Why City of Heroes/Villians has got my money for now.

In starting with a blog about gaming habits of a multi-threaded geek, I figure I will start with aspects about why City of Heroes/Villains (hereafter named CoX) has captured my time and money as of late.

A preface, I've played a small gambit of MMO games before this. Starting back with CoX, then moving to Eve Online, then taking the leap to World of Warcraft until recently. While I do enjoy World of Warcraft, I am currently the owner of a laptop, which WoW has a tendency to overheat the videocard. After a couple years the poor thing just couldn't run Warcraft anymore at anything higher then 3 fps... in Naxxramus, that's usually fatal.

So I fired up my old account on CoX and to my surprise several features remained and were added since I last graced Paragon City. A small gambit of new features that were either borrowed from or by other games... and a feature or two that should be in other games.

Basic game play aspects:
1. 5 basic "classes" 2 heroic classes for each side
This is a bit deceiving. Within each class is a multitude of choices for power sets, which allow you to mix and match to suit your playing style. For example, the defenders are consider team support/healers... but not every primary power set has a direct healing capability... several are used to slow up enemies or make them unable to do anything worthwhile to your allys. Or Brutes on the villain side, who have an assortment of high burst damage attacks and a defensive ability... which could take the form of regenerating health super fast, being invincible, or avoiding damage by being agile. Add to the mix the ability to pull from a special pool of powers available to everyone that range from leadership buffs, to Travel powers (flight, super speed, Teleportation, and Super Leaping), to more mundane fighting abilities or stealth.

2. Character generator:
Hands down, CoX has the best character generator of all the MMO's... create virtually anyone you want with hundreds of little options, which can all be color coded. Later in the game you also receive extra slots for different costumes. A tailor in game can change them at will (and money)... and you can earn extra costume pieces in play through invention, events, booster packs.
Another nice touch is with the super power sets that involve weapons, you can customize them now as well. So that nice mace isn't quite your style... well, wield a shovel!

3. Customized missions:
Each mission you take on is instanced. And the difficulty is based on three things. Your level, the number of people in your team, and your difficulty settings. Your level affects the base level of the mobs and boss you fight in the instance. The number of people you have in your group dictates how many mobs you'll be fighting. The Difficulty settings are an optional setting you set with an NPC. It allows you to ramp up the difficulty by up to 5 levels (making the base level of each mob inside the instance 1 level higher.) This makes for a more difficult challenge and of course more money and experience.

4. Sidekick/ Lackey/ Exemplar system:
This wonderful system allows you to play with your friends or join a PUG without missing out on the fun. A higher level toon can artificially raise your level to 1 below them... putting your powers about on par with the enemies you'll be facing. Since there is no real equipment to speak of in CoX, you can preform well in a group so long as you stay within range of your mentor. You earn experience as you normally would at your own level. In a similar fashion, Higher level toons can deflate their level down to a lower level toon in order to play with them and not rob experience from them. The benefit for the higher level toon is they get a good chunk of money, and if they have any experience debt (the penalty for dying), all experience they would earn goes to paying off their debt. With this system, you're no longer stuck trying to stay the same level as your friends... which leads me to the next greatest asset.

5. Leveling Pact:
In it's infancy, it is one of the coolest features I've seen in an MMO, and it needs to be implemented in WoW soon. You form a leveling pact with another toon (on a different account obviously). You then split all experience evenly to ensure that you are the same level. Even if the other person is offline. When I came back, a friend of mine decided to dust off his account too, and we've taken full advantage of a couple different pacts. They only major improvement they need to implement is to allow more the 2 people in a single pact.

6. Day Jobs:
In a similar fashion to Eve Online, where you train with time spent on or offline, day jobs allow you to train while off line for special buffs or powers after spending a certain amount of time at a specific spot (like a train station for movement buffs, police station for extra experience from patrolling the streets). Not game breaking, but a nice touch.

7. Team Base Construction
With the recent content patch, bases are a little more affordable to get up and running for small groups. Much like Dark Age of Camelot. You can spend hours tweaking and moving decorative items around, and scrapping up cash to a medical bay or transporter device.

8. Invention System:
A nice touch, similar to crafting in other games... except without the skill ups required. You find recipes, find salvage from defeating enemies, and can make some very nice enhancements (the nearest thing to equipment in the game), or build cheaper upgrades for your base... which is now on a unified system.

9. Global Chat:
You have several alts across villains and heroes, even servers... well if you find a player who's worth knowing, you can allow him access to your global chat name, which allows him to know when you're account is online and which toon your playing. Even allows you to send messages offline to them, and they'll receive it no matter which toon they log onto.

10. Easy to pick up and play
The instance missions allow for a varied groups to accomplish. In a typical 5 man group in Warcraft, you would need a tank, healer, and variety of damage dealers/Crowd Control. While that formula works in CoX, it is not always necessary. It requires some special tactics, utilizing the strengths of a class, but it can be done. For example, My mastermind (a class who controls minions to fight for them) teamed up with 3 other masterminds... and with 16 minions at our beckon call, we pummeled through wave after wave of mobs... mind you many a minion died that day... but they were expendable. And the robotics mastermind had no soul to begin with... so he's even less of a concern.

So within the last year, several changes and upgrades to the game occurred that made it quite fresh... a handful I've not covered here... and 1 in the works for the next content patch. The ability to create full fledged missions, and be rated by the community for play on the live servers.

Next blog post will cover the class that makes my namesake on this blog... The mastermind.