City of Heroes/Villains - Even heroes need a little grinding!
I'm a huge fan of comic books... Ever since I was little I've been fascinated with super heroes and super villains...
I think for me it was Superman that started it all, but the last 20 years or so I have been far more interested in the Marvel universe (Superman is DC Comics), and I think its due to the multitude of heroes and villains that exist in the Marvel world...
So Originally when I heard they were making City of Heroes, I was so excited (mind you, this was in 2004 or maybe even earlier than that, I honestly dont remember)
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past 5 years, or accidentally stumbled upon my blog because you thought it was something entirely different... I Can tell you that CoH/CoX is an mmorpg based on heroes. You create your avatar by using many many many different costume/outfit options, and you can make your avatar look like almost anything you could imagine.
This is actually my favorite feature of this game. In fact, if they had allowed you to buy Lifetime-Subscriptions for City of Heroes back in the days, I would most likely have bought the Lifetime, based entirely on the Character-Creation System of the game...
Its that good!
But for me, this is also the downfall of the game... You see, I have so much fun with the character creation system, going through almost all the options, colour combinations and sizes and what not... Imagining the godly potential of my new character and spending probably in the region of 30-45 minutes making my new character...
But the fun ends there :(
Because once you've made your character, you will enter the game with HUGE expectations of how you will play your character and what you will do as your newfound hero!
But it wont be long before you hear the standard cartoon sound going 'Bwaap... bwaaap... bwaaaawww.....' as the disappointment ensues and you are forced to go through a very long and very boring series of quests.
Mostly things like: A smelly hobo was kidnapped, please go to this location and secure the smelly hobo (optional bonus xp for washing his smelly ass before letting him go... I WISH!)
or
The Plutonium Modulator has been stolen by evil zombie aliens! We have no idea who might have done it!!!
There is only 1 evil zombie controlling mastermind villain in the universe, but we are still totally stumped as to who the bad guy could be!!! Please go investigate!
Now this was a long time ago... things have changed a little bit since then, and I'll describe how, in a moment.
So, you're going through all these missions, mostly soloing it, unless you happened to have picked a class/power combination that just isnt suited for soloing (meaning he spends 5 times as long on finishing a mission than other classes... Pure Healers are like that)
In which case you'll be looking for a group... an experience that isnt quite as enjoyable as one might think (Who am I kidding... enjoyable Grouping Experiences ended sometime around the release of the Planes of Power expansion for EverQuest1 in .. i dunno... 2001 ? *shrugs*)
Aww... but Pickup-grouping isnt THAT bad! It can be loads of fun!
To which I can only respond: Where is the fun in grouping with the following people...
The Grulk - A huge green guy with purple pants and dark green hair.. He spends the majority of his time in the mission super-jumping and pulling aggro left and right while spamming his macro that says: ME SMASH!
Newt Dukem - an arnold looking guy with yellow hair, black sunglasses and a red/blackish outfit... spends more time searching for mirrors and quoting crappy 80s action movies than killing the proper targets and managing his aggro...
Pheonixx (Yes, I am fully aware that Phoenix is in fact spelled... Phoenix... This guy, However, was not!) - a girl with flaming red hair and a yellow/orangey outfit that will open up ANY fight with her full arsenal of Area-Effect-Meteor-Flame-Rain-of-Destruction... Even when said fight only consists of 1 measly henchman who was sent out to pick up sandwiches for his boss.
Wally Mort - A dark figure cloaked all in black with an eeeevil aura emanating from him. His class description said that he was a Support Class, but he seems to spend most of his time using the Moon-beam looking Sniper ability on every mob we see, and in between moon-snipershots he seems to talk alot about a kid named Harry Potter and how much he wants to get his hands on Harry's Alchemist Stones...
About 5 minutes into the first Mission, Newt Dukem starts threatening me with how he will tear off my head and shit down my neck unless i start healing him!
Meanwhile the Grulk is busy in one of the siderooms, trying to operate a Console... but sadly the Computer just says Nooo...
Mr. Mort occasionally stops to complain about how they nerfed his moonshot and how he used to be able to solo this mission with his high level.
Aaaand last but not least, it would appear that Pheonixx is busy cybering one of her guildmates to get some phat lewtz since she just realised that we're not going to get ANYWHERE with this epic fail of a group ;)
Slightly disappointed from this poor grouping experience, I decided to go out and solo some more... Quickly realising that a healer like my character wouldnt really make it very far or more importantly... very fast... (yeah yeah, I'm a wannabe powergamer... sometimes you just want to see some results)
I decided to make a Ranged DPS type of class... so I made an Ice based Blaster... (Think Iceman from the Xmen/Marvel Universe)
With my new hero, The Furious Frosty, I was able to handle most of the content that the game threw at me... mainly due to the Ranged Attacks and of course the built in Frost/Snare of most of the attacks that I had chosen for my hero.
I had soon hit lvl 15ish, mostly through mission grinding and just picking up the groups of mobs I would find on my way to the mission spots. Occasionally I would find these Badges and Emblems which were basically rewards... accomplishments or achievements if you will.
As you've probably noticed from reading my blog, I am a huge fan and a big sucker for this feature in mmorpgs, but I am also a bit picky about it... Meaning... I love that I can get rewards for discovering certain things, or for killing enough monsters, or for taking 1,000,000 damage...
Too bad none of the badges I unlocked had any rewards... none of them whatsover... Maybe its been changed since then I dont know. (I know Cryptic Studios changed it in their 2nd game Champions Online)
Risk Vs Reward... I dont mind fighting hard or spending alot of time for something, if I get something interesting or at least remotely useful in the end.. but getting a Title or a Badge to display on my profile... I dunno, that just doesnt do it for me... In fact, I would rather just avoid the timesink all together.
Speaking of Timesink, I suppose that will bring me onto the next topic with this game... Huge timesink... There doesnt seem to be much 'unique' content in it, as far as I am aware, there was only 1 raid, a shit ton of dungeons that all seemed randomly generated from large map-blocks that all seemed very similar. Mobs would continually be reused and rescaled... an example would be that I fought some wizardy looking guys with green spells and some crossbows... 30 levels later I fought the same wizardy looking guys but instead of them standing in a circle chanting around an innocent victim, they were now chanting in a circle around a demon (at least that was new... but the rest I would consider to be the 'A Large Gray Adolescent Male Wolf vs A Large Black Mature Alpha Male Wolf' problem...
I understand that mmorpgs have to pay tons to create new monster models for an mmorpg, but still... They have an excellent character creation engine and they could easily have added alot more variation to the enemies and the themes.
To me it didnt feel like I was playing through a comic book story, AT ALL... it felt more like i was playing through an mmorpg that had dragged a sheet of Super-Hero over it and once you scratch the super-hero surface off, it was very much like every other mmorpg, except it didnt have the same level of depth with Equipment as you see in some other games. In CoH you find Enhancements that are basically Bonusses you can apply to your powers to increase or alter their effects.
Later in its life, CoH/CoX introduced something called the Mission Architect, which is basically a system that allows the player to write a story, design content for this story and put it all into 1 or more missions, thereby creating new playable content for his fellow players. (Something that has been attempted with various levels of success in other games like Ryzom and some cutsey-wootsey asian mmo that i forgot the name of, but the humongous eyes of the characters still haunt my memory...)
Anyways, back to the Mission Architect! This would seem like a GREAT addition to any mmorpg... on Paper :(
Because with EVERY great mission comes at least 5.000 really really really really crappy missions that served only 1 purpose: XP FARMING!
All of a sudden CoH became an empty wasteland, the heroes had abandoned the streets and left the poor innocent citizens to fend for themselves! Everywhere I looked, there were no groups to be found. They were all busy inside the Architect Mission building, doing custom XP Farming Missions so that they could add yet another character to their swelling ranks of useless maxed out super-heroes...
But at least the game allows you to befriend someone based on their account-name, rather than their character name... that way you can keep in touch in case you didnt play during the weekend and you came back and he was ready to level up his 6th character of the week ;)
Goodbye City of Heroes... Hello Champions Online (not to be mistaken with Hello Kitty Online.. I know some of you follow that with great enthuse... Incurus ;) )
I think for me it was Superman that started it all, but the last 20 years or so I have been far more interested in the Marvel universe (Superman is DC Comics), and I think its due to the multitude of heroes and villains that exist in the Marvel world...
So Originally when I heard they were making City of Heroes, I was so excited (mind you, this was in 2004 or maybe even earlier than that, I honestly dont remember)
For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past 5 years, or accidentally stumbled upon my blog because you thought it was something entirely different... I Can tell you that CoH/CoX is an mmorpg based on heroes. You create your avatar by using many many many different costume/outfit options, and you can make your avatar look like almost anything you could imagine.
This is actually my favorite feature of this game. In fact, if they had allowed you to buy Lifetime-Subscriptions for City of Heroes back in the days, I would most likely have bought the Lifetime, based entirely on the Character-Creation System of the game...
Its that good!
But for me, this is also the downfall of the game... You see, I have so much fun with the character creation system, going through almost all the options, colour combinations and sizes and what not... Imagining the godly potential of my new character and spending probably in the region of 30-45 minutes making my new character...
But the fun ends there :(
Because once you've made your character, you will enter the game with HUGE expectations of how you will play your character and what you will do as your newfound hero!
But it wont be long before you hear the standard cartoon sound going 'Bwaap... bwaaap... bwaaaawww.....' as the disappointment ensues and you are forced to go through a very long and very boring series of quests.
Mostly things like: A smelly hobo was kidnapped, please go to this location and secure the smelly hobo (optional bonus xp for washing his smelly ass before letting him go... I WISH!)
or
The Plutonium Modulator has been stolen by evil zombie aliens! We have no idea who might have done it!!!
There is only 1 evil zombie controlling mastermind villain in the universe, but we are still totally stumped as to who the bad guy could be!!! Please go investigate!
Now this was a long time ago... things have changed a little bit since then, and I'll describe how, in a moment.
So, you're going through all these missions, mostly soloing it, unless you happened to have picked a class/power combination that just isnt suited for soloing (meaning he spends 5 times as long on finishing a mission than other classes... Pure Healers are like that)
In which case you'll be looking for a group... an experience that isnt quite as enjoyable as one might think (Who am I kidding... enjoyable Grouping Experiences ended sometime around the release of the Planes of Power expansion for EverQuest1 in .. i dunno... 2001 ? *shrugs*)
Aww... but Pickup-grouping isnt THAT bad! It can be loads of fun!
To which I can only respond: Where is the fun in grouping with the following people...
The Grulk - A huge green guy with purple pants and dark green hair.. He spends the majority of his time in the mission super-jumping and pulling aggro left and right while spamming his macro that says: ME SMASH!
Newt Dukem - an arnold looking guy with yellow hair, black sunglasses and a red/blackish outfit... spends more time searching for mirrors and quoting crappy 80s action movies than killing the proper targets and managing his aggro...
Pheonixx (Yes, I am fully aware that Phoenix is in fact spelled... Phoenix... This guy, However, was not!) - a girl with flaming red hair and a yellow/orangey outfit that will open up ANY fight with her full arsenal of Area-Effect-Meteor-Flame-Rain-of-Destruction... Even when said fight only consists of 1 measly henchman who was sent out to pick up sandwiches for his boss.
Wally Mort - A dark figure cloaked all in black with an eeeevil aura emanating from him. His class description said that he was a Support Class, but he seems to spend most of his time using the Moon-beam looking Sniper ability on every mob we see, and in between moon-snipershots he seems to talk alot about a kid named Harry Potter and how much he wants to get his hands on Harry's Alchemist Stones...
About 5 minutes into the first Mission, Newt Dukem starts threatening me with how he will tear off my head and shit down my neck unless i start healing him!
Meanwhile the Grulk is busy in one of the siderooms, trying to operate a Console... but sadly the Computer just says Nooo...
Mr. Mort occasionally stops to complain about how they nerfed his moonshot and how he used to be able to solo this mission with his high level
Aaaand last but not least, it would appear that Pheonixx is busy cybering one of her guildmates to get some phat lewtz since she just realised that we're not going to get ANYWHERE with this epic fail of a group ;)
Slightly disappointed from this poor grouping experience, I decided to go out and solo some more... Quickly realising that a healer like my character wouldnt really make it very far or more importantly... very fast... (yeah yeah, I'm a wannabe powergamer... sometimes you just want to see some results)
I decided to make a Ranged DPS type of class... so I made an Ice based Blaster... (Think Iceman from the Xmen/Marvel Universe)
With my new hero, The Furious Frosty, I was able to handle most of the content that the game threw at me... mainly due to the Ranged Attacks and of course the built in Frost/Snare of most of the attacks that I had chosen for my hero.
I had soon hit lvl 15ish, mostly through mission grinding and just picking up the groups of mobs I would find on my way to the mission spots. Occasionally I would find these Badges and Emblems which were basically rewards... accomplishments or achievements if you will.
As you've probably noticed from reading my blog, I am a huge fan and a big sucker for this feature in mmorpgs, but I am also a bit picky about it... Meaning... I love that I can get rewards for discovering certain things, or for killing enough monsters, or for taking 1,000,000 damage...
Too bad none of the badges I unlocked had any rewards... none of them whatsover... Maybe its been changed since then I dont know. (I know Cryptic Studios changed it in their 2nd game Champions Online)
Risk Vs Reward... I dont mind fighting hard or spending alot of time for something, if I get something interesting or at least remotely useful in the end.. but getting a Title or a Badge to display on my profile... I dunno, that just doesnt do it for me... In fact, I would rather just avoid the timesink all together.
Speaking of Timesink, I suppose that will bring me onto the next topic with this game... Huge timesink... There doesnt seem to be much 'unique' content in it, as far as I am aware, there was only 1 raid, a shit ton of dungeons that all seemed randomly generated from large map-blocks that all seemed very similar. Mobs would continually be reused and rescaled... an example would be that I fought some wizardy looking guys with green spells and some crossbows... 30 levels later I fought the same wizardy looking guys but instead of them standing in a circle chanting around an innocent victim, they were now chanting in a circle around a demon (at least that was new... but the rest I would consider to be the 'A Large Gray Adolescent Male Wolf vs A Large Black Mature Alpha Male Wolf' problem...
I understand that mmorpgs have to pay tons to create new monster models for an mmorpg, but still... They have an excellent character creation engine and they could easily have added alot more variation to the enemies and the themes.
To me it didnt feel like I was playing through a comic book story, AT ALL... it felt more like i was playing through an mmorpg that had dragged a sheet of Super-Hero over it and once you scratch the super-hero surface off, it was very much like every other mmorpg, except it didnt have the same level of depth with Equipment as you see in some other games. In CoH you find Enhancements that are basically Bonusses you can apply to your powers to increase or alter their effects.
Later in its life, CoH/CoX introduced something called the Mission Architect, which is basically a system that allows the player to write a story, design content for this story and put it all into 1 or more missions, thereby creating new playable content for his fellow players. (Something that has been attempted with various levels of success in other games like Ryzom and some cutsey-wootsey asian mmo that i forgot the name of, but the humongous eyes of the characters still haunt my memory...)
Anyways, back to the Mission Architect! This would seem like a GREAT addition to any mmorpg... on Paper :(
Because with EVERY great mission comes at least 5.000 really really really really crappy missions that served only 1 purpose: XP FARMING!
All of a sudden CoH became an empty wasteland, the heroes had abandoned the streets and left the poor innocent citizens to fend for themselves! Everywhere I looked, there were no groups to be found. They were all busy inside the Architect Mission building, doing custom XP Farming Missions so that they could add yet another character to their swelling ranks of useless maxed out super-heroes...
But at least the game allows you to befriend someone based on their account-name, rather than their character name... that way you can keep in touch in case you didnt play during the weekend and you came back and he was ready to level up his 6th character of the week ;)
Goodbye City of Heroes... Hello Champions Online (not to be mistaken with Hello Kitty Online.. I know some of you follow that with great enthuse... Incurus ;) )
Sooo agree on the architect thing, what was an awesome idea is now a farmfest so imagine my surprise when at lvl 1 (upon resubbing) I was invited to Arch mission farming and at the end of 2 hours intensive farming I was lvl 25 :D
ReplyDeleteAmazing hehe
CO....looking forward to that one...
Aye, I am looking forward to Champions Online as well, its alot more quest based like WoW, but it has public quests and quest-area-marking like Warhammer, and of course a really really good character creation system :)
ReplyDeleteI especially like how you go to the Powerhouse to train your abilities and while you're in that house you can retrain and respec and test your abilities on mobs, have lasers fire at you to test mitigation.. test your movement powers and everything.. its a great idea and helps you get a better feel for your power before you select it.
From my experiences with the game, I can highly recommend it for the goofing-around-kinda-game where you make a char, kill some baddies, do some exploring, and move around with your new shiny movement power like flying or superjumping, or tunnelling :P (just make sure your computer is up to par... i had issues with the game until i got the latest graphics card drivers.. silly me )