Blondeshell

This dovetail's nicely with the current efforts to get Paragonwiki updated with all the story arcs that are and would have been in the game. Hopefully I/we will get them all documented by the end of the month and you'll be able to read them there, too.

Link to the progress being made

Welcome to the forums, Katbird!

I've updated two points on the list with more accurate totals after performing some maths:

* Had over 1200 different ability set combinations for each of those 768 potential character slots at character creation, with nearly 3 billion total different combinations available
(formerly "over 30 million")

* Had literally trillions of costume combinations available right out of the box, with hundreds more costume pieces you could earn, unlock, craft, or purchase, making over 4.5 quindecillion (4.5 x 10^48) total combinations per costume
(formerly "over 10 tredecillion (10^42)")

The ability set combinations include Primary, Secondary, Pool, Epic, and Incarnate sets, but NOT individual combinations of powers within those sets.

Costume piece total includes every piece that is available to unlock on both live and beta servers, excluding weapon customizations.

Yep.

Discussion in a thread about inspirations made me realize I'd completely forgotten to mention them in the list. So, the following points have been added:

* Had multiple tiers of consumable buffs (obtainable as drops or purchased from contacts or the market) that increased your health, endurance/mana, accuracy, damage output, damage resistance, defense, or protection from status effects, or rezzed your character from defeat

* Allowed you to combine unwanted consumables into a specific one you needed

* Allowed stacking use of consumables that could turn your character into a nigh-indestructible damage-dealing god for a short time

* Would auto-rez your character if you leveled up while defeated on the battlefield, while also applying all top-tier consumable buffs simultaneously

Two more to add to the list:

* Always gave you entirely new abilities when you leveled up, rather than just more powerful versions of old ones

* Scaled your abilities' effectiveness as you leveled up, making them just as useful at max level as at level one

Added a few more items to the list:

* Didn't use pointless backtracking along explicitly-defined paths as a time sink for traveling between quests and contacts

* Gave you the ability to call contacts directly rather than having to return to them for your next quest

* Didn't place silly restrictions on your character's movement around game zones - "You want to climb that hill over there that you'd be able to in real life? Sure, go ahead!"

* Didn't automatically force you to team with other people simply because of where you were or what you were doing

* Didn't require you to "gather ten of those plants to make a good soup" or "kill five of those predators to protect my herd" - 99% of quests were combat-oriented "go punch somebody in the face"

* Used actual opening and closing doors for quest instances, providing better immersion in the game world

* Used Buffing and Debuffing characters as "force multipliers," making your team much more powerful than you would have been without them

* Had a power-to-level-difference ratio such that your character couldn't still be defeated by an enemy mob five levels below you

* Had a Pet/Summoning class which could have buffs, debuffs, healing, and damage all rolled into one fully-controllable "Army of Seven"

There are so many others that people haven't yet mentioned:



















Don't forget some of the secondary/background characters. (Yeah, also an excuse to show off some of my screenshots. )

Try installing it from the NC launcher:

ftp://ftp.ncsoft.com/Launcher/NCsoftLauncherSetup.exe

<<Am thankful that I purchased all the recipes I needed to fully unlock everything yesterday so I wouldn't have to pay 1 billion each today>>

Thanks for the continued sharing of thoughts about what made City of Heroes unique for you.

Here are some more new entries for the list:

* Never went through a server merge

* Let you preview your abilities during character creation and costume modification

* Decoupled your character's appearance from its abilities, providing complete freedom during the costume creation process

* Allowed you to write publicly-viewable bios/backgrounds for your characters

* Had a cross-server marketplace with complete anonymity between buyers and sellers, and opacity of selling and asking prices

* Was the first MMO to allow your character to be capable of fully unrestricted and untimed flight, without gliding or using mounts

* Allowed you to create 8-person teams, or up to 48-person leagues for larger group content

* Had a demo recording function that allowed you to record in-game activities, or edited to create your own machinima productions

* Allowed you to save/load costumes, preferences, and UI customizations for use on other characters

* Had 20 different methods of transiting between game zones, including across realms, resulting in some of the fastest play and travel times of any MMO
(methods considered are direct (i.e. AP to SC), train, ferry, helicopter, TUNNEL, Ouroboros, Pocket D, Midnighter Club, Vanguard base, smuggler ship, Portal Industries portal, Hortha vine, Submariner Janus, auction house TP, mission TP, base TP, long range TP, lighted path TP, DA portals, and Mistress Eva/Carter Mordesen portals)

* Allowed you to pause multi-quest "dungeons" to finish later at your convenience

* Had both local server and global friends lists, as well as a global ignore list for spammers or offensive players

* Had multiple levels of publicly hiding yourself from other players, allowing your gameplay to be as social or as private as you chose

Just thought of another point that was a big addition for many people:

* Enabled players to find level-appropriate content with a single click, thus eliminating XP "dead zones"

And another one that should've been listed earlier:

*Provided multiple opportunities to respecify your character's abilities and enhancements, without spending any real money

The tracks could be added easily enough, but it could be a little tricky to properly identify their usage in the exact missions. (I don't know for sure, as I haven't checked.)

Unfortunately, I have regular RL commitments every Sunday from 6:30-7:30pm ET. I'm not so self-absorbed to think that everyone else's schedule should be changed to accomodate me. Still, I would heartily join an attempt that fit my availability, or one that was in-progress as soon as I got home. Otherwise, good luck to everyone (including those who were running it tonight), and here's to hoping that Triumph can finally earn this last pesky little badge.

Updated:

• Didn’t involve politics or endless rolls for loot distribution – all drops were 100% random for every member in your group and dropped instantly directly to your character

Added:

• Allowed each character to have three different builds, enabling even more customization of ability sets
• Was the first MMO to allow your character to be capable of fully unrestricted flight
• Allowed your character to fall from any height without dieing or swim in any water without drowning

I've added/revised a few entries on the original list:

• *Had over 1200 different ability set combinations for each of those 768 potential character slots at character creation, with over 30 million total different combinations available
• *Had 14 classes from which to choose
• Allowed you convert unwanted drops into something useable for your character
• Allowed you to save up in-game rewards to be able to purchase specific drops without having to use the market system at all
• Allowed you to enhance different characteristics of your abilities, either with or without using the crafting system
• *Had tens of thousands of solo-friendly quests made by other players up and available to play
• *Had nearly 1400 in-game achievements you could earn, the earliest of which pre-dated the Xbox Live Achievement system by over a year
• Allowed you to combine those chat line commands into powerful keybinds or one-click macros, providing an unparalleled system for customizing your game experience
• Would frequently have features added to the game that were specifically requested by players and implemented by the development team
• Had one of the friendliest, most mature, and most helpful communities of any MMO yet to exist on the market

I'm working on some other comparisons that should be interesting, and will post them here later. Are there any other characteristics of City of Heroes that made it unique for you among other MMOs?

The thing is, since the game is shutting down, it would put NCsoft in a very messy situation if people still had a way to give them money, even while they might be trying to figure out what to do with the people who paid for more time than the servers will be available. I agree with their decision to just turn everything off when it comes to cash transactions, even if it inconveniences some players. It just eliminates a lot of potential headaches that way.

As far as making everyone VIP goes, though, I could see that happening later, maybe for November. Give 'em a little time to make a decision. It's only been a week so far.

Absolutely, yes.

A while back I had posted a list of characteristics that made City of Heroes different from some, if not all, other MMOs. The list was phrased in such a way that it was sufficiently generic, but could be understood by players of other MMOs, so as to disguise its identity. The coworkers I showed it to were actually surprised and intrigued by some of these characteristics, even more so that they could all be found in one game.

I thought it might be time to revisit this idea, if not as a checklist of features of games any of us might consider playing in the future, then simply for nostalgia's sake. So here's the newly updated list, with tenses changed to past.

-----------------------

I knew an MMO that...

1. Had over eight years worth of content and updates
2. Was the first, and still the most popular, MMO of its genre
3. Didn’t limit you to only playing one realm per server
4. Never went through a server merge
5. * Had 14 different classes from which to choose
6. * Gave you access to 192 characters slots out of the box, with the option to quadruple that amount
7. * Had over 1200 different ability set combinations for each of those 768 potential character slots at character creation, with nearly 3 billion total different combinations available
8. Allowed each character to have three different builds, enabling even more customization of ability sets
9. Let you customize the visual effects of your abilities, with no reduction in their effectiveness
10. Let you preview your abilities during character creation and costume modification
11. Didn’t boost your character’s abilities with ugly clothes that didn’t match
12. Decoupled your character's appearance from its abilities, providing complete freedom during the costume creation process
13. * Had literally trillions of costume combinations available right out of the box, with hundreds more costume pieces you could earn, unlock, craft, or purchase, making over 4.5 quindecillion (4.5 x 10^48) total combinations per costume
14. * Allowed each character to have up to 10 different costumes/appearances that you could switch to at any time
15. Allowed you to write publicly-viewable bios/backgrounds for your characters
16. Didn’t base your character’s advancement on gear that could break, get lost, need repairing, or be stolen
17. Didn’t involve politics or endless need/greed rolls for loot distribution – all drops were 100% random for every member of your team and dropped instantly directly to your character
18. * Had a cross-server marketplace with complete anonymity between buyers and sellers, and opacity of selling and asking prices
19. * Allowed you to obtain any drop you wanted or needed through the market or through regular play within a reasonable amount of time
20. Allowed you to convert unwanted drops into something useable for your character
21. Allowed you to save up in-game rewards to be able to purchase specific drops without having to use the market system at all
22. Didn’t require membership in a guild to participate in content
23. * Allowed you to build massive guildhouses with medical, crafting, storage, and transportation facilities
24. * Had 20 different methods of transiting between game zones, including across realms, resulting in some of the fastest play and travel times of any MMO
25. Didn't use pointless backtracking along explicitly-defined paths as a time sink for traveling between quests and contacts
26. Gave you the ability to call contacts directly rather than having to return to them for your next quest
27. Gave you your own travel abilities instead of using super-expensive mounts – or one cheaply at level 1 if you didn’t want to take an ability
28. Was the first MMO to allow your character to be capable of fully unrestricted and untimed flight, without gliding or using mounts
29. Allowed your character to fall from any height without dieing or swim in any water without drowning
30. Didn't place silly restrictions on your character's movement around game zones - "You want to climb that hill over there that you'd be able to in real life? Sure, go ahead!"
31. Didn’t have XP loss or make you run back to your body when you died
32. Left your character with all their stuff when you logged back in – nothing decayed
33. Didn’t require spawn camping for specific kills/objectives – quests were your own private instances for you and your team
34. Didn't automatically force you to team with other people simply because of where you were or what you were doing
35. Didn't require you to "gather ten of those plants to make a good soup" or "kill five of those predators to protect my herd" - 99% of quests were combat-oriented "go punch somebody in the face"
36. Used actual opening and closing doors for quest instances, providing better immersion in the game world
37. * Had a crafting system that anyone could use without grinding raids
38. Didn’t penalize your character’s advancement or participation in content for not using that crafting system
39. Always gave you entirely new abilities when you leveled up, rather than just more powerful versions of old ones
40. Scaled your abilities' effectiveness as you leveled up, making them just as useful at max level as at level one
41. Allowed you to enhance different characteristics of your abilities, either with or without using the crafting system
42. Provided multiple opportunities to respecify your character's abilities and enhancements, without spending any real money
43. Had complete transparency of your abilities’ stats and costs so you could see exactly what they did and what you wanted to enhance as you leveled up
44. Didn’t require your character’s build to be min/maxed to be effective, though you could do it to your heart’s content if you chose
45. * Had over 140 levels of content across three different realms that could be soloed at will by anyone willing to do so
46. Enabled players to find level-appropriate content with a single click, thus eliminating XP "dead zones"
47. * Gave players the option to travel to other realms to experience content on a non-PvP basis
48. Had PvP but didn’t require you to participate in it to advance your character
49. Had compelling stories and quests to encourage players to enjoy the journey to the level cap – the game didn’t "Start at Level X"
50. Allowed you to go back and play lower-level content you might have missed, with full XP credit
51. Didn’t have an ever-increasing level cap that invalidated or made obsolete lower level characters, content, and equipment
52. Allowed you to create 8-person teams, or up to 48-person leagues for larger group content
53. Allowed you to team with anyone for most content, regardless of their level, and still earn XP credit
54. Didn’t require the "Holy Trinity" (Tank/Healer/DPS) for group composition – any combination of characters was viable for virtually all content
55. Used Buffing and Debuffing characters as "force multipliers," making your team much more powerful than you would have been without them
56. Allowed you to customize quests to be easier for the solo player, or as difficult as being on a full team
57. Let you call fighting 10-on-1 a fair fight, where you were the 1
58. Had a power-to-level-difference ratio such that your character couldn't still be defeated by an enemy mob five levels below you
59. Had a Pet/Summoning class which could have buffs, debuffs, healing, and damage all rolled into one fully-controllable "Army of Seven"
60. Had multiple tiers of consumable buffs (obtainable as drops or purchased from contacts or the market) that increased your health, endurance/mana, accuracy, damage output, damage resistance, defense, or protection from status effects, or rezzed your character from defeat
61. Allowed you to combine unwanted consumables into a specific one you needed
62. Allowed stacking use of consumables that could turn your character into a nigh-indestructible damage-dealing god for a short time
63. Would auto-rez your character if you leveled up while defeated on the battlefield, while also applying all top-tier consumable buffs simultaneously
64. * Had a quest creator that allowed any player to make their own quests of whatever difficulty they wanted
65. * Had tens of thousands of solo-friendly quests made by other players up and available to play
66. * Had an end-game system that could be used by solo players
67. Allowed you to pause multi-quest "dungeons" to finish later at your convenience
68. * Had nearly 1400 in-game achievements you could earn, the earliest of which pre-dated the Xbox Live Achievement system by over a year
69. * Had over 450 chat line commands that allowed you to do things such as interact with other players, change the UI, or activate powers
70. Allowed you to combine those chat line commands into powerful keybinds or one-click macros, providing an unparalleled system for customizing your game experience
71. * Had over 250 emotes your character could perform, including when switching costumes/appearance
72. Had a demo recording function that allowed you to record in-game activities, or edited to create your own machinima productions
73. Allowed you to save/load costumes, preferences, and UI customizations for use on other characters
74. * Had global chat abilities that allowed you to talk to other players on other servers, regardless of the character names or realms on which they were playing
75. Had both local server and global friends lists, as well as a global ignore list for spammers or offensive players
76. Had multiple levels of publicly hiding yourself from other players, allowing your gameplay to be as social or as private as you chose
77. Had a development team who would occasionally log in as critical lore-based NPCs and roleplay them on the live servers
78. Would frequently have features added to the game that were specifically requested by players and implemented by the development team
79. Let you fight time-traveling alien Nazis with giant robots in Ancient Rome (yes, really)
80. Had one of the friendliest, most mature, and most helpful communities of any MMO yet to exist on the market

Sound too good to be true? It wasn't. I played it for years.

* Feature required MTX purchase and/or active subscription to fully access.

Hm, I think I even knew that already. :/