I don't get why this is so much better than CO

[HEROID]

Champions Online has some lovely graphics and an exceptional costume creator. The female characters can be very beautiful if you work at it and you can actually get a variety of female faces by using the sliders. But all of the male characters look goofy and no matter how hard you try, all of the male faces wind up looking alike.

 

 

Also, when you roll up a new character, you always start with at the same spot and run the same Purple Gang missions over and over until you are sick of them. I have never gotten to the higher level content because the level 1 to 20 content is so repetitive that I get bored. City of Heroes has them beat on 1 to 20 content, hands down. CO is not a game for altoholics like me.

 

 

Bases in CO are not customizable and there is no creativity involved in the game after character design and conception.

 

 

These issues and a few other things are why I prefer CoH to CO.

 

[oedipus_tex]

I've always praised this game for its "chaos factor."

 

I did not like this game at first. I found the low level soloing experience to be painful. Then I discovered radio/pickup teams. Totally changed my perspective.

 

Play on some teams with a mixed group of heroes. The battles get crazy and the powerset choices matter. That's the best I can describe it.

 

You shouldn't look at powerset choices as limitations. The goal is to find combinations and make them work. Some are more powerful than others, of course. But many are still viable.

 

I'm playing Earth/Nature and a Ice/Kinetics Controllers right now. Totally different gameplay experiences. Every time I think one of them is "better" I encounter a situation where one or the other would have been able to respond to the battle in a different way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JakeyK]

Once upon a time, when CO was first hyped and released, I bought a lifetime subscription to it, believing it would be a better 'version' of CoH.  At first it seemed cool, the costume options alone were standout, but as I played it I just wanted to play City of- again and so I went back to it.

 

There are many reasons why I love city of- even though it has outdated graphics and static combat (which being said, looks and feels chaotic when you're in a team, it's bonkers).

 

1. Community - I have formed lifelong friendships with my first teammates on CoX.  We write together, draw together, laugh and play other games together.

2. Inspiration - More than any other game I've played, CoH taps into something at my core that provokes me to write, to roleplay, to draw, to have fun.  It's something CO could never do for me.

3. ??? - I have pondered the mystery X-factor that City of- has and I cannot for the life of me put my finger on it.  I've since learned game design and development, written whole novels worth of content and yet I cannot explain what makes CoX so much more engaging than any other game I've played.

4. Devs - back in the day, you could talk to any of the devs, they were open and friendly and active in the community.  I think the soul of CoX was really defined by Positron and company.  And WarWitch's writing is excellent (she did the later arcs and I think she did the 'who will die' arc ... someone please correct me if I'm wrong).

 

In essence, I don't think anyone can really define why they love this game so much.  It has je ne sais quoi.  X-factor.  Something sublime and unknowable in it's very roots.  And even though it's clunky and flawed, the love I carry from when it was at its prime to now covers over those cracks and just gives me joy.

 

And things that give me joy can stay.

[tolrick]

 

The community in CoX have also never been too concerned with the balance of power, in my opinion. Sure, certain MM powersets might be stronger than the other archetypes, but if you don't find MMs fun, then there's no reason to play one. And in a large group setting, the OP-ness of what you're playing matters less. As you get into endgame and start crafting and slotting IO sets, that balance of power also shifts again.

 

Ultimately, CoX is a game that's about the journey, not the destination. There's no point spamming AE on your MM and hitting 50 in 3 days if you never had fun doing it, and don't have fun playing the character. One of my fondest memories of the game was making SS/invuln tankers with my friends, making all of them look like Trolls and roleplaying Trolls while running around in the Hollows. Those characters didn't even make it past 20 because they were silly gimmicks, but to me, they were way more fun than playing a dominator who could wipe out an entire screen in seconds (to me, at least).

 

 

Here are two of my main reasons for liking CoX more.

 

I tried CO as well.  the graphics turned me off, but then so did the artwork of the Teen Titans cartton as compared to JLU or Batman TAS.  I adjusted and came to love the show.

That didn't happen with CO.  I enjoyed the freeform powers, but that was just about it.  The game had no heart.  It was just a hastily slapped on re-skin of a Marvel game with equally no heart.

 

Here, the community, despite the insanity of the average forum, is warm and welcoming once you get into the game.  You feel wanted, like you belong, no matter how new you are.  No other MMO or multiplayer game I have ever tried, short of the original Neverwinter Nights, has accomplished this.  I have more friends in game than I think I've ever had in real life.  Many of them better friends than any of my RL ones.  That's shifting slightly because I've been talking the game up for seven years, so now they want to try it too.

 

and yeah, the journey.  There are still plpaces in CoX I haven't been.  Eden, Recluse's Victory, I barely touched the Shadow Shard back then.    I took 4 years to get my first 50 and never worried.  Never cared "it's taking too long".  Conversely, I tried STO at start and made 50 in a week.  I proceeded to get very bored with it.

 

 

In short, there is no "one thing" that makes this game so loved.  It's all the pieces, put together just right.  And we'll be here forever because of it.

[hnloaded]

CO lacks a firm structure that CoH has.  With the unguided build system of Champions Online, and the (relatively) poor balancing and no limitations on powers, there's no real emphasis on team play like there is in City of Heroes.

 

The other part of this is its very easy to make a bad build in CO becuase you're not limited in your powerset choices.  So, like, I say i'm a corrupter (i want that passive) I'm then told, okay, here's the primary sets you can have.  Here's teh secondary/ancillary/patron powers too, pick from this list.  This keeps newer players safe from the pitfalls of 'Pick hwatever' that lead to dilluded builds in CO.

[Sniktch]

Cities has Cyrus Thompson.  An old man, forcibly retired because if he ever uses his powers again, it'll kill him.  And when the Freedom Phalanx - and OUR CHARACTERS - aren't fast enough to save the day...  he does, knowing full-well the result.

 

Every storyline from CO I remember, outside the Vibora Apocalypse, is "you win, hurrah".  And even Vibora is 'fixed' via time travel.  Cities has multiple storylines where the end isn't happy...because our characters aren't perfect, the contacts aren't perfect, and people make mistakes.  Villains has even more.  And those flawed victories are what ends up being character-defining, to me - knowing Terra got turned into a literal monster because we got too complacent is the kind of thing that drives a hero ever-harder, or reshapes them into something different.  They cause us to write stories, to try and feel and think like these characters would.  To look at a life through someone else's eyes.  CO's stories don't do that.

 

CO's 'click, charge, sustain, combo' combat is...interesting, to some degree - but it's buried under a mountain of unclear stats, and a lot of sets actually have powers that don't work with the main stat of the others; the chain attacks in their Super Strength are a perfect example.  They're ranged, so they use one Super Stat for damage, but all the rest of the set uses Strength.  Control tools are neutered to literal uselessness; IIRC the longest-lasting hold is 4 seconds, IF that critter doesn't get damaged the whole time, with a crippling  level of diminishing returns on repeated applications.  Buffs are almost an afterthought, and debuffs are iffy at best.  The game is essentially heal/tank/DPS, whereas Cities is 'do what you aspire to'.

 

Base-building.  CO's was as much of a bolted-on kludge as PvP was for Cities, and it showed.  In Cities, the small circle of friends I ran with regularly had multiple bases for our multiple ideas, ranging from a Kings Row strip-club to a leaky, rusty, dingy ship.  They all felt different, unique, a lot more interesting than CO's 'one room, three furnishings, call it bases' thing.  And unlike CO's, Cities bases had functionality - zone TPs, SG storage, hospital, buff machines, a place to craft outside the universities and abandoned labs, etc.

 

Scale.  Cities felt BIGGER.  Millenium City could be crossed in about 2 minutes as I recall - Paragon City, it can take that long for one NEIGHBORHOOD.  And that lends a sense of both scale and cohesion; in CO, you got 'more space' by going to OTHER PLACES.  Nevada, Canada, that jungle island, Vibora Bay, and undersea...actually, i think that's the whole list.  And each one was about the size of maybe Kings Row.  Cities, it's ALL Paragon City.  Different aspects, but you feel like you're in a PLACE, not scattershot 'world of X' thrown at the dartboard.

 

Mechanics.  CO's numbers system is almost intentionally obfuscatory - half the sub-stats are deceptive, the opther half are unexplained.  In Cities, after the Real Numbers update, things are very, very explainable, very clear.  Even with ED in place.  Same with IOs.  And the fact that as long as it's basic IOs or 'lower', it's 'no-farm availability' makes it very newbie-friendly, as well as reliable for old-timers.  Cities has no 'gear check' content - everything CAN be done with SOs only.  It may take more time, more effort, but as long as you are the level required, you're in.  CO has literal gear-score checks all over the place, so sometimes even being the requisite level isn't enough - and I don't put this on the same level as 'need to do Story Arc X to access SF Y'. because there's an actual universe-canon reason for that, not an arbitrary 'need x Rare IOs to play' bar.

 

Teaming.  CO's 'teaming' was a kludge - some things could be shared, others couldn't, and if you were different levels, tough shit - the lowbie was getting no XP.  Cities, with Auto-SK/Exemplar, made sure there were no shenanigans while also making sharing very, very easy - you had it?  You did it?  You shared it, no button-pushing required.  Compare this to quite a few other MMOs - The Old Republic and FFXIV come to mind - where all main-story content is solo-only unless it's team-only.  This is something Cities avoided...by not really having an overarching main story, only broad themes and smaller arcs.

 

So yeah...a lot of subjective things, some objective ones.

[Wandering_Mania]

I honestly think both games had/have their Pros and Cons. And both are 'good' in their own way. The do vary in some key areas, but without that variation, you would have nothing but a cloned game, maybe with some updated graphics.

 

CoH/CoV had:

• Better and more rewarding team play
  
• Better overall map design
  
• Better character choice (Choose Hero or Choose Villain)
  
• And the moral compass in me can't forget the lack of MTX
  

 

CO had:

• Better selection of costume parts(Most locked behind expensive MTX)
  
• More definitive 'gear' over the 'Enhancements' that CoH/CoV has
  
• Vehicles and Vehicle 'End game' raids (Also accompanied by MTX) (Though why some 'Super Heroes' need a vehicle is beyond me. You never saw Superman driving in a car normally)
  
• Teaming up was usually reserved for 'end game' raids, and near the end of the game it was more; 'Hop in an alert queue over and over to level as fast as possible then wait in more and longer queues to try and get the raid you wanted/needed'
  
• Oh and the voice overs, please for the love of everything unholy, I wish I could forget those horrible cheesy voice overs
  

 

Personally I think CO was more 'geared' to attract the 'WoW Population' and CoH/CoV was more tailored to the gamer/hero/MMO audience. It was all a shift in 'gaming culture' that made the 2 different.

 

On a side note; 'MTX' means 'Micro-Transactions'. Just for those that don't know what that term is.

[WanderingAries]

I don't remember CO specifically, but after Sunset I tried to play the other games. I even Beta tested the Marvel one and they all felt like my Marvel:UA console games. Lack of character personalization was big to me as well as what felt like a more WoW feel to the community/ingame.

[Fraktal]

I will chime in here, as someone who has tried to play and enjoy CO 3 times since 2009 (or maybe 4), and have not been able to get past level 22 because I get bored of it after a while... And who got multiple PCs to 50 in COH over the years.

 

Paragon City feels like a real place. People talked when the game finally went live again after all these years about feeling like they had "come home." (There is a reason this place is called "Homecoming.") The zones felt like regions of a real city. The NPCs had real personality. Contacts would snark you sometimes, or tease you sometimes (in the text). The factions of different good and bad guys like Skulls and Trolls and Council and Freakshows felt like they were real characters.  And the city felt this way right from the first day I ever played it.

 

Millennium City and the other environs of CO don't feel like real places. They feel like video game theme-parks. The NPCs are shallow and wooden. They don't tease you or snark you (at least not in the first few zones, that I have noticed). The villain factions are unremarkable and I honestly can't even remember what they are right now, even though I last played it a couple weeks ago.

 

I also prefer both the sound FX and the music for COH vs. CO, but clearly that is pure taste, and even more subjective than my above statements, which are also, of course, subjective.

 

Aside from that, the biggest thing I prefer in COH vs. CO is just the UI and the control system. I find the COH UI to be pleasant, intuitive, graceful, and easy to use. I find the CO UI to be clunky, awkward, ugly, and difficult to use. And the control system in CO with the blocking (hate it) and the charge-up of powers (hate it more), is just not for me.  All of the "old school" things that a few people have criticized about COH? Those are my favorite features of the game.

 

I feel like COH hit the market before a lot of the modern-style innovations of MMOs (most of which were derived from WOW, I guess) became saturated through the market. Nearly all MMOs play the same way now, and COH was built before that became entrenched. By the time the modern style had proliferated it was way too late to change COH to work that way (with things like blocks and charge-ups and combo moves and such). Since I prefer the old MMO gameplay to the current/modern style, this means the COH style suits me.

 

And then there are some of the innovations that COH invented and that, sadly, almost no one (or perhaps literally no one) ever copied, like the scaled (to team and level) instanced private missions (with difficulty sliders!)... or the Sidekick concept that allowed all of you to play together regardless of level. Does anyone do this today but COH? Does CO?

 

But then, as a friend of mine says, I took the Nostalgia pool power and I have it 6-slotted and perma'ed so... it's not a surprise that I'd feel this way.

[Prime Knight]

My main in CoH was a Mind/Kin controller. 

 

After the CoH sunset I attempted to recreate the character in CO.  A mind/kin could not be created in CO and the the CO control powers were in effective in comparison to CoH. 

 

I promptly uninstalled the CO game. 

 

I also preferred the way the endurance and power activation worked in CoH compared to CO

[wmtyrance]

I'M kind of with the OP on this. All the stuff he said is so true to me. I used to play both games at the same time and liked them a lot. COH combat is slow compared to CO too. The long cooldowns on some powers don't help. And you can move around while using your powers in CO too. And you are really weak in those early levels compared to CO. I think most of the rage came because COH got shut down and CO didn't. Not one person really came up with a good reason why COH was a better game. It was just a personal choice and that is not a real reason. It's fun playing both games again because I always have CO on my PC. Truthfully I never was a big fan of the enhancement thing either for your powers.

[srmalloy]

One of the little things about teaming in CoH that wasn't mentioned is that when your team completed a mission, and you had that exact mission, too, you got a pop up telling you of this and asking if you wanted to have that mission completion count as completing yours, too (with a setting to do this automatically). So you had the choice of running it once and everyone with the mission gets completion, or hang onto it and run it later. Other MMOs, like SWTOR, make you run the mission separately for each character in the team who has it.

[RagabashMoon]

Champions Online imitated City of Heroes. That's the difference. One broke the mold. The other is a knockoff.

 

Champions was a superhero rpg long before COH was a gleam in its creators eye.

 

And it would have been a lot more complicated but a lot more satisfying if they translated Champions pnp to a computer game.*sighs* the more you rea about the lore, the more you see how they butchered such an interesting world with that MMO

 

You hit the nail on the head why I don't like Champions Online.  It's not Champions, it's a lackluster game with a haphazard Champions paintjob.

[oedipus_tex]

Something worth noting is that the early game is dominated by lots of log recharge powers that function mostly as "emergency" reservoirs. As the game progresses, however, these transition more and more into the role of readily available powers. The Control and Buff sets are good examples of this. Once you start adding in IOs with global +Recharge bonuses you can build characters that are truly super powerful. It is this part of the game that isn't apparent to new players and its also the part that often hooks long-timers, since no other MMO in existence (that I have know of) provides a battle experience like it.

[Redmountain]

I tried both CO and DCUO, in addition to many other MMOs after COH closed it's doors and honestly none of them ever caught on for me. I never did like CO's initial gear slotting and how you built out your powers, the goofy looking graphics, and just the lack of immersion with the game. With CoH I literally had a character I spent hours putting together, including a bio and building out their extra power pool and incarnate slots to fill out their character arc(and I did this with many characters) and I grew attached to my characters. I could never get that feeling with either CO or DCUO. Maybe it was just the fact I played COH for its entire existence and was just jaded to the other games, but they just never grabbed me. As an old pen and paper RPG player I just loved the amount of customization and input I had on my build. I loved trying new IO combinations, min maxing set bonuses to make my defender able to do amazing things solo'ing hard content, and just having so much flexibility with how I could build out my powers and character's overall performance. Were there builds and guides that were "the best" ? Sure...but that was also the fun thing about the game, you could make just about anything work.

 

I didn't even really touch on COH's best aspect, which was the community. I've never been a part of such an amazing community since this game shut down. I think around the time COH shut down, the gaming community overall was starting to become jaded and entitled, and toxicity and elitism started to become a real issue in a lot of MMOs, especially the ones that were F2P. Part of what made COH attractive to me early on was the paid subscription, which to me made people take the game more seriously and just in general created a better community aspect. People were paying a monthly fee to enjoy the game, so they were going to be sure to make sure it was enjoyable for themselves and every one else. Even when it went F2P eventually, the community remained amazing, while with games like WoW the community was falling apart and becoming completely toxic.

[RedwoodElf]

Champions Online was Champions in name only. Lots of tabletop gamers like me were expecting the Hero System, which allows FULL customization of powers to a ridiculous degree, and to us it was false advertising.

 

And it was NOT cryptic's choice to shut down COH...that was all on the suits at NCSoft, who shut it down because it sold better in the west than in Korea, and they wanted Korean sales, not Euro/NA sales.

[Kaliselia]

Okay City of Heroes was the first MMO that I ever played and only WoW got me away from it.

 

But still I did play it for years.

 

When it ended I did try playing Champions but got bored with it and could never get a Hero much past 20.

 

But in CoH I got my main up to level 50 and played her for quite awhile.  She was an Electric/Electric/Electric Blaster who really prefer playing as a Blapper.

 

Got back into the game and I have recreated her but this time she is an Electric/Energy Blaster/Blapper this time.

 

I also tried DC Universe Online as well but like Champions it want money in order to get the great costumes and powers.

 

CoH character creation was and will always be the greatest one ever for a MMO, I found that the one for Champions was okay but CoH will always be my favorite.

 

Players did not end up with cookie cutter builds since there were so many ways to come up with a character due to how you slot or power choices.

 

Sure in CoH you start off slow but by the time you hit your 20's you are getting your hero set for later.  My Blapper main was a Boss killer and love to jumped into large groups as well due to her choices of powers.

 

There is a reason why so many individual are back in this game because they love it.

 

If this was Champions that came back you would not have seen this result with it.

 

 

[JPax]

Well, at the time, Champions Online was NOT the same game as it is today, I'm sure you understand that. COH was better back then, far far better. Shortly after, CO caught up, but it remained second fiddle to COH if only by association rather than actual fact. New people who hadn't played either may have thought CO was the better of the two, and that's down to them. But, you just can't compete with YEARS of personal history, stories, community building, friendships that COH had already had you building. It isn't that the game was better or worse, it was just what people felt was 'home' to them, much like Ultimate Online, Runescape, WoW, etc. COH is a good game. Is it the best? That's down to the individual.

[deathevan]

CO is boring in just about every aspect except for its combat, which is only marginally less boring than CoH's and I personally don't like the art style of the game.

 

besides that, the only thing it has going for it is better customization, but it just wasn't enough for me. I tried it twice and the furthest I got was around level 25 before I got bored.

[SteelRat70]

I'm not sure it matters if you "get" why people prefer one game over another one.  Play the one you want and leave others to play the one they want?

 

Genuinely wonder what you're trying to achieve with this post?

[THEDarkTyger]

I know it's not a satisfactory answer for you, but "the feel" is what it comes down to for me. CO just felt bland and like a LOT of wasted potential. It had the potential to be a much better game, but never really lived up to it. The costume creator had the potential to be fantastic with its variety and more customization options, but fell short with so few options that were really any good. The action combat could have been much better, but was underutilized. It SHOULD HAVE been better than CoH....but just...wasn't.

[ThunderCAP]

No no no. I'm disappointed in all of you.

 

How did you miss the fact that Champions Online was completely a SOLO game, vs City of Heroes that's completely a TEAM game?

 

This is the major difference that makes all of us throw up when we got in CO. Not one of you remembered the first year of CO where it was IMPOSSIBLE to team up? And I don't even know if they fixed it (I tried to play it several times during the first years and it was the same pretty much), and even than it would still be just a "patch" attached to a game born to be solo-played.

 

I remember my attempts to team up in Champions Online very clearly:

A: "I have 4 missions, but only one can be shared"          <------- OBSCENE that the majority of missions couldn't be shared for several reasons

B: "Oh what level?"

A: "12"

B: "Oh sorry but I'm level 7"      <------- really? the devs that CREATED the exemplar feature force you to do missions at specific levels?

 

 

That was Champions Online. A better gameplay to me (personal tastes), a better graphic to me (personal tastes), and even better missions (buildings in flame and missions under water or in space etc.) and still with all this favourable personal tastes I couldn't play it because it wasn't a mmorpg at all, it was the exact opposite of City of Heroes.

 

Impossible to team-up and team mechanics completely lacking/rushed or not working at all.

 

It's a SOLO game, that's all. How did they manage to screw things up like that when City of Heroes was the king of easy team picking and quest sharing and community chit-chatting? Easy answer, because it was born in the "After-WorldOfWarcraft" era where all mmorpgs became such boring solo-content where you just see 1 person around which doesn't even "hello" you since he has to run to the next mission to exp alone.

[Scrapulous]

There are a lot of things I love about CoH, a lot of ambitious design elements that wound up working well (robust keybind system, very mobile, dynamic combat, a low reliance on instancing, breaking a city up into zones), but what made this game really special boiled down to one crucial, elusive, gossamer element: community. The prevailing toxic bullshit in every other mmo community I've seen just didn't ever dominate in CoH, perhaps because the game makes you a hero by design, perhaps because of skilled community moderation by people like CuppaJo, or maybe due to some magic invisible to me.

 

Community. I have not seen another game community quite as engaged, helpful, and applied as this one, and definitely not in an mmo. CO didn't have it in the short time I tried it.

 

[Android Nim]

Your "Post" such as it is, sounds like a kid at the park watching the older kids play frisbee. The kid doesn't understand why the older kids like frisbee, but tossing around a piece of plastic must be stupid because we have Xbox, PS4 and internet porn!!!!

 

So let's start with insults: souless ae farming

 

How people play an MMO is none of your business as long as it does not impact you. If they want to fast track to the high end, so be it.

 

I also might point out that CO is literally no better. Soon as you are high enough level to join the Group Queue that's it. Nobody is out there doing any of the static content or missions.

 

Graphics: Big whoop.

 

If Graphics meant anything why is RuneScape the second most popular MMO out there with over a million people actively playing?

 

Combat: "more action based combat where you can actually move around while using your powers instead of being physically locked in place"

 

Get out of the newbie zone and we'll revisit this question.

 

Travel Power: travel powers in CO are actually just travel powers instead of being mixed with stat based powers to take away from the fun of simply picking a travel power

 

I think the only thing CO has over CoH is Super speed can climb buildings. Otherwise, same deal in both games. As for being able to upgrade your travel powers being a "Negative" are you kidding me?

 

Free Form vs Coh: heroes are different and custom in CO (freeform) while in CoH/V when you chose a class and a powerset chances are tons of other people are exactly the same as you.

 

I'll chalk this up to your admitted ignorance of both CoH and CO's Endgame. 

 

There are those out there chasing the "One True Build" that is the epitome of DPS and Efficiency, etc, etc. In which case, in either game, you are going to see the same builds doing the same things. Because not all power sets are built the same and it's a constant dance between the devs and the player base.

 

As for Free form, come on man. What they offer the "Free to play" or as I like to call them "Poverty players" is garbage. Could ya make it work... sure. Is good... Nope.

 

So once ya go Free Form you are going to do like everybody else. You are going to hit the forums and youtube and spin up the same thing as everybody else so you can get along as opposed to being some kind of half breed tank/healer that can do neither very well.

 

Final thoughts.

 

Ultimately the thing you don't "Get" that continues to Drive CoH's popularity is

 

Community

 

You were a kid when this game was around. I don't expect you to understand what CoH meant to us. I also don't really get your post since as you said. " Because I was around 10 years old when I played CoH/V" and "I haven't played Champions Online very seriously" why are here promoting a game you don't really care about over a game you don't really know?

 

So... yeah you sound like a troll.

 

W.

 

this

[BlackDecember]

Others in this thread have explained it better than I'll be able to but I completely understand those who say COH simply has a better "feel" than CO. It's hard to define. The game is difficult, no doubt, especially when compared to something like WoW. But the controls in COH have always felt intuitive to me. And something always felt off about CO. It always felt like the lanscapde was moving around my character rather than my character moving through the landscape. I don't know if that makes any sense. And I didn't enjoy the power sets. I had really high hopes for CO ... so high that I bought the lifetime subscription ... but it just never kept my interest the way COH did. And it was never as much fun to play.