I haven't had chance to test them all fully yet, but great job expanding the content of missions.
However, I would also like to add my voice to the 'No Quantums/Voids in waves' vote. That really is unfair, and uncalled for.
Always remember, we were Heroes.
This sounds great and I can't wait to try them out but I have to agree, I hate escort missions. let us TP them if we need/want to. overall tho these changes sound cool
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Many existing missions have been updated with hostage escorts, friendly heroes who fight by your side, villain wave attacks and more.
Discuss the new mission types and how you liked them. More of them? Less? Hostages AI Ok?
This thread is for you to provide feedback to the Devs on the above issues. You are allowed to post ONCE in this thread. Make it count! If you post more than one time - the extra posts will be removed.
If a dev responds this count will be reset.
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so the more i read these threads, the more i see how the company is expecting a paying public to beta test their changes and then arbitrarily ignore whatever doesn't mesh with said company employees' mindset?
i honestly want to know who works for this gaming company and is paid to make this game enjoyable and tweek it for the benefit of the public which pays their salaries?
A little feedback about my first escort mission experience:
One of the things I liked about this game was getting to the end of a mission and clicking out, that is, not having to hoof it all the way back to the entrance to leave.
With this type of mission, you have to do just that, with (in my case) two "Missing Homeless Person" types in tow. I had to backtrack a few times inbetween the in-map ambushes to ensure that these poor citizens were still following me.
I guess it's more heroic to actually save the people and see them out safely (rather than watch them take the elevator up to the next level jam-packed with bad guys), but it seriously dampens my enjoyability of the game.
It was cute once, but I got a mapserver disconnect and had to do it all over again, and it was annoying the second time though. I don't think it's going to get more enjoyable with a third, fourth, fifth, and so forth experience.
I'd rather chase down Ubelmann over and over rather than walk hostages out of the sewers ad infinitum.
The new mission customisation seems like a good step in the right direction, even if the implementation might need a little polishing. (But what's new in software development?) Despite the clamour for new zones, new powers, new costume pieces and the like, it would seems that what most players unconciously want is more variety in their gaming experience.
On a similar front, the introduction of customised mission maps turned many heads. Unfortunately, even though the maps are being produced at a good clip, they are still only beginning to graze the overall number of available missions.
Call me crazy, but has anyone there at Cryptic thought about producing 'spawning scenery' that adds itself in select locations in the more prevalent mission types? Such scenery would be tied to whichever gang of villains 'owned' that map, for instance:
* The Hellions would have graffiti alpha-ed over various walls, and small shrines and fires located throughout their stalking grounds. Some Hellions could even be shown 'praying' to their occult idols.
* The Lost would have no doubt gathered together all sorts of random debris and scavanged goods to horde throughout their sewer homes. Garbage items lying around, etc. etc.
The idea isn't really that far out, it is more about rejigging the map system slightly to accept the addition of multiple scenery components. Once that's done, the effort spent on creating a custom map can be applied to a whole swath of missions in one fell swoop. It's all very reusable resource. ^_^
First off, I like the changes, but a few small changes would be helpful:
Hostage/Ally escort: Very cool, though I would like to see Allies start fighting their captors once I do (why am I the only one working to save their sorry butt??). Also, they're kind of hard to work with for a number of reasons. First, I don't know what their abilities are (power-wise), so until I bring them into battle, I have no idea what kind of role they're going to take. If part of these new features is about adding strategy, well then we should be able to use strategy! Besides that, we are able to see any other hero's abilities by checkin their info, just a list of their powers would be more than enough for me.
Second, we need better control over our allies/hostages (ex-hostages?). I'd suggest an inherent ability given to everyone called "Direct" or something like that, where basically you can use the same system that exists with mouse control (I forgot the exact name, but the method of control thats click based, not holding down both buttons to run), to give your ally/hostage a place to run to. This could allow me to have my ally run into battle (or range) when I'm ready to engage, instead of waiting for me to do so. This also could be applied to pets, so controllers would have more control over them (which I believe they want, I don't have any that high level).
Third, I'd like the ability to hand off an ally/hostage to a team-mate, either through an inherent power ("hand-off"?), or something similar to the promotion button in the team window. If I'm escorting a hostage, and I'm a melee AT, and my teammate is a ranged AT, I'd rather have my team-mate hold on to the hostage, without having to stop attacking and allow my team-mate to get the last kill. I've noticed that hostages already hand off to team-mates if I die (not sure if the team-mate was chosen based on location or the fact that she was my sidekick though).
Another thing I'd like to see is some sort of generic warning a-la "Be careful $hero_name, once you have freed $ally_name, the $enemy_group will probably come looking for you!" I did the fortune-teller mission, and after we freed her we decided it would be more fun to have her help us clear out the rest of the mission. Bad idea!! A LOT of CoT started spawning and ambushing us, which is ok (very much warranted), but because of this misunderstanding, we lost the mission (although I noted that I received a message that fortune teller was teleported back to the hospital).
Just a few small suggestions that might make a world of improvement.
*PRAETORIAN SPOILER ALERT*
Someone from my home server (Sephina) copied her Tyrant mission over to test. In the mission, you defeat Tyrant, and his minion group, and Statesman (who has been imprisoned) fights by your side until you exit the mish! It's really freaking neat.
Bugs: If there's nobody left in the mission to fight, Statesman acts... Oddly...
If you walk too near the lava in Tyrant's throne room, Statesman trys to attack the lava. While amusing, this is counter-productive.
Waves - There is nothing heroic about walking at a slow pace back to the entrance of a dungeon.
In comic books, Superman picks up hostages and flies them away from danger. Spiderman swings them out of danger. In City of Heroes, you walk slowly at the hostage's pace to the entrance. . .
If you made this so that our heroes carried them in some fashion like comic book heroes (and thus encumbered our heroes with them so their hands/powers weren't free) then this would feel like a comic book. As the system currently stands, it just isn't a fun game dynamic. . .
Also, I'm already scared of playing Orenbega and/or Cave missions that contain hostages. . . I can only imagine that the boredom will be 5 times the size with a much larger map.
While this is a huge timesink, the rewards for completion are also not increased. It is horrible xp/time and I think it will increase people wanting to street sweep instead of doing missions. For groupers, it will mean having to spend time on their own "clearing up" hostage missions so that they have "good" missions for the group to enjoy together.
Anyway, 2 really cool new things and one poorly envisioned one. I think you could make hostages LESS boring if you upped hostages run speed significantly, but they would still be very boring and I can only imagine that they will lead to a huge number of support tickets in maps that have a ton of obstacles like caves and Orenbega.
Cut hostage rescue, invent something to make it more exciting and less tedious (can't think of anything myself), and/or give incredible xp for it. I'll do something boring if it means better than average xp/time, but it would take like multiplying the current mission xp by 10 to make it worth escorting hostages out of Caves or Orenbega.
Can I suggest you update the design of some of your maps to make more effective use of the mission changes.
Example: In the Tutorial Mission you almost always encounter the NPC hero in the last room. Which makes their offer to help fight the bad guys rather pointless.
Change the map so that there is a large open room where you can see the NPC trapped over to one side. Then you can decide to rescue them first and then they help you clear up. Or else make the map circular so there is always half of the map yet to clear.
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
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Can I suggest you update the design of some of your maps to make more effective use of the mission changes.
Example: In the Tutorial Mission you almost always encounter the NPC hero in the last room. Which makes their offer to help fight the bad guys rather pointless.
Change the map so that there is a large open room where you can see the NPC trapped over to one side. Then you can decide to rescue them first and then they help you clear up. Or else make the map circular so there is always half of the map yet to clear.
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Better idea. Have a new wave of mobs spawn once you reach the NPC at the end of the mission. These new mobs could be "reinforcements" or the NPC could reveal that the rescue mission was actually a trap set for the heroes.
I'm sure anyone would welcome the chance to fight their way back out of the mission rather than just walk back without incident.
With all the different types of missions available now, I'm thinking that it would be good to have some advance warning attached to the contacts' mission descriptions, perhaps in icon format.
For example, timed missions could have a clock out to the side, missions with villain waves can have a wave icon, escort missions can have a person icon, missions with archvillains and elite bosses could have certain icons, etc., etc. That way, a person would know what's expected of him/her before picking the mission.
The reason I think this would be a good idea is that, prior to doing my first "protect the artifact from villain waves" mission, I had no idea I was in a villain wave mission. I simply beat up the two goons threatening the artifact and then moved on to the next set of goons, only to hear gunfire behind me. I turned, and...lo and behold, there were five more goons attacking the artifact! I succeeded at the mission, but still, it really threw me that I wasn't done when I thought I was done.
And, of course, there are always those nasty AV and Elite Boss missions that don't specifically tell you that the villain at the end is an AV or Elite Boss. I remember the first time I did the Maestro mission. I expected an Elite Boss because that's what Heracles was, and I soloed Haracles, but when I opened the last door...purple AV! Run away! Run away!
So, I'm just saying that more info would be good, especially with all the new mission types coming out.
NewScrapper
P.S.: One more icon would be particularly helpful -- let us know if the mission is part of a story-arc, so that we don't get locked into a story-arc when we're really only looking to do a single mission.
In the consolidated thread for mission customization, someone mentioned that they had the Dr. Vahz mission, and that it now had a "cut scene" at the beginning. Can anyone else confirm this? Is it only the Dr. Vahz mission, or do others have cut scenes as well?
I was under the impression we wouldn't see these until after CoV, so if we're getting them earlier, I'm psyched. Plus, I don't want to do a mission on live now that will have a cut scene when I5 comes out 
I did the Dr. Vahz mission recently and got no cutscene
Well I finally got a higher level "rescue the NPC" mission. This was the first mission in The Mysterious General Z story arc. I copied my L29 Rad/Rad defender over to test and went to speak to Christine Lansdale. For anyone who is not familiar with this arc their are *Spoilers* contained within, stop reading now.
Fairly straight forward objective, rescue 3 npc's. I was thinking ok this will be a wave type mission, I rescue one at a time take them to the door rinse and repeat. Well, was I surprised, I walk in the front door and what do I see. A diplomat fighting the Skyraiders, not cowering but fighting. So I move in and rescue him and start heading towards the door to get him out.
Wait what's this, "I can help you fight the Skyraiders". I think pffft ya sure ya can, anyways I let him tag along. We encounter the next group of baddies and this guy proceeds to whip out a sniper rifle and starts picking Raiders off. I think "oh hell, that's cool". So I heal and AM the little fella as we make our way up a level and who do I find. General Z, kickin [censored] and taking names. After "rescuing" him he joins my little band. We move to the next group and the General who cons as a red boss to me pulls out a handgun and proceeds to one shot everything I go near! Was damn hilarious! Anyways we finally get to the main objective, a named diplomat who we rescue and take back to the door, fighting off waves as we go.
All in all I enjoyed that mission very much, having npc's aid heroes will be a big help to defenders. Even if I ran this on my scrapper I would have enjoyed it, the General one shotting everything meant no XP's for me but I can see how this could be heavily exploited so I prefer it this way. All in all a great addition. One bug that I did notice was at the end. If you run out the door before the objective NPC reaches it you get no mission bonus XP's, already /bugged it.
I solo a Ill/FF controller for fun. He's up to level 31 now, and I've had a wonderful experience doing all the missions so far.
I know I'm in a small minority, but I *like* soloing a controller. I tried a mish in test to check the changes out. I was fighting yellow and orange sky raiders, with red and grape jump bots. Whew, quite a challenge normally.
I rescued an ally, and he was pretty cool. I could wander around invis and he'd follow. Some things I noticed.
*he'd retreat when he got hit too hard.
*he'd one or two shot minions, and remove whatever XP I was going to get for that mob. Seeing as it takes me a lil bit to arrest villains (even with changes) I thought this was a bit unfair. I'd rather make him wait until I needed him.
*He'd agro mobs I didn't intend to agro, especially when I took great pains to get around them. lucky I have PFF, or I'd have been toast on several occasions.
*I could bubble him. very cool.
*the extra damage from my powers was good enough to allow me to defeat a boss I couldn't in I4. the ally helped that a bunch, but I lost XP. I might as well have confused some bosses and whittle down my opponents for me.
Overall its a mixed experience. Made the mish go faster, (only an hour long, rather than the 2 hours it took on live) I welcome the changes to spice things up.
* I'd like more control over my ally, as he is an annoyance at times.
*I'd like to be able to say 'stand here', 'wait', 'follow' as well as 'attack!' and 'retreat!'
*the XP thing I think should change. yes less because he's helping, but maybe a percentage down like in a team setting, as opposed to not getting credit for his kills at all.
Theres my 2 cents, thanks for listening.
-Dr. Mindslayer
[ QUOTE ]
Many existing missions have been updated with hostage escorts, friendly heroes who fight by your side, villain wave attacks and more.
Discuss the new mission types and how you liked them. More of them? Less? Hostages AI Ok?
This thread is for you to provide feedback to the Devs on the above issues. You are allowed to post ONCE in this thread. Make it count! If you post more than one time - the extra posts will be removed.
If a dev responds this count will be reset.
[/ QUOTE ]
I hope I can get more than one reply as I have yet to hit any hostages, just some desks to protect and some wave attacks.
I had a VERY hard time figuring out when I could stop guarding the desk and move on with the other objectives in the mission. I failed the mission because the waves seemed to stop coming, but the mission was not complete. I went back and tried defeating nearby MOBs, and while I was a wave formed behind me and finished off the desk. MISSION FAILED.
Please we need some obvious indicator that the waves are over. Maybe a glowie appears on the desk so you can click it and know it's safe to move on.
I REALLY enjoyed protecting the desks. Very thematic task for my controller. Love that such content is finally here. Just needs some fine tuning to let us know when we've completed the objective.
Also, I was suprised to find I could not heal the desk, even though I could target it. It let me cast the heal, but it did nothing. It also let me speed boost and increase the density of the desk - though I saw not effect (not that I expected speed boost to do anyting, but did Increase Density apply my DMG RES? I dunno.)
It would be nice if we could use our buffs and heals on the things we are protecting.
Not trying to rain on the parade here. I LOVE the content, just needs a little work to make it as smooth as other mission objectives.
i actually just made a post on a mission i haven't seen anybody comment on. My lvl 23 Inv/Fire tanker picked up the "Stop Lt Conner from escaping" mission.
I've tried it a couple times now, failing easily both times. I like the idea, but heck ... the second time i tried, Lt Conner actually teleported to the elevator bay and left. I didn't even get a chance to swing at him.
I think some of the same comments that have been made apply to this idea, too. The final room configuration was such that Lt. Conner only had to run maybe 50ft to get to the elevator and leave the mission. As a pretty low damage hero, i had little chance of taking him out in that time even when he didn't just teleport there. I'd like to see him buried deeper into the floor, maybe with multiple paths to the elevator.
From hearing about the waves, after being surprised by his actual running, i expected to be able to follow him through the whole mission. Instead, as soon as he hit the 3rd floor elevators, i had failed. Some clarification might be in order in the mission description to make sure folk know this.
Also, i'd be thrilled if i had more than one chance to succeed. Maybe if you fail, it becomes a mission chain where Lt Conner simply tries again in another building. You could get three shots at him before finally exhausting the chain and failing?
I'm excited about the several new mission types adding variety, depth and immersion to my CoH experience.
I know the devs have worked hard to integrate mechanics with story and want us to be suprised sometimes. But at risk of spoiling said suprises, I would appreciate a simple set of icons that appears with each mission indicating the general type such as timed, wave, protection, escort, defeat all, hunt, or locate glowies. As it is, I sometimes have to decipher what the mission type will be based on the narrative text and then judge how much uninterrupted time in a play session I am guaranteed. I am not always correct. I've sometimes popped on for a "quick solo mission" before bed only to realize it is a stealth "defeat all." Ick.
I hope the Dev's remember that some of us out here families, jobs, and social lives. It would be nice as a player be able to make clearly informed choices as to what sort of both time and attention commitment we are making when chosing a mission. For example, in a defeat all mission, I can easily find a corner or cleared area of the map if I am interrupted during a play session and need to leave the keyboard for an indefinite amount of time. But with the waves of villians missions and some timed missions, that is not possible.
Don't nerf the variety or the new mission types. Just make it very clear as to what we are getting into when we speak to our contacts. Icons indicating the mission conditions would do this nicely. Yes I know this might interrupt immersion to a degree, but some of us really need to balance playtime with real-life responsibilities. This is the curse experienced by many casual gamers.
Other than that, great work on adding variety. I haven't seen all of the new missions yet obviously, but if there aren't already, I would love to see a few missions incorporate the same mechanics as the fire extinguishing event. I like how that event works like a soft "protect the target from a wave of villians" allowing a tug of war back and forth as the hellions rekindle flames. That might be a fun dynamic in a private door mission.
Okay, first off, good job.
Now to business:
Helper Missions
First off, The Flower mish in outbreak was nice....until she got me stuck in a room for 20 min. Is there anyway to fix that?
Anyways, I don't know if she stole xp or not since it was outbreak, but someone above said that "helpers" do, so I wanted to ask that this not be the case. She's technically on my team since we're working together toward the same goal, so him/her kills should count as mine like in normal teams.
Escort Missions
Also very nice. But the NPC speed needs to be boosted just a tad. I had turned off sprint and still outran the guy.
Also, secondary spawns need to go. You know, the ones that show up after you initially rescue the victim? I mean, what was the point of clearing your way to them in the first place? I might as well ninja to them to save myself some time. Also, as mentioned above, I outran my contact several times...and one of those times, in the few seconds before I noticed he wasn't following, he was mobbed by a "secondary spawn" as I call them.
Wave missions
I LOVE these. Reminds me soooo much of the council wars. But anywho, these do need to be made more soloer friendly. So far, I've not heard of anyone able to solo any of them. And in the one I tried out (save samalanca henges *or something like that* which was a 5 min timed) we--three heroes--were fighting greys WAAAAAY below our level, and still almost failed. I mean, I thought States said that any mish should be soloable except for AV missions? Just wondering. Anyways, I would like to see this tweaked a bit to make it more solo friendly--maybe smaller spawns when set to heroic and only one person on team, or more warning from where a wave is coming from so you can cut them off?
That's just IMHO.
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Nobody likes escort missions... in any game.
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Agreed. It's just boring. You do it once, the newness is gone and it gets frustrating.
Okay, I have seen many of the new missions by luck and honestly, other than one bugged mission(the hostage did not move although we cleared the whole place) I had a really wonderful time playing them.
Love the new Allies and mission goals, however I do see a complaint about one "not fun" aspect of the new customization.
Escort Missions: So far it looks like everyone sees this as boring and many suggestions have been made to make this less confusing and time intensive.
My suggestion is to forget about increasing thier speed, AI, or giving players new commands. Just add a new option to the target window when targeting an ex-hostage, "Pickup" should be the new option. The hero can pickup a hostage and carry them around the map, while carrying a hostage only passive powers and travel powers may be used. Once the hero clicks on the mission exit the hostage is placed on the ground, thanks the hero, awards the team xp and leaves. Give the hero the temp power "Put Hostage Down" after the pickup so they can fight if need be.
Now I imagine this is a much closer experience to hostage rescues we see in comics all the time. Also enemy waves could spawn to try to re-capture important hostages giving the hero the option of:
1. Have his teamates form a defensive wall around him or fight a delaying action so the hostage can be evacuated.
2. Putting the hostage down and dealing with the new villians
or
3. Trying to outrun/fly/teleport/jump the villians to the exit point.
I think seeing teamates grab hostages and quickly evacuating them via recall friend on the person holding the hostage or flight on outdoor maps is a much more exciting solution. Also it gives the players a new level of strategy for escort maps besides playing "lead the civie".
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Nobody likes escort missions... in any game.
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Agreed. It's just boring. You do it once, the newness is gone and it gets frustrating.
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Not true, it's done perfectly in Resident Evil 4. Obviously, not really fair to compare gameplay mechanics of these two games, but it can and has been done.
However, I REALLY like DShift's idea. You can pick up items in GW, another NCSoft game, it'd be nice (and possibly easy) to do it here.
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Nobody likes escort missions... in any game.
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Agreed. It's just boring. You do it once, the newness is gone and it gets frustrating.
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I like them, and I like them as implemented.
I loved the new villains spawning after we rescued a hostage. I loved that the mission was really the mission - you didn't just clear the map and accomplish the mission as a side effect.
We fought our way in, found the hostages, and fought our way out. We weren't careful and got separated (just running too quickly and not paying attention). A spawn formed between us.
It made for a much more interesting mission then just clear spawn, move to next, rinse, repeat.
That said - having them run a bit faster would be nice but might spoil the effect.
I want escort missions - not turning them into click on blinkie mission by being able to "pick them up".
I want my variety to actually be different, not just a defeat all mission called something else.
I like the hostage escorts. Flower Knight in Outbreak was one of the most exciting things I saw (though I will admit to being easily amused). I've long thought that missions where we were to rescue a purported hero (and there are a few) resulted in the same "Eek! I must run wildly like a chicken with its head cut off!" effects were annoying. I *like* seeing a hero that I've rescued turn and assist the rest of the mission.