City of Heroes: Difference between revisions

''City of Heroes'' managed to stay alive for so long despite being only a few months older than the massive ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' juggernaut largely by occupying a niche market and having a die-hard, rabidly-devoted fanbase. However, this was not sufficient to keep owners [[wikipedia:NCSOFT|NCSoft]] from shutting down the game (albeit with several months' notice) in late 2012. The move came as a complete surprise to the staff of Paragon Studios, who were in the process of designing and implementing at least a year's worth of new content at the time, and who were unceremoniously canned simultaneously with the announcement of the game's impending demise. Exactly ''why'' NCSoft killed a popular, groundbreaking game that earned them in excess of US$2 million every month is unknown. The company's few "explanations" were vague and confusing; industry observers and pundits generally agreed that the move made little to no sense. Additionally, NCSoft rebuffed all efforts to buy or license the game from them, apparently preferring to lock it up and throw away the key rather than earn ''any'' kind of money on the property. One of the more interesting speculations about their motivation was that it was a combination of face-saving for the Korean company and a deliberate slap at former NCSoft executive Richard [[Ultima|"Lord British"]] Garriott, who had overseen ''COH'''s creation and had just won US$32 million in damages from NCSoft in a lawsuit over how they'd forced him out of the company. (Another, very detailed, analysis for the death of ''COH'' can be seen [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YahAati0d2c here].)

 

 

{{tropenamer}}

* [[The Chosen Many]]: In addition to the whole "Destined One" thing, there's the issue of "Incarnates", characters with a fragment of divine power. At first, it appears that Statesman and Lord Recluse are the only Incarnates. Then, it turned out several other characters (such as Sstheno and Trapdoor) can claim Incarnate powers. Then, as of Issue 19, player characters began acquiring Incarnate powers by drawing upon the Well of the Furies. (Sadly, the instant super-power-up Statesman, Recluse and the others got is no longer available, so you're forced to [[Level Grinding|slowly acquire divine power a little at a time]].

* [[Circus of Fear]]: The Carnival of Shadows.

* [[City of Adventure]]: The whole city.

* [[City of Canals]]: Founder's Falls, aka "Super-Venice". Also Crey's Folly, whose original name actually ''was'' "Venice".

** [[Continuity Snarl]]: The one use of it caused this, and the death of its inventor, {{spoiler|when he tried to turn the hero Faultline into a villain, as well as misinterpreting his powers. As a result, a lot of information on Faultline is... confused.}}

*** Well generally {{spoiler|when you try to brute force a change in reality with absolutely no idea what you're doing, it tends to make things go wonky. We're lucky he didn't cause a [[Critical Existence Failure]] to reality.}}

* [[Cut Lex Luthor a Check]]: NPCs will hold victims hostage, hide out after a heist, or just make a base of operations for their goal in caves that are littered with gem stones the size of coffee tables. Never once do they think to mine this huge rock and sell it.

** Because large quantities of gemstones being readily available to the market lowers their value.

* [[Cutscene]]: Implemented as of Issue 6. Some hate them, others wish there were more.

* [[Cyberpunk]]: The Freakshow.

* [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique]]: Not literally, but one of the Incarnate components was actually ''called'' Forbidden Technique!

* [[Dark World]]: The Night Ward.

* [[Deadly Doctor]]: Dr. Vahzilok, and all the living mooks.

* [[Death Is a Slap on The Wrist]]: Above level 10, dying resulted in a certain amount of experience debt, where half of the XP earned went to paying off that debt, while the other half was used to progress as normal. Also justified in-game, in that all heroes and villains were issued medicom patches that stabilize the wearer and teleport them to a hospital in the case of their vital signs dipping below a certain point.

** Later updates added "patrol XP" which doubles-ish your XP gain for a time proportional to how long you'd been logged off—dying while you have any will reduce that time, and you won't even accrue debt.

* [[Expansion Pack]]: ''City of Villains''; marketed as an "expandalone", since it could be played as a separate game. The game's major updates (known as Issues) fall in this category as well, happily adding a full pack's worth of content for free each time. ''Going Rogue'' was a traditional paid expansion pack, though it was also be available in a ''Complete Edition'' with the base CoX game, [[And Your Reward Is Clothes|bonus costume pack]], and 30 days of game time that you'd get even if you already own the base game.

* [[Face Heel Turn]] / [[Heel Face Turn]] / [[Face Heel Revolving Door]]: The signature gameplay element of the ''Going Rogue'' expansion. Its mascots are an Arachnos-employed demon summoner who was lied to about her mother's death and a heroic [[Knight Templar]] superhero who became an insane vigilante. You can even have a hero turn into a villain then work their way back into being a hero again! (The same is true of villains.)

* [[Faceless Eye]]: Some of the inhabitants of the Shadow Shard.

* [[Faceless Goons]]

* [[Fan Nickname]]: When the Council were first introduced, they were known by many as "Sazis" or "Spazis" (for "Space Nazis"). Seems to have died out, though some still call the masked Galaxy soldiers "[[Masked Luchador|luchadores]]".

** Rommy and the Fuzzies, for Romulus Augustus and his three Nictus, who look like floating balls of purple-black smoke.

** Hami-O's for Hamidon Origin Enhancements.

** Quite a few signature characters have shortened versions for ease of use: States, Posi, BABs, Manti, GW, Scorp, [[And Zoidberg|and DocQ]].

** The new tutorial level for ''Going Rogue'' has been referred to as the "Praetorial".

** The underground city of Orangebagel.

* [[Flying Firepower]]: mix a ranged ability with flight, and you are one.

* [[Fighting a Shadow]]: The "shadows" are actually a ''basic boss'' for the Nemesis faction—being the [[Magnificent Bastard]] that their titular leader is, his [[Power Armor]]s have a very advanced AI that can work on its own. "Fake Nemeses" are, as one might guess, spare suits that have been activated to serve as field commanders/doppelgangers.

* [[Five-Bad Band]]: The leaders of Arachnos.

* [[Flash Back]]: Via the aptly-named Flashback system, complete with [[Deliberately Monochrome|sepia tones]] at the beginning and end of missions.

** [[Lightning Bruiser]]: Any Tanker/Scrapper with the Speed travel power.

* [[Freemium]]: Since the ''Freedom'' expansion. The majority of the game's content really was free, but endgame content, a special arc, certain archetypes, and a whole lot of costume options had to be paid for. Also, anyone who never spent any money on the game labored under some extra limitations.

** To a far smaller degree, the Steamy Mist power from the Storm Summoning set is quite literally a small-radius movable Fog of War centered on the user's person.

*** A full group of high level players fighting for their lives can send up a truly epic amount of particle spam, making it effectively impossible to see what is going on on your screen.

** [http://threepanelsoul.com/2007/08/13/on-corruption/ DID YOU JUST MAKE ME FLAMING??]

** Enemy NPCs with Confuse powers can force you to treat them this way.

* [[Gambit Roulette]]: [[Magnificent Bastard|Lord Nemesis]].

* [[Game Breaker]]: Incarnate abilities are this in-universe, especially the fully-developed, not-controlled-by-the-Well version. Players will (likely) never get the full extent shown in one future flashback mission where Archvillains (the toughest regular foes in the game) are defeated with laughable ease.

** Lacking a clearly defined team role isn't necessarily a bad thing, since the Scrapper can make a good stand-in for an aggressive Tank. Their greatest team-centric let-down is that they ''must'' run into a fight to land a hit, so you mustn't get too mad at them for going on ahead; they're a Melee class and their powers demand close-up fighting. As a result they get knocked out quite a lot in a team and are sometimes known as "Rug-Munchers".

** Since side-switching became available, the Brute has fallen into this. Offensively, they're weaker than Scrappers, but stronger than Tankers (and vice-versa for defenses).

* [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope]]: Villain missions undertaken as a Vigilante are this, to a hilarious degree—blowing up a Longbow base to teach them a lesson about being complacent, destroying a charity event because no one in the Rogue Isles deserves charity, ''murdering a kidnapped girl, faking a distress call with a promised reward, and then killing any heroes who try to come rescue her since they were probably doing it for the reward''...

** Issue 19 added new tip missions for Vigilantes trying to become Villains and Rogues trying to become Heroes, which are much better written while still playing this trope straight—that is to say, Vigilantes jump off the slippery slope in a much more realistic and believable manner (along with Rogues... getting... ''back up'' the slippery slope?).

* [[Kryptonite Factor]]: Especially bad for the Peacebringers and Warshades, whose presence on a team [[Kryptonite Is Everywhere|causes special enemies to spawn specifically to hose them]].

* [[Large Ham]]: Romulus Augustus' transformation, right down to larger font.

* [[Laughably Evil]]: [[Mad Scientist|Dr. Thaddeous Aeon]]. His scatterbrained megalomania (complete with [[Did I Just Say That Out Loud?]]) is just so ''cute''!

** Ditto up-and-coming Mad Lab Assistant Vernon von Grun. He even tells you to laugh with him at one point. (Anyone who doesn't, for real, is not getting into the spirit of this arc.)

* [[Lazy Artist]]: The never-ending supply of generic, near-identical warehouses with random floor plans. And the office buildings. And the caves.

* [[Leaked Experience]]

* [[Leeroy Jenkins]]: As a [[Shout-Out]], no less.

** And far, far too many players in bad pick-up groups to count.

* [[Legacy Character]]: The current Manticore took up his father's role after his murder.

** Also, in a Villain-Only [[Time Police|Ouroboros]] mission you get to fight the mother (and former nameholder) of Miss Liberty.

*** Well technically the mother is Miss Liberty, her daughter is Ms Liberty. Yes, they're confused all the time.

* [[Level Grinding]]: Although the devs do their best to minimize it.

* [[Level Scaling]]: While enemies in open world areas have fixed levels, most missions are instanced, and the instances are scaled to player levels and group sizes. In case of the flashback system that allows high-level heroes to revisit low-level missions, the ''player'' is scaled in level to match the mission difficulty.

* [[Liberty Over Prosperity]]: If you create your character in Praetoria, the squeaky-clean police-state, you defect to Primal Earth (the main game setting) at level 20. Either because you believe that liberty is worth the chaos that comes with it, or because it'll make being a villain easier.

* [[Limited Special Collectors' Ultimate Edition]]: Standard editions, DVD Collector's Editions, Good vs. Evil pack...

* [[Load-Bearing Boss]]: The end of the last mission in the {{spoiler|Ernesto Hess}} Task Force is a nasty shock your first time through...

* [[Loot Boxes]]: The game never had anything along the order of in-universe Loot Boxes, but toward the end of its original run a "Booster Pack" mechanism was added to the game. Players could buy booster packs with real-world cash or merits, and each would give five random drops ranging from common salvage to ultra-rare enhancements and recipes. With the revival of the game in a non-profit form in 2019, boosters became available for in-game currencies only.

** ''Going Rogue'' brings graphical updates for the Praetorian Clockwork, providing male, female, huge, and Giant Monster flavors of Mecha-Mooks.

* [[Mighty Glacier]]: Stone Tankers and Brutes. As well, Ice Tankers can usually move as fast as anybody else—except when using the tier 9 power, Hibernate, which renders you immobile, invulnerable, and incapable of attacking, but boosts your regen and recovery.

** Some Vigilante-to-Villain morality missions follow the idea that your character is becoming evil via descent into madness. To symbolize this, those missions will delve into [[Mind Screw]] territory.

* [[Mirrored Confrontation Shot]]: The Good vs. Evil box art.

* [[Nebulous Evil Organisation]]: Malta, Arachnos, the Council, the Nemesis Army...

* [[Nerf Arm]]: Intentionally averted: the developers want customizable weapons to still ''look'' like they should do significant damage. Nevertheless, a Nerf bat option remained one of the more popular requests all the way up to the shutdown.

** That said, some of the options were still not entirely serious-looking (for example, one of the battle axe options was a shovel, one of the shield options was a manhole cover, and among the war mace options were a wooden baseball bat, a variety of pipe wrenches, a shillelagh, a bone club, and... a shovel).

*** You think a shovel doesn't make a good battle axe? Look up "[[World War I|entrenching tool]]" some time.

*** Which suggests the current developers are woefully ignorant of their own setting's lore, the players (who've been joking about it for years) are perverts, or both.

* [[Patchwork Map]]

* [[People Jars]]: Several examples.

** Nemesis Warhulks have their pilots floating in a gold-colored liquid.

** Arachnos bases frequently have creepy glowing tubes mounted on the walls in which various varieties of [[Mooks]] appear to be growing.

* [[Perpetual Molt]]: For burned wings; this is more like perpetual smoke. The straight version was meant to be put in but was initially pulled due to hardware limitations; as of issue 20.5 it's now available for Incarnates to purchase with Astral or Empyrean merits.

* [[Personal Raincloud]]: One of the top-end powers in the Storm Summoning set lets you create one of these—complete with destructive lightning—over anyone you care to inconvenience. Sadly, it stays put instead of following them.

** ''All'' of the {{spoiler|Circle of Thorns, thanks to their use of [[Grand Theft Me]].}}

* [[Power Creep, Power Seep]]: Necessary for game balance, but not handled so well in a certain mission available only to characters who are [[Badass Normal|explicitly highly-trained soldiers]], where they are sent to defeat a [[Flying Brick]] wielding the power of Zeus just to prove how tough they are.

* [[Product Placement]]: The "Optional In-Game Advertising" for a while advertised Nike and T-Mobile products.

** Strangely, despite all the [[Ruined FOREVER|kerfuffle about its addition to the game]], actual ads not only weren't all that common, but actually seemed to disappear entirely in the last couple years before the shutdown.

** Dra'Gon of the Rikti.

** And U'Kon G'rai, encountered on Rikti Mothership Raids. ("You con gray", a reference to the game's color-coding of enemy threat level, basically translating to "you register as an inconsequential, easily-defeated twerp to me".)

* [[Purely Aesthetic Gender]]: Male, female, and "huge". While there are no statistic differences, some costume options, like skirts, are specific to certain body types.

** Hilariously lampshaded in places like tram stations, where the bathrooms are divided into three categories ... Male, Female, and Huge.

* [[Pyromaniac]]: Several flame-powered NPCs, both villains and, to a lesser extent, heroes.

{{quote|'''Pyra:''' I'm just here for the money. Well, the money and a chance to set people on fire.}}

* [[Recurring Boss]]

* [[The Remnant]]: The Rikti, after their failed [[Alien Invasion]]; specifically, the Reconstructionist faction.

** There may be another "developer oops" retcon coming up: there is no interpretation of the in-game evidence that permits the most likely candidate for Penelope Yin's mother to have been older than 16 when Penelope was born—and depending on how you interpret "young graduate student" and some other pieces of the in-game timeline, said mother could have been as young as ''[[Squick|8]]''.

*** And with the death of the game, we'll never know what [[Author's Saving Throw]] would have been used.

** Various retcons involving Stateman and Sister Pysche were being implemented as of the shutdown, to reflect {{spoiler|their deaths in the "Who Will Die?" special arc/storyline}}.

* [[Ride the Lightning]]

* [[Rival Turned Evil]]: [[The Cape (trope)|Statesman]] and [[Big Bad|Lord Recluse]].

* [[Robe and Wizard Hat]]: The Cabal. With the release of the Magic Booster pack, players can join in.

* [[Rogues Gallery]]: Issue 18 introduced the "Rogues Gallery" faction of various enemy supers for the player to fight during Tip Missions.

* [[Rouge Angles of Satin]]: The ''Going Rogue'' expansion added a badge called "Going Rouge." It's right by the Praetorian tailor.

* [[Run, Don't Walk]]: For over five years, you could take down anything from lowly street thugs to gods of alternate dimensions to next-gen SWAT teams and demonic mystic forces... but you could never ''not'' run. This has finally been changed with the addition of the Walk toggle, although it turns off all other powers, so you shouldn't use it in combat.

* [[Tuckerization]]: In addition to [[Shout-Out|shout out]] locations such as Perez Park and Gaiman Woods, a particular example is the first superhero that players encountered in the old hero tutorial, [http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Coyote Coyote].

* [[Turned Against Their Masters]]: In a short arc available to characters in their early L30s, the Council accidentally improves their robot A.I. to the point that a group of rogue robots starts not only rebelling against them, but planning to wipe out all of humanity.

* [[Uncanceled]]: The Cathedral of Pain trial, which up until Issue 18/''Going Rogue'' was hopelessly bugged and unfinished.

* [[Underground Level]]: The many cave maps; [[That One Level|some are hated]].

* [[The Unintelligible]]: Ricochet of the Crusaders part of the Resistance. The Resistance use their own slang but they can be understood. Ricochet uses slang that's so thick that the first thing you do after accepting her first mission is get someone to translate what she just said. The second has a question mark next to the mission objective. It doesn't get any better.

** Played straight with the [[Utopia Justifies the Means|"utopia"]] of [[Mirror Universe|Praetoria]] introduced in [[Expansion Pack|''Going Rogue'']]. [[Big Bad|Emperor Cole]] rules a "meritocracy" where any and all basic needs are provided free of charge, Clockwork robots handle all manual labor, and Praetorian PD officers on every corner have all but eliminated crime. Which happens thanks to {{spoiler|a [[Government Drug Enforcement|drugged water supply]], the psionic [[Seer]]s being literal thought police, the PPD drafting any super-powered individuals, and the [[Secret Police]] under [[Smug Snake|Chimera]] having full authority to "disappear" anyone whom they think is a threat to "the peace." Such threats usually wind up as [[Playing with Syringes|guinea pigs]] for the resident [[Mad Scientist]]s}}.

* [[The Virus]]: The Will of The Earth.

* [[Warmup Boss]]: The Giant Shivan at the end of the Galaxy City tutorial. You don't even have to do full damage to it before it retreats and you are congratulated for its successful defeat.

* [[Warp Whistle]]

* [[Wham! Episode]]: "Who Will Die Part 3". {{spoiler|The identity of [[The Dragon]] is revealed to be Malaise, and Statesman's daughter Miss Liberty is killed - possibly by the [[You Bastard|player villain.]]}}

** {{spoiler|Or [[The Chessmaster]], if the player villains [[Not What I Signed on For|declare they didn't sign up for]] [[Even Evil Has Standards|cold-blooded murder.]]}}

* [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]]: See ''Playable Epilogue''.

* [[When All You Have Is a Hammer]]: Almost every mission in the game involves punching (or shooting or stabbing) someone in the face.

** The Cathedral of Pain Trial also has a 7-day temporary power reward.

** A Villain SF involves you breaking into Positron's base and taking a small bit of the Flames of Prometheus.

* [[Video Game Flight]]: [[Flying Brick|Superheroes]].

* [[Villain-Beating Artifact]]: Both are averted and invoked. During some plot arcs you would be given special weapons to use on the enemy at hand -- but you didn't ''have'' to use them, and they would remain in your inventory of powers until you used up their charges (which could be months or even ''years'' later). A good example would be the anti-ghost weapons you could get in several different arcs, including a villain arc that sent you up against [[The Dragon|Ghost Widow]]. In other arcs, though, you would find, receive or craft weapons or items that would immediately vanish with the end of your need for them -- this included things like the grenades from the Lambda trial or the wand which cures the Lost that you would make at the end of the Midnighter Club membership arc.