Texarkana

Warning 1: this is a long post
Warning 2: I am biased in favor of CoX but I will try to be as fair as possible.


I think City of Heroes and City of Villains, collectively known as CoX, is the best mmo on the market (although it comes with all the trappings of the mmo genre as well.)

• It still has the best customization of character appearance going, breaking down the body into multiple parts that can be mixed and matched with an ever-increasing number of models and 180 colors (as well as color patterns). Your toon is recognizable. By default, for each character you are given 4 costume slots, with the possibility of adding a fifth from a Halloween event. You can create totally different costumes as well as change an existing one at the tailor, the only exceptions being that you can't change the model type (male/female/HUGE) or the height. Lastly, if you join a supergroup and enter supergroup mode, your character can customize how the supergroup colors appear on your costume. There is no problem of running into 30 people who look just like you...

• It has 12 different classes (Hero: Tanker, scrapper, blaster, controller, defender, peacebringer, warshade; Villain: Mastermind, dominator, stalker, corruptor, brute). Each class breaks down into a group of 5-6 primary power sets and 5-6 secondary sets making for a ridiculous number of combinations alone. Couple this with the fact that you can further customize your powers from up to 4 different power pools that each contain 4 different powers and lastly an epic power pool with 4 different powers. Does this sound like there isn't that much diversity? Unless you hit upon the truest of min/maxer, you won't often see similar builds and even then....

Character creation: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_Ds0MlN2l2Y

• Powers are further customized with Enhancement slots, upwards of 6 of them, that can affect damage output, knockback, hold duration, recharge time, etc. With the 9th (nineth!) free issue, inventions were implemented into the game. Inventions, among other things, combine different power enhancements (like accuracy and damage) into a single slot. Furthermore, like other games, you can have sets of enhancements that bestow additional benefits as you acquire more of them.

• I say this again and again -- combat in CoX is arguably the best, fastest and most epic in an mmo, short of not being a first person shooter. There is no attack queue, you are absolutely active and engaged. There is collision detection for all objects -- tanks really do tank and prevent melee mobs from breaking through the lines, going straight for the squishies. There is a Z-access: In addition to multi-level battles, air battles are not only possible but the norm. As a hero, your toon is designed to be able to take on roughly 3 even-conned mobs....meaning groups battles can entail 25+ mobs at once. Of course, where's the challenge of that you ask? Well, aside from mass numbers, those thugs have lieutenants and bosses ordering them around... they're stronger and quite capable. Of course, we shouldn't forget the Villains, Arch Villains and Giant Monsters (the lattermost usually takes a raid-size group of players to take down.) For example (http://youtube.com/watch?v=xFpNMZde-mE)

• The AI in the game is pretty decent. Someone (Anofayle?) had a great post on it but to summarize. At the lowest levels, you'll see thugs basically switch between ranged and melee attacks and occasionally flee. Bosses will start using status effects. Eventually, as early as the mid-teens, you'll encounter mobs like the Tsoo sorcerer who ninja heals his comrades. And then later on you see Sky Raider engineers plunking down shield generators to protect his comrades while duking it out.

• Although you can effectively solo any class based on its own capabilities, CoX shines as a group game. Everybody has a job -- crowd control, pets, buffers, tankers, damage dealers. When players come together, synergies naturally come about (unless you have a few weenies in the group -- can't stop that after all....) Need another perk? Perhaps it's the hero mentality, but the community is among the nicest out there and pick up groups (PUG) are EXCEPTIONALLY easy to find. Given the powerset diversity, there's also no formula to a group. Largely any combination can be plugged in (although 8 controllers in a group might be slow going...)

• CoX may have been the first to address the problem of outleveling your friends. They implemented a sidekick/exemplar system that allows 2 players to pair up, either boosting the existing powers of a lowbie up to his friend's level or reducing the character level of a player back down to his lowbie friend's level. This sytem allows xp to be doled out reasonably well and everyone can still participate.

• Because of how easy it is to get a PUG, the game is casual friendly. There is raid content at the end, namely the Hamidon encounter but issue 10 also implemented zone-wide conflicts in the form of Rikti alien invasions and the Rikti crash-site encounter. There are also a few dedicated PvP zones including Recluse's Victory whose graphics change as control changes hands between villains and heroes. Otherwise, the game is storyline driven with several missions per story arc per level as well ad-hoc, randomly generated missions (from police scanners and newspapers for heroes and villains respectively.)

• Because it's the superhero genre set in the modern day, it can pull in any storyline without breaking continuity. We have purse snatchers, cultists, mobsters, mad scientists, aliens, supernatural beings, mutants, ninjas and ghost pirates all looking for a piece of the action in Paragon City.

• Techologically-speaking, the game is fairly sophisticated with very nice graphics (not photo realistic though), excellent sound and music as well as physics rendering (regardless if you have a Phys-X card, software can render everything ifyou have the cpu.)

• The game is heavily supported by the developers and they do interact with community. Cryptic Studios has opted to release roughly 3 free issues/updates per year (this is year 3.25, free issue #10 released 2 weeks ago) rather than go the expansion route, with the exception of the City of Villains game. And these aren't piddly little updates -- Epic character classes have been introduced, new powersets implemented, inventions and the consignment house have been released, new zones and revamps of old zones to keep them fresh as well as new costume parts, bug updates, etc.

So, what's the down side to all of this goodness? Well....

• the biggest complaint against CoX is that it is repetitive and grindy. So far as gameplay goes, you can attribute that to any MMO out there -- I think it's a matter of how well you can immerse yourself into any game. There are simply a set number of mission types: patrols, kill x, defeat this mob, retrieve this, talk to him, escort so and so -- every game has them but I think the comic-book fan wants a bit more. if you play 5 hours a day, every day, you will burn out the game. Honestly, I don't see how anyone can do that. I myself took what equaled a 21 month break (II'm an 18 month veteran, the 39 month veteran reward just came out so...) to follow my friends to wow but came back to CoX in November and have thoroughly enjoyed myself since. One last note about repetition is that even though most missions in CoX are instanced, the diversity of maps is quite lacking, particularly cave and warehouse maps. New maps get slipped in with updates but it's noticeable still.

• the second biggest complaint is that PvP hasn't lived up to expectations (Vajuras has posted about this quite a bit). PvP was first introduced with Arena battles as the game was heroes only initially. With the release of CoV, there are 4 dedicated zones for pvp. Supergroup raids don't really happen that often. Many of the old-timers blame the implementation of PvP (even with arenas) for the nerf bat that has been taken to some of the classes.

• CoX lacks end game content. With the exception of the Hamidon encounter, now the Rikti Warzone, some PvP in Recluse's Victory and a few Task Force missions, there isn't much there unlike WoW has chains of Raid Level content. Here I think, CoX is more about the journey than the end. There are multiple story arcs that you can't necessarily see with just one toon and the diversity of skillsets (and character design) lend itself to making multiple alts. It's not a long-term solution for Hard core players and Achievers but it's a very statisying one for explorers and casual types.

• Many people left after the issue that included "enhancement diversification". Essentially the developers implemented diminishing returns on enhancements if you slot more than 3 of the same type in a power. You still get a benefit, it's simply not a straight-line calculation any more. Many people put this on par with the Star Wars galaxies NGE in terms of radical change to a game and the way the developers thrust it onto the community. If you came in after the fact, you would never know about it and with the Invention system, it is totally mitigated but some of the old-timers still complain that this happened to the game mechanics and the community.

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• Lastly, some people need loot and the feeling that their character evolves. Enhancements for powers have always dropped but that wasn't deemed enough. With issue 9, salvage drops to create invention enhancements as well as costume parts that otherwise inaccessible. As mentioned earlier, you can change the look of your hero/villain at any time by visiting the tailor but it won't happen because of direct accomplishment. Furthermore, some people need to get the Sword of Slaying that is popular at the moment or else purchase fireball 4 after fireball 1, fireball 2, and fireball 3. In CoX, as you acquire powers, they scale up in effectiveness as you level and use enhancements rather than simply get replaced -- that was the design decision made on how your character evolves in the game.

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But that's it, like anything else, you take the bad with the good --For me, I think the good far, far outweighs any of the bad and people looking for a new game ought to give it a try if the genre appeals to them. CoX runs with a population somewhere around 150,000 yet (even with fanbois padding vanguard and lotro) both CoH and CoV remain in the top 5 games ranking list here at mmorpg.com. It doesn't aspire to WoW numbers; it's a niche game that won't appeal to everyone but it's made many people very happy, even for brief spells. Aside from the dedicated masses like myself, even the people who leave say that for the 1-6 months they played, it was great. Considering the game has a free trial and can be purchased on the cheap (including your first month free), you would be hard pressed to say you did not get value for your time and money.