Why I don't like City of Heroes

[dvandom]

First thing, I'm not giving up yet. But now that I've played for a few hours and had time to think about it, I've managed to clarify what about the game counts as Big Problems for me, reasons why I'm less likely to put up with the little problems.


Okay, here's the little problems, just to get them out of the way. It's not an exhaustive list, but it's what bugged me once I got underway and that doesn't fall under the Big Problems. I expect I could overcome or get used to most of these if I keep playing.

• The camera "loses" my character way too easily. It's not fun to be fighting in tight quarters and suddenly I can't see my character because I moved to the wrong place.
  
• Information overload. Yes, I know all the windows can be moved around and so forth, but there's so much I have to be able to keep track of, all at once, in a fight...and I don't operate at twitch-gamer speed.
  
• R'yleh geometry. I spent a few minutes stuck behind a desk because there were no paths out. I had to turn on a jetpack indoors and just smash into the ceiling to get out (oh, and the camera lost me while I was there, too, so I couldn't even see where I might be getting hung up). The jetpack also left me with head and shoulders merged with the ceiling a LOT.
  
• Exit lag. Yeah, I know it's there to avoid people abusing the system by getting into trouble and then logging out until the mob goes away, but it still annoys me.
  

All right, now for the big two reasons.

1. It's not a superhero game, it's a fantasy game with spandex.
   
2. I can't ignore it at will.
   

It's not a superhero game.

Yes, it has all the trappings of superhero stuff. Costumes, energy blasts, flight (although not right away), supervillains, etc. But that's just surface details. At its core, it follows the standard Campbellian Hero's Journey of a fantasy game: start out as a rube from the sticks and after long travails you're finally a Big Damn Hero. Pretty much all the RPGs I enjoy start you out as a Big Damn Hero and move on from there (Mutants and Masterminds, which still uses a Fantasy RPG level system, starts you at level 10...most other superhero games don't even use levels and you simply build a kickass character). Following the Hero's Journey from the start can be interesting in fiction, but that's because of the characters you meet along the way, not because of the grind. And games built around the Hero's Journey tend to keep the boring parts and lose the interesting parts.

City of Heroes, on the other hand, starts you out as a fragile rube from the sticks, better than the average human but not by a whole lot. Maybe a housecat can't take you down, but some of the mugging victims around Atlas Park might give you a serious challenge. As a result, chargen is not just the few minutes it takes to create a costume and pick out your starting powers...it's the several hours of grind required to reach the point where you get the powers you actually wanted to start with. Maybe if there were an option to start a character at any level I wouldn't mind this as much, but there isn't.

I don't insist on starting on top of the mountain, but I'd like to start somewhere on the mountain, not in a coastal village a thousand miles away from the mountain and without a horse.

And here comes a bunch of complaints that weren't in the "little problems" above because they are inevitable consequences of the fact that this is D&D in superhero drag. Things designed as encouragements and rewards for advancement become discouragements and punishments for starting players. Boring long travel stretches exist so that you can be rewarded with better movement powers later on, or encouraged to use team play to take advantage of taxibot specialists or team teleport. I've heard there are missions you simply can't accomplish solo, to encourage team play, but it discourages people who'd rather solo. A lot of powers and costume elements are inaccessible to beginning players in order to encourage leveling up, but it discourages players who want a flying character from the word go (maybe Superman had to "learn" to fly, but almost every other flying superhero had that power as part of their origin).

In other words, the whole fantasy RPG style of "start weak and boring, then become strong and interesting as a reward for play" thing is Not For Me. I want my escapism to escape immediately, not spend hours sawing away at the cell bars.

I can't ignore it.

I freely admit, I multitask a lot. But it's not parallel processing, it's massively serial. I'll do thing A, then thing B, then thing C, and maybe back to B, some more C, a little D, etc. And with the exception of watching live TV so I can comment realtime in chat with friends, pretty much every activity I enjoy for leisure is something I can arbitrarily set aside for at least a minute or so with zero consequences. And even the TV thing has blunted consequences, given the plethora of ways to see a show again after it has broadcast (i.e. Hulu, iTunes, reruns, wait for the DVD, YouTube, etc). In a tabletop RPG or wargame, I can excuse myself for a minute if I need to use the restroom or want to grab a drink, or my phone rings. In a MUSH, I can ignore the window for a minute if I have to, even in the most hectic of scenes. I can put down a kitbash and leave it for days, I can set aside a book as long as I want, I can zone out on a chat for several minutes without even being noticed.

But if I get into a mob fight on CoH, ignoring it for even ten seconds could get me a trip to the Hospital (followed by either long boring travel at low levels, or Debt at higher levels). Because it's Massively Multiplayer, there's no pause button. And while it's possible to go hide in a corner to take a break, that doesn't help me if my phone rings right after I've aggro'ed a mob. Especially if I'm teaming, and it'd mean flaking out on the teammates. And if I have to actually exit on short notice, there's that whole "30 seconds for them to beat on you unopposed" thing that's there to prevent abuse, but also prevents me from being able to control my own leisure time. In tabletop, even in the middle of a battle, I can ask for a time-out if I need one. But MMOs don't allow for that.

This also ties into the otherwise little problem of information overload. Not only can't I choose to ignore a mob, I can't slow it down if I want to think for a few seconds. And while some people enjoy being put under time pressure on a task, I get enough of that at work to satisfy any cravings I may have for such an experience.

If you want to be able to tell me when I can and can't ignore you and at what pace I have to deal with you, then you have to pay me, not the other way around. And if you're not paying me, you at least have to make it worth the hassle and aggravation in some other way.

So, that's the two big hurdles CoH is going to have to get over if I'm going to keep up with it after the gift subscription from thandrak expires. Is it worth the several hours of real chargen, assuming I ever want to make a new character? And is it worth having the game tell me when I can and cannot step away?

Comments

[rickj.livejournal.com]

As someone who spent far too much time addicted to CoH, I can say it's probably best to walk away.

That said, both Champions Online and DC Universe Online are said to have travel powers at level 1.

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

True enough -- though they have even less ability to walk away, according to reports. They're 'action RPGs,' after all. :)

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

Maybe a housecat can't take you down, but some of the mugging victims around Atlas Park might give you a serious challenge.

Not actually true.

Remember, your starting opposition in City of Heroes are the Hellions, the Skulls, the Council, the Vahzilok and the Clockwork. Not to overly spoil, but this means your starting opposition is:

1. A street gang that uses magical artifacts and pacts with infernal creatures to greatly enhance their physical abilities, culminating in the ability to wield hellish fire.

2. A street gang who essentially shoot up on Miraclo on a regular basis, with all the attendant powers, and who either get too addicted to it, turn green and stop using definite articles in their speech (see the Trolls) or who are selected as leaders by the gang founders and invested in a death cult that gives them the power of negative energy.

3. HYDRA, in slightly more generic uniforms. Also, there's evil astral calamari involved. A poor substitute for the original Nazi Art Thieves in this slot, but still not the norm.

4. SCIENCE ZOMBIES STITCHED TOGETHER THROUGH UNHOLY SCIENCE! I really don't need to elaborate.

5. Living clockwork automatons controlled by a giant clockwork robot with an integrated brain in a jar.

Honestly, any one of those groups would have given Spider-Man a hard time his first week on the job. Heck, 1938 Superman would have had some issues with them.

One of the things I absolutely loved about City of Heroes, when I started playing all those years ago, was that I wasn't going out as a bold fantasy adventurer and stabbing rats for seven hours to get the ability to take on large dogs. On the very first moment, I was containing an outbreak. My first moment of 'free time' I was fighting enhanced street gangs and saving people who were being mugged for their purses or their precious bodily organs. In part I knew this because they were running up to tell me so.

I can understand if this isn't your kind of game, but it's also not fantasy repackaged as superheroing. It's superheroing. You go out and save people. You don't get goblets or magical trinkets or gold as your reward -- you get influence -- which is to say your good deeds make people more willing to pitch in and help out in your fight against evil.

And if the running around until level five (at level five you can get a mission that gives you a flight pack) is really driving you nuts, well in April or thereabouts Issue 14 will drop, and by all published accounts you can level yourself up with no mission travel time whatsoever. Granted, you'll be running virtual missions in a glorified Danger Room, but that's what the X-Men did before they started hitting the streets, and a lot of people plan to ignore the interface and just treat this as their adventures.

(Heck, more than one person's planning on using the mission creator to create customized content for their supergroup to play -- in effect GMing for them. Assuming it will do what it says it can do, anyway.)

[masonk.livejournal.com]

What he said. :)

I burned out on the game awhile ago, but mostly because I was tired of going through the same content over and over. I14 has me psyched because there's going to be a ton of new content to go through. But, of course, YMMV.

Also, while running around in the streets isn't a safe place to go suddenly idle, in missions it's relatively safe, as long as your not actively fighting. There are some patrols, but not nearly as many as in some other MMOs.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

You're mistaking the engine, which was and still is a D&D automation engine, with the superhero genre. While I hate the engine sometimes, the game itself does actually work as a storytelling system. I wish they had chosen a different way to present and organize the powers, but they might still not have it on the market if they hadn't chosen to adapt the Everquest MMO character-role shorthand, and that shorthand provided them with some fast-track getting new players onto the game, which was absolutely necessary to survive. Champs Online will be better in some ways and absolutely worse in others.

As for 'can't walk away' ... that's not really true. You have to be in the right places, and if you are on a public map you may auto-disconnect, but untimed instanced missions if you are in a safe place (depending on whether there are wandering patrols, which aren't common), or if you are in a supergroup base, you can stay away from the keyboard without being disconnected.

You can't go off and leave your character running a script, but that's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.

Travel powers aren't so much of a big thing. Only a few of the zones are actually that large until you hit the point where you are likely to have travel powers. At level five (which I can achieve for any character with at most three hours of play) you can go to King's Row (heroside) or Port Oakes (villainside) and perform three missions for your police contact or your underworld broker. After three missions, your level 5 character is offered a bank mission (rob or prevent robbery) which, if you are successful, grants you a "raptor pack" that gives you two hours worth of flight. It seldom takes more than 2 1/2 minutes to cross a zone, and thus, you may end up at 50 without having used your entire pack. If that isn't enough, for five bucks a month you can buy a rental-pack usable on every one of your characters.

The pleasure in this game is the story arcs. It's exactly the opposite of the leading Fantasy MMO games. Due to what appears to be a badly fractured time-stream, YOUR character is in the story position of the Big New Hero or Next Big Villain. Even when you're on someone else's mission, you can still do your version of the same mission, even simultaneously complete them if you happen to have compatible missions from the same contact.

The other pleasure in the game is the same you get from playing an RPG with friends - when you join up with friends, and do the missions, or sit around on the sidelines and engage in social RP. There two or three servers with LARGE populations of Roleplayers, and some of them are every bit as lame as you would expect on a non-filtered MUSH, but there are also some pretty good ones.

I'd say give it a month to form your opinion, because a few hours isn't really enough to find the full spectrum of good and bad.
Of course, I think the good stuff far outweighs the bad.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

And a second response to the "I can't just hit pause" ... that'll be true of every online game and many single-player videogames.

When I was caring for Penny, even though I would be on with a group of people, I could say "I have to make dinner," or "need to afk, wife emergency," or "AFK emergency" right up front, and the rest of the team had no problems; if it was just me, I could just say "Real Life trumps Game" ... even pick-up groups were ok with this if I let them know up-front that I had stuff going on, and would either let me hang, or in very rare circumstances would boot me.


This game can be played solo, but it's more enjoyable with a team.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

And you'll notice that I have not played any online MMOs previously. There are reasons for this beyond hardware/software issues.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

You have, however, played in MUSH/online interactive games, with other people. The difference here is that the game itself is autonomous. In a MUSH-type game, you have the social pressure or the social flexibility, and you have the MASSIVE online drama issue.

Perhaps paradoxically, it's the presence of a team that can solve most of the problems of the game's insistence.
It really is rare that you will be playing and need to go away instantly, and when that happens, if you tell your team, they're likely to "have your back" and that reduces the catastrophy rating.

There's another new thing -- I haven't had significant debt since the start of Issue 13. They added a version of "rested experience" - that blue stuff you see in your experience meter. Any debt you accrue is subtracted from the blue stuff first. Any character which has been offline for more than a few days, is likely to have enough built up to completely eliminate debt.

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

This game can be played solo...

I'd argue that the game can be played to a certain point solo. I've solo'd a few characters up to twenty, but getting over that late-teens hump for my non-Mastermind characters has almost always involved teaming with people. I think Lady Lawful is the first non-MM I got to twenty completely solo, and that was only because I ground through a level and a half one double XP weekend because I wanted LL to have a cape.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

It's pretty easy to do, but it takes time. Certain characters, it simply isn't possible to do in reasonable time, but they're pretty much team-build characters.

The addition of newspaper/police-band missions and the temp travel powers, plus the recent revamp of the Hollows, makes it MUCH easier than it was, for the majority of characters.

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

Really? The Hollows has changed since November?

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Did they have the repeatable missions contact in November?

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

I do not remember.

[thandrak.livejournal.com]

All I can say for camera controls is that the home, end, page down, page up, and so forth keys are your friends, since you don't have a scroll mouse.

The controls are in the manual, it may help to read it.
As far as 'stuck behind a desk', just wiggle, you'll get out, generally.

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

Sometimes typing /unstuck will move you a few meters and unstick you.

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

It's not a superhero game.

Well said. It's always bugged me that I have to work up to flight, super-speed, and a cape in the game. Narratively I typically build my most successful characters around that (Doctor Developer slowly building his empire, Teleportress being a castaway from a post-singular future who has to acquire technology because she's so far advanced none of ours makes sense to her (ala Marvel's Decepticons), or Diana Drake (my Black Canary) who's a King's Row girl working her way up the ranks), but it sure makes it tricky to play characters like Lady Lawful who should start with some perks of legacy and powers.

I can't ignore it.

In defense of CoH, that's just MMOG's. I have two monitors at work, where I play WoW on one and browse on the other. I'm lucky to get a minute of browsing in before I'm forced to click back into WoW for some reason or another. Try as they might, I don't think there's a single MMOG that caters to multitaskers. Maybe Second Life, but that's more 3D chat than game.

I will add, one reason Mastermind's on the villain side are so nice is because once you hit 20-ish and have five robots, a force field generator, etc. you can kind of ignore it a bit more. Send your bots after a small mob (2~3 baddies) and go do something else for a minute or two. Not as perfect as it could be, but better than playing as a Blaster.

[not-croaker.livejournal.com]

I have two monitors at work, where I play WoW on one

You can play WoW at work? Wow!

Where DO you work?

[jarodrussell.livejournal.com]

Local community college. I'm one of the IT guys, so when it's slow on Friday, it's okay to play. (No one's ever complained anyway.)

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Well, I never said my big issues with CoH were unique to that game. They're probably both bog-standard for MMOs.

[zqadams.livejournal.com]

People've already addressed the "unignorable" nature as just a consequence of a persistent real-time game, so I'm going to stick to the "fantasy game with superpowers instead of spells and swords" issue.

Many thousands of years ago, there was a post on the forums from one of the lead developers. He basically said that in most cases, when they felt they had to make a choice between gameplay and superhero atmosphere, the former usually won. That's the whole reason the Tanker archetype exists--management of mob aggression was considered a huge part of online gaming at the time, and they just couldn't imagine a tank-free world. Furthermore, they felt the tank had to do relatively little damage to avoid making them too powerful to ever get in over their heads (and it wasn't all that successful. In the first two years of the game, a tank could get the attention of every mob on a map and, if necessary, survive indefinitely while holding it). One of those concessions to conventional game design was the level system. As foomf said, the archetype/level combination made the game more palatable to players who would have fled in terror at the sight of the Hero System in 2004, and made it much easier to iron out a basic playable framework (the original alpha version of the game didn't have class delineations until they realized that more than half of the characters wound up with powers that failed so spectacularly to work together they were essentially unplayable).

To be frank, they made a LOT of design mistakes in the early days of the game (giving Controllers access to nearly all Defenders' signature powers, with the difference in effectiveness being minimal enough that I actually found myself booted from teams to replace me with a Troller since he could freeze the enemy as well as buffing/debuffing/healing). Some of those were fixed with the Villains expansion as they moved away from the EQ-standard classes to experiment more, others couldn't BE fixed without starting all over.

Frankly, I'm not sure it's really possible to make a game with any significant character progression that would give you what you want. Even the major offline Marvel and DC games have leveling up to unlock new powers (in Ultimate Alliance, Cap may have all his signature tricks at level one, but he can't ricochet the shield off multiple enemies until he's leveled up some), and without progression MMOs lose their siren song to the non-RPing masses.

Sorry if any of this sounded condescending--I'm just trying to explain things you couldn't reasonably be expected to know since you're not usually a video/PC gamer. To be honest, I got pretty burned out on CoH as a game a good two years ago--it's the fact that it's my primary outlet for roleplay, the people I've met in the community and the stories and characters we've created that has kept me going so long.

[diosoth.livejournal.com]

I stick to "free" MMOs(free meaning I neither have to pay to play or pay to get a copy).

Bad cameras are nothing new to me in gaming. They've been a problem since the late 90s with Sonic Adventure and still show up in numerous games. Legend of Zelda from Ocarina of Time onward, possibly with Grand Theft Auto, seems to be the only "perfect" camera- usually gluing it behind you and ignoring any solid object that it might bump into.

This was actually a big deal in Super Mario 64, where the "camera" was a floating NPC behind you at all times which you could move around.