Interface

If you're set on Dark Melee, go Brute instead of Scrap. The first two attacks have very fast animations and good recharge, building Fury very fast.

I haven't taken either to 50, but Invul and WP are both generally good. Invul has a big PSI hole but otherwise makes you godly; it's rough on the END bar, but DM has Dark Consumption to fix that. WP falls to alpha strikes and isn't great against lone AVs, but it's still fine overall.

An alternate choice is a Defence based set, Energy Melee or Super Reflexes. Since Dark Melee debuffs tohit, this synergizes well. Take Touch of Fear (-15% tohit) and add some tohit debuff boosters, and even AVs will be whiffing nonstop.

Or, go onto Beta and do Bio Armor. It has a PSI hole as well, but covers all the other bases well and keeps your END bar full. Plus double XP and free amplifiers!

A big thanks to everyone who played and left comments. I never really participated in the community much, other than making a few comedy AE arcs a few years ago, so this makes a good final way of giving something back. I fixed a few typos based of feedback, thanks!

Yes the Battalion boss is tough. I though of him as CoH's ultimate final boss. Of course, I could always make him Mace/EA for a real challenge

I always wanted to create a Mace character named Herbie Popnecker, but this thread inspired me to reach for the stars...

http://i.imgur.com/hqFED.jpg

In case anyone doesn't want to (or can't) go on Beta, here's a quick rundown:

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HERO:
1: For some reason, there's a Nemesis Jaeger in Steel spewing propaganda, which when spoken to kindly informs you that Nemesis is planning to attack City Hall. You relay this tidbit to Positron, who agrees to send the Freedom Phalanx to City Hall with you... but what if that's a diversion? A-ha, he's also planning to attack Talos... but wait, that might be a diversion as well! Why look, he's also attacking a radio station! Basically, based on your dialog choices, you can have all, some or none of the Phalanx accompany you to City Hall. Sadly, there's no badge for doing it alone.

You arrive and clobber three Jaeger that are powered by Pandora energy, but aren't too hard. Then an empowered Warhulk, who also isn't too hard.

2: You need to cut Nemesis off from the Pandora energy, so you go to Harvin's lab. You battle some Nemesis, push some buttons, then battle more Nemesis, during which you can push more buttons to prevent more Nemesis from coming. Then you push another button and the lab blows up, although all you get is a message that the lab blows up before the mission ends. Maybe they were planning to add SFX later.

3. Nemesis is attacking Steel Canyon! You go to an instanced Steel map and defeat empowered Warhulks, who give you "Pandora Power" or something, which adds -res to your attacks plus a chance to proc EXTREME!!!!1 energy damage. Then you fight the Nemesis Monstrosity, a three story tall Warhulk. It looked really cool, but wasn't too hard: I beat it with the gimmick petless MM I made on Test.

After the fight, you blow up, pass out, and awake in Fort Trident, where Posi spends eight dialog screens filling you in on his affair with a Russian researcher... wait, that's not it. He actually congratulates you, says that Nemesis if defeated, and the Phalanx needs to shape up more.

Then, out of the blue, you go to Ouroboros to talk to Mender Silos, who gives you a bunch of vague, blow-off answers about how he could have helped you but didn't. He doesn't say or even hint that he really is Nemesis, which I found disappointing.

VILLAIN:

In Sharkhead, you find "Inconspicuous Female #23573", a Nemesis Automaton who thinks it's 2013 and is telling you how to live under Nemesis' rule. You speak to Lastri, who calls you to a debriefing on your ship. Along with Odysseus, Captain Castillo, and two other guys, she tells you that you need to name your organization "The Illuminati" because you work behind the scenes and stuff. Whatever. Then, she says you need to make a truce with Arachnos. So, you go to the Grandville instanced map, and meet Ghost Widow, Black Scorpion and Scirocco. They won't let you in to see Recluse, so you pummel them, which is not too hard with your allies' help. You then go in the tower and talk to Recluse, who snarls at you but agrees to a truce.

The second and third missions are the same as the hero ones. After that, another debriefing, where Lastri tells you she won't be working with you anymore. As she leaves, you drop a tracking device down her cleavage, treating you to a cutscene where she talks to her boss. Surprise- she was working with the heroes all along, to form a rival organization to weaken Arachnos. You aren't told who the hero is, but when he says he's off to an orgy tonight it's kind of clear it's Manticore. After that, you go to Ouro for the same vague answers from Silos.

All in all, it was pretty good but not as great as the first SSA. Maybe a few more coats of polish would have brought it to the same level.

Starting a new studio would take a lot of money. Even if a whole bunch of ex-Paragon people got together, that probably wouldn't happen.

Still, I think that a 'spiritual successor' to CoH would be great, rather that trying to recreate the entire game from scratch.

Thanks for the info. If this is going to be an 'ask a dev technical stuff' thread, two other things have always interested me. When Issue 2 launched, players were given a bunch of badges as soon as they logged in, which meant the game had been gathering data for a long time, probably since launch. My question is, in addition to the stuff you got badges for, what other information was datamined? Missions taken? Inspirations used? Blind invites received? Times jumped?

Second, something I was wondering since day one. Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems that when you use an inspiration in combat, and another drops seconds later, it's more likely to be of the exact type you used. Is there any mathematical truth to this, or just my whiskey-fueled ravings?

Once again, thanks to ALL the devs for a great time!!

Gratuitous threadbump. If you are one of the ones who have played this, please, drop me some feedback, I'd love to hear it.

A few weeks ago, I clicked on an M pedestrian while playing my badge character, Purple Lovin'. Turns out I've logged 1224 hours on that character alone. And, I have 6 other 50s all fully IOed and T3/T4 Incarnated. And 8 other 50s in various stages of IO-ing and Incarnate-ing. And about a dozen sub-50s I've abandoned, and maybe another dozen I deleted.

Altogether, that's much, much too much time spent in the pale glow of a computer screen. I'll keep playing video games until the day I die (Dishonored, mmm...) but I think I've had it with MMORPGs.

As for where my characters will live, I'm taking the view that the City of Heroes will live on forever without us. I mean, from a storyline point of view, there are only a few ways that we can fit the shutdown in...

1) The Battalion destroys Earth.

2) Rularuu eats the dimension.

3) The heroes and villains of Paragon continue to fight on, they just don't have My User Dave looking over their shoulder anymore.

I'm kind of glad that CoH never advertised on mainstream media. Our playerbase was never huge, but it was composed of fun, smart, vibrant people.

Offhand, the only MMORPGs I can think of that advertised on TV are WoW, SWG, and SW:TOR... and just take a look at their players.

Like most of us, I was hit pretty hard by news of the game closing. I've been trying to wrap my head around it for the past month, and getting nowhere really. The past few weeks, I decided to deal with it the best way I could; by making an AE arc designed to give closure to the game's diehard players.

Your Final Mission, #554396 by @Interface

You take the role of a longtime hero, summoned by the Well of the Furies to deal with the end of the world, the Coming Storm. Since most of us will want to play it on their main, it has EBs, or AVs depending or your setting. Still, despite being 5 missions, it should be easily beatable within 15 minutes. READ ALL THE CLUES, that's where the story is told.

In particular, the arc lets you choose the path of a hero or a vigilante. In the first three missions, check your clues after the mission ends. You have a choice to make before leaving.

Any and all feedback is welcome, here or ingame.

Thanks to everyone who fought by my side for the past 8 years!

Like most of us, I was hit pretty hard by news of the game closing. I've been trying to wrap my head around it for the past month, and getting nowhere really. The past few weeks, I decided to deal with it the best way I could; by making an AE arc designed to give closure to the game's diehard players.

Your Final Mission, #554396 by @Interface

You take the role of a longtime hero, summoned by the Well of the Furies to deal with the end of the world, the Coming Storm. Since most of us will want to play it on their main, it has EBs, or AVs depending or your setting. Still, despite being 5 missions, it should be easily beatable within 15 minutes. READ ALL THE CLUES, that's where the story is told.

In particular, the arc lets you choose the path of a hero or a vigilante. In the first three missions, check your clues after the mission ends. You have a choice to make before leaving.

Any and all feedback is welcome, here or ingame.

Thanks to everyone who fought by my side for the past 8 years!

I was hoping for the past month that things could be salvaged, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. So, here's a big goodbye to all my friends on Champion.

I started playing in late beta. At launch, I made a few throwaway characters on random servers before making my first real one: an Ill/Emp troller named Gaia, based on an obscure Marvel character I was intrigued by. I even checked to see if she was copyrighted; I can't remember where, but somewhere on the web is a list of all characters that Marvel has copyrighted (several thousand).

http://imgur.com/x4CiZ

I got to know most of you at Hami raids. Eventually I started recieving tells asking me to join, since Illusion trollers were vital for the Hami strategy back then. I even led the PA drop team a few times, a cool experience since I usually shy away from any leadership role.

Other characters on Champion were Shadow Kitty, Purple Lovin', Luminious Kitty, Bewb Widow and Operative Fuzzypaws. Yes, I'm a guy who likes playing catgirls. There's probably a word for that somewhere.

I played almost exclusively on Champion from '04 to '09, and got to know a lot of awesome people. Sadly, even before the shutdown notice, the game eventually began to decline. I took a break from CoH in late '09, came back in '11, logged into Pocket D at 9 on a Saturday night and found it completely deserted. I almost cried. I played on Virtue for a while when I came back because that's where people were. I even moved a few characters over, although I couldn't bring myself to move Gaia and Purple. Champion was their home.

Anyway, shout-outs to a few particular people:

Zubligunubli: I never knew anyone who enjoyed played a blaster so much. Also, 'Running of the Bulls' was hysterical.

Redorthy: I'm going to miss your Big Bubbles.

Bud: We disagreed, but still being in PoN was lots of fun.

Mistress Shaana: if you had just playtested your AE arc once, it would have been... well... playable.

Dollmistress: It seems you moved on from CoH a few years ago, but on the off chance you see this, being in your VG was a lot of fun. You clearly put an incredible amount of work into the base.

A big hi also to Neuronia, Witty, Netminder, Placta, and Amygdala.

...give them Hostess Twinkies?

Holy crap, I knew SoAs were awesome, but duo-ing the mothership? Way to go!

My personal moment of SoA awesome was soloing a 8x4 paper mission with my psi Fort, before Incarnate. No temps.

You hit the debt cap at lvl 6.

There's a note by the register at Image Inc. "Do not take checks from $name".

A new badge comes out, "Defeat $name 100 times."

Mobs can get that badge too.

You get Ouroboros mission "Go back to Outbreak to find out who is undoing your work". You arrive to find Statesman, Mender Silos, and Rularuu.

The Mediporter sends you to Grandville. If you're a villain, it sends you to Steel instead.

The first power of your secondary is Absorption.