Superhero mmos

[chaser5000]

I tried DCUO back when it first went f2p and never really got in to it. I'm thinking of giving it a second try, but are there any other alternatives?

 

[Keoul]

Champions online: Generic MMO experience but with super powers.
Fusion Fall: Based around cartoon network universe so not sure if you're into that or not
Marvel Heroes: A diablo-esque game go around maps, kill mobs, go in dungeons you get the idea.

Those are the ones that come off the top of my head.

 

[DementedSheep]

I tried DCUO and Champions online

Champions
The good points:
Lots of appearance customisation
Lots of build customisation and even more appearance if you pay
Doesn't take itself seriously
Feels more like making a superhero rather than aping one (which is what DCUO feels like to me)

The bad:
Boring quests and gameplay
Looks like ass

I don't really recommend it since I got bored of it really fast but you might as well give it a try since you can play it free.

 

[Therumancer]

I tried DCUO back when it first went f2p and never really got in to it. I'm thinking of giving it a second try, but are there any other alternatives?

Someone already mentioned it but Champions is the only other real option right now given that "City Of Heroes/Villains" went belly up a while back. I've played it on and off for years (lifetime subscriber) but I must admit it's best for rare binges than serious "WoW-like" play.

To be honest I'd wait and see if "City Of Titans" is ever completed and released, it's a new MMO in development by the guys that did "City Of Heroes" (who also worked on Champions), I think it's kickstarter succeeded a while ago. Of course that could take years and wouldn't really sate your desire right now.

I'll also say that while not as bad as a lot of other F2P RPGs, Champions, like all of Cryptic's games is kind of a money pit, somewhat justified by fairly frequent give aways, and the fact that in the endgame if you grind enough you can exchange in-game "Questionite" currency for "Zen" which you can then use to buy paid options. "Star Trek Online" and "Neverwinter" also by the same company use similar mechanics. They tend to be the only F2P games tolerate or support, largely because of this, however if you plan to play without putting in a dime, it will take you a long time.

One thing that doesn't affect me as an early adopter of Champions (as my entire account is permanently "Gold") is that if your a F2P player the biggest strength of Champions will be off limit to you for quite a while. In Champions you can do a lot with power selection and customization, *BUT* if your a free player using a "silver" slot you can only create characters from specific archetypes... predefined power sets where you get to pick a few options at a couple of points but can't heavily customize them, and what's more you have to pay for each archetype you want to unlock beyond the few basics that are "free". That gives a taste of the game, but to really make a "serious" character you need to subscribe or buy a gold slot, which allows you to customize every aspect of the character and select each power individually.

The art style for "Champions" is a love it or hate it thing, they tried to get experimental with it and took the WoW-route of figuring that cartoony graphics would age better. They however stylized all of their graphics beyond generally cartoony to the point of trying to make them look like 2D artwork in a 3D world (including black lines around things in many cases) so things would look kind of like in a comic book. This has been a huge turn off for a lot of people because it is *EXTREMELY* stylized. A lot of people think it is dog ugly, some people worship it (people hold costume contests nearly every day), me... I mostly take it in doses, and give it credit for being distinctive.

DCUO was an interesting idea, but to be honest suffered from a horrible lack of content when the game was first released. It's F2P system is a joke, and honestly I'm not surprised you hated it, as they pretty much monetized everything (requiring paid for tickets to access what was basic content, even subscriptions just give you so many tickets now), and pretty much booted F2P players out of the player economy by tightly capping money (and requiring you to pay real money to pull your own in-game currency out of Escrow) making it almost impossible to trade with anyone. It had huge potential, but it was poorly planned, badly implemented, and content deprived on launch. Gameplay wise I think both Champions and CoH (when it existed) were much better.

Marvel Heroes (since I'm going on about this) is a Diablo-Clone type thing where you play as one of Marvel's characters and pretty much run around mowing down hordes of baddies while following a brief outline of a plot (you know... like Super Hero Diablo). It's not bad, and the characters do feel very distinctive (each pretty much being it's own class) but it's not very challenging, it's all about the constant quest for shinier loot like Diablo is. I still pop in to waste some stuff once in a while since it's almost zen-like in it's simplicity and it is pretty flashy for it's type
of game. It's F2P but uses a Cryptic-Type system where you can unlock everything in the game (given time) if you play enough, in this case you collect "Eternity Splinters" periodically which can be exchanged to unlock different heroes at a cost of 200-600 per character (which is less based on power level than how much the license cost for Gazillion to get to hear them tell it).

 

[gorfias]

I'm giving DC's Infinite Crisis a try. No report yet. So far, it is a huge pain in the keester getting started. I'm better off playing Skyrim again.

 

[Tayh]

I think Champions Online is your best bet, at the moment. You can remove the black lines and fiddle in the graphical settings to make it more pleasing to the eyes.
I've tried DCUO a couple of times, but it's such a horrible buttonsmashing game, and the controls can be a bit glitchy, too. But then again, it was designed as a console game, so you can't expect much.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

To be honest I'd wait and see if "City Of Titans" is ever completed and released, it's a new MMO in development by the guys that did "City Of Heroes" (who also worked on Champions), I think it's kickstarter succeeded a while ago. Of course that could take years and wouldn't really sate your desire right now.

Very well written post, but I just thought I'd clarify this bit. It's not actually being developed by anyone involved with CoH, but by fans of the game. I'm a proud backer of that one though haven't spent much time on their community forums, except to briefly reminisce about CoH with others left homeless by its closure. It really was a one of a kind MMO, and while it went downhill in many respects, in many others it was still superlative.

The lackey/melefactor system was ingenious and I'm still to this day surprised that an equivalent mechanic doesn't exist in every single MMO. It's beyond comprehension that something so clever and useful simply doesn't exist. The costume creation is still better than practically any other MMO (or even most offline games), the amount of content it had was staggering and still, 2.5 years later, I remember my characters fondly and in detail. Ask me about my characters from other MMOs and my recollection would be hazy at best. There was an archetype for every mood, and so much to do. Story arcs, PvP, GM hunting, badge hunting, accolades, base building (wish I'd had a better go at that), create your own missions or just paper missions. I also adored the way missions were instanced rather than the crumby "open world" missions to hunt 20 aardvarks whilst other players are doing the same, thereby forcing you to wait for respawns.

I wish more than anything NCSoft would release the server code as open source to the community. Considering they've entirely abandoned it, they'll lose nothing and gain only gratitude from the fans. I'd pay a monthly sub to play it on a private server, but it's not yet been reverse engineered. Apparently there are some secret things happening secretly, but I wish those things would happen faster o.o Until then, I have CoT to look forward to.

Regarding the original topic, there is Champions Online, made by Cryptic but bought by Perfect World (who also own Star Trek and Neverwinter). It has some cool features but it just isn't absorbing. I bought a lifetime some, preordered, and I still haven't levelled past 25 (the level at which one gets to design their nemesis I believe, one of the few features I'd love to see). The powers, travel powers and so on are alright, combat is okay if repetitive and I like the "freeform" way of levelling (which allows players to have any powers they wish).

You have two main types of attack, energy builders and energy consumers. The Builder is your basic (1 key) attack that auto-attacks. You get energy as you use it expend it for more powerful attacks, such as cone, AoE, crowd control, etc. It's cel shaded, which really adds to the comic book feel. But it's a bit...much. There's often so much shit going on on the screen. There's tons of features and content that I found it easier to ignore most if it as I had no idea what anything was for.

I played DCUO from release for a bit, also got a lifetime sub (I should really learn). It was okay, though at the time there wasn't much to do but repeat the same missions. It looked and played well enough, I really liked the way costumes and abilities worked and the travel powers were all fun. I actually had a character called "The Spy", designed exactly like his TF2 namesake. He could put on disguises and what not.

 

[chaser5000]

Wow thanks for all the information. I'm going to give champions a try, looks like you can't be a villain kind of disappointing(don't really get why all superhero mmos lock you into good or bad and never let you change) but I'm hopeful about the game. I checked out CoT and I'm going to keep an eye on it.

 

[Therumancer]

Wow thanks for all the information. I'm going to give champions a try, looks like you can't be a villain kind of disappointing(don't really get why all superhero mmos lock you into good or bad and never let you change) but I'm hopeful about the game. I checked out CoT and I'm going to keep an eye on it.

The reason is that the game developers are concerned about villainous content, given that most super villains are mass murderers, torturers, rapists, and worse. In an RPG you can't just gloss over the details of what the villains are doing like in most comics (the ones that show it being under special "extreme" labels as opposed to the general fare these games are going for). As a general rule the good guys might find dead bodies or whatever, but you generally don't see say "Purple Man" or "Mandrill" throw down some girl and rape her in a normal comic ("Alias" spelled this out pretty well in Purple Man's case for those who never got the subtext before). Games that have come close to this just in violence like "Manhunt" and "Grand Theft Auto" have garnered a lot of attention as well.

The hero games that have allowed you to play villains more or less don't let you really do it, which is why it doesn't go over very well, and people generally complain that it's weak so there isn't much incentive to run with the idea. In say "City Of Villains" you pretty much got to be some schmuck who got thrown into a hellhole built as a sort of Darwinist boot camp for henchmen, eventually you "graduate" to being a lackey for a real villain and pretty much act as their gofer/blunt object being sent out to "beat up these guys" again and again. There was a random quest generator that was fun, but was conceptually kind of pathetic because you'd pretty much knock over random banks and such, or maybe go on a rampage and try and do enough damage to a city infrastructure before time runs out (for no real good reason I might add). "DC Universe Online" was even weaker because again it pretty much made you a gofer, but didn't even have the embellishments "City Of Villains" did, you pretty much get to play as say one of Lex Luthor's less cool bootlicks. I mean they actually managed to make say trashing Superman or Green Lantern feel unsatisfying and that's something a super villain should never feel in such a position, largely because it has nothing to do with me or my plans, I'm there because my patron said "sic them doggie!" and I did like a good super thug.

At any rate a bit was written about it over the years. I seem to remember that the guys doing "City Of Heroes" only did "City Of Villains" as an expansion under duress due to fan demands, because they felt they couldn't handle the subject matter correctly, and weren't sure they wanted to get sociopathic enough to "do it right". Theirs was the best compromise but wasn't exactly wonderful.

I hope you enjoy Champions, I've maxxed out two characters and have a ton of others of various levels. It's a fun ride the first couple of times through and the story missions (White Out, Serpent Lantern, etc...) are fun a couple of times though I was never into grinding them like some people. Just keep in mind that if you want to get the full experience for character building/power selection you'll need a gold slot. That right there is one of the big barriers to the game's FTP success (compared to some of Cryptic's other titles). While in theory you could get one for free by grinding enough questionite I believe, that's going to be a lot of time and effort with your basic character, and only a few people can deal with that burn out. A big part of the reason for that is the daily refine caps. Let me know how it goes though.