City of Heroes Issue #5 Update

[Evil Avatar]

NCsoft sends along word that the City of Heroes (http://cityofheroes.com/) update, Issue #5: Forest of Dread (http://www.coh.com/features_update10.html) is now available on the European servers.

City of Heroes fans can take action immediately, as NCsoft Europe announces that the latest extensive update has gone live. Issue #5: Forest of Dread is available at no extra cost for existing subscribers to download right now.

Issue #5 features a thrilling new Zone for heroes to explore – the mystical Croatoa, which is populated by monstrous new villains such as the giant Fir Bolg and the legendary Tuatha de Dannan. A new epic Task Force is also available in Croatoa for heroes to complete.

Two exciting new power sets are also being debuted with Issue #5: Archery and Sonics, available to Defenders, Blasters and Controllers. New Zone Events will test heroes to the limit, asking them to stop arson attacks and break up an out-of-control superpowered rave. All this, as well as new mission customizations and brand new badges, ensures City of Heroes will be more enticing than ever with Issue #5.

"Play testing on the internal servers has been going well and we're happy to say that Issue #5 is now ready for City of Heroes players all over Europe," says Stephen Reid, Content and Community Manager, NCsoft Europe. "We've got tons of exciting new content for our players, which should keep them busy until the debut of City of Villains."It doesn't look like this is "Live" yet on the US servers, but I'm sure it will be soon.

[Savok]

God damn it, I was gonna submit this :p

Had a whole thing ready

Issue 5 for City of Heroes has gone live after spending a great deal of time on Test. A summary of the update can be found here (http://www.cityofheroes.com/features_update10.html), with details on the new powersets here (http://www.cityofheroes.com/features_update12.html). Detailed patch notes can be found here (http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/updates.html) and a "flame Statesman" thread about the defence nerf can be found here (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Dev&Number=3263859&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1).

Personally I like the changes, the powers as they were along with the caps made some power sets completely useless, maybe we'll see a few less fire tanks now.

Anyway, US servers have it now.

[Vandenh]

When I hit 60 in WoW (next moth normally) I will switch back to CoH for a month for some superhero action!

[Savok]

http://www.coh.com/community/statesman_address.html

That crotch terrfies me.

EDIT: And is it just me, or is States completely stoned in the pic on the patcher?

[Justin_McElroy]

Just when I think I'm out...I realize I still don't really care and I'm still, in fact, out.

[Heretic Machine]

I'm tempted to go back to CoH for a month... cause I haven't been doing jack with WoW.

[bean19]

I'm amazed at how long it has taken Issue 5 to go Live. Last time I played on the Training Room (Test Server), the load times were still absurdly long. Also, I'm not sure if they've fixed all the new Task Forces in the new area Croatoa (I've avoided this content on test as I hope to enjoy it on Live).

This is suprising.

[balamoor]

Right now I'm divinding my time between, WoW, and Coh for my MMORPG's, and its getting harder and harder to decide which on each time I sit down and play.

I think with Issue 5 though the decision will be a lot easier :D

[Savok]

Test ALWAYS takes ages to load anything.

And going through the patch notes, there are some excellent changes I wasn't even aware of, BS's Parry may now be useful.

[TrackZero]

.......break up an out-of-control superpowered rave.

Uh...what?

[Savok]

Trolls have got their hands on some new Superdine, and they're going a bit nuts.

Also

Scrapper/Spines: characters will no longer go through a ‘redraw' animation between attacks.

[Savok]

In the "awesome... oh shit" catagory

Pets will now follow their master through elevators. Pets cannot follow through zone or mission doors.

Enemies may chase players through elevators.

[PantherModern]

I know a lot of people have walked away from CoH (including many of the friends I started out playing the game with), but I find myself captivated by it. I did the WoW thing for a few months, and it was cool, but it just didn't keep my attention. For all the talk of making the grind nonexistent, it still felt really "grindy." I suppose that CoH is just more within my idiom. I like the urban setting, the idea of hazard zones, travel powers (I hate having to run around for hours just to get where I need to go), and of course being a bad-ass superhero. I have been looking forward to issue five and I am also enjoying my spot in the CoV beta, so this will certainly keep me occupied for while.

/edit --Just read through the update/fixes page. Man. This is a total overhaul of the game. Seriously. No debt until level 10? Half debt for mission deaths? Increased blaster HP and a new "Defiance" inherent power? Awesome!

If anyone ever wants to team, I'm on Freedom server.

DixieFlatline - lvl 39 AR/Dev Blaster
Kavalier - lvl 22 Ice/En Blaster
Brother Justin - lvl 24 Fire/Ice Tank
Uller - lvl 16 Ice/Bubbler Controller
Fighting Flame - lvl 16 Fire/Rad Controller
Master Vidar - lvl 10 Martial Arts/Invul Scrapper

[Savok]

Now the servers keep crashing, argh!

[BalekFekete]

Everyone remember the First Rule of Patch Day...

Do Not Play on Patch Day.

:)

I myself am looking forward to this latest issue. As my wife and I started breaking into the mid and upper levels, we noticed the game getting just too damn easy. Yes, its nice feeling completely super and all...but some challenge will be appreciated again.

B.

[Demo_Boy]

Controllers rewritten from scratch. ie. they are UnControllers now.
As long as that doesn't matter to you, it could be a fun issue.

[Savok]

It's all working well now and I've a lovely haul of badges, hoorah.

[Xerxes]

I still can't believe this game. It's like imagine if the Horde didn't come with World of Warcraft. Then you had to wait all this time for World of Warcraft: Horde Edition.

[bean19]

I still can't believe this game. It's like imagine if the Horde didn't come with World of Warcraft. Then you had to wait all this time for World of Warcraft: Horde Edition.

Yeah. I'm sure they'd have loved to ship with both. Keep in mind that Blizzard was already a world-class developer during development whereas Cryptic was a start-up.

[Heretic Machine]

I still can't believe this game. It's like imagine if the Horde didn't come with World of Warcraft. Then you had to wait all this time for World of Warcraft: Horde Edition.

...What the fuck are you talking about? I assume you're referring to the villains, which aren't a part of City of Heroes. They aren't going to be either, as CoV is a seperate game with only limited interaction with CoH. Besides that, CoH isn't a PVP game, it's a PVE game. Although this makes for a crappy end-game, it's actually much more fun until you hit the peak.

[Gel214th]

Well, as a CoH player I suppose slowly websites will pick up that the CoH population isn't too pleased with this patch. There aren't as many subscribers as on SWG to make as big a scene, and the game isn't as popular, but the problems are similar.

Cryptic has decided that after 1 and a half years the game wasn't being played the way they thought it should be, and proceeded to completely redesign every single defensive powerset in the game to be, in some cases, up to 60% less than their original effectiveness.

The reasons for this are wide and varied, and no one really knows for sure, since the developers have not made a unified release on why the changes were made. You have to piece together why they've done this from multiple posts by different developers on the boards. Basically this is supposed to make the game more 'exciting' for players.

Decreasing the accuracy of opponents, and increasing the XP gain from killing creatures level 25 and up is meant to balance the horrid reductions in effectiveness. But the very way in which powers are used has also been changed. With several powers including the much used Instant Healing in the REgeneration set going from a Toggle (ON/Off power) to a Click (Click on...lasts for a while...then has to recharge before it can be used again). That's a change that will completely alter the way someone plays their character, it isn't just adjusting numbers..it's altering the basic gameplay.

Kudos on the new content for Issue 5, but the horrific crippling of the game's powers and drasticaly altering gameplay this far into the title's release is not a positive thing in my view.

Some will like it, and some won't. I just think that after so long the basic gameplay of a title should not be so radically altered as to make it completely different from the game you started playing months ago. We'll see how it turns out as the general player base get a hold of I5.

[Savok]

Even now I have trouble with the people complaining about the defence nerf. People were playing at the caps solo, this made some powersets completely redundent beyond 32 or so. Really, did Force Field have ANY use beyond the early/mid game? Why bother when the Fire Tank and maybe an Energy Blaster can nuke entire maps at zero risk.

States gave all the reasons here (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Dev&Number=3263859&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1)

For the record my main is a BS/Regen Scrapper, all making IH a click did was make it so SOMETHING (other then Sappers) could kill me if I didn't think about what I was doing. Remember thinking? What we did 10-25.

[Gel214th]

Even now I have trouble with the people complaining about the defence nerf. People were playing at the caps solo, this made some powersets completely redundent beyond 32 or so. Really, did Force Field have ANY use beyond the early/mid game? Why bother when the Fire Tank and maybe an Energy Blaster can nuke entire maps at zero risk.

States gave all the reasons here (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=Dev&Number=3263859&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1)

For the record my main is a BS/Regen Scrapper, all making IH a click did was make it so SOMETHING (other then Sappers) could kill me if I didn't think about what I was doing. Remember thinking? What we did 10-25.

Correction, *some* people were playing at the Caps solo.
and *some* people would herd entire maps.
Not the majority.

Do you agree that the Gameplay of City of Heroes has been drastically altered with Issue 5?

[Savok]

Of course it has.

And we mustn't be playing the same game, 40+ most of my life was spent bridging or filling while yet another Fire Tank did a Dreck run. Some days I'd look at who was in Peregine and see a river of tanks.

[bean19]

The reasons for this are wide and varied, and no one really knows for sure. . .


They have said the reasons over and over, but you still say something like that? They made a lot of changes for a lot of different reasons.

Exploit changes: Lowered the number of targets that can be simultaneously taunted, held, and/or hit by an AOE attack. This is a blatant attempt to stop herding as herding is the only way anyone would go over the cap. Controller's aoe holds also got this for balance as they held EVERYTHING and it made grouping with them in high levels really boring and too easy.

Defensive Changes: This is a shift in the numbers to make the defensive powersets like super reflexes and ice armor to be as good or comparable to the damage resistance powers. Basically there was a large problem in that other sets could use pool powers to get the same defensive abilities of these defensive based power sets (topping out at 95% total possible). So ice armor and super reflexes people were understandbly upset that their set was not as good as the damage resistance sets that also got a large amount of defense, but also got enormous amounts of damage resistance. By shifting every hero's base defense down, and nerfing some of the defensive pool powers, they allow these sets that focus on defense to be the defensive experts that they are. No one but they should be dodging 19 out of 20 shots. This also is "nerf" to the Invuln set that was able to max out both damage resistance and defense, making it by far the strongest of the tanker sets. While this was a "nerf" to many sets, the goal was to make the true defensive sets shine instead of being outshone by damage resistance sets that ALSO had huge defense, and they acheived this goal.

Balance Changes (Various): Regen scrappers, invuln tanks, and controllers were able to play the game after level 34 w/o any risk. It was really easy to set up a few toggles and take on insane amounts of higher level mobs. They were more overpowered in PvE and PvP than any other class in any other MMO Ever. Imagine if the big boss mobs that should take a full group in Everquest or some other game could be beaten by one (or in some cases) 2 of these uber powerful archetypes w/o breaking a sweat. Tanks could put all their maxed out toggles on and take bareley any damage, regen scrappers could heal it back fast enough that they could solo archvillains (uber powerful group mobs), controllers could huge groups and/or summon tons of pets and then use phase shift to avoid any threat as their pets then decimated mobs.

Keep in mind that the xp is MUCH faster for every hero in the game now, with the exception of those who used exploits to level. They will no longer get 3 levels/session. :)

They had to do this to make all the builds good for the PvP upcoming in CoV, and they had to do it to make the endgame less boring and unfair to the less powerful archetypes. In the long run, it will be a win for them as many of the disgruntled will return for City of Villains.