Originally posted by bowzef1990
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i found myself doing same 3 events more than 5 times and there were not that exciting as i was hoping for i was hoping more of a random dynamic that's on a like on list of 10 that get randomly picked

Ok, so I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong for thinking the game's not the second coming or anything so don't misunderstand me here, but why on earth would you do that?

I wandered around doing nothing but fighting enemies that were my level or +1 to me and doing all the dynamic events I ran across and I managed to get to level 13 without repeating a single one.  Though to be fair I did also do my personal quests.

I think there are at least some different events tough.  I made a second character and played it briefly a bit ago and ran into completely different events at the closest spots to the starter town.  Of course they might just be later stages or earlier stages of an event and I missed them the first time.

Huh.  I thought 'new content' meant some of the content that just went into the game with Issue 22, but apparently it's a trial from Issue 23.  Nifty.

Originally posted by KingGator

And leave the cash shop off of these servers. I love alot of what I've read about this game, but I just won't pay a game with a CS that has anything but cosmetic items in it, I'd prefer not even that because you know EVENTUALLY the sword of 1000 truths will show up in that thing. Make it a smaller sub, like maybe 9 bucks a month and I bet you'd be shocked at how popular those servers would be.

Ok, so I'll admit I haven't read the thread fully and it's highly likely this has been brought up already, but just on the off chance it hasn't.

So if you look at ArenaNet's track record with their currently existing GW cash shop you'll note it's pretty much nothing but convienience, cosmetic and vanity items.  There's the expansions themselves, some costumes, charcter renames/makeovers, character slots, 'bank' slots, unlocks of things for PvP characters (and henchmen) so you don't have to play PvE to get them, and the ability to turn one or some of your characters into henchmen useable by your account.

GW has had a cash shop for years and that's what they sell.  Nothing remotely 'uber in-game PvE/PvP item'ish about any of it.

I'd love a full-out graphics rehaul, but I still think it looks pretty good for an almost 8 year old MMO.

So to echo some of the other complaints about this article ....

I'm not completely sure if it was the true first, but I don't recall any other game before City of Heroes divorcing a player's appearance from their defensive capabilities.  However since then there have been several other games that did the same thing which makes The Secret World a just another in a line of MMOs doing it.  Personally I wish more games did it to be honest.

I'm not sure how the features list differs between City of Heroes's Mission Architect and Star Trek Online's Foundry, but even then player created missions aren't exactly a new thing either.  Heck, if I remember correctly there was a decent hubbub about CoH claiming to have the first player created missions since Ryzom did it even before them.

Guild Wars 2's WvW is nearly a flat-out copy of DAoC's RvR system.  All the way down to the little crossed swords on the map marking where there's a fight.  Though I do believe the mercanaries you can get onto your side is a new thing.

I'll give you SW:TOR's fully voiced game since while other games have certainly done extensive voice-work before (EQ2) I've never seen anything quite so extensive before, and I can't really speak to RIFT's instant raids.

Honestly WvWvW looks pretty much like a copy (and slight improvement) of DAoC's RvR frontier.  So going by that you're pretty much taking/defending keeps or out looking for an open-ground fight.  It's not really scripted but if there's a decent population generally you'll be able to find a lot of fighting.

I do recall reading that there will be DEs that let you make mercanary groups in the mist into allies that will help you for a time.

Originally posted by TpsArchangel

yeah.. no thanks... graphics are....

Yea.  It's almost an 8 year old game at this point so the graphics aren't going to be the shiniest in the world.

I've always thought it looks relatively good for its age though, but that's just me.

Originally posted by Gravarg

My $150 for buying expansions means nothing to them...everything I got in those expansions and original game are locked and have to re-buy them...uh no thanks.  If I'm going to buy a game I'd rather it be something new, not something I've already bought.

Um.  The only two things that were part of the CoH and CoV boxed sets that should be locked from you as a returning 'premium' player are Controllers and Masterminds.  Oh, and a bunch of character slots.  Pretty much everything else they've locked off has been added since then.

Personally I kind of agree that returning players who purchased a box shouldn't have to unlock controllers or masterminds, but if you really enjoyed the game $15 isn't really all that much.

Oh, also they did put a price-point on how much a returning character needed to have spent in order to get Controllers and Masterminds unlocked.  One box and (I believe) 27 months of subscription time.  If you were remotely close to that then it actually might be better to just buy some stuff in the store and get the couple of reward tokens it would take to get you to finish off tier 5.  Since getting tier 5 complete unlocks controllers and masterminds without having to purchase them from the store.

Originally posted by trancejeremy

They really really need to merge the servers. Outside of the VIP one and 2 of the more popular ones, the game is a ghost town. If they added cross server grouping for dungeons (er, trials) it would help too.

 

Really?  I play on Justice, Infinity and Liberty and I've never had trouble finding people to do things with.  Justice in particular is good for late night  gaming here on the East Coast.

Have you tried joining your server's global chat channels?  I've found that's usually where a good portion of the group forming goes on.

Of course, I don't know that many people would be against cross server teaming for trials though.

Originally posted by XxjagoxX

What they FAIL to tell you is this is a Story arc in the game that they Added to the "Paragon marekt place" So yea Unless you shell out more real life cash to "Buy it" Your not going to get it..

I Stopped playing this game a About a month after going F2P and thats after Playing it and being a 60+ month Vett Because Nothing is Free to play.  Before it when F2P we would have got this in a "Issue update" like the 20 we had before it started doiing the F2P as a part of are monthy charge..

Damm it i hate when good games go F2P All they Do is Add Fluff and Charge Everyone more then there Monthly fee

 

If you're a subscriber and pay the monthly fee the Signature Story Arcs are entirely free.  As was all the story content in I-21 and the trials added as I21.5 and the upcoming story content in I-22.  There was also a free (for subscribers) brand new power set with I-21 and some powersets already in the game added to different ATs and there's another one coming with I-22 that's free for subscribers.

So far their track record is pretty good.  I'm getting everything I ever used to as a subscriber.  The two issues that I've been able to see (one live and one currently intesting) are just a content rich as they ever were.  New/revamped zones with numerous story arcs, a free powerset with each issue (something that very rarely happened before), a free costume set with each issue, and new VIP/veteran costume sets.  Then on top of that there's been more story arcs added in with the issues that wasn't part of the 'new' area of the (First Ward for I-21 and the revamped Dark Astoria for I-22) and the five Signature Story Arcs that they've released so far.  As a subscriber every single bit of that cost me not a dime more than my $15 a month.

Sure they've released costume sets, vanity pets and 3 power sets that I'd have to pay for if I wanted (and I did for some of them) but all of that is above and beyond what they've ever given subscribers in the past.  Plus it's mostly fluff aside from the powersets, but as a subscriber you'd get $5 worth of points per month and since the power sets seem to be coming out ever other month or so and cost $10 you could just ignore the fluff and save your points for powersets and get 'em "free".

Seriously, if you dropped your sub and stopped playing assuming you'd be having to pay for all the new content added into the game and not because it was no longer fun, then I encourage you to try re-upping your sub for a month.  All you'd have to pay for would be any of the powersets you might possibly want and a couple of the powersets and all that is completely incidental to the game itself.

Originally posted by PukeBucket

In LotRO I can unlock things account wide.
That's the big difference from the COH and the EQ2 model here.

CoH's cash shop did something stupid with making non VIP's (subscribing players) pay to unlock previously standard ATs (classes), but almost everything worth buying through the thing is an account wide purchase.  Pretty much the only difference I can think of between LotRO's shop and CoHs is the locking out of Masterminds and Controllers.

Originally posted by teakbois 

The issue people have is they fail to look at the big picture, only what effects them.  F2p isnt meant to be the prime way to play, its meant as an unlimited trial with the hopes people sub.  However for the people that do want to play for free, there is an insane amount of content they dont have to pay a cent for.  Just have to go with one of the 8 classes.

I don't really have a problem with classes being locked off, heck I expected the Beastlord class to be unavaliable to me since I haven't purchased the expansion yet.  I mean that just makes sense.

My problem is that I bought the game in the past when it wasn't free and I played the game for about 3 months (had the account active for longer thinking I'd get back to it), but not I can't access any of the characters I made without paing more money for them or deleting all but one of them since they take up playable character slots and I can't make a free character if they're there.

I'd be less annoyed if I could make a free character without deleting all my old characters, but I can't do that.  I'd much rather that they locked off content than locking off all the races and classes.  At least that way I'd have been able to log into the game and play through some content and then purchase what I wanted when I needed, but with this implementation I either need to spend a lot of money on classes and races to play any of my old characters and more money on character slots in order to make a new character.  I'd much rather pay more money over time unlocking content than this giant up-front fee I have to pay simply because I bought their product in the past ... something I wouldn't have had if I'd never given them money at all.

It's a fine implementation for new players, but it's a very poor one for returning players.  Very.

Apparently not all races/classes need to be unlocked, just the majority of them (including every single class I'd made a character for in the past).

All I wanted to do was log in, pay to unlock the new beastlord class and dink around with it for a while.  I'll probably still do that at some point, but having all your old characters locked is never a fun thing.  It was a bad idea for CoH and it's a bad idea in EQ2.

Yea, I wasn't a long term player or anything, but I bought the game and played it very casually for about three months a couple of years back.  It was fun, but I was primarily playing another game and didn't want to have two subscriptions going at once.  So I figured I'd drop back in and play a little on an old character since it just went free to play ... only to find every character I made was locked because I needed to purchase every single race and class separately.

$7.50 for each class and another $7.50 for each set of a couple races.  Sheesh, and people complained when CoH made a small portion of their classes limited.  To be honest I'm really hoping this is some sort of bug actually.

So even though I'm a fan of the game I know it's not perfect 10 of a game, but the 6.9 seems a trifle low.

Also did I just miss something important in the review or did the gameplay get a 6.0 because the PvP in a PvE focused game wasn't very good, and was the score of 8 on innovation because it innovated away from fantasy too much?  Or at least that's what I took away from the reviewer's comments.

The graphics thing I think is fairly valid, even though I like CoH's graphics more than a respectable chunk of MMOs that have been released since it's release it's perfectly fair to downrate the graphics when so much better is possible currently.  Admittedly I don't really think graphics are the most important bit to judge a game on, but some folks do.

Probably because it's not an issue.  It's one of the 'half issues' they've been putting out since they started releasing Incarnate trials.  It's actually kind of large for one of those since it's a delayed part of the half issue too.

Originally posted by Amarsir

But now if there are 500 on a server, how many different ways does that get fractured? You might be looking not just for a tank, but a tank with vigilante access who has incarnates unlocked and the alpha slot first-tier filled . . . 

A bit of a late reply here and all, but the game only would get split 3 ways.  Being vigilante or rogue doesn't come with any specific content.  It only lets you do content from both the hero or villain sides.  So you split things hero, villain and VIP (or incarnate basically).  I'm not even really sure I'd consider VIPs along the same lines as I'd consider Heroes or Villains since their exclusive content is really just a very small part of the game.

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Originally posted by VirusDancer
More proliferation of powersets, an updated graphics engine, and three color choices during costume design - I'd resub.

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Don't get me wrong, I'd be all for a re-do of the graphics engine and more costume color options would be nice (but honestly probably require a hefty revamp of the current costume choices). I just don't think it's likely to happen any time soon (especially now that it's 'FTP'). Heck, I'd love to see more costume piece locations to allow asymetrical costumes, but I know that's not going to happen unless someone comes up with a code miracle.

To the OP and premium folks. I'm not one myself, but I think you should be able to post in the 'Player Questions' forum as well. I think the idea is any forum that'd be used for getting help as opposed to ones that are just for discussion and chatting.

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Originally posted by SwampRob
CoH used to be the only, and I mean absolutely the only MMO I've every heard of, that made it possible to obtain the best gear through solo play.    With the alpha expansion, it made grouping nearly mandatory, the only other option being an insane grind.

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Originally posted by paulocafalli

Alright I have 14 characters, it's about US$ 15.00 per character so ... about US$ 210.00 to play a game that was supposed to be free now. And the thing that really bothers me most is that I have paid many many months and I have to pay a lot more to enjoy the game than new players that will only play it for free. Is that fair really?

I just checked the in-game store.  Character slots are $6 for 1 slot, $8 for 2 slots and $20 for 5 slots.  That's much less than $15 per character.  You should start with 2 free slots, have one extra slot for each year you were a subscriber, and 2 bonus slots if you bought Going Rogue before Freedom went live.

Also, unless you only played controllers, masterminds and the 'epic' ATs (which is somewhat unlikely but certainly possible)  you should be able to unlock a couple of your characters at least.  If you look up on the top left of the character select screen you should see some text that says 'Global Slots'.  That lets you know how many characters you can unlock and as long as you actually have the slots then the only barrier should be if you have the AT unlocked or not ($15 for mastemind or controller and $12.50 for the 'epic' ATs).  If the latter is the case then you only need to unlock the AT once, not for each character.

By the way, if it's the mastermind and controller thing that's keeping your characters locked, before unlocking them (assuming you want to) check your paragon rewards tokens first.  If you're close to 13 tokens (like 2 away) buy the tokens but don't unlock the ATs.  Filling up the tier 5 level of paragon rewards unlocks those two ATs automatically and you'll get 2 tokens for buying $15 of points.  So buy the points and spend them on something else in the store you might want (like character slots for unlocking more of your characters).