City of Heroes to get frickin' laser beams [Updated]

If there's one common cry on the City of Heroes forums, it's "give us new power sets!" Fortunately, the upcoming Freedom expansion aims to deliver just that. This morning, CoH's Phil "Synapse" Zeleski offered up a new dev blog outlining one of the planned power sets, Beam Rifle. Available to Blasters and Corruptors (as a primary set) and Defenders (as a secondary set), Beam Rifle is heavy on the AoE and features a signature cascading Disintegrate effect, which can be spread to nearby enemies and causes targets to take ever more damage from the power set's attacks. In a nod to style, Synapse noted that "plasma beams from movies, games, and other sources were the inspiration for the style of beam used by this power set" and that it has "a synthetic, futuristic sound with some 'grime' added [to make it] sound powerful."

In related news, Paragon Studios has reiterated that various CoH-flavored purchasables on the NCsoft store website, including the booster packs and expansion boxes, will be discontinued in advance of the looming F2P conversion. If you can't live without a Steampunk costume in the meantime, you have until August 30th to get your fix.

[Update: A second dev blog outlining each of Beam Rifle's powers in-depth is also now available on the official website.]

Reader Comments (16)

Oh boy, I can finally play as a Gundam on City of Heroes! Buster Rifle Blaster here I come!

Hehehe, Austin Powers reference.

@sjheiss now it just needs sharks!

You are a bit too fast (again), dev blog is not up on the City of Heroes web site yet.

The cascading effect was something that was added after beta testers commented that it was a bit much single target in the set and one example they do listen to feedback.

Synapse is also one of those nice guys that logs in and chat with the players on the beta server about the game, even on weekends. Definitely a guy with passion for the game I would say.

@Sente If you click on the "City of Heroes Dev Diary" source link at the bottom of the post, it'll take you straight to the official entry on the official site. Or go here:

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/news/game_updates/issue_21/beam_rif le_power_set.php

Between this and Time Manipulation for I21 and the upcoming Street Justice and Titan Weapon sets after that, they are really filling in the gaps.

If a laser rifle is what people are counting as power sets, then DCUO has way more than 6 powers. Just saying.

@Furdinand - Just to clarify: Power sets in CoH have 9 powers apiece.
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Beam_Rifle

@Furdinand

I don't really know why you wouldn't consider a weapon or martial arts style to be a 'powerset'. I mean there's plenty of weapon or martial arts characters out there.

@Furdinand

So counting weapons and "powers," DCUO has 16 unique powersets total.

Counting powersets, City of Heroes/Villains has 19 unique powersets in the Blaster archetype alone.

Not really sure what point you are trying to make here.

@Shirogetsune

That City of Heroes has vastly more power sets than DCUO and CO combined? And despite that, Paragon are still continuing to put out more and expanding greatly on the ones they have. I guess the point is, that despite CoH's age and being slow on the uptick, you can virtually create any kind of superhero imaginable....accept for ones you can shrink down to crawl up a commenting troll's pant leg and bite its neithers. :)

@Utakata

While I agree that CoX has more power animations than the other 2 games. I would not say vastly, considering the power numbers are inflated by power proliferation, i.e. an energy punch shouldn't be counted more than once just because the same animation is in brutes, scrappers and tanks.

Still CoX is bound by the AT, 2 powersets restriction which is sufficient in many cases but not all

@gandales

I don't know. I'd be tempted to say vastly, at least in comparison to DCUO. I'm not completely sure how many sets there are in CO anymore, but I'd be surprised if it had as many as CoH.

Completely take proliferation out of the picture and you still have a vast number of powersets in CoH. Currently there's 11 separate blast sets (12 with beam weapons), 11 buff/debuff sets (12 with time manipulation), 8 control sets, 6 mastermind pet sets, 14 melee sets (with Street Justice, Titan Weapons upcoming and quite possibly Staff Weapons too), 11 separate armor sets, the Epic Archetype powersets (about 10), and then there's the 6 'manipulation' and 7 'assault' sets which are hard to count since they're generally 'combination' sets (though there's 1 of each that are truly unique).

So about what ... 80 unique powersets that are shared back and forth between the separate ATs.

The AT system doesn't allow for quite the freedom to build characters that CO can (for paid accounts I think), but it does allow for a vast array of them.

@Utakata

Yeah, that's the point I was making. Not sure what the DCUO guy was trying to say in that DCUO has more powers than 6, seeing as how a single archetype in City of Heroes/Villains has more powers than DCUO all together.

i can't wait for CoH Freedom to come out. Not really eager to play the game but more curious to compare to other superhero games.

If you don't have the booster packs yet and you want those pieces you seriously need to get them before Freedom goes live.

If the prices in the store when Freedom is released are anything close to those in the beta store right now (and besides the usual caveat of "this isn't final" there's been absolutely no indication anything will change) then you will be paying 2 to 3 times the price buying those piecemeal from the Freedom store.

City of Heroes to get frickin' laser beams [Updated]

Reader Comments (16)

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 6:01PM ShivanSwordsman said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 6:01PM sjheiss said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 6:46PM Janitor said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 6:11PM Sente said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 6:14PM Brianna Royce said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 6:32PM Stormwalker said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 6:43PM Furdinand said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 6:48PM Brianna Royce said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 8:25PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 8:27PM Shirogetsune said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 9:07PM Utakata said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 9:47PM gandales said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 2:20AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 4:04PM Shirogetsune said

Posted: Aug 23rd 2011 11:28PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 24th 2011 4:02AM goldenhornet said

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