Author Topic: CO's for Newbs  (Read 3302 times)

Xev

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CO's for Newbs
« on: July 03, 2017, 03:24:26 PM »
Really, wasn't CO awesome when you were a newb? And then... and then some thing(s) you liked got notniceified in your eyes.

I've been playing more and more CO lately.. Not like I play a lot, but, I have to make a choice now whether I want to play the game I am progressing in or the game I'm having fun in.

That's not right.. I have a lot of fun in both games. But, playing CO again has been purely for fun. There has been zero progression and I'm not really looking for it I just like playing in a team and the queue's are popping, AS EVER. You can badmouth CO all you want but man I tell you what, for a game that has been declared 'dead' for every year since CoH went away.. the queue's pop, and you can find a team.

What's great about leaving a game for awhile is you can kinda rediscover it. I Totally forgot how to play my Support toon, for example.. And the comic book art style which some people don't like, I like a lot. It's hard to beat the average CO team. Everyone looks good, their powers are flashy and varied, we get to run around in all kinds of different ways as we take down bad guys in comicbookland. A childhood dream come true.

The babes! CO has babes. They may be beer bellied dudes irl wearing a virtual skirt, but, that's nothing new in the wonderful world of mmo'ing. I can admire their art. My wife was a virtual babe and a babe irl.. so, ya never know! It's most likely a dude, tho.. LOL   : )
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Jooc  ~L50 TW/Ele Brute> Senge  ~L50 Claws/Fire Brute> Leezard  ~L50 Claws/Regen Scrapper> Kosmoz  ~L50 Fire/MM Blaster>  Xev  ~L50 Ice/Emp Troller> |NW|~~ Erste ~L80 Warlock> Reks ~L80 Rogue> Phizzl ~L80 Wizard> Ayeron Gahls McBinty ~L80 Fighter>

LaughingAlex

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #1 on: July 03, 2017, 06:14:51 PM »
CO felt like when I first started playing, "I got to feel like a super hero!" cause it was easy to smash everything into oblivion no problem.  The trouble was, besides the incoming nerfs, the only real reason I found I was powerful were the enemy mobs were woefully underpowered.  So the game was effectively super easy mode.  When the player character is winning inspite the enemies themselves being very powerful that creates a feeling of triumph and success; they had tools which could ruin me and I beat them anyways.  But when the player is indestructable and the mobs aren't a threat, then it feels like I'm just a bully.

CO is a game made to make you feel ultra powerful, but it never removes the crutch.

Edit: Nore do the badguys get anything to make things dangerous for the player.  Just things to delay the inevitable.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Castegyre

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2017, 08:21:02 PM »
I still don't like the art style, but I've always liked the customization.

I also really appreciate the amount of materials that have been added to the game at different points to allow people to customize their characters.

The attempt at hybrid tab targeting is not too bad.

I appreciate the attempt at lairs.

I really like being able to design whatever character I want even if I gimp myself though the game seems to have been designed with people gimping themselves in mind.

It's nice to see a game that wasn't necessarily originally designed to be a trinity game but at least had the pretense of letting people build to fill whatever role they wanted to in a group.

BLOCK!

Xev

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #3 on: July 03, 2017, 09:40:23 PM »
CO felt like when I first started playing, "I got to feel like a super hero!" cause it was easy to smash everything into oblivion no problem.  The trouble was, besides the incoming nerfs, the only real reason I found I was powerful were the enemy mobs were woefully underpowered.  So the game was effectively super easy mode.  When the player character is winning inspite the enemies themselves being very powerful that creates a feeling of triumph and success; they had tools which could ruin me and I beat them anyways.  But when the player is indestructable and the mobs aren't a threat, then it feels like I'm just a bully.

CO is a game made to make you feel ultra powerful, but it never removes the crutch.

Edit: Nore do the badguys get anything to make things dangerous for the player.  Just things to delay the inevitable.

Dang, LA.. I thought I was Good at the game but you are downright UBER.

It took me a long time to get anywhere near what you are talking about and lots of people playing the game right now are far from it.

I've had some tense moments in Grabs with my mainiest mains even recently. I still faceplant! Not recently, but I still do and the danger of it looms often enough to keep me hopping, which, adds to the fun for me even though the loss would be little more than a little pride. In my defense.. I'm not playing safe builds, normally - I went more balls to the wall. I'm normally playing Ranged Offense passives.. dps focus.. agro grabbers.. that aren't tanks but often end up tanking. I'm only saying this to get a *little* slack, plx  : ) That I still get tense moments..

I still don't like the art style

This right here would be about enough to kill it, for me. I mean, you have to like how things look! How You look! To me, it looks like I'm in a comic book and that my toon/I fit(s) right in.

I like the game because it lets me do things I could only dream of when I first Read comic books, and, I can do them pleasurably well.

At this point, for sure, I would not say CO is a game I would play 'seriously' or try to progress in, but, damn, it's fun! Zone's given me some welcome laughs, too. And I'm glad I have something else to play  : ) Can never have too much fun in the cupboard.

I'm having fun but I couldn't go back to CO as a main game at this point. Because, reasons. But. As someone who used to really love to play CO and hasn't played hardly at all in the past 150 days and has had no expectations at all besides 'how fast can I get in a team' - I could really re-appreciate the things I originally liked about the game. Enough to come here and express my joy : )

Some Faves:

Jooc  ~L50 TW/Ele Brute> Senge  ~L50 Claws/Fire Brute> Leezard  ~L50 Claws/Regen Scrapper> Kosmoz  ~L50 Fire/MM Blaster>  Xev  ~L50 Ice/Emp Troller> |NW|~~ Erste ~L80 Warlock> Reks ~L80 Rogue> Phizzl ~L80 Wizard> Ayeron Gahls McBinty ~L80 Fighter>

Castegyre

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #4 on: July 04, 2017, 02:26:25 AM »
I was trying to give a sense of building frustration with the game without coming right out and saying it with that post. Re-reading it, I could have done better.

Anyways, I don't completely hate the art style of CO. It's possible to make characters that look cool, and that is something that's very important to me. It's always seemed to me that it could have been better if they hadn't have tried to do the comic book gimmick.

Xev

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #5 on: July 04, 2017, 02:02:22 PM »
I was trying to give a sense of building frustration with the game without coming right out and saying it with that post. Re-reading it, I could have done better.

Anyways, I don't completely hate the art style of CO. It's possible to make characters that look cool, and that is something that's very important to me. It's always seemed to me that it could have been better if they hadn't have tried to do the comic book gimmick.

It's not a gimmick.. it's their interpretation of an art style of the genre. I highly approve of it/like it. If I didn't, that'd probably make me want to play something else right off. Like if it was Richie Rich or Caspar or Archie style f/x... Wait, Archie Style CO might be interesting...for a day.. lol

The ground movement/combat is extremely pleasing to me too! Not only do I look good and have flashy powers but I move around cool and have a High degree of maneuverability, too.

CO is definitely not for everyone but then, what is.
Some Faves:

Jooc  ~L50 TW/Ele Brute> Senge  ~L50 Claws/Fire Brute> Leezard  ~L50 Claws/Regen Scrapper> Kosmoz  ~L50 Fire/MM Blaster>  Xev  ~L50 Ice/Emp Troller> |NW|~~ Erste ~L80 Warlock> Reks ~L80 Rogue> Phizzl ~L80 Wizard> Ayeron Gahls McBinty ~L80 Fighter>

LaughingAlex

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #6 on: July 04, 2017, 05:00:31 PM »
I still don't like the art style, but I've always liked the customization.

I also really appreciate the amount of materials that have been added to the game at different points to allow people to customize their characters.

The attempt at hybrid tab targeting is not too bad.

I appreciate the attempt at lairs.

I really like being able to design whatever character I want even if I gimp myself though the game seems to have been designed with people gimping themselves in mind.

It's nice to see a game that wasn't necessarily originally designed to be a trinity game but at least had the pretense of letting people build to fill whatever role they wanted to in a group.

BLOCK!

The trouble with that last part is in a game of poor balance, what it does is FORCE people to wait around for trinity based rolls in content they feel is especially difficult.  You don't get to do things like the rampages without a healer anymore.  You don't get to do the cosmic bosses without dedicated healers.  It's beyond annoying even so much as seeing that to me in a game where you weren't required to have a healer everywhere else including a good amount of the earlier team content(even the one with deadly bosses)

See the thing is there were players who wanted rolls to be forced on the majority because they couldn't get a team just by picking those rolls.  I spoke to one of them in CORP before I left the channel.  The person spoke negatively of "hybrids" and anger about not getting in any teams.  When I mentioned CoH had teams and how non-healing based support actually allowed for teams to be quick, the person often just resorted to saying CoH was a game of nothing but hybrids(not at all true, course).  The persons intolerance towards anything other than straight holy trinity made me think he was a scrub who never played any game genre outside of mmorpgs. 

I mean the lack of proper buffs, proper crowd control, and proper debuffs has crippled CO in that there is no variety in solutions to anything that is actually difficult to deal with.  With the hard content coming out many people are demanding healers, healers, more healers, in a super hero mmorpg.  It feels like CO is a super hero mmorpg in name and visuals only, but in reality a fantasy mmorpg in reality no different then many of the WoW knockoffs out there.  Heaven forbid we have anything as good as force fields was in City of heroes, or time manipulation(and I wouldn't want any interpretation of time manipulation in CO anymore, they'd just gimp it hardcore).

Of course, if your like the above person and only roll support classes so you can get into teams, I wonder what kind of person you are.  If you really needed the game to make people have to take people in your roll, I wonder what kind of person you are if your unlikable enough to depend on the game to make people take you.  Thing is, in holy trinity games, people do NOT invite others based on friendship, but instead only on class.  If your a healer, you being invited cause your a healer, not cause your nice.  If your a tank, cause your a tank, not cause your a cool person.  If your mean you can play either those rolls and still get in teams easy.  I imagine it's especially true in CO these days, since there are so few players left to run anything.
Currently; Not doing any streaming, found myself with less time available recently.  Still playing starbound periodically, though I am thinking of trying other games.  Don't tell me to play mmohtg's though please :).  Getting back into participating in VO and the successors again to.

Castegyre

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #7 on: July 04, 2017, 06:09:13 PM »
The bad design decisions in this regard with CO were made when the game was made, not when rampages or anything else were introduced later on. There's a reason why WoW and a lot of games since then have focused on the trinity; it's easy. Easy to play, easy to maintain, and easy to code tuned content for. More variables means more to account for, and CO is a giant sack of variable. It's probably not a task for any dev team to take lightly or drop the ball on. The actions or lack there of to address this by both the community and and devs has just been adding more to the failure pile in the sadness bowl over the years from what I've seen.

Most of my experience grouping in CO over the years, even with players who were competent, has amounted to either headless chickens death zerging the map, or people soloing the content together.

On a side not, I do occasionally log in still. I play with the creator, look at my characters in game, read chat, and see if a few people are on. I can't play most of my characters without paying and I don't want to give PW money so I don't do much more. Most of the channels I was in are quiet now, but it seems like MC has been pretty caustic the last few times I've bothered looking. More so than just the usual general chat cancer. That's disappointing.

Xev

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #8 on: July 04, 2017, 10:11:51 PM »
It was really fun to come back to the game after so long and rediscover what I liked about it from the beginning. Look forward to playing more, maybe tonight. I said that last night but I never made it out of STO. Just want to run some Alerts. Probably Grabs, mostly. Always fun to help people ding (everyone has had a string of bad Grabs, before!) and I usually don't have to wait longer than 30 seconds to get into a team of eager beavers.

Hey I can remember what is a Grab and what is a Smash, again! Did you notice? It's because Deeps (one of my toons) has a motto (the thing your Friends and people looking through LFG see) "Over 6 Billion SMASHES Served". I was reminded of it the last time I logged him in and now it's fixed in my head again which is a Grab (XP...) and which is a Smash (the dough-ray-me). So don't change it again, Cryptic, PLX!
Some Faves:

Jooc  ~L50 TW/Ele Brute> Senge  ~L50 Claws/Fire Brute> Leezard  ~L50 Claws/Regen Scrapper> Kosmoz  ~L50 Fire/MM Blaster>  Xev  ~L50 Ice/Emp Troller> |NW|~~ Erste ~L80 Warlock> Reks ~L80 Rogue> Phizzl ~L80 Wizard> Ayeron Gahls McBinty ~L80 Fighter>

princezilla

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #9 on: July 06, 2017, 12:34:38 AM »
This hits on a lot of why I can never play CO for any extended period of time, the game is completely stagnent. Well that and the fact that the longer you play the more blatant it becomes how horribly lame and uninspired the setting, NPCs and lore are particularly compared to CoX.

Xev

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Re: CO's for Newbs
« Reply #10 on: July 06, 2017, 02:00:21 AM »
Man what a fun conversation you guys are having.
Some Faves:

Jooc  ~L50 TW/Ele Brute> Senge  ~L50 Claws/Fire Brute> Leezard  ~L50 Claws/Regen Scrapper> Kosmoz  ~L50 Fire/MM Blaster>  Xev  ~L50 Ice/Emp Troller> |NW|~~ Erste ~L80 Warlock> Reks ~L80 Rogue> Phizzl ~L80 Wizard> Ayeron Gahls McBinty ~L80 Fighter>