What made City of Heroes unique for you?
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2012-09-07 10:13 in Player Questions
City of Heroes is the only MMO I've enjoyed playing. That's unique.
Be well, people of CoH.
There's so many points that made CoH great in my mind....I copied and pasted this from another post of mine recently:
I was so excited! Getting into WoW and all the hype about WoW. WOW was I blown away at the difference between CoH and WoW! CoH was (and still is in my opinion) sooooo much more awesome than WoW was for me. More intuitive, easier to know where to go, who to talk to, etc...I'm not the "explorer" type so when WoW told me to go to x city and talk to y person...uh...I know I have to go south but...uh...where in the town is the NPC?! Ugh....*walks 5 mins trying to find him*
CoH? Oh, go here and here's a marker to know where to go! Awesome! I don't want to waste 5-10 mins trying to find something so that I can actually get my quest.
CoH's UI is still awesome and the ability to fight more than 1 "mob" at a time made me smile. Going from CoH to WoW and I'm like, "2 mobs? pfft, I got this...*starts attacking* *gets hit once by each mob* OH MY GOSH, RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!
And while playing Diablo 3 one night two people were "Reminiscing" about WoW and a few highlights were (paraphrasing since I don't remember it all):
"yeah I remember if you were serious you had to be available for at least 8 hours to do x raid."
"those darn x guild people were always camping (24/7) every spawn point of x new boss."
Me: *shakes head*...yeah...that sounds like...pain...I want to start up a game and PLAY and play to have fun, not "have a 2nd job which supposedly is a game." >_>
Leader of The LEGION/Fallen LEGION on the Liberty server!
SSBB FC: 2062-8881-3944
MKW FC: 4167-4891-5991
I think one of the biggest draws coh had for me personally was it allowed me to live out a fantasy of mine. Maybe I'm over over-sharing but, I've always imagined what might happen after I die. Is there an afterlife? Do we get reincarnated? Do we have any say in where we end up and what we end up as?
At the same time I've always been a huge fan of Jean Grey as the Phoenix. It was Classic X-Men 43 the reprinting of the end of the Dark Phoenix saga that had the "after" story of Jean's death as Phoenix, that was my very first comic book as a child. I felt a kinship to this woman. I collected everything to do with Jean and anything Phoenix related. City of Heroes allowed me to have my own personal reincarnation as my character who is basically me as the Phoenix with enough subtlety and uniqueness not to get genericed :P. His name was just Nic (like Cher!), no fancy super hero name.
Here he is:
And here's his bio in game:
Quote:
City of Heroes gave me the chance to live that fantasy to some degree. To be reborn in a world of super powered beings with fantastic gifts to help the world be a better, safer place. Other games let you be a hero of one sort or another. Whether it's a powerful mage fighting world ending dragons, or an angelic being trying to save a shattered world, these games let you be a hero within very strict confines. What City of Heroes did was let me be a hero based on my desires and the kind of story I wanted to experience. |
Whille technically classified as a mutant by the Paragon City Hero Registration, Nic's true origin remains a mystery. Examinations by Positron revealed that every cell of Nic's body carries a very powerful and unique energy signature never before seen, and exerting his psychic powers beyond a certain threshold, psionically ionizes air particles around him creating a fiery visual effect. Suffering fragmented memories from some unknown ordeal and unschooled in how to control his powers, Sister Psyche mentored Nic, teaching him how to cope with hearing the thoughts of others and how to have fine control over his telekinetic abilities. Turning to Azuria for some divinatory assistance, it was revealed that Nic had died in one reality and somehow resurrected himself in this one. It is, as yet, unknown how he did so. What is known is that with his rebirth also came unimaginable psychic potential whose limits have yet to be determined. |
In most other games you're not much different from anyone else who picks the same class as you. Your equipment may determine who is stronger but at the end of the day you still can do all the same things "same class as you" can do. CoH let me tailor my character to MY tastes. My character Nic was a psi/psi/psi Dominator. Did other players play psix3 doms? Sure they did! Did they necessarily have all the same abilities I did? No they likely did not. While we still had limitations and worked within a certain structure, I was still able to tailor my character to a very close approximation of my imaginings both in how he played and what he looked like. No other game to date has been able to pull that off with as much success as City of Heroes IMO. That's what will forever make COH unique to me
Jem - Ill/Rad Controller Lv 50+3 Nic - Mind/Psi Dominator Lv 50+3 Lady Liberation - Invuln/SS Tanker Lv 50+1 Invicitx - Demon/Pain Mastermind Lv 50+1 Celeste - Emp/Arch Defender Lv 50+1 Nightsilver - DB/WP Scrapper Lv 34 Dusk Howl - StJ/Regen Brute Lv 32 Kyriani - Time/Energy Defender Lv 41Psifire - FF/Psi Defender Lv 50
Star Lighter - LB/LA Peacebringer Lv 30
Mechanics. The accessibility of things like inspirations and zero downtime for looting, but specifically customization vs. balance, multiplied by (eventual) statistical transparency. It was just done better in this game than any other. You could get more than just a visual grasp of what you were doing; you could open a window and see it right in front of you. You didn't have to guess. The numbers were very clear. Champions mix-and-match system was more customizable, but it was way too easy to become way too powerful.
Guild Wars 2 is the closest I've ever seen, and it does offer the ability to move while fighting which CoH lacked (for the most part). But even as the closest, it can't even remotely reach what this game had. And what it was going to keep adding.
I was spoiled here. I don't think I can do MMOs anymore.
I really don't understand how the game that caught on is not the one where you can be literally anything you want, look any way you want, and have nearly any combination of powers (and still be effective!); but the ones where your only options are to look and play exactly like everyone else or get shunned and/or mocked for not looking and playing exactly like everyone else.