PCGamer CoH article


Aliana Blue

 

Posted

Just got this months PCGamer delivered and there a full page article on city of heroes at the very back (there's also a 3 page CO review earlier on).

The article is a bit strange, it says that the game is great but after level 20 there's nothing to keep the interest going.

It says the micro-transactions are good but the jet pack is a dissapointing rip off

Unfortunately they dont mention I16 (only goes up as far as I15) and they finish with a comment on the fact that the servers are empty.

There's good and bad points but overall, i think the article is not a good piece of publicity for CoH as the negative outweighs the positive and I feel potential players would be put off. Perhaps paragon should give PCGamer a call and address some of the issues the author found. Some hype on going Rogue and I16 would be good too.

Much as I wanted to, I really couldnt disagree strongly with any of the negatives in the article.....


 

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I share their sentiment about the jetpack...but now you can get in game ones at level 1 bot hero and villain side if ya like.


 

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Well, the fact is the game is a series of instanced missions, which can get repetitive quickly.

It's a shame they never got higher though, they missed the Rikti War Zone, Cimerora, Hamidon Raids, STF/LRSF, etc etc.

AE throws a wrench in the mix though, with new content, mobs and placements.


Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
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Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangel View Post
The article is a bit strange, it says that the game is great but after level 20 there's nothing to keep the interest going.
Wait... what?

...

...

What??


Players' Choice Awards: Best Dual-Origin Level Range Arc!

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aliana Blue View Post
Wait... what?

...

...

What??
It's possible that they rolled a new character, did the initial contact missions then hit the newspaper route. In that case, they would have missed the Midnighter Arc, Faultline, the PvP zones and so on.

To be fair. the game 'starts' at two points, level 20 and level 35. At level 35 you get your Vanguard Merits and you can participate in ITF. Those are both great zones.

Villainside, stuff starts getting fun in the mid-20s.

The author does repeat a common lament of people I introduce the game to:

"What is there to do? It's just going in doors all the time and so on. Where are the interesting wilderness quests?"


Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes

 

Posted

I think the author was referring to the character progression as opposed to the story progression.

he started by sayign that the surge of excitement and the pure thrill of getting the travel power at level 14 followed by the expansion of your primary and secondary was completely untouched in any other MMO he's played (good!) but that after that, the powers just all become samey.

that's my take on it. I do realise the content continues to evolve and some of the best Arcs , TFs and SFs are level 20+

according to the author, CoH after level 20 is a game to come back to every now and then but not one that encourages you to stay for any prolonged period of time.

(I dont have the article in front of me so I am paraphrasing).


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aliana Blue View Post
Wait... what?

...

...

What??
Another reason to facepalm at Future, you reckon?


Sam: "My mind is a swirling miasma of scintillating thoughts and turgid ideas."
Max: "Me too."

Stuff

 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Neuronia View Post
It's possible that they rolled a new character, did the initial contact missions then hit the newspaper route. In that case, they would have missed the Midnighter Arc, Faultline, the PvP zones and so on.

To be fair. the game 'starts' at two points, level 20 and level 35. At level 35 you get your Vanguard Merits and you can participate in ITF. Those are both great zones.

Villainside, stuff starts getting fun in the mid-20s.

The author does repeat a common lament of people I introduce the game to:

"What is there to do? It's just going in doors all the time and so on. Where are the interesting wilderness quests?"

yeah, more "wilderness" missions would be nice. A zone event triggered by a mission or on a timer to trigger once a week on a random day.

I want to have missions where we have to chase down a burglar in Steel canyon while avoiding his minions and the other nasties of the game. Missions that take place in the city with some life going on around. Instanced missions are great but get very repetitive after a while, especially with the similarities in map layouts and tilesets.


 

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Seriousness: Paragon Studios need to invest in advertising
Have seen: Most other MMOs: In somr form of advert
Net based: Or otherwise
CoX: Lacks ANY advertisement
Unless: Radical difference in the US?


Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazy_Dragon View Post
Another reason to facepalm at Future, you reckon?
you have every right to your opinion but I personally think that ignoring an article because you dont like what it says is the wrong way to go about it. the negatives are not plucked out of thin air, they do have a basis in reality as shown by many forum members through the years. Perhaps we should be looking at where these negative impressions come from and, if they have a solid base, discuss how they can be addressed.

Anyway, I would encourage any player of CoX to give the article a read and make up your own minds. Agree or disagree I think you'll find that the author has a few valid points.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Neuronia View Post
It's possible that they rolled a new character, did the initial contact missions then hit the newspaper route. In that case, they would have missed the Midnighter Arc, Faultline, the PvP zones and so on.

To be fair. the game 'starts' at two points, level 20 and level 35. At level 35 you get your Vanguard Merits and you can participate in ITF. Those are both great zones.

Villainside, stuff starts getting fun in the mid-20s.

The author does repeat a common lament of people I introduce the game to:

"What is there to do? It's just going in doors all the time and so on. Where are the interesting wilderness quests?"

I had to ponder what you wrote here to think what a wilderness quest would even be then I remembered my month in WoW and my years in EQ.

I think we could use some outdoor missions that aren't defeat X of group.


total kick to the gut

This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.

 

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they finish with a comment on the fact that the servers are empty.


i made a post it was time for a server merge, as a new player, saying i cant find find any full teams going ever but during the short prime time of usa, ya, i got trolled and flamed like a nutcase

when a other outsider , new player comes to coh, see's the same thing as me, dears to make a story out of hes time here

at lest i know am not crazy, and all you vets defending the server pop as anything but not empty as hell, read and weap, i told you so


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by joshx View Post

at lest i know am not crazy, and all you vets defending the server pop as anything but not empty as hell, read and weap, i told you so

Well, after the umpteenth time someone says "I want everyone to go through the inconvenience of a server merge so that they will be available to serve as team mates at my pleasure" it gets a bit old.


My scrapper doesn't need an AoE. She IS an AoE.

 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangel View Post
you have every right to your opinion but I personally think that ignoring an article because you dont like what it says is the wrong way to go about it. the negatives are not plucked out of thin air, they do have a basis in reality as shown by many forum members through the years. Perhaps we should be looking at where these negative impressions come from and, if they have a solid base, discuss how they can be addressed.

Anyway, I would encourage any player of CoX to give the article a read and make up your own minds. Agree or disagree I think you'll find that the author has a few valid points.
I'm not saying that Alec Meer's talking 100% crap through the article, and I do agree that a lot of it is true, but he should have done more homework. Calling the £3 jetpack a "horrible wound on the soul of a game originally built for unprecedented self-expression", saying there's naff all after L20 is the kind of just plain facepalm-inducing bull that manages to slightly override all the more sensible stuff in his article for me.

Yes, I know, it's kinda the wrong way to look at it, but still. :\


Sam: "My mind is a swirling miasma of scintillating thoughts and turgid ideas."
Max: "Me too."

Stuff

 

Posted

well, maybe the fact that its been said for the umpteenth time means there is something to it and maybe , instead of think "its a bit old" you should think "a lot of people are thinking the same thing, maybe they have a point".

before I joined my current SG i saw this as pretty much city of solos. defiant was quiet as a mouse that has recently shuffled off the mortal coil while locked in a soundproof box buried 30ft underground in a bomb shelter. However, since joining the SG the game has a new lease of life! I'm loving playing the arcs and TFs, even if I've played them before. some servers are heaving, others just feel dead. I've seen stats that say otherwise but that doesnt change the feeling of abandonment.... perhaps the server area is too large?


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazy_Dragon View Post
I'm not saying that Alec Meer's talking 100% crap through the article, and I do agree that a lot of it is true, but he should have done more homework. Calling the £3 jetpack a "horrible wound on the soul of a game originally built for unprecedented self-expression", saying there's naff all after L20 is the kind of just plain facepalm-inducing bull that manages to slightly override all the more sensible stuff in his article for me.

Yes, I know, it's kinda the wrong way to look at it, but still. :\
i know where you're coming from. I was halfway through the article myself and started to feel rather protective. the mix of good and bad was quite misleading. However, I think it would be good to keep in mind that its articles like this that spread the word about a game and if we hope to entice fresh n00bs we'd like these articles to be as positive as possible. Which unfortunately means having to temporarily almost agree with the authro and look at the game we enjoy so much with a more cynical eye. Its strange, the £3 jetpack qutoe is really just a more eloquent expression of many of the comments in the forums when the jetpack was initially announced.

I have to say, I wonder if the power progression should be looked at to generate more of the anticipation effect you get when approaching the travel powers? Sort of a feeling of "ramping up" in ability every ten levels or so? more variety in each powerset perhaps? Optional entries into paralell power progression paths perhaps (yes, I really wanted to have 5 p word alliteration so I admit, I shoehorned it in there)


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by joshx View Post
they finish with a comment on the fact that the servers are empty.


i made a post it was time for a server merge, as a new player, saying i cant find find any full teams going ever but during the short prime time of usa, ya, i got trolled and flamed like a nutcase

when a other outsider , new player comes to coh, see's the same thing as me, dears to make a story out of hes time here

at lest i know am not crazy, and all you vets defending the server pop as anything but not empty as hell, read and weap, i told you so
joshX: experiencing happiness for you
Imma: Let you finish
However:
UniqueDragon: Possess best internet rants: of all time


Quote:
Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by joshx View Post
i made a post it was time for a server merge, as a new player, saying i cant find find any full teams going ever but during the short prime time of usa, ya, i got trolled and flamed like a nutcase
You usually get these comments not because of what you're saying, but because of how you're saying it. In short, it's not being critical that gets you these responses; your posts in general have an aggressive tone and look like they're first drafts, with barely an effort made to get spelling right, let alone to communicate. People will thus (not unreasonably) assume that such posts are flamebait and react accordingly.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by joshx View Post
they finish with a comment on the fact that the servers are empty.


i made a post it was time for a server merge, as a new player, saying i cant find find any full teams going ever but during the short prime time of usa, ya, i got trolled and flamed like a nutcase

when a other outsider , new player comes to coh, see's the same thing as me, dears to make a story out of hes time here

at lest i know am not crazy, and all you vets defending the server pop as anything but not empty as hell, read and weap, i told you so
for a new player to be spouting such dribble out of their mouth makes me utterly sick to my stomach. if you can't find teams on freedom then maybe it is you and your attitude that is the problem. i have absolutely no trouble at all with getting teams whether it be by my own hand or someone extending a hand to me. infact i have no trouble on infinity either. this time of year, like said many times before, is a hard time to judge player base. school just started back up and people are adjusting their schedules to that. there are also many people grabbing as much overtime as they can due to the holidays comming up. many reasons contribute to the lower numbers of people playing at this time of yr. happens every yr at the same time.

just because server population is down a little bit does not mean these people have stopped paying for their accounts. in fact if they did we would have heard about it by now.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by joshx View Post
at lest i know am not crazy, and all you vets defending the server pop as anything but not empty as hell, read and weap, i told you so
Because the 8-man PUGs I've been playing on within 15 minutes of logging in every day this week are made of ghoooooooooosts. WooooOOOOooooOOOO.


Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.

 

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PCGamer is a crappy magazine, apparently. Also, that guy is a noob that doesn't know how to use /search.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha View Post
joshX: experiencing happiness for you
Imma: Let you finish
However:
UniqueDragon: Possess best internet rants: of all time
Techbot Alpha: Rikti virus apparent



------->"Sic Semper Tyrannis"<-------

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by joshx View Post
they finish with a comment on the fact that the servers are empty.


i made a post it was time for a server merge, as a new player, saying i cant find find any full teams going ever but during the short prime time of usa, ya, i got trolled and flamed like a nutcase

when a other outsider , new player comes to coh, see's the same thing as me, dears to make a story out of hes time here

at lest i know am not crazy, and all you vets defending the server pop as anything but not empty as hell, read and weap, i told you so
Unsurprisingly, you ignore what you've been told. If I could red-rep you again, I would.

I've been hopping between Aion and here for the last week. For someone coming from another MMO, yes, COH *Looks* more sparsely populated. Why?

Because everyone's running around outside in other games. You're competing for kills with them for that "Get X Enemy-item" and "Defeat X Bad Guy," while another's going for the "Take the soup to Jim" mission.

COH? People are *inside* instanced missions. Yes, there's some travel. No, you don't have to compete to "Defeat 10 Hellions" - because there's around 300 in a 1000 yard radius, if not more. You see me going to a contact, then a door - *and my team vanishes from the map as we all go inside.*

Gee, why does someone who doesnt' spend half a second to think about it think "the servers are empty?"

As has been pointed out, AGAIN, even those of us on "small" servers have no problems getting teams with a *bare minimum* of effort (IE, not just standing there going "vlv 10 nincompoop lft!" in local or broadcast.) Oh, and not every team has to be 8-person, one-of-each-AT minimum, etc.

You also, AGAIN, ignore all the problems with a server merge - including a *very* solid impression that the game's about to die that such a thing sends.

Go learn something before spouting off instead of ignoring what's been told to you.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Coming_Storm View Post
PCGamer is a crappy magazine, apparently.
This has been true for years. No, my pointing that out has nothing to do with this article. They've been pretty pointless for... hmm... yeah, years. Probably a minimum of a decade.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
Unsurprisingly, you ignore what you've been told. If I could red-rep you again, I would.

I've been hopping between Aion and here for the last week. For someone coming from another MMO, yes, COH *Looks* more sparsely populated. Why?

Because everyone's running around outside. You're competing for kills with them for that "Get X Enemy-item" and "Defeat X Bad Guy," while another's going for the "Take the soup to Jim" mission.

COH? People are *inside* instanced missions. Yes, there's some travel. No, you don't have to compete to "Defeat 10 Hellions" - because there's around 300 in a 1000 yard radius, if not more. You see me going to a contact, then a door - *and my team vanishes from the map as we all go inside.*

Gee, why does someone who doesnt' spend half a second to think about it think "the servers are empty?"

As has been pointed out, AGAIN, even those of us on "small" servers have no problems getting teams with a *bare minimum* of effort (IE, not just standing there going "vlv 10 nincompoop lft!" in local or broadcast.) Oh, and not every team has to be 8-person, one-of-each-AT minimum, etc.

You also, AGAIN, ignore all the problems with a server merge - including a *very* solid impression that the game's about to die that such a thing sends.

Go learn something before spouting off instead of ignoring what's been told to you.
<3 *quick lick*