CoH must have sucked

[nihilii]

14 hours ago, Sovera said:

This love for grind and boredom and slowness is 100% nostalgia with the gloss bad memories get.

For me, the idea of playing a game I find boring is bonkers. "Bad memories"? In leisure time? Why not switch to a different hobby?

 

People are different in what they enjoy and in how they enjoy things.

Grind to you, good pacing to me. Leveling up felt like an achievement. Moving through danger zones without travel powers required some involvement.

 

It all takes part in setting an atmosphere, and MMO "mythology" builds off these things. Like the popularity of Frostfire and Atta, the thrill of finally reaching a new zone, especially the fabled Peregrine Island. Soloing an AV meant something to the point people doubted claims of doing so.

I like the theme park orientation of modern CoH just fine. I liked I23. I like the Homecoming changes pushing it further. It's a different experience. It might be an experience with more widespread appeal. In fact, it's overwhelmingly likely it is. Afterall, WoW built its 10 millions playerbase off embracing the theme park route before anyone else even thought of it.

 

But it's not an objectively superior experience from a qualitative point of view, because certain aspects of the "grindy" experience are missing. Especially community-wide positive externalities, arguably the meat-and-potatoes of a massively multiplayer game.

[Murcielago]

I started playing in beta and it was rough. I couldn't figure out how to play the game until around Issue 3 lol. I had a triple ice blaster that was so crappy and I couldn't figure out why. Turns out I was slotting for every aspect of a power rather than acc/dmg. I distinctly remember someone telling me I was a terrible blaster. CoH definitely sucked back then lol. 

[EmmySky]

8 minutes ago, Murcielago said:

I started playing in beta and it was rough. I couldn't figure out how to play the game until around Issue 3 lol. I had a triple ice blaster that was so crappy and I couldn't figure out why. Turns out I was slotting for every aspect of a power rather than acc/dmg. I distinctly remember someone telling me I was a terrible blaster. CoH definitely sucked back then lol. 

Lol I remember thinking well it takes end red, rech red, range, dam and acc therefore I must be supposed to put one of each in there.  My first was storm/energy def, remember when there were diff enh for range and for cone?  I cant tell you the number of times I managed to buy the wrong ones in DOs, but by the time I got to SOs I had that figured out because back then it was an expensive mistake.

Edited December 15, 2019 by EmmySky

[Abraxus]

I do recall that trying to save up for that first full set of SOs with my very first character, just seemed agonizing.  There were a lot of powers that were running with some DOs, and some SOs into the mid-thirties, until I began to hit that point where I achieved some financial independence.

[tidge]

6 hours ago, Mr. Wallet said:

 

No, again, you can't just go play your own game the old way, unless you never want to team with anybody until 14...

Allow me to jump in (very early) to this post. *IF* you can find a group of like-minded players who will team with you, it is perfectly possible to run Flashback missions that return the feel of the slow grind through missions/TFs as long as you select the specific limitations of the flashback. It isn't going to return you to the pre-Enhancement Diversification days, but if you want to eliminate Temporary/Travel powers and enhancements (e.g. from IO sets) you absolutely can do this.

 

Do I have a desire to send my Energy Melee/Invulnerability tanker back through the Legacy Positron TF in this manner just to relive what it is like to finish a story under painful circumstances when everyone else on the team had dropped the TF because of boredom? Not really. It was something of a triumph for that character at the time... but that time has passed.

[DougGraves]

8 hours ago, Mr. Wallet said:

No, again, you can't just go play your own game the old way, unless you never want to team with anybody until 14,

 

There are not good team options level 1-5.  Starting at 5 hollows works well for teams.  And when hollows teams are advertised during busy times they seem to fill.  People just rarely advertise them.

 

Starting at level 8 is positron 1.  That comes up a lot.  Which is at least a change from DFB.

[Mr. Wallet]

My point was that it's not fair to your team to play something like posi 1 without at least Ninja Run. You're supposed to be at the mission, helping. This is why in classic CoH even if you could tolerate not having a travel power at 14, you should really pick it up then anyway. The devs kept all new primary/secondary power picks out of level 14 specifically so this would be less frustrating to do.

 

But there is a new secondary at 4, when you now get your travel powers. Another "the game wasn't designed for that". It's not just the faster and easier pace I dislike, it's that the overall game design kind of spiraled out of control and nothing seemed to have really deliberate reasons behind it anymore, and that's a great example.

Edited December 16, 2019 by Mr. Wallet

[EmmySky]

I never take p2w travel and I never use temp travel given from missions, and I am not any slower than some others on teams.  The one time I was so slow I missed an entire mish was because of slow zoning (computer needed a reboot).

 

I dont lead teams, did that way more than I wanted back on live so I am happy to join someone else's team.  I am happy to run at whatever pace is set, speed runs or slow old fashioned read the text style.  Nobody has ever dictated to me (on HC) that I should take or not take certain powers.  (Other than someone helping me with a build I was unfamiliar with).  

 

I notice in LFG chat people advertising for literally any type of run you can imagine.  Arcs, stories, mish, radio, speed, tfs...it seems to all be available.  I understand what some people are saying, about it being harder to find certain playstyles, and you certainly can't go in-inherent fitness, but from what I see you can pretty much run any way you want, and I think thats what some other people are trying to point out.

 

Happy hunting!

[DougGraves]

3 hours ago, Mr. Wallet said:

 Another "the game wasn't designed for that". It's not just the faster and easier pace I dislike, it's that the overall game design kind of spiraled out of control and nothing seemed to have really deliberate reasons behind it anymore, and that's a great example.

 

I agree that a lot of the game now feels not designed, it is a fresh coat of paint hiding a crack in the wall.  The game has accreted over time rather than being designed.

[Machariel]

Even with all the streamlining tools that we have today, I still don't enjoy levels 1 to 25 very much overall, even when exemplared down from 50.   So I'm extremely glad that it's now thoroughly optional if I so choose, and I'm making more characters and seeing much more of the game's content - at all levels - because it's now so easy for me to roll up a character to level 50, kit them out with a full set of IOs, and then I feel like I can almost grab a new character for whatever I want to do.

 

I'm sure I'd feel differently if I had started playing the game from the very beginning, but I didn't, and back on live (as a college student) I only ever had 2 or 3 characters in as many years that I really felt like I got to play.  Now I have a solid dozen in six months and I'm a Real Adult (TM).  So while I wouldn't go out and say that early CoH "sucked" I will say that if I were forced to go back to those times I probably wouldn't play at all.  YMMV. 

 

But of course the fact that we are playing at all is still totally remarkable. ❤️

[Lines]

5 hours ago, DougGraves said:

 

I agree that a lot of the game now feels not designed, it is a fresh coat of paint hiding a crack in the wall.  The game has accreted over time rather than being designed.

This has pinpointed my exact feeling in words I wasn't finding myself.

 

I think a lot of MMOs suffer from this, over their lifetimes. CoH needs a coherent 'vision', and for all its elements to mesh with that vision. At the moment, there is a dissonance that has emerged over time.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

On 12/15/2019 at 2:07 AM, Mr. Wallet said:

 

No, again, you can't just go play your own game the old way, unless you never want to team with anybody until 14, or just grind Death From Below to 14 absolutely every time you roll a character. I mostly played controllers, tankers, and defenders, so soloing was boring as hell at those levels. I already tried to pre-empt this point about the "you don't have to do it personally" sentiment in my first post. In a lot of cases you absolutely do have to do it personally, because this is a multiplayer game. When everybody had to do it the old way, you could find pick-up groups in King's Row or the Hollows or wherever. But when you are the only asshole who didn't even take Ninja Run by level 11, and you can't find any groups in south Steel Canyon using Broadcast or the searching for team feature because most people are not looking at those for teams on Homecoming, it is entirely reasonable for the team leader to kick you because you used the LFG channel to get picked up from 2 zones away and it's going to take you over 3 minutes just to get to the mission. That dynamic is broken. If you want to play with other people and not be disruptive, you must have Ninja Run or better when you want to stop running Death From Below. Please don't pretend that the old game is still around for me to enjoy and everyone gets it exactly how they want.

 

And to the 2nd point: you can't properly accuse someone of seeing things through a lens of nostalgia if they already literally told you that their reason for quitting, at the time, was because the game stopped being that way. Unless you're saying I played with inherent fitness for a month or two and then in November was blinded by my nostalgia for September?

 

Dodging purples made me feel special when I had a hero in the 20s with invisibility and recall friend. A lot of those now-useless powers like Team Teleport were utility pick-ups that were rarely used, but felt really good when they were. That was gameplay, in a very literal sense, because like all other gameplay, they were problems that could be dealt with to varying degrees of success and expediency. Maybe it's not the gameplay most people wanted, but it's gameplay I wanted, and gameplay that we had, and I loved it. It was fun as hell.

 

You're totally entitled to your opinion, and I've already made it clear that I know that lots of people thought Stamina was mandatory. I thought I also made it clear that I didn't feel that way because, like I said, I rarely took it. The offensive ATs that I didn't play as often, particularly blasters, did struggle with endurance, and I certainly took it on a few characters when it was clear I was going to have to slot End Reduction on a large number of powers to keep up. But it's not like the designers never tried to play their own game, and never saw how much endurance there was. They knew what game they were making, and I "got" it, even if most people didn't. If you're running out of endurance, just... don't use the less-efficient powers, as decided by the situation, until you recover some? Maybe I'm expecting too-hardcore gameplay out of an MMO. Or maybe I'm the only one who actually expects the game to have been designed for people to fight white minions more often than purple ones.

 

It's wonderful, and I mean truly moving, that I get to play any City of Heroes at all. But Issues 8 through 13 were absolutely the pinnacle for me, and that's not nostalgia; I was bitching my unpopular opinions about this on the forums all the way back in the day.

You know I feel compelled to ask why wouldnt you use a travel power? Is it due to RP, because as an RPer I do get concept over meta, however especially on support toons, recall friend, stealth, and super speed by 14 was basically expected meta for supporting a team and making things like TFs go fast. Hell even my blasters, scrappers etc who I regularly ran TFs with tended to take those if they fit within the RP concept. fortunately since a lot of my characters are mages or psions all those powers easily fit into the concept.

 

and now days well most of us are using double xp to zoom through early content even if running mishes or street sweeping. aint no one got time to waste 3 min getting to a door mish that will take less then that to finish unless its a clear all mob map.

 

If you want a thematic group that doesnt use travel powers etc that shouldnt be hard to create a static SG team that meets up a few times a week to play like. Ive seen a great rise in that very approach on HC many people are doing such, so seek out some like minded and play how you want. Because yes when you pug you cant control who you get and if you are dead weight thats a you issue not a game issue. Bad players/character builders do exist and you seem to be coming off more as a bad player that is mad that others are not willing to dumb down their approach to what you are comfortable playing like.

 

I lead TFs almost every day I play. and its not uncommon for there to be those who are in fact useless to the part because they are slow, dont have powers that let them be more adaptable and useful to a myriad of situations, etc. But only when they start QQing like you about how they need to remake their build or yearn for an era when everyone couldnt grab a jet pack etc do they end up ignored and never allowed on my runs again. I dont demand people be good at the game, just good company.

 

I really am having a hard time understanding your actual position because you havent givena  good reason not to take a travel power early. Nor to forsake P2W. After all for science and tech and natural using things like jet packs to fly make more sense then having it naturally. Likewise  the hover board/skiff.

 

And why do you want to take so much time between door mishes anyways? because again if it was some kind of pride thing sneaking slow across a zone like the hollow, well as I always say people should not ever feel things like pride nor take a sense of accomplishment from gaming. Play for fun, not to boost your ego.

[DougGraves]

10 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

And why do you want to take so much time between door mishes anyways? because again if it was some kind of pride thing sneaking slow across a zone like the hollow, well as I always say people should not ever feel things like pride nor take a sense of accomplishment from gaming. Play for fun, not to boost your ego.

 

CoH is a set of mechanics concealed by visuals of superheroes, villains, and a city.  It only is fun for me as long as the mechanics are hidden by the visuals and I feel like a superhero.  So while I do not want the game to be a grind, I want the game to maintain the illusion that I am a superhero in a real city.  The whole game could be like AE - stand in a room and go through the same door to do missions - but it would lose its magic.

[roleki]

Way I figure, you have to have one hell of a game if people can volunteer to forego something so basic as a travel power and still have a good time with it.

[VV]

On 12/6/2019 at 7:06 PM, 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.

It suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked! I remember many times dying multiple times just trying to get to low-level missions. I remember even more times just having a staring match with your opponent as you awaited your two powers to recharge. 

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

23 hours ago, DougGraves said:

 

CoH is a set of mechanics concealed by visuals of superheroes, villains, and a city.  It only is fun for me as long as the mechanics are hidden by the visuals and I feel like a superhero.  So while I do not want the game to be a grind, I want the game to maintain the illusion that I am a superhero in a real city.  The whole game could be like AE - stand in a room and go through the same door to do missions - but it would lose its magic.

That is about as lacking in substance as a statement as Ive ever seen on the forums. It certainly isnt answering my very simple direct question, why wouldnt you take a travel power? The reason they made them accessible sooner was because as was brought up over and over, for characters from supermans flight to flashes speed are the core of their power set. A character like Angel of the X men is entirely his flight.

 

So aside from RP reasons, why wouldnt you take a travel power or P2W vehicle like the board which is applicable to just about any concept? I am all about immersion so you need to actually communicate rather then blather.

 

Nor act like using them is some kind of crutch. Ive done my fair share of wall climbing using ledges and air conditioners in KR with nothing but combat jumping. It has a certain novelty but its not something Id call fun.

 

So again I ask, why wouldnt you take a travel power or use a vehicle esque P2W power if your character doesnt have actual powers? Heck they added rocket boot and tech wing cosmetics back on live to again let those who didnt want flight to seem some inherent super ability be seen as device based. Within the lore of the game teleportation is tech based and every time you hosp youve used sucha  device so TP is very very much something withing lore that everyone has some access to.

 

 

[DougGraves]

46 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

That is about as lacking in substance as a statement as Ive ever seen on the forums. It certainly isnt answering my very simple direct question, why wouldnt you take a travel power? The reason they made them accessible sooner was because as was brought up over and over, for characters from supermans flight to flashes speed are the core of their power set. A character like Angel of the X men is entirely his flight.

 

It's like trying to explain beauty to an accountant who looks at art only as numbers in a spreadsheet.  You say my answer lacks substance, I say your question lacks a soul.

[Charistoph]

55 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

That is about as lacking in substance as a statement as Ive ever seen on the forums. It certainly isnt answering my very simple direct question, why wouldnt you take a travel power? The reason they made them accessible sooner was because as was brought up over and over, for characters from supermans flight to flashes speed are the core of their power set. A character like Angel of the X men is entirely his flight.

 

So aside from RP reasons, why wouldnt you take a travel power or P2W vehicle like the board which is applicable to just about any concept? I am all about immersion so you need to actually communicate rather then blather.

 

Nor act like using them is some kind of crutch. Ive done my fair share of wall climbing using ledges and air conditioners in KR with nothing but combat jumping. It has a certain novelty but its not something Id call fun.

 

So again I ask, why wouldnt you take a travel power or use a vehicle esque P2W power if your character doesnt have actual powers? Heck they added rocket boot and tech wing cosmetics back on live to again let those who didnt want flight to seem some inherent super ability be seen as device based. Within the lore of the game teleportation is tech based and every time you hosp youve used sucha  device so TP is very very much something withing lore that everyone has some access to.

 

 

I think the bolded and italicized parts are the exact reasons why they don't.  They don't have to spell it out as RP, but nevertheless, that is what it is: Matching the image of the hero to their expectations within the system.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Charistoph

[jubakumbi]

On 12/16/2019 at 6:43 AM, DougGraves said:

 

CoH is a set of mechanics concealed by visuals of superheroes, villains, and a city.  It only is fun for me as long as the mechanics are hidden by the visuals and I feel like a superhero.  So while I do not want the game to be a grind, I want the game to maintain the illusion that I am a superhero in a real city.  The whole game could be like AE - stand in a room and go through the same door to do missions - but it would lose its magic.

This is an awesome description.

To some people, it's about numbers, not the experience itself, which I also find a little sad.

[Lines]

Not to mention how niche the travel powers that we have are. Even throwing Jetpacks, Ninja run and Beast run into the mix, these still don't mesh with all that many character concepts. I'm very much looking forward to freerunning. I'm sure it will place last in the travel power effectiveness, but some of my heroes need that normality. I even quite like the idea of being closer to the ground, like ninja run - the city feels great to explore at that height. Yes, even the Hollows and The Rogue Isles.

 

One thing that CO did well was the variety of travel powers. Can't think of much else.

[Coyote]

On 12/16/2019 at 9:43 AM, DougGraves said:

CoH is a set of mechanics concealed by visuals of superheroes, villains, and a city.  It only is fun for me as long as the mechanics are hidden by the visuals and I feel like a superhero.  So while I do not want the game to be a grind, I want the game to maintain the illusion that I am a superhero in a real city.  The whole game could be like AE - stand in a room and go through the same door to do missions - but it would lose its magic.

 

This is actually the reason I really like Ninja Run compared to Superspeed... it's slower, but SS is so fast at high levels that details around you are a blur on your way to the next door mission. Sometimes slowing down on your way to the next batch of XP makes the game overall more enjoyable. It's not like we're getting awards for getting to 50 faster, after all.

[roleki]

56 minutes ago, Coyote said:

[...]It's not like we're getting awards for getting to 50 faster, after all.

True enough, unless you consider the opportunity to start a new alt that much sooner as an award.  

[Ulysses Dare]

1 hour ago, roleki said:

True enough, unless you consider the opportunity to start a new alt that much sooner as an award.  

Why on earth would you limit yourself to creating a new alt only when an old one reaches 50?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

7 hours ago, DougGraves said:

 

It's like trying to explain beauty to an accountant who looks at art only as numbers in a spreadsheet.  You say my answer lacks substance, I say your question lacks a soul.

If I was anyone else you might have a point but I am by far the hardest core RP advocate on these forums. I even pissed off plenty of other RPers by pushing lore based RP in a thread, and again when i pushed immersion RP by encouraging the RP community to make a habit of turning off their target window on the screen, turning off player and mob name displays under options, and basically said that is how real role players should be playing to be more in the games world rather then just playing it.

 

You seem to think your talking to some meta number cruncher. I live in Paragon when i log in, My characters know the streets and their home territory like few others. I can sit for hours at the bar in D  rambling on about the games history from the pov of having been there as the games one immortal character known in coh lore.

 

There is nothing about your posts that make you sound other then silly, the OP and title of this thread make you come off not as a lover of CoH but one of those who like to denigrate it while wearing a sheepskin of a true ardent CoX player.

 

In other words your claim to be some lover of the work of art that is this game rings quite hollow. Your poor attempt to deflect my simple question typical of one who finds themselves without real reasons to support their position.

 

In the game world of CoH even the most common citizen has access to mediport tech, This means no matter the origin, no matter the back ground concept of a character, teleport at the least is a viable travel power option. Likewise a hover board in a setting with such sci fi tech is basically just a scooter anyone could have, its not special, its not high tech, its not out of the realm for even john smith and ordinary joe to own one.

 

And trying to act like its somehow special to take far too long to get between missions again makes you sound silly. I mean yeah when I play something solo like elder scroll games I use mods to fully disable fast travel and then use mods to get a semblance of it back via magic spells and houses with teleport features.  Being a solo game if I want to spend endless hours exploring cool. as you said however when on a team the slowest person especially if every one else is getting to doors fast is dead weight. The way you sound in your posts it comes off as wanting everyone denied the option to travel fast, that you with rose tinted glasses yearn for an era where everyone had to waste precious minutes running around rather then actually playing the content.

 

You are in the arena with the wrong berk if you think your going to have a leg to stand on when it comes to using RP or nostalgia as excuses to justify head in the sand behavior.

 

But go on give me an example of a character concept that wouldnt under any circumstance have access to what in this setting be considered common and widely accessible technology? Because while its not the far future it is very sci fi, and if anything its the cars on the streets that are out of place in a city that has more in common with Star Trek and people being able to transport across the world casually.

[Charistoph]

I can think of several:

 

Magic: Arcane forces they have access to do not work with such tech or causes the tech to fail, so they go without.

 

Natural: "I hear that super powers are over-rated anyway" - Robin (Tim Drake), Young Justice

 

Tech: Too much mass/Tech is incompatible.

 

Mutant/Science: It gives me a rash.  It burns when I use it.  Whatever.

Edited December 17, 2019 by Charistoph