What made City of Heroes unique for you?

A while back I had posted a list of characteristics that made City of Heroes different from some, if not all, other MMOs. The list was phrased in such a way that it was sufficiently generic, but could be understood by players of other MMOs, so as to disguise its identity. The coworkers I showed it to were actually surprised and intrigued by some of these characteristics, even more so that they could all be found in one game.

I thought it might be time to revisit this idea, if not as a checklist of features of games any of us might consider playing in the future, then simply for nostalgia's sake. So here's the newly updated list, with tenses changed to past.

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I knew an MMO that...

1. Had over eight years worth of content and updates
2. Was the first, and still the most popular, MMO of its genre
3. Didn’t limit you to only playing one realm per server
4. Never went through a server merge
5. * Had 14 different classes from which to choose
6. * Gave you access to 192 characters slots out of the box, with the option to quadruple that amount
7. * Had over 1200 different ability set combinations for each of those 768 potential character slots at character creation, with nearly 3 billion total different combinations available
8. Allowed each character to have three different builds, enabling even more customization of ability sets
9. Let you customize the visual effects of your abilities, with no reduction in their effectiveness
10. Let you preview your abilities during character creation and costume modification
11. Didn’t boost your character’s abilities with ugly clothes that didn’t match
12. Decoupled your character's appearance from its abilities, providing complete freedom during the costume creation process
13. * Had literally trillions of costume combinations available right out of the box, with hundreds more costume pieces you could earn, unlock, craft, or purchase, making over 4.5 quindecillion (4.5 x 10^48) total combinations per costume
14. * Allowed each character to have up to 10 different costumes/appearances that you could switch to at any time
15. Allowed you to write publicly-viewable bios/backgrounds for your characters
16. Didn’t base your character’s advancement on gear that could break, get lost, need repairing, or be stolen
17. Didn’t involve politics or endless need/greed rolls for loot distribution – all drops were 100% random for every member of your team and dropped instantly directly to your character
18. * Had a cross-server marketplace with complete anonymity between buyers and sellers, and opacity of selling and asking prices
19. * Allowed you to obtain any drop you wanted or needed through the market or through regular play within a reasonable amount of time
20. Allowed you to convert unwanted drops into something useable for your character
21. Allowed you to save up in-game rewards to be able to purchase specific drops without having to use the market system at all
22. Didn’t require membership in a guild to participate in content
23. * Allowed you to build massive guildhouses with medical, crafting, storage, and transportation facilities
24. * Had 20 different methods of transiting between game zones, including across realms, resulting in some of the fastest play and travel times of any MMO
25. Didn't use pointless backtracking along explicitly-defined paths as a time sink for traveling between quests and contacts
26. Gave you the ability to call contacts directly rather than having to return to them for your next quest
27. Gave you your own travel abilities instead of using super-expensive mounts – or one cheaply at level 1 if you didn’t want to take an ability
28. Was the first MMO to allow your character to be capable of fully unrestricted and untimed flight, without gliding or using mounts
29. Allowed your character to fall from any height without dieing or swim in any water without drowning
30. Didn't place silly restrictions on your character's movement around game zones - "You want to climb that hill over there that you'd be able to in real life? Sure, go ahead!"
31. Didn’t have XP loss or make you run back to your body when you died
32. Left your character with all their stuff when you logged back in – nothing decayed
33. Didn’t require spawn camping for specific kills/objectives – quests were your own private instances for you and your team
34. Didn't automatically force you to team with other people simply because of where you were or what you were doing
35. Didn't require you to "gather ten of those plants to make a good soup" or "kill five of those predators to protect my herd" - 99% of quests were combat-oriented "go punch somebody in the face"
36. Used actual opening and closing doors for quest instances, providing better immersion in the game world
37. * Had a crafting system that anyone could use without grinding raids
38. Didn’t penalize your character’s advancement or participation in content for not using that crafting system
39. Always gave you entirely new abilities when you leveled up, rather than just more powerful versions of old ones
40. Scaled your abilities' effectiveness as you leveled up, making them just as useful at max level as at level one
41. Allowed you to enhance different characteristics of your abilities, either with or without using the crafting system
42. Provided multiple opportunities to respecify your character's abilities and enhancements, without spending any real money
43. Had complete transparency of your abilities’ stats and costs so you could see exactly what they did and what you wanted to enhance as you leveled up
44. Didn’t require your character’s build to be min/maxed to be effective, though you could do it to your heart’s content if you chose
45. * Had over 140 levels of content across three different realms that could be soloed at will by anyone willing to do so
46. Enabled players to find level-appropriate content with a single click, thus eliminating XP "dead zones"
47. * Gave players the option to travel to other realms to experience content on a non-PvP basis
48. Had PvP but didn’t require you to participate in it to advance your character
49. Had compelling stories and quests to encourage players to enjoy the journey to the level cap – the game didn’t "Start at Level X"
50. Allowed you to go back and play lower-level content you might have missed, with full XP credit
51. Didn’t have an ever-increasing level cap that invalidated or made obsolete lower level characters, content, and equipment
52. Allowed you to create 8-person teams, or up to 48-person leagues for larger group content
53. Allowed you to team with anyone for most content, regardless of their level, and still earn XP credit
54. Didn’t require the "Holy Trinity" (Tank/Healer/DPS) for group composition – any combination of characters was viable for virtually all content
55. Used Buffing and Debuffing characters as "force multipliers," making your team much more powerful than you would have been without them
56. Allowed you to customize quests to be easier for the solo player, or as difficult as being on a full team
57. Let you call fighting 10-on-1 a fair fight, where you were the 1
58. Had a power-to-level-difference ratio such that your character couldn't still be defeated by an enemy mob five levels below you
59. Had a Pet/Summoning class which could have buffs, debuffs, healing, and damage all rolled into one fully-controllable "Army of Seven"
60. Had multiple tiers of consumable buffs (obtainable as drops or purchased from contacts or the market) that increased your health, endurance/mana, accuracy, damage output, damage resistance, defense, or protection from status effects, or rezzed your character from defeat
61. Allowed you to combine unwanted consumables into a specific one you needed
62. Allowed stacking use of consumables that could turn your character into a nigh-indestructible damage-dealing god for a short time
63. Would auto-rez your character if you leveled up while defeated on the battlefield, while also applying all top-tier consumable buffs simultaneously
64. * Had a quest creator that allowed any player to make their own quests of whatever difficulty they wanted
65. * Had tens of thousands of solo-friendly quests made by other players up and available to play
66. * Had an end-game system that could be used by solo players
67. Allowed you to pause multi-quest "dungeons" to finish later at your convenience
68. * Had nearly 1400 in-game achievements you could earn, the earliest of which pre-dated the Xbox Live Achievement system by over a year
69. * Had over 450 chat line commands that allowed you to do things such as interact with other players, change the UI, or activate powers
70. Allowed you to combine those chat line commands into powerful keybinds or one-click macros, providing an unparalleled system for customizing your game experience
71. * Had over 250 emotes your character could perform, including when switching costumes/appearance
72. Had a demo recording function that allowed you to record in-game activities, or edited to create your own machinima productions
73. Allowed you to save/load costumes, preferences, and UI customizations for use on other characters
74. * Had global chat abilities that allowed you to talk to other players on other servers, regardless of the character names or realms on which they were playing
75. Had both local server and global friends lists, as well as a global ignore list for spammers or offensive players
76. Had multiple levels of publicly hiding yourself from other players, allowing your gameplay to be as social or as private as you chose
77. Had a development team who would occasionally log in as critical lore-based NPCs and roleplay them on the live servers
78. Would frequently have features added to the game that were specifically requested by players and implemented by the development team
79. Let you fight time-traveling alien Nazis with giant robots in Ancient Rome (yes, really)
80. Had one of the friendliest, most mature, and most helpful communities of any MMO yet to exist on the market

You know, reading all of that just made me miss the game even more! LOL

Additional point you could add, we get benefits/buffs for logging off in certain areas (day jobs).

Alot of the games out there might have stuff we don't have, but if you added up all of their options, and I'm sure they wouldnt have half of what we have...

Masterminds. And controllers. Or "Lets you play as an army of seven" and "Let you completely shut down most opponents with no hope of retaliation".

The recently-added ability to transmute enhancements was huge.

I didn't use it a ton myself, but it made enhancing powers a lot easier for everyone in the game--casual players could convert unneeded drops into needed ones, plus it upped supply and drove down the cost of those enhancements in the market.

And of course, before that were Reward Merits, which allowed you to save up and by 95% of the enhancements (all but the absolutely most rare) without interacting in the player market at all... and later, those were followed by Incarnate (Astral & Empyrean) Merits, which allowed those participating in the endgame to purchase literally any enhancement in the game.

Quote:

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

The ability to customize the interface with keybinds and macros. There are few other games that I have played that have the level of customization and capability available here.

Didn't only give me the ability to do it but showed me how, leastwise the community forums did.

Another thing that was added after launch that made my life so much easier was the mailing system...

Oh, and a funny thing that was added was the ragdoll anymations! LOL

My main, my warshade. I will never be able to truly replace him.
If and once the servers go black, he will cast his host body aside and drift through space as a nictus essence. A final departure.

Being able to fly... Simply having the ability to take my winged characters flying anywhere I wanted, for as long as I wanted, without having to worry about "no fly zones" or "flight timers" or any of the crap Aion and other games hide the ability behind.

After spending hours just kiting around the Shadow Shard, I find that I absolutely *hate* the way flight works in Aion. I'm spoiled, and I'm afraid nothing less than another game that lets me fly the way City does is going to satisfy my inner sky-pilot.

I'm also going to miss the way side-kicking works in this game... The mastermind AT... The ability to throw my solo scrapper into the middle of a group of two dozen goons AND SURVIVE... Kestrel's collection of Lore pets... and of course, her Adept companion, Red Cardinal... And I'm going to miss the Shard. Aion's Abyss has it's own style, but it'll never be as beautiful as the Shadow Shard.

No other game will give anything like my Peacebringers, either...

The interface alone is stunning, after tryin' a few others in these past couple of days. I'm definitely jonesing for Co*'s inteface, it's just... heavenly in comparison.

The looks overall of Co* is simply... better. I can't describe it... the engine may be old, sure, but the artwork of...well...everything... seems to be a step above, and more 'real' than the others. I can't believe anyone would be complaining about it, frankly.

The way you get to make your character. I mean... I can't make a brawler only character anywhere else. How awesome is it that this is, so far as I've seen, the only place where you could actually 'South Park' a character from 1 to 50?!

And the CHAT SYSTEM... goodness me, it's just... awesome. Period.

And on and on...

NCSoft simply doesn't understand what is has here... or had. Whatever.

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Mind, this is only the game itself. There's so much more than the game too. But yeah, thems the things about the game that aren't going to let me play anything else long... I've been *spoiled rotten* and nothing will compare for a LONG time.

Mike

Being able to jump 700 yards at a time. Provided it was open space of course.

Cheer!
MT

HAVING A SUPER AWESOME OUTSTANDING DEV TEAM!!!!!!!! AND HAVING THEM LISTEN TO WANT YOU WANT!!! (sometimes) BUT THEY DID DO A LOT OF CHANGES AND TWEAKS!!!!! And Made stuff in the game happen from player requests!!!!

I've added/revised a few entries on the original list:

• *Had over 1200 different ability set combinations for each of those 768 potential character slots at character creation, with over 30 million total different combinations available
• *Had 14 classes from which to choose
• Allowed you convert unwanted drops into something useable for your character
• Allowed you to save up in-game rewards to be able to purchase specific drops without having to use the market system at all
• Allowed you to enhance different characteristics of your abilities, either with or without using the crafting system
• *Had tens of thousands of solo-friendly quests made by other players up and available to play
• *Had nearly 1400 in-game achievements you could earn, the earliest of which pre-dated the Xbox Live Achievement system by over a year
• Allowed you to combine those chat line commands into powerful keybinds or one-click macros, providing an unparalleled system for customizing your game experience
• Would frequently have features added to the game that were specifically requested by players and implemented by the development team
• Had one of the friendliest, most mature, and most helpful communities of any MMO yet to exist on the market

Sadly there will most likely never be another City of Heroes/City of Villians.

If I had the money I would buy this game and keep everyone who works on it employed continuing to do so. I would do it in a heartbeat!

City of Heroes was unique in its uniquely unique uniqueness.

Not having to manually pick up your drops is a huge one for me.

1. The awesome costume creator. You design your character as you see fit - its not controlled by drops.

2. Designed for casual players. None of the "man, I have to level fast to keep up with my friends". None of the "I have to have purple gear to survive more than a few seconds in this dungeon".

3. Mature community. Leetist players were few and far between.

4. The huge number of archtype/powerset combinations. Other games you can pretty much categorize everything as Tank/Fighter/Healer/Ranged DPS.

5. No cookie cutter builds required - pretty much everything works.

6. Mission Architect

7. All of the memorable villains - Nemesis, Recluse, Crey, Romulus, etc.
I think I'll miss Nemesis the most.

All that customization with powers and costumes imparted more of a sense of ownership than any other MMO I've played. CO may have offered as much customization, but it fell short for other reasons.

That sense of ownership allowed me to get my head and heart wrapped around the toons that I created. Now that I'm "reminded" about the vulnerability of this gaming medium, I doubt I'll let myself get that wrapped around a MMO game like this one. There is a lost opportunity here. I sort of lament that this game wasn't in the hands of a private entity who can live with something modestly successful. I can only imagine what this game could have been in another decade. Maybe a revamped engine ... base code that doesn't resemble jenga on fire ...

Wow, now I'm even more depressed! I don't expect we will ever see another game have anywhere near the same number of features in the future