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City of Heroes Issue Four Released
The fourth free expansions pack for City of Heroes has been released, and it's quite a doozy. Included in the latest release are a ton of new costume options, new content, and (most significantly) large coliseum where heroes can battle it out in PvP battles. Statement by Jack Emmert from the article: "I believe PVP will supplement the game while not detracting from City of Heroes' missions or story arcs...I see the PVP arenas as a way for players to hone their skills and as a change of pace from arresting villains."
It's an MMORPG, like Everquest or World of Warcraft -- but with superheroes and more focus on casual gameplay (no loot, instanced missions instead of spawn camping, sidekick system so you can fight across levels, etc.)
It's a lot of fun, been playing it for a year. To play devil's advocate, because it's casual oriented, it's not as deep as other MMO's; more like Final Fight than Street Fighter, swapping action and simplicity for pacing and depth.
So... can you be evil? Can you mow down civilians?
Not yet. That's in City of Villains, which is due out later this year / early next year / dunno. It's practically ANOTHER MMORPG, rather than an expansion pack, since villains have their own areas, own missions, own power sets, etc.
I kinda doubt they'll let you wander into Atlas Park and start ganking 1st level heroes and civilian NPCs, though. They've said all along PVP will always be consentual; and Arena PVP definitely is.
The Arena is fun, I'll give it that. The intuitive easy gameplay remains. There's a bit of a fly in the ointment, in the sense that right now, there's "loot" unbalancing the game. Specifically, "Hamidon Enhancements". Enhancements boost a power in CoH, and come in 3 varieties: the +8.3%, the +16.6%, and +33.3% variety, available as you get higher level. The raid reward enhancement (for killing the Hamidon) is +50% to *2* aspects. So the best enhancement available to most L22+ players is, say +33% accuracy or +33% damage. A "Hami-O", as they're called, could be +50%dmg&+50% acc.
I have about 30 myself. Experimentation has shown that when I'm fighting in a lower weight class, the power of the hami-Os may scale down, but they're still obviously WAY too good and I absolutely terrorize people I shouldn't be able to.
So for the casual player vs the hami-O laden veteran, there's a serious mismatch.
Otherwise, it's a blast.
There are definitely some great new options in the costume department - lots of jackets, several types of martial arts gear - pants, shirts, even kung fu shoes.
There's a lot of crying over nerfs right now, as scrappers took a hit to their defenses in I4 for the most part, but game balance has improved if you ask me.
Really, while the arena is great, it is obviously also laying ground and gathering data for City of Villains, which has Villain vs Hero pvp as a real theme. It's not mandatory, but it will obviously play an important part for those who are interested. This is a good first step to making sure that is not unbalanced.
City of Heroes was the first MMO I ever played. I don't have a huge amount of time to invest in gaming, so a more casual MMO was a good start. It took me a total of 10 months to hit level cap, which probably sounds ridiculous to some people. I just took my time, played a few different characters and generally enjoyed myself. :D
I really have to commend CoH for making a relatively bug free MMO. Sure there have been bugs, but nothing game killing and for the most part not highly irritating. In contrast World of Warcraft which I am now playing is still extremely buggy more than 6 months after launch. I've had my character in WoW stuck logged in to the game after a crash for an entire day.
The one thing about CoH is that it really is a fairly simple game. The game revolves around combat, and most of the depth comes from combat tactics. With so many power sets to choose from, there's a lot of flexibility in developing your characters. Outside of combat, there really isn't anything to do except maybe play with changing up your costume.
This is both good and bad. On the one hand CoH is free from a lot of the standard MMO bullshit (crafting, seeking out mad loot, running out of money), on the other hand it doesn't offer any additional gameplay options outside of combat. I can't really say that having to spend time working your day job as your secret identity would help the game much.
I'd really love to see super bases or something that would give incentive for super groups to be more than just a convenient chat channel. More large scale raids like the end game Hamidon run would be cool too.
Oh yeah and we have alternate dimensions - but where is the secret Moon base?
Sometimes my arms bend back.