New efforts!

[MM3squints]

R.I.P.  Muhammad Ali 

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!"

Ali took out Superman, true story

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-GaGULpI-kZA%2FUa7R6ho6kFI%2FAAAAAAAAClw%2F8RnkFo9g5D0%2Fs1600%2Fali2-supesali.jpg

[Canine]

....But...but no one liked Penny!  She was everyones most noteworthy mary sue back in the day!

I must have been odd, then.  The only characters that really annoyed me were the villain patrons.  Paranoid, scheming, semi-competent useless lumps, the lot of them.

When even after several real world *years* of playing my Bots/Traps/Scorpion MM I was referring to BS as the paranoid moron, then something must have stuck in my craw.

Fusionette, Penny Yin and all the other usual bugbears never really bothered me, they had a role in the stories and they played it.  The Patrons however were built up to be these supreme powerhouses of Arachnos enforcement and might, bearers and implementers of Recluse's will.

And then you played through the patron arcs...

And they were all petty little children.

Feh.

[darkgob]

I must have been odd, then.  The only characters that really annoyed me were the villain patrons.  Paranoid, scheming, semi-competent useless lumps, the lot of them.

When even after several real world *years* of playing my Bots/Traps/Scorpion MM I was referring to BS as the paranoid moron, then something must have stuck in my craw.

Fusionette, Penny Yin and all the other usual bugbears never really bothered me, they had a role in the stories and they played it.  The Patrons however were built up to be these supreme powerhouses of Arachnos enforcement and might, bearers and implementers of Recluse's will.

And then you played through the patron arcs...

And they were all petty little children.

Feh.

Almost as if to make a point. ;)

[Canine]

Almost as if to make a point. ;)

And you still had to nod like a good little puppy when they wanted you to do something.

No matter how powerful or accomplished you got, no matter how many of their dark little secrets you held for future <ahem> study, they still bossed you round like they were a 4 year old, and you were their 3 year old sibling.

But like I said, none of the other traditional bugbear characters bothered me, but the writing on the patrons and Arachnos in general just made me want to get the hell away from CoV.

[Arcana]

I must have been odd, then.  The only characters that really annoyed me were the villain patrons.  Paranoid, scheming, semi-competent useless lumps, the lot of them.

When even after several real world *years* of playing my Bots/Traps/Scorpion MM I was referring to BS as the paranoid moron, then something must have stuck in my craw.

Fusionette, Penny Yin and all the other usual bugbears never really bothered me, they had a role in the stories and they played it.  The Patrons however were built up to be these supreme powerhouses of Arachnos enforcement and might, bearers and implementers of Recluse's will.

And then you played through the patron arcs...

And they were all petty little children.

Feh.

Far be it from me to defend the red side writing, but what you describe sounds like you played Black Scorpion's arc and extrapolated the others.  You could kind of make the case that BS fits that description, but less so Captain Mako.  Scirocco is more emo than petty in his patron stories.  And Ghost Widow doesn't fit that description at all.

[Tahquitz]

I must have been odd, then.  The only characters that really annoyed me were the villain patrons.  Paranoid, scheming, semi-competent useless lumps, the lot of them.

When even after several real world *years* of playing my Bots/Traps/Scorpion MM I was referring to BS as the paranoid moron, then something must have stuck in my craw.

Fusionette, Penny Yin and all the other usual bugbears never really bothered me, they had a role in the stories and they played it.  The Patrons however were built up to be these supreme powerhouses of Arachnos enforcement and might, bearers and implementers of Recluse's will.

And then you played through the patron arcs...

And they were all petty little children.

Feh.

Same here... the only character that bugged me was Fusionette... she was in trouble more often that Heather Diazzo from the radio missions.

[Canine]

Far be it from me to defend the red side writing, but what you describe sounds like you played Black Scorpion's arc and extrapolated the others.  You could kind of make the case that BS fits that description, but less so Captain Mako.  Scirocco is more emo than petty in his patron stories.  And Ghost Widow doesn't fit that description at all.

Played 'em all.  Had enough alts that I tried all of the patrons.

However, I freely admit that my ire was especially reserved for that paranoid twonk, and it may have soured my viewpoint on the rest of them.

None of the patron arcs interested me enough that I had anything other than a single alt with that patron...

From my (poor) memory, Scirocco wasn't smart enough to be a criminal mastermind, Ghost Widow was too limited by her condition to be any great shakes, Scirocco was, as you say, Emo and wrapped up in his own problems, and Black Scorpion...  Paranoid moron.

None of which did anything for any of my alts' motivation to work for them.  Not with them, because you were always working *for* them.

Other than the four that went patron, the rest of my villain alts went self employed, and used the 40+ power slots to take more from Primary, Secondary, Travel or Pool powersets.

I think temperamentally however, I was just a Blueside player.

Hell, my nominal CoH 'badge toon' never left Blueside, so missed out on all sorts of badgery things.  <shrug>  Different strokes for different folks.

[Vee]

They never struck me as any more petty and dysfunctional than Darkseid's lieutenants.

[LaughingAlex]

From a gameplay perspective, every "escort" missions important person though had the intelligence of a blind and deaf dog in a hurry to run around like a maniac and ram his head into everything.

From being unable to navigate up a simple flight of stairs, bumbling into walls and charging headfirst into mobs more than a match for them.  Which was why many people felt Fusionette was a moron.  But Pennys story was "most powerful psychic" and was unchanging and incorruptable.  She was far over-idealized to a lot of people i met to a point she was kind of obnoxious.

[Sinistar]

From a gameplay perspective, every "escort" missions important person though had the intelligence of a blind and deaf dog in a hurry to run around like a maniac and ram his head into everything.

From being unable to navigate up a simple flight of stairs, bumbling into walls and charging headfirst into mobs more than a match for them.  Which was why many people felt Fusionette was a moron.  But Pennys story was "most powerful psychic" and was unchanging and incorruptable.  She was far over-idealized to a lot of people i met to a point she was kind of obnoxious.

I always let Penny in mission 1 of the RIKTI TF be defeated and she had to 'port out.  Same with the 2 in mission 3, it speeded things up a bit. :)

[Tahquitz]

From a gameplay perspective, every "escort" missions important person though had the intelligence of a blind and deaf dog in a hurry to run around like a maniac and ram his head into everything.

From being unable to navigate up a simple flight of stairs, bumbling into walls and charging headfirst into mobs more than a match for them.  Which was why many people felt Fusionette was a moron.

I hear that.  I'd fly from the ground level to the door on the mission to defeat Capt. Castillo to get into the building (the one where Doc. Delilah is supposed to support me as I get to the upper entrance).  Then I'd watch Doc Delilah's AI fail as she'd climb up an invisible ramp and walk right into the ceiling of the office.  I'd be on my own at that point.  I guess Doc Delilah's clipping counts how many doors she went through, and skipping the outside elevator screwed her up.

I'd just let Fusionette die when I could and finish the mission without her when possible.

[kiario]

Looking in the local newspaper on our national day i am reminded of City of Heroes by this kids party add!


https://i159.photobucket.com/albums/t127/gronbek/image.jpg1_zpstnyrmku8.jpg

[Vee]

Yeah, I've not seen a newspaper since I was getting Council mishes from them either.

[Azrael]

Doc Delilah.  Nice to have a 'tank' to watch your back.  Especially with Skyraiders.  Irritating mob types who were very satisfying to take down.  Great to have her 'rucking' the raiders with her SS powers.  Though I always seemed to lose Delilah above a certain level on the way to Captain 'Ego' Castillo?  Where she went I don't know...

The New Faultline.  Really enjoyed the new content of that zone.  A labyrinth of content.  It was a good 'late teen+' to early 20s leveller.  (I remember testing my non-stamina ice-ice blaster build there...)

Fusionette was scalded on more than one occasion for sneaking out into the night to play superhero.  A 'bit young' to be doing that sort of thing.  And yes, an all round loose canon and nutter on 'given' map.  A one woman team wipe.  But she was an en blaster so it was to be expected... ;)

Faultline (New) had a lot more depth to its zone.  With some great mission arcs.  Agent 21 (or whatever his name was...)  Freakshow mobs.  Sneaking behind enemy lines with the arachnos.  Paragon had done a 'good job' on that one.  One of their studio highlights with great zone design and a krusty Kreme do-nut ident.  Some fine NPCs.  The guy with the 'stone' powers whose name eludes me (one of the contacts.)  (The other notable Paragon effort being their excellent ITF which showed what could be done with the CoH engine.)

The 'Penni' stuff I was less enamoured with. 

As for Scirocco.  He was just misunderstood...so I hear...

Azrael.

[Kaos Arcanna]

Doc Delilah.  Nice to have a 'tank' to watch your back.  Especially with Skyraiders.  Irritating mob types who were very satisfying to take down.  Great to have her 'rucking' the raiders with her SS powers.  Though I always seemed to lose Delilah above a certain level on the way to Captain 'Ego' Castillo?  Where she went I don't know...

The New Faultline.  Really enjoyed the new content of that zone.  A labyrinth of content.  It was a good 'late teen+' to early 20s leveller.  (I remember testing my non-stamina ice-ice blaster build there...)

Fusionette was scalded on more than one occasion for sneaking out into the night to play superhero.  A 'bit young' to be doing that sort of thing.  And yes, an all round loose canon and nutter on 'given' map.  A one woman team wipe.  But she was an en blaster so it was to be expected... ;)

Faultline (New) had a lot more depth to its zone.  With some great mission arcs.  Agent 21 (or whatever his name was...)  Freakshow mobs.  Sneaking behind enemy lines with the arachnos.  Paragon had done a 'good job' on that one.  One of their studio highlights with great zone design and a krusty Kreme do-nut ident.  Some fine NPCs.  The guy with the 'stone' powers whose name eludes me (one of the contacts.)  (The other notable Paragon effort being their excellent ITF which showed what could be done with the CoH engine.)

The 'Penni' stuff I was less enamoured with. 

As for Scirocco.  He was just misunderstood...so I hear...

Azrael.

I found that Doc would disappear if you took her through the elevator, so I would always circle around back and climb up to the door that led inside the mission. It took some finagling, but if you did it that way she would make it inside the mission with you.

[Thunder Glove]

Scirocco was going to actually become a hero had the game continued (opening up Patron Pools for Bluesiders in the process).

[pinballdave]

Pity the poor mastermind that tried to solo red-side content CoV when it was released. Door missions were the worst with ambushes at the door. No zoning pets. No AoE upgrade and equip, and the recharge time to singly equip and upgrade your pets was horrendous. Yet, I loved my mad scientist: Bots/poison.

[Dev7on]

Scirocco was going to actually become a hero had the game continued (opening up Patron Pools for Bluesiders in the process).

Here's evidence to back it up. Scirocco wasn't really an evil person. If you look him up on Paragon Wiki and read his background it tells that he was just "misunderstood."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9dVlNA1SMM

[Canine]

Pity the poor mastermind that tried to solo red-side content CoV when it was released. Door missions were the worst with ambushes at the door. No zoning pets. No AoE upgrade and equip, and the recharge time to singly equip and upgrade your pets was horrendous. Yet, I loved my mad scientist: Bots/poison.

I remember those days, it was more painful on my non-stamina Bots/Traps, but at least I had caltrops and other toys to block off the entrance lobby while I got the idiot bots up and running.

However, there was worse than that in Issue 7.  There was a bug introduced with knockback and destroyable mission objectives, where the first KB hit tweaked their position or state somehow that meant the objective was now invulnerable to further damage.  Also, 'stop this NPC for running away' objectives being hit with KB instafailed the mission, IIRC (although that may have been a different bug).

So, this meant that the only way to reasonable complete missions with destroyable objectives was to pull all nearby mobs well clear of the glowy, pulverise them there, dismiss your pets, resummon them and apply only the upgrades that didn't include any KB attacks, and then stand off at range dragging any pets that wanted to punch the generator (or whatever it was) back to a sensible distance.

It felt like I was hitting one of those missions every night in the 40-50 run, but I can't have been.

And yet, I kept slogging onward with my MM toward 50, resetting missions when a swarm missile went astray, or some other random bit of KB knackered the mission...  I must have been insane.

[Ultimate15]

I'm missing it something fierce today. I mean, I'm always 'missing' it - but it hits me in waves like this sometimes.

I went to Philly Comic Con this weekend. I think that's what did me in.  :'(