The Root Problem.

Yes, it's a whining thread. Skip if you choose.

Yesterday I ran across a 'feature' in CoH that looks a lot like a bug, and I think it illustrates the root problem the game has been having for a few years now. Speaking only from personal experience -- although I know there are others with the same opinion -- the game has been lackluster and boring, our characters no longer feel 'super', and in general the fantastic escape that CoH used to offer just isn't there anymore.

The bug was simple to find. I'm playing the Dark Astoria arcs. Got through the contact 'Max', skipping the personal mission for each contact, when I found that next contact won't speak to me. The cause appears to be that the personal missions are all marked as part of their contacts' plot arcs, instead of being free-standing missions. There's a limit on how many plot arcs you can have open at a time. In order to finish the DA content, we are forced to play the personal missions where we are not controlling our own character.

The purpose of a superhero game -- or, really, any interactive role-playing game -- is to make the player feel like the hero. Now we're being explicitly forced to play content as NPCs to whom we have no attachment.

We haven't been allowed to feel heroic for a long time. Incarnate content blurred the ATs together and required stupidly large teams to do anything, so that the player felt like just another cog in the machine and a weak one at that. The Signature Mission arcs allow our characters to punch a few enemies in the backdrop while the real story takes place with the real heroes -- we're supporting actors, at best, in a movie about the Freedom Force. I could stretch back as far as ED as the first time that some dev mandated 'thou shalt not feel heroic'.

But now it's blatant. They're not being subtle anymore. City of Heroes isn't about the players. The devs are telling stories and benevolently allowing us along on the ride.

Look, I'll be honest; sometimes I think that there's one and only one change to the game that would make me instantly re-subscribe my VIP status. If they only allowed us to make Supergroups out of our own characters I would be happy. Because it would allow me to build a home, and tell stories with a stable of characters of my own, even if only in my own head. As it is now, however, I have characters strewn through a dozen different abandoned SGs that are all ghost towns. I'm haunted by hundreds of abandoned characters who also thought that the game was about them. This is another symptom of the root dysfunction of this game: We cannot be allowed to inhabit SGs of our own, because it might make us think that the game is about us. It's not. It never will be again.

I like to play games where I am the hero. City of Heroes used to provide that. It's a shame, and a loss, that the game no longer respects that simple element of escapist play.

Not sure if serious...

I can take on hordes of enemies at the same time. That feels pretty heroic to me. I can wipe out a spawn full of enemies in a few seconds. That's pretty awesome and powerful. I can now call down the power of the gods to help me smite foes. Awesome-sauce!

Yes, there are a few times when you can feel less powerful, but they're usually fleeting and easily done. So I don't get how this is a widespread concern.

ED happened, yes, but allowed us to have the invention system, which allows you more flexibility in what you can do with your character, so I consider than a net win.

I have to respectfully disagree with the OP's overall thesis, while agreeing with some of the examples. Yes, there have been obvious instances of railroading PCs in support of NPCs, but (with the exception of the SSA so far) their numbers have been declining. The enormous groups needed for iTrials do make you feel more like a soldier than a hero, but that's just the nature of MMO end-game content (or so they tell me). And to be honest, I didn't know that the epilogues at the end of the DA arcs aren't skippable, mainly because I've loved doing them.

But feeling super-powered? Yeah, I've got that in spades, even when soloing my pathetically misbegotten Emp/Psi defender, and when my brute leaps into a bunch of Nazis and stomps her foot to send them flying everywhere, man, that's golden.

To give you the level of "star power" I gather you'd prefer, the game would probably need to be single-player, or limit teams to 3-4 players, tops. Until then, we're all going to have to share the world, and that means sharing the limelight with other players, and with the NPCs that provide the icons for starting heroes to emulate.

Personal story missions in the 1-20 GR content would have been epic.

I must be wired backwards.

I know exactly how powerful my main is... and he's REALLY powerful. The fact that I'm facing enemies that require over a dozen people just as strong as me to defeat just impresses on me how powerful my enemies actually are and how important it is they be defeated.

And I feel damn heroic when we win.

Also disagree. Since returning I feel like my characters are much... 'bigger'... for participating in the incarnate stuff. Can't wait to get my new characters up there after trying it out with my old blaster. Lots more recharge and endurance regeneration in the game now, too. That was always the point when I stopped feeling heroic, getting tired in the middle of fighting four guys was annoying. 'Fitness' was a pool power lol...

It's strange you talk about the past. When was getting beat up by devil worshipping thugs heroic? When a pile of Vahzilok all barfed on you and killed you, did you feel like Superman? Maybe it was when you herded and punched six guys standing 'inside' eachother that immersion was at it's finest, or perhaps when your ice tank was instagibbed on the '5th hit' or whatever it was that you felt on top of the world.

CoH/V is the only game I come back to and repeatedly find it's better than when I left it.

Not sure how a MMO that caters to thousands at once is supposed to make a singular character be as special as the OP seems to desire. I hear you, and see your point, but really not sure if it's doable in COH, or any other MMO, really.

I'd love a single player 'sandbox' type 'superpowers' game that had the customization and power selection of COH (with the feature like many console sandbox game have, allowing select friends to join you in your world); I'd be all over that. Such a game could really make you feel like you are (or can become) the center of the universe, like the Fable games can do.

But in an MMO, such expectations must be tempered, I'm afraid...

So basically, my mary sue isn't mary sue enough, it needs to be all about me me me.

A whole world involves a lot of stories, and a lot of characters, and a lot of stories to -those- characters. A good world tells us those stories and makes us like those characters, instead of just making them cardboard cutouts that spout meaningless jargon and tired phrases. Making every single little thing focused entirely on the singular player character makes it really hard to tell stories in different ways all the time and advance the overall storylines of the game. I much prefer feeling like I'm a part of the world instead of the dead center of it with all eyes on me because to me, that breaks the illusion more because even in a superhero genre it's unrealistic and just plain silly. I like having a starring role, but if the world is going to get fleshed out in any kind of proper way I'm going to have to share the spotlight. Maybe it doesn't stroke my ego as much as it could, I'd rather enjoy the cool stories than be told how awesome I am and how the universe rests on my shoulders for the umpteenth time.