Game Feature: City of Heroes Beta Thoughts

[kaid]

If you want a group open up the team window and click seeks group. This broadcasts your desire to group to the zone you are in. In general if you are in a zone appropriate to your level it will take 5 to 10 minutes or so before you get your first invite. You can also see who else is looking for a group by clicking find members and it is super easy to start up groups just /invite name boom you sent an invite they can be ANYWHERE in the game world.

I myself prefer not to solo in games and aside from a few minutes here or there I have never had any problems getting at least one person with me.

It is even easier in the hazard zones because they are so nasty that any extra person in your group is a good thing and there really is not much reason not to fill the group up.

Kaid

[Alluvian]

I have actually been soloing lately as a fun change of pace.  Love the grouping, but sometimes I like to impress myself with what I can do solo.  Out of 12 levels I would say I have done about 80% grouped.

[Fargull]

I know it has been mentioned before, but I would like to restate it right now.  For me the dramatic impact of COH is the fact that from start point A to where I am at now (11th is my highest) I have felt like I have had to pay attention in combat, my role in the group, ect.  None of the we treat the new player as an idiot syndrome that the rest of the recent entries have done.  I also know that around 8th level the tactics have changed and I expect them to change greatly as the levels progress.

3 Months, maybe, mostly because in my heart I like the high fantasy setting, but right now the capeless crusader is going to reign.

[Alrindel]

Getting a group is not a problem, even less so since my main is an Empathy Defender healer-type.  But pickup group quality is highly variable: my first session, I was invited right at the newbie start point to a full group that headed straight down the sewers and everybody in it got three or four levels right then and there.  Then there was the Perez Park group that spent half an hour bickering about where to go and what to hunt... (and, inevitably, wiped out when one person got impatient, ran off and pulled some Thornies, and trained them back to the group).

[stray]

So what if it doesn't last long, at least it's probably fun while it lasts. Fun is what matters. I doubt they'll have trouble with subscriptions if it's "fun", though. The grind is what alienates players, not keeps them (except for the fools who think there's actually a purpose to all of it).

Why should MMO's have to be about longterm investment, acquisition, or some kind of simulation of real life? Fuck all that shit. And fuck "player economies". All that stuff is getting in the way of an otherwise good idea.

[Alluvian]

Yeah, my wife is so into SWG and doing so much of what looks like work to me I am desperately trying to get her to try out that new mmog called "Ameritrade".  I think I could retire if I could get her hooked.

[Soukyan]

Yeah, my wife is so into SWG and doing so much of what looks like work to me I am desperately trying to get her to try out that new mmog called "Ameritrade".  I think I could retire if I could get her hooked.

Bingo. Money making and work are best suited to real life.

[HaemishM]

In reaction to this bold statement, let me say I think you all will be bored with COH in 3 months.  I don't normally post on threads about games that I'm not interested in as it just annoys people to hear a conflicting view but all the love is rather disturbing.

You may actually be right about that. However, 3 months will be about 2 months and 27 days longer than I've played any released or beta MMOG since Shadowbane. That's a step up in this genre. If it gets boring, well, see my conclusion article about levels. I'm not sure ANY game with a level-based advancement scheme (or not) has more than about 3 months play-time in it altogether.

From what I understand there is no end game, no significant economy, little loot drops, no wearable equipment, no twinking (apart from sidekicks which does sound like a good idea).  No player vendors, no housing, no crafting, nothing to fight over and with no pvp you are even unable to fight.  

With the exception of the PVP, I'm not convinced an MMOG NEEDS those things, at least not City of Heroes. I HATE end game loot whoring, I HATE twinking. The only time I ever craft is to provide myself better equipement, and then only if it doesn't bore the fuck out of me. Both PVP and housing have been discussed as additions, but who knows if they will be there in the first 3 months or ever?

What you have is an enjoyable grind, that will gradually become less enjoyable when you discover the best missions to achieve X, you will constantly do the same missions.  Kill stealing and capes will be the biggest complaints for weeks, at least till the boredom kicks in big time.

Again, you MAY be right. But at this point in the genre, the fact that a game could rope a jaded fucker like me in for even 1 paid month is a step up.

[Scorus]

I'm one of the people that got disinterested in CoH when they went to archetypes. I was wrong. Happy? :)

I keep seeing people mention PvP coming into the game with the expansion, has that been announced or are people just hoping? While I think we can expect to see arena-style PvP at some juncture, I have doubts they will let you play villains. The head designer spoke to that question at length long ago, his vision of the genre are that villains are rapists, torturers, homicidal maniacs, mass murderers, genocidal, etc. and he quite honestly didn't want to cater to players that would actually want to RP someone like that. In his mind, supervillains aren't just someone that is greedy or someone that has a different opinion, they are exactly the kind of person that you don't want to be spending time with. I don't see them going down that road, but I was wrong in the first paragraph, could very well be wrong in this one also.

Scorus

[Morfiend]

In reaction to this bold statement, let me say I think you all will be bored with COH in 3 months.  I don't normally post on threads about games that I'm not interested in as it just annoys people to hear a conflicting view but all the love is rather disturbing.

You may actually be right about that. However, 3 months will be about 2 months and 27 days longer than I've played any released or beta MMOG since Shadowbane. That's a step up in this genre. If it gets boring, well, see my conclusion article about levels. I'm not sure ANY game with a level-based advancement scheme (or not) has more than about 3 months play-time in it altogether.

I and in agreement with both of you. The game is fun, but how long will it stay fun is what remains to be seen.

I dont have much play time these days. I have a farly demanding job, and same for my girlfriend. I also like to hang out with my friend in rl a lot. Leaving me with not much more than an hour or two a night, and a few more on the weekends.

This is leading me to level very slowly in CoH.

From levels 1 to 7, is very easy, and a nice advancement curve, but once you hit lvl 8, man, you just smack in to a wall. Reading the beta boards I have found the avarge level times for low levels.

1-8 = 6 hours
8-9 = 3 hours
9-10 = 4 hours

Then

13-14 = 6 hours
16-17 = 8 hours
19-20 = 10 hours

This is talking straight up killing. Non stop missions. Now, Im not sure, but one of the best parts of this game is opening up new powers and stuff. Thats really going to kill it for me if I have to play for 20+ hours at even low/mid levels just to get a glance at a new power.

Now, once the game hits release, Im sure the min/maxers will find ways to level faster, but that is just a bit depressing to me. To think it could take me over a week to level from 19-20. At least they have the SK system.

[Khaldun]

Superheroes change costumes. Some do it all the time, some do it only when they're having a dramatic crisis of some kind, and a few do it as a part of their powers--basically "gadgeteer" types like Iron Man.

They gain (and lose) powers.

But most don't follow a levelling curve where they get more and more phat loot and shit and get bulkier and bulkier. Iron Man is one of the few exceptions; any gadget-using character might do that. (Batman gets better shit for his utility belt; Dr. Strange might get a new and improved mystic doo-dad). Occasionally this sort of stuff is then retrofitted to the character's continuity, so now it appears that Batman has *always* had a bulletproof patch behind his logo on his suit.  

If characters regularly change appearance in ways that correlate with levelling, then the game will lose an important piece of its genre in favor of MMOG norms.

(I might also note that even though Iron Man upgrades his armor every 20+ issues or so, it often doesn't really get any more powerful. He just acts like it does, but the number of times that the character has genuinely added a totally unprecedented functionality to his gear is pretty small. He usually just gets "new and improved repulsors" that oddly enough turn out to be just as effective or ineffective against his usual gang of opponents.)

[bignatz]

I said it was going to suck because they removed PVP.

I miss PvP, because killstealing starts to become a problem, and it'll get MUCH worse after launch. Which isn't about the lost exp, but about my total impotence to react to my beloved fellow-heroes in any meaningful way. But I'm coming from 10 months of SB, so I knew this one would bother me in a PvE-only game.

Btw, I don't think CoH would support a PvP-addon without taking out a whole "class", the controller. Way too much crowd-control, great for PvE-fun but would totally ruin PvP-fun.

Also starting to feel the grind at level 12. Good group, good supergroup might change that, however.

Other than that I agree with the fun-factor. Mucho FUN indeed! Which really took me by surprise, I hadn't seriously considered CoH at all.

~bignatz

[kaid]

My hope for the tailor thing is it unlocks like the titles in the game do. At level 14 or 15 you can get a new title for your character I chose for my main to be known as The Startling Psystorm. Titles at this level are fairly generic ones and anybody can take them. At 24 you get an origin title choice where you get a pool of choices determined by your origin.

I would imagin the costumn buying will work the same. At some level you will open up stores to buy some new or change basic items that everybody can access. At higher levels you will get access to more origin specific costumn options which would go a log way into some more origin diversity the game could use.


Kaid

[Velorath]

In reaction to this bold statement, let me say I think you all will be bored with COH in 3 months.  I don't normally post on threads about games that I'm not interested in as it just annoys people to hear a conflicting view but all the love is rather disturbing.

From what I understand there is no end game, no significant economy, little loot drops, no wearable equipment, no twinking (apart from sidekicks which does sound like a good idea).  No player vendors, no housing, no crafting, nothing to fight over and with no pvp you are even unable to fight.

So basically you're looking for timesinks.  FFXI has possibly one of the best in-game economies in an MMORPG and that's part of what ended up driving me away.  I don't want to be forced to stop leveling for a couple of days so I can farm, craft, and auction, just so I can afford the spells, items, weapons, or armor I need to be even remotely competent at my job.  Crafting and selling shit has never been fun in any MMORPG I've ever played, and the only reason housing keeps people subscribed longer is because in games like DAOC, you'll lose your house from not being able to pay rent if you cancel your subscription.

All those things you list are in pretty much every other MMORPG out there.  If that was the kind of stuff we found fun we'd still be playing those games.  Maybe CoH isn't the ultimate, can't possibly be any better, final word in the genre.  There are plenty of things that could be improved.  The important thing is that the game is a big step in the right direction.  They cut things down to the basics and found a way to make those fun first, and that's something they can build off of in future expansions, and it's something developers for other MMORPG's can use as a model in the future rather than EQ.  

Maybe someday Cryptic or somebody else will be able to find a way to make crafting, or player based economy fun, or make pvp balanced and not just about who has put the most time into their characters, who has the uber template, and who has the most numbers on their side.  But until these things are figured out, I want them to stay the fuck out of the games I play.

[Margalis]

So basically you're looking for timesinks.  FFXI has possibly one of the best in-game economies in an MMORPG and that's part of what ended up driving me away.  I don't want to be forced to stop leveling for a couple of days so I can farm, craft, and auction, just so I can afford the spells, items, weapons, or armor I need to be even remotely competent at my job.  Crafting and selling shit has never been fun in any MMORPG I've ever played, and the only reason housing keeps people subscribed longer is because in games like DAOC, you'll lose your house from not being able to pay rent if you cancel your subscription.

You read my mind!

I did some crafting in FFXI, but I gave up at level 14. It was really tedious, had to go around collecting materials that filled my inventory, then doing the same recipies over and over.

To afford good equipment you have to farm a bit. To afford the best equipment you have to farm a lot. That sucks.

Housing? Who cares...what do I do with my house anyway, but a nice plant and put it in the corner...wait, I can play "real life" and do the same thing!

It's like people who play SWG and are vendors...jesus just start a lemonade stand or something.

There are some kinds of people who feel compelled to keep playing a game until they've unlocked everything, seen everything, etc. Those people may get bored of CoH. But there are also types of people who get bored well before they have experienced every little thing if everything is, well, boring.

[Arthur_Parker]

So basically you're looking for timesinks.

Well I wouldn't quite put it like that, true all the things I listed are time sinks to some extent.  However, the largest time sink in most of these games is generally thought to be the level up process and that appears to be enjoyable in COH.

PVP, PVP Roleplaying, PVP area control, Crafting, a working economy with player vendors, an interesting loot system and housing.  None of that appeals in any way shape or form?

Well that's interesting.  Maybe COH is actually appealing to the legendary casual gamer that Turbine failed to grab with AC2.

I'm not knocking the game BTW, from what I understand COH does what it set out to do very well.

[Soukyan]

PVP, PVP Roleplaying, PVP area control, Crafting, a working economy with player vendors, an interesting loot system and housing.  None of that appeals in any way shape or form?

Well that's interesting.  Maybe COH is actually appealing to the legendary casual gamer that Turbine failed to grab with AC2.

None of those things appeal in their current MMOG incarnations. If Cryptic could find a way to make them as fun and engaging as their combat system, then bring them on.

And I didn't think I was that legendary... but thanks for noticing. ;)

[HaemishM]

So far, CoH is fun in 30 minute blocks of time, as well as 2-hour or even catass sessions of 4+ hours. So yes, it does appeal to the casual gamer, IMO.

PVP would be nice, but things like an economy and crafting aren't flat out needed to make the "world" of this genre complete. And looking for roleplaying in an MMOG is almost a lost cause in anything other than selected groups. Loot would be especially silly in a Superhero based MMOG; after all, how many superheroes do you know that received any compensation for the good things they did? I think the enhancements covers that nicely. It provides some form of "teh lewtz" without making it so that the inner cockgobbler comes out in your party. As an aside, though I might be able to see someone e-baying enhancements, I don't think there's much of a market in CoH for anything but tweaked out characters. And honestly, as pathetic as it is to buy a maxxed-out character in normal, boring time-sink MMOG's, how much more pathetic would it be to skip out on a leveling process that's actually fun? Since there's no endgame to shortcut to, and leveling is a fun byproduct of playing the game, why miss the actual fun of leveling?

[gith]

http://img6.photobucket.com/albums/v16/arcanist/captain.jpg

Good stuff.

[Alluvian]

Maybe should hvae given him a cute little baret so you could say "Don't you think I look cute in this hat, ... these matching tights?"

I don't think crafting is needed in ANY of the genres really.  It is an attempt to broaden the audience, which in the end usually hurts the game.  The more broad your audience the more resistance there is to every single design move you make.  I think WTO and F13 are more about a good game than a game that makes 6 kazillion billion dollars.  Obviously there is a marked difference of opinion with those funding the games.  :)

That said, it has come to be expected in fantasy genre and maybe now the sci-fi genre as well.  Leaving it out of those would probably be seen as a shortcoming for many.  I am not one of those.  CoH decided what it was about early on (fun, fast and furious superhero ass kicking) and then designed for that.  I don't think crafting adds anything to that design goal.

PvP would add to that goal, and will probably be implemented somehow eventually.  Hero vs villian would be hard because some types of heroes will just always win vs others, and that won't be fun one on one.  The understanding would be that it is meant for many on many.  But anytime one on one is possible there is going to be problems with one side being pissed because he is getting his ASS kicked every time.  Think of how unhappy wolverine would be in a game where magneto was a griefer.  Wolverine cant do SHIT vs magneto.  Professor X can't do SHIT vs magneto in his helmet.  You would assume other characters are around that could.

I would most support PVP in just specific zones or in instanced missions.  Then you can reasonably assume that anyone dumb enough to go into a pvp region solo is in for a hurting.

In the quasi near future a 'no apologies' arena/duel option is all I expect.  Where some matchups will be totally one sided, but that is understood in advance.  People can come up with their own rules for fairness.  Like the EQ best of the best tournaments.  Matching class vs class or making certain abilities illegal.  Maybe no flight in an arena match for example.  Then you can open up more in group vs group matches where if you are lacking in one aspect that is your fault for making an imbalanced team.

Like ALL games, it will get boring in somewhat short order without the constant addition of new content.  You can say the same thing with WoW.  The content in WoW is the quests, but what happens when you are done with them?  Same can be said of city of heroes.  Ultimately the longterm success will be how effective the live team is in adding content that the players enjoy.

[Arthur_Parker]

God help the poor bastards, they let me into the beta.  Captain Coprolalia will be born soon.

[Alluvian]

Good luck playing today.  Going to be their launchday test.  Server will be fucked over bad.

[kaid]

Most of the early talk about pvp in coh was in the form of player vs player or team vs team danger room arena action. There was some talk also about letting people watch the fights and bet on them as well.

With a variety of danger room environments you could have some where you can have free ranging arial battles and some that would prevent much vertical movement. Melee in general would have no luck against a flying moving target so there would have to be areas that restrict flight so tanks stand a chance.

It will be interesting to see if they do it and how it would work out. Right now the archetype mix works very well in group combat but I am not sure how it would work against other players. I am thinking it would turn into a huge flying blaster fest of fast furious slaying.


Kaid

[Morfiend]

After playing my scrapper a bit more, I can safely say, they need to do some thing about movement and melee. It is getting very frustrating trying to hit running npcs, and since about 60% of the NPCs have been running on me lately, its getting frustrating.

I cant even imagine what it would be like for a melle to try and hit another play, who is doing his best not to be hit. I am all for pvp, and I really hope they impliment it, but with the current mechanics, melee would be the bottom of the barrel.

[HaemishM]

That's about par for the course for MMOG's, unfortunately. It makes realistic sense that ranged would own melee, after all, if I can hit you and you can't hit me, I win.

But it does create a balance problem that is tough to overcome.

[Alluvian]

Yeah, it needs to be tweaked.  Right now it is a touchy timing issue of hitting a special right as you stop near the npc.  The good thing is if you activate the attack in range it WILL have its normal chance to hit, even if the npc moves away during the animation.  I am getting pretty good at it.  To reinforce the part where I can't be moving I tend to jump at the npc and then hit the hotkey as I land.  Without bad lag I can trigger an attack about 80% of the time.  With bad lag it can be a bitch.

[stray]

So...No PvP at the moment, but is there any kind of "competitive" play available?

[Alrindel]

No, it's carebear all the way.  They haven't even implemented duelling.  There are public terminals in each zone where you can see "high scores" for that zone for the past two days and two months, I guess that's competition in a way.

It's not at all self-evident that they will ever introduce any real PVP in City of Heroes.  At first glance it would seem to lend itself to a sort of DAOC-style world split - let people make heroes in zones A-E, villians in zones F-J, and both sides can enter zones K-N which are "Good versus Evil" areas.  But the devs have readily admitted on the beta boards that balancing would be a nightmare.  I'm certain they'd quickly get locked into the never-ending cycle of tweaks and nerfs with the mass of players rushing to whichever class is disproportionately overpowered this month - just like DAOC.

[Arthur_Parker]

Long range damage dealers with some form of invisibility would be my bet for the pvp baby seal clubbing class if they ever add pvp.

[Valmorian]

So...No PvP at the moment, but is there any kind of "competitive" play available?

Depends what you mean by competitive.  There are kiosks in the game that indicate who the most effective players are at "arresting" criminals, dealing damage, etc..

[Righ]

Long range damage dealers with some form of invisibility would be my bet for the pvp baby seal clubbing class if they ever add pvp.

You missed out flying. And rooting. Flying, rooting long range damage dealers with some form of invisibility. And healing as a side order.

I'd help you defend that castle from the battlements, but my balance is as poor as a Shadowbane character.

[Tisirin]

Actually, if you do a google search on "City of Villains" you will get an idea of what NCsoft/Cryptic has in mind for PvP in City of Heroes.  

A lot more about this expansion will be coming out soon.



Tisirin
OCR Manager
NCsoft

[Soukyan]

Good read about it on RPG Vault. Thanks for the tip, Tisirin.

The whole PvP stance is summed up well with his closing statement:

And so, my own secret plans to brainwash all of you aside, there is one more reason you can't be a villain in City of Heroes. Because, someday we want you to play really cool villains. Someday, we want to release an expansion to the game that lets the players really add to the world of Paragon City in fundamental, exciting ways. Ways that not only include villains, but ongoing storylines and shaping the game world itself. There's no way we can do that for first release. But once the game's successful, once the whole wild, wonderful thing is up and running, well then it will be time to bring you in on the whole process of making villains. But not until we can do it right. Not until it's super cool.

[Big Gulp]

Actually, if you do a google search on "City of Villains" you will get an idea of what NCsoft/Cryptic has in mind for PvP in City of Heroes.

You guys really need to set up another wave of beta invites, goddammit.  Every store around Ft. Benning is out of preorder boxes, I've gotten no love from my email account.

Oh sure, I can jump into Lineage 2 no problem and get azzraped by Korean PC Bang addicts at any moment, but you guys are invite only.

[xcarnifex]

I really liked City of Heroes at first.  Despite the lag, disconnects, and over-crowding, I had a lot of fun playing a broadsword/reflexes scrapper to 15, a dark/dark defender to almost 11, and a few smaller guys into the 5-7 range.


The complaints I have about the game center mainly on what I've experienced while playing my scrapper.   Some of these things include:

- Attack animations freezing you in place while you execute them.
   I understand this is sometimes required to make the animation look correct, but some of these animations take a long time to execute.  A few that come to mind are flurry, jump kick, and any of the hack/slash attacks if you dont have your sword drawn before executing them.  So if you execute flurry, hack, jump kick, slash...you have to draw the sword two times which adds more time to the animation delays.  But flurry bothers me because the punches need to be sped up, half the time Im hitting the guy and he's about half a block away when I finish.

- Not being able to hit NPCs while they run.
  The only solution I've found to this is to run ahead of them and wait for them to run into you.  It really doesn't make sense, and I haven't read too many comics where the hero chases the enemy two blocks down the street on his tail and is unable to take any sort of action on him.

- Accuracy of attacks.
   I've seen people complain about this on the forums for COH, and it's all really speculation as no one can say that something is right/wrong without hours of running numbers on like level NPCs, etc etc.  But it bothers me for a few reasons:  Meleers are standing right next to the npc they are trying to hit and I miss 1/3 of the time I swing at most things my level.  As a scrapper I don't seem to do as much damage as most blasters my level, but I take a greater risk since Im standing within melee range of many NPCs just to execute my attacks (and the constant missing doesn't help this).   And as for blasters, I tried one..when I got to level 5 and was running a partnered mission with a friend of mine...I missed attacks nearly half the time I fired..  It got to the point where I tried to kill a fleeing thing and missed three times in a row.  And when you're blaster is standing toe to toe with an npc and he extends his hands over the npcs head and blasts the ceiling twice...it starts to piss you off.

- Area of effect attacks (mainly slice)
   Slice is a broadsword attack that swings in an arc in front of the scrapper damaging all npcs within melee range.  Except in my case usually I'll be getting hit by multiple NPCs and when I use slice it only attempts to hit the one Im directly fighting.  I don't see "miss" or anything over the other things heads, the attack simply doesn't seem to be reaching them even though they are reaching me just fine.

- Missions (especially teamed)
  The missions I usually get with teams are front-loaded.  Meaning the hardest things in the mission are the first things you encounter in the mission.  This has caused missions to completely obliterate teams I've had....and often times these msisions would put NPCs 2 levels above the quest receivers level in it.  While this is fine if the whole team were the quest receivers level or higher, it's not a good thing when the mission doesn't scale the average level of the npcs to the average level of the team.  So if you got one guys whose level 16 and the rest of your team are 13-14..and you average out to about 14 as a team.  The level 16s mission will contain npcs in the 17-18 range in huge packs often with bosses due to your team containing over X many people.  All it does is add more npcs for the bigger teams, instead of putting the levels at some sort of average level in comparison to teams ability.  What usually ends up happening is the team has to take the lower level guys missions just so we don't rack up huge exp debts trying to do the higher level team members missions.

- Task force missions

I tried one, we ran into a lot of "untouchable" npcs who were stuck in doors/walls.  Had many other issues with the missions, and the missions were very long....which is OK in some cases but disconnects and other things lead to the mission being too hard for the remaining team to handle and we ended up with a lot of exp debt trying to finish.  Not really going to elaborate, but all I can say is if these are as buggy in retail as they are now...the game masters/whatever they are called will have their hands full dealing with the little issues that keep the missioners from completing the missions.

- Power selection

I would like to see better descriptions for powers....  I ended up with a lot of power choices that were better that I had thought they would be and others that were very disappointing.  When you get stuck with the disappointing ones (like hover *cause it's much slower than walking*) it becomes irritating to continue with the character.  I wouldn't mind seeing the option to trade up powers on the following odd level.  Or even some way of "trying powers" in some sort of battle room or non-exp gaining environment...similar to planetsides VR area especially since you can't currently drop powers for others.  I don't even care if you can't try them out till you can get them, but at least it would be some sort of "see if this fits my play style" period before taking a new power.  And for the record, hover needs to be at least as fast as walk baseline....it's ridiculously slow.



The above things I've listed have really made my game experience a lot less enjoyable.  I've read people arguing about most of these on the boards at COH, but it becomes a full-time job trying to read every little detail people post about them.  I posted a lot of these here to hopefully see if anyone else is being bothered as much by these as I am, and if they could add any creative solutions to try to alleviate the problems.

I'll list what pops into my mind as a suggestions below.  But I'll stress again that I haven't played every combo in this game, nor have i played past level 15.  I have however spent a lot of times getting very irritated by the problems that seem to have roots in the basic gameplay and not in bugs/beta testing/lag caused areas.


Suggestions:

- Make some melee attacks have some sort of "slow opponent down" effect to them, so they are easier to run down.

- Extend the melee "range" out a few feet so running things can be struck without having to run past them and wait..or hope they stop.

- Balance missions to a teams average level.

- Allow trying out of powers, or trade-in on powers besides maybe the starting ones (since it's easy to try them).

- Speed up animations, especially for melee.  It really doesn't make sense to have the bad guy running away while you're still "flurrying" on him.



I just feel bad recommending this game to anyone without telling them what is making my gaming experience less than fun.  Im sure most of my listed concerns will be seen by other melees, especially scrappers.