5 Issues of Awesomeness

I still remember it as clearly as if it was four and a half years ago... I had just started playing the game, and the 2006 Halloween event introduced these slick little costume piece Salvage items that you could trade in for a new costume slot. I was still working on my first character, a Hero, who wasn't 50 yet, but I had a lowbie Villain sitting on the server for when I was ready for it. Not wanting to pass up this seasonal opportunity, I took the time to go knocking on doors in Mercy Isle until I too had enough parts for a new costume slot.

But where to take these suckers? Granny Beldam, you say? Where's that? Nerva Archipelago? Like those stupid cold/dark ghosties in the Cirlce of Thorns? How on Earth do I get there? Via Cap au Diable Through Port Oakes!? Gee whiz, you guys are making this so complicated!

At the time, the Rogue Isles Ferry with its fabulous selection of popular tourist destinations wasn't encountered until you got to the northern part of Cap au Diable. Mercy Island directly connected to Port Oakes East, and Port Oakes West directly connected to Cap au Diable South. If you were a lowbie and you wanted your Halloween costume slot, you started hoofing it and it was essentially a rite of passage just to have the option to wear the dang thing. Also, teleporting a teammate who had his teleport prompt disabled directly into Port Oakes while he was wasting his time at the Black Market was a great source of fun and a good bonding experience.

In addition to the Ferry, there were these Black Helicopter Line transfer points that led you to these wasp-looking aircraft that don't particularly resemble helicopters. There was one in Mercy Island and Cap au Diable (which only connected to each other), and one in Nerva Archipelago, St. Martial and Grandville. It was handy at times for getting from Point A to Point B, but with the exception of shortening the trip between Cap au Diable and Mercy Island, they never saw a lot of use.

Until now, that is. There were many Black Helicopter Transport nodes added to various zones and holy cow they make life easier. Let's take a look at what's new:

• Mercy Island got a new one on Fort Darwin, where Arachnos Fliers have been parked and out of service since City of Villains launch day. They've apparently been refuled at long last (despite Matthew Burke's repeated attempts at sabotage), so when you're tasked with visiting Kalinda or reporting to Arbiter Diaz, you don't have to run through that demolished slum with its putrid cesspools... all the while confusing lowbies as they wonder why you're even there in the first place. Anyone remember the Death Rattle hike from the Operative Renault Strike Force? Then you'll know why this transport is a good thing.
• Port Oakes and Sharkhead Isle both got Transports they've never had before, and both are near the hospitals: Oakes' is behind it and 'Head's is up on top. It's as though they were expecting you to get in over your head, quit in disgust, and hop your nearest ride out of those miserable joints.

• Ever remember how terribly nonsensical it was that any time the CoV mission designers needed a Circle of Thorns-related mission, it would invariably be on Thorn Isle in Nerva Archipelago? Well, that hasn't changed, but think for a moment how awesome it would be if one of these new Black Helicopters dropped you off there. Yeah, now you're dreaming as much as I am. Nerva Archipelago did get a new Transport, so I guess I can't complain, but for the love of Pete, look where they put it: Agincourt, the Longbow headquarters in the Rogue Isles. I suppose it has a delicious irony to it, though. No matter how strong Longbow thinks they become, Arachnos is tongue-in-cheek enough to set up one of their transports out their back door since they know what will happen when push comes to shove. Ah, those comical Arachnos transportation agents. Always making fun of the do-gooders.
• Grandville, on the other hand, gets one in a totally awesome location: on the FAB island proper north of the main city. It's a mere hop and a skip (and a manufacturing facility) away from the Monster Island transfer point, and by golly, this has gotta be the best one yet. Getting into northern Grandville for any purpose in the past was a tiring enough journey, but now it's so easy that brand new Villain characters can pull a prompt 180-degree turn right out of the tutorial and find themselves among the strongest enemies available in the redside public zones. Though it does make me wonder what will happen when inexperienced players find themselves in the wrong places and shout for help in the Broadcast chat channel... That Mercy Island helicopter's gonna be lots of fun!

All-in-all, even though this was just a relatively minor update to the game, the long-sought Quality of Life shot up by indescribable quantities with this one. Dare I say, travel in the Rogue Isles is now more convenient than in Paragon City... Okay, so that's not saying much. But still!


Issue 19 - Inherent Fitness


For those of you tuning in a little late, Fitness used to be a Power Pool which you could select from starting at level 6 and onward. You know, order parts from the same catalog as Flight and Leaping and stuff? Yeah, those power pools. What it meant for (apparently) most players is that they had to sacrifice two power selections before level 20 in order to be able to take Stamina and, let me see if I get this right, "resolve the issues that were universal in regards to Endurance consumption."

My bitterness towards Stamina notwithstanding, this article touches on the logic that went behind the decision to auto-grant Fitness to all characters at level 2. Looking into it, no matter what approach you take to build effectiveness, it was a hands-down excellent decision.

Let's flash back a bit for clarity (the fact that the above screenshot was taken in Ouroboros is coincidence, mind you). By the time that, oh, I don't know, three or four days had passed after the game entered its initial closed beta testing prior to release, City of Heroes users had been stocking up on Fitness for some pretty obvious reasons. Like all Power Pools, you get to pick one at level 6, which enables you to pick the third at level 14, and if you have any two of the three, you can pick the fourth at 20. And all throughout the game's history, the majority (and by this I mean the fraction less than 1.0 as determined by machine epsilon) of characters were pushing back powers they'd rather be taking in favor of having Stamina by level 20. That wasn't in the product specification!


Once upon a time (in the magical land of Issue 11; again, Ouroboros is a coincidence), the XP rewards for enemy defeats was increased across the range of all levels, especially 13-20 and 36-50. It used to take a while to level a character. That header image where I'm level 45? Yeah, in two days, that character will be 2 weeks old. This "XP curve" adjustment, as it's called, really was effective and frankly, I'd say it was a good call.

But 13-20? What was it about that level range that needed extra help? Maybe it was truly flawed from the beginning, but the original XP values were pretty much uniform from start to finish, so there was something about the player's experience that was affecting their character's experience. Theories come and go like 20-somethings on New Year's Eve, but the fortune cookie told me it was related to people reserving their teen levels for slotting up Fitness and preparing to take Stamina. I'm not one to say that nobody ever actually needed Stamina, but in the event you did (and you never did), the trip from 13 to 20 was comparable to pulling out your own teeth with a splintered shard of rusty pipe.

Single Origin Enhancements, Stamina, better powers... The trip really was somewhat horrendous back in the day. Whether all these observations were cognitively connected or not remains a mystery, but the struggle through the 13-20 level range has all but vanished now that all characters are granted Health and Stamina automatically. Not only do we have access to those powers way earlier, but we get to take powers we actually like in the teens, which makes the game experience in whole more fun and thusly less of a trouble spot.

The 36-50 level range is still open to interpretation. By that point, speed of character progression is generally and directly proportional to how much fun you have playing the character.


Issue 18 - The Alignment System


Issue 18 brought with it a number of updates: four new powersets, the Alignment Merit vendors, some place or something called Praetoria, and something really important: the option to finally switch sides! It'd been a great many moons since those days began when Heroes and Villains were different, and now we've achieved sweet homogeny at long last!

The seas tell a tale of a legendary jerk hacker American who discovered that he could enter an icky villain's Supergroup base from Pocket D using the brand new Base Transporter Veteran Reward and deposit his Hamidon Enhancements into the storage containers there. And thus, select Villains were able to use the coveted Hami-O's and, much to the disbelief of lolhealers and follow-the-Tankers everywhere, become just as powerful as Heroes! Blasphemy!

There's a long line of "devs hate Villains" jokes out there that belong somewhere else (maybe the next article), but the disparity had been staggering and lasted for a really long time. The Wentworth's and Black Market databases were separate, co-op teams weren't able to give each other Awakens, e-mail attachments wouldn't allow for the import of foreign goods... It was a mess. A miserable mess. And any Villain who had more badges than a Hero meant the Hero was slacking off. For reals, the divide was nearly as great as the trip to Thorn Isle and lasted almost as long as Infernia's rescue speech.

Historically, City of Villains was marketed as an independent game so that Cryptic Studios and NCsoft could boast "two award-winning MMORPGs" despite actually only having dedicated the effort and resources for one. They insistently perpetuated the lie that the two games were separate because of these petty self-glorifying reasons, but by the time Going Rogue came around, they realized they had to cut the foolishness, do away with the lousy split in their userbase and make one big happy inventory pool for all of us. And there was much rejoicing.


By the time the initial culture shock wore off regarding Masterminds in Paragon City (who were presumably there to get away from those insufferable Demolitionists on Sharkhead Isle), the game really was a much different place. Once people realized that you don't need tanks or healers; that Brutes were not Tankers and Dominators were not Controllers; and that playing a redside Arcehtype doesn't automatically make you a bad person, enjoyability skyrocketed for everyone and team make-up has been far more diverse and interesting than it ever was before.

The consignment service was merged for both sides, e-mails and inventory trades were allowed without restriction between characters... it's bliss compared to how it once was. I personally shift all my characters over a moralistic notch so that they can participate on both sides of the game; so that they can play with anyone at any time. To each his own (trash or treasure or otherwise), but I'm going to have to cast my vote to the Alignment System and its associated implications being the #1 greatest improvement made to the game since the launch of City of Villains.

There were so many things to spill out of Issue 17 that the issue itself can be summed up in three words: quality of life. It didn't have any particular updates remarkable enough to merit an Issue release on their own, but the flagship (read: most costly from a development perspective) feature was the introduction of the Ultra Mode graphics updates which, I'll admit, are smoooooth.

There were many other things that came into the picture that players like me use every day. So many, in fact, that they can only be enumerated in a traditional, bulleted list:

• The Positron Task Force was removed and replaced with something good instead. The old one is still available in Ouroboros. The new bad boy takes place in two parts and documents the dastardly antics of three villain groups in their simultaneous yet unrelated plots to compromise the Overbrook dam for some reason! The new arcs are much nicer on the attention span and far more forgiving as an introduction to the Task Force program, and they've hopefully set the standard for revising all those other terrible old Task Forces to match.
• You know when you had to "defeat all mosquitoes in central Africa" or had some equally nonsensical mission objective, but could never find that one last guy because he kept moving around the map when you were busy looking for him elsewhere? Or how about that glowie that was hiding behind a stack of crates obscured under some tangled weeds and tucked around a corner in the dark shadows? Thanks to Issue 17, the Last Mission Objective now lights up on your map like a distraught Christmas tree begging, "I'm over here, and I don't like this any more than you do!"

• It used to be that Epic Archetypes meant you were at least familiar with how to play the game, seeing as how you unlocked them by getting a character all the way to level 50. I still remember the day I got my Arachnos Soldier up there. It still errantly said "Epic Archetype Unlocked!" and I shouted to my team, "Awesome! This is my first 50." Ah, those were the days. Nowadays, though, people get to unlock the Epic Archetypes at level 20, so the next time a Warshade asks you how to get to Crey's Folly, just remember that it never used to be that way. (For the record, I consider this to be a good thing and thusly put it in this list)
• Never letting a perfectly good thing go to waste, the introduction of the Consignment service in Issue 9 was immediately misused as a sneaky way to transfer goods between characters on the same account and even across servers. Just find some totally obscure item that's hard to find and that nobody in their right mind would buy (like <insert reference to a competing MMO here>), post it for sale with one character, and pay millions for it on another. If you did it right, you could send yourself all sorts of money! Well, Issue 17 let you do the same thing legitimately by simply e-mailing inventory attachments, and it's opened a lot of doors for people visiting other servers.
• This one's probably stretching it a bit, but I hate those cramped, rectum-shaped cave maps. The ones with the infamous "layer cake room" invariably at the end where you have to clear out the whole thing just to complete the mission. The ones that Circle of Thorns, Carnival of Shadows and Arachnos all to often wind up in when you select them from the Rogue Isles Protector or the Police Band. Apparently, so do the devs, as you'll notice approximately none out of none of all the new missions released for the last several issues take place in one. Likewise, though certainly not to any comparable degree, I prefer to not partake in rescue/kidnap missions where you escort a person from the back of the map to the front of the map. So now, when life tries to give me lemons, I just Abandon Mission as many times at it takes until I get a mission *I* choose to run.
• And last but not least, there were different sound effects for certain things at one time. In particular, any time you kinda stepped half your foot into a shallow puddle of water, you'd hear this loud SPLASH!.. This along with many other sounds have been changed for the better as of Issue 17. Though not experienced by most players, the audio update also introduced some sweet support for surround sound. Also, cars honk at you now.

Issue 17 may not have had some awe-inspiring new feature or content that paved the way for all future updates to build upon, but it sure as heck ranks really high up there on my list of favorite game updates.


Issue 16 - Super Sidekicking


If you were expecting Power Customization to go in the Issue 16 slot, then I got you good! There's no denying that coloring one's powers isn't among the most awesome things ever, but in the grand scheme of things, it is, by definition, purely cosmetic and didn't really go too far for forever changing the gameplay experience. Super Sidekicking, on the other hand, totally did.

Life before Super Sidekicking was governed by the tether in the ether, which would tie you to your mentor/boss such that one failure in communication would lead to your quick and certain doom. It gave you warnings, though, if you were lucky enough to have the Emotes channel tucked away in a chat tab somewhere. "I'm getting a little too far away from my lackey." "I'm too far away for my mentor to help me!" "Halp! The spiders, they're all over me! Aaaah!"

There was a certain distance between you and your sidekick that determined whether or not their Combat Level was boosted to yours minus one. If they were beyond that limit, their Combat Level would promptly drop to whatever level they actually were and everything they were fighting suddenly conned purple and mischievously proceeded to press your sidekick through one of those Play-Doh extruders.


Old-fashioned Sidekicking had another issue: pairs. Each person could sidekick (or exemplar to) one other person. This means that, under best circumstances, 4 people on your team of 8 were within 5 levels of each other so that they could each sidekick a lowbie and everyone could get XP. 5 levels, you ask? Yessir: if someone on the team was more than 5 levels higher than you, you would not earn XP for enemy defeats. Not surprisingly, more than one team or Task Force didn't happen because sufficient arrangements could not be made in regards to sidekicking.

There was one benefit to this setup, though, which nobody misses because it brought along problems of its own. People who practiced this behavior called it "bridging," and it would involve a level 46 character sidekicking someone else in a level 50 mission. For those keeping track at home, that makes the sidekick Combat Level 45, which is 5 levels below the mission, and thusly maximized their rewards per enemy defeated. But there was so much spam in the Broadcast chat channel asking for/offering bridges that you couldn't set foot on Peregrine Island to stop a terrible plot of world conquest without getting hit in the face with a beggar or advertiser over on the portal end of the zone.

People would scour the /search interface looking for level 46 users to pick on as well, which, combined with the prolific real-money spam artists, persuaded most veteran players to just go into /hiding and never come out. Incidentally, Issue 16 was also when the e-mail filter was instated that pretty much made it impossible for real-money traders to get ahold of you. Nobody misses them either.

And then the heavenly gates opened and into our presence descended Super Sidekicking. Under this system, your Combat Level is adjusted to that of either the team leader or the active mission. If you're below that level, you become that level minus one. If you're above that level, you become that level exactly. Everyone's on the same sentence of the same page, and all the enemies pose roughly equal threats to all participants without the magic shuffling of team pairings. Truly, this change was inspired by a message from on high.


Issue 15 - Gotcha!

15 may be 5 less than 20, but describing anything here would entail a sixth issue, and that would exceed my quota of 5 Issues of Awesomeness.

Maybe you love Issue 20, maybe not, but frankly, there's a lot of stuff to be grateful for, even compared to how the game used to be. So if you find yourself wondering how you can manage to go on, just reflect on some of the things that are awesome and you bet your belt buckle we'll be seeing more of those in the future.

These were working in i19.

The bit before the comma contradicts the bit after the comma

Now if they could only get the last guy kidnapped by Council and hidden behind a stack of crates under an array of fish ponds and tucked around a corner in dark shadows guarded by two guys who don't really count as foes for mission objective purposes thing ironed out.

Yeah there are a few missions/maps (?) that still don't have the mini-map objectives working correctly I think.

Thank goodness for the black helicopter additions. If not for them, I'd have nothing in I20 to enjoy at all. Still, I think I preferred Issue 4... where all I got was some new costume pieces.

So what are you aware a new task force and strike force were added also or, are you one of those anti omgbbqs@uze never team under any circumstances ever people?

My poor teaming skills aren't up to standards for TFs/SFs/trials/raids in any case, let alone the uber l33t incarnate stuff. In the past seven years I've only managed to complete two TFs and zero trials or raids, and it's been years since I did the two TFs.

Mortimer Kal and Admiral Sutter are not leet incarnate stuff. They're level 20-40 TFs. They take about 30 min to an hour to finish (more if you're all new, I guess).

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I stand corrected, although that doesn't really help.

my main is a ma scrapper, until the natural booster, issue 4 was the best issue to happen to me, costume wise. issue 17 completed it by finally letting me use tails with robes, but people keep slapping issue 4, but if you like more (admittedly vaguely)Asian themed looks for your character, it was pretty good.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Oh, yes, Issue 4 was definitely good for costumes. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. One of my best costumes was a direct result of Issue 4. That leaves Issue 20 as easily my least favorite update.

No it doesn't.

On the Kahn, why don't you just duck into RWZ, turn around and come out in PI? On the STF, you need to add the train to FF before ducking into the RWZ, but the travel time except for crossing PI is still minimal.

@SpaceNut - My 50s, AE arcs and current projects at ParagonWiki

...I forgot what experience means.