MrLiberty

My original Trio of characters was Cosmic Chris, Kid Kinetics, Mr. Marvel (I liked alliterations!) Unfortunately with the Marvel Lawsuit scare, Mr. Marvel had to go (sadly I didn't realize I had ripped off such an obscure character in the marvel universe http://marvel.wikia.com/Mr._Marvel_(Earth-616) in name only) and was renamed Mr. Liberty.

*edit* Techincally I guess Mark Hawkins was Mister Marvel too, but yeah! Who knew.


One of his I think earlier Costumes :



And later he became Liberty Incarnate because it sounded cool, and then even later it turns out incarnates were a real thing, which was also nifty.

Since I had a free sub to toss at something and already play a lot of games (CoH: 2-4 nights a week) I went gold on Champions to give it a look see.

Running on whatever the base setting was, my video card a GTX 550 TI that can run COH Ultra, Diablo 3, Crysis 2, etc etc had constant hiccups to the point where the screen would go black before fading back in. (No other games in my library have this problem atm)

So after cranking the graphics down I was able play without it freezing during every combat sequence and getting me killed.

Something I've wanted in COH for the past few years is a power armor type character as its been one of my mains concept wise. So seeing CO had that was a ray of sunshine.

I feel like from what I've seen so far, CoH is the prettier game. Overall. That isn't to say CO has some wins in their corner. Rocket boots flight looks awesome. The "glow" slider in the costume creator for certain parts makes an awesome looking suit of power armor. The layering that is possible is greater in CO than CoH.

Power wise, at first I was like "I don't get anywhere near as many powers, booo!" then it sort of hit me. The single target Tap powers pretty much fill the role of a tier 1, 2 or 3 blast. Short fast strikes vs. longer chargeups for more damage. Rather than an intricate secondary of defenses you pretty much get a passive that fills the mitigation role with 1 or 2 click along the way for burst of mitigation/healing.

The coolest thing I've found so far is Power Armor has hardpoints for powers. So where in City of Heroes I can cycle an attack chain of 1/2/3/4. In CO if I build my character right I can cycle 1 (Builder) 2 (Hand missles) 3 (Shoulder Chain gun which looks awesome) 4 (Chest missle swarm) or I can toggle on 3 and 4 and shoot 2 while doing it all at the same time for an awesome mess of damage.

Another positive is you can purchase proc's / perks for individual powers that change the way they function. For the hand missles, you can turn the ST attack into a thunder strike style Powerful ST + splash damage AoE. You can give the chain gun a stacking -res debuff. The chest missles gain a perk where at max targets they do standard damage, but that damage increases as the number of targets left alive decreases. It definitely adds a very interesting spin on the powers so you end up with more, despite having less.

The down side is, you do have less. At this point I'm level 16 ish my combat expereience is pretty much, walk up to spawn. Line up cone. Hit 3 which toggles on the shoulder cannon and melts mobs, build up energy with 1, repeat. Its fun (because its power armor) but I've been doing it since level 6 and can recognize its a bit on the shallow side.

Despite being freeform, I took the in set heal and found out that it sort of sucks compared to other heals I'm not sure if there is a way to respec, I hope there is, I think I might have seen one in the cash shop. My guess is it'll be expensive.

Another cool feature I found with an Alt is for some healing powers, they act as a single target charge up attack, single target charge up ally heal or self heal. That is pretty awesome, again its more with less. But you still end up with less. As a note, COH's powers seem much more pretty/flashy than CO's which is surprising considering with CO's cartoony look I figured they'd be way over the top.

Blocking is a fun little mini game added and allows for some fun herding options (though most attacks cap at 5 targets so its mainly just to save travel time, not really increase kill speed) It sucks that everyone has the same block animation /holds up left arm to shield self, but eh, what can you do.

In the end, the few systems that CO has as an advantage are far outweighed by the number of things I find more fun in CoH. Things like tap powers and blocking would have been amazing for blasters or the toggle hardpoints idea, allowing them to make better use of all those attacks they have. But what can you do.

Just my review of things, tried to make light of positives found in the game (because it isn't all bad) while weighing them against my (personal opinion) negatives.

I'm all for trying to make someone seem like the bad guy here, but really. Head size? In one game you can make kids who are 7-8 and dress them up however you want. In the other you can make them 13-15 at the yongest. Both have the potential to be abused. One is not worse than the other if abused.

As for Blade and Soul, sadly its been a title I've been looking forward to since I first saw the premise of it however many years ago. Kung Fu MMO that uses real time fighting combo's rather than 1/2/3/4.

Games can be grindy if they make the grind fun. Hell I still log into generic farm maps in the AE to watch my Plant/Storm controller make a mess of as many 8 man mobs grouping up as possible.

I'm not trying to defend the game, there is no real need too. If you like it, play it. If you don't. Move along. Trying to slander while playing a game that has the same potential for the abuse you are playing makes you come off as silly. Trying to justify with with "Oh well our models are 8 head sizes where theirs are only 4.75" is just dumb. Espeically when you can scroll down face options and choose from ones designed specifically to look "Young". Its a 10ish year old game engine with 3 only character models for players. I somehow think the exclusion of young character models is tied that and not some moral high ground.

@MrLiberty

If you still have those chance for KD/KB procs I could use one for my warshade, which is pretty much my main at this point. So Lot 24 if its still available.

Just my own Data point, the various chat channels I'm in seem to still be buzzing with TF's trials/etc. My global friend list still has the usual people logging in, and I still regularly see Virtue not in the green (along with freedom) when I log in.

Seems to me likely business as usual for the most part, though I'm sure some people have already left. Just not a mass exodus.

Choice 1 would be aggro cap.

Choice 2 would probably be controller pets.

Choice 3 would be ET

PvP would be on there but no one would come back so it'd mainly be a waste :P

Exploits will never stop. Some players will always look for the fastest easiest safest way to do something. Look no further than the AE in CoH, specifically fire farms.

The only exploits that deserve bans are things like duping, account hacking / stripping / etc. Finding something that provides a better risk/reward ratio just needs to be brought in line with the arbitrary standard set by the game designers / people who run it.

AFK farming is nothing new to a lot of games, banning people for it (perma) rather than fixing the exploit is just lazy. It also hints that the game thinks it has a very expendable playerbase.

Spending hours and hours jumping on the 4 squares in pocket D does make you a better PvPer.

Some people just like to be the d-bag that starts arguments. You can usually spot them when they throw out either personalized or generalized insults (in this case calling the player base oblivious and obnoxious and suggesting that the "protest" was hostile).

Nothing really to see, the internet is the internet.

By your logic, the same nerfs of i5 and i6, the invention system and the incarnate system would have brought players back. Outside of a few tanks I played back then (who would herd the map, then AoE it with no aoe caps) I'd say a vast majority of my builds are more powerful today then they were pre ED GDN.

What is a much more realistic scenario is as games get older the population generally declines, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Restructuring the game will chase some people off, sure. But a better overall product will ensure others stay longer. And that is pretty much what I think happened.

You had some population loss with the i5 i6 nerfs, you had a population loss with the i13 changes. But overall you had a game with a healthy population that lasted 8+ years where most are lucky to last 2.

I like to present the facts and nothing but. What kind of person would take the side opposite that kitten and baby ducks!

One of my original characters was Mr. Liberty who spawned an alt of the same character: Liberty Incarnate

When the day finally came that the name carried a bit of extra gravity, I snapped this screenie of him discovering this newfound power.