The link to the rest of the article is broken

It's quite a good article and it decribes CoH well... except for one thing: questing is mostly inside buildings and HIGHLY repetitive. Yes, HIGHLY.

Many people who have tried out CoH went "oh, THIS IS FUN" for about 10-20 days, changing their opinion to "jesus, this is BORING" when confronted with this feature for a while.

It's still a good game though.

ps: Servers are pretty empty, too.

I still can't get to the article because of the incorrect link, but...

CoH has always been a game I *want* to love.  The character creation is great fun, those first 10 or 15 levels are lots of fun, but then you realize it's just more and more of the same.  I've always said CoH was one of the most polished games from day 1 that I've ever played and they really focused solely on the things they wanted to accomplish, but it's just too repetitive to keep me around.

Now, why does MMORPG decide to make an article about the free trial of game as old as CoH? It´s called purchased editorial content. PlayNC obviously paid to get this story out. Not that I care but that´s how it´s gotta be

Now don´t get me wrong, I love CoH and played it for several years. I agree with it being rather light in certain areas and they really need to open a OpenPvP-server to regain the momentum. The major problem is world immersion. It´s very hard getting attached to a modern world (as we see it every day in real life, you don´t really get drawn in) especially since most of the missions are instanced or inside. At higher levels there are some really cool maps but still you really don´t get attached as it feels like you´re somewhere else than the actual area maps.

It is also very repetetive around the 25th to 40th level but it really opens up in the higher levels with epic missions. I wish the game held a "bigger" story somehow, something to really dig into.

 The game IS unbeatable though when it comes to character creation, skillsets and good ole plain fun when it comes to actually teaming and PvE-ing. The ragdoll effect is a blast and kickin someone off a ledge to see em splatter around like dying fish gets me every time. It´s a game that´s very easy to get into, you don´t need to loot anything so the action is fast and smooth.

Still, I hold CoH as the Nr.1 MMO so far, looking at the total package. SwG was close but Sony wrecked it and the combat was never 100%. All in all, I´ll be playing CoH whenever I look for some fun.

A very nice review. Two thumbs up!

LINK

Originally posted by lmzz

Now, why does MMORPG decide to make an article about the free trial of game as old as CoH? It´s called purchased editorial content. PlayNC obviously paid to get this story out. Not that I care but that´s how it´s gotta be

I wrote this article because I was playing the game, and thought that it would make a good "At A Glance".  Also, it's my job.

The only "paid for" parts of this site are the advertisements.

I hope that clears things up for you.

Originally posted by Gnomig

It's quite a good article and it decribes CoH well... except for one thing: questing is mostly inside buildings and HIGHLY repetitive. Yes, HIGHLY.

Many people who have tried out CoH went "oh, THIS IS FUN" for about 10-20 days, changing their opinion to "jesus, this is BORING" when confronted with this feature for a while.

It's still a good game though.

 

ps: Servers are pretty empty, too.

Good article....but as Gnomig said - 14 day trial would not show the gaping fault COH has

And that is repetitive content

What at first looks like amazingly good idea - randomised missions , slowly turns into bore fest when you realise that all missions happen in handfull of same areas.

For all expansions COH had until now, i never could figure why they didnt add more areas ? Just 20 or some new maps would make this MMO 500% better experience

I'ma read the article in more detail but ya the newness wears off due to repititive missions. But really thats expected. but whats unforgivable is the Class based system is too darn rigid and "respecs" is just totally darn hard to come by. its a typical shallow character advancement system

character creation is totally awesome and it can be fun to play. for sure worth checking out.

I dunno how to describe it, I would call this game a "Flawed Masterpiece".

I'm surprised no one mentioned that there are facial sliders available for you character. If you look under the portrait in character creation, you will see the sliders for the body as well as ones for the face--you just have to click on them to expand and see them.

The first time I subscribed to CoX, I was in full grind mode and determined to hit 50 as fast as possible--I quit the game after about 2 months with my highest character at level 27. On this, my second go, I play when I feel like it and figure I'll get to 50--or not--whenever I get there. My highest is now a level 36 after less than a month (a new character) and I'm still enjoying it without being bothered so much by the repeated missions? Why? Partly because I've made a full stable of alts this time around in order to experience different aspects of the game, but also because I'm just not in a hurry. Ironically, I've levelled faster, but that's partly because they've made it easier with reduced debt in missions and the wonderfully powerful invention origins. 

I believe a game gets repetitive when there's only a few things to do: kill monsters, loot, sell, get new mission, kill monsters... But CoX has so much more! There's the character creation and the possibility of creating new costumes, improving them, acquiring special effects for your character; adventuring in the forms of battling foes on the streets or in instanced missions, solo or teaming-up, with or without your nemesis (Heroes/Villains), robbing banks and causing mayhem as a Villain or trying to stop them as a Heroe, going into the special missions; gathering money and items to create items, selling them and getting richer at the auction establishments; searching for badges; respecing; building your supergroup base, raiding the Heroe's bases as a Villain; getting to level 50 with a Heroe just to be able to play with the special character classes; going to the Pocket-D night club; PvPing one-on-one, team-on-team, Supergroup-on-Supergroup and even collecting Gladiators to let them fight your PvP battles; saving people, killing people... And don't forget: it's two games for the price of one!

CoX could improve in many ways but it's already a great looking game, with easy tutorials, easy gameplay, easy chatting and grouping  (and I'm comparing this with WoW, which I also love).

Now, about the empty servers, I never understood why CoX has so many servers. Even at its peaks, you can only see Freedom and Virtue full, the other barely make it moderate. If they merged some, it would end this bad impression the game leaves on newcomers.

CoH is repetitive in the sense that mission maps look the same, and you often battle the same enemies. Some of the low level stories are also repetitive (dropping some bad stuff in the city water). However, where CoH (and CoV, though I played it less) win over other games is the stories. There are a lot of story arcs consisting of several missions, which reveal a lot about the world and are often interesting in themselves. For me this makes everything a lot more interesting (and is why I'm looking forward to Issue 11, which should allow my level 50 to do missions I missed).

Playing the lowest levels in this sense is not representative of the game. It comes a lot more into its own in the 20s, when you get a lot of areas geared towards these levels. Independence Port, Talos Island, Striga Island and Croatoa provide quite a lot of stuff to do, and it's pretty varied. At the higher level more epic story arcs are available.

Another thing that I think is different than other games, and only comes into play at level 14 (again, not covered in the article) is the travel powers, which take a lot of the drudgery of getting from place to place out of the game, a problem which is common with other MMOs.

Originally posted by Gnomig

It's quite a good article and it decribes CoH well... except for one thing: questing is mostly inside buildings and HIGHLY repetitive. Yes, HIGHLY.

Many people who have tried out CoH went "oh, THIS IS FUN" for about 10-20 days, changing their opinion to "jesus, this is BORING" when confronted with this feature for a while.

It's still a good game though.

 

ps: Servers are pretty empty, too.

I have yet to play an mmo that isn't highly repetitive,and i've played MANY. They are all repetitive grinds.  I have never had a hard time finding a team on any server.

First off to say that all the missions are indoors tells me that some posters here haven't play CoH for very long.  It was quite some time ago they added outdoor instances in addition to adding more variety to indoor missions.  Not all caves are quite the same.  Most of the Croatoa missions are actually outdoor instances.  Plus early on you'll figure out what villain groups frequent what areas, so if you hate cave missions just avoid Circle of Thorns missions.  

Second servers are hardly empty, NCSoft actually reported an increase in subscriptions from a year ago.  You can't judge how many people are in a zone but seeing who's running around.  Remember, a lot of them will be inside their instances.

Game never got repetative for me due to the sheer number of options on how to do missions.  I can adjust difficulty if I want to change the number and types of mobs I face.  Heroes has a LOT of contacts, so if I get bored doing Contact Jane's story arc I can go do Contact Bob's story arc instead.  Plus the police band missions added in Issue 8 let you pick and choose what kind of mission you are in the mood for.

With Issue 11 announced they are going to keep me busy and un-bored for quite some time.  

Good for you Jon. I notice that no one commented on the pimp slap you laid down on the obvious 'intarwebz knowleage' that the poster used to determine that your article was obviously bought and paid for. I'm glad you posted to defend it and straighten out the readers.

The character creation feature in this game is A M A Z I N G. My wife and I *STILL* tell other gamers about it, and we've not played CoH since before CoV was in Alpha. My wife spent literally spent hours playing with creating toons. I don't think she entered the game until I was like level 6 :) It's a great game, but unfortunately like too many others have pointed out, it becomes too repetitive too quickly =( If only it could be combined with the 'casual' gameplay  that WoW offers, it would be a killer. Who doesn't want to fly and be a super hero!? I know we had a blast flying around and finding all the achievements, err, badges in the game.

We still keep an eye on it, but unfortunately, there's not been enough done to yank our slim time-slices away from WoW...

Originally posted by Stradden

 

Originally posted by lmzz

Now, why does MMORPG decide to make an article about the free trial of game as old as CoH? It´s called purchased editorial content. PlayNC obviously paid to get this story out. Not that I care but that´s how it´s gotta be

I'm going to stop you right there. I take major exception to this accusation. Never before has ANY feature content been paid for by ANY game company here at MMORPG.com. The fact that you would imply it is, frankly, insulting.  I take pride in my work and the fact that MMORPG.com doesn't take money for editorial content.

 

I wrote this article because I was playing the game, and thought that it would make a good "At A Glance".  Also, it's my job.

The only "paid for" parts of this site are the advertisements.

I hope that clears things up for you.

The review from Stradden is fair and accurate.  For 14 days CoH is definitely a blast, esp for those who are abused by excessive elf roleplaying.  There is no point in bashing Stradden.  He has the right to write anything he wants for any game out there, and you Imzz do not need to read it if you know CoH well enough.  If your line of bashing makes sense 90% of the forums here should be closed.  SWG is even far less played, why do we still have discussion forums here?  Because someone else online wants to know about some other games, or someone is trying to search for a new game genre (to him).

I do not know if Stradden is paid for.  I have no proof either way, so I reserved my judgment, sorry Stradden not that I do not trust you.  That said, I would hold a similar view of CoH.  It is worth wasting 14 days trying it out.  As for the game being repetitive eventually.   Yes all games do, I have yet to find one that is not.  This does not nullify the suggestion that for a free 14 days trial, CoH is worth a shot, and a very good game at that if played casually.  There is always the option of cancellation when the feeling of repetition sets it, but till then there is a lot of fun trying out the game, and even after years, I still recall the huge enjoyment I have during my first year trying out CoH.

CoH was a game i really wanted to like but couldnt. Aside from a varied costume design the game offers nothing close to what i would call fun.

As others have pointed out the game takes repetitive grinding to new levels. My "favorite" thing about the game was getting missions that required me to pass through areas where the mobs were so much higher level they could kill me as i tried to run by. What fun.

Everything about the game since just before Issue 4 came out (I'm talking nerfs here) was designed to ramp up risk and screw reward, as though to punish players for leveling too fast or having too much fun.  In issues 1-3, players could have as much fun grouping to street sweep or power level each other as they could doing missions or task forces, if they so chose.  Now the game is nothing more than run to a contact (or call them if you've done enough of their missions), run to instance, do mission, collect reward: it's the ultimate "rinse and repeat" grind-fest, offering little or nothing in the way of a "sand-box" style of play.

I originally joined CoH on January 21, 2005, during the hay-day of Issue 3 and right at the height of the Winter Lord event.  Everything - and I mean everything - Emmert and Company did to the game after Winter Lord did nothing more than punish the players for having a blast.  The only reason Cryptic didn't get more bad press for all the nerfs to CoH was because SoE was busy screwing its customers worse.  And SoE had way more customers to screw.

Fourteen days isn't enough time to get heinously bored over this catastrophically nerfed and boring P.O.S.  But after a month, you'll wish someone would put your eyes out and dip your fingers in sulfuric acid.

YMMV.

Serling!

I've missed your bitter ex-boyfriend comments. Please..keep em coming, keep em extreem.

Because, not learning to adapt keeps things in perspective. We need to know when the inner child died and that evil is still afoot!

Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Serling. Your sad devotion to that ancient issue has not helped you conjure up the stolen childhood, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the 5th column...

Originally posted by Serling

Everything about the game since just before Issue 4 came out (I'm talking nerfs here) was designed to ramp up risk and screw reward, as though to punish players for leveling too fast or having too much fun.  In issues 1-3, players could have as much fun grouping to street sweep or power level each other as they could doing missions or task forces, if they so chose.  Now the game is nothing more than run to a contact (or call them if you've done enough of their missions), run to instance, do mission, collect reward: it's the ultimate "rinse and repeat" grind-fest, offering little or nothing in the way of a "sand-box" style of play.

I originally joined CoH on January 21, 2005, during the hay-day of Issue 3 and right at the height of the Winter Lord event.  Everything - and I mean everything - Emmert and Company did to the game after Winter Lord did nothing more than punish the players for having a blast.  The only reason Cryptic didn't get more bad press for all the nerfs to CoH was because SoE was busy screwing its customers worse.  And SoE had way more customers to screw.

Fourteen days isn't enough time to get heinously bored over this catastrophically nerfed and boring P.O.S.  But after a month, you'll wish someone would put your eyes out and dip your fingers in sulfuric acid.

YMMV.

Originally posted by finnmacool1

CoH was a game i really wanted to like but couldnt. Aside from a varied costume design the game offers nothing close to what i would call fun.

As others have pointed out the game takes repetitive grinding to new levels. My "favorite" thing about the game was getting missions that required me to pass through areas where the mobs were so much higher level they could kill me as i tried to run by. What fun.

CoH was new to me when it goes commercial, I was not in the beta.  The customisation, the travelling modes (flying was fun for a while till I got shot down in bricktown, and even that was fun), the combinations of skills ... are fun to me.  What I like most is the fact that your lvl 1 skill is as good when you are lvl 50.  Properly slotted, a skill never grows old.  Unlike the other games where you get single heal class 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, .... in CoH you get single heal and then you can slot it and augment it as you like as you level up.  The power of the heal scales with your level.  Come to think of it, that makes sense on its own.

Its gets old fast, I agree, the newspaper missions from CoV adds a dice of fun but not enuf for a long haul.  There is little end content, I already stated that indirectly, I do not want to put my words with force, b/c everyone deserve a chance to make his own judgment.

All this does not negate the suggestion that, for a 14day free trial its worth a shot.  Whether you feel bored a month down the road or 2, it does not deny the fact that it entertains the newcomer for a while.  And when that duration ends, subscriptions will be cancelled, but the player might have a good memory of something that does make him/her smile for a month or few.

There are betas and free games that you will feel sorry for wasting the time downloading the client and patching.  I for one do not think CoX falls into this category.

Originally posted by Serling

Everything about the game since just before Issue 4 came out (I'm talking nerfs here) was designed to ramp up risk and screw reward, as though to punish players for leveling too fast or having too much fun.  In issues 1-3, players could have as much fun grouping to street sweep or power level each other as they could doing missions or task forces, if they so chose.  Now the game is nothing more than run to a contact (or call them if you've done enough of their missions), run to instance, do mission, collect reward: it's the ultimate "rinse and repeat" grind-fest, offering little or nothing in the way of a "sand-box" style of play.

I originally joined CoH on January 21, 2005, during the hay-day of Issue 3 and right at the height of the Winter Lord event.  Everything - and I mean everything - Emmert and Company did to the game after Winter Lord did nothing more than punish the players for having a blast.  The only reason Cryptic didn't get more bad press for all the nerfs to CoH was because SoE was busy screwing its customers worse.  And SoE had way more customers to screw.

Fourteen days isn't enough time to get heinously bored over this catastrophically nerfed and boring P.O.S.  But after a month, you'll wish someone would put your eyes out and dip your fingers in sulfuric acid.

YMMV.

But it sure was fun perma holding huge groups of bad guys while my imps tore them apart. But then holds got nerfed. Cryptic decided it was to much to let controllers "control" so they cut way back on hold duration to the point of making many holds totally worthless. 

Another fun thing was watching my Fulcrum Shift power line up about 50 debuff icons across the screen and watch the pack of crazed imps tear everything apart with the huge damage buff from Fulcrum's Shift. But it was too much apparently because Fulcrum's Shift was nerfed and had caps on the amount of mobs it could affect. To much damage for one character to wield apparently.

Thats ok because my saving grace was being able to 6 slot the imps for damage...think again. No more six slotting anything in the game. That too was nerfed. You could have 3 slots with maximum effect then severe diminishing returns kicked in. No more perma hasten meant your powers refreshed much more slowly thus making you less effective.

What made all these nerfs even worse was that as a controller for the first 32 levels of my existance I could not solo a grey con mob. I was completely and totally group dependent and ran PUG after PUG to climb my way to 32. Once I'm there and really getting into it the nerfs start raining down. They "fixed" this hard path to 32 for controllers. They allowed controllers to do double "containment" damage when a mob was held. This makes the first levels easier to get through for new controllers. The damage from containtment was about 1/10 of what I did before the parade of nerfs.

These changes were SUPPOSED to make the game more challenging thus more fun. It just made me feel like a super wimp. I ending up cancelling. I realize your game experience may change while playing any online game but that doesn't mean I have to stick around and like it.

I came back for CoV and got a taste of the completely watered down, so unfun to play, villain archetypes that Emmert and Co. came up with. Obviously, these mangled versions of the hero archetypes was Cryptics attempt to "get it right". All of the CoV archetypes suck. They are all shadows of the hero side even after all the class "adjustments".

Dominators = gimped controller combined with a gimped blaster. You are only really effective when the dominator bar fills up. So, this leaves your character feeling helpless when the dominator bar is not full. This is a horrid mechanic. Even if you gave dominators perma domination they would still merely be ok.

Brute = can't tank and has to build rage to do 1/2 the damage of a scrapper out of the box. Rage goes away fast and takes a long time to build. I remember one of the devs (maybe even Emmert) talking a few years ago on the tanker forum about ways to help improve the tanker. One idea was to make the tanker more effective as the fight progressed. I'm convinced this is where the brute was born. They can't take nearly as much damage as a tanker and again you have to stare at a rage bar and wait for it to fill totally in order to feel like your character is playing at maximum effectiveness. Think of a class with the defense of a scrapper but only does scrapper damage every once in a while. Why would you even bother with this class? Just go build a scrapper. They are better all the way around.

Mastermind = pet class that can't debuff or hold like a controller could back in the day. Somewhat fun but once you've tasted what a real controller could do when this game was in its prime it just feels watered down.

Corrupter = gimped blaster damage with second rate defender abilites. You do double damage when the mob is practically dead otherwise your damage is on par with a defender but you don't have nearly the power to debuff as a defender. Admittedly there are a couple of strong lines in this class but overall it feels watered down as do all the CoV archetypes.

Stalker = stealther character that make blaster look like tanks. I personally hate stealth characters in all MMO's so I never even bothered with this class.

I know this won't stop many of you from having fun. And some people managed to play through the nerfs and still enjoy the game. I, however, was not one of them.

I sound like a paid ad, but no I am not paid to say this.

CoH was too easy at the start.  I remember playing a fire/cold tank and I can kill any non range mob literally, tons of them at once, by throwing down a slippery ice patch around me on the floor.  Every melee mob will run to me and keep falling down unable to land a blow on me.  All I need is to maintain a firewall around me and my XP rocks.

Same for all those classes that can use smoke, say rifle blaster with smoke grenades.  Most mobs are blinded that will almost always miss you, while you can shoot at them point blank or do whatever you want.  Pick the right enemy and just roll over them.

Then come the series of nerfing patches along with enhancement.  Put it this way, everyone has his views on what is good and what is bad.  I for one am not too hostile to most of the changes.  The Fire/Cold tank just trivialised the game, so is the submachine gun blaster, and the fire controller you mentioned.  What is the point of playing a game, in which you summon 12 imps let them loose and go afk.

They do not always nerf, they did improve the playability of some skill sets such as the energy melee set.  Mildly improving it, but that shows the developers were trying to finetune, and not just across the board bashing.

If CoX added DAoC or even WoW style instanced battlegrounds, with various PvP rewards, I'd never leave it.  The (incredibly fun) PvE really needed a PvP counter.  The way the PvP is instituted now just isn't fun.

As an electric/energy blaster, I remember being able to 5-slot damage with 1 accuracy and actually be able to do damage, not wait for a near-death experience to actually be able to kill something!

I'd hit Aim + Buildup and one shot an even-con Lt. with my snipe attack, then run when his buddies would come after me!  :)  I used to impress the hell out of my teammates when I could hit Aim + Buildup on my blaster and take down a whole mob of Council with one shot of Thunderous Blast!  Sure, I could only do that once every 5 minutes, but at least I got to feel really super at least once every 5 minutes.  The game doesn't give you that feeling anymore, and hasn't since fall of 2005.

Jon Wood cited the company line when he wrote:

• Blaster – Ranged damage machine
• Controller – Stun, sleep or otherwise affect enemies.
• Defender – Buffer / De-Buffer class
• Scrapper – Melee damage machine
• Tanker – Like a tank, packs a punch and takes a hit

Since all the nerfs have come about, here is how his list should read:

• Blaster a.k.a. "Pea Shooter" – Ranged "owie" generator (let me put a band-aid on that).
• Controller a.k.a. "Annoyer" – Bore them to sleep.  (Watching C-Span produces similar results).
• Defender a.k.a. "Useless" – Buffer / De-Buffer class*
• Scrapper a.k.a. "Slapper" – Sissy fighter.
• Tanker a.k.a "Wanker" – Flacid and soft.  Couldn't punch through a wet paper bag.  See also  "Sissy Fighter".

*This is perhaps the funniest and yet most tragic story of how the nerfs affected the weakest, most useless class of all.  When ED went live, Emmert and Company realized they had so royally screwed Empaths and other defenders - especially regarding debuffing powers (Radiation set, anyone? Bueller?) - that they built a percentage base to-hit debuff into the mobs so that Defenders wouldn't miss their debuffs so much.  (I'm writing this from memory, so don't hold me to the specifics.  Suffice it to say that they had to balance down the mobs to make what had been a weak set - weakened further by their nerfs - feel a little more useful in a post-ED world!  What an absolute bunch of freaking 'tards!!!)

Emmert used to decry "rinse and repeat" tactics, so his response to rinse and repeat tactics was to make his entire game a rinse and repeat grind-fest!  At least in Issue 3, you could alter your gameplay to suit your mood.  Now you have no choice but to play a certain way just about every single time you log in.  I play Rappelz just to remind me what a gawd-awful grind CoH is!

/endrant

CoH was too easy at the start.  I remember playing a fire/cold tank and I can kill any non range mob literally, tons of them at once, by throwing down a slippery ice patch around me on the floor.

Speak for yourself.  My blaster died way too often in the early game.  It wasn't until I got to level 41 on him that he really started to feel powerful.  The nerfs Cryptic instituted only made the weak weaker and did nothing to balance the metagame.  Certain builds are still overpowered compared to other builds, which none of their brutally heinous nerfs did anything to address! 

The day arenas went live was the day CoH changed irrevocably for the worse, because nerf after nerf came down the pike to balance PvP for a game that wasn't originally designed for PvP!  And what was the upshot of all those PvP balance changes??? Virtually empty arenas virtually all the time!  Want to know where the emptiest zones in CoH are now?  Just go into any arena.  They put hundreds of man-hours into shoe-horning PvP code into a game that - by now should be abundantly clear to even the slowest among the fanboys out there - nobody wanted!  And they destroyed a great PvE game in the process!

And then they had the stones - after a year of allowing travel powers to be used in combat - to nerf them with suppression, offering the lame-a$$ excuse that they "weren't working as intended!"  Not working as intended?!?!?  Wait a minute!!!  Who wrote the damn code in the first place???  Did the code for travel powers write itself and - only after a year - did Emmert and Company discover that the game didn't code itself properly and needed to be fixed?!?!?

This was the modus operandi of these bozos: let their perceived "problems" fester for a year or more, then insult the intelligence of the customers by saying the game "wasn't working as intended" as though every bit of code they wrote was a game-breaking mistake they let slide!  Does this sound like the kind of development team that had any clue about what they were doing?

I've written it before and I'll write it again and again until someone "gets" it: If you're going to charge a monthly sub for your game, you damn well better have all the big balance changes made BEFORE YOU START CHARGING PEOPLE TO PLAY IT!  Otherwise you simply invite the kind of heat (deservedly so) that companies like Cryptic and SoE get for their half-witted changes!

If - after letting a game mechanic go for a year - you can't think of anything better to do than punish the players for using a game mechanic YOU created in the first place, you don't deserve my respect or money.  That's how I feel about these clowns.

As always, YMMV.

P.S. If you let something go for a year then "fix" it, offering the excuse it was never "working as intended", I can only conclude you're either incompetent or a liar or both.  If it was never "working as intended", why wait a year to "fix" it?  And if it was originally working as intended but they simply wanted to change it, why not be honest about it?  Why lie to your paying customers and treat them like idiots because you're afraid of the heat you might take?

These are the same morons who tried to cover up ED's impending release when some CoV beta testers broke their NDAs to let people know how badly ED was going to screw their builds.  Emmert and Company deserve every bit of contempt they get because that's EXACTLY how they treated their customers!

I'd like to ask the people who suffered from the nerfs what MMO they're playing now. Because from my experience even after the nerfs other MMO's still have much more dangerous combat in general, where you can battle with a beetle for a minute and actually fear for your life.

I was going to try it then...

NOTE: This trial is only valid in North America.

These 5 classes are only in city of heroes, not to mention the 2 secret ones u get after reaching lvl 50

there are another 5 in city of villains, they may be working on the new archtype.

u get both games for the price of one,

wow eat ur heart out cause u can never compare to coh/cov

there are usually no gold sites or bots that i have seen in my  years of playing unlike wow

and last but not least! no one needs to pay 10k in real money for a costume

not to mention veternwards

as for the gathering missions - wouldn't that be a "defeat 10 <some baddie>" or a patrol mish?

Thanks for the very good review. We, too, have been trying out the 14-day free CoH trial, and the review reflected well our own favorable impressions of the game.

Thus far, my kids really like CoH/CoV. (It didn't appeal to me much and was in no way going to lure me away from Eye of the North.)

My chief complaint with CoH is that it didn't seem worth (to me) the price of the subscription. It seemed like the kind of game that you'd want to play for a while, then stop for a while, and then pick up again and play some more. Well, on a subscription basis, that just doesn't make economic sense and would be too much of a hassle.

If the initial admission price (game cost) was higher -- but the game was "free to play" thereafter -- we'd probably get a copy. As it is, our 14-day trial has expired and we are back to playing Guild Wars.

The irony is that I *would* willingly pay for a monthly subscription to Guild Wars IF they were continually adding new content, as they do in CoH.

I just started playing this myself with the free trial and I am loving the game! Good write up!

Originally posted by tmr819

"Thanks for the very good review. We, too, have been trying out the 14-day free CoH trial, and the review reflected well our own favorable impressions of the game.

Thus far, my kids really like CoH/CoV. (It didn't appeal to me much and was in no way going to lure me away from Eye of the North.)

My chief complaint with CoH is that it didn't seem worth (to me) the price of the subscription. It seemed like the kind of game that you'd want to play for a while, then stop for a while, and then pick up again and play some more. Well, on a subscription basis, that just doesn't make economic sense and would be too much of a hassle.

If the initial admission price (game cost) was higher -- but the game was "free to play" thereafter -- we'd probably get a copy. As it is, our 14-day trial has expired and we are back to playing Guild Wars.

The irony is that I *would* willingly pay for a monthly subscription to Guild Wars IF they were continually adding new content, as they do in CoH."

I find Guildwars to be absolutely boring. atfirst i thought it was good or great but after playing i found it to be like wow or wow like it i should say. too many skills for your skill bar/s

Originally posted by Tier

yeah coh/v gets boring after a while but thats near level 40 or so..there remains allot to do.

Yeah, I stopped playing for a while at level 39, because I ran out of missions. However, issue 10 should alleviate that, with the new level 35 rikti content. Once I got the 40, things got interesting again.

I played CoX for about a year. The game, while having a great community and plently of customization options for how your character looks, is very, very, linear. Your basically stuck with the handful of powersets that aren't nerfed, which you'll have to combine and modify in the same ways as everyone else in order to expedite the incredible amount of grind within the game. 

CoX would be a great game if the devs put the same amount of customization within the powersets as they do with the costumes, but currently, players are still stuck with the same box in a new wrapper everytime they want to make a new toon.

Played for nearly a year and agree with the comments that it gets very, very repetitive and dull.

A nasty XP curve (compared to modern MMORPGs) combimed with XP debt does not make leveling friendly for casuals.

Horrible mission maps.  Nothing says 'Superpowered' like seeing your character struggling to move between sewer pipes or getting stuck in grating. 

Annoying timesinks.   Zones designed so they are tedious to traverse and this is WITH superpowered travel abilities! 

CoX deserves its place in MMORPG history for the innovative character generation and trying something different.  But at this point, this game is only that, history. 

I'd like to ask the people who suffered from the nerfs what MMO they're playing now. Because from my experience even after the nerfs other MMO's still have much more dangerous combat in general, where you can battle with a beetle for a minute and actually fear for your life.

Irrelevant.  How many of these other MMOs offered the promise and potential of playing a virtual superhero.  And if you feel less super now than you did before the nerfs, then that promise and potential have been taken away from you.

It's like buying a Porsche only to have the dealer come along a few months later and replace it with a Yugo in the middle of the night.  Anyone in their right mind would be pissed about that, not shrug it off and say "Cars change. The dealer was only doing what he thought was in the best interest of the Porsche."

People need to stop letting companies like Cryptic push them around and cause them to settle for a second-rate product, because while you may view it only as a game, the people at Cryptic see it as serious business.  Only when they start feeling the pinch in their bottom line will they learn to stop screwing with their customers.

Stop being sheep and start being shepherds.

Annoying timesinks.   Zones designed so they are tedious to traverse and this is WITH superpowered travel abilities!

Nothing says "We need to keep subs up" like having a contact in one zone and a mission two zones and 5 real-time minutes away.

I am a 30 month vetran of the game which just goes to show how much i like the game.

Once you get into the game you really don't care about the repetivness or going into the same maps.

There are lots of superb graphics through out the game and i erge people to try it, it's one of the most underrated games about.

Please try it out, become a Superhero.

Originally posted by Serling

Annoying timesinks.   Zones designed so they are tedious to traverse and this is WITH superpowered travel abilities!

Nothing says "We need to keep subs up" like having a contact in one zone and a mission two zones and 5 real-time minutes away.

The comments about repetative missions to me is misleading.  Can't you essentially boil down any game's quests to that?  Oh WoW is repetative all it is is Kill X mobs, Collect Y items or kill Boss Z.  Of course that wouldn't be very accurate and is over simplified.

Please try it out, become a Superhero.

Just for grins, I re-subscribed for one month, played for five minutes, then canceled.   I used to have a level 50 blaster til I deleted him with the nerfs, because he simply became unplayable.  My highest level toon is a level 25 Warshade, and let me tell you, the game is so damn dull and such a grind now, even with recommended slotted options under ED, my Warshade (Nova form)  - which used to plow through mobs - is constantly in a life or death struggle with blues and greens!

Soloing slows the game to an absolute crawl.  Teaming ups the XP ante, but invariably leads to people dying and getting debt, which slows their toon's leveling progress.  Everything, EVERYTHING that was done to this game since spring of 2005 - whether it's travel suppression, ED, even the Base and Invention crafting systems - EVERYTHING was done to slow character progression in a transparently cynical move to keep subs up longer while taking away the one thing the game was supposed to be about: SUPER HEROES!

Furthermore, while the devs have gone to great lengths to slow leveling to a god-awful, grinding crawl, they haven't done much to improve quality of life issues.  Transfering influence from one toon to another still requires the use of a trusted third party to act as the middle man.  The catch-22 is that if you don't know anyone, how can you trust someone with thousands of influence just to buy the half-a$$ed enhancements you need to even hope to improve your alt(s)???

Oh, and here's the biggest joke of all: stealth powers were nerfed to keep people from sneaking past mobs to collect mission items because Emmert had a problem with people getting "free XP", as he once wrote on the CoH fora (despite the fact that any "free XP you might have gotten in the game was a mere fraction of whatever it was you actually needed to ding 50: the amount of XP just to get from 49 to 50 was 5 million XP!)

So what do the "geniuses" at Cryptic do???  Allow players to abandon a mission once every 7 days with full credit for successful mission completion!!!  Free XP for doing NOTHING!  At least before, you had to actually go into an instance!  Now you just have to take a mission and abandon it every 7 days.  You eventually get to 50 just doing that, but you'll have paid hundreds of dollars for the "privilege" to do so. 

But again, that's the point: keep you hooked long enough to line their pockets, and screw whether people actually enjoy the game!  They don't care about your fun.  They do care about their bottom line, and insofar as these goals overlap, everyone wins.  Since spring of 05, however, the devs at Cryptic have made it pretty clear where their priorities lie, otherwise they wouldn't have treated their customers like dirt.

I'd like to see them put up an Issue 3 server and see which game people prefer.  But they won't do that because they already know what would happen: people would go back to the game the way it was and actually have more fun playing a super hero. 

At least Smedley apologized for the NGE. Cryptic's customers got screwed and didn't even get a kiss.

Again: EVERYTHING they've done to this game has taken away options for playing it, not added to them, and in the process, they have slowed leveling to an unbearably boring crawl.  Everything in this game is a grind now, whether you're farming salvage, farming XP, or farming influence.  It's all one, long, stale, dated, boring grind, regardless of the type ot character you play.  Because they all feel EXACTLY the same now.

Maybe some of you people like that, but sorry that's not fun for me.

If you're looking for a fun game, don't waste your money on the CoX franchise.  Wait for something better.

CoX is an awesome game.  I can solo any mission on relentless np with my stalker.  Some classes can solo some cant every MMO is like that.  Saying CoX is a grindfest is just silly.  Tell me one MMO that isnt a grindfest and has more than 20 lvls.  I dont play hardcore but I could get a lvl every 10 hours if I wanted.  Saying that farming this or farming that makes the game a grindfest is silly.  Thats why its called farming it takes time to do.  God forbid you dont get instant gratification out of the game.  Maybe earning your lvls and enhancements is what the devs intended.

One thing that bothers me is saying they are only out for your money.  Well no sh!t, they dont make these games out of the goodness of their hearts.  These people have families to feed and bills to pay just like the rest of us.  Saying they only want your money because they make you pay a subscription fee is ludicrous.  Just be glad thats not all they want or you would see alot more schemes to get your money while you are playing the game they made.  If they really only wanted money and as much as possible they would add things like equipment you have to pay real money for.  Classes you have to buy to use that no one else can use unless they buy that class too.  Paying to get double exp for a couple days would be a great way for them to earn alittle extra cash.  Want a totally awesome pet almost no one has???  Pay some cash and hes yours.  Dont they add free content every couple months?  Last I checked they did.  Face it if they really wanted your money there is so much more they could do to get every cent out of you.

Face it if they really wanted your money there is so much more they could do to get every cent out of you.

Besides the fact that no one would pay, they've started doing this very thing with server and name changes.  Ten bucks a name change or to move a toon to another server???  Ouch!

But the point you seem to be missing is that with a subscription-based product, you just need to keep the subs going.  You can do that by making a great game everyone would gladly pay twice as much to play, or you can do it by making a mediocre game that just so happens to be the only one of its kind around (and the fanboys will never let you forget it).

CoX is a mediocre product at best and - if you read any of the other comments about the game on this thread -  you'd notice I'm not the only one writing that it's a horrible grind.  It has no end game for people who get to 50 because - according to Emmert himself - the game isn't about arriving, it's about the journey.  I see.  So then why make it a level-based game at all???

It's because when you create a goal people are going to want to achieve it.  And if you charge a sub and make achieving that goal take as long as you feasibly think you can, you're going to get more money out of people.

Cryptic could care less whether the customers have fun, because it's ultimately all about the marketing.  Sell people on the idea that you can be a virtual super hero, and some people will pay to play no matter how badly the product sucks. 

So they produce a grinder that lets people think they're playing super hero, and they get away with it because - after all - it's "the only super hero MMO in town."  And the reason they can continue to charge subs for this gawd-awful snoozer is because there are just enough people - like you - willing to pay for garbage.

Enjoy!

P.S.  Guild Wars charges no monthly sub and - based solely on sales of the game client alone - has been able to roll out 2 whole stand-alone additional games, an expansion, a mission pack, regular game updates - including a new zone (Sorrow's Furnace, which came out within months after the original's release) and is developing a new MMO that is getting huge run in gamer rags right now: all without charging any sub at all!  Get that?  They made huge coin on GW because it's an excellent product that millions of people want to play.

City of devs rely on the idea that CoX is the only super hero/super villain game in town.  As such, it can afford to suck.  If GW had the kind of grind CoX did, it would've folded a long time ago.  Still, GW has sold more than 4 million units.  Cryptic is happy when they can report 170,000 players.  Big difference.

After reading Serling's comments I have to make a few of my own.

Blasters weren't nerfed, they got defiance before anyone else got their specific AT ability.  Only if you try to keep your health at 5% is this risky to use, my blaster tries to stay around the 30% range and gets a decent damage buff.

If you really did have a 25 warshade, you should be plowing through blues and greens in Nova form.  Unless of course you screwed up your slotting.  I found that 4 slotting Nova itself with 2 tohit buffs and 2 endurance mods is all you really need.  My warshade is 31, but I've kept my Nova nuke powers at 4 slots so I can work on my Dwarf slotting.  I can solo on Rugged and only run in to problems when I meet a Quantum or Void mob.  So I'm guessing you just messed up your slotting if you are "constantly in a life or death struggle with blues and greens".

Soloing is always slower than grouping.  That is a fact in any game.  However, tell a MM that he's going too "slow" when he's running through his missions.  Besides, xp debt is just mildly annoying.  There is actually a cap, so you can only get so much debt.  Not to mention paying off the debt actually earns credit towards a badge.  With the addition of teleporters and temp travel powers from safeguard/mayhem missions the game is, by far, hardly designed to slow down progression.

Quality of life issues are there if you just look for them.  Why do I need to transfer inf to one of my toons?  I can take my 50, drop some 50 enhancements in base storage, logon my alt and have him take them out and sell them.   I've been doing that since CoV came out, i do not have any need for a inf transfer to myself.

Stealth and Invis weren't "nerfed" they were being used to exploit.  Before the change I could take my scrapper, invis and run through a whole mission and click on everything and then "win" without ever fighting a thing.  That isn't what they had in mind, they wanted me to have to fight through the guards.  SO they fixed it.  Besides, you're only visible for 10 secs then you re-stealth.  Position yourself right and you can still click the glowie without aggro.

The drop mission option is hardly "free xp".  It's once a week, not exactly power leveling myself if I rely on that "free xp" now am I?  It was put it for casual people to get passed a mission that can't do alone OR to complete a bugged mission if they don't want to wait for support. 

NCSoft doesn't treat it's customers like dirt.  They added the veteran rewards as a way of saying thanks to those long term players.  They are adding Dual Blades powerset and weapon customization in Issue 11, both of which the players have asked for.  Everyone whines about pre-Issue 3 but the game is better now that it was before.  Now people actually have to think about slotting instead of the "old days" of Accuracy(1) and Damage(5).

If you don't like the pace of leveling then either (1) turn up difficulty or (2) join a team.  Unless you played EQ1 in the old days you have No concept of what grinding really is.  If I need magic salvage for whatever reason, all I need to do is run missions with magic-based mobs.  I can also hit the Market if I am really impatient and just buy the dern thing I want. 

So in conclusion I find your posts Serling to be extremely bitter and very misleading.  I have had issues with SOE before, yet I do not go blasting them on every forum whenever someone mentions them or one of their products.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but yours is laced with resentment and half-truths.

After reading Serling's comments I have to make a few of my own.

Written like a dev or  fanboy.   Which one are you again?

Defiance is completely stupid and was NEVER needed before ED! 

Soloing is always slower than grouping.  That is a fact in any game.

Demonstrably NOT true.  XP rewards in Guild Wars actually increase for soloers.  But then, with a level cap of only 20, Guild Wars isn't a grind, either. 

Mildly annoying or not, XP debt is PRECISELY designed to slow levelling even further than it already is, adding yet more frustration and grind to an already god-awful grindfest.

My slotting is fine, thank you.  I know how to play the game and the bottom line is my Warshade was more powerful before all the nerfs rolled down on him, as well as all my other toons.

BTW, half the comments you make are in regards to CoV, which I don't own or play.  I didn't and don't have a base or don't belong to any Supergroup, so most of your points don't apply to my situation.  Transfering influence the way people like me have to do it is a waste of time and effort, not to mention extremely risky.

You COMPLETELY missed the point about the stealth nerfs: Emmert decries "free XP" and so nerfs the use of stealth in "find all" missions, only later to give "free xp" to people who abandon missions altogether!   Again, the devs directing players on how players should play the game and how to have "fun" doing it, while hypocritically offering rewards for doing NOTHING!   Sorry, that's just stupid in my book.

Yes, I'm bitter, because I signed up on January 21, 2005 to play a game about super heroes, and spent hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars to do just that.  Within a couple months, the game was taken in a whole new direction - not unlike the CU and NGE in SWG - and toons I had spent all that time and money to play were trashed by people who don't give a damn about anything but the bottom line.  NCSoft can keep their veteran rewards.  I'll resub in a heartbeat if I can play my toons on an Issue 3 server again, free from all the nerfs this game has experienced.  If I wanted crafting in a game, I'd play Wow. What I'd rather have is the feeling you get from playing a super hero again.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but yours is laced with resentment and half-truths.

And yours are laced with half-truths and an undying love for everything these devs have ever done or will ever do.  Hardly makes your point of view any more "objective" now, does it?

Originally posted by mkpvpks

  Tell me one MMO that isnt a grindfest and has more than 20 lvls.

 

 

Way to argue GW you totally owned me.

How long ago was issue 3?  Get over it.  If you dont like it dont play.  Here's an idea get CoV so you can play the full game.

You know if they start a issue 3 server they are going to charge you $10.00 to move your characters to it.

MUWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAAA!!!!!

Here's an idea get CoV so you can play the full game.

Yeah, right.  And be twice as bored???  No thanks.

BTW, next time you cite something, make sure you're citing in context.  My point about GW to you wasn't about grind or the lack thereof.  It was to illustrate how a really good ftp game can make a hell of a lot more money than a mediocre grinder, a point that seemed to be completely lost on you.

You know if they start a issue 3 server they are going to charge you $10.00 to move your characters to it.

MUWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAAAA!!!!!

Not if I re-roll on it.  And I'd be willing to bet I'd get to 50 before you do and have a hell of a lot more fun along the way. 

P.S. To all: stop the ad hominem attacks.  I'm discussing the game, NOT you!  I'd appreciate the same consideration!

If GW had the kind of grind CoX did, it would've folded a long time ago.

CoX continually puts out free content.  Every 4 months or so they are called Issues.  I pay to play the full version of CoX.  In the full version by that I mean CoH and CoV soloing is simple if you know what you are doing.  SG bases are great and police scanner and paper missions mean I get to pick and choose what type of mission I run.  If I want to make the game more challenging I adjust the difficulty at the fateweaver.  As for infamy and or influence that is no problem either.  If you know how to work the black market you can make 100k in 30min with only 100 to start with.  If you have the full version of the game just transfer enhancements to your alt using your supergroup base and sell them.  As for being the only super hero MMO on the market I dont see anyone coming along to replace them.  CoX doesnt make anyone play their game.  People pay to play because they want to not because its the only super hero MMO.  No one is going to play a game they hate just because its about super heroes.  Id love to think no one is that stupid.

Yeah I've gotta say I'm really enjoying myself in CoH, and I've been at it for about a year and a half now.  I love the character creation.  Working on a good build that's balanced for PvP and PvE is kind of a hobby ^_^.  I also really like the costume creation options and how that all works at the tailor shops.

I found the new invention system really added to the game.  Now I'm working on the "right" power set-up, and on getting the right invention sets to enhance those powers.  I've got some nifty winged boots for my ArcAngel character too, a very nice loot drop that came with the inventions.

I like the PvP in Siren's call and in Recluse Victory, especially when there are teams of heroes going up against teams of villains.  The team PvP really rocks the house for me.  I can do it solo with my scrapper, but I just find the team dynamics really add to the fun.

I'm also enjoying the safeguard missions and the new Rikti Warzone a lot for PVE.  They added some variety to the mission types that I find keeps the games interesting for me.  

Two things have really stood out for me in CoH: it's fun and it works.  I very rarely encounter in-game bugs, and when I have (I think on 3 occasions), the customer support has been good.  I got npc characters unstuck within 5 or 10 minutes of submitting a petition.  That was really a pleasant surprise.

Our S.G. has some really excellent people in it, our leader decorates the "batcave" (supergroup base) to match the seasons lol.  It's a lot of fun.  I'm just having a really good time, and thought I'd share -_^.

Having been amused by Serling's wall-of-text commentary on CoH/V, I feel the need to comment on them.

Serling is a good vocal representation of how some players felt about the power nerfs that occurred for some archetypes (ATs) over two years ago. The biggest problem the game faced then was the ATs were horribly unbalanced in some instances. Fire Tanks could take on a whole map of spawns by themselves with no risk. Post lvl 30 or so, Fire Controllers were unstoppable due to their Fire Imps (which has already been mentioned in another post). And there were other overpowered behaviours.

At the same time, other ATs couldn't keep up - as Serling comments, Blasters (although popular) couldn't keep up with certain Tank / Controller damage outputs and had trouble surviving the same situations. So a number of game changes were made that flattened this powergap difference considerably. Some players really, really hated the changes and left. Typically they said that CoH no longer let them be superheroes anymore.

However, imo, the fact that a Tank actually now requires a team to take on a map full of enemies is a good thing and good to the long-term game health of CoH. Yes, some overpowered builds still exist, but they aren't as exceptionally overpowered as they once were. And imo you still feel like a superhero when taking on 3 (or more) enemies at the one time and winning, or sending an opponent spinning over a bannister in full ragdoll mode.

Stealth suppression is no big thing. It just means you can't 'click the glowie' while an enemy is standing right next to you. Serling's comparison of the 'free xp' of stealth supression to the drop-a-mission option isn't valid, given that you have to wait 7 days between a single automatic mission drop (which was put in place to help players out of bugged / problematic missions) but could conceivably run 10 stealth missions an hour, especially with the radio / newspaper mission systems in place. Even with stealth suppression, you could probably do very well if you just wanted to grind out stealth missions.

As for Serling's comments on the state of the game today based on 5 minutes of play: seriously, that's a weaksauce argument. A short-resub after a (long?) break isn't enough to say, "OMG, this game is broken because I can't pwnzz0r the first mobs I came across!". CoH is no longer for Serling - that's fine. But talking about the game two years ago (as well as the tired, tired commentary on Jack Emmert) has little do to with what CoH/V is today.

Also, comparing GW to CoH/V is another weak comparision, since GW is a F2P (after box purchase) PVP orientated game, while CoH/V is a sub-based PVE game. GW can say they have 4 million players since they sold 4 million boxes, but I don't believe they have ever released an active player number. CoH/V has never released  its number of box sales so a direct comparison with GW isn't possible, but they do have (at last measure) 150k odd subs as well as releasing 10 free content updates since launch (I6, or the CoV launch, did have some features that were free to all players, even if they didn't buy CoV). Sub numbers for CoH/V have actually gone up in the past year. Virtue and Freedom are the most populated servers.

So, all in all (and imo) CoH/V isn't the awful nerfed game that Serling likes to make out. Sure, it's not perfect - if all you do is grind missions, then you are going to get very bored - but I've found playing it a few hours a week is pretty fun (and I've been doing that since beta). The community is pretty good, so most pick up groups are at least functional (if not fun to be in) and you can solo as easily as group (and may prefer to solo if you want to maximise your changes of getting salvage drops).

If you are at all interested in CoH/V, do the trial 14 days. At least you can then decide for yourself.

Originally posted by Serling

And yes, there are people addicted enough to the super hero genre that they would pay to play Pong if the ball wore tights.  Such are the kind of people who continue to pay to play that nerfed-up piece of crap called CoH.

It didn't, and your overgeneralisation is wrong. I'm sure there are some people who obsessively buy every superhero game that comes out. But enough to support an allegedly awful MMO for 2+ years such that it is profitable? That seems very unlikely.

Originally posted by Stradden

 

Originally posted by lmzz

Now, why does MMORPG decide to make an article about the free trial of game as old as CoH? It´s called purchased editorial content. PlayNC obviously paid to get this story out. Not that I care but that´s how it´s gotta be

I'm going to stop you right there. I take major exception to this accusation. Never before has ANY feature content been paid for by ANY game company here at MMORPG.com. The fact that you would imply it is, frankly, insulting.  I take pride in my work and the fact that MMORPG.com doesn't take money for editorial content.

 

I wrote this article because I was playing the game, and thought that it would make a good "At A Glance".  Also, it's my job.

The only "paid for" parts of this site are the advertisements.

I hope that clears things up for you.

Now, you state that I´m wrong and if I am I stand corrected and I apologize. In my line of work, which is the advertisment business, buying editorial content occurs all the time though and that´s not nec. a bad thing in my world and I just called it as I saw it.

So a number of game changes were made that flattened this powergap difference considerably.

"Devspeak" and "Fanboy spin" aside, we agree: the game was nerfed to hell.  

BTW, stealth suppression - like travel suppression - was a mechaninc the devs originally created and let the players use FOR MORE THAN A YEAR before deciding it was an "exploit."  I wrote this before, and I'll write it again for your benefit: if it were such a "game-breaking" exploit, as Emmert & Company alleged, why the hell wait MORE THAN A YEAR TO FIX IT???

If you're going to charge a monthly sub for a game, you damn well better have issues like this fixed BEFORE you start charging people to play it.  And if you can't, you better just swallow your pride and think of something else to fix, NOT wait more than a year and decide it's "broken"!

See, what you don't seem to "get" is that when you create a series of expectations, let them become "reality" (in a completely virtual sense), then start charging money to let people play the game, THEN more than a year later completely change how the game is played by TAKING THINGS AWAY FROM THEM, then people should have a right to get pissed about that!

How would you like it if I charged you hundreds of dollars to let you rent my Viper for a week, let you drive it the way YOU wanted for the first hour, THEN replaced it with a Yugo and said, "now go have fun!" 

I'd be willing to bet you'd be b!tching on every auto rental site in the country and - it goes without saying - you'd be awfully pissed at me for screwing you!

You're right: people who start playing the game now won't know how badly the game has been nerfed, and I'd be willing to bet the "brain surgeons" at Cryptic are glad customers - like me - left, so they don't have to read it anymore. 

But my advice to anyone looking to play this game is simply this: don't pay for more than a month at a time, and DON'T let them auto-bill your credit card!  You'll never know when you'll end up feeling the same way I did about this POS and the idiot devs who screwed people like me out of hundreds of dollars, because it WILL happen!  It's only a matter of time.

/end rant

P.S. 42 posts in 3 years?  Is this the name and account you use to refute your critics, Jack???  Just wondering...

Originally posted by Serling

If you're going to charge a monthly sub for a game, you damn well better have issues like this fixed BEFORE you start charging people to play it.  And if you can't, you better just swallow your pride and think of something else to fix, NOT wait more than a year and decide it's "broken"!

See, what you don't seem to "get" is that when you create a series of expectations, let them become "reality" (in a completely virtual sense), then start charging money to let people play the game, THEN more than a year later completely change how the game is played by TAKING THINGS AWAY FROM THEM, then people should have a right to get pissed about that!

How would you like it if I charged you hundreds of dollars to let you rent my Viper for a week, let you drive it the way YOU wanted for the first hour, THEN replaced it with a Yugo and said, "now go have fun!" 

I'd be willing to bet you'd be b!tching on every auto rental site in the country and - it goes without saying - you'd be awfully pissed at me for screwing you!

You're right: people who start playing the game now won't know how badly the game has been nerfed, and I'd be willing to bet the "brain surgeons" at Cryptic are glad customers - like me - left, so they don't have to read it anymore. 

But my advice to anyone looking to play this game is simply this: don't pay for more than a month at a time, and DON'T let them auto-bill your credit card!  You'll never know when you'll end up feeling the same way I did about this POS and the idiot devs who screwed people like me out of hundreds of dollars, because it WILL happen!  It's only a matter of time.

/end rant

 

This should be required reading for all MMO fans wanting to be taken seriously when debating games:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy

 In addition, I would be quite curious to know if anyone can mention a MMO that lasted over 3 years that did *NOT* have a serious re-tuning at some point in the game's life post-beta.

 Here is another link for those of you who are actually (astonishingly) interested:

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/

 I respect the right for everyone to have their opinion, and concede that I am not, in any way, an MMO 'expert'.

However, respectfully,  someone thinking that a large 'nerf' or 're-tooling' is unexpected.... perhaps  you should re-evaluate whether or not your 'expectations' are rational.

For the record, I have played at least 3 games that were 're-tooled' whilst i played them & hurt so bad I can remember all 3 situations vividly, and remember being angry.

However, IMHO, in all 3 instances, the overall 'health' of all 3 games was better off after the changes.

In addition, I also think it is implausable to expect devs to figure out all the deviant ways us genius malcontents can break a game using a skill they have handed us by day #1 gold.

/2cents

EVE Online
Time VS Bucks
It airily entered my life. I made the first character on EVE online in 2005. The amazing interface, control, the stars distribute in the galaxies. Everything lets me infatuated. The auto update saved my time a lot. However I need plenty of ISK to buy ships, I have not enough time to rush pirates or mining to get much ISK. The GTC was the best way to change my bucks to ISK. I was told some guys have the better ways to get ISK, I mean the cheaper and quickly transfer, anyone knows?

Congratulations!  You can cut and paste links!  Kudos!  Now, please lower yourself for a moment to tell us why you think there are logical fallacies in my argument. 

Your defense of this nerfed-up POS is no more objective than my disdain for it and the people who screwed their customers.  Play it if you will, but let others read my warning and take it for what they paid for it.

Originally posted by Serling

Face it if they really wanted your money there is so much more they could do to get every cent out of you.

Besides the fact that no one would pay, they've started doing this very thing with server and name changes.  Ten bucks a name change or to move a toon to another server???  Ouch!

But the point you seem to be missing is that with a subscription-based product, you just need to keep the subs going.  You can do that by making a great game everyone would gladly pay twice as much to play, or you can do it by making a mediocre game that just so happens to be the only one of its kind around (and the fanboys will never let you forget it).

CoX is a mediocre product at best and - if you read any of the other comments about the game on this thread -  you'd notice I'm not the only one writing that it's a horrible grind.  It has no end game for people who get to 50 because - according to Emmert himself - the game isn't about arriving, it's about the journey.  I see.  So then why make it a level-based game at all???

It's because when you create a goal people are going to want to achieve it.  And if you charge a sub and make achieving that goal take as long as you feasibly think you can, you're going to get more money out of people.

Cryptic could care less whether the customers have fun, because it's ultimately all about the marketing.  Sell people on the idea that you can be a virtual super hero, and some people will pay to play no matter how badly the product sucks. 

So they produce a grinder that lets people think they're playing super hero, and they get away with it because - after all - it's "the only super hero MMO in town."  And the reason they can continue to charge subs for this gawd-awful snoozer is because there are just enough people - like you - willing to pay for garbage.

Enjoy!

P.S.  Guild Wars charges no monthly sub and - based solely on sales of the game client alone - has been able to roll out 2 whole stand-alone additional games, an expansion, a mission pack, regular game updates - including a new zone (Sorrow's Furnace, which came out within months after the original's release) and is developing a new MMO that is getting huge run in gamer rags right now: all without charging any sub at all!  Get that?  They made huge coin on GW because it's an excellent product that millions of people want to play.

City of devs rely on the idea that CoX is the only super hero/super villain game in town.  As such, it can afford to suck.  If GW had the kind of grind CoX did, it would've folded a long time ago.  Still, GW has sold more than 4 million units.  Cryptic is happy when they can report 170,000 players.  Big difference.

First how do you know no one will pay if cryptic do this or that? Pure speculation.

You keep asserting your view that CoX sucks while some others here are less negative.  So what? you do not play it, fine.  You do not need to criticize others as fanboys simply b/c others do not see things your way, and pay to play a game you do not want to pay.  Can we turn the table around and call you hateboy?  Same reason same logic, you are as much hateboy as the subscribers are fanboy.

Cryptic could care less ... oh you know Mr Cyptic in person?  A business who do not care about its clients will not last so many years, not with competition.  Is CoX the only fancy game? is CoX the only shooting game? is CoX the only what?  I have many games I can play, including console games.  I choose to play CoH for 1.5 years and later CoV for almost a year.  That is my choice with my money, why slam me and others for playing it?  Its bad to you, its fun to me during those days, period.  I do not need you to educate me on what is fun.  I respect your views, but not the way you put it across.  It borders on dictatorship.

"and the reason why they can charge subs for this gawd aweful snoozers is that there are enough people ... to pay for this garbage".  Watch your words!  What make you the ultimate judge on what is good and worth spending money on?   You can tell me how much you do not like it, I will try to read your words and judge for myself, why do you feel so upset when you see a lot of people not agreeing with you and continue to sponsor Cryptic?  You have a personal grudge with Cryptic?

GW and CoX are two very different types of games, and 2 ways of doing business.  It is hard to give a simple ruling on which is better, I did played both, but CoX gave me better memories.  That is my view.  Why?  b/c there is far more customisation and variety ingame than the GW for PVE.  GW's first installments are pure PVP fests in my view, the PVE is a joke, its all instancing, so you can only interact with people inside towns, or the few you take with you into the instance.  And the instance is really "fun"n GW, one linear route, you cannot deviate from the route.  You cannot explore, its just a one way lane with fixed mobs and one linear story line.  Sorry this is not my cup of PVE.  As for PVP, well GW is fun for a while but the PVP maps are not varied enough and I left the game early.  It never kept me interested enough to wait for the first expansion.

I do not agree with your ranking of GW way above CoX.  But I respect your judgment, and I would not bash you or label you a fanboy.  To each his own.  Try learn to respect mine and others' view.

Originally posted by Serling

Congratulations!  You can cut and paste links!  Kudos!  Now, please lower yourself for a moment to tell us why you think there are logical fallacies in my argument. 

Your defense of this nerfed-up POS is no more objective than my disdain for it and the people who screwed their customers.  Play it if you will, but let others read my warning and take it for what they paid for it.

Yes opinion is not objective, but to put it across in such an arrogant manner is not very persuasive.

This will be my last reply to Serling, who obviously doesn't understand what I've said before, doesn't care about what I said before or just is very bitter about NCSoft in general.

Neither dev nor fanboy here.  Starting off your post with cheap immature insults is certainately not the way to start off a mature rebuttal. 

Defiance is hardly "stupid" which seems to make me believe more you don't actually have a 50 blaster.  It was added back when blasters were "the squishies" to give them a little something to make them unique.  Never try to maintain the full bonus at 5% health, that would just show you don't know how to play a Blaster.  If you want to talk "stupid" Defenders' ability is rather weak, does little unless you're in a large team.

Soloing is slower than grouping, even in Guild Wars.  Even if someone goes "solo" they rarely actually go with just their character, taking some NPCS or the Hero NPC introduced with Nightfall.  So if you go with a full team of NPCS you aren't actually soloing.  Just this time the other group mates are AI controlled instead of player.

XP Debt is a penalty for dying.  Most games have some kind of penalty if you die, some harsh some not.  EQ1 you die your body, with all your gear, lies at the feet of the mob that ate you.  You lose xp, possibly a level as well.   WoW you die you have to run back to the instance and take a small hit to item durability.  These are probably the 2 extremes, so in that respect XP Debt is closer to WoW's so is "mildly annoying".  Plus as I said paying off debt earns credit towards a badge.  For the impatient people exemplar down and get it paid off twice as fast.  If NCSoft designed XP debt as a way to slow leveling, then why did they half all XP debt you get inside missions?  Would seem to defeat the "purpose" of your slow level grind theory.

You said your WS slotting is fine.  If so, why do claim to have problems with greens/blues yet people playing Khelds now do not have the same trouble?  If I get a Defeat X mission. or join a team with one, I purposely look for large groups of Mob X and nuke em down with my Nova.  Nuke powers are Acc(1) and Dam(3), so they will actually get better once I'm satisfied with my Dwarf slotting and begin to allocate accordingly.  Only problem I would have is if there are Quantums or Voids in the group, which would be expected.

I would have to say you completely missed the point of Stealth as well.  Also you seem to be hung up on dropping missions as "free xp".  Previously my Scrapper with Invis could complete a Click X Glowies mission in a couple minutes.  In theory if all I got were those kinds I could complete a whole story arc in under a half hour.  That was not what they intended so they fixed it.  They intended Mission X to be a climactic battle with The Bad Guy and then you get Item Z back, instead people were walking behind him and clicking on a glowie for Mission Complete. 

Now the drop mission is once per week, I can not fathom how you think that once per week is somehow giving away "free xp".  Some missions can't actually be dropped if they lead to a story arc reward or AV usually.  This wasn't put in to reward people for doing nothing this was to assist players with getting by (1) a mission they have trouble doing or (2) a bugged mission they don't want to wait for support for.

You say you didn't want crafting so the game sucks.  The crafting isn't at all like WoW, if you were actually playing you'd know that.  I didn't want the Arenas yet I kept playing.  You really long for the days where slotting all was Attack powers 1 acc, 5 dam?  Where archtypes had no unique abilities?  Brutes may take exception to losing Fury and Tankers would be unhappy losing aggro to the 1acc/5dam blaster that can't stop over nuking.  The days where the whole team zones in, stands there with Boombox emote, while the Invis guy goes and clicks on the glowies... Mission Complete. 

Finally in conclusion there is no "undying love" for the devs.  I gave detailed points and counter points to support my opinion.  I pointed out flaws and inaccuracies and was "fanboy attacked" for it.   You admitted you're bitter so there will be nothing more I can say.  Continue your ranting, I will move on to another thread. 

Good day.

Originally posted by Serling

Congratulations!  You can cut and paste links!  Kudos!  Now, please lower yourself for a moment to tell us why you think there are logical fallacies in my argument. 

Your defense of this nerfed-up POS is no more objective than my disdain for it and the people who screwed their customers.  Play it if you will, but let others read my warning and take it for what they paid for it.

If I rented a Viper from a company and, in the wording of the contract, the rental company stated "The rental company retains the right to exchange your Viper for a yugo at its discretion", then I would be foolish to expect that this would never happen.

 Moreover, if it did happen, I would (of course) retain the right to be mad, but would be defenseless against people who told me " Duh, your expectations are irrational".

   In every contract, EULA, License Agreement, ect of every MMO I have every played in, there are provisions for changing the game, nerfing, even provisions for serious amounts of "downtime".

  Fallacies that exist in your post include :

 A- Non Sequiter

B- False dilemma

C-Fallacy of the Consequent

D- Ad hominem

E- Perfect solution fallacy

F- Accident fallacy

G- Argumentum ad populum, Appeal to ignorance, Appeal to emotion

This isnt just a random list. They're all there imho.

An example of how this links to your post. This is non sequiter. (Since you wont go to the link):

Non sequitur is Latin for "it does not follow." In formal logic, an argument is a non sequitur if its conclusion does not follow from its premises.^[1] In a non sequitur, the conclusion can be either true or false, but the argument is a fallacy because the conclusion does not follow from the premise. All formal fallacies are specific types of non sequitur. The term has special applicability in law, having a formal legal definition.

Here are two types of non sequitur of traditional noteworthiness:

1) Any argument that takes the following form is a non sequitur:

1. If A is true, then B is true.
2. B is stated to be true.
3. Therefore, A must be true.

Even if the premises and conclusion are all true, the conclusion is not a necessary consequence of the premises. This sort of non sequitur is also called affirming the consequent.

An example of affirming the consequent would be:

1. If I am a human (A) then I am a mammal. (B)
2. I am a mammal. (B)
3. Therefore, I am a human. (A)

"I" could be another type of mammal without being a human. While the conclusion may be true, it does not follow from the premises. This argument is still a fallacy even if the conclusion is true. It is a non sequitur (note that it is the exact same argument form as in example 1 - the form is always a non sequitur).

 Viper Vs. CoH.

Viper: Probably have the right to be mad.. Typically is not stated in rental contracts that can be replaced with a yugo. Ergo, justified.

HOWEVER

CoH: Right to be mad. However, warned innumerable times in ToS, License, historical expectations, ect ect.

Conclusion

 Affirming the consequent/ Non sequiter argumentative fallacy.

2ndary: appeal to emotion and ignorance.

 Dont get me wrong. I wish MMO's could be as perfect  as you obviously *expect*.

I dont think CoH is a perfect MMO.

I, too, get angry when a char i have put time, effort, and money into gets 'nerfed' 'borked' or 'destroyed'.

 However, again, irrational expectations.

Originally posted by DrowNoble

This will be my last reply to Serling, who obviously doesn't understand what I've said before, doesn't care about what I said before or just is very bitter about NCSoft in general.

Neither dev nor fanboy here.  Starting off your post with cheap immature insults is certainately not the way to start off a mature rebuttal. 

Defiance is hardly "stupid" which seems to make me believe more you don't actually have a 50 blaster.  It was added back when blasters were "the squishies" to give them a little something to make them unique.  Never try to maintain the full bonus at 5% health, that would just show you don't know how to play a Blaster.  If you want to talk "stupid" Defenders' ability is rather weak, does little unless you're in a large team.

Soloing is slower than grouping, even in Guild Wars.  Even if someone goes "solo" they rarely actually go with just their character, taking some NPCS or the Hero NPC introduced with Nightfall.  So if you go with a full team of NPCS you aren't actually soloing.  Just this time the other group mates are AI controlled instead of player.

XP Debt is a penalty for dying.  Most games have some kind of penalty if you die, some harsh some not.  EQ1 you die your body, with all your gear, lies at the feet of the mob that ate you.  You lose xp, possibly a level as well.   WoW you die you have to run back to the instance and take a small hit to item durability.  These are probably the 2 extremes, so in that respect XP Debt is closer to WoW's so is "mildly annoying".  Plus as I said paying off debt earns credit towards a badge.  For the impatient people exemplar down and get it paid off twice as fast.  If NCSoft designed XP debt as a way to slow leveling, then why did they half all XP debt you get inside missions?  Would seem to defeat the "purpose" of your slow level grind theory.

You said your WS slotting is fine.  If so, why do claim to have problems with greens/blues yet people playing Khelds now do not have the same trouble?  If I get a Defeat X mission. or join a team with one, I purposely look for large groups of Mob X and nuke em down with my Nova.  Nuke powers are Acc(1) and Dam(3), so they will actually get better once I'm satisfied with my Dwarf slotting and begin to allocate accordingly.  Only problem I would have is if there are Quantums or Voids in the group, which would be expected.

I would have to say you completely missed the point of Stealth as well.  Also you seem to be hung up on dropping missions as "free xp".  Previously my Scrapper with Invis could complete a Click X Glowies mission in a couple minutes.  In theory if all I got were those kinds I could complete a whole story arc in under a half hour.  That was not what they intended so they fixed it.  They intended Mission X to be a climactic battle with The Bad Guy and then you get Item Z back, instead people were walking behind him and clicking on a glowie for Mission Complete. 

Now the drop mission is once per week, I can not fathom how you think that once per week is somehow giving away "free xp".  Some missions can't actually be dropped if they lead to a story arc reward or AV usually.  This wasn't put in to reward people for doing nothing this was to assist players with getting by (1) a mission they have trouble doing or (2) a bugged mission they don't want to wait for support for.

You say you didn't want crafting so the game sucks.  The crafting isn't at all like WoW, if you were actually playing you'd know that.  I didn't want the Arenas yet I kept playing.  You really long for the days where slotting all was Attack powers 1 acc, 5 dam?  Where archtypes had no unique abilities?  Brutes may take exception to losing Fury and Tankers would be unhappy losing aggro to the 1acc/5dam blaster that can't stop over nuking.  The days where the whole team zones in, stands there with Boombox emote, while the Invis guy goes and clicks on the glowies... Mission Complete. 

Finally in conclusion there is no "undying love" for the devs.  I gave detailed points and counter points to support my opinion.  I pointed out flaws and inaccuracies and was "fanboy attacked" for it.   You admitted you're bitter so there will be nothing more I can say.  Continue your ranting, I will move on to another thread. 

Good day.

 

Honestly when I read Serling's posts I couldn't believe it was about the same game I've been playing for the past year and a half.  I've really enjoyed myself, and have had good customer service as well.  Well, I guess we all see through different lenses.  I respect others' views, but I've had a very positive experience, and appreciate it after the stuff I went through with the Star Wars NGE.  The communication and customer service in CoH has been consistently far better than what I was used to in SWG.  It's been very refreshing.

Renting a car =/ (does not equal) paying a subscription fee to play a game.

They are both payment for services contracts.  The product or service doesn't matter.  The payment for services is what defines the contractual relationship, ergo it is analogous!

If I rented a Viper from a company and, in the wording of the contract, the rental company stated "The rental company retains the right to exchange your Viper for a yugo at its discretion", then I would be foolish to expect that this would never happen.

The actual wording of the EULA says "game experience MAY change".  It doesn't indicate anywhere in the EULA that it WILL change.  If you're going to parse the language, look up the difference between "may" and "will."

The rest of your post looks like nothing more than a cut and paste job, so I'm not even going to bother addressing it.

I would have to say you completely missed the point of Stealth as well.  Also you seem to be hung up on dropping missions as "free xp".

Last post to you as well:

The point about the stealth nerf was in reference to Emmert's oft stated disdain for no reward without risk.  In his world, free xp is apparently tantamount to kidnapping.  Fine.  But then don't turn around and in an act of sheer and utter hypocrisy create a reward for doing nothing at all!

Get it now???

Apparently free XP is OK now under certain circumstances.  Fine.  Now that we've established that we can get free xp, let's negotiate.  We've established what the Cryptic devs are.  Now we're just haggling over "price."

These devs have always said one thing and done exactly the opposite, even when it came to telling us to six-slot powers they KNEW in a matter of weeks would not be worth a damn six-slotted!

You love the game.  Great!  I get that.  Feel the way you do about it, and I'll feel as I do.  I'm not asking you to change your views, only warning those who might wish to try it what a god-awful grind it is, and how - like me - you can spend hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours building a toon only to see all your time and money wasted!  That's hundres of dollars and hundreds of hours I'll NEVER GET BACK!  Maybe you're OK with a company like Cryptic and its devs treating its customers like dirt, but I'm not!

Maybe you people don't feel cheated by these cretins, but I do, so don't tell me how I should feel about my experience with them, OK?!?

AMF.

Originally posted by ArcAngel3

Originally posted by DrowNoble

This will be my last reply to Serling, who obviously doesn't understand what I've said before, doesn't care about what I said before or just is very bitter about NCSoft in general.

Neither dev nor fanboy here.  Starting off your post with cheap immature insults is certainately not the way to start off a mature rebuttal. 

Defiance is hardly "stupid" which seems to make me believe more you don't actually have a 50 blaster.  It was added back when blasters were "the squishies" to give them a little something to make them unique.  Never try to maintain the full bonus at 5% health, that would just show you don't know how to play a Blaster.  If you want to talk "stupid" Defenders' ability is rather weak, does little unless you're in a large team.

Soloing is slower than grouping, even in Guild Wars.  Even if someone goes "solo" they rarely actually go with just their character, taking some NPCS or the Hero NPC introduced with Nightfall.  So if you go with a full team of NPCS you aren't actually soloing.  Just this time the other group mates are AI controlled instead of player.

XP Debt is a penalty for dying.  Most games have some kind of penalty if you die, some harsh some not.  EQ1 you die your body, with all your gear, lies at the feet of the mob that ate you.  You lose xp, possibly a level as well.   WoW you die you have to run back to the instance and take a small hit to item durability.  These are probably the 2 extremes, so in that respect XP Debt is closer to WoW's so is "mildly annoying".  Plus as I said paying off debt earns credit towards a badge.  For the impatient people exemplar down and get it paid off twice as fast.  If NCSoft designed XP debt as a way to slow leveling, then why did they half all XP debt you get inside missions?  Would seem to defeat the "purpose" of your slow level grind theory.

You said your WS slotting is fine.  If so, why do claim to have problems with greens/blues yet people playing Khelds now do not have the same trouble?  If I get a Defeat X mission. or join a team with one, I purposely look for large groups of Mob X and nuke em down with my Nova.  Nuke powers are Acc(1) and Dam(3), so they will actually get better once I'm satisfied with my Dwarf slotting and begin to allocate accordingly.  Only problem I would have is if there are Quantums or Voids in the group, which would be expected.

I would have to say you completely missed the point of Stealth as well.  Also you seem to be hung up on dropping missions as "free xp".  Previously my Scrapper with Invis could complete a Click X Glowies mission in a couple minutes.  In theory if all I got were those kinds I could complete a whole story arc in under a half hour.  That was not what they intended so they fixed it.  They intended Mission X to be a climactic battle with The Bad Guy and then you get Item Z back, instead people were walking behind him and clicking on a glowie for Mission Complete. 

Now the drop mission is once per week, I can not fathom how you think that once per week is somehow giving away "free xp".  Some missions can't actually be dropped if they lead to a story arc reward or AV usually.  This wasn't put in to reward people for doing nothing this was to assist players with getting by (1) a mission they have trouble doing or (2) a bugged mission they don't want to wait for support for.

You say you didn't want crafting so the game sucks.  The crafting isn't at all like WoW, if you were actually playing you'd know that.  I didn't want the Arenas yet I kept playing.  You really long for the days where slotting all was Attack powers 1 acc, 5 dam?  Where archtypes had no unique abilities?  Brutes may take exception to losing Fury and Tankers would be unhappy losing aggro to the 1acc/5dam blaster that can't stop over nuking.  The days where the whole team zones in, stands there with Boombox emote, while the Invis guy goes and clicks on the glowies... Mission Complete. 

Finally in conclusion there is no "undying love" for the devs.  I gave detailed points and counter points to support my opinion.  I pointed out flaws and inaccuracies and was "fanboy attacked" for it.   You admitted you're bitter so there will be nothing more I can say.  Continue your ranting, I will move on to another thread. 

Good day.

 

Honestly when I read Serling's posts I couldn't believe it was about the same game I've been playing for the past year and a half.  I've really enjoyed myself, and have had good customer service as well.  Well, I guess we all see through different lenses.  I respect others' views, but I've had a very positive experience, and appreciate it after the stuff I went through with the Star Wars NGE.  The communication and customer service in CoH has been consistently far better than what I was used to in SWG.  It's been very refreshing.

One thing I appreciated about changes made to CoH over the past year and a half was that there was dialogue with me as a player about possible changes, pros and cons etc..  I didn't get that in SWG.  We got an entirely new game system "sprung" on us, right after we bought an expansion designed for professions that were about to be entirely deleted.  I also appreciate that CoH has tried to warn us of upcoming changes and their rationale for them.  I liked being able to buff the heavy bots in Recluse Victory, but I understand why they felt they should change that, and I respect their reasoning.  It didn't come as a bad surprise, nor was it senseless.  Also, after changes have been made, we've  always been given a free respec to modify our characters in light of the new changes.  So yes, I've seen changes to the game over time, but the core game mechanics have always remained the same, the changes have made use of player input/dialogue, we've been advised of upcoming changes and the rationale for them, and we've been given respecs (that work--another happy change from SWG) to help us adjust to the game changes.  So I can still understand people not liking changes to their game, but if they're made, my experience has been that the process is a lot more respectful and collaborative than what I was used to.  I've appreciated that.  When I felt robbed by SOE it was because I lost 3 entire mastered professions and 2 years worth of quest progress, and because this massive change was a very unpleasant surprise that rendered features I just bought in a new expansion useless.  Losing my ability to buff the heavies in CoH could be desribed as getting a flu shot (it was a bit painful, but I understand the reason for it).  The treatment I received from SOE was like a surprise decapitation.

I still respect someone else's right to be p.o.ed, but I wanted to highlight that comparing changes made in CoH to changes made via the NGE in StarWars Galaxies (comparison was made in one of Serling's posts I believe) is like comparing acorns to atom bombs.

Originally posted by Serling

Renting a car =/ (does not equal) paying a subscription fee to play a game.

They are both payment for services contracts.  The product or service doesn't matter.  The payment for services is what defines the contractual relationship, ergo it is analogous!

If I rented a Viper from a company and, in the wording of the contract, the rental company stated "The rental company retains the right to exchange your Viper for a yugo at its discretion", then I would be foolish to expect that this would never happen.

The actual wording of the EULA says "game experience MAY change".  It doesn't indicate anywhere in the EULA that it WILL change.  If you're going to parse the language, look up the difference between "may" and "will."

The rest of your post looks like nothing more than a cut and paste job, so I'm not even going to bother addressing it.

First when you pay subscription fees to play a game, you do not own the game, nor the alts you made or the sword or armor (none in CoX anyway).  You only got the right to play the game as presented by the developer, with allowances for them to shut down servers ...  The game is given as is, if you do not like it, sorry.  Your right is limited to playing it the way the developer likes to present it.  You do not enjoy the right to decide how the game should be designed, how the dice rolls, and how the mobs reacts, no no no.  The developer consults its clients on the web, message board or the test server as a courtesy, not as an obligation.

So if the game presented to you changes, you still enjoy the right to play as stipulated in the subscription, but you have no right to dictate when or how the game world be changed.  The game belongs to Cryptic, you do not own a share of Cryptic or the game.  NO.

All these are clearly delineated in the agreement you clicked AGREE before you can start playing a game.  Its a contract.  It is the contract you entered to with your payment.  You are all wrong, the payment for services does not define a contractual relationship.  Even if you enroll in a free game and hence no payment on your part, you are still bind by the contractual relationship when you click AGREE.  If you do not read it, its your problem.  If you violate the agreement when playing a free game, you are still legally liable.

The first dog I killed when I log on drop me a golden sword, when I log out and come back tomorrow, the game is twitched so that the dog no longer drop me a sword.  Time to call the sheriff.

If the game experience MAY change, than change is a possibility and you are forewarned.  If the weather guy says it may rain tomorrow, then you should be ready for it.  You MAY die if you jump off a tall building.  You might not die, but if you die, don't be surprised.  MAY =/= WILL, yes, but MAY =/= WILL NOT.  MAY means both are possible.  It may not happen today, it may happen tomorrow or the day after.

Originally posted by AlienShores

I still can't get to the article because of the incorrect link, but...

CoH has always been a game I *want* to love.  The character creation is great fun, those first 10 or 15 levels are lots of fun, but then you realize it's just more and more of the same.  I've always said CoH was one of the most polished games from day 1 that I've ever played and they really focused solely on the things they wanted to accomplish, but it's just too repetitive to keep me around.

The crafting wishes were met with the introduction of the auction house, and the recipe and ingredients drops.  It's a simple crafting system, and a simple economy, but they both work well and I find have a real fun factor.  I especially get excited when costume piece recipes drop, or when I get a rare ingredient that's needed for premium enhancement sets.

I found that the Safeguard mission expansion in I9 added some diversity to the PVE experience.  It was pretty cool to race against time to get the villains either before they rob the bank, or before they make it to the getaway truck.  With a large group, you also get to fight an archvillain in the bank.  Then what really made it interesting for me were the side missions you could unlock by finding and defeating the mobs with keys.  Each of the side missions is unique (stop an arson attempt, find contraband weapons, prevent a jailbreak etc.)  It's fast paced and has variety.  I still enjoy those.  I10 brought periodic alien invasions to spice things up, and a new high level zone full of missions.  These missions also add some variety.  Rescuing npc superheroes that fight alongside you against alien invaders is fun.  The zone also feels like more of an immersive world in that you can battle Rikti across the zone in open areas, and join in multi-team raids to plant explosives on the alien mother ship and bring it down.

I'm an SWG vet, so used to enjoy base-busting pvp.  I7, which came shortly after I started CoH added base busting to the mix in a high level PvP zone.  You can also use heavy robot "pets" in that zone, which is fun for me, since I play a healer mainly.

I'd still like to see another element added to the game to promote non-combat socialization.  I'm not sure what that would look like, but the game has been modified to try to address its earlier repetative nature.  I think the changes are on track, but there's room for more to come.

Soloing is slower than grouping, even in Guild Wars.  Even if someone goes "solo" they rarely actually go with just their character, taking some NPCS or the Hero NPC introduced with Nightfall.  So if you go with a full team of NPCS you aren't actually soloing.  Just this time the other group mates are AI controlled instead of player.

One final response to this bit of misinformation:

Tell this to the Assassins (A/Es), Ritualists, Elementalists (E/As), Warriors (W/Mos) and "55" Monks (Mo/Ws) who have solo builds that CAN solo - no heroes or NPCs - in places like the Underworld, Fissure of Woe, and other zones where they make huge loot and xp by farming whole zones!

In fact, guildwiki.org has lists of different solo farming builds people can link to and use to spec their characters for solo farming.

So yes, it is possible to solo in GW with the right build.  And when you do, killing the equivalent of a +6 minion (Hard Mode) yields 300 xp per kill.  With triple xp runes, that goes to 900 per kill!  Even in Normal Mode, killing a +4 minion yields 250 xp per kill!  And to get from one level to the next requires about 14,000 xp.  That's flat for every level (skill point) you get at level 20.  In CoH, you have to grind out 5 million XP just to get from level 40 to 50!!!  Yeah, there's no grind at all in CoH! 

But guess what?  With a level cap of 20, XP in GW doesn't really matter.  And now the A-Net devs are discussing no cap at all in GW2.  The level grind is what drives people to keep paying subs to play, because everyone who plays wants to reach that gold at the end of the rainbow.  Being a max-level toon is - for many players - a status symbol.  It means "I've arrived".  Take character progression via levelling out of the game, and you kill one more reason to grind, something the devs at Cryptic - apparently - know nothing about.

First when you pay subscription fees to play a game, you do not own the game, nor the alts you made or the sword or armor

Strawman.  I never said I did.  It's a rental agreement, not a purchase agreement. 

You do not enjoy the right to decide how the game should be designed, how the dice rolls, and how the mobs reacts, no no no.  The developer consults its clients on the web, message board or the test server as a courtesy, not as an obligation.

And when said developer - namely Jack Emmert - wrote repeatedly that they should listen to their customers, that they should provide more information on what they were doing, that the customers deserved better communication from the devs, THEY were the ones creating the expectations many of us in the early days had about this game!  Go back and read Emmert's comments from the beginning!  He was the one saying they should listen to the customers and nerf "as little as possible"!

So on the one hand, they obligated themselves to a level of service they were neither able nor prepared to offer!  That either makes them liars or incompetent, and while they had no contractual obligation to make the kind of promises they did regarding customer service - once they did THEY were the ones who created the unfulfilled expectations that pissed off a lot of people - even to this day!

Nerfs are one thing, but don't take my money then turn around and cheat and lie to me like I'm just a piece of dirt or an idiot!  That is why these people get my contempt!  If you can't "get that", that's your problem!

all these leads us to suspect your claim of "objectivity".

OMG!  LMAO!!!  Go back and re-read the thread and then please point out where I EVER claimed to be objective on this!

My point about objectivity was to illustrate how the defense of this product is no more objective than a disdain for it.  Clear enough for you now???

Originally posted by Serling

First when you pay subscription fees to play a game, you do not own the game, nor the alts you made or the sword or armor

Strawman.  I never said I did.  It's a rental agreement, not a purchase agreement. 

You do not enjoy the right to decide how the game should be designed, how the dice rolls, and how the mobs reacts, no no no.  The developer consults its clients on the web, message board or the test server as a courtesy, not as an obligation.

And when said developer - namely Jack Emmert - wrote repeatedly that they should listen to their customers, that they should provide more information on what they were doing, that the customers deserved better communication from the devs, THEY were the ones creating the expectations many of us in the early days had about this game!  Go back and read Emmert's comments from the beginning!  He was the one saying they should listen to the customers and nerf "as little as possible"!

So on the one hand, they obligated themselves to a level of service they were neither able nor prepared to offer!  That either makes them liars or incompetent, and while they had no contractual obligation to make the kind of promises they did regarding customer service - once they did THEY were the ones who created the unfulfilled expectations that pissed off a lot of people - even to this day!

Nerfs are one thing, but don't take my money then turn around and cheat and lie to me like I'm just a piece of dirt or an idiot!  That is why these people get my contempt!  If you can't "get that", that's your problem!

Yes the developer has suggested his intention to seek views from its players, including you but not just you.  I played CoX too along with a lot of friends, and there are thousands more online everyday.  I for one like the changes and spoke out against the Fire/cold tank, against the smoke tricks against chain summoning fire pets.  Yes I do not like the game to be trivialis after lvl 32 with fire imps and after 36 with slotted fire imps.  I welcome the change.  I know you love your overpowered pets, sorry man, play another alt.

Too bad the developer cannot satisfy the views of everyone, and these views are conflicting.  To each his own.  You do not like the change you stopped paying, others enjoyed the change they keep paying.  So?  That is it period.  Why keep posting here, criticising others who pays?  Express your wishes but if its not adopted, move on.

They do not take your money and go around lying.  You volunteer your own subscription, you try to buy an account and then maintain it with your own hands, not at gun point.  Your subscription carried no conditions binding the game developer to twink the alts to your liking.  You pay for it and regret now?  Oh well next time you go to a movie and find your favourite hero killed, go sue the movie director and ask for your money back.  He took your money and go around lying.

Stop posting emotion and start posting with reason.  Know your limits.  You are just 1 of a few tens of thousands of subscribers, and you only shore up $15 a month per account.  That is hardly enough to pay for the energy bill for an hour.  He does not serve you alone, control your ego.  His only obligation is to give you a login account to participate in the game world when the servers are not down.  Anything else you come yelling for is out of order, he does not owe you anything else.  Try to ask politely and reason, and if he does not immediately implement what you want, wait or go play another game.  That is your only option.  Until you got enough money to buy Cyptic or NCSoft, that is all you can do.

Wait for the next patch and hope, or quit.

I was a beta tester for CoH, and played it up through publish two or so (before the Winter Lords, which I understand was a powerleveling haven).

My reason for quitting? I was finishing off my Jedi grind in SWG. Had a house there, which automatically made it a stronger by in, and I was putting intensive effort into finishing that off. Wasn't playing CoH, as I was very, very close to finishing off a post-9, pre-CU MLS+MDef Jedi.

A lot has happened since then. Long story short, when I was finishing the Jedi grind, some folks who had helped me needed my help, and I was involved with their guild's crisis, and their town's crisis. By the time I had finished with those, NGE hit. In order to help mitigate that, I went looking for a game wherein our non-causual guild could replicate the feeling of having their town, houses, etc.

Found VSoH, took 'em there.

Now, I have time to take another look at CoH and CoV, and I must admit: the ED changes are more in-line with what I understood the powers to be intended to be, back in the day. Even at 34 (when I quit, that was actually close to the hero limit of 40), CoH is quite fun.

Flat out, I regret cancelling my subscription, and I have reknewed simply because it feels like the game I wanted to play, back in the way back. Personally, I'm glad that flight no longer has the 40% reduction in accuracy; a few of the other changes remind me a *lot* of the gripes we used to have (looks like most, if not all of my former complaints were actually fixed!)

I know this is possibly the wrong place to be asking this...but of course i am still amazed at the fact that NCSoft does not release free trials like WoW, and Eve Online and other games, Don't you think the servers would have more people playing?!?!  lol.

Anyway, I really need some help. Me and my best friend are debating on playing this game but we dont want to go out and spend money on this game just to find out that we don't like it, lol. Between the two of us buying the game and monthly time it would be rather disappointing to find out we wasted the money.  I have searched and searched and searched and cannot find a code. I even have a friend who will re-activate his account to play with us if we start playing.  Chances are if we start playing we'll end up paying to play it.

Does anyone know where I may be able to find 2 free trial codes? We both downloaded the game, all 2.5GB just to find out that we can't play it, lol talk about being rather frustrated.

If anyone can help i would greatly appreciate it, all i need is to find a code for myself and my friend. I would forever be grateful!

Along with replying to this, you can try emailing me at: initialdknox@yahoo.com since i don't check this much.   Thanks again!!

-Darkon

I tried the 14 day free trial back when issue 10 came out... I'll post what I thought about the game.

Graphics: Sub-par with games I am used to. Most of my games have visuals that are far better than the ones in CoH/V. However, this is not a bad thing for me. The customization, even at a cost of the "Awe" factor is FAR worth it. The game runs smooth as silk for me with max settings and allows me to actually make a character I enjoy! Everything seems to blend terrificly so nothing seems out of place. Sure, not the best graphics, but that does not hurt it at all!

Leveling: Levels take a little bit. Not terribly slow, but they are not just handed out to you either. I really enjoyed getting new powers as I leveled up and the ability to choose what I got!!

Difficulty: Pretty easy as far as I am concerned. When I was playing, I spent my time as a Gravity Controller with force fields. I regularly soloed even mobs and even yellow cons. In groups I'd take on a yellow con mob and actually kill him faster than the group could kill the same mob type... go figure. This isn't to say I couldn't be over powered and killed. I went down many times, but I emerged victorious many more times. Many mobs are just plain EASY. But... Im a SUPER HERO... could you imagine lowly grunt taking out superman? HECK NO. Major Villians take out super heores... not grunts dang it! he he.

Loot?: I loved it. Thing would appear in my inventory bag thing whatever it was, and all things didn't require me to loot a corpse. I didn't need "gear" really either. I LOVED THIS. I play other MMOs where 95% of my time I work on harvesting, farming, etc, just to afford gear and spells to be able to lvl up to a point where I got to do it again. Here... I can just run off and save the day!

Overall: I love this game as a now casual player. I cannot be all hardcore like I was in EQ1, ain't got the time. This game allows me to come on with any amount of tme and feel accomplished. And since so many make alts, it's easy to find people to team with. There isnt people ALL over, which is nice too cuz I hate feeling overcrowded... we aren't so super if there are more heroes than regular people right? he he.

The bad is that the maps are used over and over again. Even in 14 days I was like "Seen it". But hey, EQ1 was like that too when they added the adventures. I had a good time with the game during my trial and am considaring getting the game.

ty. i find everyones comments very interesting. I have played many mmo's but never tried COH. i am going to try out the free trial and see how i like it.

Graphically, CoH is probably better than the cartooney look of That Other Game but not nearly as detailed as EQ2 or Vanguard.  The character creation system is excellent, many many options available to you so you won't look like everyone else.  Power effects are good eye candy too, with some good physics added in (mobs fall down stairs, bullet shells on ground scatter as you move thru them, etc).

Leveling is set to a good pace.  For those that are "impatient" you can increase the difficulty of the missions for greater risk to gain greater rewards.  Plus Hero side, usually when you arrive in Atlas Park at level 2 (from tutorial) many join a sewer team.  After about an hour in the sewers you'll usually be around 7ish.

With Issue 9 they added a crafting system that doesn't break the game.  Gives the hardcore types something to grind for, but those that don't want to can still compete decently.

Overall I've been very pleased with CoX.  Since 2004 other games have come and went off my PC, yet CoX remains.  One can only take so much dancing elves on mailboxes ya know.....