Pixie_Knight

This is amazing to learn. I'd been considering twitch streaming or doing youtube videos for CoH because I've loved the game since I first discovered it in the summer of 2005. Every time I considered doing so, I had to scrap my plans due to not wanting to draw attention to Homecoming. But with this news I may just do so now.

You think an 8 man defender team is slow? Oh, you poor summer child. Teams of all defenders and controllers melt enemies due to all the -def and -res debuffs being thrown around. I use to run with an all defender SG. And to be honest, the weakest members of the SG when we ran task forces was usually any empaths on the team. In fact, one time a 'pure healer' empath defender (you know, a Empathy/doesn't matter who only takes direct heals and the rez) managed to join one of our groups due to only having 7 SG members on at the moment. And he spent half the TF complaining about how bored he was due to nobody taking any damage, so he had nothing to do. The other half, he was yelling at us for not letting him shine.

Yeah, ya know what happens when someone tries that whole "wish for more wishes" thing? Either it doesn't work (inanimate wish granting objects can't grant it), angers the being granting the wishes (and thus they refuse and punish you), or... you become a djinn yourself and get bound to a lamp or bottle and forced to grant wishes to anyone who frees you. That last one can often be accomplished by you replacing the being that was granting the wishes. Regardless of what happens though, things never work out in your favor when you try wishing for more wishes.

Last week I hunted the GM in croatea with a group consisting solely of scrappers and blasters. yeah, several of us went down multiple times. And the fights were rather drawn out. But it was entirely possible. We had no healers, no buffers, no debuffers, and no tanks, just damage dealers. And not even a full team either, there were just 4 of us. Trying to do something like that in most MMOs... not possible.

The answer is... it depends. Teleport movement is known to help prevent VR sickness for some reason. Other then that, it depends entirely on the person. Some get nausious in Minecraft if using a boat. Others don't. Some can use smooth movement, others can't.

In my case, the addiction was bad. It didn't start out that way. Initially I played for hours because I had nothing better to do with my time, and it was fun. But I did still do other things. I watched TV, I read books, I went out with friends and family (mostly family), I was roleplaying a couple times a week (usually). CoH was just one activity among many. I never really noticed it taking over my life. I still went to work, but I no longer was reading (unless you count the CoH forum) or watching TV. The gaming group fell apart due to various reasons, so that stopped being a thing. It wasn't until December that I realized I might be addicted, and by then I was in too deep. I'd blown off my mom's wanting to go out to eat or see a movie in the theater a few times (okay a lot of times), but it wasn't until I blew off visiting my dad for Christmas that I realized I was addicted. I always visit my dad for a couple weeks over Christmas. After I got burned out around June 2006 I still kept playing, but I made sure to limit myself to no more then 4 hours a day and 4 days a week. I added a 2nd MMO being active in any given month. Dividing my time between them helped avoid both addiction and burnout. I use to mock MMO addiction and claimed people getting addicted to Everquest wasn't a thing. Then it happened to me, and I realized it does happen and it does ruin your life. Not as badly for me as for some people. I never had much of a life to begin with. These days I barely play MMOs. I might sign into one for 3-5 hours a day, or 3-5 hours a week in total. Sometimes I'll sign in daily (especially if I subbed for a month) But it can also be weeks between sessions. These days I spend most of my time reading and writing short stories. Two things I love doing, but CoH and MMO addiction had pushed to the wayside for years.

That's the worst kind of djinn, in fact. The rules lawyer who will screw you via fine print and minor details, and you'll think you got a good deal. In fact, by the time the paperwork is finished that poor wisher might be about to die of old age.

You kidding, this IS the djinn punishing the uppity mortal. Have you seen the stack of paperwork already filled out?

I might do a macro (or keybind) for "ah$$ em alakazamreact".

That is a mighty neat trick. How did you pull it off?

Ask a hundred people what makes CoH the best MMO, and you're likely to get 100 (or more) answers. There's just so much to love. And there's never been another MMO quite like it. You want a fantasy MMO? Those are a dime a dozen, and they all feel like cookie cutouts. Some might have interesting and unique mechanics such as a card game based diplomacy system, but they mostly are identical. Play one, and you've pretty much played them all. So just find the particular flavor you prefer. But CoH? It was unique, and it's still unique. Others have tried to cash in on the superhero subgenre, and some have even done well. But nothing has ever had the sheer staying power of CoH. Hell, 7 years after the game was shut down, and people still fondly look back upon it. And many of us are playing once again via Homecoming servers (and other servers I suppose).

Was running quests earlier. And in the final quest of Slot Machine's arc I came across this from one group. [NPC] Harlequin Fencer: I can't believe they invited us in! [NPC] Bronze Strongman: They couldn't resist the lure of a private show. [NPC] Harlequin Fencer: Oooh! Aren't you a rough one? [NPC] Bronze Strongman: And now, we'll steal as we please! [NPC] Hostage: I'd inform an Arbiter about this, but considering we invited them here for a private show, that might be a bad idea.

Maybe a VR mode? With or without VR controller support, but VR would be amazing. Not gonna happen, but it would be amazing.

I joined CoH during the 1 year anniversary event in 2005. It was my first MMO, I fell in love, then (if I'm honest with myself) got seriously addicted. Even after a year and a half of doing nothing but eating, sleeping, going to work, or playing CoH and thus burning out it was still my favorite leisure activity. It had managed to replace reading or vegging out watching tv. For nearly a decade I had a subscription to the game. Towards the end I didn't subscribe every month, but that's only because the game had moved to a F2P model, so I was able to play without paying when finances were tight. Going to other MMOs, they felt over balanced towards requiring a team to do anything. You want to fight even a single enemy and you're alone? It had better be lower level then you. Certain classes could maybe fight a single enemy that is their level, but it'd be a close fight. 2 enemies is a death sentence. You don't feel like a hero in most MMOs. Instead you feel like Random Grunt #982.951.734. You not special, you are not a hero, you are in fact quite replaceable and expendable. And the in-game communities reflect that, becoming rather toxic as a result. In City of Heroes however, sure you're just one among many but you feel like a hero. You feel like you can take on anything. And if a threat is too big for any one hero, there are fellow heroes that have your back. It has always done a good job of selling the Superhero concept. And the game community? It reflected that too. Even when there was a flame war (which I participated in more then my fair share of), they tended to be rather polite. You could be engaged in a heated argument with someone in one thread, and chatting with that same person in another thread on another topic. Arguments didn't usually spread across the forum. If you asked for help, you got help rather then insults (usually). THAT is what has always made CoX the best MMO in my opinion.

Love the clone arcs. Then again, they mirror match fights can also be difficult to fight.

So, basically you want Champions Online? Let's break it down. More body type varieties: both Champions and CoH have 3 main body 'types'. A "huge female" body type might not be amiss, but it's not particularly thematic for comics. The typical 'huge' type characters in comics are generally male. Even so, you could customize a lot, including your idle animation, facial expression, and combat stance. Better graphics: Champions Online has much better graphics and character customization then CoH, and this was one of it's strengths. Not to mention one of it's selling points. Ironically, CoH's graphics aged better despite having a less robust character creator and more simplistic character models. Investigative/environmental mechanics: Champions Online has a plethora of missions where you are suppose to be sneaky, or where you have to investigate and follow environmental clues. Modular power selection: Champions Online uses a modified form of the Champions RPG system. As such, you can (if a paid subscriber or if you bought a free form char slot) freely mix and mach powers from any and all frameworks. And then customize those powers with a selection of perks, so no two builds need ever be the same. Except that game didn't do particularly well at launch. While fun, it launched with a lack of content. Especially for end-game. Even worse, it felt so damn grindy and copy/pasted that despite how fun it was, many of those from the closed and open beta were already experiencing burnout by the time it launched. It did well enough that it's still around, but it wasn't the CoH killer that it initially wanted to be. There's a reason that SOE were willing to settle for "played along side of" status with DCUO. CoH was HUGE at the time. Not EQ (or even WoW) big, but still the game to beat in the Superhero MMO market. An already extremely niche subsection of an already niche market. That said, I do find it amusing that WoW became such a massive juggernaut. I remember a friend talking about the WoW open beta with me while we both happily played CoH. Her view was that WoW was fun, but had a lot of problems.

CoH has always had some rather amusing NPC dialog. There's a reason I dedicate a tab just to NPC dialog. It's easy to miss it during a mission.

That might depend entirely on if you think you need perma-hasten or perma dom or to have another long cooldown power permanently active. Which not everyone will consider required. I know perma elude was considered "required" on Live for Super Reflexesprior to IOs, and softcapped defense was considered 'required' after IOs and the global defense nerf. But to be honest, that was entirely unneeded. Sure, softcapped defense by any means does make you nearly invincible. But it's not required to be effective. Hell, my experience is that Super Reflexes is nigh immortal just by having Aid Self, with Elude (or a luck or two) only being needed for Elite Boss/Archvillain/Giant Monster fights.

It's more power selection (and what level) that matter. Set bonuses can be game changing, but should be considered more of an added benefit IMO. If your build can't handle challenges without IO sets and Incarnate abilities, maybe it's time to re-examine your build. 🙂 At least, that's my thought process. If my character needs those set bonuses to be effective I did something wrong.

With auto exemping, any "final build" also needs to take into account leveling. As such, your final build may as well be your leveling build, unless you decided to drop or swap out some pool powers.

When I was testing it prior to the revamp going live, there was an NPC that would give you the mats needed for making everything. So I copied Madam Enigma over (as well as my villain main) and crafted every single incarnate power to experiment with them in different combinations.

Homecoming does something that didn't occur on Live. Salvage gets converted from one type to another within the same rarity when sold This means that if you're shopping for an Essence of the Furies, for example, then it only matters that this is a rare salvage. Any rare salvage someone lists for sale can be used to fill your buy order.

Which is a fair point. The powers themselves didn't seem to me like they were game changing. Useful, but not game changing. But the Incarnate level shifts from incarnate powers would definitely help out. Granted, the level shift only applies to incarnate trials/missions, to my knowledge. So the rest of the time you just have a set of situational abilities.

Sadly back on Live I'd never upgraded the original Incarnate starting power to tier 2, was farming mats to do so. Then when they did the Incarnate revamp (which is when I tested it out on the test server) I was working towards making the first incarnate power at the time of CoH's shutdown. Since I wasn't running many incarnate trials, it was taking a long time to grind for materials. And with my severe altitus, I wasn't playing a lev 50 often. I had at least 14 characters on every server when the game got shut down.

Admittedly, my experience with incarnate abilities is limited to Test back on live servers. But I really didn't feel incarnate abilities were that big of an impact. The toggles turned off after 30 seconds or so, and had a fairly lengthly cooldown. The pet summons were nice, and would add some nice power to controllers and masterminds, but for other characters they didn't last that long, I thought. All told, my impression was they were more a permanent version of the various temp powers. Or in other words, nice to have and can shift things in your favor, but situational.