And the mask comes off.

[LaughingAlex]

I've always felt that our games community was one giant catch 22. One one hand we love talking about the community and how great people where relative to other games and how the CoH system didn't follow the great trifecta and how you can play how you want without other people (mostly) yelling at you. Then on the other hand people are always talking about how not enough money was ever spent on marketing and the game could have been so much bigger.

But in my eyes those two are mutually exclusive. If NCsoft had pulled in way more people we wouldn't have the community, it be much more wow-esque. Where TFLeader XxxWeedWizard420xxX doesn't take you because you are not an emp def or /kin etc.

I often think to myself, or even ramble about it RL(a problem I have due to my admittedly tense sanity, though no, I don't ramble when other people are nearby and stop anytime I hear someone within earshot), how much mmorpg players are like master of orion klackons.  Klackons see, are bugs and are also very, very stupid as a species, litterally.  Not so much in the first game, but the second one they were the "uncreative" race, meaning they were ludicrously narrow minded.  They'd only see 1 tech in any field no matter how useful or useless it was, you couldn't choose what you researched, ever.  Not to mention even dumber in MOO3.

MMORPG players are equally as narrow minded in that extreme way.  If healing vs resistance buffing vs defense buffing were presented, they only saw healing and then drew a conclusion "THATS THE ONLY WAY AND THATS FINAL!".  Every "tactic" I see in mmorpg forums are built around a trinity and the terms they often have are about as primitive and backwards as a person who thinks warfare is entirely on sword fighting and surround tactics.  You never see them use the term force multiplier.  You never see them use the term flank(it's adds instead).  Or reinforcements even(adds is used interchangeably for that).

Like, really, have any of these players played strategy games?  Or first person shooters?  Or anything else?  Often the answer is no.  It's simply impossible to not see how narrow-minded many mmorpg players are.  They suffer from a very obsessive one track mind, not just one track mind but obsessively one tracked.  In that they HAVE to go with the first and only options they saw.

In analogy, heres how we tend to see strategic options.

Rule: You cannot have more then one type.  If you research a second type, the previous one is removed due to obsolescence.

Our View and legitimate options:
50 XP
More healing | More resistance | more defense
150 XP
Crowd control | Damage Sponge | Medium debuffs
250 XP
Advanced Healing | Advanced REsistance | Advanced Defenses
600 XP
AoE Crowd Control | Improved Damage Sponge | Advanced Debuffs

We can easily choose "More HEaling", then take "Advanced Defenses".  "Damage Sponge" followed by say "AoE Crowd control" or "Advanced Debuffs".  In other words, we had freedom to choose and avoid redundancies.

The Average MMORPG player/game dev:
50XP
More Healing |
150 XP
Damage Sponge |
250 XP
Advanced Healing |
600 XP
Improved Damage Sponge |

Advanced Healing and Improved Damage sponge renders More Healing and Damage Sponge wasted slots.

Due to also possessing an often repulsive personality, they cannot trade for what we have either.  They cannot avoid the crippling redundancies seen here nore solve them.

In short, they are ludicrously uncreative.

And MMORPGs have also not advanced beyond very very old mechanics, so they must also be feudal (-50% research speed) and -1 research.  In other words, you have a game genre that is litterally stuck in the 1990s, and has only advanced technologically in gameplay only 1 year, at the most.  Because the other "tech choices" they had were all graphics exclusively .

[Ultimate15]

I've always felt that our games community was one giant catch 22. One one hand we love talking about the community and how great people where relative to other games and how the CoH system didn't follow the great trifecta and how you can play how you want without other people (mostly) yelling at you. Then on the other hand people are always talking about how not enough money was ever spent on marketing and the game could have been so much bigger.

But in my eyes those two are mutually exclusive. If NCsoft had pulled in way more people we wouldn't have the community, it be much more wow-esque. Where TFLeader XxxWeedWizard420xxX doesn't take you because you are not an emp def or /kin etc.

While I can't really speak on how different the community would have or would not have grown to become should there have been more people playing the game (I left my crystal ball in my other wizards cloak) I will say that I've always been of the impression that our community had less to do with the quantity and more to do with the quality - and I don't think the gaming 'experience' factors that come with these two things are contingent upon each other.

There are trolls and bad apples in every game - some more so than others. But I'm not convinced that our player base would see a drastic change just in there being more of us. I've met other great players in games like CO, STO, DCUO, etc - and many of them never even played COH. I've always felt that there are gamers out there who would have made great additions to our community - but COH, for one reason or another, just didn't snag them.

[Arcana]

I've always felt that our games community was one giant catch 22. One one hand we love talking about the community and how great people where relative to other games and how the CoH system didn't follow the great trifecta and how you can play how you want without other people (mostly) yelling at you. Then on the other hand people are always talking about how not enough money was ever spent on marketing and the game could have been so much bigger.

But in my eyes those two are mutually exclusive. If NCsoft had pulled in way more people we wouldn't have the community, it be much more wow-esque. Where TFLeader XxxWeedWizard420xxX doesn't take you because you are not an emp def or /kin etc.

I think there would be significant differences between a mega-CoH and WoW due to the nature and structure of the games.  However, I believe there is significant truth to your intuition.

[primeknight]

But in my eyes those two are mutually exclusive. If NCsoft had pulled in way more people we wouldn't have the community, it be much more wow-esque. Where TFLeader XxxWeedWizard420xxX doesn't take you because you are not an emp def or /kin etc.

The community for the most part was awesome.  But, as a speed boost-less /kin I got a fair amount of teammates who were confused/frustrated at no SB.  Although to sort of make your point, that happened more when the game was younger and there were more people playing (visibly in Liberty).

Closer to the end no one really cared (although I never tried a master-TF) 

[ivanhedgehog]

The community for the most part was awesome.  But, as a speed boost-less /kin I got a fair amount of teammates who were confused/frustrated at no SB.  Although to sort of make your point, that happened more when the game was younger and there were more people playing (visibly in Liberty).

Closer to the end no one really cared (although I never tried a master-TF)

there is a difference between not caring if a potential party member is any particular power set and wanting  a potential party member to have key powers from whatever power set they took. If I came on a team with a rad defender that took as few rad powers as possible but had every travel power, I would just be riding that team. If they so desired, I fully expect them to tell me thanks but no thanks. Its like petless masterminds, it is possible to make one, but then it is possible to make burlap underwear, dont expect anyone but yourself to wear them.

[LaughingAlex]

The community for the most part was awesome.  But, as a speed boost-less /kin I got a fair amount of teammates who were confused/frustrated at no SB.  Although to sort of make your point, that happened more when the game was younger and there were more people playing (visibly in Liberty).

Closer to the end no one really cared (although I never tried a master-TF)

I'm kind of of the mindset of Ivanhedgehog above, if your skipping the critical powers of a set then your not going to be able to really contribute.  For empathy it was fortitude and the RA's/clear mind and adrenaline boost(and I saw empaths without fortitude, and often also without any attacks as a defender or any control powers as a controller).  Time manipulators should always have at least times juncture and farsight ect.  Some sets skipping key powers were both crippling to the person who had it and to the team and it caused them to leech sadly.

It was also an issue for the arachnos soldiers earlier on with idiots skipping Tactical Training: Maneuvers and if they were widows, mind link.  In fact, idiots tried to argue against taking TT: Maneuvers or any TT power "Cause it was a buff to the team" even though IT HELPED THEM TO.

I have no issues with any particular power set combination, but I did expect key powers to be taken.

I think though the game didn't have alot of try hards as the game made it possible for any one power set combination to work, which served to discredit the try hards.  Course I don't recall to many try hards demanding nerfs excessively on the forums to ruin sets they felt were "cheap" either.

Edit: There were try hards course that demanded defenders do nothing but heal though even later in the games life.  I still remember reading the "defebcers should heal" thread.

(for the few who didn't see it, yes, the thread was litterally called that and defender was mispelled that way)

[Thunder Glove]

I never made a Kin because, while I liked the idea of a general buff-based Support set whose visuals are vague enough to interpret as anything (rather than the more visually-specific buff sets like Fire, Ice, or Sonic, or a buff set with a more specific niche, like Force Field or Empathy), I didn't want to be pigeonholed into being The Speed Boost Guy, so I wound up avoiding the set entirely.

[Ohioknight]

I'm kind of of the mindset of Ivanhedgehog above, if your skipping the critical powers of a set then your not going to be able to really contribute.  For empathy it was fortitude and the RA's/clear mind and adrenaline boost(and I saw empaths without fortitude, and often also without any attacks as a defender or any control powers as a controller).  Time manipulators should always have at least times juncture and farsight ect.  Some sets skipping key powers were both crippling to the person who had it and to the team and it caused them to leech sadly.

It really depends on your perspective and the point of playing the game.  If you're "playing the game to win" because it's a GAME, then you care about the capabilities of the people you're playing with. 

If you're undertaking missions IN ORDER TO FIGHT EVIL! then you recognize that those heroes who might join you only have those abilities that their individual stories and histories have allowed them to acquire. 

If somebody doesn't need my help on their mission, that's fine -- I can find some evil that needs fighting.  I just wish that Paragon's damn revolving-door justice system didn't put Frostfire right back on the street every time I brought him down! 

[JanessaVR]

If somebody doesn't need my help on their mission, that's fine -- I can find some evil that needs fighting.  I just wish that Paragon's damn revolving-door justice system didn't put Frostfire right back on the street every time I brought him down! 

They sort of left it up to the player to decide the fate of "defeated" enemies.  Some liked to imagine that they were all teleported to the Zig.  But because Frank Castle and Light Yagami are my personal crime-fighting paragons, I always insisted that anyone my characters "defeated" was 6 feet under.  The best way to fight crime...exterminate the criminals.  As such I really appreciated the newer missions where you would sometimes actually get a choice to flat-out kill someone.  Not "arrest," not "defeat," not "beat up," just flat out kill.  At last, a chance to get rid of someone who would not be taking advantage of a revolving-door justice system!  I always wished we had more missions like that.

[LaughingAlex]

It really depends on your perspective and the point of playing the game.  If you're "playing the game to win" because it's a GAME, then you care about the capabilities of the people you're playing with. 

If you're undertaking missions IN ORDER TO FIGHT EVIL! then you recognize that those heroes who might join you only have those abilities that their individual stories and histories have allowed them to acquire. 

If somebody doesn't need my help on their mission, that's fine -- I can find some evil that needs fighting.  I just wish that Paragon's damn revolving-door justice system didn't put Frostfire right back on the street every time I brought him down! 

If it severely impairs my team for that kineticist to skip fulcrum shift, I'm sorry but I do have a game to win, I do play for fun, and indeed I have fun, but my fun is not to be gimping my team horribly.  I could see a kin without speed boost or fulcrum shift if they are not a high enough level.  But after the QoL patch that made speed boost hit everyone in the team in ONE cast, there is no excuse.

Not to mention said QoL improvement made it very very easy to do all kinds of other things that you are NOT pidgeon holed into being the speed boost guy nore did I really consider a Kin to be the speed boost guy.  I considered kins to be the fulcrum shift damage amplifier that made everything die very very fast.

And to me, I do have shades of grey on it, but again some things I just won't put up with a badly made toon unless it's a retcon trial in which case yeah, I can see why they are doing it.

And no, I am NOT being a stop having fun guy.  An SHFG would pass you up for not picking specific powersets, I don't mind if your a powerset I personally do not enjoy playing.  But I do expect a person to not be ludicrously foolish with their power picks, I put up with that before and found said people to be horribly ineffective.

Look at things from my perspective: I want to have fun and losing repeatedly is NOT fun.  Having people who are horribly ineffective greatly increases the chance of that.  There are powers that, not taking them is just about as foolish as it gets.

It's called having a practical mindset.  I'm being the realist, not the "Ok so I got a kin who has never taken fulcrum shift and speed boost.  Ok I am good!" and then suffer "God dangit we are losing endlessly cause we got so many teammates who don't have any key powers in their powerserts".  I had moments like that, mind you, losses due to a team leader picking people with terrible power picks.  It's called being realistic and practical about the game, not theoretical and ineffective.

[LaughingAlex]

I'll make another statement here:

Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?  Why not take another powerset to reflect what you want to do better?  Like kineticism but hate speed boost and fulcrum shifting being a support toon?  Take kinetic melee on a scrapper/brute/tanker/stalker instead.  Want to challenge yourself?  Rather than skip a critical power just up the difficulty.

Want to be fast as someone siphoning speed with said melee char?  Take super reflexes to and the quickness power.  Load up on the +recharge IOs when you get the chance and money for it.  You'll never have to be the "speed boost bot" that you fear being.

There is a HUGE difference between being thematic to a point of being impractical and being effective and thematic.  City of heroes made it very, very possible to be both practical and thematic at the same time, just think about what you really want to do with said character and the theme of said character.

[Felderburg]

I just wish that Paragon's damn revolving-door justice system didn't put Frostfire right back on the street every time I brought him down! 

To be fair, he did go hero after a while. Guess he wanted to be on the winning team?

Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?

Could be a lack of awareness of "key" powers. There was a tale of an empath that only took the straight heals, and none of the good stuff. Given the general permeating view that "empath = healer," it could very well be that the player didn't even realize that the other stuff was good, since it wasn't a straight fit with the "healing" theme of the set.

[Kaos Arcanna]

To be fair, he did go hero after a while. Guess he wanted to be on the winning team?

Could be a lack of awareness of "key" powers. There was a tale of an empath that only took the straight heals, and none of the good stuff. Given the general permeating view that "empath = healer," it could very well be that the player didn't even realize that the other stuff was good, since it wasn't a straight fit with the "healing" theme of the set.

When I was leveling my first Fire/Kin I met a controller with Empathy who had taken the heals and didn't realize the values of powers like CM or Fort until I started speaking to her in private chat. Not in a "Don't be stupid. Take this power" kind of way but in a "you'll find this power to be really useful for your team..."

[FloatingFatMan]

I'll make another statement here:

Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?  Why not take another powerset to reflect what you want to do better? 

Concept, that's why.

Not everyone played the game the same way, you know.  Many times I ignored key powers in builds because they didn't fit the character concept.

[Twisted Toon]

If it severely impairs my team for that kineticist to skip fulcrum shift, I'm sorry but I do have a game to win, I do play for fun, and indeed I have fun, but my fun is not to be gimping my team horribly.  I could see a kin without speed boost or fulcrum shift if they are not a high enough level.  But after the QoL patch that made speed boost hit everyone in the team in ONE cast, there is no excuse.

Not to mention said QoL improvement made it very very easy to do all kinds of other things that you are NOT pidgeon holed into being the speed boost guy nore did I really consider a Kin to be the speed boost guy.  I considered kins to be the fulcrum shift damage amplifier that made everything die very very fast.

And to me, I do have shades of grey on it, but again some things I just won't put up with a badly made toon unless it's a retcon trial in which case yeah, I can see why they are doing it.

And no, I am NOT being a stop having fun guy.  An SHFG would pass you up for not picking specific powersets, I don't mind if your a powerset I personally do not enjoy playing.  But I do expect a person to not be ludicrously foolish with their power picks, I put up with that before and found said people to be horribly ineffective.

Look at things from my perspective: I want to have fun and losing repeatedly is NOT fun.  Having people who are horribly ineffective greatly increases the chance of that.  There are powers that, not taking them is just about as foolish as it gets.

It's called having a practical mindset.  I'm being the realist, not the "Ok so I got a kin who has never taken fulcrum shift and speed boost.  Ok I am good!" and then suffer "God dangit we are losing endlessly cause we got so many teammates who don't have any key powers in their powerserts".  I had moments like that, mind you, losses due to a team leader picking people with terrible power picks.  It's called being realistic and practical about the game, not theoretical and ineffective.

Within the group of players that I normally ran around with, there was one person that would get simulator sickness occasionally. Usually it happened in caves. She absolutely hated getting Speed Boosted because she couldn't control the character as well and the Simulator sickness symptoms tended to come upon her sooner when SB'd. So, the /kin controller I had did not have Speed Boost. I never got that character high enough in levels to acquire Fulcrum Shift, unfortunately. Now, I used Siphon Speed a a lot and would teleport her to the mission door, unless I had to spend my time siphoning the speed from the same hellion a dozen times because she kept using Recall Friend (before the power had the choice to be accepted) on me.

[LaughingAlex]

Within the group of players that I normally ran around with, there was one person that would get simulator sickness occasionally. Usually it happened in caves. She absolutely hated getting Speed Boosted because she couldn't control the character as well and the Simulator sickness symptoms tended to come upon her sooner when SB'd. So, the /kin controller I had did not have Speed Boost. I never got that character high enough in levels to acquire Fulcrum Shift, unfortunately. Now, I used Siphon Speed a a lot and would teleport her to the mission door, unless I had to spend my time siphoning the speed from the same hellion a dozen times because she kept using Recall Friend (before the power had the choice to be accepted) on me.

I can understand a person not wanting to be speed boosted, just don't see any good reason to skip speed boost when it's such an important asset to the power set.  Hell the QoL improvement to speed boost gave the option to remove the speed buff but keep the massive +recharge and even larger +recovery buff that made it near impossible for people to run out of end.

[MM3squints]

To be fair, he did go hero after a while. Guess he wanted to be on the winning team?

I always wondered about that in CoX. Are certain zones supposed to be in a certain time line? Example Faultine, RWZ, IP. In Faultine, it's the start of Fusion and Jim super hero career and you also meet Penelope Yin. Then go RWZ, you see them further in the career, and in IP Yin replaces Sister Psyche for the TF. You can go to IP and see the present "Penelope Yin", but travel to Faultline and see her younger version. Just probably an oversight, but I always found that interesting even in your heroes progression, you are around lvl 15-25 for  Faultline zone where you meet Penelope Yin then in IP you meet her future self around 20-25, but for the Lady Grey TF at lvl 45-50, she is captured and is the younger version.

[LaughingAlex]

I always wondered about that in CoX. Are certain zones supposed to be in a certain time line? Example Faultine, RWZ, IP. In Faultine, it's the start of Fusion and Jim super hero career and you also meet Penelope Yin. Then go RWZ, you see them further in the career, and in IP Yin replaces Sister Psyche for the TF. You can go to IP and see the present "Penelope Yin", but travel to Faultline and see her younger version. Just probably an oversight, but I always found that interesting even in your heroes progression, you are around lvl 15-25 for  Faultline zone where you meet Penelope Yin then in IP you meet her future self around 20-25, but for the Lady Grey TF at lvl 45-50, she is captured and is the younger version.

I'd say it kind of is by design that way, the timeline was for a time established in a way.  I just wish there was some clarity there though, honestly if I recall many people hated Penelope Yin as a character, due to her sue-like nature(liked by certain villain, replacing someone else, getting a power as a plot demanded ect).  I wondered what they wanted to do with her and Faultline in the long run.  I did notice other time line similarities though, like the character development in Flamebeaux and Blast Furnace; the higher your level, the more evil Flamebeaux and the more good natured Blast Furnace tended to be.

Edit: I also noticed Frostfire becoming more "Good" natured to as your level increased in the alignment missions.

[ivanhedgehog]

I'll make another statement here:

Why take a powerset if your going to skip it's key powers at all?  Why not take another powerset to reflect what you want to do better?  Like kineticism but hate speed boost and fulcrum shifting being a support toon?  Take kinetic melee on a scrapper/brute/tanker/stalker instead.  Want to challenge yourself?  Rather than skip a critical power just up the difficulty.

Want to be fast as someone siphoning speed with said melee char?  Take super reflexes to and the quickness power.  Load up on the +recharge IOs when you get the chance and money for it.  You'll never have to be the "speed boost bot" that you fear being.

There is a HUGE difference between being thematic to a point of being impractical and being effective and thematic.  City of heroes made it very, very possible to be both practical and thematic at the same time, just think about what you really want to do with said character and the theme of said character.

its like a guy that joins the team but tells you he is nonviolent so his blaster cant use any attacks. he will just follow you and counsel the enemies you defeat. I dont think that would go well with many teams.

[ivanhedgehog]

Within the group of players that I normally ran around with, there was one person that would get simulator sickness occasionally. Usually it happened in caves. She absolutely hated getting Speed Boosted because she couldn't control the character as well and the Simulator sickness symptoms tended to come upon her sooner when SB'd. So, the /kin controller I had did not have Speed Boost. I never got that character high enough in levels to acquire Fulcrum Shift, unfortunately. Now, I used Siphon Speed a a lot and would teleport her to the mission door, unless I had to spend my time siphoning the speed from the same hellion a dozen times because she kept using Recall Friend (before the power had the choice to be accepted) on me.

there was an npc that could shut off speed boost for you.