Things Newbs Need to Know

The scheduling of various cut-off dates for the NCSoft store makes it looks like that issue 21 will launch on or shortly after Labor Day.

So here we are with a slew of hopefully new and excited players about to join us... and they won't have a clue what hit them when the Paragon train runs them over.

CoH is NOT yer average MMO. We aren't beholden to holy trinity tactics, nor is the game all about maxing out your HP. Fights last seconds rather than minutes and getting a swarm of 17 enemies at once is common place... something that would wipe all but the most powerful of teams in some other MMOs I could name.

Players who spend time in /help and who wear the 'Helper' tag probably need to spend some time over the next few days thinking about what genuinely new players are not going to know about the game... and might make it suck for them if they don't.

My thoughts... please feel free to add your own:

- Debuffs in this game are EXTREMELY powerful when compared to some other games. They shouldn't be skipped just because they don't come with damage.

- You can PL to get to the end game... but the CONTENT of the game is still spread all across it in the form of mission arcs and taskforces

- Content scales to your team. It may not be in your best interest to take a full team, especially at lower levels.

- When in doubt, take more purples (Luck Inspirations).


Remember, these should be things that existing and even returning players won't think much of, but that new players might get confused by.

Although you are a free player, and the game is now called CoH: Freedom, you do not actually have to make your characters on the Freedom server.

It's OK to join a team that's significantly higher or lower level than you.

If it's much higher than you you'll still stand a chance because you'll be sidekicked up (though you'll have less powers than you would have if you were really that level.)

If it's much lower you'll still get good XP and drops, and while some of your powers may be greyed out you'll still have more than a player who was really that level would.

So feel free to play with whoever you want to.

Sooner or later, well-meaning team members will try teleporting you without consent. It can be frustrating if you were in the middle of something, like training or buying. To avoid this there's a setting under Options that creates a prompt asking for permission to teleport.

Distance travel in the game can be very fast, rather then jumping on a hoofed or feathered friend and waiting 15 to 30 minutes to cross a continent. You should also consider that travel can be accomplished in a variety of ways, some faster than the train/ferry/helicopter. These include, but are not limited to, Pocket D doorways, the "O" portal, Wentworths/Black Market teleporters (earned from day jobs), and many supergroup bases.

The woods of Perez Park are a maze, and have been a point of frustration and defeat for many a hero. Rather than bread crumbs, consider utilizing Vidiotmaps.

If you venture on foot into the Hollows basin, and enemies are not grey yet, be aware that the ground around you may be alive...

Striga Island is a fun zone, but the access points are not always understood. Look on the maps of Talos Island and Independence Point for smuggler ships. The guarded doors on these ships will get you to Striga Island.

Many types of opponent mobs will have one special class that should be targeted for elimination before tackling the others, lest his special ability negate all your efforts. (healing, mesmorizing "mezzing", energy sapping, etc.) Many have been the teams that wiped for failing to recognize this.

If the door or contact on your map is at the location you are at, but you don't see them, try looking underground. Many zones have tunnels or other layers, and the access to these is not always right nearby. Some exploration may be necessary.

It's OK to be new and totally OK to ask questions. If you don't know or understand something, ask for clarification. We don't berate players for being new; everyone was new at some point!

On the same token, don't act like you know everything after two weeks of play. Trust me... there's a world of stuff you haven't touched on yet. This game is about the journey, not getting to 50.

Don't make copies of existing comic/movie/video game characters. They can be and will be "Genericed". This means that the name, costume, and description will all be set to some bland generic version if they're a violation of someone's copyright/trademark.

A lot of very good names are already taken, but that doesn't mean they all are.

Don't be in too big of a rush to get to 50. There's a lot of good stories in this game at all levels.

Powers work differently in PvP. EVERYTHING works differently in PvP. This includes PvP zones.

You are not a fighter. You are not a mage. You are not a cleric, rogue, monk, or anything else like that. You're a *bleep*ing super hero. Even if you're fighting with an axe and shield, this is not a fantasy MMO. Things work different here.

Virtue and Union are the unofficial RP servers. They also tend to use the Pocket D zone for RP, and not as much for other things. That having been said, you can find non-RPers on those servers, and RPers on any of the other servers.

Try different AT,s till you find one you are happy with,they cater for all type,s of player.

Adding to the chorus of "feel free to ask questions", with a slight suggestion - if you get in the habit early of courtesy, you'll get a LOT more mileage out of it than you'd expect. For example:

"Hi, I'm new, quick question - where can I find X?"

Speaking for myself and most players I know, unless I am a) absolutely buried in a mob, or b) afk/at a tailor, I'd stop and answer this (or escort them over if needed), and probably follow it up with, "not a prob, if you need any other help, just give me a shout."

Also, "please", "thanks", and "you're welcome" are always a good idea.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Newbs need to know what the game was like when it launched. They won't believe us though.

This one might be personal, and I don't know if they cover it in the new tutorial arcs, but:

You can have more than 1 power pool.

On my first character, Friggin' Taser no less, I did not realize this until he was almost 38.

There are a ton of emote animations in the game. You can see a menu of them if you look at the "text input" line of the chat window (lower left corner of the screen, normally) and click on the "chat balloon" button.

If one of the choices is "greyed out", it means that emote has to be unlocked. Typically it has to be purchased from the market but sometimes it needs to be unlocked by other means. For instance; the Facepalm emote is a promo from "liking" City of Heroes on Faceboook. Dice7 is unlocked by earning the "Burkholder's Bane" badge in-game. (Before the game was free-to-play, those "for sale" emotes were components of expansion packs that were purchased as a package.)

You don't have to use the UI to activate an emote. You can activate any emote by typing either a semi-colon (';') or the emote slash command ("/em") followed by the emote name.

A list of emotes along with their emote names and examples of their animatiom can be found on the Paragon Wiki Emotes Page.

In addition to ordinary emotes, there are "costume change" emotes. These are emotes that are designed to be played before a costume change, either manually or as part of a macro.

As with ordinary emotes, costume change emotes come in two flavors - standard and unlockable. You also have the option to activate them via the user interface or by using a "slash command".

Using the UI - The simplest way to change costumes (assuming your character currently has more than one costume slot) is to look in the upper right corner of your screen, click the word "Menu" and then about 4/5's down the menu for the word "costume". You'll be shown a graphical representation of your available costumes. You can activate one by simply clicking it. For client/server performance reasons, you are limited to one costume change every 30 seconds.

The costume UI also has line of text at the bottom that reads "Select Costume Change Emote" and a clickable menu. The menu shows your available costume change emotes (CCE). As before, the grey ones with padlocks on them are unlockables. A free player has five or six standard CCE's available. Click the one you want to use (or none, if you prefer none). Now, when you click your alternate costume, the CCE will play as a transition between the two costumes. If you have "none" selected, the switch will be made immediately, like flipping a switch.

Slash Command - The "/cc X" command will change from your current costume to the costume in the slot indicated by the digit you put in place of the X. Costume slots are numbered starting at 0, not 1, so the command "/cc 2" will actually set your costume to your THIRD costume, not your second.

There is also a "/cce X cce_name" command that will explicitly play a particular CCE. Here again, the Paragon Wiki Emotes Page can show you samples and tell you the cce_names to use with the command.

Newbs need to know that the tram is that way, and life exists outside of AE.