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Role Playing (Games)

Review: City of Villains 230

Posted by Zonk from the bad-guys-who-like-to-loot-and-plunder dept.
Early last year, NCSoft and Cryptic Studios released a MMORPG that struck out in a new direction. Despite the familiar leveling structure, it eschewed the fantasy trappings of Everquest and Ultima Online for a more four-colour experience. City of Heroes (CoH) tapped into the Comic Book Guy in all of us by allowing players to create their own superhero. The incredibly detailed character generation system and the feeling of power that it invoked for even starting players made it one of the most enjoyable games of 2004. Unfortunately, a sense of repetition set in for many players and CoH subscription numbers dipped. CoH has an evil twin, though, and City of Villains (CoV) allows you the opportunity to step into the psyche of a depraved criminal mind, a thuggish legbreaker, or a lead-melting pyromaniac. Whatever your villainous bent, read on for my take on Cryptic Studio's City of Villains.
  • Title: City of Villains
  • Developer: Cryptic Studios
  • Publisher: NCSoft
  • System: PC
  • Reviewer: Zonk
  • Score: 8/10

Every story has a beginning, and your villainous career begins in Paragon City's prison system. The 'Zig' is normally a maximum security prison, but thanks to the spider-themed soldiery of the enigmatic Lord Recluse it is on fire and you are busting out. After doing a few quick shakedown activities that explain the controls and combat to you, you're smuggled out of the facility and begin your life as a criminal on the streets of the Rogue Isles, a lawless pirate archipelago far from the safe streets of Paragon City, the setting of City of Heroes. While initially you'll be working for Lord Recluse you'll eventually have the option to join up with a number of other groups. In the meantime, you'll find yourself fighting against a menagerie of fellow villains, all of whom are trying to muscle in on your chance at the brass ring of archvillainy.

One of the elements that set City of Heroes apart when it launched last year was the complex character creation system it shipped with. Even at launch it was possible to create an extremely elaborate costumed crime-fighter. Several body shapes and accessories made it possible to create anything from a hulking strongman to a sickeningly cute cat-girl. Since the game's launch new additions to the system, like capes and the ability to change the proportions of body areas, has only added to the system's versatility. All of these improvements and even more textures have been incorporated into the City of Villains character creator. New elements includes monstrous textures like wolf heads, scarred and disfigured facial textures, and even (for the pirate in all of us) hook hands and peg legs. The new elements are terrific and I've had numerous friends spend time at my PC just creating characters, with no interest in actually playing the game.

Once you're on the street and looking tough, you'll start getting a better feel for the role you chose during character creation. Characters fall into one of five archetypes, and although four of them are similar to what you'd find in City of Heroes they're all different enough to feel fresh. The Brute is the front-line melee fighter, but while CoH's Tank is meant to take damage the Brute is better at dealing it out. In fact, the more damage he takes and inflicts, the more powerful he becomes. This is actually a good general rule with the new archetypes: CoV characters really adhere to that "the best defense is a good offense" rule. Stalkers fill the high-damage output role, with the ability to cloak themselves for a critical first strike being their signature power. Dominators are all about controlling the battlefield, with powers designed for crowd control and damage over time. They also build up strength as they go, and unleash it in a flash of light with the 'Dominate' power. While Dominating they do more damage and their holds last longer, a powerful element in a boss fight. Corrupters are long-range and buff/debuff specialists, with the ability to suck an enemy dry of health very quickly once they've begun taking damage. The final archetype in City of Villains is entirely new, and extremely cackle-worthy. The Mastermind is a 'pet class', a character that can summon NPCs to do his bidding. There are four types of minions available: robots, ninjas, mercenaries, and zombies. While the lack of pirates is saddening, Masterminds also generally have access to buff/debuff powers of the Corrupter archetype. In a group they act as a sort of glue, fleshing out the ranks and ensuring that party members do their jobs more effectively. The decision not to use the same archetypes as in CoH was a great one, and more than any other element in the game helps to set the new apart from the old.

The job, of course, is crime. Doin' crime in the Rogue Isles requires connections, and CoV provides those to you out of the gate. While initially you'll just be doing jobs for some two-bit crook in an alley you'll eventually have several contacts, all of whom have tips on thuggery. A great improvement over the CoH mindset is "paper missions". Some contacts only give you missions occasionally; in order to convince them you're worth the effort you have to do some petty crimes first. You find these quick, in-and-out-grab-some-xp missions in the newspaper by checking out the articles. A mention of a valuable artifact sends you on a shopping spree, or an article about the release of a former cellmate has you looking for revenge. Overall the quality of the missions is higher than in City of Heroes, with the violent and petty nature of criminality making your actions a lot more sensical than in some CoH missions. A big complaint I have, though, is the lack of variety in the early missions. While City of Heroes offers you several mission tracks out of the gate based on what kind of character you are, CoV has only one track that very quickly gets old when playing new characters. This is somewhat alleviated by a great improvement: allowing missions to 'count' for more than one character. If you and another player have the same mission, completing it will prompt the other player with the message "Do you want this to count for your mission as well?" This way, groups don't have to be constantly redoing missions to ensure that everyone is on the same page. A very nice addition that partially offsets the repetitive nature of the early game.

Doing your thing alone is never all that fun, and CoV introduces some great new elements for supergroups. Bases are the big draw, allowing organizations of supers to finally have a place to hang their hats. They're as customizable as characters are, and have a host of functional elements as well. Bases link zones, act as hospitals, and allow access to the limited crafting added to the game. They are also mustering points for Player Vs. Player (PvP) action. While PvP has been in City of Heroes for a while in the form of combat Arenas, City of Villains introduces entire zones for PvP action. The results are mixed. Like with any game designed for Player Vs. Environment play (PvE), PvP added after the fact has forced some serious balance tweaks to powers and enhancements. Initial reports seem to indicate that PvP is a good deal of fun, and the clash of fully powered heroes and villains is just as explosive as you'd expect from the pages of comic-dom.

The comic look that Cryptic managed fairly well has been expanded and refined in the level design utilized in City of Villains. The Rogue Isles look terrible, in a good way. Even the first zone, Mercy Island, is a twisted rubble of burnt-out buildings and industrial sprawl. In sharp contrast to the cleanly orderliness of Paragon City, the Isles are dark, dirty, and filled with naughty people doing naughty things. Mission design is much improved over the launch of CoH, as well. CoV incorporates the lessons Cryptic has learned in the last year, and mission spaces are quirky and interesting. Some of them are downright jaw-dropping. My teammates and I spent a lot of time during a mission against the military Council agog about their massive base, which evoked James Bond, WWII bunkers, and Star Trek all at once. Additional minor graphical elements have also been added, like an extremely appealing water effect and sometimes-hilarious ragdoll physics.

Overall, minor elements seem to be what separates City of Villains from its goody-two-shoes neighbor. CoV is a dark and gritty version of Cryptic's first offering, for better or worse. If you quit City of Heroes months ago because you were tired of instance, instance, rinse, repeat, City of Villains may offer you some fleeting fun because of the new setting but probably won't hold your interest over time. On the other hand, if you enjoy City of Heroes you're just going to love City of Villains. The people are bad, the story is good, and there's just as much to see and do in the Isles as in Paragon City. What's more, if you are already subscribed to City of Heroes you can double your content without increasing your monthly fee. One subscription fee allows you access to both CoH and CoV. If you've always wanted to leap tall buildings or find the idea of a world-spanning empire of evil appealing, you can do a lot worse than the world NCSoft is hosting online right now.
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Review: City of Villains More

Review: City of Villains

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  • Deep down... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RandoX ( 828285 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:22PM (#13991033)
    I think playing a villain sounds much more fun than a hero. It may be human nature to want to smash stuff once in a while, and I'd rather take it out online than in meatspace. I'm really a nice guy on the inside. My mommy said so.

  • Combine the Two (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mysqlrocks ( 783488 )
    Why not combine the two games into one? Let CoH characters play against CoV players. That would be pretty cool. I know this will never happen for many reasons but it's still a cool idea.

    • Re:Combine the Two (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jackboot ( 791190 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:28PM (#13991098)
      This is already functional. There are PVP zones in the game where Heroes from COH can battle Villians from COV.
    • eerm, they can. You can fight heros from COH.

      ==>Lazn
      • And you don't have to buy CoV (if you already have CoH) to go PvP in those zones. You do need CoV if you want access to superbases, good or evil. Also, I believe there will be raids of good superbases via evil players and vice versa, though from the beta evidently base features that took months for the supergroups to save up for and craft could be destroyed in 30 seconds. Not the best thinking...

        It's already been 5 days since I saw my first villain in the level 38 PvP zone -- a level 31 brute. A bunch o

    • Re:Combine the Two (Score:2, Informative)

      by ryanmoore ( 139890 )
      They are combined. CoH and CoV all share the same servers, same game client, and the same universe. There are 3 PvP zones which both Heroes and Villains may enter. In those zones, you get Hero vs. Villain combat.

      You only pay one monthly fee to access both games assuming you have purchased both of them. The monthly fee is no higher than if you purchased CoH or CoV alone.

    • Re:Combine the Two (Score:4, Informative)

      by snuf23 ( 182335 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:36PM (#13991175)
      Uh actually not only do you pay one fee for both games, the PVP zones are designed for Hero vs Villain combat. CoV is not entirely a new game, it's more like a standalone expansion. You can buy it to play villain only if you don't have CoH or you can buy it to add the new features to your CoH account and play both heroes and villains.
      • Can you play in the PVP areas if you don't have both? Or do you need to have both in order to have the art resources?

        • Re:Combine the Two (Score:3, Informative)

          by urulokion ( 597607 )
          Yes. You can enter the PvP zones if you just have City of Heroes. And FYI, there are 3 PvP zone. 2 are Hero vs Villain only and the 3rd is a free-for-all zone. And their are goal related play in the zones as well. In you can can collector and refine meteor sample to get a temp power to summon a nifty pet, in another zone it's a battle for control of the zone between the NPC forces of Paragon City and the Rogue Islands. Players can affect the outcome of these battle. If you side can control the zone, you unl

        • Re:Combine the Two (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Lectrik ( 180902 )
          Oh, you got the art resources (and the ragdoll physics) for CoH (even if not planning to buy CoV yet)in the form of a 1.6 GB patch a couple of days before the release of CoV.
          Yes, a 1.6 gig patch...
          I didn't play around in the folder before hand, but afterwards it's around 2 GB
      • Yes, but does it run on Linux?
    • I know this will never happen for many reasons but it's still a cool idea.

      Now that you've been clued in that it in fact happens every day (and we even tested it in beta), I'm curious as to what your "many reasons" were why it couldn't?
      • I'm curious as to what your "many reasons" were why it couldn't?

        Well, actually I figured it was quite possible to do (and didn't know that it was already being done) but I thought a bunch of naysayers would respond with, "that would never work because of x" so I thought I'd say it upfront to avoid all that BS. Anyways, pretty cool and kudos to the game developers for building the functionality in.
  • ... COV, and it's a good game but it really could have pushed COH from being a "good" game to a "Great" game had it been done at release instead of years afterwards.

    • Re:Beta'd... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )
      I briefly beta'd during the stress test. I was unimpressed.

      The character creation process was the only truely interesting part of the game. The rest was utterly repetetive to the point of boredom. Kill all enemies of type X from location Y. Now do that for the next 10 missions. Now do the same thing with a different enemy type for another 10 missions.

      The engine is also horrible. It requires a ridiculous amount of memory (You get tons of swapping on 1GB of RAM, so really you need 2GB), and has insanely low f

    • Re:Beta'd... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ChickenMaster ( 466305 )
      I too have Beta'd this game, and I was wholely unimpressed. I was among the many people to Beta and play CoH when it first came out. I had fun (before it got repetitive) but really yearned to be the villian. I remember shouting out in most of my groups "I want minions!" So, now that CoV beta is available, I'm finally getting my minions. But that's about it. CoV did not do a good job at making me feel like a villian. I just felt like a hero in a black costume, something I could have done in CoH. Everytime a

  • Villanz! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Woot! Now I can go around being the evil bastard I am!

  • That's Unfortunate (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Knight Thrasher ( 766792 ) * on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:23PM (#13991051) Journal
    "If you quit City of Heroes months ago because you were tired of instance, instance, rinse, repeat, City of Villains may offer you some fleeting fun because of the new setting but probably won't hold your interest over time."

    That's most unfortunate. I loved City of Heroes, was in the Beta for a week or two before it was released, and played it from release in several different classes. Mostly I'd reach a travel power, and group with friends from the Super Group, but ultimately what drove me to cancel was the lack of variety in quests. I value my game dollars, and full anticipated buying CoV even after cancelling my CoH account, but I probably won't now. I can't reason myself into buying a game that suffers the same lack of longevity as it's predecessor.

    • I actually didn't mind the simplistic gameplay, simply because the social aspects of the game were pretty good. The game lent itself to the enjoyment of simply "hanging out" with guild members and friends when between missions.

      That said, I quit last CoH last year and I probably won't bother with this CoV.

      There's no Mac version of either CoH or CoV, and probably never will be. That simple fact is keeping most of the crowds I run with on World of Warcraft for the forseeable future. WoW is currently the onl
      • City of Heroes runs fine under WINE. Linux users can play that way.

        Personally, I've never enjoyed a Blizzard game. WoW looks like a slightly cartoony version of EQ, and hey, remember Bnetd?
        • City of Heroes runs fine under WINE. Linux users can play that way.

          I said users of differnt platforms, not different OS's. WINE requires an x86 platform to run. How would this info be of any use to current Mac and PC owning gamers who want to game together in an MMORPG?

          Besides, we all know that most of the folks who call themselves "Linux users" are secretly dual-booting to Windows anyway. ;P
    • As the base system evolves, it will create more and more reasons to continue. Like it or not, it's loot that drives players once the missions start to look the same, and it's the base system that drives loot in this game.

      Right now bases are restricted to supergroups, but they're also planning to add "apartments" or per-user (possibly per-character, they haven't said) bases, so there will be loot incentive even for non-teamers.
      • The way bases are paid for are using a new in-game currency called Prestige, which is earned in the same way that Influence/Infamy (the currencies used for heroes and villains respectively), but only while playing in supergroup mode (that is, while "flying group colors").

        Prestige is an interesting concept. Unlike influence, you don't gain vastly more as you go up in level and defeat stronger foes, so even low-level group members can contribute to the total. Groups gain a bonus of 20,000 prestige for every
        • The dynamic that Salvage adds is interesting, too. You use Salvage to build nifty gear for the base. That gear, however, requires Control and Power, and adding those things not only costs Prestige, but increases the "Rent" tax.

          Unfortunately the testing we did in the Beta was very much functional, and not very much economics; SGs got 36,000,000 Prestige and went hog-wild, but I don't think anybody knows how it's going to work out in play. Of course, it can always be bumped/nerfed. I just hope they don't
          • On the CoH boards, the reaction to Prestige's extremely low earn rates compared to what the really cool stuff costs is extremely negative, but I kind of hope they leave it as it is. I mean, why have the cheaper alternatives even there if everyone always buys the biggest and best? Everything can be sold back without cost penalty, which is cool. Rent could be a bit of a pain, however....

            I've not had the chance to play with Salvage yet (since the cheapest workshop costs 100,000p, heh), would you happen to k
            • Mostly, things that add capability to the stuff in the base. For instance, you can build items for your base that duplicate the medical teleporters in the hospitals. However, by default they only heal 25% of your max HP. With Salvage, you can build items that enhance that capability, with several of them (I think it might be three, but I don't recall) raising it up to 100%.

              Also, you can use Salvage to build teleporters that let you exit your base in another zone than the one from which you entered it.

              Oth
    • It really depends on what you're after. What makes this less repetitive than any MMO? I'm relatively an MMO newb. CoH was my first, and I played WoW for a couple months. So to compare to WoW, which enjoys immense popularity, I can't see how people like it, because for me it was the epitome of repetitiveness. What did I get every few levels as a mage? An upgrade to an existing power. Instead of using "Fireball 2", I was using "Fireball 3". I encountered the same enemies with slightly different appearances. I
    • I'm in the middle of playing it, and quest variety, while really still really low for starting characters, has gone up as of late. In addition to "defeat everyone" missions, there are rescue missions now, some missions that require you to protect an objective, some of the task forces have very unusual elements. (The first Terra Volta respec TF leaps to mind -- in the final area, you and your teammates have to protect a reactor against nine or ten waves of foes, but you also have to ensure the reactor doe
  • ...until the two games are merged such that CoV and CoH are actually *in* the same city.
    • So you'll be looking for a game that's not coming.

      I can't find the link anywhere, but I recently read an interview that stated that Cryptic has slated CoH and CoV to have PVP instances and areas, but the two games won't be 'merging' persay.

    • They have been merged from the release of City of Villains. There are three PvP zones where Heroes and Villains can duke it out; Siren's Call, Bloody Bay, and Warburg. All three zones available from either CoH or CoV.

  • Ummm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ebcdic1 ( 95830 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:28PM (#13991099) Homepage
    Nerf Shammies!

  • PvP? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HerculesMO ( 693085 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:29PM (#13991112)
    It's a question, but as a gamer who only enjoys the game when it brings misery to others (hah!), how good is the PvP?

    I am personally waiting for the game that takes into account the player's skill at the game itself instead of having XXX level will beat XXX-1 level, or YYY class will always defeat YZY class. It's idiotic and boring, and brings little to tactics in games of scale.

    I am still watching for DarkFall Online as it seems to be the only game that will combine the elements of PvP I'm looking for, but still I'm curious... how does PvP in CoV stack up? I haven't played CoH since there was almost ZERO PvP, but now with the expansion I wonder how the combat system takes into account any type of player skill, or is it just another XXX and YYY game?

    • Re:PvP? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mikael_j ( 106439 )
      Personally I'd like to see an MMORPG where real-life skills could be applied to the game, cut down on the funky stats and let the player figure out on his own how to get past that locked door... So in say, a futuristic cyberpunk environment, a player might not have a computer skill but would rather have to rely on his/her own understanding of computers to use a computer in the game, to understand a note written in a foreign language you'd have to find someone else to translate it for you instead of just buf
      • They had a game like that, Majestic [wikipedia.org]. It bombed. I think most people play computer games to do things they can't do. Therefore, you either a) have tasks that are so dumbed down they're ludicrous ("To translate the ancient language, figure out the simple substitution cypher") or they become slightly irrelevant to the actual puzzle ("play the Tetris minigame to pick the lock"). Besides which, how many people would actually try to solve a puzzle by guile and how many people would be firing up GameFAQs?

    • Re:PvP? (Score:5, Informative)

      by illumin8 ( 148082 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:43PM (#13991233) Journal
      I am personally waiting for the game that takes into account the player's skill at the game itself instead of having XXX level will beat XXX-1 level, or YYY class will always defeat YZY class. It's idiotic and boring, and brings little to tactics in games of scale.

      You should check out Guild Wars [guildwars.com]. It's made by NCSoft and the designers of the game designed it from day one specifically for that reason: balanced PVP. There are no uber-leet godly items that give players an unfair advantage. Anyone can create a PVP character that has the same items and stats as anybody else does at maximum level, giving you the opportunity to fight in a fantasy battleground where some kid that spent $100 on eBay isn't going to beat you just because he bought some godly sword of slaying that kills anyone in 1 hit.

      PvE content is admittedly a little lacking compared to WoW, but it's a great game and has probably the best PvP experience I've seen yet.

      • Re:PvP? (Score:2)

        by Cyn ( 50070 )
        This isn't *strictly* true. While you're correct that anyone can pop out a lvl 20 character, they have to unlock the skills and items and such in the roleplaying side of the game - so if I buy the game and roll up a PVP character, and play it against someone who's played through the RP side of things many times, they'll pretty much guaranteed win on equipment alone (armor reduces damage, items boost stats, etc.)

        Still, limiting players to choose from only 8 skills definitely adds a level of "know thyself" a
        • This isn't *strictly* true. While you're correct that anyone can pop out a lvl 20 character, they have to unlock the skills and items and such in the roleplaying side of the game - so if I buy the game and roll up a PVP character, and play it against someone who's played through the RP side of things many times, they'll pretty much guaranteed win on equipment alone (armor reduces damage, items boost stats, etc.)

          Agreed, there are skills to unlock, however those that don't like playing the RP side of things c
    • it was a multiplayer online FPS with different levels. each time you leveled up you had access to more skills, vehicles, equipment etc.
      http://planetside.station.sony.com/ [sony.com]

    • Re:PvP? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jbert ( 5149 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:45PM (#13991259)
      Have you played guild wars? Its exactly what you want. The PvP is all tactics, with all PvPers being levelled to the same. There is some dependence on which skills and items you have "unlocked", but that isn't the main thrust of things. Success is about how your chosen character skills operate together and interact with those of your team. And of course how well you and your team mates do at using those char skills.

      Also, no monthly fee (since most areas are instanced in a peer-to-peer way, with little server load, so ArenaNet's running costs are lower).

      Sorry to sound like an advert, but it is a fun game and appears to fit what you are looking for. (Hmm...maybe *you* are the guild wars plant...asking that question to entice a positive response about the game. Damn, you're subtle).
      • Actually no, Guild Wars isn't what I want. Admittedly, it's a fun game in spurts. But the content is the type where you fight over and over in the arenas and don't accomplish anything -- and the matches are all 5 on 5 or whatever it is (it's been a while).

        Anyways.. Guild Wars is not as 'scaled' as I'd like to see in a true MMO. The battles of 30 on 30 that I used to fight in Ultima Online YEARS ago were the best PvP experiences I'd ever had. The fact the game had no levels and that all characters were merel

    • Re:PvP? (Score:2)

      by Kaa ( 21510 )
      I am personally waiting for the game that takes into account the player's skill at the game itself instead of having XXX level will beat XXX-1 level, or YYY class will always defeat YZY class.

      When you say "skill", do you really mean hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes? That's the proper skill for Quake, but probably won't get you far in, say, a Civilization game.

      Different game genres ask for different skills. I find that in MMORGs like DAoC and WoW player skill is quite important in PvP (PvE anything g
      • That's a part of it -- yeah. However knowing how to conserve mana, when to 'flurry' (to borrow a boxing term), what spells to cast to counter, etc... that's the 'skill' I'm talking about. Also skill in a group setting when you're fighting with 20 others in a scaled battle... that's something that takes effort and skill in a different way.

      • Re:PvP? (Score:2)

        by oni ( 41625 )
        That's the proper skill for Quake

        Will anyone ever make a game that's better than Quake 3 Threewave Capturestrike??

    • Re:PvP? (Score:2)

      by L7_ ( 645377 )
      You're going to be waiting a long time. With how Shadowbane turned out, and its (lack of) current subscriber base, I doubt that *any* new MMORPG will not feature any sort of 'integrated' pvp the way Shadowbane did, or the way that Darkfall is planning. We will see what types of measures (and constrictions!) that DF puts in to prevent the typical problems that come with full FFA pvp games. In fact, since DF is supposedly a skill-based game and not a class-based game (like UO and AC were/are), then you might
      • I had high hopes for shadowbane. It is also the reason I stopped playing on non pvp servers when I tried mmos. I just couldn't go back to pve with no form of danger out there from other players. It's fun in it's own right, but the randomness that is pvp (yes even avoiding rampaging high level people) is very very thrilling indeed.

        But SB's problem was it's techincal implementation. SB.exe errors to desktop garonteed for any pvp that was going to happen. I found this unbelievable that it would crash to deskto
    • The PvP's still being tuned pretty heavily and will for a while because, as it stands, with CoV being new and CoH having hordes of top-level characters. Villains can try PvP right now, but usually you wind up just getting ganked because A) there are more heroes than villains PvPing, and B) the heroes are all of a much higher level. Give it a couple months or two, and you'll start to see some balancing out. Some people could speculate based on the hero vs. hero combat that was added in during the summer, but

  • ...tapped into the Comic Book Guy in all of us (Score:5, Funny)

    by everphilski ( 877346 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:31PM (#13991138) Journal
    ... when we all said "worst... MMO... Ever..."

    -everphilski-
  • From what I understand, Co(H|V) has no crafting. I'd like a game with a really good crafting system. I was in the beta for Horizons and I thought that had a pretty good system. I play Anarchy Online, which has an interesting crafting system but you can't really get into it until you get into the higher levels. I've been told that Star Wars: Galaxies had a great crafting system, but i'm not sure what's become of it now. I was also in the beta for Second Life which I think has the perfect geek's crafting syst

    • Re:Crafting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by srmalloy ( 263556 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @03:03PM (#13991429) Homepage
      That's not entirely true. When you are a member of a Super Group, you can play in SG mode -- basically, wearing the colors and insignia of the group to 'show the flag' as you defeat heroes/villains. In SG mode, you get a reduced amount of influence/infamy (the 'currency' of the game for buying enhancements for your character), but acquire Prestige for your group, which can be used to build or expand your group's base -- and you occasionally collect Salvage of various kinds (weapons, armor fragments, etc.) that can be reworked at crafting workbenches in your base into other components, which can be made into equipment for your base. So there's no crafting that directly affects your character, but you can craft things that will benefit your group, which will help you acquire Items of Power, which provide in-game bonuses to everyone in the group (having Items of Power in your base does, however, make you vulnerable to having your base raided by other groups trying to take them; some of the things you can build for your base are improved defenses).
    • I'm not sure what your definition of "good" is. SW:G had a very complex and intricate crafting system. It was also an a**whip for crafters. Let's pick on weaponsmiths (since that's what I mastered).

      Let's say you want to make a T21 rifle. You need:
      150 units of ditanium steel
      127 units of metal (any type)
      100 units of reactive gas (any type)
      85 units of polonium iron
      50 units of inert petrochemical (any type)
      30 units of low grade ore (any type)
      30 units of alantium carbonate ore
      17 units of wood (any type
      • Hey man, I never played the game. All I said was that I was told it had a great crafting system. I like complexity, but that sounds way too over the top to be any fun.

        Of course the average game company will take aggrivating and addictive over fun any day.

      • And you only scratched the surface ...

        • Storage limits ("our database can't handle the load, we'll fix it later" - Thanks Raph/SoE. Oh, wait, you never did fix that, did you?)
        • tell-hell ("Joe RandomPlayer: Make me your best gun, use the good stuff. Oh, and can I have it for free? I don't have any money.")
        • loot components better than anything you could make, dropped maybe never, but that's all the high-end customers want ("What, no Acklay Power Hammers? Ur a useless ws."
        • automated vendors that can only s
    • >I'd like a game with a really good crafting system.

      I never understood this mentality. To me its like saying "I would also like a game where I have to put in 9 hours of work, eat, and poop." At this point you might as well admit you're Sims 2 material.

  • Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @02:41PM (#13991223) Journal
    The 'Zig' is normally a maximum security prison
    So the players have to escape every Zig? To thwart justice?

  • It should be called "City of Anti-Heroes" (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Overall the quality of the missions is higher than in City of Heroes, with the violent and petty nature of criminality making your actions a lot more sensical than in some CoH missions.

    Sadly, the majority of the enemies you face in CoV are *still* villains (I've made it to 30 and only seen 3 total hero groups, and only one shows up with any frequency), and you have lots of missions with goals like "rescue the Wretch" and "stop the intruders", that are passed off as villainous only because you are being paid
    • would be a more appropos title then?

    • The real reason for this is simply balance. As much as we'd all like to be the uber-evil super villain with the thermalnuclear bomb holding the world hostage, the game would be disrupted when some griefer(s) decides to actually push the button and kill the world.

      On top of that, going up against other heroes (or even other players) would get boring since it'd never be a 'fair' fight (either YOU have the element of surprise, the enemy would have the element of surprise, or the fight would be unbalanced since

  • "Overall the quality of the missions is higher than in City of Heroes, with the violent and petty nature of criminality making your actions a lot more sensical than in some CoH missions"

    I'd love to know what sensical actions are...

  • CoH(V) (Score:2, Interesting)

    by umbrellasd ( 876984 )
    CoV lasted a week on my hard drive. I played CoH for about 4 months until the repetition drove me to the brink of insanity and I became a villain. At which point the further mind-numbing boredom drove me back to the brink of sanity and into a supersane state of "chuck this boring thing into the nearest landfill where it can do no further harm to humanity".

    It is a pretty game with a nice theme, but that is just not enough. Oddly, the day they upgraded CoH with the CoV content, I could no longer run CoH

  • It was their horrible support. Anytime an update was done something broke. And you'd get the standard "send the diag output" only to never hear from them again.

  • New skin, but nothing new to do (Score:3, Insightful)

    by J. T. MacLeod ( 111094 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @03:06PM (#13991459)
    I loved City of Heroes. It was a beautiful feast of pure joy.

    For about half an hour.

    It became pretty apparent that there is only one mission: Go beat every one up. That's it! Oh, I forgot: You could also find some things by clicking on boxes as you... went to beat every one up. That by itself is fun for a couple of minutes.

    Now, EQ and WoW both got dropped by me due to the grind, but there were at least places to explore, puzzles to solve, things to learn... In other words, there were things to do.

    City of Heroes had nothing else, excepting the opportunity to look at the (gorgeous) scenery and earn the next superpower. I kept playing after hearing tales of the game play, social interaction, and mission variety opening up after a certain point. I found none. My contacts and missions looked different, but acted exactly the same.

    Had there been more social interactions that were relevant to game play, or game play designed to really let people feel in-character... Or any number of things, it could have been better. The entire time I played, I felt like I was playing an engine demo released before their content.

    City of Heroes brought to the table the BEST game in years... that gave me no compelling reason to play. :(

  • Yeah, but the real question is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mpath ( 555000 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @03:10PM (#13991512)
    Can you name your character CmdrTaco?
  • I do enjoy both City of Heroes and Villains, but CoV really isn't all that different from CoH: nearly all the mission instances are just retextured versions of CoH missions. It is a good thing that there's not an extra fee for CoH players, since there's very little that's new.

    The problem with CoH is that there's nothing to do after level 50. There's only one raid level encounter in the entire game and the risk-reward ratio of it isn't all that great. Once you've done it, though, that's it. There's nothing e

  • Not villainous enough (Score:5, Interesting)

    by robson ( 60067 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @04:04PM (#13992154)
    I played CoH for 1.5 years and was in the CoV beta.

    My main problem with CoV, and the reason I didn't end up subscribing, was that most missions had me fighting other villains. Sure, villains engage in some in-fighting, but in 16 levels of leveling up a Corruptor in beta, I fought non-villains in exactly three missions:

    1.Fought guards in the tutorial mission.
    2.Fought heroes in the first mission.
    3.Fought guards in the bank heist mission.

    Everything else was fighting the same old villains from CoH -- Hellions, Skulls, Lost, Family, etc. Sure, the mission text may say "kidnap" rather than "rescue", but I was only ever "kidnapping" someone from another villain group, and it sure felt like a rescue. Sure, I steal valuable items, but only from other villain groups -- never from museums, offices, mansions, and the like.

    It just seemed like a massive waste of an opportunity. There was even a 40+ page thread on the CoV beta forums titled "CoV Just Not Villainous Enough"? That thread never saw a single developer response, and appeared not to impact the game in the slightest.

    Which is fine, really, if the developers' definition of "villains" is just "heroes who don't get along". I'm sure lots of people will dig it because of the new archetypes, zones, powers, and PvP potential.

    For my money, though, I expected something very different from a game titled City of Villains.

    • This changes (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MattW ( 97290 )
      Early on that's true - you spend the first few levels fighting almost all villains. Later on, you run across a lot more good and neutral factions. Longbow and the like, as well as a lot of Elite Bosses which are basically hero builds. There's also the striking dockworkers on Sharkhead.

      You must have been skipping content also, because there are some other early missions you fight heroes in - I think you're L6 or less when you go to defeat the sea witch, who is the first "hero" sort of enemy (Although she's o
      • You must have been skipping content also, because there are some other early missions you fight heroes in - I think you're L6 or less when you go to defeat the sea witch, who is the first "hero" sort of enemy (Although she's only a boss at low levels, you encounter her again in the low 20s as the first actual "Hero" you fight (which is the CoV equivalent of an Archvillain)).

        Yeah, in all fairness, I've heard folks say that. I wasn't deliberately skipping content, though; I was simply joining pick-up teams
  • Are you people ever going to learn how to write?

    "allowing players to create their own superhero."

    No. It should be "allowing players to create their own superheroes." The plural noun "players" has to be matched with a plural noun: "superheroes". They're not all working on the same superhero.

    Why has fourth grade English become so damned challenging?

    Go ahead. Mod me down. I dare you.
    • Are you people ever going to learn how to write? "allowing players to create their own superhero." No. It should be "allowing players to create their own superheroes." The plural noun "players" has to be matched with a plural noun: "superheroes". They're not all working on the same superhero. Why has fourth grade English become so damned challenging? Go ahead. Mod me down. I dare you.


      If you really want a 4th grade English lesson...

      You should always precede quotation marks with a comma. The s
      • Everything single thing you said is wrong.

        You put a comma before quotation marks only in dialog.

        Your ideas on the proper usage of parentheses are simply bizarre.

        The colon is a matter of style. It was perfectly ok.

        Are you a troll or an idiot? Back to your cube, Bosco.

  • Some CoV thoughts (Score:4, Informative)

    by MattW ( 97290 ) <matt@ender.com> on Wednesday November 09, 2005 @04:35PM (#13992465) Homepage
    First, the writing. The writing in City of Villains is a notch above City of Heroes. While many contacts in City of Heroes were memorable, most of the best were in the high-level content (Crimson and Indigo, for example, were 40-44 and 45-50 level contacts). In City of Villains, you're struck early and often with the quality of the writing. I've been doing almost all contact missions, almost all solo, and at L26, I've run into a half dozen contacts now that I already remember better than most City of Heroes contacts. These ones are not just giving out missions, they are telling a story; or rather, inviting you to participate in their stories. From a uniquely quirky "MBA-turned-Arachnos-operative" contact who talks about your "synergy" together as you kidnap people and trash enemy bases for him, to the Superheroine who lost her powers in a friendly fire accident and is out for vengeance against the "friends" who "abandoned her", you'll feel like the contacts are a lot more alive. Fundamentally, they're all just standing in one place doling out missions, but their stories and speech are much more engaging and of a higher quality.

    Second, the mission system. Street hunting is fine, but several "issues" ago, Cryptic raised the xp from mission completion, to encourage doing story-laden missions as opposed to random street hunting. City of Villains makes this better in several ways. First, newspaper missions: entering a zone you can immediately take "newspaper" missions from anywhere, without needing to visit a contact. Every so many missions, you build enough reputation with a contact to get a "special" mission offer which you have to see them in person to get. But this helps drastically minimize the travelling.

    Next, contacts dole out their cell phone numbers a lot faster. In City of Heroes, you had to complete roughly 2/3rds of a contact's missions before you got a Call button for them. In City of Villains, you typically complete 2 missions and then receive their Call button, cutting down drastically on dull travel time, and further distancing CoV from MMOs where travelling becomes a major hassle and upgrading your modes of transportation (*cough* epic mount *cough*) becomes an overwhelmingly important goal simply because the walking is boring. It means the game is that much more fast paced.

    Next, CoV missions are usually located in the zone you acquire them in. All newspaper missions are, and MOST contact missions are, unless there's a compelling story reason to have them be elsewhere. (For example, the ominous Aeon corp is located in Cap Au Diable, and so if the mission involves breaking into their corporate headquarters, there you go - but in 26 levels, I've only been sent out of zone perhaps 4-5 times)

    Finally, CoV further improves by having a LOT of story arcs. It seems like I'm always doing one. Unlike one-shot missions, story arcs have, well, story behind them. They're more entertaining than one-off missions. If you continue to seek out contacts and work for them, you'll get souvenirs out the wazoo. I'd guess at 26 I probably have at least 15, if not 20 or more. I stopped counting. I've gotten more than one story arc from some contacts. Also, Arcs tend to be a bit shorter, with less "filler" material, whereas in CoH there were a lot of "now, do this" missions which didn't really move the story along very much. In other words, the content is thicker.

    Unlike city of heroes, however, your starting missions are currently the same regardless of Archetype or Origin. Whereas CoH content differed for the first 5 levels or so based on Origin, everyone in CoV starts with Kalinda and the same set of missions. Devs have already said new starting content is coming, but... well, coming is not here.

    Third, the Archetypes. As Zonk points out, the Mastermind is a unique experience. Overall, however, I think all the Villain ATs have a unique flavor. The least unique is probably the corruptor, which plays essentially like a defender with their power sets reversed. They don't do enough damage to
  • I've played CoH on and off since launch, and did a bit of Beta for CoV, and am, in fact, currently playing CoV (waiting for my teammates to get back from walking their dogs) while I write this.

    What's good is that there are now more archetypes/classes, and they are closer (for me, anyway) to what I'd wanted in the first place.

    Also, there are some new graphics tweaks that I'm really liking, and a change to ragdoll physics which makes for some more smash-up fun when beating the crap out of things.

    What's bad is
  • My comparison of City of Villians, coming from World of Warcraft:

    There are NO items, just experience points to get you additional powers. No goofy loot system.

    Each spell gets a number of buff slots, and as you kill mobs you get buffs to apply to your powers. (i.e. +heal, +dmg, +accuracy) You can do `instances' (kill quests) with 1 person, 3 people or whatever. It will scale difficulty automatically and spawn more mobs. No sitting around waiting for people shouting LFG.

    If your buddy just started the game
  • The reason I left this fantastic game was because the powers got old....FAST.

    I got really tired of seeing the same limited powers and that was it. I wanted variety, I wanted visual differences. Auras were cool....but let me tweak the visuals of my actual powers! How lame is it to see the same stupid bows and guns and blasts etc.

    If an attack does a lot of damage, I want it to show up on my screen!

    I also feel like CoV, while it had new classes, didn't do much in the way of new powers, which was what everyb

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