8 characters versus 132 characters per account. Sounds like City of Heroes wins to me. CoH loses badly in this area. When I played CoH I quickly filled all my slots on the liberty server, and since all my friends were on the liberty server, there was no way for me to ever make more than 8 characters in that game to play with my friends. In contrast, I already have 22 characters in Champions Online, and all of my characters can play with all of my friends characters, no artificial server boundaries exist to separate us. 22 characters without leaving my friends behind, is much more valuable then 8 characters with my friends and 124 character somewhere else.
First of all, the default number of characters is no longer 8, it is 12. Second, you are aware that in City of Heroes you can buy new character slots from the store and you get them as veteran rewards, right? For example, on my main server I have 14 character slots, and also a few unused ones that I can apply to any server from veteran rewards.
How did you get 22 character slots? You probably bought them from the C-Store.
Another non-issue.
Correction noted. In 2007 the number of slots had been increased to 12 (shared between two games though). It is nice to hear that you can buy additional slots! Ours cost about $3.15 each, although you also earn one for each character that you get to level cap.
So I am glad CoX fixed this issue, but it did take over 3 years during which I suffered. CO will probably improve in the next 3 years as well.
Originally posted by SwampRob Soloability? As a devout soloer, it's hard to imagine a more solo-friendly game than CoX. There are, perhaps, 20 quests in the entire game that can't be soloed? And not a one of them offers you loot (other than a badge) that you can't get elsewhere, something ALL MMOs need to learn to do. Blocking in combat. That might be your cup of tea, but I don't think it's appropriate for all superheroes. If you're playing a Captain America type, that shield is sure handy. But how often do you see a Hulk-type hero blocking? They are there for DAMAGE!
Most retarded statements I have heard in a while.
First of all, as I recall correctly, MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online and not Massive Singleplayer Online. Therefore, soloability should be reduced and almost non-existant in MMO's. Why play online with other people if you're going to do everything yourself? That is just plain retarded...
Secondly, you dismiss the ability to block because in your opinion some heroes aren't made for blocking. WHAT THE HELL?
It's manual blocking, if you don't want to block, you don't. It's simple! That is no reason to take away the ability to block for other heroes. It's like saying you want to remove apples from the market because some people don't like apples.
Originally posted by SwampRob Soloability? As a devout soloer, it's hard to imagine a more solo-friendly game than CoX. There are, perhaps, 20 quests in the entire game that can't be soloed? And not a one of them offers you loot (other than a badge) that you can't get elsewhere, something ALL MMOs need to learn to do. Blocking in combat. That might be your cup of tea, but I don't think it's appropriate for all superheroes. If you're playing a Captain America type, that shield is sure handy. But how often do you see a Hulk-type hero blocking? They are there for DAMAGE!
Most retarded statements I have heard in a while.
First of all, as I recall correctly, MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online and not Massive Singleplayer Online. Therefore, soloability should be reduced and almost non-existant in MMO's. Why play online with other people if you're going to do everything yourself? That is just plain retarded...
Secondly, you dismiss the ability to block because in your opinion some heroes aren't made for blocking. WHAT THE HELL?
It's manual blocking, if you don't want to block, you don't. It's simple! That is no reason to take away the ability to block for other heroes. It's like saying you want to remove apples from the market because some people don't like apples.
Hmm... That's kind of like saying "MMOs are for PvPing! Therefore PvE content should be reduced in MMOs to force PvPing!"
Some people like grouping, and some people like playing solo. I sometimes enjoy going off by myself and enjoying content alone without any teams, but sometimes I like joining a team and doing content with other players. Everyone has their own preferred play style, and limiting content is always a big negative for any MMO.
In summary, CoX was a decent but not spectacular design concept that was pretty well implemented, and CO is a better design concept that was horribly implemented. Some examples:
Get rid of classes: Good idea.
Fewer generic instances: Good idea.
More unique travel powers: Good idea.
But in the end, it plays like a broken game. Little about it feels right. Heavily unbalanced; can be too easy, or too difficult in the same general area... and the quests just feel... unsatisfying. It's difficult to say what it is directly, because it's such a low perception thing. Everything feels clunky, like riding in a car from the 80's where all the suspension bushings, strut mounts and springs are shot. Driving down a bumpy road just gives a feeling that the car wasn't MEANT to be driven. That's your toon in CO.
You have to feel comfortable in your toons skin. CoX has that, CO doesn't.
Toggling flight in the two games, for example. In CoX, you could be in free fall and the toggle activates and your toon floats intuitively. I would often do a leap then toggle flight and it would look and feel like a smooth and graceful thing. CO just doesn't feel that way at all.
Just that basic concept of control over your toon goes such a long way, and when you don't have it, it's a huge detriment to everything else ingame. The coolest minigolf course in the world is crap when you have to use pirates peg-leg for a putter.
I played COH for a few years and have a great time.
I dont know if Chanpions online is better or not as I have not played it.
However, if I do decide to it will not be because of the info in the article. With all the errors about COH that the author made I would rather find out about Champions from another source.
I think it comes down to intangibles. CO certainly has some interesting ideas, but I just couldn't get absorbed into the game. On the other hand, CoH has legitimate weaknesses, yet it was quite enjoyable and fairly addictive to me.
So then you haven't played in a while have you? Quit after issue 12. (which was when Cryptic left but I was not paying attention to that at the time).
They actually give out slots now as veteran rewards. I don't understand though how you are unable to play with your friends on the servers. Yeah, in the old days of 2007 there was no way at all to get additional slots, no way to pay, or vet rewards or nothing. Great to hear they fixed that, since that was one of my biggest peeves with the game If you are making that many different characters to play with the same people then what kind of play style do you have? You mean my 22 Champions? It's because the open build system lets me make so much variety in the characters. Any powers can be combined with any others so the combinations are really endless.
Oh that is right they don't have a clearly defined respec system like City of Heroes/Villains.
Clearly defined? This just sounds like an issue with learning the system. When I played CoX, you would pick your new power and immediately be stuck with it. There was no such thing as trying out different powers before picking your new one. The only way to ever change your powers was to do an all at once respec, after grinding through a several hour long task force, and if you make a mistake at that time it is very inconvenient.
In CO we have the powerhouse, which is an instanced area where you can try new powers and respec them out immediately, with no penalties at all (once you take your new power outside the powerhouse, then it cost in-game resources to change the power, but at least you don't need to change all of your powers at once or grind to do so, and again the ability to preview powers is something CoX badly lacked).
Honestly I think now you are just trying to prove your point about CO being better at this and that than CoX. They both have features that are good and bad you have to agree with that.
Definitely, where I am coming from is that I played CoX for a long time and I am voicing the reasons I quit that game. Not enough variety in player builds once the AT is chosen. No chance to "Try before you buy" with new powers. These are not concerns that I made up to put down CoX, these are reasons I quit CoX, along with being tired of "tanker"/"healer"/"CC" as these do not feel like superhero archetypes to me.
On the powers thing I usually know by reading the description what a particular power does and if you know your AT in CoX then you pretty much know what you are getting as far as powers go. You can read the description for each power in each set in CoX.
It's true, the power descriptions are pretty useful. I remember the first time I took flurry from the superspeed pool, I hated it immediately, as soon as I saw it, terrible animation and low damage I didn't want it at all. Instead I was stuck with it until a respec months later. I really appreciate how they fixed this problem in CO.
Maybe to end this debate I would propose that a few folks here play COH and CO for ONE FULL YEAR from say February 1st to February in 2011 and then give a real, detailed report being as objective and factual as possible.. then the community can see and discern which one is truly better.
I cannot be part of this group though simply because I played COH since Beta in 2004 and would be too biased.. but if some newcomers here in this community or some here who have not played either game could do this..
if so, maybe we as a community could tell the moderators here to give this group some kind of small reward (like a unique forum title or a entry into a beta for some new game.. whatever)
I think that would be the only fair way to determine which game is truly better. Just my thought.
City of heroes is simply better then Champion online.
COH, world pvp and super fast combat system.
Champion online, Arena type pvp and combat are not that fast. CO not being faster is not a problem at all because it ease the balance situation, but fighting in a ring is really lame and stupid. Add some villains in CO and i might consider it.
I played CoH for 3 years and enjoyed a significant portion of that time, I can still drop back and enjoy it in short bursts today although I do wish it had more variety and depth.
I played CO from late alpha to early retail, I popped back for the free weekends hoping something had improved....however its still a painful drag, possibly it qualifies as the first mmo with ZERO world variety, like many others I did have faith in Cryptic and really wanted this game to be great...maybe that was the problem....but as it stands its possibly the most dismal, unrewarding and univolving game of any style that I have ever experienced..... and I played Hellgate and Tabula Rasa so you may appreciate it has some stiff competition ..... CO is a game made by people who have no intention of playing it and who don't care for or respect the theme on which it is based - nope no return for me thanks!
Wow. Glad to see all of the pro CoX posts. The author is clearly a CO fan. While reading the article, I was wondering what I had missed in CO. I have been a CoX player since the beginning, and I tried CO when it came out and found it lacking. It was so lame that I let my buddy finish my free month. CO can just go away IMO. Long live STO! Even the beta rocks.
City of heroes is simply better then Champion online. COH, world pvp and super fast combat system. Champion online, Arena type pvp and combat are not that fast. CO not being faster is not a problem at all because it ease the balance situation, but fighting in a ring is really lame and stupid. Add some villains in CO and i might consider it. CO is simply a downgrade to me compared to COH.
Arenas are only one of several types of PvP available in CO. In addition to the cage match style arena there is:
A large city block map including a construction site, warehouses, alleys, and high rise buildings.
An arctic compound being overrun by zombies, including PC undead.
A lava temple (careful where you step!!!)
The interior of a super prison during a breakout by supervillains (including PCs in the role of SV's)
And of course open world dueling.
For the most part all of these are very fast paced. Its posssible, and not that uncommon, to see contests resolved in under five seconds. On the other hand long drawn out matches between skilled players can take minutes. Most contests run their course in seconds however.
I did not participate in PvP when I played City of Heroes so I have no comparison between the two games in that regard. I have no doubt that it is quite enjoyable as it seems to have a significant number of fans. I am only posting this to correct possible misconceptions about CO's PvP.
When all has been said and done, more will have been said than done.
Microsoft scrapping an MMO... yeah like that's new, it's a reason why White Knight Chronicles will NEVER EVER appear on the 360, level 5 hates microsoft.
Why well during the beta stages of TFLO (true fantasy live online) which was the MMO for Xbox, Microsoft scrapped it - why? - taking too long to develop an MMO.
No really? seriously.. it takes years OMGWTF
yeah microsoft have this long history of killing MMORPGs off before they're finished.... they really are a funny stupid company if it wasn't for the number of games for the 360 no one would have bought the system. It dies on you, it wasn't designed for especially to be HDD (unlike the xbox).
It's a backwards console... plus actually paying for "live" now seems a bit... blech. why is why BBC told them to go **** themsleves.
Anyway i digress, luckily Cryptic got out of that, i'd just wish... they'd do something different like offering both they're MMO's (Co and STO) together for a price less than you'd pay for a sub for both.
£12.99 for 2 games would seriously make people want to go to them properly... especially now with people actually playing 2 MMO's at a time (due to burnout).
"nothing actually matters, we're just slightly evolved monkeys clinging to a dying piece of rock hurtling through space waiting for our eventual death." - Frankie Boyle, Mock The Week
Just stepping in to own up to calling it Liberty City... big whoops on my part. Brainfarts happen to us all, folks. Also, this article was purely my opinion and you're certainly free to disagree with me and hate my face. But yep, I enjoy CO more than CoH.
No reson to hate your face. An yes it showed you liked co more than coh.After playing both an not even geting a full month of free time in co due to server problems , bugs etc. i went back to cox an had a blast.Co had problems with marked mission doors not shining.capes disapearing, super jump killing,powers that dont work as listed,Power color customization not working ,ranged>mlee..etc etc.
Co has its apeal . Grafics remind me of the The Incredibles movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incredibles tho.Turning on or off the outlining didnt help.From the looks of this thread tho cox in most posters views is a better game.Co does have posibities, but then again so does CoH .
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Just stepping in to own up to calling it Liberty City... big whoops on my part. Brainfarts happen to us all, folks. Also, this article was purely my opinion and you're certainly free to disagree with me and hate my face. But yep, I enjoy CO more than CoH.
No reason to hate your face. The problem here is, your opinion piece was never really stated to be as such and you do yourself and your credibility futher disservice by littering the article with numerous incorrect statements which have already been pointed out. Perhaps you'll use consider using a fact-checker and an editor in your next piece?
Unfortunately, BOTH City of Heroes and Champions Online have quite a crappy attempt at PvP. CoH's PvP was great when it first came out, and then even better when CoV came out. But from there, it went down hill because of the number of, what the dev's called, "balancing" issues.
City of Heroes fell from these patches to make PvP seem more "balanced", because now it's just a frag-fest to those with the more players.
Champions Online has a fun, and quite interesting PvP, but for someone who's playing the game simply for end-game PvP, they'd be disappointed. It's a great pass-time, and a great way to actually level while you play (yes, you earn exp from PvPing!), but the unfortunate part is that CO's PvP is too repetitive. Because of the "open power set" they give, people build to make PvP monsters, and going up against a team of them makes you rage quit.
Just to finish up, I've been a veteran City of Heroes player for nearly 6 years (starting Oct 2004), and quit many times because of it's repetitiveness of missions, level-grinding experience. Quit again only to play Champions Online, and I found myself re-activating my CoH account only months after purchasing CO.
On that note, though, I will continue to play both. But neither are games I could find myself playing full-time.
I hope the PvP mechanics in DC Universe Online (which seems to be it's main point of interest) plays as good as it looks, because this will be my full-time hero MMO.
CO was turd, it should have been made more similar to CoX.
Biggest problem being a lack of instances, instances are sometimes a bad word in mmo's, but playing CO made me desperatly miss them... Some times a hero just wants to go and do a good deed on his own, without there being hoards of undead everywhere and heroes competing for frags ¬.¬
Wow. Glad to see all of the pro CoX posts. The author is clearly a CO fan. While reading the article, I was wondering what I had missed in CO. I have been a CoX player since the beginning, and I tried CO when it came out and found it lacking. It was so lame that I let my buddy finish my free month. CO can just go away IMO. Long live STO! Even the beta rocks.
QFT
I think Cryptic fumbled by trying to do too much with Champions. It's almost like they decided they HAD to be as different from CoX as possible. After my free month was up I dumped Champions as well, melee frameworks were broken and all the ranged ones were pretty much the same. Definately this game was made with consoles in mind with all the button mashing involved.
The author of this article did no research whatsoever, and one can tell that he has played neither game that he has written the article about. Good to see other posters have corrected his many mistakes.
I haven't read any of the replies in this thread, so this reaction is based purely on the article: lolwut?
The first big stumbling block is Murphy's assertion that City of Heroes was not solo-friendly at the start. That's errant nonsense. CoH was actually much more solo-friendly early on than it became when City of Villains was released and the gigantic nerfs happened. (Internally known as GDN and ED, the "Global Defense Nerf" and "Enhancement Diversification.") in fact, the game was a bit too easy to solo and some builds were only hampered by the advent of the "Purple Patch," which made attacking critters many times higher than your level a dangerous thing to do. Before it was simply pretty risky.
There was a time right after the so-called "Boss Buff" that the game was impossible to solo, but it was also often impossible to team, too. The bosses were buffed way too much, and that change was removed entirely from the game.
Champions Online, by contrast, was either easy to solo or was impossible to solo depending entirely on which build you chose. I got lucky in an early character I created in alpha and walked all over everything without breaking a sweat However, when I rolled up different characters (about 25 in all throughout my time in both alpha and beta), I discovered that one could very easily create a character who was the equivalent of the 90-pound weakling.
Another point that must be underscored is that CoH has one of the best chat features ever put into any MMO, full stop. By comparison, CO is like trying to communicate via Etch-A-Sketches connected by strings. It was insanely difficult to even get the chat feature to work, right up until the game's launch, let alone actually do anything useful with it. Like, say, create a team and organize its behavior.
While it's a good point to mention it's unfair to compare a brand-new game's content with one that is 5 years old, why not take the next logical step and compare CoH at launch to CO at launch?
There's the aforementioned chat feature. CoH's has improved remarkably with age with increased and robust functionality. One can only hope Co's has, too. But at Day One? CoH wins, hands down.
In terms of sheer content at launch, CoH also wins. CO has exactly one path to max level, something people are *still* complaining about on the CO forums even today. (Literally today. I was just reading about CO's first expansion and the one-path thing is at the top of many players' twitch list.) Right out of the box, City of Heroes had multiple zones with vastly different stories in them. Steel Canyon and Skyway City were in the game from the start, as were Talos Island and Independence Port, each focusing on different enemies and different Origins. Right from the start you couldn't play all the content in CoH on just one character. That's not true in CO.
In terms of costumes you're actually tempted to use, CoH wins. (And that's not just personal preference speaking. I played CO for a year, and I rarely saw anyone actually make a "demon-clown-wolf-robot" or its equivalent. Mostly people stuck to the tried-and-true options. Even then, they mostly stayed away from the really over-the-top silly items, which eliminates at least half of CO's costume pieces.)
The classless power system sounds like a great idea. In practice, however, it's kind of lame. Cryptic abandoned it when they made CoH because they couldn't make it work, and all these years later they still can't get it right. As I said earlier, it's easy in CO to be uber or gimp, which is exactly the reason why the scheme was replaced in CoH's beta with the standard classes.
Some have disparaged CoH's reliance on instanced missions, but it's not instances which are bad, but rather their repetitiveness. I have been among those who have decried their boring sameness, but it's actually better than the "open-world quests" that typify WoW and CO. There's nothing more immersion-breaking or less fun than standing in line waiting to beat someone up so you can complete your mission. It reminds me of the line from Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms." Instanced missions are terrible... except all other types of missions are worse.
Later in the article, Murphy says "migrants from Liberty City might miss their old super-hangouts." That was a head-scratcher, since CoH takes place in Paragon City and CO is centered around Millennium City. Googling it turned up the fact that Liberty City is actually where Grand Theft Auto is set. That's just kind of a dumb mistake that basic proofreading should've caught.
Well i have both subscriptions Lifetime CO.. wish i'd been able to get lifetime CoH.. I've played since US Beta and only switched to Euro with CoV.
Combat ---CoX all the way... there is no real strategy in CO I totally disagree with original post... and agree that its really kiting. 112 112 1121 2 block
Everything spawns so fast strategy or tactics are meaningless by comparison. In CoX i have blaster type(Gun Fire whatever)-devices that have real tactical options. Against even quite tuff bosses u can prepare. Lay a mine (well haste first) lay another and another place the mines in paturns to catch bad guy(s) and probable support (actuall i they cause blast and for fun i like to lay them so one mine throws a target into another. Set up sentry guns Lay some caltrops to slow stuff down. go past your moinefield and snipe big boss to get his attention... retreat back thru your minefield fireing as you go and drag him and support back to your 'field watch them ge trhrown all over the place. go back grenade anyone standing to make em fall over then shotgun or slugs depending on how many left. And that when soloing.
even down to kill one back off n hide return kill next... because CO spawns so fast when only a part group is killed most strategy is out the window and i dont even prefer the tactics.
CO has more options but seems to make all the girls into ugly toons whose centre of grav is beyond their toes... they should all be falling on their face--- or would if their face could reach the ground
The custom archvillian enemy.. an excuse to make u fight th same boss over and over.
As i say have both..play COP when i dont want to think and CoX when I do
Comments
First of all, the default number of characters is no longer 8, it is 12. Second, you are aware that in City of Heroes you can buy new character slots from the store and you get them as veteran rewards, right? For example, on my main server I have 14 character slots, and also a few unused ones that I can apply to any server from veteran rewards.
How did you get 22 character slots? You probably bought them from the C-Store.
Another non-issue.
Correction noted. In 2007 the number of slots had been increased to 12 (shared between two games though). It is nice to hear that you can buy additional slots! Ours cost about $3.15 each, although you also earn one for each character that you get to level cap.
So I am glad CoX fixed this issue, but it did take over 3 years during which I suffered. CO will probably improve in the next 3 years as well.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
Most retarded statements I have heard in a while.
First of all, as I recall correctly, MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online and not Massive Singleplayer Online. Therefore, soloability should be reduced and almost non-existant in MMO's. Why play online with other people if you're going to do everything yourself? That is just plain retarded...
Secondly, you dismiss the ability to block because in your opinion some heroes aren't made for blocking. WHAT THE HELL?
It's manual blocking, if you don't want to block, you don't. It's simple! That is no reason to take away the ability to block for other heroes. It's like saying you want to remove apples from the market because some people don't like apples.
Most retarded statements I have heard in a while.
First of all, as I recall correctly, MMO stands for Massive Multiplayer Online and not Massive Singleplayer Online. Therefore, soloability should be reduced and almost non-existant in MMO's. Why play online with other people if you're going to do everything yourself? That is just plain retarded...
Secondly, you dismiss the ability to block because in your opinion some heroes aren't made for blocking. WHAT THE HELL?
It's manual blocking, if you don't want to block, you don't. It's simple! That is no reason to take away the ability to block for other heroes. It's like saying you want to remove apples from the market because some people don't like apples.
Hmm... That's kind of like saying "MMOs are for PvPing! Therefore PvE content should be reduced in MMOs to force PvPing!"
Some people like grouping, and some people like playing solo. I sometimes enjoy going off by myself and enjoying content alone without any teams, but sometimes I like joining a team and doing content with other players. Everyone has their own preferred play style, and limiting content is always a big negative for any MMO.
CoX wins, no contest.
In summary, CoX was a decent but not spectacular design concept that was pretty well implemented, and CO is a better design concept that was horribly implemented. Some examples:
Get rid of classes: Good idea.
Fewer generic instances: Good idea.
More unique travel powers: Good idea.
But in the end, it plays like a broken game. Little about it feels right. Heavily unbalanced; can be too easy, or too difficult in the same general area... and the quests just feel... unsatisfying. It's difficult to say what it is directly, because it's such a low perception thing. Everything feels clunky, like riding in a car from the 80's where all the suspension bushings, strut mounts and springs are shot. Driving down a bumpy road just gives a feeling that the car wasn't MEANT to be driven. That's your toon in CO.
You have to feel comfortable in your toons skin. CoX has that, CO doesn't.
Toggling flight in the two games, for example. In CoX, you could be in free fall and the toggle activates and your toon floats intuitively. I would often do a leap then toggle flight and it would look and feel like a smooth and graceful thing. CO just doesn't feel that way at all.
Just that basic concept of control over your toon goes such a long way, and when you don't have it, it's a huge detriment to everything else ingame. The coolest minigolf course in the world is crap when you have to use pirates peg-leg for a putter.
I played COH for a few years and have a great time.
I dont know if Chanpions online is better or not as I have not played it.
However, if I do decide to it will not be because of the info in the article. With all the errors about COH that the author made I would rather find out about Champions from another source.
Really have you played COH ??
I think it comes down to intangibles. CO certainly has some interesting ideas, but I just couldn't get absorbed into the game. On the other hand, CoH has legitimate weaknesses, yet it was quite enjoyable and fairly addictive to me.
I gave my attempt at a detailed comparison before. However, I think if I had to do the short summary:
CO is a better game and a better engine which is lost in some of the questionable implementations.
CoH has more to do and is far more polished but suffers from legacy decisions and engine design.
Both are fun and enjoyable for their own reasons.
Oh that is right they don't have a clearly defined respec system like City of Heroes/Villains.
Clearly defined? This just sounds like an issue with learning the system. When I played CoX, you would pick your new power and immediately be stuck with it. There was no such thing as trying out different powers before picking your new one. The only way to ever change your powers was to do an all at once respec, after grinding through a several hour long task force, and if you make a mistake at that time it is very inconvenient.
In CO we have the powerhouse, which is an instanced area where you can try new powers and respec them out immediately, with no penalties at all (once you take your new power outside the powerhouse, then it cost in-game resources to change the power, but at least you don't need to change all of your powers at once or grind to do so, and again the ability to preview powers is something CoX badly lacked).
Honestly I think now you are just trying to prove your point about CO being better at this and that than CoX. They both have features that are good and bad you have to agree with that.
Definitely, where I am coming from is that I played CoX for a long time and I am voicing the reasons I quit that game. Not enough variety in player builds once the AT is chosen. No chance to "Try before you buy" with new powers. These are not concerns that I made up to put down CoX, these are reasons I quit CoX, along with being tired of "tanker"/"healer"/"CC" as these do not feel like superhero archetypes to me.
On the powers thing I usually know by reading the description what a particular power does and if you know your AT in CoX then you pretty much know what you are getting as far as powers go. You can read the description for each power in each set in CoX.
It's true, the power descriptions are pretty useful. I remember the first time I took flurry from the superspeed pool, I hated it immediately, as soon as I saw it, terrible animation and low damage I didn't want it at all. Instead I was stuck with it until a respec months later. I really appreciate how they fixed this problem in CO.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.
Maybe to end this debate I would propose that a few folks here play COH and CO for ONE FULL YEAR from say February 1st to February in 2011 and then give a real, detailed report being as objective and factual as possible.. then the community can see and discern which one is truly better.
I cannot be part of this group though simply because I played COH since Beta in 2004 and would be too biased.. but if some newcomers here in this community or some here who have not played either game could do this..
if so, maybe we as a community could tell the moderators here to give this group some kind of small reward (like a unique forum title or a entry into a beta for some new game.. whatever)
I think that would be the only fair way to determine which game is truly better. Just my thought.
City of heroes is simply better then Champion online.
COH, world pvp and super fast combat system.
Champion online, Arena type pvp and combat are not that fast. CO not being faster is not a problem at all because it ease the balance situation, but fighting in a ring is really lame and stupid. Add some villains in CO and i might consider it.
CO is simply a downgrade to me compared to COH.
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I played CoH for 3 years and enjoyed a significant portion of that time, I can still drop back and enjoy it in short bursts today although I do wish it had more variety and depth.
I played CO from late alpha to early retail, I popped back for the free weekends hoping something had improved....however its still a painful drag, possibly it qualifies as the first mmo with ZERO world variety, like many others I did have faith in Cryptic and really wanted this game to be great...maybe that was the problem....but as it stands its possibly the most dismal, unrewarding and univolving game of any style that I have ever experienced..... and I played Hellgate and Tabula Rasa so you may appreciate it has some stiff competition ..... CO is a game made by people who have no intention of playing it and who don't care for or respect the theme on which it is based - nope no return for me thanks!
Wow. Glad to see all of the pro CoX posts. The author is clearly a CO fan. While reading the article, I was wondering what I had missed in CO. I have been a CoX player since the beginning, and I tried CO when it came out and found it lacking. It was so lame that I let my buddy finish my free month. CO can just go away IMO. Long live STO! Even the beta rocks.
Arenas are only one of several types of PvP available in CO. In addition to the cage match style arena there is:
A large city block map including a construction site, warehouses, alleys, and high rise buildings.
An arctic compound being overrun by zombies, including PC undead.
A lava temple (careful where you step!!!)
The interior of a super prison during a breakout by supervillains (including PCs in the role of SV's)
And of course open world dueling.
For the most part all of these are very fast paced. Its posssible, and not that uncommon, to see contests resolved in under five seconds. On the other hand long drawn out matches between skilled players can take minutes. Most contests run their course in seconds however.
I did not participate in PvP when I played City of Heroes so I have no comparison between the two games in that regard. I have no doubt that it is quite enjoyable as it seems to have a significant number of fans. I am only posting this to correct possible misconceptions about CO's PvP.
When all has been said and done, more will have been said than done.
Microsoft scrapping an MMO... yeah like that's new, it's a reason why White Knight Chronicles will NEVER EVER appear on the 360, level 5 hates microsoft.
Why well during the beta stages of TFLO (true fantasy live online) which was the MMO for Xbox, Microsoft scrapped it - why? - taking too long to develop an MMO.
No really? seriously.. it takes years OMGWTF
yeah microsoft have this long history of killing MMORPGs off before they're finished.... they really are a funny stupid company if it wasn't for the number of games for the 360 no one would have bought the system. It dies on you, it wasn't designed for especially to be HDD (unlike the xbox).
It's a backwards console... plus actually paying for "live" now seems a bit... blech. why is why BBC told them to go **** themsleves.
Anyway i digress, luckily Cryptic got out of that, i'd just wish... they'd do something different like offering both they're MMO's (Co and STO) together for a price less than you'd pay for a sub for both.
£12.99 for 2 games would seriously make people want to go to them properly... especially now with people actually playing 2 MMO's at a time (due to burnout).
"nothing actually matters, we're just slightly evolved monkeys clinging to a dying piece of rock hurtling through space waiting for our eventual death." - Frankie Boyle, Mock The Week
Just stepping in to own up to calling it Liberty City... big whoops on my part.
Brainfarts happen to us all, folks.
Also, this article was purely my opinion and you're certainly free to disagree with me and hate my face. But yep, I enjoy CO more than CoH.
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No reson to hate your face. An yes it showed you liked co more than coh.After playing both an not even geting a full month of free time in co due to server problems , bugs etc. i went back to cox an had a blast.Co had problems with marked mission doors not shining.capes disapearing, super jump killing,powers that dont work as listed,Power color customization not working ,ranged>mlee..etc etc.
Co has its apeal . Grafics remind me of the The Incredibles movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incredibles tho.Turning on or off the outlining didnt help.From the looks of this thread tho cox in most posters views is a better game.Co does have posibities, but then again so does CoH .
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
No reason to hate your face. The problem here is, your opinion piece was never really stated to be as such and you do yourself and your credibility futher disservice by littering the article with numerous incorrect statements which have already been pointed out. Perhaps you'll use consider using a fact-checker and an editor in your next piece?
Unfortunately, BOTH City of Heroes and Champions Online have quite a crappy attempt at PvP. CoH's PvP was great when it first came out, and then even better when CoV came out. But from there, it went down hill because of the number of, what the dev's called, "balancing" issues.
City of Heroes fell from these patches to make PvP seem more "balanced", because now it's just a frag-fest to those with the more players.
Champions Online has a fun, and quite interesting PvP, but for someone who's playing the game simply for end-game PvP, they'd be disappointed. It's a great pass-time, and a great way to actually level while you play (yes, you earn exp from PvPing!), but the unfortunate part is that CO's PvP is too repetitive. Because of the "open power set" they give, people build to make PvP monsters, and going up against a team of them makes you rage quit.
Just to finish up, I've been a veteran City of Heroes player for nearly 6 years (starting Oct 2004), and quit many times because of it's repetitiveness of missions, level-grinding experience. Quit again only to play Champions Online, and I found myself re-activating my CoH account only months after purchasing CO.
On that note, though, I will continue to play both. But neither are games I could find myself playing full-time.
I hope the PvP mechanics in DC Universe Online (which seems to be it's main point of interest) plays as good as it looks, because this will be my full-time hero MMO.
CO was turd, it should have been made more similar to CoX.
Biggest problem being a lack of instances, instances are sometimes a bad word in mmo's, but playing CO made me desperatly miss them... Some times a hero just wants to go and do a good deed on his own, without there being hoards of undead everywhere and heroes competing for frags ¬.¬
QFT
I think Cryptic fumbled by trying to do too much with Champions. It's almost like they decided they HAD to be as different from CoX as possible. After my free month was up I dumped Champions as well, melee frameworks were broken and all the ranged ones were pretty much the same. Definately this game was made with consoles in mind with all the button mashing involved.
The author of this article did no research whatsoever, and one can tell that he has played neither game that he has written the article about. Good to see other posters have corrected his many mistakes.
I haven't read any of the replies in this thread, so this reaction is based purely on the article: lolwut?
The first big stumbling block is Murphy's assertion that City of Heroes was not solo-friendly at the start. That's errant nonsense. CoH was actually much more solo-friendly early on than it became when City of Villains was released and the gigantic nerfs happened. (Internally known as GDN and ED, the "Global Defense Nerf" and "Enhancement Diversification.") in fact, the game was a bit too easy to solo and some builds were only hampered by the advent of the "Purple Patch," which made attacking critters many times higher than your level a dangerous thing to do. Before it was simply pretty risky.
There was a time right after the so-called "Boss Buff" that the game was impossible to solo, but it was also often impossible to team, too. The bosses were buffed way too much, and that change was removed entirely from the game.
Champions Online, by contrast, was either easy to solo or was impossible to solo depending entirely on which build you chose. I got lucky in an early character I created in alpha and walked all over everything without breaking a sweat However, when I rolled up different characters (about 25 in all throughout my time in both alpha and beta), I discovered that one could very easily create a character who was the equivalent of the 90-pound weakling.
Another point that must be underscored is that CoH has one of the best chat features ever put into any MMO, full stop. By comparison, CO is like trying to communicate via Etch-A-Sketches connected by strings. It was insanely difficult to even get the chat feature to work, right up until the game's launch, let alone actually do anything useful with it. Like, say, create a team and organize its behavior.
While it's a good point to mention it's unfair to compare a brand-new game's content with one that is 5 years old, why not take the next logical step and compare CoH at launch to CO at launch?
There's the aforementioned chat feature. CoH's has improved remarkably with age with increased and robust functionality. One can only hope Co's has, too. But at Day One? CoH wins, hands down.
In terms of sheer content at launch, CoH also wins. CO has exactly one path to max level, something people are *still* complaining about on the CO forums even today. (Literally today. I was just reading about CO's first expansion and the one-path thing is at the top of many players' twitch list.) Right out of the box, City of Heroes had multiple zones with vastly different stories in them. Steel Canyon and Skyway City were in the game from the start, as were Talos Island and Independence Port, each focusing on different enemies and different Origins. Right from the start you couldn't play all the content in CoH on just one character. That's not true in CO.
In terms of costumes you're actually tempted to use, CoH wins. (And that's not just personal preference speaking. I played CO for a year, and I rarely saw anyone actually make a "demon-clown-wolf-robot" or its equivalent. Mostly people stuck to the tried-and-true options. Even then, they mostly stayed away from the really over-the-top silly items, which eliminates at least half of CO's costume pieces.)
The classless power system sounds like a great idea. In practice, however, it's kind of lame. Cryptic abandoned it when they made CoH because they couldn't make it work, and all these years later they still can't get it right. As I said earlier, it's easy in CO to be uber or gimp, which is exactly the reason why the scheme was replaced in CoH's beta with the standard classes.
Some have disparaged CoH's reliance on instanced missions, but it's not instances which are bad, but rather their repetitiveness. I have been among those who have decried their boring sameness, but it's actually better than the "open-world quests" that typify WoW and CO. There's nothing more immersion-breaking or less fun than standing in line waiting to beat someone up so you can complete your mission. It reminds me of the line from Churchill, "Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms." Instanced missions are terrible... except all other types of missions are worse.
Later in the article, Murphy says "migrants from Liberty City might miss their old super-hangouts." That was a head-scratcher, since CoH takes place in Paragon City and CO is centered around Millennium City. Googling it turned up the fact that Liberty City is actually where Grand Theft Auto is set. That's just kind of a dumb mistake that basic proofreading should've caught.
Well i have both subscriptions Lifetime CO.. wish i'd been able to get lifetime CoH.. I've played since US Beta and only switched to Euro with CoV.
Combat ---CoX all the way... there is no real strategy in CO I totally disagree with original post... and agree that its really kiting. 112 112 1121 2 block
Everything spawns so fast strategy or tactics are meaningless by comparison. In CoX i have blaster type(Gun Fire whatever)-devices that have real tactical options. Against even quite tuff bosses u can prepare. Lay a mine (well haste first) lay another and another place the mines in paturns to catch bad guy(s) and probable support (actuall i they cause blast and for fun i like to lay them so one mine throws a target into another. Set up sentry guns Lay some caltrops to slow stuff down. go past your moinefield and snipe big boss to get his attention... retreat back thru your minefield fireing as you go and drag him and support back to your 'field watch them ge trhrown all over the place. go back grenade anyone standing to make em fall over then shotgun or slugs depending on how many left. And that when soloing.
even down to kill one back off n hide return kill next... because CO spawns so fast when only a part group is killed most strategy is out the window and i dont even prefer the tactics.
CO has more options but seems to make all the girls into ugly toons whose centre of grav is beyond their toes... they should all be falling on their face--- or would if their face could reach the ground
The custom archvillian enemy.. an excuse to make u fight th same boss over and over.
As i say have both..play COP when i dont want to think and CoX when I do
Jef Addley