MMOgrinder reviews City of Heroes

Well, I'm sure some of us still remember Chaos D1's old poll for which super hero MMO to review on his site that we kind of skewed in City of Heroes' favour. Though I originally thought we'd crossed the man, it seems our enthusiasm spoke louder than I thought, and so he finally posted his review of City of Heroes.

Check it out on MMOgrinder.net

It's not all glowing praise as our game has its fair share of nasty flaws, but I think it's fair as far as his perspective of a pretty much brand new player playing as a Free account goes. And, moreover, this is what we voted for

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.

Agreed.

Was a good, fair review, the community recieved praise which was nice.

Wow didn't realise that CoH was really harsh on free 2 play people and as posted on his video I still find the chat restrictions off putting.

I've lost all the friends i recruited to play as premiums due to the chat locks and general feeling like they don't belong here without paying. I wrote off trying to recruit months ago...

My first thought is, doesn't it just take tier 3 to get chat features unlocked?

While I love the art style of CoH, I agree with the reviewer in that it's all subjective on that part, as I don't care for the original competitions art, but like the major fantasy competitions art style.

The review seemed fair though, and yeah, I've seen more than a few friends leave for the newest competition :/

Indeed, it only takes 1 purchase of $5 to unlock chat.

Even that small of a barrier though, gets them in the mindset of; "This is only going to be worth it if I shell out the cash to be ViP..."

Then the feeling in game rams the point home even further.

I'm not saying everything should be free, that would be stupid. But with the Dev stated goal of designing everything for ViP's because we are still their primary focus, I think they aren't getting the true feeling of what it feels like to come on board completely new. That more than a few of the RL friends I talked into giving it a shot, had the same complaint upon quiting, that it felt like the free and premium levels were nothing more than a glorified trial tells me all I needed to know.

Old debate is old though.

I thought the review was fair enough also. I particularly agree with his comments about the camera and maze-like maps/poor directives, those are some of my biggest pet peeves with COH.

I didn't realize CoX was slow paced compared to other MMOs...or that we have a lot of loot compared...

The review was super fair.

The sounds and music ARE lacklustre; sure when you get more powers you get more whizbang but it would be nice to have mores sounds around you or at least more music.

I get what he's saying about combat, but it's inverse to other games.

Big Box MMO: Click powesr but they "build up" and then shoot.
Here: Button mash but then wait for them to come back.

It would be ineresting (for someone else) to compare how long a full attack chain takes in City of Heroes vs. Big Box A and New Shiny A.

Yeah, the "pace" issue is totally gone as you level up more and he obviously didn't play long enough to see his attack chains/etc fleshing out.

I read some comments about CoH having "bad" graphics. Before I bought Rift, people said that game has such awesome graphic?

Yeah, the world looks fancier but the animation/spell graphics suck. They are so plain looking.

CoX is the only game I've tried that cares about animations. Yes, there are some buggy animations but we are not governed by Global Cool down (which means all spells/attacks need to come out in 1s). Some attacks activate faster and some don't.

I find CoX has one of the best "fire" graphics. They even make sure you see burning effect on the ground. Oh and I love the "rocks" that Stone Melee leaves behind too.

I think CoX's graphic is good enough. I care more about animation and graphics from the spells/attacks.


CoX has the best character designer.

The only thing CoX sucks is music. It needs better music. :P

No, the devs should implement a feature that lets you trigger your own music from your own play lists. I kinda do that now, when a climactic battles about to start I queue up my 'action' play list, or for boss battles pull up some old JRPG boss music or if I'm reading some piece of story that is kinda sad, I queue up the 'melancholy' play list. Sometimes I do it on teams. "Wait, hold on, let me switch music....okay let's go!"

The game should do this for me. If the world can be lazy self-entitled ***es, I want at least 1 chance to be that myself

The "slow combat" thing might stem from the fact that he didn't really get to a very high level. Yeah, combat in low levels is slow because you don't have a lot of powers. It's not really until your 30s when you have all the powers you're gonna have and can have a smooth, non-stop attack chain, which is when combat is.. not-slow. And being sidekicked up to level 49 isn't a good indicator of how your character is actually gonna play at 49, and I kind of wonder if he thought it was.

Also, he played a stalker. Not commenting here on the "right way" or "wrong way" to play, but I know when I first played a stalker, it WAS slow, because I didn't really realize how the mechanics worked, and that I could just scrap it out after using AS.

He could have been a little more thorough with the cash shop, maybe even mentioning what just a 5 dollar investment will get you above a purely F2P account, or even going into a little bit more detail with what subscribing will unlock. But it seemed like this was a very F2P-focused piece, and so it's understandable why he didn't linger on pay-for options.

The rest of the review was fine, with just a few small errors here and there that weren't a big deal. I would say however that this is less a "review" and more a "first impressions" based on the amount he played. Getting a character up to (what appeared to be) level 15 or so makes for a fine enough review of the low-level game, but without experiencing how the game truly plays at the higher end, I just can't accept it as a full review. At the same time though, I realize that the low-level game is what new players will be experiencing first and a positive review of it can help a lot. I think that this piece was mostly positive, and I hope it'll attract more players.

While I am a strong voice for how the city looks, but content for now graphically(ala Atlas Park, Galaxy City), I do agree with the reviewer about the characters looking doll like and plastic compared to other characters from other games. Gameplay I am use to CoX and would not change a thing. Community also rocks everyone can be friendly and jerky at the same time so you have a balance which I feel gives it flavor. Powers fit well when teamed, especially if you have an elemental based team, feel tho Ice and Fire can do more as travel powers but that is for another discussion, but going back to the character models just feel as tho clashes with the new look, this is my small nip pick tho. I come from a session(PC or console) on another game and feel the need to be heroic and log into my characters I feel a little let down when I look at them.

Environment is great, just need characters models to match them.

Pretty good review. Very fair.

He should have done a little more basic research

A fair and accurate review, I thought. There were a few "huh?" moments; I didn't get the comment about the camera at all. (But then I've played the game so long, maybe I learned to auto-compensate for it long ago.) I definitely agree about the slow pace of combat in the game. Having recently begun playing a very new MMO, CoH's combat feels so sluggish it might as well be turn based.