City of Heroes going F2P with Issue 21

[UnSub]

The CoH community seems to be dead / Terrible. The remaining players are mostly running AE farming missions or perfecting their raid enhancement set. Super-groups are a personal bank extension rather than community building. I hope most of the veterans do run off to their gated community and the maps are once again full of erratic noobs and flying rag-dolls.

Occasionally I'd browse the CoH/V forums to see what they were up to after quitting the game a year or so ago. Any time the "Should CoH/V go F2P?" it was RAGE ON.

The community has some great people in it, but also a lot of people who are institutionalised to that community. So as a group it has a lot of baggage to try to get through (particularly if you aren't in glowing agreement about specific features or the direction of the game).

If CoH/V is about the journey, some of these vets have made that journey 60+ times already. They know what they like.

[SurfD]

So, appearantly i can now log in.  However, if i am reading this right, i am only entitled to two character slots. Not sure if that is 2 character slots PERIOD, or 2 per server.

I have a level 46 blaster from WAY back, who i am tempted to "re-activate" on the Victory server, but I thought i would ask: what are the current server communities like activity wise?  And where do most of the F13 oldtimers hang around?

I have no problem creating a fresh character on a different server, but I at least want to make sure I am not going to end up on a dead one.

[Ragnoros]

Freedom is the most populous server. Virtue is the second, and unofficial RP server. Although going F2P, things might change.

[SurfD]

Nice to know.  Any idea on the Character Slots thing? Says i have 2 Global Slots (with 0/0 currently used when i pick a server).

Does this mean i only get 2 character slots total, period, or do i get 2 per server?  Would be nice if they made it a bit clearer.

[Kageru]

It's not going to be two per server. I believe it's 2 in total plus any you've unlocked or paid for.

I'm mostly on Justice because that used to be the unofficial oceanic server. Of course the "Australia" channel only has 30 people in it. It's pretty quiet all round actually.

[Numtini]

I couldn't figure out the slot thing either. It told me I had five slots. I used one and it then told me I had used 0 slots and had five left. I'd suspect a bug except a lot of the stuff seems overly complicated and I suspect there's something more to it.

[Kageru]

Well that certainly is the CoH style. Their invention system remains one of the more terrifying character advancement mechanisms I've ever seen. The paragon points system is clearly from the same minds.

[Kitsune]

Okay I worked out the slot thing.  You have two slots on a server.  You also have X number of 'global slots' that you can apply wherever.  So the first two slots you use on a server aren't coming out of that global slot pool.  Now I just need to find the best way to get four of those veteran points to reach the unlock for IOs.

[Kageru]

You have a lot of veteran points if you are that close. As far as I can see the most cost effective is to subscribe for X months. More-so if you are doing gated content and less if there's lots of stuff you want to buy in the store (since you'll get a free 400 points a month). If there's lots of things you want in the shop then you can just buy the points (1200 points per veteran point) or do some combination of the two.

Bought myself a knockback IO using the market. 4-20 million influence in game (be quite a long time before I have that) versus 120 points in the market for the pleasure of not sitting on my ass half the time in a lot of encounters. Also splurged on ninja-run because I loved that power in CO and it fits the character (plus is available for all of them). Sprint + Ninja run + power-pool stealth is a pretty practical travel power I hope.

[SurfD]

Okay I worked out the slot thing.  You have two slots on a server.  You also have X number of 'global slots' that you can apply wherever.  So the first two slots you use on a server aren't coming out of that global slot pool.  Now I just need to find the best way to get four of those veteran points to reach the unlock for IOs.

Didnt seem to work that way for me.  I went ahead an unlocked a slot on Freedom server.  It took one of my global slots and used it to unlock the server slot, so now i only have 1 global slot left, and one server slot on Freedom available.

Currently i appear to have 14 total vetran "tokens" or whatever they are, and I apperantly need 27 to permanently unlock the invention system.  Since as far as i can tell the only way to get more reward tokens is to subscribe as a vet (I couldnt find any entry for anything that might be a Reward Token in the point store), that means i would need to sub for a minimum of 1 year and 1 month to hit the "permanent access to invention" state.  Yikes.

[Zetor]

You get a reward token for every 1200 points you buy ($15); you also get a reward token the first time you buy anything from the store. Other than that, yeah, you get one for every month subbed.

[SurfD]

hmm, so the best bet, if i wanted to unlock the invention system would be to sub up for a year, for the 12 tokens + 400x12 credits.

I wonder, if you buy a 1 year subscription, do they give you all your credits / tokens in bulk, or do you have to wait for each month to roll by.

[Kageru]

Since I've been scouring the forums I remembered a post on this,

We’ve fielded several questions over the last several weeks about the Paragon Rewards Program, one of which being about how Paragon Reward Tokens are awarded for players who purchase Multiple Month Subscription plans. Our original design, and what we’ve been sharing, is that VIP players who purchased multi month subscription plans would be awarded all Paragon Reward Tokens at the time of purchase. Unfortunately due to technical limitations that we have been unable to overcome, this will not be the case. Instead, VIP players who purchase multiple month subscription plans will receive their Paragon Rewards Token each month on their billing cycle, at the same time they receive their monthly allotment of Paragon Points. Please note that Paragon Reward Tokens granted by the purchase of Paragon Points will grant at the time of purchase.

[Kitsune]

Yeah, the only way to get the tokens nownowNOW is to shell out for cash shop points.  Though if you're VIP subscribed you don't really need the tokens for the duration of your subsciption, so I guess there isn't much of a hurry.  I'd rather just thunk down the fifty bucks for the 4600 points than thunk down forty five for three VIP months that will vanish and leave me with just 1200 points in 91 days.  But then I never dealt with that whole incarnate thing, so I'm not concerned about lacking access to it.

[Zetor]

I have a vip account, so I can tell you first-hand that incarnate content is "meh". It's just like a diku badge/rep grind where you run the same 4 trials over and over in random LFG pugs to farm 'special xp' and drops that you farm to turn into bigger drops so you can upgrade your ability that 1-shots 16 minions into an ability that 1-shots 32 minions. The incarnate TFs might be better, but the BAF/Underground trials I've done were just like pug molten core raids (or not even that) with lots of aoe spam, "why did I die?" situations, gimmicky boss fights, and various situations where a bumbling noob can wipe the group. With all that, the boss fights still come down to staying out of fire, taking care of adds, occasionally avoiding a cone attack, breaking LOS, and running away from the group if you're the "bomb". WOW 5-man dungeons had more variety in '05... I am disappoint. Overall it just shows that COH really isn't designed for this kind of content.

To me, the best aspects of COH are the insane amount of player-created story arcs in Mission Architect, and playing random wacky alts in random wacky situations -- you can all do that without paying anything. Last week I was in a pug with 4 defenders, 2 controllers, a blaster, and a stalker "tank" (with a crazy spread of levels, all SK'd / exemplared to level 35); I'd like to see anyone doing the same in level-appropriate WOW content!

[Numtini]

I thought Mission Architect missions were VIP only?

[Zetor]

Nope - you can unlock the ability to play them sans rewards (kind of pointless) at tier 2, which is a trivial amount of reward points. You unlock the ability to get drops from MA at tier 4 (8 tokens total, not that bad), and the ability to make missions at tier 6 (20 tokens total, I just hit this one).

[Valmorian]

The character slots could have been done WAY better..  It's damned confusing the way it is.

[Lantyssa]

hmm, so the best bet, if i wanted to unlock the invention system would be to sub up for a year, for the 12 tokens + 400x12 credits.

Unless there's something VIP gives you that you can't get through other means that you really want, you're better off buying points.  You either get 1200 points or 400 points + 1 month VIP for $15.  Seeing as that will get you over half a year of IO access if you buy nothing else with the former, you get far more for your money.

[Kageru]

Looks like it's gone live now, trailer.

[Kageru]

how sad to throw the doors open to your magical kingdom... and find out that no one noticed or cared.

Or in other words not seeing the surge of new activity I would have expected. They need to list the game on steam.

[Merusk]

That it's F2P has been very poorly advertised.  I saw LOTR ads everywhere when they opened up and I've seen nothing about CoH.  The only reason I know it's F2P now is this thread.   You can bet that's why the game hasn't had the influx of players you'd expect.

[Numtini]

The word of mouth has not been particularly positive. I did a search on twitter and about half were people bitching about the IOs.

[Lantyssa]

Not having IOs available without paying and needing VIP status to pay base rent were both mistakes, I think.

Allowing IOs but not giving their set bonus to premium players would have been accepted a lot better.

[raydeen]

I unlocked several of my old heroettes on Freedom. Gonna be fun tooling around with them again. Had 8 unlocks total and I think I did 5 so far on my favorites.

[Valmorian]

Just did the new tutorial opening level and a few of the missions in Atlas and I have to say it's pretty obvious they are trying their hardest to get that old engine to do new things.  Many of the missions are attempts to do the more interesting things in WoW, like non-combat bits where you are disguised. 

It's a good try, but I wonder if their quest engine just can't do what they need it to.

Honestly the one thing they keep avoiding and yet would improve the missions the most is to overhaul the dialogs you get for mission text.  This is a COMIC BOOK game, they should make those dialog boxes look like they would in a comic.  And that translucent background for them that you cannot modify makes reading them very annoying...

Other than that, I'm really enjoying being back in the game..

[SurfD]

One of the things that really bugs me about CoH (still did when i played it way back when) is the whole contact system and how easy it is to out level the bastards.  At least in WoW, it was easy to go back and do quests you out leveled, even if you got no real reward for doing so, or it was easy to go and find a dungeon you out leveled and steamroll it for the lore / story / completionist in you.

In CoH, for example, I KNOW I missed some special event contact in the Hollows by out leveling the contacts, but there is absolutely no ingame indicator of where I could go to experience it (I beleve there is somewhere you can go to "re live" old content you missed, but none of my contacts has mentioned anything about it yet.

And it is stupidly easy to out level early contacts, especially if you hop into a taskforce or mission grind group.

Also, they REALLY need something that directs you to level appropriate task force initiators when you hit the appropriate level.  I just hit level 20 on my blaster, and i am pretty sure there are at least 2 task forces i could have done by now, but i have absolutely no idea (without going to a CoH Wiki) where the people who start them would be.  As a complete newbie, i wouldnt even have a clue I could start a task force on my own.  Meanwhile, WoW practically shoves you towards dungeon content with quest hooks and the like.

[Trippy]

Just did the new tutorial opening level and a few of the missions in Atlas and I have to say it's pretty obvious they are trying their hardest to get that old engine to do new things.  Many of the missions are attempts to do the more interesting things in WoW, like non-combat bits where you are disguised. 

There have been disguise missions since the beginning. I still have screencaps of my character dressed up in her Freskshow outfit.

[Valmorian]

Just did the new tutorial opening level and a few of the missions in Atlas and I have to say it's pretty obvious they are trying their hardest to get that old engine to do new things.  Many of the missions are attempts to do the more interesting things in WoW, like non-combat bits where you are disguised. 

There have been disguise missions since the beginning. I still have screencaps of my character dressed up in her Freskshow outfit.

Yeah, I remember them too, but these seem different somehow, as though they're more interested in telling a story and less interested in just giving you another room full of punching bags.

[Kageru]

They did put a "find a contact" button which gives you a level appropriate contact in the zone I assume. I do agree that if you did some grouping you always felt like you'd jumped the tracks of the story flow and it was quite hard to re-attach.

I tried using the LFG tool they have but apparently it's fairly useless. While it gives positive stats like "average wait, 2 minutes" that's because it counts pre-formed groups entering without using the system. Then again there's only so much a match-making system can do when you are at reservoir population levels.

[UnSub]

The word of mouth has not been particularly positive. I did a search on twitter and about half were people bitching about the IOs.

If you were a player who spent the time and cash building up your IO'ed character, coming back to an un-IO'd one is returning to a nerfed character.

My hopes of seeing a second Paragon Studios game keep diminishing.

[Koyasha]

In CoH, for example, I KNOW I missed some special event contact in the Hollows by out leveling the contacts, but there is absolutely no ingame indicator of where I could go to experience it (I beleve there is somewhere you can go to "re live" old content you missed, but none of my contacts has mentioned anything about it yet.

The way this is done is actually pretty cool: there's no in-game indicator or NPC or anything that tells you where to go for this.  As soon as you do something that involves time travel, though, you automatically get the power to create an Ouroboros portal and a little message about it.  At least that's how it worked last time I played.  From a character and story perspective it's pretty neat, cause it's just something you get dragged into by getting involved with time travel.  And there's several story arcs throughout the game involving time travel, so while it's possible to miss, odds are you'll get it just by playing.  Of course, if you already know about it and just want to get the power, accessing it is as easy as having a friend drop an Ouro portal for you.  Touching that portal 'counts' and you get the power yourself.

A lot of the other comments are (or were, last I played) true though - it's really easy to miss contacts and task forces are out of the way and not explained at all by the system.  Outleveling contacts is pretty common.  I seem to recall it being possible to lock your exp bar though, which you pretty much have to do if you want to do a lot of the low level story arcs.  And there are some missions that cannot actually be done as part of Ouroboros flashbacks either.

[Numtini]

I tried using the LFG tool they have but apparently it's fairly useless. While it gives positive stats like "average wait, 2 minutes" that's because it counts pre-formed groups entering without using the system. Then again there's only so much a match-making system can do when you are at reservoir population levels.

I think the LFG tool is only for stuff you can't do unless you're a VIP?

[Tyrnan]

I tried using the LFG tool they have but apparently it's fairly useless. While it gives positive stats like "average wait, 2 minutes" that's because it counts pre-formed groups entering without using the system. Then again there's only so much a match-making system can do when you are at reservoir population levels.

I think the LFG tool is only for stuff you can't do unless you're a VIP?

The new low-level trial is started from it too. I assume any new trial content added to the game from now on will use it and maybe they'll add all the old trials/TFs/SFs to it at some stage

[Numtini]

But it's not for regular gameplay. Like just doing random dungeons.