How well does City of Heroes do solo play? While I think the idea of getting a group together sounds fun, being forced to group early in the game is the main reason I quit playing Everquest.
Earlier in the Beta, joining a team was virtually mandatory once you got past level 5-6. It simply became too difficult to work alone after a certain point. After much complaint, this was changed. Now it’s difficult, but possible, to play the game solo. Joining a team is still very rewarding. Although the mission scaling is such that some missions are actually more difficult to win on a team, simply wandering around attacking randomly spawned villain mobs is much easier and safer with a group.
I find it comes and goes in waves. Around level 5 I needed to team up with others to complete missions, but that lessened around 8-9. Then around 11 I had to again, and now that I’m 14th I’m often (although not always) able to solo pretty well. Also, taking out ‘random’ street crime is always fun, although I’d like to know what the heck they make purse straps out of that won’t break when people who can tear up chunks of sidewalk and throw them try to grab said purse from a struggling civilian!
Alright alright…I’m going to Best Buy after work to pick me up a pre-order box. I have a $5 coupon so it’ll cost me $5. And then if I don’t like it, who says I gotta go pay for the rest of it, eh? Not a bad price for a rental.
Once I get my invite, I’ll be on as Max Carnage…if no one has taken my name by then.
…aaaaaand no one has it on the shelves any longer. sigh.
When online, look for me, Zombie Man, a user of dark forces to eat brains.
Mmmmm. Braaainnns.
City has gone gold! $14.99/month US confirmed.
As far as I know, the game is still under NDA so I will not be commenting on gameplay specifics yet. I will go so far as to say that of all the MMORPGs I’ve played (and I’ve played almost all of them), this one feels more like an action game than an RPG due to lack of downtime.
If anyone wants to meet up in beta, and I will be keeping the same name for the release, look for Disco-Inferno, level 11 fire/fire blaster. I’m part of a long running guild, the Wanderers, www.thewanderers.us if there is any interest there as well.
I’m in Beta right now too, and I am having a BLAST. It’s great to see an MMORPG where no one looks alike, even remotely.
Look me up. Name of Hawthorn Mutant Scrapper. Went the Spikes Invulnerability route. I am interesting in a SD team for sure.
According to the official website, the non-disclosure agreement has been eliminated now. So go on, give us the scoop!
Yep. NDA is gone, gone, gone! So… Whatcha wanna know? 
I just read that there’s no items or looting, instead you earn enhancements to your existing skills. How does that work out? Can you sell or trade enhancements? How about stuff like kill-stealing, griefing, camping, etc… Also with no items I guess there’s no trade skills?
Whenever you or anyone on your team on the same map as you defeats a villain, you will get Experience and Influence points (unless the villain is significantly below your level, in which case you get none) and you will sometimes recieve an Enhancement or Inspiration. There is no looting of bodies as such, just these automatic rewards. You will also be rewarded with Experience and Influence for completeing missions. All your powers have slots in which you can place Enhancements; these improve the powers in various ways, such as increasing damage or range, or decreasing Endurance cost or recharge time. Gathering Experience lets you go up in level, and with each level you gain you get additional powers and/or Enhancement slots on existing powers. Inspirations are single-use tokens, which give you back some Health or Endurance, increase your Accuracy, Damage, or Defense for a short period of time, or do a few other useful things. There are various stores and contacts around the maps where you can buy or sell Enhancements or Inspirations (using Influence points gathered from kills and missions.) There are no items, trade skills, crafting, or any way to go up in level other than combat and missions.
Kill-stealing is a problem on the more crowded maps. In some areas, random spawn mobs have gotten seriously overhunted. It’s better now than it was earlier in the Beta when they were doing load-testing. I have yet to notice any camping going on - random spawns are frequent enough that there’s not much motivation to, and the real high-level villains are found on mission maps which are generated as unique instances for each hero or team doing the mission.
The game is by far the most ‘action oriented’ MMORPG. Downtime is generally minimal, and combat gets hot and heavy, unlike the slower strategic EQ might be. There is no crafting and no ‘gear’ per se. Most times when you level, you will either choose a new power or add ‘slots’ to existing powers. These slots allow you to add enhancements to the powers. Among the enhancements (and I hear there are more types as you level up) are increased damage, increased range, increased accuracy, reduced cost, increased flight speed, wider cone range, etc. In addition, each enhancement has a number that signifies the strength of the enhancement. ON TOP OF THAT, you can combine like enhancements to get more benefit out of them.
The other kind of loot in the game are inspirations. At the start you can hold four of these, but as you level up, you gain more slots. These are short term ‘potions’ that enhance abilities, like health, defense, damage, as well as some that allow you to revive yourself if you fall.
Lastly, you earn influence in combat, which is like money in that it allows you to buy inspirations and enhancements.
Next up is character creation, which is AMAZING. Besides a nearly infinite combination of body types, clothes, shapes, and accessories, there are dozens of combinations for powers setup initially. If I recall, there are 4 main types (magic based, science, mutant, and athletic), 5 sub-types (blaster, controller, scrapper, defender, tanker) and from within those, about a half dozen main powers categories and a half dozen secondary power categories. Each of those categories contains seven or eight powers that will obtain as you level (you won’t get them all). Phew, on top of THAT are two common pools that you can choose from as you level out of six or seven common pool types (healing, fitness, leadership, teleport, etc).
Gameplay is great. You can either roam the city streets stopping crime, or pick up missions from various contacts that you will meet. Some of these missions consist of ‘kill 10 xxx types’ that are straightforward. Many more (you often have a choice) involve entering a building/cave/sewer and killing everyone and/or finding various items. These indoor missions are ‘instanced’ in that the only people who will go in with you are those on your team.
Speaking of team, once you hit level 10, you can group with people of any level. If they are more than 3 levels below you, they become your ‘sidekick’. During this time, as long as they stay relatively close to you, they will fight as a character one level less than you. This means that you will always be able to hunt with your friends, regardless of the difference in levels.
There is, in early levels (I’m only 11th) a lot of duplication in bad guys. Members of the ‘skulls’ fall into one of 5 or 6 types, as do the hellions, as do the clockworks, etc. Each villain type has their own specialty (clockworks are resistant to mind control, etc), but there are supposedly many more villain types as you level (undead, monsters, etc.).
As far as world size, it is tough to say. It doesn’t seem TOO large so far, but it is large enough. Of course there are SEVERAL areas I haven’t seen yet so I have to reserve comment. Travel is easy though as a tram in most zones will (for free) take you to other zones. The world is also in 3-d in that you can climb fire escapes to rooftops (or if you have the power, fly to the top or jump to the top).
Death is kind of rough. If you die, you lose no gear, and if you are not revived, you will appear in the hospital in your zone (or the nearest zone). That is the good news. The bad news is that when you die, you accumulate and xp debt. This means that when you gain xp for some certain total amount, half of it goes towards your levelling and half has to pay off this debt. You can still level, and you will never LOSE xp, but levelling will slow down if you die too much.
The only downside is that gameplay CAN get repetitive. As I said, the quests so far consist of kill missions for the most part and levelling can be a bit slow (though I die wayyy too much while still in beta). Supposedly the quests get better once you hit 15, and I get so engrossed in the team combat so much, I don’t pay attention to the levelling much, but those who need the repetitive bell-dinging may be disappointed.
Of course, unlike most other MMORPGs, in this one, if you are into crafting, don’t bother to sign up.
Lastly, for now, I run a 1.4gHz, 384 meg of ram, and 64meg Geforce 3 card, and have almost no lag. The only time it gets bad is when there are a dozen or so heroes on the screen, and even then it is FAR better than any other older MMORPG I’ve played.
If you have any other questions, let me know. I’ll be checking this thread often. And again, if you see a guy in a purple suit with a flame pattern on the legs, say hi to me, Disco-Inferno (burn baby burn!).
Now that the NDA is lifted, my wife has put up a few screen shots from our Beta experience:
A note on the ‘repetitiveness’ factor- At low levels this is true, but as you get higher up and get more contacts that will assign you to different mission types, this tends to fade. I teamed / sidekicked with some 36th level folks, and was battling some of the weirdest stuff I’d ever seen (including ALIEN MONKEYS!)
Another interresting thing about levelling- When you start out, most of your ‘indoor’ missions are in burnt-out warehouses, sewers, or caves. When you get higher level, things get more interresting. When we were figthing those monkeys, we were in an underground supervillain base that would have made Doctor Evil salivate. Very cool stuff.
Aaargh. Don’t know how that got mangled. That’s http://www.geocities.com/dina_the_bard/coh.html, of course.
Can you change/alter your costume on the fly after character creation?
Not yet. Currently your appearance is fixed when the character is created. There have been complaints about this, and the developers are considering adding a feature allowing costume changes in exchange for spending Influence points.
Apologies for bumping
I’ve just pre-ordered the game and I think I’m in beta as well. Downloading the client as we speak, so no characters yet. I’m all for fighting ignorance, so sign me up for a possible Superteam