Thank You For All The Things

In light of the announcement that negotiations are under way, I felt that I would reminisce about the things that I love about City of Heroes, City of Villains, City of Heroes: Going Rogue, and City of Heroes: Freedom.

First, I'm not sure how many of you know me, since I don't spend much time on any one character, even less time on the forums, and took 7 years to get one character to 50. In the early days, I provided some of the first CoH Avatars, based on the many villains you might run into, like the ones still accessible at this link:

Had to include the Gardvord in there, for his biggest fan, wherever you are.

My main character ever since the original Beta is Defiance (down there at the bottom), an En/En Blaster (I still claim that the Blaster inherent was named after him).
For a contest, I once won the title Ultimate Sniper for a month.
I was Cotton Gin-erator in the Historical Figure costume contest on Exalted.
I have been paying for a subscription to City of Heroes since before there was a City of Heroes.
I contributed 3 or 4 stories, and one comic strip, to the Jenkins lore.
I create alts, spreadsheets, character wallpapers (one of my favorites), avatars, sketches, and I love the creativity that CoH brought out in me.
The costume creator alone would have me lost for hours on end, especially when new items came available. I don't know how I survived CoH and CoV launches. The only other creator that I spent nearly as much time in is Spore, where you can find me on the same username (just not very often, lately).

I'd like to thank every Dev who ever logged into a character for a server event, whether it was a Rikti Commander in the CoH end of beta event; Manticore one-liner-ing me for chasing him down by myself as Poe's Raven during the CoV end of beta event; letting us trounce Positron, Synapse, Sister Psyche, and Statesman; Freitag inviting my lowbie Mastermind (Tsuki's Revenge) to go on an Architect mission that he was rating for a Dev Pick; or costume contests.

And to end, some things I have always wanted to see:
Mastermind "templates" instead of static pets, where the Thugs template can choose from Skulls, Hellions, regular thugs, other, um, thuggy kinds of minions, and robots could select Clockwork (either dimension), generic bots, or something along those lines. I just feel like it would be cool to have a character who breathes the lore in a way that the Lore pets don't really provide (at least I don't think they do). Also, it could be used to add gender equality in yet another place like Hellions and Skulls got.
Mastermind customization: I know this is a big one when talking frame rates, but I feel like we have had the same minions for the longest time, and would like either the above options under a "power customization" type mechanic, or allow it to only work client-side, so your frame rate is the only one that suffers.
Another Mastermind one, and then I'll come up with something else: My pets on the minimap. Where's my Pyro? *Click his name in the list* Oh, there he is, stuck trying to get down from a ramp. Man, that guy is dim.
I always wanted the zone danger colors to be dynamic based on your level, so when you go to a low level area, you can see that there's no challenge left there for you. It would help in new areas where you can immediately tell if you should even be there. Could auto-update when Exemplared or Sidekicked.
I wish there was a way to turn off certain buffs for screenshot purposes. For example, I don't want to see buff and debuff effects like Insight, Enrage, Luck, etc.

I leave you with this:


I salute you all, and have great hopes that things will work themselves out.

A few more:

Thank you for the Architect system. I was working on some very interesting things there.

Thank you for the doppelgangers. I loved entering a mission in one costume, and then switching to a different one when my Doppelganger showed up. It worked best if I had "faction swap" costume, so they could look the part.

Thank you for the Alignment system. When the game was still in Beta, I know we pestered you all to create these elaborate missions that would allow us to become villains. This includes allowing the ATs to be created for whichever side you wanted right from creation.

Thank you for power customization. Defiance spent so long with a neon green costume, green glowy eyes, and blue energy blasts. Once I could do the bright green blasts, he felt whole. I was sooo looking forward to changing the power pool powers, too. Just when I thought I was done tweaking his look.

Thank you for the body sliders that ruined our characters looks at first, but that I eventually came to love. In conjunction with this, I also thank you for the Body Sculptors, so my smaller characters could pilot mechs, and some of my bulkier characters could have an alter-ego that wasn't just as bulky.

Thank you for Praetoria. The original missions and NPCs were cool, but they did not prepare me for the amazing zones, NPCs, and special challenges that would come in Going Rogue.

Thank you for zone phasing. While some people may not like it, I think that it adds that level of, "I did that," to the world. When I first saw the Habashy's together in Atlas, it was very heartwarming.

Thank you for the ongoing tutorial story arcs with Twinshot and Mr. Graves. These stories, while a bit heavy-handed on the tutorial for experienced players (and sometimes railroaded my character in to saying things they would never say, especially since one of my characters was a mute Arachnos Widow), were still fun to play, and I can say that I didn't see the endings coming... at least not explicitly. *hoorb* I am making happy air sounds at my friends. *hoorb*

Thank you for special events, holidays, trials, incarnates. My only 50 took 7 years to get there, and I unlocked a few things. After my "1 Level Per Character" project that I do for my MMO characters every year (I know, how OCD is this guy?), I planned on going back and unlocking the rest.

Thank you for Ouroboros. The setting was cool. The lore was ominous. I liked the fire/ice pillars. It's always fun to be a time traveler, and it even inspired me to create my own Mender-In-Training... or rogue Mender... or something, in Time Enigma.

Thank you for the LFG queue, even though most of the CoH community never learned to use them properly. Step One: click on which TFs, SFs, or trials you want to queue for. Step Two: Click the queue button. Step Three: Do stuff while you wait. It might take a bit, and that's ok. Oh, it might have been better if the queuing system worked on all of the same-language servers, though, dropping the new team on an instance server blade for the duration of the team.

Thank you for the Signature Story arcs. I still haven't finished them all, but I enjoyed the ones I played. I really enjoyed when my villain temporarily stole Synapse's power on top of my own. Smackdown ensued.

Thank you to anyone who would talk TV Tropes with me. I have had some bizarre conversations that start from that one word. Maybe it ruined my life.