MMOgrinder reviews City of Heroes
By
80sBaby,
Posted on: 2011-12-29 07:19 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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But really, people trying this game aren't going to do any research.|
Originally Posted by Golden Girl
He should have done a little more basic research
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They're likely going to walk away with the same or similar misconceptions as the reviewer. If we want to get and keep new people, we (or rather the devs) should be concerned with getting people the correct facts and better educating them in the tutorial and early content.
Things I took away from this review that could be improved upon:
-Getting some non-city/non-urban environments in, especially in the lower levels, for variety's sake.
-He responded well to giant monsters. Again, this is something CoH does well and also something that can be expanded upon. More giant monsters and zone events is something I can get down with.
-A lot of the music and SFX in the game is forgettable. Remember how Going Rogue was professionally scored? Yeah, I rarely remember even hearing any of that. Personally, it's a non-issue for me; I mostly listen to my own music or internet radio when I play.
-Whatever error message the old launcher gives should probably be changed to point people in the right direction, somehow. But, if it's out of date how can they do that? It's kind of a catch 22 and there's really nothing that can be done aside from people using their own brain and asking on the forums. A flashing "Common Beginners Problems" button on the website is the best you could do.
-The misconception that Origins somehow limit your powers in some way persists, so maybe we could add something to that page of creator that says otherwise.
-Auto attacks, recharge and accuracy. I believe combat could stand to change for the better in this game, but that's a topic I should, and probably will, take to it's own thread.
-Manticore's mansion could use a 'tell' for that secret passage.
-Loot. I presume this just doesn't drop for free players? New players may not even know they're missing out on stuff. I almost think they should get drops and recipes as a tease, but have them grayed out and be non-usable except for selling to them trash vendors for inf.
-The games community is, and always has been, it's strength. Honestly,
-The communication and SG joining issue seems to be a big hang up for this guy's free experience. Maybe a reevaluation is necessary, maybe not. I do know the second anything changes, the gold spammers WILL jump on it. Any inch given, they'll take.
-If possible, consider letting free players try the Guest Author arcs in AE at the very least. Or possibly let them try AE with no rewards of any kind.
We should learn from new people and their experiences as much as we can. They'll tell us about problems we don't even think about, and since they have no real investment in the game, usually they're being genuine and aren't pushing an agenda. But, sometimes they are.
[As a snarky aside, the fact that he remade his main from WoW, and used Dual Blades to do it only validates my long standing allegation that's the only real reason we have so many weapon sets (sword based sets and DB in particular) and that's what people usually do with them.
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Heh. I am going to both agree with you, and disagree with you at the same time. My disagreement is minor, and purely aimed at one small misunderstanding: his WoW clone was not the Stalker, I don't think, but the Ice Blaster, which was probably the closest he could come, in terms of power sets, to the mage he had in WoW, at least based on what little research and preparation he did before hand.|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
[As a snarky aside, the fact that he remade his main from WoW, and used Dual Blades to do it only validates my long standing allegation that's the only real reason we have so many weapon sets (sword based sets and DB in particular) and that's what people usually do with them.
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Where I am going to agree with you is with the rest of your sentiments. I don't think he is alone in doing what he did: taking his favorite WoW toon and recreating it in CoX. It seems that a lot of players want to turn Paragon City into Azeroth, and as you say, we have an over-abundance of mundane weapon power sets to prove it.
NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
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Well, opening up supergroup membership and supergroup chat, certainly, even if they shouldn't be allowed supergroup leadership, rent paying, base editing, etc. There are tons of supergroups who will gladly evangelize the game if only given half a chance to do so, and - particularly for the exact sort of extroverted supergroup that's likely to invite newly minted freebies - the awesome supergroup bases are ads all in and of themselves.|
Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
-The communication and SG joining issue seems to be a big hang up for this guy's free experience. Maybe a reevaluation is necessary, maybe not. I do know the second anything changes, the gold spammers WILL jump on it. Any inch given, they'll take.
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That's a totally seperate issue from the idea of unlocking global chat in general.
@Mindshadow
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Well this raises an interesting question, then. What restrictions would you leave in to serve as incentive to go VIP? Virtually everything else in the game can be unlocked with a one-time payment. Some things involve recurring costs (Invention license, AE license, SSAs as they are released), but most of the stuff being touted as critical to basic game play can be purchased outright without having to subscribe. The game isn't technically "free" anymore--and such accounts become premium accounts as a result, unlocking other features without further cost--but it is still a lot less expensive than a monthly subscription. About the only thing unavailable is the Incarnate System, and I doubt that alone is much of a draw to go VIP for most freebie players anyway. Other carrots are needed to dangle in front of noses. You know, like Supergroup access.
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Originally Posted by Egos_Shadow
Well, opening up supergroup membership and supergroup chat, certainly, even if they shouldn't be allowed supergroup leadership, rent paying, base editing, etc. There are tons of supergroups who will gladly evangelize the game if only given half a chance to do so, and - particularly for the exact sort of extroverted supergroup that's likely to invite newly minted freebies - the awesome supergroup bases are ads all in and of themselves.
That's a totally seperate issue from the idea of unlocking global chat in general. |
NOR-RAD - 50 Rad/Rad/Elec Defender - Nikki Stryker - 50 DM/SR/Weap Scrapper - Iron Marauder - 50 Eng/Eng/Pow Blaster
Lion of Might - 50 SS/Inv/Eng Tanker - Darling Nikkee - 50 (+3) StJ/WP/Eng Brute - Ice Giant Kurg - 36 Ice/Storm Controller
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All you need for Supergroup access as a freemium player is Tier 2, or basically right away once you pay for anything. The thing is, if the content of this review is an accurate representation of freebie player experience, then being completely shut out of Supergroup stuff makes you feel rather isolated and thus lowers the chance that you'll pay for anything, on account of you're likely to just leave.|
Originally Posted by Wing_Leader
Well this raises an interesting question, then. What restrictions would you leave in to serve as incentive to go VIP? Virtually everything else in the game can be unlocked with a one-time payment. Some things involve recurring costs (Invention license, AE license, SSAs as they are released), but most of the stuff being touted as critical to basic game play can be purchased outright without having to subscribe. The game isn't technically "free" anymore--and such accounts become premium accounts as a result, unlocking other features without further cost--but it is still a lot less expensive than a monthly subscription. About the only thing unavailable is the Incarnate System, and I doubt that alone is much of a draw to go VIP for most freebie players anyway. Other carrots are needed to dangle in front of noses. You know, like Supergroup access.
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I would put forward the idea that Supergroup access fits better as a loss leader - something you should expect to make no money off of whatsoever and which people will not buy for what it's really worth - in order to create a situation where freebie players feel more involved in the community and thus more willing to become regular customers. Also, it possibly creates a situation where your own existing customers are likely to be doing some of the "upselling" by talking in supergroup chat about various things that the freeb can only access by paying out.
However, the question of wether the review is representative of the common experience is an open one. Only Paragon Studios really knows wether they're happy with the conversion rate of freebies into freemiums or not. On the other hand, the opening of the forums suggests that the need for community involvement as a retention/upselling device is not entirely absent from their thinking.
@Mindshadow
Speaking as someone who started F2P about 4-5 months ago, I'd have to say that the lack of access to most of the things you mentioned is what caused me to go VIP.
I wanted to play a MM so I purchased it and, while in costume creator, saw a number of items I couldn't get so was a bit dissapointed. But I went ahead and played, with my F2P restrictions. I had a blast! I realized I loved this game. The problem came when, over the next three weeks, I started noticing a few things I wasn't able to do that I really wanted to do (i.e posting here, joining/creating SG, AE, etc.) Now, i could have spent cash on individual items but, for me, I found that paying the monthly sub to be the smarter option.
All that is to say that witholding these perks does have the intended affect. Unless I'm the only one who fell for it, which would be kinda cool. I like being unique.
my gripe will always and forever be the costumes these guys make for their reviews...
From what I've seen of Chaos' reviews on MMO grinder, they're mostly done from the perspective of a brand new player who just heard about the game last week and is trying to decide whether it's worth "investing" in it, be that time or money. That's why his conclusions end in reasons to play or reasons to skip. The truth of the matter is that F2P MMOs are a dime a dozen in today's market, so it's never really a case of finding a good one so much as avoiding the bad ones, and you can't afford to have to get too far into the game before you decide. I know for a fact that having gotten a long way into an MMO to suddenly realise it's not what I though is the sort of thing that makes me so, so mad.
Where slow combat comes in is likely animations. Looking at pretty much any other MMO, animations tend to all be less than half a second, and here we have 3+ second animations, with the bulk of them being between 1 and 2. I, personally, don't consider this a bad thing because - as someone mentioned before - City of Heroes is the only MMO I'm aware of that actually cares about animations. I kind of want to credit BABs for this in large part, because the guy took his animations seriously and tried to make a difference. The point, though, is that as soon as I go play any other MMO out there, the animations are the first thing that pisses me the hell right off. There's no sense of weight, no sense of momentum, no sense of impact or strength or power. It's just a character flailing in fast forward, a game built for people who only care about watching large numbers float away and not really the graphical representation of what they're doing.
City of Heroes combat may not be exactly fast, but it's hectic as hell, especially if you don't throw on the air breaks and pull every enemy alone one by one. For the last couple of days, I've been teaming with a friend of mine's low-level Scrapper and my high-level Mastermind set at +0x4 with me routinely aggroing two, three and even four spawns at a time, resulting in insane melees that we don't always survive and never really fully comprehend. It reminds me of that ITF I ran the other day on a team of three Masterminds - two Robotics (including me) and one Demons. I recall wishing we were demorecording the TF, so that future archeologists could analyse the footage and maybe piece together what the hell went on, because I guarantee that all of us left with no idea what it was we had just done among a sea of incendiary missiles and a mosh pit of robots and demons.
City of Heroes combat may not be fast, but it often requires you to act fast and think fast, which makes it feel a lot more dynamic than most other MMOs. Static "bag of health" AV fights are an exception, obviously, which makes Reichsman the game's most boring fight, but by and large there's just a lot going on. At times, it's useful to step back and appreciate how often you're actually given the opportunity to decide what to do next, rather than having to have trained and memorised a script word for word.
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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.
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I think the 'slow' combat is actually a plus. The 'slow' combat puts a lot more emphasis on tactical planning than say, a game designed for a console instead of a computer.
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@Inquisitor
Yeah that seems like a pretty fair review. CoH is my MMO of choice, but it does have both its weak and strong points. But having played the game for so long, I'm obviously blind to a lot of those, so it's good to see the perspective of a new player. Plus, it's always nice to see a shoutout to the community, and his choice of mission for that Nemesis one was great. That's a lot of enemies, perfect for showing off one of CoH's strengths, even if he didn't show it directly: "Few vs. How many?!"
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The point is to GET them addicted to it. Locking them out as far as they have - which, yeah, I get what spammers did, etc. but there has to be some way around this to make it freebie-friendly - doesn't help convince people to pony up the money. |
Originally Posted by Jibikao
I agree.
If they can't even afford $5, then there is nothing this game can sell to them. They are really NOT THAT addicted. |
An LFG channel and a server channel, perhaps, will give a nice trio for free users (and reduce some of the load in Help, where people can again use it for... help.)
Having not played as a Freem and not knowing what their experience is like: how obvious is that purchasing $5 worth unlocks all/most communications and that you get to keep the points for whatever you want?
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Originally Posted by Tormentoso
Having not played as a Freem and not knowing what their experience is like: how obvious is that purchasing $5 worth unlocks all/most communications and that you get to keep the points for whatever you want?
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Its right in the paragon rewards tree, how obvious to a new person not to sure.
It was a very fair review, and I'm happy to have seen it. 
As I (sort of) play the other two MMOs in the poll, I also can't wait to see them done. I'm really looking forward to the not-a-major-comic-book-publisher-title review...
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Originally Posted by Tormentoso
how obvious is that purchasing $5 worth unlocks all/most communications and that you get to keep the points for whatever you want?
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It's not all and it's not most. $5 gets you Tells, Supergroup, and Coalition. It's anther $45 to get access to broadcast and global channels.
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Actually, I'm unaware of any MMOs similar to CoH where you can act more than once per second. Some have *animations* less than one second, but they also have global cooldown which prevents you from doing anything after that half second for an additional second or so.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Where slow combat comes in is likely animations. Looking at pretty much any other MMO, animations tend to all be less than half a second, and here we have 3+ second animations, with the bulk of them being between 1 and 2.
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I think the "slow combat" perception actually comes from the fact that in other MMOs there are "bread and butter" attacks you can cycle quickly, and situational attacks that you use every so often. We don't have that. We have to construct attack chains. If you roll up a character and take two attacks, you'll find yourself waiting for those attacks to recharge a lot. But with no global cooldown by the time you have four attacks you'll be attacking almost constantly with no need to ever wait for a cooldown. You don't have to wait for recharge if you have another attack: this is something fairly unique to City of Heroes but a cognitive dissonance for people used to other MMOs, particularly anything that looks like WoW's combat system (in other words, almost anything else not based in Asia).
The closest thing to us that I know is CO, and its potentially faster paced with energy building. But other than that, I think the "slow combat" thing is something that is an artifact of the fact our combat system is so different from other MMOs. And its also fixable: we could simply change the design rules so that the tier 1/2 attacks for every archetype recharge faster by fiat, so they *become* bread and butter attacks. This wouldn't cause too much in the way of balance issues, because it only speeds up activity levels in the early game. It doesn't do that much in the later game.
Overall, though, I found the review to be fair. In fact, I'm surprised he didn't eviscerate us for the bad store implementation. I would have. But that's not the focus of a free to play player, fortunately.
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Boohoo and good riddance, frankly. Honestly, if they can't grasp the need for such a barrier, I'm glad to not have them around as there's a good chance they're part of the group that creats that need.
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Originally Posted by MaestroMavius
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..." |
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That's been my impression, as well. In most other MMOs out there, you have a basic auto-attack that you're always doing irrespective of using any "skills," so even though you may not actually be doing as much in terms of player involvement, your character still looks like it's doing something. Frankly, I personally find this design to be far more boring than City of Heroes because most of the time, you quite literally can subsist on your auto-attack and only one other. In City of Heroes, the game more or less forces me to use multiple attacks because if I don't, I have nothing that's recharged. In, say, 9Dragons, I can keep my auto-attack on a constant loop and only ever use one other attack, because by the time I can use ANY attacks at all, that one attack has recharged. Why bother with anything else?|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I think the "slow combat" perception actually comes from the fact that in other MMOs there are "bread and butter" attacks you can cycle quickly, and situational attacks that you use every so often. We don't have that.
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Interestingly enough, Masterminds probably come the closest to the WoW model, because they kind of sort of do have an auto-attack - their henchmen. A Mastermind has damage output that he doesn't have to spend animation time on, which means he's dealing damage while doing other things, usually support. That actually makes the game "feel" a lot faster because there's always something going on around you and even if your character may be standing still and waiting on recharge, at least one of your henchmen is shooting at at least one of your enemies.
As a point of fact, the game can become TOO fast at times. One of my original complaints about Blasters back in the day was that while I COULD try and control my enemies, it felt like I spent so much time trying to control them that even if I could stop most of them, I didn't have enough uptime to actually deal damage and died of attrition before my enemies did. I suppose that could just have been my slotting, but in City of Heroes, you REALLY need to pick your attacks, because there is only so much you can do before you plain run out of time in the day to do it.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Overall, though, I found the review to be fair. In fact, I'm surprised he didn't eviscerate us for the bad store implementation. I would have. But that's not the focus of a free to play player, fortunately.
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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.
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I wonder if it's possible for them to let freebs have access to /tell, but then restrict the use of /search and /whoall
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Originally Posted by Model 75
The point is to GET them addicted to it. Locking them out as far as they have - which, yeah, I get what spammers did, etc. but there has to be some way around this to make it freebie-friendly - doesn't help convince people to pony up the money.
An LFG channel and a server channel, perhaps, will give a nice trio for free users (and reduce some of the load in Help, where people can again use it for... help.) |
If he thinks the game is slow paced, he should play a kin as the sole support on a large team 
IMO the review was fair but I also think CoH is a game that takes a bit longer than most MMOs for the mechanics to fully sink in. The reviewers feelings were pretty similar to mine the first time I played it. If he had played a bit longer I think he might have come to understand better what it is about CoH that crushed the other two superhero games, if nothing else.
I would generally agree about low level combat being slow. Before Stamina was made inherent, especially. I do wonder why we are one of the last games standing with long recharge on Rest powers.
CoH unfortunately doesn't really market its best features, which IMO are an unprecedented amount of freedom in terms of solo/group options and the inability to outlevel content. I've been far far away from this game for a little while, so to speak, and some of the things I find shockingly bad about that place are the need to balance teams around role, the ability to out level an instance and come back to it so high that you dominate it, and the fact that just getting the whole team to the mission entrance is a huge pain. It's simply unacceptable to me that in 2012 MMO developers are still releasing games without at least a nod to exemplaring mechanics to prevent missions from becoming loot runs led by players 10 or 20 levels higher than the intended party. Frankly, someone by now should have stolen CoHs model, in which your favorite character never outlevels content and can always go back and play it without ruining the experience for the rest of the team.
Overall a fair review, though.
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If you look at his video again, notice there's a red "objective" arrow there.
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Originally Posted by Johnny_Butane
-Manticore's mansion could use a 'tell' for that secret passage.
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Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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I've done that mission (part of Twinshot's arc, IIRC), and the red "objective" arrow points down and to the left of where the actual secret door is located.|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
If you look at his video again, notice there's a red "objective" arrow there.
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So yeah, I went there, "felt" around with my mouse (on the wrong section of the wall, of course), then noticed it was pointing down so went all the way back to the entrance of the map to see if I had missed a staircase going down or somethin' (in case the actual door was on a lower level)...
Finally got back to that room, and thought "humm.... where would a (former playboy) millionaire vigilante hide the door to his secret lair ?...". After a few more seconds of "groping around" with my mouse, I got the "blue hand" and was able to open the door.
Keep NCSoft from shutting down City of Heroes : http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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That's almost exactly what happened to me, except first I spent about a minute wondering if I was supposed to be looking for a very small blinkie in that room that controlled the secret passage first.
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Originally Posted by Archiviste
I've done that mission (part of Twinshot's arc, IIRC), and the red "objective" arrow points down and to the left of where the actual secret door is located.
So yeah, I went there, "felt" around with my mouse (on the wrong section of the wall, of course), then noticed it was pointing down so went all the way back to the entrance of the map to see if I had missed a staircase going down or somethin' (in case the actual door was on a lower level)... Finally got back to that room, and thought "humm.... where would a (former playboy) millionaire vigilante hide the door to his secret lair ?...". After a few more seconds of "groping around" with my mouse, I got the "blue hand" and was able to open the door. |
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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.
I do find it weird that they decided to put what is essentially a 'class defining power' at such a late level.
Keep in mind those Fantasy MMOs will usually have an 'auto-attack' feature which CoH does not, so you're constantly attacking but not always pushing buttons so CoH combat will 'feel' slower if you get my drift.
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