NewScrapper

Your tastes differ from mine, then. I find the new zone mechanics pathetic. I kill a spawn, and 30 seconds later the same spawn reappears? Oh, yeah, I'm really helping clean up this town. Now I go to my very own indoor mission...only it's not my very own, since some doofus just walked in and is now stealing my kills...which, again, respawn after 30 seconds. And now I can't beat anything up in that part of the zone anymore because my futile activities apparently "cleaned up the zone" and now there are no baddies to fight.

Better written? More engaging? Why, because what used to fit on one dialogue screen now takes five screens and requires my clicking through them all? Because now the writers are putting words in my character's mouth that he would never say, so that going through mission text is less like roleplaying and more like reading a script somebody prepared for you? I didn't care that missions were like instanced street hunts -- they gave XP bonuses to help me level, and that's all I needed.

Maybe you like the new Atlas Park, but if the game gave me a choice between the new and the old, I'd at least be splitting my toons between the two -- and probably would favor the old, as I've played the Matthew Habashy arc twice now and would be perfectly happy to never play it again my entire life. The Vazhilok arc was just *painful* to go through. The "stolen supplies" arc was probably the best of them all -- too bad I can't just get that arc from somebody without having to do the Habashy arc first. I don't care for the new warehouse maps -- why so many doors that don't lead you to anything? The beat up Arachnos on the street missions are aggravating when you're competing with other players for spawns -- no, just because teaming up is the logical thing to do in those cases doesn't mean anyone is even slightly interested in teaming with you. So, for me, the new Atlas Park is a cesspool of frustration, to the point that I wish I could skip it and pick Kings Row for my starting zone.

Is there anything in the first two Twinshot that actually requires that the player go to a particular zone? I mean, I know that the arcs as the are currently written will send you to Kings Row and Steel Canyon, but is there any training content actually introduced in those arcs that could not just as easily be done in Atlas Park? All I recall is getting sent to a police station and to a hospital and maybe to the university, but the only thing it was necessary to do at any of those locations was talk to your team.

The old tutorial finished with given the player a choice of trainers:

"Talk to Miss Liberty in Atlas Park."
"Talk to Back Alley Brawler in Galaxy City"

And then when you got to your destination, there was a 10-second delay on the screen saying, "Go visit your trainer," before you could cancel that screen. I don't see how the new tutorial *could* have improved on that.

The old contacts didn't suck any worse than the new contacts do, and at least you got variety from being able to choose from ten different initial mission paths (even if the missions probably didn't vary much from zone to zone -- I never really checked because I never rolled two characters of the same origin type that close together). With ten different initial contacts to choose from I *never* got bored with the early game on CoH, whereas on CoV it was dull city having only two starting contacts (especially since both initial Villain streams would send you up against the Snakes, and you didn't get a choice of second contacts -- haven't played the new Villain early game yet, though, so I hope that part has improved some).

Or unfun, depending on whether you actually like them or not.

lol!

Yeah, this was pretty aggravating to me. In the first mission I beat the bad guys, then the clock started, and I Ninja Ran back to the front door and got stuck. No idea what to do from there. Failed.

Second mission I'm told, "Oh, do something with rocks." Except I'm having some funky problem with my UI, so the mission instructions in the compass map are missing every third letter so I can't read them. No idea what to do. Failed.

Last mission, I power up and fight and finish. Yay, I won, right? Nope, here comes ambushes by characters I do not know from Adam, whom I'd love to read more about but I can't read their backstories and save my life at the same time, so now I'm frustrated by the content I'm missing. And so I beat them up (largely thanks to the veteran power Return to Battle, gee, glad I'm not a n00b having to rely on the standard powersets)...and it's over.

So my first impression is, "Wow, that was aggravating and not fun at all," which is my impression of pretty much all the new content I've come across in CoH Freedom so far, which includes the new tutorial, all the Atlas Park content, and the first two Twinshot training arcs. I have yet to come across one new story arc where I've finished it and thought, "Wow, I look forward to doing that again!" I hope the rest of this SSA is better than this first installment, and that it doesn't continue to rely on ambushes, short-fuse timers, and quirky tricks to make it "exciting." I'm more interested in story than gimmicks.

Yes, but action trees are understandable -- most action trees in the old-style CoH amount to, "Either do the mission or talk about something else." I'm not looking for infinite choices, just the "ability" to roleplay (in my head, at least) the choices I'm given according to how my character would think, speak, and feel.

Well, yeah, but why should I have to make an "effort" to "talk over" the dialogue I'm given? Let me choose actions instead of words, and there you have it.

Side-note: What I really find annoying is when you're given something to say in place of "Accept this mission," and the NPC responds to whatever dialogue you were given to say, even though instead of clicking on the line which means "Accept this mission" you clicked on the mission text itself. For example, let's say the mission invitation ends, "So what do you want to do?" and the acceptance text says, "I think I'm going to open up his face like a trash can and see what sort of garbage I can pull out" (or some stupid stuff like that), but instead of even seeing that like, you just click on the mission text to accept the mission. And then the NPC says, "HA! I can just see you as a garbage collector!" and you're like, "What on earth is he/she talking about?" because you never saw your preprogrammed response on the prior screen. So even if you "talk over" the text in your head, the NPC is going to remind you that all it cares about is the preprogrammed text -- i.e., you might as well just read along and forget about whatever RP'ing is going on in your head.

Really? So it's best to run the bank mission in each zone at least once just to be sure not to miss anything?

Eh, my RP'ing takes place in my head, since I'm a 95% soloer, which is why having dialogue put in my character's mouth is frustrating. It feels like I'm playing someone else's character (albeit with my power choices and costume design). I'm just lucky the character concepts I picked sort of blend well with the GR dialogue options, or I probably would have rerolled something else that fit better.

I don't mind Pop Help notifications that appear in the context of what I'm doing (e.g., I target an enemy for the first time and the "Targeting Enemies" popup appears), just those that appear for no reason while I'm running down the street to my next contact.

That's good to know. Thanks!

Hard but possible, as I've discovered with Nova Praetoria, at least. I hope I manage to do everything in the right sequence in the later zones so I don't accidentally lock myself out of something later on. I don't want to spoil plot points for myself by looking at the wikis first.

Let me clarify: I like that there's so much mission content packed into Nova Praetoria, but not all the text so much. I prefer the old style of, "Here's the mission. <Accept mission.> Here's a little more detail, now go to it." And I absolutely hate the new "conversational" style that keeps putting words in my characters' mouths that they would never say. But that's another thread altogether.

Very good points!

I would suggest that if they're going to drop inspirations and enhancements on you at those low levels, it would be helpful to be told what they're for and how to use them, just as the old tutorials used to tell you.

Okay, I can agree with that. Would be a lot nicer if you could rt-click on signature NPCs and get their backgrounds, but at least you do see them. But there's a drawback to this particular implementation: Given that they're invincible (to the extent that they don't even have health bars), I can't help but get the impression, "You're not even remotely in *their* league," which is not the kind of feeling I would want as a new player. I would want to feel like an essential part of the action, not an irrelevant accessory. Couldn't the tutorial have sent you to B.A.B. and S.P. as your first contacts?

B.A.B.: "Hey, you! You see these big lugs I'm fighting? I need you to get in the action! Here's how you con, target, and attack! Now defeat 5 of these things and get back to me! Good job, go see S.P!"

S.P.: "Here are some enhancements and inspirations, and here's what they're for and how to use them. Now equip yourself, fire up an insp, and help me take out a few more of these things! Good job, now there's a hero down who needs help, so go help him out!"

I like this idea. I was never a big fan of the Jailbreak tutorial on CoV (mainly because the "defeat a couple prisoners to show me what you're made of" mission seemed extremely lame), but this kind of "Start with Outbreak, then ramp up to the Coming Storm" idea isn't bad at all. Instead of being a showcase for the game's basic functionality, maybe the Coming Storm portion could feature teaming, giant monsters, moral choice, and other stuff. And players could choose to either go to Outbreak, go directly to Coming Storm, or do Outbreak and skip Coming Storm to go directly to Atlas or Mercy -- whatever they preferred.

No bombs from me. I'd have to agree with you on the average IQ drop, actually. I nearly hit the roof on this issue a long time ago walking down the aisle of a Toys R Us and seeing what they'd done to Stratego. Used to be (old man voice: "back in my day...") the pieces in Stratego were numbered from 1 to 9, with 1 being the Marshall who could beat anyone, and 9 being the Scout who couldn't beat anyone. But apparently kids got too stupid to realize that for the purposes of Stratego, the lower number beats the higher number, so they renumbered the pieces from 10 (Marshall) down to 2 (Scout). I don't think they even have a 1, that's how stupid this all is. And all because it was too much to ask kids to think.

I had the same argument a while back concerning comic book covers. I asked Joe Quesada, EIC of Marvel, "I used to read Iron Man but I don't now. Question: How do you expect me to ever pick up an Iron Man comic again if all you do month after month is show a picture of Iron Man on the cover? I know Iron Man's in the book because it's his title. You gotta show me more than that if you want me to be interested." And he basically said he didn't care if I was interested, it was the new readers, the people who'd never bought an Iron Man comic before, that he cared about grabbing. He didn't think it was worth the effort to reach veteran comic readers like me. Maybe CoH Freedom is going that same route. If so, whatever, I'll just let them know what I don't like, and they can take it or leave it.

And you seriously think it was the *tutorial* that was preventing new players from catching on? I mean, you could be right, maybe they ran focus groups and asked whether or not the tutorial was interesting. But my first guess would have been the fact that there's a F2P competitor sitting right across the virtual street -- I'd be over there myself if my sub didn't go into 2012 because free is way cheaper than $11/month.

My character can't start in the old tutorials if I want it to. You can't call bull on that. And whatever freedoms that CoH added for this F2P model didn't have to come at that expense.

Not really. I don't expect any massive changes, but I am highly dissatisfied with the new tutorial and feel compelled to express my opinion why in case the devs see something in my complaints and say, "Yeah, he's right, maybe we should change that. Let's put that in the queue."

Me? A long time. But I'm also trying to put myself in the shoes of a new player and say, "If I were playing this for the very first time, how would I feel?" And, let's face it, CoH Freedom *is* a new game in many ways, so I entered this tutorial with my eyes and ears open, wanting to see if there were any important differences in gameplay that I needed to pick up on. (Goodness knows all the bonus items I keep getting from the new rewards program are strange and frustrating enough to deal with -- I liked it better when I could leave items unclaimed without that little red "you have email" indicator always on.)

Well, there are two kinds of players, then: those who care about tutorials, and those who don't. And if you make a tutorial that pleases the ones who care, and offer a "skip tutorial" button for the ones who don't, then you've pleased both groups.

Then you're not listening. There were several systems that the old tutorials explained which heroes entering the cities at level 2 would need to know how to use. The new tutorial either doesn't try to explain them or explains them practically in passing (kind of like the GR tutorial, which is irritating as all-get-out with its random popups).

And yet, had they followed the old tutorials, they would have learned how to do these things. You can't say that about the new tutorial. *That* is the problem.

I can't help it if today's gamer is a coffee-inhaling, sugar-mainlining squirrel. College isn't for everyone. If they want to skip the tutorial they can do so, but those of us who have traditionally played through the old tutorials when rolling alts would like to have seen those old tutorials replaced with something that was worth our time.

I like the Apple/Mac comparison, but I was under the impression that the old tutorials *were* the Apple/Mac. This new tutorial is like a bright red power button that lets you know how to turn the PC on, but not much else.

Again, I'll give it another try later on. Maybe I'll find things about it to enjoy that I didn't see the first time. These are only my first impressions.

Seriously? I'm a hero/villain-in-training for *20 levels?* Wow, I sure feel like a superpower now! "Look out, world! I came here to TRAIN!"

But if it feels like suckage, it's not a gift horse, and the new tutorial -- this one initial part, anyway -- feels like suckage to me. Who knows? Maybe I'll like the later stages. I'm keeping an open mind because I haven't played those yet. I just hate to see something perfectly good (like the old tutorials and old AP & GC) trashed to make way for something that turns out to be less functional and less stimulating as this "Coming Storm" tutorial.

I'll play the new tutorial again soon -- still need to roll a villain on it. Maybe the second time around I'll enjoy it. That happened in the case of another game I played -- the first time through I didn't like it, but when I gave it another chance, things started to click. I gotta say again, though, the first time I went through the old CoH tutorial, everything clicked right away, so kudos to the devs of the original tutorial for giving it all the mojo it needed for new players to catch on quickly and get started.

I'm interested in seeing the new AP content, but I agree with the variety issue: Pre-Freedom you had *ten* possible starting contacts on the CoH side. Now you have...one?

I also wasn't a fan of the Kalinda-->Mongoose line vs. Burke--><whoever> line, particularly the fact that whenever you were done with Kalinda or Burke, you didn't get a choice of which contact to visit next. I would have liked to have seen the same variety V-side as H-side, or at least maybe something along the lines of providing a starting contact for each of the different lieutenants of Lord Recluse.

But as an overall gripe, the variety problem is something that has bugged me ever since they introduced The Hollows and Striga Isle and said, "Here's the way we'll do zones from now on!" and repeated this zone-long-story motif with Croatoa, Faultline, the Rikti War Zone, etc. They're making it so you either do the zone or you don't. You either play the story of the Hollows, or you don't. You either play the story of Croatoa, or your don't. Every arc feeds into the next such that it makes no sense to pick up in the middle (if you even can). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I'd much rather have variety such that I can say, for example, "Oh, here's a contact who needs me in Talos. Now I'm needed in Croatoa. Now I'm needed in IP." And on and on so that I'm needed all over the city, rather than camping in one location saying, "Okay, let's do this zone for the next few days." So, basically I don't like the fact that I have to say, "Do I do this zone or not?" Of course, I don't expect them to ever change this, but I am a little sad that Atlas Park has now been made over in that image. (I also miss going to City Hall and seeing my origin-based contacts. That was a way to make player's toons feel special right off the bat, making them go to an origin-specific contact, as if the origin designed by the player really mattered to the NPCs. That was like showing respect for the players' creativity right from the beginning. Now it's more like, "Okay, whoever you are, get in there and fight!")

Sounds like you were there with your friends and were able to answer any questions they might have had. Or maybe I'm reading you wrong?