Something Truely Unique and Revolutionary is Being Lost

I've seen the press releases for new games such as GW2 and how "revolutionary" they are to the MMORPG realm, and my response is "oh really"?

GW2 adds little hearts to maps and you have to perform tasks that have been around for years to complete, and supposedly that's revolutionary.
They draw circles on a map and spawn zergs, call it an event, and thats revolutionary... They eliminate healers, give each class a weak heal, and call that revolutionary. The appearance of each toon is still specific to the equipment you pick up. Yes, you can transfer stats to something you like, but hardly revolutionary.

Let me point out some things in this game:

1. CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION - you can literally create anything. YOU ARE WHAT YOU CREATE. Not what you pick up and wear. No other game even attempts to do this. Equipment is king. (with CO as the exception)

2. POWER SYNCHRONIZATION - in every other game, you can do what you can do. Nothing else anyone does has that much of an impact on your performance. The way powers in this game mix and match is something to behold. A /kin troller can make a good meleer truely awesome. A buffer/debuffer can make a good blaster literally melt through enemies. I have always loved PUGs in this game, because every group is different depending on the mix of powersets. It feels like a completely different game - every time. I can participate in a 1000 PUGs in WoW, it's always the same, except for perhaps the competency and equipment of the players.
Tank/DPS/Healer/Whatever. The experience never differs.

3. PLAYER CREATED CONTENT - now this is something truely revolutionary. Love it or hate it, you wont see this in the vast majority of MMORPGs. Yes, the design could have been much better, but you have to admit some of the stories you can find are far and away better than most of the Dev content.

4. BASE EDITOR - yes, its hard to use. But look on the base forums, it's amazing what people have come up with. DAOC had very limited player housing where you could pick decorations. GW allowed you to select a guild base, but no customization.

5. TRUE TANKING - I've tried to tank on games such as WoW, after tanking in CoH. My reaction is always - you've got to be kidding me.
In CoH, you are a brick wall, and you can keep a substantial portion of the baddies on you alone, just by doing what comes naturally. In WoW, and most other games, you're nothing but a bag of hitpoints that the healer has to keep filled. Keeping a substantial number of the baddies on you is difficult.

6. BADGES - yes, every game has them now. But CoH invented the concept ... which WoW later stole. Now that was revolutionary.

7. SIDEKICKING - havent seen this anywhere else. GW2 has auto-exemplering at a zone level, but it's just an inferior implementation IMO. Try joining a team 30 levels above you in any other game, you will die in 1 second.

8. POWERSET/ARCHTYPE PROLIFERATION - nothing else comes close to the number of powerset combinations in this game. Foe each class, GW2 expects you to pick from 2 weapons and swap between them, giving you a grand total of 8 attacks. Less is better in their minds, I guess.
In Wow, you can pick from one of three skill trees for each class, again not much of a choice.

9. TRAVEL POWERS - this is both a blessing and a curse. It destroys any chance of having true "exploration" in this game. However, it is a joy to be able to have the ability to fly, by myself, without having to use some giant bird or other contraption.

10. INSPIRATIONS - yes, we take them for granted. But have you seen anything like them anywhere else?
You get "potions" in other games, but do they drop that frequently and have as much of an impact?

11. EIGHT PLAYER TEAMS - the rule of thumb in other games is - 5 players.
Not sure why they do this, but it really cuts down on the flexibility of group composition.

12. TEAMING - this game encourages teaming. From the power synchronization mentioned above, to side kicking, to the fact
that you can just level faster by teaming ... nothing else comes close. You can form a PUG in just a few minutes, whereas forming a team in other games can be such a major time-consuming hassle.

It's a shame the game is being sunseted. And it's more of a shame that the industry hasnt taken a harder look at some of the features in this game, and tried to emulate more of them. This is an 8 year old game, and IMO far more revolutionary and unique in design than anything coming out now.

The supersidekicking method that CoH implemented to stave off door sitting and PL shenanigans really broke open how easy teaming should be.

This should be reposted on Titan Network's forums, Maybe someone will decide to make a spiritual successor with these things in mind.

Realistic? Nope. But what do we have to lose?

Well summarized, Hercules.

More examples are also in the What made City of Heroes unique for you? thread. I hadn't realized until people started listing their favorite parts of the game just how painfully true it is that CoH is unique and the forerunner in setting the standard of fun for MMOs.

I've tried to play other MMOs including CO, and none have ever held my attention like CoH has done.

In this game, we get to write our own stories. Between the incredibly diverse and open game lore and the character creator (complete with a decent space for character bio), we get to be anything we want. We're not just a handful of pre-selected races whose backstory is pre-written for us.
In what other MMO could the avatar of a Skyscraper join forces with a Steampunk inventor, a wood elf, and a garden variety spandex-clad human with superpowers, and the lot of them go on an adventure together?

Here I really bonded with my characters- in game I was unique, whatever I felt like being. Not just random elf/char/human wearing whatever-level gear. I won't get that anywhere else. Being able to transfer stats from one piece of gear to another just won't cut it.

Overall a good post, but I do have to take issue with one thing:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hercules 5. TRUE TANKING - I've tried to tank on games such as WoW, after tanking in CoH. My reaction is always - you've got to be kidding me. In CoH, you are a brick wall, and you can keep a substantial portion of the baddies on you alone, just by doing what comes naturally. In WoW, and most other games, you're nothing but a bag of hitpoints that the healer has to keep filled. Keeping a substantial number of the baddies on you is difficult.

Its the "you're nothing but a bag of hitpoints" bit that I'm taking issue with.

Most games that came after CoX intentionally have far more sophisticated threat mechanics than our game did. Generating threat and holding aggro is part of the challenge and fun for a tank in other games. Likewise, ranged DPS classes and healers can steal that aggro and cause some real problems if they're not careful. There's a lot more at work(and a lot more fun!) in this scenario than you appear to be giving credit to.

In fact, it was stuff like this that caused a lot people that tried CoX to dismiss it outright as being a "Mickey Mouse game that was too easy". I'm not saying that the Holy Trinity is outright superior(and it couldn't port perfectly into our system), but it does have some benefits in certain ways.

Its perfectly ok if you prefer CoX's simpler tanking mechanic(which was your point), but please don't pretend that a huge amount of programming effort and Gameplay Theory hasn't gone into the industry standard, or that it isn't popular.

If you're basing this strictly on experience with WoW, maybe WoW is the problem! Other games might just do it better.

You've not seen tanking until you've seen a bard tank Nidhogg by singing at it (FFXI).

Actually, Star Trek Online has player-created content (they call it the Foundry). Neverwinter will have an even more sophisticated player-created content that will essentially become part of the world (no AE building). Contacts will be spread around the world, and barkeeps will refer you to them.

CO has supersidekicking, which you can turn off if you so desire. CO has travel powers that you get at level 6 (basically right out of the tutorial), which you can skip after the first character you create.

CO also has inspirations, though they are a pale imitation of CoH's inspirations. They drop during fights and you have to consume them by moving to them, which means you can't save them. One "problem" with CoH inspirations is that you can stockpile them and essentially become unhittable for most normal content just by popping purples. It's a great way to handle bosses, but it does tend to make CoH characters overly powerful.

CO has most of the stuff that CoH does, and it's really splitting hairs to say that Cryptic didn't come up with it first: they did, they wrote CoH in the first place and basically created CO as CoH2. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I like CoH better than CO, but it's a moot point now CoH is going away.

The big mistake Cryptic made was to dump the way CoH does certain things (missions, salvage, crafting, looting, for example) and use the WoW model for so many aspects of the game. They should have doubled down on their CoH ideas and expanded them in that direction, instead of slavishly imitating every other MMO in the universe.

I don't understand why we don't see a "Sidekicking" system very often in other MMOs..

There are a few that have limited versions of it..

GW2 auto-down scales you depending on what zone your in. But you still retain most of your powers and traits/talents, so you're a bit more powerful than a "level appropriate player"

FFXI implemented an Exemplar system sometime after I quit playing. I believe it scaled everyone's level down to match a specified player's level. Also scaled down gear stats too. The exemped players also got full experience. I remember jokingly saying to my brother "Wow, if you wanted to you could level in the Dunes from 10-75!"

EQ2 has it in some fashion, no idea how it works.

And of course Cryptic games have it, well at least CO does.. Does STO?

It just seems like such a great system for so many companies to just kick it to the side like they do. Perhaps they don't want to bother with the balancing headache of stat/item/trait scaling? Or maybe they don't think it will be utilized much because everyone just rushes to end-game anyways.. Who knows, but I miss it in every game I play that doesn't have it..

Half of these aren't even accurate.

Oh come now. Other Ncsoft games have so much unique game mechanics than -THAT!-

Like hitting an enemy until they die!

Swords

Axes!

Spears!

JUMPING

Instant death jumps!

A totally original loot system!

Totally original quest system!

Totally original combat system!

Heavy armor- Still get killed by three dudes, because it encourages better gear!

You can even be a elven sex sl- swords-person

TOTALLY ORIGINAL "RAID" SYSTEM WITH TOTALLY INTERESTING THINGS INVOLVED!

Sound like Another WOW Clone and I saw it on Youtube, Nothing new at all, they took what they need form Coh and Said F-You too it.

I haven't seen anything Unique and different compare too Coh, Hope the Rumors are true and someone is looking to buy Coh.