Grandpa, tell me about the old days...

[GastlyGibus]

Ran the Eden trial again today for the WST, and I realized just how much has changed from the old days. I started playing this game right around the time Inventions were added, so I'm not a veteran, I wasn't around from the beginning, and I don't know exactly what the game was like when it was first released.

So, anybody here who was around during those days, tell me about it. Was it good? Bad? Neutral? What do you miss? What are you glad was changed?

[Snarky]

you got here before me.  i bought the good vs evil edition and broke out of the Zig.  

[kito]

Way before me I joined in the AE expansion 

[Glacier Peak]

The Eden trial was used for farming if you can believe that. It didn't always have a timer. I enjoyed taking my Fire Tanker through the hundreds of Devouring Earth mobs, herding the many floors and burning them all down. 

 

The entire thing could be abused and geometry could be teleported through for a long time, like recently patched on Homecoming kind of long time. 

 

The trial used to always be bugged due to the NPCs at the end that needed rescued (which make for a delightful Easter egg of sorts in the Dr. Aeon SF).

 

I'm pretty sure it's the only place that you can farm Ambrosia.

 

And boy were those Crystal Titan Origin enhancements awesome! Especially before getting your hands on Hamidon Origin enhancements. They used to only exist between the 40s if memory serves me right.

 

Related note - the Abandoned Sewer Trial used to also be used for farming those Kraken. 

 

Edit: Oh Issue 1 is when I started. Exciting times!

Edited February 13, 2023 by Glacier Peak

[Crysis]

I don’t remember the old Eden Trial, but I do remember running around with a pack of other */Regen scrappers, all of us running perma-MOG.  It was glorious.  Unlimited +END, nigh-impenetrable +DEF and a teeny-tiny sliver of health.  You literally just ignored all your other Regeneration powers because you didn’t need them/couldn’t use them with MOG up all the time.  

 

But yeah…that’s a grandpa story.  It was OP as fxk.  Thus the skull crushing beatings Regen took from the nerf bat…repeatedly.

[Ambidexter]

I started in the beta, but stopped playing sometime around 2010 maybe? After CoV, after AE, before 2012.  My first kid was born in 2008 so everything's a blur after that.  Two things that stick in my mind:

 

Everything was slower in those first years. Literally, because you couldn't get your travel power as early, and also progress-wise.  I don't think Patrol XP existed even, so getting a character up to 20 and beyond was truly work. This is pretty normal in my experience with MMOs, before they get tuned appropriately, but it means that the MAJORITY of my memories from that time are lower level content.

 

The second was brought up already, but it's HERDING, before the max aggro limit.  I remember our team of 8 Rad/Rad defenders herding up whole maps with Enervating Field and Radiation Infection, stacking all those debuffs on hundreds of mobs before wiping them out (much like Vortex + Archons for any Starcraft players out there).  It was just really satisfying.

[nihilii]

I joined in the European beta, which was middle of I3, and I recall the game as a beautiful broken mess at the time.

 

As a Tanker, you could aggro literally hundreds of mobs, stack them on each other (as in, they'd physically share the same space, no collision), then oneshot all of them because (if I recall properly) the Tanker Gauntlet worked in such a way your single-target attacks had the tiniest AoE radius.

Also, no AoE caps. Burn obliterated everything, and the standard build advice for a Fire Tanker was to take Burn and Hasten and not bother with secondary attacks. You needed the power picks and slots anyway, no inherent Stamina at the time and no ED either, so it made sense to 6-slot Hasten for recharge, 6-slot attacks for damage, grab Focused Accuracy to hit stuff, and so on.

 

Blasters were ridiculously bad in comparison. Much lower damage than today with no inherent, no defenses, no fast snipe, crashes on nukes.

The power gap was so large between ATs and powersets. Many people chased the flavor-of-the-month builds, but I happen to think the trend was negligible compared to the *real* power gap. As in, given players of similar skills, you could genuinely have a single Tanker perform better than 4 Blasters.

 

There truly was some absurd power builds, and this was compounded by a relative lack of challenge. Outside of Hamidon, the fiercest foe you could face was a +2 Archvillain. Hardly the multiple AV fights with special mechanics we see today.

I know from reading other players things were even more zany before I joined. And the mad times lasted for a couple issues longer, too. It was a fun era of the game, where each issue would bring radical gameplay changes, somehow slowly shaping this fun but batshit crazy power fantasy simulator into a legit game system with engaging balance.

[dtjunkie]

Back in my day one of the most popular ways to level as a lowbie was to street sweep on a team in Perez Park. And you couldn't just e-mail influence to yourself. Oh no. You had to get a buddy to help you do as many 99,999 transactions as either of you could stand. We didn't have fancy capes or auras, and if you wanted to get anywhere you had to walk your butt from the yellow line to the green line in steel canyon. And god help you if you got the defeat 10 CoT in Kings Row mission. You had to take the 30 flights of fire escape up to the rooftop or pray to god you found a high level kinetic with inertial reduction. And if you made a bad build choice, that was it. You just had to deal with it or re-roll.

 

[Shred Monkey]

We were all newbs at the beginning, so I might have a bit of this story wrong... if someone has first hand knowledge of this, please feel free to correct.

 

The first level 40 (when 40 was the max level) used superspeed to cap defense and multiple patches of caltraps for damage.  Since then, caltraps got nerfed to a longer recharge so you can't have 6-7 patches up at once, and superspeed no longer gives defense.

 

Edited February 13, 2023 by Shred Monkey

[Crysis]

30 minutes ago, dtjunkie said:

Back in my day one of the most popular ways to level as a lowbie was to street sweep on a team in Perez Park. And you couldn't just e-mail influence to yourself. Oh no. You had to get a buddy to help you do as many 99,999 transactions as either of you could stand. We didn't have fancy capes or auras, and if you wanted to get anywhere you had to walk your butt from the yellow line to the green line in steel canyon. And god help you if you got the defeat 10 CoT in Kings Row mission. You had to take the 30 flights of fire escape up to the rooftop or pray to god you found a high level kinetic with inertial reduction. And if you made a bad build choice, that was it. You just had to deal with it or re-roll.

 

 

Reminds me….I recall when the TV Respec trial was finally released.  Up until then, you were stuck with your build/power choices once you chose them during a level up event.  So if you chose poorly, too bad.

 

I wasn’t yet a forum regular in those days, so eagerly jumped onto a TV trial with a couple of my original toons that were borked beyond recognition.  I’m talking 6-slotted Acrobatics levels of borked.  I was so excited playing that trial at the prospect of a) surviving it (it was initially quite challenging) and b) getting my respec token so I could rebuild the thing with any different powerset I desired.

 

Of course, I’d learn quickly that you could only respec your power pool choices and your slotting.  Not your primary/secondary powers.

 

Was still a godsend but not quite the respec I envisioned.

 

I also remember when they introduced CoV and there was, at the time, a lot of misinformation and/or wishful thinking being spread around the forums.  I had the mistaken expectation that CoV would introduce the concept of a “personal arch-rival” for any heroes, a player character toon that would randomly show up as a personalization feature in your mission arcs to PvP you during an otherwise PvE oriented mission.  They’d get an alert in CoV you were running a mission and would be invited to insert themselves as the “boss” for that mission and then take you on.  Of course, this turned out to be all sorts of conflated misinterpretations of what became the Nictus/Void Hunter special critters when a PB/WS would be on the team coupled with the marketing for PVP zones.  But it was a really fun idea to consider, however impractical it would have been, not to mention the absolute meltdown people would have that didn’t want to be forced to PVP in an instanced mission.

 

That’s where the boards I think have always played an important role in any MMO….spreading rumors, gossip and “what ifs.”  Some of them actually become features over time.

 

I also recall the good-old-days of herding entire maps or even entire zones’ worth of street trash, having a Kinetic Fulcrum Shift them all at once and destroying everything with a couple of full Fulcrum’d Nova’s or Inferno’s, the Burn Tankers picking up anything left.  You had to be careful about how many you applied Fulcrum to at the time as if you hit some magical upper limit, the buff icon’s would totally fill the screen and you ran the risk of crashing everyone’s game clients as a result.  Many a time I’d be in a herding mission and someone would do that and I’d log back in lying in a dumpster or on top of phone wires in the Wolfie mission lol.

Edited February 13, 2023 by Crysis

[Marine X]

Ah, the good old days.....

1) Debt from level 1, lots of debt, plenty for everyone.

2) Not understanding how difficulty settings worked ( rep asked how you wanted the city to perceive you, I chose INVINCIBLE, ouch, why are they all purple? )

3) No Capes for you, only Statesman gets these, period, for a while, and that costume, you are going to just have to live with it.

4) Influence  and Enhancements is all you got, no salvage or recipes, nope, and you'll like it, bunch of real poor heroes, scraping by to afford enhancements

5) Only 5 archetypes: Blaster, Defender, Controller, Scrapper and Tanker.

 

 

[Frostbiter]

Back in the old days everyone got directed to Perez Park then the Hollows. Atlas Park and Galaxy City had missions we assumed but no one ever got sent to them. No, you got sent to Perez Park to defeat 500 Skulls and then to the Hollows so you could become intimately familiar with running from the hospital to the Hollows over and over again.

[PoptartsNinja]

Back in the old days there was no Hollows, and Vahzilok were terrifying because 'toxic' wasn't a damage type.

 

Back then, 'toxic' damage was untyped which meant it bypassed all forms of defense and resistance.

 

 

Edit: Oh yeah, and back in the day most Rikti were nudists.

Edited February 13, 2023 by PoptartsNinja

[ChzBoi]

...ya'all can't tell me it wasn't a thing of beauty when a tanker did the "WholeZoneHerd" to a side of a tall building and the blaster did the "LeapOfFaith" off the top, hit the ground, drop to 1 life, then hit NUKE.......glorious......

 

...and that first day I saw a Keld in a mission on my team....and kept trying to target it!...........(wait...I still do that)...... 🙂

[Greycat]

Started in i3.

 

So. yeah. The whole "it was glorious" bit was fun... if you were the tanker. Maybe the emp following them. For anyone else on the team - basically being told to stay back and let the tank handle it - it was boring as hell. It was superhero "stand around and chat." Pick a blaster to nuke when the tank got back, go to the next floor, do it again. I could do *that* on IRC without paying a sub.

 

Blast from the past for those remembering how sidekicking/exemplaring went:

"You are getting too far from your mentor."

"Your mentor is too far away!"

"You are getting too far from your mentor."

"Your mentor is too far away!"

 

There were times I was *just* on the outer range and it seemed Superjump was... *exceptional* at filling your chat window with that on repeat. 🙂 Yes, mentor/exemplaring was 1:1... and heaven  help you if your exemplar for the task force you'd been on for a few hours lost connection. Too high, you'd get auto-kicked.

 

Of course, once you hit... I think it was 38-41 (obviously once PI was introduced,) you could get *bombarded* with tells asking you to help sidekick for a farm (for max XP.) You could get decent INF thrown at you for that. (Or offering the Spelunker mission. I never asked for INF for that, and *still* got gifted millions every time.) Of course, if you wanted to actually play the game, you'd have to go on hide to avoid all the tells.

 

Taxibots were known and loved. Especially in the Hollows. (Warshades were welcome too... fly to the mission if you had Nova, or teleport there, and start teleporting teammates.)

 

the Hollows also taught you aggro radius and dodging. Unless it was just being laggy. Which was often. And would see you run face first into a pack of purple enemies that weren't there a few seconds ago, but you just found yourself in the middle of... and would have to sprint back from the hospital... in Atlas. The fastest route from point A to point B was very often not a straight line.

 

Newbie races along the rail lines!

 

The Tram actually going where the LED sign above said it was... on, off, on, off, switch lines...

 

"Woo, I hit 20, time for Stamina!"

"Woo, 22, I can get SOs!"

[Uun]

I've been around since I3. To my knowledge the only change to the Eden Trial is that HC increased the level cap to 50. On live the trial capped at lvl 41.

[Go0gleplex]

Had just gotten my Tank to 50 when they started the numerous nerfs and power adjustments; lost that sense of 'Hero' when I went from handling aggro for a dozen to barely surviving 7...and group wipes increasing across the board. 

 

The Perez Tree Maze was a nightmare, especially when low on Inspirations, the healer toast, and health bar flashing red as you were either escaping or just trying to FIND the mission entrance. 

 

A lot more diversity in mob types within zones than there is now it seems...and story lines were less fixed than they seem to be from contacts. 

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, dtjunkie said:

And god help you if you got the defeat 10 CoT in Kings Row mission. You had to take the 30 flights of fire escape up to the rooftop or pray to god you found a high level kinetic with inertial reduction.

This was why you learned the skill of jumping up the side of a building using the window ledges.

[Seed22]

Been around since just before i6(but was a little one back then, so really it was my pops and older brother who'd been around). I remember the horrible days of "you're too far from sidekick"

 

I also remember the old naked Rikti 😛

[MoonSheep]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

Started in i3.

 

So. yeah. The whole "it was glorious" bit was fun... if you were the tanker. Maybe the emp following them. For anyone else on the team - basically being told to stay back and let the tank handle it - it was boring as hell. It was superhero "stand around and chat." Pick a blaster to nuke when the tank got back, go to the next floor, do it again. I could do *that* on IRC without paying a sub.

 

Blast from the past for those remembering how sidekicking/exemplaring went:

"You are getting too far from your mentor."

"Your mentor is too far away!"

"You are getting too far from your mentor."

"Your mentor is too far away!"

 

There were times I was *just* on the outer range and it seemed Superjump was... *exceptional* at filling your chat window with that on repeat. 🙂 Yes, mentor/exemplaring was 1:1... and heaven  help you if your exemplar for the task force you'd been on for a few hours lost connection. Too high, you'd get auto-kicked.

 

Of course, once you hit... I think it was 38-41 (obviously once PI was introduced,) you could get *bombarded* with tells asking you to help sidekick for a farm (for max XP.) You could get decent INF thrown at you for that. (Or offering the Spelunker mission. I never asked for INF for that, and *still* got gifted millions every time.) Of course, if you wanted to actually play the game, you'd have to go on hide to avoid all the tells.

 

Taxibots were known and loved. Especially in the Hollows. (Warshades were welcome too... fly to the mission if you had Nova, or teleport there, and start teleporting teammates.)

 

the Hollows also taught you aggro radius and dodging. Unless it was just being laggy. Which was often. And would see you run face first into a pack of purple enemies that weren't there a few seconds ago, but you just found yourself in the middle of... and would have to sprint back from the hospital... in Atlas. The fastest route from point A to point B was very often not a straight line.

 

Newbie races along the rail lines!

 

The Tram actually going where the LED sign above said it was... on, off, on, off, switch lines...

 

"Woo, I hit 20, time for Stamina!"

"Woo, 22, I can get SOs!"

 

started in issue 3 also, think you’ve summarised the era really well

 

pre-IOs archetypes used to be much more defined, e.g for an STF you’d want certain powersets to have a good chance of making it. i remember completing it in 40 minutes with a really switched on team and that a really good run time back then

 

rad defenders were in strong demand for AV battles

 

sirens call in 2006-2007 was *the* place to be. it would be swarmed on both red and blueside, people would make alts just for sirens

 

having a granite tank on the team was such a noticeable thing

[UltraAlt]

14 hours ago, GastlyGibus said:

I started playing this game right around the time Inventions were added, so I'm not a veteran

 

You are a Coh Veteran if you started playing before the sunset.

 

14 hours ago, GastlyGibus said:

So, anybody here who was around during those days, tell me about it.

 

Well, I wasn't there when the CoH launched, but I was in game for about about a week before Episode 2 dropped.

I had probably last least 2 characters on every server at that point and 5 or 6 on some of them.

 

Yeah, that was great. It was the https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Rularuu_Invasion_Event_2004

 

 

Portals spawned all over the City and Rularuu were pouring out of them.

I don't know what server I was on, but heroes quickly learned that destroying the portals stopped them from pouring and we were all over them.

I don't think it was a 1/2 hour from when I logged into whatever server I was on that we had managed to shut down the portals at least to the zones that I could safely get to at the time - which probably wasn't any higher than Steel/Skyway.

It was awesome.

 

And then when Issue 3 dropped: "The Council coup d'etat of the 5th Column was seen ingame for only one day following the release of Issue 3. Groups of both 5th Column and Council troops spawned in every zone and fought each other to the death." - https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Issue_3

And I took some of my street level characters to fight the massive mobs as they battled each other.

Another glorious even. I think this still happens sometimes over the factory district of Atlas. Or maybe I just have flashbacks when I'm over that way... who can tell?

 

14 hours ago, GastlyGibus said:

Was it good? Bad? Neutral?

 

But to be honest, before the invention system, it was super hard to slot enhancements and even level in some situations (mostly because of not having enough influence to slot enhancements).

You know, I don't even know if there were goldfarm spammers before the invention system. I'm not even sure that really kicked into full spam mode until they started giving away the free 14-day passes (I can't even remember when that happened).

Oh, but, yeah, off track. I had a empathy defender that was stuck in the mid-teens somewhere. The xp was divided up by who did the damage, so while I was keeping the team up and running, they were leveling and my squishy was struggling to have enough end to keep healing them. I can't tell you how much characters I watched out level that character and ... see yah...you're too low level for us.... that character didn't have enough influence to even half slot training enhances.

I had to put a bunch of characters in the teens on the shelf at that time. I focused on my scrappers and some some tanks and they made headway.

 

I was there in the CoV Beta.

[Screenshots just before the shutdown of the CoV Beta]

 

I made CoV characters to check it out, but, honestly, I purchased CoV to support the game ...well... kind of ... but mainly to get the extra character slots and access to supergroup bases.

 

Of course, back then, you have to run around in supergroup mode and farm prestige to kept your base open (rent once a month! what?) and pay for base items.

 

I remember running lots of door mission and street-sweeping teams were still a thing back then. I remember plenty of rampaging in Perez and the streets of Steel. Good times.

 

It's hard to believe it was a full 2 years later when the invention system dropped.

That was the real turning point for me, because then I could craft, and craft I did. And, suddenly, those characters that were left behind were making bank and slotting up was no longer an issue.

I think they had changed the xp for being teamed up with other people by that point as well. You no longer had to do the arresting to get a decent share of xp.

That was the big high point for me because I could make any kind of character I wanted to and they wouldn't be gimped.

I was making level ones, trading salvage until I had enough to memorize a recipe and then they were trading crafted IOs on the market at level 1. Yeah, that was fun after the squishy suffering before that.

 

And...I'll stop there ... because you know the story at that point.

 

Edited February 13, 2023 by UltraAlt

[ZemX]

5 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

pre-IOs archetypes used to be much more defined,

 

Bingo.  I think a lot of people would point to ED as the big mistake, but I think it was really Set Bonuses.  Making them additive bonuses instead of enhancements meant that you could add things your powersets didn't have, most notably, of course, being soft-capped defense to ATs that didn't even have armor powersets.   But what powersets (and ATs in general) DIDN'T have was as important as what they did have in setting them apart from one another.

 

That's really the only nostalgia I have for the old days.  You could still put together a team from any collection of ATs and powers, but the team needed to work as a team.  After Inventions, it was just eight people soloing together much of the time.

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

"Woo, 22, I can get SOs!"

Oh yeah...  After the Faultline revamp, Penny Yin's arc was crazy popular because you could get access to Yin-O's (SO equivalent) as early as lvl 15.  With potentially weeks and weeks of play ahead of you to reach 22, they were a godsend.  At least on Freedumb, Faultline could sometimes get as busy as The Hollows with teams running that arc.  Many people would then go on to run Doc Delilah and Agent G.

I must have fought Nocturne. Castillo, and Sands as many time as I did Frosty.  Actually, almost nobody fought all three in the final mish of Agent G's arc.  You let 'em beat on each other first then went after the survivor(s).

Story arcs were a big thing, and leveling by farming was largely frowned upon.  (I mean people did it, but they were a minority even after autoexemp put an end to Mentor Tetris.)

That's another thing, multiple accounts.  Between character limits (per server) and not having /altinivite, I had a 2nd account to get more characters and to be able to invite myself to my personal SG.

[Captain Fabulous]

Was in the original beta, but didn't really start playing regularly till just after launch. The game was very different, but great nonetheless. There was a lot more AT synergy than there is today, as soloing anything above +0 or +1 was hard for everyone, except maybe Scrappers. But yeah, no travel powers till level 14. Capes weren't in the game till later, and even then you had to do a level 20 mission to unlock them. Spent a lot of time Hovering across Kings Row and the Hollows because it was simply too dangerous to Sprint to all those missions you got at the opposite end of the zone with all the purple critters. Level cap was 40 and PI didn't exist yet.

IMO, at least in terms of gameplay, I3 was perfection. I4 is when all the nerfs started, and I will die on this hill: ED broke the game. It was never the same (read: as good) after that. Jack never quite understood that playing superheroes should be a vastly different experience than playing D&D. It was a very difficult time, watching him slowly dismantle what was previously such a great game to play (I mean, it was still fun and I still played, but it just wasn't the same; you never really ever felt "super"). IOs came something like 2 years later, and one could theoretically make up for what had been taken away, but it required a LOT of grinding for INF and/or playing the market, and created a huge divide between the casual and hardcore players in terms of raw power, something the game still struggles with now.

[El D]

4 hours ago, Marine X said:

Ah, the good old days.....

1) Debt from level 1, lots of debt, plenty for everyone.

2) Not understanding how difficulty settings worked ( rep asked how you wanted the city to perceive you, I chose INVINCIBLE, ouch, why are they all purple? )

3) No Capes for you, only Statesman gets these, period, for a while, and that costume, you are going to just have to live with it.

4) Influence  and Enhancements is all you got, no salvage or recipes, nope, and you'll like it, bunch of real poor heroes, scraping by to afford enhancements

5) Only 5 archetypes: Blaster, Defender, Controller, Scrapper and Tanker.

 

 

 

All of this. It's wild to look back at how vastly different the game was.

 

I've been around since release, 2004. The early Issues were very different. Perez Park being constantly inundated with street sweeping teams, then the Hollows being added and having to do the lowbie death run through the map every time you died in a mission. Seeing the Winter Event for the first time ever (and getting pancaked by the Winter Lord). Not even having Badges in the game - or the ability to respec your character until Issue 2. Kheldians actually being a rare sight in-game and being fascinated by the transformation powers they had as 'the new cool thing.' Actually being able to fight the 5th Column as an enemy group - in low-level missions no less! The FBSA contacts actually having missions and a purpose, and getting different ones if you started in Galaxy City or Atlas. Freakshow Dumpster-Diving and the original Praetorians just being 'the Freedom Phalanx, BUT PALETTE SWAPPED AND EVIL' ruling over a wrecked Paragon City that was the same as every other 'alternate ruined Paragon' Portal Corp map.

 

One of the biggest things IMO though, is just how slow the game used to be. Traveling around took so much longer back in the old days (between movement speeds being much lower and having to be level 14 before ever getting a travel power) and the combat was not remotely as kinetic and fast-paced as it is now. The tanker herds an entire group (or map), the blasters spam AoEs like Fireball or Rain of Fire, the Defender and Controller stack buffs on the Tank to make them the next best thing to immortal long before IOs were even a thing, the Scrapper scraps, and... that was about it. It was very static, rinse-and-repeat old-school MMO 'just stand here and use your powers.' The fast-paced nature of iTrials and speed-running TFs was not even a glimmer of a thing. If you signed up for an original Positron or a Synapse back then, you were going to be doing that for multiple hours minimum.

 

I sometimes wonder what a pre-Enhancement Diversification iTrial might have looked like - or if modern iTrials would still be doable with pre-ED numbers and buff options. It'd be an interesting experiment to say the least.

Edited February 13, 2023 by El D