City of Heroes/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Nemesis is either a brilliant schemer with a hand in friggin' everything, or an egotistical blowhard who keeps trying to take credit for other people's work.
  • Alt-Itis:
    • With all the power and costume options, it's not unusual for one person to have 20 or more characters.
    • Given 573 672 (as of Issue 18) possible archetype/power set combinations, 20 is few. This is probably the game whose players named Altoholism.
  • Broken Base:
    • Munchkins and roleplayers each look down on each other as the nerdier way to play the game.
    • Ironic, considering that a small portion of the fanbase consider themselves both, and come up with long, intricate storylines explaining why their character can now use Fire/Kin control powers.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Westin Phipps definitely qualifies for this title and arguably anyone who gleefully takes on his missions.
    • Tyrant and his Praetors. During the war against Hamidon, Tyrant stood by and let everyone in the world who refused to submit to his rule perish. Now he's building an army specifically to hunt down and murder every single super-powered being on every other alternate Earth, so he can conquer them all. Mother Mayhem runs a mental asylum devoted to training Praetorian psychics as "Seers," thought-police who track down and apprehend any "thought criminals," so that "Mother" can "rehabilitate" them. But the Seers aren't volunteers, and that's actually the secondary purpose of the Seer Network; the primary purpose is to provide "Mother" with psychics to feed on, prolonging her own life and expanding her personal power. And those "thought criminals" wind up as guinea pigs for Neuron's bio-weapon experiments, as does pretty much anyone else he wants, even a "hero cop" from the PPD. Chimera's Secret Police and assassins round up any dissidents that the Seer Network misses, and his relationship with Belladonna is basically what happens when Batman murders the Graysons so he can take Dick under his wing as Robin. Marauder and Dominatrix secretly supply the Destroyers with Fixadine, artificially creating a threat to public safety that gives Tyrant an excuse for his totalitarian regime. Anti-Matter might be the lone exception, as his missions involve the PC preventing a staggering loss of life against the wishes of the other Praetors. But even he murdered the man who helped him create the Clockworks, inadvertently unleashing the Praetorian Clockwork King, "Metronome," upon the world. There are "good" and "evil" people among both the Loyalists and the Resistance, but the Emperor and his Praetors themselves are unambiguously evil.
    • Playing as a villain especially, there will be times when you are this.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • The Malta Group were one of the most-loathed enemy groups in the game once they appeared, generally having the right abilities to eventually hose any PC trying to fight them.
    • The Knives of Artemis were also deserving of this. Knives could see through stealth, could easily keep player characters stunned permanently, and they stacked Caltrops to a ridiculous level, ensuring that most players could barely move while taking damage. Unless there was a character on the team with Speed Boost to free others from Caltrops, teamwipes happened on every single Knives of Artemis mission. Fortunately there weren't that many. (You could save yourself through use of flight. And, if you had the Team Teleport or Assemble The Team powers, you could teleport all your teammates in range to a safer spot.)
    • Historically, players gave the role to the Rikti (when they first started invading and everyone panicked because they were showing up everywhere, only to calm down once they realized they weren't so bad once you became powerful enough), the Malta (Sappers used to be much more plentiful than they are now, and their spawn rates were decreased as a result of player complaints feedback), and the Rularuu (which had ridiculously powerful and accurate powers and were extremely hard to kill, but thankfully only showed up in Those Four Zones that are entirely optional).
    • A much, much earlier example would be the Headmen Swordsmen in The Lost enemy group. They had giant swords they pull out of nowhere, possibly their asses, that dealt insane damage. Needless to say, Headman Swordsmen could be a pain for Scrappers, who were melee-based and not that good in defense, as well as Stalkers.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Ghost Widow. Scirocco also got this occasionally.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Becky the Tarantula Mistress, Blue Steel, Foreshadow...
  • Fandom Rivalry: Champions Online is made by the Scapegoat Creator of this game, and has a lot of pretty blatant attempts to steal players from it. The results are not pretty.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: If you're lucky, Metronome just wants to kill you. If you're not, he wants to rip out your soul and shove it into a robot body.
  • Fridge Horror: Some might notice that the entangles produced by the Carrion Crawlers power continue to deal damage to the defeated enemies. Apparently dead bodies are tasty.
  • Fridge Brilliance: The Cosmic Retcon noted elsewhere also explained why every new character has to do similar missions: Time gets rewound, making the ever-repeating missions your alts have to do perfectly Justified!
  • Goddamned Bats: Exactly which enemy type fit the trope depended on the individual player.
    • However, PPD Equalizers and Ghosts are a very common offender. If you don't kill one immediately, they will use a very long duration debuff. The Equalizers have a Glue grenade that is autohit and slows you to a crawl, while the Ghosts' Flashbang, if it hits, neuters your chance of hitting and dodging.
      • It's especially noticeable because heroes never really fought the PPD - until recently, when a recent story arc featured a faction of villainous rogue PPD. Cue hero-players horrified at how overpowered the "new" group was.
  • Good Bad Bugs: Countless popped up every now and then. From the ability to make illegal but cool (and lag-causing) outfits, through captives being replaced by harmless killer robots, to ten foot tall robots trying to ma- er.. combine with players. And succeeding.
  • Growing the Beard: Early in its life, the game was littered with poor design choices, uninteresting quests, and a lack of incentive (there was no economy, for one). But starting at around the release of City of Villains (a year after the game originally launched, coinciding with the release of Issue 8), the devs eventually proved themselves ready and willing to listen and communicate with the playerbase, and steadily made several quality-of-life enhancements along with adding genuinely interesting new content -- this is likely much of the reason that the game has survived so many years, and had such a vociferous outcry at its death. Many players agree that the turning point was when Cryptic Studios, the game's original developers, sold the rights to NCSoft, who created a division called Paragon Studios to exclusively work on the game -- which coincided with the departure of the game's Scapegoat Creator, Jack "Statesman" Emmert.
  • Internet Backdraft: *ahem* Never assume that healing is the main purpose of support sets, especially near the Defender board, don't bring up open PVP, Mission Architect farming, powerlevelling in general... and formerly Enhancement Diversification, but players seem to have finally accepted that as a necessary evil.
    • And now the Incarnate system and Super Packs are causing a few disagreements.
    • All of which were pikers compared to the reaction to NCSoft's announcement about the impending shutdown of the game.
  • Iron Woobie: Wretch.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • Blue Steel is responsible for so many Deus Ex Machina rescues in City of Villains that fans hail him as a Super Super Hero. He has a fact list similar to "Chuck Norris" facts. Until recently, his shield-based power set was impossible to show in game, making him even more awesome.
    • The exact opposite happened to the NPC hero, Fusionette, and owner of the MAGI vault, Azuria. Their incompetence (in the case of Azuria, someone else's incompetence) has been played up to ridiculousness.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.
    • Also, it's all a Nemesis plot.
      • It gets somewhat circular in one specific tip mission, involving a hacker on a forum devoted to this meme discovering an actual Nemesis plot in his workplace.
    • DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
    • IT WELL BE GONE TO THE AMERICANS!!!!!
      • Because of Jerk Hackers dupin rares.
    • Freem!
    • Devs hate red.
      • Which is rather ironic, since the Dev's Names on the Fora are in red.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Villain alignment missions (the ones which cement your alignment as villain after you have done ten morality missions with the villain choices) generally feel like you are crossing one of these. As they should.
    • The Crusader Rebels of Praetoria are a good example of what happens when a Well-Intentioned Extremist goes waay over the line. And these guys are supposed to be working for the traditionally morally superior faction.
    • War Dog's story arc provides Resistance characters with unparalleled opportunities to Jump Off the Slippery Slope. In one mission, he sends the PC to kidnap and threaten the family of a PPD officer War Dog is interrogating. After the cop sings like a canary, War Dog kills him, and orders the PC to kill his family. Later on, War Dog lets the PC in on his master plan: to set off a neutron bomb in the heart of the city, in a gambit to destabilize Tyrant's regime.
    • Maelstrom's transition from "Hero" to "Vigilante," when he turned to his only friend in the world and shot him in the face, just to improve his own bargaining position with Tyrant.
  • Paranoia Fuel:
    • When you idle in the game by civilians, sometimes they'll talk about your exploits. Nemesis is fond of using Automatons that perfectly resemble normal people. If you've encountered Nemesis troops lately, you might hear a comment like this:

"I can't believe how Carol behaved today at the -- Lord Nemesis is watching you, $CHARACTER_NAME. He will not let this transgression pass without punishment. We know who you are -- before the toner ran out and I had to get more."

    • A couple of tip missions in the 30-40 range revolve around a former hero who falls foul of this, and ends up being driven Ax Crazy by the belief that anyone can be a Nemesis automaton. In one Vigilante mission it's actually the player character that does so, blowing up a Longbow base and killing everyone inside in the belief that they're all automatons. One possible interpretation of the whole affair, bearing in mind Nemesis' nature as a chessmaster and his "Heroes are a threat" propaganda, is that this actually his real goal rather than successful infiltration.
    • Metronome, the Praetorian Clockwork King. He has no physical body. You can't kill him, because he's already dead. He can possess any robot by telekinetically rewriting the operating system on its hard drive (which he knows how to do because he helped Anti-Matter design them). You know, those robots that Praetoria uses for everything. Throw a stick and you'll hit three of them, and now every single one of them could, at any time, suddenly drop what it's doing, turn around, and try to murder you. He's not just a ghost in the machine, but a ghost in any and every machine. And since Anti-Matter murdered him, and Penelope Yin spurned his affections, he's angry.
  • Scapegoat Creator: Jack "Statesman" Emmert, especially once he no longer worked on the game.
  • The Scrappy: Fusionette, especially to anyone playing a melee character at the time.
  • Selfish Good, Selfish Evil: Options for the Praetorian content allow you to choose how nice - or how mean - you want to be, regardless of which faction or path you're pursuing.
  • That One Boss:
    • Which boss is That One depends on the PC's powers -- Malta Gunslingers and Carnie Master Illusionists tend to be much-hated.
    • Also the Carnie Ring Mistresses. They are completely normal bosses, except for one power, Mask of Vitiation. Said power:
      • Almost autohits any character without defenses.
      • Lasts twice as long as it takes to recharge.
      • Completely shuts off the target's Health and Endurance recovery (in a group famous for Endurance drain).
      • Makes any other attack against the target pretty much autohit, roughly doubling the damage intake.
      • Oh, and it drains a fair chunk of Endurance, too.
    • Romulus (in One-Winged Angel form) is often very difficult for unprepared teams, as can be Reichsman.
    • Kadabra Kill.
    • When Going Rogue came out, a new boss class enemy was added to the Freakshow lineup: the Super Stunner. Along with being able to kill most characters' recharge, they have endurance drain abilities just this side of a Malta Sapper.
    • Issue 19 added two new task forces, with two more contenders for the title: Battle Maiden (as she appears in the Apex TF) and Director 11 of the Malta Group (in Tin Mage's). Possibly also Bobcat in the latter, if you hit her Berserk Button.
  • That One Level: Certain mission tilesets, including the "layer cake" room in several caves and the Circle of Thorns' city, Oranbega. The Shadow Shard consists of four entire zones of scrappyness and were all but deserted towards the end of the game's life.
  • Uncanny Valley: There are a number of strange creatures in the game, but the Uncanny Valley-est are, by far, the Arachnoids, part-human/part-spider creature that lurk beneath Grandville. They have eight eyes, no ears, and four extra limbs growing from their back. They have an exoskeleton that is pushing through their skin, in such a way that it looks like their skin is peeling away in layers, and to top it off, a portion of their abdomen is missing, allowing you to see the inner side of their spines through where their stomach should be.
  • Unfortunate Implications:
    • The "Cure Lost" mission of the Midnighter arc gives you the ability to make the heavily-mutated Lost normal humans again. Unfortunately, due to the random nature of the swap from Lost character to "citizen" character, this sometimes involves turning black people into white ones. And white to black.
    • Also, one mission where the Knives of Artemis take on the Carnival of Shadows, which can be described by some as Lipstick Lesbians vs Butch Lesbians.
    • There's the fact that there's a disproportionate number of ethnic villains to white heroes.
  • What an Idiot!: Some of the plot points in arcs are fairly contrived. An example, a warrant is put out for the arrest of the second Ajax after he revealed in his time capsule letter that he killed the original Ajax despite the fact that at that point the character in question had redeemed himself beyond a shadow of a doubt.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
    • Polar Shift, a young hero who ends up going crazy after discovering a Nemesis plot to replace other heroes with automatons; she begins to believe that anyone might be a Nemesis automaton and ends up blowing up a Longbow base full of innocent people. Eventually, she becomes a full villain who believes that the world is so corrupt it has to be destroyed.
    • However, you can make the choice to help her redeem herself.
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