Why are you so into CoH?

[HaemishM]

I like City of Heroes because:

I'm a HUGE superhero comic book geek, and it gets the "world" of superheroes right without being an actual virtual world. I get all the good parts of being immersed in a superhero story without all the bad parts that a real world might bring.

Combat is engaging. I am constantly watching the fight, instead of watching the chat box to see how much damage I'm doing, or effects that have gone off.

Jumping off of a building, especially the really high buildings, gives me that feeling in the pit of my stomach that I get on rollercoasters, that dizzy exhilirating jolt of freefall stomach flop.

My character is heroic, and has been from the word go. I'm not a ratcatcher, I'm a super hero.

Every action I do has some reason behind it, thanks to missions. I have never sat in one spot and "camped" for experience, ever.

I can get on for 15 minutes at a time and do SOMETHING, whether I'm with someone else or not. I group when I want to group, and I solo when I want to solo. I play the game, the game does not play me.

Will it turn into a treadmill? Maybe. Will it last more than 2-3 months? Why do I care? It will last for as long as I'm having fun, and then it will get put it. Again, I play the game, the game doesn't play me. I played EQ for 2 1/2 years, and most of the time I played because I felt I HAD to. I HAD to log on, because I needed to get to a certain level, or get a certain piece of gear, or because I needed to be online to make sure my guild was running smoothly and not at each other's throats or losing confidence in me. After the first 1 1/2 - 2 years, the game played me.

[Fargull]

Couple of new points.

In a supergroup (unfortunately outside of batcounty) and we have had two players re-roll and with the sidekick system have caught up to the main characters in two nights of still just running missions.  Had one go from 4th to 13th in seven hours on Saturday just running missions with the rest of the group sidekicked.  No.. you have to solo till your within 5 levels you LOOSSSEEERR wanna be re-roller.

The chat system, while not the best I have seen, is far better than many that have recently released (in my opinion) and seems to actually work consistantly.  The emote and dialogue system (and your control over it with the bind commands) is just astounding.

The Z axis has been conquored as far as I am concerned.  Some other games have it to a degree, but COH is the first game that it feels truly right in its implementation.  Damn is it cool.

Every game before has whined about the Sniper technique, well, COH has it built into the framework and it works.  The first time I ran into a Shocker and that F'ing SOB launched into the air after me I knew the game was a hit.

[Soukyan]

Every game before has whined about the Sniper technique, well, COH has it built into the framework and it works.  The first time I ran into a Shocker and that F'ing SOB launched into the air after me I knew the game was a hit.

Yes! I about fell out of my chair the first time this happened to me. I thought I had this encounter down pat and then that bastard jumps into the air and flies after me. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor and come up with an alternate plan, but truly impressive. The NPC AI, if not terribly complex, has still been impressive in CoH. When a mob wants to run away, the bastard finds a way to do it. And when they want to get to you, they certainly try to find a way to do it.

[Matt]

For myself, I'm starting to get a little bored of it now. It's the same thing, over and over and over. The missions are silly (kill 10 Lost. Kill 10 this. Kill 10 that. Wipe out warehouse config A, wipe out warehouse config B, etc) but it's better than camping, I suppose.

I'm up to level 12 with my main guy now and am hoping I can maintain interest long enough to get to level 14 so I can fly around. After fly though, there are no abilities that seem overly interesting and then it's just a level grind with absolutely nothing else to make the game interesting. Maybe the overall story will actually develop but I see little to inspire confidence in that so far.

Having said that, if we ever get funding for the Feist graphical MUD, I'm looking to CoH for inspiration on the combat system and the idea of the Z axis.

--matt

[Sky]

It's neat to fly around for awhile but ultimately it's just another form of transportation.

I use flying extensively in combat. So much more than a Vice City chopper, unless you were doing drive-by missions in the chopper.

Like Hammy, I'm also an old comics geek, though I haven't collected in years. My interest in comics is sparking again for some reason :P

Jumping off of a building, especially the really high buildings, gives me that feeling in the pit of my stomach that I get on rollercoasters, that dizzy exhilirating jolt of freefall stomach flop.  
 

Oh yeah, the run and freefall off a big building, then activating Fly and swooping out of it (with some G force applied kinda)... good stuff. The flying model is a little basic, more Freelancer than Freespace, but that's a relatively small gripe (though it'd be cool to be able to do banks and rolls and loops and such!).

I mean, the game isn't the coming of Christ, it's just a game. Not even an ambitious one. MMORPG players I expect not to like it very long, as there is 'nothing' for them to do besides level up. I'm hoping they level up, get bored, bitch, and move on. I'm in no hurry to level up to 40, I'm just enjoying a fun game. But then, I dislike most MMORPGS because of all the attached crap that people seem to miss in this title. *shrug*

[cevik]

I mean, the game isn't the coming of Christ, it's just a game. Not even an ambitious one. MMORPG players I expect not to like it very long, as there is 'nothing' for them to do besides level up.

This is exactly what I've been trying to say since day one.  It's a game.  It's supposed to be fun.  It is fun.  Eventually we will probably get bored and it will no longer be fun.  At that point, it's time for a new game.  

We've been doing it for years, the same damn cycle.  We pick up a game, we have fun with it, then we eventually beat it/grow tired of it and move on to the next game.  For some reason, normal reasonable people turn into lunatics when it comes to MMOGs, they think this same pattern that we've been repeating for the last twenty years should somehow magically change and there should be one MMOG that they marry and never speak to another game again.

We've spent 2 or 3 years here talking about how MMOGs and the casual gamer, well this is the type of product that will eventually pull in the casual gamer.  This is a game that so doesn't want you to marry it.  It lets you take it out for a quick drunken bang on friday nights when you are bored, but the sex is without strings and if you don't call it the next day it doesn't care.  The next time you need some luvin' you just call her right up and she's there and ready to rock.  This is a casual gamer's game, it's revolutionary only in the fact that it's just a fucking game and it's not a way of life.

[Toast]

I am excited for the MMOG genre again thanks to City of Heroes.

COH is fun, but it has obvious weaknesses and shallow spots. What is exciting is that other MMOG programmers can learn from what COH has implemented so well.

The innovations brought in by Cryptic are going to help future games in this industry.  The gamers win here.

[WayAbvPar]

This is a game that so doesn't want you to marry it. It lets you take it out for a quick drunken bang on friday nights when you are bored, but the sex is without strings and if you don't call it the next day it doesn't care. The next time you need some luvin' you just call her right up and she's there and ready to rock.

Henceforth, I shall be required to refer to CoH as 'Kristen'.

[Daydreamer]

I play CoH for the nazis

[Soukyan]

This is a game that so doesn't want you to marry it. It lets you take it out for a quick drunken bang on friday nights when you are bored, but the sex is without strings and if you don't call it the next day it doesn't care. The next time you need some luvin' you just call her right up and she's there and ready to rock.

Henceforth, I shall be required to refer to CoH as 'Kristen'.

Oh, you know Kristen, too? Right on!

[Matt]

I am excited for the MMOG genre again thanks to City of Heroes.

COH is fun, but it has obvious weaknesses and shallow spots. What is exciting is that other MMOG programmers can learn from what COH has implemented so well.

MMOG programmers can't learn anything from CoH, except maybe that writing stable billing and login code shouldn't be praise-worthy, just expected. Designers on the other hand..

But yeah, it's odd what you say. I think CoH barely qualifies as an MMO (half-joking) but it has me newly excited about "fun" in MMOs, even though CoH's only lasted a few days for me.

--matt

[schild]

One of the big things about it for me (and the shiny has gone away, but I keep logging in) is that it's the 'fun' of MMO's. I've liked parts of many MMO's I've played - even Horizons had some interesting....well maybe not Horizons. But crafting has never been fun, though I love to craft, until it's fun I can do without it. Cryptic knew they couldnt make crafting fun, so it's not in there. The players are not capable of running an economy yet - so there is no player economy in CoH.

These are the same things Blizzard North did with Diablo. Look at all the games on the market, strip out what isn't fun and inevitably (with decent programming) the game will be fun.

With proper z-axis coding and the ability to fight 10+ 'bad guys,' CoH has what it takes for me to get my money's worth until something with FUN crafting and a working player economy comes along.

Once again, it IS missing PVP - but it seems that's being taken care of - and we'll know soon enough at E3.

Sure, Matt, the fun has worn out for you, but ya know, MUDs got boring for me a LONG time ago, and well - I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to show me fun in them again. It seems the problem here is that you feel shitty for not being able to find the interesting bits of City of Heroes. As for me, I expect a 5-7 month's worth out of the original box. I like every archetype and will probably play them all for about a month, and of course I'll have my main who will progress to the high level game.

Oh, and there are super heroes. That's fun. I do wish they had more of a fireworks type powerest (a la Jubilee of the x-men), but Illusion controller will do.

[Soukyan]

Sure, Matt, the fun has worn out for you, but ya know, MUDs got boring for me a LONG time ago, and well - I'm sure you'd be hard pressed to show me fun in them again. It seems the problem here is that you feel shitty for not being able to find the interesting bits of City of Heroes.

Nail on the head. I was thinking the same thing. I even make it a point to try one new MUD per week to see if I can find an interesting new twist on the old games. There are a few, but it's still a matter of not finding the fun.

And really, it's mostly a difference in perception. My friend who has a ton of free time and nothing to do with it highly enjoys the mindless farming of artifact scrolls on DAoC for 6 hours a day and at work he plays a MUD that is a level grind that requires very little interaction on his part because he can sit and watch the TV while spamming his attack aliases and level up. Another friend I spoke with the other day enjoys FFXI because he has a static group that meets for three hours every day of the week and he is level 63 so he's mostly on the front end of the leveling curve, although he is beginning to tire of it. And I play CoH when the mood strikes me and anywhere from 30 minutes to 8 hours at a session. Each of us considers the games we play fun, but each of us plays quite a different game. Yeah. It's perception and what fits best into your lifestyle.

[Xilren's Twin]

MMOG programmers can't learn anything from CoH, except maybe that writing stable billing and login code shouldn't be praise-worthy, just expected. Designers on the other hand..

What about "how to implement a true Z axis in a mmorpg?" or "how to use instancing in lag reducing ways that don't impede gameplay" or even "how to have tons of character diversity without slowing your engine to a crawl showing more than 20 people"?

It's not just design, programmers have to make design documents execute in fun ways. There are lots of designs that sound fun on paper...

Xilren

[daveNYC]

"how to have tons of character diversity without slowing your engine to a crawl showing more than 20 people"?

I'll second that one.  My Athlon 700, with 512MB and a two year old video card (I can't even remember what it is) is doing quite nicely with the game.

Edit: Don't forget about the enemy AI and pathfinding.  I'll take my controller up to the top of a building, gust a pile of hellions off (it's not the fall it's the sudden stop) and they'll come back up in order to kick my ass.  Not by some cheeseball jump/teleport workaround, but by actually climbing the fire escape.

[eldaec]

For me...

1) No static spawn point camping (though the option to to do so is in there in some hazard zones, this is the first MMOG I've played where it is not the primary method of gaining xp).

2) No waiting for respawn timers on mobs.

3) Feeling (illusion though it may be) of actual progress when clearing rooms on a mission.

4) Little or no downtime, downtime is time in which I do not make decisions, it is always bad, it is never a good death penalty or balance device.

5) Infinitely more decision making in combat than previous MMOGS.

6) Teh shiny.

7) Violence has a context. I am bashing this mob to rescue this scientist etc. I am never bashing anything solely to gain xp. Even, 'I am bashing this mob to complete this mission for the group' is better than 'I am bashing this mob for an infinitesimal xp increase'.

8) A dev attitude that says things will not be in game if we cannot make them fun at this time (see: crafting, villans)

9) Classes which can all solo, and can all provide group utility.

10) No buff bots. All buffing is an active in-combat role.

11) No twinking, which in the long term prevents new players accessing the game.

12) Greater character diversity, both in costumes and powersets than almost anything else.

13) No more fricking elves.

14) No pure support class.

15) Client performance is excellent - the game does not fall over every 20 seconds. The account server and login servers appear to work. This should not be a big deal. But it is. (afaik, this was the best launch since at least DAoC)

There are bad things in there too btw...

1) The lfg tool needs to be expanded to work across the whole game - currently non-guild groups are going to be an ass to find at higher levels.

2) It needs an elder game of some sort. CoV might provide it.

3) The missions need more variety and complexity (they may have this at higher levels). Most today boil down to clearing out a building. More interesting use of timered events within missions might be good, or objectives where killing everything is not always the goal (maybe specified times when reinforcements arrive (friendly npcs or enemies), or run-the-guantlet floors where the objective is to get past uber mobs rather than necessarily face them down).

4) Thats about it.

[eldaec]

A quick point on attempts to reduce CoH to dps calculations and so on.

It doesn't work like that because so many powers in CoH work more as battle condition modifiers as opposed to straight damage or heal powers.

And because (at least so far) there are regular occasions where all the powers are useful, and occaisions where they are useless. There is no predominant tactic at this time, no pbaoe groups, no mez-and-kill for 8 hours straight at one spot. And the simple fact that you keep moving through maps rather than camp single spots helps reinforce this.

Example:

Hurricane/repel field is an aura that continually knocks mobs away from the user.

Fantastic in confined spaces as a group cc tool. In wide open areas it becomes an aggro escape tool for the single user, or maybe just the blasters hiding in the field. And you will have to visit both types of area - you do not camp in one or the other.

Also note that the usefulness of all these powers varies because we are not playing a game where 99% of mobs are predicatable tanks.

Giving the mobs the same variety of powers as players can have gives CoH a surprising amount of variety and freshness (and helps prevent single uber tactics) over other MMOGs.

[eldaec]

Oh and one more thing.

Pick up groups are *much* better in CoH than most MMOGs I've played before.

Why?

I think it's because if you form a group then the mystical power of mission selection seems to grant you some weird form of authority and people so far have actually listened to the plan, and seem wait for direction, and get nervous if there isn't any.

I guess simply choosing an arbitary player and making their group leadership mean something (even something minor) actually encourages others to listen. You don't get that in most MMOGs.

I noticed the same thing in PS where players tended to respond pretty well to commanders who use waypoints properly.

[Soukyan]

For me...
3) The missions need more variety and complexity (they may have this at higher levels). Most today boil down to clearing out a building. More interesting use of timered events within missions might be good, or objectives where killing everything is not always the goal (maybe specified times when reinforcements arrive (friendly npcs or enemies), or run-the-guantlet floors where the objective is to get past uber mobs rather than necessarily face them down).

I think this will get better with higher levels, but just as an example, at level 14, schild had a mission to find several canisters inside a huge warehouse. There were three of us in the group and when we went in, we found gigantic groups of Vahzilok and it was apparent to us that we were not going to be able to kill off these groups as we were. Solution? I hit group invis and we ran around and recovered the canisters without having to fight a single thing. Pretty nice, eh?

[Fargull]

Couple new things to add.

I have no Fing clue how to add the "exceptional"/"radiant"/"coolest" to my name after hitting 16th.

Not that big O deal though.

Found some interesting things.  Damage is scalling quickly now that I got past level 14.  I have two DOE in my Fly for endurance and I actually gain End back slowly flying around.  Took firebreath and am not fully convinced it is the shiz yet, but I did catch a clustered group of Clockwork last night on a mission and it hit for two maybe three waves of 36dam each.  Very nice.

Reading the story arcs in the missions is getting interesting, if only from a top down view on where the missions might take me.  Faultline is a damn cool zone, much cooler than Boomtown.

On the mention that pickup groups are easy, yes they are, but I found in Perez Park (and probably boomtown) that you can just go in single and help out groups and get really good xp.  Spent about two hours running around with what I thought was a group, but was not, just had six seperate people running around slaughtering hellions.  Asked about starting or joining the team and everyone replied xp was better not grouped.  I think this is the way any MMORPG should setup large areas for multi person encounters.

Now, couple of negatives so far that I have found.

Mobs stuck in the geometry, while not happening all the time, has happened under a few circumstances that equaled restarting the mission.

Restarting a group mission that a group finds easy can create a good supply of good xp, not sure this should be viable, as this can be done over and over.  Have not seen a great randomness in this either, from what I can tell the seed for the mission is generated when the mission is taken.  Should it be when the mission is reset, might make this xp funnel a little less desired.

[Alluvian]

I have no Fing clue how to add the "exceptional"/"radiant"/"coolest" to my name after hitting 16th

You do it at a trainer.  They will have a link you can follow to setup your prefixes.  Once you set it you can't change it until you get your next title.


Firebreath has 3 waves.  Always.  It either totally misses or hits all three.  And it is by far the best single damage attack a fire blaster has at that level.  Plus if you can keep the mobs clumped it is not that hard to hit 5-10 with it.  I pick a target towards the back center of the clump I want to hit and then trigger off the fire breath while BARELY in range.  This ensures the widest cone at the target.  I love firebreath.  Even vs just one target it is still a good power for the sheer damage it does.  I use it on LTs, bosses, or groups of minions.


I agree with your statement about missions.  I had one that was FULL of abominations in beta.  As a solo blaster these things are a cakewalk.  Hasten, and then just keep whipping fireblasts till they die.  They are so innacurate with their ranged attacks it is pathetic, and they are so dopey they would never be a threat of getting into melee.  Plus they don't assist each other much at all.  I kept getting mapserver disconnects during the mision and almost finished it 3 times with 3 other times getting about halfway through.  Each disconnect would put me outside the doors with a fully reaspawned mission.  It was maddening to me because I find abominations so freaking boring, but the exp was incredible because I could mow then down so fast.  I got TWO levels during that mission because of all the crashing.  I could have continued that indefinately on purpose if I wanted to.

In a group abominations can be a serious threat because they seem to get more aggroed (and they can do insane melee damage).  Solo for a blaster they are a joke.

[Soukyan]

Mobs stuck in the geometry, while not happening all the time, has happened under a few circumstances that equaled restarting the mission.

While it does not diminish the fact that this happens and is a bug, I have encountered it a couple times as well and found that in all cases, if you can get the mob targetted, Teleport Foe will pull it out for ya. This is especially helpful in those extreme cases where the mob is completely inside the geometry and can't be seen to be hit.

[HaemishM]

You know, I've seen the "exploit" that you could restart missions before finishing them for mondo exp. Yeah, you could do that. But I don't think the game really encourages it. After all, why keep doing the same thing over and over again to level when actually levelling is pretty fun? People tend to camp and grind exp. in this way to get AROUND the boring parts, but there really aren't any boring parts that I've seen so far. It's been so unlike other MMOG's in that I don't think there is anything I want to skip to get to the good parts.

[Furiously]

I figureded at this point one game would just be stealing customers from another. but I was grouped with two people three days ago that had never left Atlas Park, didnt understand the Con system, (We ended up going to Kings Row and they were amazed at the exp.)

Not everyone wants to play in a fantasy world - I'd love to see the subscriber numbers for this one.

[AOFanboi]

auto attack and sticky melee

Autoattack: Press Ctrl and click the power you want to auto-attack with, it gains a green circle around it and will be "default" attack whenever you don't use a different power. Dunno if it was added in a recent patch, but it's there. Cancel by either using the auto-power manually, or Ctrl+click again.

Not sure what you mean by "sticky melee", but you can follow a mob by pressing F. You still need to jump over obstacles/fences and the like to get at them, though.

My primary reason for liking the game is that for once, your character is actually a hero, saving civilians from evil and getting thanked in the process.

This occurs in what feels like a living city, not endless empty spaces with the occasional quest/trader NPC inbetween the respawning monsters. Also a plus.

Third, it actually is 3D. You can jump onto almost any surface, and leap in bounds (by holding the jump key) to jump some really impressive heights. Others have mentioned Hover/Fly, which is just the icing on the engine's cake.

Also, it borrows heavily (yet stealthily) from ToonTown, which is a good thing in my opinion.

I neglected to mention anotrher big plus: It's not stinking "phantasy". Though it lets you have pointy ears, that's more of an alien thing. Really.

The negative, aside from occasional deadly lag, is that it sucks to go back to other MMORPGs - like my beloved AO. "Why am I running so slow?", "Why can't I jump higher?" etc. start to pop into my mind...

[schmoo]

Also, it borrows heavily (yet stealthily) from ToonTown, which is a good thing in my opinion.

Yes, it does, and I agree, it's not a bad thing at all.

I admire CoH; it does a lot of things right.  I played during closed beta and some in the open beta, but I just couldn't see myself playing the game for more than a month or two, so I didn't bother to buy it.

It sure was fun for a while, though.

[Kyper]

auto attack and sticky melee

Autoattack: Press Ctrl and click the power you want to auto-attack with, it gains a green circle around it and will be "default" attack whenever you don't use a different power. Dunno if it was added in a recent patch, but it's there. Cancel by either using the auto-power manually, or Ctrl+click again.

Not sure what you mean by "sticky melee", but you can follow a mob by pressing F. You still need to jump over obstacles/fences and the like to get at them, though.

Even early in beta, some of the testers were saying that they didn't want to hit so many keys to fire off their attacks, they wanted an auto attack feature so they could basically walk away from their computer.  Thankfully, the devs effectively said "no way".  This type of auto attack would have ruined the game.

As for sticky melee, in some games your attacks fire off even if the mob runs away and you will stick to them like glue no matter what they do.  It's a less interactive type of combat.  Some testers asked for this, but it too was shot down.  

Both features would have made CoH's combat intensely boring, like most other MMOs.

[Arnold]

Glad to hear a new game finally got movement right.  That was one of the things I loved about AC1 that no game I've played since has equalled.  AC1 has awesome freedom of movement and a great camera.  I loved being able to go FAST and jump HIGH and fall off mountains, etc.

[Riggswolfe]

I still miss AC1 sometimes.

[Soukyan]

I still miss AC1 sometimes.

/agree