Sunday 18 April 2004

Pic of the day: Take-off. A superheroine flying in the Atlas Park area.

CoH review 5

The power and the glory: Flying, jumping and swimming in the power pool.

Each archetype of hero has a limited number of power sets to choose from. The total number of combinations is pretty high even so, since you have one primary and one secondary power set. Together they provide attack and defense, or something of similar effect (such as healing). By level 2, when you have finished the tutorial, you should be able to survive in a somewhat hostile world. By level 4, you have the powers you are likely to use most of the time, the bread and butter of superpower. And so at level 6 you are finally allowed to branch out.

The Power Pool is of course not actually a pool filled with water. It is a game concept, and consists of superpowers that are not assigned to any particular archetype. Some of them are weaker versions of powers found elsewhere. For instance, you can get a kind of first aid even if you are not a healer, and you can get some fighting moves even if you are a healer. Some want to balance their powers, others want to specialize further. There are also specialized skills such as leadership which affects your whole team and concealment that lets you go undetected. But there are also the travel powers, and those are what most character pick at level 6.

***

There are 4 sets of travel powers: Flying, jumping, superspeed and teleportation. Up to level 5, the only way you can get around the zone is by walking or sprinting. (Sprinting requires very little extra stamina and there are few heroes who actually walk outdoors. We are heroes after all.) From zone to zone you can also travel by monorail, but that's another matter.

Flying is probably the most popular set. Not least because you can actually begin to hover right there, whereas the other travel powers only have related effects until level 14. Admittedly hover is snail slow. You can walk a lot faster than you can hover, unless you buy flight speed enhancements. Even then you need a couple of them to get up to decent speed, and this will take a couple levels to get. Still, when facing a really big wall (as most players do frequently at level 6) even a slow flight saves a lot of time compared to running around the whole neighborhood to find a flight of stairs or get around the wall.

Of course, flight does not fit all character concepts. Sure, if you are a mutant who radiate energy blasts from your eyes, flight is entirely in character. But if your superpower is lightning fast reflexes and hitting things with a katana, flying will usually look out of character. Jumping to rooftops, however, would be nice.

Sadly, the jump powers available at level 6 are rather weak. There is an acrobatic attack which really does nothing for your general leaping skills. (Then again, flight also has a combat move as an alternative, but almost everyone takes hover.) The combat jump lets you jump just a little higher than before (you are already quite an athlete and can jump high fences) and it also lets you climb certain types of buildings. Blank walls, however, are beyond your reach until level 14. Since leveling slows down pretty drastically from level 10 onward, this will take several days for most players. On the bright side, superjump at level 14 is really super. You may not be able to get to the top of a skyscraper, but most other buildings are quite fine. And you have a great deal of control over the leap while you are in the air, as well as protection against falling damage when you land. As with flight, you can get enhancements. I've seen some pretty incredible leaps by older characters.

The third alternative is superspeed. This is, I believe, the only travel power that has an alternative in the power pool. Kinetics powers, available to some controllers and defenders, lets you steal speed from a villain and greatly increase your own speed. I have tried that, and found that navigating the streets at such a high speed was uncomfortable to me, even after I upgraded my video card driver so I did not get the slide show effect. But boy is it a rush. Too bad you risk rushing into enemies if you use it in dangerous areas. The actual superspeed power (available at level 14) helps this problem by giving a bonus to defense, so you are harder to hit. This keeps the villains from killing you when you rush past them. But superspeed running is not available until level 14; there are two superspeed powers to choose from at level 6, but one of them gives you a fast hand to hand attack and the other lets you hasten your other powers so you can attack or heal or whatever, more often.

In contrast, teleportation has a nifty transport power at level 6. The problem is, it does not transport you, only a team-mate. You cannot transport a random hero or even a friend or a member of your supergroup (guild). Only a team mate. This is nice if you quickly want to convene at a mission location, like the entrance to a cave or warehouse. It also works as an ersatz resurrection, as a fallen hero can always go to the hospital for revival, and then you can fetch him back in the blink of an eye. (Well, if there is a hospital in the zone ... hazard zones don't have that.) Alternatively there is power to teleport an enemy to right in front of you. This is not all that useful in most situations, it works basically as a taunt, but it can give you a head start if the villain has friends to back him up. You get a short time to take him down and then get out of there before you are overwhelmed by a sea of his angry buddies.

At level 14 teleportation can finally be used on yourself. It is limited to line of sight and there is also a distance limit. But you can port vertically, and it has a short built-in hover so you can port up in the air, locate the next waypoint and port there. You have to be quick though. As far as I have seen, teleportation is the least popular of the travel powers. Then again, it is also the least visible. You don't see a teleporter soaring through the air or streaking along the avenues. He just fades away and fades into existence somewhere else.

***

To keep people from going wild in the power pool, you can only take 4 different types of pool powers at this time. (It may be extended when level ceiling goes up from 40 to 50.) Each type or pool has 4 powers in it. The two first are different but equal, available at level 6. You have to take one of them to "open" that pool. For instance, you need to take hover or air superiority to get flight, and you need to take aid other or stimulant to open the heal pool. Then at 14 you can get the third (you don't need to take the second if you don't want to). The level 14 power is the defining power of that group. Flight, superjump, heal self, teleport self etc. Finally at level 20 or above you can get the fourth and extravagant power: Group flight, group teleport, revive and such.

Your two original power sets contain 9 powers each, and you get 20 powers over the course of 40 levels. So you need to dip into the power pool eventually, but most do it at level 6 to get transport powers. Some power sets are so useful for their archetype that it is less tempting to load up on pool powers, but of course that depends on your character concept. For a ninja type scrapper, for instance, the concealment pool power set is every bit as defining as weapons and reflexes.

Because each player chooses his combination of archetype powers and pool powers, very few characters are likely to have exactly the same powers. You also choose what powers to enhance, which over time makes quite a difference. Add the fact that some people have powers to enhance others, and the dynamics of the power system is virtually limitless.