One of the reasons I stated was about PVP but mostly it is the lack of difficulty in the game, as well as the complete lack of competitivenes. Champions PVP is not good either, but mainly I was not speaking of PVP alone but the complete change of direction this game took at that point. There were a few other things that took place there as well, one of which was the deliberate attempt to kill socialization in the game. AE single handedly revolutionized ignoring content and ignoring other players.
For a moment there I forgot I was on a forum, and I just remembered the rules of conversation of forums.
1. When in a disagreement, faced with anyone having a legitimate point, shout them down, call them a retard, or tell them they are a crybaby.
2. stop the process of logical thinking after rule 1.
3. Repeat until someone gets banned or mods step in and delete everything.
get over it, it's my opinion.
It still looks like you're talking about a completely different game. AE was bad at the beginning, but the devs have been working on preventing exploitative farming so you don't really see AE farms anymore. I'm also not sure what other gripes you have, the game has only been inproving over time.
So far your complaints are: PvP (have fun with CO's monster play by the way,) and AE (long since fixed by the devs.) Anything else?
1. no socialization, they gave players a tool to pad their own missions and increase mob spawn so the people left soloing the game can dual box more affectively.
2. non existant population, maybe you don't see as many farmers any more because there is nobody left in this game, because farmers can play farmville for free. Which is probably more fun.
3. unchallenging, task forces can be soloed.
You addressed one point , and said it still wasn't fixed, anything else ?
in calmest breeze, in tornadoes blast, no evil shall escape my gas let those who are an evil fink fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
Originally posted by hehenep Because as much as CO has 'better graphics' they don't actually end up looking all that good? Or at least that's my opinion of them.
I won't argue with artistic taste, I just want to point out for anyone who may care that the comic book outlines in CO can be turned off, which is what I do. The game is not really cell shaded, the black lines are a lot like that 2xSai stuff in the ZSNES emulator. As a 3 year vet of CoX, I feel that CO without the black outlines looks a lot like I would have expected from CoX2, but that's just my opinion. I don't see a large difference in art style once the outlines are turned off.
I'm currently playing CO, and I turned the outlining off right away. Still, the graphics seem to be excessively simplistic and cartoonish. Not even in an engaging comicbook stylized way, ala Borderlands, but in a very bland sort of way. Sometimes it almost seems like they use the "comic book style" as an excuse for a lack of development resources put into the artistic detail and direction.
CoX, OTOH, just suffers from being dated. It's amazing how much can be done with some retexturing. I think some devs these days are lazy about textures, because they think high polygon counts and lighting techniques make well detailed textures obsolete or unnecessary.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
It still looks like you're talking about a completely different game. AE was bad at the beginning, but the devs have been working on preventing exploitative farming so you don't really see AE farms anymore. I'm also not sure what other gripes you have, the game has only been inproving over time.
The AE farms will always be there, the reason I know is that CoH is all about farming, long before AE was introduced. Also, this Massively article paints a much less rosy picture about AE, calling the latest patch "borked beyond comprehension" based on the heated forum reaction.
So far your complaints are: PvP (have fun with CO's monster play by the way,) and AE (long since fixed by the devs.) Anything else?
Do you know what monster play refers to, and/or are you trying to be misinformative? All forms of PvP in Champions Online are player character vs player character, meaning you keep all of your players skills and stats when you step into the arena. It's not like CoX where your character transforms into a watered down less distinguished version of themselves, and it is certainly nothing like a monster play where you don't even have your skills and abilities.
One of the reasons I stated was about PVP but mostly it is the lack of difficulty in the game, as well as the complete lack of competitivenes. Champions PVP is not good either, but mainly I was not speaking of PVP alone but the complete change of direction this game took at that point. There were a few other things that took place there as well, one of which was the deliberate attempt to kill socialization in the game. AE single handedly revolutionized ignoring content and ignoring other players.
For a moment there I forgot I was on a forum, and I just remembered the rules of conversation of forums.
1. When in a disagreement, faced with anyone having a legitimate point, shout them down, call them a retard, or tell them they are a crybaby.
2. stop the process of logical thinking after rule 1.
3. Repeat until someone gets banned or mods step in and delete everything.
get over it, it's my opinion.
It still looks like you're talking about a completely different game. AE was bad at the beginning, but the devs have been working on preventing exploitative farming so you don't really see AE farms anymore. I'm also not sure what other gripes you have, the game has only been inproving over time.
So far your complaints are: PvP (have fun with CO's monster play by the way,) and AE (long since fixed by the devs.) Anything else?
1. no socialization, they gave players a tool to pad their own missions and increase mob spawn so the people left soloing the game can dual box more affectively.
2. non existant population, maybe you don't see as many farmers any more because there is nobody left in this game, because farmers can play farmville for free. Which is probably more fun.
3. unchallenging, task forces can be soloed.
You addressed one point , and said it still wasn't fixed, anything else ?
Huh, funny, I can get a PUG at any time, no one really asks me to pad their team. The population Redside is spread a little thin, but if you join a good VG this can be largely negated. Maybe you've just been playing on underpopulated servers?
Not only that, but I find the CoH community to be one of the best communities I've ever played with. You can join a PUG and meet some really great people who you just might become friends with for the life of the game.
I ran the top ranked VG on my server, which was also the top ranked group on the server as well. We all bailed because all players want to do is farm and use exploits. It's farming for the sake of farming, a revolving door of farming for god's sake. There were times when this game was challenging, and there were times when I played that I got up out of my chair and shouted "OH HELL YEAH !!" but rather than trying to elevate everyones experience they only try to dummy things down to a homogenized level of boredom. Everyone equally miserable and disappointed is fair. I am sick of it from every MMO there is.
in calmest breeze, in tornadoes blast, no evil shall escape my gas let those who are an evil fink fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
I ran the top ranked VG on my server, which was also the top ranked group on the server as well. We all bailed because all players want to do is farm and use exploits. It's farming for the sake of farming, a revolving door of farming for god's sake. There were times when this game was challenging, and there were times when I played that I got up out of my chair and shouted "OH HELL YEAH !!" but rather than trying to elevate everyones experience they only try to dummy things down to a homogenized level of boredom. Everyone equally miserable and disappointed is fair. I am sick of it from every MMO there is.
I echo your sentiments on the general devolution that mmo's seem to be experiencing although I have to concede it's possibly as much a case that the player evolves/ages faster than the game can keep up etc... in my recent experiences however I have have to say I find CoH is actually far less affected by this trend and far more imaginitive in its response than most other games and even very disturbingly more than newly released ones (CO, Aion, STO etc etc all seem to be satisfied achieving the absolute minimum and its not good enough imo and certainly not a message that should be seen as success by other studios).
I ran the top ranked VG on my server, which was also the top ranked group on the server as well. We all bailed because all players want to do is farm and use exploits. It's farming for the sake of farming, a revolving door of farming for god's sake. There were times when this game was challenging, and there were times when I played that I got up out of my chair and shouted "OH HELL YEAH !!" but rather than trying to elevate everyones experience they only try to dummy things down to a homogenized level of boredom. Everyone equally miserable and disappointed is fair. I am sick of it from every MMO there is.
Generalize more will you... please...
Some people was always about farming... from bleeding day one... I was there... i know... Winter Lords... Bridging... Dumpster diving... spawn portal grinding... dreck... And strangeley enough... even with all this going on i had never any problem with finding people to play with... even after the release of AE... Then again i have characters on Virtue and Freedom... i guess some other servers are abit empty these days... So i say the problem is with you... You... did not feel the exitment any more and that is OK but to put the game down just because it did no longer give you the special feeling is just uncalled for.
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
1. It actually makes sense that to accomodate the players in situ and to facilitate a valid villian starting zone they had to give villians their own areas - at least for the early levels (I'd have preffered to see dimensional variants of the same zones tbh but a compromise was found). Of course Villian play should have been included as an integral part of the initial design and it would therefore work much better with the world and theme lore. It is a profound shame that Cryptic learned nothing from this early misstep repeating it in CO and worse adding a wholly inadequet Sharding system which work to actively split the player base to a much more significant degree.
2. It is sad that every mmo falls back on the conciet of loot as a means to propagate ongoing objectives but in truth CoH is one of the least loot dependent games on the marketplace - its very much at the players discretion, which is no bad thing imo.
3. Again it seems par for the course with mmo's but the degree of chages is certainly not as drastic as some (Matrix ONline, SWG etc), at least the implementation of pvp is thematically sound and not some arbitrary intrusion of childish gameplay shoehorned in an arbitrary and contradictory manner to the theme.... as ever this is going to be a wip and the clear deisgn intent is to capitalise on the dynamics and variety that multiple factions allow for.....if nothing else it doubles the paths open to the players and affords a stylistic foundation to the gameworld. The only hope for valid pvp driven comicbook fun is now resting with DCUO.
4. Some players will always abuse the systems they are given if they can....the real question is will you? The AE is a tool that can be used creatively or as an exploit...personaly the story functionality far outweighs the latter for me, I couldnt care less how fast someone else wants to level, there are always people intent on enjoying the game in the proper spirit when i log. CoH is a different game when played in a group as opposed to playing solo and that kind of variety is to be applauded.
Overall CoH is designed to give you a reason to play, the proposed additions are targetted to devleop more than just the avatar creator, they are actively workingt o diversify the ways you can enjoy the world , diversifying the valid forms of ambition, diversify the mechanical variety of each game session....these are elements CO should have offered from day one but seem clueless about even now, there were many lesson to learn from CoH, Paragon are showing signs they have...cryptic had a terrific oppertunity and headsatrt and went nowhere fast...is CoH the perfect mmo, no but its elevated by its conviciton and imagination, its ambition to be more and that is something to be applauded imho.
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
1. It actually makes sense that to accomodate the players in situ and to facilitate a valid villian starting zone they had to give villians their own areas - at least for the early levels (I'd have preffered to see dimensional variants of the same zones tbh but a compromise was found). Of course Villian play should have been included as an integral part of the initial design and it would therefore work much better with the world and theme lore. It is a profound shame that Cryptic learned nothing from this early misstep repeating it in CO and worse adding a wholly inadequet Sharding system which work to actively split the player base to a much more significant degree.
2. It is sad that every mmo falls back on the conciet of loot as a means to propagate ongoing objectives but in truth CoH is one of the least loot dependent games on the marketplace - its very much at the players discretion, which is no bad thing imo.
3. Again it seems par for the course with mmo's but the degree of chages is certainly not as drastic as some (Matrix ONline, SWG etc), at least the implementation of pvp is thematically sound and not some arbitrary intrusion of childish gameplay shoehorned in an arbitrary and contradictory manner to the theme.... as ever this is going to be a wip and the clear deisgn intent is to capitalise on the dynamics and variety that multiple factions allow for.....if nothing else it doubles the paths open to the players and affords a stylistic foundation to the gameworld. The only hope for valid pvp driven comicbook fun is now resting with DCUO.
4. Some players will always abuse the systems they are given if they can....the real question is will you? The AE is a tool that can be used creatively or as an exploit...personaly the story functionality far outweighs the latter for me, I couldnt care less how fast someone else wants to level, there are always people intent on enjoying the game in the proper spirit when i log. CoH is a different game when played in a group as opposed to playing solo and that kind of variety is to be applauded.
Overall CoH is designed to give you a reason to play, the proposed additions are targetted to devleop more than just the avatar creator, they are actively workingt o diversify the ways you can enjoy the world , diversifying the valid forms of ambition, diversify the mechanical variety of each game session....these are elements CO should have offered from day one but seem clueless about even now, there were many lesson to learn from CoH, Paragon are showing signs they have...cryptic had a terrific oppertunity and headsatrt and went nowhere fast...is CoH the perfect mmo, no but its elevated by its conviciton and imagination, its ambition to be more and that is something to be applauded imho.
CoH starts without CoV, the content was added progressively over the years. CO is pretty casual, the idea is to avoid grinding and have your hero at 40 in a short time. CO could have used the same 10 indoor maps of CoH and plunged of missions from lvl 1 to 40, instead it tries to make missions less repetitive, if it succeeded it is a matter of opinion but at least it didn't take the cheap way. Again, it is not my idea to critize CoH since it is a great game, but many people just bash CO as vengeful ex-wives (I am not refering to tyanya, that at least issues proper opinions).
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
Wrong. City of Villains was and is great. The biggest mistake made regarding CoV was making it a stand alone game instead of an expansion. We can blame Jack Emmert for that one.
I sense a little jealousy because Chapions Online doesn't even have villains. City of Heroes just keeps getting more and more complex, and Going Rogue will add a whole new dimension to the game with side switching. CO will never be able to match that complexity.
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
Nope, it didn't really copy WoW's "loot economy," especially with the merit system. I don't have to do Dungeon X to get Helmet Y, I can do whatever I want and trade merits for nice rewards. The invention system also has very little to do with looting at all, I don't see how you can make the comparison. Also, your precious Champions Online also has an invention system. Undoubtedly ripped off from, yet vastly inferior too, City of Heroes' invention system.
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
There you go making sensational claims that have no basis in reality again. Do you even know what "NGE" means? For one, City of Heroes hasn't lost a single archtype whereas NGE totally removed popular classes from Star Wars Galaxies completely. The truth is, PvP was always broken, PvP is notoriously difficult to tweak and balance, especially in a PvE focused game like City of Heroes, and people who play(ed) City of Heroes didn't PvP much anyway. The devs are going to eventually fix PvP, but like I said, it's very difficult to tweak and balance.
But, after all is said and done, City of Heroes' PvP is still far, far superior to Champions Online's PvP. You're really the pot calling the kettle black. And the kettle is a lot cleaner than the pot in this case.
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Which has been pretty much entirely fixed to prevent easy exploitative farming. Haven't you been reading the thread you're commenting on? Farming has always existed in CoH and will always exist. It's simply something people do. Do you know how many sewer teams I've run to get past the first 8 levels of the game quickly? Do you know how many people run Television farms or Portal farms? These things existed in the game far, far before MA ever came out.
Not only that, but at least these farms mean people are in teams and socializing. I've met some great people on sewer teams, I've met lasting friends on Television farms, I've met some great people on AE teams (which I've never used for farming.) Unlike another game I could mention *coughChampionsOnlinecough* where players never, ever join teams and very rarely socialize.Also, do I again have to point out that thwe mission architect system is an amazing player content generation tool that has added a huge amount of depth and replayability to City of Heroes and is something that Champions Online will never have, or something the will copy for an inferior system?
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
"Colossal missteps?" Hahahahahaha! That's the funniest thing I've ever read!These might be colossol missteps to an ardent fanboy of a certain game that is in competition with this game, but they are no means missteps to anyone else or in any other way. Maybe the worst thing the CoH devs have done is the PvP rebalancing, but none of these other things can be called missteps in any other way.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
And there we have it. Someone far too impatient to play the gameand wants his instant gratification right now.Part of the fun in City of Heroes is building up your powers and earning new and powerful attacks when you level up. Honestly, this has been your only complaint against CoH from day one, the rest of your complaints are an absolute joke.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
Your only legitimate gripe "you can't get all the powers right away!!" is also a complete joke. Restricting powers by level does make good sense (though I'll never convince you of that) with CO, I see that I can play aspects of that game in a single day. Where is the replay value? Where is the delayed gratification? why should I play that game for longer than one day?
The vast majority of your post reads like an angry fan of one game slagging off the competition, which is pretty much exactly what it is. You're being dishonest again championsFan, it does nothing for your credibility.
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
1. It actually makes sense that to accomodate the players in situ and to facilitate a valid villian starting zone they had to give villians their own areas - at least for the early levels (I'd have preffered to see dimensional variants of the same zones tbh but a compromise was found). Of course Villian play should have been included as an integral part of the initial design and it would therefore work much better with the world and theme lore. It is a profound shame that Cryptic learned nothing from this early misstep repeating it in CO and worse adding a wholly inadequet Sharding system which work to actively split the player base to a much more significant degree.
2. It is sad that every mmo falls back on the conciet of loot as a means to propagate ongoing objectives but in truth CoH is one of the least loot dependent games on the marketplace - its very much at the players discretion, which is no bad thing imo.
3. Again it seems par for the course with mmo's but the degree of chages is certainly not as drastic as some (Matrix ONline, SWG etc), at least the implementation of pvp is thematically sound and not some arbitrary intrusion of childish gameplay shoehorned in an arbitrary and contradictory manner to the theme.... as ever this is going to be a wip and the clear deisgn intent is to capitalise on the dynamics and variety that multiple factions allow for.....if nothing else it doubles the paths open to the players and affords a stylistic foundation to the gameworld. The only hope for valid pvp driven comicbook fun is now resting with DCUO.
4. Some players will always abuse the systems they are given if they can....the real question is will you? The AE is a tool that can be used creatively or as an exploit...personaly the story functionality far outweighs the latter for me, I couldnt care less how fast someone else wants to level, there are always people intent on enjoying the game in the proper spirit when i log. CoH is a different game when played in a group as opposed to playing solo and that kind of variety is to be applauded.
Overall CoH is designed to give you a reason to play, the proposed additions are targetted to devleop more than just the avatar creator, they are actively workingt o diversify the ways you can enjoy the world , diversifying the valid forms of ambition, diversify the mechanical variety of each game session....these are elements CO should have offered from day one but seem clueless about even now, there were many lesson to learn from CoH, Paragon are showing signs they have...cryptic had a terrific oppertunity and headsatrt and went nowhere fast...is CoH the perfect mmo, no but its elevated by its conviciton and imagination, its ambition to be more and that is something to be applauded imho.
CoH starts without CoV, the content was added progressively over the years. CO is pretty casual, the idea is to avoid grinding and have your hero at 40 in a short time. CO could have used the same 10 indoor maps of CoH and plunged of missions from lvl 1 to 40, instead it tries to make missions less repetitive, if it succeeded it is a matter of opinion but at least it didn't take the cheap way. Again, it is not my idea to critize CoH since it is a great game, but many people just bash CO as vengeful ex-wives (I am not refering to tyanya, that at least issues proper opinions).
I've played CO, and it was not my cup of tea. Honestly, it's not even on my radar. I don't care about the game one way or another. I know I'm bashing CO here, and the only reason for that is a knee-jerk reaction to championsFan. Have I lowered myself to his level? Probably. But I just couldn't resist.
I ran the top ranked VG on my server, which was also the top ranked group on the server as well. We all bailed because all players want to do is farm and use exploits. It's farming for the sake of farming, a revolving door of farming for god's sake. There were times when this game was challenging, and there were times when I played that I got up out of my chair and shouted "OH HELL YEAH !!" but rather than trying to elevate everyones experience they only try to dummy things down to a homogenized level of boredom. Everyone equally miserable and disappointed is fair. I am sick of it from every MMO there is.
Generalize more will you... please...
Some people was always about farming... from bleeding day one... I was there... i know... Winter Lords... Bridging... Dumpster diving... spawn portal grinding... dreck... And strangeley enough... even with all this going on i had never any problem with finding people to play with... even after the release of AE... Then again i have characters on Virtue and Freedom... i guess some other servers are abit empty these days... So i say the problem is with you... You... did not feel the exitment any more and that is OK but to put the game down just because it did no longer give you the special feeling is just uncalled for.
I didn't feel the excitement any more? Special feeling ? are we talking about video games ? I am really not following what you are saying, maybe it's all the periods that are throwing me off.
in calmest breeze, in tornadoes blast, no evil shall escape my gas let those who are an evil fink fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
1. It actually makes sense that to accomodate the players in situ and to facilitate a valid villian starting zone they had to give villians their own areas - at least for the early levels (I'd have preffered to see dimensional variants of the same zones tbh but a compromise was found). Of course Villian play should have been included as an integral part of the initial design and it would therefore work much better with the world and theme lore. It is a profound shame that Cryptic learned nothing from this early misstep repeating it in CO and worse adding a wholly inadequet Sharding system which work to actively split the player base to a much more significant degree.
2. It is sad that every mmo falls back on the conciet of loot as a means to propagate ongoing objectives but in truth CoH is one of the least loot dependent games on the marketplace - its very much at the players discretion, which is no bad thing imo.
3. Again it seems par for the course with mmo's but the degree of chages is certainly not as drastic as some (Matrix ONline, SWG etc), at least the implementation of pvp is thematically sound and not some arbitrary intrusion of childish gameplay shoehorned in an arbitrary and contradictory manner to the theme.... as ever this is going to be a wip and the clear deisgn intent is to capitalise on the dynamics and variety that multiple factions allow for.....if nothing else it doubles the paths open to the players and affords a stylistic foundation to the gameworld. The only hope for valid pvp driven comicbook fun is now resting with DCUO.
4. Some players will always abuse the systems they are given if they can....the real question is will you? The AE is a tool that can be used creatively or as an exploit...personaly the story functionality far outweighs the latter for me, I couldnt care less how fast someone else wants to level, there are always people intent on enjoying the game in the proper spirit when i log. CoH is a different game when played in a group as opposed to playing solo and that kind of variety is to be applauded.
Overall CoH is designed to give you a reason to play, the proposed additions are targetted to devleop more than just the avatar creator, they are actively workingt o diversify the ways you can enjoy the world , diversifying the valid forms of ambition, diversify the mechanical variety of each game session....these are elements CO should have offered from day one but seem clueless about even now, there were many lesson to learn from CoH, Paragon are showing signs they have...cryptic had a terrific oppertunity and headsatrt and went nowhere fast...is CoH the perfect mmo, no but its elevated by its conviciton and imagination, its ambition to be more and that is something to be applauded imho.
CoH starts without CoV, the content was added progressively over the years. CO is pretty casual, the idea is to avoid grinding and have your hero at 40 in a short time. CO could have used the same 10 indoor maps of CoH and plunged of missions from lvl 1 to 40, instead it tries to make missions less repetitive, if it succeeded it is a matter of opinion but at least it didn't take the cheap way. Again, it is not my idea to critize CoH since it is a great game, but many people just bash CO as vengeful ex-wives (I am not refering to tyanya, that at least issues proper opinions).
I've played CO, and it was not my cup of tea. Honestly, it's not even on my radar. I don't care about the game one way or another. I know I'm bashing CO here, and the only reason for that is a knee-jerk reaction to championsFan. Have I lowered myself to his level? Probably. But I just couldn't resist.
Understood. Pretty much I think both games are pretty enjoyable. I played city of heroes for more than a year. I left because problems to run on grandville(last villain zone) and from being burned from trying many archtypes. Now, I play CO and I enjoy it too. Superhero game communities are usually pretty nice
there is all this back and forth about which one is better, and I see COH guys talking about how everything about Champions is bad because of Jack Emmert. Everything that is wrong with COH is because of Jack Emmert, COV was a failure because of Jack Emmert. From what I have seen from what the guy has said publicly is that NCSoft had their own ideas about the games direction, they called the shots. He brought what they wanted to the table, and handed the whole thing to them because he saw how very little he had to say about what to do with "his baby". Jack's days at the helm of COH was it's golden age, it had "it" (the edge, it was on track with what the players needed to keep up the ongoing fun in the game).
in calmest breeze, in tornadoes blast, no evil shall escape my gas let those who are an evil fink fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
Every element of Champions graphics hands down is vastly superior to COH's. The only reason I could think of a person would say that COH's graphics would look better would be if their machine couldn't run Champions to any degree that would do it justice. Particle graphics alone cant even touch...I can't even go into it there is such a vast difference.
It's all personal preference but I certainly would not attribute one as better. I'm in that camp that sees the graphics as just another reason why I enjoy playing CoX rather than CO.
Either way IMO all these changes are coming 3 years too late, player feed back for this stuff was submitted 3-4 years ago. There are too many Quality of Life issues in this game that either get flat out ignored, or begin to get addressed, then realized that making it work is more trouble than it is worth. NCSoft is too focused on giving players what they want and not what they need.
So, what do players need? Are you really ripping on giving players what they want? Exactly what systems have been aborted after realinzing they were more trouble than they're worth?
I am sick of the homogenization of games to the point where everything has to be "Fair". This game "Jumped the Shark" the minute the creative team decided that pvp should be a supressed suckfest. The more you try to make players equal the more you remove the skill in playing a game. What an incentive to compete would a person have if you took away anything that required a "counter". The beauty of pvp in that game originally was you needed to be ready for whatever your opponent had in their bag of tricks. Now all PVP is is 8 guys afk running macros farming PVP recipes.
Disgruntled PvPer. Got it.
The community at large in COH is just looking for the fastest way to endgame without having to bother with the content, they don't really want any new content. They are just bored of farming / macroing the stuff the have ground out over the past 6 years.
The community in CoH? The same players that explain to people that the game is all about the journey and not the end....considering there really isn't any substantial endgame? These are the people you're accusing of racing to endgame? As for farming, every game has it -- unlike other games, it is not required to be succesful in the game. Macroing? Not in CoH....
Ultra Graphics mode and Going Rogue is the biggest compliment that COH ever paid Champions, and this article actually made me reactivate my Champions account.
Ultramode and Going Rogue are compliments to CO, that game which is the paragon of rendering realistic, non-comic looking graphics and side-switching? Right....
All I'm gonna say is that I've been playing CoH since launch and it just gets better and better. Regular, timely updates, QoL improvements, new additions, a (nearly) asshole-free community, etc.
If there's anyone out there who is thinking about trying it for the first time, dl the trial, take your time creating your character and give it a whirl. Oh, and stay out of AE until you know the game.
One of the reasons I stated was about PVP but mostly it is the lack of difficulty in the game, as well as the complete lack of competitivenes. Champions PVP is not good either, but mainly I was not speaking of PVP alone but the complete change of direction this game took at that point. There were a few other things that took place there as well, one of which was the deliberate attempt to kill socialization in the game. AE single handedly revolutionized ignoring content and ignoring other players.
Let me try to decipher this. You're back-peddling on bringing up PvP as issue even though you seemed to channel a good amount of bile into it. The real issue is this big change of direction the game took...in an attempt to "kill socialization in the game". You're talking about CoX still, right? The game that prides itself on having one of the friendliest communities with the least turnover? Okay.
Now, I will agree that when AE arrived, it hurt most servers, except for Freedom. It was the new shiny so, of course, many people flocked to it but at least Freedom had the numbers to balance that a bit. I was a proponent for the changes that went into AE -- it was meant to compliment the existing content, not replace it. Recently released issues have dealt with AE and it is more in-line with content. Call it the equivalent of itemizing a dungeon.
One final word on socialization -- I really hope you aren't going to point to CO as a social game because for the most part it's a solitairy experience. At least in CoH, you aren't forced to team, but people recognize there are true synergies in teaming and thus are motivated to do so. CoH is possibly the most PUG-friendly mmo out there.
For a moment there I forgot I was on a forum, and I just remembered the rules of conversation of forums.
1. When in a disagreement, faced with anyone having a legitimate point, shout them down, call them a retard, or tell them they are a crybaby.
2. stop the process of logical thinking after rule 1.
3. Repeat until someone gets banned or mods step in and delete everything.
get over it, it's my opinion.
If you don't have the skills for forum-pvp, maybe you should find a forum that homogenizes it ( ' ; In all seriousness, in expressing you opinion, you have to expect some people to push back.
One of the reasons I stated was about PVP but mostly it is the lack of difficulty in the game, as well as the complete lack of competitivenes. Champions PVP is not good either, but mainly I was not speaking of PVP alone but the complete change of direction this game took at that point. There were a few other things that took place there as well, one of which was the deliberate attempt to kill socialization in the game. AE single handedly revolutionized ignoring content and ignoring other players.
For a moment there I forgot I was on a forum, and I just remembered the rules of conversation of forums.
1. When in a disagreement, faced with anyone having a legitimate point, shout them down, call them a retard, or tell them they are a crybaby.
2. stop the process of logical thinking after rule 1.
3. Repeat until someone gets banned or mods step in and delete everything.
get over it, it's my opinion.
It still looks like you're talking about a completely different game. AE was bad at the beginning, but the devs have been working on preventing exploitative farming so you don't really see AE farms anymore. I'm also not sure what other gripes you have, the game has only been inproving over time.
So far your complaints are: PvP (have fun with CO's monster play by the way,) and AE (long since fixed by the devs.) Anything else?
1. no socialization, they gave players a tool to pad their own missions and increase mob spawn so the people left soloing the game can dual box more affectively.
No socialization...in CoX? Really? As far as padding missions and increasing mob spawns -- it was possible at one time and there was nothing preventing players from doing it, so they did at their whim. Controls have been put into place to balance that with existing content though.
2. non existant population, maybe you don't see as many farmers any more because there is nobody left in this game, because farmers can play farmville for free. Which is probably more fun.
I play Heroes on Freedom and Villains on Virtue; both have thriving populations that have swelled even more since transfers were temporarily made free as a hoilday gift. BTW, PVPers consolidated onto Freedom.
3. unchallenging, task forces can be soloed.
Unchallenging? Depends on the team make-up. Soloing Taskforces? Perhaps if you have a lot of time on your hands -- sounds a bit like a challenge. ( ' ;
You addressed one point , and said it still wasn't fixed, anything else ?
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
I would agree with this -- it was a bad decision to make CoV a standalone game.
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
I disagree with this -- the invention system is strictly optional and the game is balanced on the single origin enhancement system.
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
Reworking pvp was not an NGE (it's sad how the term is devolving). The closest experience CoH players had to an NGE was Enhancement Diversification.
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Only for those who chase the farms. One of the fixes Paragon Studios needs to implement is recognize farming as legitimate gameplay and allow players to tag AE missions as such. At least then, those of us who are looking for good story-arcs coulld filter out the farms and get a better picture of the ranked story-arcs.
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
These three paragraphs offer a lot of insight into the type of player you are. What you criticize City of Heroes for is an ideological difference in approach to game play. What you consider to be terrible in CoX really just isn't your cup of tea. The sad thing, imho, is that you equate seeing every power in the Powerhouse in CO to playing all the powersets in City of Heroes. That's just laughable and if game-play in general is that shallow to you, I cannot fathom your interest in any game that offers skill differentiation or doesn't start you off as all powerful.
Basically, what you're saying is that 1.) you don't bother with character concepts but focus on an all-powerful, max/min-ed main character and, more importantly, 2.) you see no difference in the ramifications of how choice (power and enhancement selection) and circumstance (mission, enemy, team-makeup) affect your game-play experience. So, okay, that's your preference. Clearly CoX isn't for you. But turning around and claiming that CoX is slow and repetitive because of the alt system and that it's stretching out content is naive, egocentric-thinking at best and foolhardy at worst.
there is all this back and forth about which one is better, and I see COH guys talking about how everything about Champions is bad because of Jack Emmert. Everything that is wrong with COH is because of Jack Emmert, COV was a failure because of Jack Emmert. From what I have seen from what the guy has said publicly is that NCSoft had their own ideas about the games direction, they called the shots. He brought what they wanted to the table, and handed the whole thing to them because he saw how very little he had to say about what to do with "his baby". Jack's days at the helm of COH was it's golden age, it had "it" (the edge, it was on track with what the players needed to keep up the ongoing fun in the game).
Don't be a Jack-apologist. He made his bed and will lie in it.
After enjoying CoH/V for the best part of 5 years, I would still regard it as a casual mmo - its great in the area of customisation, there is a lot of fun to be had solo or teaming, it exudes a conviction and joy for what it attempts, but over time you do wish it attempted to do more...where it falls down is in the areas of endgame, in mechanical variety and in delivering thematic involvement (part of which is pvp imo)....but those complaints are equally if not more valid in CO, its as if Cryptic learned nothing and started over only to arrive back where they were 5 years ago....that we can even compare some of these aspects speaks volumes to me.
But, fair enough, that is past, more important now is what are these studios doing for the future, well imo Paragon and CoH are attempting to address the very areas I feel are most needy and that for me tells me the design team that is in tune with the playerbase and care about their product....yes some eggs may get broken on the way to making the fresh omlette (pvp being one), but at least if I see them appreciate the existing problems I have some faith they will in turn address the other collateral damage in due course.
In all honesty and in all nievety I did assume CO would ensure their core design was not as prone to these same issues, I never anticipated a comparable 'content volume' but 'content quality' and imagination had to be there at launch to compensate....and it just wasn't..... it excells in some areas CoH is good or great at, but conversely it crashes and burns ineptly in areas even CoH still needs work...I was not convinced they had a clear vision or adequet ambition during alpha/beta and even now in their proposed content I feel its not targetting the very serious definciencies the game experience has....every mmo has a plethora of players with great ideas to boost it, but the design team has to have its own vision and ambition to know which and when they should be employed and Cryptic show no sign of that imo, which is a great shame.....at least Paragon with their 6 year old CoH engine are surprising us, at this point its far more than any comicbook mmo fan could expect.
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
1. It actually makes sense that to accomodate the players in situ and to facilitate a valid villian starting zone they had to give villians their own areas - at least for the early levels (I'd have preffered to see dimensional variants of the same zones tbh but a compromise was found). Of course Villian play should have been included as an integral part of the initial design and it would therefore work much better with the world and theme lore.
The villains should be in the same zones and world as the heroes, I use the term villain land to refer to the wholly separate world and game that the villains are in.
It is a profound shame that Cryptic learned nothing from this early misstep repeating it in CO and worse adding a wholly inadequet Sharding system which work to actively split the player base to a much more significant degree.
The sharding system splits the playerbase more than CoH/ CoV? I move between shards with the click of a button, but CoH and CoV are separate games entirely.
2. It is sad that every mmo falls back on the conciet of loot as a means to propagate ongoing objectives but in truth CoH is one of the least loot dependent games on the marketplace - its very much at the players discretion, which is no bad thing imo.
That's true, and I think less loot is better for superheroes, so they do that well. But of course, loot was even more non-existent when the game launched, and that was better.
3. Again it seems par for the course with mmo's but the degree of chages is certainly not as drastic as some (Matrix ONline, SWG etc), at least the implementation of pvp is thematically sound and not some arbitrary intrusion of childish gameplay shoehorned in an arbitrary and contradictory manner to the theme.... as ever this is going to be a wip and the clear deisgn intent is to capitalise on the dynamics and variety that multiple factions allow for.....if nothing else it doubles the paths open to the players and affords a stylistic foundation to the gameworld. The only hope for valid pvp driven comicbook fun is now resting with DCUO.
Actually it very much was shoe-horned in in an arbitrary and childish manner in issue 4, I was there. Even then my friends and I played and enjoyed the PvP, but they all quit when issue 13 completely reworked their characters. That's why I call it an NGE, one day you log in and the PvP side of the game has transformed to be unrecognizable.
4. Some players will always abuse the systems they are given if they can....the real question is will you? The AE is a tool that can be used creatively or as an exploit...personaly the story functionality far outweighs the latter for me, I couldnt care less how fast someone else wants to level, there are always people intent on enjoying the game in the proper spirit when i log. CoH is a different game when played in a group as opposed to playing solo and that kind of variety is to be applauded.
This massively article paints a different picture, more familiar to my friends and I who played CoX, in which the Mission Architect greatly damaged the game with its exploit-ability. As the article correctly points out, this will never be resolved.
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
Wrong. City of Villains was and is great. The biggest mistake made regarding CoV was making it a stand alone game instead of an expansion. We can blame Jack Emmert for that one.
That's what I said, the biggest mistake was splitting the playerbase. I agree that CoV was a great addition with the new powersets it added, but the biggest mistake was splitting the game into two, like I said.
I sense a little jealousy because Chapions Online doesn't even have villains. City of Heroes just keeps getting more and more complex, and Going Rogue will add a whole new dimension to the game with side switching. CO will never be able to match that complexity.
Actually, City of Villains doesn't have villains either. They are just strange mercenaries, in a weird villain-dimension. When CoV launched I played it exclusively over CoH, but it had nothing to do with the "villain" theme, it was just about the new powersets.
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
Nope, it didn't really copy WoW's "loot economy," especially with the merit system. I don't have to do Dungeon X to get Helmet Y, I can do whatever I want and trade merits for nice rewards. The invention system also has very little to do with looting at all, I don't see how you can make the comparison. Also, your precious Champions Online also has an invention system. Undoubtedly ripped off from, yet vastly inferior too, City of Heroes' invention system.
Yeah the loot in CO sucks, but unlike the invention system it was not crudely tacked on years after the launch of the game. Honestly both games are sell outs for including loot, and the original CoX enhancement system at launch was the closest to fitting the superhero genre.
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
There you go making sensational claims that have no basis in reality again. Do you even know what "NGE" means? For one, City of Heroes hasn't lost a single archtype whereas NGE totally removed popular classes from Star Wars Galaxies completely.
They did not remove the label for the class, but the changes in issue 13 watered down the differences between the archetypes in PvP, and essentially made everyone the same. The reason I use NGE is because one day everyone logged in to find that their PvP characters had transformed, that the fundamental combat of PvP had transformed. You simply can't deny that this happened in issue 13, and that the PvP community collapsed, it's a fact and I was there. As recently as Feburary I looked at rejoining CoX, but the PvP forums told me that it never recovered from i13.
The truth is, PvP was always broken, PvP is notoriously difficult to tweak and balance, especially in a PvE focused game like City of Heroes, and people who play(ed) City of Heroes didn't PvP much anyway. The devs are going to eventually fix PvP, but like I said, it's very difficult to tweak and balance.
But, after all is said and done, City of Heroes' PvP is still far, far superior to Champions Online's PvP. You're really the pot calling the kettle black. And the kettle is a lot cleaner than the pot in this case.
OK, I liked CoX PvP, unlike you, before Paragon transformed it into a watered-down "i punch you, you punch me" borefest. But of course Champions Online is much more fun and balanced in PvP than CoX was, because CO supported PvP from the beginning, it did not tack it on a year after launch.
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Which has been pretty much entirely fixed to prevent easy exploitative farming. Haven't you been reading the thread you're commenting on? Farming has always existed in CoH and will always exist. It's simply something people do. Do you know how many sewer teams I've run to get past the first 8 levels of the game quickly? Do you know how many people run Television farms or Portal farms? These things existed in the game far, far before MA ever came out.
Who do I believe, you or massively? Massively describes the recent MA patch as "completely borked", and the recent article states that it is impossible to ever fix the MA.
I agree with you that CoX is about farming at the core and that will never go away. I quit with issue 13, so the MA was after my time, and yet I knew the MA would be used for farming because that is what CoX is about, lots of farming,
Unlike another game I could mention *coughChampionsOnlinecough* where players never, ever join teams and very rarely socialize.
There is a lot more socializing and teaming in CoX, but it is also much easier and more fun to play solo with all build types in CO, that's the trade-off.
Also, do I again have to point out that thwe mission architect system is an amazing player content generation tool that has added a huge amount of depth and replayability to City of Heroes and is something that Champions Online will never have, or something the will copy for an inferior system?
Since most of us are ex-CoX players, we know that the MA was a big mistake that harmed CoX irreperably. We have sent the message to Cryptic very clearly that we do not want an MA.
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
"Colossal missteps?" Hahahahahaha! That's the funniest thing I've ever read!These might be colossol missteps to an ardent fanboy of a certain game that is in competition with this game, but they are no means missteps to anyone else or in any other way. Maybe the worst thing the CoH devs have done is the PvP rebalancing, but none of these other things can be called missteps in any other way.
I hope you realized that I have played CoX for 1000+ hours over three years. I was playing a kinetic defender in the days befoe "sb plz" became the standard way to say "hello." I know both of the games we are talking about, and look what I have chosen? I know those were colossal mis-steps, because I played CoX while they happened!
It's not because I have some gripe with paragon or ncsoft, no way. CO is just a much better game, having played both extensively.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
And there we have it. Someone far too impatient to play the gameand wants his instant gratification right now.Part of the fun in City of Heroes is building up your powers and earning new and powerful attacks when you level up. Honestly, this has been your only complaint against CoH from day one, the rest of your complaints are an absolute joke.
Too impatient? Actually I can just see through the huge time sink that is designed to keep you subscribing. CO doesn't need artificial time sinks to keep me playing, I can start a new character and have fun the whole time, without grinding away for dozens of hours just to get a travel power.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
Your only legitimate gripe "you can't get all the powers right away!!" is also a complete joke. Restricting powers by level does make good sense (though I'll never convince you of that) with CO, I see that I can play aspects of that game in a single day. Where is the replay value? Where is the delayed gratification? why should I play that game for longer than one day?
The first day I played super mario bros, I saw Mario run, jump, shoot fireballs, eat a mushroom to get bigger, and collect a star to become invincible temporarily. That's all he can do? Where is the replay value?
Oh I see, the game is actually fun. So I play for fun, I don't play to grind for dozens of hours so that a reward seems fun by comparison with a punishing grind.
Comments
1. no socialization, they gave players a tool to pad their own missions and increase mob spawn so the people left soloing the game can dual box more affectively.
2. non existant population, maybe you don't see as many farmers any more because there is nobody left in this game, because farmers can play farmville for free. Which is probably more fun.
3. unchallenging, task forces can be soloed.
You addressed one point , and said it still wasn't fixed, anything else ?
in calmest breeze,
in tornadoes blast,
no evil shall escape my gas
let those who are an evil fink
fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
I'm currently playing CO, and I turned the outlining off right away. Still, the graphics seem to be excessively simplistic and cartoonish. Not even in an engaging comicbook stylized way, ala Borderlands, but in a very bland sort of way. Sometimes it almost seems like they use the "comic book style" as an excuse for a lack of development resources put into the artistic detail and direction.
CoX, OTOH, just suffers from being dated. It's amazing how much can be done with some retexturing. I think some devs these days are lazy about textures, because they think high polygon counts and lighting techniques make well detailed textures obsolete or unnecessary.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
Huh, funny, I can get a PUG at any time, no one really asks me to pad their team. The population Redside is spread a little thin, but if you join a good VG this can be largely negated. Maybe you've just been playing on underpopulated servers?
Not only that, but I find the CoH community to be one of the best communities I've ever played with. You can join a PUG and meet some really great people who you just might become friends with for the life of the game.
Task forces can not be solo'd.
I ran the top ranked VG on my server, which was also the top ranked group on the server as well. We all bailed because all players want to do is farm and use exploits. It's farming for the sake of farming, a revolving door of farming for god's sake. There were times when this game was challenging, and there were times when I played that I got up out of my chair and shouted "OH HELL YEAH !!" but rather than trying to elevate everyones experience they only try to dummy things down to a homogenized level of boredom. Everyone equally miserable and disappointed is fair. I am sick of it from every MMO there is.
in calmest breeze,
in tornadoes blast,
no evil shall escape my gas
let those who are an evil fink
fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
I echo your sentiments on the general devolution that mmo's seem to be experiencing although I have to concede it's possibly as much a case that the player evolves/ages faster than the game can keep up etc... in my recent experiences however I have have to say I find CoH is actually far less affected by this trend and far more imaginitive in its response than most other games and even very disturbingly more than newly released ones (CO, Aion, STO etc etc all seem to be satisfied achieving the absolute minimum and its not good enough imo and certainly not a message that should be seen as success by other studios).
Generalize more will you... please...
Some people was always about farming... from bleeding day one... I was there... i know... Winter Lords... Bridging... Dumpster diving... spawn portal grinding... dreck... And strangeley enough... even with all this going on i had never any problem with finding people to play with... even after the release of AE... Then again i have characters on Virtue and Freedom... i guess some other servers are abit empty these days... So i say the problem is with you... You... did not feel the exitment any more and that is OK but to put the game down just because it did no longer give you the special feeling is just uncalled for.
This have been a good conversation
It makes me laugh when people think the majority of the players are farmers in this game.
The biggest mistakes for CoX were:
1. introducing villain-land and splitting the player base
2. introducing the invention system to copy WoW's loot economy
3. pulling an NGE and totally re-working the PvP so that most PvPers quit
4. creating the mission architect that made the farming even more degenerate and universal
Even before these colossal mis-steps, CoX has always been extremely slow and repetitive. The main draw of the game is to play with different powersets, and they stretch out the gameplay with the huge time sinks that are needed to explore these other powersets. Yeah, you can respec but it doesn't let you change your powerset/archetype/class. So if you want to roll a new archetype be prepared to subscribe and grind for at least another month.
Haha, I played with all the CO powers in the entire game on the first day of open beta, you can try any power once you are level 14 and that takes only 10 hours. In CoX it takes hundreds of hours just to see the best powers of a single powerset. The whole time is just repeating the same missions over and over, the only real incentive is to see those high level powers.
Looking at it that way, CoX sure does a good job of hanging onto subscribers by stretching the content further than anyone would have thought possible. By restricting player freedom to explore the powers at every turn, they insure that someone has to subscribe for years just to see a substantial fraction of the powers. CO let me see all the powers in one day.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
1. It actually makes sense that to accomodate the players in situ and to facilitate a valid villian starting zone they had to give villians their own areas - at least for the early levels (I'd have preffered to see dimensional variants of the same zones tbh but a compromise was found). Of course Villian play should have been included as an integral part of the initial design and it would therefore work much better with the world and theme lore. It is a profound shame that Cryptic learned nothing from this early misstep repeating it in CO and worse adding a wholly inadequet Sharding system which work to actively split the player base to a much more significant degree.
2. It is sad that every mmo falls back on the conciet of loot as a means to propagate ongoing objectives but in truth CoH is one of the least loot dependent games on the marketplace - its very much at the players discretion, which is no bad thing imo.
3. Again it seems par for the course with mmo's but the degree of chages is certainly not as drastic as some (Matrix ONline, SWG etc), at least the implementation of pvp is thematically sound and not some arbitrary intrusion of childish gameplay shoehorned in an arbitrary and contradictory manner to the theme.... as ever this is going to be a wip and the clear deisgn intent is to capitalise on the dynamics and variety that multiple factions allow for.....if nothing else it doubles the paths open to the players and affords a stylistic foundation to the gameworld. The only hope for valid pvp driven comicbook fun is now resting with DCUO.
4. Some players will always abuse the systems they are given if they can....the real question is will you? The AE is a tool that can be used creatively or as an exploit...personaly the story functionality far outweighs the latter for me, I couldnt care less how fast someone else wants to level, there are always people intent on enjoying the game in the proper spirit when i log. CoH is a different game when played in a group as opposed to playing solo and that kind of variety is to be applauded.
Overall CoH is designed to give you a reason to play, the proposed additions are targetted to devleop more than just the avatar creator, they are actively workingt o diversify the ways you can enjoy the world , diversifying the valid forms of ambition, diversify the mechanical variety of each game session....these are elements CO should have offered from day one but seem clueless about even now, there were many lesson to learn from CoH, Paragon are showing signs they have...cryptic had a terrific oppertunity and headsatrt and went nowhere fast...is CoH the perfect mmo, no but its elevated by its conviciton and imagination, its ambition to be more and that is something to be applauded imho.
The vast majority of your post reads like an angry fan of one game slagging off the competition, which is pretty much exactly what it is. You're being dishonest again championsFan, it does nothing for your credibility.
I've played CO, and it was not my cup of tea. Honestly, it's not even on my radar. I don't care about the game one way or another. I know I'm bashing CO here, and the only reason for that is a knee-jerk reaction to championsFan. Have I lowered myself to his level? Probably. But I just couldn't resist.
I didn't feel the excitement any more? Special feeling ? are we talking about video games ? I am really not following what you are saying, maybe it's all the periods that are throwing me off.
in calmest breeze,
in tornadoes blast,
no evil shall escape my gas
let those who are an evil fink
fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
Understood. Pretty much I think both games are pretty enjoyable. I played city of heroes for more than a year. I left because problems to run on grandville(last villain zone) and from being burned from trying many archtypes. Now, I play CO and I enjoy it too. Superhero game communities are usually pretty nice
there is all this back and forth about which one is better, and I see COH guys talking about how everything about Champions is bad because of Jack Emmert. Everything that is wrong with COH is because of Jack Emmert, COV was a failure because of Jack Emmert. From what I have seen from what the guy has said publicly is that NCSoft had their own ideas about the games direction, they called the shots. He brought what they wanted to the table, and handed the whole thing to them because he saw how very little he had to say about what to do with "his baby". Jack's days at the helm of COH was it's golden age, it had "it" (the edge, it was on track with what the players needed to keep up the ongoing fun in the game).
in calmest breeze,
in tornadoes blast,
no evil shall escape my gas
let those who are an evil fink
fear the wind of Fartman's stink.
Ultimately, you sound bitter.
All I'm gonna say is that I've been playing CoH since launch and it just gets better and better. Regular, timely updates, QoL improvements, new additions, a (nearly) asshole-free community, etc.
If there's anyone out there who is thinking about trying it for the first time, dl the trial, take your time creating your character and give it a whirl. Oh, and stay out of AE until you know the game.
Don't be a Jack-apologist. He made his bed and will lie in it.
After enjoying CoH/V for the best part of 5 years, I would still regard it as a casual mmo - its great in the area of customisation, there is a lot of fun to be had solo or teaming, it exudes a conviction and joy for what it attempts, but over time you do wish it attempted to do more...where it falls down is in the areas of endgame, in mechanical variety and in delivering thematic involvement (part of which is pvp imo)....but those complaints are equally if not more valid in CO, its as if Cryptic learned nothing and started over only to arrive back where they were 5 years ago....that we can even compare some of these aspects speaks volumes to me.
But, fair enough, that is past, more important now is what are these studios doing for the future, well imo Paragon and CoH are attempting to address the very areas I feel are most needy and that for me tells me the design team that is in tune with the playerbase and care about their product....yes some eggs may get broken on the way to making the fresh omlette (pvp being one), but at least if I see them appreciate the existing problems I have some faith they will in turn address the other collateral damage in due course.
In all honesty and in all nievety I did assume CO would ensure their core design was not as prone to these same issues, I never anticipated a comparable 'content volume' but 'content quality' and imagination had to be there at launch to compensate....and it just wasn't..... it excells in some areas CoH is good or great at, but conversely it crashes and burns ineptly in areas even CoH still needs work...I was not convinced they had a clear vision or adequet ambition during alpha/beta and even now in their proposed content I feel its not targetting the very serious definciencies the game experience has....every mmo has a plethora of players with great ideas to boost it, but the design team has to have its own vision and ambition to know which and when they should be employed and Cryptic show no sign of that imo, which is a great shame.....at least Paragon with their 6 year old CoH engine are surprising us, at this point its far more than any comicbook mmo fan could expect.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.