f13.net

It's tough to write about something you like so much. (http://www.f13.net/index2.php?subaction=showfull&id=1081847847&archive=&start_from=&ucat=2&)

Another article with little to no expletives brought to you from f13.net.

Some random thoughts of my own.

I too am enjoying the hell out of CoH, and knew after 2 hours I'd be buying this game.

Character creation is fun in and of itself.  I suspect many will spend more hours than they like to admit just creating and tweaking new heros to find one they like.  Ask Signe (level 14 character creator) for clothing tips.

Skills and power seem pretty balanced out of the gate, so you can't gimp yourself.  And the cool stuff keeps flowing, you get to pick a new power every even level, and can add enhancement slots on odd ones.

I think Cryptic has done an excellent job bringing their world to life and it's many little things which add up to an overall synergistic fun factor.  They do use Zoning, that dreaded thing from EQ that i beleive it actually better to have than not now.  Reason, true geogprahic diversity.  And make no mistake, the Zones are HUGE and each contains several suburbs with their own flavor uniqueness and mob disperesion.

The 3 dimension actually exists and has meaning in this game.  Yes grandma, you can really fly.  You can climb to rooftops via fire escapes and engaing in battle on high.  If you choose the flight power pool at level 6 you can get Hover power right off the bat (think of it as levitation; good up and down, very slow lateral movement) and flight at 14.  And in battle hover becomes quite useful to stay up out of melee range and blast away.  This sound like a cheesy tactic but it isn't because a) mob all seem to have primary and secondary attack modes (so if a brawler type mob can reach you with his club/knife/sledgehammer he'll whip out a pistol and start shooting at you), mob generally dont come alone and thus you'll most often be fighting mixed groups that have some primary ranged attackers too, c) as you level enemies start to have superpowers off their own (so dont be surprised if you end up in a mid air battle).

Movement is actually fun with sprinting and sprinting jumping right off the bat not to mention things like flight, teleportation, leaping and super speed the further you level up. Yes there is falling damage, but it's not bad enough to prevent your from wanting to jump off a 20 foot hight in pursuit of great justice.

Missions themselves are nicely varied.  One mission i did that was enjoyable was hunting Circle of Thorns mystics in King's Row.  My contact told me to defeat 10 of them and to look for them in alleys and rooftops of certain suburbs at night.  I had just gotten my hover power, so levitated up to the rooftops as night fell.  First cool thing, when it got dark the lights on building actually came on; i know it sounds minor but it wouldn't have felt right without such a basic city element.  As I partolled the rooftops I saw a green glowing mist off in the distance, appoached it to find 2 CoT mystics trying to sacrifice a citizen in some mystic evil ritual.  Proceed to lay the smack down rooftop style inclusing blowing one sucker clear off the building.  Save the citizen, and proceed to trounce more evildoers knowing to look for the glowing green mist as a sure sight of my quarry.

Other missions might have you detroying some drug lab equipment (and yes you have to find lab look equipment in the missing and disable it), or recover stolen goods, find kidnap victims, give warning, stop gang wars, etc etc.  Lots of suitabley heroic activities.  I hear some of the higher level mission get even more intense and cool (giant robots anyone?).

To give another cool moment for me, in one mission I encounter an enemy type I cant say I've seen in another MMORPG to date.  The suicide mob.  In my case it something called a Life Mage from the circle of thorns.  I was in a cave hideout trying to recover a stolen mystic artifact and was fighting several guards.  This life mage was zapping me with a life drain attack which was keeping his life total complete so I wasn't taking him down quickly.  Then, he runs up to me and basiclly detonates in a cloud of mystic energy killing himself and severaly hurting me.  Lesson learned.  But the other part of the coolness part for me is using my own super powers to counter this threat.  I have storm summoning and first power is called Gale which is a cone of wind to blow back foes and knock them down (which i had at level one mind you).  So, now when I see such a life mage making his run at me i time my gale to send him flying backward causing him to either explore harmless away from me, or getting him before he starts to tick and zapping him down with my lightning.  Again, seems little, but was fun.

Combat is fun; group combat is more fun with lots of mobs and powers flying.  In most mmorpgs to date you try to arrange it so it's always multiple players fighting one mob; that just a waste of time in CoH.  Your hero is perfectly capable of taking on several mobs at once, which oddly enough seems much more...heroic.  Add in several friends and let the big ole battles begin.

Death is also pretty painfree.  When you try you can elect to hang about hoping for a rez (or to use a rez inspiration you might have), or can spawn fully healed back in a hospital with a exp debt to pay.  Basically, each time you earn exp a portion of it goes to pay your debt, so you earn at a reduce rate for a while.  That's about it.  As a matter of fact there are even several power which relate to death in a cool way, either by self sacrifice or things like if you fall inspiring your team mates to avenge you  with massive buffs.

This game has coolness leaking out it's ears.  If you want to *gasp* roleplay, there is a surprising amount of backstory for you to play off against and the mission are couched to make it believable.  The contact system where the can give you mission which can lead to other contacts is nice, and as you perform tasks for them they gain confidence in you as a hero so you can get to a point you can simple call them rather than physiclally go see them.

And I've barely scratched the surface.  Gah, I'll stop now and let others chime in, but this has been the best gaming surprise of the year for me.

Xilren

Not paid any attention to this game at all so have a few questions if anyone can be bothered answering them.

1.  PVP is it possible at all with the current ruleset, if so how does it work?
2. What's downtime like and approx time to get to level 30?
3.  Are there vendors?  Is the loot system any good?  Is there a working ecomony?
4. No crafting at all?  Any plans to add this, would have thought being able to design rocket packs etc would be cool.
5.  from 4 above, any flyable helicopters, jets, cars etc or any plans to add them?
6. I assume guns are in the game but it's not clear, if so can you twink a lower level character with better equipment to level up fast?
7. Do you have to group or can you level solo without massive time penalties?
8. Is there an invisible ability?
9.  Are the beta forums open and if so can I have a link? Edit NM, found them (http://www.coh.com/forums/index.php).

I'll give this a shot.

1.  PVP is it possible at all with the current ruleset, if so how does it work?

No pvp at all yet.  May come with the first retail expansion.

2. What's downtime like and approx time to get to level 30?

No clue.  To be honest I dont care as im enjoying shit NOW.

3.  Are there vendors?  Is the loot system any good?  Is there a working ecomony?

Yes, their are shop where you can buy and sell inspiration and enhancements.  Currency is basically your reputation points.  Not too much need for this though.
 
4. No crafting at all?  Any plans to add this, would have thought being able to design rocket packs etc would be cool.

You can combine like enhancements to increase ones power, but no real crafting. And no real need, you don't actually have equipment at all.

5.  from 4 above, any flyable helicopters, jets, cars etc or any plans to add them?

No vehicles that I know of.

6. I assume guns are in the game but it's not clear, if so can you twink a lower level character with better equipment to level up fast?

If you pick guns as on of your power pools you will have them, but again, there is no equipment slots, only powers you can.  So you may start off with say a burst shot power, and later get a sniper shot.

7. Do you have to group or can you level solo without massive time penalties?

You can solo and I primarily have so far.  You missions seem balanced to your level pretty well.  There is no real downtime to speak of.  If you finish a battle low on endurance, it will regen in like 30sec-1min tops so just walking to the next battle is enough time to be fully ready.  Health regens a little slower but you can use a rest power to heal back in like 10 sec, or pop a healing or endurance inspiration if need be (basic on heal 25% right off the bat and insipirations drop pretty commonly from mobs).

8. Is there an invisible ability?

Yes and stealth.

9.  Are the beta forums open and if so can I have a link?

Now that I don't know.

Xilren

Fun right out of the box?  You're sure it's a MMOG?

Not only is there invisibility there is also at the highest of the invis pool intagability. Yes indeed you can go completly ghostly. In that form nothing can  hurt you and you cannot hurt anything. It is a very nifty power later on for scouting some of the seriously dangerous high level hazard zones.

Mission layouts are pretty varied early on there may be a bit of overuse of office and sewer maps but once you get to 15 of so you start seeing nazi bases, circle of thorn temples, caves, crey labratories which are very cool and a few other types. And those are only the skins so far I have seen at least 5 or so of the uber cot dungeons and never yet gotten a repeat. They are terribly cool.

Work ons

I like schild think they need to flesh out supergroups a bit my biggest gripe is the default color for the super group channel is really freaking hard for me to read and I have never found a way to change it. I am sure you can or will be able to but at the moment I cannot find it.

Adding stuff

They have already added in the high level devouring earth trial which people have fought and apparently last night won and they said it was super cool. Basically there is a giant blob thing in the zone called the hive that is trying to eat part of that town. You and your buddies and their buddies have to team up to try to push it back out of the town. You cannot permenantly kill it cause blobs are tough but apparently it is a blast to fight and is the first of the higher end trials. Also you can get some phat loot from fighting it hehe (okay different stuff but not really eq like loot). After defeating it you can defeat these lil bloblings that spawn and you get a special enhancer that effects TWO things instead of just one. So if you got lucky you could get a SO endurance AND damage power up on the same enhancer.    That alone is a hell of a incentive to join the higher end trials as enhancement slots are precious things.


Task force groups.

You can do your first task force starting at I think 14 or 16 not sure which. The first one is I think in steel canyon and there are others scattered throughout the higher level areas usually given to you by a hero looking person.

A task force group needs to have at least 4 people into the group. Once you take the first mission you cannot add new people and if people in the group choose to leave (disco does not remove you from the group) they cannot be brought back in.

Task forces are a series of linked missions in its own story arch. The fights are tougher and the missions are more involved. In these missions you also can get the chance to see/fight archenemies like the clock work king. These archenemies are tougher than normal bosses and are a very challanging foe to combat.

Hazard zones.

The first hazard zone that you can enter is perez park. Each hazard zone has a certain level that you have to be to enter you cannot side kick people past this requirement. Hazard zones are ment for groups of peopel to hunt. If you go in at the first chance you will want a big group as me and autumnfyre found out even perez does not screw around. The mob groupings in hazzard zones tends to be bigger in cases MUCH bigger than normal and the opponents are often tougher.

Hazard zones in a group are great places to level up if you are tired of mission running and just want some free form mayhem.

List of a few hazard zones

perez park

boomtown Terribly impressive zone

faultline impressive zone but hard to navigate very ripped up area

Dark astoria anybody who plays this game at all if you get to 21 VISIT THIS AREA. It is a very cool place and as a spooky thing to try walk up to the "citizens" and see what happens. I intend to explore this more and find out how this area got to be what it is now.

Terra Volta I am not sure what sane government lets their cities powersupply become a friggin hazzard zone but hey it is and that is why we heros are here.

Crey's folley never been in here so I can't really say.

Eden formerly a park and a suburb it has been taken over by the devouring earth (really neat REALLY dangerous critters de missions are some of the hardest you will have) and is now a primal and very wild area.

The hive this is where the hamidion lives he is the first of the end game trial mobs no real background on this area other than you have to get through eden to get there.

Well that is enough blabbing for the moment I have played a bumped character to level 34 so I have seen quite a bit of the game but even in the couple months I have been in there are still about a dozen zones I have not been into yet and alot of things I have not seen. So the content that exists is pretty decent. ALso unlike swg you will likely not see people blasting to level 40 within a day or two leveling is decent paced but it is not super fast even at the higher levels.


Kaid

I have been in the beta since early December, and I love the game.  However, I have to disagree with Schild's view regarding character customization.  You can make your character LOOK completely  unique, but your character will never BE unique.  An electric - electric blaster, whether of a magic, science, technology, etc. origin, is the same as any other electric-electric blaster. That isn't all bad, and there are at least 5 different primary and 5 different secondary skills that a blaster can choose, so in essence you can have 25 different blasters.  The only way to differentiate between blasters of the same type is by their additional power pools (one blaster flies, the other leaps, a third teleports).

If the game has a problem, it is in the enhancement system.  As Schild said, enhancements come in 3 level - traininng (+10%), dual origin (+20), and single origin (+40%) - and many types - increase range, increase damage, increase debuff, increase accuracy etc.  Enhancement work over a 6 level range: my level 22 can use enhancements level 19 through 25, although enhancement below my level don't work as well.  Tthese are all available at the stores, and MoBs drop them as well on a fairly random basis.  there doesn't seem to be any incentive for endgame.  In EQ you kill the giant bat of doom to get the uber sword.  In CoH you run to your nearest store and buy a single origin enhancement.  In the end game, you can get enhancements that effect two aspects of a power (see below), but it is worth the effort?  I think people have been able to show a cap as to how far a power can be enhanced, so it might not be that great a reward.  

And maybe this is just me.  I was just telling my brother my feelings on the subject, and he liikes the way CoH is set up.

Here is a descrition of an endgame zone by Statesman:

I don't see lack of "phat lewt" rewards as a problem as long as I'm having fun. I have yet to go into a mission or encounter and think, I wonder if I'll get a badass enhancement drop from UberMob_001. I'm too busy having a fun time to worry about it. And when the battles are over and the smoke clears, I see what enhancements I managed to pick up and use them if I can. If not, I trade them with other players for ones I can use or sell them. Right now, I have all enhancements at my level or above and ++ on every one. Sure, I don't have any of the rare ones, but I'm not worried about that. I sincerely hope Cryptic sticks to the game plan and keeps the game fun. I don't want to see them succumb to the "uber loot and harder leveling and camping for reward" system that a lot of players have begged for more of in past MMOGs. That does not make a game more fun.

Awesome review, I think it was right on. Though give AO credit for devising the mission system, which CoH has improved upon. Thus, the sidekick system is the greatest innovation since AO missions.

Another glaring costume omission which a female friend of mine noticed is skirts other than mini-skirts. There are probably some flow problems similar to capes, but even straight long skirts would have been good. And she also would like to have less than D bra size. She firmly believes there were no women on the art design staff...

One really surprising thing is how well balanced the game seems to be. Now there is no PvP, which is where balance is usually screwed up, but still it is impressive. Tanker has been the only unbalanced class (first far too powerful, then nerfed to useless, recently they hit a middle ground which is still a little weak, it seems).

A really great fun game. My only concern is lag and zoning once the game goes live. I hope they are limiting each shard because if the population increases too much then things are going to get ugly.

Scorus

I love the game, and I really like the loot system.  You can get great drops in combat but you can also buy the things you want.  It lets people play the way they want to.  People fighting solo vs lower level mobs will get far less enhancement drops but will get a lot of 'money' because of the quantity of mobs they are fighting.

A question was asked about downtime.

For me there is NONE.  The rest skill puts you on your knees, waits about 3 seconds and then immobilizes you and your health and endurance ROCKET up.  I mean less than 10 seconds from almost dead to fully healed.  Then the rest skill slowly comes back.  The rest skill is like any other skill though.  If you want to use it a lot (if you solo a lot) you can socket it up and put in some uber recycle time enhancemtents in it.  I have two 10++ enhancements in mine, I could go higher, but I don't need to.  Rest comes back every 3 or so fights, maybe 3-5 minutes?  So I can fully heal pretty much any time I want.  Endurance comes back fast enough I don't bother using rest to heal that.  If I am in a group I sometimes will if I don't want to slow them down.  Especially if someone has healing and I know I can gain health back easily.

Differentiation
Two different electricity/electricity blasters WILL be somewhat different.  They will have taken different powers from their sets and almost surely different power pools.  One may have hasten and hover while the other may have healing skills and teleportation.  Hell, one of them could have special melee attacks.  Each of them will sockett differently as well, so each will have different attacks as their most powerful attacks.
Compare COH to any other game out there and you have more playstyle differentiation than any other mmog I can think of.  Each archtype (there are 5) has about 5 primary and 5 secondary.  Most have a lot more, but lets lowball and say 5.  That is 25 different types of each archtype available.  With 5 archtypes that is 125 different 'classes' and even then they will surely have different skills and different generic power pools.  All the power pools are so cool it is hard to pick them.  I have chosen to go for super speed and super jump to fit my character more, but damn I would love flight or teleport as well, and healing would be awesome.

The game is fun.  Can not really get over saying that, it is just an absolute blast.  The sidekick system is such a wonderful idea that I am suprised that no one before ever came out with it.  As Soukyan has pointed out, leveling is really just a by product of playing.  You can certainly see the difference, but just running around saving citizens is almost as fun as the missions.  I am still unsure of the enhancements, but I am filling up slots left and right.  Overall I am completely amazed and pleased with the game.

CoH sounds a bit like Toontown Online for adults.  That's not a bad thing.

Damn, I'm going to have to buy this one.

So "the game is fun", in more words.  And what makes it fun is the missions.  Apparently I'm going to like WoW too, since that's also based on missions (quests).

Have to wait till open beta, I suppose, to see what effect the jerkwads in the community have on the game.  Closed beta communities are always nice, no griefers anywhere.

How much of the fun is actual fun, and how much is the wow! factor, I can't tell from your posts.  Sounds like a lot of wow! factor.  And since the game is so close to opening, I guess I'll just wait and see for myself how it holds up after I start characters over a few times and the novelty of the zones (and missions) wears off.

Well, different archetypes have different mission sets and stories to accompany them, so there's a fair amount of diversity in missions. Some can be repetitive, but you can tell from the descriptions which will be Kill X mobs and which will actually be more involved.

I can't speak for other powersets or archtypes, but I can say with fairly reasonable certainty with an elec-elec blaster that there are definite right choices to be made with respect to power choices, particularly in the secondary power set.  There are a series of melee powers that are just not useful for a blaster.  It would be possible to make one different than another, but I think the one who took the melee powers would be a lot less powerful.

For those of us who haven't played yet, what's the status of the pre-order get into beta offer?  Is there an estimate on how much longer it will be going on?

I don't know for sure, but if you go to the store and pick up a pre-order CD, you should be able to go to the PlayNC site and activate your beta account right away with the key.

I heard the beta is going completely open sometime in the next week or so, so the pre-order dealie is a bit of a moot point.

It's seriously worth the purchase; the wow factor for me goes away after five or so hours of actual gameplay. I've logged about fifteen, and still can't get enough of the game.

Hell, I'm still subscribed to ATITD even though I haven't logged in a few months, I can see my way clear to pony up $10 in order to create Bozo the Destroyer.

Suzerain:

Um... Okay...  But you are fixating on one of over 125 different BASE combinations.  And even then most of those 125 have more differences in them than the different classes on the different realms of DAOC have.

It is like saying 'all fighters are the same in EQ'.  Which would be a true statement.  Except it is NOT quite a true statement in CoH.  As a generalization I can see where you are coming from.  But saying all of X are the same when there are over 125 different choices of X is pretty assanine to me.

It is like complaining there is no diversity in Jelly Belly Jelly Beans because the entire bag of 'lemon' jelly beans tasted the same.  Christ, pick a different flavor of jelly bean, they have hundreds of flavors.



No, the game is fun on the basic level of combat.  The missions are fun too, but the key is that the COMBAT is fun.  It is dynamic, fast, and has some twitch elements in it.  In a group it becomes strategic as well as the the other things.

Missions are just a nice way to bring you balanced combat in ways you don't have to run around and search for.  If the combat sucked, the missions would suck.

This is where I fear I might not like WoW as much.  Their combat is still in the old auto-attack mode and the 'fun' is supposed to be the missions.  But I doubt the missions will really involve much more than a series of battles.  If the battles are not 'fun' the missions won't be either.

My understanding is that after the 14th, they are starting to let others that have NOT pre-ordered but have signed up for beta into the beta.  The key is 'START'.  Pre-orders started coming in on the 22nd of march, but the majority of them didn't get in till the deadline on the 7th of april.

We have no way of knowing how many they will actually let in or how fast.  It could be a lot it could be almost none.

I have an Elec-Elec blaster, and I have to say I kinda disagree here.  I even went so far as to take Flurry from the speed pool, despite everyone telling me it's weaker than the melee from the secondary electrical line.

I've been happy with it.. ;)  Something deeply satisfying about pummeling a boss to finish him off..


What's more, it doesn't really "Gimp" you at all to make these kinds of choices, because you can be quite competent using nothing but your first couple of attacks in the primary line.  Everything else after that is just diversification, and you can experiment with whatever you like.

Good writeup...really looking forward to trying this one out. Is Bat Country going to be a reality for launch? I have a buddy that would probably join us (he was in House Daenyr with us in SB).

Think Alluvian nailed it to the tree here, the fun comes from just playing.  Heck, even the few times other supers have flown in from the sky to decimate the guys I have been fighting it has not been a bad thing.  I still get xp, still get influence and can still find more combat quick.  Perez Park is like a seething body of badness.  It has groups of villians all over the place.  I have mentioned before that a game that could come along and provide group level combat and enjoyment without grouping would be a winner and I think COH is getting damn close to making that a reality, at least it has steps in that direction.

I think right now the enhancement choices are more like Perma Buffs that you can add to your powers and figuring out how to lay down your sockets and apply those enhancements will be a mini game in and of itself.  I just toss those my arch does not need or sell them if I am close to someone who will buy them and keep looking for those to pump my powers up.  So far I have not been lacking except for a good flight bonus.

The shiney is sweet.

Ditto, with an emphasis on the exact same time frames. I'm still getting a "wow" moment every once in a while with an 8th level character, and even more as I level up my second character who is a completely different type of character.

I think the simplicity of the character creation system, which I at first rebelled against, is actually one of its main strengths. The differences in origin make a completely different experience, visually and play wise.

I'll probably have a "beta review" type of thing up at some point, but suffice it to say, the game is fun. That's something I haven't said about an MMOG since Shadowbane's beta. We can only hope this goes a bit better.

The archetypes to me seem to have been a real stroke of design genius, whoever came up with it... since it was not announced at first, the impression is that someone on the team came up with it later when trying to deal with the fact that a complex character creation system at the start made the game difficult for newbies.

Perhaps another issue is that since everyone is FORCED into an archetype, it prevents the sort of min-maxing "uber-template" making you often see, where the default templates are discarded by hardcore players as inefficient.

Bruce

Let me tell you what I want to see in CoH.

I want to see temporary power sets.  I want to walk into Cooke's Electronics in Steel Canyon and buy 10 web grenades or a 6 use teleportation device.

Sounds good right?  You could have a lot of funs with drops and gameplay if you could equip temp powers dont cha think?  Now the good news, this ALREADY exists in the game!

I have had a mission where the contact hooked me up with 7 flash-bangs!  All Cryptic needs to do is formalize it and test for cost/effectiveness/drop ratio balance.  Also I would like to see one shot 'epic' powers.  Say for instance creating a massive earthquake or tidal wave or summoning a 30 foot tall demon or a horde of litttle imps.  Make em one time use and rare and you could have a blast with using and collecting them.

Another nice thing is that they've been constantly tinkering with the servers to improve performance.

At home studying today and getting one or two boxes towards my next level as a study break here and I there, I logged in 30 mins before some downtime.

Here's the reason for the downtime:


This is great.  Whatever they're doing, if it works, will give me more faith in this team than I've had in a dev team in a long time.  I'll gladly take 1-2 hrs downtime in exchange for fewer mapserver errors.

And less lag.  

Because something tells me that unless the content wears out for me in a few months, you won't be seeing that many people say "Fine, quit!  Less lag for me!"

They may be saying something else, but it probably won't be about lag.  If they manage to make this work with each upgrade/reconfigure.

Best idea I've seen to improve the game yet.  Especially because it shouldn't be hard to do.  I've had the mission with the flashbangs too.  It was sweet.  Clearly, there's the code for temporary powers already in the game.  Not sure how it works, so this is entirely speculation, but wouldn't it be possible to just change the triggering event for the application of the powerset from getting a mission to viewing a contact's store option/purchasing a power?

This would add real items to the game. If they are tradeable - somehow, someone, would figure out who and what to camp. Unless they add this is a super controlled manner, I would have to beg for them NOT to add it at all.

Edit: Though, I'll admit if anyone can buy them in any stores, and they take up an inspiration slot, it may be a good addition. Just don't add them as drops.

The functionality to do that is there in the game so if they want to open limited use powers as things people can buy it deffinatly is something the game is capable of.

I would not be surprised to see that opened up in the future but I think for now they are mainly aiming to make all the current power sets useful and fun. Adding in alot of temporary things could mask issues that they need brougth to light.


Kaid

Yeah drops would suck.  I just saw the "buy at the store" part.

Just thought of something to add.  Something that is often review are the spawning systems.  The game does seem to spawn mobs out of thin air, but they will not spawn in sight of a player, so for all you know they have been there the whole time.  They tweaked the spawns up abit after the April 7th flood of new players and the difficulty in finding crime.  (had to go up on the rooftops)

Pathing is also a true sight to behold.  You can climb up on top of one building where the fire escape does not even touch the ground, see some villians on another roof, shoot them, and they will run down their fire escape and up the one for the building you are on.

They will leap over fences to flee or to pursue you.  They will leap up on boxes to get up on rooftops when fleeing even.  It is pretty darn impressive AI use of the Z-axis.

Sometimes I notice citizens getting 'stuck' on places, but that is mainly because they have nowhere to go and are just wandering randomly.  Any mob with a set purpose seems to have no trouble finding intelligent paths to get there.  And the geometry gets VERY complex in many places.

Pathing is very impressive if you think you can buy time by making ai take a convoluted path to get to you chances are you will be wrong. Heck I have played it for a while and what it can do still surpises me.  The higher you get you start getting more and more diverse type creatures such as the devouring earth with some very different AI schemes.


If you are doing Devouring earth missions in doors be very very cautious and if you see things called trees of life KEEEL THEM FIRST!


Kaid

Archetypes were brought in about midway through testing, chiefly as a way to prevent people from finding that Combination X was the most kick-ass and then every character going with that combination (then some aspect of that gets nerfed, everyone gets mad, switches to Combination Y which is now the most kick-ass, rinse and repeat).

When it happened it pissed a lot of people off, they saw the game moving from make-your-own-character to character classes. But in reality they stumbled on a middle ground where you have an archetype that limits you to two sets of powers (and there are 8 powers in each of those sets), but also lets you choose from other, generally useful powers outside the archetypes which any character can have. So anyone can have flight, basic melee, super jumping, teleportation, taunt, invisibility, healing, etc. You can't have all of those, you only get a limited number of powers, and someone with healing as a side is not going to be as good at it as someone who has healing as their primary power. But it is enough so that there is a lot of possible variation between my mutant tanker and your mutant tanker.

Scorus

One thing that keeps them safe with drops is that mobs don't drop anything when they go grey to your level.  No inspirations, no enhancements, nothing.

The way they do exp debt, you are always gaining exp, so you can't keep killing a mob that drops something without eventually leveling past it. You can't stop leveling unless you only fight greys that drop NOTHING.

Your concern about farming drops is no different if the things are purchaseable.  Then they just farm money instead.  Neither one is that destructive to the game I don't think.  I won't be doing it either way.  I will get what I get when I get it by doing whatever the fuck I want in the game.  So far I have everything I want.

I think an even better idea than having temp powers be purchasable in a store would be to have them be available only from special contacts.  For instance, you are doing a mission for a scientist of some sort, and if you succeed, he gives you some prototype gadget he has been working on.  Or if you do a mission for some sort of magic based character, you could get some sort of magical item he found.  Something like this would be cool because they could be random and un-campable.  They should be fairly common, but not so common as to negate the cool factor.  Plus it fits nicely with the soryline...

Color me surprised.

I was pretty sure it was going to suck, partly because I think the normal mechanics of a MMOG are so wildly inappropriate to the superhero genre. (Much as they've turned out not to fit Star Wars and I'm sure won't fit Middle-Earth). Maybe I'm wrong. I'm still a skeptic--have been burned too many times--but CoH at least moves back onto the "might not suck" list now.

Nice idea.  Also anything that could have balance issues could easily be a fixed reward in a onetime quest.

I've seen most of the comic book movement types covered except wall crawling.  Is that implemented?  How about rope/web swinging?

Nope, not looking to replicate spider-man, or even choose these powers, just wondering how sick they got with the super powers.

Nope, neither of those, but you can actually scale some building types with regular jumping in crevaces.

I could see wall crawling, but web swinging would probably just get them sued, hehe.

 
In certain quests (at low levels) you can receive web grenades to ensnare your enemy, they don't run out and are yours until you complete the quest (the one I got it for was one of the kill 10 skulls)

Actually the devs talked about webslinging. It isn't that they would get sued or that it was a technical hurdel they could not accomplish. Their reason for not adding it is they could not find a way to make it look decent. Much of what spider man does is just impossible due to anchor points and momentum. For much of  what he does to make the physics engine like it you would be shooting webs and anchoring off the sky.

It is possible you could do it like the old time quake grapple hook but true webslinging was something they were not happy with how it looked so did not go through with it.

Heck I would rather see ice mans ice slide thing as a movement power but again it is one of those looking silly in game issues that would keep it from being done.

Kaid

Lots of spiderman games exist and although those play really fun, watching from another vantage point WOULD look pretty darn stupid.  When in tight third person like in those games you can just pretend there is something above your head.

But the pysics DON"T work unless you are attaching to a ceiling.  Using just buildings even with perfect reflexes you would either lost a TON of height on each swing or you would smack into the building you are attaching to.  In order to keep height you would have to swing well past the anchor and regain the height you lost before sending out another line.  And if you wait to get to your lowest point, you are below the anchor, or smack dab into the wall of a building.

Not that anyone who has spent more than 10 seconds thinking about it has not already figured that out.  The spiderman movie used an interesting trick that the webs were VERY elastic and PULLED him up on each swing by shortening after they attached.  This would work in a movie, but in a game it would be too hard to stay below the building line.  The alternative of attaching to air still looks silly.

Icemans movement would also look silly as you would have to decay the ice slide thingy really quickly after him or the whole world would be covered in them.  With the ice decaying shortly behind him it would make even less sense.

Some things only work on the pages of comics or in very carefully framed movies.

Ok, just a few things that have been bugging me about this game. Nothing big, but I thought it worth a mention.

First is the fact you cant swing the camra around in front of yourself. Some times I just like to have a look at my character, and I get tired of his athletic butt filling my view. I did find a way around this. If you put some one on follow, then you can swing the camra around.

Second, is that with no armor you dont really get more badass looking. In a lot of these games, as you get better equipment, you get more cool looking. Now, in CoH you start sweet looking. (some times). But you dont have that super badass looking piece of equipment to look forward to. Also, you cant always tell if a character is lvl 40 or lvl 2 by looking at them. I guess this is personal preference, but its a minus for me.

Mouse look lets you rotate however you want, you can stare at your crotch if you want.

Agree about the non-changing looks, though with the mention of the Tailor later for influence, this might not be a huge issue.  Hmm...

I would hope at least the underlying physics engine could make all characters slowly "bulk up" as they level.

Bruce

No! No! It's a really *good* thing that you look more or less the same as you go along. That's a surprisingly good sign of being true to the genre. Sure, Spiderman and Superman and their ilk get better at being superheroes as time goes on, that's a part of the standard narrative. But they don't get more gear and phat loot and bulkier and all that crap. Here's hoping they keep a clear head on this and other issues and don't listen to MMOG junkies.

Press and hold Mouse3, then use mouselook.  This changed POV for me.



It's a big, big, BIG plus for me.  I never liked the idea that I couldn't look the way I wanted to in an MMORPG.  What's more, I'm not penalized or forced to take a particular path if I want to look a particular way.  I can make a big hulking blaster, or a tiny little tanker, my choice.

This game sounds way cool.  I'm so there!

Try pressing the shift key and moving the mouse.

I think that was the default, but you can look it up in keybindings.  You can move the camera however you want.

Sounds like a really fun game. I'm tempted to pick it up, but what are the min reqs? That's the only thing stopping me from pre-ordering right now.

On the other hand some characters like Iron Man tend to upgrade their costume and equipment on a regular basis.

Hold page up and move your mouse to move the camera around.

I was one of the first 100 testers for CoH and I remember the thread on the old WT.O boards slamming NCSoft back in December for their "beta tester comments" news release.  Everyone said "those can't be real... they must all be fanbois".  Hehe.

We really were impressed with the game, even back in December.  It's a helluva lot of fun.

Who is going to be a man (or woman I suppose) and admit that THEY were one of the people crying and complaining about CoH?

When the CoH people announced archetypes the reaction was *overwhelmingly* negative. Now all those people are looking to the side and whistling...weak.

I already admitted in several threads the lack of PVP kept me away from the game. I said it sucked. On a whim, after being horrified  by Lineage 2 I exchanged the preorder for City of Heroes, not expecting much.

I was surprised.

I not only said it would suck because they went for the archtypes instead of skills, I said it was going to suck because they removed PVP.

I've already written the first line of my beta review.

"I was wrong."

Dont forget, when Wolverine left X-Men, and was just Logan for a while, no costume, only a hat and  jacket.

Also, Hulk turned in to the Grey Hulk. Angle from X-Men turned into Archangle.

Or when Spider-Man got the symbiotic suit, and was black spiderman before the suit left him and became Venom.

How about The original Beast from X-Men, he looked human, but mutated more and got blue fur. Jean Grey turned in to the Pheonix, then the Dark Pheonix.

Iron-Man built a new suit, and was War Machine.

Batman had several different suits, with different amounts of armor and weapons in them.

Superman died and split in four. (I think, thats about the time my house burned down, including my comiv collection, and so I stopped collecting).

The downside about people getting new gear that makes them look even more badass is that everyone ends up looking the same. Every level X looks like every other level X. Boring.

In this game, you just make yourself look like a badass from the character creation. :)

Henry Pym has also gone from Ant-man to Giant-man, Goliath, and Yellowjacket, The Thing has mutated at times becoming bigger and sort of spikey, and Captain America has switched shields a few times.



The solution might be to give characters new costume options every ten levels or so based on archetype, origin, and powers.  A tech character with flight for example should be able to get a jetpack or some boots with jets.  A broadsword based scrapper should be able to choose a different looking sword every so often.  Tankers should be able to become bulkier if they want.  Hell, take a look at the trailer on the pre-order disc and you'll see that even Statesman has changed his look a couple of times over the years.[/quote]

If I take what you are writing about this game out of the context it seems you are talking of World of Warcraft. Perhaps when it will be gold it won't be the first to have done something "right".

In reaction to this bold statement, let me say I think you all will be bored with COH in 3 months.  I don't normally post on threads about games that I'm not interested in as it just annoys people to hear a conflicting view but all the love is rather disturbing.

From what I understand there is no end game, no significant economy, little loot drops, no wearable equipment, no twinking (apart from sidekicks which does sound like a good idea).  No player vendors, no housing, no crafting, nothing to fight over and with no pvp you are even unable to fight.  

What you have is an enjoyable grind, that will gradually become less enjoyable when you discover the best missions to achieve X, you will constantly do the same missions.  Kill stealing and capes will be the biggest complaints for weeks, at least till the boredom kicks in big time.

They could save it by making an evil path to follow to be a bad guy but again I don't see how that would work long term as it would require pvp.

I think it's an original game and intend to give it a go, if I get into the open beta but I don't think I will enjoy it long term.  It's a pity because I was looking for a game to introduce the girlfriend to MMORPG's

Gotta crawl out of lurk mode here...

Anyways, that's probably what has put me off about CoH (lack of PvP). I should have paid heed to Haemish's L2 writeup though, because it's a piece of shit, PvP or not. Now I just want Fun (It sounds a bit sad, but I am really, really jonesin' here), PvP or not.

Hey schild, sometimes a fanboi can be good thing. I'll probably check it out.




And if your out of luck, there's always Rambozo.

All of those things you mentioned are not what sell me on a game.

- DAoC has houses, but I must farm gold to obtain one.

- Same goes for player vendors and crafting.

- Wearable equipment just leads to spreadsheeting and camping and farming of the uber gear as in EQ.

- Twinking is necessary in games with interminable grinds and with mobs so beefed up that you cannot survive wearing equipment that the game originally intended for you.

- Players are fighting to protect the city. NPC threat, yes, but it's a goal.

- There are far better games to try to simulate an economy in as MMOGs have all fallen prey to massive inflation in their economies and end up diminishing gameplay by creating the necessity to farm gold. That's called work. I do it during the day, I don't want to do it at night.

- PvP might be nice, but not as an afterthought. If SWG players are content to pay money in the hopes the the Space Expansion will solve all their dislikes of the game, I think I can wait for the PvP expansion from Cryptic. I have more faith in them than SOE at this point.

- End-game in all previous MMOGs has been existent because they've needed a carrot to dangle in front of players who are forced to trudge through gameplay that is less than engaging.

All of the aforementioned are things that have the potential to repeat the past MMOG mistakes because they are so poorly tied into game systems. If any of those make an appearance in CoH, you would see an immediate change to mimic use of those systems as players are used to using them in other MMOGs. That's not the developers fault, but I give Cryptic credit for not trying to cram a shitload of extra features in before a fast approaching release date. I also give them credit for making a game that is FUN from the start. A game that doesn't require me to level to the max level and then begin an alternate level grind to enjoy it.

Sure, it's a possibility that if more low level content is not added on a regular basis that players may start to feel that if they do not level up, then they are missing something. But as I stated in other posts, it's hard to feel that way when the base gameplay is fun and engaging. It's the replay value that is important and I think Cryptic has the replay value down pat. The rest is just icing. Will I get bored with the game? Probably eventually. More likely another will come along that catches my interest. But to be honest, I think it will be quite a while. For me, I enjoy logging in and teaming up and have an absolute blast with other players. Gone are the days of watching a status bar for crafting, watching a mana bar fill while I med, killing mobs for gold because it is no longer optional, etc.

You are right about one thing. It's probably nothing more than an enjoyable grind. The key word there, however, is enjoyable.

I agree with you, although I think 3 months might be stretching it.

CoH as it stands is stable and fun right out of the box, which is good, and it has some good features with instanced indoor missions and the sidekick feature to let newbies do high end raids with their high level buddies.  But for how long am I going to want to be doing that stuff for $15/month?

Also, my character has now reached level 9, and I haven't been in a decent group in a while - which has left me running around the King's Row zone eking out a little XP by blasting green and blue con level 6-8 mobs.  This is very uncomfortably reminiscent of what DAOC was like for my ranger: 6 months of solo grind to claw up to level 50.  Make no mistake: combat is fun and full of eye candy, but under that sugar coating lies a treadmill.

Nevertheless, this game has surprised me - I had written it off a long time ago and had doubts it would even see the light of day (it's been in development for what, 4? 5? years now?) but I am planning to purchase it and subscribe for a while.  But probably not for long.

Yep.  End-game is just a fancy way of saying 90% of the game sucks.

From what I have read COH sounds like a PVE version of planetside, not that there's anything wrong with that.  I guess with enough good reviews and lets face it from what I am hearing here the reviews should be very good, they should shift enough boxes to recoup the development costs even without aiming at long term player retention.

Is it going to worry EQ2 or WOW?  imho Nope.

Game will only be good for 3 months?  [edit]beyond good and evil[/edit] lasted me about 9 hours with little to no replay value.  Max Payne 2 I played through three times and still only played it about a week or two.  Prince of Persia, even less replay than BG&E because of the drawn out story telling and no difficulty mode.  Completed it in about 10-12 hours.  Ran through it a second time in 6.  Have not played it since.

I have already gotten more hours of enjoyment out of CoH than those games I just mentioned.  All of which are what I consider good purchases.

ONLY three months?  That is damn good for me.  And nobody knows when each individual will get tired of it. Could be one month could be 3, could be a year if they keep adding kickass shit like the rikiti spaceship and the devouring earth epic.

We are still in the low level game.  It actually gets MORE fun once you start forming taskforces.

Regarding the person who has not grouped, I don't think they are looking that hard.  Head out to perez and form a pickup group if nobody in the guild is around.  I get invited all the time out of the blue there when soloing.  Maybe it is because I CAN solo there and they want that in the group, I don't know.

Also started a scrapper bruiser and am having fun with him.  Broadsword is far from the best scrapper style but it fits my troll.  I wanted to see if I could remake the concept of my EQ Troll Ranjur.  So far he is a blast.  Love how he visually turned out, even though I found and reported a few bugs in character select leaving him with a few bits colored wrong.


Regarding costume changes:
Well, they ARE adding tailoring.  And I would guess that from time to time or with expansions or whatever they will add new costume bits.  Capes are coming in for sure, as well as particle effect clothing.  So you will surely be able to upgrade if you choose to at that time.

I personally don't like capes.  makes everyone look the same.  Thought they were a dumb idea in DAOC.  The only time I would agree with capes is if there are none that affect any stat so that you don't lessen your effectiveness if you don't want one.  So I am fine with them in CoH.  In DAOC everyone was compelled to wear one.  So the already overly same characters became even moreso.

Of course not, and they've already niched themselves in that some folks won't want to play a comic book style superhero. But I do think they'll do well for themselves and garner a fairly decent playerbase. Hell, look at SB and the ridiculous tech problems and they still manage to retain players.

Sure, for me too.  But for a MMORPG - where you have several years of development to amortize plus hefty operating costs, you will want a better retention rate than that, or you'll never get your money back.  Let alone profit.  The question is not whether you are getting your money's worth, the question is whether or not they are getting enough of your money and everybody else's to stay afloat.

If you want a group open up the team window and click seeks group. This broadcasts your desire to group to the zone you are in. In general if you are in a zone appropriate to your level it will take 5 to 10 minutes or so before you get your first invite. You can also see who else is looking for a group by clicking find members and it is super easy to start up groups just /invite name boom you sent an invite they can be ANYWHERE in the game world.

I myself prefer not to solo in games and aside from a few minutes here or there I have never had any problems getting at least one person with me.

It is even easier in the hazard zones because they are so nasty that any extra person in your group is a good thing and there really is not much reason not to fill the group up.

Kaid

I have actually been soloing lately as a fun change of pace.  Love the grouping, but sometimes I like to impress myself with what I can do solo.  Out of 12 levels I would say I have done about 80% grouped.

I know it has been mentioned before, but I would like to restate it right now.  For me the dramatic impact of COH is the fact that from start point A to where I am at now (11th is my highest) I have felt like I have had to pay attention in combat, my role in the group, ect.  None of the we treat the new player as an idiot syndrome that the rest of the recent entries have done.  I also know that around 8th level the tactics have changed and I expect them to change greatly as the levels progress.

3 Months, maybe, mostly because in my heart I like the high fantasy setting, but right now the capeless crusader is going to reign.

Getting a group is not a problem, even less so since my main is an Empathy Defender healer-type.  But pickup group quality is highly variable: my first session, I was invited right at the newbie start point to a full group that headed straight down the sewers and everybody in it got three or four levels right then and there.  Then there was the Perez Park group that spent half an hour bickering about where to go and what to hunt... (and, inevitably, wiped out when one person got impatient, ran off and pulled some Thornies, and trained them back to the group).

So what if it doesn't last long, at least it's probably fun while it lasts. Fun is what matters. I doubt they'll have trouble with subscriptions if it's "fun", though. The grind is what alienates players, not keeps them (except for the fools who think there's actually a purpose to all of it).

Why should MMO's have to be about longterm investment, acquisition, or some kind of simulation of real life? Fuck all that shit. And fuck "player economies". All that stuff is getting in the way of an otherwise good idea.

Yeah, my wife is so into SWG and doing so much of what looks like work to me I am desperately trying to get her to try out that new mmog called "Ameritrade".  I think I could retire if I could get her hooked.

Bingo. Money making and work are best suited to real life.

You may actually be right about that. However, 3 months will be about 2 months and 27 days longer than I've played any released or beta MMOG since Shadowbane. That's a step up in this genre. If it gets boring, well, see my conclusion article about levels. I'm not sure ANY game with a level-based advancement scheme (or not) has more than about 3 months play-time in it altogether.



With the exception of the PVP, I'm not convinced an MMOG NEEDS those things, at least not City of Heroes. I HATE end game loot whoring, I HATE twinking. The only time I ever craft is to provide myself better equipement, and then only if it doesn't bore the fuck out of me. Both PVP and housing have been discussed as additions, but who knows if they will be there in the first 3 months or ever?



Again, you MAY be right. But at this point in the genre, the fact that a game could rope a jaded fucker like me in for even 1 paid month is a step up.

I'm one of the people that got disinterested in CoH when they went to archetypes. I was wrong. Happy? :)

I keep seeing people mention PvP coming into the game with the expansion, has that been announced or are people just hoping? While I think we can expect to see arena-style PvP at some juncture, I have doubts they will let you play villains. The head designer spoke to that question at length long ago, his vision of the genre are that villains are rapists, torturers, homicidal maniacs, mass murderers, genocidal, etc. and he quite honestly didn't want to cater to players that would actually want to RP someone like that. In his mind, supervillains aren't just someone that is greedy or someone that has a different opinion, they are exactly the kind of person that you don't want to be spending time with. I don't see them going down that road, but I was wrong in the first paragraph, could very well be wrong in this one also.

Scorus

I and in agreement with both of you. The game is fun, but how long will it stay fun is what remains to be seen.

I dont have much play time these days. I have a farly demanding job, and same for my girlfriend. I also like to hang out with my friend in rl a lot. Leaving me with not much more than an hour or two a night, and a few more on the weekends.

This is leading me to level very slowly in CoH.

From levels 1 to 7, is very easy, and a nice advancement curve, but once you hit lvl 8, man, you just smack in to a wall. Reading the beta boards I have found the avarge level times for low levels.

1-8 = 6 hours
8-9 = 3 hours
9-10 = 4 hours

Then

13-14 = 6 hours
16-17 = 8 hours
19-20 = 10 hours

This is talking straight up killing. Non stop missions. Now, Im not sure, but one of the best parts of this game is opening up new powers and stuff. Thats really going to kill it for me if I have to play for 20+ hours at even low/mid levels just to get a glance at a new power.

Now, once the game hits release, Im sure the min/maxers will find ways to level faster, but that is just a bit depressing to me. To think it could take me over a week to level from 19-20. At least they have the SK system.

Superheroes change costumes. Some do it all the time, some do it only when they're having a dramatic crisis of some kind, and a few do it as a part of their powers--basically "gadgeteer" types like Iron Man.

They gain (and lose) powers.

But most don't follow a levelling curve where they get more and more phat loot and shit and get bulkier and bulkier. Iron Man is one of the few exceptions; any gadget-using character might do that. (Batman gets better shit for his utility belt; Dr. Strange might get a new and improved mystic doo-dad). Occasionally this sort of stuff is then retrofitted to the character's continuity, so now it appears that Batman has *always* had a bulletproof patch behind his logo on his suit.  

If characters regularly change appearance in ways that correlate with levelling, then the game will lose an important piece of its genre in favor of MMOG norms.

(I might also note that even though Iron Man upgrades his armor every 20+ issues or so, it often doesn't really get any more powerful. He just acts like it does, but the number of times that the character has genuinely added a totally unprecedented functionality to his gear is pretty small. He usually just gets "new and improved repulsors" that oddly enough turn out to be just as effective or ineffective against his usual gang of opponents.)

I miss PvP, because killstealing starts to become a problem, and it'll get MUCH worse after launch. Which isn't about the lost exp, but about my total impotence to react to my beloved fellow-heroes in any meaningful way. But I'm coming from 10 months of SB, so I knew this one would bother me in a PvE-only game.

Btw, I don't think CoH would support a PvP-addon without taking out a whole "class", the controller. Way too much crowd-control, great for PvE-fun but would totally ruin PvP-fun.

Also starting to feel the grind at level 12. Good group, good supergroup might change that, however.

Other than that I agree with the fun-factor. Mucho FUN indeed! Which really took me by surprise, I hadn't seriously considered CoH at all.

~bignatz

My hope for the tailor thing is it unlocks like the titles in the game do. At level 14 or 15 you can get a new title for your character I chose for my main to be known as The Startling Psystorm. Titles at this level are fairly generic ones and anybody can take them. At 24 you get an origin title choice where you get a pool of choices determined by your origin.

I would imagin the costumn buying will work the same. At some level you will open up stores to buy some new or change basic items that everybody can access. At higher levels you will get access to more origin specific costumn options which would go a log way into some more origin diversity the game could use.


Kaid

So basically you're looking for timesinks.  FFXI has possibly one of the best in-game economies in an MMORPG and that's part of what ended up driving me away.  I don't want to be forced to stop leveling for a couple of days so I can farm, craft, and auction, just so I can afford the spells, items, weapons, or armor I need to be even remotely competent at my job.  Crafting and selling shit has never been fun in any MMORPG I've ever played, and the only reason housing keeps people subscribed longer is because in games like DAOC, you'll lose your house from not being able to pay rent if you cancel your subscription.

All those things you list are in pretty much every other MMORPG out there.  If that was the kind of stuff we found fun we'd still be playing those games.  Maybe CoH isn't the ultimate, can't possibly be any better, final word in the genre.  There are plenty of things that could be improved.  The important thing is that the game is a big step in the right direction.  They cut things down to the basics and found a way to make those fun first, and that's something they can build off of in future expansions, and it's something developers for other MMORPG's can use as a model in the future rather than EQ.  

Maybe someday Cryptic or somebody else will be able to find a way to make crafting, or player based economy fun, or make pvp balanced and not just about who has put the most time into their characters, who has the uber template, and who has the most numbers on their side.  But until these things are figured out, I want them to stay the fuck out of the games I play.

You read my mind!

I did some crafting in FFXI, but I gave up at level 14. It was really tedious, had to go around collecting materials that filled my inventory, then doing the same recipies over and over.

To afford good equipment you have to farm a bit. To afford the best equipment you have to farm a lot. That sucks.

Housing? Who cares...what do I do with my house anyway, but a nice plant and put it in the corner...wait, I can play "real life" and do the same thing!

It's like people who play SWG and are vendors...jesus just start a lemonade stand or something.

There are some kinds of people who feel compelled to keep playing a game until they've unlocked everything, seen everything, etc. Those people may get bored of CoH. But there are also types of people who get bored well before they have experienced every little thing if everything is, well, boring.

Well I wouldn't quite put it like that, true all the things I listed are time sinks to some extent.  However, the largest time sink in most of these games is generally thought to be the level up process and that appears to be enjoyable in COH.

PVP, PVP Roleplaying, PVP area control, Crafting, a working economy with player vendors, an interesting loot system and housing.  None of that appeals in any way shape or form?

Well that's interesting.  Maybe COH is actually appealing to the legendary casual gamer that Turbine failed to grab with AC2.

I'm not knocking the game BTW, from what I understand COH does what it set out to do very well.

None of those things appeal in their current MMOG incarnations. If Cryptic could find a way to make them as fun and engaging as their combat system, then bring them on.

And I didn't think I was that legendary... but thanks for noticing. ;)

So far, CoH is fun in 30 minute blocks of time, as well as 2-hour or even catass sessions of 4+ hours. So yes, it does appeal to the casual gamer, IMO.

PVP would be nice, but things like an economy and crafting aren't flat out needed to make the "world" of this genre complete. And looking for roleplaying in an MMOG is almost a lost cause in anything other than selected groups. Loot would be especially silly in a Superhero based MMOG; after all, how many superheroes do you know that received any compensation for the good things they did? I think the enhancements covers that nicely. It provides some form of "teh lewtz" without making it so that the inner cockgobbler comes out in your party. As an aside, though I might be able to see someone e-baying enhancements, I don't think there's much of a market in CoH for anything but tweaked out characters. And honestly, as pathetic as it is to buy a maxxed-out character in normal, boring time-sink MMOG's, how much more pathetic would it be to skip out on a leveling process that's actually fun? Since there's no endgame to shortcut to, and leveling is a fun byproduct of playing the game, why miss the actual fun of leveling?

http://img6.photobucket.com/albums/v16/arcanist/captain.jpg

Good stuff.

Maybe should hvae given him a cute little baret so you could say "Don't you think I look cute in this hat, ... these matching tights?"

I don't think crafting is needed in ANY of the genres really.  It is an attempt to broaden the audience, which in the end usually hurts the game.  The more broad your audience the more resistance there is to every single design move you make.  I think WTO and F13 are more about a good game than a game that makes 6 kazillion billion dollars.  Obviously there is a marked difference of opinion with those funding the games.  :)

That said, it has come to be expected in fantasy genre and maybe now the sci-fi genre as well.  Leaving it out of those would probably be seen as a shortcoming for many.  I am not one of those.  CoH decided what it was about early on (fun, fast and furious superhero ass kicking) and then designed for that.  I don't think crafting adds anything to that design goal.

PvP would add to that goal, and will probably be implemented somehow eventually.  Hero vs villian would be hard because some types of heroes will just always win vs others, and that won't be fun one on one.  The understanding would be that it is meant for many on many.  But anytime one on one is possible there is going to be problems with one side being pissed because he is getting his ASS kicked every time.  Think of how unhappy wolverine would be in a game where magneto was a griefer.  Wolverine cant do SHIT vs magneto.  Professor X can't do SHIT vs magneto in his helmet.  You would assume other characters are around that could.

I would most support PVP in just specific zones or in instanced missions.  Then you can reasonably assume that anyone dumb enough to go into a pvp region solo is in for a hurting.

In the quasi near future a 'no apologies' arena/duel option is all I expect.  Where some matchups will be totally one sided, but that is understood in advance.  People can come up with their own rules for fairness.  Like the EQ best of the best tournaments.  Matching class vs class or making certain abilities illegal.  Maybe no flight in an arena match for example.  Then you can open up more in group vs group matches where if you are lacking in one aspect that is your fault for making an imbalanced team.

Like ALL games, it will get boring in somewhat short order without the constant addition of new content.  You can say the same thing with WoW.  The content in WoW is the quests, but what happens when you are done with them?  Same can be said of city of heroes.  Ultimately the longterm success will be how effective the live team is in adding content that the players enjoy.

God help the poor bastards, they let me into the beta.  Captain Coprolalia will be born soon.

Good luck playing today.  Going to be their launchday test.  Server will be fucked over bad.

Most of the early talk about pvp in coh was in the form of player vs player or team vs team danger room arena action. There was some talk also about letting people watch the fights and bet on them as well.

With a variety of danger room environments you could have some where you can have free ranging arial battles and some that would prevent much vertical movement. Melee in general would have no luck against a flying moving target so there would have to be areas that restrict flight so tanks stand a chance.

It will be interesting to see if they do it and how it would work out. Right now the archetype mix works very well in group combat but I am not sure how it would work against other players. I am thinking it would turn into a huge flying blaster fest of fast furious slaying.


Kaid

After playing my scrapper a bit more, I can safely say, they need to do some thing about movement and melee. It is getting very frustrating trying to hit running npcs, and since about 60% of the NPCs have been running on me lately, its getting frustrating.

I cant even imagine what it would be like for a melle to try and hit another play, who is doing his best not to be hit. I am all for pvp, and I really hope they impliment it, but with the current mechanics, melee would be the bottom of the barrel.

That's about par for the course for MMOG's, unfortunately. It makes realistic sense that ranged would own melee, after all, if I can hit you and you can't hit me, I win.

But it does create a balance problem that is tough to overcome.

Yeah, it needs to be tweaked.  Right now it is a touchy timing issue of hitting a special right as you stop near the npc.  The good thing is if you activate the attack in range it WILL have its normal chance to hit, even if the npc moves away during the animation.  I am getting pretty good at it.  To reinforce the part where I can't be moving I tend to jump at the npc and then hit the hotkey as I land.  Without bad lag I can trigger an attack about 80% of the time.  With bad lag it can be a bitch.

So...No PvP at the moment, but is there any kind of "competitive" play available?

No, it's carebear all the way.  They haven't even implemented duelling.  There are public terminals in each zone where you can see "high scores" for that zone for the past two days and two months, I guess that's competition in a way.

It's not at all self-evident that they will ever introduce any real PVP in City of Heroes.  At first glance it would seem to lend itself to a sort of DAOC-style world split - let people make heroes in zones A-E, villians in zones F-J, and both sides can enter zones K-N which are "Good versus Evil" areas.  But the devs have readily admitted on the beta boards that balancing would be a nightmare.  I'm certain they'd quickly get locked into the never-ending cycle of tweaks and nerfs with the mass of players rushing to whichever class is disproportionately overpowered this month - just like DAOC.

Long range damage dealers with some form of invisibility would be my bet for the pvp baby seal clubbing class if they ever add pvp.

Depends what you mean by competitive.  There are kiosks in the game that indicate who the most effective players are at "arresting" criminals, dealing damage, etc..

You missed out flying. And rooting. Flying, rooting long range damage dealers with some form of invisibility. And healing as a side order.

I'd help you defend that castle from the battlements, but my balance is as poor as a Shadowbane character.

Actually, if you do a google search on "City of Villains" you will get an idea of what NCsoft/Cryptic has in mind for PvP in City of Heroes.  

A lot more about this expansion will be coming out soon.



Tisirin
OCR Manager
NCsoft

Good read about it on RPG Vault. Thanks for the tip, Tisirin.

The whole PvP stance is summed up well with his closing statement:

You guys really need to set up another wave of beta invites, goddammit.  Every store around Ft. Benning is out of preorder boxes, I've gotten no love from my email account.

Oh sure, I can jump into Lineage 2 no problem and get azzraped by Korean PC Bang addicts at any moment, but you guys are invite only.

I really liked City of Heroes at first.  Despite the lag, disconnects, and over-crowding, I had a lot of fun playing a broadsword/reflexes scrapper to 15, a dark/dark defender to almost 11, and a few smaller guys into the 5-7 range.


The complaints I have about the game center mainly on what I've experienced while playing my scrapper.   Some of these things include:

- Attack animations freezing you in place while you execute them.
   I understand this is sometimes required to make the animation look correct, but some of these animations take a long time to execute.  A few that come to mind are flurry, jump kick, and any of the hack/slash attacks if you dont have your sword drawn before executing them.  So if you execute flurry, hack, jump kick, slash...you have to draw the sword two times which adds more time to the animation delays.  But flurry bothers me because the punches need to be sped up, half the time Im hitting the guy and he's about half a block away when I finish.

- Not being able to hit NPCs while they run.
  The only solution I've found to this is to run ahead of them and wait for them to run into you.  It really doesn't make sense, and I haven't read too many comics where the hero chases the enemy two blocks down the street on his tail and is unable to take any sort of action on him.

- Accuracy of attacks.
   I've seen people complain about this on the forums for COH, and it's all really speculation as no one can say that something is right/wrong without hours of running numbers on like level NPCs, etc etc.  But it bothers me for a few reasons:  Meleers are standing right next to the npc they are trying to hit and I miss 1/3 of the time I swing at most things my level.  As a scrapper I don't seem to do as much damage as most blasters my level, but I take a greater risk since Im standing within melee range of many NPCs just to execute my attacks (and the constant missing doesn't help this).   And as for blasters, I tried one..when I got to level 5 and was running a partnered mission with a friend of mine...I missed attacks nearly half the time I fired..  It got to the point where I tried to kill a fleeing thing and missed three times in a row.  And when you're blaster is standing toe to toe with an npc and he extends his hands over the npcs head and blasts the ceiling twice...it starts to piss you off.

- Area of effect attacks (mainly slice)
   Slice is a broadsword attack that swings in an arc in front of the scrapper damaging all npcs within melee range.  Except in my case usually I'll be getting hit by multiple NPCs and when I use slice it only attempts to hit the one Im directly fighting.  I don't see "miss" or anything over the other things heads, the attack simply doesn't seem to be reaching them even though they are reaching me just fine.

- Missions (especially teamed)
  The missions I usually get with teams are front-loaded.  Meaning the hardest things in the mission are the first things you encounter in the mission.  This has caused missions to completely obliterate teams I've had....and often times these msisions would put NPCs 2 levels above the quest receivers level in it.  While this is fine if the whole team were the quest receivers level or higher, it's not a good thing when the mission doesn't scale the average level of the npcs to the average level of the team.  So if you got one guys whose level 16 and the rest of your team are 13-14..and you average out to about 14 as a team.  The level 16s mission will contain npcs in the 17-18 range in huge packs often with bosses due to your team containing over X many people.  All it does is add more npcs for the bigger teams, instead of putting the levels at some sort of average level in comparison to teams ability.  What usually ends up happening is the team has to take the lower level guys missions just so we don't rack up huge exp debts trying to do the higher level team members missions.

- Task force missions

I tried one, we ran into a lot of "untouchable" npcs who were stuck in doors/walls.  Had many other issues with the missions, and the missions were very long....which is OK in some cases but disconnects and other things lead to the mission being too hard for the remaining team to handle and we ended up with a lot of exp debt trying to finish.  Not really going to elaborate, but all I can say is if these are as buggy in retail as they are now...the game masters/whatever they are called will have their hands full dealing with the little issues that keep the missioners from completing the missions.

- Power selection

I would like to see better descriptions for powers....  I ended up with a lot of power choices that were better that I had thought they would be and others that were very disappointing.  When you get stuck with the disappointing ones (like hover *cause it's much slower than walking*) it becomes irritating to continue with the character.  I wouldn't mind seeing the option to trade up powers on the following odd level.  Or even some way of "trying powers" in some sort of battle room or non-exp gaining environment...similar to planetsides VR area especially since you can't currently drop powers for others.  I don't even care if you can't try them out till you can get them, but at least it would be some sort of "see if this fits my play style" period before taking a new power.  And for the record, hover needs to be at least as fast as walk baseline....it's ridiculously slow.



The above things I've listed have really made my game experience a lot less enjoyable.  I've read people arguing about most of these on the boards at COH, but it becomes a full-time job trying to read every little detail people post about them.  I posted a lot of these here to hopefully see if anyone else is being bothered as much by these as I am, and if they could add any creative solutions to try to alleviate the problems.

I'll list what pops into my mind as a suggestions below.  But I'll stress again that I haven't played every combo in this game, nor have i played past level 15.  I have however spent a lot of times getting very irritated by the problems that seem to have roots in the basic gameplay and not in bugs/beta testing/lag caused areas.


Suggestions:

- Make some melee attacks have some sort of "slow opponent down" effect to them, so they are easier to run down.

- Extend the melee "range" out a few feet so running things can be struck without having to run past them and wait..or hope they stop.

- Balance missions to a teams average level.

- Allow trying out of powers, or trade-in on powers besides maybe the starting ones (since it's easy to try them).

- Speed up animations, especially for melee.  It really doesn't make sense to have the bad guy running away while you're still "flurrying" on him.



I just feel bad recommending this game to anyone without telling them what is making my gaming experience less than fun.  Im sure most of my listed concerns will be seen by other melees, especially scrappers.

Hm, sounds to me you should be playing a blaster with better team dynamics.

That is all.

If you like melee but don't like runners take Spines. Spines has a few range attacks impale one of them actually has pretty decent range, good damage, and can ROOT.


The runner thing is kind of a bane and a blessing for scrappers. If you do enough damage fast enough when swarmed you can usually juggle enough mobs to stay alive. The downside is it is kinda annoying to run them down. One power that is VERY handy for tanks is teleport foe.  If a mob takes off tp it  and in general your auto attack will fire the instant it lands infront of you.


As for animation times yes on some powers they are long but in most cases the long animation time is on long powerful or multi hit attacks. The animation time is part of the built in draw back of the power which is usually harder hitting or has other strong special effects.

The flurry kick for martial arts and dark maul both have very long animations but they are offset by the massive damage the powers do when they land.

Some folks don't like playing scrappers much but I will tell you even the previously "gimp" power spines back before its boost was REALLY NASTY  even at  level 34. Scrappers are all about damage and I have seen level 34 scrappers outdamage everybody including the blasters in the group consistantly. The shock damage that broadsword scrappers can do is really scary. I highly recommend though that any scrapper picks up hasten.


kaid

As I have a level 15 fire/fire blaster and a level 11 broadsword/regen scrapper I would like to refute some of this.

Sorry for the huge sir bruce here.  There were so many points I didn't know how else to counter them all.



You mention the solution right in your statement of the problem.  The freezing in place is not a big deal as you still hit if you can trigger the attack.  It is like complaining that blaster shots go through the wall when you trigger and THEN the enemy runs behind a wall.  Unless you want it to check before and after the animation for LOS then this will happen.   And checking twice for LOS would suck.  I had enough of that in EQ with shitty a shitty LOS system.

Regarding the sword draw, yes.  You have to draw it twice with that.  LOOK at what you are doing with jumpkick.  Do you really think it would make sense to do that with a 6 foot broadsword drawn?  In live, avoid the power pool attacks if you have a weapons scrapper/tank.  First your base powers will be far stronger, and second the power pool powers don't use your weapon by design.

Since my first day of playing a scrapper I have no problem hitting a fleeing target.  Just run in front as you say.  Piece of cake.



Um... socket up some accuracy enhancers man.  My fire blaster needed two accuracy enhancements on fireblast to make me happy.  Now vs mobs my level I hit about 90% of the time and vs mobs two levels higher I hit about 60-70%.  I am okay with that.  I could hit more if I stuck more accuracy on it.  They are choices you make.  Some attacks don't need the accuracy.  My fireball is pretty darn accurate, but I slotted it with one accuracy anyway just cause I hate missing.

My broadsword guy has one accuracy on hack because it is SUCH a strong attack I don't want it to miss, but even with one accuracy I think I missed ONCE all day yesterday with that attack.  And I probably slammed down hundreds of hacks (gotta love hasten).  I didn't bother putting accuracy on slice or whatever the other one is called.  They hit about 80% vs even mobs.  If I started grouping more with my scrapper I would probably socket up some accuracy on them all.  But I have only soloed or gone in pairs and have yet to die with him up to level 11.



Again, I don't really understand your problem.  I don't have a single accuracy on slice and I hit 2-3 targets a lot with it.  remember that your selected target is in the middle of the cone.  It is not a terribly wide cone, but you can widen the cone with enhancements if you like.  I always selece the best slice target and switch to him JUST before hitting slice to make sure I get multiple in the cone.  Sometimes they are too evenly spread out though.  My biggest problem is a mental one, where if there are three targets all in the cone my brain attacks the center one.  Good for the first slice, hit three, but then the hack kills him and without the guy in the middle I can no longer cover the gap on slice.  Best to slice on the central guy and then switch to a guy on an edge to hack dead, so when your slice comes back you can still get two in the cone if they have not moved.




I have probably done about 200 missions or so, and this frontloading has only happened to me about 3-4 times.  And those times it was just a coincidence as those missions got harder and easier throughout with level changes all around.  The bulk of the missions I have played are pretty stable levelwise with only a +/-1 level difference.  The 3-4 I list above swung +/-2.  Something to do with real large groups.  They fluctuate a lot.



Finally something I agree with you on.  Many aoe powers can still hit them though in walls.  We finished the positron task force in about 15 missions or so and this happened twice, both with those COT little ghosties.  Rain of fire still hit them fine though.  Just a slow recycle so it took abit to kill them.  Certainly possible for groups to not have any aoe's like that though.  It is a real problem.



I like the idea of trying out powers.  Maybe oneshot three use temporary items from a trainer when you have enough exp to level for instance.  Would not be overbalancing to give you three shots of something you are the right level to use anyway, they already have temp powers coded, and you could test them vs mobs you are really fighting.

That said... its called HOVER.  Not something I associate with fast lateral movement.  Especially when one power lower is a skill called 'flight'.  Does not take much to put two and two together.

Trial power is still a good idea though.

Like me at level 14, I had combat jumping and hasten.  Was a DARN hard choice between super jump and super speed.  Would have loved to try them both out so see which I liked the most.  In the end I am very happy with superspeed and will pick up super jump maybe at 18 or something.  But I will be wiped before I get there of course.



Some melee types CAN do this.  Some primary some secondary.  Read the skill descriptions at char generation.  They are not as bad as you seem to think.



Don't they already do this?  I have completed very challenging missions solo all the way up to 8 in a group.  Many of both.  The 8 man missions are INSANE but incredibly fun.  Don't forget your AOE blaster, muhaahahaha.




Yeah, I see them, but I just don't see them as real problems.  Just speeding up the animations for instance would make them look really stupid and you would still have the badguy being hit while running he would just get only half as far this time.  Not much of an improvement.  As a visual problem only and not a gameplay problem at all it does not bother me.

Testing out powers is a good idea though.  Let the trainers hand out temp powers once per level for each skill you qualify for. 3 use sounds good to me.  Can't imagine it would be that hard to code.  Just need a flag that says you already got it, reset the flag on level up, and add in a 3 use temp power item for all the ingame powers.  Not imbalancing I don't think.  Especially since auras shut off when zoning in/out of missions.

The melee powers with slow animations are that way for a reason. They are usually more powerful than the normal "faster" animations.

I haven't really seen much of a problem with "front-loaded" difficult missions. Most of the time, I'm 3/4 of the way in before I see a real tough Lieutenant or Boss.

The tryout powers would be a good idea; or they may just have to add "respecing" in. Having to "reboot" a character because you picked a power that doesn't fit your style could get annoying.

I thought I saw mention somewhere that they were putting in a mission where the reward would allow a "respec". Not sure where I remember seeing that. I'll try to find it again.

The lead dev, Statesman, said that on the beta boards.

Who knows when it'll be implemented, though.

My preface to this post is that I disagree almost entirely with evertyhing you've written here.  I have played a Blaster to 15 and a number of other classes up to around 10 including various scrappers and tankers and I have to say I think you are off base.  Sir Brucing for teh win!!!


This is a legitimate gripe but really minor.  Your upset because sometimes you have a few extra frames of animation to run through...  The alternatives are animations that end abruptly or animations that dont match their effects.  Would you rather that the attack ended as soon as the opponent was out of melee range?  I bet your be even more pissed if your attacks only did 1/4th damage if the opponent was running, wouldn't you?  How about if the victim of the attack was stunlocked during the animation?  Well then everyone would play scrappers and the game would fall apart rapidly.  How about if instead of a flurry of attacks your all attacks were just a basic jab?  BORING.  I'm sure Cryptic is sorry that you have to watch a few frames of animation every now and then but it's probably the best solution.


Yea you ever tried to hit someone running away from you?  It doesn't work my friend unless you can get in a tackle, maybe they could put in an 'Open Field Tackle' power.  Anyway's, I've played enough meleers to know that it's simplicity itself to get ahead of the criminal and launch your attack, it's not that hard and it's one of the penalties of playing a close in fighter.



One word.  Enhancers.  Live em, love em, use em.  You can literally ensure that you NEVER EVER miss.


Different attacks have different arcs of effect, play a different scrapper with different attacks if that one is inadequate to your play style.  


I will give you the front end loadedness of missions, I've /feedbacked this myself.  It's disappointing when the last half of your mission has you fighting greys which are trivial to beat and net you no experience.  Group missions also can vary wildy in difficulty dependent on the average levels in your groups.  One player a level above the mobs and the mission becomes very easy (Particuarly if that character is an effective controller) but if most of the team is below the level of the team leader (which is often the case) then a mission can become extremely difficult.  Note that this problem goes away if some of the team members are 5+ levels below the creator as they can be SideKicked to within 1 level, so the problem really on exists for characters that are 3 or 4 levels below the leader and can be overcome anyway with a good group that worls well together, running battles = megafun.  All that said, missions in a good group are by far one of the most fun things I have ever done in any MMOG to date and I've played retail or beta tested almost all of them since UO.



The only problem we had was finding the enterance to a mission that was mostly due to us bieng to tired and two mobs stuck in floors.  The mobs in floors thing needs to be fixed but it's one of those tweeking things that just need to be fiddled with by the programmers.  I am absolutely sure it wont be left like that for an extended period of time, especially if enough guide time has to be used to fix it.  In cryptics favor a guide type showed up within 10 minutes of the petition.

I totally utterly could not disagree more, I would be willing to bet that 98% of the people playing with hover think it is in close running for "Greatest Powah evar!!!" I know it's one of my favorites.  Hover is not fly, hover is hover.  Interestingly enough it allows you to hover.  It does exactly what it says it does, it allows you to hover and while hovering it grants you a defense bonus (A sizable one at that).  Also interesting is that fly allows you to fly at quite a respectible speed much faster than run with even a well enhanced sprint, it's odd that because fly lets you fly and hover lets you hover isn't it?  And that brings us back to enhancements, if you really wanted to you can get hover upto a reasonable speed, about that of running I hear if you actually, you know, use the game mechanics as they are implemented rather than as you dreamed they might be.  I find the rest of the descriptions equally accurate literal and extremely helpful.


Most of your irratation to me seemed to be problems of your own creation.  As I said before I mostly do not agree.

They exist, go see a doctor about your extreme case of myopia, if you want them you will have to trade off some of the high end damage of a blade scrapper.
Again they exist, try to realize that all the classes are not cookie cutters of each other in the same tree.

They are but you probably mean sidekicked median level and though I agree its only to a point I still think even though toughest missions are doable even when most of the team is underpowered.
It was stated that respeccing would be added as a mission reward.  Nuff said.

Don't agree see ablove.



I just feel bad recommending this game to anyone without telling them what is making my gaming experience less than fun.[/quote]
I don't agree, I recommend this game whole-heartedly across the board.  The game play is phenominal.

</fanbois>

I see I'm not the only one whose fished in by this game.   We're down to the wire, 2 days of beta left (servers go down sometime tommorow, Thursday).   Then on Sunday, the Pre-order 3 day head start begins.

Chronic class picking disability has always been a problem for me.   I've worked it down to three archetypes.  Here's what I've worked out:

I like a Scrapper with Claws/Regeneration because of the low downtime, excellent offensive, and relatively good defensive capabilities. Already quite soloable, he's a lot of wiggle room to put in power pool selections for versitility as well. However, I dislike this choice because (even with power pool dabbling) it's not at all subtle, and as such a game connoisseur I like to think I can be more clever than that.  Chasing down mobs that run is also an annoyance as a Scrapper, but one I've learned to deal with.

I like the idea of a Controller with (Mind Control or Illusions)/Kinetics because this is an extremely subtle yet powerful character, fitting my clever fix nicely. There's very little you cannot do with this Controller, and his power to sway combat in favor of the group is astronomical. Plus, he can get Siphon Speed at lvl 10 which is a built-in travel power. I dislike this choice because Controllers are lousy to solo with - not due to safety concerns but because their damage output is abysmal. Also, I suspect it won't be a very original choice because everybody and their dog is going to take Kinetics.

I've found a Defender with (Anything but force field)/Energy Blasting is also a fun character. The buff/debuff primary power set gives the Defender considerable subtle ability to sway power. Energy Blasting is sure ego mass joy, tossing out Energy Torrent and watching scores of foes bowl over from it is bliss. However, the Defender is nearly as group-focused as the Controller is (and thus, not very solo friendly), and lacks a certain level of versitility.

Ultimately it comes down to the number one law of good MMORPG class picking: You can't do everything, and this is by design. So just pick one and stick with it, and learn to accept the down sides as something you're not made to do and probably will need to get from others.

Just cause I thought this was a cool screenie:



edited because html is friendlier for images than bbcode and to point out the cool tats on the Tsoo's arms.

Ok, for those people that are griping about the endgame, you are forgetting a few things.

Everquest did *NOT* have an endgame when it first came out.  The cap was level 50, there were no AA points, and about the only thing you could really do when you hit 50 and maxed out your exp was to fight Vox or Naggy (although I'm not entirely sure that they were even in when the game started.  Can't remember that part)

The Planes were really the first of the "endgame" for EQ, and they came out about 6 months after EQs release.  I remember that Fear came out on Halloween.

With most games that really have an "endgame", the endgame was created when a number of characters had maxed their advancement and didn't really have anything to do.  They started adding content until they found what it was that worked.

The reason that EQ's endgame is all revolving around raids is because that's what worked and kept people interested in the game.  At level 50, the thing that people enjoyed the most was raiding in Fear and Hate, and because it was the raids that people enjoyed, there was more raid-style content added in kunark, and then each expansion became more and more geared towards large raids and the uber-loot that was required to give incentive to go through all the work.

I'm sure that if this game becomes popular enough that they will find and endgame that works for people.  The fact that it doesn't really have an endgame right now doesn't matter in the least because it will be created when the need comes, JUST LIKE EQ DID!!

It's easy to find a flaw in a game when you compare a new game to one that has been developped for 5 years.  Personally I feel that CoH has every bit as entertaining a game as EQ did when it first came out.  I started eq about a month after it came out.  CoH I started 2 months after release, which is pretty comparible overall.  I think that CoH has the potential that EQ did when it came out.

Holy mother of necro-posts, Batman!

braaaaiiinnnnsssssss....

Actually, it was the Plane of HATE that was added on Halloween, with a special event in Kithicor Forest that had some dark elven chick sacrificing shit to Innoruuk. It was also the event that changed Kithicor from an unused n00b zone to a level 35-45 death trap. Fear came earlier, maybe 2-3 months after release. Vox and Naggy were I think in at release, but I couldn't tell you if they worked right or not. On the first night, Fear wasn't level-restricted; you could go in it with any level character, though you'd probably die toot suite if you weren't 46+. My fiancee made a level 1 Ogre and ran through the gauntlet of spectre death and into the portal just to see what the zone looked like. Apparently the ubers bitched and moaned because they were afraid the planar armor would get ninjalooted, so days later, McQuaid had the group add a hardcoded level restriction to the zone. I imagine that's part of why all the planes after that until Velious not only had a level restriction, but required a teleport spell to get there instead of walking into a portal.

Kunark embraced the raid mentality because the most vocal assholes bitched about the ease of the challenge in the game once the planes and dragons were conquered. Unfortunately, they listened to the vocal minority and catered everything to that set of people.

Insert sucking noise here.