This game any fun?

[Alluvian]

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

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[WayAbvPar]

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...

[Glamdring]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[WayAbvPar]

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.

[schild]

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.

[Liquidator]

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

[Velorath]

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.

[Alluvian]

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.

[Soukyan]

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.

[HaemishM]

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.

[Xilren's Twin]

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.

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.

No crafting or economy? Who needs it?

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

[schild]

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.

[HaemishM]

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

[Velorath]

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.

[angry.bob]

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.

[Alluvian]

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.

[Signe]

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. :(

[DarkDryad]

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

[angry.bob]

Fledgeling CoH version of the Bobs?

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.

[kaid]

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

[Alluvian]

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.

[schild]

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.

[Alluvian]

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.

[Rasix]

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.

[kaid]

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

[Alluvian]

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

[Signe]

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.

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.

[kaid]

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

[HaemishM]

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

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.

[CmdrSlack]

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.

[kaid]

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

[Alluvian]

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.

[Soukyan]

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.

My Blizzard + AE Fire Rain from Fire Blaster = Ownage