Scarab

Scarab is my Gadgeteer. The goal of the build is to create a solid core out of the gadget powers and go from there. I went through a couple iterations of the gadget build before settling on this one.

Powers

Sonic Blaster (Rank 1 + Refraction of Sound) — This is a nice energy builder with decent damage (as energy builders go) and a good energy return rate. With the advantage, it goes from a single target attack to a cone and this makes it even better because then it can be used as a carrier for the dreaded Sonic Device.

Gauntlet Chainsaw (Rank 3)– Ok, so I go from being a hero to being that guy in Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Well, I am supposed to be arresting the bad guys, not killing them so… maybe the chainsaw just stuns them! That’s it! It’s a Taser Saw!!! Overblown rationalizations for a silly power aside, GC is a great melee power, perhaps one of the best in the game. It is a high damage, maintained, cone melee attack that ticks every half-second. Its only drawback is the fact that it has a prohibitive energy cost.

I putzed around with lots of different builds with lots of different attacks, and had even tried the Chainsaw and dismissed it because of its high energy cost. However, I later revisited GC and specced into a build with super Endurance and Intelligence. With the extra energy and reduced power cost, I could now run the saw for a full maintain, cutting through bad guys like teens in a slasher flick. If you spec correctly, you can cut through henchmen, villains and even master villains in a few seconds, making this the signature power of the build.

Sonic Device (Rank 1) — Though this power does good damage, its main purpose in Scarab’s build is for crowd control. I charge in with my cone Sonic Blaster and then click on the device and all of the henchmen are either dead or stunned. More fresh meat for the Chainsaw!

Personal Force Field (Rank 2) — PFF is a power that has taken its share of criticism and rightfully so; it is probably the least useful passive defense in the game. Still, I was determined to make use of Personal Force Field and Scarab can do so because of his mix of super Endurance, great crowd control and high damage output. Scarab is hoping to stun and kill (taze) his opponents quickly and only needs the “up-front” defense that PFF provides. Is PFF going to fail me at higher levels? That is part of the experiment.

Field Surge (Rank 1) — This power allows me to regenerate my force field and doubles as an oh crap power when things get dicey. I would never take PFF as my defense without also picking up Field Surge.

Munitions Bots & Medical Drones (Rank 1) — I took both types of bots because I wanted to go with the Power Suit/Gadget theme and I thought robots would be cool. The munitions bots are pretty good pets, doing great cone damage in their immobile turret form. The med drones are ok as a maintenance heal, but when there is an emergency, they are either healing someone else, on a cooldown, or dead. Fortunately, between my highly offensive style, my force field and field surge, I rarely need the drones.

Field Eruption (Rank 1 + Gravitational Polarity) — This power is used almost exclusively as a damage buff.

Stats

Scarab has super Endurance and Intelligence. This combo allows me to run the chainsaw with impunity and has the nice side effects of reducing cooldowns and buffing pet damage (though I think the way pets scale with stats is pretty weak).

Tactics

My tactics on Scarab are pretty simple: energy build, trigger sonic device, chainsaw. On tough enemies, I can use Field Eruption for the damage buff and make sure the bots are in their offensive turret mode. Large groups, or very powerful enemies can surprise me with their incoming damage and so against such foes, I have to keep an eye on my health bar and use Field Surge as soon as I start taking damage (meaning my force field has dropped). Unfortunately, this leaves my

Thoughts

Though it is common knowledge by now, one thing to note about Scarab’s build is that he lacks Experimental Blaster, the default starter attack for a gadgeteer. This is a low-damage, long-charging blast that has a number of wacky effects that have anywhere from a 1-20% chance to proc on an attack. Well, what I would really like to proc is DEATH, so I think this power underperforms. If you save your cash through the first 5 levels, you can respec out of that starter power and get another. I dropped the blaster and got Gauntlet Chainsaw which is infinitely superior.

I have mixed thoughts about Scarab. On one hand, he is fun to play and pretty effective… and a snappy dresser to boot! On the other hand, at level 21, I feel that the build is mostly complete and that any powers I get now are just gravy. This brings up one of the design oddities of Champions Online: there aren’t any cooldowns on attacks and thus, you don’t need to acquire multiple attacks to form a chain. For Scarab, this meant that quite early, I had my full attack chain (Sonic Blaster, Gauntlet Chainsaw and Sonic Device). Similarly, at the moment, I don’t feel the need for any more defenses. That leaves utility powers and there aren’t many. So, though I may be having fun with this guy, being “done” with his build at level 21 is a little disheartening.

My Champions Online review is below starting with character creation.

Character Creation: Simply put, character creation in Champions Online is one of the most verbose systems I have ever dealt with.  The closest thing to compare it to is City of Heroes, which makes perfect sense since Cryptic Studios developed that superhero title as well.  In Champions players can create the most insanely awesome, copycat or downright ugly characters that their imaginations allow.  There is a metric ton of typical options, sliders for body type attributes, and even more options that enable you to modify those attributes into robot parts, wings, a demon tail or objects that are barely describable (T-Rex arms!).  Assuming you manage to pull off a sweet design you can even save and share it with friends.

Character creation doesn’t end after the ‘Play’ button though.  Throughout the game players can specialize their character in numerous other ways, some purely cosmetic, some that actually impact gameplay.  Cosmetically, one can chose where, and with what color, our spells fire from.  Want fireballs to launch from you chest and appear as iceballs?  So be it.  Gameplay customization can be summed up as specializing, but Cryptic enables players to chose basically anything.  To the point that you can horribly gimp your toon.  You can roll these poor decisions back – a tanking toon with threat reduction is bad? – but it’s a costly process.

For all the choice built in to the feature, Cryptic did botch one aspect of creation.  Costume creation contains so many options, with so many dropdown boxes that it’s common to be unable to locate what you want to modify.  The developers seemed to realize this, because they allow you to click on specific parts of the costume to modify in an attempt to pinpoint such things, but it isn’t that accurate.  A minor, but rather annoying, inconvenience in one of the title’s most stunning features.

Opening & Lore:  Thanks to Cryptic’s acquisition of the entire Champions intellectual property Champions Online has quite a bit of lore.  Although the stories and heroic deeds done by the property’s heroes aren’t well known to the general public, it doesn’t make them any less enjoyable.  From the early tutorial to the powerful super villains, everything has a greater purpose.  Much of lore is forgettable, but the truly epic stories and tasks are ingrained in players thanks to the an extra detail, full voice acting.

The early public quests sets the tone for the rest of the important battles.  A champion rises to the cause, explaining the requirements, setting the stage and pumping up the participants for the multi-stage task.  The task(s) isn’t all that memorable, but it’s amazing how eloquent voice acting and good character writing can sear a setting in one’s brain.  On the flipside, it goes to show how easily all the text-based lore and character development is forgotten.  One can only hope that Crytpic realizes the importance of voicing future content.

It’s worth noting that Cryptic initially filled the website with new lore.  An act that has tailed off since launch, likely due to devs being busy with fixing and extending the game itself.

User Interface:  Champions Online sticks with the User Interface that has become common since the original EverQuest burst on to the gaming scene.  Spells and abilities are launched from a default bar on the bottom of the screen, the inventory pops up on the right side of the screen, and the ever popular minimap resides in the upper right corner.  The basics are nothing but familiar except for the gear that boosts character statistics.

Because Cryptic Studios wanted to make the costume players chose last the entire game, or until they wish to change the look, the gear equipped has absolutely no impact on a character’s look.  This means that loot isn’t applied to a character in the same way as most popular MMOGs.  Out goes your token slot – head, waist, legs, shoulders, etc - Instead players are given nine slots to work in whatever boosts they can finagle without overlapping types.  An interesting design decision, even if it is a little confusing at first.

Quests & Grinding:  Quite simple, questing is your only option.  The mobs in Champions Online offer so little XP per kill as to become negligible when compared to the massive amounts of experience gained by completing quests.  With the balance heavily favoring questing – something some players hate, and others love – the problems arise when players clear an area’s quests but aren’t high enough level to progress to a new level.  Thankfully Cryptic has been adding extra quests for those sparse areas.

Dungeons:  Solidsamantha has over two dozen hours clocked but has never entered what one would call a dungeon.  She’s cleared plenty of group content, villains of varying difficulty, but there’s never been a dungeon crawl, complete with a loot-hording boss at the end.They do exist, Cryptic calls them ‘Lairs.’  These challenges have been available to her, but have never been worth the effort. Following the path of least resistance mantra, Solidsagart has progressed through solo content.

Polish:  It’s obvious that Champions Online needed more time in the oven.  It’s been over a month since going live and the game still has issues.  No MMOGs ship in a perfect state, but Cryptic continues to have problems across the board.  Cryptic is handling it well, issuing patches and community updates to keep players abreast of the situation and show them that the developers are aware of the issues.  To make amends Cryptic has issued free playtime and retcons – aka respecs – to subscribers.  A small measure that actually goes a long way.

Uniqueness:  There’s only one obvious comparison that can be made, City of Heroes (and Villains).  Considering that Cryptic Studios also made CoH, it’s easy to assume that Champions Online is simply CoH v1.5.  The assumption isn’t far off the mark at first glance, and likely why the stigma still remains, but Champions is far deeper than a weird rip-off.

Sure, both titles feature fast-paced action and revolve around superheroes, but Warhammer Online and WoW feature fantasy settings and they aren’t the same.  Just like the fantasy pair, the worlds of CO and CoH are drastically different, enabling the developers to go in a variety of directions.  The reoccurring knock of v1.5 is the result of Cryptic’s developers not diversifying the title from the get go.  This was likely a conscious decision; having some familiarity is a good draw for MMO gamers in general, not just former CoH players.

To be clear, it’s the worlds that diversify the content – the story, the writing and the presentation.  The combat remains fairly close to CoH’s, although Champions’ combat is faster and more arcade-y than CoH’s already arcade-y combat.

Overall:  Champions Online offers a unique experience in today’s crowded MMOG genre.  It’s extremely casual and alt friendly, but is hamstrung by a lack of group content early on.  By and large the game is entirely soloable up until the lairs become a more frequent occurrence later in the game.  Champions Online is far from perfect, but as one of the few non-fantasy titles available it holds its own and will only get better in the coming months.

In an attempt, possibly last ditch effort, at regaining Age of Conan’s hundreds-of-thousands of lost subscribers Funcom has announced some brand new incentives.  For starters, there’s double experience gain through the end of the month.  Should you continue to subscribe for two months after November’s demise, you’ll be granted access to the upcoming The Secret World beta test.

But that’s not all! Continue further and you’ll unlike these fabulous gifts.  The higher tiers include the bonuses from the lower ones – ie. a one-year subscription gets everything.

• Subscribing for 1 month gives 7 days extra game time for no additional cos.
• Subscribing for 3 months adds a guaranteed spot in the open beta for The Secret World.
• Subscribing for 6 months also gives a level 40 helmet with a 10% XP modifier.
• Subscribing for 12 months gives a free copy of the Rise of the Godslayer expansion.

Any RPG that bases its re-playability on loot is going to be compared to MMOG.  Considering that most of the endgame content in Borderlands is based around gathering loot, a common draw to stereotypical MMOG, the comparison only seems fair.  The enticement of gearing out your character and reaching the level cap – level 50 in Borderlands – isn’t its failure though, but its greatest success in claiming anMMOG label.  Rather it falters in other impersonations, including story, NPC interactions, and connectiveness.

Borderlands is a beautiful game, set in the colorful, and hard, world of Pandora, but the story is downright dreadful.  It isn’t poorly written, it’s, for all intents and purposes, simply non-existent.  That may be a bit hyperbolic of me, there is a story, but if I were to layout the story in a text document it’d likely only reach a few pages.  The story is in sad state, and ultimately a missed opportunity when one considers how well the extraneous dialogue – quest text, NPC and players barks – was delivered to players.

NPC interactions are encompassed in that extraneous dialogue, and each and every one of them was fantastic.  Through a combination of art, video directing and hilarious writing, each non-playable character was given its own place in Pandora, its own personality and reason for existing.  Some were bad guys, others good, while one is as blind as a bat that constantly jokes about his condition.  They nailed the delivery, but not the quantity; there is only a handful of NPCs, be they quest givers or boss mobs in the game.  A desolate world indeed.  Borderlands was light on the interactions for a standard RPG, let alone a title being compared to an MMOG.

Gearbox Software missed a perfect chance to create a strong Borderlands community.  The company started things off right, releasing an interactive spec page ahead of release, but failed to capitalize post-launch.  Outside of the forums – which are currently rife with bug complaints – there’s nothing to grow the community.  No loot database (yes, the loot is largely dynamic and random, but there are common factors and drops that could be tracked) or even a helpful manual to explain the intricate specializations to newbies.  Had the company chose to invest in growing and supporting a community Gearbox would recuperate those expenses, and then some, on DLC.

Let’s get one thing straight, Borderlands was never advertised by Gearbox Software as an MMOG.  The comparisons have all been made by gamers and writers, such as myself, who saw the common trends in game design merging in the FPS/RPG hybrid that is Borderlands.  Gearbox didn’t perfect this blend, but that doesn’t stop the title from being chock full of character and re-playability.  Oh, and fun as hell.