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Reader Comments (11)

Posted: Jul 16th 2009 3:38PM Anatidae said

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They do have a Nemisis:

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/game_updates/issue_16/issue_16_overview.html
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Posted: Jul 16th 2009 5:17PM (Unverified) said

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This is something that should have been in from the get go. I really didn't want to see another CoV incident, where the heroes were already heavily established when the villains finally made it.

This, in my opinion, is why DCUO will attract a large amount of the Champions player base when it launches. Of course, having Batman doesn't hurt it either...
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Posted: Jul 16th 2009 8:59PM wjowski said

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Of course, what people don't realize is that they won't be playing Lex Luthor or Superman, they'll be playing the Ten-Eyed Man and Booster Gold.
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Posted: Jul 16th 2009 5:38PM (Unverified) said

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Wait, they want to once again try to add something later that should of been in at the start?

Cryptic doesn't learn from their past mistakes, do they?
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Posted: Jul 16th 2009 5:47PM (Unverified) said

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Have to agree with the naysayers here. It really didn't work very well when they created City of Villains (CoV tends to be a ghost town anywhere except the most heavily populated servers) and now they're just going to mimic the same thing all over again?

"Hey, it was a mistake the first time we did it, but maybe it won't be a mistake the second time we do it!"

I bet they stick their fingers in light sockets more than once too . . .
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Posted: Jul 16th 2009 6:57PM esarphie said

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I'd have to disagree on the "error" that Cryptic made with City of Villains.

I don't think the error was not having it available from Day One. I mean, seriously, the percentage of people invested in pvp in the City of.. Universe is, was, and always shall be really small. Plus they separated pvp areas by distinct levels, which guaranteed a level-neutral fight from about 3 days after City of Villains was released.

No, the error that made it fizzle from what it should have been, was that City of Villains was simply City of Heroes in a dirtier environment. It really didn't matter if you were a hero or a villain, you pretty much went from contact to contact, getting missions to run to a door, then defeat everything inside that building/tunnel system/secret base for whatever reason the text you really didn't read said.

It needed a totally different feel... a risk vs reward structure that felt much more criminal and a lot less procedural. Heroes fought for reputation with the populace... and Villains fought for anti-reputation with the populace?

That, in my opinion, was the failing of City of Villains. The fact that it didn't really explore the feeling of being a criminal, but simply flipped some text around to call your superpowered character a villain instead of hero.
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Posted: Jul 17th 2009 7:06AM Damn Dirty Ape said

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Although I enjoyed CoV, I agree with you completely. The games were virtually identical and you never really felt like a 'villain', more like a super powered errand boy in a dirtier city. It didn't help that you were often fighting the same people and doing the same missions as the heroes (except that instead of 'rescuing' someone you were 'kidnapping' them).

Personally I think that the only good way to have a superhero game with heros and villains is to have either direct or indirect PvP throughout the game, rather than in battleground type areas like the 'City of' games. Direct PvP is obvious, but by indirect I'm thinking more along the lines of things like WAR's public quests (you send your NPC henchman to rob a bank and a hero has a chance to stop you, etc).
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Posted: Jul 17th 2009 4:20PM esarphie said

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The public quest sorts of things in the pvp zones in City of... kind of operate that way, but once again the goals were all identical. I mean, either the heroes tag all the places, or the villains do... either the heroes win a battle in an area, or the villains do... no difference, really.

For my part, to really feel a sense of super-villainy, I want some sort of reward/downtime to happen after succeeding. If you rob the biggest bank in town, split the cash and have an extravagent party at the local nightclub, or buy a stupidly expensive sports car, or something.

It'd also be nice for your villain to not be running around the world kowtowing to contacts for their entire career. Sure, as a young, wanna-be villain you've got to pay your dues, but when you've got 40+ successful levels of villainous behavior behind you, you really expect the people who want evil things done to come to you once in a while.
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Posted: Jul 16th 2009 10:03PM charlieromeobravo said

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Interesting. With power customization coming to CoH, Cryptic talking about doing a villain version of Champions, lore and base power similarities, it sounds like we're going to have two nearly identical super hero MMOs on the market soon...
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Posted: Jul 17th 2009 2:15AM (Unverified) said

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I think they're being a bit disingenous here. 'If'. Hah. There's no reason they couldn't introduce the game upfront with two factions, plenty of others do it. They're just planning on milking the cow.

In any event, I truly hope they're designing the game with this in mind NOW, especially considering PvP and balancing. But I don't see how they could do it well without proper testing, so I'm afraid it's going to be a not-so-well-thoughtout bolt-on.
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Posted: Jul 17th 2009 8:06AM charlieromeobravo said

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"There's no reason they couldn't introduce the game upfront with two factions, plenty of others do it. "

Except increased development costs and pushing out the release date of the game for who knows how long. No company can develop a game indefinitely. Remember, this game started its life as Marvel Online and villain play wasn't part of the release plans there, at least not initially. Cryptic wasn't solely calling the shots then so when it started to fall apart and they switched it to Champions they had to live with some design decisions that weren't totally made by them.
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