Things from Live I dont miss....

[Myrmidon]

7 hours ago, Heraclea said:

Supergroup prestige.

Mender Ramiel and Trapdoor.

I have to remember to invite Hera to every single Mender Ramiel arc my alts do from here on out.

[THEDarkTyger]

On 8/15/2019 at 5:14 PM, Abraxus said:

I have a healer these days, and I can vouch for the fact that they are not as prized as they once were.

Healers being prized didn't last long on Live either. Among those who knew what they were doing, at least. They were useful, but buffs and debuffs and control that could avoid the damage in the first place were more prized.

[THEDarkTyger]

6 hours ago, Abraxus said:

I get the whole "Jack Emmert" sentiment, as his later days with the game weren't necessarily good.  But, let's not forget that he helped bring CoH to life in the beginning, so for that at least, his name doesn't live in total infamy in my book.

It wouldn't have gotten off the ground if he hadn't had people reigning him in during development, though. Even then, after he left, the game made vast improvements specifically through discarding some of his early design philosophies.

[Heraclea]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

I have to remember to invite Hera to every single Mender Ramiel arc my alts do from here on out.

When Trapdoor was broken and couldn't be kited away from his healers, I realized that the knives had been drawn for the melee classes. 

[Apparition]

On 8/15/2019 at 5:59 PM, Mansome said:

R U H34L0RZ? anytime I logged in as a defender or corrupter. It got so bad I actually made a character called that.

 

9 hours ago, Frostweaver said:

I don't miss the Hollows PUGS

 

Back around Issue 4, I had a Rad/Dark Blast Defender.  I went into the Hollows.  Someone was broadcasting that they needed a Defender, (in retrospect, that was the first warning sign.)  I sent the person a tell and they invited me to the team.  We got to the mission, I did my thing, blasting away and using Radiating Aura, AM, etc.  I thought we were doing relatively well.  About five minutes later, I was booted with no warning.  Then the leader sent me a tell, saying that they needed a healer, not "whatever you are."

 

Then there were the jerks who would TP teammates off of rooftops in the Hollows.  To this day, I generally avoid the Hollows.  Flashbacks, man.

[biostem]

Maybe I'm dating myself here, but I recall many broadcasts specifically looking for a kinetics user with speedboost, and sometime later, a stone tanker with granite.  I also remember players specifically looking for teammates withOUT knockback powers...

Edited August 18, 2019 by biostem

[Primantis]

30 minutes ago, Apparition said:

 

 

 

Then there were the jerks who would TP teammates off of rooftops in the Hollows.  To this day, I generally avoid the Hollows.  Flashbacks, man.

 

 

I had someone TP me out of bounds in a shop once. I couldn't move and they would only TP me back out if I gave them some cold hard INF. I told em to 'suck on a Freakshow', and got someone in my SG to help out.

 

This was back in like i1 or so xD

Edited August 18, 2019 by Primantis

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, Primantis said:

 

 

I had someone TP me out of bounds in a shop once. I couldn't move and they would only TP me back out if I gave them some cold hard INF. I told em to 'suck on a Freakshow', and got someone in my SG to help out.

 

This was back in like i1 or so xD

Ah... the days before "prompt for teleport".  When instant healing was a toggle.  Good times!

[Primantis]

6 minutes ago, biostem said:

Ah... the days before "prompt for teleport".  When instant healing was a toggle.  Good times!

It was the wild west of CoH!

[VanguardXL]

2 hours ago, THEDarkTyger said:

It wouldn't have gotten off the ground if he hadn't had people reigning him in during development, though. Even then, after he left, the game made vast improvements specifically through discarding some of his early design philosophies.

True. The Tanker Wars after ED, but before IOs came out, were where a lot of people lost all respect for Jack, myself included. Turned out his design philosophy wasn't too far off the mark of the trinity, in that if you were playing a tanker, you weren't supposed to really do anything by Taunt. Many great ideas for improving tankers ere suggested, devs responded, Jack thought they were great...

... and then folded every one of them into Brutes, leaving tankers high and dry.

[Moonshades]

Remember when people charged inf to go on  Rescue the Fortune Teller mission? Before Ouroboros flashbacks and when inf and levels were hard to grind, especially at low levels?

 

So I, being a newer player at that time, thought that when I got Dr. Trevor Seaborn as a contact, I would get on that gravy train and get me some SO money.

 

Dummy me I didn't make anyone pay up until after the mission. With thoughts of millions dancing in my head I wound up with about 500k after 3 people stiffed me, two people paid and you one berated us and the larger CoH community for being the kind of players that rob people blind just for a badge, before also leaving without paying. Other people ran it for inf, why was I getting all that grief?

 

Long story short, I don't miss Fortune Tellers for currency, the lower levels being a real grind and a million inf being a lot of in game money. 😞 

[Chuckers]

4 hours ago, THEDarkTyger said:

It wouldn't have gotten off the ground if he hadn't had people reigning him in during development, though. Even then, after he left, the game made vast improvements specifically through discarding some of his early design philosophies.

True, it is because of him that we have this game to play... but I remember him saying that every AT should be able to survive taking 3 white minions without any problems and that's how he designed the game. When people started finding ways to take on heavy hitters, that's when he got upset because they weren't playing the way he wanted everyone to play. I *think* that's why ED happened, to force players to use the secondary characteristics of their powers and not 1 slot acc/5 slot dam. (I could very well be wrong...)

As for the gold farm companies, they managed to kill that with our help. I thought they had made changes that characters under level 10 couldn't use global chat or something like that. They also did something with new accounts. We had the ability to report gold spammers as well. 
 

[PaxArcana]

2 minutes ago, Chuckers said:

I *think* that's why ED happened, to force players to use the secondary characteristics of their powers and not 1 slot acc/5 slot dam. (I could very well be wrong...)

Also so that you couldn't 6-slot any defensive powers you had with just +Defense or +Resist, and become effectively unkillable.

 

Also also, so you couldn't 6-slot Regeneration powers with just +Heals, and lso become effectively unkillable.

[Chuckers]

2 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

Also so that you couldn't 6-slot any defensive powers you had with just +Defense or +Resist, and become effectively unkillable.

 

Also also, so you couldn't 6-slot Regeneration powers with just +Heals, and lso become effectively unkillable.

Sorry to derail the topic, but while I hated ED at first, I think it made the game more challenging and fun. It stopped being a push to win and became a more thinking game. 

 

(I DO miss dumpster diving and being able to use my blaster nrg nuke to take out 100 enemies in one shot.)

 

[Myrmidon]

3 hours ago, Chuckers said:

Sorry to derail the topic, but while I hated ED at first, I think it made the game more challenging and fun. It stopped being a push to win and became a more thinking game. 

Having been one of those indestructible Demi-gods, I have to agree with this. 

[MrAxe]

The pre fire tank nerf days. So many tells asking if I was a fire tank only to get no response when I told them I wasn't. Rude and irritating.

[Sanguinesun]

18 hours ago, Force Redux said:

NC Soft.

Jack Emmett.

 

Was thinking this exactly as well.

[THEDarkTyger]

8 hours ago, Chuckers said:

Sorry to derail the topic, but while I hated ED at first, I think it made the game more challenging and fun. It stopped being a push to win and became a more thinking game. 

 

(I DO miss dumpster diving and being able to use my blaster nrg nuke to take out 100 enemies in one shot.)

 

I never hated it, though I can see why people did. I do think if it had been that way from the start, nobody would have thought anything of it. Too many people had the mindset, though, that "playing a superhero" should mean they're untouchable and the game should pose no challenge. 🙄 While I do sometimes miss the ridiculous power of no-ED, I do think the game's longevity benefited greatly from it. Besides, 1acc, 3dam, 2rech makes for better DPS than 1acc 5dam. 😉

[Abraxus]

On 8/17/2019 at 9:40 AM, Force Redux said:

Definitely not villifying him, but the dev team and vision for the game leaped miles ahead when he was gone on to Champions Online. That's all.

I will admit though, if Champions was more of what he thought was a good game, then it is a good thing he left when he did.  I would hate for him to have stayed, and pushed CoH in directions that Champions embraced.  Just not a fan.

[Twisted Toon]

21 hours ago, Heraclea said:

When Trapdoor was broken and couldn't be kited away from his healers, I realized that the knives had been drawn for the melee classes. 

I had forgotten all about Trapdoor's Bifurcating when I recently ran that arc. My Psychic Melee Brute just stood toe to toe with him in the center of the platform and Psychically slapped him down in a couple of minutes. I wondered why it took longer than I figured it would have...

17 hours ago, Chuckers said:

Sorry to derail the topic, but while I hated ED at first, I think it made the game more challenging and fun. It stopped being a push to win and became a more thinking game. 

 

(I DO miss dumpster diving and being able to use my blaster nrg nuke to take out 100 enemies in one shot.)

 

ED didn't really affect me all that much. I was already diversifying my slotting at that point. So, I didn't really see any change. My brother, on the other hand, never respec'd his Kin/Dark Defender and his Transfusion was still 6 slotted with all heals when the game went dark. He was out healing some Empaths with that one...even after ED.

[PaxArcana]

2 hours ago, Abraxus said:

I will admit though, if Champions was more of what he thought was a good game, then it is a good thing he left when he did.  I would hate for him to have stayed, and pushed CoH in directions that Champions embraced.  Just not a fan.

Oh, but it gets even worse.

 

During the closed beta, Hero/NPC balance was pretty close to that of City of Heroes.  A little better, actually, most characters could handle 4-5 equal-level minions without too much difficulty.

 

During the 3-day Head Start for pre-order customers, a small handful of players used the knowledge they had accumulated during the beta (and probably copious notes they took) to skyrocket to the level cap before it ended.

...

Cryptic, and Emmert, PANICKED.  The morning of official Launch, a very large patch got pushed.  A patch that simultaneously weakened every Hero by about 30% across the board (offense, defense, everything) .... while also strengthening all the NPCs by at least 50%, again across the board.  (Edit to add: if we valued each "equal level minion" at 2 points, that means heroes had 8 to 10 points.  After the patch, the Minions were at 3, and the Heroes were at 6 to 7.  That's a good mathematical representation of what happened.  My personal experience was, my main (Munitions with a splash of Power Armor, called Arsenal of Justice) went from being able to bounce quickly from 4-5 spawn to 4-5 spawn all day long, to faceplanting if even one spawn was more than 2-3 minions.  And GOD HELP ME if there was a Lieutenant in the mix ...!!)

 

Almost everyone, except those with the "best build possible" went to struggling to beat TWO equal-level minions.  For some of us, in the space of six hours (the "maintenance" window in which the patch was pushed out).

 

That day killed CO for me.  Which sucked especially hard, considering I had bought a Lifetime Subscription.  Fifty bucks for the game, two hundred bucks for the Lifetime sub ... and twelve hundred more, for a computer capable of running the game "with all the bells and whistles".  And by the end of week two, I had uninstalled it.  😢  I've tried going back a couple times, but ... no.  It's still dead to me.  😢 

Edited August 18, 2019 by PaxArcana

[Myrmidon]

9 hours ago, THEDarkTyger said:

I never hated it, though I can see why people did. I do think if it had been that way from the start, nobody would have thought anything of it. Too many people had the mindset, though, that "playing a superhero" should mean they're untouchable and the game should pose no challenge. 🙄 While I do sometimes miss the ridiculous power of no-ED, I do think the game's longevity benefited greatly from it. Besides, 1acc, 3dam, 2rech makes for better DPS than 1acc 5dam. 😉

After reading all of the “discussions” going on about ED, I switched my BS/Invul Scrapper to an ED build (a month before it went live) and took it the last 15 or so levels to 50. It took a few minutes to get used to, then it was fine.

[PaxArcana]

Yeah, I for one agreed with the idea behind ED.  It really did make the game better.  It diversified not just the use of enhancements, but made a few less-popular powersets see the light of day more often.  Or so it seemed to me, in the year after.

[Snakebit]

It's like they slapped together a game engine and called it a day. How did they not see the power creep?

 

Emmert had a great idea that he shoehorned into horrible execution and imposed horrible ideas of risk/reward and his definition of fun on the player base. It's almost like there's a smart part of his brain and a stupid part of his brain constantly at war with each other. Too bad the stupid part wins more:

 

Q: You admit that you aren't the most perfect designer... how do you get people to stick around in your games?
A: I had a vision for the game. In action/RPGs, there aren't any items with stats. Why do we need all of those numbers?

 

GDN. Aggro caps. Target caps. Half Duration/Double Recharge for controls. Then Jerk promised "no more nerfs" and dropped ED out of the blue. But no need for numbers.

[PaxArcana]

10 minutes ago, cejmp said:

In action/RPGs, there aren't any items with stats. Why do we need all of those numbers?

.... and then, in CO, there's SO BLOODY MANY items with stats.  /facepalm