Faultline & Boomtown = Ghostown
By
9783_Dollar_Man,
Posted on: 2004-11-15 08:36 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
The problem with Faultline is that you need a fairly big (4+) person group to hunt in there because the Clocks/Vahz both have fairly potent ranged attacks and come in big groups. The problem is that navigating Faultline is so treacherous that it is very hard to keep a big group together, especially if someone falls down the pit and everybody had to follow.
I am pretty good at navigating around Faultline, but I'm a SJer so it's not too bad, but try finding 3 other SJers or Fliers around your level who want to street hunt in Faultline. Not gonna happen. The TPers that I've played with avoid Faultline like the plague because it is so easy to TP right into the middle of a pack of Vahz and die before you manage to click again. Once I neared the top of the level range, I did take a tour through Faultline just to see what it looked like. I even saw the door all the way in the bottom that may someday open up to that area behind the dam.
The XP bonus idea has been mentioned before, but I don't think it's going to happen because I think from the dev's perspective, there's already a bonus involved: you get a bonus for grouping and a place with virtually unlimited spawns to kill, you just have to go out there with a group and tear up the place.
A lot of players have realized, however, that the grouping bonus begins to become less profitable when your groups start getting larger. A large group must hunt higher and higher level prey in larger spawn sizes in order to make the XP per hour better than a solo or duo. Well, at that point, the nefarious purple patch will kick in. Many people have indicated that 'around 4 people' is about the limit, from a profit standpoint.
The bigger issue really is that despite the clamor by a few for a more challenging game and more grouping, most people seem to prefer the opposite. i.e., they want easier, faster leveling and tend to solo quite a bit.
50 Fire/Dev | 50 AR/Dev | 50 Ninjas/FF MM | 50 Bots/Dark | 50 Kin/Rad |
44 EM/Regen | 39 BS/Regen | 38 Kin/Elec | 27 Thugs/Pain
"Rare is the man so noble that he will always give thanks for that which is freely given." -Jock_Tamson
I find it interesting that people are trying to maximize their xp, I seem to spend all my time these days trying not to outlevel story arcs and task forces, ninja-ing mission objectives and deliberately building up debt. So, unless I was at one of the levels where no contacts will give me missions, the last thing I would ever do is go out and 'hunt' villains in the hazard/trial zones just for xp.
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Yeah, the hazard zone concept doesn't seem to be working as intended. Supposedly, soloers should be hunting small packs in city zones while groups should be raking in XP in hazard zones, but it's quite the opposite.
Both my AR/Dev (44) and Fire/Dev (42) blasters farmed minions in hazard zones like Boomtown or Terra Volta - mostly solo. Conversely, my defender gets annoyed when a group of 5 kill-steals the pack of 3 or 4 minions he had just Fulcrum shifted in Brickstown.
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Part of the problem is that you don't hafta leave the cities to find the large spawns that were once only found in hazard zones. Don't recall exactly when the change took place but once upon a time almost all city spawns were 2-3 mobs, now i'm seeing groups of 8 in steel canyon.
Umber's Hall of Heroes & Villains
You should see the Rikti Crash site (level 40+ hazard zone). I have been there 4 times. Twice I was there with a friend, twice I was there by myself. Out of those times only once was there another person in the zone. 
Champion Heroes: The Wu Jen Adept(50)/Major Madcap(50)/Panther Ice(43)/Nightshadow Dragon(42)
Champion Villains: Freezing Night(49)/Tactical Widow(44)/Umbral Servant(38)/Mister Mechanical(33)
I absolutely love the Hollows, and I hope the devs decide to breathe some more life into the other hazard zones. I've been to Fautline once, badge hunting with my flyer, and I kept thinking "this place looks so cool, but needs something to entice people to come here." So how about adding some contacts, a story arc, a trial or something? Hell, I think I'll post in the suggestions forum now.
You can keep Faultline...One fall off the east side of the crevice and landing in the middle of CoT's was enough to convince me I had other places to be. 
Boom got me from 16 to 20. So I have a special.... 'Good Ol Days' memory of it! 
Find a group of lost along the back wall and hover up over them....then kill..err...arrest them. Not to mention I've killed babbage a dozen times at least back there. Was good xp in that level range.
Been concentrating mostly on mission arcs since 21 but DA is fun to grind in occasionally too. And TV is a challenge with the raiders. Have had some good aeriel battles with skiffs.
Did I mention you could keep Faultline? 
The increase in mission xp bonus all but killed street sweeping which, in turn, killed these zones which right now are only good for street sweeping.
I've got some great memories sweeping with pick-up teams in both zones the first few months after launch. After the Purple Patch and the mission xp boost, there's just no incentive unless they shift some storyarc missions there.
Ya hear that, dev's? Storyarc missions in Boomtown/Faultline for teh win!
the Problem with a lot of Hazard zones is that the Spawn Sizes are all pretty much the same size. Now Faultline is different because the Spawns are even bigger when you consider there's always a Boss or two in them. But look what's there... Clockwaork, Vahz, and CoT... That's basically Positron's TF and everyone HATES Positron's TF because the Risk just isn't worth the Reward.
Make the Spawns in Boomtown Small enough that a Duo or Trio could take on +1's/+2's and you'll see a real resurgence there. Make Street-Hunted Clockwork, Vahz, and CoT's start occaisionally Dropping Low Level DO's and SO's and you'll see some Major population increases in FaultLine. ...SuperSpeeders may even be Tempted to LEARN the pathing in that zone if that was the case.
The reason Hazard Zones are so empty is because they are so damn dangerous.
Statesmen and crew, I implore you to please look into doing something with the Hazard/Trial zones. You hold by "risk = reward" but these zones do not provide that. Something extra needs to be put into these zones to draw people there - GIVE US AN INCENTIVE PLEASE!
It probably doesn't help that almost everybody has a bad first experiance with Faultline. The first time most of us went in there was most likely the talk to Security Chief->Hunt 20 Vahz in Faultline that you got as soon as your level was high enough to actually enter the zone.
Great, now I have to hunt Vahz who spawn in large groups at +1 to +6 my level solo because there's nobody else who wants to hunt in here. Oh boy, I can't wait to try attacking a group with 3 +1 Eids, 5 +1 Morts, and a bunch of +1 Abominations alone. I think I did what most people do for that mission, draw the aggro of a nearby mob and run like crazy for the police drones. Once the drones take out the eids and a few morts you can sort of muddle through the rest. It's still no picnic and certainly not a place I wanted to return to.
Hazard Zones that are used:
Perez Park
Hollows.
Perez Park
Zone
|
Zone---Perez----Zone
|
|
Zone
Hollows:
Zone-- The
Zone-- Hollows
All the other ones:
Zone--Hazard Zone.
Or in the case of the bloody Rikti
Zone---Hazard Zone full of crap---Crash site.
See a pattern?
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It probably doesn't help that almost everybody has a bad first experiance with Faultline. The first time most of us went in there was most likely the talk to Security Chief->Hunt 20 Vahz in Faultline that you got as soon as your level was high enough to actually enter the zone.
Great, now I have to hunt Vahz who spawn in large groups at +1 to +6 my level solo because there's nobody else who wants to hunt in here. Oh boy, I can't wait to try attacking a group with 3 +1 Eids, 5 +1 Morts, and a bunch of +1 Abominations alone. I think I did what most people do for that mission, draw the aggro of a nearby mob and run like crazy for the police drones. Once the drones take out the eids and a few morts you can sort of muddle through the rest. It's still no picnic and certainly not a place I wanted to return to.
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Good point, I usually try to lvl up +2 from when I first get the mission (they con blue/green) then I complete it. I think the idea of making them more like Hollows with contacts there would work lovely. Even a Hospital like Dark Astoria for Faultline since its more out of the way than Boomtown. Put a Hero there for TFs even, something....Hopefully one of the devs will take note of the thread since so many good ideas are coming fourth.
Well quess what a lot of people get first right off the bat missions to send them into the hollows and perez. Later on you can avoid the missions to send you into the trial and hazard zones.
And you can duo the groups in the hazard and trial zones.
Vhaz in faultline not really a problem with teleport foe.
Also it makes sense these zones would be mostly unused by heroes. They have been taking over by villians.
Remove the hydra from perez and most people wouldn't go there either.
Groups get far more xp in a hazard and trial zone by design then a city zone when they street sweep. And you have to form a team to work the zones.
You had to do this from day one.
I never really thought about it until reading this thread, but I don't like Fautline much either. Both and and Boomtown are very dead on victory. To me there is really no appeal to go to either one.
Here's my suggestions for improving the hazard zones:
1.) how about a Mobile Army Superhero Hospital (M.A.S.H unit) at the entrance? When a hero dies he would go to this spot and instead of full health would come back like he took an awaken (i.e. low health, no end and disorientated). This would be great for the lower levels, like perez park and the hollows where people dont have a travel power yet and the run is so long and tedious.
2.) alont the same lines as above, how about an army supply person who would level you and give you insp and enh (sorta like the grey ghost in PI).
3.) how about a contact in the zone that you dont neccesarily have to get from another contact. This contact would give you level relevant missions in the hazrd one only. As an example, in perez it would start you out with the skulls and hellions, do a few missions with them, learn some storylines and then you would move up to COT, Hydras, etc). as you move up in levels it would make you explore more and more of the zones. Give a person the option to go from, say lvl 7 to 14 in Perez all with missions. I can remeber when i used to hun there, i would join a team and everyone would be like "what do you want to do?" "I don't know", and someone would suggest that our team of 7's and 8's go hunt hydras, because they are "good xp". This would be a great way to really explore each zone, learn the history of the baddies in each zone, maybe even instruct us in the bad guys power sets.
4.) how about more zone specific badges for each zone, like kill 100 COT in faultline, etc. This would get more people to the zones, which would give people someone to team with when they go there. Everytime i go to Boomtown, its empty, no one to team with so i leave.
5.) how about zone specific accolades, that give MINOR increases in your powers for completing a group of sotryacrs in each zone, but that must be done at a certain level (or done as exemplar). When i say minor, i say like increase HP by 1%. As we have it now, we have an accolade that gives a 5% or 10% (not sure) boost to HP and endurance. Why not have that accolade increase incrementally. It would be another thin the lower level people could strive for instead of just leveling. Each zone could offer a 1% increae in HP and end, provided you completed all the storyarcs for that zone.
Thanks!
Dr Winkie Lvl 42 Emp/Darrk Protector
Unlce Winkie Lvl 5 Kin/Rad Protector
TechnRad Lvl 20 FF/Rad Protector
Phoenix Rising Lvl 28 Grav/Emp Protector
Just my random thoughts.
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I find it interesting that people are trying to maximize their xp, I seem to spend all my time these days trying not to outlevel story arcs and task forces, ninja-ing mission objectives and deliberately building up debt.
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I assume you are under 30 then. I havent had missions for 2 levels now. If I had died more, it would be even more dull.
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It probably doesn't help that almost everybody has a bad first experiance with Faultline. The first time most of us went in there was most likely the talk to Security Chief->Hunt 20 Vahz in Faultline that you got as soon as your level was high enough to actually enter the zone.
Great, now I have to hunt Vahz who spawn in large groups at +1 to +6 my level solo because there's nobody else who wants to hunt in here. Oh boy, I can't wait to try attacking a group with 3 +1 Eids, 5 +1 Morts, and a bunch of +1 Abominations alone. I think I did what most people do for that mission, draw the aggro of a nearby mob and run like crazy for the police drones. Once the drones take out the eids and a few morts you can sort of muddle through the rest. It's still no picnic and certainly not a place I wanted to return to.
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Bingo. Hazard Zones are more trouble than they're worth. Who in their right mind would choose sitting around lft or trying to form a team that doesn't fall apart once they hear you're going to a hazard zone, over just soloing a door mission?
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The problem with Faultline is that you need a fairly big (4+) person group to hunt in there because the Clocks/Vahz both have fairly potent ranged attacks and come in big groups.
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Vaz puke is incredibly deadly. It is fire typed, which is something most people dont realize, but tanks dont really have great fire resists at that level. Its a heavy damage attack, with a strong dot. As a fire tank, I got wasted with an empath and some other teammates trying to tank groups of vaz there. Its a TON of frontloaded damage. Who cares if they have long recharge, its the initial wave of attacks which reams you. Add in slow darts and eidalons... Faultline sucks because the all the mobs are bastards to fight, and give the same exp as everything else. The whole its full of lts and bosses doesnt apply. Boomtown is full of the same mobs, and they go down easier, hit less hard, etc. If the devs dont want to give hazard zones bonuses, they should deifnately give certain mobs or factions bonuses. A sapper should be worth more exp than a jaeger, its a hell of a lot more dangerous. Rikti mentalist vs freak tank? Tsoo Sorcerer vs family lt class goomba. Aberrant vs Hellion buckshot. I've never even seen anything on why this is the case. They should have left the elemental attacks on low level outcasts, and boosted the exp. People dont go for the path of least resistance, they go for the path of fast exp. Fighting hard mobs gives less exp/time than easy ones. Make hard mobs the same exp over time by giving them a boost, and you will see more people branching out in their targets. Not everyone mind you, but more. The solution isnt to make everything hit like vaz at low levels. Leave some mobs weak, so that defenders/controllers etc have targets while leveling if they have to solo in lowby levels. Leave some hard, but worth more, so well balanced teams progress quickly.
The problem is that people who want to grind are soloer or small groups and in that case it's faster to level in towns and not in the hasard zones.
Ithink they should add monsters or special villains that spawn at random place into these zones. Add a badge or 2 to that and that's it you got people playing there.
Hunt Hydra - wrong. I do not ever kill them until the Abandoned Sewers at 36.
I kill in Perez 7 - 11 then go to Steel or Boomtown.
Take and put all of the Brickstown mobs into Faultline. Raise the level up much higher and watch the fun.
For one, everyone takes SS now because everyone takes hasten, and noone wants to deal with the annoyance of the varied elevations. Two, Faultline has tons of vahz and CoTs, lots of mezzers.. hellions and trolls are easier to defeat.
I like Boomtown, I spend as much time there as I can.. and wish there were more zones like it.
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I think the problem is many people who play the game don't really want to deal with the challenges posed by hazard zones. They are difiicult to get to, inconvenient if you need to sell or go to the hospital, and hard to get around in
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You're partially correct. What it really comes down to is that players of this game just generally enjoy missions more than safari hunting. The hazard zones are setup for the safari hunters, and there were plenty of them back in the days when safari hunting was the most efficient way to level up. When the mission XP was cranked up the people doing the safari hunting all switched to doing missions instead.
There's plenty of street crime already for the safari hunters. There's no need to go to Terra Volta when I can XP just fine hunting Family in IP. I'd rather be following a story line, but if I feel like a change of pace, I can just as easily save people being hassled by Outcasts in Steel Canyon as take on packs of unlikely group villains in Boomtown. Herding and AoEing the huge mobs in the hazard zones is no longer optimal, so people have stopped doing it.
Basically, the Rikti Crash Site is the only hazard zone that has any real reason to exist, in a story sense. It really doesn't make sense that in a city of heroes, entire boroughs are left to rot and be taken over by thousands of gangsters. Especially when you consider that Faultline has the dam, and Terra Volta has the nuclear power plant. Are these really zones that the city would just blockade and forget about? At the very least, there ought to be signs of reconstruction in Faultline. Heck, the lights are still on in most of the buildings!
Anyway, the reason they're ghost towns now is that mission XP was made comparable to hazard zone XP so there wasn't any good reason to play the safari game any more. When the difficulty slider goes in there'll be even less reason. Basically, the hazard zones need a gameplay makeover at this point. They're designed for a style of play that, apparently, is only attractive to CoH players when it's the fastest way to level up.
Personally, I don't see any real reason to go into these areas except for power-levelling. At least Perez and Boom have the Kraken/Babbage respectively, but they're fairly rare spawns.
Give us more content, give us more rare spawns and more Trials in these areas. Make them special. Give us a reason to go there except for the "Defeat (number) (type) in (zone)"
Boom is great street grinding up to 19.
DA is great street grinding 21 up to 28
Faultline is way too hard to get around, and it has mass status mobs cot and untyped mobs vaz.
Noone wants to go aganist untyped mobs and the risk of falling into the canyon while streeting clocks is too high. Since boom is basically the same level noone goes to Fault. Also since most go hasten ss, you are hard pressed to find ppl that are willing to street grind in fault since it is incompatible.
Solution?
Make Fault 18- 26 zone
theres no hazard area for level 20 ppl. they r looking for fast grind area.