I'm sitting here missing having a game to play solo or with my wife when I'm in the mood to play, and trying to decide between DCUO, Champions, and TSW, and just not being able to pick one because each has some aspects of what I miss in CoH but not enough together in one place to really be satisfying.
I thought it might be worth discussing what, as we wander around looking for a new home, we find that we really miss about CoH.
What do you miss? I miss...
1) Dinkering with my build on Mids till I have it down (or planning builds for my wife and son), then playing till I have all of the pieces, and then going out to play and fully becoming the hero that I thought up and planned out.
Becoming the Titan.
2) ROWS and rows of cooldown powers at my disposal so it wasn't a spamfest, and the fact that I had to activate them in different patterns and sequences for different enemies
3) Strategy and tactics instead of twitch, yet still with great, fun, and amazing-looking and feeling Superhero action
4) Mostly soloing from day one to shut-down and having a ball the whole time
5) Easily duoing with family or close friends
6) And yet once in a while also easily jumping on a full 8 hero team and just and kicking ass and taking names like a boss
7) The classic Superhero/Villain setting, yet not too cartoonish in look and feel or too frivolous in story
8) Being able to play with my son from age 8 to 16 and share that with him without exposing him to things I'd rather not
9) The brisk development pace and the way the Devs listened but didn't just kowtow to players.
10) Amazingly nice people. Just the best. My wife agrees with me on that and she's tried to follow me to other games.
She mostly played with me and my son, but she said when she teamed in CoH, it still felt like family. She hasn't seen that in another game since and neither have I.
What do you really miss?
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Even though I hated the in game lore associated with it, I really loved playing around with AE. that was my favorite thing and the thing I miss the most.
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Ironically, though I mostly played solo, I really miss the ease of teaming.
I have given it a lot of thought, but I still don't know what it was about teaming in CoH that was so much easier than in ANY other MMO I've played (over a dozen of them).
Granted, I occasionally found myself on a bad team, but that was the exception, not the rule.
I also miss the random acts of kindness. Not just heals when you see someone bit off more than they could chew, but buffs which lasted long enough to make a difference for someone.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
Pounding. Scratching. The shrieks of a thousand alien voices. Every murderous sound in the piercing chorus of endless torment drove my mind to the brink of annihilation.
My mortal instincts begged me to turn away from the grim bastion of insanity that loomed in the stormy sky above. Surely no man who entered could possibly withstand the wrath of a god who once smashed this world asunder. There could be no hope within those walls; only death...destruction...Rularuu.
My body trembled as I summoned the last of my resolve to carry me forward. The ripples of an otherworldly wind grew stronger. One step into the gravitational geyser would send me to the outer rim of The Storm Palace from which I feared there would be no return.
I miss The Shadow Shard very much. I loved to explore it alone in character and imagine that I was beating back the madness and uncovering the secrets of Rularuu. I spent countless hours in that shattered world.
Aside from that, I miss teaming up with random players and being part of the best player community of any game I have ever played. I miss bringing my characters to life and seeing a fantastic world through their eyes. I miss dynamic combat that truly felt heroic.
So many memories. I try not to dwell on the loss, but sometimes it hurts. The hole in my heart never healed. I need City of Titans!
I killed a lot of time fly-by healing and buffing people in Hollows back when it was really hell to get through it.
I loved the Shard too. The lore was just absolutely brilliant, as was the feel of it. Probably spent more lvl 50 hours there than any other zone. I really miss it.
Yet it's often cited as an example of bad game design and too many empty zones. But I'll never forget it, and I can't imagine that the game without it, or that the game would have been better off without it.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I miss being able to cause terror constantly and it NOT be against game mechanics.
Also threatening the protesters on Mercy Island.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
Shop.
Save.
Rularuu.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Probably the trivially easy grouping. No idiot designers mandating enormous chains of prerequisite missions. (This means you, Tera! And almost everyone else.)
Just join and go.
Even though I was a major alt-o-holic, with literally over 100 alts, I just had one main I kept topped off with the best stuff and latest incarnate.
With no need whatsoever, I would join coalition task forces every evening, or help a lowbie or midbie in running missions, with that character.
This was fun in and of itself. It is the only game where playing it is the fun, and not some grind to get to 50 "where the real game begins", AKA asinine grinding.
Incarnate was somewhat grindy, but even there it felt more like the above than sickening, boring grinding of other games.
I looked foward to that, or my coalition daily ancient Rome TF (forget the name, sniff).
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The very existence of the taunting tank irritates, for it requires idiotic AI that obeys the taunt.
I laughed way more than I should have at that! XD
Imperius Task Force.
I have my moments ... {roll eyes}
Although in this case, I cannot take credit for this one. The true source of this joke was a meme that cropped up amongst Hero Dawn SG members during a series of Shadow Shard TFs that we did together. One of Hero Dawn's leaders (Goat) dropped the immortal [i]Shop. Save. Rularuu.[/i] into chat while we were all doing [i]Word. Word. Rularuu.[/i] jokes ... and I spent the rest of the night trying to stay upright in my chair.
But, as you can imagine, the [i]Shop. Save. Rularuu.[/i] was an instant classic, and something of an in-joke among the people who were on that particular Shadow Shard Task Force. Even days later we were still saying it to each other in SG chat.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I miss random teams that stayed together for hours, roaring through missions one after the other.
I miss the costume contests.
I miss creeping through Warburg solo to get a full load of the warheads.
I miss everyone in Skyway swarming together to attack Babbage when a Synapse TF was being run.
I miss swooping through Atlas and handng out level 50 SOs to new chaacters to help fund them.
I miss soloing the ITF with my Dual Blades/Willpower Main, just because I was told it couldn't be done. :p Dual Blades weak because of Lethal Damage? Pffft :p
I miss all the costume pieces that I loved!
I miss CoH's raids (or whatever we call them) because it was so many people and in CoH no expected team speak.
I had a friend once who said something along the lines of "taking forever to chip away at enemies," to which I replied "chipping away? I'm a god damn blender of death!"
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
I can't vouch for Dual Blades, but I did love my Broad Sword Scrapper. Yeah, it was all lethal damage, and it was strictly inferior to Katana in terms of DPS, but the blade's audible [b]*CRUNCH*[/b] as it ripped through enemies was so satisfying! He was also rockin' one of those Achilles' Heel procs along with a +24% global damage buff from IO's, so you can only imagine the kind of Headsplitter crits I could deliver.
Nonetheless, I had heard that Dual Blades was a beast in the right hands. It never tickled my fancy though.
Oh, one of my two mains was a SS Brute. Smashing damage, yeah, but metric hineyloads of it--single target AND AOE.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I miss not knowing or caring what most of those abbreviations meant
Man the game was fun back then
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
You design PnP games, right? Some powers affect an area, some only one target, there is a certain amount of damage, etc.
How is it that different? Abbreviations just save keystrokes when typing stuff out.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
One goal I've always kept in mind in creating my game is to avoid jargon as much as possible.
I don't use abbreviations, in my game, at all.
That means a bit more typing but it's really worth it to me.
The main thing that made me start hating the Abbreviations was people using them when they speak.
That's something that really got big in the 90s
Before then, almost no one did it, unless they worked for the government, or referred to government agencies like the FBI
I still say Kentucky Fried Chicken.
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I guess I just never thought about having positive or negative feelings about abbreviations or acronyms. I don't think I've ever coined an acronym except as a joke, but when others use them I learn them to communicate. But then, there are things that bug me that don't bug others, so I get it. But it can be good to get over things too.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
Oh that's a good one!
I remember being on a TF with Redlynne (MA/SR Scrapper) and there being another Scrapper on the team using a Katana. I was watching the damage numbers smoking off of targets the two of us were ganging up on and noticed something decidedly odd. I was doing more damage using Martial Arts on these Crey than the other Scrapper was doing with their attacks.
At one point I paused my attack chain to say in chat ...
"My sneakers are doing more damage than your sword!"
Needless to say, my fellow Scrapper didn't ... appreciate ... my observation all that much ...
/rolleyes
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Oh, how I wish CoH would have allowed us to combine Martial Art animations with Street Justice animations! CO's martial art moves have been so sad in comparison.
I thought the Martial arts animations were pretty bad at first but later when they introduced alternate animations for every power it was a big improvement.
One thing I'd like to see is the option alternate between the 2 animations so there'd be more variety in the onscreen activity.
But the Jump kick animation was just awful
May I suggest a Jump kick that works more like the shield charge.You know moving us a good distance toward the target.
This probably isn't the right place to make such a suggestion but I was just responding to what Brand X said
I'll post the same thing somewhere else
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What? I always loved the Jump Kick animation (you mean the power from Jumping Pool, right?). I had that on one character as a freebie power. Was fun to use.
Actually I looked it up on my offline character creator and what I was thinking of was the Eagle's Claw.
The animation showed a jump kick
It might be the same as the pool power I don't remember
and can't check because the character creator doesn't show animations for pool powers.
What I didn't like about it, was the way it didn't look like any real jumpick.
The pose the toon assumes in the air should be used for a forward moving kick, a charge into battle kind of thing
A stationary jump kick should be either a snapping front kick (like the Karate Kid) or some sort of spinning thing. Either a turn around (like Jean Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport) or backflip kind of thing (like Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon)
By the way did you ever notice that the Karate Kid cheats?
An announcer says several times that no points will be given for blows to the face
But he wins the match by kicking his opponent in the face.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Just to throw in, I LOVED the front stomp kick from the fighting pool.
It was the last attack in my single target attack chain, so my Super Strength guy would smash the mobs down, and then as they were getting up, PUNT!, right in the face or the ribs, often sending them flying across the room and finishing them.
I think I giggled just about every single time for all the years I played him :P.
Ah, it's the little things.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
What I miss most is working with PUGs. Finding the team chemistry. The best way to tell if the team was filled with good players was encountering a Nictus Cyst. If it went down quickly, the team was golden. I knew the group could handle anything for as long as it hung together.
When the team leader asked: "Should I turn it up to maximum?" That was when the fun REALLY started!
Lay your hands on me
While I'm bleeding dry
Break on through blue skies
And take it high
[url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Scrapper_Melee.Martial_Arts.Eagles_Claw]Eagle's Claw[/url] is the power/maneuver that you can see my character, Redlynne, doing [i]twice[/i] in the Samuraiko Productions video [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py4RFU5X68g&t=119]Death incarnate[/url] at 2:00 and again at 2:05.
Full disclosure: the Death Incarnate video actually has [i]three[/i] of my City of Heroes characters in it!
Ms Terry, my Warshade (in human form using Orbiting Death) on the Drowning In Blood Trial starting at [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py4RFU5X68g&t=80]1:20[/url].
Leggs, my Huntsman Soldier of Arachnos on the Solo Incarnate Path starting at [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py4RFU5X68g&t=94]1:34[/url] with a second appearance at [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py4RFU5X68g&t=129]2:09[/url].
And, of course, Redlynne, my MA/SR/Soul Scrapper on Dilemma Diabolique starting at [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py4RFU5X68g&t=118]1:58[/url].
Yes, I am mighty proud of having been able assist Samuraiko with filming this and the Issue 21 video. Why do you ask?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I miss just the overall game, the community was easy to get along with and WAY easier to get into groups. And the freedom of having eight players on one team, nowadays you can only have like four. last (at least I think, to much to cover) is the character customizer (not sure if I spelled that right, says it isn't XD) there were SOOOOOOOOOOO many things to choose from, there was a really low chance of people having the same outfit, that was the thing that made it stand out from the rest, and how all you needed to level up was enemys XD
The community and the RP are very much up there for me. I'm not sure what it was, but the absence of RP in DCUO and Champions eventually becoming somewhat depressing to play in, I never really found myself being able to stick around in those games. When I landed on Virtue in CoH, I felt... well, at home, I guess. Sure, there were bad times, that's unavoidable in any scenario, of course, but I don't think I was ever so attached to a game. It was perfect, almost.
Roleplay was vibrant and healthy, the vast majority of the community was otherwise friendly to boot. It was there that I adopted the philosophy of 'If you want to have a strong character, then you have to earn that right and make a good build' and would settle disputes via the PvP system. Sure, it wasn't as balanced as we would have liked, but it was an independent adjudicator, so when the fight was over, it wasn't filled with bile.
I guess it helped that, with CoH, it was actually the first, and possibly still is, one of the few games I was [i]genuinely[/i] good at. I get frustrated at games all to often as it seems that my ability to get better and develop was simply gone, and I found myself leaving a session drowning in salt and berating myself at not being good enough. With City of Heroes, it was not only a breeze, at least as far as melee classes were concerned, but the desire to make something better was as powerful as ever. I could plan and make amazing builds, get them to max and then play around with a few things to make them better. Not only that, but I could make a halfway decent build using classes and powers built around the character's theme, rather than having to restrict myself to specific powersets because they were mechanically better.
And, in a small way, I miss Peacebringers.
I wasn't a shape-shifting one, as at the time, i was using the class for its mechanics rather than its context (and yes, I did get yelled at a lot for being a non-PB PB.) but I started to find it amusing how bizarre the class was. It could solo, it could tank, it could do so much, but the dynamic was... odd. It seemed almost mediocre by itself, but when teamed, the character was buffed so much that the rest of the team seemed almost superfluous. I remember a saying that was passed around "The Peacebringer needs a team, and the team needs the Warshade." But after a while, that's really what I came to love about the AT. It might not have seen much usage towards the end, but damn it was fun to play.
I do a DnD Podcast, which can be listened to here.
Additionally, I write up my sessions of a Teen Heroes game here.
I miss the CoV Prison Break Tutorial. I've played a lot of games and run through a lot of tutorials, but CoV's Prison Break was in a class by itself.
I miss building long story arcs in Mission Architect, spending days getting all the dialog and feedback strings to display right, Creating custom enemy groups with my own brand of minions, lieutenants, bosses, and elite bosses. Adding my own main character as a helper in the beginning who betrays the player character and turns against them in the end, or vice versa, staring out an enemy and becoming an ally! I had a story arc with nothing but minions in the first mission, all hinting at who the boss might be, then the second mission had teams of a lieutenant and three or five minions with lots of patrols just wandering around looking for trouble, and in the final mission an Arch Villain surrounded by five Elite Bosses, all six with the names of Sumerian deities. Good times!
I made a five mission story with nothing but Mastermind enemies in it. It garnered a dozen or so reviews with a final rating of only three and a half stars, but I enjoyed running through it whenever a new character hit level 30. It proved to be an excellent test bed for survivability when experimenting with oddball builds or when new powers were introduced.
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+1
Even though i didnt play Villain side much, I never dreaded running through that tutorial. :)
I did something similar, creating a story arc with nothing but Ninja/* Mastermind NPCs. Did a lot of variations on the secondary powersets, but set up their costumes to all look as close as possible to the Ninja Pets for maximum Faceless Minion factor. I called the arc [b]Inverse Ninja Law[/b] and set up the contact for it to be a Tsoo Sorcerer named [b]Midnight Sun[/b] who was ... of course ... a Lawyer.
Strangely enough, I could "balance" it just fine for my MA/SR Scrapper to solo the missions without too much trouble, although I'd be "pressured" in each encounter so it wasn't a cakewalk. Brought in a team of SG mates to try it and they promptly all got slaughtered because the Ninjas overwhelmed them ... which was something of an eye opener for me (but then, they brought Squishies to the party).
After that I withdrew the story from circulation and somehow it got a fatal flaw in the file from something or other and I just never bothered to fix it.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
OMG.... I remember the lawyer. I might have run that mission. I seem to remember giving it five stars and a good review.
Something in Issue 19/20 broke the existing MA storylines. A change in costumes or array values or some such. They explained it at the time. I deleted all my missions and just started over. More fun that way!
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I had the same - a Humanform PB and yeah he was really fun to play - especially once I had him properly "frankenslotted". Takes a bit of getting used to - lower DPS than a blaster but has some nice melee attacks and defenses, some heals, some stealth, a self Rez, and your max capabilities can change on the fly depending on who is on your team at any given moment so you need to stay on your toes. Oh - and your own personal "kryptonite" mobs heh heh. Those damn Seekers were pretty stupid at first though.
Yep, one of my best characters was a Human PB. Nothing beat them for pure flexibility.
Be Well!
Fireheart
A human Peanut Butter?
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
That's right, Warshades were the purple Jelly.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Seriously, what does the PB stand for?
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
Peacebringer - one of the Hero Epic Archetypes for COH.
It's entirely possible that you did. I used the original Paragon Dance Party location for the first map and a Hostage Escort for the trip back out. There were a couple more missions in the chain after that. Anyway, nice to know that someone appreciated it in the brief time it was out there. ^_^
That sounds right. I just remember going in to edit something and being told I had an unrecoverable error that no amount of editing could fix, so I just deleted the arc and walked away ... mainly because I'd "wasted" enough time building up the custom characters the first time around and wasn't relishing the thought of doing it all over again.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Getting maxed out on fulcrum shift then nuking a huge crowd
This excellent reference site, www.paragonwiki.com, might come in useful when you see folks use popular abbreviations from City of Heroes.
Spurn all ye kindle.
I was skeptical but I went to the site and entered pb into it's search window, it took me right to peace bringers. so I added that site to my bookmarks bar.
thanks
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC48O9dPcNVdeyNM4efAvX6w/videos?view_as=subscriber
No problem. I wouldn't steer you wrong.
(I checked for PB before sending you the link. AoE is in there also.)
Spurn all ye kindle.
Already new AoE but personally I always shorten it to "area". It's almost as short and I don't have to shift which makes it easier, and it's just as clear to any reader.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/browse/pub/3185/Crusader-Game-Books
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