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Dont expect CO to be as "developed" as COH
thetruthurts
Posts: 22 Arc User
In another thread, I saw a new player remark that CO was not as "developed" as COH. For those that arent aware, COH is 8 years old, and CO is 3. Thats right, COH is nearly 3 times as old as CO. It has had nearly 3 times the amount of development, so it obviously isnt as "developed" as COH. It isnt realistic to expect it to be, anymore than it would be realistic to expect a 3 year old to be the same as his 8 year old brother. Just saying.
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As a long-time CoH player, I agree. You really can't compare the two. Both are very different, especially the the types of comic book world they portray. As a friend of mine said; CO is Saturday Morning Cartoon, CoH is the Avengers movie.
Also, CoH is 8 years old, not 6, so the point is even stronger in favor of not expecting CoH's level of content.
I wouldnt say it like this, but yes CoH was alot more developed than CO, but I am sure with time it will get better.
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Beyond that, the two games seem too different to really compare.
Of all the things I've lost,
It think I miss my mind the most.
Such a sword and the moves to go with it exists but it's found in the Power Armor set.
There's laser swords in the power armor tree.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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"Power armour" tree? You mean the one that has shoulder cannons and that sort of thing? OK, that makes sense, I guess. What about "ego blade?" What kind of powers does that have? It's paid, so I can't check for options.
*edit*
Wait, can you clarify "power armour tree?" I could have sworn Champions gave me access to Power Armour as a "set," let's call it, but now I can't find it in any of the pre-made ATs, not even the locked ones. Is there any way I can see those laser swords BEFORE I pay for a Gold subscription? At least see screenshots of them?
Of all the things I've lost,
It think I miss my mind the most.
TK blades.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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Could you go into a bit more detail, please? Imagine for a moment that I'm a complete idiot who can't follow simple directions and knows nothing about Champions Online. How can I find those laser swords?
Of all the things I've lost,
It think I miss my mind the most.
Mentalist Power Sets. Telekinesis. Also known as Ego blades.
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Telekinetics power framework, has ego blades that look like swords made out of pure energy. However, they don't have traditional hilts and are fairly transparent. They are known as Ego Blades. The Dsicple AT uses TK blades.
Laser Swords are found in the power armor framework. All of them have laser sword in their name, and there are about 4 powers, including an energy builder, for laser sword theme. You would need to be freeform in order to just pick them, as I don't think there is a AT that uses laser swords at the moment.
Silverspar on PRIMUS
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For new players from CoH:
1) There is a lot of info that is not explicit and you won't find it in a game tutorial or help. Forums(official and unofficial), wikis and other players are your way to find things. I can stress this enough Ask, Ask and after that Ask.
2) There are nice things to do in CO, some of them unfortunately has been for so long that veterans are not so interested and new players are too cautious about it(Lairs, adventure packs and comic series).
3) About porting characters from CoH to CO. While it can be done, it is not guaranteed that can be everypower and every costume piece has a counterpart in CO. I had the same problem when I tried to port characters from CO to CoX. Just try to do the best you can.
Yes it is. Its like comparing a 3 year old to his 8 year old brother.
If they're not in the Archetype, then you'd need a freeform character to access the powers.
I cannot say enough about how people both in the forums and in game have been very friendly and helpful to me. For fellow CoX players, I would STRONGLY suggest joining the chat channel "CoX". I believe it's the the text command "/channel_join CoX". Chatting there was like old home week. So yes, by all means...ASK. These folks want us to like their game and stay around so it will be OUR game too.
Psh...ain't THAT the truth! I've recreated one of my characters from "there" to "here", and...well he certainly doesn't look the same, but I got the idea across at the very least. I'm a little dismayed at having to shell out so much Zen for items that CoX players seemed to take for granted, or looking for items that simply don't seem to exist here.
On the other hand, I signed up for the 3-month billing option, which makes my cost nearly $5.00 cheaper per month than I was paying for VIP billing via CoX. That alone justifies me buying another $5.00 in Zen without spending any more on my gaming hobby than I was before. That means 1000 Zen per month, which should allow me to get a couple of items. I suppose that'll do.
Both are good games that involve superheroes but play SOOO differently.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
A better comparison I think would be that playing CoX was like playing at Batman's level all the time whereas in CO I can play at Superman's, Thor's, or Hulk's level as well if I wish. And all without making overpowered FotM builds.
I see. Thank you for the explanation. It lets me know that's not what I'm after. I looked on the Wiki, but pics of Ego Blades are "Coming soon!" However, by there being only three placeholders, I'm not hopeful. In either case, that's not what I'm after.
Aha! I looked at the Wiki for what powers Power Armour offers, but found only one Laser Sword. About how many offensive powers would I need in this game to make up a decent build? Can I do it with just the four Laser Sword powers from Power Armour and whatever I pick from Dual Pistiols? Or should I just stick with Single Blade and make do?
Yup. I compare myself with my brother all the time, and leave safe in the knowledge that I'm better
City of Heroes has a pretty uneven selection of classes. Say this on their forums and you'll be neck-deep in arguments to the contrary, but there simply are some City of Heroes AT which do not solo well. You can do it, but it'll be hell and high water. By contrast, there are some who solo so well for them the game is damn near broken, especially of late with all the Inventions nonsense that send stats through the roof and the Incarnate powers that are basically cheating. As well, many of the ATs have gone through multiple upgrades to make them more competitive. Come this news Issue which will now never come out, the "glass cannon" AT that is Blasters was supposed to be made to not suck any more.
I don't know enough about Champions Online, other than that I got killed horribly by far too unremarkable a group of enemies last time I played at level 12.
Of all the things I've lost,
It think I miss my mind the most.
Just to let you know, you may want to check back on your posts on the Transitioning Sticky. I posted a few You Tube links to some folks using the powers you were asking about.
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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
The powers are:
Laser Sword: A combo power with a resist debuff from the advantage called "Particle Acceleration". This is the best single target Laser sword power and one of the best single target melee damage powers in the game.
Laser Edge: the laser sword energy builder.
Plasma Cutter: The single target burst power. This has more Burst damage than Laser Sword but less DPS. Its ok, but i skipped it in my build.
LightWave Slash: The melee cone laser sword power.
Lightspeed Dash: The laser sword lunge power.
Note: Targeting computer (the passive for power armor) does not buff melee damage. If you want to use Laser blade powers in melee role, the best passives would be Electric form or Night Warrior. Also consider Energy wave with the reverse polarity advantage for a laser sword melee build.
I have a laser sword based build with Electric form as a passive and its pretty deadly in pvp and pve.
EDIT:
you have to be free form to access these powers.
PVP is starving without rewards
1. Please give us Daily PVP missions that reward Questionite.
2. Please give us an exchange rate between Acclaim and Recognition so that PVP has access to all "On Alert" PVE rewards.
Heck, if you have one of the speedier travel powers and keep it on during a fight you can do without a Lunge quite easily, at least outside of duels and PVP (where it is essential). Enemies just don't move that far or that fast. I only ever use Lunges on tunes where I want to duel a lot, and have been doing well enough since Pre-Launch without them.
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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
I dunno if I'd put both in the same category of "good."
The combat system in CoH was what led to my eventual boredom. The quality overall of CoH was vastly superior to me.
The combat system in CO is what sets it apart, as unbalanced and buggy as it can be.
In CoH, if a bug was found, it was usually fixed before I experienced it first hand. In CO, if a bug is found on PTS and reported by players, expect it to hit live and persist for months.
"Is it better to be feared or respected? I say, is it too much to ask for both?" -Tony Stark
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Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Outmatched? I'm sitting here wondering if you and I played the same game, but then as Stardiver said, the different AT's are vastly different in solo play. I play scrappers and brutes, and by the time they're 50 and their builds are done, I have the difficulty set to simulate a team of 8 while I'm soloing. Yes, my scrappers and brutes can solo stuff normally intended for a full team of 8 players, some of them even have the DPS and survivability to take down an AV/Hero-class enemy.
I know what you mean. My Mind/Fire permadom, permahasten IO build felt like a god.
It is both fair and unfair to compare the two.
Let me illustrate what I think are some strengths and weaknesses of both.
TECHNICAL:
In terms of engine. In terms of graphics - I think there's no question that Champions is the more advanced. The textures and the way it renders things is smoother and more detailed. It is very pretty. City of Heroes has been doing AMAZING things with an engine 3 times as old, no doubt. But there are limits. The actual polygon counts are lower and the effects aren't as detailed in some cases.
Mind you - this is on the HIGH END settings where the comparison is made.
You drop Champions graphics down to it's lower end, and it quickly loses a LOT of it's shininess. City of Heroes retains most of its detail and look down to less optimal settings than Champions does.
In other words - drop down City of Heroes from "Ultra Mode" graphics down to "Performance" mode and you will see less difference in the world and characters than you will in Champions.
To get the most out of Champions, graphically, you really do need to run it at maximum settings more than you do City of Heroes. City of Heroes still looks like itself at lower settings. Champions starts to look very "unfinished" at lower settings.
This may be why some COH players think Champions isn't as pretty. You may have more COH players who are still running on older machines who CAN'T run Champions at a setting where it really shines. But their older machines were able to render COH at levels where the graphics - if not ultra - were still looking pretty darn decent.
Or - to use an analogy. Take two nearsighted people. Me and my friend Dave. I represent COH and Dave represents CO. I'm nearsighted, but not nearly so much as Dave. But Dave has a better more up-to-date prescription, where I have let mine lapse a few years. So my eyesight is slightly fuzzier even with the glasses than Dave's are with his.
But when I take off my glasses, I can still see reasonably well. When Dave takes off his, he's at a disadvantage.
Put our glasses on and Dave sees the world more clearly than I do.
That's COH and CO in the graphics in a strict technical sense.
Design-wise, in terms of characters, people say CoH is more "realistic" than CO. Now that's not really fair. NEITHER are realistic AT ALL.
Now it's true that Champions characters are inherently more "cartoony" than COH characters are. That was by design after all. Turn off the outlining and a lot of this drops away. But it does still tend to lean more towards a look reminiscent of "The Incredibles" than, say - Jim Lee or George Perez. With proportion tweaking, you can alleviate that. But that's where the basic templates begin.
Character creators.
I've been playing both for a long time. I really can't tell you which has more options. Which seems more versatile. They each do things that the other does not. They each have strengths and weaknesses.
In terms of tights designs and things that have a more traditional "skin tight" or fabric look. I'd say City of Heroes is undoubtedly more robust and has more options.
But in terms of layered looks and armor pieces, I'd say Champions has it beat.
It is far easier to create a robotic looking character that looks unique in Champions than it is in City of Heroes. The tier 9 mecha costume parts in COH closed that gap a lot. But most people wouldn't have access to that.
Mecha and power armor characters honestly look more like they have METAL in them in Champions than COH does. Also the ability to choose textures in Champions outstrips that of COH.
Capes look better and flutter better in COH than CO does. Hands down. Sorry. But I don't make many characters with capes in CO compared to COH.
This is getting longish. So let me stop here for now and I'll continue later in another post.
The stories I could make ^^
The most fundamental difference, for me at least, between the two games is that the CoH devs were more involved -- on the forums, fixing bugs, fixing bugs in beta before going live, interacting with the players.
At one point, it got so bad that Jack Emmert (AKA Cryptic's CEO) came onto the forums to promise that all these points would be improved. And things did get better, for a while, and then the devs started backsliding on some points.
And, honestly, Cryptic has a history of being kinda' dou---- towards CO's players.
During the headstart, the devs "rebalanced" the XP curve to match the game's available content (i.e., you had to play every single mission in the game to hit 40) for the headstart. The biggest single flaw at release was the lack of content, which Cryptic subsequently announced would be fixed by charging players, even LTs, for new DLC. Cynical, much?
The devs initiated a heavy-handed rebalancing of the game during the headstart.
The devs made Lemuria unplayable at one point, removing 1/6 of the game's content, more or less making it impossible to level to 40 by playing missions.
The Kitchen Sink patch was terribad, just awful -- and in the leadup to its badness, the devs went completely quiet making it seem like the lights weren't on.
Cryptic moved Tumerboy, hands down the game's most popular dev, onto another game without bothering to tell us. He just ... stopped posting one day.
And so on.
Yes, CoH did some similar things ... but, CoH got better once Cryptic's dev team split into two just after the release of CoV (one team focused on CoH, the other on what became CO).
Clearly everyone has their own preferences and no one wants to engage in silly arguments with our new friends from CoX.
I will end with this, however. If your house is destroyed and you have to move in with your friend, it's considered good manners not to take a dump in his living room.
As far as power levels go, I really feel City of Heroes was one of the "easier" games out there, if you played the right classes. As others have mentioned, Scrappers and Brutes are basically easy mode - massive offence, significant defence and great staying power. The trouble is a lot of people got suckered in by Blasters and their promise of extreme damage awesomeness. Trouble is, even with the proposed fixes that will now never make it through, Blaster damage wasn't that far ahead of Scrappers and Brutes, but their survivability was and is MILES behind. Comically, they were the only AT specifically designed to die more often. I, myself, bought into the notion that "With a Blaster, you can kill the enemies before they kill you!" Well, you can... Sometimes. Right up until you run into strong enemies who you CAN'T instakill, and then you sort of kind of run out of options other than cross your fingers and hope for the best. Then a Malta Tac Ops lobs a 45-second duration Stun Grenade at your face and a Gunslinger three-shots you in under 10 seconds. Yeah, that worked out great!
I can't speak of how hard Champions is since I haven't gotten that far in, but I will say this - sending me on the Nighthawk mission at level 5 is just mean.
Of all the things I've lost,
It think I miss my mind the most.
Supervillains aren't hard at higher levels or if they're specifically tweaked for the level range they're in, but the Supervillains in the Nighthawk missions are clearly designed for mid-range and higher heroes, and fighting them at level 6 is... nasty. I had to explain to a friend who's currently trying CO that that mission, despite what it says, is really best held until 15 or so. (Even then depending on how new you are you may still want help.)
Now for an experienced CO player, you might, possibly, be able to manage at level 6... I've done it; but it was TOUGH; and ultimately not worth it.
Another thing I don't like about that set up:
They put it on Defender. I realize for story reasons why that's the case - but Defender is also the guy who gives you your first mission chain, and with Nighthawk listed there too, people are naturally going to assume he's part of the newbie content ><; and that... doesn't end well, as noted above.
*That's what the "Skull" means btw, when it's in place of a level number. It doesn't mean, like it would in some games, "This is impossible for you to kill, don't even think about it."
Check out my Champions Online webcomic in progress!
Annoying people since 2009!
We desperately need more developers. I mean it. For this game to stick around it needs to attract people, and for that to happen it needs:
More content.
Better content.
Fewer bugs.
It needs all of these things at once, and right now, we don't have the people to make that happen. I don't think our developers are anything but awesome, but there's only so much you can do with a tiny team and miniscule budget.
Check out my Champions Online webcomic in progress!
Annoying people since 2009!
Yea, that right there is the one big hurdle I think most CoX folks will have the hardest getting around.
CO, like any other MMO has a power curve. We all have seen it, the point where a character finally comes together and feels powerful. CoX you seem to get that feeling fairly soon.
CO, if you've not played CoX. Seems ok. If you've played CoX it will feel very sluggish. A concept wont start to gel until about level 12 or 15ish. You have to have a passive, your stats selected, a few attack powers, ect. And you need levels to get all that.
The positive side, is once you pass that hurdle. Its pretty easy to ride high on a power trip. In fact its all to easy for some builds to feel complete long before you reach 40. With the extra power choices feeling like bonus or flavor powers more then "I must have this to feel complete"
I managed to take out two of the three Nighthawk impostors at... Either level 5 or level 6, I forget which. The Fire one isn't actually too tough - not a lot of damage if I don't stand in his Burn patches. The one in the warehouse... Is he using wind powers? Yeah, that one was tough, but blocking A LOT and using Bullet Mojo (or whatever the dual pistols rapid fire one is) as I was backing away really helped. Took about seven tries, though. The last one - the one in the lab? Him I plain couldn't beat. He was dodging all my attacks and I just couldn't damage him while he cut me down through Block. Took until I was level 10, trained up and using the healing items from the reward pack, but I kicked him down fairly easily.
But you're right, it's not worth it. It ends in a forced-team mission that has what I can only describe as the WORST GOD DAMN VEHICLE SECTION I've ever seen in any game period. Good GOD the fight with the jets in the city's skyline is awkward. Those things handle like a boulder balanced on a pogo stick balanced on a roller skate, they slide around as you move and keep sending me into buildings and constantly shoot their machineguns 90 degree sideways of where the gun barrels are pointing. There's no sense of weight, no sense of scale and no sense of what the devil I'm doing and what I'm accomplishing. It's like if that one UT2004 map with the Marines vs. Skaarj space battle were extended and done badly. I'm told "vehicles" are relatively new to the game, but if that's what they're like, I don't want any. These are easily the worst vehicle controls I've ever seen, and I played Jungle Strike. Hell, earlier today, I played World of Tanks and that wasn't as stiff... And it's intentionally very stiff.
So, no - very hard bosses are not worth the reward of forced teaming and a horrible vehicle section. Though I guess the 2000 Questionite could be handy, if all the costume pieces weren't priced at 45 000 each...
It doesn't help that when you take the mission, it's tagged as [5], leading me to believe it was a level 5 mission. In fact, as I levelled up off side activities, the mission in my list went green, then blue, then dark grey, indicating that I was outlevelling it. And it's also the FIRST mission that Defender offers, at the top of his list before all the others, and it's done in a different colour. I genuinely believed that was what I was intended to go do after the tutorial. It's a good thing I suspected it was hard, lest I would have thought my character just sucked...
Speaking of the "Giant Monster Code," I get the impression it doesn't scale well. As this is the same Cryptic engine that City of Heroes uses, I want to go ahead and assume the GM Code works in a similar way. When a player affects a GM, the player's outgoing statistics are scaled up or down to the GM. When a GM affects a player, its statistics are scaled to match the player's level. What this means is you're asking a level 5 player to produce damage which would be competitive against a level... What? 20-30 critter? A low-level character can't, since his or her damage will be low for lack of Strength/Ego and decent gear, not to mention upgraded powers. A high-level critter, in turn, will have defences designed to resist high-level damage and offences designed to penetrate the protection high-level characters would have, which I DIDN'T have at level 5.
All in all, the GM Code is not an excuse to do "level-less" content without scaling it in some way. Which brings us to the "Winter Lord" fiasco, which prompted Jack Emmert himself to promise this would never be allowed to happen. For those who don't know, circa 2005, City of Heroes had a Winter Event which caused Giant Monsters to spawn around the various zones, sporting the very first use of the GM Code. These gave a flat experience reward that didn't scale with player level, and each zone got a different version of a Winter Lord monster with base stats scaled to match the player levels in that zone. An Atlas Park monster (1-5) had around 2000 hit points. A Peregrine Island monster (40-50) had 20 000. Do you know what happened?
High-level players didn't do as they were expected. They didn't stay in Peregrine Island to fight the harder Winter Lords, they went to Atlas Park to kill the weak Winter Lords in large numbers. The reward - I think around 5000 experience - was the same regardless of your level, so while level 50 characters earned very little (you need around 5 000 000 to go from 49 to 50), level 1 brand new characters earned 10 levels at once (it takes 106 to go from 1 to 2). That's when experience gains were capped to never give you more than half a level per reward. That just meant people had to kill more Winter Lords. Players were power-levelled 20 levels in an hour or two and made zillions of alts. When the event ended, Jack Emmert admitted the event had turned out very poorly and swore the Winter Lords would never return again.
And to this day, I still laugh my **** off about it
Of all the things I've lost,
It think I miss my mind the most.
lol - that was me who said that.
If you read my original post (the opening post of the plea for a foundry thread), what I actually said that CO does not appear to be as developed as CoH, but that may be due to my inexperience with the world. Since then, I've realized another possible reason, which is that the CO wiki may not have gotten the same attention that the Paragon wiki has, so many of the things in CO may not have been documented as they have at the Paragon wiki. Or, it might be, as said here, that CoH really is more developed owing to being developed for nearly three times as long as CO. No faults there - it's just sad to lose CoH after all these years.
The jets use the same physics as the various "Slide" travel powers, only faster. They are GREAT for crossing maps as fast as possible, but are no replacement for regular Travel Powers for regular movement.
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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