I’ve never been into online RPG’s. (I was a D&D fanatic many, many years ago.) But I’ve lately been fretting that I’m just not geeky enough anymore, so I think I should start. “City of Heroes” appears to have a superhero slant, which I would get into. But I want to hear a bit more about it before I subscribe to the newsletter. Since it is apparently very popular here, what can the Teeming Millions say about it? What do you like? what do you dislike? What do you actually DO??
Basically, you do missions mostly of the “go here and beat these guys/click on this object/ escort this NPC” variety. There are random missions ( Newspaper missions for villains, Police Band for heroes ), missions from contacts ( which often are part of a story arc ), Mayhem/Safeguard missions where you rob/protect a bank ( and get a temporary power for success ), and Task Forces/Strike Forces/Trials which are long teamed missions with a special reward at the end. There’s also PvP, but it’s a minor part of the game. There are also various Giant Monsters to beat, Mothership Raids at high levels, and special Events - alien invasions, for example, and a zombie apocalypse is scheduled for October. Also, you can collect badges, which are awards for all sorts of things ( kill 200 of a special enemy, beat a specific mission, go to a particular enemy, etc ); most are just a way of keeping score, but some grant powers and costume parts.
Some points to be made. First, the costume creator is great; you can give your characters an incredible variety of appearances. Male, Female, Huge ( like the Hulk ); human or animal heads; helmets, horns, chains, tattoos, spikes for eyes, animal legs, robot legs, robot hands, various armors, and on and on. You can get capes at 20 ( after doing a mission; heroes earn their capes, villains steal it from an NPC hero ) , auras at 30 ( flaming body aura, electric fists, glowing eyes, etc ). Up to 5 slots per character.
The chat system is supposed to be better than most others ( it’s my only MMO, so I don’t know personally ). Multiple cross server channels ( CECIL is for SDMB members ), private /tells to specific people, a player help channel, multiple windows with different colors and labels ( for the colorblind ) for each channel.
There’s very little of the “take 1 hour to get to a 10 minute mission” thing you see in some games; starting at level 5 you can get things like a jet pack that just lets you fly over enemies and obstacles; by 14 you can get a permanent travel power ( Fly, Superspeed, Superjump, Teleport ).
While there is now crafting in the game, unlike other games you don’t need to get the best stuff to play; you can use the basic “Enhancements” and do fine.
The Dev team is active and actually talks to the playerbase.
While it can get repetitive, the game changes enough that if you get bored you can drop out for a while and it’ll be different.
The game is quite solo friendly, if that’s what you like. It’s also very team friendly; the “sidekick system” means that you can team at a low level with a high level and still survive and contribute. You won’t be stuck where if you team with your level 40 friend at level 20 you die fast and can’t scratch the enemy.
The games “classes”, called ATs for Archetypes aren’t as restrictive as I’ve heard is true in other games, nor is teaming with them. you don’t NEED the classic Tank+Healer+Damager combo. 8 Defenders ( the closest CoX comes to a “Healer” class ) can annihilate most anything with their massed buffs and debuffs, despite having no Tanks, for example.
Unlike many such games, it’s more about the road to max level ( 50 ), and not about rushing to 50 and doing the real game. So don’t do what some people from other games do and fanatically rush top 50 as fast as possible missing all the content.
It’s currently the only MMO I play right now, and while I’m in a bit of a slump I love it overall. It’s a very casual game that you can play for any length of time, although I believe that’s true of most MMOs these days.
The costume creator is perhaps the biggest draw; much of the game is about aesthetics rather than stats, and earning unlockable costume pieces is a very real reward.
Much of the gameplay can be repetitive, although again, the same can be said of most MMOs. However, a lot of work has gone into making the gameplay visually interesting and fluid, and I’ll wager there’s at least one class (Archetype or AT) in either City of Heroes or City of Villains (both are part of the same package now) that will appeal to you. Even within a class, there are several playstyles available. (Right now I’m absolutely adoring my Fire/Devices blaster. Incredible firepower mixed with lockdown and stealth abilities. One hell of an assassin.) If you get tired of killing guys one way, there’s plenty of available character slots for you to try killing guys another way.
The Virtue server has a thriving roleplay community, if that’s your thing. I’ve known a lot of people who got bored of the actual game, but continue to play because of the RP value. Because of the robust character creation system, RP tends to feel more solid in CoH than other games I’ve found.
I’m actually not on CECIL. I’ll have to sign up on that when I get online tonight.
ETA: Naturally as soon as I post I remember some things. The content is great. Much of the gameplay is beating up thugs and monsters in new and interesting ways, but the backstory and story arcs are very rich and fleshed out. Even at the low levels, the NPCs involve you in city-saving plots, and the endgame is epic as anything. Like DT says, it’s about enjoying the journey to level 50 rather than getting to level 50 itself.
DT did a good overall description there.
The costume creator is far beyond any other MMORG.
I play World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online, and started playing CoH about a month ago. CoH offers a different “genre” to play around in when you get tired of “sword & sorcery”.
There are some minor details that make the game different, to me, than the other two I mentioned. One, with flying possible, the game actually takes advantage of a 3D enviornment, where WoW rarely does (only occasionally, and at high levels), and LotRO practically not at all. The first time I had to chase a fleeing “mob” (computer controlled foe) capable of flight around the buildings and through the monorail supports in the game, I was impressed with how much 3D could bring fun to a MMORG.
Another, a “contact” is an NPC that gives you quests to do (if you fall in the right level range). When you finish the quest (say, go kill 10 street gang punks), you return to the contact for another. (Just like WoW or LotRO.) However, after doing two or three quests for the contact, they “give you their cell phone number”. Now, you can just “call” them from anywhere, instead of having to hike all the way back to them. Much less time wasted, and I’ll miss that when I have to go back to WoW for the Frozen Throne Expansion. 
One of the things I don’t like, however, is theat they made it tougher to “respec”. If you pick a skill (while leveling up) that you later learn you don’t like, your kinda stuck with it. The remedies: 1) create a new toon, 2) go through a special quest that becomes available when you hit a certain level, 3) or pay $10 U.S. to NCsoft. ugh…
Huh? How did they make it tougher? There’s always been three ways to respec, at least since I began playing:
- Complete the 60-minute trial,
- Find or buy a respec recipe with in-game currency,
- Earn a respec as a veteran reward, or as a bonus when they make earth-shattering changes to one or more ATs.
They have since added:
- Pay $10.
I don’t see how that makes it any harder. 1 through 3 weren’t affected at all.
Harder compared to WoW. sorry.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Well, it thematically makes some sense. Many superheroes never chose their powers to begin with, so locking them in isn’t wholly out of bounds. The respecs are just tough enough to get that you wouldn’t do it on a whim, but easy enough to get at least once during a character’s career.
Plus they’re not shy about handing out respecs when they make major changes, as I said. When the recent issue (read: major update, for non-CoH players) came out, the Stalker AT got a massive balance pass and they ended up handing out like 2 respecs to every character on the game, regardless of whether they were Stalkers or not.
ETA (again, dur): I should mention for Superman’s benefit that re-arranging your powers is actually not a big thing. You’re given some choice in which powers you take as you level up, but it is very very hard to create a non-viable character. Respecification is primarily for optimizing your build, and it’s not necessary for new players to worry about it until well after they’ve gotten their feet wet.
Yeah, your right about it not being absolutely “necessary”. There are many viable ways to play the same “class”, which is another CoH strength.
My personality type sorta drives me into trying to “tweak” and find the “perfect” (for me) character. Maybe that is a habit trained into me by WoW (where the talent trees are not as balanced, and can lead to constant respeccing).
ponder
Actually, the reason they gave out 2 respecs is that they didn’t intend to give out the first when they did. Normally, they roll out a new Issue, they wait a week or two THEN give out a respec, and that’s what they said they’d do with Issue 12 - except someone punched the wrong command and rolled out Issue and respec at the same time. So, they went ahead and tossed out a second one, with the timing they’d normally use.
They DID hand out a targeted respec to players who had more than one Gaussian proc slotted when they decided to make them unique, so the players could extract them.
I did not know that. That’s funny.
It works for me, anyway. I’ve got a bunch of characters that have a couple of freespecs now, so I don’t have to worry about doing the trial for a long time. It’s a fun trial, but it gets repetitive after a while.
Also; you can join a “supergroup”; the main advantage to this is access to a base which can contain various amenities, such as storage and teleporters to various zones. CECIL has branches on several servers, Virtue hero side and Protector villianside being the biggest.
I’m going to download the free 14 day trial and give it a shot. But it won’t happen until next week. This is a double Fame weekend in Guild Wars.
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Looks like I need to play some GW.
Those who get the Good vs. Evil edition also get a Jump Pack at level 1. It’s not capable of flying like the Jet Pack but can be useful when combined with jumping.
OK; the limitations include a level 13 ( or is it 14 ? ) level cap, you can’t start a team ( but can join one ), and heavy chat restrictions ( blame the Real Money Trade ( RMT ) spammers for the latter two ). The Help channel’s still accessable; type /help and your message to access it. If you want a team you’ll have to run up and ask in person; I recommend starting in Atlas City heroside since there’s almost always crowds of people.
Yup; very useful. It turns Superjump into SuperFly, speeds up Fly, makes Superspeed less frustrating.
Teleport doesn’t need it. It’s just awesome on its own. 
One of the best things about the game is that it is the most streamlined MMO I think I’ve ever encountered. Downtime in the game is about as minimal as possible which is shocking when you consider how many games try to prolong it for the sake of keeping players on the line as long as possible.
Also great is that every character plays very differently and specialization doesn’t hamper you as badly as some MMO’s where players quickly find the most efficient path and anyone not on it has to sit the game out. Don’t get me wrong; there’s still a bit of that in the game but my first character was an energy blaster which I spec’ed out for extreme range. My Ice/FF Controller was built around active defense than straight control and would typically be the first one into a fight. Some people would get locked into a certain mindset (healer/tank/damage) but in CoH alternatives were very viable.
I played the game to death and could walk away. However I am now looking forward to Champions which is by the same team and looks to take the lessons learned the hard way in CoH’s and apply them to a fresh game.
Really? I thought I was the last Doper still playing GW.
I also thought that I had another 3 weeks or so before the next double Fame weekend was due. I recently gave up on PvE to focus entirely on PvP and I wanted to get my Bambi before the next double Fame weekend, alas that is not to be, as I am still just shy of r2. One month ago I had 2 Fame and I am sooooo close to r2 now that I can taste it.
What is your IGN? I don’t figure on sleeping too much this weekend so I’ll almost always be on and almost always looking for a group, being r2 does that to you. BTW, you can add me to your friends list as Oliver Jonas Queen.
Sorry for the hijack.
I’ll believe it when I see it, to be honest. One of the best things to happen to City of Heroes was Jack Emmert (head dev, alias Statesman) leaving the team and NCSoft taking over. The game’s gotten its second wind, and the dev team is highly motivated and excited about the stuff they’re able to do now. They’re hiring on more people, and apparently Statesman blocked many interesting ideas because he had a Vision, which…many people honestly didn’t find all that fun to play.
I played the game briefly before NCSoft bought it, and started heavily playing right when they took over, and the stuff that’s happened since Emmert left has been downright unreal, and all of it awesome.
You’re probably the last one playing regularly. I mainly played at release but bought the expansions about six months ago. Just haven’t done much with 'em.
I have a few but haven’t played in so long that I don’t remember.