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Review: City of Villains
- Title: City of Villains
- Developer: Cryptic Studios
- Publisher: NCSoft
- System: PC
- Reviewer: Zonk
- Score: 8/10
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.
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.
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.
Bradley Holt
... 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.
Shadus
Woot! Now I can go around being the evil bastard I am!
As customary?
The game is a different direction in how you build up in power than CoH - and it's a refreshing change. I hope NCSoft continues making great games like this.
5...4...3...2...
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.
...until the two games are merged such that CoV and CoH are actually *in* the same city.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
Now, people who post demeaning and sweeping generalizations on the internet...
Nerf Shammies!
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?
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
"Move zig move zig move zig move zig"
Aargh.
... when we all said "worst... MMO... Ever..."
-everphilski-
As it is, Heroes can battle Heroes in areas, and for some reason I find it hard to believe 4+ level 38 characters beating up on a single level 30 character is "heroic." Perhaps some of the nerfing ... I mean "balancing" they did in issue 6 can be extended in issue 7.
I for one welcome our cue'd overlords.
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 system, but it's a bit too freeform for my tastes. SL is of a toy and online community than a game.
Any suggestions?
Technoli
...that did the lighting for Doom III.
omg it f'n rocks! it allows me to sit alone in my basement staring at a computer screen until the wee hours of the morning while shirking my real life responsibilites
Why, they could simply have called it Paris...
Oh well, what the hell...
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
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 to do it, or because it will raise your standing with some villain group. For example, I once rescued a guitarist for some band, and it told me it would raise my standing with Lord Recluse. I guess it was his favorite band?
You do get to rob banks on occasion, but the police officers guarding it are the corrupt Rogue Island Police.
Overall, it really makes you feel more like a vigilante on the level of The Punisher, rather than a villain such as Lex Luthor or the Joker.
I'm pretty sure the reason you don't get to fight many heroes or perpetrate many real evil schemes is so that the game can maintain its Teen rating.
"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...
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
`Nuff said.
http://www.lp.org/
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/
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
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 smoothly on my Radeon 9800, and was faced with the choice of upgrading my computer to have a smooth (still mindnumbingly repetitive) play experience.
Granted as a gamer I might drop a couple hundred to bring my computer up to snuff for a game, but not this one.
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.
It'd be really cool if the game will let me create a character modeled after crazy lawyer Jack Thompson. Imagine a character so evil that he works within the game to make the game itself illegal! BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!
I prefer the archetypes (classes) more in CoV, but it wouldn't be enough to turn anyone who doesn't like the underlying play mechanics.
They had a game like that, Majestic. 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?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I agree. Seriously, as a former player of COH and beta tester of COV, I have to ask, did your mother need some surgery? Is that why you've sold out to them?
I told Statesman to kiss my ass over the latest round of nerfs, set upon the Heroes entirely so that the villians would stand a shot at getting to kill them. It meant all of my high-level, carefully crafted and playtested characters would be cut back by a third. I couldn't choose to ignore his nerfs, even though there are only 3 areas where villians and heroes meet to fight. I left, because they only understand when the money stops coming in. And, a good number of my Supergroup left, as well, for similar reasons. I suspect they're getting anxious about now, as I'm guessing about a third of their subscribers left.
With luck, Marvel will come along with their superhero game, and a no-nerfs policy, and I can again fly the friendly skies of heroism.
Remove the spamfreak to speak.
But then, what good is a game setting in which you have to surrender before anything cool happens?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Hard to believe that buried in the multiple redirects was a referral code. What, were you hoping to make $2.50 from purchases off your posting? And the discount isn't secret...just use a9.com every once in a while and get pi/2 percent off your Amazon purchases.
Amazon referral link for the lose.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
would be a more appropos title then?
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
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.
Can you name your character CmdrTaco?
I'm not sure what the secret to success is, but the secret to failure lies in trying to please everyone -Bill Cosby
There will NEVER be a "no-nerfs" policy in a MMORPG. Too many diviersified player opinions about what should/should not be powerful. Most nerfs are actually player community driven to some extent. Exploiting specific mechanics which make an encounter easier is a sure fire way to get nerfed. If anyone comes out with a no nerf policy I'll be surprised as it will be a 100% FOTM class type game with little variation in the player base. However, I'm really glad you had the chance to sit down with Statesman and voice your opinion. Or...did you post it on a message board where you were just another whiner?
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)
15 units of gallinorian rainbow gem (crystalline gemstone)
5 units of crystalline gemstone
Now, not just any gallinorian rainbow gem or polonium iron or ditanium steel either. Oh no. You see, each material type has properties related to it: cold resistance, conductivity, decay resistance, flavor, heat resistance, malleability, potential energy, overall quality, shock resistance and unit toughness that are rated 1-1000. And some material types are capped (you'll never see iron with more than 700 conductivity, etc)
In the case of a T21, conductivity counts for 50% of the item and overall quality counts for the other 50%. Then you need a power handler, which is 66% conductivity and 33% overall quality. Oh, and you probably want an ADVANCED power handler, which requires irolunn reactive gas, phrik aluminum and diatium copper. And a blaster rifle barrel, which is 66% conductivity and 33% shock resistance. And again if you want an advanced rifle barrel add rhodium steel, duralloy steel and duranium steel as well as ryll amorphous gemstone to that list.
And these stats change. You see, the polonium iron on Tatooine isn't necessarially the same polonium iron you can get on Corellia. And the great conductivity polonium on Tatooine only lasts about 10 days before it disappears. And there is no guarantee that it will respawn anytime soon, and if it does it may have really bad conductivity, or overall quality, or whatnot.
So unless you've been playing the game and feverishly monitoring all resources available daily, for a year you may miss the alantium carbonate ore you need to make a -good- T21 rifle.
So is this a GOOD crafting system? I don't know. It's complicated as hell, which is (to me) kind of neat, but it really forces crafters to be slaves to their profession since it takes up skill slots just like fighting classes and you can only have 10 harvestors running per account. I finally gave up on it and quit, YMMV.
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
(Hmm...maybe *you* were that dude I saw with the tinhat...making that insubstantiated point to entice a negative response about paranoia. Damn, you're subtle.)
You forgot the word "parents'" between "my" and "basement".
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 else, other than running lower-level missions.
Cryptic really needs to introduce some more high-level PvE content for CoH to remain viable.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
Things like bases are not available to heroes unless they upgrade CoH with CoV. I am in a supergroup that has a base, and I can't get to it because I haven't purchased CoV. So, essentially NCSoft thinks that I should pay $50 to get bases. Yeah right. I think I will go without and ruin the experience for my SG because they won't unlock this feature. Come on, there is a disparity now between heroes and villans running around and NCSoft is comfortable with this disparity in functionality, even though both are supposed to have access.
I tried to play City of Heroes under sockcaps at work and it was not working, so I stop right away. It as to do with the way their net connection work : UDP. Some other game work fine, like : WoW, Anarchy Online, Eve Online. Any of you tried the expansion with sockscap tunneled in a SSH connection ? Thanks
Seems like it would be a lot more fun if there was a World of Warcraft like battle between the heros and villans. I know if would slice the revenue stream in half but would make this game a whole lot more fun.
There are two character classes missing: The Evil Software Empire Overlord; and Rat-Bastard Movie/Recording Industry Puppet Master. Without these two villian types Slashdot will not be interested.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
I played CoH for a long time from its inception. One day I just couldn't take it anymore. It is monotonous, and lacks any real personal interaction besides chatting. I did the beta for CoV, and I didn't even think I was playing a different game. It couldn't hold my interest past the first 5 levels. Which, generally speaking the first 5 levels should be the ones that really pull you into a game. A lot of the villain powers were the same as from city of heroes, though I admit I did like summoning cronies. But my backup power was a bow and arrow. I felt it was the same as CoH with a few different powers, and they basically used purple everywhere instead of blue (how villainous!) I really wanted to like it though, due to my deep seeded superhero infatuation. I stopped playing CoV beta, and I continue to WoW. But I'm praying to the MMORPG gods that DDO wins out
yeah it was a great game just before its time
the closest thing today is battlefield 2, but even then you dont have the grand sense of scale as you did with planetside.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
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.
It was a joke, maybe not a massively funny one, but most definitely not a troll.
Sure, if that's all a person does. That's why you balance gaming with a *real* life. Everything in moderation...
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.
Insert witty sig here.
Having played CoH for 1 year and having attained the coveted level 50, I was happy to hear about CoV being released (I was getting bored of making new toons and levelling them again). I participated in the Beta and I guess my excitement over it was more about my boredom with CoH. But the excitement has worn off, quite quickly actually since I stopped playing about 1 week ago and the game was only released to the general public at the end of October. My problems with CoV (not in any order):
1) It looks and feels like a re-skinned CoH. Most of the missions take place in the same CoH locations (office buildings, caves, etc.), just with different skins.
2)Missions are the same as CoH. Most of the missions, with the exception of the bank and casino robberies, are the same missions as CoH. The "kidnap so-and-so" mission is just the CoH "rescue so-and-so" mission. The "clear out the X's from Y location" is just the CoH "clear out the X's from Y location". Its all just the same.
3)If I play a villain why can't I randomly attack the citizens walking down the street? Why?
4)If I am a villain, why are all my missions to go fight other baddies such as Skulls, Hellions, Family, etc.? Shouldn't I be fighting heroes?
5)If heroes have SGs (Super Groups) why do villains have SGs? Shouldn't it be VGs (Villain Groups)?
6)Most of the power sets are the same as CoH. This one bugged me alot. Where was the creativity in coming up with new powers? Rather than just shuffling them around and recombining them.
7)Only one truly new archetype, the Master Mind. All the other archetypes are just the same ones from CoH, only renamed. Brute == Tank, Stalker == Scrapper, Dominator == Controller, and Corrupter == Defender. No creativity here.
8)I feel like a hero more than a villain. There is nothing villainous about what you do in the game. This one bugged the most. They should have called it CoV - City of Vigilantes.
If you've played CoH, then you've played CoV. There is very little new content. This is extremely disappointing.
If you are playing CoV, and are enjoying being a Master Mind, enjoy it now while you can. It won't be long before the dev's get out their nerf gun and nerf the crap out of Master Minds. The archetype is just too powerful as far as the game goes. Considering that when a Master Mind has all his/her pets its a total of 6 (including the player). That means a team of 8 Master Minds is composed of 48 beings/creatures/players. 48 things working a mission meant for 8! Yeah, you can bet they will be nerfing Master Minds very soon.....like they did with Controllers in CoH.
CoH was a great game until they started nerfing everything PvE for the purpose of PvP... and got to a state where its a completely different game than the one it began as, CoV is just going to walk the same path, if only it wasnt made by Cryptic Studio... they are too dishonest and will lead the game to failure the same way as CoH has been.
Obviotically, you have misunderestimated the geniosmarterness of the reviewifier. All you need is a little reedumacation.
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
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
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 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)).
Once you get to the high teens and 20s you're also fighting Aeon corp, which is seedy but "legitimate" on the surface.
Not that your objection is wholly out of place. But I think it makes sense; villains fighting villains is going to draw a lot less hero/law enforcement heat than villains assaulting the innocent.
I completely agree. PvP and PvE are two very different animals. When the devs nerfed people that were too powerfull in PvP they crippled very reasonable PvE abilities and destroyed several of my better characters.
I was in the CoH closed beta, and did the same for CoV. While CoV does breath a bunch of fresh air into the CoH game, I see a lot of problems coming up.
First of all, much like Blizzard did, PlayNC apparently changed a lot of powers late in the beta for gold. This leads to the characters not being well balanced. (Not that the beta characters were well balanced. Typical rush to gold MMO scenario...)
Early on, you could easily do missions in the PvP zones and not run into a single other player. That was kind of nice if you didn't want to PvP, but if you did, it was boring.
The classes themselves have a lot of issues. They worked really hard to not have the "Who needs tankers, when Scrappers are so much better" problem with the Stalker class, and in turn, made it really weak. The Mastermind class is very powerful. The Corrupter actually feels weaker than the Defender, even though the power sets are reversed. The Brute is a god while soloing and working with a healer, but get more than a few folks with him, and since he can't taunt to hold aggro, he becomes pathetic. (Higher levels will eventually give taunt, and then watch out!) The Dominator is quite effective, just like the early Controller class was much more powerful than most folks realized.
Sadly, for all that folks playing MMOs bitch because the developers don't listen to class balancing issues, CoH become a lot worse because PlayNC listened TOO much. The nerf bat is coming in CoV, as well...and I dare say the results will be just as bad.
Reptition does set in even in the early game with CoV. Many of the maps are the same, or almost identical. The prevelance of "door missions" makes it nearly impossible to expect that many different maps. This is the one major weakness with the high number of instanced "dungeons" that PlayNC has used for CoH/CoV. It cuts down on lag, but it spawns the repetition factor.
It's too early to tell on the PvP side. I'm not a big fan of PvP, as it seems to generate more "My weenie is bigger than your weenie" bull than it does any sense of fun competition. Unlike WoW, heroes and villians are allowed to talk to one another, though they do need to flip a few options to send tells to one another. Plus, the server cross-talk makes it easy to keep in touch with friends.
I give CoV a B-. It was rushed out before it was ready, as they made that major mistake of doing a last second revision to the classes, without testing them for a week or two to see how it affected gameplay.
But their character generation still blows away every single game on the market. I can still blow off an hour tinkering with a costume, and by the time you hit lvl 20 and can make a revision to it, you feel an itch to fix things you got wrong. I just want to see some other game companies start to really allow us to personalize our characters. And the fact that equipment doesn't define how you look is just a bonus.
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 that it's the exact same thing, just with naughty names. Instead of beating up Hellions to bring them to justice, I'm beating them up because they're on my turf. Instead of Rescuing Dr. Petersen from the Circle of Thorns, I'm kidnapping her from the Circle who just kidnapped her originally.
What's indifferent (for me) is the base building. It's a neat thing, glad they added it, but enh...
Overall, I really enjoy the game because it allows me to smash things while being semi-social, and I get some fun out of trying new concepts out with my friends who also play. I am currently running around with a brute based on the idea of a Very Upset Child.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I got a chance to play CoV beta. I haven't purchased it. I just can't see paying $50 for the exact same game. I mean, seriously, when people say it is the same game, re-skinned, they are quite literal. Most of the buildings and missions maps have the exact same geometry, with different textures (granted, some of the new textures are quite well done), and a few different 'scenery' objects in the mission (like slightly different furniture lieing around, or slightly different piles of junk).
And, as others have pointed out, most of the character types/powersets are almost identical, with some changes to the numbers (like, for example, the offensive and defensive powers of the Tanker set from CoH were moved over, and swapped in effectiveness [that is, tankers had high defense and only moderate offense - in CoV you get high offense and moderate defense], and called 'Brute' in CoV).
I might have let this pass if the game lived up to a villainous feel. But most of the missions, as others have pointed out, were going around fighting other villains, with no ability to attack any 'good' people, for the most part. The whole experience was too locked down to feel villainous. Heroes have to abide by a certain moral standard, so I understand why you can't attack citizens or rob stores in CoH. But in CoV, I ought to be able to take a risk by mugging one of my contacts, nicking a few enhancments, but in the process, losing faction with that contact and whoever he is aligned with. Things like that, which would give it a truly criminal feel.
It's just not there. And I'm not gonna pay $50 for the same game I'm already playing.
CoH runs on linux with Cadega fine, im sure it would be pretty easy to get CoV to work, its essentially the same game.... I'll try it sometime soon
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 at lvl 2, he can help you with lvl 10 quests by making him a sidekick.
He will then be 1 level lower then your level. Same thing, you can help a lvl 2 guy with his quests by being his "malefactor"
You can summon people across the map with just yourself. Travel powers kick butt, teleport, portal, fly, hover, the whole gambit.
The UI is streamlined, and took some time to get used to coming from WoW. I'm not sure entirely if I like the chat system yet though. Thats all I can think of for now.
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 member up to the first 15 (groups can have up to 75 members total), but groups also LOSE prestige at the same rate if they lose members so they're under 15.
Prestige gain rates is unusually slow relative to the prices of base options; reading the boards seems to indicate that earning 500-600 a mission is common. Getting your base and initial plot (containing one, tiny room with a teleporter in it) is free, but even adding the smallest of additional rooms costs 100,000 prestige! Larger lots, bigger rooms, and the devices that actually make your base into a playable area for opposing teams to attack very quickly raise costs up into the millions of prestige. Decoration items are fairly cheap, on the other hand, but most groups won't have enough room to add many of those for quite some time.
On the other hand, losing prestige is somewhat difficult. Selling base items back (in a manner that is amusingly like selling stuff out of your apartment in The Sims) returns every penny of prestige spent. Having large bases (value over 1M prestige) entails paying a monthly rent to keep everything working, but that's the only prestige cost in the game other than just buying stuff.
So, it seems clear that base development is intended to be a long-term goal for a group, which is great for a game that previously that little in the way of goals other than gaining experience, tricking out your enhancement slots, and finishing whatever mission/task force/badge collection you're working on at that moment.
All of the weapons are weak, the modifications are weak, and their armor concept is odd and limited.
You've completely failed to grasp the point that the parent was making. GW provides the ultimate in skill-based PvP. The weapons don't matter, the modifications don't matter, the armor doesn't matter. If you're good, you'll win, and if you're not, you'll lose. Even your level doesn't really matter -- a level 10 who knew what he was doing could trivially beat a dumb max level 20.
Far from being a "flaw" as you put it, it's the whole point. GW is a mega game of pure skill. Not just the in-game *skills*, but the player skill, tactics, use of attack-counters and combinations, etc, etc. It's damn impressive, with an incredibly diverse range and complexity of skills to deploy. Pretty stunning.
Actually I met statesman on Halloween night at the Sunnyvale Frys. Warwitch is a plesant and charming woman. Stateman is decidedly less charming. When I started asking them questions and got to ED, he just piped up and said "ED is here to stay... thats final!" But my question was, "whats the rationale behind ED?" why is it happening this way? Atually, I hate the skill tree methodology of power aquisition because it is just another intance of the old hard class sytem. "You are lvl 4, now you can summon your magical warhorse!" *yawn* I would rather have a pure points system like in Hero and buy my powers with advantages or disadvantages. The responce from the Dev's was taht someone might just put all their points into flight and not be able to do anything. But just like in Champions you get your ass shot off and you learn. I think a suitable system would be to have a template type system for newbies which might include a graduated power increase, and then have an expert level system which is raw points. Then you could have the toon you want instead of the toon you settled for.
If you're looking for something completely different to just fighting baddies and doing delivery quests for little reason, give GW a try. The quests and missions are like nothing else around, incredibly diverse. Admittedly, you do fight baddies of course, since they're the main obstacle, but there's a hugely elaborate and quite entertaining storyline (optional) that really draws you in, and the fantastic questing is just out of this world, magnitudes better than EQ's dumb ones.
:-)
And even the notion of baddies is not all that firmly tied down, because you finally discover that there's a twist in allegiances owing to some evil shenanigans and the hidden agenda of the guy that eventually becomes the Undead Lich (aka end boss). And in one cute mission you're actually working for the baddies under a cloaking spell, and end up fighting the baddies of the baddies (who are not the goodies), so there's a lot of variety.
And the GW missions are interspersed with machinima cut-scenes, into which your own team's characters are seamlessly spliced --- it's damn impressive. Really not seen anything else remotely like it.
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 everybody wanted.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Let us be honest, heroes have been nerfed into oblivion in the last few updates for the "City of.." games. Some of the nerfs were warranted, some of them just have the player base scratching their heads and wondering what Cryptic are smoking. Most of this is, again, part and parcel of this kind of game. The two main things that really have people annoyed right now are these.
1) PVP. Originally, there was no PvP in CoH. Many people flocked to it for just this reason, it was a game free of the griefing and gank squads, wher eyou could go on, be a casual player, and still manage to advance your characer, even when surround by level 50's who were all much harder than you. Your fun was not dependent on anyone elses, or on anyone else doing badly. This appealed to a lot of people. Cryptic eventually put PvP in, at first in the form of the areans, which were a waste of time and effort, and even now are mostly empty. Then wholse PvP zones come in, with assorted rationale (and nobdoy has yet come up with a suitable plausible reason for heroes to be slapping heroes. The gank squads in the free-for-all zone appeared within a couple of days of release of CoV. It was also stated early on that at no point, would PvE powersets or balance be altered to fit PvP. This proved an out-and-out lie.
2) Stealth nerfs and quiet devs. As if this wasn't bad enough, a couple of major, game balance affecting changes never made it into the respective patch notes, and the fact they happened had to be pointed out by the players, at which point the devs backpedalled and said "oops." Also, the biggest balance-affecting alteration to powers happened with the CoV release, afte rthe devs had already said they would not mess around with powers in any major fashion in the near to mid-future. The fact they screwed with the way enhancements work rather than the powers themselves smacks to many of sophistry, and so far, those changes have proved vastly unpopular. (Hell, the creator has stated that he has his Vision (tm) for the game, and thateverything else, including what the players want, has had to be a close second to the Almighty Vision (tm). Pretty much the dev team, with a few major exceptions, has come across (rightly or wrongly) as a bunch of high-handed, out-of-touch, crack-smoking aroogant sods (a change is unpopular enoughg to spark 6000+ replies, saying "don't do this," causing people to quit, and disiluusioning everyone else. Do you A) look into it, see what their problemis, and try and fix it.B) look into it, see the problem and ask what peopel think can be done, or C) bring it in anyway as a fait acompli, regardless of opinin or other actions... opinion?
Guess whichone cryptic used.
"How fine you look when dressed in rage."
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 they ARE "heroes.")
Finally, if you don't mind nitpicking, you can just say that the corrupt Rogue Island Police are 'corrupt' because they're working with the heroes. (Maybe they're funneling money to the heroes?) Those who kidnapped the Wretch? Minions of rogue heroes but the heroes themselves are careful enough to avoid being implicated/caught with the 'crime'. (Happens all the even in the comic books.) The intruders? Minions of heroes attacking to gather intel on your defenses. (Think recon units.) The list goes on. Aliens invading the planet? Thats not good for business. Some rogue villian trying to blow up the bridge just to settle a score? Well thats not gonna be good for being in the new destruct-o-beam for your base. Someone kidnapped someone close to the boss of the city? Well rescuing him is a good way to win favor.
Well if I was committed to a no-nerf policy and someone abuses a skill, instead of nerfing him i'd just buff the baddies in the encounter. After a while doing this i'm sure everyone's gonna be insanely strong and then I can remarket the game as Dragonball Z!