A comparison of Champions (CO) (2009-current) vs. City of Heroes/City of Villains (CoX) (2004-2012, current).
A little background information, I was a late player getting into MMOs in general, starting with CoX, and played it til the end. Once it shut down I took a break, but then was drawn back in to play Champions Online and eventually became a life time subscriber. Late last month a group called SCORE (Secret Cabal of Reverse Engineers) opened up their private server, which apparently had been running for the last 6 years or so (no hard feelings, good for them!). Once I heard I fired up CoX using the information provided and started playing again. I played with a silly grin on my face for hours, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t nostalgia speaking when I said that I believed CoH was better than CO, even though they are basically the same engine originally designed by Cryptic Studios.
I’ll just do a side by side comparison and let you be the judge.
Character Creation:
Naming conventions are different between the two games, In CoX the name you pick is yours, there is no other “SuperDude” but you, there might be a “Super-Dude” or a Sup3rDud3″ though. In Champions your account name is attached to your character, so there might be multiple SuperDudes running around, but they will appear as SuperDude@MyAccountName.
Character customization has to go to Champions, as that seems to have been their focus for the last several years with hundreds of costume pieces, and places to put them (left/right options) and many auras, however later developed auras are bind to character, not account. unfortunately all male characters look like they are related to John from “Garfield”
Travel is a bit of a toss-up. There are a few more options available in Champions like tunneling and swinging, but each version is a separate power. while flight in CoH gives you 5 optional poses and the wings flap while flying. If you have the rocket boots costume piece, it appears they are what is propelling you through the skies (rocket boots is a separate power in CO)
Speaking of powers, Champions is either more open (Free-form) or more restrictive (Archtype), while CoH, depending on your “class” (scrapper, tank, blaster, stalker, defender, etc) you pick a primary and secondary power-set. In Champions power activations are usually Tap or Charge, while CoX they are all tap, but have a cool-down period on each power. When building your character, CO is a bit more forgiving since if you decide you don’t like a power, you can just do a mini roll-back by spending in-game currency without restarting a whole new character (In CoX you are stuck with whatever primary/secondary power sets you initially chose).
Character Advancement:
In Champions you start at level 6 and progress up to level 40, In CoX you start at level one and work your way up to level 50+3 (the +3 being incarnate enhancements). There is more work to maintain your characters in CoX as certain enhancements can be out-leveled.
Zones:
Champions has 6 zones. Millennium City, which is a rebuilt version of Detroit after the invasion by the Lumerians destroyed it. “Desert Southwest” which includes radioactive mutants, the prison called stronghold, area 51, and a amusement park filled with robotic cowboys. The “Canadian North” which is home to the GM Kiga, frost demons, an area where froglike aliens have terra-formed the land and Sasquatches. Monster Island is home to dinosaurs, Lemurians, and 2 GMs, The radioactive Telieosaurus and Qwyjibo the giant, fiery ape. Lemuria, an underwater realm where (as you can guess) the ancient Lemurians reside. Viboria Bay (which is locked, per character, until you complete an arc) is a very cool zone looking like a supernatural version of the old French Quarter of New Orleans. and lastly there is the very purple Qliphothic Warzone, which was revamped 2 years ago to more of an end game zone.
City of Heroes on the other hand has 13 zones on the hero’s side, 7 on the villains side, 4 PVP zones and 6 co-op/shared zones. Ranging from various city zones/Islands, to more unique ones like Croatoa (Home to witches, Red Caps, & Fir Bolgs), Cimerora (Ancient Roman) and the Shadow Shard (an alternate dimension). Several zones, including lower level ones, have GMs. Before CoX was shut down, there was a facelift given to the graphics of Atlas Park, and a complete revamp of Dark Astoria.
Endgame:
Before CoX shut down the incarnate system was introduced, which added all new trials, a revamp of Dark Astoria, and new enhancements to make your character even more powerful. I can’t say much more than that as I don’t have a character in a position to experience them once again, but I do remember lots of teamwork and certain teams assigned to do specific tasks.
Champions endgame is pretty much relegated to a handful of missions in the Qliphothic Warzone, one epic dungeon and fighting 4 GMs
Crafting:
CoX crafting is set up with recipes and salvage in order to build IO (Invention Origin) Enhancements, and you enhance each power separately, making them more accurate, giving them longer range, more damage, more debuffs, etc, and if part of a set, they can give extra bonuses to overall damage, hit points, defense, etc.
Champions on the other hand really doesn’t have crafting per se. Each character has 6 slots in which to put mods in; Primary and secondary Offense, Defense, and Utility. These six slots modify the entire character, boosting powers, increasing offense and defense, and damage. For “crafting, you collect five of the same level mods and fuze them to make a more powerful mod.
You can modify how a power works in CO through its Advantages system, which allow you to alter how the power performs.
Bases:
CoX has fully customizable bases where you can put hundreds of items almost anywhere you want, especially after SCORE modified the code to unlock even more items. CO has several pre-designed bases that share fixtures with other styles of the same kind of base (basement, cave, penthouse, etc)
Vehicles:
CoX has none, except for a mission transporter that swoops in to take the team where they need to go. CO has a wide variety of vehicles that can be modified with Vehicle Mods.
One other item that I feel CO could have delved into more and expanded was their nemesis system, where you design your own nemesis for your hero. As it stands once the nemesis is created, its minions would show up on missions and drop clues (missions) for you to investigate.
Obviously there are more nuances between the two games that I didn’t get into, most are just personal preferences.
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At the end of the day, CoX (NCSoft) shut down just as the Super Hero craze started, and Champions (Perfect World/Arc) did nothing to capitalize on it.