f13.net

Short review, anyone?

That was me.  Odd.

Coming from Lineage 2 to this was like eating shit and then getting some good wine that was made for the first pope.  Seriously though, it will be a game I buy at release, stability, polish, shine, it has all these things. It is also fun, there's very little teh shiny, but when it comes to this game, gameplay rules the beast. When the NDA is lifted I'll get very specific about the game, but let's just say - I have no problem playing this until the second coming (of MMO's - could care less about the son of god) arrives.

It boggles my mind how NC Soft thinks Lineage 2 will be a hit comparatively. City of Heroes is going to be the fucking 'sleeper' title til everyone catches on.

It's odd.  While I want this game to find the success it probably deserves, part of me hopes the masses never catch on.  I'll take a small niche community any day over the typical mainstream community, which tends to range from anti-social and dull like FFXI's, to the horrors of the WoW fanboys and apparently the Lineage 2 community.  Let the masses who are afraid of anything other than fucking fantasy MMORPG's keep chasing the empty promises of the Blizzards and SOE's, like a legion of Charlie Browns who really believe that this time Lucy isn't going to pull the damn football out from under them at the last fucking second.

On the other hand it would be nice to see this game do better than EQ2, just so other companies might be encouraged to do something original themselves.  As it stands Pirates of the Burning Sea is pretty much the only other MMORPG being worked on that I'm actually interested in seeing, unless some company gets off their ass and starts making a Shadowrun game.

Yes, but if this DOES hit it big, maybe the "hey guys, auto attack SUCKS" concept will sink in and we can get more fun combat in other games as well.

As schild states, he is WAITING for the second coming.  This isn't it yet I don't think, but it is better than anything else out there by a good margin.  We are still evolutionary at this point and not revolutionary, but the evolutions are in a very positive direction here.

Hell, the MOVEMENT is more fun than anything else in any mmog out there right now.  Jumping from building to building is better than any other gameplay before you even bring up combat and the actual game.

And I think the shiney is there in a VERY well done city.

Give your local gamestore a phonecall to see if they have the preorder box.  Grab it for $5.  It has a registration key on it that you can use to sign up for beta.  All registered with this key get in prior to april 7th (next wednesday) and then you can cancel your preorder if you don't like it and only be out $5 (less than swg beta) or if you stick with it for the first free month you can get started on the 25th of april instead of the 28th public launch.

No brainer if you are curious.

I just got into the beta last night, but being on dial-up at the moment I've got another 27-30 hours of downloading left.

The thing about this game is, I don't think the devs were designing CoH with being the Second Coming in mind.  I don't recall ever seeing it marketed as the EQ, FFXI, or WoW killer.  I don't think they were ever expecting CoH to take away huge amounts of the other games playerbases.  They didn't go with an established genre or some licensed world for hype value.  This is one of the few MMORPGs where I get the feeling that the designers were really looking to do something fun rather than try to cash in off the masses, with "licensed fantasy world or sequel #758".

But yeah, I hope it does well enough to make other companies think twice about churning out the same old shit in their shiny new packaging.

They were probably scared that Freedom Force may have only been a temporary anomaly in the superhero game curse and trying to hide.

is there going to be an open beta?

You're still here? Http://www.cityofheroes.com ...n00b.

I think a lot of us were afraid Freedom Force was only a temporary anomaly.  I mean fuck, Marvel comics alone has 20 some-odd movies in the works, and I fully expect nine-tenths of these movies to have crappy video game tie-ins.  Hell, even fucking Man-Thing is getting his own movie.  Besides having the most unitentionally funny comic book title back when Marvel was doing Giant-Size issues (resulting in Giant-Sized Man-Thing), I can't think of why anyone would want to make a movie about this character.

CoH does a lot of things well.  Some other things, not so well.  I was one of the original 100 testers and have enjoyed the experience.  I've pre-ordered and will be there happily when the servers open.  

Once the NDA is lifted, I can post a lot more info.

Man, I've been waiting for somone to implement some good, interesting melee combat.  Hell, I'd even be interested in a FPS-style fencing or swordfighting game.

I never enjoyed playing warriors in MMOPRGs because they tend to be so limited in abilities and choices.  We need warriors who call up attacks, parries, ripostes, and feints in response to what their opponent is doing.

Okay, you've convinced me, I'll pop out $5 for the pre-order. Two weeks at the end of beta should give me an idea if it is worth $50.

Have they said how many shards/universes/whatever they are having? Is this going to be an Eve/AO with only one game universe (at launch, at least), or multiples? I only ask because I see that you can reserve a character name during beta and that indicates they are going for the 1-universe-fits-all approach.

Scorus

What are the sys reqs (if you can mention them in a general way without breaking the NDA)? Will it run on low end systems? Do I need a 3 ghz system with a spanking new vid card?

Also- when the post NDA reviews come, please go over the powers available in detail. I am specifically looking to see if each character is actually different, or if power B is just power A reskinned (like flame attacks vs ice attacks). Can a nearly unique character be played? Are they 'effective'?

I'll be doing a rundown of 5 or so of the more than 30 power sets when the NDA breaks, which will hopefully be April 7th.

I'll go ahead and answer whether powers are reskinned. The first 3 powers (which you get access to at level 1 and 2) are quite alike in every class. Well, not alike so much as very balanced against eachother. Once you get past that (which I can do in about 15 minutes) the classes start to get REALLY unique. More later.

Questions......

I saw that at least two of the people in the beta are going to pre-order which has caused me to look at bit closer at the game.

I was hoping to get into the "open beta" that is supposed to take place after the 7th, but if it doesn't happen I see no way to try the game out without buying the full game or the pre-release CD.

I saw that best buy sold the pre-release seperate at 10 dollars a pop, but someone earlier said 5 dollars...where and can it be purchased at the retail outlets or just online?

Of the people who are planning to subscribe, what other games have you played or are playing of the MMO chain?  

Myself I've played EQ the most...DAOC about a month (too EQ-esque and was burnt on it), AO (won the game was fun for the free month), Shadowbane (felt totally ripped off), SWG (again, ripped off), and a few betas here and there.


I've found that it's pretty hard to get anyone I know to try out any MMOs with me anymore because of the complete trash they release.........and it really sucks that the NDA is still up on COH..cuz I'd like to know now if this game is worth the look.  Otherwise, if I don't get to try it, I won't be buying it without a lot of positive feedback after a few months past release.....so the new-ness has a chance to wear off.

Go to your local EB, plop down $5 bucks and there you have it. Preorder for $5. Make sure they have the extra cd or will order you one.

Called up EB and the guy thought City of Heroes was out already.  Told me you only get the CD when you pre-order and they were out anyway.  Oh well.

Well it's underhanded, but you could go to Bestbuy, pick up a box for $10 and come back later and just say you don't want the preorder and get your $10 back, otherwise you get $10 off when it goes live.

Fucking hell, how many times does one have to repeat themselves?  There is not 'open beta'.  Only the preorder beta for those that have registered their preorder.  The preorder beta is promising everyone who registers will be in by the 7th of april.  To register you need the code off the cd sleeve in the preorder box.  So call around anywhere that sells games and ask them if they have the preorder box.  many places are sold out of the preorder box and never bothered restocking.  just call around.

Some you can get online, but places like gamestop online are out of preorder cds.  EB might still have them, but you would have to wait till they send it to you.  If you want in I would hurry up.  I am not sure what happens to people who register a preorder after the 7th.

My $5 is what my local EB asked for as the minimum order put down.  NC Soft does not get any money from preorders so the MSRP is $0.00, or whatever teh hell they feel like charging.  If you put 5 bucks down and change your mind, the local store gets that money, not NC Soft.


To the person wanting a 'unique character', well you can make a ton of very diverse characters.  Anyoen who wants to copy you could of course do the same thing you did though.  There is never a way to gauruntee you are unique.  Suffice it to say there are a lot of valid combinations.  Way too many to even try to figure out statistically.

Read this off their website.  It's not the definition of open (IE get as many people in as possible before retail), but it's pretty close considering they are going to get a large signup of people and are randomly selecting them....meaning there's no qualifications needed to test (preorder, betaed 100 games before).....pretty much "open".

So I guess it's not "only the preorder beta" after all, fucking hell.


Public Beta Signup
Monday, March 29, 2004

Hope for the Beta-less

So you didn’t get (or find) a pre-order box and you didn’t register on the forums until after Nov. 1st, 2003, and you’ve also struck out on the various CoH beta giveaway contests on the web… what’s a beta-less super-powered hero to do? Well, take heart, the beta train for Paragon City hasn’t quite left the station! This is your last best chance for getting into beta! Read on…

Starting today, we are creating a new public beta pool for those who haven’t had the opportunity to be included in our past beta selections. To signup for this beta pool, you are going to need a PlayNC account. Please head on over to PlayNC and follow the instructions for creating your account. After you have your PlayNC account name and password, the next step is to go to Beta Signup and follow the instructions for registering. Random beta invites from this pool will be sent out by email starting on April 14th. Good luck!

Interesting.  Not an open beta yet though.  Open beta is like lineage 2 where anyone who signs up gets a login and password and crushes the game servers.

Yeah, I ordered the preorder on gamestop online to discover that they're waiting for more beta boxes.

I called all the gamestops in town, none had any beta boxes.

I may have to try circuit city or somewhere else similar today...ugh.

Best Buys everywhere still have about 5 or so. For some reason they were supplied with an assload of them at the beginning. Just call your local one.

there isnt even a crappy teams or consensual pvp system? :(

No pvp yet, but a long ways back they had plans to put in an arena.  I think the reason for holding off on any sort of pvp, was to make sure they got the pve right.  Given that few if any MMORPGs have had much success making pve actually fun, I think it was a good decision on their part.  I'll take a solid, fun PVE based MMORPG with no PVP right now over another DAOC. SB, or L2.

I was reading their forums.  From what I gather...their first expansion is supposed to be when "villains" are added and arena PVP is added (possibly more, but arena for sure is what Im sensing).


I'd just like to play.  Honestly reading through the website and description of their systems, the game seems really simple in design ignoring their character customization.  What I think is happening is the website doesn't host enough information to make any sort of solid judgement on the game besides the very broadest and core of their game.


I haven't seen anything negative said on their forums about the game....besides lack of pvp, villains (being evil), and it being pretty much North American only in it's release and target audience.


So if those are the biggest complaints about the game, then I think that's pretty impressive.


I hope that if/when I get into the pre-release beta that they have a couple patches in that period...cuz I'd like to see how they handle the patching of the game.  Everquest seemed like it spent somewhere around four hours each week patching, and it was usually during the time I played.  And that's assuming no problems arose (which 90% of the time they did), and they still have these kind of patches going in....people are reporting tons of problems with DX9 support they added.



And another thing I've gathered from reading their forums...the next wave of beta invites won't be this weekend.  They might not even happen until the 7th....and when they do happen that means there will be a whole lotta people downloading their client all at once.  So I hope someone bittorrents it, or ncsoft does like blizzard did the wow beta.

I vote everyone pitches in and buys Jennifer a new video card so she can play! *snicker* Seriously though, I tried stealing it from Joe. What a joke.

"Your video card is a piece of shit. Now die plzkthx."

Yep, I can confirm this, at least for my local Best Buy.  The EB in the local mall was sold out, but I went to Best Buy and they had at least 10 pre-order boxes.  I picked one up, and I'm all registered.  I guess I'll be in by this Wednesday, I can't wait.

-Liquidator

You can't tell anything about how a live game will patch from how they patch during BETA.  Besides, CoH has been featured locked for about 3 months now.  They won't be doing any major patches.  They have been just doing balance tweaks for a long time.

The preorder is mainly stress test so I expect the servers to go down a lot.  I expect them to intentionally take servers down and run on far less than they should be running just so see what happens to the server at that load and fix any bugs that crop up due to being crushed.  I have a feeling the next few weeks will be nearly unplayable by design.

Well apparently for a long while in beta cryptic has been running the servers about 4-5 days out of a week then taking them down for the rest.

People have been saying that they do run closer to 24/7, but they are still taken down intentionally.  My guess is for updates and upgrades.

As for unplayable during the next few weeks...I dunno.  They have been doing waves of people getting in, which would indicate that they aren't trying to over burden the server in a large way immediately.  And them having servers going in on Wednesday doesn't seem to fit the overburdening, unplayable scheme either.


I'd say they are using the opportunity to make sure their servers are "hardened" to the onslaught of a "retail-esque" attack.  Also probably trying to judge how many servers they will need in place for retail to host everyone.  DAOC had this...got way more people than they expected and caused problems for awhile.


I'd say them making the game intentionally unplayable for long periods will really hurt them by word of mouth, and I don't think they want to take that route being new to the MMO block.

And yes you can tell how a live game will patch from how they patch during beta.  If they don't have their process pretty much locked down and running like clockwork before retail, they are headed for problems.  Does it mean they will never run into problems in retail with patches?  No, but they better have a strong and tested process in place that works long before retail rolls around.  

It costs a lot of credibility to have the 10-20k beta testers say good things for the company...then comes in the wave of 50k people at retail and problems arise.  If they have unstable/overburdened servers and "patch & pray" patches......then that's going to cost them a whole lot of face.

They're going to 24/7 starting at 10 am CST today. And judging by the time, they're underway. Of course, crashes and downtime for bugfixes and patches will be happening, but they are trying to keep the servers up as much as possible now.

Will be on tonight.

Hoping I get a beta invite today, but if not....should be getting one tommorrow if they stick to what they've been saying.

Not really looking forward to getting the invite then spending a day or two downloading the client..heh.

Out of morbid curiosity, can anyone tell me whether or not the Control Archetype is gimpy without breaking the NDA.

From what I can glean from their website, it looks as though your true allstars are the Scrappers, Tanks, Blasters and Defenders (in that order).  Controlers seem to be an afterthought, or at best, a unique buff bot/mezzer/summoner.

In any case, we shall be waiting for your answer.

Not gimpy at all.  They are a tad more support oriented, but they can solo as well.  They probably have the most differences between powersets of any of the archetypes.  So they are pretty hard to pin down.  You can't say "I am a controller" and have people know what you do.  Actually my friends favorite archetype.  and you list blaster pretty low in your listing, and they certainly do have durability issues, but they are are not a can of whoopass, they are a whole cement truck full of whoopass.  You just need some help not getting flattened sometimes.

Against my better judgement, I put down the $5 pre-order at EB and got in the beta today at lunch.

Two words that aren't covered by the NDA.

HOLY SHIT.

That is all.

PM me the NDA breakage, bitch! I need to know whether to bother.


When is the launch date, any way? I will probably be in the middle of moving and/or getting cable set up...

ERr... bastards.

I swore to myself that I was swearing off mmorpgs until WoW even though I'm a huge sucker for super heros.  Now you're telling me that the game kicks ass?

Okay, I'll grab a preorder box tonight.  If it releases this week I guess I'll just trust the mass judgement and buy the damn thing.

Keep in mind that I have had less than 1 hour of experience with this thing, so honeymoon optimism is VERY HIGH. But immediate first impression based on immersiveness, character customization options, performance, and tutorial is still HOLY SHIT.

I am guessing that it has at least improved on the Engrish text boxes from L2, or that 1 hour would have sent you over the edge.

Zero engrish. Perfect grammar and english. I've found two typos through extensive playing.

Like I said weeks ago: This fucker is a sleeper hit. It'll sneak in and grab the money from your fucking wallet.

I just started playing yesterday, and I'm having a fun time.  Character creation is simply amazing, and I find myself inventing new costumes more than playing the game.

My knowledge of the game is close to zero, I've just been wondering what the end game will be like and how long the game will last once the novelty wears off.  What happens in the game once you max out your hero and have completed all missions from your contacts?  Just start a new hero with a different origin to get different mission types?

-Liquidator

I haven't payed too much attention to any details on the "end-game" of CoH since I got into the beta.  I do remember them mentioning in past interviews though that there would be raid-zones and high end mission arcs, which are broken up into multiple parts so you don't have to do the whole mission at once.  I'm not sure if they've got any rewards other than rare enhancements planned for either of these things though, but on the plus side I think it shows that they are keeping with idea of making the whole game fun rather than put a lot of focus on the end-game for the hardcore players.  Just don't try to rush your way through all the levels and you should have plenty of content to keep you happy.  And yes, making alts is always fun too.

Hey, we finally have a fucking game that lets you in, pats you an the back and hands you some fun saying, "Hey I think you dropped this back in EQ, I just thought you might want it back".

I am not examining it for a lifetime warranty.  I am just glad I have it.  If the game runs out of content in two months I ride it like a bull for two months and then let it slide.  New patch?  New goodies?  Re-up and start riding some more.  And that is not to say I have any idea when the fun stops.  My friend in beta has not found that point yet and he has been there awhile.

Raid content seems like it will include crazy shit like Rikiti spaceships and such.  I am going to try and take out as many 5th column giant robots as I can.  Those bastards killed Atlas.  And they are nazis.  You can't play a superhero game without crushing some damn nazis.

It is the details that make a game fun.  Movement is fun.  How basic is that?  Tight controls, high jumping skills right from the start, leaping around and just traversing the city is fun.  I am not CRAWLING like daoc the sprint ability never wears off or tires you out.  And these guys can move pretty fast.  The super speed ability is literally a blur.  All you see is the trail of fire behind the guy.  The z-axis is about as used as the other two.  Knockbacks on rooftop are too fun.  Oh yeah, full falling damage, but heroes are not TOO beat up by it.  They are heroes after all.  Leaping off buildings is just something they do.

Been a long time since a game had me letting out and audible "Wooooooo".  But this one did last night as we were jumping building to building and then leaping off what must have been at least a 20 story building.  It hurt, but it was worth it.

Oh, and if you shoot a baddie on another building, they path well enough to GET TO YOU.  All the way down one fire escape and up the other.  Damn, the fire escape in our building was not even touching the ground.  You had to jump up to it.  That shocked me.  But I had been seeing brilliant pathing all day.

Best use of Z axis ever.

Yeah, it looks like Wish isn't the only one who can boast awesome pathfinding any longer. And I have to agree that a lot of the fun factor is in the details that make you feel like your character is a hero.

Here's the thing I noticed.

Combat is fun again, even at the low levels. I'm actually watching the combatants, instead of scanning the chat box for damage done. I don't even look at the damage done. The only time I look down from the fight is to look at my powers and see if they are recharged.

I WANT TO LEVEL. Say it loud and say it proud. I relish getting levels because of the unique method of advancement and the enhancements to powers.

No crafting or economy? Who needs it?

Maybe it's the fact it's a superhero game, or maybe it's the difference in combat. But there really is nothing like being able to climb up a fire escape and survey the city from a rooftop, then leap off to another building. So far, everything I've seen the game do fits so perfectly with the genre, and yet is fun as well.

The fucking city is HUGE. I mean HUGE HUGE HUGE. You can walk it if you want, or take a tram from zone to zone. I walked through 4 city zones last night and the fucking thing was just immense.

4 hours of total playtime and I could have played all night. I totally ignored the hockey playoffs for this thing. And I haven't even grouped yet or taken team missions. Think about the fact that all of my reviews of Horizons and Lineage 2 had me tearing out my hair after this much play time.

It's still in honeymoon phase, but it's actually given me hope for the genre.

Yep, even as a rank newbie in combat 1, there are a LOT of variations on how combat works b/c there are a lot powers to choose from.  Having an area affect wind attack which actual picks up foes and blows them backwards is very cool as just the intro level power.



Well, i havent tried it yet but supposedly there actually IS some minor forms of both.  I.e. and this is a cut and paste..

Your items will now be called enhancements
Your potions will now be called inspirations
Your gold will now be called influence.

All of these things can be traded and bartered with in the game and you combine enhancements which is sort of like crafting.

We shall see citizens.

Xilren

Sigh. Let's set this straight just so questions don't keep popping up.

There's no real crafting. Combining enhancements is nothing more than say, upping the power on one.

Inspirations are yes, just potions, they are readily available and do not affect the economy. In most groups people give them away as needed.

Money is used to buy enhancements from shops if you're looking for a more obscure one (like flight speed).

Back to the game.

You can also use influence (i.e. the money system) to buy inspirations from some vendors.

After playing CoH, I have to laugh now everytime I think about all those other devs who've been saying that they just don't have the tech or the funding to give us the kind of games we want right now, and then here comes Cryptic out of nowhere reminding us that people have had the technology and the funding to make games fun as far back as Pong.  I have a mental image of Raph smacking himself on the head thinking "so that's what they meant when they said to making the fucking game fun".

The combat system is fun from the first level.  If this had been designed like most MMORPG's we'd be punching our enemies for the first 5 levels until we got a superpower we could use once every couple minutes.  The character customization is there and better than I've seen any other game do it.  Gone are the days of looking like everyone else, or hunting for good looking weapons and armor so you'll only look like a few hundred other people on the server rather than a few thousand.

And I agree that we don't need shit like crafting or economy.  Jamming a bunch of ingedients together for hours on end and selling the finished products at a loss has never been entertaining.  I doubt there's ever been a single person out there who wasn't watching TV or reading, or keeping themseleves otherwise entertained while crafting.

Add me to the list of people who think this is the funnest game ever. Hell, designing yout costume is so fun in and of itself I filled up all my character slots on two servers. The only way the game get better is letting people play villians and havie gigantic, fruity superhero fights all over town.

And my god, is people ever fun.

I have only seen a few near repeat costumes.  So far two costumes have made me wonder aloud "THERE in the world is carmen sandiego!".  I don't know what attracts female characters to the red suit and hat.  Seen that twice.  One was missing pants though.

Another time I saw two people IDENTICAL in buglike blueish armor.  Their names also were the same with different numbers after them so obviously that was intentional.  Looks like they were trying to do it as being two robots of the same model.  It looked pretty nifty.  Fledgeling CoH version of the Bobs?

Thats it.  Everyone else has been WILDLY different.  Most of them are really creative as well.  I can only imagine the devs smiling like crazy seeing the true diversity they have created, and that all styles seem equally embraced.  Heck, I have seen about 5 different versions of the full midieval platemail warrior and none looked alike.  I have seen several viking characters, again all totally different.  More robots and androids than I can shake a stick at but still, other than the clones I mentioned they are all very different.  Especially "lovebot".  That was a weird bot.

Wrote up a little bit in the other thread about what in my opinion makes the game FUN.  I am trying to put my finger on it for future generations of devs.  I am trying to keep it from being a nebulous 'it just is'.

I am so glad I am not the only one loving the early game.  You know, even if it peters off, the early part is worth the price of admission for me.  Listen up devs.  Do you think glowing reviews up front or raving madmen saying "but it gets better!" will help sales more?  Cryptic just has to stay on the ball and keep adding content.

I'm sorry but it appears I might not be able to play this game.  I downloaded it last evening and have been in character creation ever since.  I'm much too busy trying on clothes and doing my hair to be bothered to actually play.   It's brought out the Barbie in me.  

This game is hard. :(

Weplaed till what was it guys 3:30 last night? Crap that was fun. This game is gonna catass me bad.

No! Only the Bobs are mighty enough to be Bobs! I was thinking WoW was going to be the game to move to, but this game is absolutley perfect for The Bobs. Even more so if they let established characters turn "evil" or whatever with the villian expansion. Holy shit, the thought of superpowered Bobs vs Freds all over town is too good to be true.

I have been playing in the coh beta for a good bit now and have seen the upper level game and I can't say much but the missions just get bigger and more impressive. Some of the higher level content looks so kick ass it stopped my entire group for about 15 minutes as we just started taking screen shots of it.


Other than power tweaking and balancing city of heros has been in a feature lock for a few months now in order to make what is in the game as fun as possible. This was just posted to the public city of heros boards to give an idea of where they are and where they are going.


The Gaffer Beta Report #4


Jeremy (“Gaffer”) Gaffney here, with a new Beta Update...

As you all know, yesterday, April 7, marked the day we opened up the pre-order floodgates - this, needless to say, is very exciting for us! With that in mind, here's a quick update on where we've been, where we're at, and where we're going…

The Past:

We have been really stretching the legs of our server technology; over the last few weeks we've gotten 4500+ users onto each server set simultaneously; this is great news from a technology standpoint. To get there, we've made a number of optimizations for the servers and on the client side, and this has had (and continues to have) excellent results. Thanks very much to the beta testers who (sometimes painfully) helped us find the old limits and test the changes needed to break our old limits. Statesman and the designers have been working on the balancing and tuning of many of the archetypes and power-sets, aided greatly by the data-mining we are able to do on the statistics generated by players of all levels - this will, of course, be ongoing, but it's been very useful to have a numerical basis for balancing the design. There are several groups of players who have been "bumped" to higher levels to get more thorough testing of the Elder content, powers, and systems - this has created both good data and very good commentary from the Bumped crowd - quite useful to us, and fun for the Bumpees.

The Present:

We have a number of server sets ready for the addition of the pre-order folks, and that should be (or "was", if you're reading this later this week) quite exciting. Pre-order activity has been excellent, and we're very excited about the response from both fans and retailers - thanks VERY much for helping to make this happen. As we get in larger numbers of people, we'll continue to get as much information as possible from both our beta boards and the database itself and continue fine-tuning the game, as well as do whatever is needed to ensure a stable launch.

The Future:

A large number of people at Cryptic are working towards the things you'd expect right now: Stabilization, fine-tuning, tweaking, optimizations - all the good stuff you want in the last month before launch. However, another large batch has been working on the first update, and so there's a lot of goodies in the pipeline for just after launch as well. One of the things that both NCsoft and Cryptic have a big belief in is a large commitment to the Live Team for the game - the group that keeps on adding in free updates over time. In fact, the whole development team from Cryptic will keep on adding things (and balancing, and optimizing, etc.) after launch, so the game will not only be fun on day one, but get better and better over time. We're aiming for the first big update about a month after launch - though of course, there are a lot of things to do around launch, so things may change - we'll see.


Statesman’s Hit List for the First Update:

Opening Up New Levels of Gameplay - At launch, the levels will be "capped" at 40, but not too long after our update we'll start opening up the higher level content for levels 40-50, with new Enhancements, missions, story-arcs, and more.

New Areas - There have been rumors flying around recently about the mysterious Portal Corporation and the top secret "Project Looking Glass" - this is something that will have a big impact for both the game background and gameplay. In addition, a Rikti base ship has been brought down, and heroes are needed to explore the site.

New Villain Groups - The mysterious Malta Group, the macabre Carnival of Shadows, and the immensely powerful Praetorians have appeared on the scene!

New Trials - These are the repeatable, epic tasks that groups of heroes can undertake for a special reward.

Tailor - Players gain the ability to change their costume for an Influence cost - and, there will be more to this system…

Mission Interactivity - One of the most-often heard issues we had from our early testers was a desire to do "more" in the missions - and we have listened. A number of new features are coming to make new, cool things to make your missions unique. One example for the 5th Column - if heroes are defeated in some bases, they'll wake up in a cell instead of a comfy hospital! The hero will need to knockdown the cell door, overcome the guards and find his way back to his teammates. Plus, you never know what kind of allies you can make in the 5th Column jails…and that's just a tease of several features we'll be adding into the mission sets, and will continue to add after the update.

And of course, that’s not all we're planning - you need to have some secrets. Some of the above will change as it is implemented; as we have concrete details we'll do our best to keep you in the know. We're aiming to have some of the above testable via our test server between now and then, so you'll get a sneak peek.

In any case, there's a lot of work to do - we hope you're as excited as we are about City of Heroes; beta has been a lot of fun, we look forward to seeing you in the beta soon, and really are looking forward to getting everyone into the game at launch! We at NCsoft and Cryptic both would like to thank both the fans who have been with us for years with advice, feedback and criticism, and those new fans who just found us. Welcome everyone, and see you in the game!

-jg



Current higher level content such as task force missions, hazzard zones and the new uber encounter which I am not sure if I can speak of so I will hold off on talking about seems very fun.

Right now their frame work for the future is really well done and solid and the game is fun from the mintue you first make your character. None of this lineage 2 wait 20 levels to even start being amused shit.


kaid

Actually by the time you hit level 20 in L2, the fighter class can finally do what the newbie can do in CoH.  Basically he has three special attacks.  By the time you are level 20 in CoH, you have about 14 special attacks that are highly customized to your character and your individual liking.

Good find on the post there Kaid.  I can't stand official boards so I never saw it.  The beta boards are not quite as bad, but almost.

The tailor stuff is pretty crazy, but NDA as well I am sure.  I have heard some about that from older beta members, but don't think it is public yet.  New power sets are also being looked into.  I have heard some concepts, but don't know how far they are and if they are twinkles in someones eye or if they are actually nearing completion.

My second character just might have to be a gravity controller.  CRAP they get some freaking cool powers.

Talk to Anger (Aion in game), he's a gravity controller. Level 8 or 9 I think. They are pretty fucking cool.

One thing I do sorta miss is 'feint' type powers. Or well, just tricks. Maybe I want to make fireworks or something when I'm bored. I mean '/emote newspaper' is quite clever, but I can only do that a couple more times before I go insane. In X-Men when Iceman made that rose, or Pyro made that little fireball, that's the kinda shit I want to do when I'm bored. I'm pretty sure it would take them no time to implement it as well.

When they implement jackets, I'll make my alt, probably a jubilee-like fire-blaster or controller.

Yeah, the gravity controllers get a lot of knockback and a nice knock UP attack for falling damage.  They can also hurl benches and crap at people, hehe.  Too bad they don't seem to be local objects but sort of dimentionally brought in.  I want to pick up some cars and fling them around.  May be more violent than they want their game though.  I have a feeling they are considering it for the future.


As a fire/fire blaster I can say I am loving it so far (level 8).  I just got fire rain, and the combination of fire rain, fireball, and fire blast is just insane.  I can take on groups of 4-6 over my level, depending on the type (the level 10ish groups of vahz still kick me solo, damn poison darts).  Drop the rain, drop the fireball, fire off the fireblast at a few lock a few down with ring of fire, woot, fireball back, BOOM, foes start dropping.  Key for me is to keep them all in a bunch, and get them all low on health for that second fireball.  Then it is cleanup.  This all is much easier since I power pooled in speed and have HASTEN.  Attacks come back about twice as fast.  DAMN that makes a blaster a fiery ball of death.  I burn endurance FAST though.  I am also painting a huge "kill me" sticker on my chest, hehe.

I might do things differently next time though.  The fire dots don't seem to stack very well.  So sometimes my separate lines of burns don't play that nice together.  Still have lots of use for every power I have though.  I will have to look at what else is coming in the secondary fire line and see if the end payoff is worth it.  It does have the added benefit of allowing me to concentrate more on my primary power pool which has fan-fucking-tastic powers in it.

To those reading this, trust me, I am nowhere near gimped.  I would be hard pressed to make a gimped character.  Hell, we met someone who went with the seemingly insane route of putting a ton of sockets on SPRINT power.  But with 5 runspeeds stacking in sprint, wow...  Move REALLY fast with a skill that takes no endurance and has no recharge.  Turned out brilliant.  I should have gotten the name and challenged them to a race with the base level superspeed once I get it.

Blah, finally one of these games that looks fun and I have to be getting married in a week, have a huge project due and tons more school work.

Well, I hope it's still fun 3 weeks into release, because that's the first time I'll probably have the time to really try it.

Actually alluvian after looking around all adverse effects stack. So all the dots from your various powers do stack but with all the little damage numbers flying off mobs it becomes hard to spot the extra ticks and for  many it will just appear that the damage ticks are coming a bit faster than normal so it visably looks like they are not stacking.

Kaid

I would almost have to parse it then.  And um... that aint worth it when I am having fun, hehe.

How many women did you ask before one said yes?  Congrats, Ras!  You'll have much more fun being married than playing games, anyway.  Ask my husband... he's married.

Oh delayed response to the person asking about controllers.

Controllers are probably one of the most widly diverse archetypes in what they can do. You get primary of control and secondary pool of buff/debuff. This can lead to some huge changes in the way you play.

Currently I am running around with a fire/kinetic controller which is fun but kinetic just does not mesh with my play style. It is not a problem with the power pool but the buff/debuff sets are just wildly different.

The buff/debuff set goes from force fields which is pretty much all buffs and nothing but buffs to dark which is all debuffs and not much else to storm which is a wide list of movement effecting and push back powers. They fall into the same pool basically because they don't fit elsewhere but they often have very little in common.

The primaries in control all some basic crowd control skills but aside from those they all go about the CC role in a variety of ways. I can't really get specific but if you are looking at controllers as a class you want to play try a few varieties of them to get a feel for which one meshes with your play style.

Defenders are a bit similar mainly because their primary is buff/debuff but with them their secondaries are all ranged attacks which are all similar in what they do. That being said a forcefield defender and a storm defender and an empahthy defender in the same party play totally different aside from them all being called defenders. Until you see it in the game you cannot understand how varied some of the archtypes truly are for powersets.


Kaid

I played this game until almost 4 am every night of the weekend in which I didn't have to get up in the morning.

Crane Kick owns me. It has upped my character's solo ability tenfold.

I also made an alt called Cirrocco. He's a tech controller with earth control and storm summoning. Gale is stunningly cool; think Storm of the X-Men pushing a big group of people backwards with a wind.

Heh, yeah the earth/storm controller is sweet.

I should hit lv 6 after work tonight with mine and I'm looking forward to hover.  No more "wall incidents" for me.

Oh yes hamish slot up some accuracy enhancers on gale (it really needs it trust me) and your ability in the door misions to keep entire groups of foe at bay is amazing.

My level 34 main is storm/psychic and the combo of gale and hurricane is freaking impressive. I can draw a line in the sand and basically unless I am out of end no mob will pass an area I don't want them to pass.

Storm defense pool pretty much is all about area denial not so much controlling mobs but preventing them from getting into hth with your party.


Kaid

Must work great with fire blasters that are all about dealing pain to an area effect, but has mobs fleeing like crazy to get out of the death zone.

I must look into secondary blaster powers.  If there is one that has an area effect hold or snare then I might have to take it.  With hasten I can so far only stick three reliably within the full duration of the rain.  Although frankly them running away helps me solo immensely.  Lets me reduce a group of 10-15 to only 3-4 that are actually shooting back, and those poor saps die to the second fireball.  Then the rest trickle back in small groups of 2-3.  Next level I am going to do some more enhancement slots in ring of fire.  I have learned that that power is really my lifeblood in many situations.

My Blizzard + AE Fire Rain from Fire Blaster = Ownage

Yeah, it is like really hot slush.  Devastating.  hehe.

Another late night session, another character to lvl 5.

Ugh, I just want combat jump, is that so much to ask?

Made a huge scrapper who's all green and scaly, and he has spikes.  It's great.

One thing I'm enjoying about the combat system is that I get to play a support class, which I enjoy (Defender with Empathy, the only real "healing class" in the game) but I'm not at all gimped in terms of damage output with the power blast ranged attack line (just the first two attacks, but pumped up with enhancements to increase damage and reduce endurance consumption and recharge timer).  So when I'm not healing and no-one's in immediate danger, I get to lay down the smack and fry some bad guys, and I don't have to be left out of the fight.  It's like being a DAOC smite cleric back in the good old days!

Yep Alrin - thats what I like about the Defender too - I get to be the healy type and also kick some butt when needed :)  Gotta love hybrid-type classes that arent gimped :)

Due to how nasty it would be there are no aoe lock downs available to blasters although there are a couple powers that can help with locking folks down. There are two powers that work pretty well for helping your aoe out.

Ice manipulation
Ice patch - The ground beneath the heroes feet becomes frozen and quite slippery. Any foes that step on the ice patch will likely slip and fall down until the ice patch melts.

Devices
Caltrops - Tosses a handful of caltrops at a targetted location and spreads the tiny metal spikes over a large area. Any entities that pass over the caltrops will be forced to move at a slower rate. They will also take some trivial lethal damage.

I have seen caltrops used to very good effect. If you enhance up the heck out of its mob snaring ability it can drag people to a halt. It is also a ground targeted area of effect snare so you can plant it where you want it then send in the aoes.


Ice patch is nasty although the aoe of the blaster one is kinda small anything on the ice patch falls on its ass. Every time it stands up then falls right back down. The larger controller version of this from ice controllers is frigging funny as hell to watch as it really screws mobs up badly.


Deadly combos though are controllers and blasters. Controllers can make large groups of mobs not move and blasters are kings at aoe smack down. Also what the person said about freezing rain from storm controll is dead accurate.

I often in my normal group lead off with ice rain which causes everything in its radius to start flopping around like trout and it gimps their defense and snares and slows them. Once it goes off everybody in my group basically does all their aoe attacks and if you execute the attack well you can kill a ton on the initial volley.

Kaid

Another example of fun:

I recently got hover on my fire/storm chick.

Basically I go from rooftop to rooftop, fireballing groups of baddies, then using gale to shove them off the roof.

They take falling damage.

Only get exp when it doesn't kill them but my fireball fire tick does.

Now that is just pure gleeful mayhem kinda fun. Good stuff.

I'm enjoying fighting clockworks of all things....

I have an earth/storm controller with hover, and it's immensely fun to have prototype oscillators fly up to me, and then make them fall back to a rooftop with fossilize, then knock em off the roof with gale.