[City of Villains] I am finding City of Villains to be quite a bit more fun than City of Heroes and I wanted to get a grasp on some of the possible reasons why. So I listed out some things I liked to see where it leads me.
1. New game: This one is simple; it is a new game and that brings all that is associated with it. Most every MMO seems fun during the learning phase. New shiny and all that.
2. Interesting settings: By this I mean the look and feel of the surroundings. While much of them are destroyed, the cities are filled with variety. Slums, docks, rubble, grafitti, etc. Haven’t really seen anything like it before.
3. Varied mission locations: I am enjoying the variety of missions. A boat, bank robberies, snake pits, casinos, etc.
4. New classes: I’ve played two of the more popular classes so far; the mastermind and the stalker. Mastermind is a pretty typical pet class, but one of the fun things here as that as you go up in level you get more pets (quantity) as well as some additional types of pet (quality). Summoning the pets are fun too. Robots drop from the sky in a box and assemble. Mercenaries repel from a rope. Ninjas kind of just appear out of the shadows. Zombies crawl up from the ground. Stalker is a fun stealth class. Sneak up and do a major critical hit on whatever you are fighting. Plus, travel is rather safe as most everything ignores you. Some missions I just ran past everything to get to the guy I’m supposed to take out. It all depends on how much time I want to spend on the mission. Next up I’m going to play a Brute. Brutes are kind of like a berzerker in my opinion. You’ll do more damage the longer you fight. You see a crowd and you get excited. You are not a tank, so you can’t survive forever, but talk about beat down city.
5. Bases: I guess this works in CoH as long as you own CoV, but our supergroup has a base. Cool.
6. Newspaper: Any time I am not sure what to do, I can read my newspaper to find a mission. It seems they are really spending a lot of time creating cool stories and I am enjoying this aspect of finding a mission.
7. Solo play: It seems all the classes can solo pretty well, and yet they all seem to mesh together nicely in a group. No real traditional roles, no “healer”, no “tank”. But it works well.
City of Heroes was fun, but it left me bored pretty quick. It felt like I was doing the same thing over and over. So far in City of Villains I don’t feel that. But perhaps it’s all down to point number 1. Only time will tell me if this game really is any more fun than CoH.
I know there are a few people reading this that play CoV, what do you think?
– Ethic
The more I play City of Villains, the more I want to be a good guy and beat up villains. But when I try going back to City of Heroes, it sucks by comparison — way fewer costumes, boring old power sets, “enhancement diversification”, and they’ve nerfed my poor regen scrapper into the ground.
If they’d add more archetypes to CoH, and include the newspaper system for missions, and give heroes the extra costumes villains get, then it might be fun again.
For some reason, the villain thing just isn’t fun for me. Probably a mental problem.
I talked to my wife about why she hasn’t touched CoV since Monday, when she got Super Jump on her Mercenaries/Traps MM. For her, it comes down to the game slowing down post 20. To and through 20-25 or so, the game moves relatively quickly. After 20, the mobs get new abilities, missions may take more than one try to complete (especially if you’ve turned up the difficulty), and it takes fives newspaper missions to get a new mission from a contact.
Combined with the generally buggy experience (fewer crashes since the last patch, but a LOT more lag for us), the seven characters she started and got into the teens before hitting on a combo she really liked, and the two weeks of devotion she gave to the game, I can’t blame her for feeling a little burned out and disappointed that the pace of rewards/levels has slowed down.
I think she’d go back to playing her Kheldian, except that CoV feels like it has a much better balance to the abilities (albeit, some don’t work quite as well as advertised as she discovered with her Plant/Thorns Dominator).
Chris, a couple of Mastermind friends report a dip in effectiveness in the early 20s. While MM is popularly described as playing the game on easy mode, the power seems to bottom out between the time you get your medic and when you get your commando. Then things pick back up, and seem to increase through 32. So a few more levels and her pace of rewards will go way back up.
More info as things develop. :)
CoH is good and CoV is making it better.
Being a big proponent of old time family friendly comics of the 50 and 60s, I must really admit to enjoying City of Villains. Do I like being a hero that fights for goodness, eats his vegatables, and never curses…yes! Do I like being a notorious General with a legion of soldiers (well 4 anyway) and working my way thru the seamy underside of life after an escape from prison…yes!
What does CoV have?
The cities in City of Villains seem more real. With the exception of Kings Row, and Croatoa does feel like a old college town in the middle of nowhere, there’s something a bit off to me about many of the areas in CoH. They don’t quite feel like a city. Don’t get me wrong, they are good and some are pretty cool, but they don’t quite look “right.” In this I am referring to the normal areas as opposed to Faultline, Boomtown, etc.
I must agree with Ethic that the writing of the missions is good. There is a feeling of Godfather-esque gang wars going on. The different factions are struggling with each other, and you as a villain are in the middle going whichever way you choose. It would be interesting if they had a faction system that if you allied with a group enough that gang wouldn’t attack you.
Question:
How close do you follow the writing in the storylines in CoH or CoV?
I like the music and cutscreens. It gives more of a movie feeling to the game. I have a friend who thinks they are a waste of time (all 8 seconds that they last.) They add to the story.
The newspaper is great! CoH needs a newspaper. It helps to feel like your character is being proactive.
One thing I would like to see is in both games is having a nemesis. A recurring villain (or hero) who shows up to try and thwart you.
Crazy Aces laughs, “So, Mr. Hero, we meet again!” (end cutscreen, big fight)
In COH I would like to see super villains besides AVs and suped up normal goons. (Isn’t Inferno just a Hellion damned who’s tough?) They have the toolset…go crazy. Make Inferno 8 feet tall!
Which gets to the character creater. They have improved on the best character designer in any MMoRPG I have seen. All the skulls! Not that I have used any of them, but one could really go to town with all the skulls. So much new material. One haircut the villains don’t have that CoH does is the buzzcut. Perhaps it was just an oversight. There may be other elements missing that I haven’t noticed. Nonethless the creater has vastly been expanded.
CoH does need the costume options. Maybe not all of them, but the appropriate ones. Good guys shouldn’t wear TOO many skulls.
Good riddance to the healer! It may be a MMoRPG thing, but it’s not a super hero/comic book thing. I can think of only a couple of comic characters that heal. Besides villains don’t help each other. They are out for themselves. If their interests are mutual they team for profit. Want to heal someone? Hand them a green.