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City of Heroes: Musing on Superheroes
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com City of Heroes Correspondent Michael Mcnutt writes this article muising on superheroes both on the big screen and our video game monitors as he writes his introductory article.
I'm feeling very nostalgic today. Maybe it's the sudden surge of Super Hero movies dominating the big screens all around theaters this week, or the mere fact that in the last 2 hours of playing City of Heroes, I've seen 3 wannabe Batmans, 2 Supermans, and 5 mean, green Hulks sifting through Atlas, on their never ending quest to fight evil, one level-up at a time. Of course the character names are different for Licensing reasons but fear not, we are in the midst of doppelgangers, both near and far. And that's not a bad thing.
As for myself, it feels just like yesterday, that I draped the family- sized beach towel around my neck, my father's leather work gloves, and a self-made utility belt filled with Jolly Ranchers, a few feet of clothesline, and plastic handcuffs in my plight to apprehend the known criminals of my neighborhood.
Check it out here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
I'll admit I'm a comic reading geek when it comes to super heroes. I don't buy them anymore, but I'll take a peek at the free online comics from Marvel from time to time. I also like to catch all the super hero movies as well. They're great IMO and special effects really bring the stuff to life.
That said, I played CoH/V for about 2 years. I've went back a few times since for a month here and there. For me, I was always frustrated by the fact that the game made me feel more like a sidekick than the hero. I never felt powerful in the superhero sense.
I'll give you an example - Super Strength. To me, if I'm super strong, I should be lifting cars, swinging telephone poles like baseball bats, and knocking the tar out of humans with *normal* strength. That was never the case in the CoX universe. I'd hit the bad guys, and they'd get back up (when I knocked them down) and keep on swinging.
Another thing that bugged me about the game was the fact that it took so long to get all my powers. I would much rather get all my powers up front, and then have those powers grow in strength as I did. After all, Spider Man has all his stuff when he was first bitten. He didn't get wall climbing at lvl 10 and a spidey sense at 16.
Anywho, I'm going to be watching Cryptic's new game. Let's see what they've learned from CoH.
I totally agree with you Deathstrike. You never really get that "Epic" hero feel. I mean I have a level 50 character, but he can still get beat by a guy wearing a t-shirt and jeans and carrying a 6 shooter revolver. Now, I made the healing class, as opposed to a tanker, but I can shoot bolts of electricity from my hands as well as having a power called "Temporary Invunerability" That should at least beat Johnny Handgun! The game is fun and it's understandable that they want to keep it challenging even for the high levels, but it does lose that "I'm a superhero" feel and feels more like "I'm a guy with weak powers who dresses funny" ((still one of my favorite MMO's mind you, but I do agree with you))
Actually before Enhancement Diversification (ED). You had tanks that could manage 20-30-40 foes. Controllers that grew into their powers and evolved from support toons that needed a team to characters that could easily solo larger mobs towards the later levels. These felt like super heroes in the true sense of it.
However when they implemented ED they removed all that. I stopped playing my controller about a week after ED.
I would have been great to get to super-heroi status at the end where you could go toe to toe with arch villains. So I agree with you ED brought the game in the wrong direction. They left us as underlings to the named NPC heroes in the game.
I remember before the first X-Men movie, me and my friends would talk about who would play a good Wolverine, Professor X, etc. I am excited that most of the comic books and novels have come to the big screen. The X-Men, Spiderman, and the Lord of the Ring movies are some of my all time favorites. I am wishing that some of the Piers Anthony novels will come to the screen such as the Incarnations of Immortality and Xanth series. I have also played CoH/CoV since its release but haven't played for awhile. My main character is a EMP healer with Mental powers. While I love being the healer and always doing something in every fight, I couldn't beat myself out of a wet paper bag. I do love the character creater too. I've made a ton of capes just to see how they look on the tutorial only to delete them afterwards. I agree with the rest of the guys (and um, gals) that in the higher lvls, it just get boring and repeatitive. I know will come back though to see the changes and play until things get repeatitive again. It just good to get that feeling of being a superhero.
Total Gamer
this is true, you never had aggro caps or game imposed limitations like it, you were truely a superhero, swamped by the minions of evil - you stood proud and defiant! smite them you did.
but in a pvp world and in a developing world it was never really gonna last, it was untenable, they had literally pinned themselves into a corner where there was no need for enemies, there was no need for improving because everything you did already made you super.
initially when ED came around i was 'ach' but quickly realised that instead of making the game unplayable it made the game playable for another couple of years. and it has, i still enjoy coh, and i thank ED for that, i got to super diversivy my scapper, i didnt see anyone as devastating as him till inventions arrived!.
but thats one of the things i like about coh, its a time sink, they all are, but coh is unashamed about the fact that coh is the journey to 50, not being 50 that counts, its diversity and the enjoyment between what can be seen as (in your first 3 months) very similar classes, which really play totally differently...
not got a tank? support him with a tanking scrapper and defender
not got control? get some defenders and blasters to bring it together
not got damage, uber it with an all defender team.
: last message, its a perpetual conflict in mmo world, but a single rule works, buff down not up, buff up means that the entire world becomes irrelivent, buff down means only that portion becomes relevent.
I continue to have fun playing CoH/V. NCSoft NorCal has made numerous enhancements to the game. It plays incredibly well. (I've been around since the first month. I was very skeptical of the game)
To each his own. For me? CoH/V fits the bill.
Very nice article.
Very well written article.
Being female, I never tied a towel around my neck. In fact, having three brothers, I inevitably was cast as the villainess. Much to their misfortune, they were all smaller and weaker than I, so unlike the comics and movies, evil usually triumphed over good, unless they caught me in a rare streak of altruism wherein I feigned ineptness to allow them to best me in the name of justice. I suppose letting them win was only fair vengeance for the "Cowboy and Indians" play when I would plait my honey blonde hair into two braids, and ambush them from the bare back of my paint pony and drag them off to be tied to a tree while I took a break from our imaginary play for an hour or so.
I think the role-play games that allow us to temporarily immerse ourselves in long-forgotten childhood fantasies are a great escape from the pressures of day to day life. I don't have much free time during the school year. That first week of returning to Paragon City after a brush with death and finals week (yes, all in the same week) was absolutely exhilarating! It felt wonderful just to forget the stress and blow off steam by cracking a few Arachnos heads.
The City of games offer so much in the way of individual expression. The writer within me loves the ability to design such intricate and unique characters, and build their strengths and personalities as they advance through the levels of the game.
I thank NC Soft for the great venue to relieve stress and enjoy my (very sparse these days) free time!
That's the impact of a level-based game. We gotta bear it.
As to the article, it was well written but it looked more like advertisement (nothing against mmorpg.com) than an analysis of some sort of the mmorpg City of Heroes/Villains.
I hope the next article brings the writer's points of view of those games.
Not sure if you were trying to sound smart or thoughtful or if you fail to realize the one flaw in your thinking and many developers. Buffing down does not make any single portion of a level based game relevant. That would and could only work if the game were many different worlds where one did not directly influence the others. Since CoH/CoV is a level based game built on progression from area to area, when you buff down or up it has the same affect on opposite ends of the curve. The curve itself remains the same but what you are able to do does not.
rereston makes the point about a level based game. That is partially true in the sense that it is the way things have always been done to this point. For games such as CoV/CoH the system could and probably should be a skill based system such as UO was. Pick all the powers you want at the beginning and then spend time making them better. Superheros have all their powers but most have to take time learning to use them.
I'm playing it right now and I like it a lot, but it also bugs me because it could have been a lot better.
The interplay between the classes is a lot of fun, and the 'feel' of superheroic action is good. The travel powers in particular are great. They've made leveling a LOT faster, and made the travel between the missions much easier with Cimmeroa, which is basically a dimensional crossroads that you can use to jump between zones easily. This is probably the best group game I've played.
My biggest problems are:
1)The 'support' classes still solo very slowly. Defenders and controllers are awesome in groups, but if you cant get a group, you are high and dry. This is a big contrast to almost every other PnP and MMORPG which makes the support classes solo well and be just strong classes in general. I want to echo the other person's comment that you dont feel very heroic individually. The scrappers do. And the blasters can, if they hero they want to feel like is Cyclops. But the other classes struggle really hard against mooks.
2)The enemies are still really vanilla. They have one of the best editors out there. They can make 50 villains a day. Instead, the fights are almost exclusively against goons, and when you do fight 'bosses' they are still cookie-cutter bosses. I guess making a villain is more than just creating the costumed figure, you have to make an AI that can use the powerset. But it still seems like they should add a new type of boss and a new type of lieutenant every week, just to keep the variety up.
3)The game doesnt feel like supers because you are running around doing jobs. Aside from the batman dynamic ("What commissioner? Squirrel Boy has stolen the Diamond Acorn! I'll be right there!"), most heroes are in their own storyline. They fight enemies because the enemies are personal to them. Going with the character editor, it would have been great if each character got a nemesis villain. Or maybe three, one when they were created, one more at 20 and another at 35, who kept cropping up in missions, a little more powerful each time. Or failing that, if the missions were more personal, because the enemies had done something to wrong THEM.
CoX got the LOOK of supers right, and even got the powers, but they somehow missed the a lot of the feel of being a superhero.
Great article Mike!
ooo now that's a great idea - a personal nemesis !
would make the world a little more immersive if YOUR personal enemy would show up occasionally.
good one.
Hmmm if I am not mistaken is this not what was just released by CoH in a few interviews? That players will be able to customize who or what they fight and select certain things for missions?
For those that didn't like the "grind" they smoothed out the leveling curve a while back. Course, if you came from WoW you may think CoX is slow leveling. You want to see slow leveling, go play EQ1.
Yes CastorHoS, they are working on letting players make their own missions. Not just for themselves to play but for anyone on the server to use too. I expect it will be a prominent part of the next Issue.
As for not being able to solo ArchVillains, well that is kind of the point. If I could beat down the AV by myself, he wasn't really that much of a threat. They did change missions so that soloists only have to deal with an Elite Boss instead of an AV. Still challenging to defeat but doable by most archtypes. If you want a full blown AV, then get a bigger team.
All in all, I've been playing CoX since July 2004. Sure I tried other MMO's but CoX never left my PC. No matter how many elves, orcs or whatever I was hackin' and slashin' I always came back to my scrapper or mastermind.
what article?
i read nothing but puffy clouds and pink puppies
i have yet to read anything of value in any of these "articles" from "correspondents"
the staff person that came up with this uhm...concept, should be fired or at least severely gagged
ooo now that's a great idea - a personal nemesis !
would make the world a little more immersive if YOUR personal enemy would show up occasionally.
good one.
This will essentially be possible very soon. The game is implimenting a Mission Creator system. Players will be able to write their own story arcs from scratch, even down to the text and mission layout. A test picture has already been shown. Here it is.
http://cityofheroes.wikia.com/wiki/Image:MissionSimulator12.jpg
I have played CoH/CoV for about 3 and a half years now, and I still love this game. Keep it up devs!