f13.net

Well with Fable done, the ESPN NFL league on what appears to be permanent hold and my current MTGO league winding down, I finally took some time to hop back into CoH and see the new stuff.

Overall; me like, alot.

My main is level 24, so I did a tailor misson, did the cape mission and I can easily see how some people get hooked on costume changes.  Since the character creation part of CoH is often viewed as such a positive feature, it makes great sense for Cryptic to work it back into the game for established characters.  Also looked at all the badges I'd earned and selected one to be my badge title; Spirir Warrior.  Have some badges started that I dont know what they will be named until they are done (like have one for killing Tsoo sorcerors). Good stuff.

Also got my first 2 outdoor instanced missions.  Lotsa fun.  In case anyone didn't know, when you get on, you simply head to any tram station and that mission area is listed on your choices of destinations.

My first was a timed 5th column mission at a chemical factory.  Had to disarm a bomb, rescue 4 chemists and arrest the leader.  The layout was a huge vertical zone; complete with lots of ramps and catwalks.  It was like fighting up the sides of a huge skyscraper.  I was able to make good use of my flight power to find the specific tagets and then swoop in to save/pound/disarm the things.  Nice touche,  putting the boss on the tippy top of the structure; it felke like i was on top of a 15th story building.  Completing the 3 mission objective was enought to complete the mission, but there were a LOT, and I mean a LOT of extra mobs I could have taken out.  I know there were at least 50 soldiers I left alone and killed a good 50-80 more.  Hugely target rich.

The second one was found as a linked clue after doing a Tsoo vs Warriors door mission.  Zone was like a mini Talos island zone where a martial arts tournament was going on.  Had to stop 6 boss fights and also found an actual treasure chest containing a clue and a SO Natural Martial arts move called Dragon Eye or something.  Once again, huge numbers of mobs in the mini zone; left 20+ after taking out 60 or so.

Have also seen some on the new touches in other missions likes rolling up garage doors in wharehouses and destroyable scientific equipment in labs.

Sill able to do missions in reasonable 20-40 minute time frames so I can have short play sessions and still feel like Im getting stuff done.  With the new mission exp payout rates, I've made 45% of level 25 in just 4 30 min play sessions.  Combat is still multi-mob fast and furious, I still love that part.  Fought some of my fist Devouring Earth mobs; very different.

Any time I was Independance Port would get random tells from folks looking to do the respec mission, so apparently thats popular too.

Took a lvl 8 blaster into the Hollows nice low level hazard zone.   Mobs using more powers and tactics keeps things interesting.

Overall, a very nice job. I have to hand it to Cryptic, they seem to do committed to providing quality in whatever they do.  I may just stay subscribed to CoH as long as they have it open just for that reason alone.  Plus, nothing says fun like knocking a nazi off the side of a 10 story drop with an well placed energy blast. :)

Xilren
PS Their comic book serves as a nice reminder to hop back in and check things out periodically.

I did this mission. It was great, though a bit long if you beat up everyone in it like I did.

I agree with everything you said. It's still worth playing, even if you don't play every night. The new mission payouts really help with the leveling time.

BTW, apparently now when you complete a story arc, you not only get a souvenier, but you also get a choice of a reward.  Completed my first arc tonight and a double mission payout in exp, plus I got to choose between 5 appropriate AT Single Origin enhancers.

Nice.

Xilren

Mission exp is nice, I've been playing a couple weeks and haven't needed to grind exp in a hazard zone at all. 2 missions at level 23, not counting mob xp gained, is enough to wipe out a single death penalty.

I also just got Stamina and it feels like I'm cheating, almost no downtime anymore. Slot it and (especially) health a couple times and we're talking a fun action game and the antithesis to EQ.

Fun game.

I took my low level scrapper out for a spin the other day, and I have to say that the Hollows is a really kickass zone.  I also like the lower level Outcast LTs, etc.  Very nifty stuff.

Sadly, he's stuck on a mission right now where there's a red shocker as the main boss and can't seem to take it down.  I may have to actually find a team.  Oh well, perhaps dark melee/regen isn't the best build evar for a scrapper.

Actually should be pretty easy to do...  get four purples, two yellows and greens.  You should be able to take him down easy.  Pop two purple, one yellow and go to town.  Run if you need, but around Lvl 16 and then at 28 the game becomes golden for DM/Regen.

Slot up QR and your Attacks.

You can always ring up ol' Cosmic. I've got a couple alts lying around, what level? Don Pancake (fire/fire blastola) is lvl 9 (about to levelup once I decide which power I want) and Moleculator (rad/rad defender) is lvl 15. I'd like to check out the Hollows, haven't been there yet.

There's also a bug that heals you to full health when you leave a mission instance....

Good point.  What server are you on CmdrSlack?  I have characters from 36th down to 5th.... on Virtue.. edited because my dumb arse forgot what server I am on...

The changes have me very tempted to resub. I have a lvl 15 scrapper (spines/regen) that I enjoy solo, but I will probably roll a new guy to check out the new lvl 5-15 areas.

I'll likely be soloing most of the time, so I'm thinking about going blaster, even though from reading the boards the game has turned into City of Blasters. A fire/ice or ice/energy blaster might be cliche, but it does look fun.

Are there any controller builds that can solo decently, or am I pretty much stuck with a scrapper or blaster for efficient soloing?

I'm on Victory.  I have my lv 28 Fire/Energy blaster named Panther Inferno and my lv 6 Dark/regen scrapper named Barrister.

I also have Seismic Shift, who I think is still around lv 22/23 Earth/Storm controller, but he's pretty much shelved since I don't like trolling for pickup groups and it turns out that I like being a damage dealer more.

Probably the best for solo is Illusion/whatever... not sure on the second part.

Any advice for a potential Fire/Energy blaster starting out? I read a good guide on the CoH boards about powerlevelling a blaster ... I'm not interested in powering through levels, I just want to be able to solo for a few hours here and there and not die 2489 times in the process.

If I can get away with an Illusion/whatever controller solo that would be really fun, as I like the concept of illusionary destruction.

Buildup, Firebreath, Fireball, mop up with fireblast.

Hasten, Super Speed then SJ or Fly later...

Can not stress enough the need for Super Speed.  Stealth would be a good idea also.  To be honest, Hasten is not necessary unless your really looking to push the damage limit, but the whatever/health/stamina line becomes highly needed as you progress levels.  I have a 31st level Fire/Fire blaster.  Really, when you turn 22nd, 27th and 32nd you will think your doing way the heck to much damage because SO's change the world.  If you can keep your damage up your good, the deaths show up from alpha strikes.  Not sure if you can work Toughness into the build or not, but I have been told it is golden if you can.  I currently do not have it and wish I did...

That's pretty much what the powergaming guide says. They recommend any pool skills with defense (Stealth, Combat Jumping) especially if you're doing a lot of soloing.

The scrapper was fun, but I know I borked his build. And being 15, he is right in-between a reroll or grinding to 24 for the respec mission. ;) So I might as well start over.

Reason for Super Speed is to get close.  Firebreath has a limited range and it will be your attack leader if your looking to take out groups.  Firebreath/fireball should kill 90%plus of a group of white / yellow minions.. even at 31st.

For utmost and utter safety, you probably go with Illusion/Forcefield.  Throw out pets, turn on Personal forcefield, wait for pets to mop up.

I like the timed outdoor missions alot. They are so big you just cannot beat them by old fashioned kill everything. It gives you reason to make more active use of your movement powers to rapidly scout and move and scout and move to hit the targets that need hitting.

kaid

Right. The trick is to IGNORE anything that survives and just get the fuck away. This is why SJ is a good pickup in the mid-20s. Use SS+SJ to search for packs, then alpha strike and move on. Hasten is great because it keeps BU recycling faster.

Form a group with your friends. Let them hunt "normally" while you hop around alpha striking all over the zone. They will love the exp you earn and you get exp and inspirations+enhancements from their hunting. If you get in trouble, one of your teammates can recall you to safety.

After playing my scrapper a bit, I realized how truly gimped he was.

So I rerolled on Victory as a Radiation/Dark Defender. His name is Toxic Druid. He makes bad guys' tummies hurt.

I have an Earth/Kinetics controller... should I reroll him for something useful (like Earth/Empathy or Earth/Forcefield), or will Kinetics be something halfway decent later?

See, this is a pet peeve of mine; compulsive rerolling.  The fact of the matter is that just playing a character to 10th level gives you no idea of whether a character is "gimped" or not.  Some of the nastiest powers in the game start off as the apparently weakest ones.  There's just no way to gauge how a powerset will play in the endgame anywhere prior to level 30.

Another thing, stop being cheesedicks who build a character solely around what seem like the most effective min/max powers.  How's about you come up with a cohesive character idea first and then build your alter ego around that?  Fucking novel idea, no?  You people are the kind of assholes that I'd kill off on a regular basis in Champions.  No respect for comic books, you just want the most powerful character regardless of whether it y'know, actually fits into the game world or makes any kind of thematic sense.

Is it such a crime to want to feel more useful than a sack of bricks when grouped up? Earth stuff is great, kinetics so far makes me feel like I wasted a secondary power set.

*stands, applauding Gulp*

Pick what fits your vision for your character or go back to min/maxing in EQ or something.

There's a certain amount of truth to this. I have a ton of characters, since I like variety. I rarely "reroll" though.

I'll simply address scrappers here. If you're not in your mid-30s, you haven't seen what your scrapper can really do. They don't mature until you pass level 28. As long as you're been mostly chosing from your primary and secondary, you'll be fine. Slotting might be an issue, but your first respec is at 24 and you'll do fine until then (my own first scrapper, a katana/regen, suffers from this, but she plays fine, just not an optimal build in my opinion).

I'm not a comic fan. I do enjoy this game and most of my characters have some background or idea in mind when made. Some happen to be what is now regarded at FotM, but their builds are not. My BS/invul would be regarded as a power build, but she was originally made to test broadsword (when It was regarded as "gimp") and invul was chosen primarily because it wasn't regen. She was respeced at 34 and all I did was drop slash in favor of the newly revamped disembowel. She could have gotten along fine with slash, though.

Food for thought.

One last comment: my BS/invul isn't much fun in groups. She's really best on her own. She's slow, she uses a metric ton of END, she has to carefully set up battles or retire from them every two minutes, and she doesn't group well with more mobile scrappers or anyone with knockback. But she's still my fav.

There are no "wasted" power sets, and as I said before, you're at such a low level that you really have no idea what kinetics is capable of (and for the record, kinetics is a very, very nice power set; being able to throw unyielding stance on a teammate alone makes it worth the price of admission), so you're jumping the gun with the urge to reroll.

I have no idea who or what your character is, and don't really care.  What irks me is seeing people running around who apparently don't give a shit about any kind of cohesive character concept, they just want to buy whatever powerset they figure is "best".  I'm looking at all of those jackass fire/axe tankers running around out there.

My second tank was Fire/Axe, lets not be hasty. She was...interesting.

I doubt you'll see the ones you're seeing much longer though, if my experiences were any guide. My fire/axe is largely why I play scrappers now.

Still...if they do get the damage scaling fix...she might have some possiblities again.

Kinetics is a late bloomer.  When you get speed boost, you will find getting a group is not the problem, the constant requests for grouping becomes the problem.

Speedboost is the SOW of COH...

Interesting from the purely "hey, my DPS is X compared to broadsword's Y!"

That's not interesting, that's exactly what I was speaking out against.  You've said that this is your entire reason for switching to a scrapper.  So let me make it clear here:  YOU, SABLE, ARE THE TYPE OF PLAYER THAT ANNOYS ME TO NO END.  You're attempting to power level through a game where the end isn't any more exciting than the beginning.  There is no loot in this game, there is no uberness.  Why in fuck's sake are you rushing through something where the entire point of the enterprise is the journey, not the destination?

I was stuck with a gimp power for most of my character's existence; super strength only became decent with the most recent patch.  So goddamned what?  I still had fun, I still enjoyed myself, and my character was quite playable.  Best of all, I didn't have to run my power/survivability stats through a spreadsheet to compare how effective I was to every other build out there.

Fuck, given the choice I'd rather group with someone whose character is interesting, but horribly gimped than one of the min/max idiots that infest this game.

The journey did get pretty boring pretty quickly. I'm still waiting for a reason to play through. Some higher reason. Something that says the payoff is worth it. I left because there was no payoff. At the end of beta, I sidekicked up to the max level a couple times and it was like the lowest levels. meh.

To be fair, the CoH Tanker concept of "Lots of health, hits like a girl" has few parallels in comic books that I'm aware of.  Fire/Axe tankers are just trying to not be laughed at behind their backs.

OK, let me pick up my head and place it back on my neck. Hopefully it will still fit with all the bite marks.

While it's all fine and dandy to sit in the Android's Dungeon and condescend, some of us want to play the game effectively. I don't play to min/max, I play to have fun, and gimping around with abilities that are not effective because I chose them when I didn't truly understand how the game works is not my kind of fun.

As for "concept", I took the time to head to the ICON store and write down all my costume choices so I could duplicate him exactly when I rerolled, because I love his look and his story.

I only posted his name on here because I thought I would find some cool people to play with. Time to look elsewhere, apparently.

At one point we had a full parade of people in the game. Hell, one day a handful of us rolled up new celebrity character. I had G. Gordon Liddy, so I won imo. Anyway, the game shiny wore off and what was once about 40 people is like 6 now. It's a shame, but City of Villains will pull us back, I'm sure, if they can pull it off.

Man if it had better missions, a more expansive world, and some sort of economy I'd resub.  I just got bored of killing things repeatedly, in EQ2 I got up to level 12 just by doing quests, in CoH I had to kite reds in order to progress at a reasonable rate...

CoH would have felt more like a breath of fresh air to you if you had played EQ1. "Some sort of economy" just turns into having to farm gold in a game to advance. Talk about boring. And killing things repeatedly was what people did best ni EQ1. I can't speak to EQ2 yet (very soon though) so perhaps it is different. Having lots of quests is a good thing to me.

CoH's quest system works as thus:
Delivery X to Y -> oh noes! clear out the clockworks -> rinse -> repeat. As much as I loved some of the enemy design and level design, this just got too old too fast. Frenetic is fun. But if they implemented other systems (hero hideouts, wardrobes, and other things that are completely for personal goals) the missions would have at least had a worthwhile payoff and the oppurtunity to vary the mission structure (hidden rooms with furniture you can steal for your apt, extra closet space, etc).

Edit: Removed because you don't need to be berated in your own forum.  Enjoy your game but your comments are making me smirk.

The question really becomes what were you trying to progress to? I really think this misses the point of the game. You seemed to think there was something better out there to get.

There isn't, which is both a good and bad thing about CoH. For a jaded-ass MMOG vet like me, who levels slow as fuck, it's good because I have no obligation or incentive to compulsively level up and can just enjoy what I'm doing. It's bad, because some people can't seem to play a game without there being a carrot at the end, instead of swimming in carrot soup.

I stopped playing CoH because I was stuck in debt and had other things to play. I've come back about a month or two later to a game that has stuff I've never seen, and is easier to get out of debt. I don't play it compulsively, just whenever I feel like it, and that's probably the best thing about it to me.

I do think CoV will have a number of effects. It'll bring players back, it'll bring new players in, and it'll cause a lot of the min/max bullshit both Gulp and I HATE to be a regular part of the game.

bonk bonk bonk bonk bu bonk bonk bonk bonk, i wanna be berated.

/agree

Which is why I am hoping that EQ2 quests prove to be more than that. With player housing in the game, perhaps quests will provide some neat little perks for personal goals.

Hmm.. couple of points.  Some new quests have been added that are changing the normal modus operandi.

One quest was to save x civilians captured by the Ritki, but also to protect some equipment they had stolen.  The point was any damage you do that is area of effect also damages the equipment, you also have to pull aggro or take the Ritki down quick enough to keep the equipment alive.  The mission is a board the train outdoor mission.

Another was to get a blood sample from prisoners of the Ritki, which means doing the same standard freeing of x civies, but the game would go through a test with a med kit your given.  (nothing big here, but was interesting)

Third, in a lot of missions I have noticed just random blinking boxs and such, even though they are not listed on the need to do for the mission.  I have seen temp powers, clues, nothing, and xp given for the action of checking those blinking items out.

While no, it has not overly broken the mode, the fact they are taking steps to do so if only small ones is very encouraging.

Nothing like sniping at someone you've never met ingame, eh?

Well, I won't get too nasty. I made my original axe tanks so I could do the role that scrappers now enjoy. In beta, scrappers didn't look so good. Their staying power sucked and from a pure damage standpoint, they didn't look good (admittedly, I went on hearsay about BS here). Coming from a background of EQ and DAoC, more defense seemed a better bet for a character that could both group and solo effectively and have fun.

That...didn't work out.

My original ice/axe tank ran up against the problem of status defenses. Hers were great, aside from no defense against sleep. Also, since she was pure defense and no resist AND we didn't have a purple patch yet...well...she couldnt' tank and since her END costs were horrific she couldn't dish out damage for any length of time. She retired.

Tank #2. Since everyone and their dog was invul, I decided to go fire. It seemed to have the resists (hadn't figured out yet that you need both defense AND resists) and had an END recovery ability to support axe, hopefully. Same problems. No status protection, consume only keeps you swinging another few seconds, and lack of defense meant I got hit lots, even if it was for less. Again, couldn't tank the purples everyone wanted to fight and still was chronically out of END. Another early retiree.

Tanks #3 showed up about this time. She was a capitulation to the mass hunting of purples (invul/EM), but never really got  played all that much. Two things happened: the purple patch and I started to listen to my friends in the game that kept telling me I was better suited to scrappers.

Scrapper #1. Katana/regen. Regen looked good, especially after all the END woes of tankers. Katana...no real reason, I'd just heard BS wasn't much good and I like swords. This one took off like a shot. Fun to play, actually could fight more than 30 seconds without going OoE, did real damage (though axe does do comparable per hit damage with katana), and was highly mobile. She couldn't take a lot of hits, but wasn't much worse than ice that I could see overall. Best of all, no status worries once she had integration. LIfe was finally good. Except...

Scrapper #2. I like alts. I kept hearing that BS sucked, but it obviously hit very hard. So, I figured to make a BS scrapper just to see all the whys and wherefores for myself. BS and...hmm...don't like the look of dark, SR was seriously troublesome at this point (had friends with it to see first hand), and that left invul. So I was BS/invul. I quickly found out that invul scrappers played like tanks. This wan't so good. BS, however hit a ton and one shotting white cons from the getgo was a blast. END was a problem, but most of your enemies weren't around long enough for it to be really bothersome, so stuck with it. I've stuck with it for 40 levels now and I'm rather attached to this character. She's not the same as TheConfessor's BS/invul build. She's not a FotM scrapper, she has her ups and downs, but she's the one I find most entertaining over all (though I'm growing increasingly fond of katana/SR...my fifth scrapper).

That's my career in CoH in a nutshell. I've experimented and played what looked like fun to me. A big "fuck you" to those who think otherwise--BigGulp. I'm hardly a powerleveler. I've played since day one and have no level 50 characters. One lvl40, and a lot of alts below 30 (most around 20). Aside from skipping Positron with my BS/invul, she's finished every storyarc, done every boring TF, and has more badges than you can shake a dead hellion at. Again, screw you for your assumptions. If you REALLY want to see how I play you can look Shimmer Brand up on Victory. However, I don't deal with idiots well, and you've not made a good impression so far.

Absolutely. I noticed last night that the missions have been made a bit more interesting. One of the missions I was on, I thought we had hit a dead end and then my teammate opened up this huge garage door over a loading dock in the warehouse and we entered a whole other section of mission. Pretty neat. It was just a little touch, but along with the things you mentioned, they are certainly refining missions and attempting to make things more interesting.

Sable does not understand what Gulp is saying and continues to bolster his point.

Spiderman didn't get his relatively gimpy powerset because it was the most effective way to beat up villians. He got what he got because it fit the character concept.

I didn't take energy/energy because I felt it was the best blaster powerset, I took it because it matched my character's background. I took flying instead of superjump, because my character flies between planets. Not really,obviously, it's backstory that molds the character.

You've now bolstered Gulp's point a couple times, care to continue?

Ding ding ding. The journey is the thing, beating up bad guys is fun. Do not look for the man behind the curtain, there isn't one.

People looking for 'effective builds', looking for 'long term rewards', you people do not want to play CoH. You want to play a traditional mmog. It's not a failing of CoH, it's a difference in tastes. CoH is just about making a hero and going out and having fun. That's all. Nothing more to see, drive on to a 'deep and complex' world, if you've got the time.

I'm with Fargull - the quests have gotten good, and mission xp awards are back to the "fun" factor.  It's still D2 in tights but the design plan is very promising and Cryptic has been stellar at sticking to both their announced goals and the timelines.

I'm mildly interested in EQ2 and WoW but I suspect that I'll stick with CoH/CoV for a long time.  It's the most casual friendly game I've come across.  So far Cryptic's tactic off delivering fun first and adding depth over time works for me.

But I need more people on Guardian I can depend on as an SG. :-)  Only downside is the wildcard of pickup groups.

you know, being a condescending asshole isn't really a cool way to be.

I really don't see wtf the problem is here. As far as I can tell, Sable enjoys playing CoH. Sky and Big Gulp also seem to enjoy playing CoH. everyone is having fun, great.

who really gives a shit as to why people enjoy it? the most important thing is that people are actually enjoying the game. I mean come on, we are all familiar with the Bartle quotient and all that it entails. Some people are going to get the most enjoyment from socializing with others, coming up with a cohesive story to their character and their choice of powers. Obviously others are going to get their kicks from designing a really powerful character and using it to level quickly.  Maybe others want to explore the game world, and so will need to get their character to a certain level to improve survivability. As long as everyone is happy, what is the problem?

Tried my first one of these against the Lost, got 2 temp powers during the missions that were neat b/c they had negative side effcts in addition to their power (a stealth power that did damge to you when you used it, and a teleport that left your acc down).  But, i failed b/c there were about 5 lost around the last peice of equipment i needed to protect (a peice that monitored the hero emergency teleportation grid actually) and when i blasted a target, 2 others immediately started blasting the equipment; orange mobs vs blue equipment=didnt last long.  Still fun though.

I've also done 2 missions that needed multiple people.  They both had linked bombs that had to be defused at the same time.  Sky helped me do a Devouring Earth one, and Haem and I just did a Family mission tonight (had to pickup a random person to defuse the 3rd bomb).

As to CoH in general, even at relase i was getting the vast majority of my exp from "questing" i.e. running missions so I'm not sure while anyone would feel the need to kite reds to gain experience regularly; and that was even prior to the increased mission rewards.  

Besides, while I haven;t tried EQ2 or WOW quest system yet, i suspect their quests will actually have less variety of things to do than CoH's.  Consider, most typical missions starting at level 1, you could get almost any combination of needing to a) rescue npc's b) find clues or bombs or relics/stolen goods c) defeat bosses and their guards d) defeat all mobs in the area e) deliver items/information f) kills a set number of foes in a specificed area g) protect important points/things h) travel to a series of landmarks i) destroy inamimate objects like lab equipment j) use temporary powers your character normally doesnt have access to k)survive hit squads that come after you l) have multiple players take actions in seperate areas of the map simultaneous and last but not least m)do it in a set amount of time or fail.  The plotlines, story arcs, sovieners and badges you can get just add to the immersion of the missions.  You even have to do minor missions to be able to buy and sell at higher level stores.  Being able to pick what missions and contacts you want to pursue.  Hell, just being able to FAIL a quest has been a new experience.

I'm trying to recall any mmorpg thus far including what i've heard about WoW and EQ2 that will even have a small part of those type of gameplay options in their quests.  If the quests dont provide engaging gameplay, what the real difference if there are 10, 100 or 1000 of em?

Xilren

*groans and eyes his COH CDs* must. resist. temptation.

*imagines the Bold Blue Bomb in a cape*

Have things changed enought that rerolling might be worth it just to see the new early stuff? How does one get a cape?

They've added some new missions with new effects in the original tilesets. Hollows missions (levels 6 to 15) have these new tilesets, including a tunnels tileset. They're definately worth seeing. They have individual "themes" for what villain group you're fighting (Freakshow is particularily impressive).

Capes are a quest that you can initiate at lvl20. Talk to the City Rep in Atlas Park and she'll square you away. You may want to consider bringing a few associates for this one.

Whatever you do, don't bring a group on the cape mission - and make sure you do it at lvl 20.

The grouped version of the mission is substantially different in terms of the scale and number of bad guys.

Doing it solo is a cakewalk, doing it even in a duo is likely to end a couple of bars of debt unless you have a really good group.

Talk to the city rep in the AP town hall to get started.

Kinetics is frickin' awesome. Especially with a controller to back it up. A lot of kinetics is predicated on mob positioning (transfusion, transference, fulcrum shift, and to some degree siphon power) so being able to hold things in one place while you trick off them is a godsend.

Increase Density is like tossing Unyielding Stance on other people and they can still move. Speed Boost is Hasten with an endurance-regen component to keep up with it.

And Transfusion?

Most powerful AOE heal in the game. But guess what, you don't have the positioning problems an actual kinetic defender has. Empathy has better single-target heals, but you can easily outheal an AOE from all but the most dedicated defenders.

Empathy and Force Field are the two most obvious defender builds, but there's huge love to be had if you know how to work the others.

The only thing that makes kinetics slightly gimp is that there's a window where you can target a dying mob with Transfusion/Transference, and it hits, the animation plays, and the power starts to recharge, but it has no effect.

--GF

Well first it was to get my transportation power, to me the game isn't as fun as after you get superjump (oh how I miss you superjump).  

Second it was the desire to get new powers, pretty much the draw of the game at the beginning there.  You did the crappy missions and ran around killing mobs in order to get that teleport friend, smoke grenade, or cloak.  I didn't find the whole story they were weaving intriguing enough to play slowly and get inovled, but then again when I find an EQ2 mob I can have a two minute conversation with about some ancient place (and it becomes obvious I won't get a quest), I just leave.

The draw of the game is to play the game. Experiment with the mechanics, see the sights, do whatever it is you do, and just basically play the game.

As for the cloak quests, well, the final mission does scale visciously. You won't want a full group, that's for sure. But unless you have considerable ability to lock down mobs one way or another, you may want a friend or two. I don't want to spoil the end for anyone that hasn't done it, but you need some staying power here.

When I said to do it solo above, I should put on a disclaimer that I did it solo with a scrapper, and dead on level 20.

Next mission after that I was with a group of 6 who were trying to complete a level 27 cloak mission that was set for 2 people. We needed to a level 42 to help in the end.

Do it around level 20, and you get a different villan group at the end to what you get with higher level players.

I was able to solo the cape mission at level twenty with my energy/energy blaster. But I've heard a few people ingame with similar comments about difficulty ramping up very quickly when more people/levels are involved.

Hrm, i thought it was very doable solo; no problems at 24 myself.  One nice thing about some of the missions is you have to change the way you fight to suit the circumstances; it's not rocket science, but still variety=gud.

Xilren

The game really does change at higher levels, by that I mean both the missions get a slightly different slant (it's still 'kill everything' but the everything does use different tactics and powers, and the balance of minions/bosses/avs changes substantially), and also the way you play a character over level 30 is different to under 20.

It's fair to say it's not 'better', but it is different.



True, but you could say the same of, say, KOtOR.

The thing they do need to develop more is the way they express the story to you (since reading 5 pages of text of a computer screen is not an accessible way to move through a narrative). The story is all that really stops a single player rpgh looking any different in terms of quest structure.


All the accusations of CoH being grind based and not having a fast enough or interesting enough progression can make a perfectly fair case against CoH. You can also make valid complaint about the lack of PvP or crafting/homemaking/economics. But at the same time there is no pve MMORPG I am aware of that has less grindy gameplay or more variety in the core mechanic.

Yes, I'm looking at you EQ2 and WoW.

Argh! Ok...I can afford both COH and WoW or EQ2...yeah...that's it....