Your play style: what's different 20 years on?

[Techwright]

Those who've been here since the beginning or nearly so:  Looking back, what's fundamentally changed regarding your playing style and habits?

 

 

When I first started out, particularly looking back to the first Winter Lord event, I spent a lot of time climbing the fire escapes in Kings Row to get to the monsters and villains up top.  I always seemed to attract too much attention on the ground, so I acquired hover as quickly as I could and contented myself with taking the very long, but very safe journey across the top of a zone.  Every cent of INF was precious, and I'd usually have to let some enhancements go red before I earned enough to replaced a few at a time.  I did almost all play with my best friend, and an occasional friend or two, and focused on mission givers.  Initially I never did a PUG for months, and consequently didn't do task forces for quite some time.  The one PUG exception was the Frostfire mission, which I ran almost daily.  I lost count at 500 Frostfire missions, but suspect I did a couple hundred more.

 

Now, I always get Ninja Run from the P2W vendor in the tutorials, and leap from place to place, barely touching fire escapes.  INF was only a problem on my first character in Homecoming, but even that was better handled than my early days in the OG game.  I now have a dedicated auction character, and email 50 million INF seed money to myself whenever I have a new character starting.  I buy all enhancements as the slots open, and run the upgrade button with each level.  When I'm ready to change to IOs at level 38, I've already bought all of them on the auction house several levels before.  I almost never duo, but run PUGs constantly and focus on the task forces, incarnate stuff, and the instances like DFB and DIB.  I only rarely talk with mission givers. 

 

[VashNKnives]

Aggressive. I/Os, combining inspirations, teleporters, reduced impact in failure... basically more fun in most instances because I like mowing down hundreds of mobs, but also I have had less epic team encounters because of how OP some of us make our characters for normal content.

 

I remember several old school battles where we were on pick-up teams in normal content barely surviving or where someone leverages their powers to save from team wipes. Those seem fewer and further apart these days.

Edited January 31 by VashNKnives

[A Cat]

Honestly I probably play around the same. I should probably branch out some. Still haven't played any controllers, dominators, corruptors, or any epic AT. Pretty shameful I know. Instead I'll probably just make scrapper #681.

[Force Redux]

Biggest gameplay change: I don't run with a set SG/friends anymore.

 

Also: I worry less about INF and stuff. Market is better now than on Live.

 

I actually play Blasters now. And enjoy it!

[Snarky]

AR baby.  AR

 

[nihilii]

I used to optimize, optimize, optimize. Not necessarily in terms of running the most efficient XP/second farm, but in the sense of playing the best possible way within any situation, nonstop. Also in an aggressively "solo" manner, even on a team; i.e. leading the charge, snatching loose aggro, and so on. Making an effort to do things well and do things fast.

 

Nowadays I'm much more casual about it all. I don't team much but I'll happily make room for others players to be the star. Mostly I solo and take my sweet time. I will do dumb challenge stuff on occasion, but I've untethered from caring about the clock.

[cranebump]

As far as toon selection and such, I play very much the same. Melee and ranged DPS mainly. I avoid powersets where I have to track, target and individually buff others because I don’t feel I’m quick enough for that (sets like force field, for example). I don’t key bind. Still. I know how. Just don’t do it. That’s the same as before, as well. Only real differences now are: I rarely lead teams (used to run them a lot); I do more crafting and use more sets (since they’re affordable); I write more missions than I ever did on live; I actually solo more now than on live.

Edited January 31 by cranebump

[Cyclone Jack]

I was all about Blasters back then, especially my Ice/Ice blaster.  It was the perfect pairing for me, and I created the perfect build for me (186% Recharge).  I had more hours on that one character than all of my other characters combined, by far.

 

This time around, while I did remake the character, I decided to shelve them and try out a variety of other characters.  I have found that I've really been enjoying Controllers and, to a lesser extent, Dominators.  I think Dominators would pair up perfectly with me, but the End use is just through the roof; though I'm still working a few of them up towards Perma-Dom to see if that fixes things.

[MoonSheep]

fast paced, full of inspirations 

 

ran a great speed TF train last night with a PuG and a good friend - i like running lesser played content

 

on HC i play a lot less alts than on live, just two

 

i do want to roll a tank and a nature def sometime but don’t want the responsibility of keeping people alive

[KC4800]

Definitely more into MM and Controllers now. My badger is Illusion/TA Controller. I have 4 MM fully incarnate and working on another. When I need a quick infusion of inf I play my tanks.

 

I rarely play my stalkers, defenders or brutes. Can't find a way to like dominators.

 

Working on a new scrapper with a gimmicky finishing move. I have one corruptor with fold space which I almost always just solo with. I have an AR/Dev I love as a blaster, that's all I need.

[Water]

I make a greater variety of AT's with different powerset combinations. Slotting has improved massively with the wider availability of higher level recipes. It is far easier to make a rounded character which can have a reciprocal effect on good teams.

 

The community is also far better than it used to be, even though it was pretty good on live, there is a greater concentration of devotees now so I am more sociable.

 

Edited January 31 by Water
spelling

[PancakeGnome]

I think more about increasing the power of the group than just myself. 

Like I used to play more tanks / blasters that were individually very strong. But now I understand a single strong character isn't anywhere near the power of a decently strong character that ALSO has a big buff on their group (my main right now is a bubble defender that can softcap everyones defenses by being around, along with defenders 20% damage increase to group with assault).

It's the same with new appreciation for debuffs and just more team minded play.

When you get multiple people with that view in mind.... the power levels of the team shoot through the roof. 

[Skyhawke]

I actually know what I'm doing now. 😅 I played Everquest for a hot minute before I realized it wasn't the usual rpg I played. COH was my first real shot at playing a MMO. I got better as time went on, but I was also playing on dial up (gasp!) so, lag and disconnects kept me from playing different ATs to their potential a lot of times. Near sunset, we got dsl and I played more, but was totally clueless on the invention system and was just figuring out the Incarnate stuff. Since then, I've played lots of other MMOs, figured out how to play different roles in a team or solo and hopefully am a better player for it. 

Edited January 31 by Skyhawke

[sbloyd]

So very, very different.

 

Back then, proper slotting was only a vague idea in my mind.  I mean, I understood the changes once the diminishing returns system went in but didn't delve too deeply into how things worked.  IOs weren't a thing, then, nor were set bonuses and stuff.  Just TOs, DOs, and SOs.  Even if they were, I was living paycheck to paycheck in terms of INF income.  Now?  I have a much firmer grip on the enhancement system, I have access to IOs and to sets, and I have very deep pockets to fund that stuff.  The result is that my characters are much more efficient now than they were then; sure, I could jump my Inv/SS tanker into a large group during street sweeping and survive... now I can tank enormous groups of Rikti on the MSR no sweat.

 

Speaking of the MSR... back then, I was very reticent to join groups.  I was in the Legion of Valor SG, but didn't interact with them much. It was one of those "Someone saw me in AP without a SG and invited me" things.  I would join a PUG from time to time, but *never* for endgame content.  I didn't feel ready for prime time.  I never participated in a raid until Homecoming, when Marijuanaut was recruiting for an MSR; he was a great raid leader and made it very easy to follow.  Not too long after I joined my first Hamidon raid under Veracor - again, very good lead, very easy to follow.  I've led some MSRs myself since then, though not recently.  My fear of endgame content is much lessened thanks to M and V - and thanks to the previous point about enhancements, as I feel like I'm less of a liability to the group.

[SeraphimKensai]

Hmmm

 

I tend to pug about 90% of my time, when during live, I'd run about 90% of my time with my SG.

 

A guilty secret of mine is that I had never leveled up my own mastermind past lvl 20 on live. At the time the AT didn't really appeal to me, even though I knew about @Sandolphan's bind system back then. Since HC came back in 2019, I have maybe 8-10 lvl 50 masterminds, where I've even experienced triple boxing them  in content to great effect due to seeing @Neiska do it one time like 3 years ago, which caused me to strike up a conversation on the logistics of it. It's still not my favorite AT by any means, but I finally get it after all these years.

 

 

[Lockely]

Back in the day, I almost exclusively played redside. I had picked up CoH and had a scrapper I enjoyed but I could never get into leveling blueside because of how absolutely grindy it was from the get-go. 

Redside, out the gate, had so much more story focus, so it was there I crested my first 50, my Claws/Dark Stalker (I had a habit, still do, of picking underpowered or thematically fun but mechanically not great combos). I almost exclusively played with a small handful of friends, and frequently dabbled into the PvP zones. I didn't worry too much about builds, I just played for fun and if that meant I didn't have the perfect SO set (IOs weren't a thing), then so be it.

 

These days I am much more focused on features like the Mission Architect and ensuring my builds are, if not optimal, at least functional in both solo and a team context, with at the very least standard IOs if not proper sets. Love my Bots/FF MM, love my War Mace/Shields Brute, and while I'm probably still never going to play a Blaster, I have really enjoyed my Sentinel instead. I might even get a Crab Spider after all these years, one of my long term goals back then that fell off when my friends stopped playing around i14. I have loved the incredibly storylines they began to add to both blueside, and later with goldside, and that's sincerely helped me get more characters leveled up. Still don't super love grinding though.

[dtjunkie]

10 hours ago, A Cat said:

 Instead I'll probably just make scrapper #681.

 

The heart wants what it wants!

[Perfidy]

In my early days (mid-issue 3), I almost never solo'd. Now, I solo more often than not. That's probably the biggest difference. 
Back then, there were no invention sets, so just the ability to withstand the attacks of a few npcs allows for a different way of solving certain in-game problems. Not sure if that should be counted to answer the question, though. 

I do know that back then, I was much more methodical. Looking for a safe place to run to if I need to; planning out which npc to pull, and planning out what I'd do if I got the whole crowd. Now, I just plow in; with inventions sets and mids, I'm able to make my characters sturdy enough to withstand most situations. So, while the playstyle has changed, I think it has more to do with the sets then any maturation process as a player. 

[jprewitt73]

11 hours ago, Snarky said:

AR baby.  AR

 

 

[Seed22]

A lot better than preshutdown.

 

Fully IO’ed 50s that can usually dp their initial role and then some form of tanking or CC. I also am way into DPS than preshutdown, where I had 25 50s all as trollers and fenders. Now I have 100 50s of which 60 at least are some form of blaster/scrapper/dom/stalker or tank/brute.

 

My team play has become a lot more aggressive, leading the charge and very much on a go go go mentality. Not always the greatest but hey.

[UltraAlt]

On 1/30/2024 at 10:46 PM, Techwright said:

When I first started out, particularly looking back to the first Winter Lord event, I spent a lot of time climbing the fire escapes in Kings Row to get to the monsters and villains up top.

 

I remember the Winter Lord in Kings Row (at least I think this happened in Kings Row and not Steel).

The Winter Lord as  showing up in five places. Once I figured that out, I recruited for a team, flew until I found the Winter Lord at one of the five locations, and started teleporting the team in. We would fight until it was down, then onto the next. I did that for entire play sessions with my mid-teens defender that ...

 

On 1/30/2024 at 10:46 PM, Techwright said:

Every cent of INF was precious, and I'd usually have to let some enhancements go red before I earned enough to replaced a few at a time.

 

... didn't even have enhancements in all their powers - before Wentworths and Invention system were added -  because ... back then ... you only got influence based on the amount of damage you did to enemies. Being a empathy defender and working to keep keep teams running, they didn't do anywhere near the amount of damage of other characters on the team.

 

Once there was a Wentworth, well .. then it was time to make all those damage dealers pay ... not long after that they evened out the distribution of Influence among team members. But I still kept marketing and still do today.

 

On 1/30/2024 at 10:46 PM, Techwright said:

I did almost all play with my best friend, and an occasional friend or two, and focused on mission givers.  Initially I never did a PUG for months, and consequently didn't do task forces for quite some time.  The one PUG exception was the Frostfire mission, which I ran almost daily.  I lost count at 500 Frostfire missions, but suspect I did a couple hundred more.

 

I pretty much PuG until a RPG (pencil-and-paper, tabletop, whatever people are calling it these days) gaming friend started playing, but I still PuG'ed more than teaming up with with my RPG gaming friend or two or soloing. 

I played the CoV content because I paid for it. I paid for it much more to get a supergroup base and extra slots for heroes than because I wanted to play a villain.
I tried to play Praetoria content but I thought it was horrible. I didn't enjoy the gameplay. I didn't enjoy the maps. I get enough dystopia in the real world.

I leveled some heroes and villains to 50.

 

Now I'm more prone to lead TF or Trail teams than I am to run content teams. Content missions get bogged down with the hunts, and many people don't want to deal with that. Sometimes I'll run police scanner missions to get the last bit of xp to level up. Sometimes I'll run Newspaper missions to save up mayhem missions on multiple characters and run a mayhem mission night.

I team up with a couple of people that I used to RPG game with a couple of nights a week.

I'll join TF, trail, or mission teams.

The only content I play on the CoV side is the newspaper missions to save up the mayhem missions.

It isn't worth my game play time to make a Praetorian character. The DEVs start forcing their storeline into the mainstream with First Ward and Night Ward at any rate. I can game in those areas without having to deal with Praetoria.

I have leveled I think 3 hero characters to 50. I don't intend on making any more (thought I might level 1 more up to 50 so I can slot a Contiguous Confusion proc).

I tend to play levels pre-35 unless I'm on a team with friends running higher-level content.

 

On 1/30/2024 at 10:46 PM, Techwright said:

Now, I always get Ninja Run from the P2W vendor in the tutorials, and leap from place to place, barely touching fire escapes.

 

I remember the days when you couldn't trade influence even to your own characters.

So there was a big change when that happened.

Before the Sunset I had two tactics.

Make a character, transfer influence, level up enough to get the tutorial in Wentworths, and start marketing. They would keep gaming and running missions.

Or make a character, and see how soon I could make enough loot by selling salvage until I could make enough on that character to make the first IO to sell on Wentworths, then stop leveling (even had the XP turned off from the get go), and see how much money they could make on the markets without leveling up.

oh... I'm getting to the P2W ....

Back then, I'm pretty sure you only had 10 slots for enhances per character and only 10 slots at Wentworths as well.

So marketing wasn't so time consuming ... unless you did it across a bunch of characters.

The P2W was by subscribing, getting add-on packs, and, eventually, the microtransactions that lead to me cutting off my subscription and quitting City of Heroes almost exactly a year before the Sunset.

 

Now, I was told about the P2W the first time I logged in by that old RPG gaming friend from before that convinced me that it was safe to play on Homecoming.

So when I make a new character, after slotting all the micros I always did at character creation, I go to my email and pull out a couple hundred million and go to the P2W. I get a running power and flight power based on character conception.  I get my prestige enhances, unlock team insps, get all the teleportation powers. Sometimes I get one of the free P2W ranged powers if it is in character conception. Recently, I've tended lock out the basic recipe drops and certain kinds of insps. Based on character conception I'll get some P2W temp attack powers. Sometimes I'll get a vanity pet, a buff pet, etc. I always start out with 8 hours of double XP (and don't get any more of that unless I'm in some group that is leveling up together.

 

As for travel, I probably have more more characters that fly than anything else, but I still get all the travel pools across my characters. Now sometimes I don't even bother with getting a travel power and just go with the P2W fly power or the dayjob flight pack from the Shadow shard (for fighting in flight) for long distances, and one of the 3 P2W run/jump powers for short distances.

And, traveling around the City,  used to travel on foot or use a long-distance travel power. I was never one to do a bunch of running up fire escapes. I would be, and still am, more likely to window up up the side of a building with or without combat jumping. Now, well, people are alway in a hurry it seems. They don't want to race across the zone with a team if they don't have to. So much team transport power, base portals, bases full of teleporters, and O-portals readily available to most players. At least one time a saw a team use team transport power to go to a mission about 150m away.

 

The City seemed so much bigger when you didn't get a long-range travel power until level 14 (? been so long) and there was no such thing as supergroup bases.

You had to evade mobs or fight as you went unless you had hover.

So much fun avoiding mobs.

I remember being part of one of the "Naked Noob" races where characters wearing the minimal amount of clothing ran as level 1's from Atlas to Peregrine without using the trams. Challenging, yet do-able.

 

On 1/30/2024 at 10:46 PM, Techwright said:

INF was only a problem on my first character in Homecoming, but even that was better handled than my early days in the OG game.

 

I had the experience many people had.

I ran into someone that had been on Homecoming longer than I that found out that I had played before the Sunset and gave me a couple 10 million....

 

On 1/30/2024 at 10:46 PM, Techwright said:

I now have a dedicated auction character, and email 50 million INF seed money to myself whenever I have a new character starting

 

...then it was off to the /AH - since I no longer had to travel to the Wentworths. No more parking in Steel at Wentworth or the University so I could trade and craft. I could teleport to a base easily enough to craft and return to the same spot. And then it seemed so much cheaper to buy the crafting table power from the P2W than to earn it.

 

Most of my characters ....

 

 

On 1/30/2024 at 10:46 PM, Techwright said:

I buy all enhancements as the slots open, and run the upgrade button with each level.

 

Yeah, the upgrade button is great.

The market has been good enough to me that I can slot SOs starting at level 5.

I upgrade every level or two.

 

Then I think back to that teen-level defender before Wentworths and IOs were added to the game that didn't even have enough to buy enough Training enhances to fill their enhancement slots.

 

On 1/30/2024 at 10:46 PM, Techwright said:

When I'm ready to change to IOs at level 38, I've already bought all of them on the auction house several levels before.

 

I usually add IO's as a level up. Slotting Performance shifter: chance for +END at 17, Power Transfer: Chance to Self Heal at 18, and then a bunch around 27 dependant on archetype and character conception.

I've been buying a lot of card packs, so I'm usually starting slipping in some ATOs early on. I tend to slot Overwhelming Force sets quite frequently as well.

 

On 1/30/2024 at 10:46 PM, Techwright said:

I almost never duo, but run PUGs constantly and focus on the task forces, incarnate stuff, and the instances like DFB and DIB.  I only rarely talk with mission givers. 

 

I do probably 6-7 hours of 2-3 player groups most weeks.

I do far too much trading, but it is kind of addictive I guess.

I don't run 50's. I have enough characters so that I can pull one in the general level range for the content. I hate overpowering content myself, and that is partially because I really hate when level 50's come in to sub-level 35 mission and ruin a lot of the fun as they tend to far outpower the content and throw off the game play that newer/lower-level characters are experiencing.

While I'm marketing keep my eye out for sub-50 level teams that are trying to fill.

I'm ready to play the game (non-market-wise), I'll look for a team that is recruiting, I'll recruit for one, or I'll run solo - but I prefer to team up.

PuG for the win!

 

 

[Wiseguy]

The way I build my characters has changed:

 

1- Procs are amazing, doubly to triply so on some specific powersets.

2- Much more open to frankenslotting. (used to just use full sets and thought I was some kind of mad genius for it)

3- I'm addicted to the Teleport pool please help me.

 

The way I play those characters has changed:

 

4- Much more willing to play characters without easy access to status protection. (blasters, defenders, etc)

5- The best defense is a great offense, in most cases.

6- Losing is fun! My goal is now to meet challenges I can't overcome so I can theorycraft ways to beat them as efficiently as possible.

7- Badging is strangely addictive. I have a couple characters with 500+ badges and one coming up on 1,000 (I know these are weenie numbers to some of you folks, but I just recently got the badgelist popmenu!)

 

The way I play with others has changed:

 

8- Hosting teams with the community is fun. Even if it's just PI radio grinding.

9- More willing to try new content for the first time without obsessively researching it first. I never did Incarnate content on live for example because I was so anxious I'd mess something up and ruin it for everyone. Just jump in and ask questions! The community is as willing to help as I am, if not more.

 

One thing I'm hoping will change is my stubbornness in not wanting my builds to use temp powers like the Wedding Band. I also don't like my characters to depend on Inspirations for some reason, even though they're a core game mechanic. I think I'm really handicapping myself by not using everything the game has to offer; I just like being self-sufficient [for now].

 

And then there's the altaholism, but I think I'll just accept that.

 

[TheOtherTed]

Back before shutdown, I played in PUGs almost exclusively.  Nowadays, I'm strictly solo.  It may be my imagination, but I felt a sea-change in the player base a couple of years before shutdown.  Seemed like we had a new influx of players who treated CoH as if it were another bog-standard MMO - kids who couldn't check their aggro, who would eagerly blame "thuh tank" or "thuh healer" (whether the team had one or not), and who were unwilling to listen to seasoned vets who occasionally dropped a word of advice.  Beforehand, a team wipe was typically met with "lols" all around  and a jaunt back from the hospital.  After, team members wailed to the gods about the injustice of it all, often quitting on the spot with bitter, bitter words.

 

On the other hand, I've since taken one small step into IOs since I came back.  I used to run with SOs strictly, but now I slot workbench SOs around level 25-30.  Still not interested in set IOs or other fancy contraptions, but, you know, baby steps.

 

 

[Luminara]

[Curveball]

I keep trying to dodge roll.... o_O

Edited February 1 by Curveball