How are the fights?

wootin

Looking for a reasonably fun game to play with a long-distance friend of mine. I checked some of the movies and it looks like the fights are the same old "stand there and trade shots" deals. I did see something about cooler combat moves, so I wanted to ask how the fights were in game. Do mobs move around, try to evade, change up to use different ranged skills, etc?

themilton

The fighting isn't turn-based, if that's one of the things you're afraid of. You do have to wait for attack #1 to finish before attack #2 will start, but it's not Hero throws a punch, Villain kicks Hero, Hero throws another punch. Your attacks can also be interrupted if they have a long activation time (like sniper attacks) or cancelled out by other attacks/buffs/heals.

The mobs do move and will chase you if you try to run away. They're usually not too hard to evade as long as you don't get stunned or cornered. They don't really move around you evading attacks and looking for openings like you might see in a one-on-one fighting game. Several of my characters have cone-area of effects, so I'll sometimes try to get all the baddies in that cone. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't - my movement will cause them to react and move, but they don't always move how I want them to.

Most of the the villains you fight will have both melee and range moves. Most of the minions are limited to about 4 attacks total (a couple melee and a couple ranged), but they usually have a melee or ranged preference. If they see you from a distance, they might first attack with a ranged move and then switch to melee as you get closer, or chase you so that you get within melee range, or stay at a distance and use purely ranged moves - it all depends on who it is.

wootin

Hmm, ok, p'raps I'll download a trial and send him some movies to check out, see what he likes.

 

Thanks for the reply!

 

woot

Amarsir

I describe combat in this game as "fast." Anything you saw video of was likely unusual, which is why it was shown but probably not representative.

The basic rule on which fights are built is 1 hero = 3 minion enemies at a time. Now with skill and good build you can move from 3 at your level to 3 higher level. Or with the right AOEs you can handle many more than 3 at a time. Or a defensive archetype could survive many more but doesn't get any offensive advantage out of it.

This results in a full team of 8 constantly encountering spawns of 16 enemies of varying rank (Boss, Lieutenant, and Minion.) The concept of a "pull" - although it works reasonably well when you want to - is not a core part of the experience here like it may be in another game. If you insist on pulling one enemy at a time then you are doing something wrong.

(I compare this to my brief experience in WoW where the team would desperately try to peel off enemies 1 at a time. 2 we could handle, 3 was a tough fight, and 4 meant we're screwed. It always seemed slow to me, and that is not going to be the case in City of Heroes.)

As befits that type of combat, some offense-specced characters can even kill an enemy in one shot. In other games that might seem crazy, or trivially easy. But if you are facing multiple enemies at a time, one-shotting one does nothing to protect you from the other two so you aren't out of the woods yet. So that's why I describe this as "fast." You see a lot of enemies at once, and take them down quickly. Then keep moving to the nest group.

(For another example, teammate buffs last 2-5 minutes here before needing to be reapplied. Things just aren't meant to take that long, and when it does it's the rare exception for a particular challenge.)

I should also mention that there is no such thing as a "default attack" that you click on and sit back. You have a tray of powers chosen as you level up, and you chain them as you see fit. There is an ability to set one power to auto-fire (control-click it) but that is hardly the same as the "basic attack" choice would be elsewhere. That again means combat is very active, because if you're not hitting powers then you're not doing anything.

Now the other way you could interpret your question regards the AI. It's better than it used to be, but still has flaws. First though I should point out something that should be universally true for all games but isn't. Geometry matters. You can hide behind a wall, or stack of crates, or dumpster. And the enemy can't see you, and can't shoot through it. (Though they do know where you went if you already aggroed them.)

This is wonderful to me, and makes pulling powerful and running possible. However, it also means that you can pretty much always get an enemy to come to you. This has lead to Herding, where a Tanker will get as much aggro as possible, duck around a corner, and they will follow. And some people insist on playing this routine way. I personally find it takes the challenge out by turning the behavior predictable. There are times when it really is the best strategy to survive, but I (and thankfully many others) don't get so routine about it for every day play.

One of the AI updates made enemies a little smarter there. They seem to reach an agreement where only a few will charge up to melee level, while others will stay back and used ranged attacks. (Until the melee ones die, since melee does more damage.) Similarly, when they run around a corner to find someone, a few of the mobs will take wide corners to stay at range rather than running into a trap. But still the basic technique works.

(Oh, and yes when an enemy gets low on life, or sees his buddies just died, he will sometimes decide to run. It's not a big deal though, since they almost always come back eventually.)

I could get into a few more details but that is the gyst of PvE. PvP is a different animal, and it's currently getting an overhaul which I (as a mostly non-PvPer who pays attention to it) think is a positive change. But we haven't even been able to test it yet, it has only just been announced.

If you are interested in a trial, there should be keys floating around. If you can't find them, send me a PM and I should have 1 or 2 I can spare.

wootin

Originally posted by Amarsir


I describe combat in this game as "fast." Anything you saw video of was likely unusual, which is why it was shown but probably not representative.
The basic rule on which fights are built is 1 hero = 3 minion enemies at a time. Now with skill and good build you can move from 3 at your level to 3 higher level. Or with the right AOEs you can handle many more than 3 at a time. Or a defensive archetype could survive many more but doesn't get any offensive advantage out of it.
This results in a full team of 8 constantly encountering spawns of 16 enemies of varying rank (Boss, Lieutenant, and Minion.) The concept of a "pull" - although it works reasonably well when you want to - is not a core part of the experience here like it may be in another game. If you insist on pulling one enemy at a time then you are doing something wrong.
(I compare this to my brief experience in WoW where the team would desperately try to peel off enemies 1 at a time. 2 we could handle, 3 was a tough fight, and 4 meant we're screwed. It always seemed slow to me, and that is not going to be the case in City of Heroes.)
As befits that type of combat, some offense-specced characters can even kill an enemy in one shot. In other games that might seem crazy, or trivially easy. But if you are facing multiple enemies at a time, one-shotting one does nothing to protect you from the other two so you aren't out of the woods yet. So that's why I describe this as "fast." You see a lot of enemies at once, and take them down quickly. Then keep moving to the nest group.
(For another example, teammate buffs last 2-5 minutes here before needing to be reapplied. Things just aren't meant to take that long, and when it does it's the rare exception for a particular challenge.)
I should also mention that there is no such thing as a "default attack" that you click on and sit back. You have a tray of powers chosen as you level up, and you chain them as you see fit. There is an ability to set one power to auto-fire (control-click it) but that is hardly the same as the "basic attack" choice would be elsewhere. That again means combat is very active, because if you're not hitting powers then you're not doing anything.
Now the other way you could interpret your question regards the AI. It's better than it used to be, but still has flaws. First though I should point out something that should be universally true for all games but isn't. Geometry matters. You can hide behind a wall, or stack of crates, or dumpster. And the enemy can't see you, and can't shoot through it. (Though they do know where you went if you already aggroed them.)
This is wonderful to me, and makes pulling powerful and running possible. However, it also means that you can pretty much always get an enemy to come to you. This has lead to Herding, where a Tanker will get as much aggro as possible, duck around a corner, and they will follow. And some people insist on playing this routine way. I personally find it takes the challenge out by turning the behavior predictable. There are times when it really is the best strategy to survive, but I (and thankfully many others) don't get so routine about it for every day play.
One of the AI updates made enemies a little smarter there. They seem to reach an agreement where only a few will charge up to melee level, while others will stay back and used ranged attacks. (Until the melee ones die, since melee does more damage.) Similarly, when they run around a corner to find someone, a few of the mobs will take wide corners to stay at range rather than running into a trap. But still the basic technique works.
(Oh, and yes when an enemy gets low on life, or sees his buddies just died, he will sometimes decide to run. It's not a big deal though, since they almost always come back eventually.)
I could get into a few more details but that is the gyst of PvE. PvP is a different animal, and it's currently getting an overhaul which I (as a mostly non-PvPer who pays attention to it) think is a positive change. But we haven't even been able to test it yet, it has only just been announced.
If you are interested in a trial, there should be keys floating around. If you can't find them, send me a PM and I should have 1 or 2 I can spare.

 

Thanks, that does tell me what I wanted to know. My friend liked EQ2, where the entire game was built around doing exactly what you described in WoW and Herding. It was all about either easy-moding the fights by pulling 1 mob at a time or getting a tank to take and hold all of the aggro, which is just Easy Mode #2 lol.

So over time, because the dev's gameplay was so easily bested by players, they just kept turning up the HP/Damage stats to try to make it more difficult.Last I saw, the landscape was littered with Heroic level mobs all standing around just waiting to be farmed. How adventurous and fun a game that is lol.

Your description sounds like COx has much faster (which to me is more fun) gameplay. Can you help me understand why the videos show much slower fights? I looked at Issue #11's video here and the fights seem really slowly paced - whole seconds between hits and such. That's what got me wondering if this was just EQ2 in spandex . 

W

Raltar

I think the speed of the fighting depends a LOT on your own personal style, which class you play as and what powers you choose as you level up. Keep in mind there is no "auto-attack" in this game, which means you can't just click on a bad guy and watch your character use a default attack every couple of seconds like in most MMORPGs. In this game the only form of attack is to activate some offensive power. So the speed at which you fight is going to depend a lot on what your powers are.

For example, I play a scrapper as my main character and I favor a fast fighting style where I'm attacking as much of the time as possible. I have a lot of offensive powers with short recharge times and high accuracy. My attacks may not be as powerful as the attacks used by another character but I'm still doing a lot of damage because I have enough attacks and they recharge quickly enough that I'm attacking 99.9% of the time during a battle. Thats just the way my character is set up though. A tactic like that may not work for other classes or it may not fit with your playstyle. So yeah, I think in the end it just boils down to the choices you make. Personally, I think the fact that this game actually gives you the freedom to make such choices is one of its big advantages.

That video was just lame. I think they were more interested in their audio descriptions of the new powers than they were in what was happening on screen. The combat isn't really like that.

wootin

Originally posted by Raltar



That video was just lame. I think they were more interested in their audio descriptions of the new powers than they were in what was happening on screen. The combat isn't really like that.

 

Thanks, that helps a lot Have you seen any videos anywhere that show more of what the game is really about? I'd like to get my friend's opinion. CoH may be a game we can all play with his kids.

Wikkedbowtie

They have a lot of videos on the official web site. You can also find some videos on youtube.

Snipan

The Issue 11 demo video is not very representative for the game, but more like a show off for the new power sets. Every clip is like "now lets look closely how this new attack looks like".

One thing I like with CoX, compared to EQ2 or WoW, is that instead of heroic mobs, it is the same mobs as for solo play, but much bigger (bigger team = bigger mobs) You are a super hero/villain after all, and the fights in CoX feels much faster and more heroic, when you can charge in to big groups of enemies. As the hero/villain you are always much better than an single enemy at your level, even bosses (arch villains and giant monsters excluded), but they are many to compensate for that.

Amarsir

[quote]Originally posted by wootin
Thanks, that helps a lot Have you seen any videos anywhere that show more of what the game is really about? I'd like to get my friend's opinion. CoH may be a game we can all play with his kids.[/b][/quote]
As the others said, the point in that video wasn't to show real combat. It was to show off some new animations all by their lonesome so we could "ooh" and "ah" over it at our leisure.

Here is a reasonable example:

The beginning combat should be easier than he makes it look, and the final boss there is harder than he looks (the guy popped some power-up "inpsirations" right before that fight.) But it's a pretty good sense of gameplay. 1:30 shows a decent fight that demonstrates he's being reasonably challenged.

I should also mention he's only 18ish there, so it's still a bit early as far as player and enemy complexity goes.

Here is another example I like:

It's done from a Blaster's point of view, which means range, which means you can't see the enemies so close up in that video. But it shows off a full team working together. And that's probably a slower team even than the ones I run. (Though probably about average. I tend to be impatient. )

wootin

Ok, thanks all! I'm downloading now.

 

W

mrguy123

Yea, the issue 11 video is a very bad example of combat. Combat is very fast in this game and a lot of fun.

 

Also, if you want, you can take up the opprotunity in my sig. I suggest you check out my thread. You don't have to take up the offer, but it's there in case you'd like any assistance or help getting familiar with the game.

Good luck!