Hock
Member
GRAPHICS: On max settings the graphics are decent. Not even close to AoC orAION. I prefer WoW graphics over CO actually, because some things arejust scratchy and out of line in CO. When you get out of the tutorialand into Millennium City, fly up or get somewhere high and look farout. The depth you can see isn't all that great, and the further youlook the choppier and crappier things look. I was not impressed witheverything on 100% the way it looked. Some of the spells/skills lookbad, some look decent, and some look amazing. I've tried out everypower set and tried out most of the spells foreach. From lobbing some bad looking bolts all the way to giant icespikes bursting from the ground sending the enemies flying. Plus youcan customize the color for a little more depth.
GAMEPLAY: Ok we click on energy building spells and they autocast for as long astheir selected. Then we usually get a power we hold and let go of thespacebar (fun - I like these). Then we get the channeling powers whichare just like auto casting ones, nothing new. Holding Z to break out ofCC gets really annoying and boring. Holding Z to talk to people andeverything lags and doesn't seem to work for looting, I end up clickingon the button half the time. Some power setsjust feel so much inferior to others. To be honest, I like the shift towards twitch based game play withreactive blocking, and the energy building mechanism works well.However, by stripping out all the classes, you've essentially weakenedaspects of team play. Every hero now has the ability to solo (which Iknow is important for some).. but in team based situations now, it'sessentially 4-5 heroes all soloing for themselves and DPSing the mobdown. Which is a bit of an empty feeling, but I suppose reflects truecomic book team fights (ala X-Men). One of the biggest frustrations was trying to group up with a friend.The shard system definitely has its advantages, but at the same time itmakes me want to pull my hair out. I added a friend to my friends listonly to have him dissapear minutes later (then reappear hours later) -the whole time we were both unable to get to the same shard. I was onCrisis in Canada (labeled Steelhead in game... ugh) and he was inCanadian Wilderness. The "endgame" powers themselves dont you make you feel all that more powerful at all and some of them fail really badly. There are only a handful of "Must Haves" such as Regen, Invul, Resurgence, Personal Force Field. Other than that all the powers really feel the same aside from graphical differences. As a lvl 40 I never felt any different on my guy than I did when he was after the tutorial, there was never a sense of urgency to lvl nor did I feel like my character ever became more powerful from gear or lvling. The game lacks an appeal to continue on and became boring really quickly.
CRAFTING: The crafting in the game is a joke. They all feel the same, and all lackuniqueness. It's not fun, its unorganized, and we just don't wanna doit but were forced to at times to create items to help us survive thecold or toxins. Not enough depth, this is seriously the worst part ofthe game, period. Also, the equipment you do craft is pretty crappy in comparison of world drops or quest rewards. Normally, crafted items are second-tier equipment, just under good bossloot in terms of bonuses. However, here the items are usuallythird-tier, which places them below general quest rewards. This limitstheir desirability pretty badly.
QUESTING: Nothing new. Fetch quests, kill quests, it all feels the same. A lot ofMMO's have boring quests, WoW WotLK started doing some new things tomake quests more fun. I want to see more unique quests and more funthings to do. The Public Quests are ok but nothing spectacular either. CO encourages large group pulls rather than picking off one at a time.You build energy by attacking with your primary ability so there's verylittle downtime when grinding. However, those large group pulls will often kick your ass if your not careful. Also theres no real story in any of the quests that I give a shit about unlike in WoW or CoX where you'd go on long story arcs. Here it's just a random string of 4-5 missions that end in a boss fight.
OVERALL: This game will not surpass WoW, AION, ever. It has the potential topass up AoC/LotRO, probably not WAR. The game is a "good" game, decent.It's nothing special. It's what CoH should have been in the first place, put it that way. As of right now, I will not be picking it up. I can see this game being popular for the first 3-4 months, then dying out VERY quickly unless Cryptic does something. Honestly, I'd rather go back to CoX than play this as it stands.
GAMEPLAY: Ok we click on energy building spells and they autocast for as long astheir selected. Then we usually get a power we hold and let go of thespacebar (fun - I like these). Then we get the channeling powers whichare just like auto casting ones, nothing new. Holding Z to break out ofCC gets really annoying and boring. Holding Z to talk to people andeverything lags and doesn't seem to work for looting, I end up clickingon the button half the time. Some power setsjust feel so much inferior to others. To be honest, I like the shift towards twitch based game play withreactive blocking, and the energy building mechanism works well.However, by stripping out all the classes, you've essentially weakenedaspects of team play. Every hero now has the ability to solo (which Iknow is important for some).. but in team based situations now, it'sessentially 4-5 heroes all soloing for themselves and DPSing the mobdown. Which is a bit of an empty feeling, but I suppose reflects truecomic book team fights (ala X-Men). One of the biggest frustrations was trying to group up with a friend.The shard system definitely has its advantages, but at the same time itmakes me want to pull my hair out. I added a friend to my friends listonly to have him dissapear minutes later (then reappear hours later) -the whole time we were both unable to get to the same shard. I was onCrisis in Canada (labeled Steelhead in game... ugh) and he was inCanadian Wilderness. The "endgame" powers themselves dont you make you feel all that more powerful at all and some of them fail really badly. There are only a handful of "Must Haves" such as Regen, Invul, Resurgence, Personal Force Field. Other than that all the powers really feel the same aside from graphical differences. As a lvl 40 I never felt any different on my guy than I did when he was after the tutorial, there was never a sense of urgency to lvl nor did I feel like my character ever became more powerful from gear or lvling. The game lacks an appeal to continue on and became boring really quickly.
CRAFTING: The crafting in the game is a joke. They all feel the same, and all lackuniqueness. It's not fun, its unorganized, and we just don't wanna doit but were forced to at times to create items to help us survive thecold or toxins. Not enough depth, this is seriously the worst part ofthe game, period. Also, the equipment you do craft is pretty crappy in comparison of world drops or quest rewards. Normally, crafted items are second-tier equipment, just under good bossloot in terms of bonuses. However, here the items are usuallythird-tier, which places them below general quest rewards. This limitstheir desirability pretty badly.
QUESTING: Nothing new. Fetch quests, kill quests, it all feels the same. A lot ofMMO's have boring quests, WoW WotLK started doing some new things tomake quests more fun. I want to see more unique quests and more funthings to do. The Public Quests are ok but nothing spectacular either. CO encourages large group pulls rather than picking off one at a time.You build energy by attacking with your primary ability so there's verylittle downtime when grinding. However, those large group pulls will often kick your ass if your not careful. Also theres no real story in any of the quests that I give a shit about unlike in WoW or CoX where you'd go on long story arcs. Here it's just a random string of 4-5 missions that end in a boss fight.
OVERALL: This game will not surpass WoW, AION, ever. It has the potential topass up AoC/LotRO, probably not WAR. The game is a "good" game, decent.It's nothing special. It's what CoH should have been in the first place, put it that way. As of right now, I will not be picking it up. I can see this game being popular for the first 3-4 months, then dying out VERY quickly unless Cryptic does something. Honestly, I'd rather go back to CoX than play this as it stands.
And I totally agree with the idea that most content should be solo'able, but there is absolutely no reason to remove team oriented classes/powersets. Seriously, if you want to play solo all the time, don't play a troller or defender.... It seems like it really will leave everyone really fending for themselves when they "team",like they went way to far with this concept of if you want to solo, you can play most of the game solo with whatever you want to roll... I can see a game working just fine without a hold/stun/imobe based class/powerset, but you have to have clerics/priests/defenders, otherwise teaming really isn't anything more than just over powering stuff with more DPS... I really like the idea behind the no class system, let you chose to roll whatever you want to roll, but you still need the buff/debuff powersets. As for crafting, what game is the crafting system either A: Worthless or B: A huge time sync not yielding a fitting reward for time invested? 