EggKookoo

What they could get away with doing is not having a red side per se, but using something like the alignment system to allow you to go from being a Hero to a Rogue and back. No true villains, just shades of "good guy."

Ooh, necro thread. Apparently the whole thing about origins being mechanically relevant was a big brouhaha in the early live days, or perhaps during alpha/beta testing. Bringing it up seemed to have reopened some wounds. But also people just like to pick fights, I guess?

I loved DC Heroes back in the day. Great game.

Are you kidding? I love game-theory conversations. Rock on!

I deliberately kept as much "D&Dism" as I could. The current edition of D&D did a good job keeping the complexity under control, so it was a way for me to use those same constraints, if that makes sense. I'm not sure what I'd do if I were to start over. As I worked on it, it became more obvious that CoH has some issues translating to tabletop. Enhancements in particular are tricky. They provide many small cumulative bonuses to the many different aspects of their powers, and that kind of thing can become a pain to deal with at the table. I mean, you have three damage enhancements that do a combined 22.5% bonus. How do you model that with a d20 system? And then also be able to model it for any combination of such bonuses? I intended to have enhancements and slots appear, but I couldn't get it to work. I think maybe if a tabletop CoH was going to not be d20-based, it would just need its own mechanic from the ground up. It just seems hard to keep it faithful to the MMO mechanics without becoming arduous to run at the table. DoTs are another issue. Tabletop games don't handle DoTs well (they get burdensome), but CoH relies heavily on over-time effects. I ended up trying to model them as subsequent damage vulnerability, which isn't the same thing but kind of sort of gets the idea across?

A while ago I started working on a City of Heroes d20 conversion. I've made some progress but I've kind of stalled out. Rather than let it die, I thought I'd publish the site and let people see if they want to pick up where I left off. https://sites.google.com/view/cohd20/getting-started

I'm not sure I'm following this objection. Wouldn't you set the beast run for your werewolf form costume slot and the other run for your human form costume slot?

That would be a great solution. See also fly poses.

It's a bit of a combo for me. Sometimes the power concept appears in my head first. But it still hinges on the name. Two characters with the same power sets but with different names are completely different characters in my mind. Two characters with the same name but with different powers are... weird. Like, are they the same person? Are they related? Why do they have the same name? Look at it like costumes. If you saw two CoH players with the same costume, you'd think they were part of a team or otherwise somehow pairs or twins or related in some fashion. The costume is unifying the same way a name is. My very first hero back on live, I made a Blaster, created a costume, got him up to level 5 or so and then saw another character with a virtually identical costume running around. Deleted my guy and started over with a Scrapper (and didn't look back, so maybe I just wasn't having all that much fun with my first). I recently made a miniature Titan Weapons Brute named Jab. If I can get a name like that, the field is wide open.

It was a nice assumption, wasn't it? I mean even if it didn't apply to you specifically, it's pretty accurate in general. So here's how I would solve your problems. First, I'd remind you that you can check a name's availability and reserve it before going down the path of building your character and designing a costume. I'm sure you know that but it's a big deal and I wish other games did that. Second, I'd ask CoH to have some kind of random name generator a la WoW, except one that works and doesn't randomly generate names that are already taken. I mean, come on Random Name Generator, you got one job! Third, and I think they did something like this in live and if I understand right is currently implemented in HC, if you have a level 1 alt collecting dust beyond a certain idle time, its name becomes available for use. I think this even applies to levels above first but the idle time increases. Not sure about the specifics. Finally, I'd point you to places like thesaurus.com (and many similar sites). Honestly I'm not trying to be snarky here, I love that place. I look up all kinds of name ideas. Also, dig into alternate languages. My brother likes to pick common Arabic words, but that depends on the flavor of the character. It's not like I don't feel your pain. Back on live my wife had Virus (which rocked when she got a title and became Killer Virus). But that's been taken on HC, so she's come up with something else. It happens. It's an opportunity to broaden your vocabulary. My main is a speedster with his name based on the Sanskrit root word for "cheetah." Because, you know, Cheetah was taken. For me a name is paramount. I won't create a character unless I have a name. Powers are just powers...

/JRanger Instead, we should have more characters per name. Not that it's particularly tight now, but more would be nice. CoH is all about your character being unique. Your name should be no exception. If you want an MMO where you're not asked to use your creative juices when making another xXxDriztxXx, WoW is hanging out somewhere. And more selectable prefix/suffix options, like how we have The. Things like Doctor, Mister/Miss/Mrs., Professor, Master, Acolyte, Apprentice, military ranks, and so on for prefixes. And maybe Jr., Sr. (or even spelled out as Junior and Senior), Roman numerals (I, II, etc.), Esquire, Incorporated, and other fun terms for suffixes. These wouldn't count against the character limit for your name and would open up quite a few name options without bloating out the character count in the database. And it might alleviate the feeling of not getting a name you really want without having a bunch of copycat names running around.

True to some extent, but as this thread was posted by a HC admin, I think they have some approach in mind. Otherwise why ask? The gist of a lot of replies is that people really just want "CoH, but more of it."

You would leave a game because it has one or two zones you don't like? That's not an unrealistic standard? I would go so far as to say that lack of content is CoH's #1 problem right now, and has been for a long time. Graphical updates are less important. "Content" is not the same thing as filler. Content is "something interesting to do." CoH's missions are highly repetitive, in terms of both objectives and settings. How many times have you been in that warehouse, clearing out random MOBs? While they did layer in some new stuff like with Twinshot and a few other lowbie arcs, by the time you're into your teens the missions start all becoming samey, and they stay that way pretty much through the end on blueside. The 40+ missions on redside have a bit more variety but really nothing that exciting. It's one thing to always have to deal with Mission X at Level Y (a pattern that fits, say, WoW), but CoH has Mission X... endlessly. A lot of bang for the buck could be got by going through existing missions and arcs and spicing them up. Adding some unusual complexity or twists (like peppering in "surprise" MOBs from other groups). For a little more buck, we could benefit from a setting refresh, so not all office building or sewer systems or caves or warehouses look the same. Changing the visuals of a given mission's setting might not seem like much but it really would add a lot. This is all "content." CoH certainly does not have too much content. It has too much undifferentiated content.

I wouldn't mind a zone or two that used this mechanic, but not the whole game.

Totally agree, and for such an alt-friendly game as this, it's a problem.