Blood Red Arachnid

They always say that death and divorce bring out the worst in people. Losing this game is kind of like both I guess...

1) My favorite AT was definitely the stalker. It might have been because my first stalker was an author avatar, but the Stalker is the only AT that I've made more than one of. It is also the one that I worked hardest at to be good with. With the melee combat, the burst damage, the stealthyness, the stalker itself was quite fun if not hard to use. Then, stalkers received a ton of updates, and I began to get better at IOing out my toons. After the ATO enhancements and the changes to assassin strike, my stalker went from decent to OMG THERE'S A GIANT HOLE IN YOUR CHEST!!! level of strength. It is no exaggeration that I call him an Archvillain, since he mows through AVs in 1 vs. 1 fights. It is at the point where, when fighting a team of 4 or so Heroes/AVs, I'll go "O.K., I got the one on the left, you get the one on the right, and you two get the two in the center". None of this concentrate on one crap; it is just a straight up brawl. I think the epitome of strength was when on Virtue we were attempting the Keep 'em separate badge, and my Stalker was able to nearly solo Nightstar.

Honorable mention goes to the Widow and the Dominator.

2)My favorite character was a Kinetic Melee/ Electric armor stalker.

3)The controller. The troller original drew my ire because it was slow and time consuming, but as I leveled up (Ice/Storm troller) and started getting more and more powers, the class became funner and funner. In my own personal storylines, my troller was written to be the strongest out of all of my toons. Sure, the stalker punches things hard and the defender shoots stuff, but the troller throws enemies around like ragdolls, so it fit. The interesting thing is that, after IOing him out, he became the strongest out of all of my characters in reality. Summoning Freezing Rain and Hurricane and Tornado and Jack Frost and all of my other pets, the damage that was initially low would rack up incredibly fast on single targets. The strongest "feat" he accomplished was soloing Ghost Widow as an AV at +2 his level; a feat that all my other AV killing toons found to be quite impossible. The second was when I was on a +1 ITF with 8 other players who were all so n00bish (just after double experience weekend) that they would take forever to kill a single spawn. I got frustrated then ran off ahead of everyone else and just started doing my own thing, and it turned out that my troller went through mobs just as fast as the rest of the group put together.

At that point, it was no longer a question of who was my strongest.

Honestly... yeah I have kind of given up. The final nail in the coffin was when I learned that all of the game's staff have moved on and gotten jobs elsewhere. Once you hit that point, there isn't any coming back.

I'll have to mark this for later. I was trying to decide on what to do on the final day, and I figure this will work nicely enough.

It's hard to pick just one that I really liked to play. Each one could do some really cool stuff. However, on the top I would have to say these few:


Allatrope my Kin/Elec armor stalker. I liked the close combat, but I mostly really liked the high DPS that he had. After the most recent stalker updates, his single target DPS was insane. First, with ATOs, I had it set up so I would fire off an Assassin Strike from Hide every 10 seconds, and this damage output was high enough that I could solo a trial AV. After the AS update I developed a new attack chain that was... about 7 steps long. But, with that update I managed to get it so I was nearly permanently under the effect of Build Up, and with a couple of procs it made it so Allatrope's damage output was just plain insane. As soon as the battle began against any AV or EB, it was an intense but short bout. My proudest achievement with him was soloing Chimera in the Belladonna arc at +4. It took two tries, though, since I had no idea that he was going to gain levels and I didn't come adequately prepared. On my second try, however... I plowed through him and won. BTW there's a huge hole in your chest.

Second is my grav/thorn dominator Vespila. Gravity is an extremely fun set to play. I took Lift, and never got tired of throwing enemies into the roof. Worm Hole was my favorite power from the set, though, since it allowed me to relocate, stun, and scatter enemies all at once. My favorite thing to do was, in open air maps, to wormhole an enemy group high into the sky and let them plummet right on top of us. Each time I'd do it, I'd say "It's raining men!" in local chat. The team always found it hilarious. But usually I would wormhole enemies into a corner along with thorntrops. A couple of procs and then the DoTs could really accumulate. I'd say my proudest achievement with her is defeating Black Scorpion at level 54 in the incarnate trial arcs. This is amazing since she is specced for recharge and has no innate defense and only so-so damage output. It took 5 tries, but by golly I got him!

Third is the chilling black winds of the thunderous Obsidian Gales. He was an ice control/storm troller, and the fun never ends with his powers. The coolest thing about them was his ability to throw enemies around like ragdolls, which I used quite effective in my keyes video guide in my signature. Ice slick and freezing rain both had a nasty knockdown ability that stacked, causing entire enemy groups to be heavily debuffed while bouncing hard on their butts as I slowly killed them. Thunderstorm was nice since it, too, threw enemies around, and if used in conjunction with Tornado it was mass havoc. The interesting thing about Gales was that, at first his damage output was really low, but as time went on it started growing much higher. Once multiple lightnings storms, tornado, Jack frost, freezing rain, and all of the ice control powers were out, his DPS really skyrocketed. My proudest achievement with him is when I managed to solo AV Ghost Widow at +2 during the SSA #7. I left AVs on, thought "hey, why not give it a shot?" and then I beat her on my first try.

Somewhere along the line I get the feeling that when NCsoft was throwing money at Arenanet in order to make GW2, that the guys working at Arenanet had no idea it was going to come out of CoH. Even if they are owned and managed 100% (which they may not be) by NCsoft, I'm pretty darn sure Arenanet neither wanted, expected, or even heard about CoH getting axed in order to make their game.

I own and happily play GW2, and the fact that it is published by NCsoft doesn't affect me at all. As much as I hate what NCsoft is doing, I'm not sure boycotting their only other western game is going to accomplish anything even remotely preferable to the treatment of CoH.

Allatrope: He was the closest thing in game to my Author Avatar. He marks the transition I had from dark times in highschool to not as dark times later. Somewhat based off of an older idea I had for a dark/spines scrapper (before city of villains) that was a serial killer who infiltrate schools and kill all of the "problems" that he encountered. Allatrope, like many of my toons, is a reflection in myself in the sense that we both have Aspergers syndrome and that we mostly hated society and just wanted to be left alone.

Sounds like a good idea. My only concern is that if CoH does survive somehow that we'll be spoiling things. However, to start...

First, what were the remaining incarnate slots planned to do?

Second, what was the coming storm and the plans for it?

Third, how was Praetorean Hamidon going to be dealt with?

Fourth, what was the side project that Paragon Studios was working on?


That is all I have for now

Maturity is a widespread myth told to attempt to force people's behaviors to conform.

As far as game design is considered, City of Heroes did have a couple of mistakes. The greatest being the lack of an "overworld" for people to really interact in. There were a couple of powerset problems and all that, and also there was a lack of focus on PVP, the base system was kind of messed up, and other things like that.

But did the "game" really go wrong? The biggest thing I noticed in the last few months of CoH is that the developers not only acknowledged these problems, but were making active attempts to fix them. ATs were being balanced and improved, empty zones were being removed, writers were paying attention to feedback.. all in all I was really looking forward to the next couple of issues.


I'd put the blame more on NCsoft for refusing to capitalize on the emergence of several very popular superhero movies. It's like NCsoft just didn't care that much about little oh CoH.

Please tell me we are not breaking down and pointing fingers at who made CoH fail on the forums...

I only read the first five pages or so, so I'm sorry if this has been brought up.

But there IS one way in which axing Paragon Studios, a profitable venture, could itself be more profitable. It is about returns on investments: Every dollar that is spent on any project can be considered an investment into that project. The returns from that project are considered not in an absolute sense, but as a ratio to that investment. A "I put in one dollar, get one dollar and 50 cents back" type of ratio.

NCsoft is currently hemorrhaging money. If this is a fact, then which projects get funding becomes not about what is making money, but what can make more money for their investment. Of course, this assumption is a very big, jiggly, and hairy assumption that fringes on several things:

#1: The money that is no longer going to paragon studios will eventually be appropriated to other projects that are theoretically more profitable.

#2: The rather steady profit that CoH has will be negligible to the potential profits that can come from a new investment into another IP.

#3: NCsoft has something lined up that has the potential to actually be a large profit.

#4: That the current capital of NCsoft was not capable of pushing a sufficient investment alone on this alternate project.


From a business standpoint I wouldn't have made this decision due to one very large reason: It is a gamble. A move like this is capable of backfiring if the reapportioned investments have the same or less returns. The investments have to be profitable enough for the company to save enough face with the public that there won't be a overly negative backlash for killing off Superman. The investment also has to be substantially big enough that you'll get a large enough return to cover any deficits the company is getting, so it is a big gamble at that. Normally you would only make a move like this if one of two things were true:

*The new investment was a surefire thing and they care nothing for the people on the previous project and they don't have the capital to make this investment without axing things.

*They are panicking with what is the corporate equivalent to a mass PANCAKING of their pants.


And neither of them are really nice things to be true. The former is a poorer and heartless company that will lose a ton of face for their actions, and the latter is a panicking company that may have just dug it's own grave with that gamble. The more I think about this situation, the more I don't like it.

Where am I going? To the gym. Finally going to work my fat butt out...

For now, I'm heading to Guild Wars 2. As much as NCsoft is ticking me off, I really don't blame Arenanet for it. So far GW2 is a good game. It isn't CoH, of course, but I expect it to keep me occupied for many days to come.

After that, I have a couple of console games that I need to get playing. But other than that, I don't know what I'll do. Right now I'm waiting for my immense chronic stomach pain to go away so I can get back to working a job and going to college and having constructive hobbies and all of that non-man-child stuff. I was playing CoH a lot more than I usually do because of that stomach pain, and with that gone I'm going to have to figure out how to medicate myself with another distraction.

This update by NCsoft really does hurt. Literally. Right in the gut. I'm not joking when I say that.

I'm sure many of the players here have noticed that in my signature I have videos of all of the trial runs as a guide to them. Now, not many have asked where it is that I got those videos from...


Well I got them from right here. Every successful trial that I hosted came from this very server. So for that, and for making my ambitions a success, I'd like to thank all of you guys.

I like to think that my characters will be living on. I just will not be an active observer of their universe anymore.

Meet Zerenade. Real name: Yvettte Fultoni. As a little girl, she was stricken blind by Bird Flu, the same virus that killed her parents. After bouncing from foster home to foster home she eventually found herself on the streets, blind and begging in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Then one day, a battle between cosmic entities (Van Ruhle the formless and Nim Nerathim the cosmic wanderer) landed in her ally. Literally. When defeated, Van Ruhle vowed to eventually get revenge, and poured his remaining power into the nearest Vessel.

The next day, Zerenade awoke to find strange powers. She had manipulation and mastery over sound so much so that she could teleport by quantum entangling her molecules with another spot through vibrations, a superb sense of hearing that gave her near clairvoyance despite not having sight, and a magic bow that fired arrows of energy from out of thin air. Along with this came the desire to fight... something. She didn't know what. All she knew was she was inspired, and immediately sought out to be a superhero.

Years later, something had changed....



She started acting differently and doing peculiar things. Then one day, she flipped and become a monster. Donning a new outfit and a hunger for destruction and worship. She had gained strange and dark powers and an incomprehensible strength, so much that her screams put out megatons of energy and her body was nearly indestructible. With every hero in paragon helpless against the shrieking monster of darkness, salvation came from the most unlikely source: My first villain and her arch-nemesis...



Allatrope. Real name: Nathanial Saurion. Allatrope was a praetorean resistance member and terrorist, who after becoming jaded and disenchanted with the whole war, sought to disappear from that world. He has severe aspergers syndrome which lead to his detachment from people, and also his amazing computation abilities. Allatrope had discovered a way to displace capacitor plates slightly out of sync with this dimension, using the potential difference between W.I.M.P.s of different dimensional frequencies to create a self-recharging battery with a nearly endless supply of electricity. Using this shifting property, Allatrope made a suit that allowed him to phase out of reality and become invisible (at least until he greatly interacts with something and his indeterminate wave function form collapses into a solid and visible object). This, unfortunately, could not be replicated by anyone since all of the equations for it were only in his head. Fusing this into his suit and with some highly modified praetorean kinetic generators, Allatrope jumped dimensions to do odd jobs in the rogue islands. He had finally disappeared...

Until, of course, Zerenade came about. Allatrope's suit creates a warbling distortion in background sound that Zerenade could pick up from in a 10 mile radius in open air. She could easily dispatch of Allatrope, leading to his subsequent captures. This put Allatrope into "the system", which completely ruined his plans to be alone, making him frequently monitored, known about, and hunted. Allatrope swore revenge against Zerenade for ruining his newfound life.

At least he did, until he discovered that Zerenade was possessed by an interdimensional demon. Seeing the beast's immense power before anyone else, new he had to gain immense power to kill it. After "negotiations" with arachnos, Allatrope created a magically powered suit and used it to captured and displaced Death Surge into in two dimensions, tapping himself into Dr. Aeons energy grid and increasing his power output fifty fold. With his magically powered science super suit, Allatrope sought to put an end to Zerenade's misery.


The battle was epic. Whole buildings collapsed, the ground was flattened by the pressure and baked by the arcing electricity. Allatrope was losing, so he put all of his faith into one last Power Surge, which upon releasing caused his mystical suit to dissolve, releasing everything in a gigantic explosion of magic and lightning that put Zerenade into a coma.

...But not Van Ruhle, who used the dimensional distortion to create a pocket dimension of dream space that linked directly into Allatrope and Zerenade's minds. It was here that it was learned that Van Ruhle was in a quantum state of perpetual uncertainty, changing shape and power depending how how he was perceived. In a last ditch effort, Van Ruhle attempted to possess Allatrope to continue living on. Allatrope fought back, and after this dream/astral battle ended it was Allatrope who was victorious. After tearing Van Ruhle's head off, Allatrope fled from the scene (he was a wanted super villain, after all) with Zerenade over is shoulder. No one is sure what happened with those two afterwards....



Or at least not without introducing a whole lot more characters. BTW, this is Van Ruhle, AKA my first NPC:

Hard to rank but...


#1: The power. In this game, you throw around enemies like they are ragdolls, taking on 3, 5, 7, 9, and more at at time. When you march through a map, you don't feel like a couple of weasely little guys barely going from one enemy to the next. You feel like you are king of the world, and you truly feel powerful. No other MMO I have played has that feeling. Other games you feel like ants taking down a giant scorpion. In this game, you are the scorpion snickting ants in half.

#2: The character designer. It was in-depth and intriguing, and the only thing stopping any character design was a player's imagination and ingenuity. From Micky Mouse to cows before the animal pack, if it was crazy and unique you could make it.

The best part about this character designer is that in this game, you were not "Nameless blaster #452". In a lot of other MMOs, your character looks like the armor they wear, and there is little to nothing to differentiate you from any other nameless drone in the game. But in City of Heroes, the character you made stood out, loud and proud.

#3: The community. This is one of the few game communities that I am actually comfortable posting up an image of myself over. Here, I can talk to people and learn things, get new perspective and have a laugh. Other MMOs the community is filled with groveling fanboys, thankless trolls, and no room for the grey between them.

#4: The writing. The missions and story arcs in City of Heroes were awesome. When I compare it to the questing in so many other games, those other games break down into the following:

"I have an inane problem that is psuedo-solved by killing some random NPCs or fetching some random item. There's no real story to this quest other than to give you busywork, and it'll quit mattering as soon as you outlevel this area. I'm uninteresting, have no history, and you'll probably forget me as soon as your next blink".

#5: The Developers. I was anxious in anticipation for all of the updates that were going to come out, because the developers listened and they cared. They would do things we all wanted, and they acknowledged our existence as an important part of the videogame process. Paragon didn't feel like a company at all. It felt like a family.

http://na.cityofheroes.com/en/media-...comic-archive/


I'm downloading the comics and keeping them so I can show them to people later in a vague attempt to immortalize City of Heroes.


Just FYI. If you want the comics, you can get them there.

Petty...office...politics...BS!


asdfasdfasdfadsdf!

Originally you weren't allowed to post this, but with how things are going I won't be surprised if you're allowed to post pr0n on the forum now. There is a video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNKgz...6&feature=plcp


That had listings of a bunch of different powersets that were (rumored to be) slated to come out soon, and I was looking forward to them greatly. It is perhaps these that I miss the most.

I mean, the game doesn't seem like it is dying. This whole thing feels like the Paragon Studios Train has abruptly smashed into a mountainside. That Paragon Studios has been blown up from a gas leak, gunned down by a serial killer, and... dare I say... slain by a supervillian. With I24 around the corner with so many updates I looked forward to seeing, with so many future updates in the works and so much stuff to go to, the game wasn't on life support.




Our game was murdered...

Don't hold the emotions back. Keeping them bottled inside rots your soul.

I'm not sure where the idea of Manga-hate comes from. Personally I find even the most ridiculous shows entertaining in their own way, so much so that my avatar and signature are both from an anime (Excel Saga. It's kind of crazy).

I do see a point about making various anime elements difficult to transition into the game, however. With how over-the-top things can get in anime and with how loosely defined the overall style of anime really is, it is hard to pick out any one costume piece and go "See! This has nothing to do with anime!". So, we're usually left with throwing in either very specific costumes that can lead to someone going "Yeah, that is totally the Daitenzin squad", to very generalized ideas that may not be considered anime at all.

What I would like are some more over-the-top hairstyles.

I took inventory for some other sets, and as far as stuff goes there are a few ideas I have been knocking around. Not necessary to implement them all, but...


Sonic Siphon: Make this a narrow cone instead of single target.

Sonic Cage: Adjust it so this power is a toggle that can selectively phase an enemy on and off. Increase magnitude of immobilize and phase. Reduce maximum duration to 20 seconds. OR, an alternate solution is to make this a high magnitude single target hold.

Sonic Repulsion: Reduce endurance drain to -1 for each enemy. Enemies suffer from low duration mag 2 stun from each hit of the repulsion field (delayed a few seconds to compensate for knockback)

Clarity: Make this an AoE power that gives lower mezz protection, or make this an AoE power that gives non-stacking high mezz protection, or make this an AoE Power that gives psionic resistance then low stacking / high non-stacking mezz protection.

Liquify: High damage, mag 3 immobilize, reduce recharge to 225 seconds



That is what I can think of for now. I think that putting ALL of these might make sonic overpowered, but nonetheless this would make some powers in the set much better. I think some of these ideas can be applied to Force Fields, which IMO needs more improvement than this set.