Blind devotion is not healthy to your favorite MMO

I don’t think it is a small thing to say that fanboism or fangirlism has become more rampant lately in the social media market. I can understand why it happens and in fact I don’t deny that I've had a lot of my own moments in the past, but it has become even greater in the MMO market. Now, one might argue what defines a fanboy or fangirl? Well, to put it simply a fanboy or fangirl is a person so devoted to a product or idea, that no matter how much you try to prove that problems, and no matter how blatant the issues, people will make excuses and defend it. If you feel a direct ire that moment someone says something negative about something you like you want to correct them, or worse, punch them you might be fanboying/fangirling. And make no mistake, everywhere for almost anything you can find a fanboy or a fangirl for something. The MMO market is rife with them.

Before I get started, I will just put this out. If you are the type of person that gets easily offended because you don't like it when people might have a different opinion from you or might even point out the negative flaws of something you loved, then you might want to stop reading right now. I am not going to make apologies for my point of view. If you disagree, that's fine. If you plan to write an 8 page frothing hate list of why I suck because you didn't like any of my points, then well, go some place else.

Now, for me, again, I admit I had my moments where I would fangirl over things and defend it staunchly. But lately, I've been trying to distance myself from things so I can take a more objective look at the stuff I use to sit there and defend saunchly. The reason this article is coming up is because of a recent debate I found myself in over on the The Secret World forums, as well as a recent controversy that cropped up with the closing of City of Heroes and the outright fervor that those fans have towards their personal gem.

Now, on the controversy that cropped up with The Secret World is actually something I quite agree with; namely that the combat is not very engaging and that many aspects of the game, a game that was supposed to be built on mystery and secrets, tends to do a lot to actually rip you right out of that immersion. There are several elements that do this to me in that game, one being the combat system which as ingenious the idea might be, are not as deep as some people might make it out to be. On top of that the “stealth” missions don’t feel very stealthy, as you tend to casually stroll past the enemies instead of actually trying to be stealthy about it, and even then there are only a few of these missions where not agroing baddies is even required (I say agro because by all accounts they can see you).

I was not the one who brought this point up, of course, someone else started the thread but I put my points in about why I thought the combat system was shallow and a lot of the games mechanics did a lot to damage my immersion factor into the lore and story (which is what I actually like about The Secret World) but once I stated that came in the fanboys and fangirls and the apologists (which one is worse you take your pick) trying to come up with all manner of excuses. My favorite excuse is that I just didn't understand the ability wheels, which regardless of what people believe, is not that complicated once you get into it. The other argument always boiled down to it was just like WoW, SWTOR, or pick any other MMO on the market, and thus the argument was invalid, to which my reply was straight forward no, it wasn't  While elements were similar in respects, the strategic use of abilities, while maybe limited in those mediums was still there and in many instances I would at least be required to put some thought and effort into my attacks instead of just watching a counter go up while using a builder then using a consumer after every 5^th hit. The response were hilarious in that respect with how many people just kept trying to repeat the same answer as before that I just countered, by saying I either didn't understand the ability wheel or that it was just like any other MMO.

I used several instances of evidence to back this up in fact, including tanking (which I think most people know I do) and such. Pointing out as a tank the only strategy you really have is spin to win (basically all you do is use an AE builder with an occasional consumer or two), with very little deviation from that. Avoiding attacks is one thing but there isn't even a reason to do that after a point and the few instances before nightmares that interrupts are needed really aren't  and even in nightmares interrupting isn't exactly required except for a few screw you powers that the bosses might use. They are useful but that’s about it. It boils down that I am generally adding in particular abilities and attacks just to break up my tedium, not because I need them, but because it’s not as engrossing as people might have you believe.

Then of course there is a lot of immersion breaking moments about the game. Again, this is a game built on the idea that the world is secretive and such and everything you do is hidden from the public eye, as it were. But you spend a lot of time going from point to point with assault weapons on your back, some of them well past military grade hardware, and no one bats an eye lash. Then of course, the aforementioned stealth missions which aren't really stealth, only a handful of which require you to avoid things. You actually just walk to the point that you stay out of the agro range of critters, nothing else. They might actually be staring right at you, but as long as you are out of that predefined radius that says they attack you, you are fine. Then of course there is the constant combat from one point to the next that just really takes me out of the game and ruins my immersion factor for the story as a whole. In short, it’s not a very engaging system, as many of the fans might have you believe.

And there in lies the problem. While people were pointing out this flaw with the system itself, and well-constructed posts about it, the fanboys and fangirls kept parading the deniability card and just kept trumpeting those same two tag lines I mentioned above. Well, here is a basic fact, you can like something but that doesn't mean you have to blindly accept the faults of the game, especially if they are the faults that are causing more actual harm than good for the game. If something doesn't feel fun people are not going to stick around for it, and trying to tell people they are wrong because you think they are dumb is not something smart to say, especially since your game has evidently, by the companies own admission, not hit the magic numbers they were hoping for.

This of course brings me round about to City of Heroes, and leaving me feeling an unhealthy need to find cover. Now, as far as communities go, City of Heroes players are generally helpful and do a lot of things for the community, as a whole, but they do have their dark side and to a point they can be the most rabid fanboys and fangirls on the planet. At any moment you might mention a game that could potentially rival or even beat the game, these fans would do anything to talk smack and belittle the product no matter the differences or at worse, how much of an improvement it might actually be. In fact, if you point out the negatives about the game, City of Heroes players would be the first to jump on the bandwagon of apologizing or outright denying the evidence at hand. I would know I use to actually be a part of that particular bandwagon, sadly.

But the most telling sign, to me at least, is how surprisingly many people actually believe that City of Heroes was wildly popular. In spite of all evidence to the contrary, these people believed that hundreds of thousands of people were flocking to their game on a regular basis, especially towards the end. Not all of them thought this, but many of the more vocal groups did. Some even tried to claim that City of Heroes had revolutionary game designs that no one has ever done before or since, to which I really get confused at because the only thing that CoH brought to the table that was actually new was User Generated Content to MMOs (known as Mission Architect in game) and was such a colossal disaster that even the games producer threw a massive hissy fit when people began misusing it. It was bewildering on so many levels that I am left reeling at times just trying to understand this frothing fanaticism that was being demonstrated on a level that I don’t even think God has witnessed. Hell this level of fanaticism even sparked ChaosD1 of MMOGrinder.net to repeatedly say in several of his reviews for CoH fans to "stay well the fuck away from any site his review appears on" because of how frothing they could be.

Now, I am not here to condemn or condone the shut down, and I do agree, partly, it was poorly handled. But the lengths people go to try and claim that their product was somehow pulling out magic numbers demonstrates either how much blind faith they actually had, or more likely the reality they don’t understand the difference between revenue and profit. They even believed that there was some grand conspiracy to shut down the product because it was still profitable, but every time I do the math, it just doesn't add up (and looking at other people's math that have actually sat down and done the math to).

Others have actually dissected this before, but let me put it this way; running an MMO is not cheap. Now while CoH was pulling something like $10 to $12 million a year according to the last report, it was also evident that the game was steeply declining and in fact Freedom did little to avoid this decline. It also points to evidence that with those numbers CoH had less than 55,000 subscriptions, probably even fewer thanks to the cash shop, and that is the money used to keep the game running. Of course if you just take those numbers as they are, you think, then the game must be doing great. Well here’s the catch-22, revenue, again, does not equal profit, and all those developers (Paragon Studios reportedly held 80 at least) the cost of running the servers with technicians, the cost of internet, the cost of basic building utilities, employee training, employee benefits and all other overhead, my figure which others have even done in greater detail, have shown either two outcomes; City of Heroes was either just barely treading water (ie breaking even) or worst case scenario, was operating in the red.

Again, I don’t condone or condemn the actions and several of the points raised are valid by players, but some of the reactions are just baffling. One of the arguments presented about this was how the developers would be out of work and such, but those same people turned around and said just cancel the other project. So in the resolution of that the solution to keeping the CoH devs from being fired was probably firing the other developers on their other project? That would have been around 40 or more developers out of work by that, possibly even as high as 60, because that entire company would not be devoted to working on City of Heroes as admitted to by several of Paragon staff.

Other points that come up are things like how games like AION or such aren't doing well in America. Well, they are doing fine in Asia. Here’s the problem with that line of logic. CoH bombed hard in Asia, and at the end there wasn't doing well in America either. Yea, it’s easy to see conspiracies whenever you narrow your vision and just focus on one or two things about something that goes on, but you have to actually look at the whole picture on the grand scale.

Yea, I know for a lot of people that CoH was their love, the game they enjoyed and in that instance, their first MMO. Like Scotty said in the episode Relics, “You never love a woman like that again.” And the same can be said for your first MMO. Through all its faults and imperfections, you will love it because it was your first. It is what introduced you to the genre. I do miss CoH and what it was, but what it became is not the game I originally loved.

Now, my intent is not to make people mad with my points of view or even to try and dissuade them from loving their favorite product, but loving something doesn't mean blind devotion to it. You have to understand and admit that even if you love something doesn't mean it was perfect. The numbers speak for themselves in that regard, because a perfect system that everyone loves would have people jumping over each other to be a part of it. You have to admit to the flaws of the product and understand them and at least constructively point out why they are flawed. Yes Men do not help get the weak points of your beloved title fixed, and if you really want that level of exposure, you need to be sure that you help get those weak points fixed or improved, otherwise they could be game shatteringly detrimental to the longevity of your loved product. Change is a necessary thing in the life of an MMO, and sometimes things need to be changed, re-balanced and improved just to make sure the game survives, especially if they are part of the key features.

Post VIP CoH POV

I've seen some bullshit dick moves when it comes to the F2P marketing scheme lately, but so far I've never seen someone use and abuse specific taglines as badly as City of Heroes has done. I had no intention of paying more than 1 month sub to the game because, quite frankly, that game isn't worth $15 a month. I had no intention of logging in to maybe fool around every now and then and chat with friends, and collect badges because that's what I do, but I can't even enjoy that much anymore.

Now that my VIP status has expired, I expected to lose access to Praetoria, alignment, and my incarnate stuff as advertised and keep everything I owned prior to the F2P update, as the document even claimed. But nope, that's plain bullshit. First thing I notice, well not notice it's more of get a big box covering my screen once I was out of VIP, my character slots have been locked and I can only unlock 6 of them. 6 of the 12 slots I owned on just one server. They want me to pay to unlock the rest I earned and paid for years ago. I even lost access to several powers and emotes I had received throughout the tenure of my stay in City of Villains before I quit. That chafed me the wrong way to but that wasn't enough to make me rage against the wall and I expected it no less.

No, the straw that's really broke the camel's back for me and files the City of Heroes NCSoft F2P as one giant con job and uber dickery move that people who continue to play it bend over gratefully for is the fact that enhancements I earned over 3 years ago have been locked out. I have entire sets of enhancements from back when the invention system first hit the scene in City of Heroes but they are no longer working. It was a shock to me because I didn't know this fact that my entire build became invalid with a clean sweep change. This is like earning your gear in another MMO and being told you can't use your gear until you pay more. This is money grubbing uber dickery at its finest, and what's even funnier are the vast number of people who think this is perfectly fine.

No, this is not perfectly fine. This is a lie of epic proportions. I noticed that the actual amount of activity had diminished greatly the past few days and I suspect what I am feeling now is probably the reason why. The F2P bug wore off and the reality of the bullshit that NCSoft is trying to pull has sunk in. The nostalgia trip is over and people are leaving again to see that nothing has changed and they want you to pay for it in the process.

And what really makes me laugh about this is the people who turn around and try to cite Cryptic as being con artists because of how they handle freeform versus archetype. At least they were upfront about it and respected legacy stuff as well. Not to mention Cryptic has bent over backwards at times to actually make their F2P acceptable. And what's even funnier are the people that claim the Archetypes are restrictive, yet these people play a game where you are forced, forever, to be one class, with two power sets with no real change between them. I rag Cryptic a lot but I give them props for actually doing what they say and not coming up with bullshit along the lines of sounding like it's just the spirit that counts.

[EDIT]

I've had a couple of people try to tell me I get what I paid for. OK nimrods, here's the thing. I paid for this crap years ago. And now NCSoft wants me to pay again. Hell, I have a friend who owned and had upgraded their account with Going Rogue and they lost all of that and NCSoft, again, told them to repay for it. No, just no. That's plain bullshit ripoff con job.

Reviewing the City of Heroes Halloween Event

This is actually a nice exterior map, but beneath it is a
rail shooter that is just missing the rails to make the set
complete.

Well, the first game that I am currently playing has released their Halloween event and so far, well, I can't say a whole hell of a lot because there isn't a whole hell of a lot to it. Now, before people come in and take the chance to sit here and tell me how wrong or stupid I am, let me explain this a little bit. First, I want to say I am not ragging on the season; I love Halloween. It is my favorite time of year, and before any neo pagans or whatever try to come in and tell me about the history of the holiday, I will tell you now, yes, I know. In fact I probably know more about it than you neo pagans probably know yourselves since I actually studied up on it over several years because I like this holiday that much.

Now, back on point. Halloween has been a rather staple event in City of Heroes for the past couple of years. However, for the most part it has always been a rather open world thing. Go knock (or click really) on a few doors, get monsters or treats, or beat up a couple of special event Giant Monsters that are just the Croatoa monsters rehashed in the world at large. (Yes, I know Eochai came before Croatoa, but since he is a regular now, I will state it my way). They've added bits here over the years but it was pretty much the same event.

That was until around the time of Issue 10, when the Invasion started. You see, the invasion was cool during that scenario because of limited time badges and a feeling that the timeline was escalating. However, the brains over at NCSoft actually took that to mean we wanted invasions all the time, and now you can't even wiggle an eyebrow without an invasion week or something like it going on. This is something that NCSoft really hasn't grasped, that a limited time event loses its charm when it's constantly repeatable and it loses the value of reward for having participated in it when you know all the rewards you get will be there throughout the year for people to get with even less effort than you had to work for.

Now how I mean this is NCSoft thought that Invasion was so popular they would do something similar for the Halloween that year Invasion came out; A Zombie Apocalypse zone invasion. Same mechanics basically, minus bombing, and pretty much everyone either huddles around for the most zombies possible or they hide under cover (oddly) to avoid zombie spawns or better yet leave that particular zone.

Past this time I had little knowledge of because I actually quit playing City of Heroes around then, but I know, now, the banners were added and how those mechanics work (think zombie apocalypse with predetermined locations and a macguffin that needs to be destroyed to stop the spawning) and when Going Rogue and its tip missions came out, a Halloween tip that you could get that gave you a stupid easy instance you could run through to kill one guy and pick the badge you liked. And if you were bored enough get them all by repeating that step 5 times in total.

This year's Halloween is just all that, plus the addition of a level 29 trial that people get to enter. The trial sounded fun at first and there are some rewards for completing it, however, after having played through it a couple of times it came off rather bland and uninspired to me to be blunt about it.

First it's just a straight corridor map, IE you enter one end exit the other, no real deviation, just follow the hallway type map. There are turns and twists in it, IE the hallway turns and twists, but there aren't any real get off the beaten path moments or changes. The interior is nice and they probably spent some time on putting it together, but it loses its charm when you feel like there should be rails and a car under you at that point.

Second, unless your team is very thick or something, you can pretty much get all the badges this thing has to offer in one go. Hell, the only reason to do this trial a second time is to get both of the unlocks that it offers, and only if you decided that paying for those items in the Paragon store wasn't your cup of tea, which is funny to me since most everyone I did that map with did buy those items in the Paragon store (I didn't personally since none of them fit my theme).

Finally, like mentioned previously, there are no surprises. You are actually told what to do for all the special stuff right out. Instead of figuring any of this out we are basically led around like a terrier with commands to tell us to do it that way. The boss fights are forgettable and uninspired as the first boss is just Adamanstor made into an AV that you can basically laugh at, and the final boss fight is set up and easily tankable by one person while the rest just go off and get zombies for the badge they explain to you how to get in the entire event bar. Leaving no real mystery, it even says kill boss last. The only surprise is you need a costume to get the zombies out faster and defeating the boss wearing a costume gives you one of three badges. It's a fight that tests how thick people are, and trust me I've already ran into some people who were thick enough to replace the Berlin Wall.

In the end, this update to the Halloween event was just a disappointment. I don't expect much since they've only tacked on small bits every year, but with this aping of the trial and such I expected a heck of a lot more. There is a secret in it, but it isn't even worth your time as the fight is pathetic and there isn't even an acknowledgement badge to denote you even found it or anything really. So in short, it's a ride that's missing the rails and car to make it official. It's entertaining the first time through but after that point you should only be doing a second time if you need both of the costume rewards. New comers will probably get overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of things for Halloween, but that's because that's just several years worth of stuff tacked onto the original event. It's a nice effort, but still comes off disappointing to what it should have been.

Remembering City of Villains -- The Faction Oft Forgot.

I still have sometime before I get swallowed up for a day or two by Deus Ex: Missing Link DLC, so I figured I will sit back and talk about a few things conversely in City of Heroes. Namely game play and content and what should have happened. Of course, my view is objectivist, but I know it is a view that many others share or have shared in the past and I still feel as strongly as I did about them in the past as I do now.

Now the first thing I want to get out of the way is something I touched on quite a bit in my last review of City of Heroes, and that's the graphics. I don't care what anyone says, they look like shit, and Paragon should have been spending all that time at least upgrading and updating the poly count and textures. Seriously, those ancient models need to be replaced. I don't personally care if they don't add more costume locations or change the sliders much past what they can do now, but this entire system of keeping everything looking like it Deus Ex 1 is just piss poor design decisions, especially since so much time was devoted to adding new graphical features such as occlusion, real time shadows and reflections and water. Saying it would be impossible or it can't be done is just one big ass lying bullshit excuse, especially considering the new textures and costume bits and character models in the game, not to mention Mythic has proven that wrong already.

That being said, let's get to the heart of what is on my mind concerning City of Heroes, and actually it has to do realistically with City of Villains. Technically, City of Villains doesn't exist anymore, no matter what anyone says. It's currently occupying the afterthought sweepstakes spot behind City of Heroes. And despite any attempt to the contrary to say it, City of Villains actually gets as little recognition in any ads and updates as possible. Ironic considering the alignment system they aped hardcore during the Going Rogue hype train. But then again, like I said back then, I personally feel Paragon/NCSoft would get rid of City of Villains and just make them extended hero zones if they think they can get away with it.

At one time this side of the game use to actually receive some merit, but because things didn't start out like they planned, instead of actually trying to hype up that side of the game and improve upon it, they instead let it rot. Anything new that was added to City of Heroes the villain side was not allowed to actually partake in or, were just tag a long's in the overall story arc. This resulted in a lot of pissed off players and ironically the few times villains did receive anything the hero side of everything threw a basic temper tantrum saying how it was unfair, but considering how little villains actually received for the most part told us to deal with it or roll heroes.

However, that's the past and the current game is the current game but there is still a lot of things that Paragon should have done and fixed in the game as it stands today but evidently they refuse to. Namely the utter lack of game content villain side. Now, you will undoubtedly have the jackass mentality that states you can swap sides at your leisure but some people do not want to do that. It falls on the same coals as the argument to find another game from the dick heads over in Champions that are afraid of team style game play.

Many solutions have been presented and honestly, it astounds me that they still have ignored it even to this day. When the revamped Faultline zone was introduced into City of Heroes, Paragon miss-stepped so hard that they fell through the ground. This zone was perfect in setting up a competitive PvE environment and many people agreed with that, except for the asshats who felt that it would ruin their immersion which they could never honestly give one legitimate reason to actually back up on.

There were many ways to handle such things to give villains more content without having o invent new zones, it just boils down to the fact that the devs were lazy and rather listen to the minority instead of actually making the underdeveloped game side actually be competitive, content wise. Even to this day City of Villains has a glaring lack of content, and things like the Shadow Shard, the Warzones, and Faultline should have been opened up to them, but for whatever reason was decided they shouldn't.

It's one of those Greek style tragedies and of course Paragon probably trying to just sweep the entire affair under the rug. The fact they aped alignment shifting in Going Rogue seems to be their laughingly pathetic excuse to rectify the actual problem to.

In the end a lot should have been done. City of Heroes still suffers from the fact it caters too much to one faction and it shocks me when things are actually done in favor of villains. In fact, there is an actual bit of displeasure, from what I have been reading, that villains have actually been getting the benefit of the new story arc in the game. Rather impresses me. Even to the point that I've also heard that it's a boggle that some heroes even debate going villain side to get patron powers. But honestly, it really isn't even that much of a choice since going villain side is a temporary thing and can be rectified after only a few days.

There's a lot that needs to be changed in City of Heroes, honestly. But I doubt much will for a while, if at all. The games dated even if some people try to hold on like it's the best thing evar to happen.

Reviewing City of Heroes: Freedom -- Nostalgic trip, does it hold up?

One thing I have been sitting here and thinking about is all the games I have played. I've been wanting to do a compare and contrast, so in this case I will do City of Heroes versus Champions Online in a mild sense. I wanted to actually put DC Universe Online in the mix, but since the F2P isn't out just yet, I guess I will actually write about that later and probably put in some points in its own little article to try and give some comparisons between each of the games.

Anyways, CoH just recently went F2P. In short, the entire model is a copy and paste of the model that Cryptic developed for CO, but with a few modifications here and there, and a hell of a lot looser morals. But, that is something to cover as I go over a bit more later. Over all, they put a few things in that actually was sound, logically, but there are many other things to complain about because they basically took what should be standard services and told people tough shit, buy it.

My character using older
textures. Just taken
the day of this blog,
and the art everyone uses,
unless they buy costumes.

Now, what got me to go ahead and go back and check out 'City of' was just simple nostalgia, and honestly that is the only reason anyone could actually go back. I know many say it's just preference for this or that, but honestly, those people are going to hell for lying because as great as 'City of' was in its time, the game has not aged well, and one could even argue that it was dated before it even launched. In fact the compare and contrast is so bad that the so called Ultra Mode that 'City of' has actually makes the graphics look worse when they are turned on instead of better. Yes, I am saying it may be better to play the game with modern graphic features like occlusion, real time shadows and the like off, because 'City of' actually looks worse with the effects on.

This isn't helped by the fact that graphically, all the new stuff is a higher resolution texture slapped on the ancient, super low polygon character models. This creates some rather jarring contrasts between body and new features like new head types and such. It's almost painful to put new costume pieces on characters with these ancient character models. This is where me being spoiled by actually being able to create a realistic looking body comes in, because in CoH the body proportion distortion is just painfully obvious. Even the shortest legs are too long for the average female, and this is just my mind trying to ignore the facts that characters have mitten hands (ie no fingers) and boxed feet (no toes); two things I am definitely spoiled for, from Champions.

But I digress, you can't just rate a game on pure graphics alone, even though graphics can be a number one reason why you end up stop playing. Seriously, I can compare 'City of' graphically to Deus Ex one (yes, the first game) and graphically they would be similar in many respects, with very little to differentiate either of them. So, to cut to the end on graphics, they look like pure ass. Again, people will say it's just preference or style or what have you, but seriously no. The graphics look like ass, and ironically, compared to Champions, look more cartoony (which is hilarious since many complaints I heard from people before was Champions had cartoony graphics). So easily Champions is definitely the better game graphically. Hell even the animations tend to piss me off in 'City of' with either very sloppy animations, or animations that look half done. The female walk, the typical style male fantasy female runway walk has a jarring and rather disgusting ability to move the female spine in such a way that her lower back actually seems to be physically disconnecting from their upper chest. And the special dances (you have to buy) I don't even want to get on those on just how poorly animated they are.

Now, next on the list I would have to say the UI. There are things I would take away from this UI in a heartbeat honestly. Namely the split chat box and the ability to have more than one chat box. But after I consider that, there is actually very little else I would want. Seriously, the UI is actually slow and clunky, as typing doesn't update in real time. The game actually produces and audible beep for each character you input when typing, and it's roughly a half second from button push to actual character popping in the UI. Considering how fast I can type, I've actually had to slow down in many cases because I would actually type faster than the UI could register, which would have the downside of actually producing, what I call, the multiple window explosion syndrome, where specific bound default keys open up various windows whether you wanted them or not. Now, for slow typer's, that's not a bad thing, but for people that actually learned to type and don't hunt and peck, that's a bit of a detrimental thing.

Now what follows is controls, over all the controls are solid, albeit programmed in that kind of turn based combat system. Now some people might not understand this idea. But what it basically means that actions have to sort of follow a bit of strict rules. It's not going to be easy to explain so I might as well get into the heart of the combat system. 'City of' combat is very strictly turn based. That means it follows the ancient global cool down and everything has a certain attack period and fire time. Nothing else can happen while X is going on and any attempt to change that gets met with the system telling you to basically piss off. If you are used to games where combat is more free flowing and you can cancel an action or chain various attacks together, you are going to find this type of system painfully slow and clunky and, at many times, boring as hell.

Mother Mayhem: High
Resolution texture model
added recently. Mostly,
reserved for new NPCs or
new costume packs.

Now, onto the powers in each. Granted at first glance 'City of' actually has a ton of powers, until you actually stop being a twit and actually start reading and looking. Then you realize a lot of powers are copy and paste of each other rearranged with very little to differentiate them from one set to another. Almost all the fire melee sets are the exact same with little to change up, and might even share a few powers with the ranged fire powers. Now, 'City of' still probably has the edge in the sheer number of variety powers, however, but people always try to say the game has a ton of powers, but you can probably cut that ton in half because at least half the sets are copy and pastes.

There is variety there but a lot of the set pieces are starting to repeat themselves. On top of that, as far as the power system is set up, the entire power system is based on a system of chain attacks, IE you go down from one attack to the next to the next. In short, instead of being able to just keep attacking, you use what amounts to filler attacks while you wait for the cool down on each effect to end. I guess some people like that type of combat, but overall I find it clunky in the end. I am use to active combat that when I push a button I expect the effect to happen and if I am fighting I can actually defend myself. There are some things I liked about certain powers and such but overall system is just too damn slow and really doesn't espouse the heroic defender of justice feel that some people might be looking for when it concerns combat.

Now, here is probably going to be the clincher for a lot of people; content. Now, 'City of' has several years worth of content. And, just looking at it from the outside, that's a lot of content. However, here's the problem with the content; You go to a contact, get a mission, usually with flavor text sometimes in an attempt to be in a story, go to an instance and fight group of mobs to complete the mission or reach a specific objective. Sounds simple and basic and pretty standard. Except this is the same model used for almost every mission you enter. There is very little to differentiate one mission from another, except maybe the wallpaper, which there is painfully obvious few actual varieties of.

It's almost the same with every enemy group as well. Depending on how much "challenge" you give yourself, you fight the same group of mobs with different skins and sometimes different powers, but overall the same set up. Two groups will be at +1 level to you by default in an attempt to give added challenge to an otherwise mundane instance and early on it can be but once you hit 20 that should not even be a worry for whatever character you create.

My character from Champions
dressed similarly, with a few
extra options and not utilizing
all costume spots.

To side track myself, that brings up another point. I actually stopped in to do the tutorial for this, and to be blunt, this tutorial was obviously an afterthought or incredibly rushed. The map made me think of the Shadow Shard a couple of floating islands, but that wasn't supposed to be how it feels but that was exactly how it felt. The entire Galaxy City was wiped out (technically not since you can go to its Echo) and the entire tutorial has you doing things that you will never do in the game unless you are a subscriber and you get to endgame. In fact it has the Open Mission set up in the tutorial (that only appears in Praetoria) with a boss fight (a type you only encounter in a incarnate trial). The end result is a bunch of crap you never actually get to play with unless you subscribe which is kind of a jarring kick in the teeth of free to play accounts, in my opinion. I won't say Champions tutorial is a bed of roses, in fact I think it needs more work, but overall the tutorial in 'City of' is just one jarring rushed mess. At no point do you feel like you are in a crumbling city.

But that brings me to endgame. This, again is a sticking point because only people that pay a subscription actually get to participate in this. Endgame is alright, part of me does like how it's set up. I do like they finally added raids and there are things and objectives to earn and such along the way. But, they are set up in a way that organization is not a top priority. That's not a completely bad thing, mind you, but I can't say it's all good. On top of that, the incarnate system, if someone really wanted to, they could get the top tier in all their incarnate powers in less than a month. IE less than a subscription time. Now it takes work, and I am not completely against that, but I do feel they might have made it too easy.

But then again, that's a lot more endgame than Champions currently has. The lunacy that seems to be infecting some people there over endgame content is just hilarious, especially the people that think it would be unfair that certain content taking raids. Those are, of course, the type of people who either base their claims on hearsay or make up stories about limited time and such due to sob stories of family and three jobs and the like. To which I ask, then what the hell are you doing worry about an internet game? Regardless, hopefully Champions will be bringing an endgame and stop catering to the lowest common denominator that thinks everything needs to be soloable. Time to grow up people.

So, here comes my round-a-bout to the Paragon store. I said earlier I do like how the store was set up to do certain things like buying individual pieces for costumes instead of whole things, but then I looked deeper and further, many basic services, like a height slider cost $15 bucks to buy (a feature that was offered as part of the science costume pack expansion that gave emotes, costume pieces, costume change emotes, a power and the slider for $10). That is a ludicrous price. And the next thing that burns my bacon and made me stop caring the minute I saw it, Parago/NCSoft completely reneged on their promise to never have pay2win items in their store. And sure enough, pay2win enhancements are there.

The costs of many things are just out of whack. If you look at just costumes, you think you are getting a damn good bargain, especially when looking at costumes from CO since those come in bundles (currently). But then you add up the price for each piece (and mind you CoH doesn't even have half as many costume locations as Champions does) then costume sets start becoming more expensive. On top of that, the special powers like travel powers and such (which can't even be upgraded either) cost more than travel powers or archetypes (if you are silver) in the CO store. In the end, I just find the CoH store to be one big rip off compared to the CO store.

In the end, the only reason I've decided to even bother logging into CoH now is just to visit friends. The game play wears thin very fast after a few hours, and the store leaves an extremely bad taste in your mouth, especially when applying the newer high resolution items on the outdated, ugly, low poly, low resolution character models. Add in poor proportioning and the fact I am spoiled by a costume editor that is nearly triple the depth of CoH in choice and positioning, and freedom on what to do, from sliders to personal settings and costume spots, not to mention ass graphics and slow game play, it's hard to actually get into it seriously for any length of time. Some people will always say that will be preference, but realistically, that's just nostalgia. There are things I would want from 'City of' implemented in Champions, but in the end I prefer Champions over all, the game play is more solid and the game doesn't actually look like so much ass that you laugh at how jagged a statue looks from across the city.