What made City of Heroes unique for you?

Agree with all of these 100%. I'll also add that archtypes felt wanted in teams. So many other games won't take you if that AT is already filled on the team or if the mission calls for multiple of an AT that you aren't. CoH community on the other didn't seem to care, all were welcome, even if the entire team wound up being the exact same AT. This community, bar none, is the best.

50s - Energyman, Elec^3 Blaster - Light Bringer Prime, Triform PB - OxyStorm, Robo/Storm/Mace MM - Widow Lotone, NW - Psi-Vox, Ill/FF/Earth Control

That's probably because any group combination can handle content, excluding the level 50 TFs. I don't think any other game has the same sized groups. Every other I've seen has a mission group limit of 4. Here, a team of 4 is considered pretty small.

I am going to miss the sheer level of powersets you could take. Where else can I get a character with sonic screams?

All of the current MMOs I can think of are 5 person groups (WoW, Rift, Etc).

Dark Age of Camelot (my previous MMO) uses 8person groups like CoH does, and since DAoC was my first MMO and CoH my second, I was actually pretty shocked to see that most other MMOs use a 5person group instead.


I think the main thing that really allows for CoH to take groups of just about any composition is that it doesn't follow the typical Tank/Healer/DPS paradigm.

You don't need a tank, multiple character types are capable of handling agro and with enough buffs/debuffs or control agro management isn't even needed at all.

You don't need a "healer," with enough control mobs never get the chance to fight back, or enough damage they melt before they're able to get much damage of their own in. With enough agro management you can spread the damage around in a manner that maximizes group survivability. With enough "support" you can neuter spawn damage capabilities to the point of not needing any dedicated Hitpoint recovery.

You don't need DPS, you have force multipliers. The absolutely most broken teams in CoH, and possibly even MMOs as a whole, are those that bring this game's full buffing/debuffing potential to the table.

All of those roles are present sure, but they're all jumbled up in the way that they're presented and "Healer" is largely supplanted with the much broader "support" role that gives CoH a MUCH larger measure of damage PREVENTION than any other game I've ever played or heard of.

I worry, honestly, that we may never see as flexible a system at the one CoH has supported for the last 8 years again.




Also I fully agree that even 8 years later, no one holds a candle to CoH's customization.

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too