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Skeptical of returning to CO (current COH player)
eddiewood
Posts: 0 Arc User
Let me be direct. I"m a current COH player, but I also tried CO at launch and then a few months later, thinking it would be better than COH, but was shocked to find it was actually worse. Really, I only have two complaints about the game, at that time, but they are/were MAJOR flaws that I just couldn't over look.
First, whole stat/ability/role/gear system. What a cluster f that thing is. I had no idea how to set these things up or what they do. I kept waiting for some kind of theory craft around this to pop up but none did.
Second, there was no incentive to team up, ever. For as great COH was with PUGs, CO was the exact opposite. I cannot understand how the same people that developed COH and their great system that led to great PUGs could turn that upside-down in this game. CO was a solo MMO first with superficial grouping.
I don't think I made a toon past level 10 before getting bored and frustrated. It was a shame this game siphoned away players from COH.
...
So my question are these:
1) Is there any clarity with the the basic game mechanics now or is it still a confusing mess? Is there a well developed theory of builds? Is it easy to manage builds?
2) Is this game a PUGers dream come true? That's right, I want a PUGers dream, like COH, or better than COH, if that's even possible. I can't settle for anything less. Sorry, but COH has spoiled me. If I wanted to play a good soloing MMO with occasional grouping I'll play The Secret World. For that matter, what do PUGs look like in this game now?
As an aside, is this game a gear grinder? Because I hate gear grinders.
I know this seems like I only have venom for CO, but I did like the character customization, and at least in theory the classless system seemed like a good idea.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not an elitist player. I'm considering just not playing MMOs anymore. I think the genre may have passed me by. I just want what I had in COH or I don't want to play MMOs at all.
First, whole stat/ability/role/gear system. What a cluster f that thing is. I had no idea how to set these things up or what they do. I kept waiting for some kind of theory craft around this to pop up but none did.
Second, there was no incentive to team up, ever. For as great COH was with PUGs, CO was the exact opposite. I cannot understand how the same people that developed COH and their great system that led to great PUGs could turn that upside-down in this game. CO was a solo MMO first with superficial grouping.
I don't think I made a toon past level 10 before getting bored and frustrated. It was a shame this game siphoned away players from COH.
...
So my question are these:
1) Is there any clarity with the the basic game mechanics now or is it still a confusing mess? Is there a well developed theory of builds? Is it easy to manage builds?
2) Is this game a PUGers dream come true? That's right, I want a PUGers dream, like COH, or better than COH, if that's even possible. I can't settle for anything less. Sorry, but COH has spoiled me. If I wanted to play a good soloing MMO with occasional grouping I'll play The Secret World. For that matter, what do PUGs look like in this game now?
As an aside, is this game a gear grinder? Because I hate gear grinders.
I know this seems like I only have venom for CO, but I did like the character customization, and at least in theory the classless system seemed like a good idea.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not an elitist player. I'm considering just not playing MMOs anymore. I think the genre may have passed me by. I just want what I had in COH or I don't want to play MMOs at all.
Post edited by eddiewood on
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1 - It can still be pretty daunting. It's a lot to take in, saying "hey, just take whatever powers you want." However, we have very helpful people in the Combat and Powers forum if you have any question on your build, or a build you're thinking of, or whatever. Lots of players that are very good at build planning and advice.
Also, if you want to jump in and just try things out, you can try out an Archetype. They're not as good as Freeform characters, but they're still a lot of fun to play, and they can get you familiar with certain power sets.
If you want to go Freeform anyway, you can stick to a single powerset and things get a whole lot less confusing. But as always, if you have any doubts, just speak with the community here. Helpful and knowledgeable.
2 - There are people who PUG, but honestly, I don't think it's as big as CoH. Lots of the content can be soloed, and missions usually go by pretty quickly, so people are zipping about here and there. But if you're diligent, you should be able to find a group.
Sorry, but there's just not a whole lot of content that needs teaming while leveling up to make groups big.
Alerts are auto-PUGs, but usually are better playing with pre-made groups. They're short missions that you queue up for and get put in a group of 5 to take down a big villain.
As far as gear goes, it's kinda yes and no. Once you get to max level, you can do unity missions (they're solo missions) to get tokens that you can use to buy some really good gear. A single character can do the dailys for a week and then get the best gear.
But, then there's the Mods. These are upgrades for gear, which will be giving you the bulk of your stats. Rank 5 mods are pretty common at level 40, and they're all you'll ever really need. If you wanna go all the way to max rank (rank 9 mods), it's a grind, but, it's really nowhere near necessary. I think I own one mod that's over rank 5, and I do well for myself.
I know jumping into another game is usually a big change, but just give it some time. Once you're comfortable with character building, Freeform characters are an absolute blast. You can do almost anything you want, and still be able to kick some villain butt.
Hope some of this has been helpful, and hope you stick around!
Second, let me be equally direct & pragmatic:
A lot has changed, starting game content has definitely changed in particular. Only level 10 is hardly giving the game a fair try. I can get to level 10 within about 10 minutes of play time, honestly. Saying CO "siphoned off players" is conjecture and more important it shows the readers you're definitively biased.
It depends... Some yes, some no. You can customize your character even more than you used to because of the Specialization Tree and Mods & Cores. There are other nuances in the game that are complicated.
There's is definitely a well developed theory of builds, developed by the players, especially the ones that are into PvP. There are guides and knowledgeable people on the forums, you should ask if you're confused.
If you can find a team or group up with friends it's a blast. There's a lot of frustration with Alerts because some of the people are leeching, terribly unskilled, or think they know-it-all when they clearly don't (i.e.: noobs). Sometimes your experiences will be good, sometimes your experiences will be bad. Again, it depends.
More than some, less that others. Gear grinders are profitable so the trend has been for increased grinding. It depends on what you want. If you want the best stuff in the game, you'll grind like HELL. If you want stuff enough to rock out and own some villains you won't need to grind much if you do missions & such.
Keep in mind this game also has an AH (auction house) where you CAN buy things (and without getting your stuff stolen/scammed in a trade) that are posted by other players with a 5% fee they have to pay to post it at that price. You can get some pretty excellent gear for cheap there, because of plentiful supply.
The stuff people are grinding for heavily are typically Mods, gold/resources, Costume Unlocks, and Questionite (which an also be traded for Zen which is used to buy stuff from the microtransaction store)
Classless WAS the way it was originally, aka. "Freeform". But if you want freeform in this game you have to buy it. Same goes for the Premium Archetypes/classes.
For better or worse, it's a balance that works.
You might need to take a break from MMOs.
I've done that before myself, twice. After Knight Online (f*** Korean MMOs) and after Battlefield Heroes (f*** Electronic Arts). Cryptic is far from perfect, but they are certainly better than some others.
My biggest complaint with Cryptic & Perfect World comes down to them not putting their good intentions into actions. It's a lot of promises typically, but we're left waiting and wondering if new content or bug fixes are ever coming and when.
Honestly, Eddiewood, you sound burned out on MMOs right now. So stop for a time. I'd recommend you don't jump into Champions right now then.
This is not because I don't want you to come here and have fun, but I feel you're just going to get more angry. You want to be open-minded before going to a new game, or you'll only see the negatives. I don't feel you're open-minded at all right now.
When do feel ready for some super-hero action and feel happier & ready to have some fun, come check us out.
Consolidate the currencies! (Please!)
Does your Champion have a theme song? (share it!)
Got a funny in-game screenshot? (share it!)
Please fix the Overdrive energy unlock! (Should help promote thematic build diversity!)
To be honest, my experiences have been mostly positive, with even the more negative ones being more comical fails than terrible messes. But that is because I am VERY choosy about which kinds of PUG missions (in this game they are called ALERTS) that I play. I do only the shortest duration ones so that, even in the event of a visit from the Epic Fail Fairy I loose, at most 2 minutes of my day. If you want to wade into the Great Big River O' Flame that is the longer Alerts, look up anything with the words "Gravitar" or "Warlord" in the title. While these are simply not for me, many people consider them the best thing since sliced bread. My only advice to you would be to build a toon, level up a bit, and jump into Alerts. While you CAN join very early in the game (I think as soon as you finish the Tutorial) it is very strongly recommend that you wait until at the very least level 15 before you begin to do Alerts. At the rapid levelling pace of this game that will not take you long at all, most likely a couple of hours, tops.
As far as Guides go, there are a great many available right here on the forums!
Just look under the Gameplay and Feedback/Combat and Powers section.
Hope this helps!
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'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
You mentioned that you played The Secret World.
I do as well, as do several others from these forums.
The best way to explain C.O. in its current form would be to think of it as the Anti-TSW. Both of these games have areas in which they are the best out there and both have areas in which they are the worst. It just so happens that every deficiency in TSW is an area where CO absolutely SHINES (the character creator, for ex.) and vice versa. I switch off between the two regularly and it keeps both fresh.
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'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
In-game documentation is still sub-par. Power descriptions aren't very precise about their explanations and can be vague. Fortunately we have a wiki that helps explains things in more detail that is managed by Lohr from intensive power testing.
Alerts. Alerts Everywhere. That's where the PUGs are at. You queue for an alert, you get auto-matched and you're good to go. These days getting PUGs for older content like lairs, vanilla missions, adventure packs and comic series can get a little harder than before. You should see frequent LFG posts in zone chat for APs and Comic series.
Compared to CoX, getting decent gear in this game is relatively easy. There are no IO sets to grind for. There are no IO's at all. Gear is limited to 3 primaries and 3 secondaries. That's it. And then you have 5 device slots. You can still excel in this game easily even relying on green gear. There is gear that can be slotted with mods to make them even better and mods are easily obtained.
The Freeform system is still CO's greatest strength if you want full classless customization.
(And it mirrors something I thought, which was 'DAMN if only CO had TSW's level of story and voice work and graphics! But... CO everything else')
Though PvP is pretty crummy in both.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Ever since the On Alert update, statting and gearing makes a lot more sense and is a lot easier. You won't see gear with a weird mishmash of 4 stats that don't make sense together anymore. In general:
Strength: Melee Damage
Ego: Ranged Damage
Presence: Healing
Dexterity: Crit rate
Constitution: HP
Endurance: Max Energy
Recovery: Energy Equilibrium and Energy Generation
Intelligence: Cost Discount and Cooldown Reduction
The bad thing is Cryptic Math is still quite Cryptic, but there's a few threads in Combat & Powers that will help.
The PUG process is like, click a big button next to the minimap, click Join, chill in town for a few seconds and get warped to an instance for about 2-6 minutes' worth of stuff-killing, get shiny stuff at the end. That's an Alert in a nutshell.
There's also Nemcon, but those fill a lot slower.
Not really. Unless you're playing a very specialized build like a max Presence character with Aura of Radiant Protection character spamming double bubbles or a 14,000+ HP Gravitar Tank, diminishing returns tend to kick in so fast that the difference between the decent stuff and the great stuff is barely noticeable.
At level 40 it takes 6 days of daily quests, doable in under an hour a day, to get a full set of the best Primarys in the game.
The Primarys are the easy part - they need to be slotted with Mods. Level 5 Mods are the decent stuff, because they're reasonably common and cheap to slot. The grind comes in if you want to go higher.
Five of the same Mod of a given level have a chance of making a Mod of the next level. Level 6 gives such a small improvement over Level 5 that it should be skipped altogether. Level 7 is a comparatively larger improvement over Level 6, but that's the equivalent of grinding out 25 Level 5 Mods.
To put things in perspective, suppose a character slots three Level 7 Constitution Mods instead of level 5s. That nets a 315HP advantage in a game where 8000HP is considered average.
No, fortunately it doesn't.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Freeform gets more 'stuff' than an Archetype, so you'll end up, essentially, Archetype+ even if you copy Archetype powers exactly.
Wicks and Things: NW-DI4FMZRR4 : The Fenwick merchant family has lost a caravan! Can you help?
Beggar's Hollow: NW-DR6YG4J2L : Someone, or something, has stolen away many of the Fenwicks' children! Can you find out what happened to them?
Into the Fen Wood: NW-DL89DRG7B : Enter the heart of the forest. Can you discover the secret of the Fen Wood?
Champions never even had to go that far. They saw the outcry from STO and I guess decided not to implement that system. (Again - thank god)
Also - echoed and agreed about freeform. If you are a COH player used to ATs from there, you might initially think you can do ok with the Silver ATs. But in my experience, it's still better to go freeform. Use the Silver AT power progression as a guide in your first couple of characters.
By the way - if you do that - you'll find yourself actually running out of powers in the early 30s. Then you can start adding stuff from other power pools. Which to an old COH player like me, feels kinda like the Epic pool sets, only better.
Because once you ARE experienced in power selection, you can start mixing and matching powers early on.
THEN things start getting interesting.
Money is what keeps games open and PW is going to do everything in its power to keep CO making money. PW is going to get its 3-5 years out of CO one way or another.
Here we are now going to the West Side
Weapons in hand as we go for a ride
Some may come and some may stay
Watching out for a sunny day
Where there's love and darkness and my sidearm
In game as @forgemccain
Formerly @SteelDominator in COH
Proud member of Earthguard SG/Phoenix Phalanx
We do have lockboxes already, with 2 major differences -
1. They're called Grab Bags
2. You buy them from the store (1 for 100Z) ready to open and they only drop ingame from certain event missions that occur every so often (read: When a new Grab Bag launches)
This is good advice. Also Behemoth (might powers) is fun as hell, and Inferno lights stuff on fire (careful though, Inferno is super fragile). :biggrin: Archer is also quite strong now (it used to be weak), and 100% free; just remember that Focus Shot isn't worth it on Archer. If you can save up the money (or Questionite for trade) for something like Tempest or Scourge you're probably going to love it.
The most frustrating archetypes to play are going to be Grimoire or Mind because they've been nerfed to hell & back.
Consolidate the currencies! (Please!)
Does your Champion have a theme song? (share it!)
Got a funny in-game screenshot? (share it!)
Please fix the Overdrive energy unlock! (Should help promote thematic build diversity!)
The grab bags are like STO lockboxes, but they just are bought fully instead of a box found in the world and buy a key silliness.
Furthermore, PWE makes a lot of its money from ad revenue, hence all the ad deals like the Netflix sign up for Zen and so forth. CoH, on the other hand, was charging higher prices for basic features. For instance, the entire SSA (Signature Story Arc) would cost $35 to acquire just one of those, a far cry from what the adventure packs use to cost.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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CoH had superior quality - in CO I'm always waiting to find something new broken.
CoH had superior customer service - in CO reps either have little understanding of an issue or are generally "powerless" to assist
CoH had better content - There really hasn't been anything new to my CO experience other than Whiteout and Alerts. Alerts are a "mixed blessing".
There's much more reason to team now, since you queue into most of them in the alert system. Certain targets are best suited to be taken down as a team, but nothing as fun as taking down the rikti mothership or the giant octopus.
The combat and F2P system is what's made it feasible for me to stay and accept all the shortcomings.
RIP Caine
Sadly, part of the Champions problem is most people here think they should receive uber rewards on a silver platter for the least amount of work.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Strongly disagree, especially when you say "most people".
I'm fairly certain you and I have gotten into a fight in the past over this specific issue / difference in points of view.
Let's not get into that argument again please...
Consolidate the currencies! (Please!)
Does your Champion have a theme song? (share it!)
Got a funny in-game screenshot? (share it!)
Please fix the Overdrive energy unlock! (Should help promote thematic build diversity!)
One of the things I like about CO is that you can get through almost every mission of the storyline without being forced to team. It's available as an option, and a lot of people do seem to like to take that option, but it's not a requirement. Contrast with the 800-Pound Gorilla, where once you hit somewhere in the mid-60s (about 20 levels below the cap), it becomes impossible to finish any more of the required missions on your own. You are forced to find a team, willy-nilly, and God help you if you aren't already a past master at teaming (which is difficult, considering that most of the players over there require you to "know your role" and "know the fights" the very first time you team, and aren't shy about kicking you if you're trying to learn).
Reminds me - another of the things I like is that if you do team, nobody here treats you like a brain-dead carp if you don't always know exactly what to do (well, there are those who get super upset when anyone uses a Knock power in an Alert, but even that doesn't happen every time). And you can't be kicked from a team either, which makes learning how to do it a lot easier.
Oh, I almost forgot - Bluedarky, I don't know how much you play STO, but their "lockboxes" drop fairly frequently. And if you want to open one, you have to buy a key from the Z-Store, which runs 100 Zen. Each. Yes, that's right, you have to spend money to purchase the right just to open a gamble box. There will be something inside, so technically it doesn't run afoul of US gambling laws - but the reward isn't necessarily anything you'd want... When they premiered on STO, there was a rumor that they would soon appear in CO. The resulting firestorm nearly melted the server. I don't think it's going to happen here.
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Hey silverspar is still around!
I don't know who these "most people" are, but myself, and the krewe (GW2 reference) that I ran with always found he rewards in champs TOO easy to get.
Champions has no challenging content whatsoever.
Gravitar? Yawn.
GW2's too easy to, since all the fights there are just dodge attack rinsing and repeating, and even if you do die it's just a war of attrition. The only challenge there is wondering if your fingers will fall off after 30 minutes of fighting the same world boss.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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^ What he said. Also, thanks for the warm welcome, this community has been great so far.