City of Heroes

[Adagio]

Is there much teamwork, or why is it online?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
No. You can not roleplay villians either.

Well, that's useless.

[Grumbold]

I dont know what you mean by powers balancing out. Different heroes are deliberately capable of very different things, with some more solo capable and others more group friendly to give players of different kinds ways of playing they enjoy. Power tweaking will naturally continue for months to come but I have no problem with the ones I have tried.

Superheroes of most types can solo a lot for levels 1-15 but naturally you are encouraged to team up to gain the benefits of mutually supportive powersets and team orientated content. There are whole mission chains that you can only do teamed and as you get higher the more it becomes recommended. Once a few remaining bugs are worked out they should provide a lot of the big incentives.

In the high level zones there are antiheroes that take a small army of players to defeat. The first major update will be bringing more of that with levels 41-50, major war zones and very complex missions. I won't be seeing that for months even if they unlock it tomorrow since 15th is apparently 15% of the way to 40 and its taken me a week

The first expansion will contain playable villains, but its hardly useless to be a superhero in a superhero world.
Anyone who insists the sole purpose of a game is to kill other players might as well stick to Halo or whatever FPS is considered the latest classic. A roleplaying game adds nothing that they need and games like EQ are hardly hurting for customers because they ignored it for years. PvE is what a lot of players want, provided the result is satisfying. The computer enemies are certainly not morons already and the ones with powers know how to use them to mess you up!

[Sharpe]

Sounds interesting so far - but $60 Canadian plus $20 per month is perhaps a little too pricey for me

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by ADG
Is there much teamwork, or why is it online?

IIRC, they have people forming their own version of the JLA, X-Men, etc. It's the games equivilant of guilds.

Grumbold will be the best person to tell you how xp is divided amongst the party taking down a villianous gang.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Grumbold
.
Anyone who insists the sole purpose of a game is to kill other players might as well stick to Halo or whatever FPS is considered the latest classic.

I like to actually roleplay in roleplaying games. I know, it's strange. And, in my opinion, you need to be able to have conflict to roleplay - having the freedom to hurt someone if the situation calls for it is crucial to a roleplaying enviroment. As are villians. (and no, NPCs don't count since the computer roleplays worse than a d00d.)

Plus, I don't want to be a do-gooder.

[General Ludd]

Is there not even a seperate PvP server? Even Everqust has a few of those.

[General Ludd]

This is probably one of the worst MMOGs for roleplaying. I can't imagine a more boring environment than where every character basically has to be lawful good.


Even in everquest you're atleast able to play 'evil' races... even if you can't do anything particularily evil.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I dont know what you mean by powers balancing out. Different heroes are deliberately capable of very different things, with some more solo capable and others more group friendly to give players of different kinds ways of playing they enjoy. Power tweaking will naturally continue for months to come but I have no problem with the ones I have tried.

If you pick 2 random characters of the same level, would they have an equal chance of defeating each other? If they can 90% of the time, the powers are extremely well balanced. If they can only 10% of the time, the powers are extremely unbalanced.

How do you generate characters? Do you get to buy powers with a point pool a la Champions (which is probably the best Superhero RPG out there)? How do you spend experience -- do you get to buy extra powers and skills, or do you just get to be better in a generic fashion? Are there a large selection of non-combat skills and powers as well?

[asleepathewheel]

Great questions, I'm interested in the answers as well.

The PvP as goods doesn't bother me, I think I would prefer it over the traditional MMORPG anyway, but if when the villain expansion comes out, you can't fight hero v villain, then its pretty lame.

[Grumbold]

I've played plenty of PnP RPGs where the DM has insisted there be no interparty conflict. Didnt stop us roleplaying The villain pack will indeed include PvP but no exact details yet of how it will work.

You can download the manual from www.cityofheroes.com if you want to take a look, its actually pretty good. Essentially you pick a primary skill line (like fire attack) and a secondary (like fire defence) from which your major skills will come as you level up. There are 9 skills in each and they grow with you so your first attack remains useful, you dont outgrow it. You pick 1 of each to start and get a new power every even level. Every odd level you get to add slots to powers you already have. Slots allow you to plug in enhancers to make that power faster, more damaging, longer range, less draining, whatever you want. Added to this you can grab skills from any 10 support pools. These supply things like movement (teleporting, super jumps, flying) leadership, support stuff. In total you get 20 skills by level 38, so you cant buy too many support skills unless you leave out some of your majors.

PvP with these powers is likely to be like DAoC - not good solo but fine in teams. Solo its likely to be whoever unloads first wins, since a controller can usually paralyse an opponent but will die fast if ambushed, blasters can probably kite tanks etc. All these powers will need careful tweaking to make sure they work "fairly" for PvP.

Generating your character involves picking an origin and a character type (blaster, tanker, scrapper, controller, defender) then your 2 skills from 2 major pools open to your type. Then you get to spend ages in the avatar/costume generator perfecting your superhero looks and choose a name. The generator is by far the best I have ever seen. SWG outstrips it for face design I hear, but for overall costume its brilliant. It has to be because until they patch in a costume alteration service (underway) you look the same from birth to retirement.

My blaster just got true flight power (he could hover before, which is a helpful defence for combat but not for movement) and it is a real thrill zooming around the city. I wont pretend the entire game is lag free but its the best I've seen yet and zooming about is a real pleasure. The combat really is 3D, so you can zoom around and throw down fire from above, escape into the air or be sniped at from rooftops. You just have to be sure your enemies can't chase after you. The first one that did gave me a real shock

[General Ludd]

Is there a site with a character builder yet? I might still be interested if there are powers and costumes suitable for a General Ludd.... although I think I would have to wait for the villain expansion pack for that.

[bipolarbear]

This gmae reminds me of Superman 64! what a pot of stemaing crap that was! Seriously, one of the worst games ever!

[bipolarbear]

SO do you getto design your costume in this game? I'd call that pretty standard for mmorpg's but It doesn't really say much aboot it.

[Jon Miller]

just bought it

the wait for the email verification to be able to play it is really long and annoying

Jon Miller