Except you can still group - and should group for bigger things! - in CO. It's just that your role in a group is now much more flexible. And, in my experience, that will lead to more opportunities for grouping, rather than less. In WoW, if you weren't a Tank or Healer you'd be lucky to get a group unless you were REALLY well geared as DPS or part of a guild with lots of tanks/healers. In CoH, I don't really recall *ever* needing to team - except for task forces (which forced a team on you even if you could easily solo all of them), and those were just obnoxiously long, punitively long and boring. Teaming could be fun, but it wasn't necessary.
Most of the things you describe can be reached through the options menu in game (hit escape until a menu pops up, just like in WoW). I agree some of them are poorly labeled - but keybindings is it's own tabular section in the options pane.
Here is something for some of your problems:
1) Tooltips can be set to appear instantly. They are, initially, set to a 1 second delay. There's an option - I think under interface - for "tool tip display delay" or something like that. I set mine to zero, and the tips pop up right away. Found it by mucking around with the interface.
2) There may be a way to have it automatically change targets to the guy hitting you in melee when you were shooting someone else, but this behavior in CO is exactly the same as the behavior in WoW. If you have a ranged mob targeting you and you hit a melee distance attack, it'll say out of range, so you'd have to handle it how you handled that situation in WoW. There are some control options that you can change around, but they take a bit of fiddling. I completely redid my controls to be more like a shooter, and I use a 360 gamepad with it and it's very easy to do.
3) UI and camera lag: I keep on hearing about this from people, but I don't experience it. My system isn't all that high end (2.8gz Wolfsdale, nVidia 260 card, 2mb ram, xp sp3) so I don't know if it's the specs or the OS or what - I just haven't had a problem with the camera not turning quick enough or anything like that.
4) The loading screen - was it patching? You may have been verifying files or something. It shouldn't take that long in future if it's patches, but then, maybe it will - you might have a lot of cruft on your system and are experiencing choked memory, perhaps?
Generally, the performance has been improving steadily with patches. I haven't had any negative issues with the performance - it was good enough for me at launch, but it's gotten a lot smoother since, which is gravy.
Graphically, at reasonably low settings, yes, it looks about as good as WoW. I have it running at nearly maximum settings and it looks phenomenal to me - MUCH better than WoW does in pretty much every way. If you can swing it, check out the 260 - it's a decent performer at a pretty reasonable price. I think a lot of the things you experienced in the tutorial might have been things you could change - boost the alpha (the rooms weren't dark for me, though somewhat shadowy, given that many of the lights had been shot out) and I'm also using the better lighting options, so maybe that changes a lot. I get around 30-40fps steadily, regardless of where I am.
On my roomie's machine, she runs it like a slide-show, though she's got 2gb vista, I think an 8800gt or possibly a 6800gt - it looks about as "good" as city of heroes on her computer, and she's getting 15 or so FPS. She says she's about due to get a new machine (or upgrade various components), and for less than $500 she's going to have a system a bit better than mine when she's done.
Good luck, and hope your performance issues get resolved, or that you at least have fun:)
Ah, I see what you mean - the thing is, the defenses aren't supposed to be the defining concepts for characters in the game, it's more about what they do vs. how they avoid dying (except in the case of cannons who strive to not get dead by being very quick at making other things dead).
Personally, I always resented having to take a defensive set with my melee characters in CoH. I didn't feel that there was much flavor between them - they weren't *active* defenses, you know? Just which toggles I ran and then ignored. With tanks it was just very bleh - the only "active" part of tanking was... Hm, no, AOE taunt was on auto-fire whenever I moved forward (keybind) and the dull pain equivalent was on auto-fire whenever I backed up (keybind) and so I just had 4-5 attacks I'd spam. I guess I just don't see powers that I don't actively do anything as being really very much variety.
Back in the day, we had 2 guilds with nothing but rad/rad defenders or kinetics types. We would take down AVs in a heartbeat, but it required a substantial amount of coordination.
And yes, I played both before and after the regen nerfs and ED - I think I played for a month or so last year just to see if things had gotten more interesting. Generally, even though I hadn't respeced, my DM/REGEN scrapper was doing crazy stuff - no temp powers, but I did duo an AV with a friend (also a scrapper) and we just used a few inspirations. Has it been nerfed again since then? (Just curious, because good lord, that would be sad)
CoH is absolutely not a complicated game, and I didn't ever find it particularly flexible. I wanted to make a multi-"elemental" person (fire/ice/electricity/darkness) but that's not possible. If I wanted to make someone who had super strength (punching the bejeesus out of people) and regen, I couldn't (I had to take DM, and couldn't customize it to not look like giant fists of shadowy doooom). If I wanted to take someone who had no offensive powerset, I couldn't. If I wanted to take someone capable of making both fire & ice pets, I couldn't. If I wanted to take an archer who was also a user of guns (basically an arms-user), I couldn't. If I wanted to take someone who would use both swords and maces when the whim struck, I couldn't. See what I'm saying?
Yes, with the use of power pools, I suppose I *can* make a scrapper who can do (pretty crappy) heals/rezzes, or I can make a rad/rad defender who can kick people (with only 1 kind of kick) or punch people (boxing) or smack someone in the air (air superiority - 1 power) but that's not really all that much variety.
If, in COH, you could take any primary and any secondary, then I might agree that it's feasible to make the argument that it is as (or more) customizable than CO - but it just isn't. I can easily make coherent and interesting (and, more important, fun) characters in CO that could never come about in COH, but there are no characters that I cannot make in CO that I can make in CoH.
As for complexity of the game - really, that's up to the player. If you make builds that are dead simple to play, they will be dead simple to play. I have one alt that has regen, mines & force shield, and I can simply swoop in and kill everyone without having to fight. It's boring as hell to play because it's simple. If I want something with more variety, suddenly the gameplay becomes MUCH more intricate and involved, and more fun. The depth is what you make of it. As I said in my initial response, I suspect you either haven't played very far into the game, or haven't tried many different builds out - the game can be *quite* intricate. I think I saw a response of yours to someone else saying as much - so really, check it out.
Group dynamics are still shaking out - the whole "there aren't any real roles" thing is really confusing for some people.
If someone really has 8 characters maxed out - or high enough that they aren't willing to delete them - at this early stage in the game, I'd be impressed.
Here are my predictions, in no particular order:
1) Extra character slots will be made available at the cryptic store 2) Full respecs will be made available at the cryptic store 3) Full respecs will be made available whenever "substantial" changes are made to powers
The game hasn't been out for a month yet; I'm having a hard time worrying about something that isn't an issue for anybody but poopsockers just yet, and that will likely change down the line.
You do realize that the uniqueness of the build isn't from my picking regen, right? It's not from the 1 power I picked from a framework, it from the combination of a dozen or so powers I picked from multiple frameworks. Whatever your opinion of the logic of my choices, the fact is that there are more frameworks to draw from in CO than in COH, and with stats more room for customization.
And, I also want to give you back a bit of your smugness: Wow! Gosh! Golly-gee! You made a melee character that's designed to take a beating somehow capable of surviving taking a beating (with a lot of outside healing & temp powers)! I'm impressed. Being serious again, have you made a tank that's capable of healing for a large group? How about a blaster that can tank an AV? If not, then your point about different roles being possible is kind of null. In CO, I can, with a bit of doing, make a healer that can switch to tank mode, a combination I'm not seeing as being possible in COH.
(And, maybe COH has changed, but back when I played it a lot, my regen scrapper could easily solo 2-3 giant monsters at the same time, so really, scrapper tanking is pretty meh)
Melee characters are trickier to build "right" but when you do, they're virtually unstoppable. They're also annoying to play with m/kb, but I use a 360 controller and that makes melee a LOT more fun for me, and easier to play optimally.
Right, a full, as in "make this character *completely* different in every way, from the ground up" - it's supposed to encourage people to make alts when they want to try new builds.
Also, there's the powerhouse when you pick a power so you can test things out a little (though I think they need to add a "danger room" feature so you can see how it works in actual combat).
If you need to respec backwards more than 5 levels, you either have consistently made really bad choices or you're trying to avoid leveling a character up to try a new spec, or they really nerfed the hell out of something. So far, when they've nerfed anything REALLY badly, they've offered a full respec for free, so I imagine that will continue.
Not that I'm saying the current costs aren't a bit out of line - they should be lowered a bit - but the idea of making completely rebuilding your character a non-trivial expense or effort is a good one.
But it *is* a role playing game, so pretending is kind of the point. Really, all games now are more or less "press buttons at the right time" so what is there to it other than the pretending?
I think you're really overestimating the idea of "unique" builds in CoH. Seriously, because of the Archetype system, the builds are pretty cookie cutter.
If you're regen, yes, you get fast healing and integration and health. Everyone does this because everyone will, by the time they're level 50, have at last 2 power choices where there's really no better option. But, if you're regeneration, you will *never* be able to pick any of the abilities from invulnerability, or darkness, or any other defensive set. And if your offensive set is martial arts, then you will never be able to pick up a sword or a gun or anything else - nope, it's pretty much all kicks, forever and ever, amen.
One of my characters is a battle-crazed cyber-valkyrie kind of character: She swoops into battle with sword attacks and an energy shield & her fists and feet at times (using power armor powers, dual blade powers, single blade powers, and martial arts attacks), and beats the crap out of her foes. When she's hurt, she'll heal either through her passive (regeneration from the supernatural set) or she'll call out some cyber-drones (gadgets) to fly around and heal her if it gets REALLY bad. Would not be possible to make anything that eclectic in CoH.
Oh, and she can change her build depending on the situation. If lots of pure, brutal damage is needed, she can go into Avenger build and do more damage (but take more). If a balanced mix is needed, Guardian stance, and then Sentinel if she needs to be a tank. Can't change roles like that in CoH.
I'd say that the Advantages in CO and the power enhancers in CoH are about the same kind of thing.
Initial attacks are actually rather different, too. It's not always "start with your energy builder" - because you can change your stats around, they can have a profound effect on the way you attack. For example, another of my characters is a pure munitions character for offense with a little bit of martial arts for defense. Initially she had to run into combat with her energy builder running and then use her other abilities, but I figured out how to make her have more energy right from the start, and can use the tactic of "going into sneak mode, getting into the middle of enemies, and planting a bomb, then mopping up the survivors with a gun-kata" or, if I wouldn't survive the alpha strike, I can snipe people from range, maybe whittle down the crowd and when people run at me hose them down with a machine gun.
With the active block thing - CoH doesn't even have anything like it, and all powers activate the same way: you click and there it is. In CO, active blocks are VERY useful (not just to defend against big charge-ups, ESPECIALLY if you look at the "advantages" you can buy for block replacement powers). And, powers activate differently. Some of them, for example, are "click and then they run for some amount of time" (so, with Power Armor you can have multiple systems firing simultaneously). Others are tap it for one effect, hold it down for a bigger effect that is delayed. Others are hold it down to just keep blazing away, etc. Nothing like that in CoH.
Nothing like stats in CoH - you are what you are. In CO, depending on how you pick your stats, you can have very different experiences with otherwise identical builds, necessitating different ways of playing.
I guess I'm saying that I cannot believe anyone would actually point to the fixed archetype CoH and think it allows more customization than COs system. I'm guessing you might not have played it very far?
It's a tutorial. They need to teach you the basics of the game so that you don't wander around not knowing how to do anything. At least in this game they make it like there's something BIG happening - because you're a super hero already - rather than CoH or WoW's tutorial zones which were pretty much "Oh, hey, dude, great you're here - wanna pick up my drycleaning for me?"
In this tutorial, I:
1) Ran into a burning & invaded building the cops wouldn't to retrieve sensitive data, beating up aliens by ripping a streetlamp out of the ground to use as a weapon 2) Did a lot of "good deeds" - rescued civilians from under giant chunks of debris, rescued a cat for an old lady, fought off invaders to get medical supplies, and helped a tourist get his stuff back 3) Rescued 2 superheroes who had been captured or otherwise incapacitated 4) Fought off an enemy invasion and protected a primary defensive system until it was repaired & ready 5) Personally fought room by room through the Champions' HQ to launch the defenses, defeating a really big boss in the process
(and, of course, learned about the game mechanics)
Contrast that with WoW where I... Brought a hot drink to someone, beat up some boars for scraps, picked some flowers, and generally was treated like a child. Or City of Heroes where I... Beat up 5 people infected with a virus, and then beat up another 10 or so to get the formula for the cure, but really, I didn't need to, because the NPC I rescued seemed more than capable of doing that.
In all those tutorials you learn to play the game, so the only distinguishing things are the game mechanics themselves and the story behind them.
The thing about "best" in this game is that it's incredibly subjective and depends so much on playstyle.
For instance, with a melee character, how "active" do you want to have to be in combat? Do you want to move around a lot to line up cone attacks? Do you like sitting in one spot and just AOEing people to death? Do you like to take out foes 1 at a time or all at once? With a ranged character it's similar - are you "ranged, but up close and personal" (meaning: fly in, throw down a minefield, have people die that way, or fight with an up-close gun-kata taken almost directly from Equilibrium?) or do you like to snipe?
I suppose there are some min/max builds out there that let you kill things most effectively, but the thing is that they really require one particular specific playstyle when using them to make them better; if you aren't into that playstyle, the build will be unfun to play, but effective, or not as effective but played the way you like to play.
On the flip-side, it is possible to completely screw yourself over if you pick powers that don't synergize well. If, for example, you are a primarily ranged character (force bolts or something) but you take a melee energy builder attack (the basic attack that powers up your other attacks) you will probably not have much fun because you have to zoom in to build energy, then run away to fight at range. Or, you might make a "glass cannon" build - all offense with no defense. In the first 10 levels or so, you probably won't notice a lack of a passive defensive power, but very quickly after that you'll slam into a brick wall where you are repeatedly killed because mobs scale up under the impression that you will be a bit more well rounded.
The retcon system fixes that, though it is rather expensive. Then again, given you can respec all the way back to level 0, it has to be expensive, because people would just get 1 character to maximum level and then respec to try out everything else easily, which may not be so good for the game's longevity. Personally, I think you should be able to respec your last 5 levels cheaply, but after that it should become incredibly expensive, and that's more or less how they have it now.
Honestly, science seems to be more popular now than ever...
Go to any bookstore, you'll find dozens of science-based magazines in print, for every age-group and level of familiarity. These magazines can't stay in print if nobody's buying them.
There are tens of thousands of websites that report on science. There are many news reports of various scientific developments (though, regrettably, they're often sensationalized).
On television there are dozens of programs about various sciences on, entire channels dedicated to scientifically informative shows.
There are people who aren't interested in science just as there are people who aren't interested in any number of other fields that are considered important by many people. But I'd say, as a whole, the existence of so many different vehicles for conveying scientific knowledge demonstrates that science is still popular - if it weren't, economic pressure would have made the case against keeping those magazines, web-sites & television shows & channels around.
For some situations, credentials and a professional track-record are actually negatives.
For example, if I want someone who is extremely creative - if I want someone who will come up with entirely new ways of looking at things (and, I recognize that 99% of those new ways will be horrible, but the 1% that work might be world-changing), then I emphatically do not want someone who is a conventional sort with conventional credentials.
If I am hiring someone to write banking or financial software, then I want someone who is extremely conventional, who is incredibly risk averse, and who takes the safest (read: most conventional) path.
I suspect that Microsoft is aiming for somewhere in the middle: creative people who might come up with some really good stuff, but who also have demonstrated that they can handle going through a top CS program, or otherwise demonstrate that they will be able to work within the MS organization. Further, if you're "mid-career" by now and making less than these kids, and I absolutely don't want to insult you, but it likely means you either aren't as good at your job as you think, or that people like you are commodity, or that you lack the drive/ambition to REALLY get ahead, or that you just don't have whatever the spark is that makes people accomplish big stuff while still young.
Most likely, not one of these kids will really accomplish anything truly great. But, unlike older people who are mid-career, they still have the potential to (and the drive to), while people in your situation have demonstrated that it's unlikely they'll do more than just put in a solid effort. Which isn't a bad thing, it's just not what they're looking for.
I don't disagree that it's a lot of money for an intern to make, but that doesn't really justify screeching at them for it.
And, you may be thinking of interns in the way most people do - some kid who doesn't know much and gets coffee for people an generally hopes to not fuck up. These guys are, I am going to say, likely a bit more advanced than that and have some serious skills/talents, and Microsoft is willing to pay to impress them and hire them. I think "intern" in this case is more like "possible potential super-stars" and they're giving them that money as a kind of 2 month job trial before investing any real cash in 'em.
For people who are very, very good at what they do, in pretty much any field, that kind of money isn't unreasonable, especially since it's likely they'll make it back in spades.
Sure, it'd be great if the money were used for people who are in dire straits, but I have a hard time getting pissed off that talented people are making money in a capitalist society. Also, I found it really funny that "Libertarian001" was pissed off - how un-Randian of him!
In a world where many people have never made a phone call, where children still get polio or die from malaria, where there are some people who make less than $30 USD in a year, let me be the first to say FUCK YOU! Seriously, Libertarian001, what the hell is the matter with you? You honestly think that showing off by using the luxury of an internet connection and personal computer to bitch about other people's fortune is a good idea? Asshole.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that trained astronauts with advanced degrees in usually scientific fields are probably about as capable of figuring out the statistical chances of a fatal mission as people on slashdot are.
Call me crazy, but I'm assuming that NASA isn't lobotomizing their astronauts.
People take risks because to them, the payout for the risk is greater than the potential downside. For astronauts, obviously, the benefits of doing missions are greater than the pitfalls of dying on missions. You can doubt their wisdom in making those choices, but I think you're being a bit absurd if you think they aren't aware of or capable of figuring out the numbers.
There's a thing called a telephone. Perhaps you've heard of it? A person who isn't feeling well can use it to make a "telephone call" to a doctor's office that will allow them to get advice on whether or not they need to seek further treatment.
The problem, see, is that well meaning idiots (such as yourself, apparently) think people need to go and physically see a doctor because PANIC! THERE IS A SWINE FLU PANDEMIC WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE I SAW IT ON OPRAH!!!! so they slam their doctor's offices, go to the ER with things like "My baby pooed green, is it the swine flu?" and other such nonsense.
If I extend your argument, as you extended mine into the absurd, if you get a splinter in your finger you should immediately rush to consult a surgeon because, hey, without an MD you can't possibly be sure it isn't life threatening, right?
You also missed my suggestion that they call the police non-emergency number - those people are trained to report things to the CDC. Maybe read what I wrote next time?
If you have a contagious infection that a doctor cannot do anything about and that presents a risk to the public welfare, they require that you go to your doctor to get a note - potentially risking many other people and using up resources that could benefit other people - to get a note?
If that's the case, that's a very, very flawed system indeed.
You mean public health as in "Don't go visit other people (such as doctors) who can't do anything for you and might catch it from you?"
If you have the swine flu, there's nothing your doctor can do for you; you need to rest, drink fluids and keep yourself from making other people sick, and call your local non-emergency police number to report the case. Going to a doctor won't do anything for you, and it will actively endanger the health of other people.
I work in a subset of the public health field, and we're really fucking annoyed when we hear a bunch of well-meaning idiots telling people to go to their doctor for something that a doctor cannot possibly do anything about.
Don't waste resources pointlessly - it essentially denies treatment to people who actually do need it and can benefit from it.
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Except you can still group - and should group for bigger things! - in CO. It's just that your role in a group is now much more flexible. And, in my experience, that will lead to more opportunities for grouping, rather than less. In WoW, if you weren't a Tank or Healer you'd be lucky to get a group unless you were REALLY well geared as DPS or part of a guild with lots of tanks/healers. In CoH, I don't really recall *ever* needing to team - except for task forces (which forced a team on you even if you could easily solo all of them), and those were just obnoxiously long, punitively long and boring. Teaming could be fun, but it wasn't necessary.
Ah, you're right - I remember why they added the NPC: it was when they added in the ability to rescue "allies" so that was a demonstration of it.
The best thing about the COH tutorial is the ability to skip it.
Most of the things you describe can be reached through the options menu in game (hit escape until a menu pops up, just like in WoW). I agree some of them are poorly labeled - but keybindings is it's own tabular section in the options pane.
Here is something for some of your problems:
1) Tooltips can be set to appear instantly. They are, initially, set to a 1 second delay. There's an option - I think under interface - for "tool tip display delay" or something like that. I set mine to zero, and the tips pop up right away. Found it by mucking around with the interface.
2) There may be a way to have it automatically change targets to the guy hitting you in melee when you were shooting someone else, but this behavior in CO is exactly the same as the behavior in WoW. If you have a ranged mob targeting you and you hit a melee distance attack, it'll say out of range, so you'd have to handle it how you handled that situation in WoW. There are some control options that you can change around, but they take a bit of fiddling. I completely redid my controls to be more like a shooter, and I use a 360 gamepad with it and it's very easy to do.
3) UI and camera lag: I keep on hearing about this from people, but I don't experience it. My system isn't all that high end (2.8gz Wolfsdale, nVidia 260 card, 2mb ram, xp sp3) so I don't know if it's the specs or the OS or what - I just haven't had a problem with the camera not turning quick enough or anything like that.
4) The loading screen - was it patching? You may have been verifying files or something. It shouldn't take that long in future if it's patches, but then, maybe it will - you might have a lot of cruft on your system and are experiencing choked memory, perhaps?
Generally, the performance has been improving steadily with patches. I haven't had any negative issues with the performance - it was good enough for me at launch, but it's gotten a lot smoother since, which is gravy.
Graphically, at reasonably low settings, yes, it looks about as good as WoW. I have it running at nearly maximum settings and it looks phenomenal to me - MUCH better than WoW does in pretty much every way. If you can swing it, check out the 260 - it's a decent performer at a pretty reasonable price. I think a lot of the things you experienced in the tutorial might have been things you could change - boost the alpha (the rooms weren't dark for me, though somewhat shadowy, given that many of the lights had been shot out) and I'm also using the better lighting options, so maybe that changes a lot. I get around 30-40fps steadily, regardless of where I am.
On my roomie's machine, she runs it like a slide-show, though she's got 2gb vista, I think an 8800gt or possibly a 6800gt - it looks about as "good" as city of heroes on her computer, and she's getting 15 or so FPS. She says she's about due to get a new machine (or upgrade various components), and for less than $500 she's going to have a system a bit better than mine when she's done.
Good luck, and hope your performance issues get resolved, or that you at least have fun :)
That was the entirety of my point, that without pretending, any game is just pressing buttons at the right time.
Ah, I see what you mean - the thing is, the defenses aren't supposed to be the defining concepts for characters in the game, it's more about what they do vs. how they avoid dying (except in the case of cannons who strive to not get dead by being very quick at making other things dead).
Personally, I always resented having to take a defensive set with my melee characters in CoH. I didn't feel that there was much flavor between them - they weren't *active* defenses, you know? Just which toggles I ran and then ignored. With tanks it was just very bleh - the only "active" part of tanking was... Hm, no, AOE taunt was on auto-fire whenever I moved forward (keybind) and the dull pain equivalent was on auto-fire whenever I backed up (keybind) and so I just had 4-5 attacks I'd spam. I guess I just don't see powers that I don't actively do anything as being really very much variety.
I was being nice; I have a soft-spot for geeky guys who are completely out of their depth.
Back in the day, we had 2 guilds with nothing but rad/rad defenders or kinetics types. We would take down AVs in a heartbeat, but it required a substantial amount of coordination.
And yes, I played both before and after the regen nerfs and ED - I think I played for a month or so last year just to see if things had gotten more interesting. Generally, even though I hadn't respeced, my DM/REGEN scrapper was doing crazy stuff - no temp powers, but I did duo an AV with a friend (also a scrapper) and we just used a few inspirations. Has it been nerfed again since then? (Just curious, because good lord, that would be sad)
CoH is absolutely not a complicated game, and I didn't ever find it particularly flexible. I wanted to make a multi-"elemental" person (fire/ice/electricity/darkness) but that's not possible. If I wanted to make someone who had super strength (punching the bejeesus out of people) and regen, I couldn't (I had to take DM, and couldn't customize it to not look like giant fists of shadowy doooom). If I wanted to take someone who had no offensive powerset, I couldn't. If I wanted to take someone capable of making both fire & ice pets, I couldn't. If I wanted to take an archer who was also a user of guns (basically an arms-user), I couldn't. If I wanted to take someone who would use both swords and maces when the whim struck, I couldn't. See what I'm saying?
Yes, with the use of power pools, I suppose I *can* make a scrapper who can do (pretty crappy) heals/rezzes, or I can make a rad/rad defender who can kick people (with only 1 kind of kick) or punch people (boxing) or smack someone in the air (air superiority - 1 power) but that's not really all that much variety.
If, in COH, you could take any primary and any secondary, then I might agree that it's feasible to make the argument that it is as (or more) customizable than CO - but it just isn't. I can easily make coherent and interesting (and, more important, fun) characters in CO that could never come about in COH, but there are no characters that I cannot make in CO that I can make in CoH.
As for complexity of the game - really, that's up to the player. If you make builds that are dead simple to play, they will be dead simple to play. I have one alt that has regen, mines & force shield, and I can simply swoop in and kill everyone without having to fight. It's boring as hell to play because it's simple. If I want something with more variety, suddenly the gameplay becomes MUCH more intricate and involved, and more fun. The depth is what you make of it. As I said in my initial response, I suspect you either haven't played very far into the game, or haven't tried many different builds out - the game can be *quite* intricate. I think I saw a response of yours to someone else saying as much - so really, check it out.
Group dynamics are still shaking out - the whole "there aren't any real roles" thing is really confusing for some people.
If someone really has 8 characters maxed out - or high enough that they aren't willing to delete them - at this early stage in the game, I'd be impressed.
Here are my predictions, in no particular order:
1) Extra character slots will be made available at the cryptic store
2) Full respecs will be made available at the cryptic store
3) Full respecs will be made available whenever "substantial" changes are made to powers
The game hasn't been out for a month yet; I'm having a hard time worrying about something that isn't an issue for anybody but poopsockers just yet, and that will likely change down the line.
So says you. This might shock you, but there are people who experience different things differently.
I generally hang in game with a decent bunch of people, and don't experience much of the assholery. Maybe try finding a different bunch of folks?
You do realize that the uniqueness of the build isn't from my picking regen, right? It's not from the 1 power I picked from a framework, it from the combination of a dozen or so powers I picked from multiple frameworks. Whatever your opinion of the logic of my choices, the fact is that there are more frameworks to draw from in CO than in COH, and with stats more room for customization.
And, I also want to give you back a bit of your smugness: Wow! Gosh! Golly-gee! You made a melee character that's designed to take a beating somehow capable of surviving taking a beating (with a lot of outside healing & temp powers)! I'm impressed. Being serious again, have you made a tank that's capable of healing for a large group? How about a blaster that can tank an AV? If not, then your point about different roles being possible is kind of null. In CO, I can, with a bit of doing, make a healer that can switch to tank mode, a combination I'm not seeing as being possible in COH.
(And, maybe COH has changed, but back when I played it a lot, my regen scrapper could easily solo 2-3 giant monsters at the same time, so really, scrapper tanking is pretty meh)
Melee characters are trickier to build "right" but when you do, they're virtually unstoppable. They're also annoying to play with m/kb, but I use a 360 controller and that makes melee a LOT more fun for me, and easier to play optimally.
Right, a full, as in "make this character *completely* different in every way, from the ground up" - it's supposed to encourage people to make alts when they want to try new builds.
Also, there's the powerhouse when you pick a power so you can test things out a little (though I think they need to add a "danger room" feature so you can see how it works in actual combat).
If you need to respec backwards more than 5 levels, you either have consistently made really bad choices or you're trying to avoid leveling a character up to try a new spec, or they really nerfed the hell out of something. So far, when they've nerfed anything REALLY badly, they've offered a full respec for free, so I imagine that will continue.
Not that I'm saying the current costs aren't a bit out of line - they should be lowered a bit - but the idea of making completely rebuilding your character a non-trivial expense or effort is a good one.
Ha, nice :)
But it *is* a role playing game, so pretending is kind of the point. Really, all games now are more or less "press buttons at the right time" so what is there to it other than the pretending?
I think you're really overestimating the idea of "unique" builds in CoH. Seriously, because of the Archetype system, the builds are pretty cookie cutter.
If you're regen, yes, you get fast healing and integration and health. Everyone does this because everyone will, by the time they're level 50, have at last 2 power choices where there's really no better option. But, if you're regeneration, you will *never* be able to pick any of the abilities from invulnerability, or darkness, or any other defensive set. And if your offensive set is martial arts, then you will never be able to pick up a sword or a gun or anything else - nope, it's pretty much all kicks, forever and ever, amen.
One of my characters is a battle-crazed cyber-valkyrie kind of character: She swoops into battle with sword attacks and an energy shield & her fists and feet at times (using power armor powers, dual blade powers, single blade powers, and martial arts attacks), and beats the crap out of her foes. When she's hurt, she'll heal either through her passive (regeneration from the supernatural set) or she'll call out some cyber-drones (gadgets) to fly around and heal her if it gets REALLY bad. Would not be possible to make anything that eclectic in CoH.
Oh, and she can change her build depending on the situation. If lots of pure, brutal damage is needed, she can go into Avenger build and do more damage (but take more). If a balanced mix is needed, Guardian stance, and then Sentinel if she needs to be a tank. Can't change roles like that in CoH.
I'd say that the Advantages in CO and the power enhancers in CoH are about the same kind of thing.
Initial attacks are actually rather different, too. It's not always "start with your energy builder" - because you can change your stats around, they can have a profound effect on the way you attack. For example, another of my characters is a pure munitions character for offense with a little bit of martial arts for defense. Initially she had to run into combat with her energy builder running and then use her other abilities, but I figured out how to make her have more energy right from the start, and can use the tactic of "going into sneak mode, getting into the middle of enemies, and planting a bomb, then mopping up the survivors with a gun-kata" or, if I wouldn't survive the alpha strike, I can snipe people from range, maybe whittle down the crowd and when people run at me hose them down with a machine gun.
With the active block thing - CoH doesn't even have anything like it, and all powers activate the same way: you click and there it is. In CO, active blocks are VERY useful (not just to defend against big charge-ups, ESPECIALLY if you look at the "advantages" you can buy for block replacement powers). And, powers activate differently. Some of them, for example, are "click and then they run for some amount of time" (so, with Power Armor you can have multiple systems firing simultaneously). Others are tap it for one effect, hold it down for a bigger effect that is delayed. Others are hold it down to just keep blazing away, etc. Nothing like that in CoH.
Nothing like stats in CoH - you are what you are. In CO, depending on how you pick your stats, you can have very different experiences with otherwise identical builds, necessitating different ways of playing.
I guess I'm saying that I cannot believe anyone would actually point to the fixed archetype CoH and think it allows more customization than COs system. I'm guessing you might not have played it very far?
It's a tutorial. They need to teach you the basics of the game so that you don't wander around not knowing how to do anything. At least in this game they make it like there's something BIG happening - because you're a super hero already - rather than CoH or WoW's tutorial zones which were pretty much "Oh, hey, dude, great you're here - wanna pick up my drycleaning for me?"
In this tutorial, I:
1) Ran into a burning & invaded building the cops wouldn't to retrieve sensitive data, beating up aliens by ripping a streetlamp out of the ground to use as a weapon
2) Did a lot of "good deeds" - rescued civilians from under giant chunks of debris, rescued a cat for an old lady, fought off invaders to get medical supplies, and helped a tourist get his stuff back
3) Rescued 2 superheroes who had been captured or otherwise incapacitated
4) Fought off an enemy invasion and protected a primary defensive system until it was repaired & ready
5) Personally fought room by room through the Champions' HQ to launch the defenses, defeating a really big boss in the process
(and, of course, learned about the game mechanics)
Contrast that with WoW where I... Brought a hot drink to someone, beat up some boars for scraps, picked some flowers, and generally was treated like a child. Or City of Heroes where I... Beat up 5 people infected with a virus, and then beat up another 10 or so to get the formula for the cure, but really, I didn't need to, because the NPC I rescued seemed more than capable of doing that.
In all those tutorials you learn to play the game, so the only distinguishing things are the game mechanics themselves and the story behind them.
The thing about "best" in this game is that it's incredibly subjective and depends so much on playstyle.
For instance, with a melee character, how "active" do you want to have to be in combat? Do you want to move around a lot to line up cone attacks? Do you like sitting in one spot and just AOEing people to death? Do you like to take out foes 1 at a time or all at once? With a ranged character it's similar - are you "ranged, but up close and personal" (meaning: fly in, throw down a minefield, have people die that way, or fight with an up-close gun-kata taken almost directly from Equilibrium?) or do you like to snipe?
I suppose there are some min/max builds out there that let you kill things most effectively, but the thing is that they really require one particular specific playstyle when using them to make them better; if you aren't into that playstyle, the build will be unfun to play, but effective, or not as effective but played the way you like to play.
On the flip-side, it is possible to completely screw yourself over if you pick powers that don't synergize well. If, for example, you are a primarily ranged character (force bolts or something) but you take a melee energy builder attack (the basic attack that powers up your other attacks) you will probably not have much fun because you have to zoom in to build energy, then run away to fight at range. Or, you might make a "glass cannon" build - all offense with no defense. In the first 10 levels or so, you probably won't notice a lack of a passive defensive power, but very quickly after that you'll slam into a brick wall where you are repeatedly killed because mobs scale up under the impression that you will be a bit more well rounded.
The retcon system fixes that, though it is rather expensive. Then again, given you can respec all the way back to level 0, it has to be expensive, because people would just get 1 character to maximum level and then respec to try out everything else easily, which may not be so good for the game's longevity. Personally, I think you should be able to respec your last 5 levels cheaply, but after that it should become incredibly expensive, and that's more or less how they have it now.
Honestly, science seems to be more popular now than ever...
Go to any bookstore, you'll find dozens of science-based magazines in print, for every age-group and level of familiarity. These magazines can't stay in print if nobody's buying them.
There are tens of thousands of websites that report on science. There are many news reports of various scientific developments (though, regrettably, they're often sensationalized).
On television there are dozens of programs about various sciences on, entire channels dedicated to scientifically informative shows.
There are people who aren't interested in science just as there are people who aren't interested in any number of other fields that are considered important by many people. But I'd say, as a whole, the existence of so many different vehicles for conveying scientific knowledge demonstrates that science is still popular - if it weren't, economic pressure would have made the case against keeping those magazines, web-sites & television shows & channels around.
That's the way you do it, I agree.
For some situations, credentials and a professional track-record are actually negatives.
For example, if I want someone who is extremely creative - if I want someone who will come up with entirely new ways of looking at things (and, I recognize that 99% of those new ways will be horrible, but the 1% that work might be world-changing), then I emphatically do not want someone who is a conventional sort with conventional credentials.
If I am hiring someone to write banking or financial software, then I want someone who is extremely conventional, who is incredibly risk averse, and who takes the safest (read: most conventional) path.
I suspect that Microsoft is aiming for somewhere in the middle: creative people who might come up with some really good stuff, but who also have demonstrated that they can handle going through a top CS program, or otherwise demonstrate that they will be able to work within the MS organization. Further, if you're "mid-career" by now and making less than these kids, and I absolutely don't want to insult you, but it likely means you either aren't as good at your job as you think, or that people like you are commodity, or that you lack the drive/ambition to REALLY get ahead, or that you just don't have whatever the spark is that makes people accomplish big stuff while still young.
Most likely, not one of these kids will really accomplish anything truly great. But, unlike older people who are mid-career, they still have the potential to (and the drive to), while people in your situation have demonstrated that it's unlikely they'll do more than just put in a solid effort. Which isn't a bad thing, it's just not what they're looking for.
I don't disagree that it's a lot of money for an intern to make, but that doesn't really justify screeching at them for it.
And, you may be thinking of interns in the way most people do - some kid who doesn't know much and gets coffee for people an generally hopes to not fuck up. These guys are, I am going to say, likely a bit more advanced than that and have some serious skills/talents, and Microsoft is willing to pay to impress them and hire them. I think "intern" in this case is more like "possible potential super-stars" and they're giving them that money as a kind of 2 month job trial before investing any real cash in 'em.
For people who are very, very good at what they do, in pretty much any field, that kind of money isn't unreasonable, especially since it's likely they'll make it back in spades.
Sure, it'd be great if the money were used for people who are in dire straits, but I have a hard time getting pissed off that talented people are making money in a capitalist society. Also, I found it really funny that "Libertarian001" was pissed off - how un-Randian of him!
In a world where many people have never made a phone call, where children still get polio or die from malaria, where there are some people who make less than $30 USD in a year, let me be the first to say FUCK YOU! Seriously, Libertarian001, what the hell is the matter with you? You honestly think that showing off by using the luxury of an internet connection and personal computer to bitch about other people's fortune is a good idea? Asshole.
Perspective, it's what's for dinner.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that trained astronauts with advanced degrees in usually scientific fields are probably about as capable of figuring out the statistical chances of a fatal mission as people on slashdot are.
Call me crazy, but I'm assuming that NASA isn't lobotomizing their astronauts.
People take risks because to them, the payout for the risk is greater than the potential downside. For astronauts, obviously, the benefits of doing missions are greater than the pitfalls of dying on missions. You can doubt their wisdom in making those choices, but I think you're being a bit absurd if you think they aren't aware of or capable of figuring out the numbers.
There's a thing called a telephone. Perhaps you've heard of it? A person who isn't feeling well can use it to make a "telephone call" to a doctor's office that will allow them to get advice on whether or not they need to seek further treatment.
The problem, see, is that well meaning idiots (such as yourself, apparently) think people need to go and physically see a doctor because PANIC! THERE IS A SWINE FLU PANDEMIC WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE I SAW IT ON OPRAH!!!! so they slam their doctor's offices, go to the ER with things like "My baby pooed green, is it the swine flu?" and other such nonsense.
If I extend your argument, as you extended mine into the absurd, if you get a splinter in your finger you should immediately rush to consult a surgeon because, hey, without an MD you can't possibly be sure it isn't life threatening, right?
You also missed my suggestion that they call the police non-emergency number - those people are trained to report things to the CDC. Maybe read what I wrote next time?
Wait, so let me get this straight:
If you have a contagious infection that a doctor cannot do anything about and that presents a risk to the public welfare, they require that you go to your doctor to get a note - potentially risking many other people and using up resources that could benefit other people - to get a note?
If that's the case, that's a very, very flawed system indeed.
You mean public health as in "Don't go visit other people (such as doctors) who can't do anything for you and might catch it from you?"
If you have the swine flu, there's nothing your doctor can do for you; you need to rest, drink fluids and keep yourself from making other people sick, and call your local non-emergency police number to report the case. Going to a doctor won't do anything for you, and it will actively endanger the health of other people.
I work in a subset of the public health field, and we're really fucking annoyed when we hear a bunch of well-meaning idiots telling people to go to their doctor for something that a doctor cannot possibly do anything about.
Don't waste resources pointlessly - it essentially denies treatment to people who actually do need it and can benefit from it.