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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."
There's a lot of contention over what Issue #4 has done to the game, good and bad. Lemme give a brief overview of the changes.
1. A PVP arena. It's really an amazing piece of work, a huge addition to the game. The question is, will you really want to play in it? Certain classes ("archetypes") have innate advantages due to higher offense and defensive mixes, while others suffer because they don't have enough of either. Odds are more balancing will take place as the days go on; they've come far from when the beta of the arena went up, but still have farther yet to go.
2. New costuming. The costuming system in COH is already top notch, and this adds more elements to it. Mostly it's asian-themed items but there are other generic items in too. Some have clipping issues which will need to be resolved, but it's not too shabby. It also introduces body physique / face sliders like in Star Wars Galaxies.
3. Power changes. The alien archetype they introduced got serious boosts, other powers got little boosts... but as with ANY MMORPG IN THE HISTORY OF TIME, some changes are going to be downward rather than upward. (You can't "buff everybody, nerf nobody" without ending up in a nuclear arms race.) So, if you hit COH forums you'll see OMG sky is falling type posts from folks who now have to change their play style. But... again, to be fair, some of the changes are really phenominally heavy handed. The devs have admitted that they're looking at alternate ways to get the effect they want without harsh penalties, and they're starting to analyze the archetypes one at a time to bring them into balance. It'll take time.
Like any MMO it's got plusses and minuses. Each issue releases new toys to play with and new changes to deal with. City of Heroes gets a big fat recommendation from me; even with the issues-with-its-issues, it's still a lot of fun and very good for casual gamers who want to try an MMO but don't want it to be a second job.
I play City of Heroes and it's a fun game, especially for people who don't have a lot of time to play every night and just want some villain-bashing action.
The weird thing I've noticed is that a lot of the new costume options are restricted to one gender or the other for no real reason. Quick background here, most costume options are unisex, but there are some obvious ones, like metal bikini-thing, that are restriced.
Some of the items restricted in the new patch include:
Wooden sandals (simple, flat, wood and leather) are female-only
"Student Cap" (looks like a police hat) is male-only
Shoulder mascot (think of a pirate's parrot) is female-only
Catlike ears (think Felicia or Inu-Yasha) are female-only
I could probably come up with a few others but you get the idea.
I know game designers can get some odd gender-roles in their heads sometimes, but these choices seem a bit random. Anyone have any inside info or personal insights as to what may have been going on there?
Damn. If you ran 30 Hamidon raids you practically deserve to kick my ass in the arena.
I agree they unbalance the high end PVP, but they are the ONLY thing you can do to enhance your characters after level 50. And they aren't exactly easy to get - well ok, not hard but time consuming. I did notice that PVP seems to work best with mixed teams as one on one duels are usually horribly unbalance. I'm also not sure about how the holds are working in the arena. My main character is a 50 Illusion/Kinetics controller and I have heavily stacked hold duration on my two holds. Blaster seem to stand no chance against me. Hold, drop pets, bam, bam they die. Defenders don't fair much better. It's definately a good idea to bring a bunch of break hold inspirations into combat with you. On the other hand versus tankers and scrappers I take a beating.
It also seems to me that changing how you slot out your powers could be useful for PVP. Especially endurance drain powers, where they nerfed their effectiveness in PVP (for good reason). I'm interested in seeing how much drain I could get from a 6 slotted end drain on my Transfusion power. I'm already sucking about 1/3 total end with a hit and that's with no end drain enhancements on it.
I agree that one of the main points of the arena is to pave the way for City of Villains. I would imagine we will see a LOT of adjustement to how powers work in PVP over the next six months.
All an all, a fun new add on to the game and finally something for 50s to do beside spam "when's the next Hami raid?" or PL lowbies.
The new costume options and body scaling is really great. Finally we have some fat heroes running around! I made an insufferably cute controller with a stuffed cat on her shoulder. The jackets look pretty cool too.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
I don' tthink you can thank WoW. It's something that's been on the drawing board for a while, hell CoV was on the drawing board form the start. I know the arena isn't CoV, but the concept was there. If anything we can perhaps thank WoW for helping them to move up their schedule a bit.