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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.
This is already functional. There are PVP zones in the game where Heroes from COH can battle Villians from COV.
They are combined. CoH and CoV all share the same servers, same game client, and the same universe. There are 3 PvP zones which both Heroes and Villains may enter. In those zones, you get Hero vs. Villain combat.
You only pay one monthly fee to access both games assuming you have purchased both of them. The monthly fee is no higher than if you purchased CoH or CoV alone.
Uh actually not only do you pay one fee for both games, the PVP zones are designed for Hero vs Villain combat. CoV is not entirely a new game, it's more like a standalone expansion. You can buy it to play villain only if you don't have CoH or you can buy it to add the new features to your CoH account and play both heroes and villains.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
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.
You should check out Guild Wars. It's made by NCSoft and the designers of the game designed it from day one specifically for that reason: balanced PVP. There are no uber-leet godly items that give players an unfair advantage. Anyone can create a PVP character that has the same items and stats as anybody else does at maximum level, giving you the opportunity to fight in a fantasy battleground where some kid that spent $100 on eBay isn't going to beat you just because he bought some godly sword of slaying that kills anyone in 1 hit.
PvE content is admittedly a little lacking compared to WoW, but it's a great game and has probably the best PvP experience I've seen yet.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
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.
Have you played guild wars? Its exactly what you want. The PvP is all tactics, with all PvPers being levelled to the same. There is some dependence on which skills and items you have "unlocked", but that isn't the main thrust of things. Success is about how your chosen character skills operate together and interact with those of your team. And of course how well you and your team mates do at using those char skills.
Also, no monthly fee (since most areas are instanced in a peer-to-peer way, with little server load, so ArenaNet's running costs are lower).
Sorry to sound like an advert, but it is a fun game and appears to fit what you are looking for. (Hmm...maybe *you* are the guild wars plant...asking that question to entice a positive response about the game. Damn, you're subtle).
Having City of Villains enables (in addition to the CoV game) getting 4 more characters slots (total 12) per servers and enables being able to build SuperGroup bases on the CoH side of the house.
As the base system evolves, it will create more and more reasons to continue. Like it or not, it's loot that drives players once the missions start to look the same, and it's the base system that drives loot in this game.
Right now bases are restricted to supergroups, but they're also planning to add "apartments" or per-user (possibly per-character, they haven't said) bases, so there will be loot incentive even for non-teamers.
Are you sure you're talking about CoH? Having played CoH since close to the beginning I have yet to experience the kinds of problems you mention. Either you're just looking to mislead people or you've had some particularly bad luck.
I haven't seen a single update cause significant problems on the scale approaching what has been seen in other MMOs. Response time by GMs has been excellent; I've always gotten a response within 30 minutes. Beyond that, the developers frequent the boards and often reply to posts. I don't think a day goes by that someone from the company doesn't make a reply. Unlike other games I've seen where people might not hear a word for weeks on end.
There have been a good number of nerfs that I've met with varying degrees of resistance. In a good number of cases the developers backed off to some extent or at least tried to work with the players. That's not to say they haven't forced some things through regardless of what players said, but all in all they've been reasonably responsive.
In terms of repetition you wont really get much of an argument from me. As much as I enjoy the game it does old quickly. It's pretty much a nonstop string of "go here and beat up these guys" type missions. Because the storyline and dialogue is conveyed through text boxes there isn't really any sense of immersiveness. They have done a bit of work to make missions more interesting, but it's really only a handful of key missions that have seen any sort of improvement. The end result, however, is the same thing with fancy packaging. Although, I would argue that MMOs are mostly the same, some just have a nicer wrapping than others that draw away attention from the grind.
As for crafting, it is in development and has been since the early days of City of Heroes. Apparently it has gone through two revisions; some crafting system was far along, but then the developers decided it wasn't fun enough, as they put it. They even went as far as putting in the universities where heroes would learn skills. Considering how many times it's been pushed back it had better be damn good when it's finally released.
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
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.