Where CoH went wrong

1. The endurance-based throttle on player progress in the early years drove a huge number of players out of the game, as many wanted to do more than watch their green and/or blue bar refill while sitting in a cave in the Hollows. On that note, I personally watched a fair number of players try out COH with a goofy "I get to be a hero" grin on their face when they started, in a kind of "gaming cafe", where people paid for playing time. Their expression would usually change to anger as they watched blue / green bars slowly refill themselves and/or they were hauling themselves back to the Hollows yet again, after being defeated. Although a fair number experimented with COH, in the end only a very small number of players freely chose COH in the gaming cafe that I frequented for a while, when given a choice among many games, and that ultimately was a sign of a long run trend.

2. ED and the global defense nerf was handled very badly. Years later I still remember how angry players were on the forums and in the game; it led to the loss of a lot of active players.

3. The whole "items and money" side of the game was implemented very badly. New players always started out dirt poor, unable to afford SOs without some kind of market activity, gifts, or TF action -- as if being new wasn't enough of a handicap to building a viable character. Item and inf sinks never worked properly. The IO system and markets had the potential to draw in (or at least keep) players, but it was implemented in a piecemeal, badly thought out way. Markets were hobbled by having tens of thousands of screens for players to wade through, when you added them all up; given the complexity of the markets, most players responded by ignoring them.

Bad things:

<ballmer>Currencies, currencies, currencies!</ballmer>

Ambushes spawning right on top of you is terrible. Even spawning right in front of you is very immersion-breaking. I could have sworn that long ago the game would try to spawn critters out of line of sight and they'd swarm on you from around a corner, but my memory may be playing tricks on me.

Bug fixes should have been a higher priority, especially for the longstanding ones.

Release cycles being set in stone and issues going live with huge glaring problems that were reported many times in beta. My running joke was, "That's why they call them 'issues'!"

Wasn't really a fan of the incarnate trial grind. I used to raid in WoW. If that's what I wanted to do, I would have stayed there.

Crafting was interesting at first but quickly got tedious, especially when it came to incarnate abilities. In-game tools to streamline it would have been welcome.

Soooooo many props that I wanted as a base item.

A good thing:

I'm probably in the minority in that I actually really enjoyed the Praetorian leveling experience. The whole package: the storylines, the side switching / double agent mechanic, and the increased base difficulty. I do think the mission designers overused ambushes, not because they made it too difficult, but just because by the end of it they became expected (and a bit cliché) and were no longer a surprise.

Favorite GR moment -- running with my usual group of friends, doing a mission in Neutropolis, being warned that we needed to clear out of the lab before the timer expired. As usual, we intentionally waited for the timer to run down, because hey -- why would we want to pass up more enemies to get XP from? Then there was the big yellow text: "Anti-matter has arrived! Flee for your lives!" And sure enough, a Level 40 (!) Anti-matter AV showed up and wiped the floor with our level 18 team. We were laughing so hard about that message, "Flee for your lives! They really weren't kidding this time!".

Ironically, my VG's RP made little sense without base-raiding being a reality.

PvP in a PvE MMO usually boils down to "PvP is why we can't have nice things".

Why PvP is "popular" in games with gear differences (CoH, WoW) is beyond me. Nothing says skill like globalling a fresh 90 in greens with your more-purple-than-barney character.

I have trouble understanding why PvP is popular in MMO's at all. After playing numerous ones, and seeing the same strategies used over and over in all of them, and analyzing how it all works, there seems to be no type of PvP game that is less based in skill (with a bunch of maxed out characters, it all boils down to the dice rolls, which is akin to gambling). But at the same time, there is also no type of game that has MORE ego problems and flame wars.

The only exception to this rule seems to be RTS gaming on battle.net, but that's a culture of its very own.

I always felt that a consenting duel option would have been great for this game for all factions in all zones.
I know that not everyone agrees, but it seems so genre appropriate (both for heroes and villains to fight each other) and because there were already enemies on every street corner, so the idea that enemies shouldn't be able to roam around freely never struck any truth with me.

And, for the record, I am someone that really never PVPs.
I think I took part in PvP, literally, three times in this game. And really only two of those times counted... and it was with a group of friends against each other.
I'm just not into PvP. I think, mostly, because, I like single defeats to be the end of a fight. Of course, I could never stand any of the games - Doom, Golden Eye, Unreal T, Halo and so on and so on... Just not my thing.

I also have a vision for what PvP could have been in this game, but I think people who expect/want the normal would probably find it absurd (hmm... I should make a thread about that too).