As some of you know, I work on an online roleplaying game called City of Heroes for NCsoft. As it happens (and it is, in fact, totally coincidental), one of our longtime Curmudgeon readers is a British fellow who now also works for NCsoft, in our newly-minted European offices.
After having exchanged e-mail messages with Stephen, I had the pleasant fortune to meet him last week as his team was visiting our North Am headquarters in Austin. Stephen appears to be enjoying the lunacy of our industry so far, but he has a problem: Believe it or not, he's having a hard time finding people to fill out his staff. You can get the details here at Stephen's blog. If you are currently in Europe (we're not going to relocate anyone, and time is of the essence), are a fluent English, French, or German speaker, and are interested after reading Stephen's info at his blog, please contact him (also via his blog). If you know of anyone who might be interested, please point them at that link. You can e-mail me privately or contact Stephen directly, but please don't post questions or comments about these positions to the comments of this post as I will delete them.
Okay, so now I have to make this post fit the Curmudgeons charter so my fellow C's don't smack me around. I'm curious: How many of you are playing or have played City of Heroes? How do you like it as a superhero game? As my fellow gamers reading this will attest, there haven't been very many decent superhero video games at all. How does CoH stack up as a superhero game? More importantly, one of our goals was to create a game that made the players really feel like they were playing in a comic book world -- did we succeed?
I'm not fishing for compliments here, give me your honest feedback (you won't hurt my feelings, believe me). (BTW, we're publishing a City of Heroes comic as well -- any of you guys reading it?)
I haven't played it, but did see some friends playing it. The most interesting part of the game seemed to be the inventive characters that people created. More than once a character just ran past for a second and had us doubled over laughing. From what I saw of the gameplay it seemed like standard MMORPG stuff, so I didn't wind up buying my own copy. As a game featuring superheroes, it looked pretty decent. The fun factor was definitely higher than most other MMORPGs like the Star Wars one (once again only viewed on friends' computers and through stories they tell about the games). Doesn't the comic get mailed for free to everyone who has an account?
If anyone's thinking about trying X-Men Legends for the console systems, save your money. It is very underwhelming. I bought it on a Wednesday and had it on eBay by Friday. Haven't done that with a game in quite a while.
Currently I'm having lots of fun with Evil Genius for PC where you play a Blofeld/Fu Manchu type evil genius who has to take over the world through various nefarious schemes.
Hey, tell Stephen I said hello. Known him for a while now.
And naah, I'm not playing CoH - I'd never get anything done.
Sadly, I am a Mac user, and short of installing Virtual PC cannot play CoH.
I haven't played it, but that's not really a reflection on the game itself. I have a deep-seated antipathy to MMORPGs. First of all, I don't have that much time to game, so I'd feel like I wasn't getting my money's worth out of the monthly fee.
Second of all, I don't have that much time to game, so I wouldn't be able to develop my character very quickly (though, from what I hear, modern MMORPGs don't have the problem earlier ones did wherein the guy who's online 20 hours a day wins and everyone else is trying to keep up with him).
Third of all, I'm a misanthrope to begin with, and being online seems to bring out the jerk in people -- I prefer to play games with non-jerks (someone I talk with on another website had a female character that became the subject of "self-gratificaiton" by a fellow player, said fellow player describing the act of "self-gratification" as it occurred). Between kewl l33t t33ns, PKers, haxors, and the like, I'll stick to my single-player games, thankyouverymuch.
I did enjoy Freedom Force, though, and am very much looking forward to the sequel. Not that you asked. And if I were going to break down and buy a MMORPG, City of Heroes would definitely be the one.
I enjoyed Freedom Force up until I got the superspeed guy. Then every mission was stupidly easy and I got bored. Is the sequel set in the 70s?
I'm not sure if any portion of the sequel is set in the 70s, but the bulk of the sequel is set during World War II (via time travel).
Man, I haven't played Freedom Force in a while. Maybe it's time for a reinstall.
Thanks for the mention, Chris - I doubt I'd have had the guts to come up to a near-complete stranger after a company meeting and say 'hi' like you did. :)
And hi Matt, too. :)
ps Freedom Force rocks!
I am Curmudgeon and I am hopelessly addicted to City of Heroes. As a new subscriber, I've only read the most recent issue (which, as was pointed out, you get free with a subscription), where a Hero gets jury duty.
On the game - I've been going back and forth. It was great at first, and then I hit a wall where I was getting smacked down a lot. However, I think I got past that wall last night, and was back to having a blast again. I get the feeling that if I had a regular team, I wouldn't be having this problem, as there'd be folks who have my back. (OTOH, I've had great luck with pick-up teams too.)
The comic was a lot better than I figured it would be. The big difference between CoH and most comic universes (except Top Ten) is that there are a zillion heroes in Paragon City. One of the perks of that is that super heroes get other super heroes as their juries. That was a neat idea and a fun bit. I also liked that I could see the jury was made up of folks easily made with the costume designer. That was a nice bit.
(I will say here what I've said in other places - NCsoft needs to sell a standalone version of the costume designer software. Folks playing superhero RPGs would snap it up in an instant.)
I played CoH for a month or so. Probably the best of the MMORPGs I've tried (the others were Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy XI) and I loved the character customization (both visually and in terms of powers). I do think the feel of a comic book world was captured pretty well too, and being rewarded with whole new powers early on made the standard MMORPG "treadmill" problem a lot more bearable than most games, where you mostly get incremental increases of your basic abilities.
The reason I dropped it was basically that my play style just doesn't mesh with the MMO concept -- I liked the feeling of being in a persistent world, but I'm not much for teaming up with people, and I got the nagging sense that it would be more and more of a requirement as I went on.
I'd love to see an offline version, though -- I'm a sucker for designing characters, and most offline games just don't bother with that.
I play City of Heroes, and I think it's the most fun MMORPG I've played. I love the combat - it's involving enough to make you feel like you're doing more than just pressing 1, then 2, then 3 and repeating until someone dies, especially when you're playing in a group.
As far as "as a superhero game," well... Admittedly, there's something realistic about the idea that if hundreds of people woke up one day with superpowers, some of them would end up named "The Alenator" with a costume that looks like they were chewed up and spit out by a fabric outlet. But honestly, other players do a lot to erode the mystique. I'm sure there are some DC superheroes that wouldn't hesitate to use their astounding communicate-with-other-superheroes device to let everyone in a mile radius know that Batman is a killstealer, but yeah. Is there anything that can be done about that? Probably not in an MMORPG.
The only other thing that really, really gets to me is the fact that almost anything you do in combat requires you to stand still. It just doesn't seem right to watch your katana dude run up to someone, come to a dead stop right in front of them, then draw their katana and begin to attack.
Visually, though - yes, it's a comic book, and a fairly good one at that. I'm constantly in awe of the visual style of the game.
It's the only MMROGS-whatever I play. And the only reason I play it is a love of the comics.
There are numerous suspension of disbelief issues. The vast number of players means zillions of heroes, and therefore google-zillions of goons and villains. I'm sure there are ways to rationalize this in a roleplaying sense if you feel the need for.
The missions you do slowly build personal story arcs for your characters. The fact other characters do the same, just ignore. Concentrate on your hero's story.
There are many different villain groups, most of whom are visually appealing and different from one another. Play is exciting, and lends itself to being cooperative. It's easy to make friends who help each other out on a continual basis.
The costume creation is powerful, and the game offers various powers to customize your characters. The different powers require you to alter your combat style so you can't do the same thing. In fact, selection of the individual powers is important and affect the game. Two people can be the same Archetype (read - classes) say a Defender, and work in very different ways.
My friends and I have formed a fake Avengers supergroup on the Freedom server. Capt Federalist, Golden Dynamo, Purple Arrow, the Magenta Mage, etc. It's a ton of fun.
I highly recommend it. And the Mighty Revengers are taking applications.
Oh, and about the City of Heroes comic - I am reading it, and this is the first issue I've made it through without wincing. The first four issues were mostly ok, but there was always something that managed to really get on my nerves, and the pacing always felt off. This one seemed really solid, though.
Actually, it does bug me when Doc Silver has to let folks get mugged because the muggers show up as purple (much tougher than him) targets, or otherwise let crime go unpunished. OTOH, unless I'm in a hurry, I do make it a point to stop grey (so much lower level you don't get any points for 'em) crooks if they're mugging some one.
I am hooked on CoH too. I enjoy the extensive character options (so naturaly I want even more - fur, wings, etc. - and why not bows and arrows as a ranged attack option?) and the graphics are pretty cool. I wish I had more time to play but the time I do spend is well spent.
I finally read the recent issue of the comic. I thought the concept of a hero's "jury of his peers" amusing and the conflict inherent in forbiding the jurors to use their powers interesting. Although I couldn't fathom the motivations behind Horus' actions, I chalk that up to the fact that thisis the first issue I've read.
According to various interviews, bows will be in an upcoming update, along with a couple of other powers - sonics being the one I recall off the top of my head.
Stuff like Wings is harder to animate, but they want to get to it eventually.
Yet to play COH mainly due to the lack of a Australian server - sadly this is a common complaint for Aussie gamers, and the main reason we all seem to end up playing nothing but counterstrike or warcraft3...shard me baby and I'm IN! Like what I've seen of the game so far (actually previewed the damn thing for Issue 2 of OzComics Magazine). Liked Freedom Force although I do wish they'd stick to the original plan of updating the feel of the game to match different comic eras