What is fun in COH to you?

As topic. What do you guys do in City of Heroes that's fun, like what parts of the game do you really enjoy? Conversely, what parts of the game do you not enjoy?

Fun: Dominators, especially getting them IOd out.
Fun: Accolades on redside.
Fun: Solo play.

I like experiencing the different interactions and synergies of the powers. I like leveling up. I like farming. I like throwing fireballs to the mobs faces. I like to try out new power sets. I like to eke out as much performance from my toons as I can.

I have never had much interest in badging. Pvp isn't worth the hassle. I have never had to have the latest costume set. Creating award winning MA arcs will never be on my resume. My base is just barely functional. I will never roleplay. None of these things really interest me at all. However, I appreciate that they do interest others.

The game really does have something for everyone and I am glad that it does.

fun: the market
fun: checking out other players cool characters
fun: mayhem missions

Of the top of my head I'd say...

Fun: costumes, teaming with PUGs or my one friend who plays, silly battle cries, coming up with ideas new AE arcs, managing to complete a mission after a team-wipe or two, new characters (I alt a lot), Halloween events, Croatoa, redside, MA's face-kicking, Energy Melee's "here's the windup, here's the pitch, POW!", Mastermind's Bots, Disintegration Spread, the new stalker changes, getting compliments on my new costumes.

Not fun: farming, trying to implement new ideas for AE arcs (it's rather impossible these days), min/maxing as if it's the only way to play, people who drop from teams without a word when there's one team-wipe (pro-tip: we usually manage to complete the mission without you after you leave), trying to team on low-pop servers.

I'm sure I could think of more later, but I'll spare you.

Fun: Blasters, Dominators, Controllers, Corruptors
Fun: The market, IOs, Incarnate powers.
Fun: The costume creator, power customization
Fun: Teaming, soloing.

Not fun: Masterminds, Stalkers
Not fun: Super Speed on Red side, Grandville, Yellow side
Not fun: most of the Itrials
Not fun: Mez without adequate tools to overcome it. (ie: blasters as they are currently designed)

For me it's a few things:

1) The costume creator - I can spend hours just making fabulous new outfits

2) The game play - The general physics of the game appeals to me and the way many AT's and power combos play can be entertaining.

3) The story - the newer story arcs are better and more interesting. I look forward to more zone revamps and the phasing out of older content for new.

4) IO's - it's fun to try to find the "perfect" build for a character that achieves the goals I want.

Purely on a CoX standpoint, my favourite things in the game are coming up with brand new characters and every step of doing such. Finding untaken names is fun, getting the costume just right without repeating myself and then putting them to power sets which just feel *right* for the character. Then I like to think big, I love manipulating the system and coming up with the best builds possible, not just for my characters but for whoever's needs help or just takes my fancy. I like to break the game with maths!

Unrelated to the game which keeps me going, I have to say that my friends are the real driving force to keep my sub going. Teaming, roleplaying, chatting and beating the odds through teamwork and superior firepower.

Few other games you can strong arm into making you powerful IMO.

Pushing buttons and beating up badguys/goodguys.

Steamrolling difficult content. Confusion powers. IO-ing out a build that I'm enjoying. Teaming with friends. Soloing to let off steam. Finally getting around to running arcs solo so I can read all the mission text. A PuG that actually knows what it's doing. Seeing some sickening combination of buffs happen somehow. Using travel powers to navigate around the city and randomly smacking down spawns while I do it. Randomly finding a badge or plaque on accident. The "Pwnz" badge. The "Said No to Superadyne" badge. Finding a like-minded collection of individuals who actually WANT to take down Lucsa or run a Synapse TF. Enjoying the beauty of Praetoria. Making wisecracks in Incarnate League chat.

Unfun things: Lack of variation in maps. Enormous branching multifloor Crey labs. The 5 layer cave room. The 4-layer Council room. People on teams who don't talk at all. Inconsistent or also WAY TOO SERIOUS role players. People who whine about receiving buffs. Morons arguing about moron stuff in public chat. People who get PO'd over a few defeats. People who join a team and go AFK. The jerk who doesn't press the button to let a trial start. PVP and everything associated with PVP. Anything north of the Longbow base on Nerva. The ridiculously long wait to enter maps that have the guy standing by the helicopter as the mission door. Ridiculously expensive costume packs. Costume packs that no longer include powers or emotes. How long it takes Controller AoE holds to recharge given their duration. Not being able to shut up Woofy the dog. Mask of Vitiation. How stupid the noises that male toons make are.

I've recently sort of changed my view of the game a bit, and it's given it new life to me.

I've transferred a lot of characters over to virtue, and started anew there.

So, I like
1)VERY open concept system for character creation. I can /practically/ be anything I want.
2)Combat is satisfying and visually impactful.
3)Teaming is simple to setup and lots of fun.
4)One of too few MMORPGS with some genuine RPG going on. Heck, I recently joined a group I encountered in Pocket D for a RP team to explore some custom (AE) missions. I was a demon helping them get to the bottom of a conspiracy involving hell itself, so we built mission arcs for our story and played them in-character. Total blast.

I don't like
1)Some class/power balance issues can have me seriously questioning whether I want fun or function, when I want both
2)I want more options... This is kind of a given, but I hunger for more! This is one of those games that can get your imagination racing, and it hurts when you realize its age and notable limitations.
3)I've spent more money on this game than I like to acknowledge.

Hmmm.

Fun:
Alts. Lots and lots of alts. Which itself needs breaking down:
- Open concepts: Not every blaster/defender/controller/tank is the exact same.
- Lots of slots to fill (not limited to a side/strict limit of characters) so you're free to explore
- Look isn't tied to power and vice versa. I don't have to give up the cool Shirt of Barely Armor I like because I've gotten to level 10 and am getting shredded. And I can swap looks because I want to swap looks
- The characters are *mine,* not Generic Ork #8974788965 or Fighter Guy #0974978652

Still mostly holds true that it's geared for casual/"bite size" gaming. I can say "Hey, I have half an hour free," log on, play for 15-20 minutes, and actually *get something done* instead of "Well, that's 15 minutes, I've sent a minion to craft and slowly walked at level 40 halfway to the next mission."

Not needing a team for most content.
Not needing a specific team makeup when you do need one.
The ease of making one when you do want/need one.
The ease of travel.
The availability of much of the dev team.



Dislikes:
The "We don't want to finish anything old, we want new people doing new new new!" I still, quite honestly, believe if we didn't have that window with TEN powers sitting there waiting to unlock, the devs would have moved on from the Incarnate system, having forgotten completely about it. Plus, old ideas *do* still fire peoples imaginations. I *still* think there's a lot of possibility in the Blood of the Black Stream, for instance.

I still stand by my characterization of the team in general as a hyperactive dog thrown into a room full of bouncing balls - more tied to the above, always chasing something, catching it, then moving on to the next thing, leaving some abandoned systems behind. (Sometimes there's reason, like the fragility and lack of commented code for bases, but still.)

The insistence of some people that they MUST have IOs to play or they can't play at all/the character is garbage. Same with min/maxing - if a character's doing .00000315DPS/DPE/DPA lower, OMG, it's broken and worthless and the AT/powerset should be deleted from the game and the design docs purged with flame.... no, it isn't.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Cool responses. Think I'll weigh my own choices in here.

FUN:
Killing stuff on teams. Love the teaming in this game because it's so unpredictable what you'll end up with. In WoW I teamed constantly, but classes have been homogenized to the point of being totally irrelevant what everyone was playing, just as long as they could fulfill their role in the trinity. CoH is not like that. There is no standard team build (and as a Peacebringer I'm innately multirole). Fill the team with people and roll out, and you'll get there even tho it might be crazy how you do.

Being able to do stories solo, especially the AE content. I like to read. Not everyone does. I like it when I can do my missions and I don't catch crap from other people because I like to go slow. Good example of this done badly is team content in SWTOR: if you're the guy not hitting spacebar, you're hated.

Costumes. I don't think I have to go into any detail here. There's a real satisfaction in creating an amazing costume that gets called "awesome" by people you've never met.

Trials. They're like big teams, but finally with content that requires the team! Love fighting against Anti-Matter and Tyrant and the rest. Can't wait to see i25 and the new trials with Battalion.

NOT FUN:
Being penalized in effectiveness to a team because you chose the "wrong" powersets. Let's be clear here: this is a development problem, not a community problem. There are sets that are demonstrably weaker than others and that's completely unacceptable. Nobody should be weaker out of the gate because they chose Energy Blast, War Mace, Mercenaries, Gravity Control, Force Field, or HEATs. Nobody should be stronger out of the gate because they chose Kinetics, Mental Manipulation, Dark Melee, Fire Blast, Illusion Control, Shield Defense, or VEATs. What a player DOES with the toon should define it, not an artificial restriction due to bad design. Also, design cowardice falls into this list. Do what you have to do to make the game good for everyone.

The wrong kind of development communication. Developers love to tell us the "what"; they all too often don't tell us the "why". If they intend to communicate effectively with the community, what they need to do is give us the measurables and the intentions. Give us the ideal damage end-state for each of the damage toons in comparison with each other, the ideal survivability state goals for the melee toons, and let us judge for ourselves whether those goals are ideal or no.

Exclusionary attitudes from players. Very bad form. Not everyone is going to be a farmer; that's okay. Not everyone is going to subscribe; that's okay. Team and teach and be patient. This includes the community's perception of knockback. Good knockback is your friend... Burn isn't everything.

Quick points, not everything but I think it expresses how I feel well.

To the OP: Good topic. Bad that I happened to see it...but good topic lol.

Likes:

The costume creator
The invention system
Lots of powersets
Lots of ATs
You can solo most of the time
On high-pop servers you can team almost any time
Some really good plots and mission arcs
Many friends...a great community by and large
Super-groups and Bases
Getting a really good team together and just having FUN!

Dislikes:

Tedium in TFs and SFs, particularly useless 'Hunt X of Y' missions. The whole TF/SF system needs revamping IMHO. Remember how bad Posi used to be? People run it now for FUN! There's never a problem filling an ITF...because it's FUN! And I want to be able to SOLO TFs/SFs without needing a workaround!

Tedium in missions (specifically, NOT getting the phone number from the contact on the first mission). Missions that demand you escort someone when stealth is your main thing. Suicidal NPCs on missions. Old maps on missions especially the infamous layer cake, Council pool room and some of the office buildings. I also shudder when seeing the word Oranbega on the mission description.

Stores in distant corners of large zone maps. MISSIONS there are fine but stores? Also the fact that the AE ticket counter doesn't sell every kind of Enhancement. The fact that many enhancements have cutsey names that don't mean anything and I have to hit Info to find out if it does what I think it does.

The Salvage system (common items should be common, not 55,000 Inf). I personally think that higher-end items should not require lower-level salvage. People starting out in the system have few funds but they're expected to bid against gazillionaire veterans for the one piece of Iron they need to make their shiny new thing. Recipes 1-10 should use salvage gained in levels 1-10 and so on.

Base implementation (Love the concept, loathe building one). Possibly one of the single most hopeful yet underdeveloped things in the game

SG implementation (can't we get together for some benefit OTHER than Prestige?)

The costume creator (not enough asymmetrical pieces, too many horns, not enough helmets, too many alien heads)

Always hearing that something "can't" be done then seeing it a year or two later (I cite Power customization and all the years we heard that the colors were 'baked into the code' and couldn't be changed)

Not seeing the stuff we ask for the most (Base changes, Moon zone) and seeing crap we don't want/can't use (if I see ONE MORE dance emote before they fix the broken stuff I'll scream!)

The utter lack of desire to fix/finish the old stuff and keep pushing out the new. I once read that War Witch was at a con speaking on a CoH panel. Many of the fans were asking about finishing or fixing their favorite thing. She said that there weren't enough resources to do new stuff AND fix the old stuff and which did the players want more. The resounding cries of 'Fix the old stuff first' were apparently something of a surprise. TAKE THE HINT DEVS!

Developmental thinking. Another point that I read was that a Dev (I forget who) stated that the players "weren't using Bases the way they were intended." No offense but just HOW did you intend for us to use them? If you'd TOLD us during Beta 'We intend for Bases to be social hubs, travel hubs and places to decorate and build' then we would have said great...make the Base Builder better out of the box and we might actually DO that! The Devs need to tell us what they expect something to do, then ASK us what we think before they dump a bunch of time into it only to find out we have other ideas on how to use their toys.

This is a great game with a great community. The new players deserve all the benefits of the new shiny stuff. But the old players that have been here for YEARS deserve to see their dreams come true too. Don't be scared...make the changes. If you improve it, they will come.

Fun:
Trying to build awesome characters(normally some sort of VEAT or support)
IOing out the toon
making cool costumes
writing a solid backstory
enjoyable(long enough and big enough they're fun, short enough I don't get bored) Strike/Task forces
ITFS
Unfun:
trying to make kheldians work
melee toons
toons like dominators, where there's a "meh/awesome" switch that I GOTS to hit to really enjoy it(this is just me, not a "doms NEED to be perma" thing. If there's a goal, I gotta focus on it)
The lack of a "hide left/right shoulder" button

Fun:
- Trying out new powersets and different combos between sets
- Playing sets I used to hate and find out that I love them
- Leveling up
- Teaming with a fun group
- Soloing on toons who can actually solo
- Playing toons who start as a plain concept but evolve as they level and find a place in my heart
- Costume/story creation
- Tanking on blasters (for the DEBT badge! )

Unfun:
- Playing powersets/archetypes that I just plain don't like
- Soloing on toons who can't solo
- Leveling after 32 (because it's a massive pain IMO)
- Dealing with idiots
- Dying a hundred million times on my toons that are supposed to be sturdy
- iTrials. I hate 'em

Fun:
- To crush me enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women

Not Fun:
- NPCs with lots of mezzes (especially groups with mezzes on minions or LTs)
- Melee characters (the closest I've gotten to an enjoyable melee character is my Time/Elec Defender who happily jumps into spawns like a melee character).

Fun: using Gale to toss Hellions from the park into the pond/lake in Atlas... or much further in high levels chars

Not Fun: visiting the folks who introduce the PVP zones ... and similar missions... thanks so much for the Find a Contact - TP to Wincott! and/or Tembler... Devs! (THAT, I like and use!)

edit: also Not Fun: Broken ragdoll / knockback ... I win because the Freaktank's head is stuck in the wall is funny once, and makes me feel guilty after I do it over and over

my fun things and not fun things are contradictory, which is my main problem

Fun: teaming and experiencing the interaction of all of the characters and powers
Fun: soloing a good arc and seeing the story.
Fun: soloing a difficult mission with each fight a nailbiter

I can only do one of them at a time. So I have to rotate.

The thing is, I almost always enjoy teaming. Not all arcs are good, so soloing many is not fun. And soloing difficult missions wears on me quickly so is only fun occassionally.

<Insert having fun when playing with plug and play sets here>

<Insert not having fun when playing sets that aren't so plug and play cos cant use brain here>



My idea of fun is living in the red just never quite dead.

Fun
-Raining AOE destruction on cannon fodder
-Soloing AVs in a reasonable time
-Defeating GMs in a reasonable amount of time
-Being impressed by teammates performance, costumes or backstory
-Impressing Teammates

Not fun
-Teaming with knock back heavy toons especially when they scatter enemies to the 4 winds with powers like LRM before I get to unleash my built up AOEs this REALLY pisses me off
-Over Aggro

FUN:
- Making costumes. So many possibilities!
- Trying out different power combinations.
- The early levels, when I'm leveling up fast and the character is taking shape.
- Storyarcs, tips, and well-written AE missions.
- Getting badges. I'm not compulsive/completist about it, but I enjoy them when they appear.
- Mothership raids. Feels epic, good rewards, but isn't as twitchy and high-pressure as most of the other big group content.
- Mayhem missions. Blowing up mailboxes never gets old.

NOT FUN:
- Those last few levels, where my character is more or less "set" and I'm starting to get bored with it and just marking time until I hit 50 and start another new alt.
- Most TFs. They can be ok if you get a really good team, but when they're bad, they're unbearable.
- All iTrials. Holy cow, what an awful slog those are. Even when they go well, they suck.

As someone who has one of those pure-healer type Empaths (Karasu actually has three of her Rad attacks, FWIW. With one slot each.), I take some offense at having them completely discounted. I take mine on MSRs and iTrials, and in those situations I promise you there's no "sitting back and rocking the aura". Between healing, buffing and having to chase down crazy scrappers who like to mistake themselves for tanks to throw out veng and a rez, there's just not time to lolly-gag around like that. I'm typically busier than the proverbial one-armed paper-hanger just keeping everyone alive. Even if I had the best attacks in the game, I doubt I'd have a second to spare to use them with a typical league... So, yeah. 'Careful with the broad brush there, Bill. Just because some of us are specialists doesn't mean we're dead weight.

That aside, what I find fun echoes a lot of what others have already posted.

I love how much of the game is solo/duo-friendly.
I like small teams and huge leagues.
I like flying around the Shadow Shard just looking at things.
I enjoy throwing my favorite melee toon into the middle of a huge horde of goons and just laying waste to them...
... with extra points if they happen to have one of their friends jumping in there with them.
Fidddling with costumes is great fun.
Trying out new power-sets and combinations on a pile of alts is grand.
Being able to move faster than a slow jog is priceless (You have no IDEA how much I miss Sprint and Fly when I'm over in Aion-)
And the badgers and "usual suspects" on Liberty and Union make me grin just about every time I log on. (Our comminuty is also something I miss a lot in my "other MMO".)

What don't I like?

Regular 6-8 member teams,
Every single TF turning into a "speed run".
Having to grind out Magi endlessly to get Hybrid opned on about two dozen of my crew.
"Market PvP"
Not being able to cross Atlas on a lowbie without getting spammed by blind invites and DfBs begging for members. <_<

Fun:

• Flexible costume options that are almost entirely unlinked to your actual powers and enhancements
• I feel connected to what my character is doing in both combat and moving around in a way I just don't get from other MMOs I've tried.
• Travel is fast. Too many MMOs are all about walking for 20 minutes or more for no apparent reason.
• Turning my brain off and hitting the same few buttons for an hour while everything falls before me
• Planning out builds in Mids'
• Crunching numbers
• Min/max
• Seeing just how difficult I can make my content and still beat it
• Amassing wealth through the market - sometimes, anyway
• The forum
• Playable in small chunks of time
• Very little Tank/DPS/Heal trinity - play what you brought, it'll be fine
• Soloing