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Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 11:17 am
by Cylus Maxii
Itch...scratched. Man this is fun!

Note I was able to buy single-origin enhancements in a normal store in a lower level zone last night. I think they have streamlined the vendors.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 2:01 pm
by Tao
Is there a consensus on which server folks plan to play on? Is everyone starting with COH or has anyone tried the Going Rogue start?

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 2:11 pm
by Cylus Maxii
I'm sticking with Torchbearer where I have other friends playing.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 2:42 pm
by Jaymann
Cylus Maxii wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 11:17 am Itch...scratched. Man this is fun!

Note I was able to buy single-origin enhancements in a normal store in a lower level zone last night. I think they have streamlined the vendors.
Where can I buy these?

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 5:12 pm
by Cylus Maxii
Jaymann wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 2:42 pm
Cylus Maxii wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 11:17 am Itch...scratched. Man this is fun!

Note I was able to buy single-origin enhancements in a normal store in a lower level zone last night. I think they have streamlined the vendors.
Where can I buy these?
I was able to buy level 25 SO enhancements when I hit level 22. I think I was 12 when I was able to buy level 15 DO enhancements. I don't think they are available before you hit the allowed level. And they are pretty pricey (~30k to 40k each for the SO), so you will need to find and sell rare salvage. You may have a lower market on a new server where there isn't enough free cash, from established high-level players, in the market.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 5:36 pm
by Jaymann
Cylus Maxii wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 5:12 pm
Jaymann wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 2:42 pm
Cylus Maxii wrote: Fri May 10, 2019 11:17 am Itch...scratched. Man this is fun!

Note I was able to buy single-origin enhancements in a normal store in a lower level zone last night. I think they have streamlined the vendors.
Where can I buy these?
I was able to buy level 25 SO enhancements when I hit level 22. I think I was 12 when I was able to buy level 15 DO enhancements. I don't think they are available before you hit the allowed level. And they are pretty pricey (~30k to 40k each for the SO), so you will need to find and sell rare salvage. You may have a lower market on a new server where there isn't enough free cash, from established high-level players, in the market.
Who sells the 15's (natural) and in which zone?

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 11:20 pm
by morlac
Oh boy...


I have rolled 2 more guys already and now have 3 at level 5-8. I could literally just make new superheros all day. I may even make a few villains.

Current Lineup:

Nor Easter Defender Storm/Elec
Half Pint Scrapper Savage Melee/Will Power
Sherlock Ohms Blaster Elec/Elec Manipulation

My daughter made :

Icearella Blaster Ice/Ice
Tarabull Tank Something/something :)



So much damn fun.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 11:38 pm
by Jaymann
Connor McGregor is perfect for my kung fu regen scrapper. :P

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Fri May 10, 2019 11:58 pm
by morlac
Scrappers are silly fun at low levels. Half Pint is only 4 ft tall and specializes in pulverizing thugs right in the jimmy. Whole groups of them...all right in the jimmies.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sat May 11, 2019 10:29 am
by Hyena
Brutes are my favorites. They have the punching power of a scrapper (almost) and the defense of a tank (almost), so the averaging out of the two make for a better overall toon.

I have recreated v.19, an elec/elec brute. He was a Longbow prototype weapons platform sent in to deal with the Zig riots by himself until his AI realized that they were just using him as a test guinea pig. His programming concluded that any organization that handled its assets that carelessly must be an evil organization, so he reset his own Friend/Foe parameters to have Longbow as the enemy.

He was my first 50, first max level in *any* MMO. Although this version of him I rolled on the hero side, so that backstory won't work any more...

I also have a super strength/willpower brute, a robots/bubble mastermind, and a dual pistols Sentinel. That mastermind at upper levels was redonkulous. I would jack the difficulty of the missions up all the way and solo them with my team of bubbled, upgraded 6 bots. With my knocklock of force bubble, air superiority, and robots' missiles, I could keep a boss on their ass indefinitely while my 'bots pummeled him to a paste.

Damn I've missed this game.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sat May 11, 2019 12:54 pm
by Jaymann
I found the shop in Steel Canyon that sells natural enhancements. Also you can do architect missions for architect rewards and use your tickets to buy enhancements. These are especially nice because they cover the "in between" levels, for example, if you are level 14 you can buy a level 17 enhancement.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sat May 11, 2019 4:26 pm
by Hyena
Jaymann wrote: Sat May 11, 2019 12:54 pm I found the shop in Steel Canyon that sells natural enhancements. Also you can do architect missions for architect rewards and use your tickets to buy enhancements. These are especially nice because they cover the "in between" levels, for example, if you are level 14 you can buy a level 17 enhancement.
If you craft your own enhancements, they never out-level. There are some generic ones you can craft that, despite being slightly weaker than specific enhancements, will never stop working. Those are my favorites until I can get a set going. I usually tried to remake them every 10 levels or so as salvage allowed.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sat May 11, 2019 5:22 pm
by Tao
Mids Hero Designer is apparently still available for download and appears to be pretty closely matched with the current game, looks like up to official I24 or so. Beast Mastery MasterMind as well as the Masteries powersets are part of the planner. It's missing some of the latest updates like Sorcery and it is still following the old leveling rules for acquiring powers.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 1:18 am
by Madmarcus
I always wanted to get into CoH and now I get the chance!

I am completely incompetent at playing this game! I have a character created on Excelsior. I can start the tutorial, move around and interact with the officer but other functions of the UI are baffling me. I have opened the map window. How do I get rid of it? How do I quit the game? Can I minimize the chat window? I have two extra copies of my action bar floating around in the upper left of the screen. How did I get them and how can I remove them?

Full disclosure - I'm running at 1024x768 right now as I'm playing on a Surface Pro 3.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 6:55 am
by Madmarcus
This time I'm going to add a new post instead of constantly editing my last one. I finally found the small red dots to close windows and found the Menu. The second problem was a fault of running at low resolution as I put my health bar (and the attached Menu) behind the compass.

I don't have nostalgia spurring me on but its fun so far.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 9:03 am
by Jaymann
Most things you click on once to open and again to close. Be sure to use your inspirations, they are plentiful. And check your enhancements to add to your powers.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 9:54 am
by Unagi
Madmarcus wrote: Sun May 12, 2019 1:18 am I always wanted to get into CoH and now I get the chance!

I am completely incompetent at playing this game! I have a character created on Excelsior. I can start the tutorial, move around and interact with the officer but other functions of the UI are baffling me. I have opened the map window. How do I get rid of it? How do I quit the game? Can I minimize the chat window? I have two extra copies of my action bar floating around in the upper left of the screen. How did I get them and how can I remove them?

Full disclosure - I'm running at 1024x768 right now as I'm playing on a Surface Pro 3.
You are hopeing ESC will bring up a menu. Alas, It wont.

In the upper right of your screen is a MENU - on there is a menu of chouices - one of which is Options, and in there you can review all of the Key Bindings.

M - will open and close your map ( I click the blue button to undock it from the Navigation bar, then I resize it by dragging the window smaller and move the whole thing off to my left side)

N - will open and close your navigation bar

T- will open and close your 'target' info (upper left of screen)

C - will open and close your 'Chat' window. (accidentally close that, and you won't know how to ask for help!)


You can fire you powers by pressing the numbers on your keyboard (not number pad)
You can open up , as many as 3 tool bars OUT at one time (There are I think 9 toolbars you could set up)
Pressing the number will activate the power.
Pressing ALT-# will activate the power on the 2nd power-bar
Pressing CTR-# will activate the power on the 3rd power-bar

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 6:04 pm
by Tao
I am playing primarily on Halcyion, Torchbearer is always under heavyload, even at 1:00 PM EST on Friday. My current handle is @Cold-Fusion if anyone wants to add to friends list or maybe do some grouping.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 6:41 pm
by Madmarcus
Getting the main status bar (the one with HP, XP, and the Menu toggle) out from under the compass really helped! It is crazy to feel this lost in a game UI. I didn't play CoH back in the day but I've gone back to even older software and had no problems.

Running around yesterday as MirrorMan (staff/energy scrapper) on Excelsior. I'll probably make a blaster on a different server if I can come up with a good name while at work today :D . BTW, do you ever get a good rotation going or do you always have to wait for powers to cycle? Even with two attack powers plus the basic Brawl I find I have to wait around at time at level 7.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 7:57 pm
by Tao
The short answer to ability rotation is yes, you can make it better as you level.

Obviously as you level you gain access to more powers so you have more skills to use during a given period of time. There are also recharge enhancements that will reduce the cool down on your powers, there are also certain powers that reduce the cool down on other powers. One such power is Hasten which is in the alternate power pools, I think under Speed, and is available to anyone. Other powers are specific to a particular power set such as Accelerated Metabolism. There were certain builds that where dependent on having a specific power with a very long cool down reduced to the point you could almost use it at will, Illusions Phantom Army was a popular one. Phantom Army had a 240 second cool down with a 60 second up time, with the right combination you could reduce the cool down to 60 seconds so you could always have PA running, although you needed end-game/raid level enhancements to do it.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 7:32 am
by Paingod
Tao wrote: Sun May 12, 2019 7:57 pmOne such power is Hasten which is in the alternate power pools, I think under Speed, and is available to anyone.
Hasten builds in the original were potent, but you had to invest a lot in the recharge aspect of it to make it useful - and you had to be really careful about energy use. Depending on how much they've tweaked the powers, it could be more viable.

I like having access to a travel power at Level 4. Getting to 4 takes about 10 minutes, so you're not glued in slow-mode for too long.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 6:33 pm
by Madmarcus
I'm going to keep polluting the thread with observations from the new player perspective. I enjoyed messing around with MirrorMan and Mr DNA (scrapper and brute respectively) but I'm loving the play of my flying blaster Redhead. I don't even fly that much but it feels so iconic. Fire/time, squishy as all get out but fun. I guess I need to see if I can get any significant defense from the additional pools (fighting and medicine might have something that is worth it).

I'm still having big problems with resolution. On the Surface itself I can run at many different resolutions but the keyboard and mouse experience is subpar. Adding a second screen works beautifully for the keyboard and mouse part but hasn't worked at most resolutions. I have managed to change to 1440x900 which seems to be stable and is decent looking so I'll probably stick to it and quit trying for higher. I'm using the integrated graphics anyway so I'm not sure how much higher I can push things.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 7:16 pm
by Tao
The Flight power pool has the Hover power which is a staple for +DEF for ranged builds (you move pretty slowly once you toggle it on). The Leaping power pool has Combat Jumping which is another good +DEF power. The Leadership power pool also has a number of toggles, one of which is Maneuvers and adds +DEF. The VIP reward vendor also offered a couple of free pets, one type increases damage the other type increases your defense. You can also increase you HP' regen a bit in the Fitness power pool which might help a little with survivability.

For screen resolution try going to the COH folder and right clicking on the SCORE.EXE file, select compatibility tab and then Change High DPI settings, then select both options. This is what I had to do when I set my res too high and the image on my monitor was so skewed I could not see any of the menus.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Mon May 13, 2019 8:04 pm
by Madmarcus
I'll try the scores.exe trick when I get home. I'm not getting a skewed screen I just have it black with random flickers of the screen. It's as if it can't settle on a single resolution and keeps switching between the screen resolution and the in game resolution. Actually 1440x900 is a fairly good resolution so I'll likely leave it there.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 1:08 am
by Jaymann
My favorite combo is now stalker/regen. It is so much fun to sneak up on an orange enemy and one-shot it.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 7:39 am
by AWS260
It's pretty amazing/wonderful that this exists.

Is just me, or does the character designer have a lot more options than CoH had at launch? I had blast tinkering around and creating a couple of characters last night.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 9:38 am
by Hyena
AWS260 wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 7:39 am It's pretty amazing/wonderful that this exists.

Is just me, or does the character designer have a lot more options than CoH had at launch? I had blast tinkering around and creating a couple of characters last night.
A ton of new archtypes that I don't remember. I started a savage/regen brute last night, and DAMN does it dish out the hurt. I hit level 7 in less than 20 minutes in CoV just by beating the shit out of the longbow spawns and doing a single mission.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 12:08 pm
by Paingod
I'm completely paralyzed in adding characters to my roster after the first two (who were recreations of my two favorites from before).

Playing solo, Tanks/Controllers/Defenders (or similar) are less efficient. I'd like to put together a good Stalker or Scrapper - but sat in front of the power selections for a good 30 minutes reading through everything without being able to make up my mind. I'm leaning towards something like a Radiation/Bio Armor Stalker.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 1:19 pm
by Hyena
Paingod wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 12:08 pm I'm completely paralyzed in adding characters to my roster after the first two (who were recreations of my two favorites from before).

Playing solo, Tanks/Controllers/Defenders (or similar) are less efficient. I'd like to put together a good Stalker or Scrapper - but sat in front of the power selections for a good 30 minutes reading through everything without being able to make up my mind. I'm leaning towards something like a Radiation/Bio Armor Stalker.
Do yourself a favor and try a brute. They hit like a scrapper and defend like a tank.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 1:29 pm
by Paingod
Hyena wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 1:19 pmDo yourself a favor and try a brute. They hit like a scrapper and defend like a tank.
Waaaay back in the day when CoH was still a Subscriber model with NCSoft, I tried everything. :D

I don't know what kind of rebalance they've done with the game since it shifted to the private sector. I did seriously consider the Brute, but they clearly show it trades a touch of damage for a touch of survivability over the Stalker. I wanted to try out one of the harder hitting classes that might require some finesse. That left me with either Scrapper or Stalker, and Stalker seemed more tactical.

Alt-Itis has always been one of my curses in MMO's. It doesn't help that this new CoH allows me to have 1000 character slots. Is that enough for one of every power/class combo?

*Edit: Maybe I will, though. This is the problem with wanting to play every class & power combo eventually.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 1:52 pm
by Hyena
Paingod wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 1:29 pm
Hyena wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 1:19 pmDo yourself a favor and try a brute. They hit like a scrapper and defend like a tank.
Waaaay back in the day when CoH was still a Subscriber model with NCSoft, I tried everything. :D

I don't know what kind of rebalance they've done with the game since it shifted to the private sector. I did seriously consider the Brute, but they clearly show it trades a touch of damage for a touch of survivability over the Stalker. I wanted to try out one of the harder hitting classes that might require some finesse. That left me with either Scrapper or Stalker, and Stalker seemed more tactical.

Alt-Itis has always been one of my curses in MMO's. It doesn't help that this new CoH allows me to have 1000 character slots. Is that enough for one of every power/class combo?

*Edit: Maybe I will, though. This is the problem with wanting to play every class & power combo eventually.
Yeah, that's my problem as well. It took me damn near three years to get my first 50 in that game. And, big shock, was an elec/elec brute. I would go in against purple Lost as a 50 and get hit with their big shots for 2 points of damage. I was a GOD against them.

Another option is the Arachnos widow class. Stronger version of a stalker, if I remember correctly.
As for alt-oholism, I had one of each, as well. Never played a controller to any real extent, had a great rad/rad defender and a bot/bubble mastermind, and about 20 different brutes. :lol: Even had a psy blaster that was fun to play.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 2:01 pm
by Paingod
One of my favorite characters ever for grouping up was a Gravity controller. I can't remember what his secondary powers were though. I want to say force fields, but can't remember if that was even an option. His name was Forsaken Imp, and his backstory was as a magician's summoned pet that gained his freedom but couldn't die. He'd been around for centuries and wandered around in a suit and tie while he fought, and he was the tiniest character you could make.

I go in more for the character theme than I do trying for overpowered builds. If I can construct a good story for the character in my head, the power set is almost irrelevant.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 7:13 pm
by Madmarcus
Paingod wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 2:01 pm I go in more for the character theme than I do trying for overpowered builds. If I can construct a good story for the character in my head, the power set is almost irrelevant.
Why did you say this! I've been holding off on alts while I play around with the game but suddenly you have made me think of my old pen and paper Champions supergroup based on Devo songs. I don't suppose there is an energy dome as a headgear option?

I wonder if there is a server that has all the names available?

Mr. Kamikazi
Mr. DNA
Spud Boy
Jocko Homo
Secret Agent Man
and
The Girl You Want (more of a way to refer to her than a real alias but I never came up with a good name)

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 8:17 pm
by Hyena
Paingod wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 2:01 pm One of my favorite characters ever for grouping up was a Gravity controller. I can't remember what his secondary powers were though. I want to say force fields, but can't remember if that was even an option. His name was Forsaken Imp, and his backstory was as a magician's summoned pet that gained his freedom but couldn't die. He'd been around for centuries and wandered around in a suit and tie while he fought, and he was the tiniest character you could make.

I go in more for the character theme than I do trying for overpowered builds. If I can construct a good story for the character in my head, the power set is almost irrelevant.
Yeah, my brute had a fun story (put it earlier in the thread). I do the same. I try to stick with thematic powers if I can. I dont role play them in game, but I like it better if I can justify where and how they got their powers.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 6:43 am
by Paingod
I remade the Forsaken Imp last night and had a good time getting him to Level 17. He's leaped ahead as my highest level character, but that also means he's skipped every contact mission - which is fine. He's not a solo character and never was, even in the NCSoft version of the game.

You might hear: "Blue LFG DFB" Blue: Hero, Red: Villain, LFG: Looking for group, DFB: Death From Below (Sewer Trial)

Good for: Any level, lots of experience, three badges, 5-8 Single Origin enhancements each run. The badges require that you (1) kill the Vahzilok leader before killing any minions when he spawns (no AoE), (2) Kill the Lost minions before the boss, and (3) defeat the Hydra at the bottom.

I jumped from level 7 to level 17 in about 50 minutes. I've got my two main Force Field buffs for players and a few Gravity powers. I took the Leadership pool for added Defense and Accuracy buffing for my team, as well as the standard Flight pool (Hover/Fly). I plan on flying and hovering everywhere as much as I can and staying off the ground, where things do a little too much Melee for my liking. His MO is to stop enemies from attacking by locking them down, and those he can't stop have to contend with the defenses he puts up around allies.

I'm starting to think that when they ported over the game's code, they somehow didn't get the contact missions and had to rebuild them with the mission editing tools. The writing and storytelling I'm seeing for contacts isn't up to par with what I remember and the stories themselves aren't the same.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 9:39 am
by hentzau
Paingod wrote:One of my favorite characters ever for grouping up was a Gravity controller. I can't remember what his secondary powers were though. I want to say force fields, but can't remember if that was even an option. His name was Forsaken Imp, and his backstory was as a magician's summoned pet that gained his freedom but couldn't die. He'd been around for centuries and wandered around in a suit and tie while he fought, and he was the tiniest character you could make.

I go in more for the character theme than I do trying for overpowered builds. If I can construct a good story for the character in my head, the power set is almost irrelevant.
My Grav/Kinetics controller, Mass Master, was my all time favorite toon to play with. I had a huge backstory for him, that I remember nothing of right now. I started playing him back when it was near impossible to solo with a controller, but I just loved the power set so much I kept at it.

I never 50’d any of my toons, but Mass Master was the closest. I think he made it to 48.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 10:18 am
by Paingod
hentzau wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 9:39 amI never 50’d any of my toons, but Mass Master was the closest. I think he made it to 48.
I got exactly one to 50. A Fire/Fire Tank that was an absolute beast and would lead groups on raids and clump up/burn down giant piles of
enemies at once.

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 10:44 am
by Cylus Maxii
My first level 50 was my Elec/Elec/Elec Blaster (Blaptroller build). I played him a ton in end-game content. I was a total completionist and badge-junkie with him. I had another couple that I hit 50 with and retired them immediately.

Currently my toons are 25 (blaster), 22 (mastermind) and 10 (brute).

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 10:50 am
by Paingod
Which reminds me ... I was a completionist as well - but I think a number of badges were available inside missions or you had to pick them up as you leveled through content and couldn't outgrow contacts too quickly. Is that still a thing, or can you get every badge at level 50?

Re: City of Heroes/Villains Lives!

Posted: Wed May 15, 2019 11:14 am
by Isgrimnur
Image