Ok so I have been on this character creation kick and not feeling the conection to the environment I’m playing in …. so I decided to go to the source. I strapped on my spandex and colorful underware, and went out and got myself City of Heros, City of Villians deluxe edition. I figured $29.00 was not a bad price. Plus I signed up for 14 days free trial and so I have just under 45 days of game play for a measly $29.00….
So first decision to make was to play the heros or the villians, tough choice … no not really Villian all the way … 2.5 hours later and 2 characters designed and I just finished the tutorial for each … wow what a difference a really good character generation tool can make in really personalizing your character. I almost actually care about them … well it did take 2 hours to design the characters … so time invested certainly plays a big part of being who I want to be.
Anyway since I really didnt get to play to much I cant comment on the connection between character and game environment in detail. However that being said …. I felt a connection, bigger than life characters in a world populated by other villians, and the story connection played right on to this … I would say bingo … they got it right …
Anyway as the days pass by I will update you on my progress to see wether or not the connection between character / environment and me remains as time passes bye.
Incidiently I was on SUWT # 7, please be gentle it was my first podcast, and any complaints pls send to Adele ;o)
I absolutely adore the character creation in CoH/CoV and agree that it really helps with that player/character connection. It’s too bad, though, that they didn’t put that kind of attention into storyline for characters. It seems like once you get past the character creation everything is so linear, generic, and combat-focused that while it’s a fun game, there really isn’t all that much to differentiate characters long-term.
well havnt had chance to play any further than finishing tutuorials so will take your word on it heather. linear is never good unless they can disguise it in a way that i dont mind he he we will see how i progress …
Heather, have you taken time to read the story lines and which sides have you been playing and which levels?
I would agree with you if you talk about low level hero side, but I think it is a bit better on lower levels on villain side and once you get some levels up on hero side, the story lines get better there as well.
You can see that it is a bit depending on the age of the zones and quests – villain side is newer and the newer revamped zones on hero side for example have a better overall quality.
Personally I played probably 90% of the time on villain side for a long time, even though I had both CoH and CoV. One part of that was that I did not quite like missions on low level hero side – plus too much running around between missions.
The combat and missions in CoH just got too repetitive for me. When you go into a building or cave for a mission and it looks exactly like one you did 30 minutes ago… it got really old.
I did try going back to the game with a free weekend offer, but their policy on idle characters meant that they offered up all my character names for the taking by other players (I was in on day 1 of the launch and had some damn good names like “Doctor Evil”, even a sword scrapper “Xena” look alike for kicks). At that point I felt like they may as well have just deleted my characters.
well so far enjoying my experince in cov. will be good for a month to 6 weeks of playing and see a fare bit.
The mission environments certainly can be a bit repetitive – it is not exactly the same, but you definitely get familiar with the building blocks they use.
Caves (the small tiny path versions) and office buildings are probably the least exciting environments here.
I would very much recommend to do the missions in groups and perhaps up the difficulty setting unless you are at lower levels. The same mission in a big group can be a different (and better) experience than doing it solo.
The naming policy which will be activated on the 29th states that the names of characters below level 6 on accounts that have been inactive for more than 90 days are changed to unreserved status. Thus they might be used by others.
If you have a character at level 5 or lower you probably have played it at most 2-3 hours in total. I do not see that as unreasonable if you are not playing and have not played the game for a while.
The change was made in preparation for the character transfer and rename service they intend to add.
My characters that lost their names were all above lvl6, but I had been away from the game for over a year. So maybe they had a different policy or just the 90+ days applied.
Either way I lost all but one my character names, as a player I often identify and build my characters around their name (especially CoH making themed super heroes), so losing them was a pretty big deal.
The policy I mentioned is not in effect yet, it will be in a few days.
Looking at older info, they had an old policy where the level threshold was set at 35 instead of 6 – that is definitely a much bigger deal. This was however suspended and has been that for a bit over a year now.
So maybe your characters got caught in the policy before the suspended the old policy. That sucks in that case, up to level 34 is quite harsh. One can easily have spent 100+ hours at that point.
I want to like this game bad, I beta tested it and played it when it launched to about level 30, but I just never felt “heroic”. I want to pick things up and bash people kinda like Marvel Ultimate Alliance which I feel is the best super hero game right now. It is also a very grindy game, but I still go back to it every now and then
its a great game to pass time in between games, or even as you put it Pvthudson ‘when you want to pick things up and bash people’ with
I’m enjoying it on a casual basis
Ok so what save I learned so far, a decent character creation system that is not changing the size of my nose, or how big my bust is, is worth spending a considerably amount of time developing.
If you are not going to allow customization through game play elements then cov / coh character system is the best hands down on the market …. and more game should be paying heed to this system and move away from the eqs / vanguard systems … devs pls take note.
War and spellborn are on the right track, I feel both are touching very nicely on attaching you to your character in very different ways … props to those designers …
I played CoH beta and played release for a few months. I picked up my sub again with CoV went live and played for a few months.
By far – hands down – I will agree that CoH/CoV has the best character creation I’ve seen from a customization point of view. Yes, I can’t specify the length of my eyelashes or the color of my freckles, but c’mon. A lot of the fantasy mmo character creators just kinda suck to be honest.
CoH – fun game to play for small stretches of time, but not a game I can play constantly or long term (obviously). I agree with Scott – what burnt me out was seeing the same four warehouse/cave maps over and over and over and over…
It just got old after awhile and everything started to feel the same.
That said, I had a ton of fun when I played and I did very much get the super-hero vibe.
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
Not that I’m impressed a lot, but this is a lot more than I expected when I stumpled upon a link on Digg telling that the info is awesome. Thanks.
Hi, maybe i’m being a little off topic here, but I was browsing your site and it looks fascinating. I’m building a blog and trying to make it look clean, but everytime I touch it I mess something up. Did you design the blog yourself? Could someone with little experience do it, and add updates without messing it up? Anyways, good information on here, very useful.
If only I had a nickel for each time I came to pixiestyx.wordpress.com! Amazing article!