CoV NDA lifted

[Wubao]

They lifted the NDA on City of Villains beta testers.

Here's my opinion of the game with my limited beta experience:

The good:
- Masterminds are a nice pet class. Something they could have done ages ago in CoH. EQ vets will feel comfortable with the pet commands.

- Costume options. More costume options are always a plus.

- Newspaper misisons. I wish they put this in CoH, as it would really have a nice HERO feel more than a villain feel. But as it is, the paper missions rock. Being able to choose your own misison and never run out, is something CoH has needed for ages.

The Not so Good:

- New tilesets, same old missions. A lot of the missions are just the same old tired "Defeat X" "Click Glowie" or "Defeat all villains in warehouse" missions.

- Some familiar faces. I really shouldn't be fighting The Lost again. Or the Hellions. Or the Skulls. They went and made some new foes to fight. But when you run into some hellions, it feels really half assed.

- Cape mission. Lame. Was lame in CoH. Is lame in CoV. A villain wouldn't really give a crap about the things they expect you to give a crap about if you follow that mission's story.

The really sucky part:

- Level 40 is the cap. AGAIN they release an incomplete game. That sucked the first time around. Is gonna suck again.

- Hero Villain PvP is UNTESTED. So the big fun happy base raid part of the game is going into launch either non-functional, or completely FUBAR.

- Most of their end-game is untested. As with CoH beta, their level bump came far too late to matter. Again, the focus is on the early game and they plan to fill in the holes as they go along. As we've seen in CoH with 5 updates of nerfs to powersets, this sloppy approach only leads to major problems going live. And the playerbase gets used to these major problems, and doesn't want to give up the way things are.

- PvP, being as tested as it is, is only going to tick a lot of folks off. One shot kills. Powers that are supposed to be useful being bugged or untested so not being useful (perception for instance). This PvP thing needs more testing, more tweaks. I'd be shocked if they give it the attention it needs.

- Did I mention the game is being launched INCOMPLETE? Cause you know that Hero falling from grace or Villain reforming and redeeming himself function? The "switch sides" function? Yeah, that doesn't exist. Maybe after the first 3 to 6 months with a patch or something.

So there you have it. My feeling is, the game can sell itself on its strengths ... which are SS/Inv BRUTES allowing folks to make the slugfest oriented, punch happy super "hero" they never got to make in CoH ... Stalkers playing the super ganker in PvP for folks who like that ... masterminds being the new shiny toy out of the box ... and bases being all the rage with the heroes (depending on how quickly they get those bugs fixed).

But for those grim, hardened MMORPG vets among us, CoV's gonna disappoint. You don't feel all that villainous, because you DO basically the same stuff you DO in CoH. You run around fighting things for your contacts, and you street sweep. I was walking past two family gangsters shaking down a civillain today in beta, and KEPT WALKING. My villain doesn't care that someone's getting mugged. Why bother? That type of street sweeping even being in the game shows how half-done this game is. There's no incentive for my robotics mastermind to stop that crime in progress. I feel insulted that the game even expects me to care. And you keep running into that all over this game. Contacts ask you to do missions for them for favor. Like I give a crap! I'm a villain, with my own personal robot army. Disrespect me at your own peril. But this City of Villains doesn't play like that. It plays like you're a hero doing deeds. With a lot of the same basic maps (though fancy new wall graphics), and a lot of the same villains.

I'm not sure this game is worth 50 bucks. They're lucky they offer the single account rate. If I had to pay more to play both games, I would definitely not buy this game. As it is, I'm still not sure I want to buy it. I can wait until all of the good stuff in this game (costume options, bases, pet functionality) gets crossed over into CoH in a patch down the road, and then I can just keep playing as a hero. At least there, I feel compelled to aid the person being mugged.

I dunno there are quite a few fun missions that make you feel like a villain. There is one story arc where you kidnap a guy for one sub family of "The Family" for another sub family. Then when you go to collect payment, they turn on you. You spend the rest of the story arc taking revenge.

I personally love the game. It's more fun than CoH, but like CoH, I can't really spend 1000s of hours playing it. Few hours here and there is all the game really holds me for. Not sure that's a bad thing, but it's no where near as immersive as EQ is.

[Baccas]

Above poster is me... :\

[Kaane Feiwong]

CoH is NEVER complete so saying they are releasing an incomplete game is premature at the least, especially since that is how EVERY MMORPG has been.

It is an expansion, it is just unique in how they are releasing it. So don't expect the next coming.

I will say that if you like CoH you will like CoV. It's not the golden carrot that will pull CoH to the top. So instead of a great expansion, they produced a really good one.

[Dalantia]

- Cape mission. Lame. Was lame in CoH. Is lame in CoV. A villain wouldn't really give a crap about the things they expect you to give a crap about if you follow that mission's story.

It's either care or get disintegrated. I'll take care.

Me? I think that there will be an outcry the likes of which God has never seen when CoH players meet Stalkers in PvP.

Edit:

can wait until all of the good stuff in this game (costume options, bases, pet functionality) gets crossed over into CoH in a patch down the road

They won't be, according to Cryptic.

A significant majority of the costume options on the Villain side are going to stay villain-only.

Controllers, Dominators, and Defenders will *never* get any semblance of control over their pets beyond leading them by the nose, as, supposedly (according to Posi on the MM boards), they've been balanced with "BERSERKER" control in mind. Yeah, they'll get the pet window, but not the control that comes with it.

Bases are, according to Cryptic again, only allowed for heroes with registered COV accounts.

[Superchum]

"They won't be, according to Cryptic. "

The same cryptic that's twisted and gone back on its previous statements time and time again?

Call my cynical but ... the only reason they're not going to offer this stuff right away is to sell more copies of CoV. (Like SoE and its expansion marketing strategies). When that's no longer an issue, I bet some "loopholes" in what they said before start to crop up.

Like Bases. They've already said that down the line, bases might get patched into non-CoV having people.

As time goes by, and folks complain and complain and complain and wear down the devs, all these things they say are villain only will get chipped away at.

The only real issue is, does someone have the patience to wait that long?

Me? I think I do.

Regarding costume options ... while I don't see eyeplugs and spiked boots and barbed wire coming over to the hero side, I do see a lot of the chest icons, some of the new shoulder options, the new jackets (Lab Coats, the REAL leather jacket) and the like all coming over.

Some stuff is pretty obviously villainous. Other stuff, though, is flexible enough that once folks see it in their shiny new CoV package, they'll start to post, and complain, and post, and complain until they wear the devs down on things like lab coats and bowler hats.

That stuff will come over soon enough.

[Dalantia]

Mmm. I also recall that CoV and CoH wouldn't be linked right away, so I6/I1 will be on Test, and they'll get to test Hero v. Villain PvP.

*shrug* I dunno.