City of Heroes Review
I got into the beta for City of Heroes, an upcoming super hero based mmpog with the pc and thought I would post my review here for you guys.
Character Creation:
First thing you do is select your origin: magic, technology, natural, mutant, etc. This effects the contacts you get - which are npcs that give you missions, what kind of inspirations you primarily get (more on this later), and I think also effects some of your costume choices. I chose mutant - not for any good reason, just because
Next you select the archtype: tanker, blaster, scrapper, controller, etc. This effects the choice of powers you have as well as how tough your character is in terms of hps and damage potential. I chose scrapper, a great melee choice with decent defense and average hps.
Next you choose your primary power set, the choices are based on the archtype you picked. Scrapper for instance has melee as their primary power set type and within that there are multiple sets to choose from, once you pick your set that's it - that's your one and only primary power set. I chose claws.
Next you pick your secondary power set, like the primary the options you have to choose from are also based on your archtype selection. You can only only have 1 secondary power set. I chose super reflexes.
Once you have your primary and secondary power sets selected you choose a power from each to start off. Each set has 9 powers and as you level up you can eventually select a new power in either set - every even level you can learn a new power. I forget what I chose already, hehe you can see if the video.
Next you pick your gender/body type. There are 3 choices, female, male, huge (male), and then there are sliders to select alter your height and build. Naturally I went for the huge model, I picked a galka in ffxi and well big dudes are cool. hehe. I also made mine the tallest version, ironically if you move the slider for height all the way down the huge model would likely be smaller then most average male/females. I also chose a medium build.
Now the powers and stuff are out of the way it's time for the real fun, picking your costume. There's soooooo many choices it's ridiculous. I went for a black/red look with a lot of spikes and a lightning theme - even though it has nothing to do with my powers, lightning bolts are just cool, lol. There are so many ways to customize your costume, based on previous choices you get different types of customization, it's hard to explain but you'll see. I can't even imagine how many possibilities there are.
After you finish playing with your costume you go to your bio screen - kind of like a hero license. You can enter a battle cry and a detailed bio for your hero. I think one of the function keys makes it show your battlecry, I dunno tho, I never actually used it in the game. I'm not sure how people see your bio, I didnt even bother to fill it out because I was eager to play.
Game play:
After making your character you have the option to do the tutorial or not, obviously you'll want to your first time, to get a handle on the controls. First off, the movement controls for the game are like those in Unreal Tournament and the like: wsad, but you can change them, which I did because I never really got used to those controls. I made the controls just like daoc. The nice thing is you can rebind your keys in game, either from the options menu or I think there is a /bind command. In the tutorial you talk to your first contact, he explains how to use the map, which is essential for getting around, and the basics about missions. The game is heavily mission based, this is where the bulk of your xp comes from. The contact has ya talk to some other people, teaching you how to select them on the map so you can easily find them and then points you to different contacts which teach you about combat, etc. After you kill a few goons you complete the tutorial and head to the big leagues, Atlas Park.
Atlas Park is teh newb zone but also where your trainer is. You'll know exactly where the trainer is because there's only 1 and there's always a shitload of people there. Atlas Park also has City Hall where you'll meet your first contact. You talk to your contact and proceed to get your missions, which in the beginning are quite simple. You go to some place, marked on your map, do some stuff, bust some skulls, search some crates, whatever. Upon completing the mission you get a nice chunk of xp and generally told to head back to your contact or possibly another npc associated with the mission.
In the beginning I found the enemies in the first couple of missions didn't even attack me - there is a con system like daoc where the name is grey, green, blue, white (exactly your level), yellow, orange, red, purple. I reported the problem but I dunno if maybe it was intentional because there's literally dozens and dozens of goons in the first few missions, probably just to give you some easy xp to get a couple of levels. They were all green/blue con from what I remember so maybe they didn't feel compelled to fight back against a higher level hero, not even to defend themselves!!
After completing a mission, in the beta, you'll get a survey to rate the mission, based on difficulty, length, "cool factor", and also an area to enter a comment. I used this feature a lot, trying to give them good feedback. There is also a /bug command where you can enter bugs not associated with missions, I used this a few times, nothing serious though.
As you kill bad guys you can get 2 types of drops, which you automatically get, you dont manually loot bodies: inspirations and enhancements. Inspirations are basically temporary buffs, some increase your damage, or luck, or accurary, or hps, there's even one you can use to rez yourself - I used it once, really cool but you move insanely slow and cant do anything but stagger for about 30 seconds. Enhancements are things you can use to enhance your powers. Initially your powers only have 1 enhacement slot but every odd level you get to add an additional enhancement slot to a power of your choice. Enhancements include things like increase damage, reduce recharge time, increase accurary, decrease endurance cost, and others. The enhancements themselves have levels, when you add them to a power you can drop another one on top of it and it effectively replaces it, which is nice, BUT you can also combine 2 of the same kind to increase the level... for instance, say you have one that increases damage (level 1) on a melee power, say brawl, everyone gets brawl. You just got another level 1 damage enhancement. Select brawl from the enhancement screen, drag the damage enhancement already in it to a combine area below it, then drag another damage enhancement from your enhancement inventory then click combine. There is a chance of failure but if it works your new damage enhancement will be 1+ (effectively level 2), you can only do this twice, so you could add another one to it for 1++ but then you cant upgrade it anymore so eventually you'll just slap a new enhancement over it and replace it altogether as you get higher ones.
As you do more missions you'll become more familiar with the city, which is broken up into zones - small load time in between zones. Each zone has different districts in it. Your missions initially take you around Atlas Park, the first zone, but eventually you'll have to go to other zones. As your truckin around town you'll notice random thugs mugging people, or otherwise harassing people, or just standing around in a gang. If you select them you'll see what their level is (not only the color of their name but it also tells you their exact level which is nice). Generally there's always at least 2 of them so if you are going to attack make sure you can handle the whole group. After kicking their ass the person you saved will compliment you, telling you your awesome or nice costume, or whatever. You don't get special experience for saving them, I think, just whatever the goons were worth. Finding these random crimes in progress is a good way of getting extra xp on the side, especially if you are between contacts.
Eventually your contact will tell you he has nothing for you and gives you a new contact to go to, for me, at level 4, I had to go to another zone for my next contact, which forced me to travel thru a zone that was much to hard for me, so I got good at running away, hehe, it's useful to have a couple of health inspirations because you'll have thugs randomly shooting at you as you try to get away. When I got to the next contact I found out he wouldn't give me missions until I hit level 5, so I had to just go around defeating random criminals around town until I got to 5 so I could continue my missions - which are always worth more experience.
One of the things I noticed after getting even just a few levels the AI on the thugs became increasingly more sophisticated, they use all kinds of tactics instead of blindly engaging you in melee even if they have no chance. For instance, I was breaking up a mugging and one of the goons fled to an alley way, he jumped up on the fire escape ladder and I chased him up 5 or 6 flights to the roof before I was able to get em. They typically have guns which they will use when they get some distance, generally this is where you can close on them and engage em in melee but generally they flee again which makes a lack of range attacks hard. They will also jump fences and all kinds of other annoying shit to get away - just die you bastard!!
After finally attaining level 5, I went back to my trainer in Atlas Park, added an additional enhancement slot to one of my melee powers - remember you do this at odd levels and get new powers at even levels. I was now told I have access to the monorail system to get around zones easier. I haven't used it yet but that's sure to be a relief. I'm already looking forward to getting Super Speed to make it easier to get around, but that's not until level 14. I was able to now go to my contact in the other zone and start working on missions again. I had to go to some factory and destroy some machines used to manufacture some illegal drug and take out the boss running the operation. I was told this would be much more difficulty and it definitely was. I got to the place, fairly easily dispatched all the normal minions and destroyed all but one of the machines, but the boss was insanely hard. He was the same level as me, but conned orange, normally would be white when same level. BUT bosses are much harder their just their level would indicate. He had all kinds of crazy powers, just like a hero. I tried a couple of times but died each time and decided to call it a night. I'm not sure if I can get help for this or only for team missions which I think are different. While on the subject of death though...
When you die you are teleported to the nearest hospital. You are in a weakened state but that doesn't last long. The real penalty is XP debt. Your xp bar will have a shaded area reflecting how much debt you have. When you get experience from future kills, some of it goes to your normal xp and some of it goes to working off your debt. So technically you could still level before your debt is fully worked off. Since you dont lose xp, just get a debt, you don't delevel if you die right after leveling, unlike some annoying games
Well, this was long as hell, but that's teh scoop so far. The game is a lot of fun but I'll tell ya one thing, it's rough getting xp just from killing random street thugs, especially when they do all kinds of stuff to escape just to get a small bit of xp when ya finally get em, then repeat. I'm still quite new to the game so there's probably other things I don't know about to xp faster, you learn as you go. I look forward to eventually teaming up with people but it seems in the beginning ya just do your own thing, get a handle on the game, get a few levels, then think about joining with others to take on tougher guys.
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