Discussion: A City of Heroes Retrospective - Part I

As a continuation of the City of Heroes' 7th Anniversary initiatives, a few of our developpers wanted to share a few things with our community.

Here is the first part of the triptyque, prefaced by Brian Clayton, Paragon Studios General Manager and Executive Producer:

Think I agree with Dark Watcher.

I wouldn't have stuck with CoX if it hadn't been for inventions giving me a way of advancing my characters even further.

Good stuff. Interesting to find out that alignment switching was pushed back from the CoV release.

And I really dug I14; until all the drama.

Issue 0. It was great to see the game go live after all the testing and waiting. It's very much a different game today--which isn't bad--but I remember what those first few hours were like. Also my first MMO, so it was a really surreal experience pretending to be a super-powered hero with friends and thwarting purse-snatching, etc.

I'm glad to see Joe "Hero 1" Morrisey is still around, I was worried he'd left. Hi Hero 1!

I'd have a tough time picking a single favorite issue.

My favorite issue for content is Issue 10. It introduced cooperative content for Heroes and Villains, revamped a dead zone to fill it with plenty of great content (four contacts with story arcs, a TF, a raid, and repeatable missions), and introduced the zone invasion events.

My favorite issue for aesthetics is Issue 16, hands down. New costume parts are great, but being able to color powers and change animations is something that we'd wanted for a long time, and it still helps this game stand out from the competition.

Issue 16 was also great for QOL improvements. Super Sidekicking and the removal of level requirements for hazard zones made teaming with my friends easier than it has ever been. The difficulty settings made it much easier to reach a good challenge level for our teams, the badge reductions made badging much less tedious, and the email filters eliminated email spam for me.

My favorite issue for new game systems is Issue 14. I don't feel it's reached its potential for various reasons, but it still holds the most potential out of any system in the game, in my opinion. I hope more improvements will be made to it.

It's amazing to look back and see how different the game is today from how it was at release.

Edit: Yeah, I guess if you include Issue 0 like DumpleBerry did, I should admit that it had the largest impact on me. City of Heroes reminded me how much I loved superheroes, and saved me from 15 years of my only real option for CRPGs being the fantasy genre. And I would never have met the woman I love if it weren't for this game. Thanks, guys.

There are quite a lot of players that have been playing this game longer than certain developers have been developing it, and certain OCR staff have been moderating.

Inventions is the big one for me here. I largely ignore it in the beginning and mid game, but in the higher levels it became my end-game system long before the End Game System was launched. Thank you Vince, if it weren't for your creation, I probably wouldn't have been conVinced to stay with the game for as long as I have!

Gotta go with Issue 9 and the Invention system as well. It added a ton of customization to the game, provided an "end-game" to a game that was sorely lacking it at the time, and was the necessary pay-off for Enhancement Diversification. I had left CoH for a year and a half because the game was dull and repetitive (this was shortly after issue 4, I believe). My brother informed me about the "crafting" system and I came back to check it out, and I've been here ever since then.

Mine's a tie between I10 and I14. I still remember how exciting the Rikti invasions were and how epic the Lady Grey TF was the first time I ran it. Being able to fight Hamidon was incredibly fun, and the twist at the end was crazy, even if it did get ruined for me very quickly.

However, Mission Architect is one of the things I keep playing this game for. I regularly use it and constantly try to test features and enemy groups to try and make exciting and unique missions with it. Definitely the funnest feature in this game to me.

It is actually kinda disheartening to see that this is basically being used as an ad for GR and everything that came with it...Unless most of the Devs are just new and weren't around pre-issue 18.....

My personal favorite issue was i6 when PvP zones were released and the most fun in any MMO I had ever played began. It was a good run and I made so many friends that I never thought I would leave the game...

Well i13 happened and now all of that is gone and I am only back because the incarnate system is fun enough and I still enjoy the PvE in this game enough to stick around until some future prospects open up.

My favourite issues:
I12
Second issue by Paragon without Cryptic, was awesome. Cimerora, ITF, Power proliferation, SoA epic archetypes... Loved this one!
I16
Power customization and proliferation, cant get better, also Super sidekicking.
I17
A much needed graphical upgrade. Cant imagine CoH without Ultra mode now.

My top 3 issues of this game are:

• Issue 18/GR - simply because the whole experience is awesome in my eyes and i do love the Praetorian content and the tip system.
• Issue 9 - i just cant remember a time when i used SO's, inventions made making a character and its build much more enjoyable now.
• I cant remember which issue it was in, but the faultline revamp for me also. For me that was the start of the "new" direction this game was going. Developing new and exciting "sub" characters that would pop up every now and then while also creating fun content.

Issue 16 for me. No question.

Power customisation was my number one want from the day I started playing, super-sidekicking and the new difficulty options changed the way we played, and I always love some good powerset proliferation.

Nice work, Paragon. Here's to hoping for more of the same.

I know it's going to sound weird, but Issue 3 was my favorite issue.

They finally removed the root from Unyielding Stance, and allowed my characters to run around and be invincible.

I hated Issue 5's GDN, but at this point, I'm probably more unkillable than I was then.

Dear folks who put these things together,

Thank you for doing so, I love to learn about the history of things I enjoy.

I have one suggestion/request... is there any chance you could post some reminiscences from folks who are no longer with the company? Not to take anything away from the great folks who are still there, but I think it would be cool to hear from long timers like Castle, or BAB. I'll understand if that's not feasible though.

My favorite Issue is 16 power customisation and supersidekicking.

For me the whole Free Issues thing (which are really free mini-expansions) was a ground-breaking first for CoH. They set a precedent that many other MMORPG's that followed it adopted. And now it's really a standard of the industry. 20 issues in 7 years is almost three issues per year. What other MMORPG has had that many expansions in 7 years?