Tell me why you quit COH/COV or why I shouldn't

Cafe Society
21

I’m kinda sorry to say this, but the second wind for CoH, for me, was when I met the bestest guild EVAH! (well, I’ve only ever been in one guild, but hey), and I’m sad to say it wasn’t CECIL… It’s a medium Roleplaying SG, and large, and active. When I go back to PuGs, I realise that, well, PuGs SUCK. Really. If I’d have to be doing PuGs until now, I probably would have quit. But now I have a group of regulars that are intelligent and mature (at 23 myself, there are members almost TWICE my age. Gasp.) and RP, to boot. Just makes the game that much more interesting, I guess, when you don’t rely soley on ingame material to create the world…

But then, RPing may not be your thing… in any case, www.silverguard.net, on Virtue. Check it out if you’re interested.

22

Why I quit CoH/CoV:

The biggest problem for me was that I became bored with the monotony of the game content. Nearly every mission in the game is some variation of beat up X villains, go to location and beat up everyone there, or go to location and click on the glowing object. The game is entierly about combat. While there are some missions which can be won without fighting a single villain, you’re severely punished in XP and loot gained for avioding fights. CoH does have a very nice and pretty combat system, with a lot of different ways to build effective combat characters with different strengths and strategies, but there’s not much else to do in the game.

The content is fixed, with a set number of pre-written missions available for each level range and zone, so that when you make a new character from scratch you’re going to see the same missions you went through with your last character. It’s very interesting and fun the first few times you go through it, but eventually you’ve seen all the content and stories. And although my highest character only got to level 31, that character is an illusion/force field controller who’s constantly getting asked to sidekick to higher-level missions, so I’ve seen most of the upper level content already.

The unreality also put me off some. I know I shouldn’t complain about a video game, but the highly unreal city zones and office buildings laid out like Esher drawings made it hard for me to feel immersed in the game world. I don’t know why this bothers me more in CityofHeroes than in a game like WoW; perhaps it’s because WoW is openly a fantasy world, while CoH is trying to show a modern-day city setting.

I beta-tested CoV, didn’t like it much. It did have a lot of improvements, neat ideas that weren’t in CoH. But it was also severely buggy, even when beta testing ended and it was rolled out, and most of the high-level content seems to be PvP based, which doesn’t interest me.

I have tried out other MMORPGs, including WoW, AO, and Horizons, but never was interested enough to join them. CoH is the most fun MMORPG I’ve ever played, but I don’t seem to be all that into MMORPGs anymore. My wife still plays CoH/Cov, but she says it’s mostly for the friends and RP groups she hangs out with. I never got into the RP side of the game, so once the gameplay itself began to bore me there wasn’t any reason to keep playing. I do every now and then get nostalgic and log into her account to play for an hour or so, until I get bored and remember why I stopped playing.

23

Ha! Me powerleveling (GuanoLad, this means using any means necessary to gain experience as fast as possible, often by exploiting the game’s quirks), that’ll be the day. I don’t have the endurance.

I vastly prefer teaming with fellow CECIL-ites. But when I’m in the mood for teaming and no one is available, I find duos work well. I use the handy Find Team functionality to see who’s on, and ask characters 1-4 levels below me if they’d like to duo. They get great experience, and I get a helpful sidekick. It’s easy to adjust to one other’s playstyle (this goes both ways), and any personality clashes are easy to resolve: you break up. I’ve even prompted higher players if they’d like a sidekick (reverseing roles).

Large pick-up teams are an invitation to disaster, although I’ve been on exceptionally great PUGs.

24

Out of curiosity:

  1. Did they ever come out with that skill system that was originally intended for issue 1 or 2?

  2. Did they ever improve Blizzard?

25

[hijack]

Something occured to me on a recent trip to Austin (where the game was designed):

The main superhero of the game must be named after the local newspaper (The Austin-American Statesman).

Anyone ever heard the Devs comment on that.

26

Skill system is “later”. :rolleyes:

Blizzard will be getting a buff in the upcoming i7, where it will be affected by self-buffs such as Buildup and Enrages, or Fulcrum shift. Woo!

27

Nope. They’re having trouble making it fit into the game while at the same time be “fun”.

*Effective as of last month, Blizzard (along with Rain of Fire, Ice Storm, Burn, Ignite, Rain of Arrows, etc.) can now be buffed via powers like Build Up.

28

Oops, Tabby’s correct: it’s not live yet.

29
  1. Nope. They’ve tried several designs, and none of them met some mysterious, internal “fun” requirements. Which I interpret to mean that the results were boring grinds with unexciting results. The idea has been put on hold until they come up with something better.

A limited form of crafted has been introduced, using workshops in the bases. It seems to avoid many of the nuisances of other crafting systems; you can’t fail and waste material, you unlock recipes with SG badges, and any given item can be built with lots of different starting materials (so you don’t have to farm one particular enemy type to get key pieces of salvage). On the downside, all you can craft so far are items to upgrade your base, most of which are PvP-oriented. The telepads (which allow you to make your base a shortcut to other zones) and the infirmary (which lets you rez in your base and return directly to the zone you died in) are convenient, but that’s about it. In the next Issue, there will be a base item that lets you produce temp powers, but I don’t know if it will require crafting or not.

  1. Blizzard is slated for a significant improvement in the next Issue, along with a bunch of similar powers–buffs will affect them once the fix is added.