I’ve been wanting to comment on my gameplay in CoH for a bit. Most of my thoughts are fairly standard stuff for everyone who’s played the game. This past week, though, Issue 10 dropped … and it’s a hoot and a half.

Massive cluster-death right outside the train stations, a brand new zone, higher drops on costume pieces … the new issue has stuff to like for almost everyone playing CoH. Some folks are even using the phrase “best Issue evar“, which I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say. (I’m still playing through the content from Issue 5.)

I’m something of a talker, so I’m going to go ahead and babble about my experiences both Issue 10 and otherwise; feel free to skip the bits about old content if you’re just interested in the new hotness. (sniff)

If you’re thinking of re-upping to check out Issue 10, I highly recommend it you have no excuse! They’ve reactivated your account through Sunday!

On the other hand, if you’ve never played City of Heroes I highly recommend Van Hemlock’s recent jaunt through Paragon City as a primer. He’s done a great job of running down what the game is like for someone who’s never donned the spandex before.

Me, I’m a dorky old player. I was in the beta for the thing, and was playing on launch day for both CoH and CoV. Despite my wanting to be the cynical old MMOG hag, every time I come back to Paragon I’m impressed; new content, new fiddly bits, and it’s always fun to make a new character.

Here, in a nutshell, is what I like about City of Heroes:

• The Auction House/Inventions - I’m serious. Dead serious. This little economic dymano has my pants, right off. (They’re not the solution, you know.) Blind bid auctions with the last five sale prices visible means that you can have an actual market economy! You can “buy it now” just as easily as setting out a net for fish. My only real reservation is the small size of your inventory for salvage. Even at max level it doesn’t look like I’ll have as much room as I want for all my inventing bits.
• Fast Action - CoH is fast. Really, really fast. In CoH, if the enemy isn’t dead about a second after you hit your first hotkey, you’re probably doing it wrong. (Or you’re a Tank.) They compensate for the fast kills by sending waves of enemies at you, pumping up the heroic feeling of every encounter. Even by the mid-levels you’re kind of wading through big swaths of baddies. In a balanced group you can dice and slice through a mission with a sick sort of finesse. You’re sort of a dedicated bad-guy consumption device. It’s a wondrous change from the sometimes-ponderous combat of a fantasy game.
• Beauty - I have a fairly nice PC, and with all the shinies turned up Paragon City is a work of art. Over the last year or two they’ve added a ton of effects to the game; my favorite tweak is the simple rag-doll physics baddies now have. It’s so incredibly satisfying to send things crumpling off of buildings or leave thugs hanging limply off of a fence.
• Power - Tall building leaping is par for the course. Faster than a speeding bullet is the norm. And yet, superpowers don’t really feel boring to me. I think it’s the travel powers that do it for me; my Electricity Blaster Zapp power is effectively a lightning bolt spell, but the freedom of movement afforded in City of Heroes is singularly awesome. Keep your griffon.
• Peeps - Hemlock touches on it a great deal in his look at the game, and I’ll reiterate it here: for some reason it’s really easy to find a group in City of Heroes. I don’t mean this as a knock against the game, but you have to be really stupid to screw up you role in the game. This combines to result in lots of ‘pretty good’ groups. Sure, if people just rush-rush-rush and don’t pay attention you’re going to get screwed. Just the same, CoH has been the most social game I’ve played (and enjoyed) since I started playing MMOGs.
• Mooks - How often is it that you say ‘the bad guys are really cool’? When you kill your millionth orc, where’s the pleasure? CoH’s lineup is so contrary to the norm, even at low levels, that it’s hard to dislike what you’re knocking around. Yeah, eventually you get tired of killing Tsoo or Vahzilok but you still have to respect the range the artists display at Cryptic.
• Badges - The Auction house I mentioned? There are badges for selling things on it. There are badges for inventing things. There are badges for learning the history of the city. Badges for participating in events. Badges for taking damage, for healing damage, for being held, slept, stunned, knocked out. Badges for celebrating anniversaries, badges for killing lots and lots of particular kinds of guys … badges everywhere! And (where LOTRO got the idea from) sets of badges combine to give you cool extra powers and such. Badges are such a little thing, but they’re lots of fun to collect. Guild Wars has cool little pins with some of their powers on them; if Cryptic is looking for a neat convention give-away, badge-pins would be awesome! I request some of the badges from Halloween 2004.

That’s all the old sauce.

To the new hotness! All I can share with you are my impressions of the Rikti Invasion event, as I’ve yet to make it to the newly revamped zone. I have noticed, though, that costume pieces are dropping significantly more often. I’d gotten a grand total of one since Issue 9 until last week, and I’ve gotten three since the new patch. The downside is, of course, that their value on the auction house is dropping. Just the same, I’ve made a few million influence with pieces of flash. Oh free market economy how I love thee.

The invasion itself is easy as pie to participate in. World messages flash in your chat window, telling you where the Rikti are headed. When you get that message, you have a few minutes to make your way to the under-siege area. In the zone, you’ll find the attack already under way. Rikti dropships strafe through the area, dropping enormous bombs to the deck. These tick down (rather quickly) before exploding for massive damage. You can usually see the blast from a few blocks away. Destroying 25 of these nets you a badge, but you have to watch your step as you do so. The ships are watching, and if you stray close enough they’ll lock onto you with their lasers. These fire a massive energy attack that can take a huge chunk out of your health.

Once the bombardment ceases, there’s a quiet before the storm. In every event I’ve done, the majority of the zone’s players gather right outside the tram station. This allows for latecomers to join the fight quickly, and makes non-participants cranky with anger. The reason? OMG lag. This is what a Rikti fight looks like:

Just a bit chaotic. My beefy machine and robust connection mean that I have had a seamless experience with these events. The image of dozens of heroes killing twice as many Rikti is hugely entertaining; as a Blaster I basically just pound on my ranged attacks as they become available. You have to join a group to get the best bang for your buck, of course, but there’s no need to help them directly. Just wail away at the surrounding hordes; it’s what everyone else is doing.

While in the abstract this sounds a bit lame, I can’t stress enough how entertaining this is. This is exactly the kind of mindless hilarity that gamers need every once in a while. If this was all the game was, all the time, it would be worthless. But here, as a once-in-a-great-while lark, it’s brilliant. I love superteam match-ups, and that’s exactly what this feels like. The high levels band together with the low-levels, everyone fighting tooth and nail, everyone making a difference.

And, of course, there are rewards! You’re awarded influence and XP as per normal for defeating the fearsome alien bastards. Given the way the even goes you’re unlikely to get full credit for many of the slain, but even in dribs and drabs your xp bar will slowly move in the upwards direction for partipating in the event. To go along with the bomb defusing badge there are two others - one requires you to kill 100 Rikti (happened to me in my first go), with another requiring you to kill 10 of the Rikti boss characters that spawn with the event (got it by my second go).

It’s a larking good time, and if you’ve ever subscribed to the game your account is now active again. Go! Play! And do it soon: after this weekend the Invasions will only be happening when players trigger them via a Task Force. Aliens need their rest too, you know.