I must admit to having been a bit of a tease of late, specifically with the whole Free Trial thing. Free, no consequences, online gaming is all very nice, but I suppose the point of it all is to actually test drive the thing with a view to paying somebody to then be able to play the thing properly. With that in mind, I've signed up with City of Heroes. Auto Assault is er...gone and Dungeons and Dragons Online didn't quite click with me as much as the rampaging superhero thing, although is definitely worth a closer look in the future, I'd say.
I've gone with the double edition which includes City of Villains, and went with the US side in the end, after all that agonising, as I already know people there. It only took two goes to get The Tundra Templar's costume right, and before long, I was out in Atlas Park again, thwacking ruffians in the name of frosty vigilante justice. Felt good to be back! I do miss some of the more advanced powers I'd gained during the trial, (the Super Jumping travel power most of all) but to be honest, hadn't got that far last time; level 15, and don't see that it'll take that long to reach the point where I left off once more.
I'm mildly disappointed that I've been sent to The Hollows again though, since Perez Park appears to be a similar kind of low level hunting zone, and I'd never been sent there on mission at all during the trial. Nothing stopping me going to the park anyway, but it's nice to have a purpose for it all. This repetition of path so far is probably to do with having identical origins as last time. The Templar is an Ice Armour/Ice Melee Magic Tanker, and seemed to have got exactly the same 'magical-based' contacts this time through too. I don't mind too much though - The Hollows seems a popular place and group opportunities are plentiful.
I'm barely level seven and already there have been some decent and successful groups. I'm quite surprised how quickly I've gotten back into the tanking, and once I'd got my Chilling Embrace power on board, (a small Area-of-Effect snare that taunts like crazy, constantly), the sheer ease of keeping aggro and stopping the more fragile Scrappers, Blasters and Defenders getting too badly battered was a joy to rediscover. Taunting is typically a fraught exercise in these games, and involves the damage dealers exercising all manner of counter-intuitive restraint, as much as the tank class spamming out damage and/or threat like a crazy thing. Not so CoH, and as far as I can tell, it's one of the few MMOs where the back-row artillery type is free to let rip with impunity, without ending up a messy smear on the floor directly afterward, for the simple crime of using their full potential. Refreshing, and thinking about it, who designs a class that is often required to 'Not Give It All They Got' if they want to live anyway?
My own durability continues to shock me a bit too, and I seem just as capable of taking a terrific beating largely unscathed, as I ever was. Mind you, with that many toggled defensive buffs running at once, keeping enough endurance (CoH's 'mana') to power it all can be a problem, and already I've relearned that my own personal 'Kyptonite' is Electricity. Electrical based attacks seem to drain this endurance pool, often tipping my already precarious balancing act over the edge, which promptly shuts all my various ice cocoons down, leaving me practically Mortal! Lots more of the socketed Endurance Reduction enhancements ahead, I can tell.
Meanwhile, in The Rogue Isles...
Taking full advantage of the double meal-deal thing, I've rolled up a Villain too, mostly because I don't have enough actual enemies, and so need to alt my own Nemesis. I did manage a very brief whistle-stop tour of the very low-end of City of Villains during the trial, but it is a completely other game, and following on somewhat later than City of Heroes, as it did, seems to feature quite a few interesting tweaks, improvements, refinements and so on.
I already had a quick go as a Mastermind - the unique and interesting pet-class available only to Villains, so thought I'd try something else, and went with a Dark Melee/Dark Armour Magic Stalker. I've no idea why I keep picking Magic as my Origin. Force of habit, I expect.
I'm probably going to get into all sorts of trouble for the comparison, but the Stalker seems to be CoV's 'Rogue' class. You get a stealth power right from the word go, and in general, the class seems to be all about DPS, and is nowhere near as survivable as the Tanker in a straight fist-fight, which you'd expect.
Mind you, just as the Tanker is like the the standard MMO 'Warrior', only much more so, the Stalker seems a similar overpowered version of the Rogue. For a start, the stealth is, by and large, perfect. Often Rogues have a hard time in these games, and stealth is usually regarded as an accidental and unintended way for some players to bypass content - a 'easy mode'. This leads to all sorts of annoying and artificial mechanisms to reign in the concealment advantage a bit; usually level-based monster 'perception'. Depending on the leniency of the developers, you'll get away with creeping past something your own level, and maybe a few above, but beyond that, you may as well not be hidden at all.
Not so CoV, and I've been galloping about Cap Au Diable, a zone I'm sooo not ready to fight in yet, pretty much as I please. I've yet to encounter anything, of any level, that can see me, if I choose for them not to, making it a great class for exploration. I don't doubt that there are monsters with some kind of 'See Hidden' ability out there, but I've not come across any so far, so hopefully those are the exception, rather than 'every other trashmob' in the levels to come. Yes, that's right, galloping; the stealth comes with none of the usual movement-speed hit. The stealth drops, temporarily, if you start beating on people, or take damage, but that's fair, and you don't even need to manually turn it back on again afterward. Wait a few seconds after the fight and up it goes on it's own.
It does all rather make my costume choices somewhat academic though, as most of the time, I'm an invisible person, in the middle of a cloud of boiling darkness, with a blue nametag over the top, but you can't have it both ways; being an invisible shadow-shrouded assassin AND looking fabulous, and all these shadow effects can be toggled off, for social events, preening, hanging out at the Black Market, etc.
Shortly after that, at level six, you get the option of CoV's version of the old 'Backstab' ability. Most attacks, if conducted from Hidden as an opening strike seem to automatically go critical anyway, but a successfully conducted Assassin's Eclipse can usually kill an even-level minion, and some lieutenants, outright in the first stab, which shocked me as much as it shocked them! I'm more used to the Backstab just giving you a head start on the hit-point attrition game, to make up for your own lousy armour, rather than being a fight starter AND finisher in one go! It all makes me feel...powerful, just as a Super Villain should. You still need to roll 'to hit' with it though, and if you miss, you end up with a straight punch-up on your hands, so one for a shedload of +Accuracy Enhancements I think. I want to never miss with this one.
It's something I'm starting to notice with CoH/V classes; they seem to have their roots and inspirations in the more usual roster, but then seem to really go to town, making the basic functions of the class much easier, more potent and more powerful. Still, I've only tried three of them so far, and none very far up the levels.
My Tanker is going for the Jumping travel power again just because it was so much fun, but I thought I'd try something different with the Stalker, and am working at Teleporting instead, and the first step I picked toward that, Teleport Foe, is a lot of fun too. On a successful hit, it teleports your currently targeted enemy, to a point near you that you specify with a big glowing ring cursor. At first it didn't seem that helpful, as the act of teleporting is an attack, and breaks your stealth if it 'hits', losing me my attack-from-hidden critical. Where it shines though, is when you have to take out groups of enemies. Run up to them (Invisible, of course), target one at the edge, then run away, get a few corners between you and them, hit the button and YOINK! One enemy, alone and rather confused, directly in Fist Range. Even works through walls, as long as you have a target selected in the first place. I love the rumbling noise it makes too!
Most of the time, his pals won't even notice he's suddenly disappeared in a flash of light. Sometimes they will though and will come for you, and I've not quite figured out why they do and don't on different occasions. Regardless, an excellent way to pull from groups, and given the rather three dimensional map design of the place, a useful way of getting hoodlums down off tall rooftops, water towers, etc, at least until I get the ability to go up there after them myself anyway. As a Stalker, I seem not to have much in the way of ranged attack, so need to be close. Bringing the mountain to Mohammed, and all that!
Stalkering is slower work than Tankering, I'm finding, as you can't just charge into the fray, but need to think and plan a bit more. On the plus side though, often as a Stalker, when sent to steal something, you can do just that; race directly to the end and grab the swag, without a single fight. Less XP, of course, but a good way to quickly raise your standing with the various contacts.
Anyway, more to follow, I'm sure, as City of Whichever does seem like it's got quite a bit of mileage in it yet, and I can see it easily keeping me amused until whichever New Release I'm currently anticipating comes out, and beyond...