Montaugh

What I saw of the event was awesome, and I wish to commend all involved on a job well done.

I actually managed to make it into one screenshot before I crashed out shortly after we had began the event. I was recording so I didn't bother to take any shots myself (doh). I most likely shouldn't have tried to record the event as I lost demo when I crashed, but live and learn it was worth the effort.

It was nice to be there in the beginning when heroes first flew around the city in wide eyed wonder. It was an honor to be there even for a short time at the ending on the beta server and to be in awe of how far the game has come. From the first 100 to the last 100(or so) has a nice symmetry to it.

Finally a shout out had to go to the few of us trapped in RWZ 2 after the event started, either arriving a little late or being trapped because of crashing. We held our own little event and did a mothership raid. It was one of the few raids that I was able to actually enjoy since it started out with just a few of us. My mind is bit foggy as I've only slept for 2 hours or so but I believe it was HP Lovecat that took charge and lead the raid, and I really should have grabbed some screenshots as we took down the pylons but I was having too much fun.

edit: Should have said I was on Controller Grav at the time.

This is absolutely awesome.

Catastrophe Carl: Mutant: FF/Energy Defender. Loaded out for knockback, no shields. (note the story most likely will not fit within the character limits))

Carl was born with his powers, and he always dreamed of one day becoming a force for good in the world. Carl had one problem though in that he could barely contain his own powers.

As a child he tried to save a cat that was stuck up a tree. He focused energy around the cat and the cat shot off from the tree pushed along by Carl's energy, the cat was later found three blocks away on top of a building.

GIFT tried to train Carl to better control his powers and that was where he first got the nickname Catastrophe. Carl was still young and his GIFT class was getting a visit from Synapse and Minx. Carl very eager rushed over to greet one of his idols forgetting that he had a force bubble surrounding him and knocked Synapse thirty or so feet down the hall, much to the amusement of Minx who was heard to say, "So, that's 'Catastrophe Carl'." while speaking with the GIFT instructor.

When Carl was old enough he registered to be a hero. He quickly found out though that being a hero does not come cheap as the heroes were responsible for the damage and destruction they caused while fighting petty crimes. Carl was soon buried under massive debt because of the nature of his powers and he could no longer afford to save everyone and to stop every crime. It was just not cost effective.

Carl had to choose who to save, and in such a way that cost him the least amount of money. Once Carl perfected his initial system he began applying it to all aspects of being a hero. He decided who to save based upon how much it would cost to save them and the returns that would be generated by saving them. Carl hoped that those he could no longer afford to save would be saved by other heroes.

It was said that when Carl acted a catastrophe soon followed. Rather then hiding from this fact Carl embraced the name and was soon seen bouncing around all sections of the city except Skyway. Synapse wouldn't let Catastrophe Carl anywhere near Skyway but that is another story..

I'd make backstory and background matter. Spider-man is more then just spider-man. You have aunt may, MJ, uncle Ben.. all effected him in different ways. How he came into his superpowers also mattered as it was continually brought up in storylines, would it be passed onto his kid, what if he kept mutating over time. You also need those reoccurring villains like Venom, Carnage, The Vulture, Doc Oct.. not just the nameless thugs and bosses.

You can add complexity within a simple menu.
Both Parents living (y/n)
(y) Names of parents.
(n) Both dead (y/n) Parent living (mother/father).
Does your character have kids? name the kids..
Power origin.. Science.. Experiement, exposure. Accidental, purposeful..
ect... Each would make the character being able to fit into the world more, perhaps certain missions only trigger if you had were accidentally exposed to some thing that gave you your powers. The people kidnapped could be one of the people listed.. failure to save them could lead to the death of that family member or cause a rift between you as some other hero saved them when you couldn't.

Make the story matter more and be more personally linked to your character. You can also build this stuff up over time, contacts that you make being added to your background, foes that you continually counter showing up more often with new schemes.

I like the idea of working for and against factions rather then being a pure hero or villain.. actions that you take matter, and can have consequences.

A villain gallery would be nice, it could be one you created yourself or your friend(s) create.. it could pull them randomly from the playerbase from opposing factions. Your character appears as an NPC in their story and their character appears as an NPC in your story.. if you are both on the same team then you wouldn't appear in each others story naturally as you are already there.

That is the sort of thing I would love to see.

I'd love to see the devs do a superhero MMO with the Cryengine 3. Though doing a quick search seems to have a license cost of around 1.2 mil. Still it would be awesome to see that engine being used for a superhero MMO.

I hope that the devs can do something together with a small studio even if its just smaller games for now so that they fund larger games in the future. Perhaps jump on the turn based strategy influx that xcom reintroduced many players too and do something with that game genre that hasn't been done before or done lately theme wise.

Ah fun times. Those were fun forums and speculation on what powers did what.. origins having different effects on your powers. So many years spent waiting for the game to come out..far too few weeks left to play.

The hexaflexmexa food idea was sheer genius in video 3.

For CoT.... Spectral Followers, Demons, knights. Then the Spectral Lords (the ghost lts) That -acc and the level range that appear is a pita.

Vahzilok: The Mire and Murk Eidolon.

Vanguard: just.. wow.

Also not fond of fighting arachnos.

Snipers.. I have a special hate for snipers regardless of group.

Bouncing around the shadow shard.

Having to pause in the middle of a story arc to:
Talk with a sec chief
Be introduced to a new contact that you must visit to continue the arc you are on, or to begin the arc that you want to run.
Be introduction to pvp zone contacts.

The following maps:
The small clustered cave maps. (infamous blue cave caves, council caves.. I liked the wide opened caverns)
The sewer maps that had similar colored walls so that doorways would vanish. (Most common in 'the dark' sewers.)
Arachnos mission maps.

Power wise:
Dimension Shift and phasing in general.
Gravity's secondary effect being negated by its control effects. (really slow movement when you can immobilize most mobs in the game)
Crashing Tier 9 armors. (liked the buff, hated the crash)
Crashing nukes as they didn't make it to the live servers to be fixed.
The disparity between ATs at high end power levels.
Purple Triangles
always seeming to miss after eating a yellow inspiration.
The lack of effect some enhancements had on powers.

Personally I would try to find a way to make backgrounds matter. In most games the character just follows a story on the server with every player getting the same exact story. But what if your background could be filled in via a series of options and then your background could be tagged and inserted into missions. Random NPC doesn't get kidnapped but someone listed in your background has been kidnapped. The consequences of having a public ID verse having a secret ID. Rivals that kept popping up and gaining new rivals.

I see it almost like a checklist sort of thing.
Parents living or dead?
Living.. Happily married? Divorced?
Happily married Name of parents. Sex of parents.
Divorced... Name of Parents. Sex of Parents.
Dead... Both dead? Yes/No
...Yes. Cause of death: Random crime, accident, murdered, natural causes.
Was the death a reason for becoming a hero?(Yes/no)
Yes. Reason for being a hero (Revenge, legacy, redemption ect)
No..

Power Source (Science, Magic, Technology, Natural, Mutation, Otherworldly)
Science... Accidental exposure. Test Subject.
Magic... Items, Spells, Possession
Technology... Gadgets, powered suit, advanced technology
Natural... Raw Skill, Honed training.
Mutation... Powers awoke at certain point in life, had powers since birth.
Otherworldly... Alien, demon, ect

Expand it out some more and you can easily get a more detailed character background that could be quickly inputted and drawn upon to make the character's interaction with the world seem more real and interactive. They wouldn't see some content if say they were on a path of revenge verses one of redemption, and for the people that don't want to take the time they could just select random and the choices would be randomly filled in... or take generic premade background options. Options like The Wayne (parents killed in random crime, seeks revenge) The Parker (powers caused by accident, actions killed family member, seeks redemption)

I love coming up with backgrounds for my characters, but in the end they are often meaningless fluff. Its an entire area that has not been explored but is really important to comics. Spider-man is more then just a guy in a suit that throws webbing, and beats up thugs on a series of adventures. Without his background story he isn't anywhere near as interesting nor would he be as popular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeLcRwJ2plA pretty much speaks for itself...

I'd like to see it as a celebration of the game. No bemoaning that it is ending, no end of the world or save the world sort of event. Just groups of players all doing what we have always done all along.

Run your favorite missions, run your favorite taskforces. Get as many people playing within those last few days as we can and simply celebrate the game, the studio, and community by simply playing and having a blast while we do so.

And when its time we take those memories always with us to whatever games we find ourselves playing in the future. Then we remember CoH in every feature that they swipe from the game.

First ward would be awesome as well... or night ward with all the tentacles as happened on virtue earlier (darn Zwill but that was spooky looking.)

heh... have the figures, scale the maps and figs to the right size.. come up with some tabletop rules and you have City of Heroes the miniature boardgame. Perhaps in a similar vein to mansions of madness. Oh dear gods I'm even seeing it forming in my head with all the missions and scenarios, moving from board to board in a campaign style game.. ahhh someone make it stop now I'll never sleep tonight.

Thank you Posi.

The only regret I have from city is that I couldn't experience the game all graphically pretty, and I am continually floored by how low end a system can play the game. Thank you for not updating the requirements (even though I suggested you should :P).

This game is and will be one of my all time favorite games and experiences for the rest of my life.

((p.s. I do have one confession... I broke the initial NDA by allowing my then 5 year old nephew to watch the game as I played.. and might have even let him play.. as long as he ate all his veggies that is. I have never seen a kid eat their veggies so fast. At 14 he still eats his veggies and looks forward to coming over to play City of Heroes when he is down this way. He will miss the game greatly as its always been here for as long as he can remember."

It seems like they give two different numbers...

I ended up with one character having 10775.. which is no way that character has been logged in that long. So I'm guessing that is my total time played across all my characters.

Controller Grav had 1865
Platinum Knight had 1385
Dominator Grav had 373
Elkinarc had 174
Edarinna showed as 10775

(just a small sampling on virtue, I'll get a total number over the course of the next few months)

Years ago Zloth made a post asking how many of The first 100 were still around, at the time quite a few answered the call. Now nearly 9 years after the initial beta started (ok so it was December but we won't make it until then *sniffs*) its time to find out who is still around once more.

To those who don't know who the first 100 are.... we were part of round one beta, the first 100 players to ever have played city of heroes. I can't recall if we were self named at the end of round one beta or if the devs called us that, I want to say it was the devs but that was nearly 9 years ago.

All during beta we were rather close as a group as we shared something that was unique to city of heroes and being part of that small group of initial testers. I've tested in other MMOs and other games but nothing has ever been like being there for the initial days of CoH. No one was jaded or burned out on previous MMOs as MMOs were new. Most of us had nothing to compare the game to. We all wanted to make our heroes and didn't care as much about the mechanics of it but how it felt and how they played. We had a level of communication between us and the devs that you can only get from a small community experience. Bonds were formed and experiences that can never again be had were jointly shared. To me it was something to be proud of, which I know some may feel foolish but I am proud of the fact that I was a member of the first 100, and I will try to be one the last 100 when the servers are shut down. Has a nice synergy to it...

We are in the final weeks of the game so I thought it would be nice to see how many, if any of us are still around... and maybe get together one last time for one final coin shot.

Well obviously I'm here... and I played as Controller Grav in beta.

99 left to find... come out and answer the call one last time...

Most of what I added/fixed/broke horribly was done during beta..

I completely broke burn and phase shift when I found out that you could burn while dim shifted (which at the time was an ally phase). A flurry of fire tankers appeared towards the end of beta with the phase power.

I was with phantom when we found out how to make him invulnerable to all damage, unless it came from something like 10 levels over his levels. A patch later damage resistance was capped.

I'm most likely directly responsible for getting dimension shift changed from an ally phase to a foe phase and potentially the reason fold space was removed and replaced with siggy.

The grief testing I was doing bad... bad.. things. I still feel bad about some of the things I did to my teammates, phasing the tank, teleport killing the entire party, phasing the empath, phasing the blaster just as they would nuke, folding the entire team during the boss fight back to the start of the mission preventing the mission from ever being completed. Folding space the entire team just before we got to the mission entrance preventing the mission from ever being started...recalling people into transitions forcing them to zone. Teleporting under the map, folding the entire team under the map, then teleporting back onto the map.. leaving the mission and them stranded.

I showed the devs how teleport foe/friend/self could be used to teleport anyone off the edge of a map, later this most likely extended to reducing the camera distance to prevent map jumping while teleporting.

I coined the phrase Dim shaft during beta after dim shift was changed from an ally phase to a foe phase that didn't immobilize. That was just.... there are no words to how screwed over you were when you used Dim shift. All the foes just piled on top of you and when unphased basically instantly killed you. I am glad to see that the name dim shaft did not become a lasting term (though surprised that it didn't. :P)

I pointed out that propel slotted did less damage then an unslotted brawl. I was not pleased when I found that one out.

I was part of the group of teleporters that figured out we could glide teleport faster then any other travel power..period. Basically you jumped off a building and teleported just before you hit the ground causing your character to slide/glide in the process. Teleporting kept your momentum going so the more you did it the faster you got. The only limit on the speed was the size of the zone or the speed of your reflexes as eventually you would splat into the ground. I was also one of the first people to use a teleporting bind (though mine was button 4 to place and then teleport as normal)

I might have started the entire sewer run thing as towards the end of beta I figured out that I could level faster by taking a group down into the sewers then I could level up from running missions. Others started following that lead at the end of beta, and it might have snowballed from there.

.... post beta....

I was one of the initial people that came up with the idea to wormhole hami during the statesman trial. I was also using wormhole on lab equipment. These 'creative' uses of wormhole were fixed soon after. Might have been something to do with throwing the lab equipment at the other players shouting "HERE CATCH".

Most likely I got Dim Shift nerfed (yes actually nerfed) before the great control nerf. I had slotted it so I could permaphase monsters and was using it as an offensive stealth power (I think I had it up roughly every 15-20 seconds it was a long time ago). I seem to remember phasing hami as well... but I can't recall if that was raid hami, or trial hami.

I suggested using tileset magic from nwn to basically reskin an existing area with a new skin. This was then used in recluse victory to good effect.

During the Invention beta I suggested not having damage/control IOs under the control IO types as the non-damaging controls could not make use of damage increases. In hindsight I should have suggested a new IO set.. damage control sets.

That is all I can think of off hand... could be more that I can't even recall from the beta though.

(interesting factoid the original blasters secondaries all had crossbows as their tier 1 secondary power in the initial days of the first beta round, so you would throw fireballs at the mobs and then shot them in the face with a crossbow. That brought a big smile to my face.)

Round 1 beta is when I started playing.
I was actually lucky to have my first character featured on the box art of city of heroes. That character was Controller Grav (grav/kin). To this day Grav is my main character and wears that same costume. She will be the last character I am playing when the servers are shut off.

(link to the box art) http://www.giantbomb.com/city-of-her...de/51-1027898/

Controller Grav is the hero found under Protect the Streets. I've often wondered who the other heroes on the box screenshots were. I know that the pic from "the join other heroes" shot was from the first 100 when we gathered for that screen shot, but the others no clue as to who they were.

I really need to upload images somewhere....

What about demo files and the demo launcher? Could OLGE capture the data from that while the launcher is playing back recorded scenes?

End it how it began...

We see heroes fall in a dramatic conflict against unstoppable odds but they manage to pull out a win.

Outside the city hall steps a lone hero approaches Ms Liberty who is in mourning over those lost. The character helps her up, talks with her for a moment (montage of all the past issues that have happened). The hero looks out over the city once more in desperate need of heroes and flies off into the sunset to answer the call.

I was looking at my NCsoft master account today while I was putting in the codes you had just released and I saw the creation date of the account. I was floored when I thought about it for a moment December 24 2003. I had created that account just to play in the beta of CoH.

I told my friend about that over a chat and I was just saying.. next year it will be 10 years since I started playing city of heroes. I was talking about everything that was going on in the game, how I was going to be making a druid character and I was looking forward to the bright future of the game. I got all nostalgic on him and gushed about the game (he was used to hearing this).

The day I first logged in I was amazed and hooked, I might not have always been able to afford to play but I always watched, talked and waited until life adjusted so that I could play once more. I was playing last night running the SSA arc and I thought just how much fun I was having. I was planning a respec for the character I had created all those years ago and perhaps tied back down to the concept rather then just going with the most uber character I could ever build. It never even dawned on me that the game would be closing down anytime soon.

When it comes time for the last day.. I'll be here the entire day, playing my favorite characters and remembering all the good times, good friends and great company I've had along the way. I will remember a great many times and miss them.

Thank you.. thank you for the past 9ish years. I wish you all the best in whatever you do next. I hope to run into you again in some game, either as a player or once again as a dev.

Montaugh

To say I am floored is just.. its hard to find the words.

Looks interesting, and I wonder what the new I-trial will be.

That is just awesome.