If we could bring COH back what would you change?

[Sugoi]

I'd like to see pattern options on the smaller pieces of clothing (i.e., tiger stripes on a bikini comes to mind for some strange reason.) Look up LUM INVADER on Wikipedia for my main reason. (grin) The first character I made for the game on opening day was an Elec/Elec Blaster named Ramu in honor of one of my favorite Anime characters of all time.

Please get rid of the sexism inherent in the Mastermind pet sets.  Why is it acceptable to have a female bossing male flunkies around, when male Masterminds have NEVER been given the option to boss an equivalent group of female flunkies?  I guess Lawyers / Feminists trump Equality in this case?

[Golden Ace]

Oh that reminds me.   I'd make it possible to do car/boat/blimp surfing.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

I would like to see an 'Automobile' as a Travel power. Or motorcycle. I wouldn't think it would be hard to create that ability.

In a way that made sense? Sky Raider Skiffs and Toxic Tarantulas inside office maps were already silly enough, but having player cars and motorcycles cruising around would have even more absurd. Well, motorcycles wouldn't have been that bad, but cars would've been plain dumb.
i suppose as vanity travel powers that only worked in open zones it might have worked to use vehicles, but of course they would have had to lock out all attack powers or created new animations for all attacks, which was why powers like the Coyote and Flying Carpet locked out power use.
Now all these limitations could of course have been overcome with enough time and money, but "it would be that hard to create". Which would be obvious if you'd been around for the Dev discussions of exactly those requests, or if you had in fact thought.
Now if they'd gotten the go-ahead to make CoH2 it would have been much simpler to incorporate vehicles, but the original codebase was not created with that sort of extensibility in mind and adding it would have been non-trivial. So, yeah, i'd like to see player vehicles as well, but i have no illusions about how it would be easy. The Phoenix Project has a better chance of adding those, or if someone with really deep pockets convinced NCsoft to sell CoH and was willing to put the money into doing it it's a definite possibility. Still, not easy.

[Tenzhi]

i suppose as vanity travel powers that only worked in open zones it might have worked to use vehicles, but of course they would have had to lock out all attack powers or created new animations for all attacks, which was why powers like the Coyote and Flying Carpet locked out power use.

Or they could've made them like the Kheldian shapeshifting powers and given them their own limited powerset while toggled on.

[Triplash]

or if you had in fact thought.

Hey hey hey. There's no call for being rude. This thread's for talking about what changes you'd make, and Maid's idea was plenty good.

But if we are getting into specifics, the devs gave reasons in one of the Coffee Talks as to why they didn't make vehicle travel powers. One big part was strafing; you know, the thing where you walk to the side while looking straight forward? Vehicles with wheels don't move straight to the side, they have to turn in arcs. The other big part was turning in a full circle while standing still; vehicles have to be moving in order to turn. It would be too disruptive to see a current-day car or motorcycle sliding to the side or turning in place, because those kinds of vehicles just don't work that way. That's why every travel power they did introduce was based either on legs (walking, running), or floating (flying, hovering, sliding).

Easy to make or not, a lot of people would've bought and used a car or motorbike travel power. And if it was a hoverbike? Hooo boy, you couldn't keep me away from that sucker 8)

[blacksly]

I would change only one thing in the coding, that would have repercussions throughout the rest of the game, and that is to use fractions, logarithms, or other curved functions to handle the base values in To-Hit and Damage Resistance.

1: You don't have a 40% defense matched against a 50% base enemy to hit. That renders a 3% buff much stronger in terms of how much it lowers incoming damage if it's added to someone with 40% defense than when added to someone with 0% defense... and useless if the target buffed has 45% defense already. Instead, total up Accuracy bonuses for an attack, and Defense bonuses from powers and buffs, and use a formula to adjust the base to-hit chance. That way, you don't run into caps making buffs/debuffs irrelevant, and you also don't run into a situation where some buffs make you 10x as strong defensively, but the person next to you only 2x as strong.

2: Same for Resistance (and its counter, Resistance debuffs).

Using fractional functions, we could have: ToHit = 50% * (1+Accuracy) / (1+Defense), as an example.

Using linear functions was just.... simplistic. Too simplistic to scale well. The results of that poor scaling brought us ED, major inherent PvP imbalances, etcetera. Without it we could have pretty much the same game, but a lot better balanced in all situations from the beginning.

[MaidMercury]

I also wanted Vet 'pets' to be able to have custom colors.
Or at least be able to purchase one.....Vet 'pets' were just default colors.  :o

Normal pets I saw had interesting effects after players started customizing them.

[Risha]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this before (or even if I have, I haven't read everything), but real long dresses.

[Golden Ace]

I don't know if anyone mentioned this before (or even if I have, I haven't read everything), but real long dresses.

animated. 

[goodtime]

An "It's Clobberin' Time" button that turns on all your toggle powers. 

Actual building locations in-game for your supergroup base entrance, in addition to the regular base portals.   I don't even care if seventeen other bases use the same door, but I want to pick a building in Talos, or Steel, or Terra Volta that I can walk in and out of. 

Costume pieces for day jobs, so you can make secret identity costumes.

[emperorsteele]

I would change only one thing in the coding, that would have repercussions throughout the rest of the game, and that is to use fractions, logarithms, or other curved functions to handle the base values in To-Hit and Damage Resistance.

1: You don't have a 40% defense matched against a 50% base enemy to hit. That renders a 3% buff much stronger in terms of how much it lowers incoming damage if it's added to someone with 40% defense than when added to someone with 0% defense... and useless if the target buffed has 45% defense already. Instead, total up Accuracy bonuses for an attack, and Defense bonuses from powers and buffs, and use a formula to adjust the base to-hit chance. That way, you don't run into caps making buffs/debuffs irrelevant, and you also don't run into a situation where some buffs make you 10x as strong defensively, but the person next to you only 2x as strong.

2: Same for Resistance (and its counter, Resistance debuffs).

Using fractional functions, we could have: ToHit = 50% * (1+Accuracy) / (1+Defense), as an example.

Using linear functions was just.... simplistic. Too simplistic to scale well. The results of that poor scaling brought us ED, major inherent PvP imbalances, etcetera. Without it we could have pretty much the same game, but a lot better balanced in all situations from the beginning.

The only problem I see with your equation is that if an opponent has a total defense of -1, then your equation ends up being divided by 0 and would crash the universe. =O

I almost want to say make it MORE simple. Remove ToHit all together. Find your accuracy ((Base accuracy+Buffs) * a power's enhanced acc modifier), then subtract the opponent's total defense. Then you have X, which I guess would technically be your final To hit chance. System makes a roll, and if the roll is less than or equal to X, then you hit.

The main problem with that in regards to CoH is that it's very possible to give ones self something like a 200% chance to hit (not even including debuffing an opponent's defense). Either the 5% floor and ceiling would have to be retained (though that makes the whole system essentially a D20 system which is where half the problem comes from), a hard cap on acc and defense would have to be implemented (not much better), or essentially doing what you suggested and create a scaling algorithm for determining actual to hit chances beyond the existing soft caps. *shrug*

[DarkCurrent]

Serverless gameplay.

[Lightslinger]

Remember when Soldiers of Arachnos were bugged and the rifle powers didn't root you? That was AWESOME! The game felt so much more dynamic on my SoA and didn't break anything. They eventually fixed that "bug" though.

Seriously, remove rooting unless it's absolutely needed by the animation. I don't mind some rooting, but ALL powers causing it is a bit much.

[Dollhouse]

Remember when Soldiers of Arachnos were bugged and the rifle powers didn't root you? That was AWESOME! The game felt so much more dynamic on my SoA and didn't break anything. They eventually fixed that "bug" though.

Seriously, remove rooting unless it's absolutely needed by the animation. I don't mind some rooting, but ALL powers causing it is a bit much.

/signed

I may have mentioned this one upthread (too lazy to look), but power rooting was, for me, the part of the combat that made the game feel antiquated. Some of the other "old school" aspects of the code were brilliantly tweaked and enhanced by the devs (like the graphics engine...the game still looked pretty damn good right 'til the end), but rooting stuck out like a sore thumb for me.  I've gotten spoiled by several newer MMOs with full "fight on the fly" capability, I guess.

[Heroette]

/signed

I may have mentioned this one upthread (too lazy to look), but power rooting was, for me, the part of the combat that made the game feel antiquated. Some of the other "old school" aspects of the code were brilliantly tweaked and enhanced by the devs (like the graphics engine...the game still looked pretty damn good right 'til the end), but rooting stuck out like a sore thumb for me.  I've gotten spoiled by several newer MMOs with full "fight on the fly" capability, I guess.

Yeah.  I love being able to retreat and still attack.

[Nilbog]

the addition of Cars and hover vehicles. Always thought it would be cool to travel around the City in a car. I thought is it was really cool they were working on a moon base, when I adventured in the space enviorments through PI they always captured my imagination and I desired the development of that cosmic aspect. If that would have been implemented It would be cool to have space ships or shuttles that take you up there (or fly yourself if that is an option)

[Nealix]

I don't think I would change it.  It was perfect for me.  They kept adding new content which I would pay for.  The new powers, costumes, auras, missions and other content was perfect for me and my tendency toward creating alts.  At this point I have moved on to CO but would return to CoH in a heartbeat if it could be returned to us in the as it was before the cancellation was announce.  I still miss CoH.

[Chance Jackson]

I still wanted a custom signature attack up until the end, someone had created a great thread on the official forum that got a lot of support so it really is too bad that never came to fruition.

-Choose whether the primary effect was on the castor, allies or enemies
-Choose power animation. (longer animations buy you more points to spend on things like dmg, def, res, acc bonus etc)

[emperorsteele]

Serverless gameplay.

You mean what we have now?

/rimshot

[MaidMercury]

Any game that I don't see the name NCsoft attached is nice.........even if all it is, is Mahjongg or Solitaire. :roll: