What makes COH so good

In no particular order:

• Travel Powers
  Customization (power and costume)
  Variety
  I don't have 12 gagillion powers filling my trays (well I do, but that's by choice, I don't use most of them).
  Regularly updated/added content

For me, what makes this game so good... oh, Gods, where do I start?

The world and its lore. Since I started playing in 2007, I have created so many memorable (for me) characters that I love exploring in terms of personality and style and background. I mean, honestly, what other game would let me create a Russian scientist-turned-soldier/superheroine, a fun-loving and boy-crazy immortal avatar of the netherworld, a gambling cancan dancer turned pistoleer and crime fighter, and a time-travelling time-controlling nun? And they all fit wonderfully into the world of Paragon City...

The /demorecord feature. OMG. To be able to make machinima. I LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS FEATURE PLEASE NEVER GET RID OF IT EVEN IF STUPID PEOPLE INSIST ON USING IT TO BREAK THE EULA PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.

The community. For the most part, some of the most awesome damn people are here.

COH has been the greatest source of creativity for me in the last five years of my life. I'm forever grateful.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I'm a gamer by heart.
I grew up with 2 Xboxes and bought well over 200 games in a few years time.
Something happened, and i lost all of it.

A few years down the road, working for the Government, i bought a laptop.
A few months later, gaming is pulling me into Gamestop, where i see the AE Edition of City of Heroes. Looking at the box, i become curious, playing a super hero and create your own content? yeah, i'll try that.
Got home booted it up, and.. wait, what? Online only? MMO? Uhm.. ok.. what ever.. i'll use the free trial to see what it is. (Game was $15,- with a two week trial, normally Xbox games are about $40-$60 with a two week lifespan for me :P) It took me nearly two hours before i was sent to Justice Server's Port Oaks.. and that was just creating my very 1st toon.
Did a little street sweeping, oh hey, contact.. did a mission, went to bed.

Next day i logged back in, picked Guardian and wondered why my toon wasn't there. (Blame the noobishness of not knowing the difference between servers) Started a new toon, took again about two hours to make a Hero this time, loaded into AP and there it was.... People? and lots of them?
I remember one of my 1st nights to try and get people to dance under Atlas.. looking back at that.. what a noob..lol
Within days i got hooked to the game. Such diversity in costumes, in AT's in.. well.. everything.

The Guardian server community is great (can't speak for other servers since i only play on Guardian), and i think that is one of the reason i keep coming back every day... my friends.

A game can be great, with the best missions, the best graphics, the best content and the best support... but if the people playing it are disrespectful, not helpful and just don't want to team up, i'm gone.

CoX is my 1st, and still only MMO i actually logged into. I can't imagine me leaving for a long time.

-We have a great character creator tool.
-We have Devs that care about their player base. (IDC what you say, they DO)
-We have customer support that keeps improving and doing their best to help. (Again.. YES they DO)
-We have several sites to find so much information about the game, making it easier to find a solution for a problem.
-We have a great community, we care about each other, and we care about the game.
-We find our home server, make friends.. and they become family.

And this is my reason why CoX is so good!

So, I had someone insist I had to read this thread, given some of my comparisons (both ways) with COH and other MMOs. (I can't seem to get away from the COH forum, no matter how much I try, someone always sends me a link....) Which is fine, timing wise, because I'd sort of wanted to write something up like this. A fair amount of this is going to be agreement with other points.

Without further ado, favourite things about COH:

1. Costuming having nothing to do with powers.
2. Costuming staying the same throughout your career.

The two are related, after all. I can set up a costume and stay in it from 1-50. I can switch to an RP costume (say, a "civilian," or a "stealth," or "officially military," or "holiday" or whatever other theme I want,) and my defense/resistance/END/etc. will stay the same.

Similarly, I'm not going to look like "Blaster #9879873498279384" because as I level I have to get "blaster gear" that changes the look I've tried to create when making the character - and have to change it because the gear becomes useless for higher level enemies.

Costuming being separate from gear is something I REALLY wish more MMOs would take up.

--- Hybridizing ---

That said, I wouldn't mind (having played with this a bit) being given "slots" with a costume that would let me do little modifications. Nothing incredible - and no, I couldn't say exactly wht would go in here, but if I had an "armored suit" I'd get a tiny bit of defense (or better, debuff resistance,) for example.

Also, SOME games let you keep an older piece of equipment and use it as a pattern for a look on another piece of equipment with better stats. So, some might be learning, finally... it's just such a klunky workaround to me. (Aion.)

3. No race limits/bonuses

There basically ARE no races (Kheldians aside, and even that has no impact on the host) in the game. You can make up anything you want, and you won't be penalized because you have a blue fish-guy Tanker instead of a burly rhino-man.

You can basically create any "race" you want - alien, elemental, human, robot, etc. - just because your concept calls for it, within the limits of the costume creator.

4. Social empowerment
5. SSKing!

The one thing I miss *badly* when going to another MMO? Global chat. Followed by being able to use email anywhere - just open up the window and type. Supergroups... may be a case of familiarity more than anything, but they seem more fluid and enabling than most "guilds," with bases being a lot more friendly.

And the SSK system is just incredible versus what I see in several other games.

--- COH can learn... ---

The status flags aren't really used much, or encouraged, and the LFG tab is... rather bare-bones (and kind of misleading, and limited.) COH can learn a fair bit in these areas and improve.

6. Travel

COH may not have huge worlds - IP or Nerva north-to-south can be a bit of a pain, so was the old tram-brickstown-crey's-RCS run. But we get travel powers early (earlier STILL now,) and even our Sprint (+Swift built in) is faster than a lot of the "run at a bit of a trot" most other games force on you. And our travel powers would be outright *cheating* in most of those other games.

Not to mention we don't end up getting stuck on any ridge higher than a centimeter, forcing us to take long detours. (Guild Wars.)

Plus, you don't have to pay to take the train, ferry, or teleporter. Just go.

7. Enemy power vs you.
8. Instant Healing's gonna kill you. (Not the power.)

In COH, even the lowest-power character can deal with 3 minions and expect to walk away. With slotting, tactics and inspirations, most can deal with EBs, with some soloing AVs and GMs. And, once you've outleveled them... they're just not a threat. You're not going to be walking through Atlas at 30 and get stunned and killed by a Hellion.

Other games have had even non-Elite enemies have to be taken on 1v1. If you can go 1v2, you're doing great... but it's a risk. And some areas you had BETTER have a team (with the holy trinity.)

COH makes you feel powerful.

Plus, if there's a fight and you ARE killed, but you had the guy down to a sliver of health, you can hit the hospital, grab some inspirations and hot-foot it back. The bad guy will have regenerated osme, sure - but he's not back up to 100% strength and life the second you die. That's EXCEPTIONALLY annoying - and makes no sense in 95% of the cases it's done.

9. Instancing
10. No world-spawn competition in most cases.

Dear $deity, I wish more games would instance areas. "Find 10 of these, and kill 30 of these." Well, great... but there are 5 other people fighting for the same limited spawns. It's worse when it's a boss you have to fight, and someone sees you waiting for 10 minutes for the respawn just to jump in, tag it and kill it. Stuff like that would be far better handled in an instance.

Yes, I hate tagging.

Now, you can say COH is *over* instanced, and to a point I'd agree - but most of the time I'd rather see other games with more instances and less competition for something on a long spawn timer that you're competing with everyone else for. (Tabula Rasa - beta - having a line going out a cave with a logos you needed to complete the mission... at least 100 people in line, with a slow-ish respawn. I wish I still had that screenshot. Other games are just as ridiculous.)

For COH, you have to... Patch the dimensional tears! Fight the Clockwork King! Defeat Burkholder! And you and your team do it *in your own instance,* not standing around hoping everyone else there isn't going to jump in. (Plus it *counts* for your entire team.)

11. Alpha and Interface.
12. Slotting and IOs

Of all the Incarnate powers, I think Alpha was perfect - boost to the character without being ridiculously overpowering, and it let you do pretty much anything and work towards it. Interface, I think, is the best of the other trees... Judgement, Lore and Destiny can be just ridiculous, especially with not being toned down for regular content. But A&I really feel like an adjustment to you and your powers, taking you in a new direction.

Similarly, since we don't have gear to have a variety of, you'd think there wouldn't be much difference in one Fire blaster from another... and yet thanks to IOs, there can be. You can go for extra damage, adding defense, getting incredible recharge or whatever. And that's not even getting INTO how different the ATs are internally...

13. No holy trinity
14. No set roles, nobody "needed" - or "useless."

With the vast differences in abilities within an AT, you can't really say you "need" one of X, Y and Z to handle an encounter. Pretty much any combo will do - which is great, because I can't say "level 40 blaster" and have you guess, within 95%, what my powers, slotting, etc. are. We're not cardboard cutouts. That Defender could be an empath, or trick arrow, or radiation or dark - all of which bring different things to the team - and all of which would be useful. Same with tanks - is it a fire tank, a dark tank bringing control, a shield tank?

You can just throw together a "coalition of the willing" and go to town, not have to be held up because you don't have a tank or "healer." (Which is one of the hardest things to get used to in other games - people looking for a healer because they actually DO need them.)

15. Train when you're ready, not when you can afford it.
16. Enhancing and Crafting - it just drops.

Yeah. I hate paying for training. It feels like more of a ripoff to me when I'm going from "Piddly first attack I" to "Piddly first attack II, III, IV" and the cost is going up rapidly.

COH does have you pay for SOs and the like, true - but you decide what to put them in, how far, and what to put IN them to an extent. Plus the drops you need just *drop.* You don't have to fight a certain boss for it, to roll for one, to hope YOU actually get the one drop you'll see this week and not the guy who doesn't need it but just threw it on the market without asking. Generally, you can be pretty self sufficient - and the cost for upgrading, by comparison to other MMOs, is minimal and WELL within reach without ignoring whole sections of the game.

Plus, odd as it sounds, it's nice that drops are private (unless you tell people you got a purple or whatever.)


I criticize COH a fair bit (and do try to be fair *about* it.) But these are the sorts of things that, while in other MMOs, I look back rather fondly on COH for and wish other games would "break the mold" and copy, instead of doing the same-old-same-old as everyone else.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Others have said some of these same things but I feel the need to chime in here.

1. Variety. -- Costumes, characters, powers -- I have yet to come up with an idea that I could not figure out how to do in the game.

2. Story. -- Tons of it. Even after 5+ years, I have not seen it all. and, to make it all more interesting, we, the players are adding more of our own.

which leads to...

3. Players. -- This is the best player population I have ever run across. Unlike other games, we will help out new players, adopt them, get them up to speed. We also have some long term relationships (friendships and animosities) that have formed here on the forums and during play. In many ways, our player base is a very large and extended (very extended) family.

4. Scenery. -- The single, biggest MMO killer for me is how the game looks. For example, I know that there is a 'world's biggest MMO' and two competing superhero games out there, but I don't play them because I cannot stand looking at them. Our City IS SPECTACULAR. The art team here has done superior work over the years and continues to improve.

5. They Listen. -- It may not feel like it from time to time but our Development team does actually listen to our feedback. There have been more than a few changes made to this game because WE SAID WE WANTED IT.

There are many more things to love about this game but those are the biggest that come to mind.

I know the Logos you are referring to.. they did speed up the respawn timer on it as well when the game launched. The one that was the killer for a lot of people was the one that needed 3 others from the zone to be picked up before hand to get.... although if you were lucky enough, you could sneak in with someone else

Your complaint though is something that is *common* to every single outdoor mission though, especially if there was a bulk of new characters.

Thankfully, this isnt as much of a problem for older MMO's as their player base generally migrates up to the later zones, and also there are *very few* street sweep missions out there for CoX (due to the bulk of the quests being instanced)

A way to allow eye colors would be to add a second color to the faces - right now, we just have a color for face details like lipstick or tattoos, and then the skin color - making it be skin color plus 2 other colors would give more customization.