Talk about the "good ol' days!"

[Display Name]

Those old school CoT outfits totally rock!  Same with the old school Family!

 

How is it even possible that someone thought it would be a good idea to change the CoT from mysterious, robed individuals with eyes glowing under their hoods to something that looks like those ridiculous costumes you see on the runway at a fashion show?

Or the Family: grim men in dark suits that causes you to turn away for fear of them noticing you watching them.  Now, they're all happy and flamboyant.

[biostem]

13 minutes ago, Display Name said:

old school

Yeah... it's one of those increasingly common situations where "less is more" still holds true - adding more detail and being able to actually see what's under the hood, takes away a lot of their mystery.  That being said, even enemies that wowed you when you first encountered them, (I'm remembering the first time I saw 2 Malta Hercules merge into a Zeus), get a bit old after you've defeated dozens of them...

[Championess]

Back in my day we had to do a few hours community service just to earn the chance at a respec.  That's if you didn't miss the guy that ported under the reactor and ruined your day.  

 

And if you chose poorly you were Super Speeding uphill in the snow through Terra Volta.  We didn't have those fancy schmancy jetpacks these kids have nowadays.

[tidge]

nekkid aliens

[megaericzero]

There was a push later in the game's life to modernize a lot of things, including the enemy groups. You should see what they did to the Skulls. 😛

[El D]

They changed them because the enemy mobs from launch all looked incredibly dated after all the other graphical improvements to the game. Plus using actual player models for enemy groups allowed much easier modification for story arc content and provided functional costume pieces to sell for player use. 'This boosts the overall graphical quality of our game, allows for more content opportunities, and gives us more stuff to put in the cash shop' is a no-brainer for an MMO.

[High_Beam]

1 hour ago, megaericzero said:

There was a push later in the game's life to modernize a lot of things, including the enemy groups. You should see what they did to the Skulls. 😛

They ruined the look of the Warriors, so its not all win.

[TheMoneyMaker]

1 hour ago, El D said:

They changed them because the enemy mobs from launch all looked incredibly dated after all the other graphical improvements to the game. Plus using actual player models for enemy groups allowed much easier modification for story arc content and provided functional costume pieces to sell for player use. 'This boosts the overall graphical quality of our game, allows for more content opportunities, and gives us more stuff to put in the cash shop' is a no-brainer for an MMO.

It says a lot when the dated costumes look better than their update efforts.

 

[Display Name]

1 hour ago, El D said:

They changed them because the enemy mobs from launch all looked incredibly dated after all the other graphical improvements to the game. Plus using actual player models for enemy groups allowed much easier modification for story arc content and provided functional costume pieces to sell for player use. 'This boosts the overall graphical quality of our game, allows for more content opportunities, and gives us more stuff to put in the cash shop' is a no-brainer for an MMO.

I had to "thumbs down" this.  But only because of what *they* said and not because of you.  As far as the costume pieces...  Wouldn't it be nice if they offered the old school costume pieces alongside the new stuff?  Imagine creating some elderly wizard from classic fantasy fiction!  Or a Mafia boss type.  I've seen players do some pretty cool stuff with the CoT pieces.  But they piece something together that *actually* looks good.

 

This "keeping up with the Jones'" approach to costume design is frankly weak.  Follow your niche.

[Healix]

everyone died looking like a gingerbread man

 

 

The Blackwand was called 'the Hockey Stick'

 

 

The original Atlas Plaza

 

 

The original Paragon Map

 

 

The original Registration ID Card

 

 

 

[TheMoneyMaker]

47 minutes ago, Healix said:

The Blackwand was called 'the Hockey Stick'

 

 

The original Registration ID Card

 

 

 

I love the original hockey stick and registration

[Scarlet Shocker]

I'm old enough to remember when

 

• you had to earn your auras and capes by doing a mission
• Hover was mandatory just to survive the Hollows
• You had to run to Icon in Steel Canyon to get that 2nd costume because you didn't have your travel power
• Stairs were useful
• Inf capped out at six million and you could only transfer 99,999 at anyone one time*
• The most valuable Enhancements were Hami-Os
• The Hollows arcs were almost mandatory. The alternative was street sweeping
• Rikti Crash Site
• PVP worked (kinda)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*pretty sure it was 6 mil but I might be mis-remembering slightly

[Healix]

Only those who were in the beta version and issue 1 will remember the cows in the game. The were scattered in Perez park. They didn't move and had big eyes....when you attacked them, all they did was 'MOOO'. They were gone by issue 2, however you can still hear them in the PD Chalet area...those are not moose you are hearing!

[Water]

I missed beta and  2004 only acquiring adequate broadband in 2005 🙃  Apart from the enforced hiatus this is my go to game ⌨️

 

EDIT: Had been reading about it with hungry eyes since 2003 👀

 

Edited Thursday at 09:30 AM by Water

[Skyhawke]

<click> I'm temporarily invulnerable! Oops, ran out...don't punch me bro!

[Scarlet Shocker]

2 hours ago, Healix said:

Only those who were in the beta version and issue 1 will remember the cows in the game. The were scattered in Perez park. They didn't move and had big eyes....when you attacked them, all they did was 'MOOO'. They were gone by issue 2, however you can still hear them in the PD Chalet area...those are not moose you are hearing!

 

I never knew that. I remember posting about the invisible cows in the chalet on live and that turned into quite a long, and very silly discussion. But I had no idea there were actual cows in the game.

 

Maybe they were Skrulls.

[High_Beam]

OMG!  On Freedom, the Babes of War ran Costume Contests a lot and those 10 Million influence  prizes (which was a lot back then) took for-evah to transfer.  I do not miss that.

[Skyhawke]

2 hours ago, Water said:

I missed beta and  2004 only acquiring adequate broadband in 2005

 

 

I played on dial up til 2008. It was fine mostly, but a TF would see me get DC'd at least once when a lot of things were going on. 

[Demobot]

I remember when Hover was the slowest way to get anywhere. Standing still might have been a bit faster! 

 

Capes at level 20, auras at level 30!

 

Seperate monorail lines! That caused some headaches. 

 

For a brief time there was a bug that caused single-target Tank attacks to have a tiny AoE. If you had enough aggro enemies would bunch up and occupy the same space. You could hit dozens of enemies with a single attack.

 

Every now and then someone would drag some monsters from the islands in the north part of Peregrine Island down to Portal Corps (quite a lot of powerleveling was done at Portal Corps and some folks took it upon themselves to police player behavior). It wasn't too long before the devs added police drones to the plaza.

 

Speaking of powerleveling, there was a time when there were no aggro limits and no target limits on AoEs. A good Fire Tank could herd dozens of enemies into a dumpster, drop Burn and massacre lots and lots of Warwolves. Changes were eventually made to wolves in particular to make this less viable, and then eventually aggro and target caps were implemented. 

 

Man, things were very wild west back in the day. 

 

[Mopery]

I started the first week CoH was out, made an MA/SR Scrapper and really liked the original "Chun Li Style" foot-slaps to the enemy's face from Storm Kick. Now it's just a neat little twirl in the air with a kick.

[Skyhawke]

"Turd Monster" Stone Armor. 😆

[Uun]

I few weeks ago I ran the OG version of Maria Jenkins arc in Ouro and noted how refreshing it was to see the original versions of the Praetorian AVs and their followers.

 

 

[El D]

16 hours ago, Display Name said:

I had to "thumbs down" this.  But only because of what *they* said and not because of you.  As far as the costume pieces...  Wouldn't it be nice if they offered the old school costume pieces alongside the new stuff?  Imagine creating some elderly wizard from classic fantasy fiction!  Or a Mafia boss type.  I've seen players do some pretty cool stuff with the CoT pieces.  But they piece something together that *actually* looks good.

 

This "keeping up with the Jones'" approach to costume design is frankly weak.  Follow your niche.

 

Regarding the old school costume pieces being player options, the quibble there is most of them aren't actual costume pieces. At least not in any player-functional sense. A lot of  original NPCs are all single-piece models. AFAIK there is no separate pieces for 'top and bottom robe' for the original CoT, for example. Or the original Skulls, where the entire outfit - jacket, shirt, tattoos, skull mask, pants, boots, and even skin - are all just part of a single texture map. A lot of NPCs have warped, custom rigging, where multiple costume pieces are all linked to a single anchor point and cannot be used separately (and clip horribly with anything not part of the 'intended' outfit). Or parts that can't be recolored at all (5th Column, Council, Arachnos pre-VEAT, various signature NPCs). 'Swhy Homecoming has so many of the old mobs as costume powers that outright replace the player model, because that's the only way they're near functional for player usage.

 

Don't get me wrong, I fully agree that actually having access to those items as functional options would have been - and still would be - cool and allow for a lot of fun concepts in ways the character creator still doesn't offer. It's just getting them player usable that's the trick. If they'd been player options from the get-go we probably would have gotten updated versions rather than replacements, but that would have required the original devs to have designed them with 'players will want to use NPC outfits' in-mind. Which would have required a lot more work for the graphics and art team (reasonable hurdle!) but also been a design choice that Jack Emmert probably wouldn't have run with (much less reasonable hurdle).

[Frozen Burn]

• Oranbega portals would send you all over the map and never where you wanted to go until the RNG decided you were allowed access to the hall/area you wanted.
• The Hollows - you used to actually be able to EASILY find Outcasts and Trolls in Cherry Hills for the hunts and not have to wade through hordes of Lost, Skulls, and Hellions taking up the spawn points.
• Green Line and Blue Line trams - Had to run across Steel or Skyway to get from one or the other.
• Founders Falls had no tram and you had to only access it by the Talos gate.
• The only way to get to the Storm Palace:
  • Ferry from Talos to Peregrine
  • Travel across Peregrine to Center Portal Corps building for portal to Fire Base Zulu
  • Travel across FBZ to to get to the Cascade Archipelago
  • Travel across the Cascades to get tot he Chantry
  • Travel across the Chantry to get to the Storm Palace
  • "What? next mission is now in Atlas Park?"  reverse the trip, go to Steel from Talos, cross Steel to the other tram line to go to Atlas.  
  • "I gotta go back to the Storm Palace now?!?!"  ....ah, good times.  🙂 
• No vidiotmaps so you could literally spend an entire day trying to find your way out of the Perez Park maze
• Invasion of Rularuu at the launch of the Shadow Shard zones - nothing like creating a new character, spawning in Atlas Park and immediately get destroyed by a giant floating eye ball.

Although, I guess all these aren't what OP was referring to.... so uh, yeah, I hate the new look of CoT too.  Graphics quality is great, but the design of the robes is hideous.  They really need Serge at the Steel Canyon ICON to help.  😄  

[Vanden]

The good old days are now. We have it better today than we ever did before shutdown.