Nyghtfal

Thaaank you.

... the shiny new toys of Ultra Mode have piqued my curiosity. Now that I17 has entered open beta, my curiosity has brought me back to CoH - at least temporarily. I'm most interested to see how it will look on my home-built PC.

I started playing CoH the first week it launched, and created my first - and currently only - character, a Mutant Gravity/Kinetics Controller named Nyghtfall, on Triumph. CoH was my second MMO after playing Dark Age of Camelot for 3 years. By the time I reached Level 5, I was invited to a Super Group and became one of the first members of THE ZERG, whom I served with for nearly four years. During my last year with CoH, I left THE ZERG and joined Fusion Force. A few months later, shortly after earning my 48-month Veteran Reward, I stopped trying to collect badges, realized how completely bored I was with the game, and quit.

I canceled my subscription in May 2008, but never stopped keeping an eye on the game. I've long felt the game was in serious need of a facelift, and was happy to learn that Paragon is finally addressing that issue. I've seen the HeroCon footage, many of the screenshots people have posted here, and those on the web site, but really want to experience Ultra-Mode for myself, so here I am.

On that note, I'm really glad I never deleted Nyghtfall. I have a lot of history with my namesake, and was especially happy to find his name still intact when I logged in and copied him to the Test server. I thought his name would've been removed from the database by now, and replaced with a generic placeholder. Apparently, that's no longer the case.

Word to the wise: Never delete high-level characters from your favorite MMO. You never know when you might return, even if you swear off the game for good.

I don't know how long I'll be back. Shiny new graphics won't change my mind about the issues that eventually drove me away two years ago, but I'm going to at least try to enjoy the next 30 days. Until then, see you in-game.

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I remember the night I first "hovered"...

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Yup, I will never forget that feeling. The ability to fly was what attracted me most to CoH, and the first time I defied gravity with Hover was unbelievably cool. I was street-sweeping with a team in Boomtown(?) when I reached level 14 and finally learned how to fly.

Ah, the memories...



My game account was also created on May 6, 2004.

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Not only that, but almost always, the low level weapons/armors suck so bad you wanna puke...

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Mmm, yes... I remember a quest my Priest was once given in WoW... I dreaded doing it because I hated how sinfully ugly the new robe I was going to be given as a reward looked, despite its stats being far and away better than the robe he was wearing. I was quite happy to finally be rid of it upon picking up another robe as a loot drop.

That being said, I'd like to add another thing to the thread.

I haven't played WoW since last July. My account was recently hacked. The issue has since been resolved, but I had to reinstall the game and pay for one more month of access just to make sure the perps didn't do anything with my character. Amazingly, he was untouched. He was still 44, had all of his gear and quests, and the 104g I had earned before quitting last year.

I found myself considering going ahead and playing for the month I paid for until I started looking through his packs. I had items I'd forgotten I'd collected, and quest items still waiting for their mates before I could turn the quests in. It occurred to me, then, how much I've grown to love CoH for not having mission loot to dump into my inventory, forcing me to try to find ways to keep my inventory space balanced between mission loot and my own items.

Also, I've said it numerous times before, but I'm going to say it again - a huge kudos for the badge system. The first night I logged back in to WoW after my account issue was resolved, I traveled down to Uldaman (one of the dungeons) and flagged myself as LFG to try and finish out a quest I needed one more item for. I sat there for about 15 minutes when I started thinking, "These quests have been sitting in your log for the last six months... you haven't felt a pressing need to finish them in that time, so why should you now? Besides, you could be working on badges right now". I immediately ported back to my bind point and promptly logged out of the game. Within minutes of logging into CoH, I got invited to a Lady Grey TF. Three hours later, upon completing the TF, I discovered I already had the badge. Apparently, I'd forgotten I'd done it shortly after I10 went live. Nevertheless, I had hella fun.

hehehe

I've already since canceled my WoW account again and removed the game from my computer. I've tried playing both at the same time before... it didn't work out well... hence why I left WoW last July...

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What is so mold-breaking there?

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Dark & Light failed.

Vanguard failed.

Third time's the charm?

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I'm going to create a new MMO and call it, "Same [censored], Different Game". That way, my marketing hype will be frank and honest right out of the gate.

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Doing the same kind of missions again and again?

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As a matter of fact, thanks to Auroboros, I'm finally able to play through old story arcs I missed when the game first launched, and add more souvenirs to my collection. Back then, I didn't fully understand the benefits of actually doing missions, and spent my first 20 levels street-sweeping with my old SG. It wasn't until my early 20's that I realized how rewarding missions were, not only in terms of xp bonuses, but actually getting involved in some pretty cool story arcs and adding context to the game world.

On a related note, I finally earned the War Wall badge, shortly after Auroboros went live. I also learned there's a lot of back story to this game that I haven't been through yet - even post level 20 - and I'm quite looking forward to experiencing all of it, right after I finish Dark Watcher's story arc in the RWZ.

Just the other day, I ran Officer Wincott's story arc, 5 times, just to acquire all of the one-time and lvl 1-14 Flashback badges. I'm just 4 badges away from 400 now.



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Standing around in Atlas Park for a few hours? What is there?

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I often log in for up to an hour and just stand around in AP. While there, I usually keep an eye on my server's raid and badge channels for opportunities to get in on some action. Sometimes I'll offer to help a newbie team with the occasional sewer run, or just hang out with other players, feeling quite proud of the fact that I don't have to level up anymore. I've also been known to give out influence to anyone who asks - my standard hand-out is 50k.

More than anything, I just enjoy feeling Heroic. Like one of my badge titles reads, I just love being a Hero of the City.

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Maybe because for some people, character development isn't the be all, end all of enjoyable game playing??

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:: points to CoH_Player_101 ::

What he said.

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If there's something from Everquest that I don't miss, it's the unenviable situation of 1-5 pieces of loot for 72+ people.

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The same goes for every MMO that utilizes loot determine character effectiveness.

That's one thing I absolutely love about CoX. I'm actually done developing my Controller. I've been done developing him since last respeccing him, shortly after the release of ED. He's as effective as I want him to be, and I will likely never get over how awesome it feels to be able to say that about a character I play in an MMO!

Upper Level, looking across the fire pit
Lower Level, looking at pool tables
Angle down shot from a distance
Alternate Angle
Full shot of entire ski slope
Ski slope from another angle
Looking across the slope at Pocket D from lower level observation deck of the Chalet
Snow covered goodness!

As a personal aside, my best time on the slope is 23.8 seconds, using Super Speed.

These are screenshots I took during this year's Rikti Invasion.

Galaxy City has never looked so beautifully haunting.

A Rikti Bomber hard at work.

I got a little too close to the action. Ouch!

Hey! I thought those War Walls were supposed to keep these guys OUT of the city!

Hard at work, helping defend the city and earning my Chief badge for defeating 10 Heavy Rikti Assault Mecs.

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Wonder what the Flier guys' specs are. It's a great shot btw.

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Thanks.

My Specs:

Alienware Area-51 Series 7500

ASUSTek P5ND2-SLI Intel Edition nForce4
Dual Core Pentium D 940 3.2GHz
256MB GeForce 7800 GTX
2GB PC5300 (333MHz) DDR2 SD-RAM
Soundlbaster Audigy 2 ZS
WinXP HE SP2
DX 9.0c
Forceware 163.76

Purchased February, 2006 for $2800.

Since switching to console gaming last September (XBox 360 Elite), CoH is now the only video game I play on my PC. I play at 1024x768 with everything maxed, and am generally able to maintain a consistent 30 FPS regardless of how intense the action gets. The only two things I don't have enabled are Depth of Field and Bloom. I don't like the soft edges the game engine casts on objects. I feel like I'm playing some kind of weird dream sequence.

Prior to my upgrade, I was playing with a 6-yr old Pentium 4 1.6GHz, 512MB SD-RAM, and a 128MB GeForceTi 4600. I had to minimize several visual effects to maintain even half way decent framerates. The first time I logged in with my Alienware, Paragon City looked like a whole new world - it looked like a city for the first time in two years! I've been in superhero heaven ever since.

Yesterday afternoon, I helped complete Statesman's TF for the first time since it went live, and snagged a fantastic screenshot of LR's flyer while we were taking down his web towers.

http://www.nyghtfall.com/coh/screens...8-16-20-02.jpg

The last moment of the final battle with LR proved remarkably easy. When his HP was down to a sliver, a bunch of his minions appeared out of nowhere. I tossed out a Fulcrum Shift and the fight was over within seconds. The next thing I knew, a Mission Complete notice was staring me in the face.

I also earned my Peerless, Diplomat, and Saved the World badges.

Speaking as someone who currently plays both CoH and WoW, I'd like to add another feature of CoH that I love:

Waypoints

I just spent the last 10 minutes riding around the Badlands, looking for the NPC for a quest that was shared with me a month ago. I finally finished the quest, today, and had a devil of a time finding the NPC I needed to turn it in to. I yearned for a waypoint to him.

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When we sat down to design CoH, we wrote on the white board: "fun." Seems obvious, but many games seemed to miss the mark. That's OK; some games don't need to be fun in order to be successful (I won't name them, but they're out there). We wanted to make a game that had fun moment to moment gameplay. Hard to quantify, but easy to identify when you find it.

Cool posts, BTW.

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A good idea. You guys just be sure to keep "Fun" as a priority.

Angry_Citizen then looks upon I9, and sighs

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Repeat after me:

"No crafting skills to level up! Everything made instantly (no progress bars)! WOOT!"

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Would it be fairly obvious to say that it ill be levels 50-55?

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I'll go ahead and squash that one now. Level cap is NOT going up in I10!

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With all respect, you devs said the same thing about crafting, before the game was even released. Now we've got I9 introducing crafting and loot. Granted, there are no crafting skills to level up - and for that I will be eternally grateful - but... are you gonna tell us to read your lips, next?

I couldn't help noticing, also, that you qualified your statement with a reference to a specific Issue. Does this mean you're considering an increase with future issues?

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What is it about engineers and programmers having a very hard time working compromise?

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That's easy. They all think in 1's and 0's. There are no decimal points.

;D

You guys have got to make this a permanent fixture of Pocket D. It's just too cool.

http://nyghtfall.com/coh/coh_test/ski_chalet01.jpg
http://nyghtfall.com/coh/coh_test/ski_chalet02.jpg
http://nyghtfall.com/coh/coh_test/ski_chalet03.jpg
http://nyghtfall.com/coh/coh_test/ski_chalet04.jpg
http://nyghtfall.com/coh/coh_test/ski_chalet05.jpg

Fly.

I've thought of gravity as my own, personal AV since first seeing Superman: The Movie in 1979. CoH is the only video game I've ever played that lets me live out my childhood fantasy of defying gravity, and I bought the game based solely on that premise.

Yup, I only play Heroes.

http://www.nyghtfall.com/coh/hellions.jpg