Doc_Hornet

I fired up COH and logged on today for the first time since the day of the announcement, but couldn't even bring myself to get past the login screens. I took screenshots of all my characters and exited. I'll pretty much be offline for the next week (Thanksgiving and traveling), so I guess this is The End for me as far as my COH days are concerned.

I'll miss the game and the wonderful players I found here on Liberty deeply.

I've found a pretty good replacement home, however, over on Star Trek Online where I play under the global handle of @Yoshikawa. I've joined a themed Fleet (Supergroup) that with a friendly and helpful atmosphere that reminds me of much of what I had found here on Liberty. The Fleet is TOS Veterans and is comprised of older players (ages 30+) who like the old original series. The Fleet's backstory is the Federation of the game-era going back in time to bring back Kirk-era captains and their fighting spirit and savvy. Kind of like what I was doing in my COH supergroup anyway, which was a collection of Golden Age heroes showing modern supers the way to do things right.

STO doesn't completely replace donning spandex and capes to fight evil in City of Heroes, nor does it replace the good times and the friends I've made here. And while STO has become a bit more to me than merely a replacement game or making the best of a bad situation, I'll never forget the heroes here on Liberty I stood shoulder to shoulder with to save the day.

Goodbye, everybody! Here's hoping we met up again someday!

Best,

Doc Hornet



P.S. The graphic above was made from an actual screenshot of my ship, the USS Atlas Park. The game is that gorgeous.

Aloha, American Valor! A wonderful post.

I really enjoyed teaming up with you on your themed ITF runs (I prize my Cowboy ITF screenshots!) and chatting with you online about the game and about more than that. I'd like to think that we'll meet up again in another game sometime.

Aloha, Val! Aloha, Steele! and Aloha Liberty and COH!

Best,

Doc Hornet

Best of luck, Geronimo. I really enjoyed teaming with you, especially the few brief chats we've had. I'll miss those. It warmed my heart just seeing your name pop up in-game, knowing there was another fellow player who'd been over in sandbox.

(I, too, felt City of Heroes served as a stable point during my hectic deployment years.)

Take care!

Doc
doc.hornet -at- dochornet.com



@Yoshikawa
Star Trek Online
Fleet: TOS Veterans
tosfleet.com

Take care, Mystic. Enjoyed teaming with you against evil!

Doc
doc.hornet -at- dochornet.com



@Yoshikawa
Star Trek Online
Fleet: TOS Veterans
tosfleet.com

Star Trek Online, at least the "away team" ground combat portion of it. Very, very much like COH masterminding, possibly better imo.

You get up to four bridge officers to beam down with you. You can chose which officers beam down with you, chose what gear (phasers etc) to give them and what skills (powers) they train to use, you can name them and customize their looks. Promote them up the rank structure. etc.

There's Aggressive Mode, Defensive Mode, Passive Mode, Follow Mode, and go stand over there and stay put Mode commands pretty much just like COH.

Meanwhile your character is also very active phasering, grenading, tricordering, and judo chopping enemies (plus buffing or debuffing). And if you get defeated, your team continues to fight (and you can call them over to rez you). And you can rez your bridge officers during a fight, too.

Thanks for reply, Val. Sorry to hear that it's been that tough a year for you. Hopefully I'll be running into you and Steele in the future.

Your STO account would still be there, especially if you had a life account. My pre-launch characters were (a Federation Admiral and a Klingon starter character) with all their ships and gear. The only difference from when I left was the game has changed its various currencies since launch, so my characters had the new ones at the change-over exchange rates.

Last night in the STO/CO "CoX" chat channel (the two games share private chat channels), one of the CO Devs came on to specifically invite COH refugees to testing some new feature on the CO test server with the devs. I must say that both Cryptic and the CO players are making efforts at welcoming us.

I plan on making a bittersweet short return to COH for the Halloween Event (I missed the Haunted House last year) and possibly a Snaptooth run or two to rescue Baby New Year (my favorite mission in the game). I haven't played COH since the day of the announcement -- too depressing -- but enough time's gone by I think I can pop back in for those events (and grab screen shots of my characters' costumes for the last time).

Don't know when they'll be pulling the plug on the forums, so just a quick Doc Hornet update about what MMO I'm ending up at with the cancellation of our beloved City.

Thanks for all the previous suggestions for MMOs. In the past few weeks I tried out EVE (absolutely requires PVP and backstabbing, no thanks), WOW again (both its graphics and playerbase are just too cartoony), SWTOR (can't figure out flying the spaceships and I dislike the Lucasverse), and The Secret World (great concept, fun action, but too dark a tone for me for long term play).

I finally found one I'm going with. I've ended up switching over to Star Trek Online. I hadn't expected this. I'd tried out STO during pre-launch Beta and Live launch and enjoyed it, but didn't stay with it as COH was my One True Game and kept calling me back.

Reasons I'm ending up at STO:

1) I really enjoy it. I've looked up after starting a morning playing session to see that it's 2 o'clock the next morning. (EVE, WOW, and the rest lacked this little lost-track-of-time effect.)

2) Heroic feel. Not quite as good as battling crime in tights, but close.

3) Character customization. Not as good as COH (nothing is), but I can customize quite a lot. And not just my Captain player character, but his Bridge Crew members as well. I can turn off the "visualization" of loot (armor etc.) so I can keep my look despite what loot I'm using. Heck, I can even design my own alien race for my player character. How neat is that?

4) I love the away team mechanics. Not only do I get to satisfy my COH mastermind fix, I get to customize, train, and equip my bridge officer away team members.

5) I can actually fly the STO spaceships. I have to pass on most space battle games because I can't ever seem to get the hang of flying my ship (SWTOR, I'm looking at you!). I'm not great in STO, but I can get by on Standard difficulty.

6) PVP entirely optional.

7) Lots to do. Open world-events scheduled on regular basis. AE-like Foundry player-built missions. (And I like the daily bonus for playing 3 player-made missions.) Equivalent of radio missions. And repeatable story arcs. And they're adding stuff.

8) The new Duty Officer system mini-game. Good way to help level up your alt characters as you play your main.

9) Stunning graphics, both character art and space scenery.

10) Gameplay mechanics. A sprint that's fast (at least compared to WOW and TSW), no corpse-running...just respawn (and your away team can rez you in ground combat. And dual pistols animated right (sorry COH). And you can run around the bridge and interior of your ship now and actually do a few things.

11) There's a very active COX chat channel that's inter-game between Champions Online and STO. I've been lurking as I've played the past few days. Seems a low drama and a very helpful atmosphere.

12) Since it's Cryptic-designed, a lot is the same. Many of the COH slash commands like bind_load_file and showfps work in STO.

There are drawbacks, sure. It's not COH (sniff), and Perfect World/Cryptic are micro-transaction happy, but I'm enjoying the game and excited to develop my various characters.

I have a human captain I'm outfitting in the canon uniforms of the various Star Trek eras as he levels (he's wearing 1979 The Motion Picture uniform right now). A Caitain (cat-person) captain who's costumed in as close to the old original Battlestar Galactica Colonial Warrior costume as I can get (pretty close actually). An Borg captain and all-Borg crew varying from Seven-of-Nine human to death-warmed-over Borg zombie. A "cute little antennaed free-form" alien girl captain in custom white uniforms. And a retro TOS non-turtlehead Klingon captain and crew.

I'm having almost as much fun developing these STO characters as I did my COH heroes. I'm enjoying STO enough I might even try out Champions.

My account global over there in STO is @Yoshikawa. If any of you move over to Champions or STO, say hi. Especially if you know a good STO fleet to join.

Trying the trial tutorial of Secret World now with Doc "Hornchurch" Hornet (Templar). The very first thing that happens is a cut scene where a hornet (or maybe a bee) flies in my character's mouth.

Perhaps a good omen.

Reminds me of my very first session in Coh. Doc Hornet in his yellow and black striped bee costume (other than adding insect wings left unchaned since day 1 with COH). I ran over to Det. jose in Atlas and he looke at me and said, "With that getup you must be Doc Hornet." For a second I forgot he was an NPC and actually thought he was making a comment about my costume for real!

For what it's worth, Dr. R, I considered you not only another fine upstanding "doctor," but as someone I was happy to see on any team I had joined or even just online in chat.

(And like you, I was a soloist for whom the Sisterhood channel opened up the world of teaming.)

Thanks for dropping by Doc R, Mystic Fortune, and Kurrent. Enjoyed my teamups with all of you.

Checked over the Secret World site and they've at least sold me into trying it. Character customization looks very promising. Looks like I'll have to get a better graphics card (something I'd planned on anyway) if I want to play regularly, though.
.
If you see a Doc Hornet running around Secret World, it's a good chance that'll be me.

If I default to WoW, assuming they're still there I parked my "blueside" toons on Undermine:

Leighvulf (worgen hunter)
Vulfsbane (worgen warlock)
Coggles (gnome engineer) (blast goggles up!)

Can't remember which server I was "redside" but toon was Cryptella (undead something).

I think those are my two likely options at this point -- WoW and Secret World.

Thanks Yeti, and Raven, and G69. And thanks for the tip about Secret World. That actually looks interesting, and even with me not being a big fan of urban dark milieus. Looks like they have a three day free trial. I'll put that to the top of my list of things to check out.

Here's a list of why I'm spoiled and why all the other games I tried didn't click for me.


Casual play. I could park a character and run pull the clothes out of the dryer without worrying about mobs respawning on top of my toon.

Super Sidekicking. Lowbies teaming with level-cappers. Dogs and cats living together.

Travel powers! COH's normal non-sprint run is faster than WoW's sprint power. You can jump over objects! And you can fly. Other MMOPRGs feel like a plodding stroll compared to moving around in COH.

Character customization. Aside from themed supergroups, it was almost impossible to find two characters that looked alike. I have an Egytpian pharoah in tuxedo and spats, a Revolutionary War naval officer, a 19th Century Britsh railroad conductor, a St. Pauli's Girl barmaid, an pumpkin-headed bipedal plant, and a biker dude turned zombie and not one of them depended on class or race or gear to look the way they did.

Player demographics. COH players seem to be a little older (not to mention mature and polite) than other MMORPGs I tried. Large number of female players and spousal and parent-child teams, too.

Liberty server. COH in general had a good player base, but Liberty players in particular were great. Helpful and friendly to new players. I've tried other MMORPGs and haven't enjoyed the player encounters I've had.

Guild-free teaming. The chat channels filled the need of joining a guild just to team. I used my two-account solo supergroup just for storage and could skip the politics and thievery of guild membership.

Easy game to play. Not that there wasn't a lot to learn eventually, but the basic play was pretty simple and you could pick up things at your own pace. You didn't need to memorize hot keys for 300 popup menus etc. Casual player-friendly GUI (for the most part).

Endless combinations of alts. I tried to make one of every powerset. I had over 70 toons on two accounts and still didn't have all the powersets. Never did make a battle axe toon for example.

thanks, Tax E.

The thing about WoW is at least I can be pretty sure it's not going anywhere soon. I don't think I could take this a second time. Not for a while, at least.

Thanks, Hazy and Ender. I didn't know LOTR was still running; I'll have to give it a looksee.

Thanks, Ion. My thoughts on fantasy as well. And Champions or DCU superheroing would just remind me too much of COH right now.

I'd love to find a good spaceship sci-fi game.

I wish I could stand EVE. The game's gorgeous and the game engine runs seemingly flawlessly. Can't stand the anarcho-nihilistic Social Darwinian game culture, though. Semi-solo PVE doesn't seem very possible there.

I did like a lot of STO but mission play quickly became mind-numbingly the same. Maybe they have new content since I tried it at game launch.

If I could find a group of sane and grown-up players like here on Liberty to guild with, I'd be okay with WoW, clunky as the game feels after COH. My old toons are on Undermine over there iirc. Still, I'll probably end up dusting them off and trying it again.

After my third Iraq tour, medically I wasn't up to doing much (the VA has since rated me 100% disabled). Playing COH has kept me alert and engaged in what otherwise is a rather austere life of being pretty much housebound.

Today's news about the game has hit me very hard.

I want to thank all the great people on Liberty server I've teamed with over the years and wish to ask one last favour:

I need to find a new COH to keep me going during the day. I've been trying to prepare for this day by testing out various other MMORPGs, but haven't found a suitable replacement. Of course, hooking up with people of the caliber of Liberty Server would go a long ways to overcome game defects.

Any suggestions of what game to turn to?

Freitag, Paragon might consider adding the Leprechaun pet to this week's items. A good number of the new Nature Affinity characters I've seen running around today have been Celtic-themed. (I know I'd buy a Leprechaun for each of my two accounts. )

Man Overboard is now available.

Character idea: Water Blasting while wearing an orange Quilted Jacket (Sleeveless option) (Pocket D costume set) for a life preserver and bet reward boxing shorts for swim trunks.

Having created well over 2000 golden age hero/villain micros for my golden age micro website, I am somewhat familiar with what sort of costume pieces Golden Age heroes/villains used and how they differ from Silver Age and modern heroes. I had to create most of my own micro hero costume piece templates because more modern costume pieces simply didn't work.

http://goldenagemicros.com/index.html

There are huge Golden Age gaps in the current COH costume creator.

The biggest gap imo is the lack of sleek tight options. (Sleek tight should be the COH default, not plain tights.) There is no slight tight option, for example, for male boots/flat. Most of the boots of the tight-fitting costumes of the golden age would be boots/flat option (no boot heels). Another big gap is if you select the brief pattern for Lower Body/Legs/Tights, no other pattern or striping can be selected. There should be a tights briefs+pattern option.

Other GA gaps in the COH costume creator:

• Turbans (esp. large round turbans w/ and w/o jewel) used by GA magicians
• Fez hats w/ and w/o tassles also worn by GA magicians
• WWI-style "tin pan" helmets worn by several GA heroes
• Jodhpur pants worn by countless GA male and female characters
• Buccanneer boots (soft leather boots with tops rolled down)
• Pilot helmets with googles up on forehead
• Bird-like "Ruin" cowls with nose-beaks
• Montana Peak hats (Smokey Bear hat)
• Headsman's full cowl (sack-like hood with eyeholes cut out)
• Headsman's half cowl (sack-like hood with eyeholes that shows nose, mouth, chin)
• A plain Baggy top option w/o the collar details. A better options would be a plain baggy option in the Jackets section so that sleeves/sleeveless could be added to it.
• Patriot tights patterning. Star-spangled pattern for chest/legs/gloves/boots/capes. Two-toned vertical and horizontal striped briefs for flag stripe effect.
• High collars w/o capes option
• Crossed leather chest harnesses (wide glossy leather)
• "Suspenders" vertical leather chest harnesses
• Sam Browne belt
• Leather bets with closed-flap gun holster
• Pilot scarf
• Clark Gable/Errol Flynn mustache
• Brylcream (a little dab'll do ya) male hair
• Tailless Wedding tuxedo
• Coveralls and overalls
• Broomstick-handle Mauser and Luger pistol options. A receipe temp power for these weapons, also, so that non-Dual Pistol GA characters can wield them.

Female-specific parts

• Sleek/leather "Merry Widow" one-piece strapless top/brief (both skin and tights underneath options)
• Veronica Lake hairdo
• Lauren Bacall hairdo

My suggestion for fixing Peacebringers isn't to change any of the powers, but to go even further Jack of All Trades with their inherents.

Add the following inherent powers to Peacebringers. Keep their Cosmic Balance inherent. Additionally, each form gets two inherents specific for their form.

Human form: Defender Vigilance and add a new Radiance Inhererent (every attack has built-in extra energy damage proc).

Nova Form: Blaster Defiance and Corrupter Scourge

Dwarf Form: Tanker Gauntlet (w/ Bruising) and Scrapper Critical Hit

This change augments thematic classification of Peacebringers as Jack of All Trades, while providing specific help for each of the forms. Human form gets better endurance managment as well as conditional extra damage. Nova form gets increased ranged effectiveness and a bit of mez help (able to fire first two ST blasts while mezzed). Dwarf form gets better taunting and potential critical damage.

Additionally, I suggest for both Peacebringers and Warshades to automatically grant an initial 6 empty slots for all nova and dwarf powers on selection of nova/dwarf power.

This change helps frees up bi- and tri-form players from having to scrimp on slots and allows a bit of stat strengthening by increased io set bonus possibilities.

Surprised not to see any naval characters cited: "Captain" this or "Admiral" that.

I went with my penchant for Golden Age patriotic heroes and rolled up revolutionary war ghost "Ensign Yank" on Liberty server, mixing the new water blast set with the new tricorn hat. A navy blue/gold trim open cowboy jacket with occult baron sleeves , white steam punk cravat/necktie, white tight (baggy texture) pants and shiny black leather boots make a passible revolutionary war naval uniform. Add epaulets, high collared cape and mask for flavoring.

Liberty Name Watch -- Water Blaster Edition

The following water-themed names are available on Liberty:

• Water Bandit ("You give up, or are you thirsty for more?") -- great for solo characters playing COH while Home Alone
• Running Water
• Plumber's Helper
• Poseidon Adventurer
• Hydro Man
• Hydrologist
• Bore Tide
• Salt Water Taffy
• Jet Ski
• Anchors Aweigh
• Waterpark