City of Heroes: Going Rogue

This review is a followup to my earlier City of Heroes MMORPG Review. In this review I cover the Going Rogue expansion and talk about the new launch content, including the alignment morality system, changes to powers and so forth.  
 
  

I recently did a review of City of Heroes. Some people disliked that review, claiming that it wasn't representative of the game as it is now, because a new expansion, “Going Rogue” was recently released. Original-Gamer.com recently received a review copy of Going Rogue and asked me to perform the review. So here it is: my review of City of Heroes: Going Rogue!

The first thing I should mention is that the concept behind this expansion is that from now on, all archetypes can be heroes or villains through a "morality system". This means Masterminds can become heroes and Defenders can become villains.

The old villain and hero tutorials are no longer accessible to new player accounts; instead, all new players will begin in Praetoria, an alternate dimension where almost all of the storyline heroes of the game are villains. It's kind of like the DC Multiverse's Earth-3 where you have evil versions of Superman and so forth.

Praetoria is a zone for characters level 1 to 20; upon reaching level 20 your character will become either a hero or a villain. The Praetoria zones are, in my opinion, better designed than the earlier starting zones. The zones are smaller, so there is less travel time from contacts to missions. Also, contacts don't appear asking you to zone hop and will only give missions to locations within the same zone they occupy.

The Praetoria mission maps are new and have a bit of variety to them. You won't just have hundreds of warehouse and office missions; instead you also have sewers, warehouses and labs. The mission maps do seem to be better designed; there are fewer "dead ends" so they aren't confusing mazes like so many of the older mission maps were designed to be.

Here's a summary of the key "new things" in this expansion.

-There are new powersets: Demon Summoning for Masterminds, Dual Pistols for Defenders, Blasters and Corruptors, and Kinetic Melee for Brutes, Scrappers, Stalkers and Tankers. Electric Control is also available for Controllers and Dominators.

-With the exception of Shield Mastery, all existing powersets have had their powers buffed in some way. Most notably, those who played Firey Aura characters will be happy to learn that Burn no longer causes fear and while the damage was reduced, it works the way it did when City of Heroes was originally released. Flight and sprint speeds have also significantly increased.

-The game has something called Ultra Mode, which is a supposedly a mode where the game graphics are greatly enhanced. I can't tell you what this is like, because entering Ultra Mode causes my client to crash, which is Ultra Crappy.

-Before Going Rogue came out, the auction house markets for heroes and villains were kept separate, but now they are all together! For many servers, this means prices for items are now greatly inflated because you have both longtime heroes and villains bidding on items! Take this as you will.

-As I mentioned before, City of Heroes now has an alignment system. New players start as a neutral character in the new zone of Praetoria. When performing missions, you will often be given choices on what you want to do. These dialogue trees determine whether your character becomes a villain or a hero.

Or so you would think! In reality, the moral choices you make in Praetoria DO NOT MEAN JACK! Once you reach level 20 your character is given the choice to be a hero or a villain, regardless of what moral choices you made during the quest chains! You could behave as the most evil bastard in the world and in the end you can still get to become a hero.

My Mastermind robbed a bank, placed bombs around the city, fed programmers to zombies, kidnapped someone's family members to use as hostages, then murdered them with bombs, and I was still able to make him a hero. What kind of morality system allows something like that?

Let me ask you this: if the game designers do not view moral choices as important, why should I, the player? Because the story is different? Pfft. A good story makes me care about it and gives me an emotional attachment. I can't have an emotional attachment to the choices I make if those choices have no consequences.

The real morality system begins after level 20. Basically, after defeating some enemies you will get a tip about something going on in the world. Following up on the tip allows you to do a tip mission. After doing ten tip missions you can do a morality mission, and after doing the morality mission you have the option to switch sides or become more loyal to your current faction.

- The only real endgame "raid" of the game, Cathedral of Pain, has been released. Note that Cathedral of Pain was in the game way back in 2006, but was removed quickly because of its game breaking bugs. Now, four years later, it has finally been revamped so it takes three parties to clear it. However, the rewards are Reward Merits (the same reward for every task force in the game, used to buy stuff from NPC vendors) and a random temporary character buff that lasts for a week. That's it! Awesome, huh? Okay, the temporary buff is powerful, sure, but that isn't enough to make me want to run it. They could have at least made some random costume recipes drop that can only be obtained from this raid. Instead you get badges, a buff, and a reward just like what you get from every task force in the game. Yippee.

Bearing all of the new content in mind, I have to ask myself, "What does CoH do that no other MMORPG does?"

Is it, as many players suggest, good storylines? Well, no. All games have storylines and quest flavor text, and I personally don't think the stories in City of Heroes are any better or worse than those in other MMORPGs.

The question now becomes: “What was unique about the other games I played for many years?”

Ragnarok Online had guild vs guild castle capturing and defending in its PVP event “War of the Emperium”, which I really enjoyed.

WoW had epically challenging raid design and team PVP events, which I really enjoyed and was worth all of the boring grinding.

NexusTK at least had player-ran organizations who can get GM assistance to create roleplaying events, which I enjoyed taking part in.

Some fans of the game suggest City of Heroes is a great game for online roleplaying, but I strongly disagree. City of Heroes has no game mechanics to encourage player roleplaying. If you look at well designed tabletop roleplaying games, many of the character abilities are designed to promote and encourage the player to not only interact with the NPCs but also with the game world. City of Heroes has no such mechanics: it doesn't even have something as simple as skills designed to promote roleplaying. I mean, hero and villain players can't even directly oppose one another in a meaningful way.

What does CoH have that makes it a special snowflake? Near as I can tell, other than "you can dress like a superhero or supervillain", CoH doesnt have ANY gimmick. It is a generic fantasy MMORPG with flavor text and graphics that make it look like a modern comic book world, but there is nothing unique about the design that separates it from every other fantasy MMORPG out there. It offers nothing that encourages me to play it anymore than I have, which is a real shame.

Here we have a game concept where you could have super groups engaging in some kind of guild PVP event, but the developers did not create a system that encourages something like that. When I say PVP, I don’t mean that everything has to be about beating the crap out of each other; just that the two sides need to have opposing goals in the event.

If there is any game concept that justifies guild vs guild pvp, it is a superhero comic book MMORPG.

I mean, think about all the comic books that involve superhero and supervillain groups clashing with one another; notable ones that come to mind are:

The X-Men Vs The Brotherhood of Mutants Justice League Vs The Legion of Supervillains.  

 The Avengers Vs HYDRA  

 The Fantastic Four Vs The Frightful Four

Hell, Spider-Man had to fight the Sinister Six all by himself!

The battles between these super organizations were some of the best issues of these comic books. There is plenty of source material for game designers to find new PvP game mechanics and incorporate them in a way that isn't just "Capture the flag" and that actually mean something within the context of the game world. Superhero groups could have consequences for failing to thwart the plot of a supervillain group, and supervillans could reap some kind of reward for their success!

Maybe the super villains have to break out of Arkhum Asylum if the superhero group defeats and captures them? Maybe there could be timed missions where two supergroups have missions that are opposed to one another, or bank robbery missions where the villains try to rob the bank and the heroes try to stop them, or hostage escort missions where the heroes need to rescue hostages and escort them to safety while the villains try to kill the hostages? There is room here to make something really awesome, and it is a shame that Paragon Studios is content to only do generic fantasy MMORPG nonsense.

Supposedly, new endgame content will be released sometime next year, and I can't say what it is because there has been little information released other than it will be a way to further customize level 50 characters. But like all unreleased content, even that is subject to change.

In my honest opinion, the Going Rogue expansion isn't an expansion at all. It is basically a new leveling zone for levels 1 through 20 that costs $40. I feel the expansion was rushed and is currently not worth the money it costs to upgrade existing CoH accounts. Maybe that will change when the developers release the endgame content for the expansion, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to change.