City of Heroes Going Rogue With New Expansion 100
NCSoft has announced a major expansion to City of Heroes, titled Going Rogue, which they say will "blur the line between heroes and villains." It is set in Praetoria, a parallel universe governed by an evil version of Statesman, the game's lead hero. As part of a new alignment system, "hero characters can become villains and vice versa, enabling hero archetypes to cross over to the Rogue Isles and villain archetypes to experience Paragon City." Brian Clayton of Paragon Studios said, "For years, players could choose between playing as a hero or a villain. Now we will present a third, malleable path where players can be affected by the results of their actions."
Come A Long Way (Score:5, Informative)
Good to see the game continuing to grow and change. They've come a long way from a studio that, in 2006, was cut down to just 15 people maintaining the game.
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I'm sorry... (Score:1, Funny)
Not that special (Score:3, Interesting)
While I do play COH and like it, I don't see it as that special in that aspect.
For example WoW also released a lot of individual instances, story arcs, etc, for free in between the two expansion packs. E.g., the endgame content in both the original game and BC was released as such free patches, and even WOTLK has just seen for example Ulduar released as such a free patch. Just because they don't call them "issues" or make a big fuss about it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Furthermore, 14 issues sounds a
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That's orthogonal to what I was saying (Score:2)
That's very insightful and informative, and I'm not going to argue against that. But that's orthogonal to what I was saying there. All that I was... debating was the whole "oh, we're getting so much free content" idea. I've seen at least as much free content added in WoW too, and a bunch of other games for that matter. That's all I'm saying.
Re:That's orthogonal to what I was saying (Score:4, Funny)
But that's orthogonal to what I was saying there.
Isn't that Normal for Slashdot?
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Rofl. Well played. I'd mod you funny, but alas I posted already.
Re:Come A Long Way (Score:4, Interesting)
The gameplay is a big draw for me. The one thing I wish they'd do is put in more bosses with interesting mechanics -- i.e. special attacks that require heroes to get out of the way, things like the Hollows trial where you need to split up to activate things simultaneously, etc. Apart from three or four fights in both sides of the entire game the deepest strategy is point the "boss" away from the rest of the team. In a game with as many mobility powers as CoH you can do sooo much better.
You want content? (Score:2)
The last issue (i14) released the Mission Architect.
The game itself already had over a thousand mission arcs, plus randomly generated missions from certain contacts as well as radio missions.
Now, with the MA, you have access to effectively unlimited content. In the first month alone, they surpassed 100,000 (one hundred thousand) mission arcs generated by the player base.
Granted, some of these were exploits and farms, which have since been nerfed. But the point still stands. If you want lots of content.
Lots of content != lots of copy-and-paste (Score:5, Insightful)
Quantity doesn't say anything about quality. If my hypothetical restaurant boasted 100 different recipes on the menu, but they're all minor variations of the same cheeseburger, you're not going to think it's the most diverse food around.
What I'm trying to say is that in COH
A) all missions are one of:
- kill NPC and everyone else in the same room
- click on glowie
- rescue hostage
- kill everyone on map
- defend an object
And I don't mean at a conceptual level (as in, both Deadmines and Ulduar involve killing an end-boss in WoW), but they're all a map full of NPC groups and you have to do largely the same thing yet again on a different map. But what makes it worse is:
B) maps aren't very different. Like in the old Daggerfall, maps are made of a small number of huge and easily recognizable chunks, that are just interconnected in different ways. So for example it's very easy to recognize that you're in the same 4-level cavern room you've already seen a gazillion times before, or that you're in the exact same lobby with an overpass, or in the same 4-way warehouse junction.
Once you recognize that, you don't just know the exact architecture and have seen it before. (As in, at the level of, "oh, around that corner are the cubicles and around that other corner is a ramp up.") After a while you also know exactly where the enemies can spawn and around which corners you should be careful.
In WoW terms, for whoever is more familiar with that, think how memorable the cave with the ship was in the Deadmines when you saw it the first time as a newbie. Now think if it were reused in a thousand other dungeons, and you're seeing the same bloody room again from level 1 to level 80. Because it's reused again and again and again.
Just saying that it's a lot of missions is kind of misleading, when you run into such copied and pasted rooms over and over again.
And even worse...
C) The number of different combinations of those pieces is also rather limited. So not just the chunks of some maps can be what you've already seen before, but the whole bloody map can be an exact duplicate of something you've already played a hundred times.
And sometimes it's as if they don't even try to hide it at all. In fact as if they try to rub your nose in it.
E.g., I can think of one teen-level task force where three missions in a row are identical. As in, you do the exact same map, with the exact same layout, and the exact same enemies, 3 times in a row. It's just placed in different buildings around the city, but it's the same mission again. What was the purpose of _that_? Just to make sure I know it's a copy-and-paste time sink?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the game as a whole sucks or anything. That's a matter of personal tastes, anyway. But saying that it has lots of content is IMHO highly misleading, since actually it's very little content copied and pasted over and over again. Repetition doesn't really make it more content.
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In WoW terms, for whoever is more familiar with that, think how memorable the cave with the ship was in the Deadmines when you saw it the first time as a newbie. Now think if it were reused in a thousand other dungeons, and you're seeing the same bloody room again from level 1 to level 80. Because it's reused again and again and again.
So, kinda like the non-instance caves (of which there are about 30 copies each of three designs) or the forts? One of the first things I noticed when I got WotLK was "Hey, new castle design!"
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Kind of, in the broadest of terms. The difference is that in CoH, all your missions (quests) take place inside the copy-and-paste caves, office buildings, or warehouses. Well, except for if you choose to do the still-more-bland street missions that involve a.)killing xx number of xx baddies, b.)delivering an item to an NPC, or c.)click some pay phones.
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Not QUITE true.
There are a fair number of outdoor maps available to you. In-game, you don't see them a lot until later levels.
Yes and no (Score:2)
Sort of, yes and no.
Yes, there is a lot of duplicated geometry in WoW too, and I should know, I've played both games more than some would consider healthy.
No, the overal feeling isn't the same. As the general feeling goes, in WoW sometimes you're in a cave, sometimes you're in the woods, sometimes you're on some snow-covered mountain, and sometimes you're in a fort, etc.... There's some copied stuff, but on the whole there's a _lot_ of content anyway. Even if you see some of it twice or thrice, there is nev
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Unfortunately, what Parent posted here is 100% correct. And unfortunately, what he posted is also largely correct of the "custom" Mission Architect missions. The only thing you can actually do with MA is create your own custom baddies and baddie groups. Oh, and write the dialog... which is very important, because everyone always reads that, right? Not only can you not create your own maps, you can't even place the baddies or items yourself. (Besides the vague options of "front", "back", or "middle" of the m
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CoX maps are tiny in comparison to other MMOs out there. I remember Asherons call it could take the good part of an hour to go from one side of the map to the other. In CoX it is a fraction of that time.
Lol. For the non-CoX players here, let me explain exactly what is meant here by "a fraction of that time". Once you have your travel powers, you can get from anywhere in the game world to anywhere else in the game world in less than 5 minutes, if your computer loads zones fairly quickly. Most of the time you can get there in 1-2 minutes.
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CoX maps are tiny in comparison to other MMOs out there. I remember Asherons call it could take the good part of an hour to go from one side of the map to the other.
Don't mean to be offensive (well, maybe just a little). But if I had to spend a friggin hour crossing a map, I'd wind up logging off and never log back on again.
In CoX it is a fraction of that time.
Good. It means I'm not wasting time that could be better utilized beating badguy behind and advancing my toon.
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Don't mean to be offensive (well, maybe just a little). But if I had to spend a friggin hour crossing a map, I'd wind up logging off and never log back on again.
Asheron's call had a large, seamless overhead world (which was pretty cool from a technology standpoint). So, you could literally run across it non-stop. The did, however, have portals scattered across the world at various points for quicker travel. Many people tried running across the world once for the sheer novelty of it.
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Good Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
And like most good ideas it depends on implementation. If the path to Good from Bad and vice versa are nontrivial actions then this stands to add a significant amount of replayablity to characters and personal attachment to a character.
A well thought out quest path that leads to the opposite faction with good story lines, moderately difficult to difficult quests, and tangible rewards can make this a tremendous addition to the game.
If NCSoft has made the path back and forth a toggle switch then it becomes just another piece of fluff that adds little or nothing to the actual game istelf.
Reliable Entertainment (Score:3, Insightful)
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That's only true if you want to play that way. Which not everyone did. And just so we're clear, there have been folks who managed to do 1 - 50 in 10 or 12 hours with regular "farm mission" content made by the developers.
The main problem I have with the Mission Designer is that everyone does the same thing over and over. I like some of the user created missions. Some of them are really well done or very funny, but not everyone I play with wants to read the clues or stop for the enemy speeches.
But then, at so
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The converse of that is that sometimes the high level content would be downright unbalancing to obtain at a lower level. Fire Controllers have a long hike to Fire Imps; Psychic Dominators have an even longer run to Psychic Shockwave, but if those powers were available at a low or modest level, no one would bother to make anything else.
I just tried WoW for the first time this weekend, and I have to say that all the people who are complaining about CoX's lack of content have obviously been smoking something.
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I've found myself doing nothing but killing animals for their meaty bits, meaty bits they only occasionally drop. I can't imagine anything less exciting than that,and nothing in the game makes me think that it's going to get any better, either.
Having played both CoX and WoW extensively I can tell you that if you keep playing, you will soon discover that it does get better, and it only keeps getting better at higher levels. The main difference between WoW and CoH is that WoW starts you off with a few skills to get you acquainted with the game, and the content is specifically tailored to be done with those skills, while CoX just gives you access to xx powers because they are in xx position, and well, if those powers aren't up to par compared to som
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I don't PvP and generally view PvP as an anti-social behavior, or at least an anti-social player base.
At this point CoX does have crafting and loot, though I'm not terribly interested in it, either.
Mostly what I see about travel in WoW is that it's some kind of punishing time sink. I rather like being about to move so freely about the game world as I can in CoX. Christ. Players in WoW can't even walk faster.
CoX also has the Mission Architect now, which is the ultimate creative outlet for players with such u
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I don't PvP and generally view PvP as an anti-social behavior, or at least an anti-social player base.
I more or less agree. But then, you don't *have* to PvP in either game if you don't want to.
Mostly what I see about travel in WoW is that it's some kind of punishing time sink. I rather like being about to move so freely about the game world as I can in CoX. Christ. Players in WoW can't even walk faster.
The difference though is that the world you're walking through in WoW is actually interesting.
CoX also has the Mission Architect now, which is the ultimate creative outlet for players with such urges, and we have the ability to redesign our avatars, right down to the size, shape and placement of our noses.
That beats fishing any day.
Huh? CoX has always had the ability to redesign avatars right down to the size, shape and placement of noses. And MA, while a great idea, is unfortunately so limited in CoX it almost doesn't matter. Really, the only real benefit of the MA is the fact that you can keep doing missions right in the same building, without ever n
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Now, if they let players design mission maps like you can SG bases, and place items and baddies exactly where you want them, and have some options for new/different objectives, you would be right.
Actually, they are working on that very thing right now. They couldn't include it in the current MA update, as it would take them a lot more work, and they wanted to give us something. No idea when, or if, they'll be able to do it, but they're trying.
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15. Farm the same damn instance over and over. Praying that not only will the 1% droprate item from the sub boss drop, but you will be lucky enough to roll higher than the other 5 people who need it. All for that extra 2dps and 3 res rating you need be be considered usable in the next higher dungeon to farm.
Oh, and your 10? Spend hours and hours farming mats, grinding useless items that have a 20% chance of skill up, spend heaps of gold on training and AH mats you can't possibly realistically farm yourself,
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You can't build missions/quest in WoW. After trying it out during the reactivation weekend, this made me resubscribe to CoX.
Playing with costumes does not happen in WoW because everyone wears what ever will give them the best stats.
There is also guild bases you can build and (until a recent patch) you could invade another guild's base.
Which is just bad design (Score:2)
That's just skirting the real problem. The problem isn't whether you have a particular power like Psychic Shockwave. The problem is whether you're having fun against enemies y
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The problem is... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that that's not what the devs wanted to do. If their vision had been "screw this, we'll let players skip as many levels as they want", I can respect that. After all, the Death Knights in WoW start directly at level 55 out of 80 levels.
But it gets funny reading some Positron statement in COH where he complains about the players abusing the mission designer as power-levelling, and promises punishments to everyone who made farming missions and/or everyone who used them. And reminding everyone th
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Okay, I've had a small bit of dialog with TPTB at Paragon Studios.
Their problem isn't farming or PL per se. They wish you wouldn't, but they're not going to stop you or delete your toons.
Their problem is utilizing acknowledged exploits that they're in the process of fixing to do so in a stupidly rapid manner.
Quite literally, there were people blowing through from 1-50 in 6 HOURS. The fact that the mission format was a farm was merely incidental.
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I have the impression that the current developers, people I really, really like for their stewardship of my favorite game, have an idealistic vision of the game as it is, and are not fully in touch with the player base. I like the game as it is envisioned by the developers, and that's the game I generally try to play. I run through the missions, do task forces and don't give all that much thought to metagame stuff like merit/ticket collection.
But I do wish that they would acknowledge that those things ARE t
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I agree. If people want to be rewards-oriented, the devs really have very little say in it other than to nerf it to the point where being rewards-oriented is impossible. If they do that, they're simply going to drive away their ENTIRE customer base.
Still not as much of a saving grace (Score:2)
I don't see that as much of a saving grace, since most of those "exploits" were simply broken design to start with, not some obscure buffer overflow bug.
It's, if you will, simply a rerun of the self-stackable Hasten way back at game launch, or of the "City Of Blasters" smoke grenade exploit, or of the other of many _foreseeable_ problems that the COH team implemented without stopping and _thinking_ first.
They seem to just plough ahead and implement something that sounds cool, and only later discover whether
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That wasn't the worst of it. They were the slowpokes. There were some doing level 1-50 in 1 (one) hour.
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Actually no. There weren't. What you saw with 1 hour (probably saw the screencap of the guy checking his time logged on) was someone level-pacted. He level-pacted, logged off and let his buddy do the march to 50.
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You're overblowing the situation... Posi mentioned *possible* sanctions against players who used *exploits*. The devs could generally care less about people that simply farm. They've always been diligent about nerfing the missions that makes things *too* easy, usually by making the mission timed so it can't be kept and restarted over and over and over again.
As far as treating the players as adults, well, if they would act in a manner appropriate for adults I would agree with you. Many of the players do,
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And that situation is only magnified in CoX, where the *only* real fun after playing for more than a few months is playing around with level 50 powersets. Honestly, the actual mission content and such is so bland that it would be in their best interests to let players create instant level 50 toons willy-nilly once they get one to 50. Any low-level content that is worth doing can be accessed any time at a higher level from Ouroboros. The player literally misses absolutely nothing by starting at 50 after leve
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I actually enjoy the low-level game more than the level 40 - 50. I like the progression, and feeling like I've become a more powerful and notable hero or villain.
Of course, everyone has a different idea of fun, but I'd rather enjoy the progression again than play loot collector to obtain yet another Luck of the Gambler on a level 50.
Of course, the other side to that is that I've STILL never gone through all the missions available from the level 50 contacts, despite the fact that I've been playing both games
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I actually enjoy the low-level game more than the level 40 - 50. I like the progression, and feeling like I've become a more powerful and notable hero or villain.
Me too, I've even gone so far as to actually turn on the NoXP option in CoH so I can stay at lower levels on some of my toons.
But what does the way I like to play have to do with what level you can start at?
Why not let anyone who wants to start at 50?
Then if you're the sort who likes to play from 1 to 50, then you can, and if you're the sort who likes to start at 50, then you can do that instead.
As opposed to other MMOs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, we've had front page stories about most other MMOs so far. I certainly remember articles speculating about Wrath Of The Lich King, back before when that was released. And articles about how WAR is adding a whole two classes... copied and renamed from other races. And then about how it's merging servers. Or about how Eve, after years of ignoring individual players if they don't happen to be some dev's best buddies, now is letting players elect a council. (Which it will likely still ignore, but now it gives players something to do and somewhere to argue with each other, instead of pestering the devs.) Etc.
It's the games section. What did you really think goes there?
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I've read through your post about 3 times now, and I'm not sure what you're complaining about.
Alright, so, there are only certain numbers of mission types, and most of them involve fighting things. Find me an MMO that isn't the same way.
Yes, the office maps may look similar, but they are made up of individual rooms, and those rooms have the same layout. This allows the devs to come up with more content and not worry so much about hand-creating a new map each time.
There are many different kinds of maps, no
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Lemme guess, you're one of the LOLPVPers who was all butt-hurt after i13 rolled with the PVP changes.
I acknowledge, the PVP in City Of.. is lacking. It's always been a bolted-on system, an afterthought.
There are several reasons why the majority of the City Of.. players don't PVP. And in no particular order.
1: The game system rarely functions the same way the PVE side does. Meaning you have to relearn the game from scratch.
2: Even with the "rebalancing", there's still massive concentration on "Flavor of t
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The game already has PvP in it. So there is already relearning and rebalancing of the game to cater for PvP.
My point being that people didn't WANT to have to "relearn" or "rebalance" for PVP with the ORIGINAL iterations of PVP. The new PVP exacerbated this.
Once you move out into the ACTUAL population 99% of the time are not only sound but look after each other from other assclowns. You will die and people will attack you easier, but that is the whole point of PvP.
Again, my point is, there's no "lea
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"Excuse me sir, are you perhaps here for a drubbing? Or would you prefer me to repectfully keep my distance while you engage the npcs as you will."
Sorta kills the entire spontaneity thing, doesn't it?
-Jeff
Downloaded the trial recently (Score:2)
I think I might get a subscription. EVE is good, but hard work. Sometimes I just want to blast something for a laugh.
Going Nethack (Score:2)
The first thing I thought after seeing the headline was "Good! Another 20 years and they'll go Nethack" :-)
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20060522&mode=classic [userfriendly.org]
Anyone else read that as Petoria? (Score:2)
I was wondering when they were going to annex Joehio.
Black and White (Score:2)
Reminds me of something, I'll get it in a moment...
Do you get villages of minions to torture, or do you have to be satisfied with PKs?
Will it be enough? (Score:2)
When City of Heroes(Villains) (CoX) was first launched, it was absolutely the only super-hero MMO out there, and as such filled a niche that wasn't being satisfied by anything else at the time. It was a good game in that it worked fairly well, was fun to play and had some interesting storylines to play through. However, in my opinion, there isn't any real depth to the game unless you're *really* into the stories and want to experience every single last one of them, despite many of them being essentially the
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Well, there are dozens of fantasy-themed MMOs out there. Each new one doesn't necessarily hurt the ones before it too badly.
I'm sure after DC Universe and Champions Online come out we'll start seeing fanboys of all 3 superhero games frothing at the mouth and crying heretic when a game other than their chosen one is mentioned.
Look at any story here about an MMO. It'll be that, with names changed.
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Fanpeople aside, the challenge for CoX is going to be that they've got a 5 year old game engine (that is very, very limited, but very solid for the few things it does) that they're charging people $15 a month to play going against 2 brand-new game engines that at the least look a lot better and most likely will have fewer limitations and will also cost $15 a month to play.
I don't know that just letting people change alignments is going to be sufficient to keep people on the old system paying the same price
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CO is maddening for several reasons:
1. It's dumbed down for console play. Ugh.
2. It does not particularly respect the source material. Champions as a pen and paper franchise is at least 20 years old, but it was essentially pasted on the CO game engine.
3. It's being run by Jack "Statesman" Emmert. I've met the guy. He's a comic book fan. But he has a particular idea of fun, and anything that does not match his vision isn't going to be part of the game. A lot of the issues that CoX had in the past stem from s
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Uh oh.
You said the "V" word.
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Having seen what a 2 billion infamy build is capable of, I'm not sure how much more "epic" the game could be.
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Before Enhancement Diversification and the various reductions in the effects of Area of Effect attacks, players could very easily take down literally hundreds of opponents single-handedly. Back when I first played, my scrapper (Dark Melee/Regeneration) would pay people to join my teams and then sit by the doors of missions so that I could maximize the spawns for fighting. Even on the highest level of difficulty with the largest possible spawn sizes, I pretty much couldn't be killed. I used to solo multiple
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Signature characters exist in MMOs to give the developers a basis for content. You can't be a signature character; people playing DCUO won't ever get to be Batman, either.
Any MMO world does have to remain largely static. Changes happen in CoX when new updates are released. I'm fine with that. From a mechanical standpoint I don't see what the developers could do that would allow players to legitimately change the game world.
Still, my level 50s are considered peers of their villainous patrons. They've rid the
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There's a difference between being a signature character and having an impact on the world, and there are a lot of things that can be done to let the players feel like they're having an impact on the game world. I don't accept that MMO worlds need to remain more or less static - I actually think that's largely a relic of the initial constraints on the genre coupled with a lack of effort on developing non-static game worlds; there have been several games that actually do let players change things fairly dram
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I agree that the zones all really need redesigns. There are zones, like Perez Park, or Boomtown, etc., which are never used these days. They need to re-design them like they did to Faultline.
The thing, though, is that, when asked about this, the Devs say that it takes only slightly less time to re-design a zone as it takes to make a new zone.
The players, when questioned if they would rather have a new zone, or a re-designed zone, always say that they want a new zone. It's really sad, though. They have a
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That is a really good point. But, I think the solution is hinted at by what's in the game already: Mission Architect. One of the CoX devs said that within 48 hours of the MA going live, players had created more missions than the dev team had in the 5ish years the game's been live. Granted, 99.99% of it would be really craptacular, but some of it is good stuff that could be ready for inclusion in the main game with a little polish.
So what if the devs released a basic level/zone design tool, specs for texture
Loving COX (Score:2)
The New Mission Architect stuff has totally renewed my interest in this game. I've designed two missions now:
"Dorothy is Dangerous" a Wizard of OZ themed map where munchkins and flying monkeys protect Dorothy, the Tin Man, ect.... as your team tries to take them out as a favor to the wicked witch...
And "Judgment" where ten Arch villains, each with very different abilities, are on the same map, and your team (or solo) tries to arrest the hell out of them. I've had only two people send me messages where they
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Weird that I've seen four or five different takes on the Wizard of Oz among MA missions. They've all been pretty good, too. "Oz" must be a code word for someone trying to actually use the storytelling aspect of the MA.
Nice try, but not much of one (Score:1)
This feature is about 2 years too late. . . (Score:2)
Having heroes or villains be able to swap sides is a cool idea - one I had about 10 minutes after they announced City of Villains 3 years ago or whatever. To call that one feature a major expansion (ok, to be fair, it sounds like they are building new zones and things into this expasion too, and probably lots of other stuff as well), but really, switching sides seems like a minor feature at best, and something they should have had in the game a long time ago.
The actually *really* interesting feature which C
Evil Statesman (Score:2)
You know, the one where Statesman and his Cryptic crew leave NCSoft to start their rival game.
Variety... (Score:2)
I still think City of Heroes/Villains has, by far, the best fighting system of any MMO. It's the closest any game has come to real-time action. It's engaging and can be a lot of fun.
When I was playing there were a handful of interesting storylines and entertaining missions. However, virtually every single mission consistent of entering one of a handful of environments and beating the crap out of every enemy contained within. While it's very entertaining taking on 5 or more enemies at the same time it does g
Meh (Score:2)
I picked up CoX at Biglots for $4. It even included a free month. I installed it and used the free week or so they give you when you sign in. It just wasn't very compelling. It looked nice enough, but I couldn't really get interested in it. I may use the free month sometime if I am really bored. I'm sure I'll get $4 worth of gameplay out of it.