Why I keep coming back to a 20-year-old game

[FFFF]

I like this game. Even though there is a lot of competition for my free time, this game still occupies a good percentage of that. If I think about it, the reasons I keep coming back comes down to these reasons:

 

1. Costumes / Concepts - the costume creator have held up pretty well. There are other games with great character customization, but the COH costume creation process is still very solid. I like that you can span the look from Silver Age heroes, fantasy characters to MCU-style heroes and villains. There are very few games in which you can get an idea of a character in your head, a name, a look and then you can largely recreate that character in game. I don't think I'm alone in this, and the idealization of a concept seems to be important to many of us. I wish the current devs lean into this a bit. Some of the other servers have definitely brought some incredible capabilities: customizable henchmen/pets, asynchronous costume pieces, etc. But overall, I'm largely satisfied with what we have on Homecoming.

 

2. Teaming - the absolute best and worst situations I've encountered in gaming have happened during a COH team-up. I've had the horrible PUG team-up. I've also had transcendent experiences that led me to make new friends, and inspired me to sort of copycat characters I've been impressed with. Some of the best team-ups were combinations that I felt wouldn't work and yet they did, amazingly so. Some teams synergized so well that enemies melted before us and no one could remember any hit point bar dipping below full. COH was the first MMO that implemented the sidekicking system, and later exemplaring. This was a MMO innovation that was copied by other games. I hope one day the HC devs can finish the Looking for Team system that would allow players to join teams mid-TF or mid-mission. I think teaming shows off COH at its absolute best (and sometimes, its absolute worst haha).

 

3. Casual Dad Mode - I'm seeing World of Warcraft and even Diablo 4 start appealing to the casual gaming demographic. Dungeons can be soloed and the leveling up is relatively fast. For as much complexity as there is in City of Heroes (looking at you Incarnate system), the game has always been casual friendly. Start the game, choose a mission and play for 10-20 minutes or so. I like that I can play for 2 hours or just 5 minutes if I choose, and still feel I can get things done in-game.

 

Anyways, it's great to have this game to come back to.

Edited September 2 by FFFF

[Jacke]

There's also:

 

4. The Price is Right  😺

[arcane]

Crippling dopamine addiction mostly

[Triumphant]

All of the above are true for me.  You can add the fact that it still runs on my jalopy of a computer.

[Apogee]

7 hours ago, Jacke said:

There's also:

 

4. The Price is Right  😺

 

Come on down!

[cranebump]

1 hour ago, Triumphant said:

All of the above are true for me.  You can add the fact that it still runs on my jalopy of a computer.

Yerp. I run the thing on a laptop most of the time. 

[srmalloy]

22 hours ago, FFFF said:

There are other games with great character customization, but the COH costume creation process is still very solid.

And even back on Live, CoH stood out in that the character customizations that were in the Paragon Store (or unlocked as veteran rewards) were unlocked account-wide, instead of being something you had to buy on a character-by-character basis -- and, even more attractive, your costume choices were entirely cosmetic, having nothing to do with your powers, instead of your stats being bound into the gear so that you outleveled it and would have to throw it away unless the game supported some sort of morphing feature that let you apply the appearance of a particular costume piece to the gear you were actually wearing (and didn't use up that item in the process, so when you outleveled that gear, you'd have to buy the piece you wanted again, and again, and again as you leveled or geared up).

[laudwic]

On 9/1/2024 at 8:59 PM, FFFF said:

 

3. Casual Dad Mode - I'm seeing World of Warcraft and even Diablo 4 start appealing to the casual gaming demographic. Dungeons can be soloed and the leveling up is relatively fast. For as much complexity as there is in City of Heroes (looking at you Incarnate system), the game has always been casual friendly. Start the game, choose a mission and play for 10-20 minutes or so. I like that I can play for 2 hours or just 5 minutes if I choose, and still feel I can get things done in-game.

 

Anyways, it's great to have this game to come back to.

 

This is 100% the main draw for me.  Secondarily, I generally can just move forward and fight the next mob.  I know I can do the quest by myself, and I can do it all.  There is no artificial thing preventing me from accessing part of a map or interacting with an object.  

 

This is my, I need to turn my brain off and be distracted from all the other stress in the world, game.

[caradoc1979]

CoX has been the most casual, fun, customizable, relaxing, social-friendly, action-packed MMO I've ever played - that DOESN'T require a ton of time per gaming session. It hits all the sweet spots, and free to play! Go Casual Dad Mode 😎

[srmalloy]

I have no way to prove it, since those decisions are closed off behind any number of doors, but I suspect that one of the things contributing to NCsoft shuttering CoH was that its cash shop was deliberately designed with account-wide unlocks, so a player would only ever buy a costume set once and be able to use it forever on all their characters, instead of having one-shot individual costume pieces on NCsoft's own cash shop, where they could bury players in microtransactions that would pay directly into an NCsoft account (presumably using their 'NCcoin' currency), instead of having to filter back through Paragon Studios and bulk up their bottom line, and represent a continuous source of revenue while choking off player choice (since if you bought a one-shot costume piece, then added it, if you went back later and replaced it with a different costume piece, changing back would mean you'd need to buy it again, or buy it again if you wanted it on a different character). That's where NCsoft makes their money from all their F2P MMOs -- an ongoing stream of people buying one-off gear before they move on to another game. The retention rate CoH had was considerably at odds with other MMOs of the time.

[Luminara]

The freedom created by the complexity of the Invention system in conjunction with the archetype and pool design, as opposed to classes with skill trees and gear.  Player-defined attack chains and a wide range of utility options, instead of pre-defined abilities with little variance.  The grand scale of design in zones, which give the impression of being in a world, rather than being on a world map.

 

And butts.

[Oz The Elderly Gaymer]

12 minutes ago, Luminara said:

The freedom created by the complexity of the Invention system in conjunction with the archetype and pool design, as opposed to classes with skill trees and gear.  Player-defined attack chains and a wide range of utility options, instead of pre-defined abilities with little variance.  The grand scale of design in zones, which give the impression of being in a world, rather than being on a world map.

 

And butts.

 

Well... butts are important.

[Mopery]

For me, playing any game always comes down to one thing: Fun.

When it's no longer fun, then I find something else to do with my time.

I still have fun in CoH, mostly making character alts these days.

The hardest part after years of altitis is, "Which one to play today?"

[jprewitt73]

It's comfort for me. I first played this game back in 2005 - 2010 when I had my first child. She is in college now and it's fun to go back to the beginning and play something I have so many fond memories of. 

[Neiska]

For me it’s the minion/pet builds and ATs. I’ve always enjoyed such classes in games, and this one has multiple versions of them from MMs to Crabberminds, controllers and more. 
 

It just scratches my pet lover itch.

[Teklord]

The simplicity and the complexity both have me very happy with COH. The complexity has me theory crafting when not playing and the simplicity allows me to play when tired.

[Uncle Shags]

There's so much to love... 

1. Min/max theorycrafting insanity 
2. Truly unique powers, sets, and combinations that enable a staggering number of possibilities
3. Lack of predatory game design (artificial limits, treadmills, grinds, p2w, bait and switch, etc.) 
4. Variety of playstyle and pacing options (solo vs full 8, tips vs story arc vs tfs, range vs melee, glass cannon vs tank, etc.) 
5. Unmatched character creation options (linked backstory, costume, powers, emotes, and role playing (light or heavy)) 
6. Mature player base (old fogeys unite!) 
7. Nostalgia (the log in music is like an old friend) 

The only issue for me is I like it too much. 

 

[biostem]

I got kind of burned out on all the high fantasy MMOs that came out around the time CoH came out, and it was nice to be able to look however I wanted, instead of having to look like whatever my gear dictated.  Besides that, CoH is very solo-friendly for an MMO, so I can play at weird hours and still make at least some progress if I can't find a team...

[Doomguide2005]

20 minutes ago, Uncle Shags said:

There's so much to love... 

1. Min/max theorycrafting insanity 
2. Truly unique powers, sets, and combinations that enable a staggering number of possibilities
3. Lack of predatory game design (artificial limits, treadmills, grinds, p2w, bait and switch, etc.) 
4. Variety of playstyle and pacing options (solo vs full 8, tips vs story arc vs tfs, range vs melee, glass cannon vs tank, etc.) 
5. Unmatched character creation options (linked backstory, costume, powers, emotes, and role playing (light or heavy)) 
6. Mature player base (old fogeys unite!) 
7. Nostalgia (the log in music is like an old friend) 

The only issue for me is I like it too much. 

 

All this times a gazillion!

[OverkillEngine]

The game also still outdoes most modern MMO games in the subtle QoL features like not having to stop to loot every single mob lest one miss out on a drop with an extra +1 to Awesome, and by being able to CALL questgivers instead of having to trudge back to them for every mission forever. And even the first implementation of sidekicking was leaps and bounds ahead of other MMO's at the time.


On that last note, I never understood the obsession most MMO designers have with artificially restricting friends from grouping with each other. For a genre that is inherently social to some degree, adding barriers like that feels unwise at best.