General Discussion

He missed one of the best features of CoH/CoV! I can't beleive he's naive enough to call base raids 'A lagfest where the highest level wins'! Lagfest? I don't know about, I only did open PvP. But one of the best things about CoH/V is they take the levels out of PvP! When you enter a PvP zone, you're autoleveled to a certian level(50 for base raids). Sure, if you're level 20, you won't have as many skills as a level 50 and the level 50 still has a slight statistical advantage(Do to having better ehancments) but you have always have a chance to win(*cough* WoW*cough*instanced capture the flag games where you get owned if you take your level 7 against a level 10*cough*).

If you read the whole thing he said he GUESSES it would be like that. He said he hasn't even been in one yet.

I maxed a villain out within a week of CoV coming out and played awhile after that and I have to say he got everything correct. Character creation and the cities are the best parts about CoV. Other than that it gets old and boring.

The base raids are nothing to look forward to either because certain classes just overpower and its not balanced at all. Most of the SGs I was in didn't even bother and when I had my own SG which had one of the biggest bases at the time, nobody would fight us.

I could make characters all day.. thats as far as CoV goes.

Having been a big fan of both CoH and CoV, I can agree with much of what the author says, but not all. For instance, CoV has never been, for me, standing back and watching auto attacks. I must consciously choose pretty much everything except my toggle powers, which I use and then try to keep running by leaving that mob alive until the end, and one autofire power, which tends to either be hasten, or a click status protection, depending on what I'm playing. Attacking is a conscious effort and all attacks are deliberate, not auto-fire. That being said, all attacks eventually boil down into set patterns that become rinse and repeat, even if it's a bit more active on the part of the player (which is still a step in the right direction).

As for contacts versus randomly generated inhabitants, I do find the inhabitants add spice to the cities, making them feel alive, but I don't agree that missions are somehow diminished by this. By taking the time to immerse yourself in the storylines, you can delve into the reasons behind the missions, and suddenly the repetitive killing sprees take on nuances. You have different reasons for beating people down, and in CoV, you have different goals, such as rescuing, stealing, taking down a boss, destroying an object, or stopping a plot by a superhero/supervillain. NPCs will often join you in missions, lending you their powers, or actively try to escape from you if you are taking them hostage. The nuances are there, if you take the time to appreciate them.

So, is there room for improvement? Certainly! Economies do add much to online games. They allow for more social elements to thrive, which is always a good thing in a MMOG, assuming that there are enough rules in place and enforced to keep people from behaving too inappropriately. However, CoV remains, in my mind, one of the best games, because it makes the most effort to draw you in and help you feel like the world is alive, whether or not there's another player in sight.

The problem with CoV is that its just more of the sameness; once I'd learned my way around the new zones and hit the villanious groove I quickly turned dull just like its predecessor.  Its a shame because they're very good games and I like the idea of tem but they run out of Fun very quickly.

Ah yes city of vllains/heroes. I haven't, and won't play CoV since CoH was... well you read the article, but without PK. Even relative to the majority of MMORPGs on the market, I found this game to be horribly shallow. I don't know if I have ADD, but it seems to me that linear gameplay with single path tunnels of 0 variation is more likely to make someone with an attention deficit bored. In a typical MMORPG half the fun is getting distracted (aka exploring). I guess what is meant is that if you get distracted RL, it's easy to figure out where you left off :P

When I played CoH the game had one redeeming factor: it's character creation system, which is a marvel (no pun intended). I purchased CoH the day it came out, and I quite literally spent almost as much time creating new characters as I did "playing" the characters I made. I found the game play predictable, boring and it was probably the most uninspiring game I have ever played. There weren't even any items, so I couldn't ignore the flaws of the game in a mindless attempt to get a new shiny sword, or cool looking armor. The item system feels like the devs said to each other: Well, players just use items to stat-max anyway, let's replace the item models with... actual numbers! Brilliant. Maybe the artists were all too busy with the char-creation.

I found the game especially dissapointing due to the excitement the creation system initially inspired. This eagerness to play my work of art was quickly squashed by one of the most boring MMORPG's I have played to date. I should also note everyone I know who played this game had a very similar experience, which is why I've always been confused why other developers didn't pick up on how succesful the character creation was. It was the one good thing most people I talked to had to say about CoH.

The funny thing is that I played COH only very briefly, yet everytime I start a new game, as I enter the character creation to choose from the 5 hair colors and 3 present faces I think of COH. Within 10 seconds I log in, with the same inevitable result: I look the same as 25% of the other players, and again I think of the game I played for less time than any other MMORPG and lament.

This idea that the game is dull and uninteresting astounds me. Clearly you guys never read you rmissions because they have long stretching story arcs that span dozens of missions and contacts. If you took the time to actually read the stories you would find very immersive experiences within the missions themselves, including actually understanding who the named bosses are, what the special graphics and items in the instance are (they don't make it obvious so you have to know what's going on to see and understand it all). Not to mention that this is the only MMO with cutscenes and bubble dialogue popping above the characters heads. What are you guys talking about?

I felt that the author of this article was just irresponsible in many of the things said. There is, at the very least, 3 standard templates of the grinder's paper missions, not even considering the hundreds of story arcs and custom missions available through the NPCs. It is not all just kill everything in the instance. There are kidnappings, as well as item retrieval. You can complete these objectives many different ways depending on the powersets you pick. If you pick the high dmg dealing builds then, yeah, the only way you're going to get through the game is by bashing through everything. If you take the concealment power pool, however, you can invis all teh way through missions without every fighting a single guy sometimes. All that said, the paper missions (instances available on demand through a newspaper you just pull out) are repetitive, but that's the whole point of them! They are for people that want to grind through the game and not read anything too detailed. If you WANT variety in your stories and missions then the NPCs provide all that for you, including customized battles, items, mutliple goal missions, and stories that span a dozen different instances.

This idea that the main mission NPCs have no personality is silly. They are the only ones who provide the long expanding story arcs and are the only NPCs that have personality. Just because they don't talk to you as you walk by doesn't mean they are not immersive characters. They are all very cool and unique to interact with and have interesting backstories and arcs if you take the time to read them.

CoV/CoH does need an economy. That is the only point of criticism in this article that I felt was accurate.

CoV is a VAST improvement on CoH, so much so that many of the key features within it are now being brought to CoH in Issue 7 (a free update so large it rivals what other people release as paid expansions, and that happens about twice per year). The author of this article took no time to learn the real core improvements of this game, doesn't mention anything about the brilliant Sidekicking/Lackying system, the incredible nature of group battle that makes every time you play a different experience (different combos of powersets makes new strategies and gameplay possibilities). I could go on. If you want someone who actually plays these games extensively to do a real article on what CoH/CoV brings to the table that no MMO does then please allow someone like myself to do so, someone that has played since CoH launch and knows what they are talking about. There are many MANY things that NCSoft/Cryptic has done with this title that set it apart from it's competition, things that will surely become industry standards in all future MMOs.

For an article that says it's going to "dig into the nuts and bolts" of the gameplay, that was remarkably shallow.

Nothing said that hasn't been said better, before. Don't take offense, that's just honest criticism.

I generally agree on all salient points; CoH/V is best played from the character creation screen. The PvE becomes dull very quickly. The PvP takes a little longer to pall, then you realize that only certain builds and especially certain classes are PvP viable. Stalkers, anyone?


I hope, for your next installment, you'll put a little more content into your article. Because "What we've learned" could have come from a compilation of game reviews and forum posts, for all I can tell.