CoH must have sucked

[Lost Ninja]

On 12/7/2019 at 3:37 AM, 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.

Played since EU launch (started in late EU beta). And this isn't my memory of it at all.

 

 

[tidge]

I will also chime in that the early days of the game (at low levels) were frustrating, the two biggest things I recall:

 

1) The general slowness of attack chains. This was primarily due to having to burn power choices to get to Stamina, but also because...

 

2) Delay of a travel power (requiring another 2 power picks) until level 14, which got in the way of picking attack powers.

 

I remember first getting the Sands of Mu (and at higher levels, a Nemesis Staff) as temporary powers (as mission rewards) and all of a sudden it felt like my character was actually taking the fight to the villains!

 

I remember doing a LOT of street sweeping because just getting between contacts (and their missions) was extremely tedious. I recently recreated this feel via Ouroboros by turning off travel powers, temp powers, etc. during a low level flashback mission...ee gads what an experience!

[drdread]

On 12/6/2019 at 9:21 PM, eknudson said:

No early travel was worse without ninja run, and trying to navigate the old Hollows mission doors without a travel power caused a lot of deaths to pumicite but I quickly learned to get to Kings Row for that raptor pack almost first things out of the sewers!

 

Edit-- who designed the old Hollows and worse the old Faultline and thought "players will love this!"? And did that person get put in charge of too much of redside?

 

The Hollow was introduced in Issue 2. It had door missions.

 

Before that, every player got sent to Perez Park for hunting missions.  I get that Perez Park was the devs trying to encourage players to team up, but when there was nobody available to team up with, it sucked.

[MTeague]

The one change I simply could not play the game without ever again?  Ouroborous.  And NOT for the convienent teleport. Take that away, I wouldn't care much. I actually don't mind travel time, even if that makes me a heretic. But I need that Pillar of Ice and Flame with the mission list.  Prior to that, outlevelling content just HURT when you're an OCD completionist.  And there was really no way around it. You were GOING TO outlevel content no matter what you did. So then I started plotting out which alts would focus on which zones, so that I'ld still get to see all the content just some on different characters. 

 

Being able to flashback and do it all on your main... godsend. 

[Grouchybeast]

21 hours ago, Call Me Awesome said:

The worst changes?  The Global Defense Nerf of issue 5 that cut defenses and resistances by a huge margin.  It was followed by Enhancement Diversification (ED) where once you reached the equivalent of 3 SO's worth of enhancement in a power adding more was pointless.  Those two great nerfs reduced protection by at least half and cut damage by 40% or more.  It took more than 5 years before IO's appeared and we recovered some of the lost ability. 

 

It was actually less than 2 years to the release of the IO system.  That's the problem about looking back -- things get remembered as both better and worse than they really were.

[Sir Myshkin]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't bother with any of the Prestige (now P2W) attacks on new characters. Given how quickly we can progress to 20 through DFB/DiB with the 2XP I just pull all my attacks as they become available. By the time I'm moving on to other content, the next few levels still go pretty fast and will have the majority of that early core >26 stuff figured out. Plus, DFB's go by so quickly (like, what, ten minutes tops per run?) I don't need to be cycling constant attacks, I'm probably wasting one here or there anyway! Use Brawl! It wont hurt!

 

I kind of find it more of a hassle to claim those extra abilities just for ten levels of over-simplification, just to never use them again.

 

All I grab at his point is:

• Flight Pack
• Reveal
• Inner Inspiration
• 2XP

Even before sunset the only reason I ever claimed the prestige powers was to show off that I'd been in the game long enough to have a Nemesis Staff AND a Blackwand at the same time. Which, honestly, didn't require much (12 and 18 mos wasn't it?). I do miss logging in and getting that instant-stack of badges for "You've been here FOREVER."

[drdread]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

You were GOING TO outlevel content no matter what you did. So then I started plotting out which alts would focus on which zones, so that I'ld still get to see all the content just some on different characters.

 

Before Ouroborous, I would broadcast if I got the Fortune Teller mission. I would often do the mission with 3 to 7 higher level characters.

[eknudson]

29 minutes ago, drdread said:

 

Before Ouroborous, I would broadcast if I got the Fortune Teller mission. I would often do the mission with 3 to 7 higher level characters.

I sometimes did that... couple times a 50 dropped a bunch of inf on my lowbie as a thank-you, which was much appreciated!

 

Redside before they added Lord Schweinzer getting all the mayhem explore badges could be a huge PITA. I remember going back to low levels broadcasting to see if anybody had the mayhem and wanted help.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 12/7/2019 at 12:46 PM, FDR's Think Tank said:

It was much easier to find a team back then. Since I have come back, most people on are Level 50 and doing incarnate.

This was my experience for about the last year if the original run of the game, once incarnate stuff was added.  I could literally log on, find say a hundred folk in one server, and like 80 to 90% of them were 50 and sitting in Pocket D.

 

These days I see all sorts of "LFM for running missions in X, any levels welcome."

[Myrmidon]

9 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

 

These days I see all sorts of "LFM for running missions in X, any levels welcome."

 Even with the never ending DFB spam on Excelsior, there is plenty of this to get into.

[Dazl]

One thing to remember is that back when the game launched we didn't have all the early game friendly features we have now. It would be hard for us to say it sucked back then compared to now since we didn't have anything else to compare it to at the time.  Heck just the idea of playing a superhero MMO was out of the box, much less one that gave you so many powers and costume options.

 

In hind sight the early game was much harder (which might not have been such a bad thing), getting to 50 was the main goal.

 

The incarnate system created a whole new reason to keep playing after 50. Even though the early game is much easier now, there is a bigger game post 50 now.

[Shred Monkey]

I think it is worth pointing out that back in 2005, our exceptions were different. 

 

The big MMO of the previous years before CoH was Everquest.  At that time in EQ you would literally take an hour running across the continent to meet up with your friends.  You could wait another 30 minutes on a boat if you needed to get to the next continent over.  And you needed to meet up with your friends because, with only a few exceptions, you couldn't really solo and make progress.  The holy trinity was a real thing, and it was really a holy quartet because you needed a mana/pump class keeping the mana users full of energy.  It was also standard to need a crowd control class so your team could focus on 1 enemy at a time.  And the best tank in the game (warrior class) had the LEAST amount of agro (taunt) of any class, so everyone had to manage their own agro by joining a fight late or wiping threat, etc.

 

Then along comes CoH where not only is there a train system to take you from zone to zone instantly, but you have travel powers to zip around that zone.  Teams not only don't have to try to single-pull enemies, but they actually have powers that are designed to work on large groups of enemies.  And tanks have a power called TAUNT so it wasn't too dangerous to use those AoE powers.

 

In many ways, what we now look back on and think of as *a real pain* to play actually felt like it was actually *easy* compared to what many of us had been playing, and the quality of life stuff in CoH was WAY better than the standard back then. 

 

And that doesn't even get into the groundbreaking costume creator... and the world has three dimensions!  That's right!  We can really fly!

 

 

 

[Ukase]

Just goes to show you, perceptions will differ. I don't remember things ever being a grind. I don't recall things being slow. I cannot for the life of me imagine, leveling a character to the 20's and then stopping and rolling another character because it takes too long to get to the next level. That kind of talk just puzzles me. I simply can't wrap my head around it. That's like having a cake, but not icing it. But that's just my own limited ability to think outside my own experience. 

I still would love the game to go back to the way it was when I first started, in issue 3. I never knew what an MMO was. When I got the game, I had no idea there would be other people playing in the same instance I was in! Jack Emmert was all about teaming. I had ZERO interest in that. Group up with strangers? That made - and still makes no sense to me. Why? If I wanted to be social, I'd go out for a beer, wouldn't I? But, slowly, I began to figure things out, and the reasons why Jack directed the development in the direction he did. (opinions still vary on this!) 

I was so bothered by the change that I asked for my money back when issue 4 hit. Circuit City looked at me like I was crazy. I said, "I bought the game a certain way - now they've changed the way it's to be played! That's bait and switch!"  I laugh when I think about it now. It really bothered me. The Arena had been introduced, and everyone had an opinion on pvp. Most everyone had been playing some other game - and continued to play those other games, while still playing CoH. That made no sense to me, either. You're paying $15 a month to play as much as you want - why would you dilute your time among other games? Just let your sub lapse until you're ready to commit. Again - just my limited, warped view of the world at the time. 

I still would love to go back to 1 acc, 5 damage. Or 1 acc, 4 damage 1 rech.  But, I have the feeling that my characters now would make those older characters look slow and weak. Those IO bonuses add up. At level 28, should a blaster be able to solo Arakhn, the av in Moonfire? Back then? Not likely. Now? Success is a given. There's really no need to team up now at all, thankfully, except for hami raids and incarnate trials. Is that better? worse? Doesn't matter - we now have the option, which is fantastic. 

[TyrantMikey]

1 hour ago, Shred Monkey said:

And that doesn't even get into the groundbreaking costume creator... and the world has three dimensions!  That's right!  We can really fly!

 

With all its flaws in that first release, I was there, in a horribly designed costume. The first time I toggled on Hover and moved straight up into the air, I was awestruck. With the cityscape below me, all I could think was, "Oh my god, I'm actually flying."

 

I could forgive a world of sin for that alone.

[Charistoph]

Yeah, as stated, CoH sucked at launch compared to now, but compared to other systems and mechanics at the time, it was actually really really nice.  I came over from Dark Age of Camelot (I couldn't get in to Everquest, but I had been on Earth & Beyond off and on, too).  Compared to DAoC, the system ran smooth, there was stuff to do, and most everything was useful.
 

Of course there were problems.  Controllers had to group before they got their pets, because they had no damage capacity (this was before Inherents like Containment were brought in).  Tankers were more likely to run out of Endurance long before they ran out of Health.  For the most part, I like most of the changes that happened, and for the better.

[tidge]

2 hours ago, Crimsonpyre said:

In hind sight the early game was much harder (which might not have been such a bad thing), getting to 50 was the main goal.

/umactually

 

I don't know if it was the *main goal*, but you could only get to lvl 40 in the earliest game.

[Marine X]

Played from Issue 0 till sunset and really only found a few things in the early game rough.

 

1) Defeat Debt at Level 5: Ouch it turned leveling up into a Painful Grind, but did allow for you to get started on the Debt Badges.

2) Perez Park verses the Hollows: Loved the Missions in the Hollows and still do them on Most of my toons, but before that there was just Perez, guaranteed granter of Debt.

3) Difficulty Settings: It is very plain when you adjust your difficulty now, back then it was not really Defined Clearly what the changes would be till you entered your next  mission, often to immediately get an Invitation for some Hospital Time. ( my brother set his perception to Invincible because it sounded cool, wow, everything is purple )

4) Travel without powers. You could only go to zones your Security Level allowed you to enter, including by train, and doesn't it figure that the mission in Steel/Skyway is right by the Green Line station at the other end of the Zone that you can't use. If you run fast enough and stay in the middle of the road those Purples will never see you, right.

 

[Dragon Crush]

16 minutes ago, Marine X said:

4) Travel without powers. You could only go to zones your Security Level allowed you to enter, including by train, and doesn't it figure that the mission in Steel/Skyway is right by the Green Line station at the other end of the Zone that you can't use. If you run fast enough and stay in the middle of the road those Purples will never see you, right.

While not needed now of course, I would hop up to the roof/over to the rail line, then follow the line across the zone to the other station hopping over trams as they came.

 

And my very first hero was elec/fire blaster (and being my first hero, he didn't have the best build) he had all his debt badges by 25.

[roleki]

On 12/8/2019 at 3:59 AM, Myrmidon said:

The absolute worst was not being able to share completing missions. The 30s in Oranbega running the same mission 8 times was the stuff of nightmares.

This doesn't get brought up enough.  Kids today don't know what it was like to hop on a team and do the same mission 4 or 5 times, hoping that one of those times would be YOUR mission instance,  but by the time your turn came around everyone had either petered out or outleveled the mission, leaving you having done the mission to death but still needing to do it -only now it was even less likely to get done in a group, so it stagnated and left your character at a development pinch point, where you'd have to solo it or come back to it when you were a couple levels more powerful. 

 

Somehow worse, this would happen, then you'd see one or two of those former teammates zipping around, +4 to you, because THEIR content was getting done while it was fresh, and you're bumbling along forced to either street hunt or do other people's content, in the hopes of getting to a level that would give you a new on-level contact.

 

Bonus points for having died numerous times in support of the team that was out-leveling your content.

 

Another thing I hated was, you'd spend all this time chipping away, toiling away,  grinding your way to 50, and then... nothing.  Hitting 50 meant retirement back then, only to be rolled out of the garage on special occasions.  

 

Nah, I loved the game from the start, but it got infinitely better the longer it hung around.  I have zero desire to drag a toon from 1 to 32 the old fashioned way, let alone all the way to 50.

[roleki]

2 hours ago, TyrantMikey said:

 

With all its flaws in that first release, I was there, in a horribly designed costume. The first time I toggled on Hover and moved straight up into the air, I was awestruck. With the cityscape below me, all I could think was, "Oh my god, I'm actually flying."

 

I could forgive a world of sin for that alone.

I had the same feeling the first time I toggled on Super Jump.  I spent an inordinate amount of time that day just jumping across maps, just to do it.

[Fan Mail]

The person that introduced me to CoH a LONG time ago showed me his character flying - before he showed me anything else (combat, missions, etc.).  I later learned he was just Hovering as at the time I didn't know any better.  But it still looked cool.  

[drbuzzard]

On 12/7/2019 at 12:56 PM, Rathulfr said:

The original Positron TF was a real challenge back in the day, before inherent Fitness.  It was a long, hard, slog.  And auto-exemplar/sidekick wasn't a thing, so you had to be careful about team composition, or else folks would out-level the TF and get kicked from it if they DC'ed (which happened a lot more back then on dial-up).

First time I did Posi back in the day was on my Ar/Dev blaster. This must have been issue 1 or so. Don't recall how big the team we started with was, but at the end it was just me and a tanker left (from quits and whatever else) finally finishing the damn thing off like 4 hours later. I don't think I ran it again until it was revised. 

[Jolly Ogre]

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.

Don't forget full debt at lvl 5 and at one time on my troller i had 1 million in debt. However I could have 9 imps out weeeee! fire burn!!!!

[Rathulfr]

2 minutes ago, Jolly Ogre said:

Don't forget full debt at lvl 5 and at one time on my troller i had 1 million in debt. However I could have 9 imps out weeeee! fire burn!!!!

Ah, yes, good ol' perma-debt.

[DougGraves]

6 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

The big MMO of the previous years before CoH was Everquest.  At that time in EQ you would literally take an hour running across the continent to meet up with your friends.  You could wait another 30 minutes on a boat if you needed to get to the next continent over.  And you needed to meet up with your friends because, with only a few exceptions, you couldn't really solo and make progress.  The holy trinity was a real thing, and it was really a holy quartet because you needed a mana/pump class keeping the mana users full of energy.  It was also standard to need a crowd control class so your team could focus on 1 enemy at a time.  And the best tank in the game (warrior class) had the LEAST amount of agro (taunt) of any class, so everyone had to manage their own agro by joining a fight late or wiping threat, etc.

 

I came from Asheron's Call that had none of that.  Out of the box it was solo friendly, you ran fast, there was no healers or tanks.  It was fantastic.  But as a melee I could attack or heal myself - no super powers.