UberGuy

Heh, cool. I wasn't actually sure if you'd respond. Well, seriously, at least. Thanks for doing so.

Honestly, that's not very far off from what I imagined. I mean, there aren't that many things someone could do and be exposed to all the stuff you've mentioned being involved with over the years you've been posting here, so it's not like it was that amazing of a conclusion. (Not that I remember all of it, but I remember that it was widely varied.) I guess it only makes sense to guess something close to what you've said if you know people with career arcs like that exist, which I suppose not everyone does.

The comments about how that usually goes for people are the kinds of things I probably never would have thought about, though.

So, Arcanaville, since you have wandered into the Justice forums...

I would kill to see you post your identity in the unmasking thread, but since I consider it more likely I will be spontaneously transmuted into Hostess Cupcakes while being transported to ancient Egypt ...

What do you actually do, professionally? If I were to guess based on your post history, I would have to say ... everything. Which, while probably a lot more likely than the above transmogrification seems unlikely to actually be correct. At least literally. It's certainly possible that you do something that lets you do work in lots of different fields.

If you tell us, do black SUVs drive up to our homes and take us away in the middle of the night?

1. Congratulations! I know that really took some work.
2. I second the motion recognizing the awesomeness of that screenshot.

Do we think the Rikti even have Incarnates?

They didn't seem to get along with the idea of gods. I almost wonder if they would have turned their nose up on any but the most indirect connections with something like The Well.

I really appreciate that. A lot of writing that up was about trying to really get my own head around what this game meant to me, trying to make sense of the pain I experienced when I heard I was losing it. But it very much warms my heart to know that by writing it I let someone else see a connection between themselves and someone very different, so I very much thank you for sharing that.

As odd as it may seem, I will probably most miss our powers system. I have no doubt whatever that it has created endless balancing nightmares for the devs throughout the years , but it created what I describe as a "Monty Haul MMO", which was really perfect for my personality.

In the stereotype of the Monty Haul campaign, the game master gives his players so much stuff that they overpower any threat he can come up with.

A lot of players view CoH like this, and I think there are certainly fine examples of this players outpacing the environment, especially with things like buff/debuff superteams. But I think overall CoH did a good job of keeping up with players, even if some of it was sort of a work-around, such as giving us the I16 difficulty sliders. (Few things increased my enjoyment of the game as much as that one, by the way.)

I've been blessed with game masters who could heap power on us and still stay ahead of it, giving us threats to face that kept pace with our power. I have loved those campaigns to death. I think CoH was as close as any MMO ever could to replicating that experience. And I have loved it to death for it.

Next would be the Inventions system. It's clearly tied to the powers system, and I enjoyed struggling with the complexity. I admit it could have been more approachable with a simpler powers system, but the engineering min/maxer in me enjoyed it a lot.

I absolutely adored the costume creator, for all its limitations. I may miss this more than anything short of actually playing my characters.

Sidekicking (and Super Sidekicking) were existential aspects of this game. Without the sidekick system, I doubt this game would have lasted nearly as long. The best part is that I wonder if anyone really understood how important these would be, given that the implementation may have been driven more by the comic book concept of sidekicks than anything else.

I think that the core of the AE system was quite fantastic. Obviously there was a lot of baggage about how it was used, and it had some serious issues I won't rehash here, but the potential was excellent. I enjoyed using it, even though I only did so in limited ways.

Personally, I liked CoH's original 5 AT system, at least where we ended up with it. It defined core roles without necessarily tying us down into being able to do nothing else. I also think they did a good job of adding the CoV ATs.

Primary/Secondary/Pool concept. I liked the slotting concept. Combined with IOs, they made for fantastically customizable characters, even if the set of practical combinations people built were a lot smaller than the number of permutations actually possible.

Edit: OMG, how could I forget this? Global channels. This was quite possibly the single most important thing they added to the game that wasn't something "mechanical" like an AT or power system. This transformed the in-game social scene from Super Group centric with zone-only broadcasts to a multi-group membership system that could even cross servers. Very few games out there seem to touch the flexibility of this system. I will desperately miss it.

I was just about to post a thread on this. I need a few specific iTrial MO badges on my primary badger, and have some "alt badgers" I wouldn't mind more MO stuff on. In exchange for the chance to get those, I'm willing to help run anything, even stuff I don't need, and have a handful of good players who've already told me they are willing to help out.

If anyone needs MO badges for TFs, those are generally much both to form and pull off. I recommend we prioritize the iTrials early, while we have the most people still active.

9PM PST should work for me most nights. Monday and Tuesday are still Hami+RWZ raids so far, but I would be willing to at least pass on RWZ raids for some of these.

As someone who was around for the original AYB craze, this really brought me back, and I really enjoyed it for that reason.

As a dedicated Justice Server player, I have been known to break out "For great justice!" on more than one occasion.

I shared this with the CoH FB groups I'm in, by the way.

Steampunk is, by its nature, a bit open to genre-crossing. It feels like technology, because it's machines, but by definition, it's very retro technology (by our standards). It lies somewhere in the middle of "modern" and "sword and sorcery", which lets it fit in both if you stretch a little bit.

Its presence in GW2 doesn't make GW2 not a fantasy setting. I mean, really, is anyone trying to claim that? Some of the posts on the last page or two seem to be trying to convince people it's not really a fantasy setting, because it doesn't have Orcs or Elves, and because it has steampunk pseudo-tech. Seriously?

I am a pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons player, or at least I used to be until CoH sucked up so much of my time I kind of stopped having time for it. I have nothing at all against fantasy settings, and can really get into a well-written one. That said, a fantasy setting is never going to be as all-inclusive for supporting character concepts as something like CoH has been. CoH basically pulls out all the stops, letting you have fantasy, modern, and futuristic themes. Folks who crave that diversity (or are just spoiled by having it in CoH) aren't likely to be impressed with GW2 on that level, even if it offers some very interesting options.