It may be the devs' intent that it be impossible for one villain to see every story arc in one go. That whole thing about having more content than you can possibly see. The thing is, it's kind of silly for a contact to abruptly dump you in the middle of a story arc. Last I heard from Billy Heck, 3K Kelvin was coming from Paragon City - and suddenly he doesn't care any more.
If this isn't a bug, it's a crappy way to design things. I was used to being able to finish out story arcs, outleveled or not, and it not only doesn't make sense, but is kind of unfair to abruptly end them. It's essentially penalizing the player for gaining levels.
Arc #41077 - The Men of State
Arc #48845 - Operation: Dirty Snowball
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It may be the devs' intent that it be impossible for one villain to see every story arc in one go. That whole thing about having more content than you can possibly see. The thing is, it's kind of silly for a contact to abruptly dump you in the middle of a story arc. Last I heard from Billy Heck, 3K Kelvin was coming from Paragon City - and suddenly he doesn't care any more.
If this isn't a bug, it's a crappy way to design things. I was used to being able to finish out story arcs, outleveled or not, and it not only doesn't make sense, but is kind of unfair to abruptly end them. It's essentially penalizing the player for gaining levels.
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Found myself in the same position with Billy Heck and completely agree.
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Takes 9, not 15 missions to get all 3 contacts (12 if you count the heists).
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In the beta it took 5 newspaper missions to fill the broker bar. It was dropped to 3 when it went live.
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I stand corrected....
it did seem faster. Any way point still stands that you should do the Paper missions as quickly as possible to get the real contact. 9 missions is still enough to level.
I missed all the Port Oakes content looking back. The Mooks thing and I remember something about ghosts or Pirate ghosts.
I had to turn down teams yesterday so I wouldnt outlevel my current contacts. I joined a strike force though and afterward Golden Roller no longer wants any thing to do with me.
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I had to turn down teams yesterday so I wouldnt outlevel my current contacts. I joined a strike force though and afterward Golden Roller no longer wants any thing to do with me.
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I dont know if the new Strike forces are as involved and as full of xp as their CoH versions. Its very easy to gain 2 or 3 lvls in some CoH TFs, I avoid SF/TFs and grouping of any kind if Im trying to be careful of outlvling stuff
Hey gang,
We are going to implement a couple changes to make this better. The early brokers will only require 3 missions and 1 heist to introduce a new contact. In addition, if a group completes a broker mission everyone on the team will get credit toward a heist that will lead to a new contact introduction. This should help keep you from leveling out of content. Just like in City of Heroes, if you start a Story Arc in City of Villains you will always be allowed to finish iteven if you outlevel it. If you miss a contact entirely, you can still Exemplar with a less experienced hero who has the correct Story Arc assigned to him or her in order to hunt down any pesky badges you may have missed.
Cheers,
Sean
Sounds Great!!
Thanks Sean!
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Hey gang,
We are going to implement a couple changes to make this better. The early brokers will only require 3 missions and 1 heist to introduce a new contact.....
Cheers,
Sean
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I believe that's already happening in Port Oakes. I noticed it last night and was thinking of /bugging it, but since it was a but I LIKED, I kept quiet 
You don't hit smiling monsters - Sister Flame
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We are going to implement a couple changes to make this better. The early brokers will only require 3 missions and 1 heist to introduce a new contact. In addition, if a group completes a broker mission everyone on the team will get credit toward a heist that will lead to a new contact introduction. This should help keep you from leveling out of content. Just like in City of Heroes, if you start a Story Arc in City of Villains you will always be allowed to finish iteven if you outlevel it. If you miss a contact entirely, you can still Exemplar with a less experienced hero who has the correct Story Arc assigned to him or her in order to hunt down any pesky badges you may have missed.
Cheers,
Sean
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Thanks for an looking at this thread Manticore, but... isnt it already 3 missions + a heist to get a new contact from the brokers?
Are you saying that if I form a group and do 1 newspaper mission the group gets credit for a heist? or that if a group does a heist we all get credit for a heist? Can 3 people independantly work up to a heist so that there are 3 heists available when they team,then do each one grouped and get a new contact with each one? (removing 6 newspaper missions in the process)
No new news on exemping to get badges that we miss. Been doing that in CoH for a long time. But the storyarcs and their souvenirs are still missed.
As an aside, at least with the Plague Spreader badge, and possibly others, only the person who "completes" the mission (by clicking on the last glowy) is getting the badge, even if its not their mission. No one else in the group is getting the badge.
Have had that happen twice now. So, yay on the exemplaring down to see content, but getting badges remains difficult.
I think what will solve this problem entirely would be to raise the upper lvl limit on these contacts by 1 or 2 lvls (Pt Oakes & 1st 3 CaD contacts).
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Hey gang,
We are going to implement a couple changes to make this better. The early brokers will only require 3 missions and 1 heist to introduce a new contact. In addition, if a group completes a broker mission everyone on the team will get credit toward a heist that will lead to a new contact introduction. This should help keep you from leveling out of content. Just like in City of Heroes, if you start a Story Arc in City of Villains you will always be allowed to finish iteven if you outlevel it. If you miss a contact entirely, you can still Exemplar with a less experienced hero who has the correct Story Arc assigned to him or her in order to hunt down any pesky badges you may have missed.
Cheers,
Sean
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Still not much of a help really. I outleveled all of my Cap Au Diable contacts... ALL of them, just playing through arcs and what not. It's nuts.
I'd rather have the ability to go back and do the content, even if grayed out. Why can't we do that? I'd rather be able to do just that. It would make life so much easier.
That's great.
Now, what about the timed missions with runners in the story arcs?
I'm outleveling in Cap too as a brute. I have yet to team. Went to Cap as soon as i completed the radio missions.
Aparently failed the last mission on one arc (bugged it, never saw anything to protect nor goldbrickers trying to escape)
Finished 2nd contact
Got 3rd but wouldn't give me any missions due to me being level 15 upon completing the 2nd arc.
I'm scared to think what would happen if i actually teamed and did anyone elses missions too.
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Hey gang,
We are going to implement a couple changes to make this better. The early brokers will only require 3 missions and 1 heist to introduce a new contact. In addition, if a group completes a broker mission everyone on the team will get credit toward a heist that will lead to a new contact introduction. This should help keep you from leveling out of content. Just like in City of Heroes, if you start a Story Arc in City of Villains you will always be allowed to finish iteven if you outlevel it. If you miss a contact entirely, you can still Exemplar with a less experienced hero who has the correct Story Arc assigned to him or her in order to hunt down any pesky badges you may have missed.
Cheers,
Sean
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It is still INCREDIBLY difficult NOT to outlevel content in the lower levels. I ran my stalker solo and finished all of the content given to me in Mercy(Kalinda, Mongoose) and Port Oakes(Drea, Bocor, Vendetti, Heck, Radio) including their badge and Temp item missions but I was level 10.8 and purposefully maxed my debt out between missions once I hit level 10. I also only ever defeated exactly what was required to finish the missions, going so far as escorting hostages out WITHOUT fighting the ambushes and mobs between them and the door(go Respites 
). Even with that very miniscule amount of xp I almost outleveled The Radio's stuff.
Now that I'm in CAP I'm repeating this method to insure I don't miss anything. What I need is to know if you can still get Lunata(sp?) if you've gotten the Radio or is it an either or type deal.
I only needed to do 3 newspaper missions and 1 heist for Drea The Hook to get introduced to Mr Bocor, and similarly for Desdemona The Glint in Cap Au Diablo to get offered 3 contacts (I chose Krylov - Dr Shelly was one of the other two choices).
Even if you reduce it to 2 newspaper missions I don't think it will make a significant impact to this problem. I didn't get to do any Mr Bocor missions - he immediately introduced me to The Radio beause even though I soloed all the Drea The Hook material on Villainous I was well into level 10 after the heist. I'm not sure how many story arcs I've missed.
The reason is simply that I spent almost all of my Mercy Island time on big pick-up teams. The sheer size of the spawns, the lack of XP debt, the Arachnos Lab missions with Hellions that spawn +2 enemies, the repeating of missions when not everybody's progress lines up, it all makes it easy to gain a lot of levels in the course of doing those first two story arcs.
I really enjoy the backstory of the game. However, there is not a big enough surplus of story content to cover multiple playthroughs of the game specifically in search of it. As such I'm not teaming any more and won't until I feel confident I'm in no risk of outlevelling contacts.
If you broadened the level range for low-level contacts (eg. make Mr Bocor accessible up to threat level 12) that would help a lot more. It would also give players more options at any given time and allow pre-travel-power teams to run more missions before having to run back to contacts.
First off, mission combination is a great idea. Even though I've tried to use it, I still haven't been able to, but I know particularly in the high-level game it will be handy. Please implement it for CoH soon!
Second, great changes with the Broker missions/Heists.
Third, exemplaring down to do someone else's content isn't quite as appealing as letting you do your own. Perhaps one temprorary fix for some of these old outleveled contacts is that if you exemplar you get credit toward that contact if you do the missions of their arc from someone else? And if you eventually do all the missions exemplared, you are awarded the souvenir? I'd prefer to just be able to talk directly to an old contact and be auto-exemped akin to the TF, but something would be nice by I7 at the latest. Teaming = losing content progression on your hero or villain, unless other people forego their content in favor of yours or you mission combine (in CoV only).
Fourth, some of the content is broken for CoV, or at least appears to be.
For example, I logged off one day came back the next and I had failed a non-timed mission.
And I logged off one day and came back the next and my mission title changed to P102203940 or something to that effect and so did the short info. I also failed the mission because they aggroed the device and destroyed it before I could intervene (which was sadly confirmed by others in my SG as happening to them as well)
Those issues also affect those of us that wanted reminders of the content but were forced to fail the arcs because of bugs that persisted beyond the beta. Now we have no way of rectifying those problems.
The problem I keep having is that I get introduced to a new contact who I have already outleveled. This has happened to me three times, I have three contacts who told me they had nothing for me as soon as I got to them. I don't think I've been leveling *that* fast, but as soon as I got to Port Oaks and got my first contact through my broker, I had already outleveled him.
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It is still INCREDIBLY difficult NOT to outlevel content in the lower levels. I ran my stalker solo and finished all of the content given to me in Mercy(Kalinda, Mongoose) and Port Oakes(Drea, Bocor, Vendetti, Heck, Radio) including their badge and Temp item missions but I was level 10.8 and purposefully maxed my debt out between missions once I hit level 10. I also only ever defeated exactly what was required to finish the missions, going so far as escorting hostages out WITHOUT fighting the ambushes and mobs between them and the door(go Respites ). Even with that very miniscule amount of xp I almost outleveled The Radio's stuff.
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Unfortunately it sounds like you STILL missed some Port Oakes content: Veluta Lunati's missions, which require you to first trap 50 or so ghosts at Fort Hades to get a badge before you can start them. I do not know what level her missions cap out at. Also, the Radio is (I believe) considered a level 10 contact, so hitting level 11 doesn't cause you to outlevel it. With one character I was nearly level 13 by the time I completed all the Radio's missions.
I've just worked a new toon up to the point of getting Bocor as a contact, after having done all the missions in Mercy, and she is just barely level 6. I'll have to find out soon if it is even possible to solo all the level 5-11 content in Port Oakes without picking up permadebt the moment I hit 10.
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Hey gang,
We are going to implement a couple changes to make this better. The early brokers will only require 3 missions and 1 heist to introduce a new contact. In addition, if a group completes a broker mission everyone on the team will get credit toward a heist that will lead to a new contact introduction. This should help keep you from leveling out of content. Just like in City of Heroes, if you start a Story Arc in City of Villains you will always be allowed to finish iteven if you outlevel it. If you miss a contact entirely, you can still Exemplar with a less experienced hero who has the correct Story Arc assigned to him or her in order to hunt down any pesky badges you may have missed.
Cheers,
Sean
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While that sounds good, I don't think it completely solves the problem. The thing is, it's not just a CoV problem. Thanks to teaming rewards, teh difficulty slider, the debt reduction in missions, and otehr factors, it's all too easy to outlevel contacts you really want in CoH, too. I didn't really have this problem with my (now level 50) Scrapper, until the... late 30s, I think (when the mission difficulty slider was introduced), but my (level 22) Controller, with his difficulty set on heroic, keeps outleveling contacts before he's finished with them. In order to have him experience all the content I want him to (which isn't nearly all the content in the game, by the way) I've had to stop teaming with him completely (and I thought many of the changes were supposed to encourage teaming...)
I think ALL contacts, CoV and CoH, should have their maximum levels increased by 1 to 3, personally.
This is the bottom-line:
Games are designed to be fun, entertaining and give the customer what they want. If you have even ONE person out there (not to mention hundreds) that want to experience all the content of this game on one character...than that is their right. It hurts NO ONE to allow this while it obvoiusly hurts many people to limit it. If I want to be able to do every badge/arc, team, and do SF then I should be able to. I should not have to waste my time planning out what content to omit. I should not have to kill myself into debt just to experience the full effects of this game. I should not have to tell my Super Group I can't team with them because I'm about to out-level my contact. I should not have to run through missions completing only the objective to try and stay a lower level. If you have even one person that is willing to get no XP to complete past-content then IMHO the devs have no right to take that decision from that person. For the people who like having limited content...well that's great just do one contact and move on; but for those of us who are OCD and want to experience it all well that should be our prerogative. I think its the devs obligation to either 1) scale content so you can complete it at any level or 2) allow us to go back and finish each arc for every character.
Sorry to be on a "soap-box" but I just think it's ridiculous I'm having to waste my time scouring these boards to plan out what I can and can not do for something I pay good money to have FUN with. Now how do I send this to the CEO of Cryptic? 
Great news
BUT
A bit confused.
I suppose we will have to ask on a chat channel or something if someone has a particular story arc, or something like that.
If we do the exemplaring down thing, will we get all of the clues and all of the before and after mission text? I really don't care about any token enhancement reward. I just want all the mission text, plus the sovengier text. Would the person I rescue or kidnap or bad or good guy I catch or take out say my name in the mission, etc?
Oh, and one other badge question: will it ever be possible for people who started playing COH the week it came out to ever get the Isolator badge?
In COH, I missed the the Vahz Plauge Stopper arc, and I missed Julius the troll and Talshak in the Hollows, an later missed Croatoa. I'm a total completist with my main in COH. I've gone back to get the Plague Stopper badge, and lots of other stuff, puting me over 200 badges now.
In COV I've managed to skip the red haired guy and Mr Bocor with three different characters. I like teaming.
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We are going to implement a couple changes to make this better. The early brokers will only require 3 missions and 1 heist to introduce a new contact. In addition, if a group completes a broker mission everyone on the team will get credit toward a heist that will lead to a new contact introduction.
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You guys are really on a roll tonight with the QoL stuff! 
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It hurts NO ONE to allow this while it obvoiusly hurts many people to limit it.
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Not true. It hurts Cryptic a great deal. The faster someone can do all the content of the game, the faster they'll cancel their account and move on to something else. That means less money for Cryptic... Which hurts them a great deal.
I still can not grasp why we ever OUT LEVEL anything. From my POV there is no difference from fighting Mooks at level 12 than fighting them at Level 16. I dont think we should ever outlevel anything. The missions should just scale to our level.
Here is something I experienced in Beta and now in Live. I was doing BRass missions. Turned 20. He introduces me to Operative Wellman. Except Wellman wont give me missions. Fine. Turn 21. Wellman still wont give me missions. Fine. Think ok I m still not high enough. Turn 22 and he gives me the complete brush off.
I think I either needed to be introduced much earlier or the text from the contacts needs to be clearer as to why they arent giving missions.
I missed everything in Oakes. Did the paper missions in Cap and all three contacts I got were outleveled.
My suggestion for Cov and COH is to remove the outleveling nonsense completely. The exemplor method is really a joke. Unless you have an SG and have a member with an ALT that is leveling up, its nearly impossible to team with lowbies. In CoH, I missed a crucial mission in Peregrine. I spent 2 hours standing next to Tina bugging everyone who walked up to her.
Aside from the difficulty in finding a lowbie team, Your constant RESPECS have made being exemplored a nightmare because if you dont choose powers in "the right order" you can be f'd when you go down in level. Case in point. After one respec on a toon, I choose all my pool powers last. If I dip down past the 30's I no longer have a travel power
So who thought it was a good idea for the agents to just dry up and stop talking to you? My hero didn't like it in COH and my villain isn't going to like it here. If you want to run 20 missions from each, why is that not acceptable? - seems like it should let you. If you want to run 100 from 1 contact why force you to move on before they have given you all the important missions or enough missions to use their store etc.? there should be no reason why you shouldnt be able to run every known mission, story arc with 1 character - without having to try and find some way "to work around an issue".
just seems like it should be the characters choice.