CoH to be shut down

[ezrast]

Alternately, the endgame was purpling out your character and seeing how broken you could make yourself. Another regret: I never got around to soloing the ITF on my stalker.

CoH certainly had plenty of shortcomings, but they're easy to forget because they're mostly not particularly unique. Repetitive and clunky combat, a lot of grind around the mid levels, a lacking endgame, shittastically balanced PvP - if I ask ten people to name a game with those features, I can easily get ten different responses. But ask for a game with fantastic costume creation from level 1, hundreds of ways to build your character, natural incentives and few barriers for playing with other people, user-made content, scaling difficulty, no real trinity, little railroading, enemies that you actually grow to care about, and a friendly community to top it all off, and there's really only one option.

It's not Champions Online.

[Lantyssa]

I also think there's some selective rose-tinting going on in this thread. Yes, CoH sounds like it did lots of things very well, and that's great and it would be good if some of those things were translated to the genre at large. However I've also heard a lot of complaints about various aspects of CoX over the years and forgetting the bad things does nothing to further understanding of why it's no longer as profitable as it needs to be to stay alive.

It's not rose-tinting so much as the game offered a package that cannot be easily found elsewhere.

For the time-frame it launched, it also had a good population.  Time has caused it to be eclipsed by newer, flashier games in more popular genres, and the engine was starting to show its age.  It could have continued on like UO with a small and dedicated population indefiniately, but NCSoft tends to kill anything not pulling in big numbers.

[Numtini]

I think the big flaws were grind, lack of diversity in random dungeons, and a lack of an end game.

[Yoru]

COH was an early favorite of mine, and I played it extensively for a few months with a group of dudes in university. We still fondly recall our old characters, stomping around through Steel Canyon and Perez Park in the early days when simply getting your main travel power was cause for excitement.

The character creator was a huge part of its charm; I think it properly invested you in your character from the start, as opposed to starting off as the same generic stick-wielding schlub who washes up naked on the beach in every other MMO out there. Coming up with silly new superheroes and power combinations was a favorite pastime; I'm still partial to my alts, The Red Book and Supply Side.

(Nerdy admission: All three of my characters had interweaving backstories, written out in the little backstory window you're given for each character. I fondly remember receiving appreciative /tells about my backstories. Long live The Third Shift and his sidekicks, Doctor Hobopolis and Skull Man.)

The early game was definitely the most fun, I think. Properly slotted, a group of 3-4 guys could easily take on a dozen mobs. The late game is where early COH really suffered, with long grind times, long travel times, and enemies that literally sucked the fun out of you (I'm thinking of those level 40+ dudes with the endurance-sapping guns). Most of us dropped out in the 30s, with only two of us making it to 40 and beyond.

The guy who made it past 40 ended up going to work for Paragon and was working on until NCSoft gave the whole studio the axe.

[PalmTrees]

Any grindiness, at least in terms of leveling speed, was long gone. They had to add a "turn off xp" option to accommodate people who were outleveling story arcs. I think their greatest flaw was the repetitveness of the mission layouts and tilesets. After a few years I'd take a step or into the map and know exactly where everything was. I quit for a few months after having three missions with the same lab tileset with the same layout in a row. Only difference was what enemy group was spawing in the exact same spawn points.  Running up against the raiding endgame of EQ2 and those almost flying carpets brought me back though. Poor Nemesis never got his own steampunk labs.

[Numtini]

The character creator was a huge part of its charm; I think it properly invested you in your character from the start, as opposed to starting off as the same generic stick-wielding schlub who washes up naked on the beach in every other MMO out there. Coming up with silly new superheroes and power combinations was a favorite pastime; I'm still partial to my alts, The Red Book and Supply Side.

Not just the character creator, but also the selection of not just a class, then a primary and secondary power within that class, plus the power origins of tech, magic, etc. It really left you with the feeling you were unique in meaningful ways.

[Yoru]

I think their greatest flaw was the repetitveness of the mission layouts and tilesets. After a few years I'd take a step or into the map and know exactly where everything was.

I do remember grinding through the 20s/30s and repeatedly thinking "oh fuck, caves again?!"

That tileset was the worst, as it only produced a maze of twisty passages, all alike, such that no minimap could help you find the one last area you hadn't hit to trigger mission completion.

[koro]

The grind early in the game's life was definitely the worst part about it and was what stunted its growth. The lack of endgame could probably have been excused for a very long time with how much fun it could be to make new unique characters over and over. CoH gave me the alt-itis I have today.

Diversity in mission environments has only gotten better, and I imagine if the Emmert Grind hadn't been around, the extra revenue from more players would've led to more mission tilesets in a timelier fashion.

[Trippy]

I think their greatest flaw was the repetitveness of the mission layouts and tilesets. After a few years I'd take a step or into the map and know exactly where everything was.

I do remember grinding through the 20s/30s and repeatedly thinking "oh fuck, caves again?!"

That tileset was the worst, as it only produced a maze of twisty passages, all alike, such that no minimap could help you find the one last area you hadn't hit to trigger mission completion.

The normal cave tilesets were relatively small, though (with a couple of exceptions in some special missions), and it was only the "cake" room (with the multiple layers*) that was really a pain. Oranbega was much much worse than the cave tilesets.

* True story, for the longest time I didn't realize there were "ramps" you could use to move up and down the levels. I would jump on the beams to move up

[proudft]

I played a fair bit a few weeks ago for the first time in about two years (and did a one-month VIP sub, sorry, I killed the game) and didn't see a blue cave until about level 25.  I was beginning to wonder if they had been removed at some point.  But no, they were still (rarely) there for your nostalgia/annoyance.  The one I got didn't have the goofy three-level room, though.  But flight at level 4 or whatever makes that much less of an issue.

That reminds me that most of the issues had been really been ironed out over the years.  Movement powers at level 4 now instead of 14 (which later became 6?), the leveling speed seems to have been increased and there was also the DFB option to really zip up to 20 in a jiffy if you wished, and downtime was pretty gone whenever they had given everyone fitness.

Now I'm re-sad.   

[ghost]

CoX has the distinction of being the first MMO that I ever played a character to max level on.

And the only MMO where character creation was so cool that I took screenshots.  Two from 2004 of my blapper, Mintergy.


And after I got my aura:


Copying it from the laptop (where I kept it for boring business trips) to the PC for some nostalgia while it lasts.

Vanilla Ice was an option?  

This game never really did it for me, once you got past the character creator.  But damn that was a cool feature when it came out.  I spent hours just getting the right character only to find the play fairly drab.  I still like Champions Online because of the character creation mechanisms. 

[koro]

I actually made a Ninjas Mastermind named Go Ninja Go Ninja Go.

All his costumes were Vanilla Ice outfits from over the years. Sadly I have no screenshots that I know of.

[JWIV]

I'm going to miss this terribly - I had a kinetics/dark defender named Quarbis and it's one of the few games where I had a full backstory and changed his costume over time to reflect story changes.

http://www.creyindustries.com/viewhero.php?id=5341


He was a demon bound into human form by the leader of a friendly corp (Lord Arkady), and after Arkady quit playing, I revamped his costume into something a bit more demonic (the bounds weakening). 

God did I love Kinetics - especially in the early days when I'd nearly crash people's systems after our tanker would herd a billion things together and I'd fulcrum shift it.

[shiznitz]

After CoH, there is really no excuse to not having flying in any 3D MMOG.  Super Leap was more fun but I can see how that might be harder to adopt lore-wise.

[Trippy]

Kinetics - especially in the early days when I'd nearly crash people's systems after our tanker would herd a billion things together and I'd fulcrum shift it.

If the FS icons didn't span the width of your screen the Tanker wasn't doing it right

[Trippy]

After CoH, there is really no excuse to not having flying in any 3D MMOG.

And capes, gotta have the capes too.

[Stormwaltz]

Super Leap was more fun but I can see how that might be harder to adopt lore-wise.

Super Leap was the best travel power ever implemented in an MMORPG. Fight mobs or do missions? Screw you, I'm too busy jumping from skyscraper to skyscraper and giggling.

[Ingmar]

After CoH, there is really no excuse to not having flying in any 3D MMOG. 

Genre/lore reasons come to mind.

[Rendakor]

TSW might have an excuse but most don't. Dragons, flying carpets, and/or jetpacks fit easily into almost any MMO out there. I imagine it's more along the lines of wanting to control the flow of players better and the coding issues WoW had prior to the Cata world revamp.

[Ingmar]

TSW might have an excuse but most don't. Dragons, flying carpets, and/or jetpacks fit easily into almost any MMO out there. I imagine it's more along the lines of wanting to control the flow of players better and the coding issues WoW had prior to the Cata world revamp.

LotRO
TSW
AoC
Pirates of the Burning Sea ( )

And then there are games with gameplay elements that flight would break outright - usually puzzle/platforming elements:

GW2
SWTOR
DDO

Flight and super jump and all that stuff was great, but I don't think you could just drop it into any old game and have it work nearly as well.

[Rendakor]

I'll give you the lore ones, but I'd be fine with being able to spend real money on a flying carpet or something in GW2 (or a jetpack in SWTOR) to bypass the platforming shit. DDO I've never actually played, but not being able to fly in a D&D game just seems weird and wrong.

[Ingmar]

Well, you're rarely doing open-world type stuff in DDO - there's a lot of indoor climbing of ladders and shooting things that are out of reach to open gates and stuff like that, Zelda shit where flying would break lots of it.

[Amaron]

Back in April, there was the largest update in the game's history: http://co.perfectworld.com/about/onalert/onalertmain

And the latest update looks to be pretty substantial, too: http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Champions-Online-Nighthawk-Update-Adds-Vehicles-46381.html

Not to mention the Comic Book story arcs.

Didn't they just add raids (LFR style even) too?  I stopped paying attention for a couple months.

[eldaec]

Flying might be iffy in fantasy settings, but the thing that there is absolutely no fucking excuse for after CoH is launching a game without sidekicking.

Not including sidekicking is just cause for burning any dev house to the fucking ground.

It seems like even people who played the game for years don't realise just how critical sidekicking was to maintaining a grouping culture within CoX.

[Numtini]

Also a fantastic LFG system that didn't automatch, but everybody used.

[Ingmar]

I got pestered CONSTANTLY for groups, outside their LFG system - due to that I can't really draw the conclusion that their LFG system was really serving people's needs, personally.

[koro]

Flying might be iffy in fantasy settings, but the thing that there is absolutely no fucking excuse for after CoH is launching a game without sidekicking.

Not including sidekicking is just cause for burning any dev house to the fucking ground.

It seems like even people who played the game for years don't realise just how critical sidekicking was to maintaining a grouping culture within CoX.

And even stuff like FFXI that added it in later proved that it's just as viable in more traditional gear-based games as well.

There's no excuse for more games to not have it.

[Rendakor]

Sidekicking is one of those things that never caught on, because WoW never adopted it.

[Llyse]

Sidekicking is one of those things that never caught on, because WoW never adopted it.

What's Sidekicking?

Fake edit:

Wow just googled sidekicking it sounds pretty awesome. I guess the fear would be it allows players to just skip content too quickly and then leaves the player to go back and do that content for writing?! 

[Rendakor]

You level so fast in WoW currently that you have to either skip content or do grey quests, so that's a moot point.

[eldaec]

It is not a moot point it was a stupid decision in wow just as it is a stupid decision everywhere else.

It is part of an idiotic line of thought which makes devs believe that playing with friends and guild mates is less important to retention than experiencing their shitty content only in the order intended and after being "earned" personally.

[Ingmar]

Sidekicking would be pointless in WoW except for dungeons anyway. The key thing about sidekicking is you have to make content where it makes sense. CoX instance beat-em-ups are a place where it does, or GW2's global scaling is another example (not that there seems to be any advantage at all to being in a group or not in GW2); WoW-style outside world questing as it exists would not be any better with sidekicking because it makes no sense to group up in the first place.

[apocrypha]

questing as it exists would not be any better with sidekicking because it makes no sense to group up in the first place.

Except that it's *fun*.

I'm playing STO atm and everything scales to your level. There's minimum level requirements on the episodes (storyline quests) and there's a bunch of 50-only stuff, but everything else adjusts to you.

You can group with your friends, regardless of level, and do pretty much anything you feel like. You can go back to old episodes and re-do them and the NPCs and loot all adjust to your level, and it's just great fun. Removing any and all barriers to grouping with your friends is a good thing. I wish WoW had learned that years ago instead of all-but-enforcing solo levelling to whatever the cap is.

[ezrast]

WoW-style outside world questing as it exists would not be any better with sidekicking because it makes no sense to group up in the first place.

My impression thus far has been that you're a pretty reasonable person, so let me clarify - if you're playing WoW at level 40, and your friend was doing quests at level 20, you wouldn't voluntarily scale yourself down so that you could kill 12 dingoes together without trivializing your friends' content?

(also, people constantly messaging you for groups is how CoH is supposed to work - the tools let you find people who would be suitable for your group but puts you in charge of getting them all together.* You probably could have stopped it by setting yourself to "not looking for team")

*the LFG tool that assembles the team for you was added way late in the game's lifecycle and only works on specific, mostly end-game content.

[Rendakor]

It is not a moot point it was a stupid decision in wow just as it is a stupid decision everywhere else.

It is part of an idiotic line of thought which makes devs believe that playing with friends and guild mates is less important to retention than experiencing their shitty content only in the order intended and after being "earned" personally.

My comment was in reply to Llyse's; skipping content already happens in WoW so that's no excuse to not include sidekicking. I'm very, very much in favor of sidekicking (and examplaring, because being able to downscale is just as important). The only real issue there would be with WoW is the heavy use of phasing and non-repetitive nature of all the quests; even if you went down to your friend's level, if you've already done the content you literally won't be able to see them or their quest mobs anyway. For things like the dungeon finder though, it would be golden.