Did you know... The unofficial history thread
By
0zymandous,
Posted on: 2006-03-23 01:22 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Did you know...
...that there used to be no attack rate debuff cap? You could lower someone's attack rate to infinity! This was changed with Issue 1 I think.
...that there was a bug that allowed someone to claim/socket a practically infinite number of enhancement slots in their powers? Since this was before ED, users could hit the damage cap (around 34,000 I believe) and two shot Hamidon?
...that in the very early stages of the game, Hasten could be made perma with only one or two allocated slots?
...that Energy Melee used to be called Power Punch?
...that the Power Pool category used to be called Etcetera?
Did you know...
That this thread is TL;DR... (only made it to page 40 out of 68)
...and also that shortly after arena went live there was a certain taunt bug? Yes I'm refering to the infamous Perma-Taunt bug where in which if a person was taunted during a match they were permanently taunted by that person for the rest of the match. This bug led to much griefing, and an subsequent taboo of taunt in PvP. I, among others, had much fun with it.
There was no faster, easier, way to piss someone off in a PvP match than perma-taunting them. Perma-taunting was essentially a mortal insult.
Leading to the insult... "I perma-taunted your mom in RL"
...also that pre-ED my hamioed Mace/Invuln tank could, and did win 15+ rated pvp matches... (In other words... Hamios were broken as hell pre-ED)
I love this thread... sticky it.
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...and also that shortly after arena went live there was a certain taunt bug? Yes I'm refering to the infamous Perma-Taunt bug where in which if a person was taunted during a match they were permanently taunted by that person for the rest of the match. This bug led to much griefing,
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Did you know...
There was also an arena bug that caused the flamethrower power from dev/* blasters to do hideous DoT? Essentially, any dev/* blaster could 1-shot nearly anyone.
And yes, the unsportsmanlike little arena trolls took great advantage of it with their PL'ed PvP-only toons. 
"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
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That this thread is TL;DR...
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I have no idea what you just said.
Paragon Unleashed, Unleash Yourself!
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That this thread is TL;DR...
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I have no idea what you just said.
[/ QUOTE ] Too Long; Didn't Read.
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(only made it to page 40 out of 68)
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Perhaps you should increase the posts you view per page to 50. I'm on page 14 
Did you know...that Hami-O's originally enhanced aspects by 50% instead of 33.3%.
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That this thread is TL;DR...
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I have no idea what you just said.
[/ QUOTE ] Too Long; Didn't Read.
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wow, that's awesome. finally, a way to tell people that you are lazy without having to type four words 
Paragon Unleashed, Unleash Yourself!
Damificanremember if anyone's posted about FF in here, but here are some things that, IME, shouldn't be forgotten.
In Beta, bubblers could shoot through PFF with a large accuracy (ToHit?) penalty. Tankers were not amused.
Through most of Beta, FF had *3* single target buffs: one for smashing / lethal; one for NRG / neg; and one for fire / cold. The elemental buffs were rolled into one and FF gained a new power, Detention Field, to replace the third buff.
Through most of Beta (I'm really not sure of the timing), FF's single target buffs went from 2 to 4 minute timers. And you think Speed Boost is difficult to manage in big teams ...
FWIW, if you add all this tidbits together, it appears that FF defenders were intended to a defender / tanker hybrid with the single target buffs being situational, like CM or Fortitude, that can't reliably (or numerically) be kept on entire teams. The intended play style seems to have involved squishies cuddling up under dispersion bubble and the KB / repel powers with mobs not getting pummelled by ranged attacks focusing on the very tough bubbler. The single target buffs were probably meant for nice boosts to melee classes who can't function under Dispersion Bubble while Force Bubble is out. The big deal with DB probably wasn't the def itself, but the mez protection -- which melee toons, at the time (and besides Ice and its sleep hole), didn't need.
A couple more links, while I'm here, to show how FF has evolved away from this view into what is, primarilly, a buff-centric set:
_Castle_ calls FF's AoE keep-away situational, but dispenses with dev tradition and doesn't name what those situations are. Worth noting:around the same time as _Castle_ made this post, it was formally announced that he had become "the powers guy" and the first announcement about def scaling was made.
This entire thread, started by _Castle_, reads like the final nails being hammered home into the coffin of the ol equation, "distance = defense". IIRC, Statesman's post above is the last time any dev mentioned distance as being a form of damage mitigation -- almost exactly two years ago in August, '05.
Few people think about defender FF (possibly because it's in the running for least-seen CoH primary), but it's had one of the weirdest rides in the game. Especially for a set that many people have /always/ viewed as underachieving.
And something else to chew on ...
In raid-type situations (AKA, Hami) with significant rewards, the devs deliberately render moderate amounts of defense worthless because of how easily Bubblers can buff def to ridiculous levels. 10 FF defenders, with DB and Maneuvers, can take an entire zone to the hard def cap of 200 ...
BaB alluded to this in I9's Beta.
There are SO MANY things in here that people are saying "used to be" that I thought still were!!
Here's an original vid of CoH of what it looked like before it's current form. This was pre-beta footage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3kW2Le9TJk
MLK Jr
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
Did you know
On 9-16-07, Lusca was successfuly soloed, post GDF, post ED, post all that stuff.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....&PHPSESSID=
Did you know....
That you can go to that area normally blocked off during tutorial? yes the zones that you normally denied access to with invis wall and can't get out until a GM pulls you out via petition?
You can do this by climbing (through jumping on windowsills and walls) up the building across from the hospital, keep climbing up to the top, then run across and jump towards the far building. You will get there and get stuck when you land. Quite fun to run around the perimeters and have a look at some places you've never seen before.
Use to get an error message when you hit over 100 enemies at a time with a power. Something along the lines of "you just hit 100 enemies, which may severely reduce the performance of the game." This was common in the 6 portal demon farming mission when they gave xp. Early on you could agro each portal once and they'd spawn forever. Eventually you had to re-agro them to keep them going. Then eventually the xp was removed.
Dimension shift, or maybe it was in the place of wormhole. It was an ally cage power in Gravity, where you could make allies intangible. People complained a ton about it and it was changed due to obvious reasons. I'd love if it were here today for PvP.
You use to be able to sidekick people that weren't on your team.
You could go as far as you wanted away from teammates and still get experience in open zones.
The gap for experience was 10 levels. Everyone wanted level 41 mentors/bridges/mids.
You could 6 slot freezing rain with damage and 1 shot any spawn up to like +10. This was crazy fun in Brickstown early on.
Use to be able to rez people that weren't on your team, etc without a confirmation message. People would train mobs to people AFK and keep rezing them.
When the arena was released you could 1 shot people with the rock from the controller epic.
So much more.
Did you know...Raimi Arcade in Dark Astoria is a reference to Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame.
(He also directed the Spiderman movies)
Did you know....Newspaper missions
There is a bundle of City of Villain newspaper missions making references to pop culture. My personal favorites are "defeat ajax" (a character in the movie The Warriors who in the game yes is a warrior), Retreive the DRAGOON Ball (dragon ball reference?), & Save LARRY Croft (tomb raider?)
++++FREEDOM+++++
Funeral Thirst lvl50 claws/SR stalker
Blood of the Blade lvl50 katana/regen scrapper
Stone of the Earth lvl50 stone/stone tank
Catalepsy lvl50 SS/Invul Brute
Despised-Icon lvl50 dark/dark defender
Hope Conspiracy lvl28 Ice/Kin Corruptor
Did you know...
...this is the third iteration of this thread since CoH was released?
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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Did you know...
...this is the third iteration of this thread since CoH was released?
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No, it's still the original thread. Thanks to Statesman posting in it early on, it's never been pruned. It just pops up once in a while when somebody new discovers it and makes a contribution.
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Did you know...Raimi Arcade in Dark Astoria is a reference to Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame.
(He also directed the Spiderman movies)
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And here I thought all this time it was named after his brother Ted, known pretty much only for his lame performances as Joxur on Xena... 
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Did you know....Newspaper missions
There is a bundle of City of Villain newspaper missions making references to pop culture. My personal favorites are "defeat ajax" (a character in the movie The Warriors who in the game yes is a warrior), Retreive the DRAGOON Ball (dragon ball reference?), & Save LARRY Croft (tomb raider?)
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Tons of them... There is Jake Emmett (reference to Statesman, aka Jack Emmert); and I do recall one guy named L. Jenkins, most likely LEEEEERRRROOOOOOOY!!!
Lois Watson, who is usually saved by her super hero boyfriend (and who exclaims when you rescue her "well, not who I was expecting..."), is an obvious tribute to Lois Lane and Superman.
I'm sure others can fill in lots more.
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Did you know...
...this is the third iteration of this thread since CoH was released?
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No, it's still the original thread. Thanks to Statesman posting in it early on, it's never been pruned. It just pops up once in a while when somebody new discovers it and makes a contribution.
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Did you know...
...there were two other threads like this before this one existed?
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
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Lois Watson, who is usually saved by her super hero boyfriend (and who exclaims when you rescue her "well, not who I was expecting..."), is an obvious tribute to Lois Lane and Superman.
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Small point, but it's a tribute to both Lois Lane (Superman's lady-friend who gets in trouble and needs to be rescued alot by Superman) and Mary Jane Watson (Spiderman's lady-friend who gets in trouble and ne-... you know the rest).
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Did you know...
...this is the third iteration of this thread since CoH was released?
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No, it's still the original thread. Thanks to Statesman posting in it early on, it's never been pruned. It just pops up once in a while when somebody new discovers it and makes a contribution.
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This is true, been here since the begining of the thread 
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This is true, been here since the begining of the thread
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This thread is awesome. To add something... uh...
Did you know that the 5th Column conspiracy nuts were totally wrong?
Just found this awesome thread a couple days ago. I thought of one that doesn't seem to have been mentioned.
) with the "we need a healer" folks that I *rolls eyes* at nowadays.
Did you know that the recharge for Rest used to be much longer? Not sure, but 1000 seconds sounds about right. Currently it's 180 secs. This influenced the following:
- Many players will use an awaken while the team is still fighting, do a "Combat Rest", and jump back in. Back then you would rarely see such behavior because the use of your "omg power" was a perceived risk for little benefit (And the awakens didn't grant debt protection, but that's another [u]Did you know[u]).
- Team captains would say "hold on. END rest" every few fights, and that meant everyone stands around for a minute while the blue bars refill.
- Greens were gold. Presently most of my characters eat the greens to make room for more drops.
- You would never see someone use Rest between fights unless they were fairly low on health, had no method of healing, and the mission was halfway finished or more.
- Back then there was a bit more reason to sympathize (empathize?
It's weird how in some ways it feels like a different game due to a minor change to a no frills level 2 inherent power. (Though, in all honesty, I hadn't played the game a great deal before this change, so others may remember these nuances differently.)