Another fortnight, another hopelessly unrepresentative lightning tour of an MMO that I'd never quite gotten around to trying before. This time it's Cryptic/NC Soft's City of Heroes. While there don't seem to be any free trials to be had directly from their website, there are lot of bulk trial giveaways floating about out there, so getting a look at the game isn't too difficult, and just requires a bit of hunting about. They also run a Refer a Friend scheme if you do have a friend on the inside.
The trial is for 14 days, is a full client download - about 4GB, requires no credit card, but does need a PlayNC account setting up, which you'll already have if you play Guild Wars, Auto Assault or other NCSoft title.
City of Heroes and City of Villains are effectively two sides of the same game, but for the purpose of this trial, I'm only looking at the City of Heroes content.
Paragon City is the largest city in America, and since it's founding in 1823, has been a magnet for organised crime, military aggression, natural disaster and extra terrestrial invasion. Fortunately, in 1933, a band of extraordinary humans with unusual powers, led by a man calling himself The Statesman began to use their gifts for the defence of the city and it's citizens.
Over the following years, up until the present day, an ever growing number of righteous super-powered individuals have come to the beleaguered city, to call it home and defend it's people against an increasingly dangerous and hostile world. In recent years one of the newer threats to this already troubled metropolis comes in the form of the sinister and organised Arachnos, based on the Rogue Isles, and made up of super-powered individuals who have chosen a darker path, (City of Villains), and now more than ever, the people call out for protection from the many forces of darkness.
You start life in one of the side streets of Paragon City, a rare individual with a special power, and a determination to use it for the greater good of the city and it's inhabitants. Nearby a police officer calls out to you - it seems that all is not well in this neighborhood, and a virulent outbreak stands on the brink of ravaging the city and turning it's citizens into ravening madmen.
This is just the first of many opportunities to put your gifts to good use...
Three Good Things:
- Diverse
The character creation stage is a thing of legend among MMOs, and rightly so. I've never quite seen anything like the sheer number of options available to you during the costume design phase, and it seems to allow for thousands of possible avatar looks. These choices also stay relevant throughout your gaming life, as you get no visible armour equipment, which in other games tends to cancel out any personal choices you made very early on. This all means that everyone gets to look as unique as they like, which is refreshing. In two weeks, I never saw two heroes that looked significantly similar.
This extends to the actual 'classes' too, with a huge number of combinations of Artchetype, Primary Powerset and Secondary Powerset, and about 10 powers in each powerset, meaning that there really is no telling what kind of tricks the next pickup group might be capable of. This makes being specific about group requests quite awkward, but means that every group you find yourself in is going to be something a bit different and interesting.
- Super
The whole game is a kind of pastiche homage to virtually every superhero book, comic or film, all in one package. This is reflected in the game mechanics a great deal, notably the wide variety of interesting and different super-powers available to pick from as you go up the levels. There are hundreds of these, including fiery breath, cocoons of ice, mind control, super speed, gigantic leaping and so on, all of which creates a different and interesting feel during play. Definitely a departure from the more accepted norms of swinging swords, shooting laser guns, and casting magic missiles, found elsewhere. Where else can you defeat your foes by flinging photocopiers at them?
It also shows in the general look and feel of the experience on a wider level. Bounding through the skyscrapers on the way to wreck a den of evil sorcerers or rescue a helpless innocent from a platoon of assault commandoes or ninjas, and seeing other heroes jetting about on their own crime-fighting errands, you really do feel the part. At present, no other game offers this unique setting, and it does the job well. I've never been much into the whole Superhero thing myself, but even I found this different kind of MMO life interesting and fun. Most Superhero stories are exactly that; stories, and so very difficult to work into an MMO where thousands of people are also The Hero. City of Heroes does a decent job of finding a compromise.
- Friendly
Perhaps not a specific game design feature as much, but unusually for me, I spent more time in teams than solo, throughout the fortnight. I don't think it's that Tankers are in short supply and needed, or that I'm a famous enough hack to warrant any specific notice, but the random group invites just kept on coming all fortnight long. I wasn't even officially flagged as LFG. I suspect something about the game, it's much more freeform group composition requirements, and it's relatively light death penalties (just XP debt and short return journey), makes the average player much less put off by bad pickup grouping experiences, and more likely to get out there and get recruiting.
In particular, the far lesser emphasis on having exactly the right balance of classes, (Tank, Healer, DPS, Crowd Control, Pastry Chef, Epidemiologist, etc), makes group work much less a ruthless science, and more a carefree adventure. Having a dedicated Empathy Defender to do the healing did make things run smoother, certainly, but it does seem that in the early levels at least, a completely random mix of any classes, can get the job done well enough. The game may indeed become SERIOUS BUSINESS at higher levels, but for the first 20 or so, it just seemed like good clean painless fun for all concerned. In general, the people were polite, good natured and the was very little of the abusive smacktalk that often tends to come as part and parcel with low-level zonewide broadcast chat. I even saw quite a bit of roleplaying going on. Gadzooks!
A particularly well-implemented mentoring system (Exemplars and Sidekicks) helps with the free and easy group mentality even further, removing yet another traditional barrier to people just going off in a random group and having fun.
Three Bad Things:
- Levels
For some reason, the usual and artificial mechanic of Experience Levels seems particularly jarring in this game. Getting all costumed up, rushing out with your first two superpowers and straying too far form the starting plaza is likely to get you a beatdown very quickly. Fair enough...go where you're supposed to be, and all that, but it just seems especially galling when you're supposed to be a superhuman crime fighter, and are then promptly sent to hospital (killed) by two regular guys with nothing more 'super' than improvised face-scarf disguises, and baseball bats. I'm sure later on, the emphasis moves more toward giant out-of-control robots, alien death raiders and bona fide, card carrying Super Villains, but the initial, and otherwise quite effective, suspension of disbelief keeps being routinely jostled by this kind of artificially imposed bracketing.
Conversely, it's somewhat shocking how quickly you learn to just run on past a handbag-snatching-in-progress without a backward glance, simply because the self-same baseball bat wielding thugs are now beneath your notice. This crime is not serious enough to warrant MY attention! A different aspect of the same problem.
Oh, I know...there are any number of gameplay reasons why levels need to exist, and I have no idea what alternatives might be tried instead, but it's a continual low-grade irritation.
- Samey
When you get right down to it, the basics of gameplay do seem quite fixed and similar. You'll either be roaming the streets, looking for ten SuchAndSuch Thugs to beat down, or you'll be in one of the modular randomly generated mission instances, beating your way to the stolen plans/captured hostage/evil thug boss. These mission instances are quite similar to the ones pioneered by Anarchy Online, several years ago, although with a much more lavish and well detailed set of 'tiles' to build them from. They are tiles however, and even after two weeks, I was starting to recognise repeated configurations of stairs, warehouse racking, office lobby and cavern. There are variations of course. I found the Safeguard missions quite a lot of fun, but even those become quite familiar after the first two or three goes.
The brief go at the first Taskforce mission chain we'd managed, turned out to start with three more missions of something very similar too, when I was expecting something a little more unique and different. We only made it three missions in though, out of sixteen or so, so perhaps those do become more Guild Wars-like as you get further in.
(On that note, 16 missions in a row without being able to leave the Task Force group, level, or do other stuff in between does seem a little excessive. It's only a small mercy that you're allowed to log out in between missions, preventing you from having to keep an 8-12 hour block aside for the badge!)
I did manage to get a bit of soloing in and would imagine that if that's all you did, the basic gameplay would get quite stale fairly quickly. The novelty of the other players does mitigate this a bit, particularly pick-up grouping, just due to the diversity of powers and costumes out there. There are other things to do in the game, of course; PvP in various forms, auctioneering, limited tradeskills, the base construction play set (which is very cleverly done), exploration and badge-hunting, and there's even some kind of superhero nightclub zone that I never quite got round to looking at. It's a great game for starting Alts in, and for those with the double-deal collector's edition thing, there's an almost entirely different game to be explored in City of Villains.
Despite all this, I still think it's a game that relies heavily on Other People, and whatever other things you try and enjoy, I suspect you're still going to be clearing a lot of thugs out a lot of warehouses in your time there. Usually this is difficult thing to spot in a 14 day trial, so the fact that it became apparent at all, is something to note. Perhaps I'm being unfair and things alter drastically and often, as you work up the levels, but I'm wondering if I'd still be clearing out the same warehouse in three months time.
- Vague
One for the hardened MMO Min-Max Spreadsheet DPS Calculator obsessive - City of Heroes is very shy about it's numbers, and almost nowhere will you find actual statistics. Your character doesn't seem to have any, in the traditional sense, and nor do any of their powers, or inspirations (potions). You also get no gear to tweak or refine or sell. Those heroes who focus on a weapon get that weapon for free as a part of the Power, which presumably is self-upgrading. Equipment is solely limited to the Enhancements - lootable and craftable abstract 'modules' which can be inserted into your Powers, to make them a bit better in certain areas. These do have numbers, but only relative percentages, applied to a number you have no idea about anyway. I'm a bit of a numbers obsessive, as regular readers will know, and this novel approach to the nuts and bolts of an MMO just left me all anxious and adrift a bit.
I guess you get used to it over time, and it didn't seriously ruin my enjoyment that much, but for many players, the hoarding of gold/credits/etc, the mini-game of hunting down the phat loot drops and endlessly refining the paperdoll, is an essential part of the MMO experience. Those folks are likely to be disappointed in the selflessly altruistic pseudo-economy of Paragon City. It makes sense, I guess - real superheroes care not for earthly trinkets and greed, and their powers are an intrinsic part of them, not something looted off the still-warm corpses of monsters. The Enhancements do provide some opportunity for tweaking however, and are probably complex enough to cause the messageboard 'Post teh Best Build evar here!!' flamewars we of the Church of Number love so much.
Presumably the idea is that we should spend less time doing the tortuous optimisation maths, and more time getting into the role of hero. It's a different kind of way, and perhaps a healthier one overall, but if like me, you're more used to regular MMOs, you're going to have quite a bit of culture shock over it all.
I wouldn't mind so much really, and approve in principle, but the reason this is a bad thing and a not good thing, for me, is that it's still quite apparent that even though we aren't allowed to see them, the game is still using some kind of numbers to determine whether we live or die, and I suspect rather than the intended liberation, we're just being kept unnecessarily in the dark. I found it very difficult to measure my own performance as the fortnight went on. Do I need to upgrade Enhancements? Am I using the right ones? Should I use Attack A or Attack B? Is this Power worth getting? What does it even do? Somewhat frustrating, all in all, but forgivable, if you have the time and effort to learn this stuff by 'feel'.
On the whole, I really enjoyed this one, and think it's going to be a keeper. Definitely worth the price of admission for a good long multi-month stint. I'm sure the longer level-grind will be less fun, but then few games escape that particular failing, and it seems the sort of thing you can come back to and chip away at, months at a time anyway.
One thing that did colour my impressions somewhat, despite my best efforts to be objective, was having a decent Supergroup to go rampaging about with. Thanks to The Disconnectables - The Chained Reaction, Slush Puppeh, Mumblebee, Changling Bob and The Mighty Millionaire. Good times! Turns out these games are more fun when played with other people. Who knew!?
(One extra Bad here, although not really to do with the game itself - the EU and US servers are totally isolated from each other. This was quite vexing to me personally, as there were a number of US CoH folks; bloggers, commenters and mailers, whom I'd quite wanted to visit, say hello and bust some heads with. Unfortunately, it seems not even the clever inter-server /tell @soandso system crossed the great divide. Apologies to those US folks who did want to meet up! This presents a difficult choice for when I do want to actually sign up - EU or US? Many of the Disconnectables are usually on the US servers, but then again, EU servers tend to be less laggy, by 150ms in some cases. Decisions...)
I always do three good things and three bad things with these, partly because I obsess about symmetry, (which makes ship buying in EVE Online a bugger - "I know it kicks arse, but it's so...wonky!" Thank god for the Hurricane!) and partly because I like to RP a 'Proper Game Journo' in my spare time, but many of the bad points I did see are either consequences of it being so different to anything else, or simply recurring gripes that no game has got right yet.
Final Verdict: Refreshingly different casual gaming and a solid, polished experience. Well worth a couple of months if you need a holiday from Orcs, or just if you always wanted to be a super hero, but look silly with your underpants outside your trousers!
Definitely one I'll be signing up to soon, but I did set out to do three titles in this season of Operation Cheapseats, and it's only fair to finish the run. Next up is Dungeons and Dragons Online, Turbine's go at bringing the old-school, back to basics, tabletop game that started it all, kicking and screaming to the 3.5 edition rules, 21st century MMO, pointy dice and all!
(I'm almost entirely convinced that I didn't personally kill Auto Assault with my review, and that it was all just bad timing, but will still be watching tomorrow's MMO news headlines with a certain sense of trepidation...)