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City Of Heroes Beta Evaluated As Game Goes Gold
Thanks to GamersWithJobs for its detailed impressions of PC-based superhero MMORPG City Of Heroes, given just after the game reached gold master status, with an "official launch [of] April 28", and a (slightly inflationary?) "monthly subscription fee of US$14.99." The preview, from a "long time tester and fan of the game", notes: "When I entered City of Heroes for the first time, one of the things that quickly grabbed my attention was the scale--the towering statues, the twenty story buildings", before discussing the action-oriented gameplay: "Unlike almost every other MMORPG out there, combat in City of Heroes is designed to be fast paced and fun" The author concludes: "It's not a perfect superhero game, but it's a very good superhero MMORPG."
Gah! No capes! That's like a street-racing game with no oversized wings and Type-R windscreen decals, or a shmup without a spread cannon!
No capes! Gah!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Well, if it was a game starring everybody's favorite /. editor, it would be called City of Hemos.
Another MMO game that is crying for PvP (super hero's vs Villans) that doesn't include it. Can someone please do something different than the PvE (player vs enviornment) friendly co-op mode all of these games are coming out in? Some of us want MMORPGs where combat against humans is allowed and maybe even (akk) encouraged.
I am also playing in this beta, and things I have to say about are "wow". The beta is more stable than any of the day 1 releases I've played in, and I've played in pretty much all of them. The devs are making changes based on suggestions people are making (holy crap, devs that listen?).
Its also fun, because you can pop on and play for thirty minutes and quit. If you're friends are hella high level because they play religiously, no sweat... you have the Mentor/Sidekick system. So basically, ANY levels can group together... no more getting left in the dust by your friends who have no lives. ;)
One of great things about the Gamers With Jobs community is that our forums are teeming with gamers who also happen to be excellent writers. Paladin is no exception and today he has been kind enough to send in his impressions of the City of Heroes beta. He's been playing since January and he's been lucky enough to have played right through to the highest level range the game has to offer. This article is not to be missed if you have any interest in the now-gold MMORPG. Get to it!
Introduction
City of Heroes - long touted as the last, best hope of comic book fans everywhere, this MMORPG is finally nearing release. After years in development, a major change in the game's fundamental design, and fears of vaporware, comic book junkies everywhere will finally have a chance to get their gaming fix. Before I begin, a disclaimer: I am not a critic, or a professional reviewer, and this article is in no way intended to be an objective review of City of Heroes. Neither am I in any way associated with or employed by Cryptic Studios or NCSoft. I am, however, a long time tester and fan of the game. I've been waiting for this since I signed up on the City of Heroes forums in October of 2001. It's been a long wait, and to my delight I'm not disappointed.
In the Beginning
When you start up the game for the first time you have to create a character. Character creation is definitely one of the high points of City of Heroes, and most people will spend a lot of time making character after character. I know I did. I managed to fill up all eight slots on each of my two beta accounts (closed and pre-order).
The first decision is to pick an Origin. The Origins are Natural, Technology, Magic, Science, and Mutant. At this point, Origin has little effect on gameplay other than to determine who your first enemies will be, and what enhancements you can use. This may change at a later date but at this point it's more of a role-playing, character concept choice than anything else. I decided to pick Science, as it fit my character concept.
The second decision is to choose an archetype. There are five archetypes in the game, which roughly correspond to the basic classes of other games. Each archetype has a primary and a secondary powerset. The primary powerset is the defining power group for the character, and represents their most powerful abilities. The secondary powerset is used to supplement their primary abilities, and isn't as powerful. The archetypes are as follows:
Tanker:
City of Heroes' immovable object. Tanks are designed to soak damage for their team, and do so far better than any other archetype in the game. The Tanker is also an able bodied meleer, able to dish out decent damage at melee range. Tankers get to choose a Defense powerset as primary, and a Melee powerset as secondary.
Scrapper:
Equivalent to a light tank, the Scrapper specializes in dealing out mass amounts of melee damage as quickly as possible. Scrappers are more fragile than Tankers though, so don't really want to be the focus of enemy attention. Scrappers get to choose a Melee powerset as their primary, and a Defense powerset as their secondary. One quick note here--the powers available to Scrappers and Tankers are different, with only a few sets overlapping. Both have access to the Defense powerset Invulnerability, but all Scrapper melee sets are unique to Scrappers, as are their other defenses.
Defender:
Defenders are the closest thing you'll find to a cleric in this game. Healing, while nice, is not a necessity in City of Heroes, and many Defenders don't even have healing powers. Defenders get to choose a Buff/Heal powerset as primary, and a Ranged attack powerset as secondary. Sadly, the Buff/Heal powersets available to Defenders are exactly the same as the ones available to Controllers, except that the Defender powers are stronger in effect.
Blaster:
The ranged damage king, this is City of Heroes' nuker archetype. As fragile as most mages,
This game is really great.
:)
:)
Ive played about every mmo game which came out since uo and non makes such a good first impression as COH.
If they will play their cards right and give trials versions to everyone and their mom it will be big.
The game is basically a GTA gone online. Everyone is a super hearo ( obviously ) and gets the super power he desires easily. At level 6 you can pick up powers like flying or hulk style super leaping ( they mean it, you will jump over buildings ).
When you just walk around in the very busy streets you will see gang wars you can break up or see old ladys beeing robbed of their purse. You pick up missions ( unfortunatly pretty simple ones ) from your different contacts who usually put you up against different villain groups.
Fighting is the best part of the game by far, Its amazingly action packet and moving while fighting actually can give you an advantage. It absolutly statisfies my need for action, i don't have to fire up a FPS after a long play session to get my balance back
anyways, give it it a try if you can, chances are you will enjoy it. The game will not put you up against rats I promise
I'm playing in the Beta and am having a really fun time with the game. I'm impressed with the stability and what has been worked into the game so far, and I'm more than patient to see what other cool things they work into the game in the future. A game can't support everything from the offset, gotta have some room to grow, so I'm not concerned about the lack of PvP and other things that seem to bother a lot of people.
The one thing I am concerned about though is the price. I'm not really interested in dishing out $49.95 for the game (and one month of playtime) and then $14.95 a month thereafter. That's just too much for cash for me to justify. I'm not anywhere close to poverty stricken, I make good money and can afford to spend that much on a game. Unfortunately as much as I'd like to participate I don't see it as *worth* my money. Am I alone in this thinking?
Droping $49.95 and having 3 months worth of online play, that seems worth it in my books (I'm still thinking high, but I'd pay it), but this cash grab just strikes me as unreasonable.
They're probably trying to avoid the slashdotting.
I'm currently playing the online version of the Lord of the Rings CCG. This game does have the unfortunate CCG pricing model (i.e. the more you pay, the better options you have) but it's certainly possible for a player with a good idea of what they want to get a tourney winning quality deck for around $50-70. (This approach requires lots of camping in the trade lobby to find people willing to give you stuff you need for the limited stuff you have, but that time investment is no worse than any other MMO.)
Anyways, the good news to the otherwise somewhat newbie-unfriendly pricing is that there's no mandatory recurring fee to keep the collection that you have. (There's an optional $10 monthly membership that gives you more than $10 worth of stuff and is intended essentially as a loss leader, since members get a 20-40% discount on further purchases, encouraging you to spend more. The membership pays for itself for anyone spending at least $10 a month on the game, but again, is optional if you know you won't be playing for a few months and want to cancel it until you come back or just want to cut yourself off.) This means that I'm not getting significantly worse value for my money dollar for dollar than the people who spend hours and hours playing, as one does in a monthly fee use it or lose it payment scheme.
The CCG model does require a certain resignation that every so often you'll face someone who destroys your puny deck with their massively larger collection. This also, from what I hear, is common on PvP MMO's (LOTRO is PVP only, there are no AI opponents yet, even for tutorial). But at least here once you get started, all that matters is how well the ~70 or so cards you brought to the table work together to win you the game. Not how much time you've spent (though playtesting will help you pick which cards to bring), not how much the 70 cards you have are worth, and DEFINITELY not how much the cards from each of your collections that aren't being used this game are worth. Knowing you've beaten someone who spent 10 times as much as you on the game? Priceless.
First, grab your pre-order box quick and get registered. You will get a nice 'prestige power' that only pre-orders get. Basically it is Sprint with cool graphics. The graphic is different depending on which store you buy your pre-order from. I got mine at Best Buy and all my characters have this cool multiple ring/ripple effect trailing them when they run.
The pre-order box does contain a CD. It does not contain the game, though. The preorder CD installs a registration program and a nice little Macromedia-esque intro to the game. If you follow their instructions correctly, at the end you will be pre-registered for the game. Write down your login name and password. You get a different username for the beta bulletin boards than for your game login, so write down both and both passwords. Otherwise you might not be able to log in later. It is a little awkward and confusing.
After an indeterminate amount of time, you should get a letter from NCSoft saying that you can download the Beta Client installer. Its a bit over 1GB, so plan for a long night if you are running dialup.
Once the beta is installed, run the Update application. It will ask for your login name and password and then will download all the current patches. Once that is done, it throws you into the game login. Once in, then you get to spend a bit of time creating a character. Its fun, but time consuming. Be VERY careful what you name the character in your first slot. That is the ONLY name that is guarenteed reserved. When the game goes live, you don't get to keep your Beta characters, but you do get to keep the name in the first slot.
Its a great game and I am already addicted. Its got the ease of play of a traditional MMORPG, and is a fast-paced combat oriented. The missions are well thought out and fun. Getin a big group at any level and you will have a great time blowing up, frying, whacking, pounding, freezing, and otherwise causing big hurt on Bad Guys.
Cheers,
I.V.
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Alright then, go ahead and start building a server farm to host the tens (maybe even hundreds) of thousands of users who will be playing online at once. Take over the development necessary to improve gameplay and add new worlds/zones. As the game becomes more popular, pay for even more rack space and servers to load balance the MMORPG. What you don't understand is, all of this requires money. Money to pay for rack space at a Network Operations Center, money for the servers, money for the huge amount of bandwidth, money for the sys admins, money for the developers to improve the game, etc. If you can provide all of that for them, I'm sure they'd be all for no monthly fees.
I understand all of that, but what I'm saying is they can go one way or the other. They can charge an upfront fee for a game and let us play it online, or build an online game and charge us to play it online. Don't charge us for the game, then charge to play it online. I'll pay for a game if the game itself is going to be providing my gaming experience. But I think its just wrong to pay for a game, and then pay to play it when other users (who are paying to play it with me) are making the game worthwhile.
:)
Make some kind of system that loads with the game that is a distributed network or sorts, like peer 2 peer load sharing. I don't know the logicistics of that, and that might not even work, but that's besides the point. I don't pay to get into a club, then pay an hourly fee for being there. You don't pay for parking when you go in to a lot, then when you leave pay again for each hour that you've parked.
I don't mean to be saying that its any less of a game if its made to be all online, or that the developers are hacks, but I just don't believe that they are the type of game that you should pay for, then pay to again play.
If people want to say "OK developers, charge me $14.95 USD per montth to play this game that I've already payed for". That's fine. They're just adding to their own hell for now. But it won't be fine when it gets the point that all content is delivered online, and the price has been set so high be previous precedents, that it screws us all in the end. I know that's probably way down the road, but what can I say... It could screw us all.
And why would I start building a server farm anyways? I don't like mmorpg.
Well, I'm one of those people you "hate"; I run an online RPG which charges a monthly subscription fee and feel it's a better deal than most other entertianment, games included. But, allow me to point out some fallacies in your argument.
First, let's get the money out of the way. You think $50k profit on 100k users is impressive? That's $6/year per customer. That's a shameful amount for any business. Many companies make at least that much profit off a customer in one visit without the costs of developing an online RPG that can hold 100k subscribers.
But, let's focus on games as you requested. So, let me ask you: when was the last time you negotiated a peaceful agreement between opposing groups in UT2004? What? Never? That's funny, because someone posted about doing that very thing on Meridian 59 just the other week. See, politics is an important force in some online RPGs, and an interesting way to engage in player vs. player competition. The problem with UT2004 is that the lack of persistence means that there is no reason for deeper interactions between players in the context of the game. My only options in UT2004 is to shoot my enemy before s/he shoots me.
It's the persistence that give online RPGs the depth you don't find in other games. Politics is just one thing, but meaningful conflict is another. When I kill a player in Meridian, that player suffers penalties. Those penalties don't go away once the game resets (except for some special events), so that player has a reason to hold a grudge against me. I have to deal with the consequences of my actions, which leads to interesting interactions between players.
In the end, it's that persistence you pay for in a online RPG. You're not just paying for the game, but also for the service that keeps the servers active and available for you to play on, and polices the game for cheaters, etc. This isn't to say that everyone has to love persistence and dealing with the consequences for their actions, but there are a lot of us that really do appreciate this and think that a monthly fee is well worth it.
And, to pimp my own game for a bit, some games are great bargains. Meridian 59 is only $10.95 per month (not $15 like City of Heroes will be), and does not require the purchase of a box or expansions. We keep expanding and improving Meridian; in fact, we're in the middle of a rewrite of the rendering engine to improve the graphics of the game. All as freely downloaded content to the players of the game.
In the end, you'll be hard pressed to find any other form of entertainment, including games, that has as low a buyin as $10.95 and is that cheap per month.
My take on things,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog