Incline The City of Heroes Thread

[mediocrepoet]

I've been browsing the wiki. It's a shame no one put up a more modern version of this or a single player offline version with support for such a variety of powers.

 

[Zombra]

Dumb question, but did they combine CoH and CoV at some point?

Yeah, Lhynn is right about it all. I think CoV's original release back in the day required you buy another box but it was always one game. Short version, all it is is a different starting area and different (good or evil) mission content. And now there is also 'alternate universe' Praetorian Earth which is another starting area with more morally ambiguous content (though it is still basically rebels vs. the empire).

 

[Zombra]

a single player offline version

No real reason for this unless you simply cannot stand to see other people in city zones. You can easily mute all broadcast chat, and solo content for 1000 hours without ever interacting with anyone if you want.

Of course maybe Homecoming servers will disappear someday, but not in the foreseeable future.

 

[mediocrepoet]

a single player offline version

No real reason for this unless you simply cannot stand to see other people in city zones. You can easily mute all broadcast chat, and solo content for 1000 hours without ever interacting with anyone if you want.

Of course maybe Homecoming servers will disappear someday, but not in the foreseeable future.

I suppose I meant more of the establishment of more of a genre that would also have things like Freedom Force with full chargen, etc. But I take your point.

 

[Zombra]

I suppose I meant more of the establishment of more of a genre that would also have things like Freedom Force with full chargen, etc. But I take your point.

Sure, we all want a good superhero game where you can really make original characters with a wide range of powers. I get why you don't see a lot of them though. Hard to make a game where the character may or may not be able to swing like Spidey, and may or may not be able to read minds, travel through time, punch down skyscrapers, have x-ray vision, etc. ...

 

[mediocrepoet]

The character customization sure has evolved a lot since the original release of CoH.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

I came back to this and made a bunch of characters, but I have been playing my Arachnos Soldier the most. I named him Captain Crabapple.

 

[Sjukob]

So my primary character thugs/forcefield mastermind has finaly hit level 50 and I've even done some iTrials already.

I don't regret selecting this combination of powers, it's probably not the best option for the later game as it has no tools to boost your damage or debuff enemies, which is very noticeable when you fight tougher opponents, however it's a very "workhorse" type of combo. Forcefield massive defense boosts allow your minions to get going really early, even without any IO sets. It often happens that I run with a team full of squishes and even as a mastermind, who has the lowest buff values on the support sets, I can still def softcap everyone on the team. And containment shell is a real party starter allowing for easy grouping of crowds of mobs, it even converts knockback to knockdown effects on any enemies inside the bubble, so everyone gets in, nobody gets out, I colored it bright red so that everyone could easily see where they should dump their AOEs.

I haven't looked at the incarnate stuff before I reached level 50 and I was really surprised to see how broken it was. I thought that fully IOd characters were very, very strong already, but with the incarnate system they get dialed up to 11! I mean, you get damage/debuff procs, nuke type AOEs, overpowered pets, huge passive bonuses on top of everything that your power sets and IO sets give you, it's almost like modding some a game to give yourself various cheat abilities. It's very fun though.

Overall, I stand by my previous statement that the game gets significantly better as you progress, while the early levels are pretty crap and boring. The prime reason why I hold this opinion is that, you don't really get to enjoy the character building aspects as all of your options are very limited at the lower levels, it's also the part where accuracy, defense/resistance, endurance and lack of key abilities issues are especially pronounced and it's just not fun when there's nothing you can do about it and just have to suck it up, inspirations can only get you so far. And due to how the game works, where you can freely revisit lower level content and still get rewards that are relevant in the end game there's just really no point in staying at lower levels, once you reach 50 the entire game is open to you, the higher level you are, the more options become available to you, and it becomes easier and more fun to gear up as there's more variety, it's becomes more rewarding too, for example, incarnate shards and very rare IO recipes begin to drop from enemies once you reach level 50, not to mention the amount of influence you receive at the cap is significantly higher than at any other point. Even various cool items, like temporary powers or consumables that allow you to summon various allies (vanguard mechs are so cool!) are more prevalent in later game. It feels like a famine followed by a feast.

This game has been very enjoyable so far and I don't regret choosing Rebirth as the server for playing it. From my experience, large communities tend to eventually turn into zoos, which forces you to filter people out and it just gets tiresome after a while, but on Rebirth I've never had to worry about it, and every interaction I've had with people has been entirely positive. I don't know why this game isn't more popular in general, as I've said before, the building and combat aspects are pretty well done, it's very fun coming out with various concepts for your characters and then see how they perform in various scenarios both solo and in groups, it's almost like playing Underrail, but online.

Also, Rebirth has announced new update, although aside from the approximate release date, no specifics have been given.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

So my primary character thugs/forcefield mastermind has finaly hit level 50 and I've even done some iTrials already.

I don't regret selecting this combination of powers, it's probably not the best option for the later game as it has no tools to boost your damage or debuff enemies, which is very noticeable when you fight tougher opponents, however it's a very "workhorse" type of combo. Forcefield massive defense boosts allow your minions to get going really early, even without any IO sets. It often happens that I run with a team full of squishes and even as a mastermind, who has the lowest buff values on the support sets, I can still def softcap everyone on the team. And containment shell is a real party starter allowing for easy grouping of crowds of mobs, it even converts knockback to knockdown effects on any enemies inside the bubble, so everyone gets in, nobody gets out, I colored it bright red so that everyone could easily see where they should dump their AOEs.

I haven't looked at the incarnate stuff before I reached level 50 and I was really surprised to see how broken it was. I thought that fully IOd characters were very, very strong already, but with the incarnate system they get dialed up to 11! I mean, you get damage/debuff procs, nuke type AOEs, overpowered pets, huge passive bonuses on top of everything that your power sets and IO sets give you, it's almost like modding some a game to give yourself various cheat abilities. It's very fun though.

Overall, I stand by my previous statement that the game gets significantly better as you progress, while the early levels are pretty crap and boring. The prime reason why I hold this opinion is that, you don't really get to enjoy the character building aspects as all of your options are very limited at the lower levels, it's also the part where accuracy, defense/resistance, endurance and lack of key abilities issues are especially pronounced and it's just not fun when there's nothing you can do about it and just have to suck it up, inspirations can only get you so far. And due to how the game works, where you can freely revisit lower level content and still get rewards that are relevant in the end game there's just really no point in staying at lower levels, once you reach 50 the entire game is open to you, the higher level you are, the more options become available to you, and it becomes easier and more fun to gear up as there's more variety, it's becomes more rewarding too, for example, incarnate shards and very rare IO recipes begin to drop from enemies once you reach level 50, not to mention the amount of influence you receive at the cap is significantly higher than at any other point. Even various cool items, like temporary powers or consumables that allow you to summon various allies (vanguard mechs are so cool!) are more prevalent in later game. It feels like a famine followed by a feast.

This game has been very enjoyable so far and I don't regret choosing Rebirth as the server for playing it. From my experience, large communities tend to eventually turn into zoos, which forces you to filter people out and it just gets tiresome after a while, but on Rebirth I've never had to worry about it, and every interaction I've had with people has been entirely positive. I don't know why this game isn't more popular in general, as I've said before, the building and combat aspects are pretty well done, it's very fun coming out with various concepts for your characters and then see how they perform in various scenarios both solo and in groups, it's almost like playing Underrail, but online.

Also, Rebirth has announced new update, although aside from the approximate release date, no specifics have been given.

Part of me wants to make a demon mastermind and name it something weird or dumb.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Part of me wants to make a demon mastermind and name it something weird or dumb.

Something like I eat frozen vegetables or dumber?

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

Part of me wants to make a demon mastermind and name it something weird or dumb.

Something like I eat frozen vegetables or dumber?

Yes.

 

[Sjukob]

The prime reason why I hold this opinion is that, you don't really get to enjoy the character building aspects as all of your options are very limited at the lower levels, it's also the part where accuracy, defense/resistance, endurance and lack of key abilities issues are especially pronounced and it's just not fun when there's nothing you can do about it and just have to suck it up, inspirations can only get you so far.

You know, the one AT I see disproportionately more often than the other ones is scrapper and I believe it's for this exact reason, it's one the few ATs that actually start out strong and it's the easiest (or one of) one to play. I was doing some missions on my fortunata, who's in her mid twenties, and quickly discovered that even fighting minions can turn out to be fatal. Consider this, with all your defensive powers available and some generic IO slotting you are sitting at about 25% of defense to all positionals, slag golem - a regular critter at that stage reduces your defense by 8% with his regular attack, you have no DDR and it stacks, at 0/0 difficulty they, like all the other minions, usually come in the packs of 3, so if they land 3 swipes on you, you end up stripped of all of your defenses and scaling resists do jack shit at that stage. I don't know how fortunata fares later on, but at that stage she doesn't deal enough damage to kill enemies quickly, so you have to spend some time in combat and each time you get hit your defenses go down, which makes you even more likely to get hit with the following attacks. In general, you may end up losing anywhere between 40% to 70% of your health, at times even having to flee, just for fighting minions on 0/1 difficulty on a class that has no innate healing and is not a glass cannon. I realised that this is more or less similar scenario for any AT that is not either scrapper, brute, tanker or mastermind and it's why they are so popular, aside from the tanker who's damage is on the lower end, and mastermind because people don't like summoner type classes or something.

Sometimes, when I team up with people playing various support ATs, like corruptors, defenders, controllers etc I ask them how did they level up their character. A good number of them say that they fire farmed at least to a certain point, usually to somewhere between 30 - 40 level range, I can understand why. You can't team up 100% of time and probably you don't want to, sometimes you just want to do something alone or may be you play off peak hours on a less popular server (like me) and just can't get the team running, but then you quickly discover that if try to solo the game turns into a pain in the ass for a measly reward, as I've said in my previous post, at level 50 you receive disproportionately more rewards for playing than at any other level, so fighting minions to death for whatever scraps you get at that level just feels insulting. I imagine that a good number of people just make a fire farmer, power level their characters to higher levels, may be even all the way to level 50 and then use funds from their main character to gear up their alts, and I don't blame them for that. Such progression curve for many ATs is probably my biggest issue with the game so far.