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State of COH Aug 2010
choujiofkono
Member Posts: 852
I want to start out by saying that I love the original idea of this game. It was one of the most fun games I've ever played.
The flip side is that in it's current state it is barely a shadow of what it once was. Things have boiled down to 80% of the players begging for "farms" constantly. Teams are a joke because most toons you find to group with have been "farmed" to their current level and aren't even equipped properly with enhancers. Most teams last a mission or 2 then people get tired of the slow XP progress and the team disintegrates. Poof. The game has degenerated into farm--> clothing change -->farm. Period.
PvP in COH is a joke. Advancement is based on who has the shiniest "purple" which has either been farmed by running the battle maiden mission 100's of times or was bought off the market for several hundred million credits which has also been farmed.
So basically nothing in COH moves without farming endlessly the same few farms over and over and over and over. It's a joke. You will get the same enjoyment from playing any of the several great desktop defense games. The level of interaction and "upgrade" choices are relatively close.
The developers have seen fit to allow several top heavy powers to exist to perpetuate farming such as the fire controllers and the Sheild scrappers. Each of these builds can easily solo a +3 x 8 farm mission easily. So you have most of the server filled with players that have one of each or aspiring to build one of each.
I don't know why they would release an "expansion" when most players of the game find the game to be totally broken. There is enough of a unique experience left to keep people paying the subs but just barely. They would be better off spending time to kill the farms and redesign the economy system so that players who put in the time and effort can gain the prestige and items. AKA special missions and Task forces. Purple recipe drops by percentages have destroyed the game along with the 2 obviously overpowered farming builds.
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized"
"The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
Comments
1. PvP has been broken since it was released and I'd rather it was left broken than a balancing took place. I think most people would agree. Specially because PvP was shoved in by cryptic despite the fact that the people who wanted it were a vast minority.
2. I had no problem soloing most of my characters (defender being the exception) so it is hardly "nothing moving without farms. When I did want a team I had no problem getting one interested in normal missions. The people who would constantly complain about farms took no initiative in forming/boosting their own teams.
3. You would rather advocate nerfing some of the most popular powers in the game than ask others to be made more attractive? No game needs that nonsense. Also if everyone wants to have a FOTM build it is their prerogative...particularly in a game known for the amount of character slots available to its players.
4. They released this expansion because the players have asked for this content for years. But I'm sure you'd rather have the devs ignore the playerbase like in every other game right?
5. Last, I remember playing taskforces and trials gave special tokens that could be used to acquire purples. Anyone wanting a specific purple badly enough could run them a few times for enough tokens for a guaranteed chance at them (beats a hell of a lot of other games' epic loot systems).
"My rant of COH Aug 2010" would have been a better thread name.
Seconded. OP has no idea what he's talking about. CoH has some problems but they are far outweighed by it's sheer awesomeness. If you want to check out the stories in the game and run with some great fun loving people while kicking all kinds of ass with a huge assortment of powers and ridiculous amounts of character customization this game is for you. On the other hand, if you enjoy farming and building ridiculously overpowered characters... well you can actually do that too!
But it's important to remember that 99% of the content in the game can be completed by a very basically specced, casual character.
To their credit they stopped trying so hard to fight farming except in the case of obvious exploits (and a general nerf to Architect rewards) so I don't see anyone "begging for farms." It's not like you need anchors to pad out your team anymore. If you want to grind out a mission, go for it. All reward-driven MMOs come down to grinding at some point anyway.
PvP was never crucial to CoH and as many referrals as I've made I always tell people it's not a PvP game. I suspect if you surveyed the long-time players they'll say they wish the devs had spent less time on PvP, not more. So the lack of PvP is not secret, new, or accidental.
Now they do need new endgame, which is apparently close by. But that will turn into grinding for rewards also, so just expect that some people will farm or move on to a game where you haven't figured out the farm yet.
Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
[Mod Edit]
This is just another community service announcement, you can make your own judgements on the game. But to people who get in the game, play for a month or 2, see how screwed up and unbalanced it has become, those people know exactly what I'm talking about. Don't say you haven't been warned. My job is done here.
A casual character soloing the game... no. You obviously are ignoring the hundreds of farm requests that scroll across the chat all day every day. There is obviously an issue with the way the system works. Of course any character can solo some of the missions in the game, but the key element to this discussion is the comparison of taking months to level to 50 and taking a week. Most people get bored of the slow leveling curve and go for the farm. Not all but MOST. The single most important factor to people joining a supergroup is the availability of perpetual farms. That's a sad fact.
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized"
"The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
No idea how anybody could call this game awesome. There are what, 3 or 4 missions (repeated ad nauseum with different foes, graphics, locations - but all the same). Costume parts still do not fit correctly. Costumes still lack enough color options (three instead of two, because two just does not cut it on many pieces while trying to match it with the rest of the costume). Costumes still make no sense, since you could make an 8 foot tall armored robot that takes more damage from an attack than a 4 foot all but naked cat girl. You are still unable to make the character that you want because of how the powers are done - often being forced to take useless powers to progress in a particular set.
GR is...is...painful.
One could go on and on and on and on.
I know how the game could be called awesome, mind you. What is the other superhero game out there?
CO.
Yes. Compared to CO, CoX is freaking awesome.
But that is like saying that getting hit in the face with a shovel is awesome in comparison to grabbing your ankles and having that shovel inserted repeatedly...
Yeah, they have added some things over the past six years...things other companies would have added in six months to a year or two.
What do people actually consider to be awesome in this game?
I miss the MMORPG genre. Will a developer ever make one again?
Explorer: 87%, Killer: 67%, Achiever: 27%, Socializer: 20%
Being a player of CoH/CoV for 5 yrs (not currently subscribed) I see truth in alot of the aforementioned statements about the game, and like everyone else I have my own likes and dislikes about the game ( I lean alot more on the like side ). What jaded me a bit about the expansion is that they charged for it. Yes I know the devs gotta eat etc. but they do get a monthly subscription and charge for bonus packs and the like. I dont think its because they are wholeheartedly greedy but just like any business, if they can make money on doing something they will.
I stopped playing CoH/CoV ( I played CoV mostly, its funner being bad
) in March, I just found myself logging in and creating new characters and never really logging in to play them. I have 9 max level characters on the good and evil side and for me, a worthwhile paid expansion should have included alot more higher lvl content along with the new stuff.
In closing, I have always and will always love the game but I have just become bored with it, I truely hope they do well and I may consider resubbing when the end game stuff gets done. Everyone should give the game a shot for sure if you havent already. If i had not played for as long as I have I would have probably bought the expansion without hesitation, as they dont make a paid expansion every 4 months or so like some companies we all know. "cough" SOE "cough cough"
Work hard Play Harder
Let me fix the OP's title and post:
CoH/CoV state of the game AUG 2010:
The game has been out over 6 years, still receives regular updates, the servers are jam packed and the game has not gone F2P. Only other game I can say all those same things about would be WoW.
"....barely a shadow of what it once was....most players of the game find the game to be totally broken." So, you're one of those guys who quit at ED. Got it, thanks for sharing. ( ' :
I've never seen a farm unless I looked for one, and even then the only reason I look for a farm is to quickly level my 1537845th alt past the first 8 levels or so. Conversely, I've found many, many teams that have just wanted to run missions or do other specific stuff. It really helps to put what you're looking for in your LFT flag, you can even say "no farms."
I'm not big on PvP, so I don't really care whether it is broke or not. I understand they are working on fixes for PvP. CoH/CoV was never a big PvP game, even when CoV first came out. I find that people who complain tend to be "I'd try CoH/CoV, but their PvP sucks I've heard."
In my experience, no one single power set dominates over any of the others. I've never seen more shield scrappers over any other type of scrapper or fire controllers over any other type of controller. Actually, I once saw a guy who had his controller completely tricked out and maxed out. He could do amazing things with that bhuild, and he didn't use fire.
All in all, I think CoH is doing better than ever before. The game is more complete, has more things to do, and has fewer problems than ever before. Sure, they can fix a few things, like PvP, but in all CoH has an excellent dev team that is only improving the game in great ways.
Please, stop either lying to us or deluding yourself, your rant is so one sided it isn't even funny.
Do you even play the game? Your statement "You obviously are ignoring the hundreds of farm requests that scroll across the chat all day every day." is not at all true, so stop telling people it is. The only people I know of who farm are those who are leveling alts for certain reasons. There's certainly enough for a new player to do without ever needing a farm.
Many "new" toons you see in COH are alts. There are rarely any real "new"folks that you come across in the game.
I stated the title as COH because COV was not another game. It was a MOD of COH that they charged money for. When COV first hit it was obvious it was the same as COH with a few new maps and some modifications to existing game assets. Definitely not worth the cost of another full game.
Scrolling texts of farm begs are definitely a huge part of the COH experience. To say otherwise or to call that statement a lie is just... petty.
Everything is relative in MMO gaming. If the price for this game and the content were 50 bux and 15 bux a month then there would be no issues. But it's not. It's been 50 bux plus the cost of COV plus the cost of the subs plus the cost of the item shop items plus the cost of the new expansion pack. That is a considerable amount of money dedicated to a game over 6 years with what has been relatively small amounts of additions. New HATS don't count. It's stil the same ole' run into a group of several enemies standing in a circle, destroy them, wash and repeat.
Is the game fun? Yes for a while.
Is it more fun than any of the other FTP MMO's or even some great flash games? Hell NO.
I think it's insulting that long term players are being asked to shell out more cash for the new "expansion".
I have played COH off and on since the beginning. Usually during the holidays when the fun factor is multiplied by 20. I have my vet wings and all that jazz and the AE buildings do not bother me at all. It's the ruined gameplay and the less than intelligent economy system that irks me. But mostly it's the constant farming by the majority of the players. The #1 SG of COH can be found in farms almost every time you log on. That's a cold hard fact and can be checked anytime the Devs feel they actually want to get off their butts and actually do something. I mean besides building more systems to generate easy profit.
Here is a list of some of the farms on FREEDOM that need attention by the Devs
438500
389155
434792
367387
XION FARM
XION FARM TWO
WTFF
These are only a few of the more popular AE farms that are abused by players. Leveling 1-30 in an hour or less should be considered game breaking. The ability of players to "hide" their farms while not using them should also be addressed. With a few modifications the game can be a much more fun experience.
I also suggest the Devs remove the ability to farm the BM maps and maps of similar structure. Maybe make the system so that purple drops stop dropping after you play a mission more than once or twice. The entire game is logged so it shouldn't be that hard to hook that function into a player name.
These changes will force players to actually experience the content, or lack of. It will also force the developers to actually add more content to the game as the demand increases. Which is exactly how it should be for a subscription based MMO. Not.. "here's a hat and a new tail for your barbie doll". It doesn't matter what your character looks like, the game plays the exact same way regardless.
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized"
"The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
In case you didn't know, CoH and CoV have been one game for quite a while now. You can currently buy the game for $20 which comes with a free month, that's not all that much money from where I come from. And as far as scrolling through text of people asking for farms, that is a lie. That might have been true when i14 was first released, but not so anymore, the devs have done a good job in fixing farming exploits as they appear.
There are plenty of people who play through the content and do not farm at all and I would certainly say its the majority population that does so. People who want to farm are going to farm no matter what, whether it be in AE or farming regular content. Disabling rewards on non exploitive content because people farm would be really stupid. Also, whats so bad about a paid expansion? Going Rogue has been the only one since CoV was released. I know its okay for some games to release multiple expansions for $50, but of course it would be unheard of if CoH released one for $30.
Well, I don't know.
I play CoH pretty regularly. I very often find myself on a (non-farm) mission team that lasts for a couple of hours. I haven't been on a farm team for... Jeez, I don't know how many months. Probably more than a year. I haven't noticed anyone "begging" for them, let alone "scrolling walls of chat". I won't go so far as to say the OP is lying, but it certainly hasn't been my experience. It might just be something common to whatever zone he's spending so much time in.
As far as anyone complaining about the limitations of the character creation, I've seen some pretty awesome costumes on display. I've come up with a few ok one's myself. Some people might have more of a knack for it than others, but it's certainly not short on options if you're willing to put in some effort.
Name one game that has beeter character customization than CoH
All Points Bulletin
It has a cool character creation tool, but not near as many costume pieces. Also APB isn't really an MMO...
Ummmm, even if it were true, isn't this a mute point? I mean, didn't their company declare bankruptcy?
I've been playing CoH since release, yes the character customization is good but you can't really add anything more to it unlike in All Points Bulletin, you can place your own symbols on your outfit, text, patterns, textures etc etc.
And no, APB has not been declared bankrupt they will just continue in a smaller amount of employees, if that doesn't go well then there is a big chance that EA or something else will buy the game.
The critics score is just a personal view of the game, to be honest i played City of Heroes on and off, while i non-stop play APB since march now (Beta).
On metacritic website CoH rates an average score of 85 based on 58 critic reviews. APB gets a whopping 58 based on 42 critic reviews. Nice try.did you even read what you quoted? i understand you're a fanboy who is overly impressed by the fact you can make a large breasted female character(pro tip: this is the internet, you can find pictures and videos of actual naked women all over) but you might want to calm down a bit. the first guy says name a game with better character customization(i've never played apb but the other guy seems to think it has better character customization) and you type out something completely irrelevant about the overall scores of the games.
OK then let me simplify it for you... APB sucks and is in receivership while COH just cranked out a sweet expansion and is running strong for 6 years... just like WoW ironically.I don't know why you guys are arguing over character customization. A new hat is not character customization it's playing barbies. Character customization is the ability of someone to create a character that is unique to his/her ability to "raise" it through time spent in actual gameplay.
What we have in COH is the build of the month club for the most part with very little room for adjustment. Usually there are one or two combinations that work and the rest are minimally efficient. A few percentages spread differently from damage to accuracty etc. don't count. So to make it clear, I want the devs to add more powers, unique enemies, and damage types to the game. I want them to develope more RPG aspects into the game to make it more interesting instead of adding stupid items that make zero difference to the gameplay.
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized"
"The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
Hoo boy, another "I am the measure of all things!" type. I am sooo very tired of these "everybody does this" and "everybody does that" rants from people who can't grasp that their "everybody" consists of their own narrow clique and the deafening roar of support is in the echo chamber between their ears. Frankly, I have zero interest in the FOTM builds so important to you, and an equally low regard for your dictation of how the game should be played. I'm having fun; if you are not, perhaps this isn't really the right game for you.
Wow, now I know that you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You can make ANY build combination be effective in this game, if you don't think so then you were doing it wrong.
once again you fail to understand what's going on kid. i'm not saying apb is good i've never even played it or had any desire to, i was simply pointing out that your comment had nothing to do with the discussion at all. one guy said name a game with a better character creator and then another guy did. you jumped in with a bunch of nonsense that has nothing to do with anything and for some reason you think it is relevant. i'm sorry that this duscussion is so far over your head but honestly its not that hard to follow.
Well all I can say is this.
Came back after a 2 year break and wow its so much more fun now. Been playing for 2 weeks now and have not seen 1 farm team in chat.
Combat wow the combat in a full team of 8 this game is sick it puts wow combat to shame.
End game is coming I only hope we will see some even more great stuff coming.
6 of us had stopped playing wow at the moment :P
clicking the Dungeon Finder has now stopped and it feels so nice