MrCaptainMan

I don't see what the big deal about farming is anymore. Death From Below is a farm, and it's being used to powerlevel characters from 2-30 in days. Look at all the 'sewer trial pls' in Help. Farming is not the bugbear it used to be.

Eco

I'm not going to argue with you, GG - you like the stuff they're throwing us lately, more power to you. I don't, and no amount of winky smilies is going to change my mind. I'm an armchair player. I like slow and steady.

Eco.

I'm not in two minds any more. I've come to the conclusion tat First Ward is a steaming pile of crap. It looks lovely, the sound effects in the zone are great (love the churchbells), but the mission design is absolutely awful. I've fallen foul of the stupid ambusmania the devs are obsessed with in almost every mission. Latest is 'Force idnight to help you stop Serene', and half way thru the fight with him he summons a mass of wankers, who kill me AFTER I've beaten him to his 'I give up, talkto me instead' mode. Then, when i'm lying there like a plank, they all run away. I'm faceplanted, he's kneeling there wheezing like a gimp. It's laughably failworthy.

I'm never playing through this terrible zone again after i'm done with it, and i'm going to recommend nobody who doesn't get it for free buys it either.

Eco

I've put a suggestion in the suggestion forum here about this subject. Feel free to add your two cents

Eco.

The AE search interface is excellent for finding a farm arc, since the first dozen pagesa re full of them, but not so great for finding story arcs.

To stop any 'competition' between farm and story arcs, allow farm-arc authors to clearly tag their arcs as 'farm', story-arc authors to tag their arcs as 'story, and give some incentive to do so to the farm-arc writers(Ask a gfarmer how many extra tickets or whatever would be small enough yet still enough to make him do so). Story arc authors don't need extra incentive to avoid their arcs being confused with farm arcs, but farmers need rewards for doing things, it seems.

Segregation of farm arcs and story arcs. Everybody wins.

Eco

The more I play through the First Ward content, the more I appreciate Striga. It's even got better weather.

Eco

I just write a fairly long post starting with 'If I ever do the First Ward content again after I've done it once to see the story (doubtful), ...', explaining what my approach will be, but then I realised that no, I can't see why I'd want to do it again at all.

So: less ambushes in future content please.

Eco

I'm sick of clicking a glowie, having a clue drop, and immediately a frikking ambush teleports in and kills me. Some of us want to take the game at our own pace, it's why we loved this game way back before the devs turned into 'reading is for squares' types who only seem to want to cater to the 'waargh moar xp pls!' crowd.

I've just fought my way thru a zillion seers in the Infiltrate the Asylum mission in FW, cleared all, here's the payoff for all my hard work, a nice bit of narrative, please. Click the ciomputer and im immediately faceplanted by a teleporting ambush. So now I'vegot to go to the hospital and run all the damn way back thru the mission map. Instead of 'woah, cool mission!' I'm wanting to pucnh a dev in the face. Awful.

Eco

EDIT: And goimng to the hospital and back to the 'mission door' makes no sense thematically, since the mission door is clicking on Katie, who then gives mea ll the mission briefing text over again as though i haven't been in there once already. It's utterly stupid.

Another EDIT: And upon entering said mission again, my objective is 'Mission Completed. Find mission exit' - way to ruin the flow of a story, Devs.

One thing which struck me as odd, and irritating, was how often, a 'speak to me now' boss would speak lines in speech bubbles at the same time as guvi g me a briefing window with info. I was told it's so my team can get the bare bones of what's being discussed while I read the 4 or 5 walls o text. As a soloer, I don't much care for it.

As regards reading vs smbushes etc, at times I get the i pression that the devs dont playtest the arcs they write. It's like maybe one test team is told 'read all these bits of text and make sure they tell a story' and a quite different test team is told 'play this arc, ignore the text, just see if the mechanics work'

Separately, both sysyems work but together they're often annoying.

Eco

I love First Ward. The Shadowed Paths are extremely cool, the varied atmospheres of the zone are all great in their own wzy, and the storylines are interesting and the new enemy groups are original and look great.

I hate First Ward. The enemy groups are annoying to fight and seemingly far too difficult for squishies, the NPCs spend an unbelievably long time waffling via multiple walls of text that make my eyes glaze over, I spend ages whittling bosses down, dying repeatedly only for them to 'give up' and grant me no xp, and the Street Hunt and zowie missions push me into contact with orange-level mobs that I can't reasonably beat.

It's the sharks that make it an overall win for me, though

Eco

I was rather pointlessly looking forward to getting my 400 Paragon Points, because the only thing I want right now is Street zjustice, and I only had 30 points left over from my 'Freedom launch' splurge.

I logged in and went to the shoo ro find I had 580 points! 'What's going on?', I thought. Some wise people illuminated me that as a T9 VIP, I get 550 evety month, not 400.

Devs, you had me at 400, really. But thanks! I now have a list of unused 'reasons to love CoH' nearly as long as my xollection of free tailor tokens!

Eco

Well I try to not come across as obnoxious, and I don't criticise. But sometimes it can be confusing, and perhaps habits caight early are easier to amend. I didn't call Quests Missions when I tried WoW. How far would you let it go?
'where do I pay my guild rent?'
'which class has the best skills and how to I mail gold to myself?'

Eco

I've noticed a lot of freebs using the 'wrong' terminology in game, usually in Help:

'Can sb help me with this quest?'
'How do I pick a new skill'
'need some advice on what spell to choose next'
'sewer raid forming'
'Enhancements - that's gear, right?'

And similar.

Personally, I always try to (politely and with a smiley) correct what I see as bad habits. It seems to be WoW refugees using terms they're familiar with.

What do we think about this subject? Should we let it go, maybe widen the terms we use to be more inclusive? Or continue to 'educate' and maintain CoH's differences?

Whenever I see 'quest' I think of Frodo trudging through Mordor, personally, but maybe I'm just being a stick-in-the-mud.

Eco

First Ward's got some howlers too. A clue in the Palatine's arc, the The Tac Scanner, contains "Two recon patrols in the compound have went missing..."

Shoddy workmanship, if you ask me.

Eco

Maybe then, the solution is for the devs to change the name of the Help channel to LFG or F2P Chat or sth, and then add a new channel called Help. That way, everybody logs in to find they're now chatting in the LFG channel and the new channel would hopefully only be sought out by players looking for help.

Eco