Kaika

Because it has not stopped being fun in the last 20 years. One of the best things I think about this game, the the sheer depth that it has that you practically do not need to interact with. When I was a kid, I had no idea what I was doing, and was just having fun picking whatever sounded cool, and the game still worked fine. These days I'm min/maxing the crap out of all my characters to my specific play style and am able to solo just about anything thats possible to solo, spending hours editing and optimizing my builds and making sure I can properly execute all of my individual characters rotations for max DPS, and the game still holds up extremely well. When people talk about accessibility they usually only mean to players newer to MMOs or video games in general, and while CoH is somewhat good at this, what I think is this games real strength is that you can kinda just always keep digging for more depth if you want it. The game REALLY wants you to play it however you want and accommodates every level/style of play. This is on top of the already absurd amount of ways to play this game, meaning that as long as you don't get bored of the base mechanics and systems, the game really never gets old. I've played since release in 2004, I take decent sized breaks occasionally but I always come back, just nothing else like this game

Keep in mind, in the original release of the game travel powers had much higher end cost, and often combat downsides when running them. This was also back in the day when stamina was supposed to be a power pool power that you really had to invest in to get (and basically everyone did). Both fly and super speed used to lower your accuracy fairly significantly and teleport had a end cost so high it practically rendered it unusable as a travel power without slotting for end. Originally travel power were VERY MUCH intended to not be used in combat. However if you played back in the day, you would know that basically none of the original design intentions like this worked, as without ED, you could 6 slot stamina, and never have end issues again, then 6 slot tactics and never have to worry about accuracy and this was all without travel power suppression. Needless to say, their efforts didn't even really work from the get go, at least once people started to learn how the game worked. Once the Pandoras box of being able to use these in combat was open there really wasn't and putting them back in it. Overtime they made travel powers less and less restricted as it turns out, going fast is fun. Honestly I think it's for the best, but it's kinda interesting looking back on the original design intention, as missions were intended to be done at what we would consider a glacial pace by today's standards.

The old blue/brown caves in their entirety, with the aforementioned layer cake room. I honestly love them from a atmospheric standpoint but they are just BAD. Narrow winding corridors filled with random bits of geometry to get stuck on. Many rooms have multiple floors with tons of nooks and cranny to hide out in. The tight corridors make travel powers and movement, my favorite aspects of the game, feel anywhere from frustrating to useless. Worst of all the enemy are always spread out through out the room, you would think "this would things harder" but no it actually makes things considerably easier. In newer maps groups are often spread out in a area to prevent fireballs from ending the fight instantly, which makes them harder, however in a cave a single group is often spread out so far that even a team of 8 PUGs with no attempt at stealth will only take half the group at a time, or less, without trying. That's not even to mention some of the room layouts, the layercake room is infamous but thats not even to mention other rooms, like the room that requires you to jump up to the second level to find a tunnel that lets you go forward. God forbid you get a "defeat all" in a caves, or even a "defeat the boss" with a layer cake room. They were very much made by a inexperienced dev team that still had little to no idea how their game actually played, even at the time. It's little wonder that at a certain point, they just entirely stopped using them and basically replaced them with the tunnel map in newer content.

I have toons that can run out of end on ageless, you can 100% end up in this situations with some setups/play-styles, without it being a deliberate misplay.

I absolutely dislike end management, I feel it's archaic is extremely annoying, and just ends up being something you have to deal with rather then something enjoyable. Most modern MMOs no longer have this kinda all or nothing resource management unless its core to the classes play-style. However CoH was made with endurance in mind, You can't just remove it without throwing any semblance of balance out the window. I find the stronger offensive sets tend to be a big end hogs because better powers tend to use more endurance faster. End is a nuisance that you still have to deal with but in dealing with it you sacrifice resources that could go to other things, whether that be activation time, slots, powers, or mental capacity. Without it the game would be missing something at it's core that would likely boil over the balance, which is already tipped heavily in the players favor. I think end is in a very good spot at moment, if you never want to deal with it there are myriad ways to basically negate endurance as a concept, at just about every point in the game if you're resourceful, but you have to spend time/money/focus on that, that could go elsewhere which is a nice tradeoff. Long story short end isn't going anywhere because its a core part of the game, like it or not. Removing it as a obstacle would further empower players more then they already are as they would no longer need to spend time/resources manage it.

Rolled a Staff/psi stalker, Psi armor is kinda a monster when built right, though staff might also be doing some heavy lifting on my end, But hey, High res, High Regen, and a good Bases for building up defenses, not even to mention the absolute monster of a power that Aura of madness is (which hits like a truck of proced out). She can solo 4x8 of most groups quickly and with relative ease, when taking incarnates into account. All and all its a good set, the only thing I have a problem with is Devour being a cone for some unfathomable reason.

I can kinda understand this on scrapper they want you to use it when approaching the group. I still disagree but at least I can understand the use intention here. On stalker the cone makes ZERO sense, as you basically always start combat from stealth, in melee. The ideal time to use devour would be when approaching from a distance but as a stalker, that's literally just giving up your opening AS/Crit, which you would basically never want to do. So as is now, you need to jump in, do your out of stealth opening stuff, then awkwardly reposition to hit the cone to get the most of of a single use so you can get back to damage. Sometimes you get lucky and enemies are just played out in a way that allows this but often you can't. It's a shame because I love everything else about this set on stalker it's a power house and really fun to play, except this single thing that is extremely annoying. Since closed/open beta practically every other single peice of feedback was "this should be PBAoE" and they still went with this and I cannot fathom why. I regret not testing it more on stalker because it feels like it was not.

You know the funny thing is, in the early days of CoH synapse was known as the "fast" TF. I do agree though it's long overdue for a proper revamp, 45 mins to a hour and a half of end draining enemies at low levels, where every mission is practically the same thing gets old.

Just gona copy paste my other post here Honestly I wouldn't want this, Hardcore in this game is very easy if you just don't go out of your way to take risk. If you just take it slow, play something like a tank or keep the difficulty low you can breeze through it making a server where that's mechanically enforce kinda pointless. Everyone I know who takes up this challenge often has to tack on a ton of other rules or there is never stakes. On top of that, this game is EXTREMELY RNG heavy, death can often happen when the numbers just don't go your way there are obviously ways to mitigate this, but it's a big part of this game, sometimes you do everything right and die to the enemy getting good rolls. That's not even to go into the difficulty in setting this up as a server structure, alot of the code would need to likely be custom written into code the OG devs referred to as "spaghetti code" to implement what is already a niche challenge mode that is already played, and likely would still require personal rules to make interesting. I'm not trying to say there isn't some kinda potential here, but this is a volunteer dev team that already has alot on their plate, I just don't see this happening. Especially for something that can already be done with a little honor. I think adding a tracker for player deaths to the city information terminal though could be a nice idea that likely wouldn't be too difficult, that way you could at least have proof, but otherwise I think it would be a waste of development time and effort.

Honestly I wouldn't want this, Hardcore in this game is very easy if you just don't go out of your way to take risk. If you just take it slow, play something like a tank or keep the difficulty low you can breeze through it making a server where that's mechanically enforce kinda pointless. Everyone I know who takes up this challenge often has to tack on a ton of other rules or there is never stakes. On top of that, this game is EXTREMELY RNG heavy, death can often happen when the numbers just don't go your way there are obviously ways to mitigate this, but it's a big part of this game, sometimes you do everything right and die to the enemy getting good rolls. That's not even to go into the difficulty in setting this up as a server structure, alot of the code would need to likely be custom written into code the OG devs referred to as "spaghetti code" to implement what is already a niche challenge mode that is already played, and likely would still require personal rules to make interesting. I'm not trying to say there isn't some kinda potential here, but this is a volunteer dev team that already has alot on their plate, I just don't see this happening. Especially for something that can already be done with a little honor. I think adding a tracker for player deaths to the city information terminal though could be a nice idea that likely wouldn't be too difficult, that way you could at least have proof, but otherwise I think it would be a waste of development time and effort.

You know trolls used to actually try back in the day.

LGTBQ people existing isn't political. If you have issue with that, you can go elsewhere.

Ah yes lets completely revamp and change a entire half of the game that's a bit underpopulated to add a activity that is already so insanely unpopular that the existing 4 zones for it are basically always empty and like 90% of the player base has a violent reaction to even existing in the game. This will only take a insane amount of development time to the point of likely being realistically impossible even if it WAS a good idea. Like you know pvp works on a ENTIRELY different set of rules right? For it to exist the entire zone would need to use pvp stats, which would make everyone in a zone villian side significantly weaker this isn't something you only have function for player interactions, it's a zone setting. As far as I'm aware there also isn't a system in place for 1 way pvp interactions like you want and I wouldn't be surprised if it was impossible to do, or likely such a massive undertaking it might as well be. All for a system that already exist in 4 empty zones. I honestly hope you're a troll.

Um welcome to CoH? Most maps have been in use since 2004. This is normal.

While I don't disagree that CoH has less of a emphasis on player skills I don't agree that it's not a major factor. As someone who used to run 801s all the time, execution played a very heavy role with success or failure. It wasn't just "we lost so we need to take a look at our build/team comp" often failure was due to bad positioning, approaching a fight in the wrong way , damage not being focused right, or not reacting quickly enough to something. Yes RNG is a major factor, but it can be reacted too and mitigated with good knowledge and quick thinking, I don't think there was any time we lost a run and went "well the numbers just didn't work out" generally it was something we felt at fault for. Just because the RNG is there does not mean it's the only thing at play, this is not a turn based game. CoH has PLENTY of places for mastery of execution, they just aren't as emphasized and often overlooked by the broader player base. Just because you don't have the ability to actively dodge or block does not mean execution can't assist in play. Movement for example is a often undervalued and very in depth piece of this game, especially on melee ATs that want to position properly to get the most out of their AoE. Due to actions locking your character, the quicker and more efficient your movement the more actions you can take with greater effect, the person who spends two seconds repositioning for a cone attack deals less damage then the person who spends 1/2 second. You're also kinda sweeping the "attack chain optimization" portion here under the rug, since optimizing that is actually rather complicated, and often has to be done on the fly with how variable this games fights are. Even if you know exactly what power to prioritize, and in what order these things can change within the same fight with, enemy variety and weakness, enemy positioning, ally position, target prioritization, your positioning, ect. ect. As someone who runs with 4* speedrunners on occasion, and tries to optimize my gameplay as much as I can, I can tell your the difference between a player who is well practiced with the mechanics of the game and a player who is simply getting carried by their build is alot greater then most realize. I honestly agree with the overall sentiment of your argument and I think it's something that alot of people don't realize, that at it's core CoH is very much a numbers game, and a fairly easy one at that and while don't think this was your intent, to claim that mastery in execution does not exist here is frankly a little insulting to those who attempt to master it.