A Flaw in City of Heroes

[SirBruce]

So, I admit I've been having fun in City of Heroes, but I think there's a flaw in the long-term gameplay, and it's bothering me.

Imagine if someone come out with a new fantasy MMOG.  The features?  Fighting, and grouping, and guilds.  That's it.  No crafting, no building, no vehicles, no PvP nor any other little mini-games.  Just combat and customizing your character.

Pretty lame, huh?  Well, that's City of Heroes, except in tights.  And that's bothering me.  Because while it's fun to be a superhero for a change instead of a fantasy hero, if all I'm going to be able to do for the next six months is combat -- either freestyle or in missions -- this game could quickly suck.

The missions offer some variety in artwork, but they are all essentially the same.  Beat up all the bad guys and maybe click on 0-12 flashing objects of various size and shape.  Some of the story that is revealed in clues and contact dialog is interesting, but also easily ignored.  Hell, there's not even an in-game newspaper that randomly reports superhero successes.

Bruce

[schild]

See, now you're just talking to hear yourself talking.

We all know how bare CoH is, the difference however, is that it is fun.

If combat in any other MMO's was actually fun, CoH may pale in comparison. Until then, I'm playing in Paragon City.

[cevik]

Heh, I find it funny, SirBruce, that you of all people are pointing out that flaw in CoH because doesn't WWIIO suffer from the same fate?

Anyways, I'm of two minds of the subject, perhaps Cryptic studios realized that all gamers just eventually get tired of the MMOGs they play, perhaps they thought "It's better for us to do one thing really really well than 10 things mediocre."  Which does seem to be the case.  At first I was afraid I'd get bored of the game faster because of this, but then I thought about it for awhile and I realized that I never do anything other than fight in any other mmog, so I doubt it will affect me much.

[Venkman]

Bruce, you're not saying anything we all haven't been thinking :) But who gives a shit? Future potential time investment doesn't matter to me and really hasn't for awhile. It's fun or it's not, with enough reasons to pay to continually advance through the content, for however long that lasts.

I'm done treating MMOGs like religions. I've got a life.

[schild]

_________________
Darniaq.com
Writer: Grimwell.com
Token MMOG fanboi

What's that last one say?

[Venkman]

Fanboi. Doesn't mean some irrational need to make them the ever time sucking vacuums some really want to be. Fuck that. I did my time. Let someone with six hours a night and full weekends take over.

I love MMOGs for what some of them can be. I get to choose though.

[MrHat]

Hell, there's not even an in-game newspaper that randomly reports superhero successes.

Bruce

Actually, you know all those 'information' points around town?  Go ahead, click on one, there's nothing in the tutorial about it, but I'm pretty sure those are for people who have fought lots of baddies that day.  i.e. Your superhero success.

[Joe]

Imagine if someone come out with a new fantasy MMOG.  The features?  Fighting, and grouping, and guilds.  That's it.  No crafting, no building, no vehicles, no PvP nor any other little mini-games.  Just combat and customizing your character.

I see where you're coming from, but the way I play, I usually avoid everything except fighting, grouping, and guilds. The lack of pvp is a huge downside for me, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it slowly trickling in, and ultimately something close to largescale pvp happening whenever City of Villains releases.

When I think back to what I used to do when I was dedicating 50 hours/week to these things, I realized all I ever really focused on was the fighting. The only crafting I ever did was in UO (and I was a miner trying to get money for a house) before I had a connection worthy of pvp. Since then, pretty much everything I've done has been centered around beating the shit out of some monster/player. It hasn't been fun since UO, but it is in CoH.

I'm not sure if it'll keep my attention for years, or will even stop me from waxing romantic about UO's halcyon days. I'm just going to play it until I completely burn out or run out of content. I'm level 10 after a month of playing casually, so I doubt I'm going to hit a wall any time soon.

[Fargull]

Imagine if someone come out with a new fantasy MMOG.  The features?  Fighting, and grouping, and guilds.  That's it.  No crafting, no building, no vehicles, no PvP nor any other little mini-games.  Just combat and customizing your character.

Have been thinking similar until I realized something someone else mentioned already.  Cryptic might not have offered the freedom of UO's playablility, but they took one feature and made it fun as hell.  That fun as hell feature also happens to be the center of what we call the game, i.e. the combat.  Make the combat the fun and you can add on through expansions and free content.  They can add the make your gadget feature, pvp villiany, massive titanic city battles with cars going boom from giant godzilla invasions, and all the rest of the shit as time passes.  And for once, the time that passes will be spent having fun instead of grinding to the goodstuff.  Shit, the sidekick feature makes the casual and the catass friends again.  Fucking imagine that...

[geldonyetich]

My line of reasoning along these lines pre-dates City of Heroes by quite a bit.  It goes something like this:

[*]Star Wars Galaxies has trade skills, housing, vehicles.    Highly detailed and well modeled versions at that.
[*]I don't enjoy Star Wars Galaxies.
[*]Therefore Trade Skills, Housing, and Vehicles add next to no entertainment factor to a MMORPG for me.[/list:u]I'm not bemoaning their lack in City of Heroes at all.   In fact, it's already occured to me that it's one of the main reasons I like the game.  More attention to core gameplay, less attention to this extra crap.   I look forward to Ultima X for much the same reason.  

Rewind 4 years to the anti-UO advertisements, "I don't play MMORPGs to bake bread."  I'll make up a couple more slogans, "I don't need to pay rent on virtual property I rarely use anyway" and "I don't require a virtual vehicle avatar for my virtual avatar."

That's not to say that City of Heroes doesn't have flaws.   I mentioned a few of them I noticed in my review.

[Alrindel]

I don't know that I'd use the word "flaw".  It's simply a slightly different game plan than we have seen from other MMOGs so far.  Most of them up to now have been designed around keeping subscribers through:

1) a long levelling period, player unwilling to abandon investment in high level character
2) reluctance to leave in-game friends, guild structure
3) elitism factor: rare uber lewt from high level encounters
4) engaging world persistence, allowing players to build structures
5) involving player participation in in-game economy
6) PVP competition and rivalries, rewards and notoriety for winning battles

To what extent CoH has 1 remains to be seen.  2 is the same as all other games, although they will take a hit for not having a better-developed guild structure in place for release (Statesman acknowledged this on the beta boards, they're working on more stuff to patch in).  3-6 are not applicable.

For a while I was comparing CoH's situation to Planetside, another MMOG that only contains "half" of what we usually expect to see in the genre (only RVR combat and battlefield persistence, no economy, no PVE) but Planetside faces competition that CoH doesn't: there are dozens of FPS on the market that you can play multiplayer for free.  There isn't a free co-op superhero game you can play if you enjoy CoH but don't want to pay the monthly fee.

By having a stable game that's fun right out of the box, they're starting from a position of strength.  If the CoH live team can succesfully:

1) quickly finish the post-release feature set - guild halls, tailors, etc.
2) regularly add new medium and high-level zones, and
3) run frequent storyline events - the end-of-beta Rikti thing is a good sign that the tools to do this are implemented and working - that'll go a long way to offsetting the lack of world persistence

then I think they have a good chance of keeping their players around for a profitable amount of time, even if they will lose a certain number of players who were weaned on EverCrack and who will burn out quickly.

One thing they have going for them: storage space required per account should be minimal thanks to the small player inventories and lack of custom items.  That has let them expand replayability by permitting each account to have a LOT of alts.  It'll also let them keep old accounts in storage forever without worrying about their database exploding, which is imporant because I suspect we'll see a lot more ex-players re-upping down the line to come back and check out the new content than is usual in the genre.

[Shockeye]

Pretty lame, huh?  Well, that's City of Heroes, except in tights.  And that's bothering me.  Because while it's fun to be a superhero for a change instead of a fantasy hero, if all I'm going to be able to do for the next six months is combat -- either freestyle or in missions -- this game could quickly suck.

I can see myself becoming bored with this game between 3-6 months from now if nothing really *new* is added to the mix. Do I mind that? Not really. As most people have said, the game is fun. It will continue to be fun until it gets boring. At that point I cancel my account and wait for something to change.

[SirBruce]

Heh, I find it funny, SirBruce, that you of all people are pointing out that flaw in CoH because doesn't WWIIO suffer from the same fate?

Not exactly.  The reason is WW2OL is PvP focused, and it has things like the high command planning missions, research and development, linked supply and demand routing, as well as vehicles.  So, it's more than player infantry shooting AI infantry.

Anyways, I'm of two minds of the subject, perhaps Cryptic studios realized that all gamers just eventually get tired of the MMOGs they play, perhaps they thought "It's better for us to do one thing really really well than 10 things mediocre."  Which does seem to be the case.  At first I was afraid I'd get bored of the game faster because of this, but then I thought about it for awhile and I realized that I never do anything other than fight in any other mmog, so I doubt it will affect me much.

A lot of people have said similar things, so maybe they are on to something.  We all knew combat in MMOGs was usually a bore, but I would not have guessed that simply making combat fun (and dumping everything else) would have been the Holy Grail.

Bruce

[SirBruce]

Hell, there's not even an in-game newspaper that randomly reports superhero successes.

Bruce

Actually, you know all those 'information' points around town?  Go ahead, click on one, there's nothing in the tutorial about it, but I'm pretty sure those are for people who have fought lots of baddies that day.  i.e. Your superhero success.

Not really what I was thinking of.  When the database isn't down :) it seems to be tracking influence and "kills", as a sort of leader-board, which isn't what I was looking for.

No, I was thinking more of a newspaper report which would pick a hero after a mission, show you a picture of them, and a headline like "FartMan thwarts Dr. Vazliakh; saves city water supply" or something like that.

Bruce

[Alrindel]

So far, the devs seem to be sticking to a philosophy that eschews rare rewards: if something is in the game, then everyone can get it (with the exception of possible player-character cameos in the monthly comic book).  An in-game newspaper picking out people for special mention would seem not to fit with that design.

[Venkman]

No, I was thinking more of a newspaper report which would pick a hero after a mission, show you a picture of them, and a headline like "FartMan thwarts Dr. Vazliakh; saves city water supply" or something like that.

Here I agree. The game falls all over itself congratulating players overtly and subtley. Adding a SimCity-esque city newspaper would be one extra step. It'd also be a great way to keep players involved in a storyline.

We all knew combat in MMOGs was usually a bore, but I would not have guessed that simply making combat fun (and dumping everything else) would have been the Holy Grail.

Not the Holy Grail as much as a logical next step.

[*]They've gotten "The World" down to a science. All it takes is some talent and worlds from photorealistic to stylized are just a few million dollars away.
[*]Given the number of folks who enjoy it, I've got the feeling Crafting doesn't really need thousands of additional man-hours to explore, even though some are trying.
[*]Socializing is really just an implied function of an MMOG worldspace. Why spend money developing ways to bring people together when by virtue of buying the game they've already proven that they want to be with others.[/list:u]
Innovation obviously isn't dead. CoH isn't revolutionary. It just ratchets up the speed in a few key areas while removing stuff that really highlights the grind, like crafting and an economy.

Really, it's just a game. But even if people get bored with it after a month, two or three, it's got a style, polish and raw playability that is more universally enjoyable than Sim Beru. And this is something that can be copied.

It's about time developers started emulating The Fun from previous titles.

[Signe]

Actually, that's a pretty good idea about the newspaper, and totally in keeping with the whole comic book atmosphere of the game.  The newspaper emote is cute, but making a real newspaper would be very cool.  Perhaps being able to pick special missions or something from the want ads would be fun, too.  There could even be a 'personal' column for you sad, lonely gits. Someone make it so.

Also, in keeping with the subject at hand... When I play a game and primarily craft, I miss combat.  When I'm a combat oriented character, I miss the crafting.  I don't miss crafting one bit in this game.  I hope the dev's are working on more high level content and things that add some sort of creativity to the game but, if not, I'll do exactly the same as Sonic... play until I become unhappy with it all.  Actually this game is refreshing in the fact that I don't have to think too hard... I might find that too simplistic in the future, but, for now, it suits me.

To play on schild's words:  Thinking is Hard.

[daveNYC]

This might be a crazy idea, but what if Cryptic designed their business plan around a three to six month subscription time?  Which might explain why people are saying the game is fun, they didn't feel the need to put in mechanisms to artificially extend subscription time.

[Xilren's Twin]

A lot of people have said similar things, so maybe they are on to something.  We all knew combat in MMOGs was usually a bore, but I would not have guessed that simply making combat fun (and dumping everything else) would have been the Holy Grail.

Oh I don't think anyone would describe CoH as the "Holy Grail" by any stretch.  I think we all recognize it's limitations, but the refreshing thing about it is it's actually FUN to play what it does offer and illustrates what many have being saying: it's not the prescence of the level curve itself which is a problem, it's the execution of the gameplay to move along the curve.  They made combat fun and still pretty well balanced with a what hybrid class/skill system.  Hell, most people would say they even managed to make character creation and the tutorial fun.  Based on that, I hope any new content and system that might add will also be designed from a fun first standpoint.

Personally, I've given up looking for a Holy Grail of mmorpg gaming b/c i recognize what I want from a "deeper" game than CoH would be very difficult to design and build and is probably too niche to even get funding.  So, I'll stick to the same basic criteria I use for single player games; it's fun.  That's enough, no matter how long it eventually lasts.

As to the newspaper thing, that not really workable game wide because your hero would simply one of a list of heroes who defeated Dr Vahz that week.  I like the souvenier concept where you can get items (that don't really affect anything) or your hero so you have a personal history.  Perhaps if they add guildhalls your team could have it's own momento's on display in a trophy room.    I do wonder how they will handle including some in game activities in the monthly comic they will be sending out; cool concept but could the breed the same sort of "why didn't you choose me, i'm a special unique snowflake too!" whining that I think the newspaper idea would breed.

Xilren

[Alrindel]

what if Cryptic designed their business plan around a three to six month subscription time?

They have 4-5 years of development to amortize. I'm certain that they are going to want to try and keep people longer than that.

[kaid]

Coh accomplished what they aimed to do they created a fun world and fun super heroic combat. Will the lack of other things to do besideds combat eventually get dull? I don't know probably some day it will. But at least coh identified what they wanted to be very good and made it both good and fun. SWG tries alot of things and no one system they have is very fun.

Combat in swg which is nearly as big a portion of the game as COH is frigging DULL! Wacking moles always plays a huge part in most mmrpg and COH is one of the first ones that really made it enjoyable.

The next big thing would be for a game that has fun crafting and fun non combat stuff to include a system as fun or more fun than COH. If a game could pull that off it would get a HUGE ammount of players.


Kaid

[Venkman]

Theoretically, WoW and EQ2 are going to do just that. "Fun" combat with relevant crafting and an economy. Color me skeptical though.

If I were to get infused with a few million bucks, I'd go straight where CoH has gone too. So many more people enjoy the dynamic heroic or even subtle fighting than crafting that the needs of Crafter-type players, in my opinion, are adequately met. Maybe I'd enhance CoH's Combine dialog to allow some true personalization of powers, like changing the colors or sounds that are displayed when cast. A sort of Power Customization Interface. If I determine a need for some sort of economy, I'd allow this customization to be sellable as a server using the Trade window interface on the front-end.

But beyond that? If the majority of folks want hunting, give them hunting. More unique powers (something CoH will take advantage of I'm sure as so many are the same thing rendered differently) and power combinations (like what they have now: DD+slow, DD+snare, DD+DoT, DD+root, etc). More zones with unique NPC behaviors (CoH has, though I don't have experience with even 1/3 of the behavior types). More ways to get more customization to the character during the game, like the proposed Tailoring system but to include more things like personalized Powers, names, that Newspaper thing Bruce mentioned, and so on.

I'd also love to see an Incognito ability (unless it's already in?). Maybe start it at level 14 or something. A way for a person to disguise themself as, say, first a regular citizen (which means they could get jumped), then as some types of villains, then as more and so on. It'd be like EQ Enchanter Illusion, and level-based, with some cool potential for RP. Basically, Invisibility done a different way.

Raph mentioned last May that he was comfortable with SWG as a system upon which post-Launch features can be built. I agreed then and agree still. It's not a game for me right now, but if one considered SE simply an über feature, then the argument holds. And they've got enough accounts to prove the game is for enough to keep going.

I think the same of CoH. It's got issues, but nothing game breaking. It's a strong base to build from. It's EQ without the suck and may very well be held up as proof that the suck is not required to keep the players in.

[Alluvian]

Yeah, best thing that won't happen right now would be that WoW and EQ2 see CoH and decide to revamp their combat to more closely match it.  Then they could be big winners.  It won't happen, but it would be neat.

[Aslan]

I think schlid and the others who said it's about teh fun got it right.  That's the key, there.  I played pretty hard during the beta and never really got bored.  There are several zones I never even saw and lots of stuff still to do.  And, theoretically, by the time the grind gets really painful, they will have patched in some new content/zones, ect.  But the basic game is FUN.  That's going to keep me around for a while.  
My goal in the end is to play both this and WoW.  I can have catassing for lewts and crafting and armors and stuff, and then when that gets old, head to CoH for some thug-smacking action.  Between the two, I think they are going to be able to keep me entertained and what one can't or doesn't do, the other seems to.

[Venkman]

I purposely kept myself down in the leveling for two reason: 1) I want teh s00prise post Launch, 2) and I hate wasting effort that'll be wiped. My highest is 8, and between advice here and Warcry's Hero Planner helps me get a feel for life beyond.

Of course, I also freely admit I've been an absolutey terrible tester in this one. I basically have no issues with the game save a few minor spelling errors and have avoided beta forums. I'm semi-sure that it's the same as pre-launch <insert umpteenth beta here>, with only the words that have changed.

CoH is what it is, particularly at the point when I got into it.

[Murgos]

By the time I got to 15 I admit I was feeling a little bored.  11 to 14 apparently were what has been called the 'hell levels' of this game, though cryptic just reduced the exp needed for those levels so all good.  I got through 11 - 14 by mostly soloing on the city street, not because I ran out of missions but because with my template I was able to solo small groups (4 -6) of yellow minions with orange bosses.  Let me just say, big exp, quickly.

A dynamic changed at 14 though, missions became A LOT cooler.  First 14 was a snap and did the whole thing in a Task Force, mucho fun with 4 people and would have been AMAZING with 8...  Also now some of my normal missions have way cool story arcs.  One I did started with a kill 10 clockworks which when completed revealed a clue.  i wont go into details because I dont want to ruin it, but its a nice little 4 mission story arc with a compeling reason to follow it though, very cool.  I understand that this sort of thing gets more and more interesting as you go on.

As long as Cryptic can keep coming up with little pleasantnesses like that every 5 or so levels I'll be pretty happy for a while.  Plus now I want to do the level 15+ task force, should be yummy.

As far as Bruces newspaper thing is concerned I don't think I'd care if was implemented as he said with random heros being singled out for recognition for stuff I maybe already did.  If it was to be implemented I woudl rather see something along the lines of a personalized newspaper, after all to you, you  are the biggest thing to every hit Paragon City.  When I /em newspapaper I would like to see "Electron Blue Saves Two From Burning Building" If I had just done that in a mission.  My paper, my game, my story.  Leaderboards are all well and good and it CAN be fun trying to stay atop one, but top 10 lists are really only fun for 10 people.  My idea is fun for only one person but that one person is me, in massive parallelism (i.e. everbody.)

Crafting?  Blech, I tried crafting in EQ, hated it.  Crafted in DAoC, god what a chore, work, work, work.  Crafting in SWG, wasn't for me.  Crafting in FFXI, the grind was too reminicent of EQ/DAoC leveling so I sure as shit wasn't sticking around to catass crafting.  Show me a 'fun' crafting system and I'll change my mind, just as CoH has helped easy my worn and weary sword arm but until then if it ain't fun I don't want to hear about how 'uber' it is.

Guild Hall?  Nice to have, don't need it.  Would be nice if you could mount guild trophies in it from difficult supergroup level missions.  Maybe some nice statuary?  Who knows?  Again don't bother unless it can be made fun.

Mini-games.  Love 'em would like to see more.  I really wan't a game to implement the standard card games with betting in a nice easy interface.  Four people waiting for a fith to log on?  Startup a game of hearts, spades, eucher, tonk or poker.  Simple enough just float the cards over your heads and a simple set of rules for deals and rakes the players will do the rest.  Two people killing time?  Chess board, or checkers.  Gambling halls, wander in and blow your Platinum Pieces, Gold Pieces, Prestige Points what have you on trying to overcome rigged games of chance.  Heh, virtual horse races would be nice.  And of course for the timid or loners, poppit, gems and any of the other myrad fun simple games out there.

Anyway, just some stuff to while away a slow morning.

[Morfiend]

Mini-games.  Love 'em would like to see more.  I really wan't a game to implement the standard card games with betting in a nice easy interface.  Four people waiting for a fith to log on?  Startup a game of hearts, spades, eucher, tonk or poker.  Simple enough just float the cards over your heads and a simple set of rules for deals and rakes the players will do the rest.  Two people killing time?  Chess board, or checkers.  Gambling halls, wander in and blow your Platinum Pieces, Gold Pieces, Prestige Points what have you on trying to overcome rigged games of chance.  Heh, virtual horse races would be nice.  And of course for the timid or loners, poppit, gems and any of the other myrad fun simple games out there.

You do know you can emote Dice and Rock Paper Sicsors. So, you could play craps, or some thing like that.

[Murgos]

You could do craps but it would be a pain in the ass one die at a time and there is no inherently set way to post and collect bets, which for craps can get tedious AND complicated.

[Venkman]

You do know you can emote Dice and Rock Paper Sicsors. So, you could play craps, or some thing like that.

But I'm personally tired of having to do what any kid with an iPaq could bust out in a few minutes with Visual Basic! I know that Dice and Rock-Paper-Scissors are a trade facilitators, but particularly in a real-world-setting like CoH, card games would be a joke.

The most disappointing thing in SWG was the lack of a playable Sabacc game. And don't get me started on the absolutely horrific gambling system. "Sucks" doesn't even begin the path towards going far enough to describe that insult.

I could see someone questioning the need for something like this, of course, but it seems like everyone was just happy enough with DAoC's text-based "card game" implemented at the whim of a programmer one day 30 months ago that they've been conditioned to accept nothing more since.

Give me real mini-games or don't bother.

[Signe]

If they add more dice, we could play Yahtzee.

[Venkman]

Edit: Heh. This is what happens when I forget to paste in what I wrote :)

[schild]

Darniaq, Are you ok?

[Alluvian]

I was wondering the same thing, but didn't want to waste a post with the equivalent of WTF?

I wasted it on this instead.  I think I made the wrong choice.

[Signe]

It makes perfect sense to me.

[eldaec]

I do think it's worth remembering that the powers you gain as you level up in CoH do rather more to the way you play than a new style in DAoC or slightly more powerful version of a DD spell in EQ.

I think that's probably enough of a hook to get people's main and an alt to level 38.

What happens after that is another matter.