City of Heroes Second Anniversary

Last month, City of Heroes celebrated its second anniversary. Those who logged on during the month were entered to win cool prizes (I didn't win anything) and received badges to commemorate the occasion. Also, if you logged in over the last weekend of the month, you could attend an online, Silver Age-themed dance party, and could take unique missions that would require you to team up with other heroes or villains for special rewards.

In case you didn't already know, City of Heroes (and its companion game, City of Villains) is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game based in a comic book world of superheroes and archvillains. It's sort of like Everquest, but with the Superfriends instead of elves and dwarves and such. It doesn't have a single-player experience--you have to create a hero and then log on to the shared, online world to take missions and fight crime. But you can run around by yourself in that world, if you wish. Within the game, you can join a superteam (like the Justice League or X-Men), or you can make a name for yourself without any help. The game gives you a lot of freedom to construct your own experience, while providing storylines, missions and other aspects to help you along.

See my City of Heroes slideshow!

Considering the fact that I was an original beta tester for the game, two long years ago, I decided I would write a state of the union address, summarizing my thoughts on the game so far. I've been along for the entire ride, though I can hardly be called a power player (I only have two characters over level 9, and neither of those has gotten above level 25). I've also taken some time off, here and there, when I didn't feel like paying the monthly fee. Luckily, COH doesn't erase your characters or mess with your account while it's inactive, so I've always been able to jump back in and play whenever I felt like it. I've played often enough over the last two years, however, to feel like I can give an informed review of the game.

Obviously, two years of gameplay gives me a lot to talk about. In an effort to keep things organized, I've divided things up into "works" and "needs work."

Works:

• Character Designer - The game's designers have done an amazing job of giving the players a variety of options for creating just about any character they can imagine. From animal heads and tails to cyborg parts to manga/anime hair, if you can dream it up, you can design it. Sure, they're missing some physical features we see in comics, but they've done a great job building a library of costume choices. They've even done a great job ensuring that players don't create walking copyright violations (like a Hulk or Spider-Man in the game). In fact, they do a good enough job with this that they recently won a copyright lawsuit from Marvel Comics.


• Power Effects - By this, I mean the special effects that happen when using your powers. Some of these are less impressive than others. But overall, they rock. You'll often see vines growing from the ground to trap a villain or lightning shocking them into seizures. And in the next update, they've previewed a "landshark" attack. Awesome! It's one of the things that makes playing on a team fun.


• Teamplay - Speaking of teamplay, the game's creators have done a good job giving you a compelling reason to team up with your fellow heroes to fight crime. And they've built the powers and archetypes in such a way as to reward a team that has the right combination of abilities. Sure, there are some Leroy Jenkins-type players in the game, who do their best to get everyone killed. But when you're on a team with the right mix of players, all with the right attitude, it can make for some beautiful, large scale buttkicking.


• Level and City Design - When the game is named "City" of Heroes, you would expect the city to be a character in the story. And fortunately, it is. You actually play in a variety of cityscapes within this game, and the designers have done a good job giving them all some personality of their own. Skyway City does, indeed, have highways filling the air above you. Boomtown looks like a city that's been hit by a nuclear blast. Steel City looks like a comic book version of Pittsburgh, filled with factories, warehouses, and other industrial centers. Even the smaller mission maps look good, whether its un underground cave, a high-tech research facility, or an abandoned club. Sure, there could be more variety on those, and some of the underground missions are designed with such subtle shading that they're hard to navigate for a colorblind person like me. But the overall design of the game is beautiful.


• NPC Villains and Heroes - The villain types you take on during the game are each unique as a group, with further differences between individual members. Although you can feel, sometimes, like you're fighting the same guy over and over, visually, they've done a good job of making them all at least look different. And the powers have been divided up enough that you'll quickly discover that you prefer fighting one type of villain over another. For example, my guys are especially immune to blunt force trauma, so I'd much rather fight the kung fu stylings of the Tsoo than the flamethrower-wielding Longbow soldiers. The villains in the game cross every genre, from zombies to ninjas to robots to mafia men, and they each look cool in their own way.


• Community Events - These can be attributed more to the players than the designers, but the fact that they exist is a compliment to the open-ended nature of the game. The events you'll see while playing may vary from costume contests to death races, to dance parties or protests. The players of COH are pretty loyal and regular, and they do a good job of creating events that make you feel like you're part of a unified group, whether or not you actually know anyone within the game. There are even some online radio stations devoted solely to the COH experience. I highly recommend playing the game while listening to one of those--it's reminiscent of playing Grand Theft Auto while listening to the in-car radio.


• Updates - Although "Issue 7" is taking forever to come out, I have to admit that the creators of COH have been great about adding to and updating the features of the game as time goes by. From new missions, villains, and cities to new costume choices or character classes, they've managed to provide enough new content to keep the game feeling fresh, even after two years. In my opinion, this is an absolute must for a game that charges a monthly fee. When you pay something each month, you expect to get something new now and then. And this game delivers.


• Support - In the few instances where I've needed help, the in-game support team has been quick, efficient and courteous, getting me back up and running without any fuss at all. Even better, they've been non-judgemental, which is important, since most of my requests for support fall under the "I'm lost" or "I can't find the final bad guy" variety.

Needs Work:

• Supergroups - After two years, I still can't see the value of being in a supergroup. Sure, it gives you people to play with, but I find that I'm never online at the same time as SG members who are of the same level as me. And I play often and am in a huge SG! So I never end up teaming with my own Supergroup. The other "benefit" of being in an SG is supposed to be the base, but the only thing that's good for is the portals, since I'm apparently now allowed to play with the other items in it. There was supposed to be a way to do supergroup vs. villain group raids, where you could steal things from the others' base, but that never materialized. So all SGs are good for so far is they're a good place to donate influence.


• Bases and Salvage - Unless you run a Supergroup, salvage (items you collect off of the people you defeat) is worthless. The only use for this stuff is to create items in a base. And the only people that can do that are group leaders. Speaking of bases, like I said above, they're mostly worthless. Sure, they provide portals to allow you to jump from city to city. But in my experience, I can never find the portal I need, and the bases themselves aren't exactly user-friendly. Nothing is labeled within them, so you just have to click on everything at random. Sometimes, you'll get the "you don't have permission to do that" message, and sometimes you'll get instantly transported to some random location. Hardly useful to most players. And hardly the personalized HQs we were promised, since only the leader can construct or create anything within them.


• Travel - Why do you have to wait so long to get a travel power? You can't fly, teleport or superjump until you're well into the double digits, level-wise. This is ridiculous. So if you create a Superman-like character, he has to hoof it for half of the game. Any Nightcrawler clones can only wish for teleportation at first. I can't see a valid reason not to let people get around quicker in the game. You'll find that you spend half of your gameplay time, in the early levels, running through the cities. Not exactly action-packed stuff, there. The only reason I can think of to deny people easier travel is to force them to play the game at a slower rate, thus stretching the content out without adding anything new. Sounds like lazy design to me. I think you could give players travel powers up front, and just maybe keep them low level at first. Or, make them sacrifice some other area to get these powers. So a flying archetype can fly from day one, with maybe a cost somewhere else. At least, that's how I'd do it.


• Badges and Rewards - The biggest flaw in this game is its lack of a collectible system. As opposed to most MMORPGs, where you can get unique weapons and armor that change how your character plays and what they look like, there's no such thing in this game. You can collect "enhancements" and "inspirations" as you play, but neither of those consists of unique items, or changes how you look or what your powers do. They're all just heals and boosts to your existing powers. I think the lack of collectibles and a barter/trade system is what makes this game less addictive and obsessive as Everquest or WOW. And the badges they give aren't much help, considering they also fail to change anything about your look, your skills, or your experience. I'm not sure this part of the game will ever change, so I'll have to just deal with it. But adding some sort of collect/barter system that actually lets you change things up would really improve the game for me.


• Storylines - I hate to bash the storylines within the game, because I think a lot of work went into them, and they all contain good writing and creativity. The only problem is that, for the most part, they don't mean anything to the game. You can play a mission and totally ignore the text screens that pop up explaining the story. Once the mission is completed, that storyline won't carry over or effect anything else you do, anyway. They're there to give purpose to what you do, but they don't have any real effect or lasting value. Even the longer storylines that involve multiple missions are worthless, as finishing them only gets you a badge or enhancement (see above), neither of which has much lasting value. The worst thing about the storylines, however, is the fact that if you play with more than one character, each one could potentially get the exact same storyline. There's a very linear approach with no randomization, so if you make similar decisions with consecutive heroes, you'll perform the same missions, making for a boring repeat experience.


• Animations - While the design and animations look good, overall, my complaint here is based on how the animations change per bodytype. Rather, I'm bothered by the fact that they DON'T change for different bodytypes. If you have a kick power for your lithe acrobat character, it will look exactly the same as it does for your stiff, bulky brute. I hate seeing my hulk-like brute do Karate Kid kicks and graceful backflips. But my only other option is just to not take new powers for him. I wish the powers had a better variety of animations, so if a small character took it, it would look like a flip kick, but on a bigger character, it would look more like a straight-on kick.


• City of Villains - City of Villains is fun. It's just like City of Heroes, for the most part. But that's the problem I have with it--it's just not unique enough to make me feel justified in owning both. Sure, the character designs are darker, and the cities/villains are more violent and wartorn. But other than that, there's not much difference. In fact, if you visit "Pocket D", the club that both heroes and villains can visit, you'll find it hard to tell the two apart. There's just not that much difference in the two types of characters or in the experience between the two games. I'm not sure what I want here. Maybe more destructive ability, or the ability to randomly take out NPCs. Just something to make the villain experience feel different than the hero experience. And right now, it's just not there.


• Comic Book - It started out as a real comic that was shipped to all subscribers. Sadly, it sucked. So how do they fix it? They hire some big name creators to work on the book....then stop sending it out to people. Sure, you can download it for free, but who does that? And who buys the comic in stores, knowing it's just promotion for the game? It was a good/obvious idea to make a comic book based on a comic book game, but it's never quite lived up to its potential.

So there you have it, two years' worth of thoughts on City of Heroes. I still enjoy the game, and play it regularly. In fact, last night, I finally got the villainous Gulag to move up a level (he's now level 23). But I'm playing on a gamecard I got for Christmas right now. When that expires, who knows if I'll decide to start paying to play again. Lord knows I have enough other free things pulling at my time.

I think I'll probably wait for "Issue 7" to come out, and see if that helps me make up my mind. Some of the features it's supposedly bringing to the game sound pretty cool. And it may help make the villain and hero experiences feel a little more different than they currently do. (Can you say "more different?" I've done it three or four times already.)

Soon, I'll post some info and pics of the characters I've created in the game. More for my entertainment than for yours, but maybe you'll get a kick out of what I've constructed. If you have any questions about the game, feel free to ask in the comments below. And if you're a player, let me know which server and what your character name is, and I'll look you up. I'm still disappointed that I've never played with any Atlanta residents and have played with only one person I know in the real world. I know there have to be some more locals in the game, right?