Incline The City of Heroes Thread

[mediocrepoet]

I've been browsing the wiki. It's a shame no one put up a more modern version of this or a single player offline version with support for such a variety of powers.

 

[Zombra]

Dumb question, but did they combine CoH and CoV at some point?

Yeah, Lhynn is right about it all. I think CoV's original release back in the day required you buy another box but it was always one game. Short version, all it is is a different starting area and different (good or evil) mission content. And now there is also 'alternate universe' Praetorian Earth which is another starting area with more morally ambiguous content (though it is still basically rebels vs. the empire).

 

[Zombra]

a single player offline version

No real reason for this unless you simply cannot stand to see other people in city zones. You can easily mute all broadcast chat, and solo content for 1000 hours without ever interacting with anyone if you want.

Of course maybe Homecoming servers will disappear someday, but not in the foreseeable future.

 

[mediocrepoet]

a single player offline version

No real reason for this unless you simply cannot stand to see other people in city zones. You can easily mute all broadcast chat, and solo content for 1000 hours without ever interacting with anyone if you want.

Of course maybe Homecoming servers will disappear someday, but not in the foreseeable future.

I suppose I meant more of the establishment of more of a genre that would also have things like Freedom Force with full chargen, etc. But I take your point.

 

[Zombra]

I suppose I meant more of the establishment of more of a genre that would also have things like Freedom Force with full chargen, etc. But I take your point.

Sure, we all want a good superhero game where you can really make original characters with a wide range of powers. I get why you don't see a lot of them though. Hard to make a game where the character may or may not be able to swing like Spidey, and may or may not be able to read minds, travel through time, punch down skyscrapers, have x-ray vision, etc. ...

 

[mediocrepoet]

The character customization sure has evolved a lot since the original release of CoH.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

I came back to this and made a bunch of characters, but I have been playing my Arachnos Soldier the most. I named him Captain Crabapple.

 

[Sjukob]

So my primary character thugs/forcefield mastermind has finaly hit level 50 and I've even done some iTrials already.

I don't regret selecting this combination of powers, it's probably not the best option for the later game as it has no tools to boost your damage or debuff enemies, which is very noticeable when you fight tougher opponents, however it's a very "workhorse" type of combo. Forcefield massive defense boosts allow your minions to get going really early, even without any IO sets. It often happens that I run with a team full of squishes and even as a mastermind, who has the lowest buff values on the support sets, I can still def softcap everyone on the team. And containment shell is a real party starter allowing for easy grouping of crowds of mobs, it even converts knockback to knockdown effects on any enemies inside the bubble, so everyone gets in, nobody gets out, I colored it bright red so that everyone could easily see where they should dump their AOEs.

I haven't looked at the incarnate stuff before I reached level 50 and I was really surprised to see how broken it was. I thought that fully IOd characters were very, very strong already, but with the incarnate system they get dialed up to 11! I mean, you get damage/debuff procs, nuke type AOEs, overpowered pets, huge passive bonuses on top of everything that your power sets and IO sets give you, it's almost like modding some a game to give yourself various cheat abilities. It's very fun though.

Overall, I stand by my previous statement that the game gets significantly better as you progress, while the early levels are pretty crap and boring. The prime reason why I hold this opinion is that, you don't really get to enjoy the character building aspects as all of your options are very limited at the lower levels, it's also the part where accuracy, defense/resistance, endurance and lack of key abilities issues are especially pronounced and it's just not fun when there's nothing you can do about it and just have to suck it up, inspirations can only get you so far. And due to how the game works, where you can freely revisit lower level content and still get rewards that are relevant in the end game there's just really no point in staying at lower levels, once you reach 50 the entire game is open to you, the higher level you are, the more options become available to you, and it becomes easier and more fun to gear up as there's more variety, it's becomes more rewarding too, for example, incarnate shards and very rare IO recipes begin to drop from enemies once you reach level 50, not to mention the amount of influence you receive at the cap is significantly higher than at any other point. Even various cool items, like temporary powers or consumables that allow you to summon various allies (vanguard mechs are so cool!) are more prevalent in later game. It feels like a famine followed by a feast.

This game has been very enjoyable so far and I don't regret choosing Rebirth as the server for playing it. From my experience, large communities tend to eventually turn into zoos, which forces you to filter people out and it just gets tiresome after a while, but on Rebirth I've never had to worry about it, and every interaction I've had with people has been entirely positive. I don't know why this game isn't more popular in general, as I've said before, the building and combat aspects are pretty well done, it's very fun coming out with various concepts for your characters and then see how they perform in various scenarios both solo and in groups, it's almost like playing Underrail, but online.

Also, Rebirth has announced new update, although aside from the approximate release date, no specifics have been given.

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

So my primary character thugs/forcefield mastermind has finaly hit level 50 and I've even done some iTrials already.

I don't regret selecting this combination of powers, it's probably not the best option for the later game as it has no tools to boost your damage or debuff enemies, which is very noticeable when you fight tougher opponents, however it's a very "workhorse" type of combo. Forcefield massive defense boosts allow your minions to get going really early, even without any IO sets. It often happens that I run with a team full of squishes and even as a mastermind, who has the lowest buff values on the support sets, I can still def softcap everyone on the team. And containment shell is a real party starter allowing for easy grouping of crowds of mobs, it even converts knockback to knockdown effects on any enemies inside the bubble, so everyone gets in, nobody gets out, I colored it bright red so that everyone could easily see where they should dump their AOEs.

I haven't looked at the incarnate stuff before I reached level 50 and I was really surprised to see how broken it was. I thought that fully IOd characters were very, very strong already, but with the incarnate system they get dialed up to 11! I mean, you get damage/debuff procs, nuke type AOEs, overpowered pets, huge passive bonuses on top of everything that your power sets and IO sets give you, it's almost like modding some a game to give yourself various cheat abilities. It's very fun though.

Overall, I stand by my previous statement that the game gets significantly better as you progress, while the early levels are pretty crap and boring. The prime reason why I hold this opinion is that, you don't really get to enjoy the character building aspects as all of your options are very limited at the lower levels, it's also the part where accuracy, defense/resistance, endurance and lack of key abilities issues are especially pronounced and it's just not fun when there's nothing you can do about it and just have to suck it up, inspirations can only get you so far. And due to how the game works, where you can freely revisit lower level content and still get rewards that are relevant in the end game there's just really no point in staying at lower levels, once you reach 50 the entire game is open to you, the higher level you are, the more options become available to you, and it becomes easier and more fun to gear up as there's more variety, it's becomes more rewarding too, for example, incarnate shards and very rare IO recipes begin to drop from enemies once you reach level 50, not to mention the amount of influence you receive at the cap is significantly higher than at any other point. Even various cool items, like temporary powers or consumables that allow you to summon various allies (vanguard mechs are so cool!) are more prevalent in later game. It feels like a famine followed by a feast.

This game has been very enjoyable so far and I don't regret choosing Rebirth as the server for playing it. From my experience, large communities tend to eventually turn into zoos, which forces you to filter people out and it just gets tiresome after a while, but on Rebirth I've never had to worry about it, and every interaction I've had with people has been entirely positive. I don't know why this game isn't more popular in general, as I've said before, the building and combat aspects are pretty well done, it's very fun coming out with various concepts for your characters and then see how they perform in various scenarios both solo and in groups, it's almost like playing Underrail, but online.

Also, Rebirth has announced new update, although aside from the approximate release date, no specifics have been given.

Part of me wants to make a demon mastermind and name it something weird or dumb.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Part of me wants to make a demon mastermind and name it something weird or dumb.

Something like I eat frozen vegetables or dumber?

 

[I eat frozen vegetables]

Part of me wants to make a demon mastermind and name it something weird or dumb.

Something like I eat frozen vegetables or dumber?

Yes.

 

[Sjukob]

The prime reason why I hold this opinion is that, you don't really get to enjoy the character building aspects as all of your options are very limited at the lower levels, it's also the part where accuracy, defense/resistance, endurance and lack of key abilities issues are especially pronounced and it's just not fun when there's nothing you can do about it and just have to suck it up, inspirations can only get you so far.

You know, the one AT I see disproportionately more often than the other ones is scrapper and I believe it's for this exact reason, it's one the few ATs that actually start out strong and it's the easiest (or one of) one to play. I was doing some missions on my fortunata, who's in her mid twenties, and quickly discovered that even fighting minions can turn out to be fatal. Consider this, with all your defensive powers available and some generic IO slotting you are sitting at about 25% of defense to all positionals, slag golem - a regular critter at that stage reduces your defense by 8% with his regular attack, you have no DDR and it stacks, at 0/0 difficulty they, like all the other minions, usually come in the packs of 3, so if they land 3 swipes on you, you end up stripped of all of your defenses and scaling resists do jack shit at that stage. I don't know how fortunata fares later on, but at that stage she doesn't deal enough damage to kill enemies quickly, so you have to spend some time in combat and each time you get hit your defenses go down, which makes you even more likely to get hit with the following attacks. In general, you may end up losing anywhere between 40% to 70% of your health, at times even having to flee, just for fighting minions on 0/1 difficulty on a class that has no innate healing and is not a glass cannon. I realised that this is more or less similar scenario for any AT that is not either scrapper, brute, tanker or mastermind and it's why they are so popular, aside from the tanker who's damage is on the lower end, and mastermind because people don't like summoner type classes or something.

Sometimes, when I team up with people playing various support ATs, like corruptors, defenders, controllers etc I ask them how did they level up their character. A good number of them say that they fire farmed at least to a certain point, usually to somewhere between 30 - 40 level range, I can understand why. You can't team up 100% of time and probably you don't want to, sometimes you just want to do something alone or may be you play off peak hours on a less popular server (like me) and just can't get the team running, but then you quickly discover that if try to solo the game turns into a pain in the ass for a measly reward, as I've said in my previous post, at level 50 you receive disproportionately more rewards for playing than at any other level, so fighting minions to death for whatever scraps you get at that level just feels insulting. I imagine that a good number of people just make a fire farmer, power level their characters to higher levels, may be even all the way to level 50 and then use funds from their main character to gear up their alts, and I don't blame them for that. Such progression curve for many ATs is probably my biggest issue with the game so far.

 

[Sjukob]

It's everywhere these days, isn't it?
https://forum.cityofheroesrebirth.com/index.php/topic,3830.0.html

Hey everyone! I'm one of the devs who worked on this event.
... I've been out as a transgender woman for about two years now

 

[Ryzer]

It's everywhere these days, isn't it?
https://forum.cityofheroesrebirth.com/index.php/topic,3830.0.html

Hey everyone! I'm one of the devs who worked on this event.
... I've been out as a transgender woman for about two years now

Stunning and brave, surely this is an important news related to the game right?

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

This game has been very enjoyable so far and I don't regret choosing Rebirth as the server for playing it. From my experience, large communities tend to eventually turn into zoos, which forces you to filter people out and it just gets tiresome after a while, but on Rebirth I've never had to worry about it, and every interaction I've had with people has been entirely positive. I don't know why this game isn't more popular in general, as I've said before, the building and combat aspects are pretty well done, it's very fun coming out with various concepts for your characters and then see how they perform in various scenarios both solo and in groups, it's almost like playing Underrail, but online.

I agree with everything you are saying. Homecoming is a Zoo. It's actually very unstable and badly run too. They're still working off of the code that was modified badly by the cancerous argentinian who stole the game and hid it for a decade. And burning bridges with the other servers by refusing to give that code has hurt them in the end because their code is hard to understand and add to. The open source Oroborous devs worked with the less new but more stable code and understand it very well. Which has paid dividends for non Homecoming aligned servers. Both Thunderspy and Rebirth have new content coming fairly regularly all things considered. And it's easy to add more. There's even documentation on how to set up and run your own private server which you can mod to your liking. I doubt they'll get more population because this is already an old and niche game. But the road to longevity is there. At worst, download the server files and make your own when all these other servers all shut down. City of Heroes will never go away.

It is extremely disappointing that NCSoft chose to endorse Homecoming but I take solace in the fact that Homecoming, it's players, and NCSoft very much deserve each other. If you know the history of how both Homecoming and NCSoft are run, you know this situation will end badly for both parties.

 

[NwNgger]

Dumb question, but did they combine CoH and CoV at some point?

Yeah, Lhynn is right about it all. I think CoV's original release back in the day required you buy another box but it was always one game. Short version, all it is is a different starting area and different (good or evil) mission content. And now there is also 'alternate universe' Praetorian Earth which is another starting area with more morally ambiguous content (though it is still basically rebels vs. the empire).

It's really easy to explain the situation,

First off, you had City of Heroes. released in 2004. You could play as a Superhero in Paragon City and surrounding areas. It was a complete MMO. You paid your box price and sub. A year later in 2005 you had City of Villains. Billed as a standalone expansion. It had the Rogue Isles and surroundings, different areas and quests, but the gameplay was the same. And you could engage in PvP with Heroes even if you didn't own CoH. You could buy either City of Heroes or Villains. And you would only have access to content from the one you bought. If you bought both, you only paid one sub for the combined game. And could pick to be Hero or Villain at character generation seamlessly. It was basically one game sawed off and sold as two halves. After a while we had the Going Rogue expansion pack. Which was not stand alone at all. And added 30 levels of content where you could create a character from the mirror universe of Praetoria. After 30 levels and a specific quest, you can choose to transition to being a regular Hero or Villain and your progression from that point was identical to your chosen alignment from the base game. The expansion also added a basic Bioware style morality system where by a Hero could transition to being a "Rogue" then villain and vice versa through moral choices. If memory serves at that point or sometime before CoH and CoV were merged into one box price. So you always got both games for one price. Then the game went free to play which changed up some things and added cosmetic MTX that no one ever bought. Then the game died. Then all the gay ops from people who hid the game for 8 years and gaslit everyone into thinking the game was dead and never coming back. Now we have different servers. All of which offer the complete game and all expansions for free.

It is extremely disappointing that NCSoft chose to endorse Homecoming but I take solace in the fact that Homecoming, it's players, and NCSoft very much deserve each other. If you know the history of how both Homecoming and NCSoft are run, you know this situation will end badly for both parties.

Very true. Regardless of what happens, the code is out there. I have it secured on a hard drive and several flash drive back ups. I am not losing this game again.

 

[Sjukob]

Anyway, I've been playing rad/fire brute lately and I realised that brutes have some considerable downsides, more so than I originally thought. And it's not about rad/fire brute specifically, but the things I about them in general.

1) Scaling. Due to lower base values on both their damage and defense/res brutes have harder time building towards either good defense/res or good offense. The damage enhancements don't benefit brutes as much as other ATs, and unlike tanks they have tough time reaching defense/res caps, because of their lower scaling.
The tanks can cap their defense/res easily and then focus on other things, like damage or debuff protection, and damage focused ATs due to their high damage scaling benefit greatly from various damage enhancements, but, because of worse scaling, brutes can neither build huge defense/res or good damage without making sacrifices. For me it was an eye opener to see just how much this base scaling affects things in the long run and how much easier it is for tanks to cap their defense/res. If an armor set offers some protection against certain damage type, a tank can very likely cap it, even if the armor set does not specialise in protection against the said damage type, for a brute it's much harder or outright impossible to do so without sacrificing a lot of damage in the process.
It didn't hit me until I started building incarnates and seeing how little they add in terms of numbers for brutes. Also, brute's ATOs are very underwhelming in comparison to other classes ATOs.

2) Fury building. So, you might think that brute's lower damage scaling might be compensated for by the AT's unique mechanic - fury, but in reality it's not so simple.
See, fury has some severe limitations, which might not be obvious initially. Fury builds off attacking and being attacked, slower in the former scenario, much faster in the later, in order to build it quickly you have to be attacked by the mobs, because smacking the dummies around just doesn't bring in the same benefits. Immediately the conflict arises between the damage you deal and the various CC and debuffs you or your allies may apply. Mobs are CCed? Now they can't attack you - less fury for you. Mobs are slowed? Now they don't attack you as fast - less fury for you. Mobs are targeting somebody else - you are not getting hit, less fury for you. And as I've said earlier, brute isn't the toughest AT, so in some scenarios you might even want to avoid getting targeted at all, to, well, prevent yourself from dying, and this might get you thinking: "Why not bring an actual damage dealing AT, who can unload his damage immediately without all of this build up nonsense or an actual tank, who is much better at protecting the said damage dealing ATs, who hit much harder than any hybrid ATs anyway?", which brings me to the following point.

3) Playing in teams. I feel like all of the said issues peak when you play in teams. You've got a melee class that is squishier than a tank, so he can't take on the role of MT and in case things start taking a plunge he will likely fold just like the other squishier ATs. It takes time for him to build his damage up and in teams, which usually kill crowds pretty quickly or lock down mobs with various CC, be it either slows or hard disables, a lot of ATs in the game have at least some CC abilities which get spammed generously during team play, it's considerably harder for brute to build up his fury. Not to mention that there's likely an actual tank running around, herding in the crowds and taunting everything in sight, making it even less likely for mobs to target you and help you build your fury, and usually you don't want to taunt off the main tank to avoid chaos. Not to mention, that you still lose fury while you move from spawn to spawn, so if you are not building enough fury during the fights, you are likely to lose all of it during movement, meaning you have start from scratch in the next fight. And in case you are doing some actual hard content, it's very unlikely that you are going to just jump into the crowds, unless you like eating dirt, because, again, you are not as tough as the actual tank.

Still, I don't regret making my rad/fire brute, I don't dislike the character despite all of the downsides I've mentioned and she helps me greatly with farming various stuff. But generally speaking, I feel like in the vast majority of scenarios you will be much better off making an actual tank or a damage dealing AT, like a scrapper or a stalker. Yes, a tank might deal lower damage, but he's so much tougher that you are unlikely to find yourself worrying about your survivability, and scrappers and stalkers can just kill things before they even have a chance to respond properly, and none of the mentioned ATs have to concern themselves about racking up their damage over time. And in teams specialist ATs are always better, if you play melee you either want to tank the bosses and herd the crowds or just deal big damage. It doesn't matter if your damage is lower as long as the other actual damage dealing ATs, that hit much harder than any hybrid character, are safe enough to focus on doing their thing.

The game is easy enough for everything I wrote to be largely irrelevant, but I sensed the conceptual flaw and it was enough for me to write this post. It's likely that the brutes would've had a hard time if the game was more difficult and required more optimization.

 

[Poseidon00]

I have many high level characters on the Hero side, but my favorite character has to be my mind control/martial assault Dominator on the villain side. This feels like playing the game on hard mode, for a number of reasons

- relying on confusion to weaken, but not kill, since when your confused enemy gets the kill you receive no XP

- using a weak character class with a middling secondary power set to engage in melee

- I almost always solo

some missions have proven to be rather challenging, with me having to pace myself and select my encounters carefully. Once I get Mass Confusion I expect this build to be quite a bit of fun.