City Of Heroes Review. A review of CoH

[darasen 0]

After being away from the game for while I returned to my favourite MMO, City of Heroes (AKA CoH). CoH is not my forst MMO after having played Everquest well past the point that it was actually fun, I have also played Dungeons and Dragons Online, World of Warcraft, and tried or Beta tested many others. Every time I come back to CoH though. I thought I would answer why this is. Tehn I realized I had a really long post on some of the mechanics in CoH just to explain why it is great. So I decided to split the post into two. one for the basic game mechanics nad one for the actual review. (hope that is ok mods).

 

City of Heroes, for those unaware, is as of this writing the only MMO based on super heroes. So if you have a preference for yet another game of elves and orcs then CoH may not be your cup of tea. If, however. you are interested in something different then read on.

 

Given that it is not fantasy based and it came out before WoW Coh has the distinction of not trying to be WoW. I would be more accurate to say that it tries hard not to be Everquest, the most popular North American MMO when CoH released, though it does retain some of the standard MMO trappings. One of the most obvious carry overs from a fantasy MMO in City of Heroes is the arch types or as they would be called in any other game the classes. You can fit or shoe horn most these AT's into a more standard MMO. Tanks represent the big, strong, tough type of superheroes such as the Thing or Colossus. In the game they could be considered the warrior or meat shield. (they do not have to be though, see below) Also there are blasters (like Cyclops) for wizards (kind of) Scrappers for melee DPS, defenders for clerics or shamans or other support, and controllers for enchanters crowd control types or pet classes. Like any MMO there are missions to accomplish and experience to gain to get more powerful.

 

The comparisons pretty much end there. The trick is that the Arch Type (AT) you play does not have to be shoe horned in to a particular role. Your character has a selection of power sets based on his AT. For example, controller may chose to control fire or earth or gravity or a few other options. You will also have a secondary power set with powers that augment or fill in tha gaps from your primary power set. On a Tank his Primary powers are defensive and his secondary set has his attacks. With a scrapper it is the other way around. What is fun is that you will never be able to take all the powers in both sets. One reason is that you also get to choose powers from multiple tertiary power (power pools) sets and when you get to level 40 you get to chose yet another power set with power types you have never been able to get before. So on my Tank, named Odhinn, he is has invincibility and super strength plus the pool powers of flight, speed, and extra fitness, then he added the ability to shoot lasers from his eyes.

 

To improve powers you add enhancements to them. When you level up you either get a new power or the enhancements slots to add to your powers. So you can control how many enhancements you want to add to a certain power up to six. Every power comes with one. You will never have enough enhancement slots to to put six in every (or even close) power. Then is it up to the player to decide how he wants to enhance any given power. The effect of this is that you can, to a point, how you want to play your character. As an example I will go back to my Tank Odhinn. He is by no means the toughest tank in the game because i do not have him set up that way. He is more of a melee damage guy that can take one hell of a beating. I have him set up to do lots of damage and fast by enhancing his attacks with more damage and recharge to make them available more frequently.

 

That is the very basic of the game mechanics. My next post will have my actual review of the game itself.

[darasen 0]

Since my Fisrt post when so long I decided to put my actual review of City of heroes in a separate post. If brevity really is the soul of wit I must be an absolute dullard. Thus onto my opinion of City of Heroes.

 

Firstly City of Heores is a Super Hero MMO. That makes it a great game to me right there because even in my late thirties I still like super heroes. To me there is no cooler fictional character than Superman. So my opinion of the genre itself may cause a bit of bias. I accept that anyway. Really is Conan, Legolas, or Drizzt really anything less than a low powered superhero?

 

The Arch Types in City of Heroes seem very restricting when first starting the game but they are only slightly restricting. So you can make your Tank more of a scrapper or do a lot of blasting with your defender or even set up a controller to do more damage than crowd control. What is also nice is that there are differences between how the power sets in each iof the ATs play. I have one character who is a spines scrapper. His body is covered in toxic spines and he can hit bad guys at a distance with them and even shoot tham all around him at once. He is able to deal damage to multiple targets at once. Where as my Broad Sword scrapper mostly hits one person at a time. But he hits for LOTS of damage per whack. For controllers, as another example, I really do not think any of the two power sets play the same. They are rather different. Defenders being the closest thing to a cleric in a fantasy MMO are not that. One defender power set focuses on healing while others may not have a heal power in them at all.

 

So while two characters powers may or may not be close to the same you can count on being able to tell them apart. the CoH costume creator is legendary for being the best of any MMO to date. if you find two characters that look alike it is most likely intentional.

 

Another great thing in CoH is that though there are these ATs like many fantasy MMO's there is never an AT that is a must to have in the group. Any group that plays with a small bit of smarts can play with out a tank or a "healer" or any other AT. This avoids the common occurance from the Everquest days if sitting doing nothing while looking for a cleric. There will be some people that insist that you need a healer or controller or what ever. Ignore them they are wrong.

 

Combat in CoH differs from other MMO's greatly as well. In WoW as example if you happen to be in a group doing an dungeon you avoid fighting multiple monsters when ever possible. You may fight three at a time but usually try to avoid so many at once. This was especially true in Everquest where often you fought one mob at a time. This is vastly different in City of Heroes where you fight multiple bad guys all the time.

WoW Conversation:

" hey wait for that patrol to go by we don't want to have to fight four guys at once"

"I can use my freeze trap on one so maybe we can get the caster before the other guy unfreezes"

 

CoH conversation:

"Theres only four bad guys?"

"Really, where are all the henchmen?"

"I know I will go attack that group of ten and bring them over here as well"

"Sounds good!"

 

The pace is far more frantic and fun in CoH than other MMO's and that, to me, makes it much more fun.

 

One of the biggest thing that makes CoH a better game than most has little to do with the game itself per se. The community makes CoH great. I can honestly say with out reservation that ratio of jerk to non jerks is expremely low. I think in may have found 10 in several years of playing. In WoW I can count on about 10 an hour. I think it is the lack of "Uber loot", lack of PVP focus and the fact that there 50 levels in the game with the developers having no intention of raising the level cap that dis-interests certain types of gamers. The game appeals to a different gamer than the "I'm the uber-est" crowd. I think that game being a super hero game with a flavor for more of the silver age attracts a slightly older audience as well.

 

This player base works well for the game. Pick up groups (or PUGS) in many games can be an absolute nightmare. In City of Heroes I have had very few groups that just did not work. Putting together a group or being invited into a group of people you have never played with is actually fun. This is especially true of the sever I play on, Virtue, the official un-official RP server. The community also frequently does fun things like costume contest where a bunch of heroes line up to see who the judge thinks has the best costume and gives rewards.

 

An odd but great thing about the the general population and game set up is that I find the game to be more kid friendly. you are never out to kill the bad guys they are "arrested" they fall over and disappear with no blood shed. Even when using a katana oddly enough. The populace being generally friendly helps as well. I ahve less to worry about when my 10 year old niece plays CoH than I do WoW.

 

there so many things in CoH that are jst plain cool to me. Costume contests I mentioned. Saving burning buildings, fighting off hordes of alien invaders when they pop up in normally peaceful zones. there is nothing quite as cool as seeing a hundred on hundred battle in a "newbie" zone. Side kicks so your level 4 hero can play with your friends level 46 with no problem. Super group bases. Flying. Diving into a group of 20 machine gun wielding robots. So many other things I am going to stop typing to go play.

 

All these things add up to make City of Heroes my MMO of choice. You can try it for free at the official web site.