After considering it for a while, what really separates CoX from DC universe online or Champions online?
What is it that City of Titans will have to capture to really be that spiritual successor?
It's not just customization, powers or beating up on bad guys. They all have that. It was something else...something harder to define...
For me, it was the writing, options given for the missions and the details like descriptions for every enemy tying them to their organization, not to mention the organizations themselves. Complex and compelling, from the basic street thugs who were trying to scrabble together power however they could in a world filled with meta-humans to the goldbrickers who...wtf chocolate obsessed steampunk jetpack criminals?
At any rate, it didn't force any of this information on you, but it was given to you in everything from background missions with paragraphs of information, to just ambient chatter or enemy descriptions.
On that note, enemies didn't just wander back and forth in an area, waiting to get pummeled. They lounged, beat up civilians, tried to break into houses....all just emotes and placements, sometimes hilariously out of place, but it helped to build a world in which these targets were more than just XP pinatas.
What was that spark that made the game for you?
To sum up what made CoX special for me, in a word... flexibility.
No other game could allow me anywhere near the flexibility in appearance.
No other game allowed me anywhere near the flexibility in concept and power choices
No other game allowed me anywhere near the flexibility in choosing my team mates. (i.e. no Trinity)
I think you folks are well on your way to producing the game i want to play.
I tried several others after CoX went under, LoTRO, NW, Firefall, SWTOR, and a few more I don't recall right off. I've effectively quit gaming, but TPP may lure me back.
My characters felt like MY characters. CO was fun, although I didn't like the art style used. It allowed me to have pretty well customised characters, but it also lacked the "spirit". The community wasn't the same, the world felt too small, the content and gameplay was lacking. CoX made me connect with my character. Maybe it's just nostalgia vision. But my main toon was BladeBot, it was my global handle and it's my current go to username. I'm not trying to be melodramatic, but on that fateful 30th of November it was more than the game closing down. It was the funeral for my characters, especially for BladeBot. I wasn't sad because of the thousands of hours of play time I put in to him, or the fact that all those rare Enhancement sets were gone, it was the fact that he was effectively dead. Every time I've tried to recreate him in other games it just feels wrong. It's not BladeBot. That's why I'm here, because maybe this will be the game where he'll live again.
Flexibility was a good way of putting it. Cox, at the start, wasn't that special to me. But it grew and developed, and allowed me to realize so many options.
And it really made me feel like the hero. I never understood anyone who complained about feeling like Statesman's sidekick.
Everything the great Col. Kernel said I agree with, but he missed the biggest point for me, which was COMMUNITY.
I grouped with people because the game was more fun that way, and it was made easy by the fact that other people wanted to group as well. It was a grouping game. Getting together, kicking ***, sharing rewards, and most importantly MAKING FRIENDS. Even when I rocked it solo, the community was still there enhancing my experience.
I'll never forget the first time I ever logged in. I had NO IDEA what I was doing. I was a 14 year old kid, my first MMO. I figured out how to use broadcast chat and asked for help and someone volunteered their time to walk me through the entire Outbreak and reinforce the tutorial the game was giving me. And let me tell you, I WAS DUMB!! I kept getting lost because I had no idea how to use the waypoint system (mission markers) or the compass or the map. I only vaguely knew how to use powers. My helper was unbelievably patient in explaining things in different ways, re-explaining things, demonstrating as best he could...
Needless to say, that formed the kind of person I was in-game. I was always ready to set aside my own character advancement to help someone new get the hang of things. The great part is, there were THOUSANDS of people just like me (and my tutor from Outbreak) at all areas of the game. People helping out with a difficult boss in an instance for little/no reward, people passing by and dropping their high-level enhancements into a low-level hero's inventory instead of destroying them, costume contests and other ways to simply dump influence into the pockets of the poorer heroes/villains, people dedicating entire characters to getting fallen heroes out of the Hollows and back to their mission door quickly (there were some rough trips back in the day)... just endless charity and selflessness.
I could go on, but I'm sure you all get the idea and had the same experience.
The operative word here is "home". It was home.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/lokkiCw.jpg[/img]
Former CoX Server: Liberty (Global Chat Handle ET Illusion)
I like the immersive factors, the lore and the feeling that the Naughty Spawns that everyone else was fighting were somehow personal opponents of Amerikatt's -- especially the "Knives of Artemis" whose concept (minions of "The Huntress", an aspect of Amerikatt's deity) were an affront to the Imp of Impervium!
The lore wasn't just a quaint backstory in a vacuum to me. Rather, it provided many splendid springboards from which to develop and understand the motivations of some of my characters. For instance, I had a Golden Age Scrapper who was captured by the Fifth Column and presented to Nosferatu as a prize. He, in turn, subjected that character to hideous experimentation, including forcing her to become a hostess for a Nictus. Thus, my Warshade was born, and that gave me motivation to develop another character from Levels 1-50. In the end, with the help of her guildies, the threat of Nosferatu was overturned. However, the trauma of what she had undergone was too much for her. She retired, and, with the help of a guildie, set out to find a cure. That then brought me to the next character in my rotation and gave me motivation to develop her from Levels 1-50.
Even Amerikatt's own origin, while linked to factors in the lore (from a game mechanics standpoint) still gave me plenty of creative room to make her the type of character I wanted to play. I wasn't too keen about the particular archetype, but it was a welcome relief over the Warshade (which was, by far, the most arduous AT I played).
In all, the ambiance of the milieu (and the very dynamic community) helped to make Paragon City not just a place for Amerikatt to frolic, but gave her an actual home in which to thrive. Where else can you find a flying kitten in a costume and still be able to keep a straight face?
I wholeheartedly concur that a game like Champions Online cannot compare to City of Heroes. It's quaint to look at, but it lacks the soul which made CoH such an incredible gaming and roleplaying experience.
[center][color=purple][size=16][b][I][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78N2SP6JFaI]Just a cat from another star![/url][/I][/b][/size][/color][/center]
And with that one sentence you have owned me.
I was thinking about community as I was typing up my response, and don't know why I failed to include it.
Yep, community. it was pretty awesome...except for those darn instagib TPers in sirens call XD
This. I grew up playing tabletop RPGs. I had little interest in MMOs, because I didn't think there would ever be a game where I had the same sense of a connection to a character. CoH changed that perception. The game was far from perfect, but it really excelled in that area, from the character creator, to the ability to make publicly viewable backgrounds, to the macro system.
The game itself somehow induced a real feeling of 'I belong here'. My wife and I made some very lasting friendships that last in RL to this day. We've traveled halfway across the country (USA) at least once a year to visit with friends here and there making a 2 week trip out of it. They've visited us when they can, etc.
My wife has been a seamstress forever. Raw materials -> yarn / thread -> ren costumes, clothing, wedding stuffs, etc. She fell in love with the character creator and started experimenting in RL with all her sewing magic. I came home to 'his and hers' CoH style things one day. Let me tell you that CoH has had a*wonderful* impact on my marriage. LOL
We have played all kinds of MMO/RPG games on and offline. She was a huge LARP gal since a teenager. One of the reasons she became a sought after seamstress. No other game has ever held our interest, been as exciting, or even romantic. Probably sounds all sorts of strange to many people, but it really was the birth place of a new chapter in our lives together and it has never been better. It has also never waned, even after the game shuttered.
So yeah - CoH was a great game and community. But it also means a helluva lot more to us than just a game. It was where we found great new friends and a whole new spin on life.
We are really looking forward to whatever CoT has to offer. We miss our heroes / heroines. :)
For me, it was the creative outlet, more than any other aspect of the game.
It was Issue 14 when I went from being a noncommital off-and-on subscriber to being a die hard who wound up maintaining multiple accounts and buying every content pack that came along. While others stood around Atlas griping that AE ruined the game, I spent thousands of hours tinkering with missions and critters, even if I was usually the only one to play them.
Sure, City of Heroes was nicely designed with a great style and UI, and I had some fun running around with a RP oriented SG for awhile, but those mostly aren't things I couldn't find elsewhere, especially now, when every other MMO game has adopted similar mechanics. And while many CoX players were courteous, and I enjoyed playing the super-friend and support bot role most of the time as well, I can't say that I had a much different experience with many other MMO games I've played.
No, it was AE, combined with the power of the costume creator, that made City of Heroes unlike any other MMO game.
[b][color=red]*[/color]Edit[/b]:
Champions' "nemesis" aspect had similar appeal, but is so extremely limited that it just looks like wasted potential. An amalgamation of the two aspects, so that players could create their own villain and hero organizations to appear in their own instanced version of the world would have been ideal.
The ability to create (or at least get close to) the character I wanted to play.
The community and the environment it fostered.
The fact that there was no strict "Holy Trinity" - yes there were tanks, DPSers and "healers", but it was more like "it'd be nice to have..." rather than "you must have X, Y and Z". In fact the "soft classes" were probably why the game was such a fertile teaming environment (unlike, say Champions where everyone is DPS/Mitigation/Self-Heal and finding a team is difficult).
The ability to make my contributions via the Mission Architect.
A lot of what the good folks have noted above, plus:
1) Combat you actually had to think about, not just spam your most powerful attack.
2) Appearance not tied to ability.
3) No fighting over loot drops; everyone got their own rewards.
4) Super-sidekicking.
5) Mostly instanced content meant no competing to kill that one boss, no one ninjaing your glowie while you fought mobs, and (until Freedom) no mobs respawning on top of you.
6) Regular new content releases for all level ranges, not just endgame.
7) Soloability. Even solo endgame content.
8) While it was not devoid of humour, it took the world and enemy groups seriously, unlike another superhero MMO (*COugh COugh*) that seems to constantly wink at you and say, "This is all so silly, isn't it?"
9) The whole system encouraged alts -- re-experiencing the game over and over through a wide variety of character builds.
10) A real sense of increase in power as you levelled; the number/strength of enemies you could take on at 50 was significantly different from that number at 15 or 30.
Spurn all ye kindle.
CoH was my very first MMO, and from the experiences there I found a deep love of the MMO world. The biggest thing for me was always the community. The feeling of family, the fun and depth that we could get into in both RP and in friendships. I met my 'sister' in City of Heroes. Some of you may remember SalsaKitten. She and her hubby and girls came to live with us for something like five years, and in fact I still have her oldest living with me. The relationship of deep caring I had for my sister is what can be achieved by such a community as we had, and I'm hoping that feeling will return with CoT.
Flexibility, as others have mentioned, was the other huge thing that drove my love of the game. I had the ability to create literally anything I wanted, and have it be a plausible addition to the world.
The writing in missions, enemy groups, and the lore of the world itself is up there at the top as well. There's nothing I love more than getting lost in the writing I immerse myself in.... and CoH had excellent writing all through it.
[color=blue]You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
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For me there was no 'one' thing that really brought it home. Yes, it was the best superhero MMO. Yes, it had a great community. Ye, it lasted a long time and grew beyond all expectations. But each of these combined to form a Gestalt...greater than the sum of its parts...for me. It was the whole shootin match which is why none of the competition has measured up. None of them has just the right combination of game play, community and scope that I need to stay hooked.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Yes. Exactly.
[color=blue]You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
[i]George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)[/i][/color]
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I got a look at Posi's "resume" in his farewell letter to us.
I think the reason the whole environment came together into one seamless meld the way it did was because it was written by gamers, for gamers. Compare and contrast that with SWTOR. EA took one of the biggest and most loved franchises of the past century and... well there's a term for what they did that's used in the military, but being in polite company I'm searching for an alternative. Let's just say I wouldn't play SWTOR unless I was paid a substantial sum to do so.
COX, designed by gamers, for gamers
SWTOR, designed by suits to make a buck.
You decide which one succeeded and which one failed.
I really do think it was a perfect storm of things. I can't pick out any one thing that, by itself, made CoH great. What made it great is how it did everything so well.
Though, I guess if I had to pick just one thing, it was just the way my characters felt so awesomely powerful, as if they were capable of doing anything, and they could do it in so many different ways. I don't get that feeling in any other game (not even Champions Online, where the game is "easy", sure, but character builds outside of "do a lot of damage" and "heal a lot of damage" are pretty lackluster)
There were very few moments...,
- ...where I couldn't make some type of character up that I was thinking of. Yes, I could make up a bunch of really gimped and worthless characters...as a matter of fact, I tried to make them because I enjoy testing the boundaries in both directions. But to take those characters that would be totally ignored for teaming...and to complete a mission with that character gives a sense of accomplishment that simply could not be found in any other MMORPG. Moreover than that, when testing the boundaries in the other direction...selecting powers that would otherwise be ignored by 'min-maxers', you can create a character that literally wrecks undeniable havoc. The last character I made was going through the Praetorian Arc soloing AV's, I hadn't done that with any other character before! I was astounded and I wasn't even maxed out yet! You can make some serious badassery with this game design concept..,
I wish I knew what it was about CoH that kept me playing for 8 years while CO and DCUO couldn't hold my attention for more than a couple of days, I've never been able to pin it down.
I'm a big fan of playing around with costume creators and CoH seemed to have a depth I couldnt find anywhere else. CO had a potentially more customizable costume range but didn't have as many costume pieces when I had a paid subscription, when I go back to it now so many of the pieces are behind a paywall that its more frustrating than entertaining. DCUO's costume creator feels very... soulless, everything feels generic, I've yet to see a DCUO costume design that I've really liked.
After costumes, I'd like messing with cool powerset combinations. CO felt limited when I had a subscription, there might be more options now but, again, paywall. Never did wrap my head around the idea of the game's tanking set being Ice. Same thing over in DCUO, isn't it?
The thing is, I knew CoH had its problems, it really did and there were many of them. I think I liked it *for* its quirks and oddities
In CoH when playing characters, I felt super. You could utilize the very systems to acquire levels of power that compared to what most MMO's give you, made you comparatively superhuman.
I've played other MMO's. Nothing held my attention for long. Nothing had the magic of being able to do some of the things I did with my characters. I loved being able to make powerful characters, and have those powerful characters fit in seemlessly with the in-game lore. Squeezing every drop of optimization I could out of a character (as I tend to do), resulted in truly significant gameplay effects. To where, eventually, I could go on an ITF with Infernal Infested and go "You guys take care of the one big one and his three fluffy pals, I'll tend to the other 300 schmucks in armor." and be able to do exactly that. Or to with a little bit of prep work, be able to take on the Giant Monsters by myself and win.
It felt normal. It was a part of the game. It wasn't me exploiting programming oversights to have my "Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?" moments.
And on top of that CoH had a community where I felt at home. I've never found another forum where I've felt more comfortable with folks. Playing the game managed to coax me out of my social shell. With my rural living location and my crippling phobia of cars (I have to take anti-anxiety meds so that I don't start throwing up hours before I go on a car trip further away that 30 minutes.), I don't really have the capacity to have IRL social interaction. So when CoH went away, so too did one of my primary sources of social interaction outside a small circle of online friends.
And in partaking of the community, I also learned things about myself.
Like the fact that I actually have a legitimate superpower, by managing to guess what number Zwillenger rolled on a d100 purely by the sound made when he wrote it down with a marker on a sticky note one week on Coffee Talk. Which was 81, if I recall correctly.
[color=green]BIZZARO MEDIA FOLLOWER[/color]
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Another thing I'd like to add. I have two kids in their late teens. With CoH, you could disable chat, turn off bubbles, auto reject team requests, etc. and more or less allow them to play in a multiplayer environment where they were nevertheless safe. It was the first MMO experience for both, and I have fond memories of holding each on my lap while they ran around punching Skulls and dropping boomboxes in Front of City Hall.
As a gamer and a parent, what a great thing that was.
For me, all the tools available for random act of kindness made for a nice synergy with the awesome community.
Some of them lasted for quite a while.
I still remember the feeling I had the first time I got a random speed boost. I didn't know what the hell happened. And a couple of times, I had a lvl 50SO dropped on me while I was training and couldn't believe I could sell it for 30k inf. I was rich! (I thought)
I started noticing it all over the place. Speed boosts. Bubbles. Heals. Teleports. The gravity distortion field or glue arrow thrown down for someone who bit off more than they could chew.
I was glad to pay it forward when my grav/kin troller was able to hang out in the Hollows and toss speed boosts to folks trying to get to that stupid cave mission way up in the far corner of the map.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
hmmm.
Some things that COX I found I think IMO only, did proper and or was heading in the right direction.
Heroes and villains. Not many games out there that I know of let you play both
Relatively it was a pretty laid back game and good for casual play. I'm talking about the actual style of the game. The people...depends on who is on at the moment. Some people was cool some people were the usual brash "me me me my opinion is better than everyone agree with me or you're troll people." Overall the community was average compared to others but the setting allowed it to feel a bit more laid back than many other games.
The different combinations of powers for it's day was untouched. Now it's a little restrictive to melee is melee range is squish and etc, but in it's hey day, it was the pinnacle of power selection.
The later changes with Null the gull. Good stuff. No more trolling drive by speed boosters that cant take a polite no for an answer. And yeah I had a Kin so I know good and well it wasn't hard to not buff someone not on the team. They were doing just to be doing to be an ass especially after asked to stop. Anyways, they killed that problem with null the gull.
Going Rogue and Praetoria maps. Sad that soon after they were emptier than even villain side, but those were some beautiful zones with interesting missions.
You know something, COX didn't feel like a huge game, it had small population, everyone seemed to know (or made assumptions about) everyone for better or worse, but that was the downfall. It didn't feel like another number among millions among millions. But in the end it's still about the dollar and small crowd don't cut it. :(
You know I found it overall to be a solid game. A very good one for it's day. Not perfect by any means, at least not in my opinion. And CO is better in a lot of aspects with RNG not being for front, a bit more friendlier community overall, and better gameplay style in powers usage and stuff and even more out of the holy trin. box than COX was. But CO probably wouldn't exist without COX paving the way. And still CO, as good of a game it is, still haven't changed anything much with putting super hero mmo genre on the map as a profitable gig. Hopefully one of the upcoming three do what even COX couldn't do and make crazy profits or have a large following that is large not only compared to a console underground game with up to 100,000 people, but large even compared to mainstream and show that super hero is profitable. Hell look at the movies out, super hero movies are everywhere. They just need games that make them feel actually super and appeal to the masses. The errand boy thing that worked in Fantasy games don't translate too well to feeling super. Hell even Tommy of GTA had more freedom in the choices he got to make and he is far from a hero.
To me the best thing about coh was that I could take on a huge horde of foes(equal or greater level ones) with any archtype in its own special way. I havent found another game that makes me feel quite so powerful. Main examples are GW2 where If I aggro 2 +1 foes I will be running for the hills it seems(though I admit I havent tested the bounds of optimization there yet).
Its almost like in most games the idea is to not let you feel powerful.
Yeah, this, too. I've always enjoyed playing the "worst" set and seeing what could be done with it. That's why I made an Energy/Energy Brute and took her to 50 (this was before Energy Aura as buffed, mind you). I still don't know what all the fuss was about. :D Energy Melee as stun-crazy, and I as constantly surrounded by enemies (even bosses) staggering around like drunk schoolkids.
Nothing was "useless" in CoH, and even the "worst" sets were viable.
Gotta go with this..and Tactics - the ability to lay 7 or 8 mines in patterns run round a corner go oops hit someone and run em back thru the mines .. or just lay them and snipe to pull a group....I even loved the way you could pattern the mines to throw a mob into a dif group of mines in a kinda "bank shot" Bank Boom? bank somethg... and all my toons had their own tricks.
Yes i loved the alts... i had 79 on us before i switched to Europe when CoV came out (big mistake that mind) and 35 in euro servers
Yes comunity....my SG had a tonne of racks for craft mats and we all just dumped rare bits we got in them 2 of each rare 6 of anything else and no one cared who used them. in fact mostly the enhancements were just stacked up in rack of level 10-20 21-30 31-40 41-50 hundreds just kept filled for whoever needed.
Thats community.. and the willingness to just change toon to what someone needed to do a mission.. and that wasnt just guild members loads of people would do it.
CO (for which i have a lifetime ) just disappointed and still does compared to CoX everything respawns so fast you cant do attack move whittle down numbers strike again.. the respawns too fast...CoX is still my fave out of all MO's played beta to close...i don't think any others lasted 2 years.. CoX i would have still been playing
So NO PRESSURE THEN! it better be good. :)
No other game lived up to the "bring the player, not the class" paradigm like CoH. Remember things like Tanker Tuesdays or Repeat Offenders ? Any combination of ATs, even completely lopsided, worked. Combined with sidekicking, this meant I could play whatever character I was enjoying most at the moment. None of that "LF tank and healer" nonsense.
Playing what you like, whenever you want ? Priceless.
Also, I spent a lot of time in Mids, trying to create the "perfect" builds for my characters :)
I didn't realize groups other than the Repeat Offenders used the meme "Bring the player, not the class". Or at least that anyone else phrased it that way.
But then again, I hardly played with anyone outside RO after Issue 7.
Heh, looking through all this has made me nostalgic.
One bit that has been touched on is the combat system. In retrospect, I don't think I've seen anything like it since. It was a bit rigid, with global cooldowns and locked animations, but it was SATISFYING. A stomp would throw enemies into the air, while ice patches had them tripping all over themselves, and yet still web grenades would hold them in place, struggling to get free.
Groups of enemies, with the thugs, LT, Boss system felt believable and challenging in their own way. Enemies became more sophisticated with their abilities and dynamics as you leveled into stronger organizations with more resources to fight, but as mentioned, by building your character just right you could become godlike, or simply enjoy whatever combination of powers and abilities you prefer, while still remaining quite effective. Enough to solo at least :P
Oh and the instancing
Better than any of the other MMO's i can think of.. and i have played a lot of them since EQ UO many years back it incresed your opponents in instances with the numbers in your group.... solo duo trio full group could do the same missions and get a reasonable accurate group to oppose them. So you could with a chara solo thru or match the size of your group.
Thats very important in a Supers game ... after all most supers work sol with occasional teams in the comics ....ok there are some groups FF Xmen etc ... but most are Batman.. superman .. Iron Man... spiderman .. Wonder Woman etc .. off on their tod
and CoX allowed you to drop in and play a mission and go ... or arrange a group to do a full sequence from one of the area heroes taking a couple of hours. The choice was always yours
and no queueing up for a chance to do an open world mission or get irritated with campers constantly hammering the same guy
I loved being able to solo when I wanted and actually make progress on my story lines. I loved teaming with my wife and taking on more than we could chew and yet pull through. I love the sidekick and mentor systems. I loved flying and teleporting. I loved feeling like a hero or villain.
I loved beating the crap out of big ass robots! My wife and I teamed up for the Kronos Titan mission with our controllers; me Starfinder (grav/rad) her Dreamheart (illusion/empathy). The titan shows up and we're slowly taking it down, then the other one showed up as we both completed the mission. They couldn't kill us, we couldn't kill them. So we sent out a call and heroes popped out of the woodwork to help us out. It is one of my fondest memories of the game.
So, yeah, the community was probably the best thing in the game. Sadly the devs can't force that community it has to grow.
Allan, the Shadowsmith
This is a cool thread idea, first. There were uncountable little things I loved about City of Heroes, but Champions of Online had them when I played (mostly in public beta and a couple times sense). For some reason, Champions lost me. It felt like the tutorial level ran on too long and then tossed me into a world where I had no idea what to do next. Which, honestly, I think was partly my fault for losing track of what the game said I should be doing next- but that never happened in City of Heroes. (That and some problems saving outfits after public beta ended.)
Aside from the concept, I think the first things that caught my attention for City of Heroes – which Champions of Online didn’t seem to do as well- were the enemy bios (and history section). Maybe part of this was that City was the first super hero MMO and CO- wasn’t. But the enemy bios always intrigued me. Short version- I loved the way they introduced the villains and I’ve been trying to remember why.
The conclusion I came to it is a combination of factors City of Heroes got right in introducing an enemy. Champions Online didn’t quite do it as well. (I don’t think the preliminary enemy bios we’ve seen do either, but that is more forgivable as we’re still basically alpha or pre alpha.) They get across the gimmick well enough but not so much the personality. So far, it’s lacking the context of “How does this character fit into the city and where am I going to run into them?”
The website bios for City of Heroes did that- it fit the image of the villain groups into the city and its history. Even with the most fantastic ideas, the introductions always felt realistic and thought out. It was quickly clear they were thinking character first. You got a real sense of how each individual group fit into the city and its history as well.
I felt like I was reading an actual bio and not just a loose sketch of a villain concept.
As I said, it’s only one of the things that hooked me (like flying around the better parts of the city twenty minutes, sometimes half an hour)- but it was the first. Even before players download the game and mess around with the powers and costumes, the website will be there, ready and hopefully able to draw the players into the world before they even consider downloading. If we (you, they, pick whatever pronoun fits your sensibilities) can hook players as well as City of Heroes did, I suspect you’ll end up with people who are much more likely to try the game out.
I really hope this game is able to nail that particular aspect. I’m optimistic they will.
Longtime City of Heroes player, longtime writer. :) Working in Nebraska.
COT: Mission tips writer, studying Cinema 4D animation program
While it's true that the devs can't force that type of community, I believe that sort of community will grow in this environment for several reasons.
1) We're (super) heroes. We want to be the hero, the helper, the one who lifts others up.
2) Like making sourdough, we have a starter culture (no pun intended).
3) The innovative features that CoH introduced us to brought people who like innovation and believe that we can achieve more together than we can by fighting each other. I see no reason to believe that CoTi will be any different.
Two things are Important to me.
#1: Story....I would go into missions to read the story, then to do my part in it. Having the feeling that I helped further the story motivated me greatly.
#2: Flexibility....Most MMO's = grab mish...Kill the mobs....turn in....rinse/repeat...CoX you were able to do things that you could not do with a less flexible game. For Example; Just before the game shutdown was announced, I thought I would try something nobody else had done in the game before (leastwise that I was able to research). I was going to solo start a Rikti Raid. The hell of the thing is, I was almost there!! I was able to down 16 of the 18 pylons, by myself....just a little more tweaking with my guy and I could have had it.
Here was a game that let someone TRY to do something outside the box and actually have a chance of succeeding. To customize yourself to such a degree that you could, potentially, accomplish anything that means something to you. In short, to overcome an impossible obstacle, and be a hero. :)
They also serve, who only stand and wait.
What did it for me?
Customisation. Everything could be tweaked or molded, from personal extremities to the colour and placement of powers. There was a huge range of power sets in the end, which made rolling new toons fun, even if it was just to see what you could come up with. I came up with a diverse and interesting set of toons, from my speedster, regenning Samurai (White Samurai), to my Healer Defender who eventually gained angelic wings after some IC RP gained him favour from a 'celestial being' (the RP was often awesome if you got the right group together).
Community: As has already been stated, the CoX community was great, with (mostly) very helpful people who didn't mind giving a bit of time to help out (myself included there).
Diversity: This goes hand in hand with Customisation. With great customisation comes great diversity. Even though you were playing another wolver-wielding scrapper, you could still be unique in your look and attitude that made the character seem unique enough to ignore the similarities. Too often in games, you end up playing just another x or y due to limited skills / powers / etc. CoX managed to handle that to quite a degree through allowing a huge level of character customisation.
Story: Although there wasn't an overall story arc (or if there was, I missed it), the various groups and zones had their own (often very unique) story lines and story missions that meant you could deal with X group or Y group and you would follow a story arc to the conclusion where you'd kick some super villains bottom. That was really good and often provided insight into the motivations and end goals of teh organisation you were facing.
Hmm... If I think of anything else, I'll update this but think that's me for now.
We all have it in us to be a hero to someone,
Super powers are optional.....
Part of the Phoenix Rising Initiative.....
Proud to be a hero. Prouder still to be a member of [url=http://www.watchfire-online.info]Watchfire[/url]
During my time in the game (July '05-sunset) I wasn't super active in the community, but I did get to be known around the Infinity server. So the community was not the biggest thing for me (though I do love you guys). For me it was the teaming aspect in CoH and how it was handled. Whether it was a PUG running missions, a TF with friends, or even just going duo with my wife the game truly rewarded you for teaming up, both from a mechanical stance and from a spiritual one. This is the core that I hope makes it into CoT.
-----------------------------------------
I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
What made COH work for me?
First and foremost, it was a super hero game. Then there's the ease of use. The player interface was simple to learn, and the fact that it was editable was perfect.
Variety, which has been mentioned a lot already. Considering all the characters I made and all the others I saw others playing I don't remember seeing two character that were exactly a like. Also the variety of powers sets available. The art work is very fitting to the comic book world, while not being cartoony.
Loved the level/power progression.
The other super hero games out there (with the exception of Marvel Heroes) cover some of these features fairly well, others not so much. DCUO has some amazing art work, but the controls made me feel far less then super. Champions controls are similar, but the level progression is weird, and the art work... don't get me started.
That said, got to get to work before I'm late.
Streaming Classic Rock, Beyond, and Before, 24/7 on Paragon Radio Gallifrey.
All of the above! Mostly customization of one's own character.... I spent quite some time building my character much like everyone else did, so of course having that type of connection makes you enjoy the game even more :)
A comment for the devs on community... I agree with others above that one of the best aspects of CoX was our unusually friendly and supportive community. I think two game design elements helped attract the kind of people we still have around today: appearance not tied to ability and no fighting over loot.
I believe these two elements created a non-material and non-competitive atmosphere that encouraged cooperation over grandstanding; a focus on what you could do to help rather than what shinies you had acquired. I believe that foundation was essential in attracting the good folks who are still here now, waiting for our new world.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Immersion... to whatever extent I wanted at the moment.
Camaraderie... even with complete strangers I would never again meet.
Self paced... there are scripted mishes or just patrolling or TF's or a slow roll through Hollows, or farming, or seasonal events, or rp, or whatever. If I am feeling it I can participate in it!
Customization... my toon was my toon. I rarely saw the exact same build and nearly never the same appearance.
I could be as good or bad as I liked and it was fun either way. When I teamed with friends it was so cool to figure out how to defeat even regular runs with new power sets.
I must've done the FF run in the Hollows like a million times... I just never got tired of that run. Should have but just never did...
I'm gonna get flamed for this but here goes. ~ Personally I kinda liked that there were areas that I couldn't traverse easily. Yeah I would have liked flight at level 1 but some of my favorite memories were of being a low level newbie getting my arse kicked in the hollows just because I couldn't get to the far end without going through at least a couple hordes of trolls, etc. Some things really should be tough at least at first, I appreciated flight so much more knowing how hard it was for my character to survive even just getting to a mish without it. I enjoyed that form of immersion. Maybe I am a sadist???
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
My friend and I ran 'Mastermind Mondays' for a year with the same philosophy. We started with 3 teams of 7 MMs and by level 8 we raised the Difficulty. By level 12 we raised it again. By lvl 15 the pets were racing to keep up as we stampeded through content. The laser light show from the All Bots team alone was a blast!
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
Very well stated! Though I will say their push to make all AT's one (from what I gather) to promote soloability(apparently) was, is, and will always be a bad idea, but otherwise yeah these plus community(as was said before) and I think we got it.
Masterminds and Radio/paper mission. I loved logging in and cranking the difficulty up to 4 or 5 person and testing my metal. It didn't matter to me that I knew every map and generic boss it was an endless supply of fun. There is no other game out there that lets you control 6 minions. And the Thug MM had that power gang war that let you call 10 additional minions. Man that felt good to just swamp an enemy in minions. I have yet to find another game with that.
Hip hooters Nee!
I was a CoH player from beta, and put in almost 6 years of play time. The thing that clicked for me was that there were so many ways to play the game. I loved the way you could totally change your game with a respec. I loved that you could play as the 'perfect' spec according to the 'experts', or come up with your own perfect spec. I loved how we kept getting the tools we needed to enjoy the game; a third toolbar, exotic enhancements, and team oriented class benefits for example. I loved that playing as a level cap did not feel like you were wasting your time. And I just loved the comradery!
DCUO has a lot of these, but the 6 power toolbar really hurts the experience. Also, 'grinding' in DCUO is not nearly as fun as it was in CoH. And, DCUO was (and still is) missing critical powersets, like Super Strength.
CO never really captured me. I did like the art style, but as has been stated I felt very confined, and many times did not feel very powerful in the game. Plus, I was less than enthused by the power building methods.
CoH player from Beta...
When I first got to level 32 with my Bots/Dark MM, and saw the full-auto upgrade of the tier-1 bots, I remembered a comment a friend of mine had made years ago during a PnP superhero game: "[i]A criss-cross of multi-colored beams, at the center of which nothing living could exist.[/i]" Admittedly, I wasn't doing [i]that[/i] much damage, but it felt as if I was carpet-bombing the area, between the sprays of laser blasts, the particle cannon, the missiles, flamethrower, and seeker drones.
The biggest problem with SWTOR isn't that the developers are just doing a job rather than working on something they love, but that the whole design of the game is essentially the common features of a generic trinity-role, gear-based fantasy MMO with all the serial numbers filed off and the shell of the Star Wars universe grafted on top of it. Secondary to that is the relative paucity of missions and the way each basic class' storyline is a railroad all the way to level max. The game worlds are artistically well-done within what you see of them, but the game doesn't take advantage of the fact that each world [b]is[/b] an entire [i]world[/i]; you only get to explore narrowly-delimited areas of each one, and with your only seeing that one area, each one comes off as both a [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SingleBiomePlanet]Single-Biome Planet[/url] and a [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlanetOfHats]Planet of Hats[/url]. And the voice acting for aliens that don't speak Basic isn't helped by the fact that they keep re-using the same voice clips with different subtitles for conversations with different NPCs.
I agree with the most part of the post but this is a nit that I'm going to have to pick.
That does describe most of the planets in Star Wars (and Star Trek, for that matter, which also suffers from chronic [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RubberForeheadAliens]Rubber Forehread Aliens[/url]). Heck, most sci-fi and fantasy uses those tropes. This is hardly restricted to TOR.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Yeah, remember the time Stargate SG1 ended up on that ice planet? :D
100% agree with this, I do.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/26pBVBG.png[/img]
([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
So much of what's written above is true. I want to focus on two things in particular, one of which was touched on by a few people, the other of which CoT will NOT be able to replicate -- at least, not out of the gate.
1) The variety of powersets and ATs has been mentioned, but one thing that really stood out to me was how different combat could be for different characters. Even my squad of Tanks could play pretty differently -- the Fire/Fire/Pyre tanker was a very different experience from Invuln/Super Strength, Battle Axe/Shield, Stone/Stone, ad Dark/Stone. Never mind going from playing a Storm Defender to Force Fields Defender to an Empath. Wildly different.
Coupled with the amazing variety in appearance, and the IMMENSE value that attached biographies gave to individualizing characters, switching to an alt could be like playing an entirely different game, but [i]without[/i] having to learn new rules, keyboard controls, and systems.
2) The game when mature was huge and varied. I definitely preferred mature COH/V to early COH/V. So many conveniences, so much content, so few bugs, such improved balance. If CoT becomes as beloved as COH/V (hell, it might become MORESO, as a community-driven project) it will get there, but it'll have to start smaller and grow into what it could be.
One of the games I have played since COH was approaching its FIRST anniversary, and I saw players returning and asking "is this old thing still running?" when it was less than a year old. That saddens me -- MMOs [i]definitely[/i] get better with time.
Captain of Phoenix Rising
What made CoX special for me? As a born altist, I loved just making characters,
writing their bios.
I used to spend hours in the character generator customizing costumes.
At the end I had like 60 toons on Defiant but mostly Union.
Then of course what sold CoX to me was the AWESOME community.
Since CoX was a nice mostly casual game, everyone had access to
everything sooner or later.
There was no elitism, and rare were the case where someone had to say,
"Sorry, we really cannot take that character since we are going to do
something really difficult and need X."
Not that is was difficult to have X in that game. Several of X really ;)
But I have never met such a happy, relaxed, carefree community.
In other MMOs it's always "Farm this! Exploit this! Speedrun that!
Time is money!" Greed and idiots all around who cannot appreciate
a nice relaxing game.
THIS is what I am missing mostly about CoX.
And of course the CoP runs every friday.
[b]Time until Zero Strykers Revival:[/b] When it's ready (tm), Beta Mid to End of 201?
Official Timekeeper of the Zero Strykers SG ~ Union
It was definitely the level of customization for me. The character at first, but then they added custom power coloring and the mission architect and it was just amazing all-around. I also adored the fact that I could actually co op with people of the other faction, including later on with actual missions, and eventually could even switch factions, repeatedly.
The other thing I definitely enjoyed was the community. Pretty much EVERYONE was on Virtue. And Virtue was a miracle. It had actual community-made roleplaying, costume contests, it was just generally amazing all-around. One of the first things I'm going to do in CoT when I start playing is see if I can't start a costume contest. :3
Edit: Oh, and Masterminds, too. I had a Bot/Forcefield; it was extremely entertaining for me to summon up a 6 minion laser-spamming team, bubbling them up with protective skills, then lay back and let them wreck everything. Then I did it again with a Soldier minions/Pain (healing) who I could leave on auto-casting team-heal and deliberately heal non-pet teammates at the same time, a one-woman group who was just as awesome in an actual group.
The fact that groups didn't HAVE to have a healer also meant that quite a few didn't, which meant I got to do a lot of it, and it's always been my favorite role.
The way power sets and pools worked. It had great structure and enough freedom so you could make any hero (or villain) you want without feeling like you gimped yourself. also the animations and effects on your powers are some of the best to this day. it made my attacks feel like they had weight to them.
Custom power coloring was great. I particularly liked how you could use two different colors in customizing the power coloration. My electric blaster had her ranged blasts col,ored a combination of bright yellow and electric blue, which resulted in a particularly stunning blue-and-yellow entwined arc of lightning. I'd definitely want to see this level of detail again, rather than single-color choice like CO.
Where the correlation falls down is that with Star Wars, both of those memes are largely [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization]flanderization[/url] by the authors who wrote the books in the EU, and Bioware didn't [b]bother[/b] to step beyond the paper-maché shells that the EU authors created, whereas Star Trek did both of those in primary canon, and the authors who wrote books in the universe mostly tried to break out of the hat stereotypes.
This is what did it for me. The powersets, the animations, particle effects, sound and ability to fight large mobs. I've tried DCUO and Champions [s]of[/s] Online then also played other MMOs over the past year(Rift, GW2, NWO, etc) and NONE of them have as visceral feel as did City of Heroes. When I clicked a power in CoH I [b]felt[/b] it but when I click it in others I was a spectator not a participant.
[b][color=red]Reward tactics as well as damage dealing.[/color][/b]
I have to echo a lot of the stuff already said on this thread. There's too much to quote
Since CoX (and to be fair, before it died) I played LotRO, SWG, CO, SW:TOR, DDO, NW, STO ... and tried a bunch of other games. Of all these games, Lord of the Rings Online is the only game that I played for any length of time (I don't play any of them regularly now, just occasionally log in to "get a fix").
I think what set LotRO apart is the same thing that set CoX apart for me: story arcs.
City of Heroes story arcs just kept getting better and better as the game aged. From the beginning, following a story arc gave you a complete tale, then showed you the door to your next story arc. Some were shorter than others, and some seemed to go on forever, but most of them seemed perfectly paced and had perfect length. And they all told a complete story.
I think Champions is probably the one that I felt the least connection to the stories. I played the Champions RPG, so I enjoyed how the online system worked, but it never felt as strong, or as rewarding as CoX play, and the stories were hard to follow ... plus it was easy to get lost when it came to moving on to the next story. I've not had the opportunity to get involved in DCUO, but friends say it's fun, but limiting.
[i]Also, the energy blast pictured at the left, and the nova blast (monkey bomb as I dubbed it while chasing the rikti monkey badge) are my favorite abilities in any MMO I've ever played -- visually and how it felt when activated[/i]
Anyway, that's my story.
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There were three aspects that made me love CoH more than any other. Fist there was choice of character. There was no best build, best armor, or must be this tall to raid sign. You build your character and did whatever you wanted without having to do the crazy math required by other mmos to maximize your character. Yes this meant that to a point what types of power you took was redundant but most effect based games are and that is what gave you the freedom to make whatever you felt like no matter how odd your hero was. Also with a large selection of costumes creating your hero could take hours as you tried different combinations. Some times you could just come up with a whole plan thanks to some random costume piece. For instance while building a tank I found that a pick was one of the props for the battleaxe power set. Add a long beard, plaid shirt, jeans, and a large hat and the Fourtyniner was born. Another time I was looking at the animations for atomic control and though how much it looked like disco dancing so I created a character in a while and green jumpsuit with a fro and Dr. Funk was ready to hit the streets where he soon met his massive friend Pimpinstine and together they crated many flash dance mobs around the city.
They second thing I loved was the community. There were no spam bots (at least I don't remember any) people were always looking to team up for something even if it was just a casual patrolling the streets or pluming (pardon the pun) the depths of the sewer system(please have one we can explore). When I played wow I got stuck in quite a few areas and had to grind my way out because on one wanted to help with my group quests not even the people in my guild. Being able to not just fight but talk with people from all over the world was a new experience with me back then and I still enjoy it. We would pause between combats and talk not just about what we were doing but who we were, where we were from, and the like. Not to mention all the costume contests that were held in the shadow of the Atlas memorial. Some of my fondest memories is from the first winter event. Swarms of heroes descended on various zones and together hunted the giant ice monsters that would appear. For some reason XP felt more like something that was best shared in that game. Also because of the lack of a trinity focus large scale events were open for everyone. I was in a super group for a time for the most part I was a independent hero but I was still able to join other heroes in task force missions. Which were another great thing, Instead of leaving the large missions solely for the end game but having a number scattered among the lower levels it bought large groups together more often so that the team work of that scale at a early level. I remember my fist run of the Clockwork task force and how we had to call in help from all over skyway to help finish off Bertha. Anyway we were all a great colorful lot of all shapes and sizes and by having so many differences each person felt important rather than tank in armor a and healer in armor b.
The last and most important part was that the city felt alive in a way. People with normal names walked around and talked, Cars drove around, and bad guys were always doing something such as siting, mugging, performing dark rituals or just trying to tell people how close their doom was. and each city zone was ripe to explore. Memorials commemorating events, little bonuses from climbing a building or jumping through a giant donuts, small things like that made all the difference. I can say there were some days where I would just patrol the streets and rooftops putting a stop to all crime even if I didn't get any Xp from it just because I felt like I was doing some good. Also each zone had personality and was sized perfectly for it. You didn't have to compete with 6 other people to kill 10 of a guy who only appears as part of a 3 man group that is only on one alley. And no go beat up guys until you get 23 macguffin quests. That take 2 hours beaus only guys 2 have a chance of dropping it. But the thing that gave the game the most life to me was a statue, It wasn't huge or very impressive. It didn't show I mighty warrior of wise wizard. it was a small, stone statue of a old man on a bench in front of a train station in kings row. Cyrus Oliver Thompson formerly the hero Breakneck who died when he used the last of his strength to stop the circle of thorns. Heroes May Die, But Heroism Never Shall. Having a overarching story line that left a visible impression, however small, on the city is what rally brought life and importance to the city for me and is a key feature that I hope for.
I also have to say that it was the Community. I started out with a Claws/Regen scrapper, and he felt completely "Super" as he levelled up, and it was in the day before they changed regen to be less, invulnerable, but he was still fun and adjusting wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.
I can't say anything more eloquent than what has already been said here, so I'll just leave with - "Be careful out there!"
I agree with almost all of the comments here, especially Col. Kernal's comments. But there are some other things that were really enjoyable in my view. One of these was the idea of "presents" at the Holiday season, which could be gathered for candy canes. When not many players were on, it was fun to collect presents and just fly around. COH was a great game!
Also, we had an enormous number of temp powers, and this really enhanced the game. As a low-offensive-power controller, I could craft a revolver, a St. Louis Slammer, etc to get me some extra damage abilities (perhaps the word "extra" was not needed). Between this stuff and inspirations, my controller could, briefly, be as powerful as needed. I liked that level of flexibility and complexity.
On these forums we've spoken at length in many threads about the need for flexible power set and customization -- one of the ways this goal is enhanced is with cool and varied temp powers, so that the early stages of a character design can be enhanced, on the path to that one-of-a-kind level 50 toon that we are conceiving.
Another thing that I believe was one of my favorite aspects of COH when I had a low level character was the spontaneous Rikti invasion. Not only was this kind of event enormously fun, but it allowed me to see how my now, lowbie toon functioned when he had buffs from the other players running, temporarily making my level 8 scrapper into a titan of invulnerability, regen and damage! How cool was that!
There has not been a game before or since that you could log in...shout for a team..and be having a laugh in under 2 mins.
It wasn't complicated and didn't need "twitch gaming skillz" so even less able people could play it.
It encouraged replay via alts as many many people will testify.
It was purely and simply THE most enjoyable MMO I have ever played and if CoT manages to instill this into the game then there will be a lot of happy bunnies around.
Cryptic and NCsoft were blind and didn't realise what they had,a true gem of a game but they the baby out with the bathwater.....shame on them.
For me it was that the game was fun and engaging without the grindy elements that make other games feel like work. The content was original and quirky but you weren't lead around by the nose being forced in to it. It was up to you to choose what content to explore.
A lot of the fun was in a combat system where you were fighting many many villains rather than 5 or 6 of heroes carefully beating down one monster at a time because two would mean disaster.
The game lacked one of the biggest fun-killers in other MMO's: fighting over who gets the loot.
The music in the game was interesting but didn't drone constantly to the point you couldn't stand it. In most other games I turn the music off because it won't stop otherwise.
Another big part was group content that didn't require any particular team makeup.
As the game worn on, grinds and end-game content which required very specific powersets became normal and the game lost a lot of its luster. In addition the later-issue missions had the droning, never ending music and random-drop must-have-to-progress loot. In other words, over time CoH became more like all the games I was getting away from.
...but on day one it was nothing like them.
Get yourself right; the world has enough problems.
The Mission Architect. It was incredible.
The Community. Awesome. Even the members of the community I had issues with were light years nicer than some of the frankly evil bastards playing Eve Online, for example, Or the cesspool of whine WoW has. I've always been more into soloing or duoing with an RL froend than teaming, generally, but knowing there was a huge community around me in Paragon and living and active in positive ways on the forums was essential in making CoH the best MMO there's ever been, imo.
Alts. I subbed without lapse for 8 years, and at the end I had one hero and one villain at lvl 50, and 32 other alts with fleshed-out origins and unique personalities, costumes and powersets, and it honestly felt like I had 34 different 1-50 levelling experiences to enjoy. Every other MMO I've tried, they've all been 'make a main. Now play him to endgame. That's it, no point rolling an alt, really.'
The narrative-delivery systems were many and fantastic. Briefings, debriefings, clues, triggered speech bubbles, bios, hell, you all know what I mean. Unmatched story delivery potential, both in game and in the MA. I cried when I was shown the pitiful comparisons that WoW and TSW attempted (though the investigation missions in TSW were a bold experiment, I grant).
The feeling of being a superhero with actual badass power. I could punch a mob OVER A BUILDING. Or take on hundreds of minions singke-handedly. In Aion Online, I was once killed by a mushroom. Not even a giant mushroom - it came up to my avatar's knee. In CoH, I killed a God.
Travel powers. World of Running? /facepalm. Sprint in TSW? /headdesk.
Badges. The collector in me loved them all.
No need for stupid gear. No need for my look to be dictated by what I need for my powers or stats. In DCU, my flying blaster nded up having to wear a viking helmet with wings on it, due to power requirements. Awful.
The lore. Spot on for the genre. It had everything. And the potential for so much more.
Tbh, I'd be very happy if City of Titans just did what CoH did. If I play it and am reminded of CoH, not WoW or CO or TSW, I'll be a subscriber forever.
MrCaptainMan, Scoop Malloy, The Accelerated Man, Soundman, The Robot From Uranus, Tommy Atkins, The Dirty Promise, The Psystem, VEI8, Atomicide, Tumbleweed Jackson, Robin Copperfield, Ragtime Smith, Jacque Le Black, Tarquin Wilde...and many more.
And no appalling loot-division. The first time I encountered Need or Greed, I was astonished that such an unfair pointless system exists (and is apparently considered just fine and dandy by loads of MMO players).
MrCaptainMan, Scoop Malloy, The Accelerated Man, Soundman, The Robot From Uranus, Tommy Atkins, The Dirty Promise, The Psystem, VEI8, Atomicide, Tumbleweed Jackson, Robin Copperfield, Ragtime Smith, Jacque Le Black, Tarquin Wilde...and many more.
Yep. Getting on pretty much any team with any AT mostly regardless of your level and rampaging through content within minutes of logging in was a dream come true.
Level 16 dark melee/ dark armor brute with barely any enhancements but bucket loads of enthusiasm? Welcome to the team.
Want to see what 8 ill rads can do? There's also a team for that.
I think how easy it was to bring up chat and chat channels is important. Having to leave play mode to go into chat mode in NW is a giant pain in the ass that keeps almost getting me killed.
If people won't pay enough to finance its creation, it is not worth creating.
/Segev
-THIS-!!!
- There was nothing like flying into a giant warehouse crawling with goons, landing amid them while unloading with an AOE...
- ...then push play to [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpUYjpKg9KY]Limp Bizkit[/url]!
- GONE were the days of having to rely on a group to handle a single mob, and it wasn't that those mobs were a threat...even a low level Tank could be taken down (...albiet after a long period of time...). So it wasn't about the possibility of being defeated, it -WAS- possible...
- ...the question was, 'What were you going to -DO- about it?!?'
CoH was special to me because it was my first-ever MMO. Well, it was the first MMO that I continued playing after the trial period expired. And although I never hit the level cap with any character (I just love making new alts), it was still the game that convinced me to try other MMOs. I also started playing way back near the beginning, fairly soon after release. Before The Council defeated the Fifth Column, before CoV, before the Architect, and so on. So it was really neat to watch the game evolve, even if I was kind of an on-again, off-again player.
It's also the only game where I felt comfortable just jumping in and LFT-ing for a couple of random missions.
When CoV came out, I LOVED it. Rarely do video games offer you the chance to play as a straight-up villain. Sometimes you can be sadistic or "evil" or something like that, but ultimately you're still saving the world or whatever. CoV wasn't the BEST when it came to doing villainous things (it still felt like you were at people's beck and call just like in CoH) but it was still one of the first and the best of its time. And morality missions just made it even more fun, allowing me to roleplay a hero's descent into villainy (and vice versa). That is the first and, as far as I know, ONLY game that allows you to change your alignment like that.
And then there's the Architect. User-generated content is one of my favorite things. I love playing with mods in single-player games that add quests or other kinds of content, so the Mission Architect was a dream come true and also the very first of its kind. The fact that Neverwinter has a similar quest-creation system is the sole reason why I even bothered to play that game at all, as it's a Perfect World game and thus overburdened with cash shop pay-to-do-anything-fun stuff.
I'm French so sorry for my English.
The two characters I loved in City of heroes where 1st : my pretty vilain "Charming Psychopath" (widow) and 2nd my feline scraper, Deadly Kitty (in french we said, ravageur, I dont know if it's the good translation).
Since, I've played several games, and much were damn good but never as good as City of Heroes.
In CoX, every character was unique. It was highly unprobable to meet your clone ingame unless you create it from a template. That was amazing ! The character creator of CoX is still unmatched !
Morality missions, incarnates, warzones, architect missions where also great features.
Hope this project will succeed.
The community, ease of play, global system, and character creator top my list.
Don't rez me, I die on purpose!
I'd say your English is better than my French, but then I'm sure I'm not the only person here who could help you out if you ever need it.
And yes, scrapper (that's the approved spelling, as little as that can mean in English) is the proper name.
/oblig. "Fetchez la vache!"
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
That's not strictly true; there were points in the game where it could become seriously grindy (for example, most controllers starting around level 12 up until you got your tier-9 primary back before the archetype inherents upped their damage against cc'd mobs -- you were mostly safe, but the mobs took [i]forever[/i] to go down); where CoH won over other MMOs is that, as you describe, you weren't locked into the grind; if you got tired of the grinding, there was always something else available for you to go off and do to take a break, then come back to your main progress line and do some more.
Sum it all up in one word Customization:
The ability to make an avatar that could be completely original was brand new back then. Creating your look and customizing your powers FX colors was miles ahead of other games. It is still the major selling point of the other custom superhero MMO (Champions Online). I would love to see this expanded.. Custom Lairs (announced YAY!) .Custom Animations (Cast style announced YAY!), Custom Powers (It's totally possible and balance-able).
User generated content is the future of Virtual gaming. So giving players the ability to craft their own stories, missions, environments etc will ALWAYS attract me.. And it's basically FREE development! City of Titans TRUE Legacy will be that was built by those who love it. No reason that should stop after the game launches. Player Created (Dev Approved) content, missions, etc is completely possible.
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CoX Also had one of the best communities I'd seen .. but I think this is possible in any game. So I won't give NCSoft or Cryptic any credit for that. If you build it they will come. I think Titans will have no problem attracting players who love being Titans.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
RadDidIt and Repeat Offenders
There was nothing in the world better than being on Vent with my RO teammates and hear Rad say, "Hey Static. What ya doin over there?", and BOOM chaos ensued. Clearing towers, raining Romans, herding maps......there was never an end to the amount of chaos he and I could get ourselves into and our teammates killed by.
First rule of Rad and Static..............NEVER follow Rad and Static.
I got chills! They're multiplyin'. And I'm losin' control. Cuz the power, I'm supplyin'. Why it's ELECTRIFYIN'!!
This is SO true.
There's more things than I can possibly list here, but the big things that drew me were all the options, being able to have multiple characters, easy teaming OR soloing, super-sidekicking, all the stuff that I know is the plan here.
Oh, and mocking Rad and Static by following them anyway (and usually surviving)
What I loved about CoX:
1) A Bio that other players could read by clicking on my character. And reading others' Bios.
2) Spaces in character names. And a "The" prefix.
3) 8-player teams.
4) Taking down a huge number of foes, instead of a bunch of players pounding away on single bag of hit points.
5) Spawns not re-spawning until after players have been out of sight for a while.
6) Saving citizens from street crime.
7) Difficulty settings from too-easy to too-hard. Sometimes I want a cakewalk, sometimes I want a cruel challenge. I loved that I could choose.
What I hope CoT has:
1) Non-unique character names. I want to be able to name my character whatever I want, regardless of other players' characters' names.
2) More colors. Give me the full 3x256 color spectrum.
3) More variety in spontaneous crime.
I have high hopes for CoT.
[size=1]Kickstart Backer # 771[/size]
I liked the fact that my characters really felt like they were MY characters. Not some predetermined race whose backstory is already written for me. I could make them look like just about anything I wanted, write bios for them, the whole works. What other game would let me be the avatar of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge? I remember playing with one group, and having a teammate say "I knew this was gonna be a good team as soon as I saw we had the whole freaking Bay Bridge on our side!"
I also liked the game's community. As long as I was playing along with everyone, I never got growled at about DPS or whatever. Those player DPS meters are one reason why I quit WoW- people used them to snipe at each other, you had to be TOP DPS or else. I love the player-led events CoH had- costume contests, trivia contests, hide and seek, and so on. I've not seen that in other games.
The 8-player teams were a definite draw. After playing CoH, going to any other game with their 5-man teams just felt so -- constrained.
City of Heroes was my first MMO (I joined just after issue 7) and as such it holds a special place in my heart.
The Community was obviously a big part of CoX, nowhere I have been since (except maybe the defunct Stargate Worlds Forum) has come anywhere near close to the camaraderie that I felt when talking to not only my fellow (47 Ties) SG members or with the myriad heroes hanging around Atlas Park, but also with our foes. No where else have I found such good natured rivalry, even the leaders of our nemesis SG (Supernations Kung-Fu Steve) always had a friendly word when we weren't busy knocking ten bells out of each other in a Base Raid.
Beyond that the sheer versatility and flexibility of CoX was ultimately the biggest draw for me, no other game has such a plethora of varied activities to keep a Hero busy, from Patrolling the busy city streets to forming a Task Force to take on the might of our worlds worst villains (the first time I ever ran the STF still haunts me today ...so ...many ...spiders ;) ).
City of Titans has the promise to be everything I miss and more (I'm literally salivating at the prospect) and with all my heart I wish you folks the best.
[URL=http://s325.photobucket.com/user/Max_Rahl/media/RahlBannerAlt.gif.html][IMG]http://i325.photobucket.com/albums/k375/Max_Rahl/RahlBannerAlt.gif[/IMG][/URL]
CoX Server: Defiant. Global(pre-merge):@Rahl (post-merge):@Ex_Umbris
I'm not going to restate a bunch of the things already said, but I agree with most of it.
I think one thing I loved most about CoX was the UI. I know that probably sounds silly, but In my humble opinion that was the thing that made everything else possible. The UI was VERY well designed, more so than any other MMO I've played. Everything worked seamlessly, from power activation (using a mouse) to chatting to looking for teams, viewing power information, real numbers, slotting powers, checking inventory, sharing/setting missions... I could go on & on. Granted, it all took a bit of getting used to.. and it was likely one of the things that turned away potential new players... because everything else on the market is basically a WoW clone from the guild menus to the team interfaces etc..
It's quite possible that I love the UI so much because CoX was my first (and only) MMO for such a long time. Many players today (it seems) jump from one MMO to the next without much difficulty because practically every title out there functions exactly the same way.. there isn't really any new learning curve to the UI because they all work the same underneath. CoX was different though, it had its own custom UI that was really unlike everything else out there, IMO. I can see why some people failed to give it a chance or stick with it... I've had the same difficulty attempting to give other MMOs a shot because all the UIs are identical... clunky, convoluted messes that feel like they're impossible to decipher or get used to after using CoX's for so long.
In any case, a nice seamless UI will be a key factor for myself, and likely others. It's not one of those blatantly apparent things that people actively think about, but I think it really plays a huge part on a subconscious level, at the very least.
Well, that's it for now
Regards,
D. A. Cross
CEO of Phoenix Rising
CoX: @Mystic Cross ; @Pareidolia // CO: @Deadman-X ; @Citymystic // CoT: @Cross ; @D.A.Cross
+1 to Bell. Super-sidekicking, altitis as a happy way of life, the ability to build crazy teams of combined powers to such devastating effect, no fighting for drops, and a fantastic community where you could (almost!) always find a fun team.
And since Rad's mentioned above, my favorite silly team we ran was a SG of Broadsword/Shield scrappers based on the movie 300. Everyone took (and 6-slotted!) Kick, and we all ran around shouting "SPARTA!!" and kicking enemies into wells. Even if they were imaginary wells.
No other game has allowed me such random fun. But looking forward to the next adventure.
I had never played an MMO before CoX, so I didn't know what to expect. I liked the art, the graphics, the crafting, badge hunting, and absolutely adored watching my scrapper kick the snot out of bad guys. I really liked Mission Architect, and crafting.
I miss the community. I will never forget one night, where I bravely ventured into a PvP zone, badge hunting. I never played PvP, did not really want to get my clock cleaned by someone and was not sure I wanted the badge I was after badly enough to hang out there. It was late one night (figuring there would be fewer people playing) and I was focused on doing something in the zone when another player appeared beside me and said something really threatening, like "hi!" I completely panicked, took off flying like I was on fire for the zone exit and flew into a flight of stairs that I could not get out of. My poor character was frantically trying to get unstuck when my new found friend appeared again and asked if I needed a hand. I was laughing so hard I couldn't see the screen for the tears in my eyes. My character did not get killed, I got my badge, and still laugh about that panicked streak for the zone to this day. That's what made CoX special to me.
The two things that I liked the most in CoX were...
1) NO LOOT! after spending more time in Evercrack and DAoC finding and updating my gear than playing the games, not having to deal with the sweat-shop farmers was an absolute joy.
2) No giant rats. Or bats, or whatever bug or rodent that could kick my arse at the beginner levels. Killing teenagers and homeless people in large groups is much better then getting wiped out by pest to start a game ;)
Experience is something you gain after you need it.
What all before have said plus THIS excellent summary.
Doctor October
I hate to say it ... right now I miss my like button, so I could just /sign most of these with likes ...
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ALSO: The writing. The NPC's and Contacts all spoke "in character" in a way that was fun and true to the genre but not clumsy or hack. And the mythology incorporated some great elements from classical myth and folklore too. As fun and easy as it was to get into the saddle and play when you started, it was still a witty, intelligent game in its bones.
Doctor October
There were several things that made this my all time favorite game.
1.It did not require uber l33t skills. I could bring along ultra casual or new players with no issue. I could also play while sick/tired/or slightly inebriated and still do ok and enjoy myself.
2.It felt like more than one game. I could street sweep, AE, arc, TF(a lot), costume contest, marketeer, or even pvp(not so much). Totally different experiences all enjoyable.
3,Community. The forums could be a little rough but ingame was always fun. I am also an repeat offender from way back. But there were many fun groups that didn't mind a weird teaming idea, and a groaningly punny name. When I finally got around to making an exhaustive guide to tanks I was shocked at the positive response, even from folks then on the dev team. Coming from a console backround (in the days of yore pre online multiplayer) it amazed me that a player could have an impact however small on a game so large.
Repeat Offender
Tank Addict
Homeless.
It was community and teaming. I loved the teams of heroes you've never met before that you'd spend hours with. Most of the teams I've been in since last long enough to quietly motor through a team-required mission. The only time anyone spoke was to berate someone who screwed up. As weird as it sounds, I miss waiting by a mission door, BSing while waiting for The Black Paladin to finish using the bathroom.
If it wasn't for disappointments, I wouldn't have any appointments - TMBG
I'd agree with this for the most part (ref. my serious world comment above), until the last year or so when (imo) the story quality improved but the writing quality decayed. Leaving aside my perpetual complaint about the hackneyed Twinshot characters and insulting plot line, all the other new stuff -- from new zones in Praetoria to the solo DA arcs to the SSAs -- had exciting, engaging stories, but they were rife with two kinds of errors: simple grammatical ones that seemed to reveal a lack of proofing, and problems with word choice, where the writers' intentions seemed to exceed their grasp of vocabulary. (The ones that made you think for a bit, then say, "Oh, I see what you *meant* to say...")
Here's hoping the editing on CoT will be better!
Spurn all ye kindle.
*waves* That Street Sweeping project we did is still one of my best memories from the game.
For me, coming up with new power combinations and creating characters was still my favorite thing from City of Heroes. I still have piles of papers with name ideas and a slew of created concepts on my PC in Mids Hero Builder.
I will say that I probably would have only played City of Heroes for a year or so, but the awesome community made me stay for 7. Big thank you to all of the other folks from the Repeat Offenders, as well as I'm sure the countless others of you I must have teamed up with over the years.
The absolute most important thing that I miss from City of Heroes / Villains is the sidekick / Exemplar Lackey / Malifactor team building feature. Especially in it's final version before the end. It didn't matter what level everyone was, I could play with my friends. I am a busy person and so are my friends. When I finally have the ability to meet my friends online I don't want the game to tell me "sorry you guys aren't allowed to play together because you are different levels". That sucks, I have no patience for games that do that. Some of my friends have more time to play than I do and some of them have less time. I was alt addicted and kept making newbies so I could try out different power combinations or character themes. If a bunch of my friends were doing a task force and they needed a healer or a debuffer or whatever it didn't matter if my only one on that server was 10 levels different from the rest of the team as long as I met the TF requirements.
Please do not tell me I can't play with my friends, because then I don't want to play the game.
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