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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

City of Heroes

06:34 / 02.08.05

Anyone else playing this? I'm usually on the Infinity server under the name Tisandra.

I got back into it last week after having played it till my eyes bled last year. It's damn fun, from the character customization to the multiplayer teams you can find. But I would love to team up with some Lithers out there, if there are any.

13:21 / 04.08.05

I'm very much in to WoW at the moment, got to be the best MMO i've played lately.

I have though given up on SWG, so if City of Heroes isn't an SOE run game i might well give it a go...

13:33 / 04.08.05

Can you tell us a bit more about it, Hieronymus? How it plays, how it's different from other MMORPGs, what you get from it, that sort of thing.

13:45 / 04.08.05

I've just been reading a Gamespot review of it, although it does seem a bit out of date.

Theres no PvP...

Wheres the fun unless you can lay waste to other players!
Seriously though, is this still the same or have they changed it now?

02:08 / 05.08.05

Actually, City of Heroes added PVP a few months ago in the form of an arena. I checked it out a little bit when they reactivated all the old cancelled accounts on Memorial Day weekend. There will be more PVP options at the end of the year when they come out with City of Villians.

I played COH from for six months last year. It was a hell of a lot of fun for a while, but eventually turned into a grind. Most of the missions came down to go and break into this base, capture all the badguys, and find/defuse all the machines/bombs/documents. You could also hunt either by yourself or with a group. They mix it up as bit with some big story arcs and task forces and archvillians missions, but it's still basically invade or hunt. I reckon it's pretty much the same with any MMORPG.

What made COH great is that you're playing a superhero. You choose their name, their powers, their origins, and design their costumes. Character generation is fun even without the rest of the game. I must have designed twenty characters for every character that I actually played.

Flying through the city was a truly beautiful experience, and superleaping through it (Hulk style) was even better. Another fun thing was just being in a city full of superheroes. It was cool just checking out all the different heroes walking/running/superspeeding/superleaping/flying/teleporting down the street. You could also go to the danceclub, which was always full of superheroes getting their groove on, usually while firing off their superpowers.

My three favorite characters (all on the Triumph server) were Spacegirl (an technology energy/devices blaster), Doctor Nihil (a magic spines/regeneration scrapper), and Starzan (a natural broadsword/regeneration scrapper).

10:41 / 05.08.05

yeah, gridley pretty much says it all. I think what I enjoy the most about it is the ability to see characters from your imagination poured out into pixeled little people, dancing, conversing, kicking villainous ass. Though it can get just a bit repetitive at times, the powers are fascinating to climb through. That and the community of teams and supergroups is also a plus, strategizing the various archetypes into a functioning unit. Too much ballsiness can get you killed. Too little and it's all too boring. You have to find the right balance of team players.

I'll try to look you up gridley. Like I said, I'm usually playing my Faerie magic blaster, Tisandra or my robot blaster, Rossum.

14:16 / 05.08.05

The fanfic writer Twoflower (Sailor Nothing, Ultrarage) has a group called Death From Below, streety angry young supers with ISSUES. And attitude stacked so high it's called altitude.
Death From Below

06:48 / 31.01.06

So should I get this or should I get City of Villians? I heard City of Villians let's you control armies or Zombies or Robots.

Also, is this game holding up for y'all? Does it get boring at a certain point, or is it still fun after awhile? Also, can you use bow and arrows?

06:50 / 31.01.06

Also, I heard city of villians allows you to create a secret bad guy headquarters.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

19:29 / 31.01.06

I really really loved City of Heroes for 7 or 8 months, and really really wanted to love it more.

The lack of inventory bothered me. Once I got my cape there really weren’t any other "achievements" besides leveling up.

I have played quite a few MMOs over the years, and in all of them there is a reason for heavy grinding, better/cooler looking gear and weapons, new abilities, higher level content that is neat and different.

In CoH you get new abilities, but your fire blaster has the same abilities as every other fire blaster (there is a secondary skill set, which is cool, but not enough variety).

What I wish is that WoW had the char creation options of CoH, because WoWs gameplay wins out, but the individual appearance of your toon makes CoH pretty damn cool, at least for a while.

21:19 / 31.01.06

The lack of loot is deliberate, so people don't have to grind or camp instances for 'ph4t g34r'. It's much more of a pick up and play game than other MMPOGS

Capes aren't the shiney's you can pick up, there are a few badge combo's which give you special awards that have powers with them. The alien ray gun sounds like the coolest

.

As for should you get City of Villians or City of Heroes, Vity of Villians is a bit more polished than City of Heroes, at least as regards content as they've had a lot of practice on CoH. But CoH is still very cool and has had 8 issues of extra content released so far for it, you'll have plenty to do.

On balence I'd say go for CoV, it'll have the most active population of users at the moment. But if you like it think about picking up CoH as then you'll be able to play all of that content as well and play both sides of the PvP game. You won't have to pay more on the subscription as that covers both games.

Mysterious Transfer Student

16:31 / 04.02.06

I've been playing the UK edition of CoH for several months now. Despite enjoying it immensely for the most part I am shamefully bad at it, never having got higher than Level 13 (of 50), and falling victim to the MMORPGer's disease of 'altaholism' - continually creating and discarding, and vacillating between, different characters and power classes in an attempt to liven up the gameplay.

The official online community is, as far as I can judge, very dedicated - there are vast numbers of insanely detailed fan-made power development guides freely available on CoH's fora, so deciding what career path to take is a doddle. Handily, later missions have a 'Respec' as their prize, meaning that any lemon-like powers you may have been stuck with due to poor judgment early on can be replaced.

I recommend CoH to anyone who has a decent PC and broadband connection. And Jack Denfeld should be made aware that yes, there are bows and arrows.

02:50 / 06.02.06

I just picked this up for $20! Trying to play now, but it's updating some patch or something and it says it's gonna take like 11 hours. Ugh.

04:56 / 30.10.06

Bump, anyone still around? I'm on the Infinity server as Boone VII. I've never played one of these things before, but I've been so lonely...

08:11 / 02.11.06

I'd be tempted to play this, but I kind of resent having to pay monthly fees when something like Guild War does it for free (not that I'd play Guild War I'm more of a capes and sci-fi kind of ape).

08:47 / 02.11.06

Well in fairness they are different games, an episode of Guild Wars doesn't have half the content that CoH/CoV does as it's focus is PvP mainly although this isn't as true with the latest expansion Nightfall as that has a lot more PvE stuff.

So anyone playing on the European servers? I've just picked this up again after a lengthy session of Vampire: Bloodlines and I'm running round as a Brute in CoV, The Magnetic Mamba is a lot of fun to play compared to the Corruptor I have been playing. None of this dodge in and out sniping people malarky, just get in there and smack people about

.

14:23 / 02.11.06

I just picked this up for $20! Trying to play now, but it's updating some patch or something and it says it's gonna take like 11 hours. Ugh.

Bar none, one of the many reasons I just walked away from CoH in disgust. Their 'patch' to integrate CoH with CoV is a 1GB file. When this first came out, because of the swarm demand on their servers, it was slow as death on training to get ahold of the update. I seem to recall I was two or three days just trying to get the damn thing to finish downloading AND get it to work with CoH. Eventually I just gave up.

So it sickens me a little to hear that nothing's really changed. Their character customization cannot be beat. Hands down. As a superhero Poser, it's incredible. But the gameplay and the developers completely riddle the fun with bullets.

And not in a cool way.

15:28 / 02.11.06

Well if you're picking up the original CoH on the cheap you've got between 8 and 4 updates of content to download, and with CoV you've got 2 updates to download. So that's a pretty large chunk of stuff you're getting. Also compare that to WoW where you'd be using bit-torrent to download your patches.

(obs disclosure I work for the publishers of CoH so may have the odd bias here and there

)

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

17:30 / 02.11.06

Are you saying that bittorrent distro is bad? The bittorrent protocal is great for huge numbers of users all trying to get the same files. The only drawback is that it hogs your upstream bandwidth, but if you aren't using file sharing you likely aren't using that for much anyway.

Anyway, I have given up on WoW and keep considering going back to CoH or trying out CoV. Something about super powers is cool, but that goes without saying.

23:06 / 02.11.06

I didn't have a huge problem with the patch. I went and read a book.

I'm having fun with COH. I'm not a video game kind of person, really. I find them either boring or frustrating, usually, but I used to enjoy a good MUSH. I wish COH were a little more MUSHy and less MUDdy.

Hey, what if all you guys got whatever patch you need, and read a book while it was doing its thing, and then we went in there and made the MUSH thing happen? It would be very Invisible.

08:55 / 03.11.06

Not saying Bit-torrent distro is bad it's very useful, but getting your users to distribute your patches for you is a bit cheeky.

And sorry Qualyn I'm on Union in the EU servers, otherwise it would be cool to team up and cause some mayhem

.

19:37 / 03.11.06

THERE IS NO U IN... oh, right, sorry.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:12 / 15.11.06

Well, I reactivated my account.

My global chat tag is @Gringolet, drop me a line, I play on Virtue.

The account page says I played last in Dec 2004. That sounds about right. Holy fuck the game has changed a lot.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

15:17 / 16.11.06

Oh dear jesus I just tested it and the game will play on my computer here at work.

Expect an "I've been fired" convo thread in the near future :-P

22:58 / 16.11.06

I have been so into the CoH forums the past couple of days. The internet is for complaint! It cracks me up.

Elijah, sorry about last night, I lost my connection.

11:41 / 17.11.06

Hey Elijah, you're the network admin aren't you? Go on, just have a go for ten minutes. No one will know. No one will know.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

20:31 / 17.11.06

No problem Qualyn, I was about ready for bed anyway.

And yeah Trips, no one noticed so far. A quick fix here and there or during lunch breaks will keep me sane.

22:05 / 24.10.08

Bump -

Just wanted to know if this game has developed and what's new - if people are still into the game, if there are any other similar alternatives? I'm a mac user so don't/can't play it anyway, but curious...