Roll a new character. Streep sweep or do the intro missions till level 5. Go to Kings Row. Do Newspaper missions till you get the safe guard mission. Complete it. Get the flight pack (raptor pack IIRC).
The first major story arc that you can experience is in the hollows, interconnected contacts telling the story of a zone. I'm not sure if you'll be able to complete it by level 14, but I think you can.
When you start, you are basically someone who has just discovered they have powers, whatever they may be. Did Superman save the world when he was 16? No, and its not that way here, though as you progress from stopping muggings, to protecting zones, you will, and you will encounter many different zones, with many different villains.
Considering the size of zones, even with sprint it shouldn't take more than a couple minutes to cross a zone, but when you get a travel power you can cross the entire city from Peregrine Island to Atlas in minutes depending on your load times.
I'm not sure what you're looking for in terms of AI, so I can't really answer that one.
Edit:
You've been offered by several experienced players someone to duo with. Take it, learn, enjoy.
Personally, I've been playing since Issue 1 and the only time I haven't played is when I'm out of town or out of the country. The only thing I find boring about the game is farming after more than a couple runs.
A lot of what you're looking for comes in later.
Travel powers when they arrive at 14 are brilliant. Flight, Superspeed and Superjump are all heaps of fun the first time you get them. Teleport's a bit of an artform...
Level 14 may seem like a long way off at the beginning, but once you get the hang of the game its a blip in your characters career.
You'll be fighting streetgangs for a while, but they do get more interesting. The Tsoo (levels 15-30) are fun and use a bunch of trickier tactics like healing, teleporting, caltrops to slow you down and have a wide variety of bosses.
In the 40's you get to travel to other dimensions and cool stuff like that.
Older storylines are a bit basic and dull, newer ones are more fun. Stick throught o 15 and do the missions in Faultline for an example of the newer stuff.
I don't exactly see a question in there, but the bottom line is that it takes a while to learn things about this game. It isn't something you just pick up and a week later you have mastered every aspect of it. Be patient, learn the ropes, and take your time. There is no rush to anything; unless of course, you make it into a rush situation.
If you are really all that disappointed in the game and don't see anything good coming of it, perhaps you should just cut your losses and move on. Life is short, and there is no reason to be involved in anything as trivial as a game if you aren't enjoying yourself.
Words to the wise aren't necessary- it's the stupid ones that need them.
"You're right...I forgot...being constantly at or the near the damage cap is a big turn off. Definitely not worth it."
- Vitality
In fact if you're playing tonight I'll run with you till you have to log off, just let me know what server and I'll be waiting in Outbreak.
Atlas/Galaxy are just the starting zones, where you being w/ cleaning up the local gangs.
It's when you progress to lv5 or 6 you can move on to some story, your first or second contact will send you to talk to David Wincott in the Hollows *Access via Atlas Park for lowbies or Skyway for mid teens*
You could either start the Hollows story arc, or go to Kings Row instead, talk to the Detective so you can start doing Police Scanner missions, do 3 missions, return to the Detective, pick up a Safeguard mission and you'll get a Raptor *Flight* Pack upon completion. Kings Row Safeguard gives a Zero G Pack which is like Super Jump, but use wisely as they only have a 2 hour duration *as in the timer starts running down while you have it actively clicked*
Atlas Park Safeguard: levels 5-10: Raptor Pack
Kings Row Safeguard: levels 11-15: Zero-G Pack *Super Jump*
Also once you get into the higher levels, I believe lv20 and beyond, it takes 5 scanner missions to get a safeguard mission.
Also x2, each zone *except Atlas, Galaxy and Hazard Zones cause you can't do them there* have a level range where you can run scanner missions.
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Also once you get into the higher levels, I believe lv20 and beyond, it takes 5 scanner missions to get a safeguard mission.
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It's still 3 for me on my 48 toon...did one tonight.
The Hollows and Faultline are some of the best low-level content int the game' once you hit 35 you get to do things like raiding the Rikti mothership in the Rikti War Zone and at 45 you can go on a Hamidon raid. These are two of the most outstanding events in the game, requiring a large group of players to work together to accomplish a goal, and pulling them off results in a sense of accomplishment that can be matched (or surpassed) only by hitting 50 the first time.
Of course, you'd have to decide to stick around to experience those.
City of Heroes taught me that when the world is burning, you don't just stand by and watch, you grab a fire extinguisher and do whatever you can to stop it-even if it's not much at all. Sign the petition to keep City of Heroes alive HERE.
@MissKyo, Leader of the Teamsters coalition on Protector
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hi guys,
so i am trying the trial of city of heroes for the last few days now and i like to give my opinion for so far from my experience. Since i'm not convinced yet if i should buy this game or not.
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The beginning of the game is really just the tip of the iceberg for what is to come. Now with the addition of AE, one can fairly easily be distracted away from finding story lines. However, if what you have listed is enough to not try the full game for at least one month, then maybe this game isn't for you after all.
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- not really a storyline when you enter the game, you begin and just doing some quests to level
- it's sometimes pretty confusing where i should go for contact persons
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The 'simple' start is meant to expose the player to the different enemy groups. The Outcasts and the Skulls are the 'newb fodder' because they are much easier to defeat. Also, not counting bosses, they don't have mez attacks (holds, stuns, sleeps, etc). As the player level increases, exposure to more dangerous enemies (like those with mezzes below boss rank) start to appear.
The storylines are also 'light' so as not to overload someone that is new. The missions do try to steer the player to The Hollows or Kings Row pretty early. The Hollows has LOTS of story and introduces the Trolls (and eventually Frostfire). Frostfire gives the first cut scene sequence in the game to my knowledge. The first Trial in the game is also unlocked here.
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- since i don't have flying yet the traveling is a pain and boring
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In Kings Row one can do Police Radio missions and thus work up to defending against a bank robbery, which is called a Safeguard Mission (the villain version is called a Mayhem Mission). These earn the first travel powers of Raptor Pack (mission obtained at lvl 5-9) and the Zero G Pack (mission obtained at lvl 10-14).
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- from my experience not really much ai with the enemy's and see always the same on the streets. gangs standing by each other or criminals are robbing a women from there purse or break in to something. not much variation to that.
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Oh just wait. The AI doesn't change drastically, but the additional powers and tactics of the higher lvl baddies make things much more interesting.
My advice to new players is to try to skip ALL AE CONTENT until after their first character. That way you have a better idea of how 'normal' game play works and won't be so confused by the differences between 'normal' and AE.
.
.Driver Sweeper * CohHelper * HijackThis * TweakCoH * CPU-ID
* Defraggler * Program Security Scan * PC Performance Scan *
If you don't convince yourself, no one else is going to do it. If the premise of the game (superhero/villain) is not attractive, nothing is going to make it so.
My scrapper doesn't need an AoE. She IS an AoE.
You've listed enough pros there that I would play it if I didn't already 
As far as your cons are concerned:
Story:
The storyline starts up in the Hollows between levels 7 and 15. The devs didn't put much story in the very early levels because they figured that people would be spencing their time learning the game rather than reading the story (just guessing here).
Make sure you read the clues and what your contact says before and after missions, that is where the majority of the storyline is found. Also, make sure you have NPC chat turned on (It appears as dark blue text in your chat window) there is more story that is contained there at times as well.
To really get the story: READ EVERYTHING. Lack of story is usually a complaint made by people who are used to their games having voice actors to say all the dialog. As such, they skip over all the text in the windows and have no idea why they're going to this warehouse.
Contacts:
When you finish, or outlevel a contact they will usually introduce you to the next contact. When they do so, the contact's name and location appear in your navigation window at the top of your screen. It will look like this if you are in a different zone than them
Paula Dempsey
Kings Row
If you are in the same zone their name will appear with an icon on your navigation bar. When you swivel your camera, the contact's location will show up as a yellow arrow with a distance meter on your screen. There is a drop down menu on your navigation bar that says: Map Contact Mission Badge
Clicking on any one of those opens up the appropriate window, so to locate a contact you already have you would click on Contact.
Travel:
You're actually lucky you started playing now, after all these temp travel powers were added to make life easier on people. When I first started playing you had to run EVERYWHERE until level 14. Navigating the Hollows at level 10 with no travel power really sucked.
Kinetics defenders and controllers get a pseudo travel power at level 6 and level 10 respectively. It grants something like Super Speed for a short time, but requires a to hit check on an enemy, which is slows down for the same length of time.
AI and enemy variety:
The AI doesn't get a whole lot more complex, but the enemies DO get a wider range of abilities later in the game that make them more challenging. You've probably encountered Outcasts by now, and may have encountered their leader, Frostfire.
Frostfire is still one of my favorite enemies to fight because he is a challenge for a low level character. He uses status effects (AKA mez) as a large part of his fighting, and very few powersets have their mez protection at the level you fight him, if they ever get any.
Later on, especially in level restricted zones, the enemies get tougher and have more ways of killing you. The game was made easy in the low levels so new players don't get frustrated by dying repeatedly. It does get tougher.
I will also extend a similar invitation, I play on Pinnacle almost exclusively, and I have one open character slot. If you want I can start a new character with you and run with you until you hit level cap for a trial account, answering questions if you have them. Or I can start a new character on just about any server and run with you for a while.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Just want to step in and say that this is a quality post, and I'm impressed that, even given your earlier negative assessment of things, you're really trying to stick things out and give it a go.
There are no words for what this community, and the friends I have made here mean to me. Please know that I care for all of you, yes, even you. If you Twitter, I'm MrThan. If you're Unleashed, I'm dumps. I'll try and get registered on the Titan Forums as well. Peace, and thanks for the best nine years anyone could ever ask for.
Is the (low-level) travel really so bad compared to other games? I've heard horror stories about traveling for hours while tabbed over to the Internet or watching TV. I haven't played many other MMOs seriously, but I've watched players in other games trying to meet a shuttle or ferry at an appointed time because there's a looong wait if they miss it, and I've played some non-multiplayer big games (Daggerfall/Morrowwind series) in which travel felt much more tedious than it does here, and one could get permanently lost in some of the huge dungeons.
And of course once you get travel powers things are very different. Not only do they solve a lot of problems, they make me feel super in and of themselves. I've got a character now who's 39 without a travel power and, although he's playable, I feel enormous contrast whenever I switch over to one of my other characters with a travel power. Soaring over the city, leaping into the air and immediately leaving the enemies far behind, rocketing down the main drag in Steel canyon of Super Speed, these things are just cool sometimes.
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
Heya, Elessar.
Something that might or might not give you a bit more of the flavour of the game and what you can expect as you progress...
http://www.youtube.com/samuraiko
On my channel you'll find about a dozen or so videos I made for COH/COV as trailers and teasers for the game for the last five issues of the game, plus music videos, commercials, etc. They feature characters of all looks and powers, enemies of virtually every faction, glimpses into most if not all of the zones in the game, and one in particular (the 5th Anniversary Commemorative Video) focused on the overarching timeline of the COH universe.
As an almost 3-year vet, I'm glad you're actually sticking with it - yes, the first few levels (especially with no travel powers) can be annoying, but as folks have mentioned, you can get temp powers by doing safeguards, or my other personal favorite - run in a large group and street sweep your way to and from your missions. Much XP and salvage to be had that way, depending on where you go!
Good luck, and hoping to see you stay with us!
Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite
Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)
Hello again Elessar,
The posters before me have pretty well covered the main jist, but I wanted to reiterate and add to their comments.
The first thing I can really urge you to do to maximize your experience, in my opinion, is read the text of what contacts are saying to you. This will give you your storylines and will probably hold your interest a little better than street sweeping.
Secondly, I wanted to warn you about travel powers. If I remember correctly, you are using a trial account. Trial accounts do not give the full gameplay experience. Not even close. Unfortunately, this means the level progression stops before you gain a travel power. This sucks. Unless you purchase the game and a months worth of play, you won't get to experience the majesty of soaring over Paragon City or jumping from rooftop to utility poles to rooftop again. Super speed is the fastest way to travel arguably once you know the zones, and can speed by some enemies without them noticing you. Teleportation is tricky, but can be useful in many situations.
Third, once you reach level 5, find the Yellow Line train station on your map and head there. Inside, you can click on the train doors and access different parts of the city. Kings Row is where you want to go at that level. A purple icon will appear on your map designating a detective for you to talk to. Once you talk to them, you will get a police scanner. You can access the scanner by opening your Contacts list and clicking on the radio at the top. Doing these will earn you a Safeguard mission, where you stop a bank robbery. Succeed and get a Raptor pack (flight temporary power) and travel becomes much easier. If you fail, try again in a few more radio missions.
When you first start playing, do the tutorial in Outbreak. You may have done this already, but it bears repeating that you should read all of the text. There is alot of useful information there that gets missed by newcomers alot.
Sorry this took so long, but I wanted to hit the main points. Good luck and happy hunting.
Steeple
PS. Are you seeing npc chat bubbles at all? What I mean is whne you are walking around, can you seeing citizens and enemies saying things? My account had defaulted to having this feature off for some reason and it was quite boring until I figured out this needed to be fixed. Let me know if you need help with that.
Didn't we do this last week?
...I forgot what experience means.
Yes. Yes we did
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con's:
- not really a storyline when you enter the game, you begin
and just doing some quests to level
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There is no single core story to the game. There are several core stories, but they don't hit you over the head with them. You learn the details of them as you level up and those seemingly random missions begin to achieve a consistency that eventually leads to a story arc or a task force that is the climax of the story.
This model has gotten rather diluted over the years, unfortunately. With all of the bonus XP for newbies nowadays, you tend to blow by the early levels quickly. There's also a lot more alternative content that sets you up to skip the core story missions entirely.
If you really want to learn the story of the game, then here's my suggestion: Don't go to the Hollows except to talk to Sam Wincott. Don't do newspaper missions, except to team up with someone else who is running a bank safeguard. (Those are the missions that get you special travel powers and such.)
Talk to your initial contact in City Hall or Freedom Corps an follow the leads they give you. It will take you a bit longer, but you will begin to learn some things about the villains populating the city and as you level up you'll learn that many of them are not what they appear to be at first glance.
Do the task forces at the appropriate levels. Many of these are the climax of a particular villain group's story.
When you see a book icon next to a contact's portrait, that means the contact is offering you a "story arc". Go do that series of missions. It will teach you something about the game's backstory, show you some unique mission settings that you won't see anywhere else, and typically will also reward you with a temporary power of some sort.
There are zones in the game that have their own self-contained story. In level order, they are The Hollows, New Faultline, Striga Isle, Croatoa, and The Rikti War Zone. If you go to one of these zones, then I would recommend that you play them from start to finish in order to get the most out of them.
In addition, you'll also find that the Midnight Club has a series of stories waiting for you at different levels, culminating in one of the better task forces in the game at level 50.
All of these extra things will distract you from the core stories, and level you up past them. That is why Ouroboros, a time traveling faction, was invented. So you could go back and do story arcs that you missed on the way to level 50. Ouroboros also has their own set of unique task forces that reveal some of the backstory of the game.
In short, the reason it appears to be random at the beginning is that you are meant to discover the story as you go along. It isn't revealed all at once, nor is it spoon fed to you. When you discover the Clockwork King's diary at level 5, and it says that you remind him of the hero that turned him into a brain in a jar, you should be asking yourself who this Clockwork King is, and how his robots work, and what his goals are. The answers won't come to you immediately, but as you experience the story of Paragon City through your adventures, the answers will eventually present themselves and some of them will surprise you.
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Also once you get into the higher levels, I believe lv20 and beyond, it takes 5 scanner missions to get a safeguard mission.
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It's still 3 for me on my 48 toon...did one tonight.
[/ QUOTE ]The only way your lv48 character did a Safeguard after 3 scanner missions is if you had already done 2. Safeguards require 5 missions once you hit level 16.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
From your Cons:
Travel is actually a Pro, you just haven't gotten to it yet. No other game does travel as well as CoH IMHO.
There are Trains, Ships, Portals etc. all over the place for Zone Travel and Flight, Super Jump etc for in Zone travel. I'm confident that your travel concerns will evaporate if you purchase the game.
Contacts can be confusing. I guess this can be true at the beginning, I don't recall having that problem, but a simple shout in the Global channels that are probably closed to you now will quickly get you helpful answers and in a very short span I believe that you'll wonder why you had problems with contacts at all.
Storyline concerns. Well, this is a toss up. If you really enjoy story lines, there are plenty to pay attention to, but they start as you get out of the early levels and zones. Of course, in almost all cases, you can completely ignore the story and kill the bad guys and click the glowies. The story is more often layered on top of the action instead of being intergral to the action. That might bother you, or it might not.
AI and enemy variation might look like an issue in Atlas/Galaxy, but the various level ranges and the various zones are all populated by differing enemy groups. You start as a simple hero and you fight simple enemys. That will change, but it's up to you how much it needs to change to keep you happy.
To the OP,
My views were exactly the same when I first started on trial, except it was on Villians side. What really sold me on this game was when you team up with 7 other players and run missions. Very entertaining. So entertaining in fact that I brought the game in just about 6-7 days because it was so much fun I had to get past lvl 14 to try new powers. Thats just me though, you can always start another character if you reach the trial cap. My advice is to have fun and team up whenever you can if solo is not your thing. Welcome and hope you stick around.
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Also once you get into the higher levels, I believe lv20 and beyond, it takes 5 scanner missions to get a safeguard mission.
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It's still 3 for me on my 48 toon...did one tonight.
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I was pretty certain it's not. And ParagonWiki agrees. Read the last paragraph of the linked section.
Doing someone else's scanner missions counts for your progress. Although it might have to be from the same detective - not sure on that part.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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Secondly, I wanted to warn you about travel powers. If I remember correctly, you are using a trial account. Trial accounts do not give the full gameplay experience. Not even close. Unfortunately, this means the level progression stops before you gain a travel power. This sucks. Unless you purchase the game and a months worth of play, you won't get to experience the majesty of soaring over Paragon City or jumping from rooftop to utility poles to rooftop again.
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No, this was covered in one of his other threads. Trial accounts can get to level FOURTEEN and they CAN get a travel power.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
<qr>
You used to play WoW, right? Did you make it to level 40 and get a mount? If so, how did you manage to go 40 levels without any travel power equivalent? Also, the speed of a WoW mount is only a little fast than CoH's Sprint. Once you do get a travel power, you'll be quite pleased I think.
As for the storyline when you enter the game, it's there. You're a fledgling hero looking to make a name for yourself, you need to start small and work your way up the ladder. Check out some of the backstory on the main page, it'll help get you more into the game without being in the game (if you get what I mean).
Also, the gangs hanging out and purse-grabbing don't really go away and it is a bit monotonous, but pay attention to the dialogue. There's a lot of stuff being said by them that will make you laugh (unless you're actually a robot and have no sense of humor), and there's pretty much variety in what they say too -- although you will hear some repeats.
Personally, I think the pros you listed outweigh your cons anyway...
@Johnstone & @Johnstone 2
ediblePoly.com
All my characters
guys, thanks for all your great reply's. Makes me really abit more convinced to keep leveling.
Thanks guys
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Secondly, I wanted to warn you about travel powers. If I remember correctly, you are using a trial account. Trial accounts do not give the full gameplay experience. Not even close. Unfortunately, this means the level progression stops before you gain a travel power. This sucks. Unless you purchase the game and a months worth of play, you won't get to experience the majesty of soaring over Paragon City or jumping from rooftop to utility poles to rooftop again.
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No, this was covered in one of his other threads. Trial accounts can get to level FOURTEEN and they CAN get a travel power.
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Ack. I stand corrected! Thank you for catching that.The good news is, you CAN play with travel powers on a trial account.
Note: You will need to look through Pool powers as soon as they become available. You will need to take at least one other power before your designated travel power in order to access it.
Example: Flight is your travel power of choice. In order to be able to Fly at level 14, you will need to take Flight from the power pool choices and choose either Air Superiority or Hover first.
hi guys,
.
so i am trying the trial of city of heroes for the last few days now and i like to give my opinion for so far from my experience. Since i'm not convinced yet if i should buy this game or not.
pro's:
- Sweet graphics and enviroment
- Nice fast gameplay
- really a unique character creation (lots of fun)
- not the same old mmo you expect if you played other mmo's
con's:
- not really a storyline when you enter the game, you begin
and just doing some quests to level
- it's sometimes pretty confusing where i should go for contact
persons
- since i don't have flying yet the traveling is a pain and boring
- from my experience not really much ai with the enemy's and
see always the same on the streets. gangs standing by each
other or criminals are robbing a women from there purse or
break in to something. not much variation to that.
So this is my list from pro's and con's which i experienced for the last couple of days. I know i can't form a opinion from only playing a few days. but maybe i am seeing the con's wrong and you can convince me otherwise. Cause i am willing to give this game a serieous try since i think it can be alot of fun. but i'm not convinced yet
Thanks for the reactions in advanced
Greetz