Razia

Originally Posted by NekoNeko

My newb moment came way back when I was really a newb. I was 3-4 days into my 7 day trial (this was back right after Issue 4) and got up to level 5 or 6 and heard I should go to King's Row to face baddies of my level so I could level a little faster than the abysmal rate I was leveling on Hellions and Skulls misssions in AP by this point. I was used to MMO's so I looked for the zone entrance for King's Row. Didn't see it, so I figured it must be through another zone. Checking out maps from a website somewhere I figured I could go through Skyway City and take the zone entrance into King's Row from there.

So I sell my enhancements and stock up on Inspirations and take off. About 83 deaths later, I finally pull into King's Row, wondering why the hell would they put a 10-14 level zone between Atlas and a 5-9 level zone. My first mission was to bring in Toothbreaker, yeah, you guessed it, the mission was in Atlas Park. I started to say "this is bull%#&@" but I took off anyways, piling up more deaths. After the mission, getting ready to come back to King's Row, I was starting to wonder if I wanted to go through this again, when by chance I stumbled into the tram station. Eureka! So THIS is how you're supposed to travel to zones! Wow, okay! NOW this makes sense! Cool!

Aaaaaaand I was hooked from then on.

Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven

I recall way back in 2004, still trying to learn all there was to learn in Paragon City while playing an Elec/Dev blaster (my first main). Inf was a lot harder to accumulate back then, and so I was always running short when trying to buy new enhancements for ever more slots as I leveled.

But as I was approaching level 15, I found that purchasing enhancements was getting easier, as I was earning more inf at higher levels, until suddenly I was able to go on a spending spree and deck out all my slots...

...with shiny new level 15 Training Origin enhancements.

Dual Origin what??? I didn't even realize there was anything other than TOs in this game!

What was worse was that I somehow got it into my head that you could only have one of any type enhancement in a power. So they all got one accuracy, one damage, one endurance reduction, etc...

Originally Posted by Codewalker

Well, look at it this way: Killing Statesman the character, even if it were a symbolic gesture in the meta-game context (which I don't believe it is, regardless of how people feel about Jack), does nothing but strengthen the character in the game's lore.

Just because the character model isn't standing around in Independence Port doesn't mean that Statesman is absent from the game. He becomes a legend, a symbol that all heroes of Paragon City will not forget. The rest of the Phalanx, no matter who is leading them, will likely use his name as a rallying cry for years to come.

Hardly the thing you'd want to do to a character if your intent was to cheese off the man who created it.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

Well, I wouldn't want to go as far as corpse runs But for all the convenience City of Heroes has over a classic MMO, I'd still like to see at least one or two dungeon crawls done proper. The Eden Trial is a good start, I suppose, but I'd like more of that, and not timed (and not a Trial ), preferably. A few existing missions work like dungeon crawls, actually, but again - I'd like to see more. I'd especially like to see a dungeon crawl that took me through several kinds of terrain.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

I guess in a big way, I just like to see that I'm making progress, and visually, not just by looking at numbers. For instance, when I run one of the older outdoor instances - the large city ones - I tend to go at them block by block, circling around each block via the streets, then going inside to clear enemies out of the interior, then moving onto the next one. At the start, it looks like it will never end, but half-way through when I look at my map, I can visually see that I'm making progress. Much of the map has already been explored and is "clear." When I go though one of those linear Oranbegan maps and I get two thirds of the way to the end, then I look at the map, I can tell I'm a long way into that cave.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

I'm positive. It's not the discovery of new things, in the sense of seeing content for the first time that I'm referring to, so much as a sense that there's something there TO be discovered, something there that's hidden deep beneath the surface or bar beyond the borders or in the faraway reaches where no-one ever goes. It's a sense of... "Location," if you will. This game can have alien graphics from the future and a city as big as New York and it would still lack that, because every place we go is exactly like every place else in one crucial, inescapable fashion - it's in an area controlled by a civilised nation. Even in the Rogue Isles, you're never more than a single jump away from a place where a regular person could receive help and support and a criminal on the run can hide out.

Look at something like Left 4 Dead. This is almost entirely a game of locations and traversal. The world has gone to ****, no-one is coming to save you, everything alive wants you dead, and you must fend for yourself. This once-bustling city full of people who could have helped you and facilities that you could have used is dead, and worse - more dangerous than any wilderness. No-one is left to help you. Possibly no-one in the entire world. That's not a game which revolved around skipping to the end and pressing the button, because that would be missing the point. It revolves around taking every step, opening every door, fighting through every set piece, all the while knowing that though you and your friends are all barely conscious enough to walk, let alone pull yourself up, if you can just break through that last obstacle and reach that next safe room, you will survive.

Or look at something like Sands of Time. That entire game is one giant trip, a struggle to get to a particular place. From the moment it begins, the objective is one single thing - get to the Tower of Dawn. And once you get there, it ends. And yet the final climb of the Tower of Dawn over the ruined outside is still one of my favourite moments of gaming every single time, even though I've done it so many times already. I feel as though I really am at this location, because the location matters. I can't simply turn on Fly and get to the tower, I need to find a way. I need to find a bridge across, I need to find my way up to that balcony, I need to find a way down to that switch.

Hell, look at something as simple as the original Diablo. That game had four settings, each four levels deep before you met the next one, with a boss at the bottom. And yet it always felt like I was making progress. Every level took me deeper, every level took me closer to the heart of darkness, every level took me farther and farther away from Tristram. Yes, there were town portals and the occasional shortcut unlocked from the inside, but still: When you set foot inside the catacombs, you left the city behind. You were on your own, with no support, no lifeline and only the items you brought with you

I get that we're in a city and that just means we're always within an arm's reach of a police station or a hospital. That doesn't we can't have locations or missions which take us away from this. And not a step away, not a loading screen away, but tangibly far a away from society. In fact, I wouldn't mind a Shadow Shard like zone where vendors did not exist, and we were forced to use forgotten artifact instead of people for training, purchases and resurrection. I get that we have travel powers that make terrain mostly meaningless, to the point where the city could do away with stairs entirely and few of us would notice. That doesn't mean that we can't have missions or tasks where terrain mattered, such that we couldn't just fly over everything right to the end, or otherwise become invisible and waddle to the end that way.

City of Heroes is very good in terms of story and gameplay, but it often feels like you can swap the city for anything at all and nothing in the game would change a single iota. You can host the game in a Fantasy forest or out in the desert and everything would play out exactly the the same. Convenience is one thing, but I fear it's making us loose touch with the game's actual physical world.

Originally Posted by Jagged

Are you sure its not just that you have lost that feeling because we've been here forever?

I certainly used to have that feeling and would explore every zone as I reached the appropriate level. I remember the first time I ventured into Kings Row and I remember trying to sneak around Founders Falls (sans stealth powers) just to see the newly added zone.

Originally Posted by ShadowMoka

Fire melee/Shield is the highest DPS build possible you can have on a brute.