Nyghtfall
May 13th, 2004, 10:19 pm
My wife posted a nice, lengthy review of CoH on her personal blog, just a day or two after we started playing it together. My own first impressions of the game pretty much reflect her's, so I'm going to post her review (with her permission, as I'm not allowed to read her journal - grin):
From The Pages of My Wife's Personal Online Journal
--------------------------------------------------
Don't expect to be hearing from me much for a bit - hubby brought home a new MMORPG called "City of Heroes" in which you get to create and play your own "comic book" style superhero. Near as I can tell, the creators of this game spent a lot of time either in other MMORPGs or talking to MMORPG players because they have come up with a game that deals with so many of the issues that usually make playing MMORPGs tiresome after a bit.
There are 5 basic classes which can be matched up with any of 5 "origins" (how you got your powers, which determines which main story arc you'll be involved in for missions - though you can always work with players from any of the other origins). Each class then has somewhere around 6 or 7 different "power sets" you can choose from for you main power, and another 6 or 7 "power sets" you can choose from for your secondary power. This would be things like being able to summon storms, manipulate fire, heal others, control minds and so on. Within each of the "power sets" are 9 separate powers that you will earn over time - and unlike most MMORPGs where the skills or spells you get at the lower levels eventually become pretty pointless to use because even though you go on to tackle tougher and tougher opponants, the spells/skills don't get any stronger, in "City of Heroes" your powers grow over time, so that they'll always be useful. At any rate, what it means is that even within a single class, you can choose between about 25 to 35 DIFFERENT combinations to make your character more unique - and then you get to mulitiply that times the FIVE classes - and you can start to see that there's a good chance you're not going to run into too many people playing a character just like yours.
THEN you have the options for designing your appearance and costume. Lets just say that if you wind up running into two characters who look identical, odds are that it was planned that way, because there are SO many things you can customize that it's not very likely that two people will design the exact same character looks by chance. I mean, you have about 10 to 15 different hairstyles, 10 basic faces, which can then be modified with any of 7 or so makeup settings (for women, anyway), gobs of different masks (from small ones that just cover the eyes to full-head masks that even cover your hair), helmets, hats, tiaras, headbands and so on. Then you get into tops, and you can customize the gloves separate from the top itself, and I can't even BEGIN to count how many variations there are for the tops themselves. You also get to choose from 20 or so belts (or tails, if you prefer), and about as many styles of pants, tights, boots, high heels, and other leg and footware. If that wasn't enough, you have at least 64 different colours you can use to customize the colour of your outfit (and you don't have to make the pieces match, either).
Then when you actually get into playing the game - oh wow! Say you accept a mission from your liason. In most games, if you're doing a quest/mission, you go to the place where you're going to do whatever it is you're going to do, and often end up competing with other players who are also doing the same quest - and if someone's just killed the monster/person/whatever you're supposed to kill for the quest, you have to sit around and wait for it to "respawn", and I've seen times where the wait has been an hour or more. In "City of Heroes", when you go into a building or the sewers or whatever to do your quest, you and your part are THE ONLY ONES IN THERE. If your team and another team show up at the same building to do the same quest, when you go through the doors, each team is taken to a separate copy of the building, so that you don't run into each other or interfere with each other's working on the mission. No waiting for respawns, no worry that your kills will get stolen - you just go and do your mission. In addition, the game will create the encounter so that it's appropriate for your group.
For example, there are a couple missions I had done and then when Matt was able to play again, he needed to do, so we did them together. The first time through for me, there were enough opponants for it to keep me busy AND on my toes, but I never felt overwhelmed. When Matt and I did the same mission together, there were a LOT more opponants. Again, it kept us busy without being overwhelming, but it was significantly different than when I'd done it solo just a few hours before. Oh, and yes, you CAN still get killed on a mission if you're not careful - that's a big part of the challenge - but the game just makes sure you have a legitimate chance of being able to complete the mission at the time you go to do it. The "scaling" and separate copies of the building for separate groups/players ONLY happens for buildings where you're working on a mission. Some missions will have you roaming the streets looking for members of a certain faction group to kill - or you can just wander around and kill whatever you find without having to BE on a mission - and in those situations (which make up the vast majority of the territory in each zone) you can interact with other players and run into overwhelming opponants. The "separate building" thing is specifically intended to avoid the problem of too many people trying to do the same mission at the same time, making it harder for everyone to get it done.
One big complaint in a lot of the other MMORPGs on the market is that if you and a friend (or some friends) want to play together, but there's a few levels difference between you, you end up either having to try and find enemies that are weak enough so that the lower-level player won't get wiped out in 5 seconds flat, but are tough enough that they'll give the higher-level player a bit of a challenge and some decent experience points. Well, in "City of Heroes", if you're going on a mission and the level differences aren't huge, it can "scale" the encounter so that it's beneficial and challenging for everyone, but not too overpowering for the "youngsters". And, if the level difference IS pretty big (more than 5 levels), the higher level character can make a lower level one their "sidekick" while they're teamed up, and the game will boost the lower level character's abilities up to within 4 levels of the higher-level character for the time they're hooked up (and as long as they're in reasonbly close proximity to each other). The lower-level character doesn't gain any new abilities or powers, but the ones they already have will be boosted temporarily. The Sidekick will earn the same kind of experience points that they would fighting against opponants at their real level, so you don't level up any faster doing this - but it lets friends whose characters are a ways apart be able to adventure together. Believe me, as much as I LOVED playing "Dark Age of Camelot" one thing I HATED with a passion was that if I couldn't keep up with my friends and didn't level as fast as they did, eventually, I wouldn't be able to play with them, because I either died to easily or they didn't get much of a challenge OR much experience. This system in "City of Heroes" is brilliant - and I love the fact that it was specifically designed with the understanding that part of the fun of a game like this is being able to play with your friends even if you can't (or don't want to) devote the same amount of time playing.
If you've ever played other MMORPGS, one thing you're probably familiar with is how the game can "lag" in areas where a lot of players tend to gather. Other areas may work ok, but the zone with a lot of characters in it (usually like the main city, or there area where trainers are) can get to be pretty damn slow. To combat that, "City of Heroes" is designed so that if the server starts lagging, it can create a copy of the lagging zone, and players can opt to go into the copy, where there aren't so many other players, so it doesn't lag quite so much. At the same time, as players opt to use the copied zone, it reduces the load on the original version of it, and helps reduce the lag there as well.
If you die, you can either wait for another character to resurrect you or you can "release" and go to the hospital. There are no "corpse runs" to worry about. After about the 4th level, when you die, you are assessed a penalty - called a "debt" that has to be "worked" off before you can reach the next level. You don't actually lose an experience points, and each time you kill an opponant while you're "working off" your debt, the experience points from the kill are divided between your debt and your experience pool - so you still build up your experience while "working off" your debt, but just not as much. (Kind of like getting your paycheck garnished, if you think about it *G*) Once you reach a new level, you're locked into that level - you can't go "backwards."
There's a lot more to it than just this stuff - but I'm serious, I've never seen a game that is SO incredibly player friendly before.
One of my least favourite aspects about "Dark Ages of Camelot" and "Everquest" was that it was so easy for me to get lost. I spent more time trying to find where I was supposed to go than I did actually fighting sometimes. In "City of Heroes", though, they've got things called "waypoints". When you're assigned to go to a certain place or meet up with a certain NPC (non-player character), a marker is placed on your compass so you can see what direction that person is in - AND the game will put a little red or yellow arrow out ahead of you that points exactly where you need to go, and tells you how many yards or feet you are away from it. Once you have that arrow in your sights, if you get turned around or run into a wall you can't jump, all you have to do when you get around the obsticle is look around for your arrow and start running right towards it again. I haven't gotten lost yet (which is damn near miraculous).
Another nice touch is that they know people will create multiple characters and will sometimes end up doing some of the same missions more than once. As a result, a mission won't always be in the same building every time its given out, and even if it is, most of the buildings have more than one layout, so you don't end up going through the exact same thing over and over. Plus, if there's an item you have to find, the location seems to be randomly determined, so you can't just go back to where you found it the last time, because it might be somewhere else. It really help keep repeated missions from being so boring that you can do them in your sleep.
----------------------------------------------
And on a personal note, I have pretty much decided that I will be playing CoH until I either become bored with it, or they decide to remove flight as a power. I don't see the former happening for several years, and the very thought of a superhero who can't fly is.... well... it's just plain wrong!
Also, a bit of clarifcation on xp and sidekicking: IGN posted an interview they did with Jack "Statesman" Emmert, the lead designer for CoH. In it, he explained that the formula works so that anyone you're sidekicking earns xp at a rate comparable to if they were fighting foes 3 levels above them. For example, if, when my Controller is, say, 25, and my wife decides to create a new character, I can sidekick her new level 1 hero, and anyone we kill together, who isn't grey to me, will grant her xp the equivalent of a foe who's 3 levels above her. It was designed this way to accomodate casual players who can't be in-game 12+ hours/day and still want to be able to team up with friends who gain several levels in a matter of days. No one ever gets left behind, yet no one's being powerleveled either.
Here's the interview:
[ur]http://vault.ign.com/articles/514/514854p1.html[/url]
From The Pages of My Wife's Personal Online Journal
--------------------------------------------------
Don't expect to be hearing from me much for a bit - hubby brought home a new MMORPG called "City of Heroes" in which you get to create and play your own "comic book" style superhero. Near as I can tell, the creators of this game spent a lot of time either in other MMORPGs or talking to MMORPG players because they have come up with a game that deals with so many of the issues that usually make playing MMORPGs tiresome after a bit.
There are 5 basic classes which can be matched up with any of 5 "origins" (how you got your powers, which determines which main story arc you'll be involved in for missions - though you can always work with players from any of the other origins). Each class then has somewhere around 6 or 7 different "power sets" you can choose from for you main power, and another 6 or 7 "power sets" you can choose from for your secondary power. This would be things like being able to summon storms, manipulate fire, heal others, control minds and so on. Within each of the "power sets" are 9 separate powers that you will earn over time - and unlike most MMORPGs where the skills or spells you get at the lower levels eventually become pretty pointless to use because even though you go on to tackle tougher and tougher opponants, the spells/skills don't get any stronger, in "City of Heroes" your powers grow over time, so that they'll always be useful. At any rate, what it means is that even within a single class, you can choose between about 25 to 35 DIFFERENT combinations to make your character more unique - and then you get to mulitiply that times the FIVE classes - and you can start to see that there's a good chance you're not going to run into too many people playing a character just like yours.
THEN you have the options for designing your appearance and costume. Lets just say that if you wind up running into two characters who look identical, odds are that it was planned that way, because there are SO many things you can customize that it's not very likely that two people will design the exact same character looks by chance. I mean, you have about 10 to 15 different hairstyles, 10 basic faces, which can then be modified with any of 7 or so makeup settings (for women, anyway), gobs of different masks (from small ones that just cover the eyes to full-head masks that even cover your hair), helmets, hats, tiaras, headbands and so on. Then you get into tops, and you can customize the gloves separate from the top itself, and I can't even BEGIN to count how many variations there are for the tops themselves. You also get to choose from 20 or so belts (or tails, if you prefer), and about as many styles of pants, tights, boots, high heels, and other leg and footware. If that wasn't enough, you have at least 64 different colours you can use to customize the colour of your outfit (and you don't have to make the pieces match, either).
Then when you actually get into playing the game - oh wow! Say you accept a mission from your liason. In most games, if you're doing a quest/mission, you go to the place where you're going to do whatever it is you're going to do, and often end up competing with other players who are also doing the same quest - and if someone's just killed the monster/person/whatever you're supposed to kill for the quest, you have to sit around and wait for it to "respawn", and I've seen times where the wait has been an hour or more. In "City of Heroes", when you go into a building or the sewers or whatever to do your quest, you and your part are THE ONLY ONES IN THERE. If your team and another team show up at the same building to do the same quest, when you go through the doors, each team is taken to a separate copy of the building, so that you don't run into each other or interfere with each other's working on the mission. No waiting for respawns, no worry that your kills will get stolen - you just go and do your mission. In addition, the game will create the encounter so that it's appropriate for your group.
For example, there are a couple missions I had done and then when Matt was able to play again, he needed to do, so we did them together. The first time through for me, there were enough opponants for it to keep me busy AND on my toes, but I never felt overwhelmed. When Matt and I did the same mission together, there were a LOT more opponants. Again, it kept us busy without being overwhelming, but it was significantly different than when I'd done it solo just a few hours before. Oh, and yes, you CAN still get killed on a mission if you're not careful - that's a big part of the challenge - but the game just makes sure you have a legitimate chance of being able to complete the mission at the time you go to do it. The "scaling" and separate copies of the building for separate groups/players ONLY happens for buildings where you're working on a mission. Some missions will have you roaming the streets looking for members of a certain faction group to kill - or you can just wander around and kill whatever you find without having to BE on a mission - and in those situations (which make up the vast majority of the territory in each zone) you can interact with other players and run into overwhelming opponants. The "separate building" thing is specifically intended to avoid the problem of too many people trying to do the same mission at the same time, making it harder for everyone to get it done.
One big complaint in a lot of the other MMORPGs on the market is that if you and a friend (or some friends) want to play together, but there's a few levels difference between you, you end up either having to try and find enemies that are weak enough so that the lower-level player won't get wiped out in 5 seconds flat, but are tough enough that they'll give the higher-level player a bit of a challenge and some decent experience points. Well, in "City of Heroes", if you're going on a mission and the level differences aren't huge, it can "scale" the encounter so that it's beneficial and challenging for everyone, but not too overpowering for the "youngsters". And, if the level difference IS pretty big (more than 5 levels), the higher level character can make a lower level one their "sidekick" while they're teamed up, and the game will boost the lower level character's abilities up to within 4 levels of the higher-level character for the time they're hooked up (and as long as they're in reasonbly close proximity to each other). The lower-level character doesn't gain any new abilities or powers, but the ones they already have will be boosted temporarily. The Sidekick will earn the same kind of experience points that they would fighting against opponants at their real level, so you don't level up any faster doing this - but it lets friends whose characters are a ways apart be able to adventure together. Believe me, as much as I LOVED playing "Dark Age of Camelot" one thing I HATED with a passion was that if I couldn't keep up with my friends and didn't level as fast as they did, eventually, I wouldn't be able to play with them, because I either died to easily or they didn't get much of a challenge OR much experience. This system in "City of Heroes" is brilliant - and I love the fact that it was specifically designed with the understanding that part of the fun of a game like this is being able to play with your friends even if you can't (or don't want to) devote the same amount of time playing.
If you've ever played other MMORPGS, one thing you're probably familiar with is how the game can "lag" in areas where a lot of players tend to gather. Other areas may work ok, but the zone with a lot of characters in it (usually like the main city, or there area where trainers are) can get to be pretty damn slow. To combat that, "City of Heroes" is designed so that if the server starts lagging, it can create a copy of the lagging zone, and players can opt to go into the copy, where there aren't so many other players, so it doesn't lag quite so much. At the same time, as players opt to use the copied zone, it reduces the load on the original version of it, and helps reduce the lag there as well.
If you die, you can either wait for another character to resurrect you or you can "release" and go to the hospital. There are no "corpse runs" to worry about. After about the 4th level, when you die, you are assessed a penalty - called a "debt" that has to be "worked" off before you can reach the next level. You don't actually lose an experience points, and each time you kill an opponant while you're "working off" your debt, the experience points from the kill are divided between your debt and your experience pool - so you still build up your experience while "working off" your debt, but just not as much. (Kind of like getting your paycheck garnished, if you think about it *G*) Once you reach a new level, you're locked into that level - you can't go "backwards."
There's a lot more to it than just this stuff - but I'm serious, I've never seen a game that is SO incredibly player friendly before.
One of my least favourite aspects about "Dark Ages of Camelot" and "Everquest" was that it was so easy for me to get lost. I spent more time trying to find where I was supposed to go than I did actually fighting sometimes. In "City of Heroes", though, they've got things called "waypoints". When you're assigned to go to a certain place or meet up with a certain NPC (non-player character), a marker is placed on your compass so you can see what direction that person is in - AND the game will put a little red or yellow arrow out ahead of you that points exactly where you need to go, and tells you how many yards or feet you are away from it. Once you have that arrow in your sights, if you get turned around or run into a wall you can't jump, all you have to do when you get around the obsticle is look around for your arrow and start running right towards it again. I haven't gotten lost yet (which is damn near miraculous).
Another nice touch is that they know people will create multiple characters and will sometimes end up doing some of the same missions more than once. As a result, a mission won't always be in the same building every time its given out, and even if it is, most of the buildings have more than one layout, so you don't end up going through the exact same thing over and over. Plus, if there's an item you have to find, the location seems to be randomly determined, so you can't just go back to where you found it the last time, because it might be somewhere else. It really help keep repeated missions from being so boring that you can do them in your sleep.
----------------------------------------------
And on a personal note, I have pretty much decided that I will be playing CoH until I either become bored with it, or they decide to remove flight as a power. I don't see the former happening for several years, and the very thought of a superhero who can't fly is.... well... it's just plain wrong!
Also, a bit of clarifcation on xp and sidekicking: IGN posted an interview they did with Jack "Statesman" Emmert, the lead designer for CoH. In it, he explained that the formula works so that anyone you're sidekicking earns xp at a rate comparable to if they were fighting foes 3 levels above them. For example, if, when my Controller is, say, 25, and my wife decides to create a new character, I can sidekick her new level 1 hero, and anyone we kill together, who isn't grey to me, will grant her xp the equivalent of a foe who's 3 levels above her. It was designed this way to accomodate casual players who can't be in-game 12+ hours/day and still want to be able to team up with friends who gain several levels in a matter of days. No one ever gets left behind, yet no one's being powerleveled either.
Here's the interview:
[ur]http://vault.ign.com/articles/514/514854p1.html[/url]