City of Heroes going F2P with Issue 21

[Malakili]

I found that it felt really slow and clunky in terms of combat after having played CO for a bit, but I'll still give it another whirl after F2P.

[Tyrnan]

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/15528482

Dev stream from earlier today giving some more details. Looks like there's going to be one of these each day this week.

[Pendan]

Sound pretty much identical to what I remember of the Champions Online model (without the stupidity of removing access to one of the major selling points of the game). Free players, Premium players (previous subscribers) and VIPs (subscribers who get an amount of cash shop points included in their subscription each month).

Champions Online model does not allow previous subscribers to play old characters. Far as I am aware previous subscribers get no benefit from the CO F2P model. City of Heroes model allows you to play your previous characters and that is why I will give it a go but ignored the CO conversion. Actually it is worse than ignored. Before going F2P I kept CO installed because I could log in to my characters whenever I wanted. While not subscribing the account was converted to unlimited trial mode. This meant all my characters were temporarily set at level 15 and could never change zone but otherwise were playable. I even subscribed for a month because some friends started playing and I logged in to talk to them and they got me to upgrade. The unlimited trial auto conversion went away with F2P so I uninstalled.

[Strazos]

So if F2P give you 2 character slots, but you are an old-time player with tons of characters...what determines which characters you can get?

I'd love to be able to pop in and out of CoX from time to time. My DM/SR Scrapper was finally inching towards the cap...too bad I remember Super Speed being...somewhat difficult to use in urban areas, do to the inability to run up walls. 

[Fordel]

I'll totally give this another whirl now that it's going F2P.

Is it two characters per 'game' or two characters Total? I don't know how the CoH/CoV split works these days.


Of course, my highest character was only level 16, so it's probably not a huge deal either way.

[Trippy]

So if F2P give you 2 character slots, but you are an old-time player with tons of characters...what determines which characters you can get?

You pick. You get two "global character slot tokens" to use to unlock whichever two characters you want.

I'd love to be able to pop in and out of CoX from time to time. My DM/SR Scrapper was finally inching towards the cap...too bad I remember Super Speed being...somewhat difficult to use in urban areas, do to the inability to run up walls. 

It's easier now if you respec to get inherent fitness so you always have hurdle or you get something like Ninja Run (part of the Martial Arts booster) which has a jump boost as well as a run speed boost.

[Trippy]

I'll totally give this another whirl now that it's going F2P.

Is it two characters per 'game' or two characters Total? I don't know how the CoH/CoV split works these days.

Two characters per account -- i.e. total.

[Amaron]

I found that it felt really slow and clunky in terms of combat after having played CO for a bit, but I'll still give it another whirl after F2P.

I agree with a lot of the comments about the lore and graphic style being way better.   The combat, free form, etc though are hard to give up.   I don't actually care that much about true freeform but the archetypes in CoX are just  .

[Strazos]

Thanks, Trippy.

I didn't have any real trouble previously (I also had Fitness pool stuff), but free powers are nice.

[UnSub]

I found that it felt really slow and clunky in terms of combat after having played CO for a bit

This is my experience too. CoH/V just feels slow these days.

[Fordel]

My issue with CoH was always the grind. Even back in the day, it broke me. I got 3 characters to level cap in DaoC, but I couldn't get to 20 in CoH.

As a F2P thing where I can just pop in whenever I feel like it and not feel obligated to play it because I have a sub going, yea I'll totally play that. If only to just make costumes all day. 

[ezrast]

I don't know how the CoH/CoV split works these days.

There is no split. City of Villains ceased to be a product a long time ago when all of its features and customers were folded into CoH.

I'm really curious what exactly they are going to sell considering this.   They can't really do pay2win without and end game.   I really want to hope they are going to do something smart like new power sets at 15 bucks a pop or something.   Going on the past though CoX's code is not well suited to pumping out new power sets cheaply.

They already have quite a variety of microtrans available. I'm curious how they'll do character slots since as a subscriber, those are my primary motivation for continuing to pay monthly (having to pay every time you want to roll an alt? In City of Heroes? Madness). Keeping it limited to just two would be a slick way to minimize loss of subscribers. Seems like Paragon has little to lose here and a lot to gain - and any restructuring of the vet rewards system that gives me hope of getting City Traveler and the use-anywhere auction interface makes me a happy customer. I also really like that they're making limited free server transfers a permanent thing. Way more elegant than repeated server closures, in my opinion.

Since this my first day on planet Earth, what's diff between CoX and CO?  CO seemed faster to the fun with early travel powers and more variety of power overall.  How do they stack up?

I didn't play much CO (just Canada and some of Desert, basically) but it's more akin to EQ2/WoW than to CoX in my opinion, at least as far as quest-grindiness goes. CoX's missions are all instanced and scalable, mission contacts don't require breadcrumb prerequisites, you can level to 50 entirely in the Mission Architect and not really miss anything except some badges (i.e. achievements) and quest text (which is way better than the industry standard, though that's not saying a lot). It's way, way less railroady than your typical MMO. Experience comes chiefly from killing mobs, and it gets pretty glacial if you try to solo but grouping is easy and fun.

They've now added what is essentially a gear treadmill to the endgame, but ignoring that, character customization is actually pretty ridiculously complex if you want it to be. Combat is a little bit clunky but steamrolling huge packs of mobs at the highest difficulty in a big group is chaotic fun that is hard to find anywhere else.

I hardly log in any more but I still go full-fanboy at the drop of a hat.

[Lantyssa]

I dig the invention system.

You can do the old way of slotting SOs and be viable.  You can slot simple IOs around 30 and never really have to worry about slotting again, or you can get into tinkering with sets for all the small boosts.  Limited access for free players kind of worries me about that.  If we can unlock that without going VIP I might just do so.

[Rendakor]

I'm pretty psyched for this; it'll make it easy to just hop back on for a weekend or whatever when I'm bored of WoW. Hope you're not too gimped without paying, however.

[PalmTrees]

My issue with CoH was always the grind. Even back in the day, it broke me. I got 3 characters to level cap in DaoC, but I couldn't get to 20 in CoH.

As a F2P thing where I can just pop in whenever I feel like it and not feel obligated to play it because I have a sub going, yea I'll totally play that. If only to just make costumes all day. 

Hasn't been grindy, as in slow leveling, in a long time. They even put in a "turn off xp gain" option because some people were leveling up too fast and missing some of the story arcs. (Could always do them via flashback though.)

For me the grindiness comes at higher levels where I'm trying to IO-out my char (soft capped defenses are so very nice). Have to repeat a lot of content (alignment dailies, task forces) to get the various merits to buy the rare recipes that I can't afford on the auction house. Also a lot of repetition unlocking incarnate abilities.

[Kageru]

That would be excellent. Group content in CoH was always fun but the game was more an "occasional" thing rather than something regular enough a sub made sense.

Bonus extra points if they link it up to steam <3

[Amaron]

This is my experience too. CoH/V just feels slow these days.

I just watched a video of a CoX scrapper earlier and lost all my interest in playing this again instantly.   The slowness of it was unbearable.   It made WoW look so quick and snappy.

[Trippy]

What's the link to the video?

[Amaron]

What's the link to the video?

I don't remember.  It was just some random video showing off the martial arts booster I looked up to see the ninja run.  It quickly reminded me how CoX's combat worked is all.   The slow executing moves and the dreadful wham/pow/etc sound effects.  Not to mention the poor bastard was occasionally using single target attacks because of course as a scrapper he didn't have a full set of decent aoe's.

[Kageru]

It's fine with me. COX combat where you are probably in a group and can apply your abilities tactically wins over CO's "mash button" gameplay. But then I've never owned a console. COX definitely wins in the attacks having a much wider variety of tactical effects with real CC, buff and debuff possibilities.

Hopefully they updated the character models a bit in going rogue though, or they'll be looking really archaic about now.

[raydeen]

I want to get back in just to have fun with my villain mastermind again. It was unbelievably awesome running around with my own pocket party. I had the undead kind. Loved watching my zombies run up and barf on stuff.

Now hopefully NCSoft can dig up my old account info. I have no idea what it is anymore.

[WindupAtheist]

I've never gotten around to playing this game, but for free the price is right. Color me intrigued.

[Draegan]

This is awesome.  I used to sub and play with the costume builder for about 4 hours and play the game for 30 minutes.

[Numtini]

What I like about COX combat is it's the only one other than old timey AC that lets you fight hordes of enemies. There's very little pulling one. You grab a group of a dozen or maybe you grab two groups. I find it far "faster" in feel than the "pull one guy, kill it, pull next" that's part of most games.

[Kageru]

The scaling instances are perfect too. Can duo with the misses. And if you've got a bunch of people then it can get quite fun plowing into hordes of enemies. And the mission builder, while obviously somewhat limited, can add at least a little variety and story to the slaughter.

[shiznitz]

So, I played for 6 months after launch.  Will that character be there and available? I liked Happy Fun Ball.

[Lantyssa]

Characters should be.  If he was too low a level, I think 31 was the cut-off but not sure as it's been so long ago, it's possible someone grabbed the name.

[Strazos]

Man, now I am psyched to maybe see my scrapper again, who I finally got to the point of being almost invulnerable - good defense, great lifetap and endurance tap, near-infinite haste...in large groups I would commonly be the only guy left with any endurance to keep going during large fights.

[Amaron]

Man, now I am psyched to maybe see my scrapper again, who I finally got to the point of being almost invulnerable

They nerfed you.

[Strazos]

Eh, I played a year or two ago, after I was supposedly nerfed, and it felt alright.

Invulnerable is not the right word, but properly super.

[eldaec]

Espeicialy around the level 20-30 sweet spot there is so much stuff this game got right which others haven't bothered with. Sidekicking, everything about the defender archetype, more genuine class/playstyle variety than just about anything, hordes of enemies, costumes, travel powers....


Suspect new people will find it slow to start, unfortunately it has that 'earn your way to fun by about level 10/15' bullshit but ymmv etc. And the power curve up to around level 20 does at least mean you feel more powerful by the end of almost every session. After 30 starts to get a bit grindy, but hey, that is what alts are for.

[WindupAtheist]

When does this go F2P?

[Lantyssa]

Well, the points start accruing July 1.  It's possible they'll release then as well, but I don't think they've given a specific date otherwise.

[UnSub]

"Later this year".

Lots of details to yet sort out.

Is this the first NCsoft title to go F2P in the West?

[Kia]

F2P goes live with issue 21.  Since issue 20.5 is just hitting test, I'd guess 2-3 months, so...  September?