CoH: Same stuff, different day, and the DCU trailer.

I tend to play City of Heroes/Villains in spurts. Months will go buy without anything, and then I’ll play for eight hours straight.

I have lots of reasons not to play that much. Most of the game is in the character creator, which is justifiably awesome. Once I’ve made my character, she’s made and barring inventions and trips to the tailor shop, will look exactly the same at 50 as at 1.

Another thing that doesn’t change, is missions. When you’re soloing, missions can be challenging, but in a group of eight or so people, you just find a crowd of mobs, use every ability, rez, and move on. I’m so busy trying to keep up and not get lost that I don’t know the plot, if it even has one, or what we’re doing. It’s a frantic hairball of confusion until “MISSION COMPLETE!” displays, and we exit the mission and head to the next red star on the compass.

By making the game random, it becomes meaningless. I know there are task forces, at least on the good side, but at least on the evil side, nobody was doing them. And I’ve been on task forces; they are the same thing as random missions, except with a plot (which everyone ignores).

I guess that’s why I play in spurts. I play until my character gets her travel power. I know there is nothing to look forward to except variations on what I have already seen, so there’s no point to move on. I have three genin and one jounin ninja in my team, I do sabotage missions in Paragon City with ease, and in a team my ninjas do dps and keep crap off me while I ice storm the ground, snow storm them so they move slowly and gale them against walls with superstrength winds. I might grab some healing powers after I get my final ninja training power, but aside from that, what is there to look forward to but another sewer mission?

My love for the superhero genre beats itself against the iron barrier of CoX’s random mission design. Let’s hope Champions Online’s handcrafted missions bring on the perfect storm that brings the superhero MMO into the mainstream. DC Universe Online? I dunno, all I saw in the trailer was Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and that crowd, and since I know you can’t play as the DC superheroes, I’m not sure why they showed them. Who really cares what they do? You won’t be playing DCU to watch some NPC be the hero. You play because YOU are the hero.

Okay, DCU trailer bit: Wonder Woman. She can fly without her invisible jet? When did THAT happen? And can you imagine a worse flying suit than a bustier and panties? Everytime she lands, she must spend ten minutes picking bugs out of her cleavage, while the guys just brush the crud right off. I wonder how she keeps her skin looking good when she has been running around outside, mostly naked, for forty years.