Here is a companion post about what was bad about COX.
What things really made CoX do it for you?
Here is one I wanted to start with:
* Music and sound effects
Even though the game engine was getting a bit dated, it still blew away things like WOW and a few others. And one thing that I wonder if many people noticed was, it actually had some pretty decent 3D sound capability. You had to have the specific creative labs hardware and software to do it, and it worked best with headphones, but CoX had positional audio capability. I would test it by standing near a police bot and turning to hear the hissing sound and radio chatter they always made pan around my head as I moved in relation to the bot. This carried through missions and everything and I think really added to the sense of realism. I also liked the music and how it changed as you moved between zones in a map. I pulled some of the ogg vorbis music files out of the game directory and played them outside the game.
-Bodai
Costume creator and the fact that how you looked had no impact on your abilities and vice-versa.
this(outside of power effects)
Issue 0 CoH player barely let my subscription lapse before NC Soft called it quits; my incarnate gear *Sniff*
Global: Chance Jackson; Triumph: Liege Cheetatron X, Fight of Your Life, Down Right Fierce, Infernal Samurai, Time May Change Me etc
One thing I really enjoyed, and is sorely lacking in any other game I've tried is something like the Pocket D nightclub. A dedicated place where characters can go and interact outside of mission, where you can really practice and polish your RP, if you're that into it. Part and parcel with that, is the ability to hover over a character and get a bio blurb. I remember spending lots of time just standing in the bar and digging on people's creativity.
I used pocket D purely as a short cut..... or the gathering point for iTrials. Past that though, it was more for the scenery...
Champions Online also has a superhero night club.
___
"Listen, and understand. City of Titans is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely [i]will not stop, ever,[/i] until we are live!"
Warcabbit
CO has a night club? Really? Admittedly, I stopped playing when they went F2P and changed how the powers structure worked. But seriously, CoX is the only MMO I've played where I got to feel like I was playing a character instead of "running a 'toon". Pocket D had a lot to do with that. But I'm an actor as well a graphic designer, so maybe it appealled to me more than some others.
Multi-contact zone story arcs (revamped Faultline and First Ward are the ones that immediately spring to my mind; I'm sure there were others). One of the reasons I soloed as much as I did in CoX (aside from random child-related AFKs) was so that I could take my time reading and getting into the stories.
As a related wishlist item, I would love to see a feature that saves all of the story info from something like a TF/Trial for later catch-up reading. Those things moved so fast, and often only the leader got to see some of the mission dialog. Yes there were offline sites that presented it, and most of the big ones had a summarized version attached to the souveniers, but being able to review in-game the complete stories I participated in but missed the lore of would be awesome.
SSK and that mission rewards were shared by all teammates. Hate having to try to keep your missions at the same exact point just to be able to team with your friends. The fact that you can team with anyone at any lvl and we all get the xp was what made CoX such a great game for me.
That and the feeling of power you get once you were fully IOed and pretty much invincible.
Every control could be remapped and keybinds could be Saved and re-used on other characters. Your default was automatically applied to a new character. Very frustrating to have to go through and set all of my preferences and key-controls on every new character.
Be Well!
Fireheart
This is a major item IMO. I also prefer the combat mechanics of CoX to most of the other MMO's out there. TAB targeting FTW!
Something I suggested in Coh that they eventually added was the ability to add notes to players you met. That way if you met someone super awesome or really terrible, you could write yourself a reminder for it..
//////************************************************************************\\\\\\
This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.
I have to say, this is what I miss the most. I have weird play times, so I may or may not be as advanced as everyone else, and then when we all get on at the same time...it was nice to be able to play with them, even tho they were 10-15 levels above me.
Plus, it made it AWESOME when my son started playing with me (he got to play ~18 months of CoX) so we could make his bajillion alts, and they could all play with any of my alts.
[b]SIDE KICKING!!![/b] CoH innovated this. No other game had [b]SIDE KICKING[/b] when it first came out This allowed newbies to play with high level people. Sidekicking allowed friends to play and team with each other no matter what level difference. I thank God CoH came up with the idea of [b]SIDE KICKING!!![/b]
[b]PORTAL MISSIONS[/b] - the story arcs & alternate realities were great.
[b]Architect Missions[/b]
[b]Player Designed Supergroup Bases[/b]
[b]Base Raiding[/b] I LOVED BASE RAIDING!! The idea was ingenious! Even though it had bugs, they were awesome when they were pulled off. "Omega Syndicate versus X-Patriots" Base raid battles. I will never forget.
CoX PVP Zone Events
"Hell hath no fury like a wife's agro. God help me when CoT comes out"
Especially the "Super Sidekick" system. You could play with your friends not matter who was what level. I dropped WoW because it was "Quick get to 90 so we can play together!" Half the fun was the journey as I leveled.
The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called Aglets; their true purpose is sinister.
Ooo! Ooo! This! I hated spending an hour remapping all my controls for every new character.
The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called Aglets; their true purpose is sinister.
What sold CoH for me was what no other Super Hero game did before: YOU COULD MAKE YOUR *OWN* CHARACTERS.
What kept me there was Icon, respecs and the immense variety of adventure paths (a legacy part of CoH's Origin system; that they *didn't* use for CoV)
Inventions reinvigorated the game for me as well. I could fill in the shortfalls with them, and felt truly super since the debacle of ED.
The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called Aglets; their true purpose is sinister.
Strange, tab targetting is generally regarded to be the "norm" for MMO's, unless they are the more action based ones...
Hell, Guild Wars 2 has tab targetting (i know, because I *use* the binds for it).
Hell, most other MMO's generally allow *everything* that has a key already bound to be remapped.... nothing special about it there...
Although the loading of keybinds *was* fairly unique (although this can be countered by account/character specific defaulting... WoW i believe has both available, although no keybind loading...)
What made CoH great AND is powering our Kickstarter is the CoH COMMUNITY.
One thing that made the community spirit strong was the way the [b]/help[/b] channel was used in CoH - it connected everybody to everybody else, irrespective of faction or location.
[h3]-- Mewkychan =^.^=m mew![/h3]
Party size!! Since the demise of COH, I have gone from one MMO to another, looking for one I liked that allowed for sizable teams! A limit of 4 means that static groups I played for years with could not play as a group in a different game.
Just a blaster looking for a game...
One thing I really enjoyed, and only realized after CoX ended, was that we did not need to abide by strict achetypes when forming groups, like in other MMO's where you pretty much always need a tank, 2dps, and a healer for team missions. In CoX, you could mix and match all over the place and come up with great combinations. You could have a group of all controllers, mostly blasters, with one tank, more traditional with a tank, a few blasters or scrappers, a controller or two, maybe a defender. I really enjoyed this versatility in group building.
The Incarnate system. I felt *powerful*. I finally had past the iconic characters in power (something of great frustration in the early days; you would never be as cool/powerful as BaBs or States)
The plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces are called Aglets; their true purpose is sinister.
Sidekicking is totally something that is lacking in just about every other game on the market. In the early days, before "super" sidekicking, it could be a real hassle trying to get enough people together in the RIGHT level range to be able to do narrowly targeted content, such as Terra Volta Respecs (oh gods, the effort needed to find FOUR Heroes in the proper level range so that eight Heroes could run the content!) ... but once we got super sideckicking it was just Game Over for worries about level disparities beyond the token considerations. Sidekicking alone made City of Heroes a far more friendly and sociable game than it otherwise might have been.
Another thing that CoH got "right" in many ways was its sense of Mass Combat Against Incredible Odds, where you weren't just sequentially fighting Onesy-Twosy in a sequential fashion, but rather dealing with "dogpiles" of Foes in parallel that just about always felt Epic, even when it was routine and "to be expected" on any 8-man team. Just the sheer chaos and mayhem of the fast moving combat against dozens of opponents was thrilling!
Giving NPC Foes powers and abilities that the PCs either didn't have (exactly) or couldn't always match kept things interesting. Thus you got opposition groups with members that developed a reputation among the players ... Malta had Sappers, Carnival of Shadows had the Master Illusionist, and so on.
Phasing tech, once it got implemented into CoH was incredibly useful, because it allowed the PC's choices and actions [i]to affect the world[/i], rather than the world remaining in a state of Eternal Sameness that never changed. If this capability had ever been utilized to its logical "full extent" it would have been possible to create missions and zone events that would fall into the sort of Epic Public Opportunity Play like Tabula Rasa managed with their Control Point system (for those who played it).
Fun contacts such as The Radio who gave "life" to their arcs through sheer personality was one of the things that CoX did right on occasion, although (obviously) some NPC Contacts were more beloved than others.
Task Forces and Strike Forces were one of the things that was "done right" ... after you got past Positron's Task Force, which was PAINFUL due to the level requirements (particularly in the pre-Free Stamina days!). Having a chain of missions following a story arc was an excellent idea ... although it was (obviously) taken "too far" with Dr. Q in Firebase Zulu. Look no further than the fact that an awful lot of social interactions and pick up groups revolved around getting a team together for these, up to and including the All Defender Task Forces that people would organize, in addition to the Tanker Tuesday outings and the occasional All Kheldian runs that people would make at this content, where the whole joy of doing it was [i]bringing people together[/i] as opposed to doing it to get a roll on a rare drop at the end that MIGHT happen.
The Flashback system is something that could have been improved upon, but once it was instituted you started wondering why it hadn't been a part of the game from the beginning.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The Control Points in TR were amazing, because if you lost the base, you lost access to the facilities within them, so fighting to get them back was fun. And actually in TR, you could fight hordes of mobs as well.
It was just one of those marvelous feelings freeing the base back. At on the EU server, there were a few of us who were more than willing to help free up that control point if someone had issues doing it themselves.
Oh, and the /airguitar9000 emote was lovely, as was the poledance emote ;)
Well, at the beginning, there was a hell of a lot less content in the beginning. Many less powersets to encourage sticking around to try out on alts. Way fewer zones.. less levels to burn through.. no beloved player vrs player.. and so on.
Longtime City of Heroes player, longtime writer. :) Working in Nebraska.
COT: Mission tips writer, studying Cinema 4D animation program
Man it's so good to see you around again, Gangrel!
Oh absolutely! Liberating a Control Point in Tabula Rasa was one of those experiences where you felt like you'd Accomplished Something because it essentially [b]changed the world[/b] (in a localized and temporary way). You could also engage in some truly EPIC pitched battles fighting off the hordes of Bane that would spawn in ... that you'd eventually lose (of course), but while you held out, it was truly a feeling making a Heroic Last Stand. I still have fond memories of defending the Lightning Fields Control Point against ever increasing waves of Bane attackers (while the lightning bolts from the sky hit the capture domes in the fields outside the control point for Extra Epic Feel!) until being overrun, forced out, and then laying siege to the place from the outside so as to recapture it again. In a lot of ways, that was PvE content that just NEVER GOT OLD, because it was just a dynamic MASS combat sort of exercise. Heck, even the animation for actually TAKING the Control Point had that epic feel to it with the arm sweep while the timer counted down until you managed the "pulling fist pump" of success when you actually managed to claim it.
The way that Tabula Rasa handled Control Points is one of those things that just translates [i]so perfectly[/i] into a City of Titans setting where you have regions where dominance and control is "contested" between the Heroes and the Villains. Using Phasing Tech for the zone, you can set things up so that when the Villains are in control the region has a particular character to it, and when the Heroes are in control, it has a different character. This could even be extended to influence what an entire neighborhood is like at any given time, such that Hero controlled points in Hero zones are "safer" and have fewer mobs in them that will aggro Heroes ... and the same could be said for Villain controlled points in Villain zones, where they make the neighborhood "safer" for villains to walk the streets openly. This could even be accomplished by something as simple as making the aggro state of various PvE mobs around the the Control Point flip their aggro state from Aggro On Sight to only Aggro If Attacked, depending on if the PC's alignment matches that of the Control Point in its current state.
Control points in a City of Titans context need not be "fortifications" like they were in Tabula Rasa, but could instead be places like buildings (meaning interior instanced battles fighting room to room), parks and other public spaces, shopping malls, parking lots, all kinds of stuff. It would certainly bring new meaning to "taking back the neighborhood" from the undesirable elements, and put a whole new meaning on "street sweeping" ... wouldn't you say? ^_~
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The problem with that is, it ruined the Help channel. It was designed for, well, Help. And nobody could use it for such. It was as if everyone could use 911 as a party line. We needed a global chat that was separate from help.
___
"Listen, and understand. City of Titans is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely [i]will not stop, ever,[/i] until we are live!"
Warcabbit
That was more the fact that F2P were locked out of the other global channels, so it was the one place everyone on a server could talk. With the "entrance fee" planned for CoT, I don't think we will have to worry about limiting chat to discourage RMT spams.
-----------------------------------------
I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
Oh god, I remember we had the 8-player ALL-RAD team, everyone had radiation as one of the power sets.
It was completely unstoppable, we steamrolled through any mission or TF.
Damn I miss that.
-Bodai
I was on a few All-Rad teams. On one 8-hero all-rad defender team, the list of buff )especially when fulcrum shifts hit all at once) took up a large part of my screen. If Recluse had spawned in front of us, I'm not sure we would have noticed before rolling over him...
I loved the newspaper/scanner missions from the game. Nice way to run a couple of quick missions without getting into a contact story arc or something involved.
Fingers crossed there will be something similar in CoT
FeeFye
Some people are like Slinkies, not good for much but it makes ya smile when ya push them down the stairs.....
Grendal the Troll just called you out, there is no way your letting that go unpunished!
Issue 0 CoH player barely let my subscription lapse before NC Soft called it quits; my incarnate gear *Sniff*
Global: Chance Jackson; Triumph: Liege Cheetatron X, Fight of Your Life, Down Right Fierce, Infernal Samurai, Time May Change Me etc
Yep - you are right Gangrel... not sure how to explain it, but there was just something about the combat in CoX that didn't make it feel like such a grind, like every other MMO I have tried.
If the combat mechanics for CoT mimic CoX, then I will be a happy camper.
Oh, and the standard jump seemed to be quite a bit different from other MMO's. I know that in playing WoW, and other MMO's, I feel like my character jumps a few inches, rather than a few feet. I hate running around and not being able to jump over a boulder that is a foot high. Maybe I was just spoiled, since CoH was my first MMO...
It may have just been my imagination, but it just seemed frustrating to me.
I know - WAAHHHH!
The character creator was what drew me in. Just the ability to bring something unique to life in that engine and then the physics of playing. It all just felt right and heroic. Being able to play with my son no matter what levels we were. Being able to customize our looks with no affect to our playability. And then they added the ability to customize the colours of our power effects.
I remember spending a long long time in the Hollows with my first character simply because I liked the zone and didn't really want to move on.
I kamehameha'd your mom
The powers...the mechanics...the enhancement system...the way the mechanics made teaming enjoyable...the lore...the world...the atmosphere....etc.
It is not true that most MMOs allow you to bind every key how you like.
I know this because CoH allowed me to bind Rctrl, Lctrl, Rshift, Lshift separately from ANY other key. Most MMOs have those keys require another key (Ctrl+1, Shift+2, etc.)
Shazam!
Depends on the program or game to be fair. Some allow it some dont. And some do something strange (like treating Alt GR as Left Ctrl).
*shrugs*
For me, i tend to ignore it though, because between my G13 and G600 I have more than enough keys available to be able to play the game, So i can pretty much put those "hard to reach keys" into easy reach.
*shrugs*
I do stand corrected, maybe it was from how limited I have had to do it (ie mixing different programs together.. ie when playing Eve Online and using ctrl+click to select targets, and rightctrl for voice activation of Vent. And just having other keys available to use without searching for them). And that because I am so used to most other programs out there treating those keys as the same.
And actually I feel kinda glad that *some* do
I have yet to find a game that will allow me to team up with the five other remaining people that I teamed with regularly. At one time, we had 10 people that would team up. Unfortunately (or fortunately) we rarely ever had more than 8 online at any one time. I had designated myself as the fill-in team member when only 7 of the others showed up. Which is where the name Agent Standin came from. I miss our team of 8 Agents running amok through the Portal Corp missions set on +4.
Also, the SSK system is sorely missed as well.
Things I hope they keep from CoH:
1. The way capes were done. I've played CO and DCUO, and those capes had nothing on CoH capes >.>
2. The female "runway" walk.. that was soooo sweet.
3. The ability to Side Kick (others have said it, and I'm saying it ~.^ )
4. The ability to bind any key, such as Rctrl, Lctrl, Rshift, etc., without needing to pair any of them with some other key.
5. The ability to make macros that are helpful during combat, especially with such features as being able to follow opponents.
Shazam!
Something is wrong with the forums.. posts are appearing where they're not supposed to be, and I see posts by me that I never made lol. >.> I'm not Fireheart.
Shazam!
[i]* flips through papers, looks over glasses.[/i]
... Are you sure? Because it says here... ^_-
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
CoH had the best scarf "cape"!!! The runway walk I found fit my main sooo well! Loved it! Crane Kick, loved it, even when others couldn't handle it's KB.
Apologies for minor necro, but this is a worthwhile thread :P
1. Fighting multiple opponents. A level 1 character was expected to be equal to three minions. Right from the start. Being able to fight multiple enemies at once creates such a dynamic playstyle, each mob requiring a slightly different strategy depending on it's composition.
2. Ease of Movement + AoE attacks. Constantly lining up cones and AoEs. The Secret World did this well too (even having nice displayed AoE warnings for enemies to encourage dodging), but didn't do the range of movements (dodging, which looked cool, and that was it). Jumping, flying, teleporting away from a mob, setting up an ambush, etc. etc. Combat /moved/ and flowed.
3. No default "attack" + quick recharging powers. Not having a default right-click attack that your powers supplemented seems a small thing, but again it makes you so much more involved in the combat. Between having to move and direct evey one of your attacks, you were constantly /busy/.
4. Temporary and additional earned powers. I think I was running four or five full power bars by the time I was incarnated up. Having certain powers from certain missions was a wonderful extra badge of been there, done that. Plus, combined with the above points meants you were almost always having to make a /choice/ of which power to use. They let you fill in holes in your abilities, or just add flavour.
-- Interlude-- All of the above can be summarised as: dang, the combat was the best thing I've seen in any MMO. And that's key, because it's what your players will be doing for the vast bulk of the game. When you have players asking to /not earn XP/ in an MMO, then you know you've nailed the combat. When I played from beta to end, and only had two level 50's because I just could not stop playing them (even pre-incarnate system [yes, yes, and severe altitis, but who didn't?]), not because I was progressing but because I was just happy playing the core combat mechanic for hours on end, then you've got a good game. This becomes important for point 6.
5. Unimportance of loot drops. Sure, some of the more powerful high-end recipes were damned expensive, but there were so many ways of getting them, and none of them involved a drop on a unique boss that only spawned when the moon-aligned with the fifth star of...you get the idea. Create missions for other people, earn your stuff. Doing heroic/villainous things, earn your stuff. Do nice things for other players, get given stuff! Have fun buying and selling in the auction house, earn your stuff. etc. etc.
6. SSK, and level-agnostic enemies (giant monsters, zombie/rikti invaders). This is still a unique selling point of CoX (that I'm aware [though The Secret World's levelless system comes close]), but for it to work, people have to be willing to engage in the core game without worrying about loot drops or how fast you're progressing. Cox was the only MMO I've ever played where the point wasn't to level up to fight more stuff to level up and fight bigger stuff to...repeat ad naseum. The complete refusal to just keep upping the level cap was one of the most brilliant and brave decisions they ever made. If the only reason to play the game is make your e-wang bigger, then your game has failed as a game. It's now a job.
7. Being powerful was fine. I was glad to hear this commented on in a dev interview for CoT. Rolling over enemies is fun. You play the game to have fun. You're a freakin' superhero, of /course/ you can and should roll over most enemies. There should be some you can't too, sure, but nothing has ever come close to the experience of 8 capes, incarnated out the wazoo, laying waste to all around them, or standing on the hill in Talos Island while huge waves of Rikti break and shatter upon our force-fielded, fulcrum-shifted, irradiated mass of heroes. We held the line. We held it good. Okay, seriously, just typing that and recalling those memories gave me the shivers. Man I miss that feeling.
8. You were unique. Just like everyone else :P Is there any other game were so many people could and bothered to create histories and backstories for their characters? Between that and your unique costumes, power and enhancement combinations and looks, the civilians commenting on what you'd done as they went past, you didn't feel like generic grunt #5678375, you felt you were a famous and unqiue hero (or villain). Coupled with point 7 above, you weren't pressured into min-maxing to get the last bit of DPS just so you could run the best content. I kicked ass on all the incarnate content quite happily with a Dark/Regen/Dark/Presence scrapper who thought she was a controller. Why? Because it was /fun/ but could still contribute.
9. Badges. I'm pretty sure a large percentage of players, when meeting a new player for the first time, when straight to the badge page. I know I did. How long have they been playing, what has this character seen and done? Not from an elitism point of view, but because it helps tell more of the story (and lets you know what to expect from the player too, but so you can provide appropriate help, not kick the n00b).
10. The community. I have never met a nicer group of people online than CoX players. I do think taking away the competative need to advance and progress and have bigger virtual numbers helped a great deal, but so did all the encouragement to roleplay (even a little bit) built into the game. It self-selected friendly, helpful players.
Betcha they nerf accuracy in the first patch...
The added Archetypes for F2P, but subs and LTS still have access to pure FF.
Just remember - CoT is in the spirit of CoH, it is not CoH!
Well done, JG -- you've summed up almost all the key points here.
Spurn all ye kindle.
How INSP worked (no cooldown, no only 1 active at a time, etc).
IO/Boost Sets (build customisation blown wide open).
No Holy Trinity required.
Super Sidekick (yes my level 10 can team with a level 30.
Ability to take on lots of opponents from day 1 (other MMO - "OMG 3 rats I'm dead").
Special Rewards (Vanguard Merits, Merit Rewards, Alignment, etc). Towards then end there may have been too many different types of Merits (?) but being able to obtain the hard to get stuff just by gaining merits from non 'RAID ONLY' content.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
Which ones did I miss? :P
Betcha they nerf accuracy in the first patch...