Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...

[Steelclaw]

Lately I've been thinking of things that really annoyed me when I was actually playing the game but which I would gladly give my $15/month subscription fee just to do again now. 

These aren't things that made me want to quit the game or anything; I don't think anything could have done that, but I approached them with a roll of my eyes and a "Well... here we go again..." attitude.

* The grind from 1st to 12th level.

* The Reactor Room "Hope my team mates are good conversationalists" anxiety.

* Back when I firmly believed that every character had to have every badge: The "Swing Your Enemy to and fro... Promenade then Let 'Em Go" Spring Event hunt for Pocket D Mission companions.

* "This is MY freakin' block to sell Girl Scout Cookies!  Get yer own!"  Halloween Event Trick or Treat grind.

* "Single Defender seeks team for missions, loot and long walks on the beach" Why did I choose to play at four in the morning with a defender, anyway?!

* "ANOTHER enemy who's resistant to Lethal?!"

* When I was obsessed with earning as many Hero/Villain Merits on every character as I possibly could: "Oh goody... I'm watching Manticore kill his wife for the 19th time this week... lovely... just lovely... hopefully I won't be TOO emotionally scarred by all this..."

* "Lady Jane... stay close there are going to be ambushes and this tunnel system is packed with spawn points... we'll be fine if you just stay with me... Lady Jane?  Jane?  Aw shi... MISSION FAIL!"

There are probably many more if I took the time to think about it.  My point is these were frustrating and annoying occurrences back when I was playing the game every day, but now I actually look back at them fondly.  I would gladly play all those and JUST those missions/badge hunts again today just for the opportunity to play at all.

Nostalgia lenses in your glasses... if I could figure out how to make them a reality I could make millions!

What things irritated you back then that you look back on fondly now?

[dwturducken]

I have to say, your list only scratches the surface, but that's not what really gets to me.

There is no game out there that annoys me the way City of Heroes did.

Week after week, every Friday night (barring RL obligations), we Friday Knights would log on, fire up Skype, and head into the City (or the Isles, but that fell way off after Freedom made all ATs available to either side). We would make new characters to some silly theme (Arab-themed toons that all had the curly-toed jester shoes, refuges from a dimensional rift accident in World of Warcraft, a New Mutants/Power Pack style team of kids, a team of intellectual property violations, etc.) or decide we wanted to do a certain level or set of missions, and off we went.

We knew what the annoyances and pitfalls were. That was half the fun. So was the player who would play tanks like they were squishy, retreating from a mob when his character got down to 75% health. So was my impatience when playing squishies, which lead to a tendency to run around a corner into the next mob alone and die bringing it back to the rest of the team. So was the player who favored ranged characters but kept forgetting that his big AoE attack (Rain of X, for instance) would invariably draw the aggro off the tank and to him. We'd team wipe, we'd laugh, we'd make fun of the guy who caused it, we'd respawn, and we'd dive back in and do it again.

Nothing else out there has that. That's what annoys me. That's what irritates me like a new wool sweater that I have to wear because my grandmother made it, and it's the only thing I have left that she gave me. That's why I'm here. That's why I'm learning everything I can about programming and game design. That's why I get so irritated with the bickering and in-fighting, here, because we all know what we want, and we all know that it's pretty much the same thing.

I wasn't there at the beginning. I came in at GvE. I was not the last one into the group, but most of the rest had been there since Beta. Even when I came in, there were things that didn't quite work, and there were things that outright sucked. Most of them were addressed, if not fixed, over time. Some things that were nice got broken or nerfed. But it never stopped being fun.

Until it was gone.

That's what irritates me.

[LightofthePhoenix]

Dr. Quaterfield.  Longest TF in the game, most repetitive TF in the game.  I only ran it once with my main/badger and vowed to never touch it again.

But now I would give anything to even get to play through Dr. Q again with one of my favorite characters.  At least then it would mean I would be in the game, beating up baddies with one of my old friends.

[Lucretia MacEvil]

Cave maps.

I actually miss the cave maps.

...should I be worried about me?

[Valjean]

Cave maps.

I actually miss the cave maps.

...should I be worried about me?

Hahaha. I think as humans, we tend to remember the past a bit more fondly than it we should. In my mind, the original Robotech cartoons had amazing art and stories. Seeing them now, I can't help notice the stiff animation and silliness. But I still enjoy it. :-)

But no, I think missing the cave maps is just fine, because if we were complaining about the cave maps right now, it would mean that our game was back!

[Lucretia MacEvil]

Hahaha. I think as humans, we tend to remember the past a bit more fondly than it we should. In my mind, the original Robotech cartoons had amazing art and stories. Seeing them now, I can't help notice the stiff animation and silliness. But I still enjoy it. :-)

But no, I think missing the cave maps is just fine, because if we were complaining about the cave maps right now, it would mean that our game was back!

Prexactly.

[Valjean]

Dr. Quaterfield.  Longest TF in the game, most repetitive TF in the game.  I only ran it once with my main/badger and vowed to never touch it again.

But now I would give anything to even get to play through Dr. Q again with one of my favorite characters.  At least then it would mean I would be in the game, beating up baddies with one of my old friends.

Gosh, I remember taking two whole nights to finish Dr. Q in the old days. At first it felt like a huge triumph, then I started to hate it. But now, I'd love to run it again, if anything so I can complain about it out loud with my teammates. :-)

[Triplash]

* The grind from 1st to 12th level.

Hehe... I actually very much enjoyed street sweeping at the early levels. The fighting part is just as much fun later, but the leveling part goes slower so the earlier levels are more enjoyable overall. I'd roam Atlas til 6 or 8 depending on the AT, then go to the Hollows til about 12. From there I'd hit Steel til 19 or 20, and then it was time for Talos. Talos was the last place my sweeper team reached, cause it takes time to level 30-odd characters alongside one another. But I'm sure I would've found a new place to go and ruin the dreams of some poor up-and-coming thugs.

After all my "important" characters had leveled past 20, I even made new ones just to street them up to 20 again. Then I'd email their inf and any nice drops to someone that mattered, and "Delete And Repeat". It was a fun diversion from the regular stuff.

Honestly though, City of Heroes and Minecraft are the only games I've ever played that did annoy me. Any other game that annoyed me, I'd just stop playing and find something else. It's very rare I'll stick with a game that continually irritates me.


But to actually answer the question:

- The Robot Arms categories in the costume editor. Why couldn't they be "Alternate Arms" instead? Instead of "upper arms, full arms, or right arm" it would have been "left arm, right arm, or both arms". Then you could do robot arms and things like demonic, plant, infected, mutated, stone, withered, burning, animal, and so on. You could pick which arm so you could match it to your weapon, you could overlay gloves on top of it in some cases; it could have been glorious.

- Standard SG Base rant.

- The cave maps. I don't miss them the tiniest, slightest bit. If they somehow get erased when the game comes back, or the new game for whatever reason doesn't even have caves... I could live with that. (Although if that was the only map we could log in and actually play on, I'd take them in a heartbeat.)

[saipaman]

I will never miss the "layer cake" cave map.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

COUNCIL & 5th COLUMN BASES
All the annoyance of a cave mish, with additional tight quarters because of the Council building all sorts of haphazard technological junk in it.  The absolute worst environment for getting enemies spawned outside the map, too!

CRAMPED CAVES
Speaking of, these were terrible.  Tight quarters, big guys like me always had trouble keeping things visible.  Enemies could ambush you way too easily, there were often caverns and enemies and glowies squirrelled away in places that are a pain to get to, and rooms that were multi-storey didn't show up on the map as such - what LOOKS like one big room is either a multi-tiered atrium or a small room with a ramp that leads upward to another small room.

ORANBEGA MAPS
All the cramped quarters of a cave, plus teleporters and caverns you really need Flight to navigate properly.  Oh, and any Oranbega map with demon-summoning warp portals that you need to smash to stop the rush of demons sucks.

MINION-SPAWNING BOSSES
Stop summoning hordes of guys so I can properly kill you already!

SUMMONED ENEMIES THAT SURVIVE THEIR SUMMONER'S DEFEAT
When I defeat your boss, you should go down too.  I'm looking at YOU, Banished Pantheon Death Shamans.

THAT LAST LOUSY GLOWY
Often squirrelled away into a place where no human being would think to put something of critical importance.

VALKYRIE
She's tought as nails as it stands, but has an annoying tendecy to Moment of Glory right before she goes down, often within ONE HIT of death.  Her MoG lasts forever too - I've literally left a gaggle of henchmen distracting and pounding on her, then went out and made a quick sandwich before she died.  I'd usually come back right as she took her last hit.

LETHAL AND SMASH-RESISTANT ENEMIES
Does everything need these two resistances?  C'mon, you're just wasting my time and making me regret not taking, say, Fiery Melee or Electric melee instead.

MALTA SAPPERS
Speaking of fire, these jerks can all go die in one.  Sure, a hold or a knockdown or some form of control effect can neuter them long enough for you to kill them, but you have to SPOT them first, which can be a little hard in a tightly-packed crowd of Malta, or when one decides to hide behind a Herc Titan, or behind a 90-degree turn.

INFINITELY-STACKING DEFENSE/TO-HIT/RESISTANCE DEBUFFS
The #1 cause of all my wipes.  They either stack -Def or -Res until I just drop spontaneously from damage spikes.  Worst was -Res, because it could drop you into negative Resistance.

STACKING SLOW EFFECTS
Glue grenades from PPD and caltrops from Knives of Artemis are the biggest offenders here.  In an 8-man spawn, one patch of caltrops/glue from each enemy is enough to make you effectively immobilized.

FUSIONETTE
You have all the durability of wet tissue paper.  Stop flying off to confront more L- for the love of Mike...

But, as everyone else here has said, if it meant having the game back, I'd endure all this and then some in a heartbeat.

[dwturducken]

I will never miss the "layer cake" cave map.

OK, yeah. This, too.

[Ironwolf]

Rescue 21 mages - everything else I could live with.

21 hidden mages in an Orangebagel map............

[Codewalker]

Rescue 21 mages - everything else I could live with.

21 hidden mages in an Orangebagel map............

An Oranbega map filled with Malta, IIRC.

[Surelle]

Cave maps.

I actually miss the cave maps.

...should I be worried about me?

Haha!  I actually used to like those! 

I definitely should be worried about me.   

[houtex]

I will never miss the "layer cake" cave map.

Uh... I actually liked those maps.  I was good at them.  It was a right handed spiral.  It was easy.  Take off to the right, smackdown as you came upon the baddies, continue until you get back to the starting point, move up on the ramp, do it again, and again, until you get to the top.  Then clean up the middle bits... and voila, all done!

/Yep.  I miss being good at that map.  And running across the Hollows as a Level 1 from NW to SE, through the Gulch, and then up to the transmisson towers.  I was awesome at that.  Awesome I tell ya.

[Artillerie]

Stop 30 Fir Bolg from escaping through the portal - hated that one (especially solo) but i have to admit, i'd jump at the chance to go for that again right now.

[daveyfiacre]

Stop 30 Fir Bolg from escaping through the portal - hated that one (especially solo) but i have to admit, i'd jump at the chance to go for that again right now.

it was awesome if you had a stormie and a bubbler. [my favorite sets]

LONG LIVE KNOCKBACK!

[Shenku]

MALTA SAPPERS
Speaking of fire, these jerks can all go die in one.  Sure, a hold or a knockdown or some form of control effect can neuter them long enough for you to kill them, but you have to SPOT them first, which can be a little hard in a tightly-packed crowd of Malta, or when one decides to hide behind a Herc Titan, or behind a 90-degree turn.

STACKING SLOW EFFECTS
Glue grenades from PPD and caltrops from Knives of Artemis are the biggest offenders here.  In an 8-man spawn, one patch of caltrops/glue from each enemy is enough to make you effectively immobilized.

These are the only two I slightly disagree with, but that's only because I was playing a Claws/SR scrapper a majority of the time. Sappers rarely hit me with their endurance draining attacks (and they dropped like a bag of bricks in a pond when I eventually got to them, which was usually an after thought thanks to SR's high defense), and Quickness, Swift, and Sprint easily stacked enough to offset any major slow effects from their caltrops. If anything, it was the -jump on Caltrops and Web-nades that bugged me, more so than -run speed. Either way, I miss dealing with them...

[Kaiser Tarantula]

These are the only two I slightly disagree with, but that's only because I was playing a Claws/SR scrapper

Oh, of course.  No enemy in the game is hard when you're not getting hit, because then the secondary effects of their attacks never take place.  Malta sappers are trivial when it takes them ten or more just to land a sap effect.

Life's a little harder for us Resistance-based characters, as we have to deal with all the secondary BS besides raw damage.  That's kind of a rule with a Resistance-based character, actually.  It's never the sheer damage that kills you; it's always the debuffs that let the damage get through.

Caltrops and other stacking slow effects were BS though - they just made an otherwise trivial fight take longer and thus be more irritating than they have any right to be.  If I were remaking CoH, I'd personally move all tarpatch effects to Lieutenant-grade enemies or higher, and make the slow effects unable to stack - only the strongest one effects you.  Letting enemies stack them up to the point where you move at the speed of a stunned snail on warm tar is dumb; may as well just give them an AoE immobilize at that point (IMO, the immobilize would be less irritating - there are ways to get immob protection.  Slow protection is a bit harder to manage.)

[JWBullfrog]

Stop 30 Fir Bolg from escaping through the portal - hated that one (especially solo) but i have to admit, i'd jump at the chance to go for that again right now.

This always annoyed me until I finally tackled it with a Grav/Time controller. Easy button.
 
I'd love the chance to try it again.