9 months in the Rogue Isles

This Friday I got my 9 month veteran rewards when I logged on to City of Villains/Heroes. While it does not separate between heroes and villains in this regards, CoV was the one I started with and have played most so far.

The longest time I have played any MMOG is close to a year, so this game is moving into the ranks of the longest played ones for me.

World of Warcraft, Anarchy Online and Earth&Beyond are the games I have played for a longer time. Everquest 2, EVE Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Final Fantasy XI were all enjoyable games, but spent shorter time in those.

For a game that supposedly "lacks depth" as some people comment on the City of games, it has certainly had a staying power for me. As it is now, I do not see that I will stop playing it any time soon. But time will tell.

This got me thinking what it is with the game that makes it stick, while other games with more depth has failed.

1. In-game friends to play and chat with. This is I think they most important factor for any MMOGs staying power. Looking at the other MMOGs I have played, all which I have played for a long tinme I have had some very nice people to play and hang around with. This I have also in the City of games. The only anomaly here is Anarchy Online, which for the most part of the time I did not have a good group of friends to play with. But it was also my first MMOG and I did not play that many hours per week, due to work.

2. Community. If not playing with your friends, then you will play and interact with the rest of the people in the game world. Pick-up groups (PUGs), chat channels in general, game forums etc will certainly set affect the attitude and the view of the game. While perhaps not perfect, it is certainly quite good and a lot of positive attitude and friendliness.
The main negative here is when people are sending invites to teams and supergroups without asking first.

3. Fast-paced, visual gameplay. True to the comic book theme, game play action is fast-paced and visual, only missing "Kapow!", "Swish!", "Blam!" type of texts - although the sound makes up for that. I find that I miss a bit of this in other games, which have a slower pace. Although sometimes it can be a bit too fast at times - or rather players act a bit too fast...;)

4. Easy to get into, can play for short periods of time. There are no extensive times to get a group together, mission content scale with the number of players in the group and thus can in most cases work well for both solo, small groups and larger groups. The necessity to keep a group together for a long time is generally not there and group compositions also have flexibility - if a certain person drops from the group it is not the end of the world.
So it is easy quickly get into a group and play without a lot of waiting time. The group size and persons may change over time also, which just works fine. One finds that most of the time, even with PUGs, it was enjoyable time and did not feel completely wasted.

5. Easy to group with others. As someone that usually plays a lot of alts, being able to play with friends who may focus more on one or a few characters only can provide a challenge in many other games - differences in level can make grouping with friends close to impossible in otrher games. Here the lackey/sidekick/malefactor/exemplar system makes that almost no issue to be concerned with. Plus the game mechanics sort of encourages people to play alts, so there are many people doing that.

6. We are all individuals. Every characters can look different and cool from start - creating an outfit for your characters is part of the fun.

7. Polish. The City of games are polished. Smooth animations, good and clear effects, many nice details in the environment, many nice story arcs, fun NPCs and mobs in the comic book theme - all pieces fit well together.


Except for the first item, these items are not placed in an order of importance. I am not sure I would be able to do that.
IN any case, there is still a lot of content int he game I have not seen and no characters are near the level cap. I stringly suspect that I will still be around in the game at the next veteran reward in 3 months. If so, then City of Villains/Heroes will be the MMOG I have played for the longest time. But only time will tell..

The power of change for City of Villains/Heroes

City of Villains and Heroes have a fairly flexible system where one can choose the skills (powers) from a few powerset pools. Each power can then be allocated slots as the player chooses, which can then be used to boost various properties of the power - more accurate, more damage, shorter cooldown timer, longer lasting effects etc.

With that flexibility also comes the possibility to make choices that are either good or bad, which is just fine. Howerver, the point where I think this system breaks down a bit is that the game itself does not provide enough information for the player to make an informed decision.

While there are various fan sites out there that can provide some added information and reading game forums can also contribute a bit. But for a new player this can all be a bit hard to grasp at first and the player may not even be aware of all issues involved.

So a new player will likely make a couple of bad choices and the first character, or even the first few characters, may simply suck. That might not be noticeable right away, but perhaps after 15-20 levels. To get to that point is still a fair amount of invested time.

While the game provides opportunity to respecify the chosen powersets and the slots used, this still requires completing a group oriented quest, which at its earliest can be completed at level 24 - more likely it will be done in the late 20s though.

This is frankly a bit too harsh on new players and may discourage them from continuing the game, just because they made some bad choices early in the game, before they learned all the details.

I would rather see that the game provided at least one free respec opportunity until at character reached level 20, plus also actually provide more information in game that can help the player making a better decision.

Unfortunately, building these power and slot set-ups will many times be a bit different for different purposes, e.g. PvP (player vs player) will have different requirements than fighting regular mobs (PvE). But since each character only has one build, a player must level up two different characters if he/she wants to have optimized builds for both PvP and PvE.

It would be better if similar to the ability to have a number of diffrent costumes for a player, a player could also have a few different power builds and be able to switch between those - at the very least two different sets.

The ability to respecify a power profile could similar to costumes cost some money to perform, or the already existing trials could be completed for a free respec.

If a player have multiple power profiles he/she would need to buy separate enhancements for each profile, to put in the slots.

I hope there will be some changes in how the power builds are handled eventually. While it is one of the really nice features of City of Villains and Heroes, it is also a fairly painful part which limits the fun factor, due to its shortcomings.

Blocked

I followed a link in an MMO blog I was reading, which was directed to Terra Nova, and got the page below:



Apparently Terry Nova does contain material that is deemed bad for the general population, although I am not quite sure why. I have had trouble accessing a number of game related sites, but only got various network errors. AT that time I wondered if it was just network errors, or if there were some filters in place as well, blocking some sites. I guess this answers that most of my other problems are rather a reliability issue.

Game breaks

Work has sent me to the United Arab Emirates, so I am spending some weeks here working far away from any major cities. While it fairly nice and warm outside, a staying at a remote hotel gets a bit tedious after a while - but that is part of the work.

While I do have an internet connection here, the connection is too slow for any decent MMO gaming experience. Many game related webpages are also inaccessible, just showing a "network error (dns_server_failure)". Unreliable connectivity to the rest of the world, "filters" or just bad luck?

While it would be fun to play a bit, it is also nice to have some break from the gaming. That both in terms of keeping the gaming parts interesting and with a fresh view, as well as do more of other activities. At home, I probably spend 2-3 hours per day playing, sometimes more.

When I first started playing MMOGs in 2001 play time was only on weekends, since on pretty much every weekday I was in a different country due to work. That kept the interest for the game I was playing, Anarchy Online, for a bit more than a year. But it also effectively kept me out of the loop in terms of people to play with - at least back then I found it a bit difficult to keep at the same level and areas as fellow players and I gave up on that eventually.

How well do games cater for people to take breaks from a game? From a soloing perspective, one can always do that as long as the game cater to some extent for soloers. But how well does the game cater for being able to play with old in-game friends and guildies?

Many games have restrictions of the level range (in level-based games) that people can have in a group, to avoid or minimize power-leveling. If you are too low level in combat you would not be able to kill the mobs you are fighting and if you are too high level they would be too easy.

If your fellow players play many alts and they have moved ahead with some characters while you were on a break, you might still be in the right range for an alt - but just might.
In a large guild there will be easier to find a guildie to play with also. On the other hand, one might have a few friends one would prefer to play with.

So far the games I have played that at least have provided some features to make this easier in level-based games are Everquest 2 and City of Villains/Heroes.

In Everquest 2 there is the mentoring system, which allows a higher level player to be adjusted down to the level of a lower level player. All skills and weared items are adjusted accordingly. The mentored player, the "apprentice" gets a slight xp bonus. The mentor also gets xp, but at a reduced rate. Multiple mentors can mentor an apprentice.

In City of Villain there is the sidekick/exemplar (Heroes) or lackey/malefactor (Villains) system.
One higher level player can exemplar/malefactor a lower level player, effectively being reduced to the same level as the lower level player - similar to the EQ2 mentoring system. The lower level player will get xp as usual, the higher level player will not get xp, but instead more infamy/influence (the "currency" in City of...).
In addition to this, a higher level player (the "boss") can make a lower-level player his/her sidekick/lackey, effectively raising the level of the lower level player to one level below the boss player. The xp gained by the sidekick/lackey is usually slightly better than what the player would gain at the regular level, but still in the same ballpark.

I have used both systems to play with friends at different levels, both higher and lower. In both cases the game experience has definitely been enhanced. For me, features like this that allow players at very different stages to still play with each other in a meaningful way an important feature.
Not only because I might be on breaks from game due to work, but also because I usually play a lot of alts and people I play with might not level their characters in the same order or speed as I do.
As I look at new games, the ease by which the game allows people to play together at any time has become more important.

Do it yourself

I have started to get into a "creative wannabe" phase recently. It started when I realized that some of the City of Villains/Heroes made good use of the demo record and play functionality in the game, such as this music video and this comedy piece .

Basically one can record any sequence in game, which will then be stored as textual commands in a file. That file can then be replayed to show the recorded sequence - and since it is a text file, it can also be edited. Started to set up a family photo of my villain alts and have then started to see if I could make a movie of my own. Since I never have even tried to make a movie ever before, not even with a camcorder, I think I will probably have a bit to learn.

But small steps and I might actually get there eventually. Started with a storyboard and have a basic idea what I want to do at least.