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Over on CDN RockinRickOwen put together a good post discussing the ins and outs of design and management for MMOs.
Over the last month, I've devoted a huge amount of time to playing Champions Online, desperately trying to get my first character/avatar/toon to the level cap (40). Having finally succeeded, I can now comment on the game and relate it's wonders and flaws.
THE GOOD BITS:
1. Cel-shaded graphics: it's like playing a comic book. Brilliant. Eye-candy.
2. Gameplay: easy to use, fun to play. Even just using the travel powers is enjoyable. With one character, I gave him a super-jump ability, and spent about ten minutes getting a kick out of leaping all over the place. Spectacular.
3. Mission/Quest Content: While a lot of people complain about the lack of content, I went a whole month leveling up just going on missions and getting the rewards. I never found myself lacking missions. There's plenty of content in the game in this sense.
4. Design: the zones are fairly amazing things. Especially the underwater ocean zone of Lemuria. Downright beautiful. Challenging, as it involved fighting and moving in three dimensions, but beautiful.
5. Customization: there's a LOT of super-power sets thus far--4 energy (fire, ice, electricity, force fields), 4 tech (power armor, gadgets, guns, archery), 4 melee (dual swords, swords, martial arts, claws), 2 psionic (telepathy, telekinesis), might/superstrength, and 5 supernatural (including one that would make us Christians pretty happy). And from the beginning, or at any point leveling up, you can mix and match powersets per power.
So all THAT, in terms of design & gameplay, is great.
Here's the kickers, though, where the whole thing goes awry:
1. BUGS GALORE, EVEN POST-BETA: ONE ZONE WAS PRACTICALLY UNPLAYABLE FOR THE LONGEST TIME: you'd get a "server not responding" every couple of minutes, that would last up to a minute, and then there'd be a horrible lag even without those messages. Lots of rubber-banding (you'd move forward, and then suddenly snap back). MORAL: Don't rush games in publishing. Even if it's the coolest game in the world, which Champions is, it shouldn't be rushed.
2. EVERY PATCH THAT CRYPTIC PUT OUT MADE THE PROBLEMS WORSE: People (including yours truly) would actually have characters stuck in Lemuria, because we couldn't log in. The most recent big patch changed some things that didn't need changing, and didn't address the issues people had been complaining about, and further, made the Lemuria problems WORSE, and worse yet, expanded the lag/server problems to another high-level zone. The player/testers would marvel at this, claiming they didn't experience these issues in testing. MORAL: Don't use an insulated system to analyze a problem and make decisions. ****In fairness, the company patched the patched early yesterday morning, so now Lemuria is working pretty well now. This means they ARE listening to the players, even if they don't acknowledge they're listening. It's like Karl Rove is in charge or something. Ick!****
3. DURING THIS WHOLE TIME, CRYPTIC STUDIOS NEVER ACKNOWLEDGED THERE WAS A PROBLEM. There was, and still are, threads upon threads in the Champions Online forums regarding all the bugs, but nobody from the development team gave any feedback or acknowledgment that something was wrong. MORAL: It is a truism that love covers a multitude of sins, and communication is essential to a good relationship.
4. THERE IS ONLY ONE GM THAT ANYONE CAN EVER FIND WHEN PLAYING THE GAME. Indigo Wildfyre is their name. Whether male or female, I don't know, but they are the only GM that ever seems to be online in the game as a GM. Indigo is always kind and helpful, as a good GM should be. Just wish they weren't the only one. And that he/she was online more often. One can wait a LONG time getting an answer or solution to a problem. MORAL: There is no such thing as a perfect system, nor will everyone always be nice to each other. That's why GMs are needed to help people who have problems. The lack of GMs is incredibly demoralizing in terms of how players regard a company.
5. CRYPTIC RECENTLY ANNOUNCED A NEW EXPANSION THAT DOESN'T REALLY EXPAND THE GAME: It's a city zone--another city besides the one that's already in the game. Of the five zones, one is in an Alaskan/Yukon type environment, another is a Southwestern desert/canyon land, another is "Monster Island," another is afore-mentioned undersea land of Lemuria, and another is Millennium City. So basically, with the plethora of creative possibilities out there, the expansion is simply repeating what's already in the game. And there are no new power sets, just new costumes and stuff. And probably a patch. So it's not really the "legendary expansion" that Cryptic has said it is. And there's no known event-related, game-story-changing aspect to it either. Moral: I'm not sure exactly what the moral here is, but it has something to do with not being a ninny.
6. THE NEW EXPANSION IS NOT FREE: Word among the players is that if the expansion were actually substantial, and if parts of the game weren't unplayable, they'd actually pay for an expansion. This is among both the monthly AND lifetime subscribers. As the expansion doesn't really expand, and 20% of the game has been unreliable, they're skeptical. Adding to this is the fact that a lot of other companies give free content expansions, including Cryptic itself when they were running City of Heroes. LOTS OF FREE EXPANSIONS back then. The sense among the gamers is that they're being asked to pay extra for problems to be corrected, when those problems shouldn't have existed in the first place. A lot of people won't be renewing their accounts. Moral: take responsibility for your mistakes; think in terms of long-term customer service, instead of short-term dollars.
7. CRYPTIC IS ALSO IN CHARGE OF "STAR TREK" ONLINE: which promises to be an equally gloriously designed game. This seems like a good thing, but the truth is that Cryptic has been focusing on the beta-testing and development of THAT game, without adequate personnel to do so whilst maintaining and improving the wonderful MMO they've already got. Another premature birth is the making. The Champions players feel that they're being abandoned by the company. They've expressed this, but still no feed back from Cryptic. Moral: Be single-minded. Don't expand until you're ready to expand.
TO WRAP THIS UP: I may or may not renew my account. I probably will, because despite all the technical difficulties, it's still one of the best games I've played, and it's a LOT OF FUN!
ICE's own Frosty! had this to add to the discussion:
The lesson here is: MMOs are hard to develop, maintain and people are more impatient and ADD centric than ever.
Champions Online has only been online for 6 months (next week). Every MMO, even the mighty World of Warcraft, has had a very rough launch. Tons of bugs, crashing, lost characters/loot, no end game content, etc. This is standard MMO fare, I don't think people realize this and the passage of time washes away many things. Most MMOs don't really fully flesh out until a year or more after release.
They have 6 months remaining of what the Lifetimers paid, they'll have to fix everything up and have some new paid content coming out (either in the form of new areas, cities, costume addons, etc.) in order to pull money out of the Lifetimers and try to stimulate new monthly subs.
They pushed hard to get Star Trek Online wrapped up because Atari signed a contract deal with them to give them $20m if they finished Champions Online and Star Trek Online within a certain time period. That's why you probably haven't seen anything huge come out, just the smaller stuff; the Halloween event, Christmas event and all the other smaller stuff. I remember people complaining that Cryptic was releasing new content so soon after release, say what again?
Although I have no confirmation on this, I think Cryptics plan is to develop (x3) niche based MMOs, with Star Trek being the largest of the bunch, and maintain them by releasing new content (paid and not paid) to stimulate the lifetime and new subs. The inital sub numbers will drop over time, so they localize all 3 games over thier servers. Infact I wouldn't be surprised if CO and STO share the same servers already. As soon as one of the MMOs starts to decline greatly, crop up another MMO and whittle down releases and support for the declining game.
So I wouldn't get too worked up about it Rick, it's good to observe, catalog and try to avoid the mistakes made by others, but enjoy the game, have a good time.
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