Author Topic: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...  (Read 19206 times)

Steelclaw

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Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« on: January 19, 2013, 03:11:00 PM »
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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2013, 04:21:17 PM »
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.
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

LightofthePhoenix

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2013, 04:26:50 PM »
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.
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Lucretia MacEvil

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2013, 04:40:51 PM »
Cave maps.

I actually miss the cave maps.

...should I be worried about me?

Valjean

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2013, 04:57:38 PM »
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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2013, 05:32:42 PM »
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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2013, 05:41:52 PM »
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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2013, 05:53:28 PM »
* 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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2013, 07:34:23 PM »
I will never miss the "layer cake" cave map.

Kaiser Tarantula

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #9 on: January 19, 2013, 07:38:24 PM »
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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #10 on: January 19, 2013, 07:54:42 PM »
I will never miss the "layer cake" cave map.

OK, yeah. This, too. :)
I wouldn't use the word "replace," but there's no word for "take over for you and make everything better almost immediately," so we just say "replace."

Ironwolf

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #11 on: January 19, 2013, 11:44:59 PM »
Rescue 21 mages - everything else I could live with.

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

Codewalker

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #12 on: January 20, 2013, 12:26:29 AM »
Rescue 21 mages - everything else I could live with.

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

An Oranbega map filled with Malta, IIRC.

Surelle

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #13 on: January 20, 2013, 12:50:23 AM »
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.   :P

houtex

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #14 on: January 20, 2013, 01:11:42 AM »
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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #15 on: January 20, 2013, 01:47:14 AM »
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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2013, 02:17:54 AM »
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]

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Shenku

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #17 on: January 20, 2013, 10:58:21 PM »
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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #18 on: January 20, 2013, 11:52:08 PM »
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

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #19 on: January 21, 2013, 02:12:44 AM »
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.
As long as somebody keeps making up stories for it, the City isn't gone.

Dollhouse

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #20 on: January 21, 2013, 07:37:22 AM »
Quote
Quote from: Artillerie on Yesterday at 01:47:14 am
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.

Piece o' cake on a D3, too...   ;)

I hated power activation/animation rooting and always will. That's the thing I wanted re-worked in the engine code above all others. I can actually tolerate tab-to-target more easily than rooting.

Wasn't a fan of the 35-40 leveling "dead zone," although that's more of an early days complaint than anything that was still an issue for the last few years.

The gimmicky "patch o' instant death" mechanic that got used in a few TFs can die in a fire. There were TFs I ran all of once and never again because of that nonsense.

There's more, of course...but I'd tolerate any of 'em just to have the game back again. Heck, it probably wouldn't even be my "main" game any more...but I'd happily pay the sub just to play when I felt like it, with so many dear friends, only a few of whom have followed me to TSW.  :(

Kuriositys Kat

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #21 on: January 21, 2013, 11:23:00 AM »
Cave maps.

I actually miss the cave maps.

...should I be worried about me?

Oh dear (with Aussie intonation) even my main misses the cave maps and and mentioning the blue cave  5 layer room would have her on the phone to her therapist for hours...

 So yes I believe we should be worried
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MaHaBone

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #22 on: January 21, 2013, 05:34:33 PM »
For some reason, when I started playing, the lake in Perez was the place to be.  Usually 5 or 6 teams sweeping around, hunting Hydra.  The tricky part was actually getting to to the lake.

Too low for travel powers.  No such thing as jet packs or ninja run.  The trails were a lethal maze of CoTs.  So what do you do?  Tree running!  From a bus stand, hop to the wall.  From the wall, hop to the conopy of trees.  And from there, its a straight shot across the park!

Unless you bork the jump.  Then you die.

Or you happen upon a hole in the canopy and fall through.  Then you die.

Or you or one of the other newbs drag some aggro.  Then the mobs (who never bork the jump) follow you up and onto the trees.

No wakies back then, so its back to the hospital with you!  Also, debt started at level 4 back then, so screw you.

If you were lucky/good enough to make it, you could pile on a level or two.  Then you had to get out of the lake.

Good times.

voodoogirl

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #23 on: January 21, 2013, 08:30:43 PM »
I used to hate CoT missions - but then I spent so much time in them they became my home.

Now I miss them.

Yes, even you pancake cave, you f******d of a design.

Codewalker

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #24 on: January 21, 2013, 08:41:43 PM »
...caltrops from Knives of Artemis are the biggest offenders here.

Those were actually fixed a couple years ago. Around the time Going Rogue was released, some new stacking tech was added, and all NPC Caltrops powers were changed to use it. Long story short, you'd take damage from all of the caltrops patches you were standing in, but only get one copy of the slow effect, which made them a lot easier to get out of.

Glue grenades from PPD

Those on the other hand can burn in hell. I don't know if they were changed to not stack or not, but it doesn't matter, because one glue grenade was enough to floor your movement speed for as long as it took you to get out of the patch + 30 seconds more. They rank right up there with Malta forever-stun grenades as far as extreme annoyances go.

LightofthePhoenix

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #25 on: January 21, 2013, 10:30:16 PM »
They rank right up there with Malta forever-stun grenades as far as extreme annoyances go.

Malta as a whole was the most utterly gimmicky and annoying enemy group in the game.

1. As you pointed out, the stun grenades that never ended.
2. The Gunslingers with their freeze bullets that lasted a good long while, too.
3. Sappers.  Though they didn't pose as much of a problem as some things, they could still get very annoying.
4. Two Hercules Titans in a single mob, manage to kill them both.  OHAI ZEUS TITAN!
5. The Operations Officers or whichever that spawned the gun drones, that I don't think died with their spawner. (Could be misremembering that part, though.)

Just all in all they had so many annoying features... but I still didn't mind fighting them all that much cause they were still fun.
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Mister Bison

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #26 on: January 21, 2013, 10:54:51 PM »
Those on the other hand can burn in hell. I don't know if they were changed to not stack or not, but it doesn't matter, because one glue grenade was enough to floor your movement speed for as long as it took you to get out of the patch + 30 seconds more. They rank right up there with Malta forever-stun grenades as far as extreme annoyances go.
And don't forget the flashbangs. 30 seconds of not touching anything ! Complete with super annoying "woshwoshwoshwosh" and rainbow on your head too ! Yeeeeessss !!
Yeeessss....

srmalloy

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #27 on: January 22, 2013, 01:25:15 AM »

Codewalker

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #28 on: January 22, 2013, 01:47:30 AM »

Mister Bison

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #29 on: January 22, 2013, 09:38:38 AM »
Replicators :P
The whole serie is like this. I explicitely remember tau'ris demonstrating P90s to rebel Jaffahs, comparing their energy lances to terror toys rather than death tools. If you were discounting the occasional "boss" energy field, but those were rare. Replicators even went up to eleven, since energy weapon were useless against them.

And then nano-replicators came, immune to both bullets and energy weapons.
Yeeessss....

Everfreefire

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #30 on: January 22, 2013, 10:47:17 AM »
5. The Operations Officers or whichever that spawned the gun drones, that I don't think died with their spawner. (Could be misremembering that part, though.)

As I recall, I tried using one of those for my damage badge. I never knew for sure if it worked, but I cleared out everything but one of those drones, ate enough purples so I could rest without being interrupted, then just meandered away. The resting regen easily outhealed the damage from the drones, and they did more damage because you were resting.

I still suspect that didn't actually do anything, but it was fun to do when I meandered elsewhere.
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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #31 on: January 22, 2013, 11:58:06 AM »
The whole serie is like this. I explicitely remember tau'ris demonstrating P90s to rebel Jaffahs, comparing their energy lances to terror toys rather than death tools. If you were discounting the occasional "boss" energy field, but those were rare. Replicators even went up to eleven, since energy weapon were useless against them.

And then nano-replicators came, immune to both bullets and energy weapons.

"This is a weapon of terror. It's designed to intimidate your enemy. THIS, is a weapon of war. It's designed to KILL your enemy."

Still one of my favorite lines from that show. :p

Mister Bison

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #32 on: January 22, 2013, 12:20:18 PM »
"This is a weapon of terror. It's designed to intimidate your enemy. THIS, is a weapon of war. It's designed to KILL your enemy."

Still one of my favorite lines from that show. :p
Thank for the exact quote. I did not try to translate from the language I watched the show in.
Yeeessss....

Kaiser Tarantula

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #33 on: January 22, 2013, 12:41:38 PM »
Those were actually fixed a couple years ago. Around the time Going Rogue was released, some new stacking tech was added, and all NPC Caltrops powers were changed to use it. Long story short, you'd take damage from all of the caltrops patches you were standing in, but only get one copy of the slow effect, which made them a lot easier to get out of.
I think something in I24 Beta un-fixed them then, or I was suffering from some amazingly vivid PTSD flashbacks in those last few months on CoH.  See, I originally was forced to stop playing back around I7-I9 (I forget which; it was like a month after the Invention system was released), and I remembered that Knives Caltrops would stack infinitely, making any sort of melee with them a slog.

I came back to I24 Beta to see CoH out, and it's like nothing ever changed.

Still though, tarpatch slow effects, and especially ones that stack infinitely or persist even when you're out of the effect, can die in a fire.  Hell, I'll even happily provide the fire!

srmalloy

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #34 on: January 22, 2013, 07:41:51 PM »
"This is a weapon of terror. It's designed to intimidate your enemy. THIS, is a weapon of war. It's designed to KILL your enemy."

Still one of my favorite lines from that show. :p

Except that they're not designed to kill your enemy; they're designed to wound and incapacitate your enemy, based on the assumption that the other side wants to preserve as many of their soldiers as possible -- a dead soldier takes one person out of their forces, while wounding them makes them expend resources to get the wounded soldier off the field, plus all the care to treat and heal them. This, however, doesn't work if the enemy's attitude is "leave them; if we win, we'll collect any of our wounded who survive."

saipaman

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #35 on: January 22, 2013, 08:10:01 PM »

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


When it first came out, the Hero Respec was challenging and fun.  However, after too many teams were defeated, it was nerfed.

Rather than give people enough to fly back from the IP hospital, they should have put a first aid station in one of the rooms in the reactor building.

Dollmistress

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #36 on: January 22, 2013, 10:55:41 PM »
One of the most bittersweet things is that in thirty years time, all of us still alive will be able to pick up a pencil and paper, draw an exact image of the layer cake cave map, and spend an hour explaining to our grandchildren the most time/distance efficient method of clearing out the final room.  8)


Primantis

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #37 on: January 23, 2013, 04:22:26 AM »
One of the most bittersweet things is that in thirty years time, all of us still alive will be able to pick up a pencil and paper, draw an exact image of the layer cake cave map, and spend an hour explaining to our grandchildren the most time/distance efficient method of clearing out the final room.  8)

Then after that we can explain our archaic method of communication called "E-Mail".. Yes that's right young ones, we actually had to type!


But, back on topic for me.

Hows about running through old school Hollows? The zone was huge, you had to navigate it all without a proper travel power, or hover in the best case scenario. To make matters worse you usually had to run through huge groups of highly-conning baddies, and the center of the map was pure doom if you accidentally fell in.

Groups of people stepped up to help. Defenders/Controllers would sit in the zone to rez any unlucky lowbie, and "Taxi" Supergroups were formed to help shuttle people around if needed.

It was an early glance at our amazing community. Full of people spending their time helping others, usually for nil reward.


I also remember Perez with some nostalgia fondness. Back when Hydra hunting was "the thing". I started the game right around the time that the purple patch hit. And I remember wailing on a purple-conning Vhaz boss with at least a dozen other heroes for what seemed like a good 5-10 minutes before the thing went down lol.


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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #38 on: January 23, 2013, 07:54:04 AM »
ATTA...When The Hollows was the post Atlas place to go.  I ran Atta so many times in 7 years I became part Ogre!
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Primantis

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #39 on: January 23, 2013, 09:25:40 AM »
ATTA...When The Hollows was the post Atlas place to go.  I ran Atta so many times in 7 years I became part Ogre!

Heck ya, Atta and lots of Frost Fire too xD


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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #40 on: January 24, 2013, 12:04:03 AM »
When it first came out, the Hero Respec was challenging and fun.  However, after too many teams were defeated, it was nerfed.

Rather than give people enough to fly back from the IP hospital, they should have put a first aid station in one of the rooms in the reactor building.

I haven't thought through every one, but my impression was that, originally, all final TF mission doors were set at least 1 mile away from the nearest Hospital and all final Trial mission doors were set at least 1 zone away from the nearest Hospital.  I noticed this was stealth changed when final mission doors that used to be in a Hazard zone were now consistently at a City zone.  Then of course, they put in Field Hospitals everywhere and made it all moot.
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saipaman

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #41 on: January 24, 2013, 01:20:10 AM »
There was a very strong tendency in the early years of the game to do just what you described -- put as much travel time between the player and places the player needed to be.

Another example being contacts in different zones than the missions they handed out.

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #42 on: January 24, 2013, 04:00:16 AM »
Those Council maps annoyed the heck out of me.  The best (worst?) thing ever was when I had my laptop on in an airplane, with Internet allowance (WOW!  SO COOL!), and I was running my Bonavox around in one of those maps.  Then my laptop lost power.  Agh!

Circle of Thorns maps sucked too.  Never played one of those thousands of feet in the air though!  :)


Primantis

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #43 on: January 24, 2013, 06:47:15 AM »
There was a very strong tendency in the early years of the game to do just what you described -- put as much travel time between the player and places the player needed to be.

Another example being contacts in different zones than the missions they handed out.

Eh, after playing FFXI for years (where travel time would range from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the situation/luck with airships), travel time has always felt super quick in CoH.

Hell, by the time you traversed from one end of a major city to the other in FFXI you probably could have traveled through several consecutive zones on CoH, using Sprint! xD.


Regardless, that did get irritating. Especially running legacy content.


dwturducken

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #44 on: January 24, 2013, 08:28:58 PM »
Those Council maps annoyed the heck out of me.  The best (worst?) thing ever was when I had my laptop on in an airplane, with Internet allowance (WOW!  SO COOL!), and I was running my Bonavox around in one of those maps.  Then my laptop lost power.  Agh!

Circle of Thorns maps sucked too.  Never played one of those thousands of feet in the air though!  :)

Anyone else thinking "Mile High Club?" ;)
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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #45 on: January 24, 2013, 08:56:21 PM »
Those Council maps annoyed the heck out of me.  The best (worst?) thing ever was when I had my laptop on in an airplane, with Internet allowance (WOW!  SO COOL!), and I was running my Bonavox around in one of those maps.  Then my laptop lost power.  Agh!

Circle of Thorns maps sucked too.  Never played one of those thousands of feet in the air though!  :)

Never did like those CoT maps. It seemed like someone got carried away with the design and or was trying to show off.

Wish that, as many CoT missions there were, they had a more interesting background instead of being a mere collection of netherworld summoned things and mages that have a library that Azuria liked to send heroes to raid often.  It's like many of their missions were just trown into some arcs just for the hell of it. An arc where it's about stopping council? Somehow ya have to have a CoT mish. Beating up gangsters, somehow CoT have to try to sacrifce someone and ya have to save them. Didnt even view them as a real threat but a group that liked to be into everything but more like another annoyance for petty missions with big maps. Although one of their arcs, think about level 30 or so was pretty good and seemed to have a purpose. Over exposure, and maps taht was too big for no apparent reason it seems besides to show wha ta dev can do with too much time on their hands.

Kaiser Tarantula

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #46 on: January 25, 2013, 03:54:16 PM »
Never did like those CoT maps. It seemed like someone got carried away with the design and or was trying to show off.
You took the thoughts right out of my mind.  A lot of the Circle of Thorns maps just struck me as pretty to look at and maybe wander through, but an absolute slog to actually play in, once they're populated with enemies.  Those narrow corridors really don't help at all when you're at +4x8 and they're absolutely stuffed to the brim with mages and ghosts and behemoth demons that don't even fit in the corridors.

I also agree that they're overused.  Every time you needed to retrieve a magic artifact, or find a mystic tome, or learn the counterspell to some ancient curse, you're always, always being sent to Oranbega and a CoT mish.  There was almost no other mystic group; why not take the Mu Mystics out of Arachnos and give them their own faction?  Or maybe, on redside, develop the Legacy Chain a bit more, and maybe give them their own architecture and story arcs?  Maybe give the Banished Pantheon a bit more exposure at lower levels (I do appreciate that the Banished Pantheon got a LOT more exposure and development in the incarnate content, but they really kinda come outta nowhere.  Striga Isle is your first real exposure to them blueside, and not everyone plays Striga.  they don't recieve ANY character building and attention prior to Dark Astoria and incarnate content.)

Point being, Circle of Thorns was too complicated, too focused on being pretty rather than being fun, and way, way too overexposed.

srmalloy

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #47 on: January 25, 2013, 04:13:37 PM »
I also agree that they're overused.  Every time you needed to retrieve a magic artifact, or find a mystic tome, or learn the counterspell to some ancient curse, you're always, always being sent to Oranbega and a CoT mish.  There was almost no other mystic group; why not take the Mu Mystics out of Arachnos and give them their own faction?

You don't even need to take the Mu Mystics out of Arachnos; just create a small set of low-end Mu 'support staff' -- people who have Mu ancestry, but who either arent's strong enough to be Mystics or haven't qualified for the process of being inducted into the Mystics (loosely analogous to the Soldiers of Arachnos character AT), so you don't have entire maps full of nothing but lightning-flingers, and if you wanted to go all-out with it create a tileset distinct from the Arachnos base tileset that is themed around the Mu (and then re-skin it for the Legacy Chain for their own dedicated missions).

LadyShin

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #48 on: January 26, 2013, 11:37:59 PM »
Ugly then...Malta caves, dimensional portal missions, finding the last glowy in Oranbega...

Flying through what seemed like hours of the Devouring Earth's city-caves...

Attempting to navigate through Dark Astoria...Without travel powers.

Fighting Reichsman and attempting to break up his deal with the other AV's...and Dying. and dying...and respawning...and dying...and dying..

And FFS, people crowding around Atlas' feet hollering for another DFB/DIB!!  :o  :gonk:

....But to be honest, that last was nostalgic even then!
« Last Edit: January 26, 2013, 11:57:06 PM by LadyShin »
"Frank! It's the love boat to Cuba! Shuffle board and pineapples filled with rum. Know what they do? They put little paper umbrellas sticking out the top so that when it rains, it don't thin out the liquor."

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #49 on: January 27, 2013, 02:31:48 AM »
Oh what I would give to wander through the biggest, most boring CoT map with a fender, chewing away at the Thorns one at a time....
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caine6900

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #50 on: January 27, 2013, 05:44:02 PM »
I loved to log on to Beta and use my Bio Armor Martial artist tanker and help people get the unvieler badge, I would do that on Victory server as well with my other tanker Street justice /Willpower.

Colette

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #51 on: January 27, 2013, 11:43:01 PM »
I always played the melee classes. Loved 'em. Loved "bodyguarding" the squishies.

Now I wanna be part of an all corr team, with the difficulty levels set higher and higher as we go. Do such teams need a tanker to take down an AV, or do the buffs make 'em all unstoppable?

Today I miss this game more than I ever thought I would.

Aggelakis

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #52 on: January 28, 2013, 12:47:33 AM »
I always played the melee classes. Loved 'em. Loved "bodyguarding" the squishies.

Now I wanna be part of an all corr team, with the difficulty levels set higher and higher as we go. Do such teams need a tanker to take down an AV, or do the buffs make 'em all unstoppable?

Today I miss this game more than I ever thought I would.
Support powersets all break the game when you get more than a couple on a team. Instead of additive (a scrapper + a scrapper means 2 damage dealers), they are force multipliers (a defender buffs more than just himself - everyone is better with a defender on the team; the more defenders there are, the better you get (until capped :p)). A whole team of them can do pretty much any content (see also: Repeat Offenders!).

(replace defender with controller and corruptor, nearly equally game-breaking)
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JWBullfrog

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #53 on: January 28, 2013, 01:16:18 AM »
I always referred to controllers as 'the unfair advantage." Just one on a team was a massive force multiplier. Add in one defender as well and a team was easily capable of cranking up the difficulty a levle or three.
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Triplash

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #54 on: January 28, 2013, 02:01:29 AM »
I've seen some controllers with enough scrapperlock to shame a brute. And they only ever looked like they were an inch away from horrible, horrible death. But more often than not they were actually carrying the rest of the team.

Kaiser Tarantula

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #55 on: January 28, 2013, 02:35:31 AM »
I've seen some controllers with enough scrapperlock to shame a brute. And they only ever looked like they were an inch away from horrible, horrible death. But more often than not they were actually carrying the rest of the team.
Oh for the love of Mike.  Now you just reminded me of my favorite old Grav/Kin 'troller.

There is nothing quite like the reaction of a squishy teammate when a bunch of enemies are about to jump her, only for them all to start spontaneously floating helplessly in the air.  Then you calmly teleport your teammate out of the midst of them as the tanks move in to clean up.

My old 'troller was a faceless insectoid alien.  He still earned hugs and bro-fists from teammates every time he pulled that stunt.

redgiant

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #56 on: January 28, 2013, 10:35:00 AM »
Around launch when you couldn't go 2 minutes someone inviting you to a team. Missions and street sweeping were intermixed. Teams would stay together for hours doing whatever came up on someone's mission list or just roaming, hitting PP, etc.

1. Sewer missions were hard.

2. Perez Park street sweeping was challenging, and the woods was downright dangerous.

3. The 5th Column caves, damn Valkyries would show up just when you didnt' need them to, and sometimes in the walls shooting at you but you couldn't fight back.

Kaiser Tarantula

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #57 on: January 28, 2013, 04:08:10 PM »
3. The 5th Column caves, damn Valkyries would show up just when you didnt' need them to, and sometimes in the walls shooting at you but you couldn't fight back.
This is a problem throughout CoH's life, apparently.

No matter how much patching they did, right up until the end there were maps where enemies would spawn in the walls.  Sometimes, they'd spawn close enough to attack the player, but would be impossible to retaliate against.

I've found wall-spawned enemies in CoT Oranbega maps, layer-cake caves, Council/5th column cave-bases, Arachnos bases, and even one instance in a warehouse mish.  Generally, the more cramped, organic, and unorthodox the map, the more likely it would be that enemies would wind up spawned in unreachable or untargetable locations.

Now you reminded me of my first encounter with a CoH GM, way back in I8-I9.  I'd been running a Council base mish in Striga with a friend of mine, and we had to clear the map of enemies.  Unfortunately, we'd gotten down to the last lousy enemy, but it was spawned outside the map.  We contacted the GMs in-game and waited.  Eventually, about thirty minutes later, a GM showed up and started messaging me.  I explained the situation, and the GM checked into it.  The GM was invisible this whole time, but he revealed himself just before the resolution.

He appeared as a tsoo eagle enforcer, spread-eagled in the air with no animations.  He asked us if we were ready, and then warped the enemy to his location.  It was a Zenith hoverbot, and it lasted maybe two thirds of a second once it was attackable.  We thanked the GM for the prompt service and went on our way.

To this day, this is still the fastest and most thorough GM response I've ever had on a professionally-run MMO.

JaguarX

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #58 on: January 28, 2013, 04:19:57 PM »
This is a problem throughout CoH's life, apparently.

No matter how much patching they did, right up until the end there were maps where enemies would spawn in the walls.  Sometimes, they'd spawn close enough to attack the player, but would be impossible to retaliate against.

I've found wall-spawned enemies in CoT Oranbega maps, layer-cake caves, Council/5th column cave-bases, Arachnos bases, and even one instance in a warehouse mish.  Generally, the more cramped, organic, and unorthodox the map, the more likely it would be that enemies would wind up spawned in unreachable or untargetable locations.


And it seemed to happen always, 100% of the time for me that I noticed, on defeat all missions. Probably because non-defeat all missions I kill everythign in sight and grab objective and move on. Defeat all, that stuck in the wall mob became a obstacle to mission completion and thus got noticed then when otherwise wouldnt have been noticed.

LadyShin

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #59 on: January 28, 2013, 05:39:40 PM »
-Facepalms-  :gonk:

This reminded me of the most awful experience I ever had:

Going through the Council/5th Column caves with 5 sets of pets hogging the tunnels. ARGH!!!
"Frank! It's the love boat to Cuba! Shuffle board and pineapples filled with rum. Know what they do? They put little paper umbrellas sticking out the top so that when it rains, it don't thin out the liquor."

Colette

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #60 on: January 28, 2013, 06:11:01 PM »
I found that PBAoE's sometimes took down the guys hiding in walls. Sometimes.

And sometimes knockback would put the bad guys through the walls. Frustrating.

Didn't the MM pets get a change so they'd move out of a Players' way? Or was it generally agreed-upon never to invite more than one MM?

Rae

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #61 on: January 28, 2013, 06:29:58 PM »
Tsoo sorcerers with their hurricane hula hoops, porting in and out used to drive me mad.

Specially when I was soloing and there were two of the damn things porting in and out and healing each other up.  Ugh.
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AlphaFerret

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #62 on: January 28, 2013, 07:19:05 PM »
Before you could buy a jetpack, I stubbornly mapped out the zulu zones with a super jumper....

srmalloy

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #63 on: January 28, 2013, 09:38:56 PM »
Around launch when you couldn't go 2 minutes someone inviting you to a team. Missions and street sweeping were intermixed. Teams would stay together for hours doing whatever came up on someone's mission list or just roaming, hitting PP, etc.

3. The 5th Column caves, damn Valkyries would show up just when you didnt' need them to, and sometimes in the walls shooting at you but you couldn't fight back.

Avoiding Science origin Tanker and Scrapper characters because you'd get Vahzilok sewer missions from your initial contact, where you didn't have the room to kite the zombies and had to stand there at melee range while they puked on you.

Pengy

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #64 on: January 28, 2013, 09:45:31 PM »
Didn't the MM pets get a change so they'd move out of a Players' way? Or was it generally agreed-upon never to invite more than one MM?
Mastermind pets that the MM could order out of the way anyway were changed to get out of the Mastermind's way (and only the Mastermind's way, they still obstruct the team) with the result that Masterminds had less reason to remember to move them out of doorways. All other pets remained as obstructive as ever.

It was kind of backward.

Colette

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #65 on: January 28, 2013, 09:55:01 PM »
Oh dear! I never saw a team made up of many, many MMs. In tight spaces it must have been a fright.

SerialBeggar

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #66 on: January 28, 2013, 10:27:01 PM »
Before you could buy a jetpack, I stubbornly mapped out the zulu zones with a super jumper....

I cleared out almost all of the fog in every Shard zones with each of my first 5 characters.  It was mind numbing, but I did it on early weekend mornings when there wasn't much going on.  I had Fly, though, so I just pointed myself in a direction and then perused the forums for a bit until turn around.  I figured out how to not accidentally gain or lose altitude (which hits the invisible zone top or bottom that'll auto-teleport me back to the starter island). 
Teams are the number one killers of Soloists.

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #67 on: January 28, 2013, 10:47:30 PM »
I wouldn't even mind lag...as long as I could play
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doctorlurkin

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #68 on: January 29, 2013, 12:40:19 AM »
Maybe it was just me, but I always had a severe drop in accuracy from early 20's to upper mid 20's levels. I mean severe fiery crash n' burn into Death Valley quicksand drop.  To the point of 6 out of 7 powers fired would miss. And with accuracy slotted.  Using inspirations could improve to about 3 out of 7, but it still sucked, to the point I stopped playing some toons. Then about level 27 or so, it would just clear up. Drove me nuts.

Also, that my MM pets would run right up and block me when I was trying to target something. I was always hoping that something would be done so they would stop 6 feet behind me or so, I even asked about it once.

But I would happily put up with it again just to be able to play!
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JaguarX

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #69 on: January 29, 2013, 01:33:49 AM »
Maybe it was just me, but I always had a severe drop in accuracy from early 20's to upper mid 20's levels. I mean severe fiery crash n' burn into Death Valley quicksand drop.  To the point of 6 out of 7 powers fired would miss. And with accuracy slotted.  Using inspirations could improve to about 3 out of 7, but it still sucked, to the point I stopped playing some toons. Then about level 27 or so, it would just clear up. Drove me nuts.


Yeah I noticed this too but didnt want to get into it with someone saying "it's impossible" and etc because they never experienced so I didnt bother mention it. Good to know it wasnt just all in my head. One of the large main reasons I left in 2011. Got tired of the whiffing and I'm supposed ot be a super hero. Felt like those goons in the movies. Shooting 100s of rounds and hitting nothing. In CO I dont have to worry about it acc. chance hit rolls or what ever other funky crazy math "formula" they used. Just glad to know someone else noticed this too.



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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #70 on: January 29, 2013, 01:59:10 AM »
I always played the melee classes. Loved 'em. Loved "bodyguarding" the squishies.

Now I wanna be part of an all corr team, with the difficulty levels set higher and higher as we go. Do such teams need a tanker to take down an AV, or do the buffs make 'em all unstoppable?

Today I miss this game more than I ever thought I would.

All corrs/defenders team were massively destructive. They were some of the most fun teams I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of.. And mine were just by mere luck. Teams like "Repeat Offenders" really ripped the game a new one.

doctorlurkin

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #71 on: January 29, 2013, 04:29:44 AM »
Well, now I know that I haven't gone loopy... yet.
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Colette

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #72 on: January 29, 2013, 08:40:14 AM »
"Maybe it was just me, but I always had a severe drop in accuracy from early 20's to upper mid 20's levels."

"Yeah, I noticed this too."

Yes, you're right. The solution's to take Tactics before 20, even if END won't let you run Maneuvers or Assault. Slot for END reduction and you never have to worry about missing again, even against those pesky Thorn ghosts. I'm just sorry I couldn't share that with y'all earlier, when it would have been helpful.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2013, 09:05:38 AM by Colette »

redgiant

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #73 on: January 29, 2013, 10:52:40 AM »
Eh, after playing FFXI for years (where travel time would range from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on the situation/luck with airships), travel time has always felt super quick in CoH.

Hell, by the time you traversed from one end of a major city to the other in FFXI you probably could have traveled through several consecutive zones on CoH, using Sprint! xD.


Regardless, that did get irritating. Especially running legacy content.

Two words ... West Karana

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #74 on: January 29, 2013, 01:42:29 PM »
Two words ... West Karana
Oh man, that immense forested mountain pass.  Yes, I remember that zone.  Thank God for wizards and their teleports.  Ahh, nostalgia - I remember my days of running a taxi-wizard service.

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #75 on: January 30, 2013, 04:23:55 PM »
Oh what I would give to wander through the biggest, most boring CoT map with a fender...



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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #76 on: January 30, 2013, 05:20:28 PM »
Started in issue 2 with a noob build on a Inv/mace tank that I didn't know I needed status protection with Unyielding. Absolutely hated Tsoo combo of Yellow ink men and Tsoo Sorcs. They would sleep my tank then when I would awake I couldnt hit anything because of the Sorcs Hurricane PBAoE debuff. I must have tried to kill for 5 minutes one grouping of those two.

Completing that old Tsoo map with the ink man Buddah was sweet when I finally did it though. I would love to play that one more time  :(
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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #77 on: January 30, 2013, 11:10:22 PM »
Statescrotch


'Nuff said.

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #78 on: January 30, 2013, 11:17:43 PM »
Oh dear! I never saw a team made up of many, many MMs. In tight spaces it must have been a fright.
Yup, but on the last two mission of an ITF a 8 MM team was the very definition of awesome.
I ran one of those, 7x demons and 1 bots. (the former) Lag valley was a blast, watching our giant horde tear through those poor traitors ;D

btt, exploding mages and zombies...bane of most of my low lvl toons.
Wouldn't really mind seeing those again.















and would probably go instantly back to hating 'em :P
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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #79 on: January 30, 2013, 11:18:12 PM »
Oh, the tales I could tell - but I'm at work and only have time for one:

Sometime back around the launch of CoV, I somehow ended up on an all-defender team in Bloody Bay.  The leader had Team Teleport, allowing all eight of us to move and fire as a unit.  It was... impressive, and the closest I've ever been to the Offenders experience.

EDIT:  Regarding an accuracy falloff around 20 - a lot of it is perceptual, of course, but I seem to recall hearing of an actual coded "beginner's luck" buff (meant to compensate for the nigh-uselessness of TOs, and not wanting to drive off new players) that was supposed to end about that time.  Can Arcana or someone else who's delved into the code and/or the numbers confirm or deny this?

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #80 on: January 30, 2013, 11:41:00 PM »
Not a buff, but at some point the base tohit for low level characters was increased to avoid the "whiffing in the tutorial" syndrome. It gradually fell off as you approached level 20 or so:

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Beginner's_Luck#Beginner.27s_Luck

Primantis

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #81 on: January 31, 2013, 12:01:22 AM »
I always hated having to take my Blueside Defenders/Corruptors to full-Villain in order to pick up a PPP that had a +defense armor (Black Scorpion's)

AFAIK they were the the only two ATs that had to switch for a +def armor epic power.

I was slightly hopeful that some day the Devs would add either Ice or Energy Mastery to the APPs to equalize things a bit.. But alas..


Also, what about way back in I6-7 or so when Villains were locked into their PPP choices permanently? That was pretty cruddy too.

Colette

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #82 on: January 31, 2013, 03:01:17 AM »
"...on the last two mission of an ITF a 8 MM team was the very definition of awesome. I ran one of those, 7x demons and 1 bots. (the former) Lag valley was a blast, watching our giant horde tear through those poor traitors."

:: Slobber! :: That does sound fun! But does anyone have experience running such a team in a cave, or Oreobagel?

"I always hated having to take my Blueside Defenders/Corruptors to full-Villain in order to pick up a PPP..."

Hmm... I took a hero scrapper 'round the alignments to pick up maces. It was fun! I just RPed it as an infiltration mission.

"I somehow ended up on an all-defender team in Bloody Bay.  The leader had Team Teleport, allowing all eight of us to move and fire as a unit."

Very nice. I expect that was fun.

My necro MM had TTport, grant invis and shadowfall. I called it a stalkermind. Good times.

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #83 on: January 31, 2013, 03:03:13 AM »
EDIT:  Regarding an accuracy falloff around 20 - a lot of it is perceptual, of course, but I seem to recall hearing of an actual coded "beginner's luck" buff (meant to compensate for the nigh-uselessness of TOs, and not wanting to drive off new players) that was supposed to end about that time.  Can Arcana or someone else who's delved into the code and/or the numbers confirm or deny this?
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#Beginner's_Luck    (table)

Started at +15% tohit bonus at level one (final base tohit 90% at level 1) and downgraded to standard (base 75%) at level 20.
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Colette

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #84 on: January 31, 2013, 04:22:33 PM »
Aha! With tactics giving an unslotted bonus to "to-hit" of 10% (varying by AT, from 7 to 12.5) I only lost 5% when beginner's luck shut off at 20. At 22, with two slots, the loss is only 1%. And the bonus applies to the entire team.

That explains why people liked teaming with me despite my being a bossy jerk.  8)

LadyShin

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #85 on: January 31, 2013, 04:50:36 PM »
Aha! With tactics giving an unslotted bonus to "to-hit" of 10% (varying by AT, from 7 to 12.5) I only lost 5% when beginner's luck shut off at 20. At 22, with two slots, the loss is only 1%. And the bonus applies to the entire team.

That explains why people liked teaming with me despite my being a bossy jerk.  8)

 :o Being a level 50+3 natural Stalker (MA+Nin) with purple and event-earned IO sets, over 15 reward tokens earned, I still had to beg to team with people! in the last few months I couldn't hardly find a team willing to run an incarnate trial at all. I began noticing many people forming up teams silently (maybe on Skype?) and not responding to join requests or inviting anyone else. Nothing was spoken or typed in the game, people would form up and assemble without a word and begin their missions.
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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #86 on: January 31, 2013, 05:29:36 PM »
Near the end, I wanted to run an "All Storm Controller" ITF and I managed to get a team together.  It was the most fun ITF ever.  Watching all the Lightning Storms at one time on Lag Hill was epic.  That is something I will always have fond memories of.

Colette

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #87 on: January 31, 2013, 05:54:46 PM »
"Being a level 50+3 natural Stalker (MA+Nin) with purple and event-earned IO sets, over 15 reward tokens earned, I still had to beg to team with people!"

RPers on Virtue didn't team by AT. They teamed because they knew their teammates were awesome. (And they let me tag along, too.)

srmalloy

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #88 on: January 31, 2013, 07:28:04 PM »
Near the end, I wanted to run an "All Storm Controller" ITF and I managed to get a team together.  It was the most fun ITF ever.  Watching all the Lightning Storms at one time on Lag Hill was epic.  That is something I will always have fond memories of.

The all-Kinetics ITF that Kay ran on Guardian was utter, screaming chaos and some of the most side-splittingly funny play I've been involved with; eight stacked Speed Boosts, people unconcerned about being in melee range because that's where all the heals were, stacks of Siphon Speed, Siphon Power, Transference, and Fulcrum Shift grinding through Rommy's resistance...

LadyShin

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #89 on: January 31, 2013, 08:09:47 PM »
Personally, my favorite mission to run was Emperor Cole's personal story, where you got the option of facing off against the entire army of Arachnos single-handedly.

For some reason my client would crash whenever I kept up the area attacks, so it was pretty much dropping one Arachnos soldier at a time until I got to Lord Recluse.


  ;)

Then I dropped him with a Zeus bolt.  8)
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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #90 on: January 31, 2013, 10:50:01 PM »
My Friday night group made an all-Stalker team. (I feel like I've talked about this one, before...) It wasn't much until level six, when the assassination strikes came available, but it was still breezy on the "find the glowy" missions. Once we had the assassin strikes (there were six of us that first week), we were pretty unstoppable. We only got to the high 20s before the end came, but it was probably one of the more fun team concepts we came up with, as far as playability and mechanics are concerned.

Also, no knocking enemies back into walls with a stalker team. :)
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doctorlurkin

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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #91 on: February 01, 2013, 12:52:23 AM »
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics#Beginner's_Luck    (table)

Started at +15% tohit bonus at level one (final base tohit 90% at level 1) and downgraded to standard (base 75%) at level 20.

I never knew this existed! After reading, I started digging through the Sentinel+ file for my Widow.  I stopped playing her at lvl 23 becaue the hit rate was just awful. I had Combat Training: Offensive slotted with 2 lvl 25 SO accuracy ans 1 DO accuracy, but I haven't crunched any numbers to see how much the buff was. I didn't know there was such a huge difference between accuracy and to hit buff.  After some more looking, I think the build wasn't near as good as it could have been at that point.  When CoH comes back, I think I'll try it again.

Personally, my favorite mission to run was Emperor Cole's personal story, where you got the option of facing off against the entire army of Arachnos single-handedly.

For some reason my client would crash whenever I kept up the area attacks, so it was pretty much dropping one Arachnos soldier at a time until I got to Lord Recluse.


  ;)

Then I dropped him with a Zeus bolt.  8)

I ran this one too & enjoyed it immensely, although it took forever because I also had to pretty much aggro one or 2 at a time also.  It took me quite a few tries because of mapserver disconnects.  After a bit of research I found out that the client and server could barely stay in sync during that mission.  Apparently there were just too many items on that map for them to keep track of. 
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Re: Ugly then... But with a Fresh Coat of Nostalgia...
« Reply #92 on: February 01, 2013, 06:52:41 PM »
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.

I used to park on top of the barn near the mission entrance and go make a sandwich, get a drink, whatever. Unless I needed to level up, then I would turn it into a kill-all, ignoring scurrying Fir Bolg as I went. That mission was a massive failure of the "fun" factor, no two ways about it.