First weekend with CoH - My thoughts

[croman]

Well I bought the game on Friday (or was it Thursday?) and I spent my first weekend playing it.

I probably put in a total of about 15-18 hours over the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday).  My girlfriend was out of town so it was the perfect opportunity.

I started off by creating a Magic Scrapper on the Virtue server. I went with this combination because one of my favorite characters back in the days of playing Champions was a Knight that got xfered to the modern time though a magical means.  All of his powers came from magical items (sword, armor, etc).

After spending about 1 hour just getting his armor and stuff to look correct, I was off to learn about the game.   His name is TheRedKnight and he is the only character that I played the first night.  

It took me awhile to get used to the controls since they are a tad different than WoW and I have been playing that for so long.  I think I got him up to level 5 the first night and to be honest.. just got completed bored of him, even at this low level.

So on Saturday I started a new character, this time a Mutant Blaster based on Fire Powers.  Her name is Lady Sunflare.  By the end of playing yesterday, I have gotten her up to level 9.  I like this character a lot more than playing my first one.   This one feels more like an actual superhero.

Now my overall impressions are .. well.. not the greatest.  I think back to when I started playing WoW and that game sucked me into it a lot more than CoH did.  I am only past my first few days and I can already tell that I may not even subscribe past my first initial month.

I never feel like I am playing a Superhero out of a comic book. Maybe this will change once I am done fighting this thugs on the streets, and I surely hope so.

I find the interface to be lacking compared to WoW.  Maybe it is just because I am not used to it yet, or maybe because WoW has all of the great mods for the game.  Does CoH have any mods that you can install to help with your interface options like WoW does?

I finally got to a mission with my lvl 9 character that required that I team up with other members for.  The Frostfire mission in The Hollows.    Now large groups of super heroes is quite confusing.  It just feels like a bunch of special effects filling your screen.  Very hard to tell what is gonig on around you.

The reason I quit playing yesterday was because the game crashed 3 times while we were trying to do this mission.  The first time it locked all of us up with some sound loop.  We all had to disconnect and reconnect (there were 6 of us).  The second time 3 of the players got disconnected and then the 3rd time all of us got disconnected again.  I just finally gave up.

I sure hope this is not how the whole mission is going to be or I am never going to get by it.

I have not joined a Superhero Group yet (I think you have to be level 10?) but I am looking forward to that.  That may help raise the enjoyment level of the game for me.

Anyways.. so far I am not that impressed with the game or that hooked.  It could be things that I am just missing.  Any suggestions or ideas would be welcome.

[unbreakable]

CoH was pretty good at in its time, but as they said on Penny Arcade, if ALL you like is fighting, its the game for you.  There is NOTHING else to do, it's kind of a no-frills MMOG.

You don't collect items, or gear, or do trade skills.  Quests back when I played were more of the FedEx or Assassination type.  I hear there are badges or something, but that was after my time there.

Having said that, Super Jump was an absolute BLAST.  I used to just spend an hour trying to climb up stuff, or cruising around.  Best mode of travel, EVAR.

[Lockdown]

Anyways.. so far I am not that impressed with the game or that hooked.  It could be things that I am just missing.  Any suggestions or ideas would be welcome.

I really think coming from WoW and going to CoH is a tough road.  I don't think I have many suggestions for you other than to help you focus on the positives of CoH as I see them (coming from a WoW perspective).

1) Finding groups in CoH is a dream.  If you have figured out how to search for people and start your own team, do it.  Keep the team smallish (about 4 people) and make sure to invite all different archtypes so everyone feels "special".  More often than not, you will find friendly people to team up with who are open to doing missions or hunting.  There is no question in my mind that the "12-year-old syndrome" is much less prevalent in CoH.  Take advantage of this.

2) Missions are instanced and scale to your group power.  This is CoH's ace-in-the-hole as far as I'm concerned.  Take advantage of these missions.  You can visit certain NPC's around city hall that will allow you to further scale the missions if you choose.

3) Enjoy the combat mechanics in the game... cause... uhhh... that's all you really have to do.  Unbreakable nailed that one.  And it CAN be fun when your team is diversified and works together.  

4) Enjoy the creation process.  The character creator is another strong point of the game, albeit it isn't actually 'playing'.  Take advantage of the opportunity to make all kinds of different superheroes.

That's about it.  It is pretty well accepted (even within the community of supporters for CoH) that things get much better as you level up past 20.  But honestly, imho, they don't get THAT much better that you need to get there to suddenly start enjoying yourself.  The bottom line is, WoW offers lots of things to do, and CoH just does not.  And I am not a CoH hater.  I was in a very early beta of this game and certainly put in my time.  But it simply has been passed up by more "complete" MMO's - WoW being one of them.  As a change of pace though - it's certainly not bad.  Best of luck.

LD

[Guy Incognito]

While it still focuses on fighting and the skills system is still a pipe dream, I believe they've branched out a little with base building.  If you turn on supergroup mode you can earn prestige or whatever for your supergroup to pay rent / build stuff and by killing mobs in supergroup mode you can get salvage (OMG loot! heh).  To get certain teleporter stuff for the base to work you've got to get some of the exploration badges, etc etc.

I can see some people getting really into the base building and focusing mainly on that.

[unbreakable]

The base building sounds pretty cool.  Unfortunately for me, there is no going back.  I refuse to carry more than one MMOG subscription at a time, and WoW pwns my soul.

Besides, I talked my supergroup into going to WoW when it came out  

[Guy Incognito]

Yeah, I'm only doing one at a time myself.  Right now burnt out on CoH so taking a month or two to play some EQ2 (bunch of old EQ1 guildies and some RL friends still play).  Will probably alternate a little later on.

[Crawley]

I just started playing this about two weeks ago as the CoV beta ended and wanted to give CoH it a whirl as I had so much fun with character creation (the game was ok too). I'd say my impressions are pretty close to yours (initial poster)

I also came from WoW and while CoH is fun in some areas its really lacking in other areas that made WoW so great. I share your quibble (and I use that word often and annoyingly as possible) about not feeling like a super hero. I'm still hoping that when I get some more fun powers to play with I will feel like one, and therein lies the desire to keep playing; the new promise of new powers.

The big problem for me is the lack of varied quests. It seems like your pushed through a set series of quest givers for awhile. It wasn't until level 11 that I found a second quest giver. Was rather annoying and the quests are not varied enough.

But despite these issues I'm having enough fun and have enough curiousity to pluck down a monthly fee to play the game a bit longer. The only issue is moving from a trail account to a paid account is not intuitive and so far I've been unable to figure out how to do this and keep my account. I'm still waiting back to hear from an account specialist to explain why, after purchasing a serial code, I can't activate the account.

I'm in need of a superhero it seems.

[Destructor]

But despite these issues I'm having enough fun and have enough curiousity to pluck down a monthly fee to play the game a bit longer. The only issue is moving from a trail account to a paid account is not intuitive and so far I've been unable to figure out how to do this and keep my account. I'm still waiting back to hear from an account specialist to explain why, after purchasing a serial code, I can't activate the account.

I'm in need of a superhero it seems.

Now that's weird. Odds are you've tried it, but did you visit the Account Management screen (on their website) and tried to Upgrade your account to your new valid CD? What does it tell you when you try?

[Crawley]

Now that's weird. Odds are you've tried it, but did you visit the Account Management screen (on their website) and tried to Upgrade your account to your new valid CD? What does it tell you when you try?

It's the account management screen where the serial code I purchased is displayed in all it's glory. It just keeps telling me it's in use already.

Given that my wife went through the same process without problems (although she can't recall the exact steps she took) I get the sense I have a bad code.

My trial ran out the other day and now I have an REACTIVATE button instead of an ACTIVATE button to choose, but get the same message about the code already being in use when I try and choose that option.

I'm awaiting on an "account specialist" to get in contact with me about it.

But even though it's a bit of an annoyance it works out. I have a bunch of shows on TiVo I had been ignoring due to the trial so now I can catch up on those.