What Makes CoH Great?

[Hexquisite]

Agree so much with everything that's so far been said, but want to add - this is one of the few games where a good chunk of the other players have a concept behind their character. Even if they don't engage in active roleplaying, they usually have some backstory, or an idea of their character's personality, or something that isn't just "I wanted the strongest possible build." (And even then, that can often factor in to a character concept they had.) Outside of a dedicated RP server or guild, you rarely find that in other games, and it just makes every player character you run across seem bland, no matter how many raids or endgame bosses they've slaughtered. Even as anti-social as I am, I love talking with random people just to hear the ideas that sparked their character. I often, unintentionally, spend hours just hanging out in populated areas, reading backstories on whatever random players come by.

 

Which, I guess, brings it back to what so many others have brought up - the people. CoH was my very first MMO, way back in the day, and I think it may have spoiled me for the numerous games that came later. Not only are they seriously some of the most helpful, entertaining people I've encountered in an online game, the fact that we're all here, playing a decade+ old discontinued game, says something. What that something is, I can't quite iterate, but I like it.

 

Also, its one of the few games where I can run around punching Nazis. Simply shooting them just doesn't cut it. 

[Gremlin]

4 hours ago, Shivertongue said:

Also, its one of the few games where I can run around punching Nazis. Simply shooting them just doesn't cut it. 

Not only do you get to punch Nazis but you get to punch more than one type of Nazi!

 

Brilliant!

[ZeeHero]

COH attracts me for almost every non gameplay related reason. if there is a gameplay related reason to enjoy COH its not related to the combat system at all, its the fact anything is viable.

[Ulysses Dare]

23 hours ago, Shivertongue said:

Also, its one of the few games where I can run around punching Nazis. Simply shooting them just doesn't cut it. 

Punching Nazis just never gets old.

[Nemeroff]

Sometimes I want to be a healer/support character, sometimes operate MM like a marionette/puppet, sometimes shoot a rifle from a distance, sometimes be a Brute SMASH! sometimes a stealthy ninja.

Sometimes be an adventurer, sometimes a strong yet beautiful lady (think DC's Knockout), sometimes a cat, sometimes robot.

Fly, Run, Teleport....

Fire, Ice, Dark...

 

Nearly unlimited variety and customization depending on the current mood and/or trend as opposed to playing generic warrior #2.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Nemeroff

[00Troy00]

The game officially ended years ago, and the industry still hasn't come out with anything in the genre that can touch it.

 

How NC Soft cannot look at the lengths people are going to in order to play a game they shut down years ago and not see that there is a very real market for a City of X 2.0 is beyond me.

[Muppy]

I fell in love with this game almost instantly when I made my first character around the end of i2 (I plugged in one of my own characters cause he translated SO WELL into the game... and then dark/dark controller sets came out way later and THAT fit like a real glove). I played the game on and off and still get into those cycles, but every time I come back it feels like a warm hug. The combat feels good, teaming felt more lax (Want an all blaster team? Go for it!), and the people were generally nicer.

 

The character creator is great, power selection got better every time the devs came up with something, each issue got more and more grand, the release of CoV and Going Rogue were both great... It really baffled me when NCSoft shut the game down. This game is like a therapy session for me every time I get into it. Having a bad day? Play CoH/V. Stressed out? Play this great hero and villain game! Just want to escape for a few hours? Right here, baby.

 

It still makes me happy that we all can continue to have fun even after the shutdown. The fact that it's still here should be enough to tell NCSoft how damn strong the community is, and just how GREAT the game is in general. This game is one of the best MMOs I've ever played... It was the first to even get me into the genre. I look forward to seeing how this game will continue to grow over time.

[JnEricsonx]

It's enjoyable, character creation ALONE kept me playing for years, the fact that you honestly didn't need to kill yourself gearing up, just needed to grind up some money and maybe get a bit of luck instead of "I did this bleeping TF 20 times and still haven't gotten the ONE PIECE I need!"  My first character was a eng/eng blaster.  When I walked up to a guy and punched him, and he flew back 20 feet into a wall, I couldn't stop laughing for about 5 minutes.  I fell in love then.  Also, the community.   I just got given out of the blue 20 mill by someone, and all I said was I hadn't played in a few months.   Couple that with the people who don't mind you tagging along on a farm because their farm character is godlike, well.....who remembers those 2X weekends back in the day.  And now you can do that all the time.   Meanwhile, I tried to start up STO again after 6 years, and I'm drowning in what to do.

[ZeeHero]

It's good we are drowning in what to do during quarantine lol.

[ZeeHero]

4 hours ago, 00Troy00 said:

The game officially ended years ago, and the industry still hasn't come out with anything in the genre that can touch it.

 

How NC Soft cannot look at the lengths people are going to in order to play a game they shut down years ago and not see that there is a very real market for a City of X 2.0 is beyond me.

The industry far surpasses it ONLY in areas COH was never that good- what COH did well- it still does BEST, a decade and a half later.

[tidge]

For me, City of Heroes focuses on two main areas, and it excels in each by having many different areas of focus in each:

 

The first area of excellence is the dedication to genre (comic books). This is manifest in many ways: The costume options, the power sets, the zones, the fights, the animations, the missions.

 

The second are of excellence is the ability to play what you want, how you want. The different ATs allow so much variety by themselves, but even within a chosen AT with a specific primary/secondary there is a huge amount of possible variety because of pool powers, slotting choices. The Sidekick/Exemplar system is brilliant. The possibility of solo or team play is wonderful. The Flashback system was a godsend.

 

One feature of the game that I never fully exercised was the extreme amount of customizing that can be done within the world: It is amazing to me that we have more than the ability to customize the appearance of our toons and powers, but that we can create custom bases and missions. Players often ask for a lot of things that would otherwise break a game; I think it was rather clever that we kept getting things that we could modify that actually didn't change the core of the game.

 

I was a day 1 subscriber (no beta for me) through sunset. There are only a few major changes I actively dislike (nerfing Energy Melee because someone got punked when PVP was introduced) but I am extremely happy with where we are now. The Homecoming team has implemented many great quality of life improvements that have made the game even better.

[Peacemoon]

It has a lowish max level, and all content remains relevant. CoH has empty zones for sure, but very rarely unplayed content!

 

Many other MMOs have huge areas which are no longer played. Or content that was only released 6 months prior but is now worthless to run. The fact that everything remains viable to play, enhances the replayability and means that vets and newbies continue to still mingle in our beautiful city (or isles!). 

[ZeeHero]

On 4/15/2020 at 11:04 AM, Peacemoon said:

It has a lowish max level, and all content remains relevant. CoH has empty zones for sure, but very rarely unplayed content!

 

Many other MMOs have huge areas which are no longer played. Or content that was only released 6 months prior but is now worthless to run. The fact that everything remains viable to play, enhances the replayability and means that vets and newbies continue to still mingle in our beautiful city (or isles!). 

ESO also has all content remains relevant design- and it does it better than COH, but it was built using more modern tech and programming. in ESO your level means not so much since it all scales.

[Primantis]

On 4/13/2020 at 3:52 PM, 00Troy00 said:

The game officially ended years ago, and the industry still hasn't come out with anything in the genre that can touch it.

 

How NC Soft cannot look at the lengths people are going to in order to play a game they shut down years ago and not see that there is a very real market for a City of X 2.0 is beyond me.

 

 

This, I can only think of one MMO that held my attention for any reasonable amount of time after CoH officially ended.. And even that was mostly due to my guild (and even then, it was only 3-4 months)

 

I love the accessibility, I love the people, I love the ability to play casual or semi-casual, I love the costume creator and I especially love the endless amount of potential character builds and the AT system. That stuff really gets my brain juices flowin. I find the typical "Each class gets exactly the same stuff" boring as all heck.

 

 

[Jaguaratron]

On 4/4/2020 at 8:34 PM, MTeague said:

1) Before the Invention System, there was no such thing as "Loot".  With the Invention System, all loot is handed directly from the game to each individual player's inventory.  There are no "loot rolls", no instances where the players themselves need to decide "who gets what" with 1-99 rolls, no loot council, no need-before-greed, nothing.  And there are not specific places you have to go to get certain pieces of loot.  It's not "oh, you want Kinetic Combat Acc/DAm? it only drops from this one boss at the end of the third mission on this taskforce and it's only a 20% chance to drop at all, and if one drops, you're competing against 18+ other people who also want it."  In CoH, anything can drop anywhere.   Only real exception is purple recipes and they can drop from any 47+ content.

 

One of the biggest sources of drama / epeen conflicts in any MMO has been who "Deserves" what loot.

City of Heroes bypasses all of that.  It's highly improbable you'll even NOTICE what drops your teammates get, and if you covet a piece of it, too bad, it's assigned, ain't nothing you can do.  

 

2)  "Guilds" are not needed.  This goes right up there with #1, as one of the biggest sources of drama in guilds is the perception (be it accurate or not) of favoritism when it comes to loot drops, or in choices of what instances the guild would focus on for progression.  Super Groups exist, sure.  They can be fun, sure.  But because nobody absolutely NEEDS a constant pre-set group of 25 raiders to do any endgame content with, week after week, month after month, year after year, you don't have the same seeds of resentment forming over time like you might in WoW guidls or EverQuest guilds.

 

3) There is no Holy Trinity.  Meaning no disrespect to anyone's religious beliefs lol.  Here I'm talking about Tank/Healer/DPS concepts.  Sure, archtypes exist.  But you're not funnelled into pre-set configs of "This Raid requires 2 tanks, 6 healers, and 17 DPS, and at least 8 DPS better be Ranged DPS".  You can slap together ANY combination and get damn near ANY content done in this game.  The ONLY possible exception is some Incarnate Trials, and I'm not 100% sure of even those, really. 

 

8 Controllers?  Sure, go to town on ANY TF.  Lockdown City, and you'll all be buffed out the wazoo from the each other's secondary support trees, and there's gonna be so much containment damage going around it ain't funny. 

8 Blasters?  Some of you may take a dirt-nap at some point on the TF, but the Kills to Faceplant ratio will be verrrrrry high.  And if it's a high level TF, probably no one will even die if people are rocking enough set bonuses and making a passing effort to watch each others backs.

8 Defenders?  Try it sometime. No, seriously. Put together an All-Defender-Task-Force sometime.  Lulz as the "low DPS" class, banded together with force multipliers, steamroll over absolutely everything.

8 Tankers?   Sure.  It might be a bit of a slog as damage output isn't the best but ain't no one gonna die except the enemy.

 

Nobody NEEDS anybody.  This keeps people from feeling chains of obligation or "I have to put up with Bob's crap because he's our main tank / best DPS / best heals" and if he de-guilds we won't make it through the instances and then I'll never get those shiny pieces of loot I want.

 

Instead, people can focus on what's FUN.

A good character concept. 

A stylin' costume.

A good backstory.

Finding people you like teaming with.

Rolling in and overpowering the enemy Biff Bam POW style.

 

This is pretty comprehensive but you left out "8 Stalkers? Everything is dead instantly" 😛

[DeepRootz]

On 4/10/2020 at 8:28 AM, justicebeliever said:

I agree 100%.  The concept is why I play CoH instead of other MMO's.  The people are why I play at all.

I've never been a huge comic book fan, but I do enjoy the genre.  I came to CoH back in the day after watching the show Heroes (Net Flix binge watching session).  I found Coh from a google search, and saw they had the free 15 day trial, and the rest is history.

[triduum]

I know this game is the best I've ever played and here's how. I stopped playing a long time before sunset, but when I found out COH was gone, I felt a hole in my heart. Just plain LOSS. I still played other MMO's, but they were less. Every game came up less than COH to me.

 

When I discovered it was back on, I loaded up the game, and it literally felt like COMING HOME. And then I found out it was run by VOLUNTEERS who love the game, and made so many Quality of Life improvements that were sensible and useful (and fun!).

 

The three things I love best about COH have already been mentioned, but I will state them again.

 

1.) The community---you can find good people at any time who will group and help. My job has changed from 3rd to 1st shift and I've met decent human beings everywhere, from farm leaders to raid leaders to group leaders to GM's ( and especially group members).

 

2.) Almost numberless combinations of interacting powersets.  I play controllers, defenders and tanks. There are similarities within the powersets and AT, but also real differences. Yes I am an altaholic, and there's always something more and interesting to learn!

 

3.) People love to share their builds and how they work. Folks are still coming up with new ways to make the powers more effective and fun. I have learned a great deal from the forums and the discussions there. People are still engaged with this game and there is great theorycrafting and guides being created.

 

Lastly, I am grateful to be playing this game. I have liked other games and have enjoyed playing them, but being grateful is a whole +4 Mag of wonder.

 

So I am on and will be playing here. Period. Thanks!

 

[RebornRose]

For me it's getting to build not just my characters, but their stories as well.  I started playing just before I3, so I have some characters whose story I have been telling for years.

 

I took a break from hero MMOs after the shutdown, but eventually drifted to that other online game(the one set in Detroit), and I started recreating some of my characters., and continuing their stories.

 

I've been back for just a few months, and I've brought back some classics, and even had some new characters make the trek from Michigan to Rhode Island (and across space and time).  Why come back, because Paragon is home.

 

 

[Heraclea]

On 4/10/2020 at 12:53 PM, Shivertongue said:

Agree so much with everything that's so far been said, but want to add - this is one of the few games where a good chunk of the other players have a concept behind their character. Even if they don't engage in active roleplaying, they usually have some backstory, or an idea of their character's personality, or something that isn't just "I wanted the strongest possible build." (And even then, that can often factor in to a character concept they had.) Outside of a dedicated RP server or guild, you rarely find that in other games, and it just makes every player character you run across seem bland, no matter how many raids or endgame bosses they've slaughtered. Even as anti-social as I am, I love talking with random people just to hear the ideas that sparked their character. I often, unintentionally, spend hours just hanging out in populated areas, reading backstories on whatever random players come by.

There have been literally dozens of random characters I've made with little more behind them than 'I want to play powerset X' or 'Here's a joke name I thought up' that turned into quite effective and playable characters.  Back on Victory I created 'Betsy Ross' as a throwaway scrapper for a 4th of July themed costume contest.  She was Willpower because when she was rolled Willpower was the scrapper/brute set I liked best; she was Spines because, why not?  It turned out that Spines/WP is quite a potent combination when it gets going.  Was one of my favorites and best built characters from the old game.

 

Here I created 'Ice Minstrel' to make fun of Ice Mistral; that's what I read it at anyways.  She was Ice because what else was that name going to be.  She was Plants because the 'right' shoulders for Ice Mistral aren't in the game, so at least she gets shoulder spines.  This turned into a surprisingly effective blaster, with more control than most controllers.  I favor her for Hamidon raids, where her three ranged holds that do blaster damage work well.  She also solos fairly well for a blaster. with stealth.  Her backstory is a work in progress, something about the death of vaudeville.  Another random character that turned into a favorite. 

[Gremlin]

12 hours ago, Heraclea said:

There have been literally dozens of random characters I've made with little more behind them than 'I want to play powerset X' or 'Here's a joke name I thought up' that turned into quite effective and playable characters.

It's got to be a big plus that CoH makes it so easy to create a character. There are lots of archetypes and power sets to choose from and all the ones I've tried have worked out fine. Likewise, I've no talent for the visual arts but I can easily create a costume that looks reasonable. So I've managed to create characters to that feel unique, work well and look decent. Even if a character isn't awesome to start with I can always tinker with the powers and change the costume. That's pretty cool.