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City of Heroes: A Look at Going Rogue
MMORPG.com correspondent Carolyn Koh had the chance to take a look at the upcoming City of Heroes expansion, Going Rogue, with Paragon Studios' Lead Designer Melissa Bianco. During the overview, Carolyn got a firsthand look at Praetoria, a fully realized and populated city. Check out all of the new information about Going Rogue in Carolyn's latest article.
General Article By Carolyn Koh on July 30, 2010
City of Heroes has been around for six years now, and first players clamored for a way to play villains which gave rise to City of Villains and PvP play, then if you have the good guys and the bad guys, what better next than to be able to switch sides? Thoughts of that particular game play feature has been fomenting in the game design team for a long time it seems, and finally, it will be available to players in the next update of City of Heroes, Going Rogue.
"Going Rogue is a journey your character goes on," said City of Heroes Lead Designer Melissa Bianco, "a journey exploring the shades of grey."
advertisement How it works is this; after level 20, players who are Heroes or Villains will get "tip" drops in games. These tips allow players to play special pivotal missions in which they make choices which affect their alignment. These missions eventually lead to a solo morality mission which will tip players over to the other side. Heroes become Vigilantes and they can remain there in the grey band or move totally over the other side to be a Villain, and Villains become Rogues and Rogues can become Heroes.
At Comic Con, Melissa was showing off their "new" city, Praetoria. I say "new" in quotation marks as Praetoria is an alternate universe that veteran players will recognize as it has shown up in game before. Now, it's fully fledged, populated with NPCs and missions, available for full play. Praetoria was built fully with the new graphics engine and looks sleek and slick. The graphical update is showcased in the robot-like clockworks as they move around the city performing tasks, their shiny body parts reflecting the scenery and sky. The sonic fencing that protects Praetoria is also revamped. "No blue walls," grinned Melissa, as she showed off other nifty graphics, like the open vistas and shimmering water in the fountains.
Ruled by Marcus Cole, a Praetorian version of Statesman and also known as Tyrant, players will also run across other alternate universe versions of other iconic NPCs in Praetoria - where the good are now evil and vice versa. Some names are diametric opposites, like Siege to Citadel, some are punny, for example, Synapse is Neuron in Praetoria.
Praetoria also provides players a new level 1 to 20 experience. In Praetoria, you are building a neutral character, neither Hero nor Villain, so all power sets are available, i.e. all 10 archetypes. Additionally, NCSoft is adding four new power sets: kinetic, electric, dual pistols and minion/demon summoning.
Emperor Cole built the capital of Praetoria into a safe haven where the citizens of the Empire can live in peace and prosperity. Under his iron fist, two factions have arisen. The Resistance and the Loyalists. The Resistance is bent on disrupting the smooth flow of the governance of Praetoria, and the Loyalists are keeping the Resistance at bay.
Entering the world, the tutorial leads you to making a choice between the Resistance and Loyalist factions. Until you make that choice, all NPCs are neutral - your targeting reticule showing yellow. The Resistance is basically an underground movement in Praetoria, and your faction is not broadcast, allowing you to play co-op missions with other players. You will take group missions with other players without knowing what their factions are. The group leader determines the direction of the mission, however, these group missions do not add faction points, and only your solo missions do. After level 20, is when your career segues into Going Rogue, where you decide where you are going or if you are going to stay murkily in the shades of grey between good and evil or if you will fully move into one faction or the other.
Praetoria and Going Rogue is what NCSoft is doing to step up the game, along with the graphical update to keep it fresh with new missions, dialogue trees and content. For a six year old game, the environments and characters in Praetoria still looks pretty darned good.
The question i have had about aligment change is will it boot you from you super group later on when shifting sides?Looking forward to going rogue.
I played City for a couple years, both Heroes and Villains. I came in after ED too so I'm not embittered by that (as many still are). My opinions are based on having played CoX pretty much from i7 or so up through i13.
Going Rogue offers a few nice things:
- New powersets (which they have always been good at adding)
- Environmental graphic updates (the character model improvements are minimal in my opinion)
- The story elements involved in switching sides or being neutral
- The increased community you could potentially have access to by being neutral (the whole game basically becomes a neutral zone for those characters)
However, I guess what I struggle with is beyond those points above, I already have a lv50 villain and a lv50 hero and a smattering of heroes and villains in the 30's and 40's. I suppose it could be mildly interesting to play as a hero Mastermind or a villain defender, but let's face it, the missions aren't that different between the two factions. The class mix between heroes and villains has already been done in the Rikti zone too so not a lot new there. The other downside is that Praetoria, the coolest part of Going Rogue in my opinion, only takes you up through lv20 and after that you're back in the old game (admittedly looking better). So basically I'd be signing up for this game for the story (up to lv20 with the exception of the morality missions), potentially the new powersets, and the environment graphics upgrades... I just don't know if that seems worth it to me. Maybe when the Praetoria content goes up to lv50 I'll jump back on board for a little bit.
Well if you're not back yet Darbius there's a lot of new missions that have been added since I last played (end of 2008) I've been back about 3 weeks now in anticipation for the new powersets mostly and was surprised that my ton of level 20ish alts had some more things to do. Villains side having some really fleshed out NPCs to deal with.
I've been playing on and off since i6 and have yet to find any other MMO more satifying. I've played countless MMOs since I was 11 (turn 23 in a few days). Its a very solid game. However, like many people I'm waiting for going rouge to come out. I last played about 2 months ago and its still better than ever.
I think Going Rouge will give this the boost it needs player wise. The graphics overhauls are great and the new powers are great. Paragon Studios is pretty the must the only dev company that actually listens and responds to what players ask for, which is pretty amazing.
ahaha the picture on the main website associated with this article makes me laugh. If I could somehow insert an image into this I would slap Sarah Palins picture over that lady it has on there already.
I think that it would be perfect, since she... "Is going rogue", or "Went Rogue" already.
I don't know how much you have been following the news about GR but they have an Incarnate system set up for lvl50 characters and several other things planned for high lvl characters meaning lvl45 and up.
i love this game :) ill come back for sure. howre populations doing these days?
Depends on which server you're on, my original home server of Guardian isn't doing so great nowadays, but Freedom and Champion are always busy with activity.
Sadly, the Incarnate system has been removed from Going Rogue and will be released in an issue update.
well you get a sneak preview but yes the meat and bones will come inthe free updates
Not anymore. There is NOT going to be any 'sneak peak' of the incarnate system at this time. They pulled it several weeks ago.
The dear old unofficial RP server, Virtue, is always at high load no matter what time of day you get on.
Personally, I'm a bit burnt out on the game after... six years, is it? But the RP community there is great compared to other games with official servers (ie WoW), so it keeps drawing me back. When it comes down to grinding a new character, however, I tend to wander off looking for something more fun.
Hmm "Going Rogue"-does mean Sarah Palin is becoming a comic book superhero you can play?
Sounds interesting. I'd be almost willing to give it another go, but it the leveling grind still as bad as I remember it?
anyone else think the chic on the frontpage looks like Betty Page?
pah the level grind in coh/v was never bad. You just did quests, enjoyed the game, and if you did it right, I'm pretty sure you won't repeat a single mission until level 45 or so.
I remember never really 'wanting' for something to do, was ALWAYS stuff to do.
Quit when they added the unbalancing enhancement upgrade thing (Designer enhancements? i forgot the actual name of them, but basically let you get 'any' and 'all' buffs on one enhancement which ruined the balance of 'choosing' what to put into a power.)
But if the game is still strong, and due to the total LACK of anything out there these days worth playing, it might be worth another look.
This sounds like a great addition - it's the way I would like to play CoX. Played a 14 day trial, didn't really care for the heroes classes, but liked some of the villian ones - be great to be able to play a mastermind hero! That said, with limited playtime, I'll wait 'til it goes F2P with item shop instead of paying $15/mo for it.
Been playing the trial to see if the game is worth buying. I played it a few years ago but wasnt too impressed with the graphics and gameplay but now in ultra mode its much better. I may still not buy it though as I really get bored of reading through loads of quest text and prefer something a bit more action/twitch based.
As it's been going for 6 years already, I'm not sure how soon that'll be. And I'm not really hoping it DOES happen either. I've played on and off for a few years now and GR will have me coming back for at least a couple of months since it always takes me ages to get anywhere in ANY mmo. CoH/V is still the best mmo I've played.