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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 5436943" data-attributes="member: 8158">I'm not sure why I would want to play a superhero MMO so I can put on khakis and a polo shirt and spend time at work in my secret ID or go out on dates--that's what The Sims is for. However, it is true that superhero games are not very immersive. Nor or any MMO's IME, and I've played quite a few. CoX is like pretty much every other MMO, which is to say there's a lot of repetitive missions/quests that have you recycling a string of hotkeyed powers in queue-based combat. Champs Online and DCU Online use a more real-time combat system that is more dynamic and exciting in nature than CoX or most MMO's, but still falls short of what you get in a non-MMO game. The main thing that damns all superhero MMO's to date is that they lack a physics engine, and without physics, superheroes and supervillains really aren't terribly impressive. Superheroes smash stuff. Supervillains smash even more stuff. But you can't go into an instanced mission and blast enemies through walls or chuck cars around or watch the beauty of what a handful of explosive pellets from a utility belt can do when you chuck them into a bad guy's ammo depot. You can't even tip over a chair. So, something pretty essential to larger-than-life comic-book action is lacking. CoX also suffers because the developers took the "City of..." part a little too literally. You don't go to anywhere particularly cool. Rather, you spend a lot of time running around layrinthine cubicle farms and abandoned buidlings designed by an insane architect who desired nothing more than to frustrate his buildings' occupants. These places were certainly never inspected by a fire marshal. Champs learned from this lesson, so you get to go to a lot more interesting locales, like army bases and spaceships. Don't know what all DCUO has to offer in this department.In general, MMO's (which seem to go less-and-less by the term "MMORPG") just don't have the variety and polish that other games do. You see the same animations for attack executions regurgitated over and over, for instance, so don't expect Arkham Asylum's robust set of moves for your dark knight. You'll just do the same kick or punch attack a million times. Likewise, locations get recycled with only a modest amount of reskinning. Things you expect from other games--like cutscenes that tell a compelling, immersive story, or tricky bosses that require special tactics to beat--are rare at best. Imagine having to chase a crazed mastermind through his madhouse lair while maneuvering around obstacles that spring out and avoiding variety of fiendish booby-traps. Classic stuff, right? Now, here's the more likely scenario: you pummel each other until a health bar drops to zero. Mission complete.MMO's are not really not about pulse-pounding adventures full of surprises and twists. They're more like Farmville, really. You log in, you grind a bit, you harvest a reward or two, and thereby make a little progress towards some goal you set for yourself. If they did it better, I'd still be content with it, but they don't really hit the mark yet. You look at other game genres and you see real innovation. Instead of missions being pass/fail or handing out random loot drops, they have a variety of objectives, and at completion your are scored and receive a commensurate reward. if you repeat them, they evolve and give you new objectives. These days, you even get to compare your performance with your friends, so you get some bragging rights. MMO's are more about repeating missions than any other type of game by a considerable degree, so they should be masters at the art of keeping you coming back for more. Instead, they need to be taking notes from games like Arkham Asylum or Hulk:  Ultimate Destruction or even Marvel Ulimate Alliiance 2.</blockquote>

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