I’ve been playing City of Heroes for a few days now, and so far it’s been an enjoyable, if somewhat underwhelming experience. As I mentioned the other day, my character is The Homunculus, a name and description I picked well before I ever actually played the game. I’m starting to regret that decision. Oh don’t get me wrong, the concept of a hand-to-hand fighter with a huge chest, forehead and shoulders but who’s only three feet tall still makes me chuckle to no end (admittedly, I have a strange sense of humor), but the game is capable of generating a wide variety of heroes, and it’s really fun to just play around with the character generator. Take a look at Zinn the Amish Avenger (“his people can’t fight back…but he will!“) or the Crimson Druid (battle cry: “for stonehenge!“). And those I whipped up on the spot just now. It’s that much fun to play with the character generator. But aside from the aesthetic dullness of my choice of character, there’s the larger issue of the fact that he just doesn’t have any really cool powers. Basically all he does is punch and slash with his wimpy, Wolverine-light claws. He does those things quite well (I’m at level 8 now, so he’d better!) but I’m getting kinda bored doing the same attacks over and over again. Particularly when they’re such comparatively lame ones.
So I think tonight I’m going to create a new character, one that can do something a little more exciting. Maybe I’ll make a female character this time…something like, I don’t know…the Flaming Queen (“she’ll burn your balls off!”).
…on second thought, I think I’ll come up with something a little more down to earth. Maybe I’ll recreate a Marvel character so I can help with that lawsuit.
I suck at powerlevelling and generally suck at predicting what the Next Big Skill Trait will be in an MMOG, so by blind luck I made a spines/regen scrapper at a time when that combination was considered to be one of the best in the game.
I managed to level pretty well, but that’s because I practically became a recluse for two months doing nothing but play this game. The result was rather hollow: I had all the powers that made me say “Ooh, I want” at the start of the game, but kind of wound up being a jack of all trades and master of none.
It’s kind of neat to have a fighter who can heal himself, heal others, boost the defense of others, and even revive them from the dead. It’s a rather cool ability to use if you’re with one other person adventuring or just impressing people around the Newbie zone (assuming this game still has newbies, back then there was a stead influx instead of just rerolls like every MMOG slowly becomes.) The only downside is that serious leveling (and skill gain) requires grouping, and every group has a person better specialized in each of those.
Oh well, can’t say it’s the same PL Template Of The Week everyone uses, though.