CoH must have sucked

[GlaziusF]

5 hours ago, Greycat said:

... appropos of nothing... I seem to recall either late in the game's life or maybe one of the AMAs, one of the devs mentioned we never did do Hami the way they intended.

 

Did they ever say just how they intended for it to go?

We were supposed to deal with Hami repopping its organelles at 75, 50, and 25 instead of having everybody spam holds on the nucleus so it didn't respawn them.

 

These days Hami's been revised so it always does that but back when it was holdable it would spawn an antibody on top of everyone in the jelly. I suppose we were intended to pull back when it started reaching the breakpoints?

Edited July 16, 2020 by GlaziusF

[Zep]

On 12/6/2019 at 5:52 PM, Riverdusk said:

Don't forget no double xp either (except for the rare "Double xp weekend" events) and no travel power until level 14.  I do kind of miss the double xp weekends and crowds that would draw, and the fun of the marathon play sessions during those weekends.  Didn't help my sleep schedule though.

 

It is nice to have extra xp on demand now (for those characters I want it on), but at the same time it makes it less special.

 

 

I expect I am in a minority close to 1 in missing travel powers being available at level 14. 

 

It makes Paragon City bigger and gives you a much larger appreciation of the city streets, growing up, gaining power and has a certain feel to advancement that is now lost.

 

I played a controller to 50 first starting in Issue 1. From before Controllers got the big damage buffs (more base damage plus containment). Back then the base duration for all control effects was twice what it is now and had half the base recharge. You moved slowly through mobs but mobs didnt move unless you have permission. Perma stun with FlashFire + Fire Cages was a real thing.   

 

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by Zep
-edit: typo

[Hyperstrike]

11 hours ago, Zep said:

I expect I am in a minority close to 1 in missing travel powers being available at level 14. 

 

It make Paragon City bigger and gives you a much larger appreciation of the city streets, growing up, gaining power and has a certain feel to advancement that is now lost.

 

I played a controller to 50 first starting in Issue 1. From before Controllers got the big damage buffs (more base damage plus containment). Back then the base duration for all control effects was twice what it is now and had half the base recharge. You moved slowly through mobs but mobs didnt move unless you have permission. Perma stun with FlashFire + Fire Cages was a real thing.   

Nah.  I agree with what you're saying.
Initially, Paragon City felt HUGE when I had to trot everywhere.
It STILL feels big, just not AS big.
And spending an hour trotting across multiple zones?
No!  I prefer the triple rusty chainsaw suppository please!

[Herotu]

On 12/7/2019 at 12:06 AM, DougGraves said:

I have been soloing a bit lately and noticed how I use my bonus powers like black wand into my 20's.  I cannot remember what it was like playing with just brawl and your powerset attacks but it must have been painfully slow.

 

I am generally opposed to making things easier, but I would not go back to playing without those extra attacks at lower levels.

"Painfully slow" or just "longer" and with nothing to compare it to, what did it matter?

 

• The game was much more deadly for players back in the day, you couldn't just buy whatever you want on the auction house because prices were prohibitively expensive, so everybody was underpowered back then.
• When it came to missions, yes, they were "Painfully slow" but there was much tension and a sense of adventure, DANGER!  Players would creep through missions carefully to avoid extra adds or surprises. People learnt to do ghosting/teleporting and pulling mobs onto a corner to AoE them. 

 

These things are gone now and I think it's a shame.

 

 

Edited July 17, 2020 by Herotu

[Lines]

I think it's possible, but complicated, to imagine the game with the best of both worlds.

 

It's a mistake to think that bringing back some of the challenge, or creating new challenges with those same feelings of adventure and danger, must also mean bringing back some of the grind.

[Greycat]

48 minutes ago, Herotu said:

• The game was much more deadly for players back in the day, you couldn't just buy whatever you want on the auction house because prices were prohibitively expensive, so everybody was underpowered back then.

 

Or there was no auction house at all. >.>

[Herotu]

20 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Or there was no auction house at all. >.>

I hasten to add that I love IOs and that whole system, it's just... well ... 

 

... everybody is in such a hurry now. I guess that if you see one guy rush off ahead without dying, then everybody else thinks/knows it's possible, too.

[Ukase]

On 12/7/2019 at 5:02 AM, Clave Dark 5 said:

Maybe some areas should get stocked with "level-less" foes that will provide a reasonable fight to any hero or villain, like the Rikti during invasions.

Seems to me, EVERY zone should have NPCs that are like this. They have the code, obviously. How hard could it be? 

What I'm not seeing is any downside from an implementation of this, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. I'm sure there's something, or they would have done it that way from the beginning. 

I will say, it's a hoot for me to find a +7 or +8 minion and slug/blast it out with them from time to time. Like those Nemesis Snipers on the rooftops in Founders, or PI. They're all alone, so no extra aggro to deal with. Pop a yellow, and see how I do. Four-five minutes, lol. A long time for only a fair bit of xp, given the level difference. Don't do this for the XP, kids! 

[Coyotedancer]

I'd have Kai or Anut out in Founders killing off those damned snipers every chance I got, just as a public service. <_< 

 

Being killed in the crossfire of an absolutely ridiculous number of snipers (Since the "no one-hit kills" rule doesn't apply when there are multiple individual attackers-) on a squishy, as you're just trying to get to your mission door, or to Infernal, or to the MIdnighter's or whatever isn't fun. I *like* eventually "outgrowing" that particular annoyance.

 

(No. I've never gotten over that contact in Indy sending my under-level scrap into the middle of that place, just to have him instantly turned into pulp by half a dozen jerks on the rooftops before I even had time to react so many years ago... 😫)

 

 

 

Edited July 17, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[srmalloy]

19 hours ago, GlaziusF said:

We were supposed to deal with Hami repopping its organelles at 75, 50, and 25 instead of having everybody spam holds on the nucleus so it didn't respawn them.

 

These days Hami's been revised so it always does that but back when it was holdable it would spawn an antibody on top of everyone in the jelly. I suppose we were intended to pull back when it started reaching the breakpoints?

Remembering the early Hami raids I was on, that was the way it went -- the taunt tank and two healers kept the nucleus distracted, then the rest of us went around in a group under a healspam bubble taking out mitos, then spam holds on the nucleus until it stopped shooting at the taunt tank, then everyone piles on the nucleus while the holds continued. At the mito respawn, everyone backed frantically out of the goo and behind a rock to break LoS, then we'd reform and do it twice more. After the pop at 25%, we'd be taking Hami down all the way, but if he broke free of the holds, he'd spawn an Antibody for each character in the goo (the 'golden sunrise')... After which the entire raid faceplanted, and at that point it was generally given up on as a bad job.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

Seems to me, EVERY zone should have NPCs that are like this. They have the code, obviously. How hard could it be? 

What I'm not seeing is any downside from an implementation of this, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. I'm sure there's something, or they would have done it that way from the beginning.

They didn't have the code to do it that way from the beginning. That only appeared when they changed the RCS to the RWZ and instituted the Rikti invasions.

 

And making the entire game world functionally levelless eliminates one of the easiest ways to scale difficulty -- if you can't beat a mission, go get a level or two and come back. There won't be any variation in the mobs in a mission; they're all at your level, no ±1 level in different spawns. The devs can't make missions more difficult by using higher-level mobs; they need to create additional tiers of 'super boss' mobs, and create additional mob mechanics so that they're not just a huge sack of HP.

[Herotu]

6 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

They didn't have the code to do it that way from the beginning. That only appeared when they changed the RCS to the RWZ and instituted the Rikti invasions.

 

And making the entire game world functionally levelless eliminates one of the easiest ways to scale difficulty -- if you can't beat a mission, go get a level or two and come back. There won't be any variation in the mobs in a mission; they're all at your level, no ±1 level in different spawns. The devs can't make missions more difficult by using higher-level mobs; they need to create additional tiers of 'super boss' mobs, and create additional mob mechanics so that they're not just a huge sack of HP.

Mechanics as in what? The simplest ones, crowd control, tend to be frowned upon and/or circumvented with IOs these days, although I'd love to see enemies doing more knockback, I think - particularly if the player CHOSE higher difficulty.

 

I approve of new mechanics, they pique my interest, but I'd like to know what you have in mind.

[Bill Z Bubba]

28 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

They didn't have the code to do it that way from the beginning. That only appeared when they changed the RCS to the RWZ and instituted the Rikti invasions.

 

And making the entire game world functionally levelless eliminates one of the easiest ways to scale difficulty -- if you can't beat a mission, go get a level or two and come back. There won't be any variation in the mobs in a mission; they're all at your level, no ±1 level in different spawns. The devs can't make missions more difficult by using higher-level mobs; they need to create additional tiers of 'super boss' mobs, and create additional mob mechanics so that they're not just a huge sack of HP.

 

20 minutes ago, Herotu said:

Mechanics as in what? The simplest ones, crowd control, tend to be frowned upon and/or circumvented with IOs these days, although I'd love to see enemies doing more knockback, I think - particularly if the player CHOSE higher difficulty.

 

I approve of new mechanics, they pique my interest, but I'd like to know what you have in mind.

 

If yall would like to see interesting uses of the existing tech to make missions more difficult, go look at the enemy spawns in AE arc 801.2 by @Linea

 

There's a nice write up here:

 

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Herotu said:

Mechanics as in what? The simplest ones, crowd control, tend to be frowned upon and/or circumvented with IOs these days,

Not mob abilities, mechanics; the aspects of fighting a mob that affected your overall strategy for the fight. The AoE blasts that drop while you are fighting Battle Maiden. Reichsman freeing captured AVs while you're fighting him. The empowerment towers buffing Lord Recluse and the droids that try to repair them. How the original Hami raid had the 'golden sunrise' if you let the holds on the nucleus slip.

Edited July 17, 2020 by srmalloy

[EmmySky]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Remembering the early Hami raids I was on, that was the way it went -- the taunt tank and two healers kept the nucleus distracted, then the rest of us went around in a group under a healspam bubble taking out mitos, then spam holds on the nucleus until it stopped shooting at the taunt tank, then everyone piles on the nucleus while the holds continued. At the mito respawn, everyone backed frantically out of the goo and behind a rock to break LoS, then we'd reform and do it twice more. After the pop at 25%, we'd be taking Hami down all the way, but if he broke free of the holds, he'd spawn an Antibody for each character in the goo (the 'golden sunrise')... After which the entire raid faceplanted, and at that point it was generally given up on as a bad job.

Thats the hami raids I remember and the new ones just confuse me. 

[Herotu]

On 7/17/2020 at 4:55 PM, srmalloy said:

Not mob abilities, mechanics; the aspects of fighting a mob that affected your overall strategy for the fight. The AoE blasts that drop while you are fighting Battle Maiden. Reichsman freeing captured AVs while you're fighting him. The empowerment towers buffing Lord Recluse and the droids that try to repair them. How the original Hami raid had the 'golden sunrise' if you let the holds on the nucleus slip.

That's really interesting and reminds me of things we've seen in video games such as Evil Genius and Minecraft. "Traps" essentially, but they don't have to be traps per se, just effects that trigger other effects.

 

I wonder if something akin to these might be implemented into AE, and even into the greater game itself?

[Haijinx]

On 12/6/2019 at 10:37 PM, summers said:

Let's be real, it had a horrific early game experience.

 

• No veteran powers
• No beginners luck
• No inherent fitness
• No Death from Below or double/rapid XP
• No early access to travel powers
• Disconnected transport systems (different coloured rail lines and ferries!)
• No Ouroboros and its portal
• TO's only

So you had very limited power selection, terribly accuracy and no endurance to speak of. Getting around was not easy either.

 

For some unbelievable reason, they made a new starter zone, Praetoria, which was riddled with even more difficult content. While the content was a lot of fun and filled with story, it was a terrible way to introduce new players to the game, especially when considering how little they knew of game mechanics.

A lot of that stuff did exist by the time Praetoria/Going Rogue came out though. 

[Space Sheep]

On 12/7/2019 at 12:13 AM, Falsey said:

In a way, it made your thirst for progression even bigger (and more rewarding). Also, having limited respecs would make you think twice about your power picks and slotting.

 

So, no. CoH never sucked. In fact, I miss the pre-IO days quite a bit.

Yes I agree - especially when it came to levelling up at 32 or 38, staring at the new power selection window with excitement ready to click on your glorious new ability and the excitement that was about to follow

[MoonSheep]

Doh, replied on an alt account. Posting on my main to follow the thread 🙄

[Peacemoon]

On 12/7/2019 at 12:06 AM, DougGraves said:

I have been soloing a bit lately and noticed how I use my bonus powers like black wand into my 20's.  I cannot remember what it was like playing with just brawl and your powerset attacks but it must have been painfully slow.

 

I am generally opposed to making things easier, but I would not go back to playing without those extra attacks at lower levels.

I never use the temporary attacks as they don’t feel very in-character...

[marcussmythe]

I remember the Hami Raid mechanics before we got large numbers of players doing them (the large public raids).  Early-early days, it was stacking RES Debuffs on one Mito at a time (Melee characters provided suicide cover to let Rads survive getting in and landing anchor debuffs) and slooooowly peeling the thing that way, before we moved to a stacked debuff hard-kill on the Hamidon itself (there was no cap to -RES, and of course the lower your RES, the larger the impact of the next RES debuff - the poor thing was one-shottable once enough E. Fields landed), and later, yes, massive hold stacking.  

 

My understanding of the 'desired behavior' was that after a long slow mito peel, the Hamidon would be taken to its golden dawn thresholds by clusters of attackers at range - once the golden dawn wiped them, another group, or that group, resurrected, would attack from a different clock position, away from the last golden dawn.

 

I find the current version much better designed for enjoyable play.  Its arguably trivial in difficulty (compared to the old way), but given that HOs are a pale shadow of what they were at the time (they were way too good), thats probably appropriate.