Greetings. Never played before

[Sume]

Greetings. 

 

I have never had a chance to play this game and keep forgetting about this project.  That is tell a hero system Facebook group shared the good news about the license from Ncsoft 

 

I am honestly lost and confused about everything I found on character stuff. Brand new to this game but not online games.  I never got to give this game a chance since I was pretty engrossed with WoW and only wanting to pay one subscription price. Then I remember the shutdown announcement and that was that.

 

All I am certain about is I would like to make a rogue character since that's the expansion and feature that orginally interested me years ago.  Sadly had no money or a good enough PC for it at the time.  I was dealing with personal injuries and money was tight. 

 

I get to normally play around 3 am to 8 am Pacific time as my normal free hours from work and sleep. I do approach games now more causal and dont necessary need hardcore raiding or pvp.

 

Now I don't know where to start.  I like to play stealthily characters, stealth archers, melee stuff and I generally actually like to tank stuff. I did try to look at archetypes and quickly got lost.

 

Thank you and I hope to meet new people. Also any noob friendly advice be helpful. 

[Digitalspork]

My biggest suggestion would be to just take a good long look into the Power Sets and Archetypes and just try something that feels right or interesting.

In the end you can have a ton of fun just playing every Power Set Combo in the game, and at least for me, a large chunk of the fun is in making characters and leveling and exploring the world with them while they become stronger.

But in terms of advice; Enhancements are everything! -- Don't make my youthful mistake, they are essentially the gear of other MMORPGs and make a huge difference in how each and every power works and can really make your build something magic with a little experimentation.

In the end, be creative, have fun, enjoy Paragon City! ❤️

[uninventive]

1 hour ago, Sume said:

I like to play stealthily characters, stealth archers, melee stuff and I generally actually like to tank stuff. I did try to look at archetypes and quickly got lost.

 

If it helps: Archetype, Powerset, Powers.  Always in that order.  Archetypes are sweeping groups of heroes, with powers being specific abilities.  Powersets are the glue in between.

 

Stealthily characters: Look at Illusion powersets (For Controller & Dominator archetypes) and Stalker Archetype (Stealth + Melee, single target attacks).  If those don't work, Concealment is a power pool choice.  (Deciphering game-speak: you can add Stealth to any character you like!)

 

Archers: available on three Archetypes, so you can choose between --

Blasters: High damage attacks with Melee backup powers (just in case someone closes in).  Got a Cliff Barton or Kate Bishop type rambling in your brain?  This might be them.  Can't take a beating, though.

Corruptors: Ranged attacks with debuff and support abilities.  Good for someone who leans on the bow, but has abilities to help others.  (Red Mage? Post Apocalyptic Warrior?  Up to you.)

Sentinels: Single Target Ranged attacks with Self-Defensive abilities.  More of a Ranger/Hunter Type.

 

Tanks are melee in this game.  (Closest 'ranged tank' is a Sentinel, but they can't take as much aggro.)  As well as their counterparts Brutes who aggro less enemies but have a rage mechanic that boosts their damage the more they attack.  The other melee choices are Stalker (already mentioned; best for single target fighting, they cannot tank at all) and Scrappers (less aggro but more damaging attacks than a tank or brute.)

Edited January 6 by uninventive

[MoonSheep]

hey, welcome!

 

here‘s a link to the CoH wiki page where you ca read about the archetypes - it sounds like a Stalker would be the right fit for you

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Archetypes

 

which server are you going to play on? excelsior is the busiest if you like a crowd, indomitable is the quietest if you prefer solo and a close community

[Clave Dark 5]

A bit of side advice: keep hanging out in the forums, read up on whatever interested you across them, you should be able to pick up a lot of info by osmosis.  Ask in-game too and the Help channel, there's always helpful folk around.  Enjoy the game!

[uninventive]

The fun part for any new player: Costume Creator.

Unlike WoW and other MMOs, costumes are completely decoupled from gear choices (Enhancements don't affect your look at all.)  You can make your character look however you like from the start.

 

You have six costume slots to start with (six different looks).  You don't have to do them all right away, but costume edits at a tailor (Icon or Facemaker) are FREE until Level 10 if you want to get your look just right.  At Level 10, you gain a free costume change token every 10 levels to cover the remaining four slots you can earn in-game for a total of ten costumes per character.  All other costume edits cost in INF (the more parts you edit, the higher the fee) with Level 10 being the cheapest and Level 50 being full price.

You can also save costumes as a .costume file on your computer. For example if you want to make a family of heroes who look similar, or want to share the costume with another player, or want a backup of a costume to return to in case you make a mistake you don't like. 

 

Biggest catch of the system: Costumes are gender-typed (Male, Female and yes, Humongous) so parts on a Male toon won't load on a Female or Humongous and thrice-versa. (Is that even a phrase?)  You can mix genders on the same character if you prefer: want a Bruce Banner Hulk, or got an Iron Man in a large Exo-Frame suit?  Male and Humongous costume slots can be done. Or you can be a shapeshifter who can be anything. (Got to visit a tailor for the "Plastic Surgeon" contact to do that.)

Edited January 6 by uninventive

[Sume]

Thank you all so far the feedback.  I will check the wiki out once I get home and a chance to relax. It was difficult to see what I wanted at lunch break since I constantly had to zoom in and out. 

 

I was looking at stalker, brute, scrapper some though.  Why I mentioned stealthy characters is how I ended up playing skyrim, oblivion and the fallouts since 3. 

 

I did try Champions online a few times over the years.  Hard with an old computer and the latest time the pay to win turned me off.

 

My favorite hero system character was a cross between dazzler and banshee.  Not knowing it at the time as all I knew was the major x men, kitty pryde, spiderman, blade and the best known dc heroes. 

 

Not sure what sticks out to me yet. Have some typical after work chores to do and change the stuff on my 3d printer.  Before I can set down and check things out. 

[Healix]

[Sume]

I made my person and the name is Miss Brandy.  I picked Excelsior for more people.  Better chance at getting groups and or questions answered, I think.  I went with Going Rogue as that is what caught my attention to begin with.  I decided upon Tanker as it has high survivability and the game suggested solo content.  I went with Dark Melee and smite as my powers.  I sort of like the idea of a dark mystic for some reason.  Hopefully I will see people in game.

Edited January 6 by Sume

[Techwright]

Welcome!

 

Don't be afraid to make mistakes and have to start over.  In my noobish days on the original incarnation of the game, I had to create and destroy three or four characters until I found one that clicked with me.  None of them I consider failures though I removed them.  Each one taught me details about the game.

 

I could write a manual for starting in the game (probably should) but l'll give a little help for anyone getting started.  I'll just cover the first screen of the character creator, but including some terms and links to help down the road:

 

Starting zone choices - There are two buttons here.  I'd advise all brand new players to avoid the "Going Rogue" button until you have experience in the game.  Going Rogue (sometimes nicknamed "gold side" or "Praetoria") can be played by a new player, but it can be confusing and isolating without reading up on it.  The City of Heroes: Freedom button is probably what you want.  Once you get to the tutorial zones for this button, you'll be asked to choose a side:  blue=hero/vigilante, red=villain/rogue.   Don't worry.  If you find you don't like the alignment choice, you can change it later in game.

 

Origins - don't sweat it too much with this.  The five starting origins are more of a storytelling concept for your character. (The wiki classifies "incarnate" as an origin, but you need not worry about that until level 50.)  The starting five do, however have a couple of things different between them.  Each origin has its own unique minor attack in the game, and the attack will deliver a small amount of damage and an additional effect.  Technology, for example, has a taser delivering a small amount of damage and also stunning your opponent briefly.   Origins also affect the selection of enhancements available early in the game (later game enhancements do no recognize origin, nor do special set enhancements).  These origin-based enhancements can be bought at vendors (on the hero side, two are close to the giant Atlas statue in the first major zone after the tuturial zones) or the enhancements can be drops acquired during combat (check your enhancements tray to see them).  The two kinds of Origin enhancements are Dual-Origin, and Single-Origin.  Dual is the weaker of the two, but as its name implies, two different origins can utilize it.  You'll not be able to use any origin enhancement that does not match your origin, so for those, plan on selling them to the vendors, or trading them with friends/teammates, or even giving them to your alternate characters with the correct origin (You can use the mail system to do this. Just address the email to your global name, like "@GlobalSuperguy" and it will deliver back into your email box, allowing any of your characters from any server to collect the contents.  Players trade the main currency, a.k.a. "INF", and other goods between their characters this way.)  Lastly, origins have an affect on a very few weapons that you can acquire for free from the P2W vendors.  The weapons description at the vendor will describe what origin works best with the weapon.  More on P2W below.

 

I'd also consider flagging yourself for help when you reach the first zone.  The game will have a pop-up with that option.  If you choose the blue/hero side as your start, it is not uncommon for seasoned players to hang out under the giant Atlas statue to help out with information, or even provide a generous boost to currency.  I'd recommend that if you feel you need to end a character and start again, that you not delete the character until you've created a new one.  Then return to the character to be removed, log in, and mail to your global name all the remaining INF and any enhancements he/she has.  It will be there for the newly-minted character to grab when you log back into them.

 

One last thing:  There are vendors called "P2W" in the game.  Find them, and take everything free that they offer, assuming you like what they offer.  Some things free have choices.  For example, the Experience Boosters have increasing levels of boosts to experience, aka "XP", needed to reach your next rank, but the trade off is that they reduce the amount of currency, INF, collected.  A new player may want to use the lowest setting, or avoid it altogether, so that your money making continues unabated.  Some of the free items are weapons, and very useful in the game, especially early on.  Read each one before taking so that you make good choices. The few origin-specific weapons in the game are found with the P2W vendors.  Once you acquire a weapon or ability from a P2W vendor, go to your control tray and click on "Powers".  Find the equipment/ability (in the third column) and drag it to a spot in your tray.

 

[JasperStone]

Welcome!!!!!

 

You have been given great suggestions, to add:

• Costume Creator - to see the full power click the "Random" button. Then go in and tweak what you want
  • Beware of the link costume colors - that means the colors are the same across the costume, you can click that off to tweak colors to individual costume pieces
  • You can also do asymmetry - left and right arms and legs being different
  •  Same to your powers - A color scheme across the entire set or you can create a different look for each power
  • Check out the Friday Costume Competition  🙂
• Go slow - Hero or Villian, Blue or Red - take your time. 
• Think of joining a Super Group to see how bases work. They can be big and sprawling or small and efficient. It is beefy, like our costume creator, and is FREE!
  • You can build your solo SG Base 🙂 There is a forum thread for it.
•  Setup your UI however you wish, keymapping is an option ingame, but most people make their own.
• Separating Chat - I recommend separating channels into separate tabs. Helps to see only what you want to see.

ummm don't forget to have FUN 🙂

 

 

[Skyhawke]

At level 5, you'll get a contact (Twinshot heroside and Dr Graves villainside). Do their arcs at levels 5, 10 and 15. For vets, they're cheesy fun, but for a newcomer they do funnel you into all the different aspects of the game. Do NOT play on the Going Rogue side as a newbie...it's geared to be harder without that nice learning curve. Also, send Yomo an ingame email to @Yomo and you'll get 100 million influence/infamy for free (totally legit).

Edited January 6 by Skyhawke

[cranebump]

Echoing playthrough of Twinshot after you Run Habashy. You could also do the Outbreak tutorial prior to entering Atlas.

[Oubliette_Red]

4 hours ago, Sume said:

I made my person and the name is Miss Brandy.  I picked Excelsior for more people.  Better chance at getting groups and or questions answered, I think.  I went with Going Rogue as that is what caught my attention to begin with.  I decided upon Tanker as it has high survivability and the game suggested solo content.  I went with Dark Melee and smite as my powers.  I sort of like the idea of a dark mystic for some reason.  Hopefully I will see people in game.

 

Fair warning about Praetoria content, the mobs are tougher, ambushes ignore stealth and will hunt you down and if you want to play though all of the contact's mission arc, you'll need to turn off XP and not touch the XP boosts from the P2W Vendor (Transact 4 Victory in Praetoria). As soon as you outlevel them they will ignore you. On all of my Praetorians is use the following to toggle my XP on/off

 

/macro_image "DayJob_XPBoost" "XP Toggle" "option_toggle noxp"

 

This puts a button on my toolbar that I can click whenever I'm closing in on the top level range for any particular contact.

 

Welcome to CoH.

 

[Coyotedancer]

Welcome to the City, Sume. 😎

 

Tanks are Love. Smashy, tough love which ought to be able to handle Praetoria pretty well, even if you find yourself having to solo sometimes. (Which you may, since fewer people start and play through the Going Rogue starting areas, even on Excelsior.)

 

The hero starting areas that you'll see most of us calling "Blue Side" are the most popular.  The "Red SIde" is the villain half of the game, and is somewhat less popular, but still has enough people to usually find a team. The Going Rogue starting zones, "Gold Side", were added to the game later in its commercial period and are the least populated starting area. It can be a little tough for teaming, especially if you aren't playing during peak hours.

 

Praetoria can absolutely be soloed, though, and doing the arcs on your own gives you the chance to read all of the mission text and really get a feel for the place, which is an advantage. Teams can make doing that difficult.

 

 

 

Edited January 6 by Coyotedancer

[High_Beam]

First off, welcome, these forums and the Wiki (referenced above) will be your bestest friends with regards to getting acclimated.

 

Be aware that a lot of team content, especially Task Force/Strike Force/Trial are run very fast, often so fast that you will not know whats going on.  Even veteran players often get frustrated with this.  Watch the Team advertising in LFG chat and if it says speed, fast, just objectives, you may well just be tagging along going "wha?"

 

KM (Kill Most) tends to slow it down to where you can sort of follow along.  Read the Homecoming Wiki (and get an idea of what awaits you (except it will spoil so your choice).

 

Have fun.  This amazing little dated game is still more fun than you will get form the modern stuff.

 

Except Laser Jai Ali, I mean how can you compete with Laser Jai Ali . . . Its Jai Ali . . . with a reflective ball and lasers that are reflected off the ball.  Very high powered lasers.  Like 10 TJ powered.  I mean the average lifespan of one of those players is like seven minutes . . . Glorious!

[Sume]

I ended up deleting and redoing the character.  Kept everything the same though.  As I found the tutorial for Going Rogue was broken.  I did the same server but went hero side.  I had to ask for help to find Ms Liberty.  I was like omg once shown where she was.  

[Snarky]

12 hours ago, Sume said:

Greetings. 

 

I have never had a chance to play this game and keep forgetting about this project.  That is tell a hero system Facebook group shared the good news about the license from Ncsoft 

 

I am honestly lost and confused about everything I found on character stuff. Brand new to this game but not online games.  I never got to give this game a chance since I was pretty engrossed with WoW and only wanting to pay one subscription price. Then I remember the shutdown announcement and that was that.

 

All I am certain about is I would like to make a rogue character since that's the expansion and feature that orginally interested me years ago.  Sadly had no money or a good enough PC for it at the time.  I was dealing with personal injuries and money was tight. 

 

I get to normally play around 3 am to 8 am Pacific time as my normal free hours from work and sleep. I do approach games now more causal and dont necessary need hardcore raiding or pvp.

 

Now I don't know where to start.  I like to play stealthily characters, stealth archers, melee stuff and I generally actually like to tank stuff. I did try to look at archetypes and quickly got lost.

 

Thank you and I hope to meet new people. Also any noob friendly advice be helpful. 

Willkommen!!!   Gotta love fresh blood….

 

Check out Yomo’s thread for free (good amount) cash.  It is just a couple posts down in General 

 

Redside is best side.  Rogue gets best of both worlds.  Although you will find it (slightly) easier to team as a Vigilante due to mixed team invites creating issues.  (Have to be in same zone if mixed, Rogue is default Red). 
 

Enjoy everything.  Try everything. 

[FFFF]

17 minutes ago, Sume said:

I ended up deleting and redoing the character.  Kept everything the same though.  As I found the tutorial for Going Rogue was broken.  I did the same server but went hero side.  I had to ask for help to find Ms Liberty.  I was like omg once shown where she was.  

 
Don’t be afraid to start a few different characters with different power sets and archetypes. One of the things you’ll notice is that they’ll play quite differently. Some combinations are powerful right out the gate and others require considerable investment. That is not saying those combinations are worse, just longer developing with a payoff later in your character career. 
 

You’ll find some combinations will draw you in more than others. The best thing about COH is the range of choices. Many will advise to start with a concept and pick powers sets that match what you have in mind. I find that characters with a strong concept tend to be less throwaway and get played more. 
 

There are a lot of concepts that fit a stealthy archer character, including power sets that you may not know have archery based powers such as Illusion/Trick Archery controllers. The Archery blast sets are common to Blasters, Corruptors and I believe Sentinels (not sure about the last because I’ve only rolled one Sentinel character) and Trick Arrow, which is a debuff set, is available to Defenders, Corruptors and Controllers. 
 

Finally, welcome to the City of Heroes. If you need any further assistance, let us know here or in-game. I’d be happy to jump on for a few minutes and show you around.

[Techwright]

37 minutes ago, Sume said:

I ended up deleting and redoing the character.  Kept everything the same though.  As I found the tutorial for Going Rogue was broken.  I did the same server but went hero side.  I had to ask for help to find Ms Liberty.  I was like omg once shown where she was.  

At the moment she can be swarmed and hard to find, that's for sure. 

 

Pro tip:  There are two other ways in Atlas park to get a trainer that isn't mobbed by trainees:

 

1. Back Alley Brawler, trainer and wielder of massive metal gloves, stands in a very small park at the center of a road loop in the far southwestern corner of Atlas Park.  For now, there's no enhancement vendor near him, which is probably why he's so lonely (hope they fix that soon).  But it does give you a chance to level up when working in his area.

 

2. Immediately to the east of City Hall is a large building with a Freedom Corp banner.  Go in the door facing City Hall and you'll find yourself in Fort Trident, a secret submarine base.  (yeah, this far from the coastline. Must be an amazing tunnel.) There's a trainer (it's Back Alley Brawler again.  The man gets around.) and both an Inspirations vendor (Nurse Alexa) and an enhancements vendor (Longbow Quartermaster) among the staff on the same level as BABs.  By the way, I should warn you: the enhancements vendor here still sells Training Enhancements (TOs) which are the least powerful enhancements in the game. Homecoming has kept them at a few vendors, but they're largely obsolete, unless you're starving for cash. Scroll down past them to see the Dual Origin (DOs) and Single Origin (SOs) enhancements.

Edited January 6 by Techwright
added links

[Coyotedancer]

8 hours ago, Sume said:

I ended up deleting and redoing the character.  Kept everything the same though.  As I found the tutorial for Going Rogue was broken.  I did the same server but went hero side.  I had to ask for help to find Ms Liberty.  I was like omg once shown where she was.  

 

 

We've all been there with something... Just like we've all gotten caught on a bus stop while super-speeding across Steel Canyon. 😝

[Skyhawke]

If, IF you decide to go to Pretoria  (the Going Rogue option in character creation) before really playing through blueside, might I recommend an Ice/Electric brute. Ice gives you Ice Patch early on which is great for the metric butt ton of ambushes you'll face and Electric Armor gives you energy damage cap almost unslotted. Guess what most things in Praetoria dish out. 

[cranebump]

Suggest opening your map, then detaching it, and moving to one side, so you can see contacts, stores, and trainers (like Ms Lib):-)

[Oubliette_Red]

4 minutes ago, cranebump said:

Suggest opening your map, then detaching it, and moving to one side, so you can see contacts, stores, and trainers (like Ms Lib):-)

☝️

This, I keep my map open at all times.

 

[DoctorDitko]

Also, Vidiotmaps is your friend: