[MUD-Dev] CoH

[Michael Hartman]

Scott Macmillan wrote:

> I'm saying that there are more meaningful choices in CoH than
> you're giving credit for, with power selection, enhancements, and
> with tactical combat.  Given that basis, I'd say that CoH just has
> fewer meaningful choices than you want, or the wrong ones.  On the
> gameplay side, IMO there is a lot to be said for focusing down to
> a few crucial elements.  I don't think Tetris would have been a
> better game if it had a talking animal companion in it.

Honestly, what meaningful choices? I'll take your three examples in
order.

Power Selection: At any given level where you choose a power, you
really do have only 2 or 3 real choices at most. The fact that you
have a few more choices if you want to do something incredibly
foolish and detrimental to your character does not mean you've added
meaningful choice. Furthermore, it is so well known already which
powers are good and which ones are crap, you usually have 1 choice,
and history has shown us that one candidate does not equal a choice.

Enhancements: There is virtually zero choice here. For example,
every attack power gets 1 accuracy and 5 damage, or 6 damage for
blasters with targeting drone. That's it. The fact that you CAN gimp
yourself with exceptionally bad choices (not slotting an attack
power in this manner) is not a meaningful choice.

Every 5 levels you upgrade from X to X+5. If you take a few extra
seconds to sell loot in the right shop, you never have to make
choices as to which things you will upgrade. You'll have plenty of
money. After level 30, even if you rarely sell loot, you'll have
plenty of money. You'll almost never use a found enhancement after
level 15 (if not earlier) because the odds are SLIM it is for your
origin, slimmer that it is a type you need, and even SLIMMER that it
is high enough level to be useful. No matter what level mobs you are
fighting, the level of the drops is affected by your character
level. That's incredibly silly. There's no reward for fighting hard
mobs.

As I have noted previously, the system is exceptionally depressing
because as soon as you upgrade your enhancements (which have the
same effect as the ones you had at level 1) you now face an average
6% decay in potency each time you gain a level. By the 4th level of
5 in an upgrade cycle, you are 24% weaker than you were 4 levels
ago. Boy, that's fun- gaining levels to get weaker.

Furthermore, enhancements provide absolutely ZERO visual effect or
cues. Your powers don't look different. The effects do not look
different. Nothing is different.

Tactical Combat: Ok, you've got to tell us how far you've gotten
into the game. CoH has fast paced combat, but it is definitely not
tactical. CoH has to be the easiest, least tactical MMORPG I've
played- and I've played tons. Getting dragons stuck on terrain in
AC2 required more skill and strategy.

It would not be exaggerating to say that an average 9 year old could
play this game and play it quite well. The game is designed to send
your hero against large hordes of very wimpy foes. The result of
this is that they cannot really hurt you, and you can kill them in 1
or 2 hits. This renders debuffs, crowd control, aggro management,
healing, and many other forms of support or other tactics
irrelevant. Sure, you can fight harder foes (purple cons), but the
game punishes you for doing this. Not only are the rewards
incredibly inferior, but the loot is the same (see above) and they
have actually made patch changes to dramatically DECREASE your
ability to fight hard foes.

I haven't even gone into the fact that the game excessively
discourages grouping and doing missions (the closest thing to a
story in the game). At level 25+, the exp earned in missions is
1/10th that of general hunting and the xp in groups is half or worse
than solo. Obviously there is more to a game than pure xp, but CoH
has nothing but advancement which begs the question "what else is
there?" Further more, even if your game has more than combat,
discouraging grouping and discouraging missions/questing/whatever
through dramatically diminished rewards is bad design.

At this point you might be asking "Wow. If you hate the game so much
why did you play it so much." I don't hate the game. It is like a
cheap but enjoyable pulp novel you read to pass the time on a train
ride. I run CoH in the background while programming and alt-tab into
it now and then to mindlessly slaughter a few groups of bad
guys. This is at level 35+ mind you. It takes no strategy or
tactics. It takes almost ZERO thought. Every mob is killed the
same. Every battle is the same. Every piece of loot is nothing more
than a widget to be sold for money (called influence). But the game
is pretty and it passes the time while working so I play it. The
fact that the PC market has been lacking horribly in games certainly
doesn't hurt either.
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