An old bug I'd like to see available on purpose...

Earlier today I happened to remember something that occurred very early in my CoH career. I was playing one of my earliest characters, the Silver Spectre - an MA/SR Scrapper and old-timey two-fisted mystery man (and an homage in style, if not backstory, to the Gray Ghost from Batman: TAS).

To help set the scene a bit, here's what he looked like back then, vs. what he looks like today, with many years' worth of costume pack additions and graphical improvements to work with...



(Amazing how much the look of the game has improved over the years. I always get a chuckle out of it when people claim it "hasn't changed" since 2004.)

But I digress. Anyway, Spectre's big thing back then was that he was especially pleased to fight the Fifth Column, since he had once personally punched Hitler back in the day. One day I rounded up a mission vs. the Column in an abandoned warehouse - pretty standard stuff. This was long, long ago, before the mission difficulty adjuster, before the Council, before any of that stuff, and I had just acquired the mission, so I hadn't outleveled it, and I was alone, so there was nothing to bump up the spawn sizes. Everyone in there ought to have conned white or yellow (with the occasional orange lieutenant) and appearing in groups of two or three. I zoned into the warehouse, walked around the corner...

... and discovered, clustered in front of, beside, and on top of the first group of shipping containers in the hallway, a horde of -2 Fifth Column minions. More than would normally have appeared in even the most wildly frontloaded mission back in those days. More than you'll find in one of those big crowds of Skulls in Perez Park. There must have been 20 or 30 of them jammed into that section of hallway.

And here's the thing: That was by far, hands down, no questions asked, the greatest fight of the Silver Spectre's career. Because he was exactly the kind of hero who would punch 30 Nazi mooks in the middle of their face. (Well, back then, without the alternate animations for Martial Arts, he was more kicking them in the middle of their face, but you know.) The Silver Spectre wading through that army of green minions, beset on all sides, easily overpowering them individually but utterly swamped by their numbers, was as close as City of Heroes has ever come to being properly, heroically cinematic for me. It was awesome.

The rest of the mission was normal, and nothing like that has ever happened to any of my characters again.

So that's my suggestion, basically: make moments like that available to player characters. It'd need to be something at least partly configurable by the user - I'm certainly not advocating dropping green hordes on unsuspecting players by surprise - so perhaps a special difficulty setting? Or a handful of unique new missions, a la the ones that provide badges (Negotiator, Spelunker, that kind of thing)... I'm not sure of the best implementation, but I'd really like that brand of experience to be available as part of a regular crimefighting career. (And yes, that means "just set up your own little greenie farm in AE" isn't going to feed the bulldog.)

I like getting dogpiled by baddies and curbstomping the lot of them. One of my earliest memories of the game was my first visit to Perez Park from Atlas. When I zoned in there was like a hundred Skulls and Hellions all piled on a Tank a little ways from the gate. Standing at the gate was me and a few other lowbies looking on in amusement, if not awe. I was lucky enough to get to do a few Perez Park Parades myself before the aggro cap got shredded.

In any case, I would be happy to see the occasional massive group of pathetic minions loafing around in a mission. Instead of the random extremely low level gray guy that I run into hanging around with much higher level enemies - don't they know about sidekicking?

I really, really wish they would employ 'Horde' mechanics for mobs that it made sense for.

One on one, a Redcap is going to get it's pointy head stepped on by all but the most lame of Heroes/Villains. But TEN of those little buggers will give you pause for thought.

Same with the Romans. One on one they should NO WAY have that much impact. These are ROMANS, with freaking iron swords and shields, giving an Arachnos Crab Spider with Heavy cera-steel armour a problem at times.
Now, if I was fighting twenty of them instead of one 'uber powerful 5th Column empowered Roman', then yeah, that WOULD make sense.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

There's already missions in the game like this involving Syndicate, Destroyers, and Legacy Chain (although in the latter case, the Legacy Chain aren't weaker, you're just much much stronger).

I love fighting hordes. Some of the most fun I've had in City of Heroes is elbowing a friend of mine, pointing to 20 blue-conning minions up ahead and asking "Think I can take that?" "Are you kidding? No!" was his answer, and it just made it that much sweeter to wipe the floor with them.

But then Incarnates happened and you wouldn't get Shard drops from -1 enemies, and then people kept getting on my case for being "weak" by playing at -1 and it was made very evident to me that while I WAS given an option to have more, weaker enemies, I wasn't really supposed to be using it.

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On the flip side, fighting only hordes presents an uncomfortable, almost taboo balancing problem - AoE in this game is overpowered. This is somewhat mitigated by the game occasionally wanting to spawn nothing but single bosses throughout an entire mission, so single-target sets get to shine, occasionally. But if we had a difficulty setting which could make the WHOLE game AoE heaven, then there would be quite literally no point in playing anything without strong AoE in it. A cone generally outstrips a single-target attack when it hits between two and three enemies, and a cone balances out at three to four. When you're facing 15 in every spawn (as wouldn't be too unusual at -1x3), you're essentially using AoEs almost entirely, and they outclass all your other powers by a significant margin.

I've tossed a few AoE balancing proposals at Arcana, though nothing realistic that garnered serious consideration. However, so long as AoE damage is handled as it is in City of Heroes, then AoE sets NEED to be discriminated against so as to not put single-target sets COMPLETELY out of business.

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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.

Years ago I made the suggestion to add a new tier of enemy, one below minion called lackey. For every Lt. spawned 3 lackeys would as well + the regular assortment of minions. They would con grey and only award a bit of influence, but plowing through the lot of them surrounding the core 'threat' would have made us feel Heroic for sure.

Yes, beating the heck out of a large number of enemies is the cool thing to do for any melee character.

Regarding the pictures though, I looked at them several times and the left looks better to me. On the other hand the right one looks like the newer one (due to the better resolution). So I don't see the graphical improvement. Not saying that the game hasn't improved (it certainly has), just not seeing it here.

First Ward likes to throw lots of weak enemies at you, who can be taken out with just one or two attacks, but who then release conventionally-tough minions and lieutenants. Presumably foes could be made without the second part...

I encountered a bug that ended up being the most memorable cinematic moment shortly after GR. It was on my Praetorian Energy/Energy Blaster, Had just hit 20 and gone redside. Was running a tip mission, I think it was against Sky Dragon.

The mission was outside, typical steel canyon type neighborhood with a construction area in the corner. I was solo on a Blaster so I flew around searching for Dragon, He conned as an EB I think. So I Tp'd his entourage away and proceeded to get in his face, expecting the typical assassination with builtup aimed bonesmashers and Bursts. However, I'd neglected to refill my insp tray which to my dismay was empty save one blue. Then my Burst and Thrust both miss back to back. I was in trouble!

I took to the skies, hoping to make a quick retreat and circle back around to finish off my injured prey when my opponent lived up to his moniker and followed my into the clouds. I zoomed and zigged, dived and climbed trying to shake him yet he pursued.

My health flashing red, I had to lose him to regain my composure. Still I couldn't shake him, every action I took he mirrored. I climbed to the very top of a building and landed near the edge, quickly hiding behind an AC unit I waited. Wasn't long before he was on me once more. I stepped out from behind my cover and unloaded with everything I had, knocking him back a peg. I knew I wouldn't survive his counter blow at that moment so I again tried to lose him.

Flying through the air it looked as if I had indeed lost him, spotting a construction crane sticking out into the air, I took the chance and landed to rest.
I'd just kneeled when he slowly came into view, raising up above the crane before landing directly in front of me. I was vulnerable as could be, kneeled down in front of my foe, high above the street on a catwalk just big enough for us both...

I'd had enough running. I would never be able to shake this guy. I was going to go down fighting. I once more hit him with everything I had, getting a lucky shot in that stunned him right as we got to the edge of the catwalk. I used Thrust and sent him flying off the crane, not waiting for for the fall I leapt off after him, tagging Air Superiority on him as we fell just in case.

I caught myself inches before hitting the ground, raised my hand and blasted away the last of his life as he raised himself off the pavement!

It was like I was fighting a real person. That was the most adrenaline filled mission ever, not being able to lose aggro no matter what, never having a chance to stop moving.
If I'd died he probably would've reset and I'm not even sure it was a bug, his speed could've been such that I just wasn't able to break aggro range, all the same, I'd love to have more missions like that.

(Btw, anyone know what mission this is? I didn't take note of it at the time and have wanted to run it every since then.)