Wildrow12 said:
Has anyone played this thing and can they recommend it?
here's the review i wrote up for the CO thread
Here's my review of the game.
It has some serious problems most people are overlooking.
I don't know if they're overlooking it because they're trying to justify their purchase or because they haven't spent much time with it or simply that they dont understand/dont have enough experience to recognize the probs.
- Teaming. Teaming is borderline non-functional. Sure you can invite people, but the XP is so miniscule for mobs that completing quests is the only functional way to level. And sharing quests is all but impossible unless you do exactly the same missions from exactly the same contacts at exactly the same time. The "share quest" feature almost never works unless it's a.) in the same level range & b.) the first quest from a contact which all the other people havent had yet.
Game Breaking
And even when you finally get a team going and are able to have the same quest, half of the quests still dont end for all members at the same time. All the ones which require gathering or clicking of anyone/anything especially. So your team either ends up having to wait for you to complete it or you end up having to wait for them. Booooooriiiing. Just plain bad game design.
- Zone populations are WAY too small. 100-150 people for Millennium City, are you kidding me? No they aren't kidding. It really is that small. Not very "massive". Most of the costs of a MMO go into maintaining the servers powerful enough to actually have "Massive" amounts of players all playing together. 100 people spread out over a huge zone, which is in itself localized makes the game a ghost town. It mind as well be a solo experince and not charge $15 a month.
- Zone caps prevent training, or doing anything else when teamed. Why? This has happened to me many times.
You go into populated zone. say 70 people.
you team up. you level up, so you go to power house, train.
you exit to go meet your team again.
BZZZZZZZZT, Nope! Sorry you cant get in that zone it's hit the cap.
Solution? either quit the team and try to find/start another, or else get your whole team to change to a different instance (which automatically teleports they away from where they were and makes them run all the way back).
That's not a solution. Game breaking.
- Search function. Useless. The very fact that it's so heavily instanced makes meeting up w/ people a nightmare. You want to invite some1. well they have to switch instances, for every single person. You cant even see what instance people are in w/ the search. they arent numbered. the LFT tag is so unintuitive it's almost like it's not even there. Considering how great the City of Heroes search function is, this is absolutely pathetic & demoralizing that they couldn't even get it remotely close to as good.
- Graphics. The graphics, yes i know they just launched a patch to try to optimize them. But they're still horribly optimized. Even on a GTX 260 they run like crap maxed @ 1080p.
Plus the colors start to get really irritating after a while. They look fun & different for about the first week; but start to look plain, ugly & an eye sore after the initial "new game" mindset wears off.
- Combat. Whoever came up w/ the whole power builder idea needs to be fired. It forces you to specialize in recovery & end; or else you end up having to stand around like a shmuck waiting for your end to build between every single power even when ur level 40. Which is retarded because they're whole spiel is 'you can choose whatever u want'. Which brings me to my next grievence
- Balance. This is one of the most unbalanced games I ever played, even for a launch MMO. I was also in the beta and they completely ignored everything people in the beta forums would say. Don't be fooled by the fact that the devs have twitter accounts. They dont give a sh*t about your opinion. The only time they'll start caring is when their player base starts dropping like an anvil.
- Microtransactions. Really? For a game that already costs $50 + $15 a month + they're gunna charge you for expansions. They want to charge MTs on top of all that? GTFO. Sets a very bad precedent.
- Perks. average perks require 1,000 - 5,000 mobs to be killed. And give ONE costume piece. Now lets say you kill these mobs when ur lv 40, (which also means you cant make your costume the way you want it until then, retarded considering customization is what they say their game is about). And you find a concentrated group of them. Lets average one kill every 1.5 minutes (includes finding, killing & running to next).
That's a minimum of 25 hours of hunting one mob.
A maximum of 125 HOURS of hunting a mob.
TO GET ONE COSTUME PIECE
Now they say most of what will be available through MTs will be able to be unlocked through the game. If this is any indication of how long it takes to unlock anything, it's proof that they designed it so it's all but impossible to get & created artificial incentive to pay them more $ for what should have been included in the game from the start.
Lastly, Cryptic is not the same Cryptic that made CoH.
Jack Emmet is the ONLY person from the original cryptic who is involved in Champions Online. The rest of the team that made City of Heroes became Paragon Studios & work for NCSoft.
Atari bought Cryptic & owns it now. Jack Emmet's sale price has almost half of it's price attached to a contingent on how profitable it is for Atari. So that's why he's doing a money grab w/ MTs, w/ trying to get people in w/ lifetime subs & 6 month packages before they realize they're playing a beta of a game which isn't very good to begin w/.
If you are considering this game. Please take my advice & this review into consideration. At minimum give it a year. I have a strong feeling this game will bomb faster than Tabula Rasa & Hellgate London.
