Green Lantern – Infinite Crisis Hero Spotlight

Green Lantern is one of the most powerful late game heroes.  He is characterized as a “Blaster” which in layman means he does a tonne of damage.

Abilities

Stolen Powers

Green Lantern has two optimum stolen powers.

Super Speed: Gain 20% Move Speed and move through enemies for the next 4 seconds.

Note: Super Speed is almost necessary for all heroes.  It is especially necessary for Green Lantern.  This will allow Green Lantern to run away early game from dangerous situations.  Late game it will allow him to chase people down.  Remember that Green Lantern does very little attack damage and most of his damage comes from abilities.

Green Lantern’s Meteor Drop: Drops a Meteor on a target location, dealing 80 Power Damage in an area around it. The meteor persists as a small environmental object.

Note: Green Lantern’s Meteor Drop is a mana-free ability that on top of adding a little bit of burst damage will also mess with drone AI.

Core Abilities

Slam: Green Lantern drops a construct on the target, dealing 80 Power Damage. Slam deals an additional 10 Power Damage per stack of Shattered Will effect on the target, and dispels Shattered Will.

Note: Shattered will is earned via the XXXXXX talent.  Slam is your opening attack in every single engagement.  It deals the highest damage and has the second longest range.  This ability scales 75% with power meaning that it very quickly becomes very powerful.

Constrict: Green Lantern’s target loses 70% movement speed and is dealt 70 Power Damage over 1.0 seconds.

Note: This ability early game is best used when retreating at low levels and when pushing at high levels.  Because of its quick damage over time it can be added in to get a kill and can be used to assist a team mate in catching up to an enemy.  Alternatively it can be used to ‘peel’ enemies off of your team mates.

Missile Barrage: Green Lantern fires a missile, and creates 2 extras, which can be fired by triggering the skill again.  Missiles explode when they reach an enemy or reach max range dealing 40 Power Damage in an area and applying the Shattered Will effect. Targets with shattered will lose 6 Power Armor and stacks up to three times.

Note: This ability has one of the longest ranges in the game and can be used to push drones or ‘powder’ your opponent with some damage before engaging.

Green Lantern’s Light: Green Lantern crashes a jet construct into the ground, dealing Power Damage to enemies in the area.   Enemies in the center of the area are knocked down.

Note: This ability might seem like its best used against a group, but in reality it ought to be used to win any battle against any number of opponents.  It is insanely powerful and the stun will allow you to win 1v1s.

Passive Ability

Indomitable Will: When Green Lantern earns a Kill or an Assist he regains 15 health.

Note: This is a late game mega win.  With the amount of area of effect damage, area of effect kills you will regain tones of health.  Early game however it is useless because well… you’re not supposed to take damage… and you don’t get that many kills.

Build

Level 1 – Slam
Level 2 – Constrict
Level 3 – Missile Barrage
Level 4 – Slam
Level 5 – Slam
Level 6 – Green Lantern’s Light
Level 7 – Slam
Level 8 – Missile Barrage
Level 9 – Missile Barrage
Level 10 – Green Lantern’s Light
Level 11 – Missile Barrage
Level 12 – Constrict
Level 13 – Constrict
Level 14 – Green Lantern’s Light

Note if you are solo-laning simply get Missile Barrage first.  This will allow you to kill off drones without having to risk an encounter in a 2v1 or 3v1.

Strategy

At late game Green Lantern is insanely powerful, but getting him to late game is difficult.

A typical ‘damage rotation’ for Green Lantern is to open Slam, Missile Barrage x 3,Constrict,, Slam.  This will nearly kill most heroes.  You can finish them off by using Green Lantern’s Light, Green Lantern’s Meteor or use Super Speed to catch up for when the Slam cooldown comes back up.

Green Lantern should never engage at a disadvantage and should always maintain at range of opponents.

Missile Barrage when activated does not interrupt movement.  This means you can spam all three in whatever direction you are moving to create a “stutter step” like effect.

Because of his insanely high damage Green Lantern can fulfill a lot of rolls.  He can sit in one lane for the entire game or equally he can roam around and gank to get a high kill count.

Either option will allow Green Lantern to get that high gold count he needs in order to purchase Power gear to make his damage insane.

Strengths vs Weaknesses

Green Lantern is very strong against Batman, Flash, and Atomic Wonder Woman.

Green Lantern is weak against Wonder Woman, Doomsday, Cat Woman, and Nightmare Batman.

First Impressions of Infinite Crisis

Oh it’s that time again.

It’s superhero season!

So with Marvel Heroes not quite doing as well as what was hoped for from Gazillion it’s time for a DC themed MMO.

But wait it’s no an MMO it’s a MOBA.  And it’s called Infinite Crisis.

You see there is this game that DC and Marvel play in which they both put the exact same game in production simultaneously for release simultaneously.  Historically Marvel gets their’s out first and then DC gets one out after.

Marvel goes for a X-Men themed fighter in 94′

DC goes for a Superman themed fight em up in 94′

Marvel releases Ultimate Alliance.

DC releases Justice League Heroes.

Marvel does a crossover game with Street Fighter.

DC does a crossover game with Mortal Kombat.

DC makes DC Universe Online.

Marvel makes…. Teen Force.

Seemingly Marvel has always won in terms of movies and cartoons, somewhere that DC has always lagged behind.

But for the better part of three decades DC as consistently produced better games.

Most Marvel games that come out have had limited replay value and the one playthrough was kind of just a standard of the time.

DC games on the other hand have had deep mechanics and have always tried to distinguish themselves from what is on the market.  Games like Batman Arkham City and Injustice: Gods Among Us are just two great games from the popular DC franchise that are just REALLY good.

Infinite Crisis as stated is a MOBA.  That’s multi-online battle arena…. if that means anything anymore.

In it you can play as the more popular DC heroes and villains, mainly the Justice League, Doomsday and some Batman villains.

One thing that is initially really cool about the game is the choice in heroes.  Batman for example has three variants, The Dark Knight, Nightmare (Vampire) Batman, and Gaslight (steampunk) Batman.

Because the game is a MOBA and hence has no real need for story they’re able to include these characters into the game.

Compare that to a game like Injustice in which Superman is the villain… they’re forced to invent stupid stories to make it all make sense.

Obviously the game designers will be adding in more heroes over time.  However the first offering of heroes is pretty great with roughly 20 heroes to choose and a screen that tells us another 40 are in development.

The game is really good in many regards and I’d like to start off with positive before I go into negative.

The first positive is shorter matches.  Nothing drove me bonkers in DOTA 2 and League of Legends than having to sit down to these 45 minute matches which you knew you had won after 12 minutes because of ludicrous designs.

In Infinite Crisis the cannons are holographic.  So if there is an enemy unit on the point, the cannon will fire.  If there is no one there, they just get captured.

Another thing that speeds up this game is the money/XP trickle.  Most MOBAs just do the money trickle.  By trickling in XP it means it is much easier for people who “fall behind” to catch up in the game and matter again.  This can be compared to something like DOTA 2 in which after you feed twice you are mostly useless for another 35 minutes.

Because killing things only gives slight XP advantages it has a gradual progression in which you always have to play skillful.

A final thing that really helps speed up this game is that there are no stalemate scenarios.  In the DOTA 2 stalemate scenario you start off for the first 15 minutes killing creeps until you have enough power to kill a hero…. you are stalemated for 15 full minutes.

In this game the “creeps” are not actually that powerful and can be easily killed and tanked.  The canon is as said, holographic.  The levels are not designed linear meaning you can hunt and gank people at any time.  Because of this if there is ever a time you feel like “no one” can win a battle…. well you don’t have to fight that battle.

An average game will go from 15-30 minutes in length, far more pleasurable than that of DOTA 2 or League of Legends in which games can go on for hours.  On top of that it gives it more eSports cred as people’s viewership tends to go down after 30 minuetes.

As far as gameplay goes all of the moves are on rather short cooldowns compared to most MOBAs.  This allows for “skillful spamming” in which you have to be able to dodge enemy attacks but get all of yours off on cooldown simultaneously.  Mana pools are high.  Compared to DOTA2 and League of Legends which is far more slow paced, this is a welcome change.  Truthfully I’ll never be able to start a MOBA at Level 1 again.

As far as weaknesses go, this game has many.

One of the first major weaknesses that sticks out is their version of a Shop.  It recommends what you ought to buy and only puts on display the items that are appropriate for that hero.

In one way it makes sense as it makes it very accessible.  On the downside it means everyone gets the same stuff.

Similarly they have “recommended abilities” that most people seem to use.  At some point I figured out that if you put one point into the three Green Lantern abilities you get more damage than any other setup.  The game recommends putting 2 points into one ability and 1 point into another.

So I meet a Green Lantern and he has gone with the recommended build, I kill him… and then he accuses me of cheating since because we’re “mirrored” we should have the exact same damage.

To me a “recommended” should be a true min/max list…. not just a bunch of random crap in random order.

The final major weakness for me is the profit model.  They’re taking League of Legends’ in which you can spend a month grinding out a single hero (8 hours a day) or you can buy it for $10.

DC Infinite Crisis MOBA In Beta

Well it looks like Turbine and DC Comics are jumping into the MOBA world and it’s looking pretty good.

Closed beta for Infinite Crisis is now open to application sign up at:
https://www.infinitecrisis.com/en

DC Universe Online on Steam

I thought it might be a little worth while mentioning that with DC Universe Online’s switch to the free to play model they have listed themselves in Steam as a free to play game.

 

 

Why Did DC Universe Online Fail?

DC Universe Online was hyped as the game for 2011.  A large part of this was due to having the single most epic game trailer ever made.  But amongst all the hype the game didn’t make it half a year.  The game had some problems itself but most of the problems with this game had to do with company management and marketing, not the game itself.  You will find that in this rare occurrence I’m spending more time talking about Sony Online Entertainment’s fail instead of that of the game they made.

DC Universe Online put out information on May 7, 2011 detailing a plan to merge all of the servers into one super server.  This of course limits maintenance costs and also allows them to keep the servers on without having to do any updates and move on to their next game.  Those servers can then be used for the next MMO or online game they release.

Sony Security Issue

The shit hit the fan in the gaming world when CNN and ABC both released reports on a massive hacking job done on Sony Online Entertainment’s Playstation Network (PSN).  On PSN are millions of credit card numbers and over night people were losing between $400-$3000.  The numbers were in such high numbers that Sony Online Entertainment released a press release instructing people how to file for fraud charges.

Sony Entertainment Explaining How to File Fraud Charges

After the story came out Sony Online Entertainment turned off all of their servers, including those of DC Universe Online.  They went offline for a full month while they tried to secure their network against hacking.  In truth it could have happened to anyone.  Blizzard’s own authenticator’s were proven faulty after a number of authenticator’s were hacked.  Considering that Blizzard has the second most powerful authenticator’s on the planet (first being the US Military) it goes to tell you how in demand gaming security has become.  Sony was merely the victim of a group of hackers who could have targetted anyone.  Of course they went for the gaming company whose Parent sold us DvD players instead of the gaming company whose Parent sold us Microsoft Word.

The law suits and hacking had a very large impact on the game and during that week roughly 3/4 of all subscriptions were cancelled.  These were people who enjoyed the game and wanted to continue playing, but felt the threat of a lack of Internet security and felt there best move was to go to some other game.

However, having said that if the security threats didn’t come in… DC Universe might have been in trouble anyway.

Superhero Game Comparison

While most MMOs are getting compared to World of Warcraft, DC Universe Online was held to the standard of City of Heroes and Champions Online.  This was a rather unfortunate hit against DC Universe because DCUO had to work within the realm of a DC Universe.  City of Heroes/Champions Online were able to create anything you could imagine.  What this ended up meaning was that the powers in the other two superhero MMOs were far more interesting than what DCUO could come up with.

One of the biggest hits against DCUO was the beat-em-up style of play.  Nearly all successful MMOs use an auto-attack game with fill special moves.  DC Universe on the other hand used a beat-em-up game with fill abilities.  This of course would come off as an awkward style of play for people who never played any Diablo.

However, when you talk to people who played City of Heroes/Champion’s Online and compare it to DC Universe Online they never ever talk about what DCUO does better.  It’s as if City of Heroes and Champions Online were these perfect little games that had no flaws when being compared against DCUO.  At no point would a person be lead to ask themselves “so why don’t they play Champion’s Online?”  The simple answer is that these games ran out of content fast and as WoW became increasingly popular, Blizzard’s content releases came more and more often to the point where they were almost building a new game every 6 months (OMFG CHAOS BOLT DOESN’T DO WHAT ANYMORE NOW!??!).

Getting people to compare a game with WoW is a lot easier because they’re going to be more willing to point out the flaws in game design that the new game is fixing.

PS3/PC Split

I ended up getting a free copy of DCUO.  However my friend who also beta tested did not.  So when he went to the store he bought the PS3 version of the game.  Of course my free copy was a PC version.  Amidst the confusion he ended up playing it on PS3 and I didn’t end up playing it at all.  One thing about building a community is that you want to try and run as few servers as possible and only put up new ones if there is a queue to join the existing ones.

The reason you do this is to prevent a problem that existed on beta, under populated dungeons.  A person might go into a dungeon expecting to get this awesome group, and then have only one other person.  So then these people would go make lunch and wait for people to join.  So I’d join one of these groups and find myself waiting on them to come back from lunch… it’s that long a wait.

By splitting up PS3 and PC titles it meant that it would take EVEN LONGER to get these dungeon groups… or groups for anything period.

But Troubl…. combining PS3 and PC is impossible right?

No… it’s not.  Not even close.  Little may people know Champion’s Online was originally created as an Xbox release which would later be sold for PC.  In it’s original form (Marvel) it was going to be an MMO that would bridge the gap between console and PC.  But Microsoft cancelled the deal on Cryptic.  Cryptic eventually repackaged it as Champion’s Online.  As a second example of ‘bridging the gap’ some first year students from USC made it so you could use the Xbox Kinect to Play WoW.

The money it would take to bridge the two systems would have been cheaper than it failing flat out.

Subscription Debacle

The game costs $60.  Most games that cost $60 have free multi-player.  Off the top of my head I can think of two games that cost that much for the PS3, Modern Warfare 2 and Red Dead Redemption.  Both of these came with free multiplayer.  So it was a pretty big surprise to gamers to find out after purchasing the game off the shelf that there was going to be a subscription fee added on top.

In a subscription based game you will pay the price of the game in subscription fees.  After four months there is some expectations that there should be something new to the game.  Sony was working on updates for the game it’s just not exactly what people were expecting.  The average MMO will have these multiboss dungeons.  What DCUO offered was single boss dungeons.  After each update people would simply reply “full of the same crap.”

Sony would come out with what they felt was a massive content update and people would put their faces to their hands.  Oh cool…. a new villain in the game.

It just never felt like people were getting their money’s worth.  A lot of pay to play MMOs don’t get this.  If you’re not doing updates the subscription fees should be adjusted for paying for the server + profit, not for playing the game + server + profit.