Things you never noticed before, but are noticing now?

Me again.

So, I was in Croatoa with Insane Chopper, my Paul Teutel Sr. type character ("GET IT DONE!") on Champion.

It was *completely* quiet. No music, no anything. I was, for some reason at the University there, as a Level 7... odd.

I was going to move him to a retirement position in Kings Row as befitting his current leve, and to do that, was going to run back along the field on the south side of the city, as there aren't many critters to deal with on this lowby character.

So I start movin... and got under a tree. Whereupon I hear.. rustling.

Rustling?

Yes, rustling. And only that. Apparently, I've been playing this game for 7 years and *never heard the leaves in the trees rustling in the wind.* There's even a little creaking as the tree sways... I stood there... listening to it... enthralled it was there at all.

That. Is. Awesome!

A little sad I never noticed it, but there it is, I've noticed it. Thanks, devs, for that little bit of an 'OOH!' moment I just had. Just another reason this game is a work of art, IMO.

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So... anyone else with such a moment?

Mike

Yeah. It's the little things this game does that others don't do that get me sometimes.

Doors. The doors on any mission entrance. It's not something I've never noticed. I see them all the time.

What I've been noticing recently, as I play a little bit of CO, and DCUO. And remembering how things worked in WoW (about a year back last I played)and a handful of other MMOs I've played over the years since CoH got me interested, is this ---

I can't think of any other game that actually has DOORS that visibly open and close with your character walking through them. With sound effects and everything. True - your character does not reach out with their hand to actually physically interact with them. But I can't really think of ANY MMO out there that routinely has working doorways for EVERY SINGLE MISSION INSTANCE.

Sometimes they're regular glass or metal-frame doors on office buildings. Sometimes they're solid wood doors. Sometimes they're out in the wilds of Perez Park and the door is a rough-hewn wooden slat thing that obviously is a mine entrance. In First Ward, a few months ago, I saw something completely new - a REVOLVING DOOR that worked with your character animation perfectly!

And yes - the rustling of the wind in the branches of trees. Stand there long enough and you'll notice leaves randomly falling off the tree.

(For yuks, if you're a grav controller, activate a singularity under the tree. Leaf cyclone! Or better yet - place your singularity right under a mailbox. LETTERS START SPEWING OUT. It looks like the scene from Harry Potter with the endless letters coming from the fireplace! )

Paragon Dance Party. The instance still exists in the game code (In fact a dev took a bunch of people from the D straight to it about a little over a week ago. Then spawned 16 Statesmen for us to fight.) but once the game went to City of Villains and had Pocket D there was no need for it. And the entrances no longer worked.

But there is - to this day! - a bum sitting beside each old entrance and if you click on him he tells you something like "GO away! Trying to sleep here, Paragon Dance Party is closed!"

The badge - Kill Skuls - "Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls." That's a direct reference to a forum meme and gag!

On the City of Villains side - if you go to Monster Island and then go waaaaaaay off over to the far Northwest Corner, there is a tiny little Island with a shipwrecked dude sitting next to a palm tree. Out in the water just off the island is a soccer ball floating in the water. And yeah - you stand there long enough. A stray coconut will fall from the tree. (For those of you not getting the joke - look here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162222/ )

There's not even a badge for this, It's just there. Some Dev somewhere in his or her spare time must've thought "Hm. That corner is awfully empty. But I know players. SOMEONE is going to want to go there, if only to "open up" the map from the "fog of war". I'll just drop this little thing here. Reward anyone who goes all that way for the effort."

Ever noticed the sounds Clockwork make? Not the obvious ones. The clank clank of the Princes and all. Get close to a couple (that you've safely outleveled, or invisible) and just listen. It's amazing the variety of sounds they make.

A few buildings and other places have neon signs. ("PWN Shop" being the most famous)

Get up close. Listen. You can hear the faint crackle of the neon tubes.

Of course all the waterfall and water sounds in general - just amazing variety.

Walk by the bathrooms in the tram stations. Stay there a moment. You'll hear flushing noises.

In Faultline, near the trainer, there are a few restaurants on the strip. Italian, Mexican, a bistro, a couple of others. Go stand right next to them. Restaurant and crowd noises with music. Same thing with the donut shop.

Stand next to The Canadian Mountie in Faultline. Hear the dog barking?

On redside, in Port Oakes, Nerva and a couple of other places, there's seagulls wheeling overhead. Listen and you'll hear them.

Fly up to the airship in Atlas Park. It's got engine noises you'll never hear from the ground.

And on, and on, and on, and on.

The sheer love that was put into this world shines through. Certainly the big, impressive things people expect are there. But down to the tiniest detail, this world IS ALIVE. It is A PLACE.

I will miss every last bit of it so very much.

It's not just leaves that can be whipped around but also spent bullet casings, bits of rock and other debris generated by mobs and players. Look closely and you will see they have varying amounts of weight applied to them too, affecting how each piece of debris reacts to powers such as singularity or merely being pushed around by movement.

The Abandoned Sewer entrances at Atlas Park and Boomtown share a piece of funky guitar music - and it's not the one listed on the Paragon Wiki for those zones either. The Wiki lists the Sewer and Abandoned Sewer tracks as being the same...but they ain't

I was exploring places I'd never really had a proper look at, and I happened across that music. I'd simply never stopped there long enough to notice it before. It's kinda jazz funk, and I'm guessing pretty old because it's not quite the same feel as more current music in the game.

Go on, head there and have a listen. Remember, not the normal sewer entrance music, go through the side door to the Abandoned Sewer

I still like flying into the pub signs and watch them swing.

Not sure if it still works, but if you stand outside some of the bowling alleys, you can hear the sound of pins being knocked over. I've always wanted to be able to enter and actually see the inside.

Nellie in Croatoa is another one - I never knew she existed until a year or so ago. Pretty rare sighting.

Never noticed the pumpkin heads in the trees in Croatoa until yesterday - is that a Halloween event thing?

Now would be great that some dev reveal the Easter Egg in Praetoria related with clockworks (I think Melissa was the one who hinted at it).
Better than that: reveal all Easter Eggs!

I usually play with a set of very old, very cheap speakers. Yesterday I played with headphones my daughter had plugged into the computer, and wow - the sounds. Absolutely a different experience.

One addition to the many environmental sounds Atlantea listed is generators. If you stand near what looks like a street-level generator box for the power company, or on a building roof, it hums.

Listen to the city when standing in Talos. (I often noticed this while loitering in Wentworths.) In addition to the sounds of cars and whatnot, you will hear birds chirping, though only when it's light out. It sounds like a summer day.

By the way, the thing with the mailbox and Singularity or Group Fly is true of all those kinds of objects with attacks. If you set off certain AoEs in the presence of those items, such as Fire Ball or Foot Stomp, you'll knock the appropriate contents out of the item. Leaves out of trees, letters out of mailboxes, sheets of paper out of cardboard boxes, soda cans and wadded paper out of trash hoppers and trash cans, etc.

In the University buildings, on the library side, there are loose books on the tops of the bookshelves that you can move.

If your graphics are high enough - there are fireflies around the street lamps in Perez Park.

Those red phone booths in Faultline? You can knock the doors of those, too.

I've spent YEARS running around in this game finding little details like this because they're great for filming. Little obscure out of the way spots, one-off things in a zone (like the baby carriage in revamped Dark Astoria - shudder), the guy stuck in a morgue cabinet in the RWZ compound...

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I just noticed today in the center square area in Grandville, when you run up to the trainer arbiter, some of the panels you run on are hollow metal sounding, the squares directly around the arbiter are solid. This I heard from the sound not the graphics.

The devouring earth plants make the same rustling noise when they shift from tree to humanoid form.

And I just noticed the Vanguard base in Atlas has a double door on the outside and 2 left doors on the inside (IE, they don't match up, int he slightest XD)

The Coralax make a faint but constant tinkly musical noise when you get close to them

I always enjoyed knocking the books in the university but my favorite is when I go to Grandville to listen to Lord Recluse speech on the jumbotrons when you enter Grandville.

In Faultline, you can hear 'music and people noise' coming from the cafe. At onetime, when the bowling alley was still in Atlas you could hear the sound of the ball rolling and pins dropping. If you used superspeed, and ran back and forth in front of the atm machine (tram station) or a mailbox, money/letters would fly out. My favorite of all time, though, was standing in front of the bathroom door in any tram station and listening to the 'flushing and gas' noises.

I recently bought a computer and installed a new video card, so was finally able to enjoy some of the advanced settings of the game (love seeing my shadow as I fly near objects). A week later we get the news . . .

These aren't new to me, but some new player might read this and not know they existed.

The Cryptic Lounge secret room in Faultline.

The Matrix Room underneath PI.

The dev. office under Grandville tower.

Ask any old pro, they'll show you how to get there.