Final thoughts from a new player.

[Vasarto]

I just started to play City of Heroes about six months ago. I heard about it over the years but never had any reason to pay it any attention or play it because I never had a computer that could possibly play it or anything like that. Over the years I had been playing Xbox or Diablo 2 or Ragnarok Online rebirth Server.

It was not until six months ago that I finally had a computer that could play such a thing. A friend of mine whom has been playing for about a year convinced me to play our "other" friend whom has been playing for six years told him about the game.

Game First impressions - When I first saw the game I could never see the game in full graphics. I made my first character and was attempting to come closest to a "other world version of me" whom I developed as a character for basically is kinda like a story. His name is Vasarto and I came up with a whole back story for the character. Where he first began as a human but finds out he is actually half shinigami (death god) etc. Than as the story progressed at the end of it all he has like...tons of crazy awesome powers but...I can tell you all about that later. One of his most potent powers is plant magic and mastery. So I chose Plant control. Than Since there were not any powers that seemed like it would fit with his other abilities. The closest was Fire assault as the secondary power and I turned my fire black to simulate the black fire he could summon which burns much hotter than any other flame. Even a purple flame.

So when I first played the game I could hardly believe what I was missing out on. An open world Elder Scrolls Series "like" world where I can fly on top of all of the buildings and explore the entire city. I always dream of being able to get on top of buildings in SO many games but you never can.
When looking around at all the powers and combinations I saw DOZENS of ways I could recreate almost ANY character I always wanted to play as. I even recreated Ulquiarra Schiffer from Bleach. He looked a lot like Him with his 4 on his chest and that white outfit and horns and stuff with the animated tail.
He had the Katana and Regeneration as his powers and was fun for a short while.

Further Impressions
Than I made a massive character to replace him which was an old guy with a cigar and this awesome old guy flat top hair and a fancy suit. His name was Dante and he was my tank. Invincibility and dark assault. I made many more like a "action Bastard" themed character with Street Justice and Reflexes. A Sexy Demon with fire blaster with fire secondary power. I made a staff fighter. I must had spent like 250 bucks on the game to get cool costume powers. I got the coyote and panther powers and flying carpet and extra character slots and tons of other cool stuff. Even made a purple haired Gothic dress loli girl with that carnival of life mask who summoned freaken zombies lol.

So many options I NEVER met a character opt that was as much fun let along bringing it into an open world that I could play with my IRL Friends.
My only regret is that I NEVER got a character above lv 38. I spent up until the final hour trying to get the fire power Blaze for Vasarto before it was over. so at least he would have the final fire power. I had almost all the powers but one because I traded it for fire mastery fireball. I wanted rise of the phoenix is why I chose it lol.

We played villains and heroes and had cool bases for both and City invasions and buildings randomly set on fire you can put out! Badges to collect which I must had gotten like 5 badges today before the end came! Just from visiting cities I never been too before!

So many cool costumes and people to meet and NEVER....EVER! Have I met someone I did not like.

The game only got a million times better when I got a new computer and could handle the game with maximum ultimate ultra graphics or whatever it is you kids call it. With every shadow and bell and whistle attached to it!
But than again six core processor with a good vid card and 10GB memory ram will do that lol.

Final Thoughts -

I do not know what to say....I want to cry. Never have I seen a community so beautiful and when I was in Atlus Park 6 and saw that all 33 Atlus Parks were full with probably everyone else in Pocket D which I had JUST visited that day and never knew there was a dance club with lights and stuff. People making their powers go wild. Me releasing my Pet Flytrap molly one last time...a pretty green and pink mouthed flytrap pet!

We took one last Group photo but I do not think I made it to the photo. There was this giant blue orb in above them and it shot light out of it and exploded. DO not know what that was about it but I must had taken thousands of pictures from the day before and today of random people and Even took TONS of Demo record footage which I hope to convert into video files like an mp4....I hope I can. The day before at atlus park 1 I got 13 people together for playing the big drums. It sounded so cool! Like a bunch of echoing vibrating drum sounds that through my sub speakers I could feel the vibrations of those players drum beats.

Just standing around in the game was fun! You can read a news paper or have floating books, lye down dead and dance and hold a torch and SO much more.

All in all, Even though my time was short my memories will last. Even though I may had only been a shadow on the edge of the city and you will never remember me. I promise you that I will remember each and every one of you. Rambler whom was with us near the end and the name I could not remember. I have pictures of the Defender whom helped me and my friend fight on in Peregrine island to get my final 38th level so I could use blaze one time before it was the end.

I made sure to save tons of screen shots and hopefully his name somewhere on it will be saved so I can remember it lol...although I will remember the costume quite well.

I remember seeing a superman, Iron man, a Hulk, a Thor, a captain America, and SO many other heroes themed after others. I remember costumes so fantastic I HAD to beg the person with chat to come back so I could get a screen shot of them.  Heroes small and large I will remember you. Heroes with fantastic powers that I only had the privilege to see one time like calling down a massive lightning bolt that made shock waves around the ground and that giant ball I told you about.

It was snowing when the end came, with fire raining down from the sky, the ground was lit up with green fog and tons of other effects!
All of the people talking so fast you cannot read it all.

To all of you, to those who risked their lives to protect our city, to the villains whom we fought against in the past, To the players whom played the game and to the defenders whom fought against our Armageddon.


I Will Remember You

-Vasarto
Dominator
Plant Controller
Fiery Assault

[johnrobey]

 It sounds to me that you discovered what so many of us did and why we all enjoyed City of Heroes so much!   The versatility of both costume/outfit design and powerset combinations (along with power pools) meant for a LOT of creativity.   My water blaster was quickly gaining on my former favorite blaster as the one I'd most want to bring to team and it was only this evening as I played him against the Arch Villain (AV) spawns that I thought how effective, thematic and FUN a water blast/Storm corruptor or defender might be.  (Wish I'd had time to try it.)  I'm glad you got to experience the joy that City of Heroes was for so many of us.  Welcome to these forums!

[Vasarto]

I wanted to try the nature affinity and Waterblast so bad too.

Now I found a new job and could had started paying for VIP again I could had purchased some of that stuff and tried it out. I bet I would had loved the nature affinity! I was gonna use themes for some of the powers too like make some green and others autumn colors. 

[johnrobey]

I wanted to try the nature affinity and Waterblast so bad too.

Now I found a new job and could had started paying for VIP again I could had purchased some of that stuff and tried it out. I bet I would had loved the nature affinity! I was gonna use themes for some of the powers too like make some green and others autumn colors.

One of the things I liked best about City of Heroes was creating a water blaster on Beta to see if I first liked the powerset enough to buy it.  With custom colorization, I'm sure you could have designed some really beautiful effects for your autumn and spring colors.  I'd also wanted to try Nature Affinity.  It looked good from the demo video and just as good when I was teamed with those who had it.  I'd already spent my allotment of points on other things I wanted, but playing around on Mids, I got the idea for Lady Maya, an Illusion/Nature Affinity controller.  (Illusion was another powerset I'd done next to nothing with.)  It was just a matter of waiting another month or two to have the points to buy it.

In the course of 3-1/2 years I'd made 2-3 rarely played characters each who were brutes, scrappers or tankers.  I played them mostly solo since that was my preferred way to learn new archetypes and powersets.  My kin melee/Regen scrapper was my highest at 25.  I had a Martial Arts/Super Reflexes scrapper at 20 and a dual blades/will power tanker in his teens, a dark melee tanker level 8, etc and a super strength/Invul tanker at level 12 made up as a Cow toon.  (The cow toons were too funny!)  I didn't yet have staff fighting.  I'd bought Titan Weapons not long after it came out but with teaming up regularly for SG teams and events, almost always found myself teaming up on a comfortable blaster, defender or controller and having a ton of neglected lowbie alts never made the TW toon.  Really, this coming year was the one I'd planned to learn to play melee toons and try several of the most appealing powersets.  One happy memory is of my friend ES who excelled at tanking coming online while I was in a mission prior to SG TF announcing on our SG channel, "OMG! Kris is on a Tanker!"  I got razzed good since there was a standing, mock rivalry within that SG about whether melee toons were superior to ranged. 

[RogerWilco]

I started the game mid December 2011. I got to level 45 on my highest toon.

I mimic a lot of your sentiments. I wish I had found this game sooner, I didn't know it existed. I sincerely doubt that it has been advertised here, as I'm a big superhero fan and would have noticed.

I only found it when the Smallville TV series ended and I was looking for a replacement for WoW as I got bored of that. I decided to google for SuperHero MMO and that's when it showed up.

I think there are a ton of players out there that would have liked this game, nearly anyone I showed it to in my circle of friends go hooked and became a VIP within a month. We were starting to build quite a nice base and team when 31/8 hit.

Most of my friends didn't like the game initially, but if I could get them to play until about level 15, things would start to get more interesting. I think Paragon really dropped the ball there in providing a poor starting experience. I think they should have made Praetoria the starting area after Going Rogue, it looked much better than Atlas Park or Mercy Island and the stories were much better as well. I didn't like Twinshot or Dr.Graves, but Savage Noble and Tunnel Rat became my friends.

I never got to experience a lot of the content, including all the end level stuff. I'm really sad how it ended and will support any glimmer of hope.

[corvus1970]

Most of my friends didn't like the game initially, but if I could get them to play until about level 15, things would start to get more interesting. I think Paragon really dropped the ball there in providing a poor starting experience.

Oooooh the "starting experience" was SO much better at shutdown than it was when I started playing in 2005 during Issue #4, thanks to many quality-of-life improvements, AND the expansion of contacts for beginners.

When I started you couldn't get a travel-power until level 14. The tram-lines were separated into two lines, the green-line and yellow-line. You couldn't do costume-alterations via trainers. There were fewer early-level contacts. The list goes on and on.

[FatherXmas]

Oooooh the "starting experience" was SO much better at shutdown than it was when I started playing in 2005 during Issue #4, thanks to many quality-of-life improvements, AND the expansion of contacts for beginners.

When I started you couldn't get a travel-power until level 14. The tram-lines were separated into two lines, the green-line and yellow-line. You couldn't do costume-alterations via trainers. There were fewer early-level contacts. The list goes on and on.

But there was a downside to all those QoL improvements, an emptiness of street and sky traffic.  Back in the "old" days the streets and skies were full of heroes as well as seeing groups of them at tram stations, ICON and later Wentworths.  However as they kept adding ways to get from one zone to another without actually traveling through other zones first, adding new places to design costumes or access the Vault and Consignment House or craft you items, it eliminated both the experience of wandering within each zone, taking in the uniqueness of each zone, and natural gathering places where you could see dozens of heroes, check out their costumes, maybe get invited to a team when you weren't looking.

Yes it made life easier as a new player but it could also leave a new player an impression that nobody was around.  Making instanced content overly attractive wiped Street Sweeping as an activity almost overnight but at least you would see players running from door to contact to door.  But then it was "teleport to the base and from there to a zone" or "teleport to the mission door" or "gather the team" or ... you get the idea.  It almost seemed like the devs tried to combat the attractiveness of AE's lack of travel time with new ways that allowed the easily bored/lazy could participate without actually "living" in the city. 

Don't forget our default speed on foot is still faster the wandering around in that 900lbs behemoth WoW.  Add in Sprint with a Swift boost and now you could cross any zone within a minute if you didn't engage and you knew the way.  Add a travel power and that drops to less than 30 seconds.

I'm not disagreeing that the QoL additions made life easier as a low level hero, I'm just pointing out the non-obvious downside of emptying the streets of players which made the game look deserted and a MMO that looks deserted isn't going to have an easy time retaining players that are willing to pay beyond the first month.

[corvus1970]

Well, yeah, off course there was a downside...because there's a downside to everything. There were downsides to Zone expansions, improvements and additions. There were downsides to the addition of temp travel powers. There were downsides to expanding the roles of bases, adding Ouroboros, etc, etc, etc. The question is this: did the benefits outweigh the negatives? For my money, the answer to that is a resounding "yes", but as with so much in life (virtual or otherwise), your mileage may vary.

As for walking around on WoW...I wouldn't know. I've never played WoW, and never will. As such I don't have it as a means of comparison.

What I do have to compare it to is recalling what it was like on CoH circa issue 4 when compared to later additions. Sure, I too missed the street-sweepings, but that aside, I vastly prefered the way the game felt and played when it ended as opposed to its earlier days. I didn't miss being defeated in the Hollows and having to Hosp it to Atlas and then run all the way back to the mish door, or miss crossing Grendel's Gulch using "hover". And those were just two specific examples.

The problem wasn't the QoL improvements: the problem was with how they were used.

[FatherXmas]

I only tried the WoW Trial a long, long time ago, before any of their expansions.  It was like walking through a world where the air was as thick as honey in comparison, and that was with run on.

Yes, hazard zones where you had to hospital in the previous zone as well as some of the default placement of missions in them, especially the Hollows (Jewel of Hera was always in the southeast corner of the map, death wish for a Level 6) was simply poor planning.  Then again the hazard zones were designed to be team oriented due to their mob sizes.  Still sticking a low level mission there or in the maze in Perez at a location that was surrounded by mobs +3 levels above you is just plain mean. 

[corvus1970]

Agreed. That WAS indeed mean, and I was SO glad when they added field hospitals to the Hollows and Terra Volta.

[Arachnion]

I never liked the "new" tutorial. That is, the one with shivans(?) attacking, and chaos etc.

Outbreak and Breakout (See what they did there?  ) were much better, IMO.

If I got the names wrong above (bad memory), then I meant the original hero and villain tutorials.

[corvus1970]

You got it right, and I agree. I much preferred Outbreak. Although I never really cared for Breakout redside.

Still, the newer tutorial on CoX was loads better than the annoying DCU one. Ugh.

[faith.grins]

You got it right, and I agree. I much preferred Outbreak. Although I never really cared for Breakout redside.

Still, the newer tutorial on CoX was loads better than the annoying DCU one. Ugh.

Uh, what?

I mean, the reliance on Arachnos to really jumpstart your career as a villain was sort of grating, but what better tutorial would you suggest for a super villain video game than a freaking prison break?

It's better designed all around, with the possible exception that the badge therein could be missed forever (until Ouroboros came along, anyway.)  Its badge isn't a huge pain to acquire.  It introduces you to the two big factions you'll be fighting against in the Rogue Isles (Arachnos and Longbow, instead of introducing you exclusively to a faction which doesn't exist outside of the tutorial...). It explains everything quickly and without too much running back and forth.  It gives you a cut scene...  I mean, honestly, I think if you preferred Outbreak to Breakout, what you're really saying is that you preferred Blueside to Redside.  Which is fine, most players held that preference, but I really think that's something entirely different from saying that Breakout was a poor tutorial experience.

[corvus1970]

Uh, yes. Its a little something called personal preference.

I didn't say it wasn't appropriate, I didn't say it wasn't fitting, and I never said Outbreak was better. My exact words were: "I never really cared for Breakout redside."

And yes, I preferred Blueside. That's no big secret. But again, you jumped to some conclusions there.

[faith.grins]

Like I said, that's fine.  About 60% of the playerbase agreed with you.  I just don't see why you didn't just say, "I never really cared for redside."  All you had to do was leave out one word in your sentence, and what you're saying is 427% more clear.

[Vasarto]

now now get along everyone.


Seriously I am gonna miss running around as a doggie in the busy streets of Kings Row and Atlas.

[corvus1970]

Like I said, that's fine.  About 60% of the playerbase agreed with you.  I just don't see why you didn't just say, "I never really cared for redside."  All you had to do was leave out one word in your sentence, and what you're saying is 427% more clear.

I did not say that, because it was tangential to the point of my reply to what Arachnion posted in regards to his preference for the old tutorials versus the recent one. And as for what I did say, its pretty clear as-is if you read the words I actually typed, rather than toggling on the "conclusion jumping" power

[faith.grins]

And as for what I did say, its pretty clear as-is if you read the words I actually typed, rather than toggling on the "conclusion jumping" power

OK, so I'll say this and shut up, because I was an English Major and this is sort in my wheelhouse.

Given that I read what you said and took that to mean that you preferred Outbreak to Breakout as tutorials, it should be obvious that your message was not as clear as you thought it was.  A less ambiguous way of saying that would have been, "You got it right, and I agree.  I much preferred Outbreak.  (I never much cared for redside, so I didn't mind seeing Breakout go.)"  Or something along those lines.  Communication is a two-way street, and I'm sorry that I phrased my response in as condescending a manner as I did, but given that we both arrived at the same conclusion, it's probably best if we stop hijacking the thread with pedantic nonsense.

(Seriously, I'll drop it now.  The last word is yours.  Say!  Isn't that a blog post over there? I think I'll go read...)

[FatherXmas]

I found the new tutorial a bit chaotic and overwhelming.  At least in the old ones you started in a position where you could setup all your keybinds, chat tabs, keymapping, etc. (this was before I learned to save and load the various settings) before proceeding into the story.

In the new one you are getting voice instructions to move on, jets screaming overhead, blob monsters exploding into goo around you and if your system didn't have the graphics horsepower it was as jerky as an invasion event on the hill in Talos.  And in all of that a new player is suppose to learn how to control their character?

Yes the old ones could be considered a little slow but the pace was entirely up to you.  You could pause moving on to the next lesson at any time.

[corvus1970]

I found the new tutorial a bit chaotic and overwhelming.  At least in the old ones you started in a position where you could setup all your keybinds, chat tabs, keymapping, etc. (this was before I learned to save and load the various settings) before proceeding into the story.

For some reason the game never did allow me to save those keyboard and joypad setup files. I'd alter em, save em, and then when I loaded em it wouldn't change squat. I'd have to set my preferences over and over for every alt I made.

T'was annoying.