More City of Heroes over the last few days, and more ramblings here!
So far I've made it to L17, largely without noticing it at all which is always nice. I seem to be settling quite comfortably into the role of front-line aggro-taunting meatshield, especially with the various tools they give you for gaining and holding aggro, and of course actually being able to survive the beatings is useful too.
The group work continues to come at a fair old pace, and I rarely find the time to solo while playing, or indeed, the inclination. Mind you I'm not quite ego-crazed enough to believe this is a phenomenon that's come about simply because I posted a character name here, previously. No, it seems that this is quite normal for the game, or at least the server I'm on. I'm not even flagging LFG, but still the offers come.
I can only imagine that the LFG tools built into the game are sufficiently helpful to cause people to actually use them. I had a quick look and finding like-minded and like-levelled individuals who happen to be in the same city zone as yourself does look quite a simple task, but there's obviously something in the water, lacking from many other supposed 'Massively Multiplayer' games, which makes people actually take the initiative far more, and get groups going. Against that kind of background, well, it would be rude not to accept the group invites.
The texture of group work is a lot more relaxed and informal than in most MMOs too. Sure, I'm a Tanker, so tend to get up front and dig in for the melee, but unless the mission presents exceptionally difficult enemies, I'm starting to see that a dedicated healer isn't always necessary, which is a somewhat heretical line of thinking, but just as well really.
It's nice to have one along, but it's quite tricky working out who actually is a healer. Turns out that dedicated healing is only one possible power pool, Empathy, which the Defender in question may or may not have chosen, from several.
The power pool system is a bit confusing really for someone from an old-school MMO class background like me. Zubon explains it a little here, pointing out that the various combinations of primary and secondary power sets allows for something like 364 possible permutations; 364 Classes, in effect. Each power set contains a self-contained and complete set of powers, which make up the hotkey buttons of the game, and many of these choices significantly change how you play, even within a single archetype. All great from a character personalisation perspective, but a bugger for trying to work out who can do what. Everyone knows what a Wizard or Druid is in the context of a Typical Fantasy MMO, but I'm a Ice/Ice Tanker, (I think), and have no idea what, say, a Radiation/Archery Defender is. Never mind the extra optional Power Pool sets of skills that anyone can take!
Best bet seems to be to recruit anyone the right kind of level level, and just wade in. With City of Heroes' excellent Exemplar/Sidekick system, atheir mentoring mechanic, even being the right kind of level isn't that import either. With any luck, each person knows their own trade at least, and sheer force of numbers ought to see us through. I should try not to worry so much about previously held notions of complex interdependence, and just go whack something, I think.
Some interesting sessions over the last few days, seeing new zones and missions. While the city is perhaps less varied than the zones you might find in other MMOs, it is just that, a single self-contained city. There are no snowfields, deserts, jungles or mountains, but there is still a surprisingly amount of variety between the different city districts, of a more subtle style. King's Row is a more industrial type of landscape than Steel Canyon, which is more commercial and Skyway City is dominated largely by massive overpasses. Perez Park is a forested city parkland type of location that seems bigger than a lot of complete 'Mysterious Forest' zones in other MMOs, and it's surprisingly easy to get lost among the trees, in what you initially thought was just a little bit of parkland.
Further out, things get really varied, with the catastrophically damaged Hollows, where a significantly large part of the outlying suburbs of the city have subsided into a massive crater. Or Faultline, a bit of the city being furiously rebuilt after a disastrous earthquake. My favourite so far though, has to be Boomtown. Heading out north from the affluent skyscrapers Steel Canyon, you pass through a gate, and seemingly pass 500 years into the future too. The new zone is totally wrecked, in a very Fallout/Max Max post apocalyptic style, and seems to be what the other zones would look like after a nuclear war. I couldn't find any NPCs to ask about the story of the place, but what with all the wonky, partially collapsed skyscrapers, it's a great playground for Heroes with Jumping Powers, which I took.
The Jumping is a huge amount of fun in general. Forewarned by the Disconnectables, I'd been careful to buy Combat Jumping and then Super Jump from the 'Leaping' optional Power Pool, when the levels allowed, ensuring I had a Travel Power at L14. There are four of these, and they're used for getting about the city - a kind of 'player mount' type of mechanic, only without ponies. The others are proper flight, which seemed a bit sedate to me; running very very fast, which I figured would just make it difficult to control, and teleporting, which I could see myself having trouble aiming properly. Leaping it is then, and I can now stride tall buildings with a single bound! Or at least smack into the side of them on a pretty high floor!
Once toggled on, mashing the spacebar catapults me with pavement-shattering force up and away, and propels me about two city blocks in my chosen direction, and basically, I can't stop giggling the whole time. It's of great practical use too; much of Paragon City is laid out to confuse and infuriate pedestrians. In particular, there are a number of split-leveled sections with really big walls that mere mortals have to go quite out of their way to find stairwells to climb.
Unlike the flying, there's a bit of a challenge to leaping, and suddenly, an entire cityscape becomes a platform and ladders game, with many coveted badges to be had for getting to some of the sillier places. I love badges!
I'm quite taken with the Safeguard missions as well. Each district has a detective who you can impress by using your police radio to find and stop Crime. Once he's happy enough with you, he'll send you to a van in the carpark. Jumping in the back of this takes you and your team to a mini instance version of a few city blocks, where a bank job is in progress. Stopping this raid is only the start though, and once the main villain is foiled, you then have 15 mins to rampage about the area thwarting other minor crime and general dishing out Justice. Time extends are available, and various side missions present themselves.
It's very cleverly done, and quite a challenge just seeing how long you can keep the thing going for. At the end of it all, you get given a temporary power which you're allowed to keep for a bit afterward. Once I got a Zero G Jump Pack, granting me two hours of Super Jump, which pretty much sold the jumping to me as a permanent power choice. I've also had a Flying backpack from one, (which also sold the jumping to me as a permanent power choice), and a self-resurrection device, which is always handy.
In addition to these, there are apparently longer and more involved zone-based chains of missions - Taskforces, which I'm guessing function in a similar manner to the longer instance runs or even raids, in WoW, only with a more involved story. These seem to be a bit of an epic commitment of time and energy, from what I hear mentioned. Mind you, like much else in CoH I'd expect it's executed in a substantially different manner to any other game I've played. I'll have to try one and see.
Surprisingly, CoH does have a pretty involved economy - mostly built around the Enhancements. These loot items are about all there is in the way of character 'equipment', and allow modular improvement of the powers. Like the rest of the game, customisation is king here, and a surprisingly variety of attributes can be enhanced, within each power; endurance cost, recharge duration, damage, accuracy, taunt duration, etc, etc. This allows the Hero to pick out aspects of their already diverse skills, and tailor them toward one area more than others. Do I want more damage, faster reuse, or more taunt effect, or a combination of all of those?
Very flexible, but as with anything that offers so much choice, I expect it's quite easy to make the wrong choice without a bit of research and/or foreknowledge. This is exacerbated a bit by CoH's aversion to Numbers. While there are tooltips that sort of explain what each power does, this tends to be mostly in the form of 'More' or 'Less' shorthand.
Icy Sword for example lists as: "Melee Moderate DMG(Cold, Lethal) Foe -Recharge -Spd"
Which is nice, but leaves me adrift a bit, being the Stats obsessive I am. Presumably, it has an invisible sliding scale, allowing it to be useful vs all levels of enemies, as I grow? The enhancements do list a percentage improvement, but +9.6% of what? Melmoth explains quite eloquently here, why I ought to stop worrying and learn to love the vague, and he has a point, but on a number of occasions, I've been a bit confused by the above shorthand and ended up buying a power, only to find out it does something completely different to what I expected, or wanted. Still, you live and learn.
The enhancements are also craftable, although the very limited inventories for the parts, recipes and end products make it more of a dabbling aside, than any kind of massive grind, or indeed, online business. There's a somewhat confusing auction house to support all this commerce too, which as far as I can tell, works on a system where both the seller and the customer have to secretly guess a price. If these guesses intersect, the transaction actually happens. I need to study this more - it's probably frightfully clever, but at present just confuses me.
The Supergroup is doing well, and we've even got a base now. It's a fun kind of thing, which sort of reminds me of the housing from Star Wars: Galaxies, having a similar social and RP function and feel, with only minimal gameplay value in itself that I could see so far. I guess some of the more advanced furniture you can add will have more relevant gameplay purpose, and I gather destroying each other's bases makes up some of the farther end of PvP. I've yet to try PvP in CoH out yet, despite there being several forms of it, from free-fire outdoor zones, to pokemon-style arena monster combat, as well as the ability to raid evil/good bases as part of the 'guild'.
I'll have to try to get at least some fighting in during my remaining free days. I've also yet to have any kind of look at the City of Villains, beyond character creation/tutorial over there. I expect that'll need it's own review really.
Time is running out however, and it'll soon be time to wrap up the trial and see what I thought overall...