City of Heroes/YMMV: Difference between revisions

** [[Munchkin|Munchkins]] and [[The Roleplayer|roleplayers]] each look down on each other as the nerdier way to play the game.

** [[Big Bad|Tyrant]] and his [[The Dragon|Praetors]]. During the war against Hamidon, Tyrant {{spoiler|stood by and let everyone in the world who refused to submit to his rule perish}}. Now he's building an army specifically to {{spoiler|hunt down and murder every single super-powered being on every other [[Mirror Universe|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 {{spoiler|the Seers aren't volunteers}}, and that's actually {{spoiler|the '''secondary''' purpose of the Seer Network; the primary purpose is to provide "Mother" with psychics to [[Vampiric Draining|feed on]], prolonging her own life and expanding her personal power}}. And those "thought criminals" wind up as {{spoiler|[[Playing with Syringes|guinea pigs]]}} for Neuron's {{spoiler|bio-weapon experiments}}, as does {{spoiler|pretty much anyone else he wants, even a "hero cop" from the PPD}}. Chimera's [[Secret Police]] and [[Professional Killer|assassins]] round up any dissidents that the Seer Network misses, and his relationship with Belladonna is {{spoiler|basically what happens when [[Batman]] murders the Graysons so he can take Dick under his wing as Robin}}. Marauder and Dominatrix {{spoiler|secretly supply the Destroyers with [[Psycho Serum|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 {{spoiler|murdered the man who helped him create the Clockworks, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|inadvertently unleashing]] the [[Mirror Universe|Praetorian]] Clockwork King, [[One-Winged Angel|"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.

** The Malta Group have been one of the most-loathed enemy groups in the game since they first appeared, generally having the right abilities to eventually hose ''any'' PC trying to fight them.

** The Knives of Artemis are also deserving of this. Knives can see through stealth, can easily keep player characters stunned permanently, and they stack Caltrops to a ridiculous level, ensuring that most players can barely move while taking damage. Unless there's a character on the team with Speed Boost to free others from Caltrops, teamwipes happen on every single Knives of Artemis mission. Fortunately there aren't that many. (You can save yourself through use of flight. And, if you have the team teleport power, you can teleport all your teammates in range to a safer spot.)

** Historically, players have given 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 ([[Mana Drain|Sappers]] used to be much more plentiful than they are now, and their spawn rates were decreased as a result of player <s>complaints</s> feedback), and the Rularuu (which have ridiculously powerful and accurate powers and are extremely hard to kill, but thankfully only show up in [[That One Level|Those Four Zones]] that are entirely optional).

** A much, ''much'' earlier example would be the Headmen Swordsmen in ''The Lost'' enemy group. They have [[BFS|giant swords]] they pull out of [[Hammerspace|nowhere]], possibly [[Ass Pull|their asses]], that [[For Massive Damage|deal insane damage.]] Needless to say, Headman Swordsmen can be a pain for [[The Berserker|Scrappers]], who are melee-based and not that good in defense, as well as [[Ninja|Stalkers]].

* [[Draco in Leather Pants]]: Ghost Widow. Scirocco also gets this occasionally.

* [[Fridge Brilliance]]: the [[Cosmic Retcon]] above also explains where 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 fits the trope depends on the individual player.

*** 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 pop 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 [[Humongous Mecha|ten foot tall robots]] trying to ma- er.. ''[[Combining Mecha|combine]]'' with players. [[Chunky Salsa Rule|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 all these years. 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.

** Metronome, the [[Mirror Universe|Praetorian]] {{spoiler|Clockwork King}}. He has no physical body. You can't kill him, because [[Our Ghosts Are Different|he's already dead]]. He can possess any robot by [[Psychic Powers|telekinetically]] rewriting the operating system on its hard drive (which he knows how to do because {{spoiler|he helped Anti-Matter design them}}). You know, those [[Robot Buddy|robots]] that Praetoria uses for [[Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids|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 [[Haunted Technology|a ghost in the machine]], but a ghost in any machine, in every machine. And since {{spoiler|Anti-Matter murdered him}}, and Penelope Yin [[Stalker with a Crush|spurned his affections]], he's [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|angry]].

* [[Scapegoat Creator]]: Jack "Statesman" Emmert, especially now he no longer works on the game.

*** Completely shuts off the target's Health and Endurance recovery (in a group famous for Endurance drain)

* [[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 are all but deserted nowadays.

** 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. [[Playing with a Trope|And White to Black.]]

* [[What an Idiot!]]: Some of the plot points in arcs are fairly contrived. An example, a warrant is put out for the arrest of {{spoiler|the second Ajax after he revealed in his time capsule letter 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.