Ive heard its got a steady amount of people playing but why is it not big? (Big as in... umm 2x the subs it has now i guess)

So far the only thing ive noticed that is not easy to do it soloing.  (im only level 20 MA/DA Scrapper)

But that could just be the class i chose.  Anyways the games awsome, so many different things you can do for character customization.  The amount of unique character development is almost limitless.

And to boot its fun.

City of Heroes has a few reasons it's not as big as some MMOs:

-Superheroes are much more of a niche market than Fantasy.

-The game has had little to no marketing.

-There was no shelf presence for a long time before Good vs Evil edition.

That said, the game should be growing in the coming months because:

-The Superhero market has been growing substantially lately thanks to comics becoming more mainstream and their movies being so succesful.

-NC Soft is throwing lots of $$ at City of Heroes/Villains at the moment, that should translate to more marketing soon.

-There are rumors of a paid expansion coming soon, most likely next year. That will generate a lot of buzz and get CoH/V some shelf space.

Also, regarding your Martial Arts / Super Reflexes Scrapper, that's going to be an amazing character in just a few levels.

At level 22 you can buy Single Origin Enhancements that will make your Scrapper not only able to solo, but very, very powerful.

Super Reflexes is probably the latest blooming defense set for Scrappers, but when it does bloom it is amazing. For the later levels, it's arguably the best PVE armor in the game.

I think the mission system is part of it, too. I don't really mind it, but the limited number of tile sets is much maligned by players that don't stay with the game. Also, while the game can definitely be soloed by most ATs, it's usually significantly slower to do so, which means seeing a lot more of those same tile sets. The MMO market's been moving in a "more solo" direction for awhile, mainly due to player expectations, and those players have almost certainly become more used to a wider variety of environments than the CoX engine and art department allow for.

Of course, the tile set issue is much less of a problem when teaming, as it becomes more about doing your job on the team rather than looking at the wallpaper; teams tend to move very quickly, so tankers need to move from group to group, defenders need to keep those buffs/debuffs running, controllers need to make sure the dangerous mobs are locked down, et cetera. When you're soloing, you're generally looking at the same group of 3 or 4 mobs for the whole mission, the same walls, floors and ceilings, and you don't have anyone to talk to unless you belong to a global channel (which most new players won't even know about).

Another problem is that the low level experience is, and has been, somewhat unpleasant for most ATs due to the way the enhancement system is set up. I can sum up low level Scrappers, Brutes, Stalkers and Tankers in a couple of lines:

Miss, Miss, Miss, Miss, Hit, Miss, Miss, out of endurance, Run, Run, Run, Rest, attack, Miss, Miss, Miss, Hit, Miss, Hit, Victory (or defeat), wait for Rest to recharge,  wait for health/endurance to recover on its own, or hope you got lucky and looted a Catch a Breath and/or Respite.

Since training origins are essentially useless, your powers just don't work well until at least level 12. Typically, new players of any MMO tend to solo through the beginning of the game until they feel comfortable with the controls and the way things work, but there's a high risk that new CoX players will get sick of the game long before level 12 if they haven't been teaming, because they'll constantly be missing and running out of endurance. CoX just doesn't offer a very good introductory experience in that regard.

Now, if you've managed to play to the Dual Origin or Single Origin levels, you know that you'll eventually get past that pain, you know that it's pretty easy to get a team, even at level 2, to help speed you through it, but your average new player isn't going to have any idea that the game improves, or that Sewer Teams are a good idea even if you don't have a clue what you're doing. Most games start out easy and get harder as you go, but CoX actually works the opposite way in some aspects; it starts off a pain in the butt, and eventually gets really enjoyable. That makes it a hard sell to newbies with previous MMO experience.

The devs have actually addressed one of your main concerns in Issue 12. Now low level characters will have a much higher ToHit number which will stop most of the missing in the lower levels.

I completely agree about the lack of variety in the tilesets, hopefully the larger art team will help with that.

If WoW didn't exist, this would be a "big" game. They just blew all expectations out of the water.

A stable population over 100,000 used to be all a game could ask for. There are plenty of famous and foundational games, like Asheron's Call, who at their best never hit what CoH does at it's lowest.

Sure, you had breakout hits like Everquest, who were flitting around half a million briefly (but got crushed by WoW). And there are non-American games like Lineage or FF XI that go huge, but the different audience makes it hard to compare. And a hit like Star Wars: Galaxies got to 300,000 because it's such a good brand. Yet they too have collapsed since NGE.

Heck, even LotrO in it's brief life hit 200k then crashed back to 150.

So CoH, which hangs out between 130k and 200k with relative stability, is an pretty big success. I think most new launches should only hope to be so successful. That said, this is what they have working against them:

Not "high fantasy" (medieval) or sci-fi. Both of those tend to get taken more seriously than superheroes do. You'd think the wave of superhero movies over the last few years would have changed that, but still playing at superheroes is considered more childish than shooting aliens with rayguns or poking elves with swords.

Not a known IP. Wow came on the heels of the Warcraft / Starcraft / Diablo lineage. Blizzard had loyal customers who'd never played an MMO before all ready for their new product. Obviously SW:G had that, LotrO has that, DDO had that. Most squander it, (frequently by hiring Turbine) but still a known brand is very valuable.

City of Heroes was a brand new line and while it may one day develop into a major brand (talk of console spinoffs, for example), that alone didn't pull anyone in.

New development studio. Cryptic was brand new. And savvy customers knew that. But more than that, it showed. A lot of their early design shows rookie mistakes. They've learned from it and have improved the game over time. But early players could easily come in and say "No PvP? Horrible imbalance? Cookie-cutter missions? I'm out."

Don't underestimate that. The game launched in May of 2004. It hit 170k in June of that year. By December it had crashed to 125k. That is the biggeest hit the game has taken - bigger than anything the ED nerfs did to them. And then Christmas sales helped, but they were still churning for a while.

Most of the balancing, (aka "nerfing") took place in 2005. Yet 2005 was a growth year. Nobody likes nerfs but having a situation that requires them in the first place is worse.

Smaller development budget
Although the team has gone up and down in size, they've never had the money and manpower of a WoW. In fact, as has been discussed recently for most of 2007 they were operating with only 15 people. It's very difficult to compete against studios of 100s with those numbers.

Smaller advertising budget
Of course word of mouth also helps, so the big get bigger. (My sister has never played a computer game in her life, but she knows WoW because, in her words "I lived on a college dorm - it's impossible to not know.") Yet there's something to be said for traditional advertising. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like this - many of whom may never have played an MMO before - who don't even know about it.

I like the game and am still subbed to it but its too repetitive and generic.

That is its major downfall.   I understand that some of that is a strength.

If they had more custom content and directed stuff in addition to its dynamic but generic content it would be destroying other MMORPGs most likely. 

CoX has had other problems in the past that may have alienated people and I dunno maybe its too late now.  But as it currently stands that is how it is I think.

The Dev team is at some point releasing user-generated story arcs, which will go a long way to alleviating the monotony and freeing up developer time.

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Originally posted by TheBizarre
The Dev team is at some point releasing user-generated story arcs, which will go a long way to alleviating the monotony and freeing up developer time.

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I mean it sounds like a nice tool and I'm in favor of its existance. However, we won't be getting the ability to craft new tilesets, enemies, or AIs. Basically it comes down to

1) Pick a location
2) Pick an enemy type
3) Name the boss at the end
4) Play Mad Libs with the dialog

Aha <CHARACTERNAME>! I knew you'd show up after I stole the <UNIQUE ITEM>. But once I dispatch you I will finally be able to <EVIL PLAN>!
That does not sound less monotonous to me. And I don't think it will free up Developer time because unless their content will inevitably be more involved than anything they allow us to do.

It WAS big a few years ago.  ALOT of people have played and loved it.  Problem is and was there really wasn't enough content to keep people for too long.  Badge Collections and bases and stuff are cool, but not enough really to retain the high volume of players.

Originally posted by Amarsir

Heck, even LotrO in it's brief life hit 200k then crashed back to 150.

Depends on who you ask. While MMOCharts.com puts LOTRO at 200k, this site puts it at 300k as of Dec 07 and well over CoX's peak at just under 200k. But Turbine never releases figures, so no one knows for certain.

The repetitiveness of missions and the frustration of the early levels pretty well covers why didn't stick around. I loved the CharGen, I really liked the spec system. But I wasn't looking to grind near identical instanced missions endlessly. I was really surprised that the game seemed to be, from playing in the trial, predominately instancing. I didn't expect that and it was a disappointment. If not for that, I'd have subbed and stuck around.

So to me, not only was it a niche market for not being medieval or sci-fi, but it was also for a fairly small  demographic that likes instancing. Even DDO, with it's major IP, saw a backlash over instancing. I don't think they ever reached even 100k. It's a tough sell.

There is also the fact that the market is really competitive, lately. A lot of new games have launched and even more hyped ones are on the horizon. Holding onto subscribers is tough in this environment.

I think CoX beat the curve, considering everything.

Originally posted by Estrus

It WAS big a few years ago.  ALOT of people have played and loved it.  Problem is and was there really wasn't enough content to keep people for too long.  Badge Collections and bases and stuff are cool, but not enough really to retain the high volume of players.

I think it is a very casual-friendly game. True, a lot of the content is pretty repetitive, but the archetypes play very differently; even different power sets in the same archetype favor different playing styles. If you are not a power-leveling fool, there is enough content in your alts and archetypes to have fun for a long time.