City of Heroes/Villians

Lights out

There was a time when in answer to the question “What is your favourite MMO?” I would dive in with a resounding Planetside. It was where I found a gaming retreat for many years and forged friendships that are still going strong to this day.

However the answer to that question changed as I found a new home in the form of the Rogue Isles in City of Villains.

Next to City of Heroes, City of Villains was always the lesser mentioned and talked about element of the MMO. In a super hero game who wants to be the bad guy right? However it was a nice break from the normal “You are the chosen, now save the world” approach and that is what kept our interest for so long.

DXP

In 30 days it will be the anniversary of NCSofts’ announcement that the City of Heroes/Villains games were going to be shut down by the end of 2012, I remember it very clearly and how I was so very disappointed.

I was reminded of that time after reading a post by Bhagpuss @ Inventory Full, yesterday was the final day of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. My thoughts are echoed back to me about wanting to play and take more screenshots in those last few months before closure, but feeling utterly lacking in effort to do so. Not through any rational thought, but the feeling of betrayal, of knowing the game you poured much of your digital soul into is going away.

However games pull you back in one final time to say farewell and you take screenshot or videos of your characters and locations that remind you of the fun times that were had in the game.

As Bhagpuss also mentions there are moves in place to maybe run an emulator maybe in the same way that Star Wars Galaxies has done. I do hope this happens for all the player that want to continue enjoying that digital world.

For the Ex-CoH/V players there is the City of Titans game development which successfully Kickstarted a campaign to raise initial funding to build a new Super Hero themed MMO. The use of the latest Unreal engine will mean this could be the foremost superhero MMO on the market in terms of graphics.

Additionally there is some movement in the Task Force Hail Mary area of the titan network. This was originally part of the multi-pronged strategy to ask various 3rd partys to buy the game from NCSoft, but efforts died down over the first year. Ironwolf is leading the charge anew, with some positive noises coming from NCSoft and other parties with regards to purchasing the game.

As makes sense trying not to get too excited at this prospect, plus it’s not clear what exactly will be obtained from NCSoft if it does succeed. (characters etc). I’d like to think that on a disk somewhere at NCSoft-land all of my characters lay dormant just waiting to be bought to life once more.

For all those Vanguard players, sorry your home is now gone and I hope you find another soon.
Check out some of my fellow Blaugust bloggers who have also been posting about Vanguard:

#MMO #CityOfHeroes #Vanguard #Blaugust

Cost of living

I’m really enjoying my time back in City of Heroes/Villains. The Halloween event was really good fun and was great to have heroes and villains teaming together. Also it was nice to have an (new) revamped instance map tailored for the task rather than just a ring fenced slice of Croatoa.

The superhero game lends itself so well to the idea of the cash-shop and the foundations of this were established by the booster packs that Paragon Studios had introduced over the past few years. If you want a new costume part then just purchase that one part or the whole outfit if you prefer, or perhaps you’ve seen a new cape someone is wearing and decide your character would benefit from owning it.

Despite being a paying member (VIP) the shift move to the freemium model truely sank in with the release of the “Street Justice” powerset, which requires a cash shop purchase. Of course the cost was more than the 400 points that are given for being a VIP player. So you either have to wait 2 months or stump up the extra cash for points.

That said the cash shop items are nearly all cosmetic and thus don’t impact your gameplay if you don’t acquire them.
But to make the perfect costume you may have to buy some extra parts rather than using just the vanilla sets.

The general thoughts people have about the shop are very positive, even when compared to existing games that sport cash shop models.
Have you tried it out yet? What are your thoughts?

Consumables

On returning to City of Heroes one of the in-game systems I took for granted in the past was the inspirations. You can activate them as fast as you are able, so with a little preparation you can enter each battle with a balanced load out to help you out if things turn ugly.

Of course this isn’t anything new to the genre, potions and medkits have been stable component of our games for many years, However I’ve always been frustrated by cool-down systems that games use to limit the speed of consumption of these items,excluding PVP balancing I struggled to find a clear reason for this implementing this in PvE, other than slowing me down.

Using a health potion every 3 minutes isn’t ideal, for me it will often result in death. Mainly due to my fondness for soloing but I also like to face obstacles that offer me a challenge. I don’t want to be limited to. Grey mobs just because I play a supporting class.

I know may will argue that “it’s a multi-player game for a reason, find a healer”.
Of course finding a healer that wants to spend an evening playing whack-a-mole is never that simple and I want the ability to play a character that is able to solo between grouping.

So I use up twice as many health potions, but my enjoyment of the game increases too.
Anyone else with a similar opinion or am I just being awkward?