Why do you play COH?

I feel like a lot of people are playing the same game as me for very different reasons, many of them very foreign and interesting to me. I wanted to start this thread to share why I play the game, and because of my morbid curiosity about why other people might.

This was a hard thing for me to figure out- I had to really think, and get down to it, and figure out what exactly my "goal" was. I finally figured it out, though, and it turns out there are points to it.

1.) I love killing as much stuff as I can, as fast as is possible.This isn't satiated by dealing exclusively with easy enemies, though. To me, there is no joy in COH like soloing some of the toughest enemy groups (or toughest individual enemies) on the highest settings and living to tell about it. It is the height of personal achievement in this game to me.

2.) I love feeling challenged. I like to feel that my characters can accomplish something impressive, and a big part of that is pushing said characters to their limits (and sometimes beyond.)

3.) I like earning what I get. For me, there is a certain satisfaction in watching a character grow and evolve. I enjoy investing time and Inf. into my characters as they mature towards their potential, and the payoff is reflected in items one and two.

Same reason I played with Barbies and ponies as a kid. Only this time they really *do* have laser eyes.

Because I have dreams where I am flying.
Because I am a sucker for the superhero genre.
Because I can be any type of superhero I want, customized almost to perfection.
Because I log in for a half hour and still walk away having accomplished something.

Because I like being the hero.

It's fun.

I think I enjoy the game for reasons opposite of yours: it's a mind-numbingly easy game to play with little challenge where the top end "gear" (as in PvP and purple IOs) is all tradable and completely obtainable by anyone with the funds (or merits). You can then run a few iTrials and unlock T1 incarnate powers and be ungodly (or is that "godly") stupid powerful. Get in over my head? I have a full tray of insps and an host of temp/accolade powers to turn the tide. And with IOs and incarnates, even AVs are a bit of a joke now: I had a +1 Synapse arrive at the end of a PI mish a week ago, who was a bit of a pushover (and this was playing a NW, which is not the most durable of critters).

Yeah, sounds a little like I'm ranting but seriously no other game I've played is like this... just log on and kill. And setup time is pretty much non existant, I can log in a toon and in 15-20 minutes complete multiple paper missions. Then I just log off and go on with my day's other activities. In the other game I play, Everquest, it sometimes takes 20 minutes just to get to a zone, and once I arrive trash mobs can kill you before you can blink... here I can be surrounded by mobs attacking me and go AFK without worry.

It's the simplicity of the game that keeps me interested.

Superheroes. Super powers. My love of comic books, this includes manga.

As well as a broad range of options for power combos.

It's been the biggest source of creativity for me in the past five years.
I love the community (for the most part).
I love the game (for the most part).
I CAN FILM! AND MAKE STUFF! AND PEOPLE *WATCH* IT!

For the most part.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I like CoX because it's simple, easy to pick up and put down, and doesn't frustrate me. I don't play games to treat them as a job, so I like the fact that CoX is easy and straightforward. Even the hard stuff in this game is piss-easy.

Because its not bugged to hell like some of the recent game releases on pc lately, like that superhero one, that fantasy sequel one, and yes even that open world crime one.

All with game killing bugs at launch on the pc with patches taking WEEKS to release.

There's a reason folks prefer to play mmos (especially this game) to the increasingly buggy single player garbage being released by these silly triple A game studios that really aren't and can't Q&A there way out of a paperbag.

Thankfully COH actually RUNS.

I like superheroes. And I like creating characters. This game gives a tiny morsel of the first with a somewhat weighty dose of the latter. Also, it's on top of the tiny pile of superhero-games-with-character-creation. If someone else ever manages to do it better, I'll move on. I'm betting this game will shut down without a worthy successor ever popping up.

I can have my own personal army. I can have a machine gun toting vengence machine, or a sword wielding hero.

But mainly, I play it because I enjoy it. If I didn't I'd quit.

City is more than a superhero game. It's progressed into a kind of themeless melting pot where anything and everything is possible. Superheroes in tights and capes roam the city, but so do warriors lost in time, aliens from other worlds, travelers from other dimensions, mutations and technological wonders every day.

It's a modern day Sigil. That makes it special.

Plus the gameplay, though intensely repetitive at its core, always manages to be satisfying in hundreds of different ways. Even if development stopped entirely right now, I don't think I would get tired of playing the game for another 5 years. There's always something else I haven't tried.

Because I can feel heroic.

Because I can fight a half a dozen critters at a time and come out on the winning side more times that not. In other MMOs fighting that many (or even two) is a formula for suicide.

Because while characters with the same power sets will have a lot of the same powers, the costume designer will grant your character a unique look (unless you were intentionally designing the character to look like someone in particular, ho ho ho).

Because team size, teammate's level and team's AT mix doesn't really matter.

Because of it's unique IP. You aren't trying to fit into 10, 20, 50+ years of cannon or fanfics of some well known series.

That covers the basics for me.

If you can show me a game that I can have more fun playing,or that has a more friendly player base I will go play it .As I doubt you can point me in the direction of one I will remain here

a. My friends play, its a fun shared thing we can do together.
b. customization is quite strong, the creator is very good, and the various powersets give a surprising amount of variety of play.
c. I can be really insanely powerful. cave so packed with arachnos that i can barely see down the hall? focus chi, spring attack and lets go nuts., throw a vorpal judgement every once in a while too.
d. the customization...i mentioned it already but its that good. additional mention goes to alt animations. dont know any other mmo that allows that on melee attacks, it is a huge thing for making characters with legacy powersets feel as shiney as ones with powers that just came out this year. more could be done, of course, pools, epics, elemental melee stuff, more martial arts animations, that stuff, but its a start.
e. I have been playing for 7 plus years, its kind of a thing i do at this point.
f. they listen. I nagged bethesda for years about how good polearms were and why they should be in oblivion, they never came, and when skyrim hits, still no polearms. I can't even nag nintendo for stuff because i dont speak Japanese and NOA s a bunch of puppets. but if we enter into respectful discussions with the devs, stuff happens, that makes me feel more valuable then bethesda and nintendo do.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

The amazing flexibility for creating characters and concepts.
The multitude of 'classes' and combinations there of with all the power sets!
The fact that I feel powerful from Level 1 and on, I may not be a complete beast, but it's extremely satisfying getting to knock gang members around like toys.
The fact the game is so casual, I can hop on for an hour and run a mission or two and feel like I accomplished some ok progress on my character.
The general friendliness of the community and how willing to help out so many people are.
how easy it is to get around (travel powers! Ouroboros ports! JET PACKS)

Here is a brief summary of my most important reasons:

* Great character customization, which allow for a great range of styles
* A great range of powersets
* Flexible power choices, you can add add in pool powers and ancillaries etc to personalize your character, for instance make it fly, resist more damage or scare enemies.
* The auction house make the game free-market.
* Gray shades between true villains and heroes
* Mission architect
* Supergroups and base designs
* Game culture allow casual gamers
* New contents and possibilities are added often
* Game lore feel flexible to blend with character biography.
* Ultra mode looks great and works fine on my laptop
* The demo files are plain text, and not very complicated, which allow the making of cool machinimas

I play for the character concepts, and that's the extent of it. Like Minecraft is a tool for the creative far more than it is a game, City of Heroes is a tool for the budding artists among us who just aren't particularly skilled at any of the visual arts. I can't draw for ****, I can't model, and while I CAN write, it's not visual enough. City of Heroes gives me a tool to put my imagination into a tangible form, and then play with it as though it were a toy. When I was a kid, I had a series of action figures (Batman, Robo Cop, Skeletor, etc.), but was never satisfied in how limited they were in motion. I always wanted to have a cartoon... No, a GAME made after my own imaginary characters.

Now I can!

City of Heroes has been by far the greatest source of inspiration in my entire life. This is less so because of what it offers as source materials and more because almost anything I can think of, I can make here, and I can have make sense with some degree of effort. This kind of freedom is stimulating, it causes me to try and come up with ever more unusual characters, ever more interesting characters, ever more absurdly amazing designs, as if to test the limits of what I can achieve. And there really is no hard limit on what you can create in City of Heroes. Where hints of it exist, we can simply appeal to the development team, and those limits will usually go away. I wanted to have a giant green troll woman with a giant sword. As of yesterday, I finally can.

The rest of the game is "not bad." I've played a lot of MMOs since I started City of Heroes, and this one is just about the only one which doesn't irritate me and waste my time with busywork. Missions are straightforward, for the most part - find instance, kill and click everything inside, hope your objective is achieved when you do so. The story is actually pretty interesting when it doesn't try too hard, giving me both examples of good writing and very cool ideas from time to time and it very rarely pisses me off.

Essentially, City of Heroes - to me - is a creativity tool that I love attached to a game that does not bother me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

because its there... oh wait that's mountain climbing

Four reasons:

1) For comic book fans, it's the closest you'll get to being a hero or villain without having actual superpowers. It's like someone granted my childhood wishes.

2) An exercise in creativity. The variety of archetypes, powersets and visual elements offered means that I can create almost any character I can imagine and see him or her perfectly realized in the game.

3) Intellectual challenge. I enjoy devising tactics for my characters that best utilize their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses. It's very satisfying when you figure out how to defeat a powerful opponent who, at first glance, should be able to eat your character for lunch.

4) An original, well-developed game world in which to play.

CoH is the first and only MMO that I've played and I think I've been spoiled.