WizarDru
Adventurer
Brief Thoughts:
1) City of Heroes/City of Villains - Fun enough to keep me playing for a couple of years, though it's been a while. Being able to build and customize your own headquarters was fun. CoV had much better level design and character balance. However, the fact remains that the game hits a level grind halfway through and the missions become very repetitive (and there are limited tilesets and enemies). Character Designer remains the gold standard. Combat is more traditional MMO. Party teamwork creates big benefits.
2) Champions Online - Developed by Cryptic, makers of CoX. Better mission variety, but some aspects are overly archaic (such as the wholly unnecessary and confusing crafting system). More limited power-sets,relatively fragile heroes and now an aspect where it feels like they constantly have their hand out for money (I realize it's Freemium, but still). Some noticable improvements over CoX, but much of the game, especially it's tutorial missions are simultaneously over-wordy and fail to adequately explain game concepts. Some important lessons are learned from CoX, though, like travel powers almost immediately. Combat works on combos and building up energy for more powerful attacks. Better physics modeling.
3) DCUO - The most action-oriented of the group, DCUO leverages known characters very well. You feel like a hero right out of the gate and the game is spiffy. Powersets are pretty limited and costume choices are the weakest of the three. However, the game is visually impressive and more active in combat than the other two. Mobility is much more key, for example, and combat more interactive overall. Purchasing items/equipment feels kind of out-of-genre, but this is an MMO problem (see Star Trek's crafting and banking, both).
Right now I'm occasionally playing Champions because it's free, but I played DCUO during the beta and liked it a lot. But not enough to actually pay $15 a month for it. At least, not yet.
1) City of Heroes/City of Villains - Fun enough to keep me playing for a couple of years, though it's been a while. Being able to build and customize your own headquarters was fun. CoV had much better level design and character balance. However, the fact remains that the game hits a level grind halfway through and the missions become very repetitive (and there are limited tilesets and enemies). Character Designer remains the gold standard. Combat is more traditional MMO. Party teamwork creates big benefits.
2) Champions Online - Developed by Cryptic, makers of CoX. Better mission variety, but some aspects are overly archaic (such as the wholly unnecessary and confusing crafting system). More limited power-sets,relatively fragile heroes and now an aspect where it feels like they constantly have their hand out for money (I realize it's Freemium, but still). Some noticable improvements over CoX, but much of the game, especially it's tutorial missions are simultaneously over-wordy and fail to adequately explain game concepts. Some important lessons are learned from CoX, though, like travel powers almost immediately. Combat works on combos and building up energy for more powerful attacks. Better physics modeling.
3) DCUO - The most action-oriented of the group, DCUO leverages known characters very well. You feel like a hero right out of the gate and the game is spiffy. Powersets are pretty limited and costume choices are the weakest of the three. However, the game is visually impressive and more active in combat than the other two. Mobility is much more key, for example, and combat more interactive overall. Purchasing items/equipment feels kind of out-of-genre, but this is an MMO problem (see Star Trek's crafting and banking, both).
Right now I'm occasionally playing Champions because it's free, but I played DCUO during the beta and liked it a lot. But not enough to actually pay $15 a month for it. At least, not yet.
