Why does it STILL bother me? I think I know...

[Thunder Glove]

The thing I came up with is that CoH was a perfect combination of elements I've loved in other games in the past.

I like various AKI wrestling games for the N64.  I like their fantastic create-a-wrestler mode, with loads of costume pieces to choose from.  I can make my own character and then force the game to adapt to him, rather than taking a pre-made character, and I can copy appearances and movesets of wrestlers that are too new or too old to have been included in the game's roster.

I like computer and console RPGs.  Why?  I like all the stat-tweaking.  I like individual characters or character classes that I can give my attention to, to make each the best they can be.  (And, yes, I like games where my character can eventually become incredibly powerful, so that he can easily hang with the most powerful enemies in the game world)

I also like computer/console RPGs for focusing the story on me.  I like being on the inside of the big stories, dealing with the big bads.

I like roleplaying.  Why?  I like showing off characters I made.  I like pushing the story forward with a character that is uniquely mine - not perfect, but mine.

I like online games, because they generally update frequently.

I like crossovers, bringing a character (whether my own or another) into another world.

I like a receptive community that will listen to what I have to say and not just blow me off or try to start an argument - this goes for all forms of gaming.

And I like superheroes. (And lightning powers)  I could go on and on.

CoH had ALL of those.

Every game I've played (new or old) since CoH shut down - more than that, every hobby, game or otherwise, I've tried since then - has had one or, at best, two aspects of what I loved about CoH.  They do nothing but remind me of all the aspects of CoH that they don't have.

When I play SNES RPGs, they're fun... but they don't update.  I can't show off.  I can't design my own characters.

When I roleplay, it's fun... but my character's not very powerful.  They're never in the big plots.  Nobody's really listening to what I want.

When I go out to see a movie... I just think of how I could make that character in CoH and actually play as them instead of passively watching.

And when I played Champions... character creation and superheroes, yes, but characters who were flimsy, had a jumble of inefficient powers that fit no coherent theme, and no updates for years (and none on the horizon).

Why are there no other games out there that satisfy all those at once?  How could CoH have been the one and only game ever that did everything the way I wanted it?

[FatherXmas]

There's a number of reasons I miss this game.  The primary one is establishing a unique identity for your character.

Character creation in CoH is all about identity.  Your look, your background.  Even in the earliest form of the creator, back when we didn't even have capes, allowed a dizzying array of looks.  Your outfit choices wasn't limited by your class.  Neither was your physical size or skin color.  There really wasn't race in the game, just humanoid.  You didn't choose what species you were playing.  There were no "true" elves with a predetermined history and back story.  That onus was on the player.  He, like a creator of a super hero comic book, was in charge of all of that.  Why does your player shoot fire from their hands?  wield dark mystic energy?  fight crime?  wear a mask? a suit? armor? spandex?

On top of all of that we were granted the ability to change our appearance for a modest fee.  While it's there because it's fairly standard in the super hero comic book genre to change up the look every few years, it included being able to do capricious things like hairstyle and color.

The whole divorcing of stats from items was brilliant.  That wasn't a +5 sword, you enhanced your ability to use your sword.  You enhanced your resistance to damage or ability to dodge attacks.  It wasn't something an item granted you (unless you wanted to RP it that way), it was you.

See right now I've been playing Guild Wars 2 (yes, yes boo hiss, traitor) and I seriously miss this.  First there's a huge rigamarole you have to go through to keep the stats of one item while skinning it to look like another.  Then for coloring it you start with a choice of like a dozen bland, muted colors.  But you can buy hundreds of others with in-game currency.  The more vibrant the color, the more expensive it tends to be, because they are dropped loot that are sold player to player.  It's like going to a paint store, look 20 shades of light purple.  At least they do allow you to recolor your armor for free, but if you want to change your hairstyle/color, too bad that will cost you proxy currency (but they do provide a means to acquire it without the need to spend actual cash).

And looking back, the reason the loss of CoH stings me the most is because I could identify with them because I wasn't boxed in with established backstory or limits on my appearance.  Each were an expression of my creativity.  Someone with no skill at drawing or writing could create my vision for a hero.  I wasn't a RPer but each of my characters were an expression of me, an outlet for my artistic creative impulses.  While other MMOs restrict you, limit your choices, CoH pushed those creative restrictions far away.

That's what I missed the most.  I could play an engineer in a suit of power armor that looks like an 8 1/2 foot tall Santa; a 5'4" wolf-teen who was raised in the eye of supermarket tabloids; a wealthy heiress who likes rifles more than shopping or sex tapes; a 19th century retired English army officer whose scientific experiments resulted in him being suspended in time until he was freed in ours; a survivor from the Roswell UFO crash, now freed from Area 51 because of his help in turning back the first Rikti invasion; a woman who discovered that her mom, who abandoned her and her father soon after she was born, is really a mystical creature and if she chooses, she can inherit those powers, but at a terrible cost, virtual immortality.  See none of these look remotely like each other from day one.  You can't identify their class, mostly, by their appearance.  None of them are pigeonholed in one of five preexisting racial histories.

Arrrggghhh!!!  This is why I don't normally join in these threads, it simply reminds me that most MMO teams want you to be part of their story and not our story being part of theirs.

[Cinnder]

There's a number of reasons I miss this game.  The primary one is establishing a unique identity for your character...[snip]... it simply reminds me that most MMO teams want you to be part of their story and not our story being part of theirs.

+ a zillion

[Night-Hawk07]

And looking back, the reason the loss of CoH stings me the most is because I could identify with them because I wasn't boxed in with established backstory or limits on my appearance.  Each were an expression of my creativity.  Someone with no skill at drawing or writing could create my vision for a hero.  I wasn't a RPer but each of my characters were an expression of me, an outlet for my artistic creative impulses.  While other MMOs restrict you, limit your choices, CoH pushed those creative restrictions far away.

Thank you for putting that in writing as that's about how I felt, but didn't know how to say it. My main hero in CoH lives on in CO and DCUO yet the feeling isn't the same at all. I can't "be" that character cause there's no way to express it with the linearity in those two games. Between those two items and that I just simply don't feel heroic, CO and DC will likely never quite match up with City in my eyes.

[Rust]

most MMO teams want you to be part of their story and not our story being part of theirs.

Got it in one. You, sir, have won yourself an Internet.

[Phaetan]

When I roleplay, it's fun... but my character's not very powerful.  They're never in the big plots.  Nobody's really listening to what I want.

Well, I can give you the name a few games where you do start off/quickly become powerful and world-shaping, with your whims affecting everyone around you by default if you wish.

That said, I absolutely understand where you are coming from, and my own nostalgia had me poking at Roll20 last night to see if I can convert it into something viable to make a CoH-based campaign, actually.

[beveri8469]

imo i think we were all spoiled with the options coh had that other mmos dont.
guess that is why it is hard for me to find a replacement mmo. lol

[MaidMercury]

Why are there no other games out there that satisfy all those at once?  How could CoH have been the one and only game ever that did everything the way I wanted it?

yezz....
I suppose we're just expected to open our wallets and be an elf in 'World of Warcraft' , play some 'Star Wars- Revenge of the Ewoks", or be an unshaven grunt in a mindless Red vs. Blue shoot 'em up game......wow, haven't seen those concepts before.

[Golden Ace]

Amen FatherXmas Amen.

Nobody could have said it better.

*Sigh*

[HEATSTROKE]

Both the top posts express my feelings exactly.. I made backgrounds for every characyer.. reasons for the powers they picked or didnt.. they each had different motivations many being attached to the game lore.. CoH was a huge creative outlet for me that is simply gone..

[Lycantropus]

I think FatherXmas hit the nail on the head. There is nothing else like it, and there really wasn't anything like it before, either. I'm sure the OP will smile when I use the phrase, Paragon figured out how to bottle lightning... for a while at least.

Honestly though, it bothers me to this day. It was so bad, I've been picking up my comics since August and only in the past few weeks am I starting to read them and get caught up (don't collect a bunch of titles, but they do add up). I knew I'd want to read them eventually, but even looking at them reminded me of 'my game'. Only in the past few weeks, since December, have I been checking out these boards tentatively because just being here reminds me of what I lost, though at least I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

I have a storage box I put all my boxes (at least one of every box they produced), binders, books (from the Prima guide to the novels), and notes in. It's sitting in my office off to the side. I'll never throw them out, but It'll be a while before I look over them again.

.. and outside of this forum, Co* is the last place I will use the name Lycantropus to go by. That name started with Co* and for me at least, it will end there. He is as much a part of that world, as that world was a part of him, to me. Just wouldn't feel right. In my mind, he's still on those steps in Atlas somewhere, holding his torch to keep the light alive in Paragon.

I've reached the point where I can look back on it fondly, but for a  while it really affected me that much, and still does to some degree. I mean I didn't let it affect my life, work, tabletop group, etc. and even my online group from there is still pretty much together in another game, and I'm very thankful for that, but it had an effect on me more profound than I expected it would. My little online group doesn't talk about it much, it's like scratching at a scab when we do, but we all fairly feel the same, and with each game whatever complaints we have, we'd remind ourselves that "there's no place like home"; which basically means nothing is going to be like what we had, but this is what we got to work with.

So I occasionally load up Icon and reminisce when I don't think I'll get too depressed looking at it... but yeah, just like Lyc standing on those steps 24/7 when I wasn't playing 'til the day it closed... Just remember, none of us are alone, and I still miss it, too.

yezz....
I suppose we're just expected to open our wallets and be an elf in 'World of Warcraft' , play some 'Star Wars- Revenge of the Ewoks", or be an unshaven grunt in a mindless Red vs. Blue shoot 'em up game......wow, haven't seen those concepts before.

Nope, we take as long as we need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and find another game or activity that makes us happy until either any of the plan Z's comes through and doesn't suck, or we find something that makes us even happier to spend our free time on, and never EVER forget or take for granted what good you have in your life, no matter how dark things seem sometimes.

Remember, and I don't know or care who said it first, but it's a great saying: A Hero never quits; A Villain never stops!

Lyc~ the 'yeah that was probably a little melodramatic, but sincere' werewolf

[Thunder Glove]

Nope, we take as long as we need to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and find another game or activity that makes us happy until either any of the plan Z's comes through and doesn't suck, or we find something that makes us even happier to spend our free time on

That's just the point I was trying to make, though.  Nothing else scratches all my itches at once like CoH does.  Everything I've played or done - before or after - only hits one or maybe two of the things I found in CoH.

I can have a great character creator OR I can have a powerful character OR I can play online OR I can play with people I really like etc etc etc.  OR OR OR OR.   Rather than being any sort of replacement, they wind up reminding me of CoH and how much more I enjoyed it than whatever I'm doing right now.

I want AND, not OR.  CoH was that AND.

[DJMoose]

There's a number of reasons I miss this game.  The primary one is establishing a unique identity for your character....
-Snip-
...it simply reminds me that most MMO teams want you to be part of their story and not our story being part of theirs.

+Infinity! My thoughts exactly!

[GuyPerfect]

Why does your player [...] wield dark mystic energy?

Netherworld. That's the one group of powers they *did* outline explicitly.

[FatherXmas]

Netherworld. That's the one group of powers they *did* outline explicitly.

Yes but why, not how.  Why can you do this?  Did you seek it out?  Were you born with it?  of it?  from there?  Can you do this because of an item?  extensive training from your master?

And once we were able to colorize it then the whole neitherworld reasoning could go away.

[FatherXmas]

Please pardon the size of the following pictures.  Putting faces to the characters I listed.  You already know Father Xmas
<---

Electric Wolf Boy


American Princess


Sir Reginald Shank


Roswell Grey


Lady Kitsune

[Tanklet]

imo i think we were all spoiled with the options coh had that other mmos dont.
guess that is why it is hard for me to find a replacement mmo. lol

This. Right here. For me, the first 2 posts all boil down to this.
In CoH I could create a character concept on a whim, and begin RPing a backstory knowing so much of it would be influenced by the participation of others.

I loved the enhancement system. It was simple. No wondering how a level 30 glove had worse stats than your level 15 glove o.o Or worse not being able to figure the system out at all...

And most of all, I LOVED the teaming. I knew I could hop on at any time of the day or night, and find a team. It didn't have to be a dungeon run ... It could just be radios where you stay as long or as short as RL allows. And that's the other thing about TFs in CoH .. while some people might complain they were easy .. I liked that I didn't have to stay plastered to my screen for 4-6 hours on the second Tuesday ... most TFs were a good 2 hours or less, which is all some people can spare at one stretch in their given lives. It also didn't detract from other things going on in the game.

I miss CoH teaming...

[trexnco]

I miss the lore of COH so much I use it in my Mutants and Masterminds tabletop games.

But as others have said, just the fact that you could log in for 10 minutes with a radio mission, longer with a story arch, or just hang out RPing with your buddies.

Was such an amazing game.

[srmalloy]

That's just the point I was trying to make, though.  Nothing else scratches all my itches at once like CoH does.  Everything I've played or done - before or after - only hits one or maybe two of the things I found in CoH.

Or, what's worse, will go along in mediocrity, and then for a brief time something opens up and it feels the way CoH did all the time... and then the moment is gone, falling back to mediocrity, and you realize that it's just picked the scab off the wound that the loss of CoH left...

[Sailboat]

Once in a while I find something in another game that makes me think that, given a number of years of additional development and some luck, this could become almost as good as COH/V was years ago.  Not as good as it had become in the Issue23/24 Renaissance, of course, and not as good as COH/V would have gone on to become given the same number of years of additional development.  And then it really hits home how different COH/V was...that new, "modern" MMOs have little hope of getting anywhere near the sophistication of the one that was "sunsetted," even if we spot them a few years.

I think the casual-friendly nature is one major element other games don't replicate or replace very well.  Hardly ever did anyone advertise for specific stats for some Task Force; the "Holy Trinity" was an example of older game design, not the ironclad rule, and even solo farming could be made lighthearted and undemanding.  It was not really a chore to play in Paragon City.

For me, one huge plus of the game was just the endless panoply of characters traveling past.  I constantly got a kick out of strangers' costumes, bios, concepts, or dialogue.  And the idea of doing missions or Task Forces with any weird combination of ATs, powersets, costumes, and concepts that happened to show up added endless variety.

Where else could a grim anti-heroine find herself chatting amiably at the train station with The Angry Budgerigar?  Or a robotic kitchen appliance join the mythical Great Goblin and a perky teenager wielding a stone hammer to take on the Prussian Prince of Automatons?  Or the Tin Khan, ultimate war machine of an alternate-universe Mongolian empire, stomp through the city with a feminine Necromancer whose powers were spectral illusions, not rotting zombies?

EH.  Now I'm Left with "Tank, Healer, a few DPS," where the limits of creativity are pushed when the Tank is a girl wearing glasses.

[Minotaur]

I'm playing Neverwinter now and it really bothers me that Cryptic (who particularly should have learned from CoH) missed so many tricks that would have made their game a lot more fun. Non scaling instances (ie same number/rank of mobs for 1 or 2 players) are particularly galling.   

[Ironwolf]

All Blaster TF? Check
All Corruptor TF? Check
All any AT TF? Check

That was the fun of the game just trying different things. I was on once and a group said - we want a Fire/Fire blaster for a TF. I said sure I have one of those - it turns out they had 7 Kins. I was tank, damage and hyperactive squirrel on crack. I had my nuke up every group and we blitzed through the TF in an amazing time.

[Lycantropus]

That's just the point I was trying to make, though.  Nothing else scratches all my itches at once like CoH does.  Everything I've played or done - before or after - only hits one or maybe two of the things I found in CoH.

I can have a great character creator OR I can have a powerful character OR I can play online OR I can play with people I really like etc etc etc.  OR OR OR OR.   Rather than being any sort of replacement, they wind up reminding me of CoH and how much more I enjoyed it than whatever I'm doing right now.

I want AND, not OR.  CoH was that AND.

I can't argue with you on that. It's the same story for me. I futz around on DCUO which is little better than a 'super hero' simulator to me once I hit 30 because I won't grind nor PuG the 30+ stuff (was disappointed to realize I can't enter a zone I PAID FOR- Central City- because I don't grind enough to get the gear that will even let me enter it) so I play it solo because the controls are too different/weird for my online group. I do the seasonal stuff and the occasional daily "regular hero" stuff where I stop regular thugs.

I currently play The Secret World with my Co* Online group because it's the only thing we can all agree on so far that doesn't suck 'too bad' (though it has it's good moments and upsides too- even though it's still not 'home') we have had our moments, but I can see a line on the horizon as we enter Transylvania and finish the regular content there. I don't think they're going to be able to keep up with our team demands, re-playabilty aside (and since the story content seems to be SOLO for an MMO) at the rate we consume it, and we don't PvP. Not to mention the fact that when the whole 'usual gang' is there it exceeds almost any other MMO's current team limit restrictions.

Co* was perfect for my group and I. Nothing else meets it, and I'm sorry if my post came off sounding a little Pollyanna, but the truth is there's nothing like it out there yet, and we have to make due with what IS for now. Hopefully one of the plan Z's will be our 'next thing' and it may not. Until that 'thing' comes along, we have to find comfort in what IS, or give in to despair.

At any rate, I cant' give in to my despair; that would be the 'easy way' and my little SG deserves better, and still holds together waiting for that 'thing' while making due with what IS.

If I could do more than that, I would.

Lyc

[Ice Trix]

Both the top posts express my feelings exactly.. I made backgrounds for every characyer.. reasons for the powers they picked or didnt.. they each had different motivations many being attached to the game lore.. CoH was a huge creative outlet for me that is simply gone..

This post expresses well & truly how I feel about the top two posts.

All Blaster TF? Check
All Corruptor TF? Check
All any AT TF? Check

That was the fun of the game just trying different things. I was on once and a group said - we want a Fire/Fire blaster for a TF. I said sure I have one of those - it turns out they had 7 Kins. I was tank, damage and hyperactive squirrel on crack. I had my nuke up every group and we blitzed through the TF in an amazing time.

Every TF was an any TF, 90% of the time.

[johnrobey]

*sings "I want my....  I want my....  I want my C.o.H." (sung to the tune of "Money for Nothing" by Dire Straits.)   

[Dollhouse]

I currently play The Secret World with my Co* Online group because it's the only thing we can all agree on so far that doesn't suck 'too bad' (though it has it's good moments and upsides too- even though it's still not 'home') we have had our moments, but I can see a line on the horizon as we enter Transylvania and finish the regular content there. I don't think they're going to be able to keep up with our team demands, re-playabilty aside (and since the story content seems to be SOLO for an MMO) at the rate we consume it, and we don't PvP. Not to mention the fact that when the whole 'usual gang' is there it exceeds almost any other MMO's current team limit restrictions.

That's one of my few gripes with TSW (also my 'main' these days), too: the five-man team is too small to accommodate "the crew." Or it was until a few of them put the game on hiatus while waiting for more content...but that's another matter.  We regularly had to leave people out for dungeon runs or a Lair visit, and that sucks.  Unfortunately, a whole bunch of content is balanced for a 5-man team (and the more challenging content for a rather specific sort of team: 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 DPS. It's sadly ironic that in a game with the most flexible, wide-open character development system I've ever seen in an MMO, things still gravitate towards the Holy Trinity. I don't think that was really the devs' intent, either; the trinity happens because it works, and only CoH managed to make it completely unnecessary. That was another amazing accomplishment that's largely unrecognized in the MMO community. 

Don't get me wrong: TSW is the best MMO I've ever played on many, many fronts...but the several areas in which it's deficient to CoH really stand out sometimes. No game before or since CoH handled teaming better, from useful social/teaming tools, to the brilliant auto-exemplar system, etc. No MMORPG has had better "kinetic immersion" (that is, the sense of your character moving in a world with real physical forces acting on them...remember the first time you used Super Jump? Yeah...that's what I mean). And so forth...

[General Idiot]

That's one of my few gripes with TSW (also my 'main' these days), too: the five-man team is too small to accommodate "the crew."

Personally, I want to know why five people became the standard in almost all MMOs except the odd one that decides to be different in completely the wrong direction and make it four instead. Seriously, what's so special about that number that almost every game uses it? Is it just because WoW made it five (In turn because Everquest made it five, I think?) or is there some crucial game design issue I'm completely missing that makes five person teams the best possible choice in all situations?

[srmalloy]

Personally, I want to know why five people became the standard in almost all MMOs except the odd one that decides to be different in completely the wrong direction and make it four instead.

...or being schizoid about it like SWTOR, which has an ops group size of up to 24 characters for Warzone Pvp and world bosses, but regular teams are limited to four (including your companions, so a team of two could each have a companion out, but a team of four would be companion-free), and the Group Finder for flashpoints makes you pick one or more roles from Tank/DPS/Heal and builds teams 1/2/1 to those categories.

[Segev]

Personally, I want to know why five people became the standard in almost all MMOs except the odd one that decides to be different in completely the wrong direction and make it four instead. Seriously, what's so special about that number that almost every game uses it? Is it just because WoW made it five (In turn because Everquest made it five, I think?) or is there some crucial game design issue I'm completely missing that makes five person teams the best possible choice in all situations?

Standards develop out of tradition as much as anything else. A fixed size is needed to help make sure missions can be balanced properly, as it's probably next to impossible to create an algorithm that would procedurally modify balance successfully for arbitrary team sizes. So given the need for any maximum at all, many will gravitate towards what they're used to. So if "everyone else" does 5, so will they.

The Phoenix Project has largely discussed 8, and I can't help but think that it is because, in part, it's what we're used to. What, exactly, would make 9 or 10 "too big?" (I assure you, we've had these discussions, but they're long and incredibly finely nuanced, and even still, we're not 100% confirmed on 8. It's just looking very, very likely right now.)