CinnderScot

I, too, "lose" the cursor sometimes when things get hectic, so I may try the suggestions above.

On a similar topic, does anyone else have troubles clicking on NPCs sometimes? Whether contacts, merchants, civilians, or guards at hazard zones, I often find that -- despite my cursor being right on top of them -- I don't get the targeting box, and I have to move around on various parts of their body before I find the right hot spot and the character becomes clickable. Hazard zone guards are notorious for requiring that I click them below the belt, literally.

Sometimes it seems like I'm playing some sort of adult MMO instead of this teen-friendly game. :-)

Since many people’s memories of the old lowbie content (including mine) seem to be fuzzy, I did a quick check with the help of the magnificent Paragon Wiki and came up with some interesting numbers regarding the choices we used to have from levels 1-5.

First, a word (ok, quite a lot of words, actually :-) ) about mission quality and preference: I understand not everyone wants the same thing out of this game...

• Some hate the lower levels and want to use the sewer trial to get past them quickly. That’s cool. I don’t want to go that route, because for me levelling is too fast from 1-10 anyway. But although the trial is not “good” for me, I don’t claim it should be taken away.

• Some people like the new mechanics in the new lowbie arcs. I really appreciate some of that (aside from the generic-MMO-style non-instanced spawning), and I would be happy if I could choose to play those arcs, so naturally I don’t claim they should be taken away.

• Some people like to street sweep for the early levels. I want some story, so I don’t want to do that, but I don’t claim it should be taken away.

• Some people like AE missions. I’m one of them, and will probably start using them as suggested by others here, so naturally I don’t claim they should be taken away.

• (Not 1-5 content, but relative to the concept as discussed so far in this thread) As you have seen, I despise the Twinshot arcs with a passion, but I would never suggest they should be removed, because some people apparently like them. As long as I have a viable alternative, I can be happy. I’ll still criticise something that I feel is poor quality in the hopes that it will be improved -- especially because I don't want new players to be turned off -- but I won’t suggest it be deleted.

• Some people like to have a choice of dev-created stories from 1-5 so we can develop a concept of our character as we play those lower levels. We don’t want those levels to go by in the blink of an eye, nor do we want to be led by the nose through the same plot with every character. We want to be able to choose, and the missions we choose don’t have to be TF quality, because we are putting in our own ideas about our new characters as we go. Please respect our preferences as we do yours, and don’t claim that our missing early contacts “should” have been taken away.
  
  Allowing others their choice in no way impinges upon yours; please don’t post any more comments saying that these should have been removed because they didn’t suit your particular preference. That’s not helpful or constructive.

OK, having said that, let’s look at choice...

[Note: I did not count fed-ex or talk-to missions, but I did count patrol and hunt missions.]

Here’s what we used to have:

A choice of one of 10 contacts, each with an average of 5 unique missions. (Choice is made based on origin and starting zone. I had forgotten that the GC contacts gave missions different from those available in AP.) Surprisingly, these contacts have an average of 1.7 arcs. Short arcs, to be sure, if measured solely in fighting missions, but storywise, that’s not bad for old lowbie content. Sure, these missions don’t have fancy mechanics, but -- as I mentioned before -- they introduced you to a particular group of enemies and their background, which is fun for some of us. (See comments about quality and preference above.) So, if you made a different choice every time you created a new character, by the time you played through all of them with various characters you had completed 49 missions, including 17 small arcs. Honestly, that's even more choice than I realised.

I didn’t take notes during this new character’s post-i21 experience, and Paragon Wiki is incomplete there, so I’ll be generous and assume the same average number of missions per contact in the new content (even though I think it’s actually less – please provide data if you have it). That’s 4 contacts for a total of 20 missions (4 arcs), with only one choice regarding which middle contact to take.

Going by numbers alone and keeping in mind the preference/quality issue, I think it’s undeniable that i21 has provided less freedom for the 1-5 experience.

But what really hurts is that leaving these old contacts in would have meant a pool of almost 70 missions (21 arcs) available through various choices at the beginning of the game. Think how long it would have been before you had to have the same starting experience for any new character! Now that would have been true Freedom.

Oh man, how could I be so remiss? The last few posters reveal that there was one more thing I forgot to complain about re: the new starting experience, and that is the non-instanced respawning. Aside from the tactical annoyance, nothing breaks my suspension of disbelief faster than either (a) having to wait for mobs to respawn cuz someone else just killed em off or, conversely, (b) having them respawn right on top of me. Sure, every game will have some quirks that can't help but feel gamey, but this is like shouting "THIS IS ONLY A GAME!!" in our faces.

You guys are absolutely right: there was a mechanic designed to prevent this, so why deliberately remove one of the best things about the game?

What Agent White and Samuel_Tow said. (“That's the point. I DON'T remember them.” was an especially enlightened comment. Bravo to you, sir!) Treating your character as new to the city left it open for almost any character backstory. Besides, given that any time I’m fighting alongside any of these characters I do about 70% of the arresting, it should be I calling them noobs. But the most egregious aspect of the way you are treated in the training missions is the goal of the first arc. With the old origin missions (which we all agree were not stellar, so there's no need to attempt to claim that somehow equates to their not being 5 paths we could choose) at least your goal was to help someone fight a crime, investigate a mystery, etc. What’s the goal of the 1st Twinshot arc? To grovel and be accepted by this bunch of losers. That’s not heroic at all.

Others in this thread have kindly suggested some alternatives that I can pursue in the future, and I thank you for those. But is this how we want new players to experience this game? You create a character using the best system in any MMO, run a quick tutorial where you fight a giant monster(!), prove yourself in the Habashy arcs, and then...get subjected to a supergroup hazing program by a bunch of poorly-written caricatures. Hardly the stuff of comic book greatness.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. More chances to kill them!!!

I've loved everything in these arcs so far, from the writing to the clever use of mechanics. And cutscenes... That's such a great idea!

Looking fwd to the next installment!!

I used to really enjoy starting a new hero. Every time I entered Atlas Park with a fresh character and heard that signature theme, I always felt a bit of a thrill, recapturing a sliver of that feeling I had when I first entered Paragon City more than 6 years ago. I liked playing the low levels, slowly jogging around the zone, getting the feel of the new character and its style of play, slowing building an idea of his or her personality from the character's interactions with the early contacts and performance on those early missions. Also, depending on the character's origin, I could be fighting anything from Clockwork to the dreaded Vahzilok.

This week I started my first new character since Freedom went live. (I had two others I wanted to get to 50 first.) I had been looking forward to the new opening in GC, and it was nice enough, though I was surprised how short it was. "Ok," I thought, "they don't want people to get bored having to play the same long arc for every character they create, so they wanted us to get into Atlas and start having some freedom of choice." How wrong I was.

Now, I understand that some people hate the early levels and want to rush through them. That's fine, and the game now has the new sewer trial for them. But for those of us who want to play at a "normal" pace for the early levels, we have only the Habashy arcs (which are ok, with a single choice in deciding which contact will precede Thiery) and then the excruciating Twinshot arc, with the most insufferable characters ever written into any MMO.

Some other MMOs have unique arcs based on class or race to give you a special intro into the world. A new MMO about to come out continues these class-specific arcs throughout the game. I admit that the origin-specific arcs in CoH could have been better, but at least it gave us some variety when starting out. One of the main complaints about CoV at first was the single path you had to follow in early levels. Luckily, the devs saw the light and at least offered us one more option. Now on blueside all the origin arcs have been taken away. I realise we can choose a fast-track TF, random radio missions, or street sweeping, so there is *some* choice, but if you want actual written story arc content, there's only one path.

I remember when GR came out and I was thrilled to have some interesting options with improved writing for the early levels. I kept thinking that sort of design improvement would be applied to Primal characters' starting experiences, but instead we seem to be going backwards, losing what choice we did have.

Can't we at least have the old origin arcs back?

It's bad enough we have to go down this single path, but the Twinshot arc is so bad that I feel I have to comment on it further. I've tried playing through it using the suggestion someone else made on the forums that the horrible characters are meant as irony, illustrating some of the most egregious types of annoying player characters (the Thinks-She's-Cool character, the technobabble character, the inscrutable alien, the one who won't shut up, and the Obviously-from-Another-MMO character). Even trying to see it this way, I still have trouble getting through this arc without wanting to strangle them all. I did create a macro for the facepalm emote to use after almost every interaction; that helps a bit when the dialogue gets truly painful. But, if this irony is indeed the excuse for these characters, wouldn't that be lost on a new player?

There are also the numerous grammatical/spelling errors, but worse than all this is the feeling that comes from playing this arc. One of the big advantages of early CoH play has always been the fact that your characters feel powerful from the start -- no spider or frog hunts here. But this arc consistently talks down to you, with characters that are no better than you constantly reminding you that you're a noob, and telling you you can't handle these mobs when you do most of the fighting anyway. The main goal in the arc seems to be to gain the approval of these repellent characters in order to join their group, which is the last thing I actually want! And of course at the end of the first arc [slight spoiler] you find you have been played by an even stronger hero, and your character's only reaction seems to be, "Wow, thanks so much for being interested in me enough to send me on a wild goose chase." I come out of that arc feeling both annoyed and belittled. Not heroic in the slightest. Is this really how we want new players to feel when they start this game?

And now my character is level 9 with the only option for continuing story content being Wincott, followed by a threat of the return of Twinshot at lvl 10. Really? If I don't want to essentially skip the lower levels via the sewers or play random missions, the Hollows is my only option? That's all I get at lvl 9?

Where's the freedom in that?

This is causing no end of grief for larger mobs, like hydra men, as their various parts juggle together trying to reach the ground. If I knock one over, it can take almost 15 seconds for it to finish falling down.

I assume this is also the reason for at least some of the oddities people have been observing with knockback. This morning I actually had 2 hydra men fall *towards* me when I hit them with a knockback power.

Cutscenes? CUTSCENES?!?!

I am eagerly awaiting this, having played your MA arcs in the past and felt they approached a movie-like feel better than most of the official content in the game. You've written great story content in the past; now I'm intrigued to see what sort of gameplay innovations you have managed to create.

I'll assume from your past work that these mishs will feature the kind of mobs that present a real challenge, but one that can be overcome if you think about the combat instead of just madly clicking.

The only thing I need to know now is: how many points will these arcs cost us? :-D

Ditto what Ev said.

I think the fact that this pet "improvement" was stealth-implemented speaks volumes about whom it was truly intended to help.