I remember playing the pen and paper role-playing game Champions in the late 1980's (3rd edition I think). Basically superhero version of D&D. The variety of hero powers was great and you had to balance your character with weaknesses to have enough points. It was a lot of fun although hard to get groups together to play since it took more time to generate characters and there weren't many modules so the DM had to put a lot of thought into coming up with scenarios. I can't see the nuances of the game that made it fun really translating to a computer game, especially an MMORPG.

[@robsolf]

Yep! The PnP game definitely honed my math skillz. CO's custom power system worked well for meta min-maxers, but it wasn't great for creating a character from your imagination. Freedom Force, a single player game, was actually much better in that respect.

[@comfortablegrey]

I think one of the biggest issues with gameplay was it encouraged everyone to build their character as a gish for solo play, and switching builds for PvP or group play was clunky because of the inventory as well as attributes. There was a lot of good about this game when it came out, but it got bloated out of the gate- CoX resisted that much better.

[@FoMScratch]

I've recently just started playing this game and what you say is definitely apparent. Since I've been running around randomly with solo play the game itself is actually kinda fun. But it's clear to me that trying to balance all these mechanics in a pvp situation would be near impossible. This is truly an amazing MMO when playing by yourself or with an irl friend with the complete understanding that neither of you are even remotely taking the game seriously. Which is not a healthy formula for a massively multiplayer online rpg.

[@VundalI]

thank you for saying that crpytic became villains with their handling of star trek, neverwinter, and Champions. It was so disheartening as a player to see a game come out and see Cryptic behind it - you knew exactly that this game would be bare bones.

[@SignoftheMagi]

Side Note: The Champions TTRPG was what many players would call a "technicans" game. Everything in the game was customizable, including how powers and abilities worked, down to effects, range and damage. You could legit make ANY hero or villain you could imagine, but it was often a nightmare of math and stats to manage. Also, CHampions had a ton of heroes, villains and organizations, all of which appeared in the game at some point. Yes many were semi-copies of existing heroes (Defender was basically Iron Man and Captain America rolled together), but they had existed for decades prior.

[@SquidGains]

Great video, was absorbed in this story about a game I never played. Underrated channel.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@RobertTowell]

I bought a life time membership and played for about 6 months in this game. I enjoyed it, and still occasionally log in for making characters to use in my own and paper RPGs.

[@supreme84x]

I wish you would have talked about the Nemesis system more. I vaguely remember hearing that the system was originally meant for CoH. That it was taken with Cryptic and used in CO. I wish we could have seen that system in CoH. I also always wished they would do some quality of life improvements to it. You could retire the nemesis and they would just be gone. This was a mistake. I expected them to be gone by being "arrested". That you could visit that super max prison in the desert and go down a corridor with all your arrested nemeses behind bars. Like when Batman walks through Arkham and passes by his rogues. Then after arresting your newer nemeses, you could have the option of either creating a new nemesis or have a previous nemesis escape from prison and continue being your nemsis. It was so obvious as a content feature/update but cryptic dropped the ball so hard. I am still so mad at how that game was handled. The world felt so small and cramped together. Each zone was so small and all your contacts and NPCs seemed to be standing right next to each other. Oy....

[@Deioth]

Man, I actually forked over the cash (when I was minimum wage in college) for a 6 month sub as part of a prepurchase IIRC. I didn't even play two. Everything good and cool about the game gave way real fast to all the underlying mechanical problems. And I had some really cool heroes. A shame character creator was the funnest part of the game.

[@xkerberosx1]

Finally, the good, timeless, thematic graphics theme has returned

[@papasalvo]

Hm viewing the video within 39secs of being uploaded......I think that deserves a DOTG for puzzle pirates just saying

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

lol

[@papasalvo]

@nerdSlayer Studios hahah I'm just saying this is ur moment to stop my evil villain origin story AND free content what would batman do?......wait no never mind he'd probably let me become evil and beat me silly

[@dragonlord3376]

I see no flaws with this argument and therefore must advocate for this suggestion

[@EldenRingStreams]

I shall bump thine comment.

[@josephhalbohn8100]

Oh my god I haven’t thought about puzzle pirates in years I spent so much of my childhood playing poker in that game or trying desperately to get the bilge station

[@gammabreaker7026]

As someone that left and returned to the game, this is all spot on. A friend called this, "The greatest game that ever wasn't." "Atari" picking up the game was a red flag early on. At that point it was the infamous Infogrames wearing Atari like a Leatherface mask. Anyone that knew who Infogrames was got worried by that for reasons that played out with the game's development going forward. PWE's acquisition had equal worries that also played out as expected. A small clarification on the Vibora Bay expansion, AKA Vibora Pay. A community rep let slip that they were *considering* whether or not it would be paid. The game was so shy on content that the players (rightfully) were infuriated. The community rep disappeared shortly thereafter, surprise. Internal redirection and siphoning of resources to STO and later NWO took a brutal toll on the game. That's normal in the industry when a studio works on multiple projects, but Champions was in such a weak position already that it resulted in long stalls and neglecting even bugfixing and maintenance. There was also the issue of a particular dev (the game went through quite a few hands), that I won't name but longterm players will remember, who had a habit of building new systems on top of old systems. The old one was often in some way busted by the new one, and neither were bugfixed as they rushed on to the next "brilliant idea." The cycle repeated, leaving something new and half-baked in place and something else half-broken. To top it off, these systems were often cash-grabby, as we were well into the PWE era. I'm pretty bittersweet about the whole thing. I've gotten over being angry at how the game was handled, and now just enjoy what I can from it -- mostly the amazing costume creator (it got a huge update a few years ago) and power selection. It'll be gone when it's gone, but for now it's fun to tinker with. But only just that -- tinker. It's easily one of the greatest examples of squandered potential I've seen in MMOs. I'm even logged in right now, about to do a cosmic fight, but it's just "something to do" until I figure out what else to do.

[@TasosEG]

FINALLY! I've been waiting for this for YEARS! And I still play and love this game. Thanks for this video.

[@elocfreidon]

The On Alert update was a godsend for making all kinds of builds useful in all content, but also the downfall for purpose of exploring. They removed all unique equipment and cosmetics from the questlines and open missions. Crafting lost its flavor too with generic upgrades and no longer being able to make unique devices for your character to use with your powers. This was followed up years later by making it exponentially harder to farm unlocks and equipment for your alts that was done in a couple days, but now takes a couple weeks. End game now requires large groups, which is laughable in a dead game. If you aren't playing with the few leftover cliques, which are overly hostile, then you won't be able to do end game. They were releasing Comic Series (episodic content) that had new unique unlocks to farm, but stopped that immediately when PWE bought them. This was when players began to notice the attitude of the devs who were still working on the game. It turns out monetization moves were made by individual devs who lied about the higher ups making these decisions. This was proven when a new community rep, who didn't get the memo, mentioned that the devs made these decisions themselves. Like making auras into items that you needed to buy multiple of to use on different characters. Even making emotes and new costume transformations unlock per character that you need to buy keys for lockboxes to acquire. (They updated this to where if you unlock enough it will be an account wide unlock, which is much too late for this game.) The vehicles update was painful from the start since its purpose was to live test features meant for Neverwinter Online. It wasn't meant to benefit Champions. Vehicles have since been gutted and are completely worthless since then. This screwed over anyone who invested money into making their vehicles top tier. Champions and its player base was abused and every time something new that came out that was promising, it was never followed up.

[@BurlapRat]

For anyone wanting to play City of Heroes I would go download Homecoming. They are constantly updating the game, running events and nothing costs a dime. The only time they ask for donations is once per month for running costs for the game and usually people donate and it meets its goal within an hour and they do not take any extra money.

[@Sorain1]

It strikes me that CoH lives on like this, while CO is effectively already dead and once it's servers go down? No one will pull off a Homecoming for it.

[@TheVincenzoGaming]

@@Sorain1 definitely because of embracer group being the wannabe monopoly it is, they will shut it down faster than cops shut down parties in movies.

[@lowkeyarki7091]

I started playing again recently, and I am genuinely surprised it is still online. There are still enough players to make the alerts a viable grind, new costumes parts are introduced regularly which is good cause character creation is the only thing that stands out in this game in a good way. Still wished they revamped TT in a way that a solo player can clear.

[@mrgig00]

This brings back memories. As I recall, Marvel Universe Online dissolved partly because of the copyright lawsuit Marvel brought against City of Heroes and 2002's Freedom Force. It was a large driver in Cryptic's decision to purchase the Champions IP.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

They lawsuitted themselves essentially, then cancelled their own project. CoH was just fans copying Marvel which led to this, and the dissolving of MUO

[@spahghettiboi4150]

I was considering playing this when I came across it on steam, and then I saw daybreak, which is usually the place multiplayer games go to die (unless you count shit like everquest)

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

it was cryptic/pwe/atari

[@spahghettiboi4150]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss oh yeah. them too. i still have fond memories of neverwinter

[@chubbubdreamer6904]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss Yeah, Daybreak was DCUO. Although, I think it's a different company now.

[@Aredein]

you know, it's ironic that with this video, you pushed me to get back to this game. Maybe with my presence, that game may appear more lively, than dead. I hope.

[@robsolf]

Somewhere, in a broom closet at PWE HQ, a laptop/server just woke up from sleep mode. :)

[@TDMicrodork]

My dad had played champions since highschool and was really looking forward to this. The most excited he had been for a video game and he hated it in 20 minutes of playing.

[@callac]

The gameplay of City of Heroes is still WAAAAY better than a lot of these new MMORPGs out there.

[@ShinobiStudiosTM]

I still play this.

[@Beowolf193]

Im going to ride it until I die or It dies preferably the first choice.

[@kazuhiroyasei]

Definitely glad to see the return of this much better intro!

[@nivlheim09c97]

Surprised this kinda last long. I remember the tough times to find a PC rental that has a good PC and internet just to play this.

[@BogusMeatFactory]

You touch on making MMOs as a pure business decision being a bad idea and I couldn't agree more. There is a romanticized ideal when developing MMOs that has to be there in some shape or form. MMOs need that passion and bold design to even have a chance to succeed and so many times, we just don't see that... ESPECIALLY in this modern era. I hope we see more smaller scale indie devs tapping into that passion and finding a modicum of success.

[@kekgoogle4809]

love me some death of a game series, simple as.

[@kyotheman69]

yep great series Champion online pretty sad tale as well, but no game could ever come close to City of Heroes, i wish someone would make another City of Heroes game again

[@whocare8260]

@@kyotheman69 You can still play city of heroes online

[@gabrieloliveiralima3772]

After finally playing City of Heroes last year, I could see how champions trully lived on the shadow of their prior project. So sad that the game was gimped from the start, guess it's all about playing CoH.

[@OdeeOz]

Did y'all know that Atari wanted Champions Online, to be an upgrade of City of Heroes? But Cryptic was too lazy to merge the coding together, and Greed Wallet took over the deal to make it a Sequel, as Cryptic sold COH to South Korea, and then to China for the final death blow.

[@Slop_Dogg]

Wow, a game on here that I actually had experience with- 11 years ago.

[@GreatisNateGaming]

Man, so many games on this channel I remember jumping on and playing and stopping, pretty much in line with the timelines nerdSlayer proposes. Wait, am *I* part of the problem? I do love buying and playing new games, especially MMOs and rarely stick to them...

[@aluminumape]

Microsoft's statement about the profitability of Marvel Universe Online can pretty much be read as "We were informed it would not be a 'WoW-Killer', so we cut our losses." a lot of failed or canceled MMOs from the Oughts were the result of publishers and developers thinking they could be "the one" to dethrone WoW.

[@dragonbornexpress5650]

Ironic since, cut to present day, now World of Warcraft is simply shooting itself in the foot again and again and again.

[@NCATDJTNT]

I had this game. And I put some major time into it and I loved it. But I see why it died as well. This was a good honest assessment of the game. Good work.

[@dukeofnylon]

Reason of Failure: Made by Cryptic, the company with the touch of death. Seriously , I never seen a company willing to make the same game three time and have it fail all three time, smh.

[@chubbubdreamer6904]

I think it shows the power of the licenses they quickly jumped on. When you know you can just say, "Where else you gonna play in the world of Star Trek?"

[@Mazinja]

Ah, CO. I tried the beta, and, at the time, was pretty impressed. While a big fan of City of Heroes, the game always felt, well, sluggish, and the fast pace combat was exiting. I eventually decided I would play the game. ... The first thing that they changed, on release day: the build I had made for my character, a melee sword user? was suddenly SUPER SQUISHY and couldn't jump into a group of mooks without dying. Didn't feel great. Had to look up a spec that wouldn't fold over and die, which, in a game that promised freedom of power choosing, wasn't ideal. I kept with the game, but other problems surfaced. The "dungeons" were just not fun. If you didn't have a solid tank and support classes, the boss would keep kicking your ass. Once you beat a zone, the only reason to go back to them was to finish the "beat X amount of specific enemies" achievements, which... well, not super fun, really. Oh, and CO launched with a full range of cool lore things that would happen in their website, in-game news and lore and-- it got discontinued in a hurry. I don't remember how long it went for beyond "not very long at all". When I stopped playing the game, and it went freemium, I was tempted to run back and give it another go. However, in order to create a FTP character, I would have to DELETE ALL MY EXISTING ALTS, including the one character I had maxed out. I passed. Honestly surprised the game still exists at all.

[@dennisnowak2605]

This. They panicked during pre launch since people hit cap. My friends refunded before launch due to the world getting harder, heroes getting weaker, and xp lowered. It was fun during pre launch and a chore after. I solo played a little further to try Nemesis but then quit. This actually feels like a miss as to many it was the reason it died.

[@JadenYoshinaru]

This one hits me especially hard. I dreaded this game showing up on the channel but it was only a matter of time. I had so many great memories of this game before the developers abandoned it. And in the end that is what matters most, I suppose. Excellent video as always!

[@FoxeyeValkyrie]

Played this game for almost 8 years, right from the beginning. Made lots of friends, had lots of fun, but it quickly died down after it became free to play. Servers used to be filled to the max, now lucky to find some in the double digits. Most people nowadays will just stand and chat or pvp.

[@BloodyProphecy]

@15:49 HOLD UP......... i had both hero's and villains, and after the FTP switch they would NTO allow me to use ANY of the hero's or villain's i had ALREADY made without PAYING for the skills to be UNLOCKED from behind a pay wall. Them deciding i needed to pay to play my ALREADY max level mastermind was THE reason i said bugger that game.

[@Jirujan]

16:46 ah nostalgia.... i remember when Forsaken World first released, it was fun but have some confusing quest

[@angelphoenix7784]

I agree with most of your reasons; however, those are not the only reasons why co has died. Firstly, when player made missions were introduced for sto and nwo, champions didn't get it. Despite players were champagning for it. Secondly, they listened to the wrong people on the boards, when someone suggested to nerf the vehicles, they listened to those that wanted to buff them (I nicknamed the the board mafia.) Thirdly, the main issue were the devs themselves and Jack Emmert, they could care less about co. And it showed when the moved almost every single dev from co to sto and nwo.

[@infectiousfungi3188]

I started playing but the limit on superpowers and character slots is really annoying. But they got fantastic atmosphere with a decent playerbase.

[@Nehfarius]

As someone who used to play this game, seeing it fall so far is sad. So much could've been done, but they just...didn't. The lack of effort put into anything besides the lockboxes was appalling.

[@mikoto7693]

So I’ve only played Star Trek Online of the Cryptic MMOs and I genuinely enjoyed it for over a decade. I’ve been fond of it partially because it was one of the few games that I could play with a few of my friends in the US and we were both huge Star Trek fans. We loved the familiar settings and incredible customisation of our character, our captain, our ships and senior crew. The ground combat was always slammed by the player base but I found it as serviceable as the space combat. I put way too much money into it when I was young and foolish, and I’ll probably always regret it but I suppose it’s one of the mistakes of youth. But the biggest problem I had with the game was that the writers were just not very talented. The storylines of STO always felt incredibly stupid and dumb and for years I claimed that I could do better. (I’ve never said it about a game developer before or since.) And then I decided to proverbially put my money where my mouth was and I slowly learned how to use the Foundry. It took me months to gradually learn it and figure out how to achieve the things I wanted and then I started really designing my own missions and stories. I got so good at it that after approaching a couple trusted associates within my RP fleet to play test a couple of my foundry missions that they shared them with me rest. The result was a lot of great testing and proofing but they started wanting more. I started out with separate stories of concepts and characters that I wanted to explore personally as a fan who’d grown up with Star Trek to the point TNG and DS9 directly influenced my moral and ethical values as my personality formed. But eventually I found myself sort of recreating some npcs that I’d used in earlier stories despite the stories not being related and with prods from my RP fleet they turned into the same defined characters rather than random bridge crew stand ins. The stories started following the journeys of these characters, blended in with the overall adventure the player character and his crew were having. A bit like how VanZyl kept showing up in the main game story, and how Sela kept showing up and evolving as Cryptic kept getting the voice actor back in the participate. Until the day that Cryptic decided to shut down the Foundry forever. It was frustrating having them take it down every time they made a new expansion and restore it months later with the new content available and they must have felt the same way because they just killed it. I’d have been happy if they’d just stopped updating it. Stopped wasting time on it, but left it intact for people like me who could have still used it for years more. But it killed my interest in the game itself. Sure I still played the main content and I was happy with it but the Foundry was vital for me so one day soon after it was shutdown, I logged off at the end of the day and never returned. I sometimes miss it. Maybe I might try again soon.

[@CarlolucaS]

I remember playing this game and than promptly dropping it cause I thought it was boring :) Great chracter customization though.

[@sinmenon4347]

I'm actually surprised it is still ongoing, albeit like a undead husk shambling about.

[@KlaelDemon]

Man, this takes me back. As a big CoX player, I hopped on Champions Online pretty early. The combat was fun, and more action oriented than CoX. The character customization was incredible, truly top of its class. I'm usually a more PvE oriented player. But man, Zombie Apocalypse in CO. There was something addictive, with the free-form power system, of figuring out how you could face off (as the zombie hero) against a full team of heroes.

[@Dragonette666]

I had a character that could win Zombie Apoc, people would be so mad. I'd tank with a weapon in block position, stand in a magic circle that healed me , had heal bots with me , and an electric field that threw out sparks and ever so often would throw all the attackers off. People would literally stop attacking me to complain "this build is bullshit" and I'd just be laughing as 10+ players were attacking me at once while I healed as quickly as they did damage.

[@KlaelDemon]

@@Dragonette666 Ahhh I did something very similar, it was so satisfying to layer defensives and healing to the point that you just couldn't be killed.

[@johnjafon2410]

I knew this day would come. I loved this game at one time. Honestly the new zones they added through updates was so good. I wish I could revisit it again with fresh Eyes. Great game. Sad it became a doll dressup simulator.

[@robsolf]

This game is abandonware, defined. But what I remember most about the game was that massive money grab at launch. A major kicker was that people could buy a lifetime sub for 300 bucks when this game launched. Imagine the poor suckers that got bit by that snake. The other thing I remember was being in beta a couple months before release, thinking how clunky and "placeholder-y" everything seemed to be, then seeing launch footage of it being in pretty much the same state. But I will say one thing "nice" about this game: The way they did "servers" was perfect for what the game would become. Instead of having a bunch of separate servers with no cross interaction, everyone was on the "same server"; the game just sharded people off into separate instances once an area got "too full". So they've never had to close servers, and the 12 people that still play it never had to change servers to find the "population".

[@orborborborb]

People should hire you as a consultant on MMO's at this point.

[@darthcinema4262]

It's amazing how many failed MMOs there are. You'd think a superhero based one would last, but I guess nothing has permanent staying power.

[@BOYVIRGO666]

Well City of Heroes lasted years and only really failed because the studio didnt want to invested more resources into updating it despite a rabid(and still active) fanbase. DC universe is still very popular nearly 10 years on.

[@darthcinema4262]

@@BOYVIRGO666 I hate when that happens. A game dying because the studio doesn't wanna spend some cash to keep it alive is always the worst.

[@BOYVIRGO666]

@@darthcinema4262 I dont want to act like thats the only reason it was shut down. Even this channel covered it. Basically the game hit its expected end of life for the publisher even though the developers disagreed and had planned content.

[@darthcinema4262]

@@BOYVIRGO666 At least the developers wanted to keep it alive, unlike what Bioware did with Anthem, where they just let it completely die

[@BOYVIRGO666]

@@darthcinema4262 Yeah but it was also really obvious no one internally gave a shit about anthem.

[@TheInnerSanctuary]

I'm so happy you covered this game. it was one of the big ones I was hyped about and I got to watch it's rise and decline in real-time

[@RumpusImperator]

I pre-ordered and played all the way through the Beta, and thought the game was okay. What drove me away was that right before launch, apparently somebody soloed what was supposed to be the hardest raid dungeon in the game because they had found a broken build. Instead of nerfing that particular build, the Devs reacted with a Day One Patch cranking the difficulty through the roof, making a high percentage of builds completely non-viable. The balance was totally out of whack, and my character was suddenly getting consistently stomped by standard mobs in level-appropriate zones. I only played for a couple of days after that, and definitely didn't subscribe.

[@laughingalex7563]

I just realized, “Death Rattle” was released after coh public servers came out of private. Lo and behold, CO’s last update was death rattle. It was rattling its cage, haha.

[@NotTheWheel]

Why can't any superhero mmos stay above water... seems like such a slam-dunk concept.

[@Twitchy_McExorcism]

"Whether you'll really enjoy the game depends on how much you like the character creation and combat systems." Well, they kept me around for about 10 years, which is more than I can say for any other MMO. Shame about the rest of the game, though, because these days, I'd say the best thing for CO is a quicker death.

[@vampirenessis8378]

I remember my issue with champions online being balancing some builds where not viable even for low tear activities

[@WiseG33k]

I've long been waiting for this one! As always, you didn't disappoint. I'm still baffled we never got another proper superhero MMO.

[@Abedeuss]

Ah, Champions Online. A game with such fun beta, I unsuccessfully tried to convince my parents to let me stay home instead of going on vacations to play it. ...man, what a disappointment it turned out to be once the honeymoon period was over.

[@jax775]

I never heard of this game and I wasn't outside of this space at the time. Very strange.

[@TCPolecat]

Hrm. I would note that you actually missed a major aspect to them losing players early on. I happened to be invited to the early beta (before they started offering it as part of a pre-order bonus), and a huge problem became the "day 1 patch". CO had freeform builds right from the start, and this created an interesting problem that, if you knew what you were doing, you could build a character that could 'break' the system and be way more effective than the devs planned. This allowed those with the head for numbers to literally power through ALL the content and levels in the space of the pre-release window of play. Cyrptic panicked over this, and dropped a "day 1 patch" that nerfed everything across the board. Unfortunately, this meant people who were not using the 'optimal' builds could no longer progress. This caused a mass exodus of players, many of whom had been there since the beta, and dropped their sub count dramatically. Full disclosure, I was so happy with the beta that I actually purchased a lifetime subscription to the game. This changed when it launched with the day 1 patch and caused me to leave the game myself. I did return for a few of the expansions to look them over and try them out, as well as check out the F2P changes, but I rarely stick around longer than it takes me to play with the creator and make a new hero.

[@nunyabusinesss1476]

I vaguely remember playing some kind of Marvel MMO back in the say but, it was more of a "Collector" kind of thing. They gave you a few heroes to start with and then throughout the various areas you would gain additional hero unlocks. It was one of those 3/4 overhead games like Diablo. Nvm I just realized it was Marvel Heroes that you mentioned. There was also some browser/flash game I remember that was turn based one that had you launching missions off the SHEILD Hellicarrier but, I can't remember the name lol. I'm actually revisiting Champions atm and started a new character :D. Decided to rewatch your vid remind me of what to expect as I explore :D.