A few reasons why I will always love CoH

As I reach out and try to fill the CoH-shaped hole in my heart, I am constantly reminded of just why I loved CoH so much, and played it all these years...

Here's just a few reasons why I was/am a dedicated CoH fan. In no particular order.


Teams

CoH is one of the few MMOs that I felt really got teaming right. Teams are not only easy to get into, but you can join one right out of the gate. They can be fun, hectic, rewarding and non-essential (meaning you don't *have* to team). More and more MMOs these days seem to save teaming for loot-farming or end-game reasons only. Nothing wrong with that, but it's more fun to me to be able to team to level up.

A fair take on the "no holy trinity approach". Many games are trying this, some more successful than others. I once again feel that CoH pretty much hit the nail on the head. Sure, you could take along a dedicated tank and healer/buffer. But they were seldom required for the vast majority of content.

Lastly, since teams were so easy to get into, they were also easy to get out of. I never felt "locked" into a team after I joined. Knowing that if something came up mid-way through the team I could easily back out. This is substantial to those of us prone to having unexpected interruptions.

---------


Interesting powers/abilities

This is another personal biggy. I loved the powers in this game. Nearly every one of them felt substantial. They *did* something.. you *felt* them, they were flavorful and you were excited to get them. Buffs and Debuffs were especially strong, potent, and fun. A far cry from the barely-there versions of other MMOs

For what its worth, I also feel similar about WoW. It had a lot of neat interesting abilities that really made classes feel unique.. I say had because Blizzard seems to be hell-bent on standardizing every class. They took away Paladins freaking auras for crying out loud.. a core mechanic for that class since its inception... no, since Warcraft 3! But that's neither here nor there..

----------


Dynamic Support

I love Defenders and Corruptors in this game. They were done splendidly well in my opinion. Not only were they great at support and team play, but could also pull their own weight around as well. Sure Defenders might have taken a bit to get off the ground, but once they did they became quite potent. Compared to the "Support" of other games they are much more active and fun to play. They have truly spoiled me when trying to make support in other MMOs. Where you are plagued by being squishy as hell, and only relegated to a very specific role. Usually spamming heals and using barely-there buffs once every 30 minutes.

------------


Costume Editor

'Nuff said.

----------------


Invention System

The IO system let you warp and distort the preset restrictions on your AT, or you could use them to further boost their primary role. I love IOs, best damn system I have ever seen in an MMO.


Well those are the couple of things that tend to pop in my mind while journeying into other MMOs. How about you folks?

Wish IO System was easier to achieve. Sometimes I just wish I had them during the periods when I can't subscribe.

Pretty much what you said, Primantiss.

I loved running PUGs, and being able to keep rolling as people joined and left. The basic teaming dynamics meant that everyone involved benefitted from being on the team (ie more XP)

I loved the support sets, and how one individual could turn up on a PUG and change the experience, be it giving everyone limitless energy or almst absolute protection or whatever.

The costume editor remains the best I've ever seen.

And the IO system kept me interested - I'd have left long before now if it wasn't for the opportunities this afforded in decking out a character, often beyond the basic scope of their archetype.

I'll add to the list the huge amount of content.
It had reached the point where I felt like I'd never get really bored, because there was enough content to play all year without repeating anything you didn't want to. Faultline, Croatoa, the Dr Vazhilok arc, Mercedes Sheldon's arc. All those off-the-beaten path parts of the game that I didn't take most characters through, but were a joy to rediscover when I felt like it.

Yeah, you both have covered many aspects that I agree with - the aspects of teaming, the feel and excitement and variation of each powerset, the support abilities, the costumes and the expansive content all rate right up there for me...

The biggest things, for me, that I can add to this are:

The customization goes well beyond the amazing costume and character creator. Each AT and each and every powerset within them not only customize your looks, but allow for a great difference in your possible approaches and playstyles. Plus the mix and match of the Primaries and Secondaries... and Pool Powers and accolades and temporary powers and Ancillary/Patron Powers, of course.

None of that, however, would really have won me over quite as much if I didn't truly love playing the actual combat game.
If I try and pin down exactly why I like it (I'm not positive that I am 100% correct, but it's what I've come up with), besides possibly the relatively quick recharge system and the multiple options generally available (even at low levels) and the interesting results of using different powers and their side effects, I sometimes think that it is the animations that really make a hugely positive difference compared to most other mmorpgs. It's not that the attacks and such are overly flashy or pronounced... they just seem to be right on the money, for my tastes. And not just the style of the animations, but the general fluidity of it without being too ridiculously involved and complicated that it might feel more like hitting a button and watching my character animate something... Instead, it just feels more like I can mash buttons in order to control my super-powered character in live action.
Perhaps the biggest aspect of the animations, and my enjoyment of them, is the ragdoll physics animations. When I thwack someone over the head with a Havoc Punch and they get knocked down and/or over a railing on a second floor... and they hang off of it before climbing back to their feet... Heck, even when I get sent flying from a knockback... I just love it.

So many other games generally have animations and interactive animations in combat that bore me. The random aspect of the ragdoll physics really seemed to help break up that monotony somewhat.
Along with that, not having a standard auto attack as our key attack all the time is great. We actually use our better powers and abilities with great regularity.

One last thing that I only just realized recently...
I've fallen in love with two mmorpgs... and generally disliked all the others that I have played.
And I realized... a large part of that is the game's world. I hadn;t fully realized this, possibly because my one gripe about CoH might be that it wasn't quite expansive enough for my exploration enjoyment (It really didn't prevent me from loving the game, but I miss that aspect... especially coming from my previous mmorpg, SWG, which had enormous exploring capabilities).
However, it's just the fact (and many people have commented on it over the years) that this game world allows for just about every concept you can possibly imagine, whether it be golden age, silver age, modern age comicbook types, or more realistic, gritty action types, military types, future, past, space, fantasy, each and every aspect and subgenre within those facets and anything and everything beyond... Not only can you create and encounter such a vast expanse of diversity in origins and genres... but it totally fits.
The other game world I loved? The Star Wars universe. Pretty similar deal, as far as the variety and combinations go.
And that says a lot, in my opinion.

So, yeah... mish-mash world of anything and everything goes... and it makes sense. I love that. And I realized that no other game that I have seen is out there that accomplishes that. Maybe CO and, to a lesser extent, DCUO, but they feel more based within a certain realm than CoH does to me (that may just be my lack of familiarity with what CO includes though).

Oh, I know I said that was the last thing, but...
Maybe the biggest of all is that I can feel comfortable to play how I want to play and I can change that up when I feel like it and I never really felt forced at any point in level or content to do otherwise.
I think that somewhat ties into the expansive amount of content. Honestly, I almost always stuck with radio and paper missions... but being able to add in any and all of the rest of the content, whenever I wished, was just huge. And true of using radio/paper missions the other way around - just as fillers now and then in-between story arcs or task forces or whatever.
Gaming a la carte, really. The way, in my opinion, it should be.

What's the OP said. I stuck with CoH for sevenish years because it managed to push all the right buttons for me.

Teaming was easy, ridiculously so once the sidekick overhaul was implemented. A couple of broadcasts and we were rolling in three minutes or less - ten, on a really slow day. During peak hours, I often had to turn away people because we filled before I could fire off a "full now, thanks" message. Then again, with chat history, it was easy to invite them once a teammate dropped off. The whole teaming mechanic was beautiful in its simplicity, given that it allowed both variety and interchangeability at the same time. Well, mostly - a single-archetype team generally had more trouble than a mixed one, but the mix never had to be of a particular type.

Then there's the community, but that hardly needs mentioning.

Another often overlooked detail is how seamlessly the game adapts itself to you. It doesn't send you into missions far out of your league, and only sends you below that when you've outleveled the contact {that said, I would have liked the missions to exemplar you in that case. Handwave it as a flashback or something}. More teammates? More enemies! And you could scale it up or down if you wanted a more controlling hand in the difficulty.

Auction house optional. The fact that I don't have to work the market to get adequate "gear", instead of being able to buy it from NPCs with infinite supply.

Global channels. Help and LFG channels.

Not another ******* Tolkien ripoff. That's what got me interested enough to try it out in the first place.

Costume customization and bio space do wonders for not feeling like another shambling mound of arbitrarily assembled swords and armor.

Generally, the ability to log in anytime I want and just burn some aggro.

An open letter to NCsoft

I tried CoH because it's superheroes. That was my main impetus but I've never found a game that works as well as this mechanically.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

It was fun to play right from the start! I started playing under Issue 15 on an old gaming buddy's account when he was a work (after we designed a couple of characters together and he showed me how to play.) One week later, I was certain I wanted my own account and was a subscriber ever since. Friends had shown me various MMORPGs before (UO, EQ, WoW) but while pretty to look at, none grabbed me. After subscribing to CoH, I tried a few other MMOs just to compare and/or because rl friends were playing (e.g. F2P LOTRO) but thus far prefer CoH by a LOT to any other MMO I've tried.

As a solo console game, I thought CoH rocked! But add to that all the friends I've made in game, some now RL friends, how helpful, friendly and generous other players were to me right from the beginning, and seeing how incredible this Community is, I'll always love City of Heroes, my characters, the city zones, the power animations and costumes, and many many story lines. That an MMO could actually provide "peak" gaming experiences to rival some of my best gaming experiences in tabletop and LARP gaming is a testament to the CoH Community and Paragon Studios development team.

If I were tasked with writing a slogan explaining why CoH is awesome, it would be something like this:

Come for the superpowered action. Stay for the super community.

I like the customization options and the whole hero concept. It was a relatively easy game to get into and easy formatting of the chat windows, especially after the LFG and Help channel rise to prominence. It didn’t take too long to level while at the same time it wasn’t too short. Good villain side content. Excellent Praetorian maps and storylines and just the right amount of difficulty for those mobs there. Oh and of course the variety of the mobs, even though having CoT from level 5-50 and somehow having to do with most game content got kind of bland. "Ok, we have to catch some Crey but first we have to fetch a book for Azuria." The updates were good and came at a good pace.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mauk2 Evil_Legacy became one of my favorite posters with two words. "Kick Rocks." I laffed so hard. Never change, E_L!