Dollhouse

Several things, and in no particular order (except perhaps the first, which is what keeps me subbing after nearly 7 years):

Wonderful friends and beloved characters.
Smooth, fluid character movement (unmatched in the MMO genre) that encourages "kinetic immersion."
Preponderance of instanced gameplay: little if any of that "take a number and get in line to fight this mission boss" nonsense.
Perfect balance between humor and "srs bzns" in the lore/content writing, just right for the superhero genre.
Polished subsystems like the auto-exemplaring, configurable difficulty, etc.

I've tried other MMOs, but the only two I've played for more than a month or so are LotRO (from launch, for about a year) and Fallen Earth. I currently play the latter, have for about a year and a half, and love it, but it's so different from CoH (or any other MMO), that it doesn't really occupy at all the same niche in my gaming world. Every other game fell quickly by the wayside, and I've never let my subscription to CoH drop in all these years. What more need I say?

I was only able to run the Lambda Trial for the first time fairly late last night, and our rather large League completed it fairly easily. My Stalker (a Tier 3 Alpha, multi-purple-set build) was defeated only once, against Marauder. We had two Masterminds on the team, and obviously their pet casualties were horrific, but they were still effective, I thought. Of course, several people in the League had already run the Trial several times, and the League Leader is very experienced at leading TFs and Trials. Having a viable strategy and executing it is pretty obviously critical to success.

I don't think this is a bad mission design (and I'm pretty sure I'd feel the same way if we'd failed). I'm not quite ready to state that absolutely, because I'd like to see if alternate strategies work, if a smaller League can pull it off without being all powergamers playing ideal ATs, and so forth. But I found the Trial to be enjoyable, if like so much of our new endgame content, paced so fast as to make roleplay pretty much impossible.

Want a bad mission design? Just look at Apex Mission 2 (and yes, I've completed it, several times). It's a badly designed mission not because it's impossible to complete, but because it's grossly unbalanced in terms of what ATs can do well in it. Because even well-suited ATs are defeated over and over again (nothing makes you feel "super" like being faceplanted repeatedly). Because those flying swords are one of the most profoundly retarded things ever seen in a game.

And - most importantly (and objectively) - because so many of your defeats are essentially random occurrences you have no effective way to prevent. Characters with long, rooted animations are frequently defeated by orbital nanite strikes they have no way to avoid. If you start the attack and at the same time the orbital strike warning displays, on the longer animations, you can't get out of range before the strike hits. A relatively squishy AT will not survive that. Getting defeated because you didn't play your character well enough is fine. Unavoidable random chance defeats? Bad mission design.

FWIW, there is a very active RP community on Pinnacle, as well as a somewhat "stealth" one on Triumph. I can heartily recommend either (or both). Most of us in those RP communities have characters on Virtue, but seldom play them, actually.

If I'm in-game, I'm in-character, period. Sure, I'll do OOC stuff if I have to, but I prefer to keep it to the minimum possible amount necessary to coordinate things. If Team chat gets too OOCly, I can be a bit of a nag about it! =P

RP is what's keeping me subbed (pretty bored with the gameplay...6+ years will do that). With all this new content, the context for RP has only gotten deeper. I don't play CoH as much as I used to (two words: Fallen Earth...), but I still find the game to be a superb canvas upon which to paint my characters' lives and personalities.

Still alive, still playing CoX (though not as much as I once did), still a Stumptowner!

One of many: The Cruxshadows' "Winterborn."

I mean, just look at this line:

"And in this moment, I will not run.
It is my place to stand.
We few shall carry hope
Within our bloodied hands."

Says it all, that does...

Two of my very best characters are Kins (with s/b), and they could hardly be more different. One is a Defender with a dedicated "force multiplier/team leader" build. Everything about her is intended to make her more effective in a support role. While like most Kin players I occasional;ly grow weary of being a "buff bot" with her, mostly I'm fine with it. It's what she does...well, that and manage a "herding cats" sort of RP SG! With her, I generally keep s/b up most all the time, unless the tactical situation or team mates' preferences dictate otherwise.

The other is a /Kin Controller, a multi-billion inf, mostly purple IO set build who can solo a good few AVs...and has. When she's teamed, I make it clear to people that she'll give 'em their "blaster crack" when she can, but that she's got a lot more than that to offer. Most all players seem to understand that and are cool with it.

So what I'm getting at is that there are a lot of possible approaches. I've never not taken the power with a Kin (I have others, too...despite letting my second account lapse, I still have about 80 alts... =P ), but some use it a lot more than others.

Too lazy to add it up, but one account at 5.5 years, another at about 3.5 years, various boosters and server transfers...I'm thinking in the neighborhood of $1750 or so. I don't include my laptop, as I'd have a pretty high end machine anyway (for music creation/performance, although if I didn't play games, I'd have saved a little on video hardware, probably).

Considering all the entertainment, the online friendships, and overall good times this game has provided (and continues to provide), I think it's money well spent.

Agreed...but the ability to stack holds on bosses is awfully nice. I tend to get both on my Dark/Elec builds...

It's not something I do a lot of, but the fishing in Torchlight (where you can haul in actual useful stuff) is a lot of fun! Adding something like that to CoH would be a pleasant diversion.

user F3$+1v@l has logged on

*Assets in place.

*Latest timeline received...will comply.

*'I shoudln't have to say anything, darlings, but no one gets through...' Bright Ring Mistress Lili, the Carnival of Light

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I think I'd love that one, Olantern. Is it still up?

Hmmm...main account on recurring (without a gap) since two weeks after launch...second about 5 months newer. Should be good to go!

My much-loved character Festival (Kin/Psy Defender) has alwasy been a Praetorian, actually: I envisioned her as a refugee from that world, a Ring Mistress in the Carnival of Light. Started an SG by that name about five tyears ago on Triumph, and it's branched onto at least two other servers (Pinn and Virt). Still going strong (although I suspect we're gonna lose the name when GR comes!). The backstory for those SGs is precisely that of the canon Carnival of Light: a part of the resistance to Tyrant.

So is it any surprise which group I've joined...? =P

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Transmission received. Assets en route. The show _will_ go on.

Lili duValle, Bright Ring Mistress, Carnival of Light

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I'm playing CO (although probably not for a whole lot longer..too freakin' campy!), and I'll download Torchlight in the next day or two. Going to look into Borderlands, too.

On the horizon, I'll very probably play APB. I've always considered the basic combat mechanics (turn-based, tab targeting, etc.) to be my biggest gameplay gripes with MMOs, so a more FPS/TPS style of combat (realtime, hit box aiming, etc.) is very appealing. So is the completely configurable music player...and the character creator makes even CoH (and Champs) look like an Etch-A-Sketch. The setting is not so appealing to me...don't know how interested I'm going to be in what amounts to "Grand Theft Auto, the MMO."

A lot further out (if at all...Funcom's in trouble) is The Secret World. Everything I ever wanted in an MMO, basically.

Been playing CO a fair bit and have hooked up with some Triumph folk (hi, Em!). I'm enjoying it...but with some pretty big caveats.

Small stuff:

* Cryptic is still in love with the nerf. They pulled a literally game-changing sweeping nerf on launch day, ferchrissakes! The poo-storm that caused can only be imagined by those who didn't experience it directly. Lots of power-specific nerfs since then...many needed, it must be said. But the result of this constant "power balancing" is a feeling of no firm ground beneath your character's feet. You feel like every patch could mean a complete re-thinking of how to play the character.

* Despite all the above "balancing," there's a huge disparity in character effectiveness, all build-specific. The completely open character building system is fun and in theory allows a huge range of possible builds. In actual practice, however, there are a handful of powers that massively outstrip all the rest...and cookie-cutter FotM builds predominate.

* The UI is laggy, even on a really good computer. It's frustrating to think that your button-mashing is keeping up with the fast pace of combat only to have the display hiccup, some rubberbanding occur...and your character faceplant.

* Not enough content. If you skip anything, you get gaps and have to grind mobs to advance (an excruciating process, as mob XP is absurdly low). If you don't skip anything, you're repeating the exact same leveling path with any alts you make.

* In short, the game still feels like something about midway through closed beta...not like a game that's been live for a month. It was pushed to release too soon.


The not-so-small issue:

All the above is fixable, and I suspect will be fine before my 6-month subscription is over. But I'll still likely not renew it. For me, the reason is immersion.

Or, rather, lack thereof. Champions Online is just not an immersive game for me, and there's more than one reason for that.

Qne is that it's not a very RP-friendly game. Partly because it's attracted a fair number of WoW-kiddie smacktards who like to mess with RP'ers. Not that big a deal for RP-on-the-fly types like me, but for the "hang out in the club and gab" sort of RP'ers, they're a pain.

More importantly to me, there's the fact that there's no space for RP...literally. The game relies heavily on open missions instead of instanced ones, and the spawn density is really close. Enemies have long aggro ranges and their attacks tend to have greater range than your own. The net result is that if you stop to RP, or even get a slight bit distracted from precise character positioning, you will be attacked, probably from multiple directions. That's tense and fun...sometimes. But it also increases the likelihood that your team will rush madly through missions in a grim, closed-mouthed sort of way. Social interaction will get you killed.

Worse still, the game is really, really, REALLY campy. The look is cartoonish in comparison to CoX, the fourth wall is made of wet tissue paper (constant, corny self-referential NPC blather...), and the target "feel" the devs seem to be shooting for is The Tick. What they actually got is more like the 60's Batman TV show. Yes...that campy.

Again, fun for a little while...but it wears thin pretty quickly and it just murders immersion for a-bit-too-serious RP'ers like me.

The net result? I'll play out - and enjoy, to be fair - my 6-month subscription. And continue to enjoy CoX until the switch off the last server.