City of Heroes/Villains

[Remianen]

Just a heads up that if anyone's playing or thinking of playing City of Heroes or City of Villains (http://www.cityofheroes.com/), I do have supergroups and villain groups if you want/need people to play with. As it stands, my groups are generally mine (i.e. I'm the primary member) but I'd be willing to toss invites to folks here who might want to give it a whirl.

My villain group is based on Infinity server. The name is Project LCS (Lie, Cheat, Steal - gee, I wonder where that came from :p). Fully stocked base with basic teleporters (to the first 4 zones) with expansion ongoing. Basically, if something is needed (more storage, more teleport locations, etc), it's added. I also have a villain group on Virtue server (the unofficial RP server and the second most populated server overall) but a few months ago, I moved several characters from there to the Infinity group so I'm not able to generate prestige quite as quickly. As a result, the Virtue VG isn't nearly as well off as the Infinity one.

My developed supergroups are on Victory (Shrike Team Victory) and Virtue (Shrike Team Virtue) servers. Again, fully stocked bases (though not a whole lot of teleporters. Hero side has WAY too many zones) and further development is ongoing. I do also have SGs on Guardian and Infinity but they're not developed much at all.

Most of the community I'm a part of is based at the CoHGuru site, which is mainly comprised of Virtue players. Lot of folks there though, especially in the global chat channel.

So, if anyone's interested in donning tights and fighting evil (or tearing off the tights and being evil), post here.

[mjdgoldeneye]

I hope that a game like this or a sequel to this gets released sometime in the future.

I really like the idea, but when the game came out I certainly didn't have the specs or cash to run the game.

Now, it's getting a bit dated and I'm not going to get into an MMO years and years into its life cycle.

I was thinking before and one of my dreams would be to somehow acquire this game's intellectual property and find a way to get a deal with Marvel or DC (or, if I was freakin' Bill Gates rich maybe I could financially smother them into letting me do a cross over) and then make an awesome "create and play as a super hero" MMO like this, but better.

[mjdgoldeneye]

I hope that a game like this or a sequel to this gets released sometime in the future.

I really like the idea, but when the game came out I certainly didn't have the specs or cash to run the game.

Now, it's getting a bit dated and I'm not going to get into an MMO years and years into its life cycle.

I was thinking before and one of my dreams would be to somehow acquire this game's intellectual property and find a way to get a deal with Marvel or DC (or, if I was freakin' Bill Gates rich maybe I could financially smother them into letting me do a cross over) and then make an awesome "create and play as a super hero" MMO like this, but better.

I'm going to be a computer science major, so I wouldn't be a completely off-putting outsider, so maybe the money would be enough.

This is obviously a nearly unattainable and incredibly geeky idea, but hey... :p

[mike b]

i used to be armored magic when i played. Im waiting fr the D/C online game and im beta testing the Champions online game.

[Moe Hunter]

I've had this for a while now but don't play it nearly as much as I should. I have two characters that I was playing as exclusively with two guys from work, but one of them decided that WoW was the be all and end all for him, so that fell to the wayside a bit.

Perhaps I should move Morgneto over to the Infinity Server? All my guys are on Justice atm. I was told there was a whole bunch of NZ/Aussie players there, but I hardly see anyone.

[Remianen]

Now, it's getting a bit dated and I'm not going to get into an MMO years and years into its life cycle.

There's only one prob with this line of thinking. CoX has been innovating at every stage of its life. From the wide-ranging, often imitated but never duplicated mentoring system, and most recently an almost limitless user content generation system, it's not what you'd expect from a 5 year old MMO. The problems with previous games have been stagnancy. They take systems and mechanics from other games and package them in "expansions". But CoX (much like EVE shortly) keeps moving forward and bringing new things to the genre. Sure, you could say Ryzom Ring was the first user content generation system installed in an MMO, but it was so limited and censored that you couldn't do anything outside the box. CoX's mission architect system allows users to create content that gives both progression and rewards (sometimes too much, as we've seen since its release) which is unprecedented in major, mainstream MMOs.

I would've agreed with you in the past but CoX is a totally different animal. You can literally go from 1 to 50 (max level) in under a month, easily. And then once you get to 50 (and unlock your side's epic archetype), you still have a lot of life ahead of you. The mission architect gives unlimited new content with challenge levels that are customizable (and if there's something you want that isn't there, you can make it yourself). There's no such thing as being behind in CoX. Heck, I have to switch alts regularly because I don't want them to level too fast. And people have made some ridiculously tough missions. Imagine the Justice League fighting 6 Doomsdays....at once.

I re-up both of my accounts for a year each at the end of June because the MA ensures I'll never run out of content that's new and different. I still play everything (glances at his credit card statement. Oh yeah!) but if I had a 'main game', it would be CoX.

[shamelessposer]

City of Heroes/City of Villains is a fine game with the best community I've ever seen in an online game, but I got frustrated with the archetype system. If they ever allow complete character customization I might come back, but at the moment I'm keeping a close eye on DCUO and especially Champions Online.

[Moe Hunter]

If they ever allow complete character customization I might come back

I have to assume you mean the limited number of powers available, because the character creator is the most in-depth of any non-wrestling game I've ever seen.

I would like to be able to blast from somewhere besides by hands. I mean, sure you can make a guy LOOK like Cyclops, but there's no point without the eye beams. And yeah, it would be nice to expand into some more power sets. But when you think about it - take Guild Wars - If you're a Warrior you have to look like a Warrior. If you're a Necro you have to look like a Necro. You can't have powers independant of your look. CoH has complete independence in that regard.

[Remianen]

I have to assume you mean the limited number of powers available, because the character creator is the most in-depth of any non-wrestling game I've ever seen.

I would like to be able to blast from somewhere besides by hands. I mean, sure you can make a guy LOOK like Cyclops, but there's no point without the eye beams.

There are a few sets that have the eye beams (X-Ray Beam in Radiation Blast and Laser Eye Beams from one of the hero epic pools) but I get what you're saying. BUT, as they unveiled at Comic Con, they're going to allow power customization in Issue 16. They showcased new animations (that can be used as alternates to the existing power animations) for the Super Strength and Martial Arts sets and they said more are coming. I'm almost positive a few of the blast sets will get similar options.

[shamelessposer]

I have to assume you mean the limited number of powers available, because the character creator is the most in-depth of any non-wrestling game I've ever seen.

That's exactly what I mean. Character creation is pretty great on an aesthetic level, but what I really want is to pick and choose powers as they fit my character concept.

[shamelessposer]

There are a few sets that have the eye beams (X-Ray Beam in Radiation Blast and Laser Eye Beams from one of the hero epic pools) but I get what you're saying. BUT, as they unveiled at Comic Con, they're going to allow power customization in Issue 16. They showcased new animations (that can be used as alternates to the existing power animations) for the Super Strength and Martial Arts sets and they said more are coming. I'm almost positive a few of the blast sets will get similar options.

The ability to change emanation points is coming in the next expansion, Going Rogue. Issue 16 allows you to change things like energy colors and has the aforementioned animation changes for some melee powers.

[mjdgoldeneye]

There's only one prob with this line of thinking. CoX has been innovating at every stage of its life. From the wide-ranging, often imitated but never duplicated mentoring system, and most recently an almost limitless user content generation system, it's not what you'd expect from a 5 year old MMO. The problems with previous games have been stagnancy. They take systems and mechanics from other games and package them in "expansions". But CoX (much like EVE shortly) keeps moving forward and bringing new things to the genre. Sure, you could say Ryzom Ring was the first user content generation system installed in an MMO, but it was so limited and censored that you couldn't do anything outside the box. CoX's mission architect system allows users to create content that gives both progression and rewards (sometimes too much, as we've seen since its release) which is unprecedented in major, mainstream MMOs.

I would've agreed with you in the past but CoX is a totally different animal. You can literally go from 1 to 50 (max level) in under a month, easily. And then once you get to 50 (and unlock your side's epic archetype), you still have a lot of life ahead of you. The mission architect gives unlimited new content with challenge levels that are customizable (and if there's something you want that isn't there, you can make it yourself). There's no such thing as being behind in CoX. Heck, I have to switch alts regularly because I don't want them to level too fast. And people have made some ridiculously tough missions. Imagine the Justice League fighting 6 Doomsdays....at once.

I re-up both of my accounts for a year each at the end of June because the MA ensures I'll never run out of content that's new and different. I still play everything (glances at his credit card statement. Oh yeah!) but if I had a 'main game', it would be CoX.

My problem is that I simply haven't found a single MMO out there that fits my needs as a player.

An ideal game like this, for me, would have competitive growth with fun and genuine gameplay. As you said, leveling is very fast at this point for the game, and I'm not a big fan of that. I hate games where you have to spend hours and hours hunting random creatures just to get to anything fun, but I also don't want to sprint my way to the top so I can get into the hardest missions for the sake of being with the majority of players. (That also reminds me to mention that I hate when these types of games introduce new features that allow new players to speed their way to the top after original players had to grind. That's insulting to the veterans!)

As for gameplay, this game isn't awful, but the click-n-wait combat that has taken control of pretty much every MMO is annoying as hell. I want there to be a game that is less about math and more about some sort of skill. I'm not a generic shooter fan that thinks you need complex controls and methods of combat, but I'm tired of 2-3 canned animations that just keep cycling as damage pops up on the screen. Strategy is one thing, but making it the only thing that counts is bland.

To summarize my thoughts, ideally, without necessarily saying that this game lacks all of the above, I'd want a game that has vast customization potential, a varied and effectual but unrestrictive skill progression (when games give the illusion of choice just to mess with newbs that don't know what to spec in, they ruin the experience), a combination of traditional MMO strategy and true gameplay (more than click-n-wait), a solution to the problem of not being able to give new players a satisfying growth rate while allowing vets to keep the integrity of their achievements, and lastly, everything else that makes a game good in general.

Constant new content is good, but a new wrapper to stale "gameplay" on top of a pretty much finished and restrictive player build isn't fun for me.

[Moe Hunter]

Ah ok, yeah I haven't got so far as to unlock the Epic stuff yet. Good to know there is something there, as well as more to come in GR/I16.