Game Feature: City of Heroes Beta Thoughts

[schild]

It's tough to write about something you like so much.

Another article with little to no expletives brought to you from f13.net.

[Xilren's Twin]

Some random thoughts of my own.

I too am enjoying the hell out of CoH, and knew after 2 hours I'd be buying this game.

Character creation is fun in and of itself.  I suspect many will spend more hours than they like to admit just creating and tweaking new heros to find one they like.  Ask Signe (level 14 character creator) for clothing tips.

Skills and power seem pretty balanced out of the gate, so you can't gimp yourself.  And the cool stuff keeps flowing, you get to pick a new power every even level, and can add enhancement slots on odd ones.

I think Cryptic has done an excellent job bringing their world to life and it's many little things which add up to an overall synergistic fun factor.  They do use Zoning, that dreaded thing from EQ that i beleive it actually better to have than not now.  Reason, true geogprahic diversity.  And make no mistake, the Zones are HUGE and each contains several suburbs with their own flavor uniqueness and mob disperesion.

The 3 dimension actually exists and has meaning in this game.  Yes grandma, you can really fly.  You can climb to rooftops via fire escapes and engaing in battle on high.  If you choose the flight power pool at level 6 you can get Hover power right off the bat (think of it as levitation; good up and down, very slow lateral movement) and flight at 14.  And in battle hover becomes quite useful to stay up out of melee range and blast away.  This sound like a cheesy tactic but it isn't because a) mob all seem to have primary and secondary attack modes (so if a brawler type mob can reach you with his club/knife/sledgehammer he'll whip out a pistol and start shooting at you), mob generally dont come alone and thus you'll most often be fighting mixed groups that have some primary ranged attackers too, c) as you level enemies start to have superpowers off their own (so dont be surprised if you end up in a mid air battle).

Movement is actually fun with sprinting and sprinting jumping right off the bat not to mention things like flight, teleportation, leaping and super speed the further you level up. Yes there is falling damage, but it's not bad enough to prevent your from wanting to jump off a 20 foot hight in pursuit of great justice.

Missions themselves are nicely varied.  One mission i did that was enjoyable was hunting Circle of Thorns mystics in King's Row.  My contact told me to defeat 10 of them and to look for them in alleys and rooftops of certain suburbs at night.  I had just gotten my hover power, so levitated up to the rooftops as night fell.  First cool thing, when it got dark the lights on building actually came on; i know it sounds minor but it wouldn't have felt right without such a basic city element.  As I partolled the rooftops I saw a green glowing mist off in the distance, appoached it to find 2 CoT mystics trying to sacrifice a citizen in some mystic evil ritual.  Proceed to lay the smack down rooftop style inclusing blowing one sucker clear off the building.  Save the citizen, and proceed to trounce more evildoers knowing to look for the glowing green mist as a sure sight of my quarry.

Other missions might have you detroying some drug lab equipment (and yes you have to find lab look equipment in the missing and disable it), or recover stolen goods, find kidnap victims, give warning, stop gang wars, etc etc.  Lots of suitabley heroic activities.  I hear some of the higher level mission get even more intense and cool (giant robots anyone?).

To give another cool moment for me, in one mission I encounter an enemy type I cant say I've seen in another MMORPG to date.  The suicide mob.  In my case it something called a Life Mage from the circle of thorns.  I was in a cave hideout trying to recover a stolen mystic artifact and was fighting several guards.  This life mage was zapping me with a life drain attack which was keeping his life total complete so I wasn't taking him down quickly.  Then, he runs up to me and basiclly detonates in a cloud of mystic energy killing himself and severaly hurting me.  Lesson learned.  But the other part of the coolness part for me is using my own super powers to counter this threat.  I have storm summoning and first power is called Gale which is a cone of wind to blow back foes and knock them down (which i had at level one mind you).  So, now when I see such a life mage making his run at me i time my gale to send him flying backward causing him to either explore harmless away from me, or getting him before he starts to tick and zapping him down with my lightning.  Again, seems little, but was fun.

Combat is fun; group combat is more fun with lots of mobs and powers flying.  In most mmorpgs to date you try to arrange it so it's always multiple players fighting one mob; that just a waste of time in CoH.  Your hero is perfectly capable of taking on several mobs at once, which oddly enough seems much more...heroic.  Add in several friends and let the big ole battles begin.

Death is also pretty painfree.  When you try you can elect to hang about hoping for a rez (or to use a rez inspiration you might have), or can spawn fully healed back in a hospital with a exp debt to pay.  Basically, each time you earn exp a portion of it goes to pay your debt, so you earn at a reduce rate for a while.  That's about it.  As a matter of fact there are even several power which relate to death in a cool way, either by self sacrifice or things like if you fall inspiring your team mates to avenge you  with massive buffs.

This game has coolness leaking out it's ears.  If you want to *gasp* roleplay, there is a surprising amount of backstory for you to play off against and the mission are couched to make it believable.  The contact system where the can give you mission which can lead to other contacts is nice, and as you perform tasks for them they gain confidence in you as a hero so you can get to a point you can simple call them rather than physiclally go see them.

And I've barely scratched the surface.  Gah, I'll stop now and let others chime in, but this has been the best gaming surprise of the year for me.

Xilren

[Arthur_Parker]

Not paid any attention to this game at all so have a few questions if anyone can be bothered answering them.

1.  PVP is it possible at all with the current ruleset, if so how does it work?
2. What's downtime like and approx time to get to level 30?
3.  Are there vendors?  Is the loot system any good?  Is there a working ecomony?
4. No crafting at all?  Any plans to add this, would have thought being able to design rocket packs etc would be cool.
5.  from 4 above, any flyable helicopters, jets, cars etc or any plans to add them?
6. I assume guns are in the game but it's not clear, if so can you twink a lower level character with better equipment to level up fast?
7. Do you have to group or can you level solo without massive time penalties?
8. Is there an invisible ability?
9.  Are the beta forums open and if so can I have a link? Edit NM, found them.

[Xilren's Twin]

Not paid any attention to this game at all so have a few questions if anyone can be bothered answering them.

I'll give this a shot.

1.  PVP is it possible at all with the current ruleset, if so how does it work?

No pvp at all yet.  May come with the first retail expansion.

2. What's downtime like and approx time to get to level 30?

No clue.  To be honest I dont care as im enjoying shit NOW.

3.  Are there vendors?  Is the loot system any good?  Is there a working ecomony?

Yes, their are shop where you can buy and sell inspiration and enhancements.  Currency is basically your reputation points.  Not too much need for this though.
 
4. No crafting at all?  Any plans to add this, would have thought being able to design rocket packs etc would be cool.

You can combine like enhancements to increase ones power, but no real crafting. And no real need, you don't actually have equipment at all.

5.  from 4 above, any flyable helicopters, jets, cars etc or any plans to add them?

No vehicles that I know of.

6. I assume guns are in the game but it's not clear, if so can you twink a lower level character with better equipment to level up fast?

If you pick guns as on of your power pools you will have them, but again, there is no equipment slots, only powers you can.  So you may start off with say a burst shot power, and later get a sniper shot.

7. Do you have to group or can you level solo without massive time penalties?

You can solo and I primarily have so far.  You missions seem balanced to your level pretty well.  There is no real downtime to speak of.  If you finish a battle low on endurance, it will regen in like 30sec-1min tops so just walking to the next battle is enough time to be fully ready.  Health regens a little slower but you can use a rest power to heal back in like 10 sec, or pop a healing or endurance inspiration if need be (basic on heal 25% right off the bat and insipirations drop pretty commonly from mobs).

8. Is there an invisible ability?

Yes and stealth.

9.  Are the beta forums open and if so can I have a link?

Now that I don't know.

Xilren

[daveNYC]

2. What's downtime like and approx time to get to level 30?

No clue.  To be honest I dont care as im enjoying shit NOW.

Fun right out of the box?  You're sure it's a MMOG?

[kaid]

Not only is there invisibility there is also at the highest of the invis pool intagability. Yes indeed you can go completly ghostly. In that form nothing can  hurt you and you cannot hurt anything. It is a very nifty power later on for scouting some of the seriously dangerous high level hazard zones.

Mission layouts are pretty varied early on there may be a bit of overuse of office and sewer maps but once you get to 15 of so you start seeing nazi bases, circle of thorn temples, caves, crey labratories which are very cool and a few other types. And those are only the skins so far I have seen at least 5 or so of the uber cot dungeons and never yet gotten a repeat. They are terribly cool.

Work ons

I like schild think they need to flesh out supergroups a bit my biggest gripe is the default color for the super group channel is really freaking hard for me to read and I have never found a way to change it. I am sure you can or will be able to but at the moment I cannot find it.

Adding stuff

They have already added in the high level devouring earth trial which people have fought and apparently last night won and they said it was super cool. Basically there is a giant blob thing in the zone called the hive that is trying to eat part of that town. You and your buddies and their buddies have to team up to try to push it back out of the town. You cannot permenantly kill it cause blobs are tough but apparently it is a blast to fight and is the first of the higher end trials. Also you can get some phat loot from fighting it hehe (okay different stuff but not really eq like loot). After defeating it you can defeat these lil bloblings that spawn and you get a special enhancer that effects TWO things instead of just one. So if you got lucky you could get a SO endurance AND damage power up on the same enhancer.    That alone is a hell of a incentive to join the higher end trials as enhancement slots are precious things.


Task force groups.

You can do your first task force starting at I think 14 or 16 not sure which. The first one is I think in steel canyon and there are others scattered throughout the higher level areas usually given to you by a hero looking person.

A task force group needs to have at least 4 people into the group. Once you take the first mission you cannot add new people and if people in the group choose to leave (disco does not remove you from the group) they cannot be brought back in.

Task forces are a series of linked missions in its own story arch. The fights are tougher and the missions are more involved. In these missions you also can get the chance to see/fight archenemies like the clock work king. These archenemies are tougher than normal bosses and are a very challanging foe to combat.

Hazard zones.

The first hazard zone that you can enter is perez park. Each hazard zone has a certain level that you have to be to enter you cannot side kick people past this requirement. Hazard zones are ment for groups of peopel to hunt. If you go in at the first chance you will want a big group as me and autumnfyre found out even perez does not screw around. The mob groupings in hazzard zones tends to be bigger in cases MUCH bigger than normal and the opponents are often tougher.

Hazard zones in a group are great places to level up if you are tired of mission running and just want some free form mayhem.

List of a few hazard zones

perez park

boomtown Terribly impressive zone

faultline impressive zone but hard to navigate very ripped up area

Dark astoria anybody who plays this game at all if you get to 21 VISIT THIS AREA. It is a very cool place and as a spooky thing to try walk up to the "citizens" and see what happens. I intend to explore this more and find out how this area got to be what it is now.

Terra Volta I am not sure what sane government lets their cities powersupply become a friggin hazzard zone but hey it is and that is why we heros are here.

Crey's folley never been in here so I can't really say.

Eden formerly a park and a suburb it has been taken over by the devouring earth (really neat REALLY dangerous critters de missions are some of the hardest you will have) and is now a primal and very wild area.

The hive this is where the hamidion lives he is the first of the end game trial mobs no real background on this area other than you have to get through eden to get there.

Well that is enough blabbing for the moment I have played a bumped character to level 34 so I have seen quite a bit of the game but even in the couple months I have been in there are still about a dozen zones I have not been into yet and alot of things I have not seen. So the content that exists is pretty decent. ALso unlike swg you will likely not see people blasting to level 40 within a day or two leveling is decent paced but it is not super fast even at the higher levels.


Kaid

[Suzerain]

I have been in the beta since early December, and I love the game.  However, I have to disagree with Schild's view regarding character customization.  You can make your character LOOK completely  unique, but your character will never BE unique.  An electric - electric blaster, whether of a magic, science, technology, etc. origin, is the same as any other electric-electric blaster. That isn't all bad, and there are at least 5 different primary and 5 different secondary skills that a blaster can choose, so in essence you can have 25 different blasters.  The only way to differentiate between blasters of the same type is by their additional power pools (one blaster flies, the other leaps, a third teleports).

If the game has a problem, it is in the enhancement system.  As Schild said, enhancements come in 3 level - traininng (+10%), dual origin (+20), and single origin (+40%) - and many types - increase range, increase damage, increase debuff, increase accuracy etc.  Enhancement work over a 6 level range: my level 22 can use enhancements level 19 through 25, although enhancement below my level don't work as well.  Tthese are all available at the stores, and MoBs drop them as well on a fairly random basis.  there doesn't seem to be any incentive for endgame.  In EQ you kill the giant bat of doom to get the uber sword.  In CoH you run to your nearest store and buy a single origin enhancement.  In the end game, you can get enhancements that effect two aspects of a power (see below), but it is worth the effort?  I think people have been able to show a cap as to how far a power can be enhanced, so it might not be that great a reward.  

And maybe this is just me.  I was just telling my brother my feelings on the subject, and he liikes the way CoH is set up.

Here is a descrition of an endgame zone by Statesman:

Gang,
We'll be releasing the first element of our Elder game this week.

What's a trial? It's something that requires constant hero attention. It's a problem or issue that can never be full solved.

The first trial we're putting into the game is the Hive. The gelatinous blob that is the source of all the Devouring Earth monsters has emerged in an area of the city. But the creature is only showing one tiny aspect of itself; heroes need to destroy it periodically to prevent the Devouring Earth from overrunning the city.

The zone itself is filled with giant Devouring Earth beasts. At its center is a huge blob. Heroes that manage to banish the Hamidon (as it calls itself) receive a special Enhancement that boosts TWO aspects of a power, as opposed to only one (like normal Enhancements).

It will take dozens and dozens of heroes to take on the Hamidon. The zone itself is for level 38+ ONLY...

This is the first trial...we'll be introducing more as time passes. Just wanted to give you the heads up. Ask questions, if you'd like - I'll answer any and all (about the Trials!).

[Soukyan]

If the game has a problem, it is in the enhancement system.  As Schild said, enhancements come in 3 level - traininng (+10%), dual origin (+20), and single origin (+40%) - and many types - increase range, increase damage, increase debuff, increase accuracy etc.  Enhancement work over a 6 level range: my level 22 can use enhancements level 19 through 25, although enhancement below my level don't work as well.  Tthese are all available at the stores, and MoBs drop them as well on a fairly random basis.  there doesn't seem to be any incentive for endgame.  In EQ you kill the giant bat of doom to get the uber sword.  In CoH you run to your nearest store and buy a single origin enhancement.  In the end game, you can get enhancements that effect two aspects of a power (see below), but it is worth the effort?  I think people have been able to show a cap as to how far a power can be enhanced, so it might not be that great a reward.  

And maybe this is just me.  I was just telling my brother my feelings on the subject, and he liikes the way CoH is set up.

I don't see lack of "phat lewt" rewards as a problem as long as I'm having fun. I have yet to go into a mission or encounter and think, I wonder if I'll get a badass enhancement drop from UberMob_001. I'm too busy having a fun time to worry about it. And when the battles are over and the smoke clears, I see what enhancements I managed to pick up and use them if I can. If not, I trade them with other players for ones I can use or sell them. Right now, I have all enhancements at my level or above and ++ on every one. Sure, I don't have any of the rare ones, but I'm not worried about that. I sincerely hope Cryptic sticks to the game plan and keeps the game fun. I don't want to see them succumb to the "uber loot and harder leveling and camping for reward" system that a lot of players have begged for more of in past MMOGs. That does not make a game more fun.

[Scorus]

Awesome review, I think it was right on. Though give AO credit for devising the mission system, which CoH has improved upon. Thus, the sidekick system is the greatest innovation since AO missions.

Another glaring costume omission which a female friend of mine noticed is skirts other than mini-skirts. There are probably some flow problems similar to capes, but even straight long skirts would have been good. And she also would like to have less than D bra size. She firmly believes there were no women on the art design staff...

One really surprising thing is how well balanced the game seems to be. Now there is no PvP, which is where balance is usually screwed up, but still it is impressive. Tanker has been the only unbalanced class (first far too powerful, then nerfed to useless, recently they hit a middle ground which is still a little weak, it seems).

A really great fun game. My only concern is lag and zoning once the game goes live. I hope they are limiting each shard because if the population increases too much then things are going to get ugly.

Scorus

[Alluvian]

I love the game, and I really like the loot system.  You can get great drops in combat but you can also buy the things you want.  It lets people play the way they want to.  People fighting solo vs lower level mobs will get far less enhancement drops but will get a lot of 'money' because of the quantity of mobs they are fighting.

A question was asked about downtime.

For me there is NONE.  The rest skill puts you on your knees, waits about 3 seconds and then immobilizes you and your health and endurance ROCKET up.  I mean less than 10 seconds from almost dead to fully healed.  Then the rest skill slowly comes back.  The rest skill is like any other skill though.  If you want to use it a lot (if you solo a lot) you can socket it up and put in some uber recycle time enhancemtents in it.  I have two 10++ enhancements in mine, I could go higher, but I don't need to.  Rest comes back every 3 or so fights, maybe 3-5 minutes?  So I can fully heal pretty much any time I want.  Endurance comes back fast enough I don't bother using rest to heal that.  If I am in a group I sometimes will if I don't want to slow them down.  Especially if someone has healing and I know I can gain health back easily.

Differentiation
Two different electricity/electricity blasters WILL be somewhat different.  They will have taken different powers from their sets and almost surely different power pools.  One may have hasten and hover while the other may have healing skills and teleportation.  Hell, one of them could have special melee attacks.  Each of them will sockett differently as well, so each will have different attacks as their most powerful attacks.
Compare COH to any other game out there and you have more playstyle differentiation than any other mmog I can think of.  Each archtype (there are 5) has about 5 primary and 5 secondary.  Most have a lot more, but lets lowball and say 5.  That is 25 different types of each archtype available.  With 5 archtypes that is 125 different 'classes' and even then they will surely have different skills and different generic power pools.  All the power pools are so cool it is hard to pick them.  I have chosen to go for super speed and super jump to fit my character more, but damn I would love flight or teleport as well, and healing would be awesome.

[Fargull]

The game is fun.  Can not really get over saying that, it is just an absolute blast.  The sidekick system is such a wonderful idea that I am suprised that no one before ever came out with it.  As Soukyan has pointed out, leveling is really just a by product of playing.  You can certainly see the difference, but just running around saving citizens is almost as fun as the missions.  I am still unsure of the enhancements, but I am filling up slots left and right.  Overall I am completely amazed and pleased with the game.

[schmoo]

CoH sounds a bit like Toontown Online for adults.  That's not a bad thing.

Damn, I'm going to have to buy this one.

[ajax34i]

So "the game is fun", in more words.  And what makes it fun is the missions.  Apparently I'm going to like WoW too, since that's also based on missions (quests).

Have to wait till open beta, I suppose, to see what effect the jerkwads in the community have on the game.  Closed beta communities are always nice, no griefers anywhere.

How much of the fun is actual fun, and how much is the wow! factor, I can't tell from your posts.  Sounds like a lot of wow! factor.  And since the game is so close to opening, I guess I'll just wait and see for myself how it holds up after I start characters over a few times and the novelty of the zones (and missions) wears off.

[Soukyan]

So "the game is fun", in more words.  And what makes it fun is the missions.  Apparently I'm going to like WoW too, since that's also based on missions (quests).

Have to wait till open beta, I suppose, to see what effect the jerkwads in the community have on the game.  Closed beta communities are always nice, no griefers anywhere.

How much of the fun is actual fun, and how much is the wow! factor, I can't tell from your posts.  Sounds like a lot of wow! factor.  And since the game is so close to opening, I guess I'll just wait and see for myself how it holds up after I start characters over a few times and the novelty of the zones (and missions) wears off.

Well, different archetypes have different mission sets and stories to accompany them, so there's a fair amount of diversity in missions. Some can be repetitive, but you can tell from the descriptions which will be Kill X mobs and which will actually be more involved.

[Suzerain]

Differentiation
Two different electricity/electricity blasters WILL be somewhat different.  They will have taken different powers from their sets and almost surely different power pools.  One may have hasten and hover while the other may have healing skills and teleportation.  Hell, one of them could have special melee attacks.  Each of them will sockett differently as well, so each will have different attacks as their most powerful attacks.

I can't speak for other powersets or archtypes, but I can say with fairly reasonable certainty with an elec-elec blaster that there are definite right choices to be made with respect to power choices, particularly in the secondary power set.  There are a series of melee powers that are just not useful for a blaster.  It would be possible to make one different than another, but I think the one who took the melee powers would be a lot less powerful.

[daveNYC]

For those of us who haven't played yet, what's the status of the pre-order get into beta offer?  Is there an estimate on how much longer it will be going on?

[Soukyan]

For those of us who haven't played yet, what's the status of the pre-order get into beta offer?  Is there an estimate on how much longer it will be going on?

I don't know for sure, but if you go to the store and pick up a pre-order CD, you should be able to go to the PlayNC site and activate your beta account right away with the key.

[Joe]

I heard the beta is going completely open sometime in the next week or so, so the pre-order dealie is a bit of a moot point.

It's seriously worth the purchase; the wow factor for me goes away after five or so hours of actual gameplay. I've logged about fifteen, and still can't get enough of the game.

[daveNYC]

Hell, I'm still subscribed to ATITD even though I haven't logged in a few months, I can see my way clear to pony up $10 in order to create Bozo the Destroyer.

[Alluvian]

Suzerain:

Um... Okay...  But you are fixating on one of over 125 different BASE combinations.  And even then most of those 125 have more differences in them than the different classes on the different realms of DAOC have.

It is like saying 'all fighters are the same in EQ'.  Which would be a true statement.  Except it is NOT quite a true statement in CoH.  As a generalization I can see where you are coming from.  But saying all of X are the same when there are over 125 different choices of X is pretty assanine to me.

It is like complaining there is no diversity in Jelly Belly Jelly Beans because the entire bag of 'lemon' jelly beans tasted the same.  Christ, pick a different flavor of jelly bean, they have hundreds of flavors.

So "the game is fun", in more words. And what makes it fun is the missions.

No, the game is fun on the basic level of combat.  The missions are fun too, but the key is that the COMBAT is fun.  It is dynamic, fast, and has some twitch elements in it.  In a group it becomes strategic as well as the the other things.

Missions are just a nice way to bring you balanced combat in ways you don't have to run around and search for.  If the combat sucked, the missions would suck.

This is where I fear I might not like WoW as much.  Their combat is still in the old auto-attack mode and the 'fun' is supposed to be the missions.  But I doubt the missions will really involve much more than a series of battles.  If the battles are not 'fun' the missions won't be either.

[Alluvian]

I heard the beta is going completely open sometime in the next week or so, so the pre-order dealie is a bit of a moot point.

My understanding is that after the 14th, they are starting to let others that have NOT pre-ordered but have signed up for beta into the beta.  The key is 'START'.  Pre-orders started coming in on the 22nd of march, but the majority of them didn't get in till the deadline on the 7th of april.

We have no way of knowing how many they will actually let in or how fast.  It could be a lot it could be almost none.

[Valmorian]

I can't speak for other powersets or archtypes, but I can say with fairly reasonable certainty with an elec-elec blaster that there are definite right choices to be made with respect to power choices, particularly in the secondary power set.  There are a series of melee powers that are just not useful for a blaster.  It would be possible to make one different than another, but I think the one who took the melee powers would be a lot less powerful.

I have an Elec-Elec blaster, and I have to say I kinda disagree here.  I even went so far as to take Flurry from the speed pool, despite everyone telling me it's weaker than the melee from the secondary electrical line.

I've been happy with it.. ;)  Something deeply satisfying about pummeling a boss to finish him off..


What's more, it doesn't really "Gimp" you at all to make these kinds of choices, because you can be quite competent using nothing but your first couple of attacks in the primary line.  Everything else after that is just diversification, and you can experiment with whatever you like.

[WayAbvPar]

Good writeup...really looking forward to trying this one out. Is Bat Country going to be a reality for launch? I have a buddy that would probably join us (he was in House Daenyr with us in SB).

[Fargull]

No, the game is fun on the basic level of combat.  The missions are fun too, but the key is that the COMBAT is fun.  It is dynamic, fast, and has some twitch elements in it.  In a group it becomes strategic as well as the the other things.

Think Alluvian nailed it to the tree here, the fun comes from just playing.  Heck, even the few times other supers have flown in from the sky to decimate the guys I have been fighting it has not been a bad thing.  I still get xp, still get influence and can still find more combat quick.  Perez Park is like a seething body of badness.  It has groups of villians all over the place.  I have mentioned before that a game that could come along and provide group level combat and enjoyment without grouping would be a winner and I think COH is getting damn close to making that a reality, at least it has steps in that direction.

I think right now the enhancement choices are more like Perma Buffs that you can add to your powers and figuring out how to lay down your sockets and apply those enhancements will be a mini game in and of itself.  I just toss those my arch does not need or sell them if I am close to someone who will buy them and keep looking for those to pump my powers up.  So far I have not been lacking except for a good flight bonus.

The shiney is sweet.

[HaemishM]

I heard the beta is going completely open sometime in the next week or so, so the pre-order dealie is a bit of a moot point.

It's seriously worth the purchase; the wow factor for me goes away after five or so hours of actual gameplay. I've logged about fifteen, and still can't get enough of the game.

Ditto, with an emphasis on the exact same time frames. I'm still getting a "wow" moment every once in a while with an 8th level character, and even more as I level up my second character who is a completely different type of character.

I think the simplicity of the character creation system, which I at first rebelled against, is actually one of its main strengths. The differences in origin make a completely different experience, visually and play wise.

I'll probably have a "beta review" type of thing up at some point, but suffice it to say, the game is fun. That's something I haven't said about an MMOG since Shadowbane's beta. We can only hope this goes a bit better.

[SirBruce]

The archetypes to me seem to have been a real stroke of design genius, whoever came up with it... since it was not announced at first, the impression is that someone on the team came up with it later when trying to deal with the fact that a complex character creation system at the start made the game difficult for newbies.

Perhaps another issue is that since everyone is FORCED into an archetype, it prevents the sort of min-maxing "uber-template" making you often see, where the default templates are discarded by hardcore players as inefficient.

Bruce

[Murgos]

Let me tell you what I want to see in CoH.

I want to see temporary power sets.  I want to walk into Cooke's Electronics in Steel Canyon and buy 10 web grenades or a 6 use teleportation device.

Sounds good right?  You could have a lot of funs with drops and gameplay if you could equip temp powers dont cha think?  Now the good news, this ALREADY exists in the game!

I have had a mission where the contact hooked me up with 7 flash-bangs!  All Cryptic needs to do is formalize it and test for cost/effectiveness/drop ratio balance.  Also I would like to see one shot 'epic' powers.  Say for instance creating a massive earthquake or tidal wave or summoning a 30 foot tall demon or a horde of litttle imps.  Make em one time use and rare and you could have a blast with using and collecting them.

[CmdrSlack]

Another nice thing is that they've been constantly tinkering with the servers to improve performance.

At home studying today and getting one or two boxes towards my next level as a study break here and I there, I logged in 30 mins before some downtime.

Here's the reason for the downtime:

Originally posted by Jeremy Gaffney, CoH 3rd Party Executive Producer:

Prime will be down for about 1-2 hours tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10am CDT getting reconfigured to a new database setup that should give us a 10-15% speedup & less lagginess.

Pinnacle shouldn't be affected, as it is already under this configuration.

FYI. Yes, we too were much happier with the new and improved less-lagginess and fewer discoes of last weekend, especially since Prime is still (on purpose) massively overloaded. We, however, are looking to achieve perfection, because we like happy users. With that in mind, yet more speedups in process as well.

This is great.  Whatever they're doing, if it works, will give me more faith in this team than I've had in a dev team in a long time.  I'll gladly take 1-2 hrs downtime in exchange for fewer mapserver errors.

And less lag.  

Because something tells me that unless the content wears out for me in a few months, you won't be seeing that many people say "Fine, quit!  Less lag for me!"

They may be saying something else, but it probably won't be about lag.  If they manage to make this work with each upgrade/reconfigure.

[CmdrSlack]

Let me tell you what I want to see in CoH.

I want to see temporary power sets.  I want to walk into Cooke's Electronics in Steel Canyon and buy 10 web grenades or a 6 use teleportation device.

Sounds good right?  You could have a lot of funs with drops and gameplay if you could equip temp powers dont cha think?  Now the good news, this ALREADY exists in the game!

I have had a mission where the contact hooked me up with 7 flash-bangs!  All Cryptic needs to do is formalize it and test for cost/effectiveness/drop ratio balance.  Also I would like to see one shot 'epic' powers.  Say for instance creating a massive earthquake or tidal wave or summoning a 30 foot tall demon or a horde of litttle imps.  Make em one time use and rare and you could have a blast with using and collecting them.

Best idea I've seen to improve the game yet.  Especially because it shouldn't be hard to do.  I've had the mission with the flashbangs too.  It was sweet.  Clearly, there's the code for temporary powers already in the game.  Not sure how it works, so this is entirely speculation, but wouldn't it be possible to just change the triggering event for the application of the powerset from getting a mission to viewing a contact's store option/purchasing a power?

[schild]

temporary power stuff

This would add real items to the game. If they are tradeable - somehow, someone, would figure out who and what to camp. Unless they add this is a super controlled manner, I would have to beg for them NOT to add it at all.

Edit: Though, I'll admit if anyone can buy them in any stores, and they take up an inspiration slot, it may be a good addition. Just don't add them as drops.

[kaid]

The functionality to do that is there in the game so if they want to open limited use powers as things people can buy it deffinatly is something the game is capable of.

I would not be surprised to see that opened up in the future but I think for now they are mainly aiming to make all the current power sets useful and fun. Adding in alot of temporary things could mask issues that they need brougth to light.


Kaid

[CmdrSlack]

temporary power stuff

This would add real items to the game. If they are tradeable - somehow, someone, would figure out who and what to camp. Unless they add this is a super controlled manner, I would have to beg for them NOT to add it at all.

Edit: Though, I'll admit if anyone can buy them in any stores, and they take up an inspiration slot, it may be a good addition. Just don't add them as drops.

Yeah drops would suck.  I just saw the "buy at the store" part.

[Alluvian]

Just thought of something to add.  Something that is often review are the spawning systems.  The game does seem to spawn mobs out of thin air, but they will not spawn in sight of a player, so for all you know they have been there the whole time.  They tweaked the spawns up abit after the April 7th flood of new players and the difficulty in finding crime.  (had to go up on the rooftops)

Pathing is also a true sight to behold.  You can climb up on top of one building where the fire escape does not even touch the ground, see some villians on another roof, shoot them, and they will run down their fire escape and up the one for the building you are on.

They will leap over fences to flee or to pursue you.  They will leap up on boxes to get up on rooftops when fleeing even.  It is pretty darn impressive AI use of the Z-axis.

Sometimes I notice citizens getting 'stuck' on places, but that is mainly because they have nowhere to go and are just wandering randomly.  Any mob with a set purpose seems to have no trouble finding intelligent paths to get there.  And the geometry gets VERY complex in many places.

[kaid]

Pathing is very impressive if you think you can buy time by making ai take a convoluted path to get to you chances are you will be wrong. Heck I have played it for a while and what it can do still surpises me.  The higher you get you start getting more and more diverse type creatures such as the devouring earth with some very different AI schemes.


If you are doing Devouring earth missions in doors be very very cautious and if you see things called trees of life KEEEL THEM FIRST!


Kaid

[Scorus]

Archetypes were brought in about midway through testing, chiefly as a way to prevent people from finding that Combination X was the most kick-ass and then every character going with that combination (then some aspect of that gets nerfed, everyone gets mad, switches to Combination Y which is now the most kick-ass, rinse and repeat).

When it happened it pissed a lot of people off, they saw the game moving from make-your-own-character to character classes. But in reality they stumbled on a middle ground where you have an archetype that limits you to two sets of powers (and there are 8 powers in each of those sets), but also lets you choose from other, generally useful powers outside the archetypes which any character can have. So anyone can have flight, basic melee, super jumping, teleportation, taunt, invisibility, healing, etc. You can't have all of those, you only get a limited number of powers, and someone with healing as a side is not going to be as good at it as someone who has healing as their primary power. But it is enough so that there is a lot of possible variation between my mutant tanker and your mutant tanker.

Scorus