City of Heroes anyone?

[Glengoyne]

Just curious if anyone else had been playing City of Heroes? I was one of the masses allowed into their open beta period, and it really looks great. I think they may have the most successful release of any of the MMORPGs to date. It really is pretty cool to leap a building in a single bound.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Glengoyne

Just curious if anyone else had been playing City of Heroes? I was one of the masses allowed into their open beta period, and it really looks great. I think they may have the most successful release of any of the MMORPGs to date. It really is pretty cool to leap a building in a single bound.

Is this for sale yet?

[Glengoyne]

Goes on sale the 28th.

[Peregrine]

I'll be waiting at least till the heroes versus villains expansion comes out, I hear that might be several more months. I don't find it that interesting to just fight thugs.

[Glengoyne]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

I'll be waiting at least till the heroes versus villains expansion comes out, I hear that might be several more months. I don't find it that interesting to just fight thugs.

I think they are talking about early 2005 for the City of Villains expansion. My experience with PvP in MMORPGS makes me leary of that expansion, but since no one really knows what they are going to do implementation wise, I figure I will just wait till they divulge more information.

[TazFTW]

The Rikti invasion they had during the last day of Beta was fun. Motherships appearing in the sky, Rikti appearing all over the place. Lots of heroes getting their butt kicked. Good times.

[Thomkal]

I'm in the "2 1/2 day" head start right now and its mostly stable though I am still getting those annoying mapserver disconnects far too often.

But I get the "Bonehead move of the day" for preordering COH back in January then forgetting to update my credit card info with them when it changed a couple weeks ago. Order got processed with the old credit card info, didn't go through. They sent me an email which I didn't see for a few days. Called yesterday and apparantly I'm now at the back of the list for shipping it. D'oh!

I think it'd be fun to have a group of us start out together with new characters and wreck havoc on the evil gangs.

[GrantDawg]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

I'm in the "2 1/2 day" head start right now and its mostly stable though I am still getting those annoying mapserver disconnects far too often.

But I get the "Bonehead move of the day" for preordering COH back in January then forgetting to update my credit card info with them when it changed a couple weeks ago. Order got processed with the old credit card info, didn't go through. They sent me an email which I didn't see for a few days. Called yesterday and apparantly I'm now at the back of the list for shipping it. D'oh!

I think it'd be fun to have a group of us start out together with new characters and wreck havoc on the evil gangs.

I'm considering. Can someone give me a breakdown of how the game is played?

[Thomkal]

Well supposedly I'm supposed to get the game tomorrow-we'll see. Can't continue playing past tonight until I get it.

Grantdawg,

Breakdown hmmm? Hard to do without writing pages and pages.

1) Create your character in their very good costume/character creator, though of course it can always need more options. You also have to decide the archetype and origin of your powers-five possible choices for each category. If you wanted to be a mutant like Storm of the X-Men-you'd take mutation/controller. You then get to select from a group of five power categories for the archetype, and another for the origin. Each power category has about eight powers in them. You get a choice of one or two of the least powerful for each one. That gives you two powers to start with. The type of origin you choose determines your starting contact-the person you get missions from. Later on (starting with Level 6) you have a third group to choose powers from-the Power Pool-this is kind of a catch all of powers that don't fit the origin/archetype categories like Flight, Teleport, Leadership etc. You again have various powers to choose from in each power pool.

2) Go through the tutorial which does a good job of explaining the basics, but gets awfully boring once you've done it a few times. And you have no choice but to go through it with each character. But you do get to Level 2 by the end of it, so its worth doing.

3)After the tutorial you are sent to the city itself. Your trainer (almost every zone has a trainer) is there and they are the ones who raise your level, giving you either a new power or more enhancement and/or inspiration slots.

4) Go to your contact after the trainer to get your first mission. Rinse repeat.

Combat is made a bit more interesting with the addition of inspirations and enhancements. Inspirations are temporary usage bonuses of various sorts like healing, better chance to hit, etc. They don't last long. You get them as a reward from battles/saving citizens, or you can buy them. Enhancements are permanent modifications to your powers such as increase in range, damage, healing power, etc. They are obtained the same way. They have various levels of enhancements.

5) Getting tired of missions? You can just patrol the streets and fight street crime. The game is populated with various evil groups-such as street gangs like the Hellions and Skulls, Mechanical robots like the Clockworks, zombies and associates like the Vaz, magic using groups like Circle of Thorns, etc. You can find many of these mobs in various parts of zones doing things like breaking into a car, stealing a purse, and more. You can stop these crimes, and sometimes get an inspiration/enchantment reward from the victim (its cool because they say thank you for saving them when you do this in various ways) You can also (when high enough level) visit Hazard Zones, where large groups of mobs hang out and you'll need to group to stop them, and Task Forces (which I haven't done yet) where a group does a very long series of interconnected missions in one setting. You need to be a certain level to get into Hazard/Trial zones.

I think that pretty well covers it. Let me know if you have any questions.

[ageofquarrel]

ive been playing coh also. its a good game and i never have been able to get into mmorpg games. I would be down with playing in a fofc supergroup if there is any interest.

[Glengoyne]

Thomkal did pretty well breakdown wise. I'll add that there is a wide variety of character types you can create. They all seem pretty effective to me so far, though I haven't gotten past 15th level with any of them. You really can spend hours playing with just the costume/character generator. It is fantastic. I think one of the best things I have noted so far is that they chose to make things easy...unlike EQ where for years you had to blow a half hour of real time to cross an ocean if you couldn't arrange for a port. If you want to move to another part of the city, go click on the train doors, and you pick the zone. One of the other things that make the game appealing to me, is the quick accessibility of the design. At least through the low teens it is very easy to log in, and immediately get down to business beating up the bad guys.

Something else...the design team really built the fun factor into the game. Flying is cool and cool looking, super jumping is worth the price of admission alone. There are lots of cool attack effects/animations as well, and more I am sure I haven't seen.

For me it has easilly become worth the $50 pricetag, and that is something I can't say about a lot of games lately.

[hukarez]

What's the monthly fee again? I'm not much of a MMORPG person, but I'm curious nonetheless of the cost in addition to a $50 price tag.

[chinaski]

you guys are making me rethink buying Lineage 2.

[rufusjonz]

I do wanna try this one, but right now im so addicted to FFXI Online that its hard to break away. Final Fantasy Online is by far the best mmorpg i have played -- the fact that it was in japan for a while before it came to US is prob why it is so bug free and thorough in nearly every area.

Lvl 35 DRG/WAR Mithra

[Thomkal]

Got my copy of the retail version so I should be set to go whenever.

Hukarez,

I believe the price is $14.99/month. For that month you are getting a continously updated client sometimes with new content, other times with bug fixes and the like. Unique to COH you also get a monthly comic book based on the current in-game state at the time.

I'm ready whenever to create a new character on whatever server the majority of us wants to play on. Just let me know.

[GrantDawg]

Ok, I bought it. I've never been able to get into a mmorpg, but I'm a big enough sucker to continue to try them.

[Coffee Warlord]

I might take a little trip to Wally World and give it a chance. I've heard from few folks it's just a fun little game that's way different from the usual MMORPG fare.

[GrantDawg]

Well, just in my intitial playing it seemed neat. I like the tutorial, but I only got a part of the way through before it crashed.

Hopefully that will not be a regular problem.

[Thomkal]

The stability of the game has been ok to good. Today for instance I had one or two mapserver disconnects but they were brief and I didn't lose the connection to the game. It was getting a bit laggy near the end of my time there though.

One suggestion I can make is to make sure you have updated video drivers-my computer's performance with the game really improved when I did that. The latest Direct X version (9.0 b) is supposed to help too.

Grantdawg if you let me know what server/character name you have I can create a new character and join you later tonight.

[Coffee Warlord]

A lot of people I know from Dark Age of Camelot are going to Virtue, if it makes any difference. Good of place to go as any.

[Thomkal]

Virtue is the unofficial Role-playing server, not that I've seen much of it on my time there. It's as good as any other, but I would probably recommend the servers that just came up today Liberty and Infinity (and one other I'm forgetting). Will likely have less stress on them so less lag and such.

[Glengoyne]

I'll second the video driver update thought as well as the sound card update. In fact I thought I had updated to the latest sound drivers and I had real inconsistent disconnects. At one point I couldn't play one character, but had access to all the others. So I ran one of them to the spot where I was continually disconnecting, and dropped immediately. I put two and two together, and thought that maybe there was some sound I was hearing there, that was unique. I found an updated sound driver for my built in sound card, about six months more recent that the one I was using, and voila near seamless gameplay.

[GrantDawg]

I have the latest drivers. It was a really strange crash where I was talking to a "contact" and the screen turned grey. I couldn't get it to do anything else so ended up having to force the program to shut down.

I'm sure it is my problem though (if there is ever a problem no one can figure out, I'm the one having it).

[Shkspr]

Freedom, Protector, and Champion are the other new servers. I signed up with an alt on Freedom if anyone wants to form a FOFC squad. He's a tanker called the Rhinoceros. Because, of course, "There's nothing more serious than 'The Rhinoceros' about to charge your ass."

[JeeberD]

Downloading right now. And I'm drunk right now.

I have a feeling I'l regret this in the morning...

[Thomkal]

Snowblinder, an Ice/Ice blaster created on Freedom and running through the tutorial right now. You can email people in the game, but you get no word of receiving an email at any point during the game. Just so you'll have to check them. You can do a /whoall to see who's in your zone, or a tell (character name), (the comma is supposed to be there) to talk to them if they are online. Hit the backspace key to send a reply to the person who just tell'ed you.

[Coffee Warlord]

Character Generation in CoH was always said to be Realllllly In Depth. I am beginning to agree.

hxxp://rides.gotwow.net/images/agd.jpg

[JeeberD]

Dammit, I bought the game, downloaded it, and now it won't work on my computer. My driver is insufficient or something...

[Thomkal]

Freedom is not actually a new server now that I think of it. It was the original server for the beta test Prime, renamed Freedom. I realized that when I saw level 17's this morning and I thought that odd for the second day of the server's existence. So I don't know if we want to stay there or not. The other servers Shkspr mentioned are new as well as the two I mentioned.

[Thomkal]

Jeeber,

Where did you download the game from? I thought the retail version was only available via stores not download.

How doesn't it work on your computer and what drivers are insufficient?

[JeeberD]

Originally Posted by Thomkal

Jeeber,

Where did you download the game from? I thought the retail version was only available via stores not download.

How doesn't it work on your computer and what drivers are insufficient?

I bought it through www.CityofHeroes.com. You can download the game through PlayNC...

The game will start up initially, but after I agree to the user agreement and it tries to start up the game itself, I get a message that says:

"Your driver or card doesn't support GL_ARB_texture_compression"

I press OK (my two choices are "OK" or "Copy to clipboard") and then a different error message pops up. This one says:

"Detected driver or video card is unsupported
32MG ATI Rage 128 Ultra
The game my run poorly or not at all with your current configuration.
Current system requirements are NVidia GeForce 2 or better or ATI Radeon 8500 or better. (If your card does meet the minimum requirements, you may not have the latest drivers. Go to www.nvidia.com or www.ati.com to update your driver. In some cases, such as laptops, you may need to get the latest drivers from your computer manufacturer.)
Do you want to continue?"

If I press no, the games closes. If I press yes, it works for a few seconds then a get an error report that says:

"City of Heroes has encountered a problem and needs to close." You can then send an error report if you want to. I haven't done so yet...

I've gone to ATI.com to try and update my driver, but I'm having issues with that as well. I'll download an update, but when I try to install it it says that it can't find the .exe file or something...

This is rather frustrating, and after spending the money on this game I don't have the cash to go out and buy a new video card or whatever...

[Thomkal]

Jeeber,

Hmmm learn something new everyday-didn't realize you could download it.

I certainly understand the frustration with a game not working. Sadly I'm not very computer tech savvy. Did you try posting on their support board and see if others with the same video card can help? From what I recall reading though, COH does pretty well require a certain level of video card to work normally. A GeForce 2, or ATI Radeon 8500 should be pretty cheap these days though if you can scrape up the money for one.

Sorry you are having such problems.

[Pumpy Tudors]

I wish they had a trial of this game. I know that there are the "free" 30 days, but you have to pay the $50 or whatever for the game first. I just can't bring myself to put out that much for this game just to try it out for a month. I may love it, but if I don't, I'll feel like a waste of money. I picked up WWII Online for $6 at Big Lots, and I hated it, but I had a month to figure that out, so I was only out the $6. I guess I won't be playing City of Heroes yet.

[SirFozzie]

I bought the game.. will try to get on Freedom for the FOFC teamup

[SirFozzie]

Met up with snowblinder, I don't know who, but it was FOFC. Kicked some major butt. (and got real familiar with the hospital, Kang Chan's not a lean mean fighting machine just yet )

Thanks snowblinder, and hope some of y'all meet me (just broadcast FOFC?).. I hang out in Atlas City on Freedom currently

[GrantDawg]

I'm on liberty with a couple of alts. I have a friend already there.

[Thomkal]

Snowblinder was me. And you wouldn't visit the hospital so much if you didn't take on a lieutenant mob three levels higher than you after I said they were too high level. T'was fun though.

Hope I get to meet some more of you in Paragon City.

[Thomkal]

Grant,

I'll create a character there now, take me a few minutes.

[sterlingice]

Man, the more and more I see the more and more I want to play this game but I just can't bring myself to pay $50 and $15 a month. That would seriously cut into my already meager gaming budget.

SI

[Thomkal]

SI,

Yeah I understand why people can't afford to play MMORPG's. These days I'm not finding a whole lot of other games out there I want to play, so the gaming budget can fit in one.

But if you are a superhero junkie like me, its really worth the money after such a long line of failed superhero games (other than Freedom Force)

[sterlingice]

I loved the Freedom Force demo- played the heck out of that level. I should pick that up since it's probably in bargain bins everywhere now. Hm.. I don't have much on my gaming plate right now, but after having bought a digital camera, I figured I'd better cut back.

Also, I bought 3 games exclusively for summer because of good deals that wouldn't last (Beyond Good and Evil for only $20 and the buy Prince of Persia, get Splinter Cell free deal) so I've got stuff to play. Plus I need to finish 4 games I've started on and never finished all the way (Mario Sunshine, Eternal Darkness, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Pokemon Colosseum). And this paragraph is probably more than anyone really cared to know.

SI

[Bonegavel]

So, any comments about the game now that you are in? I'm not a big superhero fan, but if the game is fun in can transcend that part.

[SirFozzie]

It's fun, but you have to pay attention to who you fight.. you may get caught fighting guys 5 levels higher then you, and that usually means a quick trip to the hospital and the loss of some XP.

(And Thom, I didn't see your warning till AFTER the guy hit me for the first 29 point damage hit. Ooops )

I'll be on tonight around 6 oclock, besides running the FOFC FBCB Sim, I have a feeling I'll be pulling an all-nighter.

Some of the Martial Arts moves are fun to see (my guy, Kang Chan is a Scrapper with the mighty Storm Kick, Cobra Strike and Focused Fighting )

[Thomkal]

Everybody should post the name of the character they want to use for our FOFC teamups here on Freedom server and then try not to play them solo a lot so we can stay generally the same level. Though they do have a sidekick option to help with large differences in levels.

I have Snowblinder (about fifth on my choice of names) there an Ice/Ice Blaster.

[SirFozzie]

Kang Chan Martial Arts/Natural

[Coffee Warlord]

I'm breaking down and buying it tonight.

I hereby move we put alts on Virtue, as I have learned my RL friends are also on there.

[Thomkal]

I'm not that picky about where we play, as long as we play somewhere. So you guys decide which server we should use. Virtue is the "unofficial" role-playing forum if that matters to anyone.

[SirFozzie]

I can play whatever. Tell me where and I'll be there

[Coffee Warlord]

Virtue!

There! Your Unnamed Super Hero Commands It!

[SirFozzie]

Ok. Making my Virtue guy then ;0