While I’m enjoying the game as a whole, I really dislike a key decision Cryptic made to start players off into back-to-back tutorial zones. These tutorial zones are not only small and cramped, they don’t look as good as the rest of the game. Sure, there’s enough room to move around and get the tasks done, but having noticeable field barriers ever present wherever you go– It’s not a good first impression of the game.

Tutorial Zones

Thankfully you can run through the tutorials at a fairly quick pace once you’ve done it a couple times, but this leads to my next complaint: They aren’t good tutorials. At least for me, I spent my first few moments wanting to figure out my abilities and get into some real combat and instead:

I’ve got a guy standing in front of me with a quest to send me to another quest giver to send me to poke at some target dummies / drones / alien pods and then to another quest giver. Right away, I get the impression I’m going to be doing a lot of back-and-forth quests. I actually don’t mind those once I’m into the game, but from the get-go? Put another X on the first impressions.

There’s actually some nifty things in these zones, but it’s lost in the introduction and the overall desire I had to just escape this into the more open world. The “open mission” / public quest would have been a much better place to start the tutorial, throw you right into some action. Sure, some players would like some more handholding, but Cryptic could have given them the option to take something milder, rather than funnel us all through the lowest common denominator experience.

Plural Tutorial Zones?

When I finished the end quest for the tutorial, I was feeling pleased with myself. I slapped the dust from my hands, flexed my fingers and prepared for exploration.

What? Another Tutorial Zone? They’ve labelled them Crisis zones and there’s two to choose from, but there I am again, in a limited space with quests to push me along before I can get out. My immediate reaction was to just logout and come back later. It wasn’t that I was so disgusted, it was just about game flow. I’d climbed a ladder to a destination only to find when I arrived that it’s just another ladder. Put another X on the first impressions.

I can see where Cryptic was going with this: The first tutorial zone is meant to teach questing and basic combat / gameplay, while the second teaches character development and crafting. But players shouldn’t be forced / pushed through these, especially in a game where alts will abound. Plus segregating new players sounds like a good plan, but it’s detrimental for all of the social interactions of the game, not to mention the dent it takes out on group features like Sidekicking.

Back to the Character Creation screen

Wait, isn’t the Character Creation the real first impression for Champions Online? Sort of. Not for anyone coming from City of Heroes it isn’t, because it’s expected that Champions would have it good in this dept. I’m happy to say the Character Creator doesn’t disappoint, but it does lead to a bit of a loop.

I kept returning to the Character Creator throughout this whole process while I was trying to escape the tutorial zones. I would have reached the better zones (and they are indeed much larger and well populated. Cryptic also increased the player caps per zone today) sooner if I didn’t basically reboot the process a few times. Alts will be commonplace in this game, so I think this reboot / reloop process is going to happen for a lot of players.

Getting to second impressions

I hope Cryptic doesn’t consider it too late to completely rework this whole tutorial idea. Or at least give players an option to jump past it: Either skip ahead to level 10, or provide a larger more open zone to beginning players. I don’t expect that would happen anytime soon unfortunately.

It’s like playing a different game once you’re past the tutorials.

Ultimately for me I can just burn through the tutorial zones, it’s not going to dent my experience much overall, but absolutely this set of baby-the-beginners gates will filter out a lot of players who could have enjoyed the game otherwise.

I was going to skip this beta for Champions Online. I don’t have the same stomach for pre-release material as I used to and I figured I’d pass on the bumps and warts and go straight to the game at launch. I’d gone over Cryptic’s announced features of the game and it looked like it was hitting the mark for me.

Then word came out from a few people that there were problems and I was considering a ($220 CAN) lifetime subscription to the game. Suddenly the open beta felt like a requirement.

I shouldn’t have worried about the negative hot air though. Sure, there are bugs and oversights. More importantly there are design decisions that rub some people the wrong way, including even some of the City of Hereos fans, but (and here’s the big point): The working features of the game closely match what Cryptic said it would be. There’s been no misdirection, no ruse, no gigantic missing features, no bombshell to speak of here.

So far I’m having a blast with the beta. Michelle is downright ecstatic, it’d be hard not to feed off of her enthusiasm. I wasn’t hyped or pumped about any game most of the summer, but now that I’ve played it I’m smiling. We’re happily letting that subscription charge go through.

This is key too: We’re likely to play this game casually. Oh for sure, it’ll probably be intense at first, but long-term this will probably be our fallback position. A comfortable place we can always jump in and team up with friends. We were considering Guild Wars for that, because well hey, it’s a cheaper one-time purchase, but enjoyment-wise Champions is trumping Guild Wars for both me and Michelle. I’d rather be happier with a few less bucks in my pocket.

That’s not to say I won’t turn my overtly critical eye on Champions. It’s not all golden. Hell I’ve got a few rants half-baked in the oven already. But it’s also different enough not to bore me, which is saying something since I’m so tired of the WoW clones.

I’ve been griping that my Diku-burnout has been bogged down by three things that keep staying the same in MMORPGs: Classes, Combat and Character Progression. Champions Online isn’t a huge change, except in these particular categories. It almost seems custom tailored for what I was asking for.

We’ll see how it goes. I’ll keep you posted. I’m looking forward to launch.

Update note: I’m @Rogdor if you want to track me down in-game.