phloogie

Thanks for all the great input, everyone. I'll be honest - when I posted this I worried that I was going to return to eleventy-eleven pages of vicious shouting - "This games is perfect ya N00b! Go play [insert name of game here] if you can't hang with the REAL playahs!!!"

Seems like a great community (the first time I played I didn't do much on the web in terms of forums (fora?) or similar...I'm assuming it's either always been this friendly, or you've weeded out D3ATHNINJAH69 and his annoying friends (my apologies if you actually use the name D3ATHNINJA##, it was meant in the general sense).

It sounds like my problem isn't new/unique, but might be limited to First Ward and related....someone should put some signs up by the entrance....

Ukaserex: It's hard to remember through the thick fog of annoyance that is currently clouding my mind....but I seem to recall that most of the mobs we were encountering were orange and some red, but the ambushes always had AT LEAST one purple. I don't recall the name - if I calm down and log back in sometime before 6/1 I'll try to post the name.

By the third time it happened, we knew full well there would be an ambush, but the nature of the spawning made that awareness of almost no use...I remember being struck in the head with red lightning that took 2/3 of my Health AND immobilized me the INSTANT the ambush group appeared.

I knew there would be an ambush, and I even tried to - - (actually DID) position myself so that none of the villains had line of sight to me...still got hit. Before anyone was even on the screen to be targeted I was getting killed. A teammate stacked all possible buffs, lucks, defenses, etc...POOF.

I appreciate folks taking the time to answer my questions. I hope you all continue to have a great time playing, but in all honesty this has kind of soured me on it.

As I noted, I was finding some of it a bit boring (we had a mission last week where we seriously had a network of caves with corridors - each ended in the same shaped room filled with the exact same mix of bad guys. SIX copies of this room in one 'dungeon'.

But then tonight we finally had an experience that wasn't boring, but sadly it was infuriating. Actually I take that back, because I really was getting bored of flying back from the hospital.

Sounds like they need to tweak FW, or they need to save it for the most diehard fans of the game.

As far as the instant revivals and such...I get their business model, and it makes sense to pay for what you get, but the idea that they might have actually deliberately put in instant-kill missions to drive incremental sales of items to avoid the hospital just kind of strikes me wrong. Maybe that's an issue with F2P - it drives the wrong behaviors by the company. I know that's not what you're saying, but I think the temptation is there.

We were playing a mission sequence in First Ward, and at one point you need to interact with a techno-doohickey. When we did, suddenly around 7-10 villains of orange, red, and one purple just *POP* into the room and destroy us...powerful psychic dudes - lots of holds and such...TPK...to the hospital...return...but now the group is in the room, and we can apply tactics and we wipe out the baddies with minimal trouble. (we're playing at 28th)

A couple of rooms later, and the same thing happens - vastly powerful villains appear RIGHT THERE giving you no time to do anything but take it, and at least one of our team was basically one-shotted. Bang! BACK to the hospital, we all run back...as in the last case they are still in the room we left them and can be attacked.

This happened about FOUR times in one mission.

I get that I am not the uber-elite master of City of Heroes, but I cannot imagine a lot of scenarios where this force teleporting right on top of you would not result in at least one or two instant hospital trips...that's why they color them purple..but to just pop them in....

So the question is: as someone who played five or more years ago and only just came back as VIP, is this kind of thing typical now? This kind of bizarre - BANG! Here's an overwhelming force to destroy you!..?

I LOVE playing my corrupter, and teamed with my friends we have a great balance and have learned to operate as a team, but having villains just magically appear in the middle of your crew at a level that makes single or two-shot kills possible eliminates any sort of tactics...UNTIL you run back from the hospital. So you CAN play smart, but only after the nice run back.

Is this sort of an artificial way for NCSoft to make a tiny amount of content take a whole lot of player time?

Frankly, the whole hospital thing is annoying to me because it is really just a way to get you to blow more time running about (wish you could just get up).

Note that I get that every MMO does stuff like this - missions that have you go all the way across town to talk to Bob, who then sends you BACK all the way across town to talk to Al...but I like the time suck to be a bit more cleverly veiled.

But back to my real issue - - is it typical now in CoH to have mobs just pop in, at levels far higher than your team?

I was already kind of burning out quickly (only been back on a couple months) from the grind, but this was just ridiculous. I'm paid up until June 1, and so I figured I'd keep playing until then, but if at 28th level the missions start having this kind of gimmick just to stretch the content (or to just annoy you), then I probably just want to leave the time unused.

Bummer..maybe it's me, then...I come back and the servers fall apart.

I still think it would be cool if they let you clone a character...I like the toon I have now, and would prefer to not have to either start another or just miss play time.

Does this happen a lot? I get very few chances to play, and pop - this happens.

It seems like they should allow you to not just move a character in VIP, but CLONE a character, if they aren't going to be able to keep servers up consistently. I played when they first launched and it was often nightmarish, but I've been assuming things are solid now...is that incorrect?