Which Zone or Zones are the Worst?
By
Acemace,
Posted on: 2009-07-20 06:54 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Wow, I hate Grandville. It's so vertical that it basically requires some sort of flight power.
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If only there was someone in Grandville that sold a flying travel power for pocket change...
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There is. But for one it's kind of lame to invalidate other travel powers (although 99% of my characters go Fly or SJ), and that doesn't work with all the Ouroboros restrictions.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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I actually like KR. I think it has flavor to it and very nicely captures the feel of a working-class industrial neighborhood.
Boomtown is a waste to me. There's no flavor to it, nothing interesting, just a lot of spawns.
When it comes to real dislike though, I totally dislike Firebase Zulu and those maps. An incredible amount of hassle to travel through for something that's not very interesting at all.
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Lazarus wrote:
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As far as the Hazard Zones, the Devs really need to get back on the program of revamping one hazard zone per issue. They managed to do it for three issues (Faultline, Rikti War Zone, Hollows) and then just stopped. Look, I know that going back to fix and update old content is not as fun or sexy as making new content, but at some point you need to actually fix the old broken stuff instead of trying to bury it under new shinies. The heroside is really showing it's age with all the pre-issue 6 content.
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I heartily endorse this suggestion.
--NT
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The idea is pretty cool in theory, and I appreciate that they wanted to create an appropriate mood. But the reality of navigating a zone with near zero visibility is just plain obnoxious.
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follow the roads.
or if you fly/teleport, go straight up to the ceiling box and then bee line it to your destination.
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Both are useful suggestions, but neither will eliminate (only reduce) the possiblility of smacking into obstacles, especially for teleporters. Like most zones, the roads in Astoria don't just follow straight, endless gridlines, but often end in T intersectons faced by a wall or building, or else will curve around obstacles and terrain features. And some elevated roads have collapsed sections that terminate abruptly, a real treat for the unexpecting super speeder.
As for just flying or teleporting over everything, I discovered an interesting tidbit by trying just that -- some of the buildings in Astoria extend all the way up to the altitude limit! So even teleporting along the zone ceiling may still end with you materializing face-first into an office window.
And don't get me starting on accidentally running into a huge spawn of baddies I didn't know were there. Or worse, hunt missions where I'm looking for mobs I can't locate.
Astoria is tolerable with a flying hero, and not too bad with a super-jumper either. But just very annoying with a superspeeder and just miserable with a teleporter.
The better question from the OP might be what zones do we use the most.
Whatever is left over is probably significantly underused, or for all intents abandoned by the playing population (shadow shard, boomtown, etc.).
DA's inconveniences are minor and easily overcome.
And I don't say that just because I own a vacation condo in the Rami Arcade. =)
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
IP is the zone I dislike most. It's the one zone that needs a quick shuttle to the ends, because it's ponderous travelling there.
It's the one zone that I will regularly hop the train to another zone just to go through the gate to be closer to the mission door. And it's the one zone in which I try to avoid the contacts as much as possible. And the stores are...forget about it. IP made Talos the hub.
Some other zones can be annoying if you have or don't have certain travel powers, but IP is bad for all travel modes.
That said, I like that bridge. If you run it at an appropriate level, it's essentially a mission's worth of xp by the time you get to the other end.
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I have one character who doesn't mind IP, my fire/ice blaster who has super speed three-slotted and took Swift.
But I basically avoid it with everyone else. Not that I don't appreciate the design, but it should be about half that size.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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Grandville: Just awesome in every way - jaw dropping visuals, great music, non-stop spider smashing action as you explore and some very cool story arcs. Then there's the Fab. I love to take Nightshade up there to see how far I can push her performance. I'm really looking forward to taking a brute in there 
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Wow, I hate Grandville. It's so vertical that it basically requires some sort of flight power. I've even had trouble getting around it at times with SJ. I made the mistake once of trying to do an arc there in Ouroboros with no travel powers restriction, and it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get up to where the mission was.
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I was on a high that I'd hit 40 and made it to Grandville, and I wanted to savour every minute of it. The only travel power I used for days was Sprint.
(Naturally I only did that when solo. On teams I'd use the raptor pack.)
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Besides being annoyingly vertical, it's positively overrun by enemies who throw web grenades at you, so at any given time while you're traveling to the next mission that's 700 yards in the air, you'll get grounded by a grenade and possibly land right in a nest of Bane Spiders.
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I went out of my way to aggro as many as possible, which wasn't difficult with an arsonist and a (pre-Handclap fix) bruiser
I think what I'm trying to say is... if you want to get to your next mission as quickly as possible then Grandville can be hard work, but if you want to explore, while revelling in your power by killing anything that gets in your way, then Grandville is pretty much unbeatable, and that's why it's my favourite zone in the game.
Well, that and the fact that when I walk into Spider City and that music kicks in I feel extremely badass.
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DA's inconveniences are minor and easily overcome.
And I don't say that just because I own a vacation condo in the Rami Arcade. =)
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When I entered Dark Astoria and saw that the hospital zone was named St. Eligius, the zone won a special place in my heart.
It's still a dump, though.
I like the concept of Boomtown. It's trashed in a most depressing way and is delightfully hopeless, moreso than Eden and RWZ. At least things grow in Eden and RWZ is being fought over. Baumton is just ruined to the point that no one wants to deal with it anymore, it's a festering sore where the undesirables can easily get lost, lurk and build lairs. If you listen closely, an ambient sound plays every so often that gives you the feeling of tinnitus. Sometimes I imagine what it's like inside one of those semi-toppled buildings and get goosebumps.
It wouldn't hurt to spruce the place up a bit - the undesirables could build shantytowns (like those in Terra Volta) and have minor turf skirmishes. But overall, Baumton does exactly what it's supposed to do: gives you a glimpse into Paragon City's possible future. Someday the meta-battles will tear the whole place apart and we'll all be sitting on ruins just like that, only it'll be in Atlas Park. And everything will be just too screwed up to even fight over anymore.
Hmmm...
The worst zones? Skyway City is right up there. Those highways don't really go anywhere. If there were elevated highways in other zones, it'd be cool. The way it is? The zone's a drag. And I hate Synapse.
Terra Volta ranks a close second. Why it's gotta be a hazard zone I don't know. Instead of hunting purse snatchers, Longbow should've cleaned it out ages ago, seeing as how the power plant is important and everyone wants a crack at it. And Sky Raiders, hovering in flocks and doing absolutely nothing are a sorry sight. If this zone had a tagline it would be "We're like Crey's Folly, with an extra dose of stupid".
Brickstown is the distant third. The Zig, while impressive and foreboding, is a gigantic revolving door. Look, I get it: if I "arrest" someone, they'll eventually escape. No need to shove it in my face by having a steady trickle of escaped prisoners coming out of the super-prison. Maybe there could be a zone event every so often when prisoners break out and flood into the streets. I'd take that over Stevie the Snatch and Mickey the Groin walking out along with their buddies like it's a daycare facility.
Worst three, in my opinion (obviously):
- Port Oakes. It's a waste. Some of the other redside zones have the same problem, but Oakes is the worst - it's a HUGE map and 95% of the activity is in a small strip along the southern edge. It's missing basic features - why is there a BM in Mercy, where half the spawns are too low to even give salvage and you're too low to use most IOs, but not in Oakes? And the terrain is irritating, with a lot of vertical when players won't have travel power access. Grandville's tolerable because by then you've got Fly/SJ/a jetpack, but Oakes? Have fun walking/swimming far out of your way because you ran into something that's six inches too high for you to jump over.
- Boomtown. So let's see. It's gigantic. The terrain is identical and monotonous, with few if any landmarks. The mobs aren't even worth fighting half the time, given their low level and annoying composition. There's no reason to actually go there outside the possibility of a random story mission sending you there. It's empty space that serves no purpose.
- The Shadow Shard. Beautiful. Different. Interesting. Too big, difficult to utilize and almost completely pointless. The wasted potential is staggering.
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- why is there a BM in Mercy, where half the spawns are too low to even give salvage and you're too low to use most IOs, but not in Oakes?
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They added a BM in Port Oakes.
Boomtown does have the coolest soundtrack, however.
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- The Shadow Shard. Beautiful. Different. Interesting. Too big, difficult to utilize and almost completely pointless. The wasted potential is staggering.
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I like the shard in spite of itself.
And I actually wish they hadn't added all the little travel amenities- it's still awful to navigate without fly or TP, so they might as well have left it alone.
There's really no other experience in the game like crossing navigating across the Shard, pausing halfway and just hovering and checking things out.
It will be a tragedy if they don't infuse it with meaningful content at some point. Its potential is staggering.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Heroside I'd say the sewers. I know a lot of people like sewer teams for quick levelling, but the zone is about fifteen times larger than it needs to be.
And it exits to Steel Canyon and Boomtown? Why on earth would anyone want to enter the sewers at level 1 and fight their way through to the Boomtown exit without going back and levelling?
The Abandoned Sewers are even worse. Who the heck ever goes there?
You can also count me among those who thinks Boomtown should be on the list for a do-over. For one thing, there are too many zones at 11-20 and Boomtown is the odd one out. Bring the Fifth Column back to liven it up and make the zone 35-50 and co-op like the RWZ and all's good.
I would also add the Hollows since the "improvements". A few of the changes are really good, but I really hate seeing the Lost there. They have no role in the zone's story and don't really belong there. The Hellions and Skulls I don't mind, since they have established relations with the Trolls and Outcasts, but the Lost have no business being there. I see enough of them in Faultline.
I actually used to love Dark Astoria, but I happened to be there a little while ago during a zombie attack. Instead of the usual clumps of zombies hanging around I got the ones climbing up out of the ground and attacking. That really drove home the point that every zone in the city is now capable of more creepiness than DA can manage. Time for a revamp.
And by revamp I mean DA should be under zombie attack all the time. Or at least have the BP climb out of the ground like they do in the Bog in Striga, or like the Pumicite bosses in the Hollows. Make the streets look safe until they clamber out after you.
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The Abandoned Sewers are even worse. Who the heck ever goes there?
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Sewer Trial teams.
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The Abandoned Sewers are even worse. Who the heck ever goes there?
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Sewer Trial teams.
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People still do the Sewer Trial?
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The Abandoned Sewers are even worse. Who the heck ever goes there?
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Sewer Trial teams.
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Well besides them, let's say.
Now if they'd put something down there besides the Trial door, like a skeleton with a rusty lantern and a skeleton key, then at least it would have something besides the Trial to recommend it.
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I like the concept of Boomtown. It's trashed in a most depressing way and is delightfully hopeless, moreso than Eden and RWZ. At least things grow in Eden and RWZ is being fought over. Baumton is just ruined to the point that no one wants to deal with it anymore, it's a festering sore where the undesirables can easily get lost, lurk and build lairs. If you listen closely, an ambient sound plays every so often that gives you the feeling of tinnitus. Sometimes I imagine what it's like inside one of those semi-toppled buildings and get goosebumps.
It wouldn't hurt to spruce the place up a bit - the undesirables could build shantytowns (like those in Terra Volta) and have minor turf skirmishes. But overall, Baumton does exactly what it's supposed to do: gives you a glimpse into Paragon City's possible future. Someday the meta-battles will tear the whole place apart and we'll all be sitting on ruins just like that, only it'll be in Atlas Park. And everything will be just too screwed up to even fight over anymore.
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My money's on there being an Arachnos base hidden under Boomtown. It didn't take much digging in Faultline to uncover one there, and it's just the kind of place that Lord Recluse would use as a forward staging ground for an attack on Paragon City.
Most hated?
CoV: Tough decision, I don't like both Mercy island and Grandville, Grandville because it lags more than other zones and Mercy because it just seems difficult to navigate as a lowbie. I would say Grandville I dislike more, but not by much.
CoH: The Hollows, just not a fan of it or it's missions. I like how all the CoH zones look just don't like going there unless I have to. I don't really think the zone is broken or anything, just a personal preference.
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Wow, I hate Grandville. It's so vertical that it basically requires some sort of flight power.
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If only there was someone in Grandville that sold a flying travel power for pocket change...