So yeah, meet me in Siren’s Call some time and I’ll show you my Phantom Army.

I’ve got the Unending Sickness made and spreading radiation problems to passers by.

But! With my first character, I couldn’t get past level 15 – 16 was just a universe away. With my current one, I’m already 18 and 20 seems within my grasp. A mission that’s hard enough to kill me twice carries an XP reward large enough to completely pay off my incurred debt and more. They’ve increased XP rates across the board on top of the other thing. It’s not a total fix, and the fix is glaringly obvious, but it’s more than a gesture – it’s a big step.

When i was playing the debt was horrendous. When i first started to play i never understood it, but when you’re at the lower levels it does really matter because the ammount of debt you acquire is insignificant. Plus the game is easy enough for you to lose debt by yourself at the start.

The problem is the higher the level, the more debt you get and the longer it takes to get off. Even if they have halved the debt like you’ve said, it doesn’t change the sheer annoyance of it.

It’s a harsh punishment for dying, and after a while it really seemed to seep the fun out of the game. You get to points where you have no debt and you get tense incase you somehow die and get it back again. There’s been occasions when i’ve been celebrating the loss of debt only to die a second later. Kicked back down to the ground for the long struggle up.

If you die multiple times it’s even worse. Once you’ve died 3 or 4 times with a pile of debt you just don’t want to play anymore as you know that it’ll take you such a long time to work the debt off.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the ammount of XP towards your next level later on in the game wasn’t so much. Once you hit level 20 the next level seems so far off, if you have debt on top of this you feel like you’re screwed.

In other MMO’s like WoW the ammount of XP needed for the next level always seems obtainable, but in CoH it really doesn’t.

You also get to a point where you think “do i really want to fight 5000 trolls in one building again!?” and you realise that the whole game upto that point has been exactly the same. You’ve said the same and i’m glad someone else noticed.

Another annoyance i found was that the further you get in, the more enemies there are in missions. You’ll have to kill 300 trolls in a cave in one mission, this takes up a hell of a lot of time, and if you quit halfway through you have to try again from the start next time. For what though? The same mission again and a little bit more added to “the plot.”

I was fooled into doing a set of Task Force missions after being told that they have “a great storyline and you get a special prize at the end” and the storyline was as bland as ever. The special prize at the end? A badge (struggle through a handful of tough missions stays in a team for a badge!?) and an add-on. It just doesn’t sit well to me. It’s a game that just doesn’t reward you when it should.

Argh. All the bad points are really coming to the top of my head now. But i must admit it is still a great MMO. I’ve played quite a few MMO’s and CoH has the most friendly community out there. I never had any trouble finding people to quest with and the game looks so bright and nice that it just makes it feel like everyone is smiling and happy.

I think the world itself is really great as well. It just all seems to fit perfectly. Like you’ve actually jumped into a comic world where giant cracks in the ground meld with skyscrapers without a problem.

The best part of CoH is your character though. The possibilities are endless and everyone is unique. Anyway i’m just starting to go over what Jim said in his PCG article now.

Sorry for ranting a bit.

I’m not sure when you played, but debt was a huge problem for me too, responsible for every time I stopped playing for more than a day or so. But I have to admit that it just doesn’t bother me now that they’ve halved it. They still badly need to remove it, but in practise I’m working it off within half an hour of acquiring it, and more importantly I’m always long out of it before I die again.

I can’t see myself playing much beyond level 20 either – if every mission was in a unique setting, then sure. But since so many of them are in identical, often bland places, what keeps me going is the next landmark. Right now that’s a second costume and a cape – I seem to have a free redesign at Icon already, but my current costume doesn’t need tweaking or improving, it needs a complete alternative I can switch to at will.

After that, I’d love an effect, but I’m not ploughing through ten levels of repetition to get there. Maybe if I found a great supergroup, but really I’d rather just start again with a new character – there’s more to discover in the different classes than there is in the world, at least within any given amount of playing time.

This all sounds scathing, but it only would be if you had to sign up for a year at a time or something. As it is, the two or three months you’ll play for will only cost you what a normal game does, and it’ll be the most consistently fun MMOG experience you can have right now.

Jumping past buildings at a super speed is awesome, you don’t have to worry about anything except the city limits. There is a feeling of reality in jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Watching the people on the ground quickly zooming in and out of your view. It makes you feel like you could actually do it, because it doesn’t seem supernatural, it just seems like doing something you can already do but a hundred times better.

There was a lot of fuss about flying though. As i said, the average player chooses to fly and this put me off. Near the end of the beta i’d already made my mind up that i wouldn’t be buying the game and i wanted to try out things i’d missed so i did a character swap with a friend. He tried out my character and i tried out his, a fat tank with his pink underwear on the outside and giant heart on his chest.

As soon as i switched to his character and flew around the city i knew i’d been missing a great part of the game. At times it feels like you could just fly onwards and upwards forever. It helps you see how big the game really is and makes you feel so small and yet so invincible. When you use the super jumping you feel extra ordinary, but when you fly you actually feel like a super hero and that’s how CoH should be.

I could almost say the game is worth playing just for the flying and jumping but it isn’t. The debt system constantly spoilt it for me, and once you get to level 20 the goal of your next level seems so impossible and so far away. It would have been nice to jump around with a cape though. But then again, i like to be different from the average player so would probably choose not to have one.

Actually, no. But has any NDA ever been properly enforced, with lawyers and court orders and whatnot? I’ve yet to hear of a developer suing someone for breach of an NDA, although I suppose they might just stop giving non-public content to the person breaching, which is bad if you rely on such things for your job.

Ask me again when I’ve played the beta.

I got Super Jump as that was the path I had previously chosen, but I’d always wanted to fly. I found it great fun, but respecced (using the free Iss 5 one) anyway, and now I can fly.

It’s so boring. It’s cool, yes, but just so pedestrian it’s hardly a step above running there. The only advantage is that I don’t get insta-killed in the hollows.

Now I’ve lost the motivation to play again. I’d like a cape, but it’s a long way away and I’ll have to fly there.

I’d prefer to jump.

(Cyrptic also need to add mega impact craters, as per the new Hulk game. Awesome!)