Is CoH boring?

I bought City of Heros after reading several glowing reviews on it. I've always been a comic book fan, and I used to play Champions and use the Hero Roleplying system. So I was pretty amped to try out this highly rated game.

Creating the characters is fun, but after a short time, you realize how limited the choices really are in power trees.

Then you hit the streets, doing missions and random rescues and thug beatings. At first this is great, using your powers to make the streets safer. But by the end of the first week, it all began to feel the same. Same kinda missions, same scenery with just some different textures thrown around. Same bad guys...same old same old.

I don't think I've ever gotten bored with an online game this quick before. Hell..I played Star Wars Galaxies for 6 months, and that is a damn boring game (though gorgeous).

Even the graphics in City of Heros are not anything stunning, eye-opening and in no way break new ground.

Yet is got rated very, very high in every review I read.

What am I missing??

P.S. - The one thing I did notice is that alot of folks will take the time to stop and help if they think you've bitten off more than you can chew, and many are very helpful with questions and advice, which was actually suprising to me. Sure there are jerks and annoying youngsters, but overall the community had a good feel to it.

Yeah, I played CoH for about a month. The concept is great but all you do is run around and kill stuff. Held my interest until I gained the ability to fly, then after exploring all areas available to me via flight, it got rapidly boring doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

I might try Matrix Online, but I have this feeling it will disappoint me as well.

-Ghoti

I've never played CoH, but I agree, I did hear great reviews about it. If I could have afford it back then I would have bought it. I mostly wanted to buy it because some of my online friends were playing and were screaming about how great it was and I shoud try it.

The longest that I have played a MMORPG was 5 months (Final Fantasy XI). And I played it because my real life friends were all in a hype about it, so I gave it a shot. Then they stopped playing and things got a bit boring. I was going to quit until a group of online friends invited me to go to their server and play. I went to their server and redid all the quests and lvling and all that to play "catch up" (I was on lvl 40 when I left the first server). Then I realized that all the time I had been playing, I only saw a few friends only once, and they really never stopped to chat, just things like "I'm in PT 3000 more XP to go then I can use this skill YAY! Need some help, I'm coming after I lvl...or the lvl after this..or.." (of course this was through group chat).

So things got boring, got tired of waiting and I quit. I guess I'm trying to say that the fun factor isn't at full unless you have friends who can enjoy it with you. At least, in my opinion. I almost got myself into WoW because of the same thing, then was told that they were playing in different servers, and I wasn't going to choose where to go.

It's very rare for me to try a game without having a friend or two to come with me. How'd you think I got into SL?

Hope this helps.

It got boring to me as well after playing it for about 6 months. It would have been better if you could get some kind of items or if it had more of a variety of missions, basically they were about the same.

Once again, and per normal operating procedures, you're absolutely correct in your assessments, David.

Bored after 3 weeks

CoH (which I was playing from its going live until a month ago, thanks to WoW) is a total XP grind IMHO, but....I did find it to be the easiest game to get a group together and go out and adventure....much unlike WoW. CoH has many good points, but it will eventually descend into a MOB hunt over time due to the limited nature of the gameplay.

The future looks great, though, once City of Villians goes live (sadly, as a full-on disc to buy instead of just as an update)...it will add player bases (like the Titans Tower or the Hall of Doom), lackeys (for those evil bosses out there) and vastly improve PvP situations and activities.

I'm waiting to see how CoV develops, though, before I start playing CoH/CoV again...

Yes, 'tis terribly boring after a little while, though more fun to play with someone than solo. I'm not sure if City of Villans will add any variety, but god does COH need some. I lost interest in COH so fast it made my head spin, whereas I find myself more and more engrossed in WoW all the time. I'm also grooving on the Matrix Online beta at the moment - after a slow start, I am really liking it.

Well, admittedly my highlest level character is just 16th level. And I've only joined two groups, which were fun..kinda. I did join a superhero team, but they never do anything together that I have seen. Perhaps it IS the friend thing, since I don't know anyone on there. But for just grinding in experience, it's boring. There isn't even much to explore, like in EQ or SWG, at least that I've found. I've flown through most of the areas I could get access to, and while some looked pretty cool, for the most part they semmed far too much alike, which stands to reason since it is one big city, but makes for boring exploration. Would be cool if there were more buildings and lairs you could just stumble into without having to be on a mission-path.

I've almost purchased WoW about a dozen times so far, but always stop myself. I did 5 years in EQ and remember what a huge time-sink it was. I am indeed tempted though. I know alot of my old EQ guild is in thier somewhere.

I also want to try Matrix Online, but will wait till it hits the shelves.

Check here out for the latest information; including only having to pay for one subscription to play both CoH and CoV.

I played for a couple months, my biggest complaint was that the gameplay was too fast paced and most people only wanted to grind as fast as possible. I much prefer games like EQ where you have time between fights to socialize and get to know the people you're playing with.

I played CoH for awhile with a group from here. It was a blast, until the group slowly all moved onto other things. For me, these kinds of games are much more fun when you play with a group you already know.

What do people like about WoW so much? Everything revolves around killing, even things like crafting, so how is it better than CoH?

Personally I found both equally boring and frustrating. MMORPGs didn't start out with this inane level grind formula, but that seems to be all that's left of the genre nowadays.

One thing I've become convinced of is the absolute necessity of a complex, dynamic, highly-literate story-arc - either in stand-alone games or in online games. The brain must have more than adrenaline jolts, or interest dies. WoW is a very immersive game, beautifully detailed and rendered, but I am becoming more aware of its limitations - the quests, instances, NPC interactions, even the geography and material structure tell hackneyed stories in limited ways. Story-arcs don't have to be linear, and they don't have to be closed, either. What they can provide is meaning and purpose to the inevitable grind - beyond mindless xp for leveling up, or the very slight chance of finding epic equipment that helps a toon's statistics.

Should anyone comment that "at Second Life, we don't have that problem," I'll say this: I'm seriously thinking that a complex story-arc is exactly what SL needs.

Well SL definitely needs something. The story-arc idea is a good one. Something for people to DO.

coco

Personally for SL I'm holding out for HTML and hoping they'll allow interactive-flash-on-a-prim so people can start making flashgame arcades.

Imagine how the real superheros feel

I, personaly have been in a legal battle with Lex Luthor for the past 78 years.

I was excited about CoH even after I started it because I was trying to figure out the challenge of getting it to work with my video card. Everything was pitch black except for the HUD. I raised the gamma to 2 and everything was shades of grey and interesting. Then as I turned the game off, my desktop blinded me. While entertaining in its own way, I prefer a game that works within the computer's normal specifications.

Also the name Breastula was taken.

Well..I've re-entered CoH and have been playing it quite a bit. It has gotten more enjoyable with a good supergroup, and even some pick up teams can be fun. I don't concentrate totally on one character, but share time between a few, which adds variety. But I still think it's missing something. Perhaps possesions, or "normal" time, for when you aren't in your superhero identity.

But I will continue my account and try CoV when it hits the shelves and see how it goes.

Ironically the best thing about CoH is character creation and it's all downhill from there.

wiating for CoV to try

im not a do gooder, I'm a heel

i KNOW there are some CoV beta testers in here, are the complaints of this thread addressed in CoV?

I miss Earth & Beyond

Yes.

But I can't tell you exactly how. NDA and all. But while CoV doesn't turn into a "here's a million different things you can do... all boring and useless!" fest like Everquest or WoW (strictly my own opinion; if you enjoy these games, all the good!) it does add considerable variety and spice to the gameplay.

You're still ultimately hitting people with your superpowers, but there's a bit of variety as to the details.

Also, even those some of the villianous archetypes appear to be similar to the heroic ones... they aren't, really. Even powers with the same name have some subtle differences. I'm looking forward to release.

Well with CoV will come PVP, PVP based missions, and headquarter assaults, so that's at least one more thing to do? Two if you count getting a HQ seperate from the PVP.

Do the beta-testers get to participate in any of that though? Last I heard from one (its stress test now, anyone can get it I think) the testers were on a strict timelimit for being able to play. No more than two hours or something like that a day.