Pixie_Knight

Last time I got addicted to City of Heroes, it was really bad. As in "blow off friends and family" bad. As in "ignore my sister's wedding because it's not City of Heroes" bad. I'd pull 20 hour days (or longer) because I'd get off work, and immediately sign into City of Heroes, then continue playing it until I had to be at work in a few hours. Or until I needed to head off to work. I don't want to reach that level of addiction again, because it was wrecking my life.

Regardless of how effective he is (tankers and scrappers are always effective), I have a joke character. He has no memory from before waking up beneath rubble in Galaxy City during the shivan attack. But he knows exactly who he is. He is the universe's answer to the eternal question*. He is... The One Who Cares! *The eternal question is "Who cares?"

I just think it's amazing that this revival of the first MMO I ever played managed to reawaken that long lost sense of wonder and excitement. I can't wait to sign back in not because I have a daily mission or six I need to complete or to grind faction rep so I can enter a town and get more (bland and uninteresting) quests, but because I get to be a Superhero (or Supervillain)! It's nothing I haven't done a million times before. Just street sweeping, entering mission maps and clearing out all enemies, or clearing out all enemies then clicking noisy glowing objects. Not solving any puzzles, not trying to navigate my way through a complex web of deceit, just 'mindless fighting' with a bit of text to try explaining why I'm doing it this time. And yet, I'm excited again. I feel like I'm accomplishing something beyond "gaining xp/in-game currency/crafting materials. By the end of the game's official life, I'd lost that sense of wonder. It had been ground away by years of obsession and addiction. But it's back, and I treasure it's return. I've played MMOs that felt more cinematic. I've played MMOs that felt more epic. But City of Heroes was my first MMO, and arguably the one I've always loved the most. Warts and all, I'd consider it the best one to have come out. A fantasy MMO is a fantasy MMO is a fantasy MMO. They don't really vary that much. They either model them self after Everquest, or they model them self after World of Warcraft. Very few manage to stand out from the crowd. And non-fantasy MMOs are kind of rare. Of all the ones that have come out over the years, I think only 4 or 5 are still around officially. And while two of them are also superhero games (Champions Online and DC Universe Online), they either come across as incredibly shallow (Champions Online) or have very few things you can do on a given day, and actively discourage you from playing much once at the level cap (DC Universe Online). No, seriously. My main in DCUO currently has 2 solo missions and 2 group missions they qualify for and can get rewards for. But I can only get those rewards one time per day. And to be honest, I'm sick and tired of running all 4 of them, but am only half way towards the next tier of content... which will have a grand total of six missions (solo and group combined) that I can run for rewards a day. The game actively discourages me from playing more then maybe an hour a day. At most. And one of the things I'll be able to do once I hit the next tier... I can only get rewards once a week. City of Heroes never penalized me like that for wanting to play the game. Sure some content such as ITF might have a daily cooldown timer (as I recall), but there was always plenty of things I could do beside street sweeping. Well, after the update that integrated City of Villains into the mix anyway.

No he wasn't and no, it doesn't. Champions is horrible. I know that ragging on the man is considered great fun and has been for years. But while the game is shallow and gets boring fast, Champions did do several things right. The costume creator is just as good as the one in City of Heroes, and in some ways superior. Combat it's self can be fun and engaging. And the leveling system (if you have freeform builds) is a lot deeper then you'd initially expect. Travel powers are also something that was gotten right. I mean, sure it seems a bit weird for someone with a grapple line to attach it to the air and swing. But then again it wasn't that long ago that such 'swinging' mechanics were praised when used in games. The (original) crafting system was also interesting and useful. The game is fun, just shallow. And before you start claiming that everything the man touches is horrible, remember that he was the lead developer for City of Heroes too. If you enjoy City of Heroes, then you have to acknowledge that Jack is able to make good games. After all, the game at it's core now is still the same as it was before Jack left to make Champions Online.

Didn't he get moved over to working on Champions or Star Trek Online? One of the two, I think. "Moved over" as in sold off CoH to NCSoft and took HIS company to make Champions? My take on Cryptic selling off the IP was that Jack didn't want to compete with his own company, and thought he could do better with Champions using lessons learned from making/running City of Heroes. And in some respects, he was right. Champions does some things far better then CoH ever did. Unfortunately, the game also relied far more heavily on public area hunt missions then CoH, so ends up coming across as shallow. I mean, sure. It's fun. But there is little depth to the villain groups. Even the low level only villain groups such as Lost, Skulls, and Hellions have backstory and lore which intertwines with the rest of City of Heroes. Vahzilok get their own overarching plot which concludes around level 20, if you stick with the Science based contacts. Hell, entire zones such as The Hollows have overarching story lines. Unlike Champions Online. It's hard to take it's stories seriously when there's such a distinct and sharp difference in villain group just by crossing a street. Not when CoH would have all the zone's villain groups intermingling, and sometimes even fighting each other in the streets.

CoH's community was always the odd one out. Maybe that's because it was the first MMO where it didn't punish you for not having a 100% optimized party with very specific skill rotations and roles for everyone?

Didn't he get moved over to working on Champions or Star Trek Online? One of the two, I think.

For giggles back in the day I 4 slotted brawl with damage procs. It actually worked quite well as a filler and every once in a while they would all proc on the same hit and would brawl something for 300 damage. Yeah...I did that too lol Must have horribly confused anyone who saw that and recognized the Brawl animation. Then again, if you do decide to slot Brawl like any other attack, I remember it being okay. Not amazing or anything, but not useless either.

Emphatically, no. I made my first villain today and was shocked at how long it took to find a team for Death From Below - while I could see the DFB spam on LFG for blue side runs. If it's that hard to find people for DFB, it's going to be harder to find people for EVERYTHING. My suggestion (and what I did after 3 DFB runs), go talk to Null The Gull in Pocket D and switch to Rogue or Vigilante (I went with Rogue, since the character started as a villain). Or, and I know this may sound like crazy talk, run other content besides DFB. Then when you get high enough, if you still wish to change your alignment do the in-game content that allows it. Tip missions and the alignment change/confirm missions are actually fun content.

The only power set to get over nerfed was Trick Arrow. And that occurred between taking down the Test server and releasing the powerset on Live servers. Yes, everyone on the test server realized Trick Arrow was going to be nerfed, but none of us expected it to be nerfed into near unplayability without some extreme recharge slotting. The current unenhanced state of Trick Arrow was the "six slotted for recharge in every debuff" state you had to do when the power set first came out just to make it playable.

I wont deny that things were handled badly. The changes were needed, but did they need to be in a string of 4 or 5 issues back to back one after another? Ol' Jack dropped the ball when trying to explain things. But then again considering his Stupid Blaster Tricks blog on how to 'take advantage' of the new Blaster inherent after heroes got inherent abilities, it's quite possible that he didn't actually play the game much. He was too much of a Big Picture kind of person. Which is why Matt 'Positron' Miller was a much better face for the devs. But for those who weren't there, to understand the reasons for the hated changes you also need to understand what things were like before those changes, both good and bad. The Anti-ED and Anti-GDR people will talk your ears off about how those changes 'stole' their power and ability. But they wont mention why the developers at the time felt such drastic changes were needed. They wont mention how harmful the tanker afk farms were to the community, because that would undermine their own narrative. They wont mention the outright hostility you could face if you dared slot anything other then Damage, Accuracy, or Defenses (or debuff if you were a defender). Nor will they mention how people would leave the game for something different because the Tanker Farm teams were so common and boring. Instead they often will try to spin a narritive of "we were lied to, the devs stole our abilities, and everything was great before (unwanted change here) went live!" Even with the major nerfs such as GDR and ED, those same patches would do other things which were clear positives. Introducing entire new zones or power sets, tweaking powers to improve them, there were often as many buffs as there were nerfs. Granted, the nerfs are what got the most attention. And the developers at Cryptic did try to explain why they were doing things. It's just that Jack sucked at doing so in a way that didn't come across as disinformation or outright lies. Again, the Stupid Blaster Tricks dev blog he did. EDIT: Even back in the day, the people campaigning the hardest and loudest for GDR and ED to be repealed did so by refusing to even acknowledge that there had been problems which the patches were aimed at fixing. After all, admitting that the 'golden age' had been made out of tarnished bronze undermined their own narrative. You need to take in both sides, the problems the patches were meant to address and the ones caused by the patches. But the problems caused by the patches by and large were by no means as great as some people make them out to be. As I recall, one of the reasons for ED was the fact that villain classes had been designed with this lower limit on capabilities in mind already due to lessons learned in the year or two since CoH had gone live. And since CoH and CoV had Player vs Player crossover right out of the gate, this meant that the playing field needed to be leveled between the two factions.

Buwahaha! I remember when Demon Summoning came out. So many posts were people moaning about players actually taking their attack powers (dat whip yo), or 'even worse' foregoing their summoning powers in order to focus on said attack powers. I think the same thing happened with Thugs and their pistol attacks. The funny part is Mastermind attacks aren't even that bad. Damage-wise they're only slightly worse than Defender attacks so while they won't ever be your main source of DPS you can do a decent damage with them if you slot them up a bit. I generally take at least two attacks on my MMs and some have had more. And some have some useful debuffs. Demon Summoning whip attacks have a decent amount of -res for example. 10% is nothing to scoff at. Especially in the AoE Exactly! They also give your mastermind something to actually do when you're not chain spamming heals to keep those spastic ninja alive against an EB or Freakshow Tank. Especially at low levels when you have only 1 or 2 henchmen.

Personally, I get a bit bemused everytime someone gets butthurt over the fact that the Help channel is being used as a server wide chat channel in addition to a place to ask questions and have them answered. Then again, people use to get the same way if a conversation started up in the zone wide Broadcast channel. Then later if the server wide Help channel got used for general conversation. "Take it to local!" or "Take it to PMs!" was a cry by such offended people. Of the outrage if you dared to suggest someone experiment rather then use the same 'accepted as the best by ME' cookie cutter builds. Insisting that only specific attack rotations, incarnate abilities, or enhancement sets are worth ever using is silly IMO.

And I'll third it. Motion carried, grow up people! Hey I got thirds! But in the spirit of the thread, I'll share. :) Only I should be able to be third. Devs please nerf other people who claimed third before I did. It’s not fair that they get to it so fast. They should take it slower and really enjoy reading past first and second before rushing to claiming third. In all honesty though, I fully agree with OP. Oh No. We are thirds already! Firsts and seconds need to be nerfed, thirds need to be buffed! IMO, this community is simply now going through what many have before, just with a really long lag and an odd path. Not the first game to land in this area and now this community has to deal with it ... some deal well and others not so much. The next year will be a roller-coaster! But we'd already dealt it when CoH originally went F2P. And when the various expansions hit as well, now that I think of it. Thus why we're joking about stuff right now.

I asked Mary if she'd seen better days, and all she did was glare at me. She also insisted that it's not only in her heart this thing that makes her want to start it all again.

And I'll third it. Motion carried, grow up people!

Okay, true. THings could have been handled differently. And people who wanted to were still soloing group content. But they had to work to get their build to a point where this was possible. It wasn't just "okay, slot standard enhancements in this way (same way everyone else is) and you're immortal." You had to actually plan your build out to pull it off. And while cascading defense failure was a thing, it (mostly) wasn't as bad as you make it out to be. Sure many enemy groups have an attack which can debuff defense. And yet, this wasn't really an issue since those attacks were more likely then not going to miss. And if the first one hit, the 2nd one would probably miss. Thus there wasn't an issue. Enemies with +To-Hit and who could drop an auto hit def debuff aoe were a bigger threat, but still manageable. I found it vary rare that my defenses would collapse due to trash mobs plinking at me with ranged or melee attacks. It was always things which had a to-hit buff or dropped quicksand (I think) that I struggled with. But even then it just meant "priority target" or "get out of the aoe NOW", not "automatic lose". Things could have been handled better, maybe. But the problems were so entrenched that I'm not sure if it was possible to do so without any backlash from those affected. But we did also in general panic and cry DOOM without even testing to see how bad the changes were going to be.

Yeah, and they stopped spamming within a year or two. They failed to create a Gold Seller market in CoH/V because they were trying to sell an in-game currency that was easy to get quickly. I recall pointing out to one of them (and being surprised it was an actual person rather then a bot) that I made 50 million Inf in a mission or two, so why would I want to spend $9.99 on their site to get that much Inf. The "power level" RMT sites had an easier time establishing a market, for a while. But as more systems, missions, and so forth got added the contact dry spots vanished. And when AE hit, they had their entire market demographic ripped right out from under their feet by the fact anyone could create an XP farm mission using the Architect system and endlessly repeat the mission. This is true, but in all fairness, Scrappers are the best/only AT to play! Eh, the Scrapper forum section was dominated by "we are awesome" scrapper memes and Rick Rolling. Oh gods, the rick rolls. The Defender section was dominated by complaining about idiot teams who expected them to magically heal Stupid. The Tanker section, as I recall spent a lot of time around issue 5 and 6 whining about how they had been gutted because they could no longer round up every enemy on a map, let alone expect to survive doing so without backup. I didn't spend much time on the Controller or Blaster sections of the forums. As I recall, the Mastermind section spent a lot of time discussing macro/keybinds for pet controls and general "we are awesome" posts. As well as insulting anyone who dared to take and slot the personal attacks.

True, the aggro/target cap didn't stop them from soloing 8 man content. But it did stop them from gathering up every enemy on the map THEN aoeing them to death. And losing the ability to self cap their own defense/resistance outside of an 'oh shit' power caused even that to grind to a halt. Suddenly they realized "Oh, I do need the team if I want to face these odds." And this was a good thing if you ask me, and the majority of other players at the time. The only ones truly upset at losing this 'play style' were the people who were abusing it. The rest of us were panicked because we thought our defenses were getting gutted and we were going to do nothing but die in missions, even solo missions. But teams being needed for group content? This was a good thing, and something most of us praised. Oh sure, we'd still try to solo group content. But this was for the personal challenge of doing so. For the bragging rights of being able to say "I soloed this Giant Monster" or "I beat this Archvillain all on my own". And those of us pulling such feats off acknowledged that we were the outliers, not the standard to be embraced. Even so, the devs didn't like it happening so took steps to try stopping it from happening.

Yeah, pre level 12 everyone's defenses feel like paper. Tankers will be more survivable then scrappers, but only because they are closing up their defenses faster. Meanwhile the scrapper has more attacks thus less down time between hitting the enemy. Then you start equipping DO enhancements or level 15 IO enhancements, and things really start to take off. Scrapper damage begins to ramp up, and tanker defense also starts ramping up. Okay, yeah the scrapper's defenses are also improving. But again, the tanker gets the defensive powers earlier. Thus they can get more slots into them sooner, and close up those holes in their defenses sooner. An SR/* tanker will be laughing at Council mobs using aoe when the */SR scrapper still has to be wary of said aoe. And once level 22 comes around, you can definitely feel the differences. While both classes will be able to easily handle most mobs, the tanker will be able to handle more enemies at once, although they'll deal with said enemies noticeably slower.

CoH? Toxic? Since When?! The forums could get into flame wars with the best of them. I should know, I took part in many of them. And the AT devoted boards on the official forums were filled with "This is the Best/Only way to make/play this AT". Just like with any other MMO such people would get really angry about any dissenting opinions. But I would frequently find myself in a flamewar with someone in one thread, casually chatting with the same person in another thread, and working with that exact same person to explain something to others in yet another thread. All at the same time. The in-game community had it's problem makers too, but by and large it's always been hands down the friendliest community in any MMO. Forums or in-game, it doesn't matter. By comparison, Everquest 1's in-game community are elitist a-holes. I tried getting into that game in the early 2000's because I was enjoying CoH so much, and had been hearing for years how amazing EQ was suppose to be. I accidentally selected for my new half-elf a hometown I didn't have access to due to not owning the latest expansion. So I asked in global chat how to reach the half elf hometown form the Plane of Knowledge since that was where I was dumped after the tutorial. I got insulted for half an hour, and given a zone by zone list of where to go and what to kill (and how many to kill) 'guide' for reaching the level cap as fast as possible. Then told that if I can't be bothered to do that then, well, here's a direct quote. "If you can't manage that, go get your daddy's gun and shoot yourself. It'll improve the world." Later that week I joined a team with my now level 20 ranger, and was insulted (as well as told to kill myself) because I wasn't able to, at level 20, cast buffs that rangers don't get until level 60 or so. And because my brand new character, first one I've made, wasn't fully equipped with level 60 gear (at least). Never mind I didn't have the gold to buy such gear on the auction house. Also ignore the fact that EQ would have reduced the effectiveness of that overlevel gear until it was less effective then my level appropriate stuff. I quit playing EQ1 within two weeks of starting to play, and haven't looked back. WoW has a toxic in-game and forum community, and always has. Even DDO and DCUO have toxic forum communities, although their in-game communities are less toxic then the forum ones. But City of Heroes has a toxic community? Only if you're a gold seller trying to create a market of "Inf for real world money".

Yeah, ED when it came out turned out to be... not the game breaker we all assumed it would be. There were enough other tweaks on the back end that you didn't need as high of a 'max performance' cap. Not that we probably needed it before. But if you *can* improve your character's damage by 200%, people *will* improve their damage by 200% then claim that if you don't do so you're gimped and useless even if a 100% boost to damage would have been more then enough. If you *can* reach the hard cap for defensive abilities, people *will* reach the hard cap then claim that you're gimped and useless if you don't do so. Sure, it can be fun on occasion to breeze through a game with zero challenge. I use to play Resident Evil 2 using the unlocked infinite ammo rocket launcher as a means to relieve stress. But often games with zero challenge quickly stop being fun. Especially if you're expected to be playing for 40+ hours. In fact, the difficulty slider was originally added because some people were finding the game too easy. But if your builds all completely trivialize the hardest content in the game, how long will it be before you lose interest in the game? Yes, it's a hard pill to swallow when a developer nerfs something in a game. And sometimes they do go too far. I remember how bad Trick Arrow was at launch due to the developers seeing teams of 8 TA/A defenders blazing through content on the test server due to stacking all the debuffs, so to 'fix' the powerset they gave every power a recharge so long that with slotting for recharge meant there was *only* a 1 minute cooldown on your main debuffs (which have a 30 second duration). This later got changed to having a 1 minute base recharge, so with slotting you could reapply debuffs about as soon as they wear off. Flagging them as not stacking probably would have been a better fix. But 'nerfs' are not a universally bad things. While it may be painful for those who were abusing the previous capabilities, nerfs are a part of a developer's tool chest for balancing a game. And everyone had known that the current environment of tankers being able to solo 8 man content all at once wasn't going to last. Blasters were well aware that sooner or later the developers were probably going to do something about their insane damage output. I know on Atlas server this was a frequent topic in general chat. And when the changes were made to stop tankers from farming 8 man content on their own, everyone except the tankers running those xp farm teams was happy about it because those teams were too damn common and boring as hell. In fact, none of the changes made to try to stop or limit power leveling came as any great surprise to the player base. We had fully expected something would be done.

Point of Fact, the Defense Reduction patch didn't lower the caps. Scrappers were still capable of hitting 75% resistance. Tankers could still hit 90% resistance. And I think other classes still had 50% as their cap. The defense hard cap didn't change either. What changed was how easy it was to achieve those levels. As I recall, a /invuln scrapper in issue 1 was capable of capping their smash/lethal resistance without Unstoppable. And in fact they could achive a large percentage of said cap before ever slotting a single SO enhancement. Tankers could cap their resistances and defense with ease, especially invulnerability tankers. After the patch, nobody was capable of reaching the cap on their own. With inspirations or outside buffs, sure. But not just by slotting their powers.

The costume piece I think is linked directly to the Crab power set due to the fact the attacks all require it. Which would mean you can put it on any character, but it'll only be visible if you have access to the powers that require it.

At high levels, scrappers are incredibly hard to kill. So are tankers. And while tankers can do respectable damage, eventually, it takes them far longer to get their attack chain set up. On the other hand scrappers take longer to get their defenses set up. Thus a tanker closes the gaps in their defenses faster, but a scrapper doesn't need to close the gaps as fast. Personally, I feel brutes encourage a reckless play style. While a high level scrapper can race from enemy group to enemy group with rarely slowing down, brutes are encouraged to play like this from level 1. In fact, they need to do so to keep their damage output up because of how quickly Fury degrades. The problem is that while a brute can eventually do so as an unstoppable juggernut, they're encouraged to do so when their defenses are still paper thin. And it can teach some bad habits. No matter how survivable you are, there's situations where you really shouldn't be just rushing in without thought. A Lord Recluse or Statesman AV fight are among the top ones in my mind. Especially Lord Recluse. Regardless of your defenses, he'll hit like a few mack trucks. And worst of all, he keeps summoning bane spiders. While an individual bane spider isn't a threat, a dozen of them is. Especially when they show up while you're trying to fight an AV. They also hit like a mack truck. Each.