Man_From_AUNTIE

Originally Posted by Olantern

In my early days (late i3),

- There was no "cooperative mission" completion. If you had the same mission as someone else on the team, the team did it twice.
- There were no villains, no PvP zones, no arenas, no universities, no markets, no Day Jobs, and no flashback system.
- There was a difficulty system, but it had many fewer options than what exists now, all with names that you had to learn like a code.
- Because of the sidekicking rules explained above, it was easy to get stuck in situations where you were routinely fighting +6's, often with suboptimal enhancements. I vividly remember the second Task Force I ever ran, where every single thing on the Task Force was purple, and I did a grand total of 10 damage (as a level 28ish tank) to minions with a fully-slotted attack, the two or three times I managed to connect.
- The i0 task forces, Moonfire, and Hess were the only ones available, aside from the Trials. No one had them memorized, as most people seem to today, making not just today's "speed runs" but even "moderately paced runs" impossible. My first TF ever (Synapse) took six and a half straight hours to complete.
- There was no combining of inspirations, which made the death runs through the Hollows and Perez Park even worse. I remember trying to get one level 6 character to a door in Four Seasons and dying ten times over before giving up.
- Debt seriously and significantly slowed down leveling, especially at high levels. Debt was not halved for dying inside a mission, and there was no such thing as patrol xp.
- Kheldians took extra damage from most attacks. They were supposed to make up for this by teaming. Playing one was considered prestigious (though people still complained about them the way they do today). They didn't have their own story arcs. Those were added in i4 with no fanfare whatsoever.
- Faultline was a hazard zone with DEEP chasms. Some could not be escaped without flight, teleport, or superjumping. The area behind the dam was blocked off but visible; people used to periodically get under the map to try to look at it.
- Arachnos was directly mentioned in only one place in the game (Maestro's bio) and was called SPIDER.
- Supergroup bases (and prestige) didn't exist.
- Some Rikti didn't wear clothes.
- The Council was new. (The Fifth Column had been written out of the game at the beginning of i3.)
- All player character weapons and powers looked the same.
- There were no friendly combat NPC's in missions. (This may be viewed as a positive if you're thinking of Fusionette or Lady Jane.)
- Enemy spawns of mixed factions couldn't fight each other (except in the Council/5th Column "war" that began i3). The most they could do was the "punch each other" emote. (Hostile factions were added in i5, in Croatoa.)
- Moving to i4, once the Global Defense Reduction (yes, they actually called it that) was announced, everyone was certain the game would be either instantly emptied or become unplayably difficult.
- Geko, rather than Castle, ran the devs' Powers team. Geko did not post on the forums, read PM's, or consider player opinions as anything more than the ravings of depraved ape-creatures.
- In fact, I believe Positron, Geko, Archon Voss, and Jack "Statesman" Emmert were the only devs with rednames on the fora at the time.
- Some people still liked Statesman and would praise his ideas.
- Fly gave you a large Accuracy debuff.

Okay, that's all for now.

Originally Posted by Peacemoon

Agree completely, loving the story arcs and story. Have spent more hours on it then I intended also

Also lots of respect to Paragon Studios for adding great RP elements to the game, and also for not dumbing it down which seems to be the route a lot of other games are going at the moment.

Originally Posted by LISAR

Pump your fist?

Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum

...for that matter, anyone seen Troy Hickman's "Disturbing Grandma" lately?

Originally Posted by BungeeBall

Its ok, his name has to be spoken two more times before he will be able to escape the darkness and emerge back into the City.

And really, who is crazy enought to say it two more times....