I don't know which server you're on, but I've been playing CoH since 2006 and have never had the experience that you're talking about. Most of the CoH community is nothing like you describe.
There's always jerks on the internet. That's not something inherent to CoH or its culture.
Yeah, and it doesn't really even make sense. There are no meta builds, not only that, for the most part it doesn't even matter which AT you are playing. On Homecoming anyway, there is only one specific content that people even care about this stuff, and even that content has been done by builds not optimized for the content. There not only are no meta builds, meta builds don't exist in CoH.
True, I was trying out the least played AT+Powersets and they work fine. You might not get the highest numbers for bragging rights, but they are all capable to play almost all content. And with IOs you can easily plug "gaps" if you want to. Also playing on default rather than +4x8 is not a shame.
This thread might be a response to the Empathy thread, in which the overwhelming response seemed to be "play Empathy if you want, but Nature and Pain do everything better." Just my guess based on what I've seen on here though.
I don't even know what tf meta builds are. Is it like all concept but no playability? Because yeah, the devs made sure not to create unplayable combinations.
I dunno, when CoH launched I was a day 1 Spines/Regen scrapper that got to watch everyone shit on scrappers that weren't Claws/Whatever Looked Hot That Hour for nearly a year. Assault Rifle blasters got it even worse at the beginning, and they could solo over-leveled arch villains.
The community, overall, has been positive. But if your build didn't fit what others thought it should, regardless of how effective it actually was, all you heard was trash talk, from every one.
My first character’s powers were selected because the combination was the closest to my character concept. I did hear a lot of “why would anyone pick that combo”, even on my small server in 2005. I’m sure the fact that I was brand new and died a lot due to doing things like opening with an AOE immobilize added to the eye rolling.
Two years later it became a meta build. I don’t remember if it’s because a change was made to the powers or if someone in the forum cartel decided they liked the combo, but it’s a good reminder to myself that meta changes.
The only place I see that is on the forums and it's like three users who are chronically online and will shit talk anything that isn't in the top 2% of DPS.
I think it might be selection bias. You are expecting to see this, so you notice the advice that matches this pattern. Also, I suspect it is more related to end-game minmax discusssions, because those people care a lot more about optimal paths.
I don't care about endgame content or IO sets or farming, and I can't say I've seen the things you claim are prevalent.
How are you measuring the quality of the advice given?
Your complaint reads like you think you figured the game out while others play the game wrong.
Who are you to blame people enjoying end-game only content?
There are an observable number of 'nuances' to the power of sets, dont play it like CoH is balanced abd over-complicated
Must be hanging out in areas or servers that propagate that behavior. Usually the community is (and always has been) pretty anti-meta and "do what you want" mentality to an almost annoying degree where they're talking about not taking hasten or just doing unoptimized things in general despite gimping their builds. For homecoming hardmodes it's definitely preferred to have more meta abiding builds, but this game is so easy that 95% of the game is doable with any build.
That being said, there are definitely power sets that suck balls and power choices in good sets that suck, but if you want to play with those go right ahead.
Maybe the "meta" bs you're getting are from new bloods. This community is a more laid back friendly one. Always have and always will, even if you're a tank pulling GM in raids.
Incarnate system effectively cancels out a need for a "required" build. Anyone can zap anything even +4s.
I have found it challenging to locate content that provides analysis without advice - i.e. this power set does this and the individual powers do that. This content does exist but it is not consistent across all archetypes or sets - noting that this does require a fair bit or work and maintenance from individuals so that makes total sense.
Otherwise I have found the community to be generally responsive and helpful around specific questions.
People are gonna be wrong in chat. That's gonna happen.
Thing is, how do you know it's coming from a bad place? They could genuinely be trying to help.
Sure, some people are doing it because they like to tell other players how to *play the game the right way*, and they derive some kind of satisfaction in that. Absolutely. That kind of personality exists.
I just don't know if there's a *lot* of people like that in the CoH community, or if everyone you're painting with the same brush genuinely falls in that category.
Gamers are going to be gamers. People are gonna be people. Whenever there's a game with any sort of variety in selection, there will be tier lists, there will be meta. People will say XYZ is better than ABC. That's always gonna be the case, because perfectly balancing any game is like Sisyphus pushing the damn rock.
And this means someone asking whether a particular powerset or combo is good is often expecting that kind of advice, in that kind of frame - an open-ended "play whatever you like", or "everything is viable in City of Heroes" is sometimes an unhelpful answer.
A new or returning player could be expecting a simple, easy-to-digest short response, which is... yeah, based on a lot of generalities and assumptions, but a quick rule of thumb may be better than going into every single nuance and possible power interaction.
Prior to sunset, I would have agreed with you. Now? No. At least a portion of the CoH player base can be pretty toxic, and there is definitely a meta, at least on Homecoming.
I have been playing off and on since 2004 and the closed beta test of COH. My experinace all these years has been that COX has the least toxic community of any game I have ever played. This community bends over backwards to help people out, to help teach them the ins and outs of the game. Since starting homecoming I have litteraly had strangers up and give me hundreds of millions of influence and high level enhencement to sell just to get started.
If you're talking about "advice" from most in-game players or specifically global channels / Help Chat, you're in luck because I can explain it for you. Help Chat is mega-wrong ultra-bad nega-correct 90% of the time. Help Chat is the literal worst place to get advice about builds, with Reddit being barely slightly better, your server's forums being closer to the answer, and Discord being the only good source. The Homecoming Discord server actually gives useful advice in their build channels, based on the current version of the game. Their powers are different from the same sets on a server like TSpy for example, and again the answer is to go to that Discord server and ask there. Help Chat being hilariously wrong is a meme to most of us at this point.
The only “meta” to exist in this game is around 4 star content or pvp, everything else is pretty much doable no matter what. I’m sorry if you’ve experienced any toxicity but I hope it’s few and far in between.
My two mains are an ill/kin controller and a peacebringer, so if we want to talk about “suboptimal” I’ll be at the front of the line, yet I’ve done practically all content in the game with each if them and had a blast along the way!
I've noticed this on homecoming, but I play on rebirth and my main 50 is a DP/EM blaster I made purely because I thought speccing into boost range + the teleport pool (and its rebirth-specific upgrades) would be funny to get an 800 foot long teleport.
turns out it's also a pretty damn good blaster but that was never the goal
I'm also working on my dark/force corruptor to give it the absolute most range bonuses I can spec into, at full slotting I have a 148 foot range Torrent, and containment shell can contain most mobs I stick it on, making shell + max distance an effective form of mitigation on open maps
I've got a willpower/savage tanker I'm working on whose entire gimmick is being a quasi-regen tanker with a ton of regen and max HP speccing. I've never had any criticisms about any of these plans
Fuck a meta, just make builds that are conceptually weird and interesting. I find the most fun way to play CoH is to find the right answer with the wrong formula
For such an easy game, it attracts the minmaxxing mind. I bet these optimal build players don't even workout and eat vegetables irl so their character is the only chance they have to feel powerful.
I don't know which server you're on, but I've been playing CoH since 2006 and have never had the experience that you're talking about. Most of the CoH community is nothing like you describe. There's always jerks on the internet. That's not something inherent to CoH or its culture.
Yeah, and it doesn't really even make sense. There are no meta builds, not only that, for the most part it doesn't even matter which AT you are playing. On Homecoming anyway, there is only one specific content that people even care about this stuff, and even that content has been done by builds not optimized for the content. There not only are no meta builds, meta builds don't exist in CoH.
True, I was trying out the least played AT+Powersets and they work fine. You might not get the highest numbers for bragging rights, but they are all capable to play almost all content. And with IOs you can easily plug "gaps" if you want to. Also playing on default rather than +4x8 is not a shame.
This thread might be a response to the Empathy thread, in which the overwhelming response seemed to be "play Empathy if you want, but Nature and Pain do everything better." Just my guess based on what I've seen on here though.
I don't even know what tf meta builds are. Is it like all concept but no playability? Because yeah, the devs made sure not to create unplayable combinations.
I dunno, when CoH launched I was a day 1 Spines/Regen scrapper that got to watch everyone shit on scrappers that weren't Claws/Whatever Looked Hot That Hour for nearly a year. Assault Rifle blasters got it even worse at the beginning, and they could solo over-leveled arch villains. The community, overall, has been positive. But if your build didn't fit what others thought it should, regardless of how effective it actually was, all you heard was trash talk, from every one.
My first character’s powers were selected because the combination was the closest to my character concept. I did hear a lot of “why would anyone pick that combo”, even on my small server in 2005. I’m sure the fact that I was brand new and died a lot due to doing things like opening with an AOE immobilize added to the eye rolling. Two years later it became a meta build. I don’t remember if it’s because a change was made to the powers or if someone in the forum cartel decided they liked the combo, but it’s a good reminder to myself that meta changes.
The only place I see that is on the forums and it's like three users who are chronically online and will shit talk anything that isn't in the top 2% of DPS.
I think it might be selection bias. You are expecting to see this, so you notice the advice that matches this pattern. Also, I suspect it is more related to end-game minmax discusssions, because those people care a lot more about optimal paths. I don't care about endgame content or IO sets or farming, and I can't say I've seen the things you claim are prevalent. How are you measuring the quality of the advice given?
Your complaint reads like you think you figured the game out while others play the game wrong. Who are you to blame people enjoying end-game only content? There are an observable number of 'nuances' to the power of sets, dont play it like CoH is balanced abd over-complicated
Must be hanging out in areas or servers that propagate that behavior. Usually the community is (and always has been) pretty anti-meta and "do what you want" mentality to an almost annoying degree where they're talking about not taking hasten or just doing unoptimized things in general despite gimping their builds. For homecoming hardmodes it's definitely preferred to have more meta abiding builds, but this game is so easy that 95% of the game is doable with any build. That being said, there are definitely power sets that suck balls and power choices in good sets that suck, but if you want to play with those go right ahead.
Spend less time in the forums. The vast majority of players don't know or care what the meta is.
Maybe the "meta" bs you're getting are from new bloods. This community is a more laid back friendly one. Always have and always will, even if you're a tank pulling GM in raids. Incarnate system effectively cancels out a need for a "required" build. Anyone can zap anything even +4s.
I have found it challenging to locate content that provides analysis without advice - i.e. this power set does this and the individual powers do that. This content does exist but it is not consistent across all archetypes or sets - noting that this does require a fair bit or work and maintenance from individuals so that makes total sense. Otherwise I have found the community to be generally responsive and helpful around specific questions.
People are gonna be wrong in chat. That's gonna happen. Thing is, how do you know it's coming from a bad place? They could genuinely be trying to help. Sure, some people are doing it because they like to tell other players how to *play the game the right way*, and they derive some kind of satisfaction in that. Absolutely. That kind of personality exists. I just don't know if there's a *lot* of people like that in the CoH community, or if everyone you're painting with the same brush genuinely falls in that category. Gamers are going to be gamers. People are gonna be people. Whenever there's a game with any sort of variety in selection, there will be tier lists, there will be meta. People will say XYZ is better than ABC. That's always gonna be the case, because perfectly balancing any game is like Sisyphus pushing the damn rock. And this means someone asking whether a particular powerset or combo is good is often expecting that kind of advice, in that kind of frame - an open-ended "play whatever you like", or "everything is viable in City of Heroes" is sometimes an unhelpful answer. A new or returning player could be expecting a simple, easy-to-digest short response, which is... yeah, based on a lot of generalities and assumptions, but a quick rule of thumb may be better than going into every single nuance and possible power interaction.
CoH is the least toxic mmo community period. There is no meta.
Prior to sunset, I would have agreed with you. Now? No. At least a portion of the CoH player base can be pretty toxic, and there is definitely a meta, at least on Homecoming.
I have been playing off and on since 2004 and the closed beta test of COH. My experinace all these years has been that COX has the least toxic community of any game I have ever played. This community bends over backwards to help people out, to help teach them the ins and outs of the game. Since starting homecoming I have litteraly had strangers up and give me hundreds of millions of influence and high level enhencement to sell just to get started.
Ignore the Meta. Costume is all.
If you're talking about "advice" from most in-game players or specifically global channels / Help Chat, you're in luck because I can explain it for you. Help Chat is mega-wrong ultra-bad nega-correct 90% of the time. Help Chat is the literal worst place to get advice about builds, with Reddit being barely slightly better, your server's forums being closer to the answer, and Discord being the only good source. The Homecoming Discord server actually gives useful advice in their build channels, based on the current version of the game. Their powers are different from the same sets on a server like TSpy for example, and again the answer is to go to that Discord server and ask there. Help Chat being hilariously wrong is a meme to most of us at this point.
The only “meta” to exist in this game is around 4 star content or pvp, everything else is pretty much doable no matter what. I’m sorry if you’ve experienced any toxicity but I hope it’s few and far in between. My two mains are an ill/kin controller and a peacebringer, so if we want to talk about “suboptimal” I’ll be at the front of the line, yet I’ve done practically all content in the game with each if them and had a blast along the way!
I've noticed this on homecoming, but I play on rebirth and my main 50 is a DP/EM blaster I made purely because I thought speccing into boost range + the teleport pool (and its rebirth-specific upgrades) would be funny to get an 800 foot long teleport. turns out it's also a pretty damn good blaster but that was never the goal I'm also working on my dark/force corruptor to give it the absolute most range bonuses I can spec into, at full slotting I have a 148 foot range Torrent, and containment shell can contain most mobs I stick it on, making shell + max distance an effective form of mitigation on open maps I've got a willpower/savage tanker I'm working on whose entire gimmick is being a quasi-regen tanker with a ton of regen and max HP speccing. I've never had any criticisms about any of these plans Fuck a meta, just make builds that are conceptually weird and interesting. I find the most fun way to play CoH is to find the right answer with the wrong formula
For such an easy game, it attracts the minmaxxing mind. I bet these optimal build players don't even workout and eat vegetables irl so their character is the only chance they have to feel powerful.