Spandex Solidarity

[Sentinel King]

I am a lurker.  With very few exceptions, I keep myself to myself and don't burden folks with my baggage.  I do however enjoy reading/hearing others' stories and this board has been a great balm to me since CoH was taken away. 

My fondest memories in this game are from support roles.  As awesome as tanking and scrapping were...as giddy as a kid on christmas morning wading into a huge gaggle of mobs with full Rage bar and Footstomp off cool-down...my most vivid and happy memories come from my Kinetics and Empathy characters.  I would spend HOURS just running around the zones, randomly buffing/healing others (who were street/sewer-sweeping) and helping them level just a little bit faster/easier.  I have little doubt that there is at least one or two on this forum that were the recipients of one of my drive-by Speedboosts or Foresight/Adrenaline Boost/Regen Aura buffs in my 8 years on the Liberty and Freedom servers.  To me, that was one of the MANY things that made this game so great.  Seeing a hero getting a beatdown by a couple of Bone Daddys in Perez and being able to give her the extra boost she needs to persevere without leeching any XP away from her. 

Another of my guilty pleasures was slotting Inertial Reduction with Jump and Recharge SOs/IOs and hanging out just inside the Hollows gate to help the level 5s bounce their way across to their missions on the other side of the treacherous zone.  I always found it wonderful that we could each play the game our own way and still derive the same deep love and admiration for it.

Since being evicted from the City, I've tried DDO, WoW, SW:TOR, MWO, GW2, NWO...nothing held my interest for more than 3 weeks.  With each game, I seemed to get farther and farther away from the simple magic that was Paragon City. 

So what am I waiting for?  The next CoH.  The game that allows me to customize my avatar almost endlessly.  The game that allows/encourages me to help others I pass on the street...be they NPC civilians or other spandex-bound introverts that need a boost of endurance, health, super-speed or super-jump.  The game that allows single player progression but has a sleek/easy teaming interface that encourages group play and making new friends.  The game that makes me stop occasionally just to take in the beauty of the environment and the love that went into the lines of code necessary to bring it to me.

Most days I'm able to wait patiently...some, I anxiously wring my hands wondering if ANYthing could ever fill the void in my soul that was left when this beautiful, wonderful game was taken away.  I often chide myself for letting something so universally unimportant and "meaningless" as a GAME bring me so low; but alas, I've come to realize through this board, that I'm not the only one so affected by its loss. And that gives me the strength to get through another day without this game that became such a wonderful part of the lives of my family and the friends we made across the country.

So I guess just a thank you to everyone for all you've shared on this site over the last year plus and a "gratz!" for pulling one of the many thousands of lurkers out of the shell to say you don't stand alone.   ;D

SQ

[OzonePrime]

Thanks for sharing. Don't ever feel that a game as awesome as CoH, was meaningless and unimportant! City was the best game ever!
Have you downloaded Icon? Not the same as playing, but it sure does help.
We'll have our City back someday and what a glorious day that will be! :)




Never Give Up! Never Surrender!

[emperorsteele]

I too, enjoyed support roles, and also await a game where it feels like CoX in that regard =)

[Ironwolf]

My best day playing CoH was on my Ice/Storm controller.

We were on a TF I think Lady Grey? It is the one with millions of Rikti anyways.

I was sticking close to the other squishies dropping Ice slick under the blasters and such - locking down everything I could, when suddenly someone's pets aggro'd a big extra group. I immediately locked down the extra group and kept Ice Slick under the group we were fighting. Now wandering in comes a 3rd group a patrol!

I dropped ice storm on them and kept using Gale to push them away. Now i am rapidly cycling through every power i have nearly to Hold, Knockdown, Knockback and Slow 3 large groups. As we slowly begin to turn the tide and win the battles - a blaster sends me a private tell and says - That was the best damn controlling I have ever seen.

It made my day to have someone realize while I had very little damage I could do, I was able to complete negate any damage the incoming foes could do to us!

[Sentinel King]

Have you downloaded Icon? Not the same as playing, but it sure does help.

Absolutely, bittersweet though it was.  It literally brought tears of joy to my eyes to see the City again...or at least the empty shell of the City.   :'(

[Eoraptor]

that was my problem with icon too... it's a friggen ghost town. like some low-budget post-apocalyptic mivoe set where you know people SHOULD be around; but there's nothing but an eerie quiet.

but thank you for sharing your tale Sentinel Queen. the more people who remember the game as it should be, the better chance we have of getting it back.

[Drauger9]

Hi Sentinel Queen :)

I know how you feel, I too tried to convince myself it was "just a game". But it wasn't it was literally a virtual world we all inhabited. I still let all my friends that to this day it's the best game I've ever played.

I think my favorite memory with a support toon would have to of been my ill/kin troller. There was a cave mission around lvl 30ish with Rikti in it. The first team I was on took a turn and agroed 2-3 mobs, the team wiped and everyone raged quite. I found another team shortly after (I think it was a radio mission) and after a few missions we got the same one as the last team. This time I knew there was acouple of mobs close together around that corner. So as we approached, I used the illusion power you get to make people invisible and put it on the whole team. LOL! So they ran right into the first mob, then agroed the second but not the third. So I started spamming all my support powers and trying to keep the invis on the team.

I think that's the one thing I liked about support. You could go from playing in your sleep, to full blown overdrive depending on the team you was on and when you pugged, you never knew which it'd be until you got in combat.

[GamingGlen]

that was my problem with icon too... it's a friggen ghost town. like some low-budget post-apocalyptic mivoe set where you know people SHOULD be around; but there's nothing but an eerie quiet.

but thank you for sharing your tale Sentinel Queen. the more people who remember the game as it should be, the better chance we have of getting it back.

Ghost town?   I wake up early in the morning (set time to 6, loadmap Imperial City because the graphics are better and that single map has more options), walk/fly the empty-because-its-too-early streets to work maybe see an occasional delivery truck (spawn a truck, maybe other vehicle), go into the office (set coordinates to the one office map in IC), slowly the rest of my co-workers come in (spawn npcs, set animations), later go to lunch early (set time to 12, fly up to street level, walk to one of the outdoor cafes, spawn npcs at said cafe, including a waiter, put a couple passerbys on the street, a car or two), go back to the office (move a few npcs around), go home (sigh, no "apartment" map or something close.. btw, I cannot load many mission maps), go to Studio 55 (set coords for that, or walk/fly to entrance then walk thru door and down to map, spawn numerous npcs such as the usual drunks at the bar with bartender Phil, dancers on the dance floor.. btw, several praetorian NPCs now have names  ;D).. party!

Then wake up and stare at the mundane walls around me (I think there's an old country song like that.. oh, Green Green Grass of Home).  Sigh.  Choose and manipulate many screenshots, add dialogue, make a graphical short story about my day.  My therapist says it's theraputical, my relatives say I'm just crazy.

[Triplash]

So I guess just a thank you to everyone for all you've shared on this site over the last year plus and a "gratz!" for pulling one of the many thousands of lurkers out of the shell to say you don't stand alone.   ;D

SQ

I was the "quiet, keep to myself" type for most of my life, so I know how tough that first step outside the shell can be. Glad you could stop by and chat with us for a bit! :D

Seeing a hero getting a beatdown by a couple of Bone Daddys in Perez and being able to give her the extra boost she needs to persevere without leeching any XP away from her.

Aww, see now, that right there says that you'd have been welcome on my team anytime. (We'll just ignore that I could rarely team due to constant AFKing. That's totally not the point here :P ;D )

Most days I'm able to wait patiently...some, I anxiously wring my hands wondering if ANYthing could ever fill the void in my soul that was left when this beautiful, wonderful game was taken away.

Personally, I have no doubts whatsoever that, in time, we will once again have a beautiful and fun game to team up in and stare in wonder at. And it's very likely that we'll have multiple options, if you ask me. I have this kind of confidence because I know two things: one, I know how talented and skilled many former CoH players are. (Seriously, some of them are so smart it's spooky sometimes). And two, I know that many of those players feel just as strongly as I do about wanting that "City of Heroes feeling" back. Unlike me, however, they can do something about it.

See, I've seen optimism work. I've hoped for things that had a thousand reasons to fail, and watched them succeed anyway. I know it can be easy to forget it when bad things happen, but good things happen too. All the time. Especially when good people band together in determination. History's chock full of strong willed people doing extraordinary things. So don't give up the hope that we'll fly again, my friend. Because it's not an empty hope. We have what it takes to come back from this... it just won't be fast or easy.

And hey, in the meantime, feel free to hang out with us some more. It helps pass the time at least! :D

Trip

[johnrobey]

Glad you posted, Sentinel Queen; and LOL, I like your title for this thread.  My first 50 was a defender (dark x3) but I also love Kinetics.  It's rare that even my blasters don't have some sort of buffing powers for teammates.  I still think it's awesome how, unlike the 2 other MMO's I have tried, in CoH not only did players assist one another, but they'd even buff one another in passing.  I have so many good memories of CoH and look forward to when that happy time comes again, either thru the return of CoH or the launch of City of Titans/any of the Plan Z projects. 

[MWRuger]

Then wake up and stare at the mundane walls around me (I think there's an old country song like that.. oh, Green Green Grass of Home).  Sigh.  Choose and manipulate many screenshots, add dialogue, make a graphical short story about my day.  My therapist says it's theraputical, my relatives say I'm just crazy.

Hopefully it will better for you because he got executed and then buried beneath the green grass of home.

[blueicemaiden]

Thanks for that lovely post, Sentinel Queen.

This is my first post here, and yours was one of the first few posts I read. I played CoX of and on for most of its existence. My main is Blue Ice Maiden, on Justice, ice/kin controller. And all those emotions you're describing kind of came flooding back in as I read through this thread. I miss the City.

I played with a great group called Steel Justice (on Justice). One of the main reasons I hung around CoX so long was the camaraderie and rapport we developed through playing hours and hours of missions, TFs, and events together. I'm still close with several members via other media.

I've been following the development of the "spiritual successors" of CoX and hope to the comic book gods that something good comes out of all their hard work.

In the meantime, I'm busy rebuilding my characters (just discovered Icon) and having a good time reminiscing with my fellow heroes and villains.

God speed,
Blue Ice Maiden