City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Did you know... The unofficial history thread

0zymandous

By 0zymandous,
Posted on: 2006-03-23 01:22 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

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Did you know...?

Originally, most Dark Armor toggles wouldn't stack, which often meant that DA Scrappers would have to, depending on their present enemies, determine which Armor aura would be most useful and go into battle with that toggle alone switched on.


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Neither did temp invulnerability and unyielding, formerly known as unyielding stance. This required the tank to get within melee range of foes, then switch to US. If the baddies ran away (or were pushed aside by pedestrians!) you couldn't attack as you were firmly rooted in place. You had to decide whether to switch back to TI and wait for US to recycle or to sit and hope the baddie would move back into melee range.

Also, for those unaware, capes were not part of the game in beta or at release. They first came around in issue 2. Auras too -- but they were in issue 3.

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Yup thats why I still had tp on all my invulns and people would ask why the hell would i get teleport on him. ( had no reason to respec it out)

 

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Did you know...

There is an edit button to avoid posting so many times in a row?

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yeah but im at work and very lazy, and i was posting to each of them as i went through in a seperate window. but yeah....im lazy


BTW this is one of the best threads i have read in ages


oh and thought of one more to add, pretty much related to PL but I found it hilarious the first time I saw it.

a common method for wolves was to have a dev blaster place a pile of trips mines in a corner, then go out of range to trigger his mines (not too far or they dissapear), wait for the tank to bring them in and stack them, then run in to trigger all the mines at once so they hit all the mobs.

if you were good at it you would hit pretty much the whole map of mobs at the same time and a graphics error would pop up, cant remember the complete description but it said something hilarious like Too may particles on the screen, you should not be doing this.

if someone has the actual message feel free to correct me.

 

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Did you know... Task Forces and trials originally didn't auto-exemplar you.

When the exemplar system was introduced in I2, even if you were ex'd down you couldn't run a TF or trial you had outleveled. Sometime later this was changed so you could run a TF or trial you had outleveled if someone ex'd you down into the level range for the TF you were trying to do.

Unfortunately, if you dropped your exemplar at any time you were automatically kicked from the TF. So if your exemplar quit or dc'd at anytime or if you dc'd at anytime you would be kicked from the TF. Imagine doing an eight-hour task force only to have your exemplar dc on the last mission resulting in you be kicked from the TF.

This resulted in many angry posts on the forums. They were usually responded to by people telling them that they shouldn't be trying that anyway.

Fortunatly, to the joy of players everywhere, this was eventually changed so characters would be auto-exemplared down when starting a TF and wouldn't be kicked if they disconnected.

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Just to point it, originally the devs did say that they didnt plan on implementing this system and that it wasnt broken but was just a temporary solution until they could get it working as intended (think they were meaning the 'flashback' mode thing).

There were so many complaints about not being able to do the tf's that they added the exemping to tf's but if you dropped or whatever you would be removed. (think there was a longer story to it but cant remember the details)

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That's pretty much the meat of the story. The devs never intended exemplaring to be used in TFs but the system was patched to allow it because so many people requested it. But as you pointed out if you or your host even momentarily lost connection the exemplared toon was kicked from the TF.

The reason this was never fully implemented at the time was the anticipation of what was called the Flashback system. This was supposed to have let toons lock themselves down to a particular level so they could partake in game content they missed the first time, including TFs. Once the Flashback system was implemented, we were told, it would fix any problems that existed with exemplaring.

Unfortunately, after over 6 months of speculation and waiting, Statesman announced they had abandoned Flashback altogether (he supposedly was unhappy with the entire concept) and the current auto-exemplar system was put in place.

 

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if someone has the actual message feel free to correct me.

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I think it was something like "Too many simultaneous effects is bad for performance. Just thought you'd like too know."

 

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Does anyone have a screenshot of the message the system used to pop up sometimes if you nuked like 200 mobs or more?

 

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Did you know...

That the Ghost Ship is supposedly a fishing trawler named the Moraine? And yet this "fishing trawler" is the size of a full-length freighter! Not only that, but apparently the trawler needed a crew of several hundred in order to fish, as this is the number of ghosts it spawns here and there when it appears.



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That's a continuity error, actually. Quite a few in the game. See, when the Moraine was first reported in the Paragon Times, it was said to have been a 14,000 deadweight ton tanker, not a fishing trawler as the plaques say.

It left Striga Island on December 17th, 1932 without clearance and without filing a shipping manifest. Rumors say that the captain, Reynard Kale, was working for the mafia and had been hauling moonshine to the states as Prohibition was a good year away from being repealed. The official crew was 34 men, but Ryan Mallory, a member of the crew who took ill and couldn't attend the maiden voyage, reported that the ship left harbor that day with thirty extra passengers. That still doesn't explain the army of ghosts that jump ship when it spawns, though.

The ghost ship itself hadn't appeared until the Winter of 2004, when researchers finally found the sunken vessel. It was taken under twelve miles north-northwest of Striga Island during a terrible nor'easter. The horrible weather made a dive impossible, and researchers reported that they would go back to investigate the site in the Spring of 2005, but nothing's been reported yet.

 

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Speaking of the flag - This is fresh in my mind from having brought it up in another thread today:

Did you know... Lighting the flag

During beta and post-launch, the flag atop city hall was not lighted at night. A patriotic hero named Stateswoman noticed this and started a thread on the forums, noting that there are rules for proper display of the American flag. One of these rules is that a flag that is left flying at night must be lighted for all to see.

The thread ran for about a month, with most posters supporting the notion due primarily to it seeming to be a minor thing to "fix". (There was also a fair share of the "dude, relax, it's a game" folks replying.)

The devs never replied to any postings in the thread and never made any fanfare about it, but when Issue Two arrived, voila! The flag had acquired a set of spotlights that turn on at dusk and turn off at dawn. Just one more of those little quality of life things that the devs like to sneak in after we talk about them here.

 

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Leaving the hospital use to be very easy. All you had to do was click on the Medical Reclamator which you spawned in and you'd be sent directly to the bottom floor of the hospital! No need to walk to the elevators.
This bug was fixed some time before 02/24/05.

 

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Leaving the hospital use to be very easy. All you had to do was click on the Medical Reclamator which you spawned in and you'd be sent directly to the bottom floor of the hospital! No need to walk to the elevators.
This bug was fixed some time before 02/24/05.

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Speaking of hospitals, originally (more likely way back in pre-beta, but some time around then), hospitals had stairs instead of elevators!

And the lines and arrows directing you to the elevators from the reclimators, were not added until very recently (I6 on the dot?).

Never surrender! Never give up!
Help keep Paragon City alive with the unofficial City of Heroes Tabletop Role Playing Game!

 

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There was a time when the glowie objects didn't make any kind of noise. You had to physically see the objects. There was alos a time when there were problems with the glowies being invisable. You could hear them but not see them. You would have to "feel" around with your cursor to see when it changed into a hand to click them.

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Way back when, the glowies also made a different noise, a high-pitched fast warbling noise, not the low-pitched undulating noise it does now. (Imagine the current noise on a 33-1/3 vinyl being played on a 45 RPM record player...)

I can't remember in which issue exactly it was changed (Issue 3? Issue 4?), but for a week or two after that issue was released, the glowies made no noise! You had to just roam around looking behind every desk, crate, or other object to find them! The outrage reached a furor for a while until they added the low-pitched noise in.

I actually thought it was pretty cool, like a glowie scavenger hunt.

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The exit mission button was added as a quality of life feature. It used to be that once you completed a mission, you had to run all the way back to the entrance to leave.

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Remember when there was no Exit button? To exit a mission immediately, you had to click on the "i" icon in the navbar. This was mentioned in the tutorial, but wasn't intuitively obvious. I remember going like 15 levels before figuring out that I didn't have to run all the way back to the door. I also remember dog-cussing the game once because I desperately wanted to read a mission description and clicked the "i" icon after the mission was completed and was promptly dumped outside.

Speaking of doing stupid things related to exiting missions, once I was on a team trying to mop up all of the mobs inside a mission. I lost track of my cursor and clicked frantically to try to select a villain that was attacking me--and my cursor, as it turns out, happened to be over that Exit button. Doh! I've also fired off one or two inspirations I was trying to keep that way, too. (Whoops...)

*Edit: IanTheM1 is right, I wasn't misremembering incorrectly.

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)

 

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There was once a time when Break Free inspirations didn't exist. All you could get to protect you from holds, sleeps and stuns were 'Discipline' inspirations, which you had to take before a fight. They wouldn't break a mez effect once it had already taken hold.

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I'll see your Disciplines and raise you a Resolve! It was like a break free inspiration, but you couldn't buy them in stores (only obtainable from drops), and they only freed you from "some" status effects. I have documented all three levels of these obsolete inspirations, including their icons and along with current inspirations, in the Paragon Wiki.

Also maybe worth noting, remember when there were no Sturdy inspirations? I remember the first time I saw one and was like, "Orange!!? What in the world is an orange inspiration?"

Also, if you're curious, I've documented some of the major changes in each release and the exact dates they hit the live servers in the Paragon Wiki:

Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3, Issue 4, Issue 5, Issue 6, Issue 7

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)

 

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Did you know...The Universities in Steel Canyon and Founder's Falls...

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Here's one for old farts like me...

Remember when the universities didn't exist? I remember how irritated I was that they chose to put the university in Steel Canyon where they did. It used to be a tall building under which one could consistently find lower-level Clockworks to beat up to get past really tough "Defeat 15 Clockworks in Steel Canyon" missions that the contacts assigned.

And does anyone remember that short period of time (actually months, I think) when they tore down the buildings and had construction sites where the universities are now? And they had NPC construction workers digging with shovels who would say stuff like, "Gosh, Dave, we're way behind schedule," and another NPC would respond with something like, "We've got to work faster if we're going to get done!" (Those aren't exact quotes, but I distinctly remember NPCs talking to each other about building the buildings.)

I was so excited, I couldn't wait for the universities to arrive! Then they did, and not a durn thing has been done with them yet. I was so excited, in fact, that when they finally hit the test server, I wrote an article about them in the PC Free Press in eager anticipation of the coolness that was about to come.

/e still hopes that someday they will be used...

Miscellaneous note: For a while before the Arenas were deployed, they tore down the existing buildings and had construction sites, too. And there's still a construction site in Skyway City south of the monorail station. I wonder if they're ever planning on putting something there...

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)

 

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At one time, when going through the caves searching for Atta and his Bodyguards, the troll minnions and bodyguards would dissappear, only to reappear in the center of the map, waiting for you to come back through.

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I don't remember this, but I do remember an annoying bug that I haven't noticed lately. (Fixed?) I or someone on my team would come to one of those big open caverns with lots of enemy groups in them, but it would be completely empty. When you got into the middle, all of a sudden, like five groups would spawn around you and start attacking.

I distinctly remember always running through those caverns with super speed on to get the enemies spawned before going back in to fight for real. Also, I had a few teams wiped because in spite of me hollering, "Wait before going in there," some idio^H^H^H^Hintrepid hero would immediately take off running for the glowie on the other side of the "empty" cave.

*Footnote: Sorry for all the consecutive posts, but I'm catching up on the thread as I read, and all of this stuff is bringing back floods of memories!

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)

 

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To exit a mission immediately, you had to click on the "i" icon in the navbar.

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Actually, it was just anywhere on the nav bar. But either way it was frustrating, since I've had a similar problem with wanting to read a mission description.

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With the advent of CoV, you could also now choose the instance of the zone you wanted to exit to when you clicked on the exit button. You used to zone out to the instance you were in if you didn't go all the way back to the door.

You don't hit smiling monsters - Sister Flame

 

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My apologies if I missed this one in the list already...

Did you know...?

That in CoH originally, the decor inside for missions (especially warehouses) was the same no matter who was inside. In one of the first few Issues, details were added to make the interior design (and atmosphere) more 'occupant specific". (The same time inside doors were added?) Council (then Fifth Column) flags, smokey Hellion hangouts, and hazy 'Dyne labs that new Heroes now see didn't mean much in terms of gameplay, but they certainly added some interesting details to the game...

 

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I or someone on my team would come to one of those big open caverns with lots of enemy groups in them, but it would be completely empty. When you got into the middle, all of a sudden, like five groups would spawn around you and start attacking.

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Wow, I had forgotten all about that. I remember telling PUG's I was with to 'trust me, there are a TON of trolls in there..you just can't see em! No, really!! Let me go in invis alone first. Wait!! Don't go in yet!" *team wipe*

 

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You use to be able to move while logging off.
I use to do this all the time. I'd turn on auto-run then click "Quit to Login". I would be able to wander around for thirty seconds before logging.

You can still Teleport while logging.

 

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Did you know... Theater Movie Marquee Contest

Have you ever run/jumped/ported/slid/whatever past a theater and wonder why they're showing that movie?

Originally, the marquee of every theater in town looked like this.

Thanks in part to the great interest in in-game movies that was taking place at the time, Cryptic announced a contest in March of 2005. The prize - To see your fictional film's name and the name of you starring hero up in lights above every theater in Paragon City!

On March 21, the winner was announced: Forum poster Zemeron's submission, _Rise of the Council: The Broken Column_ took it's place as the premier blockbuster of Paragon City and his hero Fractured Dawn was catapulted to stardom!

 

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Did you know.... about the MEN of paragon

I was never part of it(too much of a sissy) but back inthe day there was the MAN move ment, if I remeber right, these were the rules:

1. You Were only allowed to use powers available to every one (inherents and poolpowers [this was pre-ancilliary powers])

2. Your first few powers that you had to choose pre-pool powers were not allowed to be used.

3. Your name had to have the phrase MAN in it (yes, captialized)

4. You had to be a controller, IIRC

 

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Did you know:

... that drones at zones exit, when zapping a mob, didn't eliminate the exp. You could hit a mob for 1pt, then run to a drone, let it zap him, and get full credit. That, coupled with Enervating Field beeing a low damage toggle, made some interesting PL. Drop field on a group of skulls in Perez, run to the drones, get full exp for the group. That was fixed at the end of beta or very early release I think.

... that Enervating field was, as mentioned, a low damage toggle... with no range limitation. You could toggle it on a mob, fly up (or get inside a shop, down an elevator etc.) till said mob was defeated. It was not really worth it though, it was really low damage and took forever.

... that the Education Officer in a 5th Column mission in the teens level range had a fixed level of always 20, and was a Boss. Which resulted in some rather tough to impossible fights, depending on the level you got the mission.
I think there was another 5th Mission, timed in the same level range, that spawned always a Lv20 mob, but this one was a Lt at least.

... that the Doc Vahz mission only finished if you actually clicked on the corpses. So you could reset the mission after defeating him for SO farming.

... that the Vahz wasting disease could bug out and not get removed after the mission which was supposed to remove it. I remember writing a guide back then on how to avoid the bug before it was fixed, back when my handle was Poison_Mistress. I just mention that, 'cause I remember a player sending me a thank you tell in game later, thought that was really cute

 

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Hey, I just caught a reference with a Detective Wright sitting in the spot where Coyote is now in Outbreak. It's possible I missed the page of this thread where that was mentioned, but if not, I wanted to add it to the pool.

 

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Ok, I'm clearly coming late to the party (as usual) but I've got some fun stuff...

I had a chance to talk to Jack last November, and here are a few little tidbits he passed along. (Some of these I'm sure we've heard from old interviews, but I figure they're still fun.)

[*] He would love to do an underwater zone, but some of the animators and other staff think that Aquaman is lame.

[*] Wings as a costume option would be great to do, but almost impossible to implement since they'd need to be animated for every power out there; it's much more likely they'll show up just as part of an epic archetype, similar to Kheldians.

[*] He reads the boards roughly about an hour a day.

[*] His three favorite untrue rumors (at the time) were:

1. Accuracy has been nerfed! (Apparently sometimes after playing, he would tease Geko about that..."I don't know, it seemed kind of off to me...")

2. All the theories about why the 5th Column were removed. (In his words, "Who doesn't like beating up Nazis? Even the name sounds evil!")

3. The various conspiracy theories around Enhancement Diversification. (He said he particularly liked the quote at the time, "Statesman's nerfs are like getting my car fixed and finding out they replaced my muffler with a live Ethiopian baby.")

[*] He's amused by the "doomsayer" posts; he sends the best ones around the office.

[*] Growing up he read Marvel comics, but came around to DC with the Dark Knight, Watchmen, etc. These days he's more partial to DC...I'll let you guess why.

[*] The decision to use a monorail to get around the city wasn't a big design decision, although he liked it because not many East-coast cities have a monorail. However, its inclusion was specifically counter to the traditional MMO thinking to slow down travel to make it take longer to get places, which they didn't want to perpetuate.

[*] He and CuppaJo are the big coffee drinkers in the office...many of the developers drink Mountain Dew.

[*] The comic store where I saw him (Fat Jack's Comicrypt in Philadelphia) is where he used to buy comics when he lived in the area.


Okay, and here's one other bit of CoH lore I'm--*ahem*--personally fond of...

Back in 2004, CoH held a Halloween costume contest for people to dressed up like their in-game characters. One of the prizes was a custom in-game title for your winning character. (Which looks like this.)

The titles were different for each of the winners, based on which category they won:

[*] Best Overall Winner: Costume King 2004[*] Best Overall Runner-Up: Costume Queen 2004

[*] Best Male Winner: Costume Prince 2004[*] Best Male Runner-Up: Costume Duke 2004

[*] Best Female Winner: Costume Princess 2004[*] Best Female Runner-Up: Costume Duchess 2004

[*] Most Daring Winner: Costume Bohemian 2004[*] Most Daring Runner-Up: Costume Vixen 2004

[*] Most Humorous Winner: Costume Top Banana 2004[*] Most Humorous Runner-Up: Costume Comedienne 2004

Interestingly, the custom titles wasn't offered as prizes in the 2005 contest.

One other prize was a cameo appearance of the characters in the comic (then done by Blue King). A terrific list of all of the comic cameos during the entire Blue King run can be found here. (Does anybody know if a similar list exists for the Top Cow books?)

Story Arcs:
"The Joy of States-mas", #533168
"A Mosaic of Shattered Dreams", #497506 (2011 Players Choice winner!)
"Television Presents: Attack of the Toons!", #373710
"Lightning in a Bottle", #376222