City of Heroes issue 9
A lot of people post a lot of things on the net about video games, and generally I try to stay away from it. Why? Because a lot of geeks out there have a lot of opinions about things they don’t really know anything about. Plus they get into holy wars over all manner of things, and honestly don’t have the open minds geeks were originally known for. In other words when I see a lot of movie, TV, and video game criticism I simply ignore it. Hell…I’ve seen criticism about movies hitting the forums long before the movie is even out by people who don’t seem to know anything about it, and thus haven’t even seen it. My criticism of Catcher in the Rye is based on my actually having read it so I think my views on it are substantiated at least that far, and honestly I expect at least that much from others.
But now I’m willing to talk a bit about it for two major reasons: 1) I haven’t seen a whole lot on the matter at hand, and 2) I’m trying to expand my posting beyond free thought and web comics. 
Now then…City of Heroes issue 9. I’ve been playing CoH/CoV for about a year and a half now. I like how you can just pick up and play for a while, and then be done with said character for a while. Eve Online was a fantastic game, but it was becoming a second job, and honestly I didn’t need the stress in my life from my entertainment. Maybe I’ll go back to it at some point, but I’m not sure (I’d LOVE a single player type of game like that, but other space games are always lacking for me). Anywho, I’m very familiar with the game system and know a lot of its quirks. I could write a laundry list a yard long about little things that I’d change here or there to make it a better experience (at least in my opinion). Issue 9, though, did something that I hadn’t really considered at all through its invention system.
But this will require a little background…
For those who don’t play, your character starts off with a couple skills (attacks, defenses, heals, buffs, debuff and whatnot), with an enhancement slot in each. As you increase in level you get more skills and more slots to attach to your skills (up to 6 slots on any one skill). In to these slots you put “enhancements” to augment traits of the skills such as accuracy, damage, or hold duration. Enhancements come in three strengths, training, dual origin, and single origin, each being about twice as strong as the last. There’s another group of special ones, but they’re kind of rare for most players. Once you get an enhancement through combat winnings or more often purchasing it gives you a bonus that decreases every level until it becomes ineffective and needs to be replaced…usually every 5 levels.
As you hit the higher levels the steady decrease of your bonuses and increase with the purchase of new enhancements becomes quite a roller-coaster. The level before you can upgrade your stuff can be kind of tough…especially if you have it on higher difficulties. Basically it is just an aspect to the game you got used to and set your play style around.
But now they’ve changed things. Even though you still have the old type of enhancements you can now create new ones with stuff you get from your victories (salvage) along with recipes you can either purchase or win. The cool thing about these is that the bonuses don’t decrease over levels, thus you just replace them when you can get something that’s sufficiently better, and that is fucking fantastic. A whole new angle on things, and a great expansion on how things work without overhauling the entire game.
In addition to these, though, they’ve added some new types of enhancements that add different types of bonuses and generally work like the other special ones from before. I won’t go into depth about them, but overall yet more coolness for your character as he/she develops over time.
But wait! There’s more! There are a few costume pieces you can acquire in the same fashion: recipe and parts gained from missions and general combat. These give you a couple cool things, first new costume parts, and second given a certain level of rarity the possibility of younger characters getting money (well…influence as they call it in CoH or infamy in CoV) by selling these off to older characters that haven’t found them yet, but have tons of cash.
Last, but not least, they introduced a market for players to directly sell things to others. Before there wasn’t much worth selling most of the time, but you did have a direct trading system. Thus at one point they gave out special gifts you could give to others, and someone really wanted one. He announced he would pay a chunk of money for it, and I had a character who still had her gift to give, but was REALLY in need of some cash. The system supported that and we both got what we wanted. But now that’s expanded…I can buy special enhancements from people who were just burning through pieces they already had but couldn’t really use at a reasonable price, and I can sell something I may find that’s rare to someone who has more money than I do (well…for my younger toons).
All said I applaud the fine folks at Cryptic for this move and I think that it has greatly enhanced the game (given the few hours I’ve played with the new stuff). Well…the invention system and adding Skyway to the Green Line. Man talk about something I didn’t even know I wanted until it was there!