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

 

Posted

My bad, but i knew rage was a drug, just slipped my mind who know it.

The important thing was that Heroes used to pop them too

Liberty
My 50s:
Hero: Armor Assassin (scrapper), Cross Dresser (scrapper), Surly Seaman (blaster), Defensive End (Tank), Rad Rhino (Cont)
Villain: Beast Infection (Corr), Sweet Zombie Jesus (MM), Milk Weasel (Stalker), Orgullo (MM), Agent Eris (Crab)

 

Posted

Did you know...

...that I just read through 66 pages of posts in one sitting and actually have something new to contribute?

...that Super Group base rent/upkeep didn't used to be determined by the size of the plot but as a percentage of the total amount of prestige the SG had earned? This led to some SGs effectively abandoning their bases because they couldn't earn the millions required to pay for them each month.

Blondeshell (1381 badges) - My other badge hunters
VidiotMaps Master Cartographer
MArc #87989 - Enter, The Conglomerate
Invention Salvage Distribution Charts

 

Posted

Yeah, someday talking to newbies about the "old days of base building" is going to sound like "walking uphill, barefoot, in the snow, both ways!"

Did you know -- Vanguard origins

Anyone who reads the backstory of Paragon City is aware of the importance of Vanguard in global affairs, particularly related to the Rikti War.

What you may not know is that the heroes who make up the current roster of Vanguard were originally featured in Alderac Entertainment Group's City of Heroes Collectible Card Game.

Their archetypes and signature powers as printed in the card game are as follows:

Dark Watcher - Illusion/Force Field, Signature Power: Dimension Twist
Lady Gray - Dark Melee/Regen, Signature Power: Aging Touch
Serpent Drummer - Martial Arts/Regen, Signature Power: Snake Spirit
Borea - Katana/Super Reflexes Signature Power: Chill Wind
Levantera - Katana/Dark Armor Signature Power: Cloud Strike
Gaussian - Assault Rifle/Energy Manipulation Sidekick, no Signature Power

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
My bad, but i knew rage was a drug, just slipped my mind who know it.

The important thing was that Heroes used to pop them too

[/ QUOTE ]

On a related note, Did You Know that, in the Villain-side tutorial, when one of the contacts gives you a mission to get Superadine from Mr. Verde, he actually gives you a Damage enhancement? I always thought it was funny to think that enhancements were really just drugs.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
...that Super Group base rent/upkeep didn't used to be determined by the size of the plot but as a percentage of the total amount of prestige the SG had earned? This led to some SGs effectively abandoning their bases because they couldn't earn the millions required to pay for them each month.

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you know...

Early on there was a bug in the base editing code that allowed an SG to get unlimited free prestige?

Essentially, you could place a room at zero cost and sell it back for a full refund of what it should have cost. The bug hit the live servers as part of a patch not long after bases (and CoV) were introduced. Once this was first noticed, several unscrupulous SG’s very quickly racked up hundreds of millions of prestige points in just a few minutes.

When the devs realized what was happening they actually shut down the live servers immediately. The problem was considered so game-breaking that the person who first reported the bug was awarded the Bug Hunter Badge. (Currently only two or three players have ever received this badge.)

Eventually (several weeks later) the devs went through the database and identified (most of) the SG’s which had exploited this bug. These SG’s had most or all of their ill-gotten prestige stripped away. However, some of those SG’s ended up stuck owing millions of prestige in rent, because the rent percentage was calculated on the hundreds of millions of points sunk into massive bases.

So what Blondeshell said above really only applied to cheaters.

"OK, first of all... Shut Up." - My 13-Year-Old Daughter

29973 "The Running of the Bulls" [SFMA] - WINNER of the Mighty Big Story Arc Contest !
- The Stellar Wind Orbital Space Platform

 

Posted

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Did you know that the late game Tyrant mission was once in a generic cave?

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Did you also know that in the original Tyrant Mission, If you were able to fast track with invis powers. States would be chained up at the end overtop of tyrants Throne, and if you freed him, you could then lead him to the exit and watch states hit Mobs for 4000 dmg a hit!!

Seeing how much damage that is, people would SK lowbies into the mission, stealth through to Tyrant, defeat him, then Let the newly Released Statesman powerlevel the group by owning everything in the face. Hence why Statesman was removed from the Mission.

sometimes I wish they'd bring States bake and just remove any exp from kills he got. I didn't care about the exp, I just had fun watching statesman KO blow someone through the roof and see more damage than a brute with full fury

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I recall there being no Statesman at all in this mission until about Issue 3 or 4...

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
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Did you know that the late game Tyrant mission was once in a generic cave?

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you also know that in the original Tyrant Mission, If you were able to fast track with invis powers. States would be chained up at the end overtop of tyrants Throne, and if you freed him, you could then lead him to the exit and watch states hit Mobs for 4000 dmg a hit!!

Seeing how much damage that is, people would SK lowbies into the mission, stealth through to Tyrant, defeat him, then Let the newly Released Statesman powerlevel the group by owning everything in the face. Hence why Statesman was removed from the Mission.

sometimes I wish they'd bring States bake and just remove any exp from kills he got. I didn't care about the exp, I just had fun watching statesman KO blow someone through the roof and see more damage than a brute with full fury

[/ QUOTE ]

I recall there being no Statesman at all in this mission until about Issue 3 or 4...

[/ QUOTE ]

I just did this a few days ago and Statesy is there alright, and once you free him if you hang around for a few minutes an ambush spawn shows up and you get to see him do a 4000 dam KO Blow. And he will follow you, but only to a point -- he gets stuck in the mud on the way out of Tyrant's throne room; no way to get him to fight for you past that.

But it was definitely cool seeing him in action, if just for a little bit. I must admit tho, I expected him to be taller

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Did you know that the late game Tyrant mission was once in a generic cave?

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you also know that in the original Tyrant Mission, If you were able to fast track with invis powers. States would be chained up at the end overtop of tyrants Throne, and if you freed him, you could then lead him to the exit and watch states hit Mobs for 4000 dmg a hit!!

Seeing how much damage that is, people would SK lowbies into the mission, stealth through to Tyrant, defeat him, then Let the newly Released Statesman powerlevel the group by owning everything in the face. Hence why Statesman was removed from the Mission.

sometimes I wish they'd bring States bake and just remove any exp from kills he got. I didn't care about the exp, I just had fun watching statesman KO blow someone through the roof and see more damage than a brute with full fury

[/ QUOTE ]

I recall there being no Statesman at all in this mission until about Issue 3 or 4...

[/ QUOTE ]

I just did this a few days ago and Statesy is there alright, and once you free him if you hang around for a few minutes an ambush spawn shows up and you get to see him do a 4000 dam KO Blow. And he will follow you, but only to a point -- he gets stuck in the mud on the way out of Tyrant's throne room; no way to get him to fight for you past that.

But it was definitely cool seeing him in action, if just for a little bit. I must admit tho, I expected him to be taller

[/ QUOTE ]

Well... I mean that the mission had no, as in zero, Statesman NPC, when Issue One came out. You entered the mission and defeated Tyrant and that was it. There was no NPC to free or even see. IIRC, there was a clicky thing that "freed" Statesman, but that was it.

At least this is what I recall... I'm not 100% on this though.

 

Posted

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Did you know that the late game Tyrant mission was once in a generic cave?

[/ QUOTE ]

Did you also know that in the original Tyrant Mission, If you were able to fast track with invis powers. States would be chained up at the end overtop of tyrants Throne, and if you freed him, you could then lead him to the exit and watch states hit Mobs for 4000 dmg a hit!!

Seeing how much damage that is, people would SK lowbies into the mission, stealth through to Tyrant, defeat him, then Let the newly Released Statesman powerlevel the group by owning everything in the face. Hence why Statesman was removed from the Mission.

sometimes I wish they'd bring States bake and just remove any exp from kills he got. I didn't care about the exp, I just had fun watching statesman KO blow someone through the roof and see more damage than a brute with full fury

[/ QUOTE ]

I recall there being no Statesman at all in this mission until about Issue 3 or 4...

[/ QUOTE ]

I just did this a few days ago and Statesy is there alright, and once you free him if you hang around for a few minutes an ambush spawn shows up and you get to see him do a 4000 dam KO Blow. And he will follow you, but only to a point -- he gets stuck in the mud on the way out of Tyrant's throne room; no way to get him to fight for you past that.

But it was definitely cool seeing him in action, if just for a little bit. I must admit tho, I expected him to be taller

[/ QUOTE ]

Well... I mean that the mission had no, as in zero, Statesman NPC, when Issue One came out. You entered the mission and defeated Tyrant and that was it. There was no NPC to free or even see. IIRC, there was a clicky thing that "freed" Statesman, but that was it.

At least this is what I recall... I'm not 100% on this though.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's accurate. Most NPC helpers like Statesman weren't added until I3 at the earliest and I5 at the latest.

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

 

Posted

Unsure whether this's been done or not, but just for the kids...

Did you know that every single mission used to occur in basically the exact same cave, warehouse or office building? Not reconstructions based on generic blocks with scattered scenery, but one of two or three maps for each level range, regardless of AV inclusion or mission backstory?

... that exotic scenery like techy labs and Oranbagan ruins were actually added, to the rejoicing of all?

 

Posted

Those maps were always in, but you didn't see them til 20+. I think Positron's TF had the first lab map you would see, and the first Oranbegan map was from a 25-30 contact; she actually makes a big deal about you discovering the city.

And then the Hollows came out and there were Oranbegan maps at like level 10.

 

Posted

The maps did evolve as time went on. In the beginning, there was something like 3-4 office maps that were combined in various ways for any particular mission. It was predictable enough that you could, for instance, go into a mission you'd never seen before and immediately know where the boss or the mcguffin was located based on the layout of that floor of the building.

Thankfully, the devs responded to that complaint once Issue 1 was out the door, though it still took several issues before we got the variety of maps that we enjoy nowadays.

Most notably, the storyline missions got a face lift around the time of Issue three, I want to say. Nowadays, a storyline normally includes at least one unique mission map. (Usually the climax.) Lou's garage used to be a generic office map. *heh* The low-level superadine story used to take place entirely in generic warehouse maps. It was pretty cool when people who were used to that suddenly found themselves in a huge laboratory, with vats of 'dyne boiling and even status effects happening from breathing the vapors of the vats!

A lot of the quality of life things that people take for granted nowadays were actually added after the fact, once the dev team had the game stable enough to put their fire-fighter hats away for awhile.

 

Posted

Wow this is a long thread! A couple of random corrections....

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Also, Fog (and Steamy Mist) used to slow the caster, but not his allies...

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However, you could get around this if you had combat jump. You could hop along much faster than you could run.

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-- At the end of closed beta, it was requested of all the players to gather outside of the Police Dept. in Kings Row for a photograph. This screen shot later turned up in one of the guides for the game.

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Nope. That was either first or second wave. I remember finding the pic (actually a few versions - I know Circeus had one) when I joined in beta three. After years of seeing characters all looking mostly alike in other MMOs (after all, you must have THE most uber armor), that picture was a total joy for me.

Somebody in an earlier post said that there used to be only one boat to Strigia? Is that true? I do remember being able to get to Croatoa via the two Strigia boats. (I suspect that Cryptic originally intended for that to be a way to get there. When you used a boat to get to Croatoa, it would drop you in the drink because there was no boat at the other end.)

Did you know.... that recall friend would stun the person that gets teleported? And that was when you couldn't refuse a teleport. The stun was dropped before the game went live, or very soon after.

Did you know - a topic on "videos in CoH" (which eventually became demos... kinda) was started right around when the boards launched, years before the game came out? That topic lasted through all the years of pre-beta.

Did you know... that it's high time somebody made a web page covering all this stuff? Something more than my update guide.

 

Posted

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Somebody in an earlier post said that there used to be only one boat to Strigia?

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Pretty sure that was only while issue 3 was on Test. There was only the ferry in Talos, and some players complained that Talos was laggy enough as it was, and that having a 2nd ferry (in IP, which was a logical place) would maybe lessen the lag.

Of course, that was long before the Talos WW's *right by the tram.*

EDIT: Zloth, the date you have in your guide for issue 3 is incorrect. It's 1/4/05 , not 1/5/05.

 

Posted

I think the "coolification" of maps started in issue 2, actually. Outdoor maps came in with Issue 1 but only for the new missions made for 40+ level. Issue 2 got a lot of the lower level ones redone. Some were simply made outdoor (like Tanya's mission) while others were given much nicer graphics (like the last in the Revenant Hero project). More and more have been given upgrades as time has gone on.

I remember because the Revenat Hero graphics and the Molepoint graphics in the Shadow Shard still seem to be tied together. Both have vanished and re-appeared in the game a couple of times and they always do it at the same time.

Many maps are still very recognizable, though. The tech map with three elevators on the first floor jumps to mind.

Did you know.... that before the Rikit raids in beta, there was a phase where the devs would wipe (well, actually back up) all the characters and we would test how the game reacted when we all came in, built characters, and went through the tutorial at the same time. Opening-day simulation. We found out pretty fast that there weren't nearly enough Infected in the tutorial. There were so many people in there looking for them that they would never spawn!

Do you know... the story of the first Halloween test? The devs told us NOTHING about it. Aurora (?) just made a post asking folks to go to the Test server at such & such time and head to Atlas Park. Period. The event was HUGE with at least a dozen Atlas Parks going at once. So we all gathered for the big announcement - what were we supposed to do? What were we supposed to test? Was a new enemy coming to town? Some neat new gameplay enhancement? Maybe weather was finally going to come to Paragon? To paraphrase...

"What we want you to do is to run around town and click on mission doors. Click on as many as you can as fast as you can."

WHAT?!? Thousands of us giving up our gaming time just to check the "You cannot enter" message!? That has got to be THE weakest... oh well, we're here, might as well do the fragin load test.

At first the doors didn't do anything. Then somebody flipped a switch somewhere. I'm being attacked by witches and ghosts and.... oh great I got a temp power! Do I get to change enemies into toads? "You got a rock."

That was one of the best nights in the game, almost as good as the Rikti Invasion.

EDIT:
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EDIT: Zloth, the date you have in your guide for issue 3 is incorrect. It's 1/4/05 , not 1/5/05.

[/ QUOTE ]
My guide is definitive. Reality, however, often gets it wrong. (Which is to say, I'll fix it tomorrow, thanks. )

 

Posted

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My guide is definitive. Reality, however, often gets it wrong. (Which is to say, I'll fix it tomorrow, thanks. )

[/ QUOTE ]

Heh. All the other dates were correct, including issue 2's. For some reason a lot of people like to point out that issue 2 came out on a Friday... but it didn't.

 

Posted

Two quick questions with regard to the game's history, since I can't remember the answers:

1. In the game world now, what year is it? Is the upcoming Issue 10 Rikti invasion taking place in 2007, or is it a different year?

2. Since WW2 has cropped up in various arcs in the past, along with Axis figures like Hitler, can I safely assume that it also applies to members of the Allies, like Churchill, Stalin, and FDR? Would they also exist in this game's world?

Any answers would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

Posted

CoX moves in real time.

CoX history is placed "on top of" real history, while things happened differently I can't think of any real world figures that have been said to not exist in it. Though it's rare if ever that they actually use the names of real people.

 

Posted

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CoX moves in real time.

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Well...with 15 minute day/night cycles.

 

Posted

Did you know...

Devs & GMs show up on Pinnacle too?

Ghost Widow has appeared several times at the weekly Pocket D meetings of the Pinnacle based RP Congress (IC: Rebuild Paragon Congress) in-character, most recently to warn both heroes and villains of an impending crisis. (Shameless plug: the meetings are at 10:00 pm EST on Tuesdays, at Pocket D, generally up by War Witch.)

Synapse also appeared during December of 2006 to help the Coalition of Communist Crusaders for the Proletariat with their 2nd annual present-drive, donating several gifts to the group.


Alright, not too many will be interested in this, but it's a little tid-bit of Pinnacle info for those who are interested:

For several months in the beginning of 2006, the northeastern buildings in Siren's Call were known as "Peek's Perch," named after stalker Peek-a-boo who challenged heroes to countless duels atop them. The player then went to China for a year (I think).

 

Posted

In reviewing some info on the Did You Know? thread, I've discovered that the Statesman's Statements thread looks to have been pruned away, probably in a forum re-org, rendering the links to that thread inoperable.

I've taken the liberty of re-posting the message, only this time I'm linking to the original Statesman's Statements articles that are stored in the Wayback Machine (i.e., The Internet Archive).

While the following explanation will seem obvious to some, I want to make sure there's no confusion about what these links lead to. The following links point to copies of the pre-release City of Heroes website from the end of the year 2002 and early 2003. This is the period in which the game was still being conceived and, later, re-conceived. While the pages may look like real forum pages, they are just "snapshots". Clicking the links on the archived page may or may not take you to something interesting from the same time period, but you won't be able to reply to any of the posts in the forum thread being displayed, and some of the pictures on the pages may not all be displayable.

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Did you know... Statesman's Statements

City of Heroes had a forum operating for close to two years before the game went to beta test. In the winter of 2002/2003, Statesman posted a series of articles talking about his views on comics, comics history, and the future of the genre.

Of the seven published articles, four are still available and have been re-posted on the current forum for the edification of the current batch of players.

Statesman's Statements #1 - Top Ten Trade Paperbacks

Statesman's Statements #2 - Top Ten Villains

Statesman's Statements #6 - Comic Book Camp

Statesman's Statements #7 - Comics and Heroes

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Posted

Did you know that DE Swarms used to give regular XP?..and not only regular XP but LT and Boss level XP?

Couple that with the ability to team with any level of hero and the ability to be anywhere in the zone and get XP....and getting a fire tank that had Burn that DIDN'T send mobs running to herd up hundreds of Swarms that died in seconds...

 

Posted

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Since April Fool's Day is around the corner...

Did you know... The Hidden Badge!

It wasn't long after CoH went live that someone figured out how the data files were compressed and went "pigg diving". With Issue 2 on the horizon, a lot of the upcoming badge info was dug out of the .pigg files and enough spoiler info was posted to the forums that the forum moderators ended up making it a bannable offense to read the .piggs and upload their contents to the forums.

In March of 2006, a new badge appeared in the .pigg files and got the "pigg divers" buzzing about an upcoming April Fool's event in City of Heroes. Despite the speculation, April 1 came and went with no special event heralding April Fool's Day. Positron got the last laugh when he revealed that the "April's Fool" badge was an easter egg inserted into the data files to tease the "pigg divers". To date, there's no way in-game to become "April's Fool".

(Note to self - Try /settitle just for laughs.)

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Did you know...

That since Paragonwiki went BOOM! (and was later reinstated) on 7/15/07 links like the one above no longer point to anything and linkers need to go back and update their link-etys for posterity's sake?

(this one was fixed by switching ".....com/index.php?title=Easter_...." with "....com/wiki/index.php/Easter_....")