I have two minds about this. Coming from City of Heroes, I completely sympathize with those of you who got into the beta and gave Marvel Heroes a try for a "second home".
But on the same coin, I can't altogether relate. I wouldn't ever ask why Torchlight or Din's Curse or Freedom Force can't be more like City of Heroes, and that is totally what
these threads are doing--asking why an apple can't be an orange.
Long before I tried out CoH for the first time, I got my hands on a game called Fate, a fun dungeon crawler, one of those games I always used to go back to on a rainy day. I became a big fan of the developers, because they communicate with their fans a lot. That team went on to make another game based on Fate--which was Torchlight. It took (almost) everything that made Fate so much fun and added a bunch more too. Now of course there is Torchlight 2. I play these games for mindless fun, and I always go back to them, but I can't play them for weeks or months on end. Heck, I still play Ultima Online, one of the funnest dungeon crawlers in history as far as I'm concerned.
Marvel Heroes is a fun dungeon crawler with a super hero skin. It has a lot of fans on the dungeon crawler side, and those of us (like me) who are also comic book nerds are basically exploding with happiness over it. But, just like other super hero games I like to play, like Batman: Arkham X, The Amazing Spider-Man, Freedom Force, I don't see the point in asking how much they have in common with City of Heroes before I'll allow myself to enjoy them. There are a whole lot of dungeon crawlers I don't like also, but my dislike of them has nothing to do with CoH.
In fact, if you're looking for a CoH replacement...I think you're doing both yourself and the devs behind these fine games a great disservice. City of Heroes
CANNOT be replaced. Masterpieces can't be. Stop looking, stop driving down that road, it is a dead end. For all the people who lament the passing of an irreplaceable game while searching for its replacement, I have but one question: what on Earth are you thinking?
Like our devs admitted on occasion, City of Heroes was born from a different era and it fell together, sometimes willfully and sometimes clumsily, almost like pieces from different puzzles; a freak accident, all those pieces becoming a masterful work of art despite all the stumbling in the dark that MMO studios did back when CoH was first created.
This is the first time I've posted in one of these threads, because they are never made for fans. The last thread was titled "Marvel Heroes, I think I'll pass, thanks." And this thread's title is equally condescending. So from the get-go I don't think these threads are being created for fair discussion, and as a fan of the game I haven't been inclined to voice my opinions at all. (I'm having an off-day today, I suppose.) Over in the Guild Wars 2 threads, posts were being deleted left and right for bashing the game, and yet where Marvel Heroes is concerned, we have two whole threads for just that very purpose. I had actually planned on making a more positive Marvel Heroes thread, but Aggelakis doesn't allow multiple threads on the same topic (I'm guessing this one slipped her radar, or the other one was sufficiently old). So, it's been off to the
Marvel Heroes Hub or official beta forums with me.
TL;DR, I have been playing the Marvel Heroes beta for a long while now and I like it for what it is. I dropped cash on two founder's starter packs and a premium pack. Obviously I wouldn't like it if I tried to play it for what it isn't. And I don't even think it's a masterpiece for what it is. Only Din's Curse (with its Demon War expansion) deserves that title from me, an obscure indie title.
