Jophiel, a little help?Follow

Ok, skipping the cosmetics (char generation and stuff is great but you'll see all that later), here's a basic rundown:

There's five basic hero "types" (like races) in the game. Natural, science, mutant, etc. These make very little inital difference (later, they'll determine where some shops you can use are) so don't sweat it and go with what you feel. After that, you have five "archtypes" (or classes).
Blasters deal have low hitpoints and deal in high damage ranged attacks. Sort of the wizards of CoH.
Tankers have the highest hitpoints and powers devoted to absorbing damage. EQ Warrior types.
Defenders heal, buff, debuff, etc depending on their power set (more on that later). Medium hitpoints and they're really a support class since they have crappy DPS abilities.
Controllers have low hitpoints and also deal in support but in a more offensive role. Charms, holds, things like that.
Scrappers have medium hitpoints and are a melee DPS type. Very few ranged attacks, they're intended to get in there and mix it up.

Depending on your archtype, you then pick a powerset. If you're a blaster you can take fire, ice, assault rifle, etc. If you're a scrapper you can take claws, spines, katana, etc. So on and so forth. During creation, there's arrows to go back and forth so you can easily read through the lists of powers in each set and decide what you like. After that you pick a secondary powerset, make your character's costume and you're good to go. Powers are designed to scale with your level which is nice. The Flare ability you pick at lvl 1 will still be useful at lvl 30.

Starting the game is a snap. You start in a tutorial which leads you through how to move, attack, use special powers, etc. By the time you finish, you reach lvl two and get a new power -- yay!

There's no real "loot" in the game. The two things you gain (other than xp) are "inspirations" which are single use spell like thingies that heal you 25%, increase your accuracy 25%, etc. The other are enhancements which augment your powers. Both are tradable and sellable for Influence which is the coin of Paragon City. Of course, the only thing to do with Influence is buy more Inspirations and Enhancements.

My advice to start is to make a scrapper or blaster for your first character just to play around. It's really annoying to spend three minutes killing a single guy with your Defender's gimp attacks when a blaster could take him out in two hits. You have eight slots per server and about fifteen servers (more or less) so you have lots of room to make alts.

Some other thoughts: The game is really action oriented. You talk to NPCs to get missions, then go and beat things up. Healing and Stamina happen a lot faster than EQ so the pace is quicker (as it should be for a superhero themed game). You can also roam the streets beating up n'er-do-wells, but you get better xp for missions anyway.

You often get "door" missions where you run to some building and click on the door to enter an instanced zone. The level is based on your level when you got the mission and the number of mobs is based on the amount of people in your group. You could enter a mission, get your butt kicked, leave and get a buddy then re-enter and find more mobs. Of course, killing is easier with two than one so you'd probably still do fine.

Death is based on a debt system. You can't delevel and there's no corpse runs. When you "die" you get the option to go to the nearest hospital or to wait for a rez. Rez's don't benefit you aside from not having to run all the way back. You can even rez yourself with some powers and inspirations. Anyway, say you have 25% xp and you die. You'll still have 25% xp but also an additional 15% debt (example -- it depends on what lvl you die at, I believe). Until you clear your debt, your xp is split between advancement and debt. In other words, the worse that'll happen is you'll level half as fast until you clear your debt. Some people hate this system but I think (again, for CoH) that it beats EQ's system.

That's the quickie basics that spring to mind. Really, I think it's a lot of fun but I don't see myself playing it for years like I've done with EQ. Oh, one of the coolest things for new people is sidekicking. Say you just bought the game and you have a buddy who is lvl 20. Well, that sucks for him to have to start playing an alt, huh? Not at all. He can take his lvl 20 and make you a sidekick which makes you effectively lvl 18 as long as you're within range of him. You'll only get xp on those lvl 20 mobs as if they were lvl 3, so it's not powerlevelling, but it's a great way to get to hang with friends who might be outpacing you. At the same time, it's no sub for a *real* lvl 18 char since you only have the powersets of a lvl 1 so it doesn't make lvl 18 characters worthless for groups.

Holy crap, that was a lot of text and only barely coherant. I play on Virtue and you're free to come on by. I have massive alt-itis so I have a stable of characters from lvl 4-10 since I keep rerolling and trying new combos. I usually hop on around 8:30ish CST. I'll tell you what, provided you intend to start tonight (I assume you would), I'll make a point of playing on either Dark Gargoyle or London Werewolf so you can find me and shoot me a tell. Actually, that's The Dark Gargoyle and The London Werewolf, but you don't use titles when sending tells, invites, etc.

Final note, CoH tells require commas. correct syntax would be /tell dark gargoyle, Wow your costume is great!

Edited, Fri May 28 17:21:42 2004 by Jophiel

Ok, got on with no problem. Sent tells to both the names but kept coming back that either you weren't on or the names didn't exists. Oh well. Got a Mutant Tank named Brikk House and a Science Defender named The Jade Sentinel. I'll be on again tonight for sure. See ya round bro.

You can add friends whether they're on or not. Defenders can actually solo pretty well, but after playing one for a while a blaster feels like cheating. Depends on what you're used to.

My only quibble about the game so far is that the chat system kinda sucks. You can't chat and stop running, for instance. You have to finish talking and hit Enter and then do whatever else. If you try to back up while talking you'll just cycle through every tell you've sent and really confuse someone when you finally hit ENTER DAMMIT ENTER.

(ahem)

Other than that, it's a lot of fun. I've been playing with some EQ expatriates on Victory.

Hells yeah. I had a blast. Take my big hulking brute up in there, pick one punk, and start smashing away. IMHO, a stone tank is the ****! Then again, that's the only tank I've played. LOL The Stone Mallet graphics and sound are just killer. And it just hit me, your defender kinda looks like Alucard IMHO.

I made up a new Magic Blaster named Kold Shoulder. As the name implies, he's an Ice user.

Anyway, for anyone here who plays CoH, look me up.
BTW: I play on Virtue.

Brikk House - Mutant Tanker
The Jade Sentinel - Tech Defender
Kold Shoulder - Magic Blaster

Edited, Sun May 30 20:07:03 2004 by PsychoJester