The perils of 'official' content

Ehh, Hazard Zones were there because originally I'm not sure they knew how players were actually going to play.

But, patrolling the streets was a necessity because contacts could and would run dry on you during certain level ranges. Plus, what with the ridiculously inbalanced underling XP Crey's and Eden was great PL'ing for fire tankers....ha, that was the reason there were level requirements on those zones that are finally being removed, years later, not that anyone even cares about it....Pretty good incentive to just pound mobs out on the streets when there was no difficulty slider (you could find tougher packs in hazard zones), the mission/story arc completion rewards were peanuts, no half debt for indoor defeat (made because most blasters lived in permadebt), some of those missions were created to be as obnoxious as possible (SAVE 50 HOSTAGES FROM GIANT ORENBEGA MAP YOU STILL MAKE ME ANGRY!) with niches and hooks much more hidden than they are today. And, of course, mission doors were purposefully spread across the city as a travel timesink so sometimes it was nice to not have to spend so much time running around.

They're a failed experiment. It'd be nice if they did something to them, but I dunno what they could do to make people really interested in going there. Make 'em level 50 with higher purple recipe drop rates and open 'em up to both sides or something, I dunno.

Personally, I think people complain about travel time too much. Yes, I realise spending time not playing the game sucks, but short of asking that outdoor zones be removed from the game or a zero-recharge mission teleporter be given to everybody, I can't rightfully claim travelling is anything BUT playing the game. Unless we consider that "playing the game" means "something that gives experience," there is no other way to look at it. Otherwise, putting out fires, beating back Troll raves and even fighting Giant Monsters are just about "not playing the game."

Seriously, how long does it really take? Peregrine Island to Brickstown is two minutes, tops. Hell, the Storm Palace to Perez Park isn't more than 10 minutes without dropping off the islands. I've timed it. And there really isn't any farther you can travel in this game without having to rethread zones. And for what it's worth, I like to travel around from mission to mission. To me, it is superior to the CoV model of always looking at the same five doors and the same damn zone day after day after day.

Yes, the hero-side 40-50 content sucks. It was designed with the idea that it would be a lot more "grand," so it's chock-full of enormous outdoor instances, lots of kill-alls, long missions, long arcs, long mini-arcs, lots of travelling and annoying enemies. In his CoH-dis, Jack says he and Positron got together and decided that 40-50 should take as long as 1-40 did. This part of the level-range was supposed to be the ultra-hard, ultra-long, ultra-boring EQ-style end game, designed back in the time when everyone thought it was a good idea to have that. So everything you'll find in Peregrine Island sucks. I2's Shadow Shard is even worse, being the game's crowning achievement in chasing the "if you build it long, tough and boring, they will come" fallacy, a true testament to how wrong that notion really is.

Everything made after I2 has been closer and closer to the reality of the actual game. I'm not a fan of everything being broken up into 3-mission arcs, myself, however. After all, every one of Crimson's mini-arcs is a 3-mission story, and he has about 20 of these. In CoV, a 3-mision string is not a mini-arc. It is a full-fledged yellow-book macro-arc. This, to my eyes, is going too far in the other direction. Small arcs have their place, I won't deny that, but the occasional long, elaborate arc is NOT a bad thing.

Personally, I would take 10 minutes of travelling over 1 minute of playing the Architect. The players' crappy writing aside, I just don't feel like staring at that God damn room all the time, knowing there's a whole city out there to see.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I wouldn't mind fedex missions and such if:

A: I didn't get them before I even got my travel power

B: My computer wasn't so slow.

When you have to wait a few minutes every time you want to switch zones, and get FedEx missions on the other end of the city, it begins to add up. I can only go get food, go to the toilet or do Nerf gun target practice for so long before I get bored.

That's about the only thing I liked about Guild Wars- one it loaded a zone once, it never had to again.

The key to solving bordom is randomness. If something completly random were to happen along the way this would help. Ambushes are nice, but to an extent, they are pretty predictable and always too small.

I think i am an abomination...

Why? Because I love FEDEX with 50% of my toons...

Let me explain...

I love doing FEDEX missions when I am on a superspeed or superjump toon. Because I feel nice cruising with those movements...

The sheer speed of superspeed makes me run like a crazy on the streets, running among the mobs...

And I love to do the outrageous superjumps... Its so full of the WEEEEEEeeeee factor...

Nethergoat mentioned Tina McIntyre, but the one contact I wish I could drag into a PvP zone and put the smack-down on is Indigo. I dug out my 50 fire/ice blaster and saw I still had her arc open. I spent the entire evening trying to finish it up just to get rid of it. The entire evening for grey-filled missions that I mainly stealthed through. Actually, I didn't even have to stealth, the mobs just ignored me. Even when I had her cell phone number, she insisted on sending me off to Crimson before every mission. I never hated a computer-generated character so much before in my life. Go to Crimson (in Peregrine), then a mission in Atlas, go to Crimson, then Kings Row, go to Crimson, then some other obnoxious zone.

If there's one issue I'd like to see the devs work on, it should be the "Quality of Life" issue. Go through all those old arcs and tighten them up. Find all those other little annoyances and fix them. Just one issue to make all the old parts of the game shiny. Things like a respec system that is actually user friendly and doesn't force you to redo every single action you've ever taken when leveling your character.

But I'll still take the lamest game content over the AE farm content any day. At least if I'm going to be bored, I'll be bored traveling through different zones rather than staring at that one stupid farm map all night long.

Actually I ways thought it was odd, to be sent to Person B by Contact A, and cannot call Person B even thought I have their number. Instead I must visit in person.

Hydra, Knives, a lot of the Praetorians....they area annoying and boring to fight because they consist of one type of minion, one type of lieutenant, one type of boss, all of which have an annoying debuff that, in and of itself isn't so bad, but when you have 10 of them stacked on you, becomes an exercise in frustration. They are Exhibit A for the "What not to Do" list of Custom group creation.

As for overly long arcs, well, they are. Post-30 arcs hero-side can get downright ridiculous in length, especially since you are limited to having two open at a time. Many of them have missions that could be cut completely without impacting the story much, while others could be redone as a series of shorter arcs. Yes, World Wide Red would be just as long if it was three arcs instead of one. It wouldn't feel as long though.

I understand where the people crying for smaller to non-existent travel times are coming from. We all have lives, and jobs, and responsibilities that come first before a game about super heroes.

However, I must agree with Samuel_Tow here, and wonder if some people here, just want to be instantly teleported to their mission, and click on every enemy to kill it, then after completing their mission, click the exit button and appear right in front of the contact that gave it to them.

City of Heroes is unlike any other MMO in the fact that the world of COH exists as a single city, instead of an actual, "World" or "Continent."

The fact that I can cross the entire world in less than two minutes at level 14 is extremely rare to the MMO genre. In other games, (Who will not be mentioned) its a whole other social event just to get to the mission you're planning on completing, which is exactly what Sam was saying. And to many (as apparent by the fact that their subscription numbers are just plain ridiculous) that's seen as a part of the game and enjoyable content.

Ever since they changed the mission structure to give greater rewards, and half debt, I've felt terribly sorry for War_Witch, who is our level designer. She builds these beautiful cityscapes, and players just complain about how they hate looking at them, because it takes them all of a minute to get across and enter the mission door.

If instant gratification is what you seek, look no further than Atlas Park's AE building. It's got endless repeatable missions, a hospital that is located IN THE BUILDING, and is right next door to the Wentworth's where you can sell your rewards to get greater rewards.

As for me, I'll continue to fly across the city looking down at all the busy little NPCs below and immerse myself. I've never understood why the Farmers seek to get to level 50 as fast as they can. There's no "ENDGAME" like what is featured in other MMOs. You get to level 50, and then... you... do more missions?

The point is that these abominations are still the mainstream hero content.

Why have they not at least made the NPCs give you cell phones immediately? That would probably be extremely simple to do compared to most dev tasks.

For everybody whining about how MA farms make a bad impression with newbies, they make a far better impression than the ****ty mechanics of the default content.

And before MA most hero PUGs were scanner spammers, which is just another kind of farm.

I just started a warshade and my playstyle is to do maybe 1 or 2 missions, then log if the mission teleporter is recharging. That's WITH an inherent travel power.

QR - I was thinking recently that with the fast leveling in the pre-20 range nowadays, that they ought to "retcon" a lot of the story content from that level range and put it up in the higher levels. People scream through the opening levels so fast nowadays, that it's perfectly feasible to get through them barely knowing who Doctor Vahzilok is, let alone actually coming face to face with him.

After reading the last few postings, I'm revising my thinking. Maybe what really needs to happen is that everything is stripped out of the opening levels that isn't storyline related in some way. The pre-20 levels should be nothing BUT storylines that introduce new players to the backstory of the city, and that give the veterans something interesting that they're doing as opposed to vanilla time-filler jobs that they've done a million times.