So, I tried CoH/CoV

VGJustice · May 2006

I had played it a bit before, but I got a free trial key for both games when I bought Guild Wars: Factions, so I figured, what the hey? I could give it another whirl.

After my second run, I've come to the conclusion that the game style itself just isn't for me. I never really liked the standard MMO setup, and that's what this game follows. Ho-hum, nothing lost nothing gained.

On the other hand, I made extensive use of the character generator and I'm completely impressed. It's more fun than the game itself for me. I concider myself a storyteller, and I was able to make all of my characters here, and even made a few more. So, in that regard, I'm plenty happy. I got what I really wanted out of my free trials.

But, here's where my real problems start. I noticed a few things about the way the program itself runs that I don't like. I tried to Alt F4 once, and it didn't do anything at all. Alt Tab doesn't minimize the program, making any background program difficult to use. Also, Print Screen doesn't seem to take in game screen shots, just saves the current screen to the clipboard. I managed to get the screens I wanted, but only by opening the editing program I use, logging in to CoH, then using Prnt Scrn only to Alt Tab over to the editing program so I could load each desired image one at a time. It took forever, and seemed like a waste. Even better, the game seems to take over all my system resources worse than malware. I really hated that part.

I was informed that the code keys would make the game run as if it were a full version, so is this really the way the game runs? Or, did I just miss some option somewhere that takes screen shots? And why disable Alt F4? That just seems like a bad idea (game crashed on me, and Ctrl Alt Delete was a pain to get to work right, almost had to hard reset).

I've still got a few days left on my keys, so if you have any suggestions, I'm all ears.

yac709 · May 2006

I tried to Alt F4 once, and it didn't do anything at all.

Go to Menu->Options->Keymapping.
Scroll down to the bottom.
There's an option there to bind 'Exit game'.

Also, Print Screen doesn't seem to take in game screen shots, just saves the
current screen to the clipboard.

Print Screen should already be bound to save screenshot.
Toggle Screenshot UI will let you take it with/without the interface.

When you press Print Screen, it will save a compressed image in ...City of Villainsscreenshotsscreenshot_year_month_day_time.jpeg

Alt Tab doesn't minimize the program, making any background program difficult to use.

Yer, I hate how it keeps popping up.

Not really much you can do about this one.

Even better, the game seems to take over all my system resources worse than malware. I really hated that part.

Yup, it's pretty intensive, and likes to hog all of your CPU/RAM.
But, it shouldn't be too much of a problem as most people don't run intensive background programs while gaming.

I have a AMD 3700, 1gb RAM and 6600GT...
I can run Firefox, Winamp, Word, Excel and CoV without much slowdown.

VGJustice · May 2006

Alt F4 is a Window's command, that's why I was perturbed that it didn't do anything. The guys behind CoH/CoV would have had to go well out of their way to disable that command, and I have no idea why they'd do that. Just seems like asking for trouble to me.

Ah well, I'll take a closer look at the key-mapping screen and see if things got a little mixed up. It's possible that things are just disabled because it is a free trial. No biggie there. Thanks for the info/advice.

Serling · May 2006

What drove me away from the game was the heavy-handed and repeated nerfing of powers and whole ATs that continued on a game that was almost two years out of release. People would defend Cryptic by suggesting that "hey, they're new at this and it's their first game - give them a break" and you know, they were right! It was clear by the way they nerfed. And nerfed. And nerfed again, that they really didn't know what they were doing, yet didn't seem to mind charging $15 a month for a game that was in perpetual beta.

Hopefully - after 2+ years - they've finally started to figure it out. But meh, they've already lost me and a lot of other people - like me - who expected to play a game about superheroes and were - instead - nerfed into a bunch of pansies in tights.

Maybe they'd be better at making "Blankman - the MMO."

BTW, I'm having a blast in Factions, even playing my Tyrian characters through Cantha. In two years on that game, there have been 2 major nerfs I can recall: NPCs that run from AoEs (instead of taking all the damage AoEs dish out, but elementalists got a huge buff in return: lower energy cost and casting time to use AoEs, like Firestorm), and Necros lost the ability to summon dozens of minions and keep them alive almost indefinitely (reduced to 10 max, which is still enough to raise hell on a map) but again, they got a huge buff: the ability to summon a level 26 Flesh Golem (elite skill) that can take on virtually any foe anywhere and you can resummon from the corpse of a fallen golem when it dies, making it a virtually infinite teammate (and if you have the right weapon mod, you can summon one at level 28. Max level for players is level 20).

In other words, where CoH started everything real powerful and has had to constantly and consistently tone things down (as they say, "for the long-term 'benefit' of the game") Arenanet started everything on a pretty level footing and has only had to make very minor adjustments compared to Cryptic, resulting in a more consistent feel to the game since its release. (Ask any CoHer how often they've had to "respec" their character builds over the past two years to fix what Cryptic has broken in them, or how many CoHers have had to shelve or delete characters simply because they were no fun to play anymore. Even some fanboys - in an occasional fit of candor - will admit to doing one or both of the above).

Sorry, but GW is free to play, fun to play, and I have 9 level 20s on 2 accounts with more than 4 million xp between them that I still enjoy playing almost a year later. Can't say the same about CoH, which lost both my accounts after less than 6 months (the first was gone in less than three, when they introduced travel suppression).

Bottom line: A-Net knows what its doing. Cryptic is still learning and continues to do so at the players' expense.

VGJustice · May 2006

You make some interesting points, Serling, none of which I can refute. I am glad that I started with Guild Wars, and I think I will stick with Guild Wars. I just can not get into City of Heroes at all (just boring level grinding with a pretty shell) nor City of Villains (which is by far supperior, but still lacking something). I am sure that Cryptic will have an excelent showing with whatever game they make next, but A.Net is doing that right now.

And, after much tweaking and fiddling with settings, I finally determined that you can not take in game screen shots of your character selection screen. I do not know why that is, but it is annoying.

For the curious, I finally found a fun way to play for just myself, using a Tech Mastermind with all tech options. For some bizare reason, that is the only thing I could find that was fun to play for a long stretch of time.

Sunrider · June 2006

Originally posted by VGJustice
Alt F4 is a Window's command, that's why I was perturbed that it didn't do anything. The guys behind CoH/CoV would have had to go well out of their way to disable that command, and I have no idea why they'd do that. Just seems like asking for trouble to me.Ah well, I'll take a closer look at the key-mapping screen and see if things got a little mixed up. It's possible that things are just disabled because it is a free trial. No biggie there. Thanks for the info/advice.

to be completely honest, the ALT+F4 command will often times screw with different MMO's. For what reason I do not know, but i know if fudged up WoW one time long ago when i played that, and it also fuged SWG (another long long time ago). Also that command can completely screw up add-ons and interface additions to some mmo's as well. so they do have their reasons i suppose. also in the coh settings, there is an option to change how/where and what format your screenshots are saved in.

Xandor · June 2006

From what I understand regarding screenshots, the character creation screen and ID screens are 2d and thus can't be captured unlike the ingame interface, where it's 3d.

I'm not exactly sure what the difference is, but it's technological.

vellron · June 2006

yeah i played both its fun for a while but it gets repetitive and i got sick of it i play ff XI now

Bladin · June 2006

Originally posted by Serling

What drove me away from the game was the heavy-handed and repeated nerfing of powers and whole ATs that continued on a game that was almost two years out of release. People would defend Cryptic by suggesting that "hey, they're new at this and it's their first game - give them a break" and you know, they were right! It was clear by the way they nerfed. And nerfed. And nerfed again, that they really didn't know what they were doing, yet didn't seem to mind charging $15 a month for a game that was in perpetual beta.

Hopefully - after 2+ years - they've finally started to figure it out. But meh, they've already lost me and a lot of other people - like me - who expected to play a game about superheroes and were - instead - nerfed into a bunch of pansies in tights.

Maybe they'd be better at making "Blankman - the MMO."

BTW, I'm having a blast in Factions, even playing my Tyrian characters through Cantha. In two years on that game, there have been 2 major nerfs I can recall: NPCs that run from AoEs (instead of taking all the damage AoEs dish out, but elementalists got a huge buff in return: lower energy cost and casting time to use AoEs, like Firestorm), and Necros lost the ability to summon dozens of minions and keep them alive almost indefinitely (reduced to 10 max, which is still enough to raise hell on a map) but again, they got a huge buff: the ability to summon a level 26 Flesh Golem (elite skill) that can take on virtually any foe anywhere and you can resummon from the corpse of a fallen golem when it dies, making it a virtually infinite teammate (and if you have the right weapon mod, you can summon one at level 28. Max level for players is level 20).

In other words, where CoH started everything real powerful and has had to constantly and consistently tone things down (as they say, "for the long-term 'benefit' of the game") Arenanet started everything on a pretty level footing and has only had to make very minor adjustments compared to Cryptic, resulting in a more consistent feel to the game since its release. (Ask any CoHer how often they've had to "respec" their character builds over the past two years to fix what Cryptic has broken in them, or how many CoHers have had to shelve or delete characters simply because they were no fun to play anymore. Even some fanboys - in an occasional fit of candor - will admit to doing one or both of the above).

Sorry, but GW is free to play, fun to play, and I have 9 level 20s on 2 accounts with more than 4 million xp between them that I still enjoy playing almost a year later. Can't say the same about CoH, which lost both my accounts after less than 6 months (the first was gone in less than three, when they introduced travel suppression).

Bottom line: A-Net knows what its doing. Cryptic is still learning and continues to do so at the players' expense.

Okay enough of the "omg i've been teh nerfed =(" posts.

I'm sick of it. It's called balance. And its the right thing for the
game. There have been a few "heavy handed" changes such as the new AV
change.

But if you look to it.

Tankers complained about getting nerfed. Still extremely useful pve, still amazing in pvp. Great class.

Regen scrappers got nerfed countless times, but guess what? my mains a
regen scrapper and even with the ED and the changes... I still am
insanely powerful! I solo on the highest difficulties vs carnies,
malta, nemesis rikti, you name it. I soloed paladin(giant monsters
scale dmg to your level) before issue 7.

Really the game is fine. The nerfs haven't changed anything major,
things are pretty balanced, and everything is strong.(except domms they
need some sort of buff...). There have been changes to some ats because THEY WERENT BALANCED. Should they instead buff everyone weaker up? And then make all the mobs harder/stronger to compensate? It ends up the same way. Maybe all you wanted to do was create a build where you have no risk for any encounter ever and just basically instagib anything.

Really its just a matter of taste, you either like the game or you don't. Personally its the gameplay i love in this game. I hated the way guild wars felt. I can't really describe it. But i just couldn't enjoy it....

Try doing a mayhem mission with about 2-4 other people. It's a load of fun.

VGJustice · June 2006

Dang, Bladin, I thought I was reading a Guild Wars rant about "nerfs" for a second there. Guess the more things change, the more they stay the same, huh?

Sadly, I couldn't even bring myself to play out the full demo length for CoV, which I enjoyed more than CoH. Something about the game just didn't sit right with me, and it's nothing I could put my finger on directly. Probably just the play mechanic that's throwing me off. I just prefer Guild Wars, I guess. No biggie, everyone is entitled to their oppinion, right?

And, yeah, I had a Regen Scrapper on the Heroes side as well, that character was beastly tough.

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