And this is why City of Heroes will always be unique

I hadn't played many MMO's before CoH got me hooked, but the ones I did play all ended up leaving me cold because the character flexibility is usually nil. They seemed to amount to "you are a lowly foot soldier in this great big conflict being fought by the real heroes, and your task is to climb to the top of the mountain for a better view of the plot." Whether it's a world of elves and orcs on a warpath, or the old representative democracy that fights battles in space, the player character just never felt like a character to me so much as a passive, insert-name-here window into the setting. Licensed games seem even more prone to leaving that sort of impression, since the player characters and the adventures they're having have to stay hidden out of view of the canon universe.

CoH is the one MMO I've seen that makes the character literally anything you want, and (on the Heroic side at least) has NPC's respecting your character as their own person right from the start. Out of all the thousands of power combinations, none of them require any specific background. In a more typical MMO setting, if you want to have energy-projecting powers then you're most likely going to be a mage using a very detailed school of magic that's outlined by the game's setting, and the tone of your character is leashed to that context. In this one, you can describe yourself using any kind of powers you like. Even keeping with magic as an origin, you can be a serious student of the occult, a whimsical nature spirit, an alien sorcerer from a lost planet, a genius hacker who discovered how to program spells on his laptop or anything else you like. It's all fair game, and CoH's wide-open setting has enough narrative room to make everything fit.

What's more, if the build's shaped around the character, the gameplay differences actually make it feel like a game centered around that character. I didn't really appreciate this until my mastermind came upon some of the same mid-level arc finales that my blaster character had already finished. The battles naturally went very differently for each of them, but the outcomes also felt exactly like how each one's personality would have handled the situation. The freedom to create just about any background you can imagine for a character, and the versatility that makes the game still feel like an authentic story, is something I hadn't seen in any MMO before, and that won me over almost instantly.

I find the OP an interesting observation. Shouldn't the main difference between a single player RPG and a MMORPG be the grouping? Shouldn't that be one of the main things to focus on when making such a game?

This has been an incredibly entertaining thread, with posts that are thoughtful and/or informative and/or amusing.

But, rather than speak to that i'm going to indulge my inner pedant...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville I believe that a good engineer with no knowledge of gaming would make a far better mechanical infrastructure than a good game designer with no knowledge of engineering. Someone that is good at both will outperform either by a quantum leap of quality.

Doesn't that mean that they would outperform either one by the smallest measurable increment? A single quantum of quality?

Anyway, i would enjoy seeing more non combat minigames in CoH. However, i'm not sure they would really fit the overall style and genre.

I've just restarted after a few months break to try SW:TOR

My comments/comparisons:
TOR there is no insentive to team except for OPs, everything can be done solo including gearing up for OPs. FPs are totally detached from everything else, heroic areas can be scipped, Pvp can be queued for solo, daily missions give you the vast majority of what you need so no point even doing Hard FPs.
CoX gives insentives to team. yes you can get to 50 and 'gear' up solo but with mobs scaling with team size you get a ton more xp teaming. That alone is a very good insentive to team.

TOR takes ages to travel anywhere. constant zoning to get between planets and slow *** speeder. (faster speed = CoX sprint+swift...)
CoX with trains/ferries, portal to club, ouro, it's easy to change zones. Then you have fly, speed, teleport, even ninja run.

TOR helping higher level friends impossible, helping lower level friends gets no rewards.
CoX sidekick/exemplar means that anyone can team with anyone and still get rewards.

TOR folows the boring handful of classes with no aditions and little variation (c'mon EIGHT classes?? anyone who says 16 need to remember that it's just 8 mirrored with different graphics)
TOR with archetypes, primary, secondary, power pools, there are THOUSANDS of combinations

TOR is trying to be an equal PvP and PvE game. Haven't we learned by now you need to focus on one and have the other as secondary or even just a minor add on? Especially when they're trying to do the demonstrable failure that is 2 faction open PvP...
CoX majority PvE game, that's where the focus is. Pvp is an addition for fun

TOR is trying to get away from the 'you need to wear x gear because it's the best'. They've done better than most games so kudos to them for that. Thing is it's still limited.
CoX clothing has zero to do with anything by looks. There are too many combinations to count. The BEST customization I know of in any game (even ones with social slots are still limited in comparison)

TOR (and many others) OPs/raids need an organised group, take ages to do, only give a few people rewards and have weekly lock outs.
CoX Trials eaiser to form a group, quick to do, everyone gets reward, no lock out (also personaly opinion much more fun)

TOR standard quests that are always the same. interactive chat is a nice touch but not enough to make it a unique experience. most quests are stand alones with few quest chains.
CoX, unchanging contact missions that are majority chains AND random missions. Ability to alter mission difficulty, missions scale with level and number of players.

TOR a single crafting profession that you need to spam junk to skill so you can make things you actually want. inability to make other things you want
CoX anyone can make anything without restrictions and no need to spam unwanted crafting to skill up. (unles you're badge farming)

TOR has no feeling of uniqueness, every class is the same as 1/8 faction (1/16 server), in fact many aspects are the same as 1/4 faction. With some minor differences (eg trooper might have different style and colour armour but it's still always armour plating)
CoX so many prim/secondary combos means more uniqueness (ok lots of dark troller/doms atm) zero clothing restrictions and ability colouring means even same spec will look totally different.

CoX has been around for years and still going strong yet it seems like no ones learned anything and are still pooping out the same boring ideas. TOR was supposed to be unique/novel/groundbreaking.. yeah right. A game that's been around for years has more innovation and uniqueness than a brand new game lol

Coming very late to this thread so haven't read all of it yet, but it is no co-incidence that I actually left CoX when I-content started to force teaming, and have only come back when there is an alternative.

So even the CoX devs seem to have caught the enforced teaming bug, but in a worse way than the glowy stick game because at least there you only have to find 8 people (And I have no clue why CoX ever moved away from that ).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"