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Title: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Pagz on December 21, 2009, 06:50:24 AM
However has never played an mmo, but is a fan of games like marvel alliance etc.

They also really like the idea of creating their own superhero. Now from what everyone is saying CoX is the way to go, however would it be worth it to wait for DC online? They probably would get a buzz playing alongside known superheros, but I haven't been keeping tabs on development.

ChampO... I played the open beta and was not impressed. Unless they have turned it around 100%, I wouldn't show them that.

However CoX has been around for a long time and people have liked it, and with the new "going rouge" coming out with new content for people like ourselves that have never played it, is it worth it to buy it and start scratch? Is now a good time or is this circling the drain?

Also I can't imagine either of us hanging on for too long, a few months at max. Is that long enough to play through without feeling too repetitive? They're also pretty much pure roleplaying, is this viable without feeling gimped out compared to someone who has min/maxed their way up (I have no idea about this games mechanics)?


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Nebu on December 21, 2009, 08:01:43 AM
MMOs will kill their love of superheros fast.  If I had any advice, I'd say that the character generators of CoH and Champ Online are almost worth the box price.  Playing the games, however, quickly reminds you that you're in an MMO. 

Freedom Force may be a better option. 


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Lantyssa on December 21, 2009, 08:29:32 AM
For a month or two, and with never having played it, I think CoX would be fine as is.  After that though, it will start to drag.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Trippy on December 21, 2009, 01:21:10 PM
DC Online, from what little I've seen of it, has more of the Marvel Alliance Action-RPG feel to it than CoH does. CoH's combat system is not a button masher as there are cooldown timers on powers.

I haven't played in a while but the game was (very) slowly losing people. On the two most populous servers, Freedom and Virtue, however, there are always a decent number of people around at all times. The free server transfers that are currently going on may shift the population balance somewhat but I would assume those two will continue to be the most popular after that transfer period is over. Another nice thing about CoH is that there are always low-level characters running around as the game from the beginning has been "City of Alts" given the lack of an EQ-style end game so even starting from scratch now there will be people to play with (assuming you play on one of the more populated servers) if you prefer grouping rather than soloing.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: UnSub on December 21, 2009, 05:36:32 PM
CoH/V has a permanent free trial running, so you can try it at no cost. However, trial accounts can't start teams (:awesome_for_real:) so you need to find a third party to start the team for you with your friend.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Glazius on December 22, 2009, 11:05:01 AM
With a little cleverness you can set CoH up to run off a joypad or XBOX controller plugged into a USB port, and make missions fairly full of weaker enemies even for a 2-man team.

It doesn't have the mutable power structure that Champions has -- if you're making a hero you can play melee (offense or defense) or ranged (control/support, damage/support, or damage/even more damage) and you're stuck doing that throughout your hero's career. You can pick up the occasional helpful power outside your main strengths but it's going to be either not very good or unlocked at very high levels.

Assuming you're alright with that I'd be happy to give you some simple tips to play smart. I wouldn't necessarily call it power-gaming since the time investment for most of them is minimal and they're all supported by actual game mechanics.

Experience gain has been ratcheted up ever since release, and especially if you alt around or take breaks the "patrol XP" (think rest XP) makes things go quite fast.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Redgiant on December 22, 2009, 03:08:28 PM
If you are new and want a group, just look for any "sewer team" adverts and join one.

Unfortunately, since CoX is old, it gets harder to get a true mission group as you level up (esp. the story arch's and TFs) but it does happen. The best way to do a whole series of these is to find some alts leveling up together to do just that and get friendly with them. Hopefully you can catch a sewer team starting out for that reason (and not just random people doing sewers since everyone does it when they roll a new hero).

Mission Architect (MA) has a variety of missions but almost none of them are "at level"; they all artificially change everyone in the group's effective level to X for the mission duration (at least the ones most people run and advert for most which are farm groups at 50+ effective level). They are okay for leveling (not for story arch) if that is your focus, but you may have a hard time getting into one in low-mid levels depending on your class. CoX for a large part of the players has become a boring alt-leveling PL-fest using standard instance missions and MA missions almost exclusively, no longer doing the sorts of story archs and such that originally were in vogue. And groups don't stay formed for very long other than some MA farm groups.

When you get sidekicked up to a higher level, you don't get any new skills so they tend to not take true lowbie toons merely b/c (a) they don't know if you are any good, and (b) you just don't have a lot of the dmg/heals/bufs/tanking abilities yet. Try talking your way into groups with true levels around your own at first.

Of course, it is always ironic when you hear an advert for "LF 40+ for 52 boss mission" and the guy forming the group is himself level 12. Then listen to him defend why *you* can't be in the group as a level 18.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Glazius on December 22, 2009, 08:40:50 PM
Contrariwise, if you're a couple of people planning to play together, you can do pretty much everything in the game except the taskforces, and heroside those are no great shakes.

Really the best thing to do is form the team you want. That hasn't changed, even if some people want a team way out of their league.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Redgiant on December 23, 2009, 05:06:40 PM
I actually still like CoX and am still subbed. It has a feeling of its own which I like.

Things have changed a lot since I started, but coming in fresh I imagine you will have a lot of fun. Especially if you bring your own duo or more, there's a lot to do.

One word of advice: avoid being sucked into MA (Mission Architect missions) as long as you can to enjoy the "real" game first. Some people end up addicted to MA farming and end up missing practically the entire "real" gameworld. Obviously alts do it on purpose, but a true new player might get the wrong info and I just wanted to let you know so it doesn't happen to you. Expecially if you "go where all the other people are" which just might be the MA lobby as easily as it could be Atlas Park.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Pagz on December 26, 2009, 12:30:26 AM
Sewer teams?

So are there "Story archs" that range from early levels up? Like a large chain of missions?

So what is a "team", exactly? How necessary is it to be in one? What bonuses are there?

So don't do any MA missions? Gotcha. Also if we're going through as a duo, is there a combination that works best? Not that we're out to metagame, more to just have fun as superheros, but I'm sure it wouldn't break our mold if we made a somewhat effective duo.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Lantyssa on December 26, 2009, 07:45:41 AM
The more people on the team, the more and tougher enemies you'll face.  You can adjust this further by selecting personal difficulty levels.  More enemies means faster leveling (and sometimes more fun) if you can handle it.  It is a nice example of a dynamic spawn system.

Duos work fine for the majority of the content, and they have made adjustments since I last played which probably fixed the few times we had an issue with it.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Trippy on December 26, 2009, 01:03:13 PM
Sewer teams?
There are sewers below the starting zones Hero-side (and some other places as well) with various enemy groups. In a big group, with people who know what they are doing, it used to be the fastest way to level to around 8 - 10 (not sure now with the Mission Architect if that's still the case). However if you do that you miss out on your intro origin story arc missions as you'll outlevel your initial contact.

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So are there "Story archs" that range from early levels up? Like a large chain of missions?
Story arcs start from the very beginning (not including the Tutorial) as mentioned above.

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So don't do any MA missions? Gotcha. Also if we're going through as a duo, is there a combination that works best? Not that we're out to metagame, more to just have fun as superheros, but I'm sure it wouldn't break our mold if we made a somewhat effective duo.
CoH/CoV plays different than your traditional fantasy MMORPG in that "tanking" and "healing" are less important in CoH/CoV. This is especially true Villain-side as all the Villian ATs are designed to be able to solo. You can, however, if you want to, play it as you would a traditional MMORPG if you feel comfortable with that style.

A duo that would match a traditional setup Hero-side would be a Tanker (for Taunt) and an Empathy Defender/Controller or a Thermal Controller (for Healing). Villain-side it would be a Brute (also with Taunt) and an Pain or Thermal Corruptor.

You can if you want to though just mix and match ATs. An excellent beginners duo Hero-side is two Scrappers, for example. Hero-side you do have to pay attention to your power sets, though, as there are combos that will make leveling quite a bit slower than other pairings. Villain-side you can basically do whatever you want, though I wouldn't recommend a pair of Stalkers as your first duo as that requires some additional coordination to use them effectively.

If you have any questions about a particular pairing just ask. I dual-boxed almost all of my characters so I've done a ton different pairings in the game.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Glazius on December 27, 2009, 07:42:15 PM
Sewer teams?

So are there "Story archs" that range from early levels up? Like a large chain of missions?

Yes and no. The only real continuous 1-50 stories involve the epic archetypes. The standard content is divided into level bands: 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, et cetera. You'll get "yellow book" stories from some contacts, more often as you get above level 20, and "red book" stories from contacts in hazard zones: The Hollows at 6-20, Faultline at 16-25, Striga Isle from 21-30, Croatoa from 26-35, the Rikti War Zone and Cimerora from 36-50. You can be following 2 "yellow book" and any number of "red book" stories at any given time.

All the "red book" stories in a zone form a continuous storyline for that zone. Many "yellow book" stories in consecutive bands deal with the same villain group. But you can pretty much always jump into a story late, so don't worry about missing earlier contacts.

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So what is a "team", exactly? How necessary is it to be in one? What bonuses are there?

You're familiar with the idea of grouping, yes? Experience and other rewards are automatically split between team members, and every team member is brought down to the leader's level or up to 1 below. CoH is pretty heavily instanced, and you can only enter someone else's instance if they're in your team and it's the active mission.

Some powers can only be used on team members, but I think most of those are pool powers. You do get a condition monitor for your team so it's easier to target team members.

The larger organization level is "supergroup", which is equivalent to a guild in most other MMOs. Supergroups have bases, which can be accessed from most zones and which serve as field hospitals, shared storage, and teleports to other zones. It's not necessary to join one.

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So don't do any MA missions? Gotcha. Also if we're going through as a duo, is there a combination that works best? Not that we're out to metagame, more to just have fun as superheros, but I'm sure it wouldn't break our mold if we made a somewhat effective duo.

If you want fairly safe play, go with a tank/defender combo. Tanks are a little weak offensively but many defenders can augment offense: dark miasma, empathy, radiation, kinetics, and storm summoning can do this and also heal. (If you take storm, please opt not to take Gale and possibly Hurricane as these will scatter things away from your tank.) Take taunt on your tank as soon as it becomes available, and run any armor powers that damage or debuff things, as these help hold aggro as well.

Something you can try for a little more challenge is a scrapper/controller combo, which brings thermal radiation into the picture. Instead of the tank monopolizing high-threat targets, the scrapper can distract them while the controller locks them down.

It's possible to run a team with any hero combo, or use a defender set that doesn't have a heal in it, but healing powers are useful for recovering from the unexpected, or just a run of bad luck.

(my opinion: radiation emission/sonic attack defender, dark melee/willpower tank)


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Lantyssa on December 27, 2009, 09:53:14 PM
Dark/Dark Defenders are exceptionally awesome.

Their heal needs to be slotted to-hit, however it is very power and debuffs the target.  Mostly it's a debuff set, so it's often overlooked, however it is powerful in the right hands.


Title: Re: I have a friendwho is crazy for Superheros.
Post by: Glazius on December 28, 2009, 08:00:00 AM
Dark/Dark Defenders are exceptionally awesome.

Their heal needs to be slotted to-hit, however it is very power and debuffs the target.  Mostly it's a debuff set, so it's often overlooked, however it is powerful in the right hands.

Dark defenders are pretty much hybrid controllers, with the fear and hold (and insubstantial that nobody ever takes). Toss in dark blast for immobilize and stuns and giant cone to-hit debuffs and you can build an amazing lockdown machine, although at the expense of damage.

Really, you can pick any combo, and the pure buff/debuff sets are very useful in their own right. To a large degree CoH is a lot less reliant on just topping up hit points, but on occasion you can get blindsided or have a run of bad luck and having some way to get a whack of HP back in a hurry is beneficial.