Why IS the CoH community the best one?

This isn't so much a question about what qualities do we have that makes us the best, as we all know what they are, especially in light of the events of the last week. It's more a question of what is it about City of Heroes that attracts the best kinds of people to it? And conversely why do all the usual "people with unfortunate personalities" tend to stay away?

Is it because we can all be different and unique by our costumes instead of trying to stand out from the sea of "Armour of a 1000 Truths" clad other players?

Is it because there is very little PVP and therefore a smaller scope for people to be unpleasant when they win, or feel insignificant when they dont?

Is it because the games structure makes it feel like a game instead of a job, or even in the case of some games like a responsibility?

Is it because we can literally be who the heck we want, from a fire spitting alien reptile from the planet Zarg to a 13 year old school girl who can transform into a rock monster to a hardened ex military small arms expert and yes even an elemental mage from the realm of Gry'vel.

Or is it a combination of those and a whole load of other things?

Extremely casual environment. There is nothing "hardcore" about this game. Even the most "hardcore" people that play this game would be considered casual in other games.

The game has always catered to casuals very evident with the difficulty of the game (or lack thereof). The only competitve portion of the game was PVP and that died in i13.

I think the vast amount of customization possible was a big part of what lured people in and kept them passionate.

You could make your character look like virtually anything you could think of, and do pretty much anything.

You could build a character to play the way you wanted it to play--case in point, I recently had a discussion with someone about Grav/Kin Controllers. He played his as a damage crazed AoE monster. I played mine as a team-focused buff/debuffer with the ability to lock down foes. And both were completely valid play style choices.

There is so much to like about City of Heroes that the only times I ever really got down on the devs were for adding passive Day Jobs (I still don't get the idea behind rewarding people for not playing a specific character) and for recently giving females all the previously male-only costume parts (note that I wasn't upset about females getting those pieces specifically; I was upset that males didn't get anything in return).

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Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

It's a superhero/comic game. It has an older audience (I would guess average age is probably close to 30, possibly even older). Older audiences are generally more mature and welcoming. (Comics aren't popular with the kids anymore, nor are superheroes popular outside of the occasional movie.)

Having a base audience who is older, more mature, and more welcoming means that anyone that comes in is forced to assimilate or be rejected summarily. What a wonderful circle it is.

Also because PVP is pushed so far to the side. PVP tends to sour even the best communities.

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Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

All of the above.

And, I don't know that the other types of people do not exist here, but... I think there is something about the comicbook/superhero theme (most likely just the general populous of that fandom) that may help in fostering a nicer community as well as being forceful and backed enough to quiet down and/or simply downplay the attempts of others to cause negativity (more so than most other places, at least).


If I had to rate the potential reasons in order of significance/impact... It might be something like:

1. Casual Game = casual atmosphere
2. Super Hero influence
3. Top-Down Effect... I think, as much as we are individuals and that the theme of the game fosters a greater community, the people at Paragon Studios (and their iterations beforehand) have been a large part in displaying (thus influencing and maintaining) those greater, personable and kind qualities.
4. Because I'm here!!

The Devs and the overall friendliness of the community. I was just over on WoWs site, and reminded of why I started to hate the game. Their devs and blue posters are so full of !@#$. Ugh.

The flexibility of the game. Costumes, bases, missions, badges ...

I joined before the push to get new content out every month and there was still a lot to do then.

The community is just that a community of friends who stick by each other, who help out when there's a shout out. I still duo with a guy three years after we met when we both went to help someone during a valentines event.

There is no game like CoX; it's equally enjoyable if you want to bop a few mobs casually or hardcore pimp out a char.

I want to finish casually purpling out my Warshade (and Peacebringer) and all my other characters.

SAVE COX!

I think a large part of it is has to do with the game primarily being one of cooperation rather then competition. There is little in the way of PvP here, so most interactions with others for a large part of the player base is mutually beneficial teaming.

In many ways, helping others is helping yourself and everyone else, as over time players as a collective will become stronger. There is a lot of reward for being helpful, pleasant, and social in this game. There is little reward for being the opposite.

Like it or not, PvP is one of the chief sources of rancor in other game communities.

One thing this game does right that others don't is to clearly separate PvP mechanics from PvE mechanics. In a PvP zone, your character becomes a different character. This has always been pretty much the case. When PvP nerfherding and complaining carries over to PvE, things get especially bad.

But the main thing has always been that this game has always catered to creative people more than to competitive people. The care people put in creating characters, concepts, bases, costumes, AE missions, and roleplay spills over.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

1. As a playerbase, we are older and more mature than the players of most MMOs. The common image of a twelve year old at a computer actually has some truth, whereas it wouldn't surprise me if the average age of those playing CoH was closer to 30.

2. We come from common backgrounds. The niche of this game tended to attract certain groups of people that already have strong communities, such as comic book fans. This gave the playerbase a connection that most MMOs lack.

3. Very little in the game forces players to compete, so we don't have any reason to hate our fellow player. In another MMO, players are trained to constantly compete, whether it is over enemies needed for a quest, for loot, or for access to the game's raiding community. And that isn't even talking about PvP. Because most interactions were cooperative, rather than competitive, the games community was generally more friendly.

4. The developers encouraged a positive environment by constantly interacting with the players in a positive manner. In the other MMOs I've played, it basically felt like that players were abandoned to their own devices and that the developers honestly didn't care what they thought.

5. We had WAY more tools to socialize with. In other MMOs, it often much harder to even communicate with other players, let alone form a community. You can't team up with lower levels, so the playerbase was naturally more divided by character progress, and many of the chat options we have simply didn't exist. If a person was playing on a different server they basically didn't exist, and oftentimes the teaming functions were harder to use. Even playing a certain game with ~10 million players, I often felt lonely because of how limited the chat features were (and how horrible the community was on the forums).

So basically, we are a group of more mature gamers that generally are cooperative, already have common connections, and are constantly able to talk with each other and the development team. How couldn't we be different?

In addition to what others have mentioned, I'll add that CoH is the only MMO I've played (or know others IRL who played) where the policy against abuse and bullying is actually enforced. Because of this, the jerkwads don't feel welcome, or are forced to modify their behavior and act like human beings. The community as a whole therefore benefits.

I like to think of our community as the "Big Bang Theory"

One of the reasons *I* think the community is so great is because the Devs allowed us to be.

Think about it, when they game started they gave us so many chat channels that folks could easily keep in touch with their friends and SG members at the same time, yet keep them seperate if need be to not annoy.

Then they realized that since the game encouraged players to make multiple characters and that *some* players made so many new characters that they needed to go to a new server to keep up with the altitis demand. So what did the Devs do?

They created GLOBAL channels. These channels allowed people to keep in touch with anyone anywhere in the game. How freaking cool is that? And they increased the number of Global channels a player could be in at least once showing just how committed the Devs were in keeping the players connected.

Maybe not the largest contributor to the great community we have here, but definitely in MY top 5.

One other reason that has not been mentioned yet is that the Dev's actually communicated with us as a community instead of just throwing stuff at us. (Yes that has happened, but overall they have been incredibly more communicative than any other mmo I have ever experienced.)

If we could point out how something was broken with statistics, they would fix it or at least attempt to. Not to mention they have incorporated a whole boatload of things into the game that we as a community have requested over the years.

So it isn't just the players that have made an awesome community, it is the developers and community managers (Cuppa, Zwill, Avatea, etc) as well.

I have played PvP before and after i13. It wasn't for me.
I think this community, in general, is more into the teaming, which has built friendships and made us a tight ninched group. The all for all approach to this game and the developers treating the community in the same way, makes us unique.

For me, it goes back to the extremely wonderful amount of customization, which lets people have the freedom to make the heroes and villains they want instead of feeling shoehorned into someone else's. That leads to a generally easier going populace with a degree of pride in its creations--and, thus, a desire to share those with others in casual, fun ways.