Another night of running some toons through the initial invasion tutorial. (Hmmm … how are we supposed to be providing “beta” feedback to Cryptic?)
LIKES
- I really like the Invasion environment. There’s just a lot going on. Consider the “Outbreak” environment in CoX — you spend a lot of time running down the street, but the “bad guys” are all safely off behind a fence — and, of course, in small mobs that stand there and don’t attack until you come within each of their aggro ranges. Heck, the same is true for CoX in general. On the other hand, there is stuff going on all over the place in Millennium City in CO — even the “safe areas” get groups of Qularr charging into them (with cops and soldiers shooting back). It feels more dynamic — and heroic.
- I like the talking NPCs (limited, thus far, to two Champions). It’s a nice break from, and addition to, the voiceless dialog boxes and mute NPCs you get missions from.
- I like that the Level 1 powers have, in many cases, different poses associated with them each time they fire. Since you use them so much, that’s important. Martial Arts is very nice, as is the Handgun. Others, there’s less difference.
DISLIKES
- The 8-toon limit is going to drive me nuts, I assure you. I’ve already deleted off one just to try some other concepts. Bleah. I think this is an area where the “console” limits/bias of CO shows, hand in hand with a “this is how people will play” bias toward single toon players. Regardless, it irks. And if the idea is that this will be expanded via microtransactions, it had best be a very small MT indeed — on the order of a buck — otherwise it will be even more irksome.
- The invasion tutorial is very good. I think, though, it will become long and irksome with repetition — unless the idea, again, is that folks will take a single toon (or maybe two) through to level cap completion. For altoholics (though Beta further distorts this) it’s going to be a real pain sooner or later.
- How the attributes (Endurance, Strength, Presence, etc.) tie into the powers and abilities is not very transparent; the tutorial doesn’t tutor on it. At least, I haven’t gotten it clear in my head, aside from persona RPG experience. Nevertheless, one is asked to choose loot based on attribute increases it gives, etc. That could all use some work. As could what the different screens do. There’s plenty of good info provided, but it’s a more complex environment than CoX, and needs more explanation therefore.
OTHER NOTES, OBSERVATIONS, QUESTIONS
- Margie noticed last night, going through the log book for the heroes after we were done, that there were a few missions we had missed. She did some research, and discovered that, for example, Foxbat is buried under some rubble somewhere, and Sapphire, I believe, is also lurking around. We need to do a bit more exploration, but suffice it to say that you can’t just take the mission chain from one end to the other and hit all the content there. Which is a good thing.
- If I had to characterize the feel of CO vs. the other two MMOs I’m familiar with, I’d say it has the “vibe” of CoX (through the super-hero genre) with the mechanics of LotRO (screen layout and controls, multiple trays of stuff, drops that boost attributes and sometimes require decisions about whether to use them and lose a lower-level one). It’s a nice combination.
- I have yet to learn or have explained or figure out how the various drops work in the primary, secondary, and tertiary (I guess) attack / defense / utility trays. Loot just seems to go the appropriate points when clicked on, but I don’t know what pressing 8, 9, or 0 does (there’s no particularly visible effect or message). Are those active powers, passive ones, or what?
- Took me a while to see how to customize the powers, but it can be done on the fly — right-click on the powers, I believe, and the list comes up with dropdowns for emanation points (where that applies) and sliders for color. Nice. And nice that it’s not a “tailor token” to do.
- How do you toggle powers on? I’ve seen mention in a few places that the Level 1 attack power can be toggled on (to fire off whenever you select a target). That’d be nice, but there’s no obvious way to do it (though in some cases the firing seems to get stuck on).
- There was a discussion about looting earlier. From my observations thus far, the only loot that can be kill-stolen from outside a team are the “inspiration” drops (which are immediate boosts) from kills (if you’re in melee or close blasting, you usually get it automatically because it spawns within range of you). Objects that drop are sometimes for individual heroes (the little “!” is formatted different), and sometimes for folks within the team. The team leader gets to decide on various strategies of how those get divvied up. Looting, beyond those “inspirations,” remains annoyingly manual.
Overall impression is favorable. It’s time to take some characters to the Desert and to Canada, to see how those environments play, but at the moment I am overall content with the game.
Later in the game you’ll get some drops that you can equip that will be useable as a power. I got some ‘armor’ that was a healing power, etc.
I think the team/hero specific drops are a relatively new phenomena, and a good one at that.
Your level one power will, once you select a target and ‘trigger’ it, continue to fire at that target until it’s defeated or your click the power again. From my CoX play experience I ALWAYS hit it and deactivate it when I’m busy button mashing.
After running through the tutorial with two different characters, playing with almost all the travel powers and testing a few normal powers, my impressions are…
LIKES:
1. The Power House is awesome. It’s so good to be able to pick a power, try it out, then change it if you don’t like it. It was great to be able to try out all the travel powers as a new player.
2. The character creator. It’s still early days for me, but what some people have done with it looks amazing. I also like the way the running animations change with your stance (or whatever it’s called). I wish you could see this in the creator though.
3. You can turn off the black outlines! I really wasn’t impressed by the graphics at first, but turning off the outlines has really helped. I’m sure some people will love them, but I don’t. Great to have the choice.
4. Variation. While I haven’t experienced it yet, it looks as though there’s lots more variation in terms of locations than in CoX e.g. underwater areas, snowey landscapes etc., which is nice.
5. It’s a superhero game! It’s nice to have another superhero game to play with.
DISLIKES:
1. General control. Movement’s quite stiff with the keyboard and I find all the clicking and poking needed to navigate menus and speak to contacts pretty frustrating.
2. Charging up endurance for bigger powers. I’m fine with the charging up big powers thing, but I don’t like having to keep reverting back to the base attack to build up endurance. This actually seemed to be worse once I got another power. You hit the little power and wait for your bar to fill, then you choose which of your bigger attacks to use, which seem to drain the bar completely, so your back to your little attack. It would be ok if your endurance bar was much, much bigger, but at the moment it feels like a pain.
3. Shielding from attacks. This is bugging me too. I seem to be getting in a muddle with what’s happening. I use the little power to build endurance, then start charging the big power. Half way through a charge, the enemy starts charging their big power. I therefore hit shield and I’m not sure what happens. Does my big power go off half cocked? I don’t think I’ve been able to tell yet.
4. I’m almost certainly going to need a new graphics card. The rest of my PC is totally fine, but my graphics card is struggling.
5. Font size. I seem to be leaning forward the whole time so I can read the text. I know you can increase the UI size, but I just want bigger fonts, not bigger everything.
6. MMO stuff. This probably sounds odd, but I’ve avoided all other MMOs (other than CoX obv) because I don’t fancy all the looting, stats, crafting and especially open world events / missions which require you to wait around for the thing to re-spawn after someone else has completed it. I loved CoX as almost none of this applied (especially before the auction house stuff came in). CO feels far more like other MMOs and I’m not sure I’m going to enjoy it so much.
So I still have mixed feelings about it. Hopefully some of the negatives will become non-issues as I get used to them and have a go at re-mapping keys and things. I also haven’t teamed with anyone yet, so I don’t know what that’s like.
@Arty: “Your level one power will, once you select a target and ‘trigger’ it, continue to fire at that target until it’s defeated or your click the power again.”
Really? Must try that. It would explain some oddities.
@Stuart: “I also like the way the running animations change with your stance (or whatever it’s called).”
That is, indeed, very cool. I love the loping bestial run.
Your other comments all seem quite reasonable. I’m having problems remembering to “shield”, as some “Defeats” have indicated.
Thanks for the tip on customizing the powers. In closed Beta the ability to change the power was handled differently.
I agree with you on the points about the tutorial. Foxbat is indeed hidden away — if you listen closely in the area where you rescue civilians from the rubble, you’ll find him on the other side of the wall with the wrought iron details. If you help him, you get a special use weapon. Also, the tutorial could indeed be troublesome if you experience alt-itis. I hope that’s why Sapphire is in the tutorial (I spotted her last night close to the Mayor’s tent); perhaps she can point alts on a different track. That was one of the things that used to bug me about alts in COH; going over the same content again and again is a quick way to get bored with game content.
Well, I’ve managed to avoid too much boredom in CoX, especially as it is all the way in I15 than in I3 (when I joined — yikes!). Added zones and content, police bands, etc. — it’s easy to avoid repeating toooo much. Esp. if you’re choosing different power sets (which makes each battle / opponent different, to my mind).
And CoX gives you the option to skip the tutorial.
7-G-Royal proverbs
Btw, we both encountered problems with post-patch loading of the client, including a “reverifying files” for me and a rebootably-correctable correction for Margie. :-/ They really need to get their patching shit together.
I talked to Sapphire yesterday and she didn’t have a lot to say . . no idea why she’s even there. She might need to be talked to after saving a few of the other hidden away Champions . . . ..
Maybe. I tried it as well, and she seemed mostly informational. We did find the school days mish, plus Foxbat (who seems to usually have a group of heroes waiting for him to respawn, dagnabbit); if you rescue him, there are some useful and amusing things that happen.