City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

The perils of 'official' content

Amy_Amp

By Amy_Amp,
Posted on: 2009-08-13 11:19 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

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Originally Posted by Darc_Ranger View Post
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.
This something that really should be fix. There might be some times where there is a big enough need to see them face to face, but you really should be rewarded for getting contacts to call status.

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Originally Posted by NightshadeLegree View Post
Is it my imagination or are the redside EBs a lot tougher than most of the heroside EBs? My scrapper shredded every single Praetorian on the first attempt (well, except Malaise, but he got lucky) but the Freedom Phalanx, Vindicators and Arachnos Patrons and their flunkies usually KO my villains at least once.
Also factor in the sheer number of them and you are bound to stumble upon one, or so of them that give you issues.

 

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A lot of the content is indeed dated and ponderous and in dire need of fixing. A new coat of paint on hero lowbie stuff would be great as well.

One ancillary issue is that of Merits. WIth many of these long arcs awarding close to a recipe's worth of Merits, would players be accepting of quality (of content) over quantity (of rewards)?

Questions about the game, either side? /t @Neuronia or @Neuronium, with your queries!
168760: A Death in the Gish. 3 missions, 1-14. Easy to solo.
Infinity Villains
Champion, Pinnacle, Virtue Heroes

 

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Originally Posted by Neuronia View Post
One ancillary issue is that of Merits. WIth many of these long arcs awarding close to a recipe's worth of Merits, would players be accepting of quality (of content) over quantity (of rewards)?
First we need to rework teaming and the awarding of arc merits. As it is right now there's no incentive reward-wise for a PUG to do arc missions, unless by some miracle they all have the same arc open.

Branching Paragon Police Department Epic Archetype, please!

 

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On the "written in stone" part of content:

Is there a genuine story difference between rescueing 50 hostages in an oranbegan cave or rescueing 3? Is there any reason to necessarily have super-long, annoying missions?

If so, it is extremely narrow writing. Narrow writing isn't necessarily bad, but it does contribute to a bad arc.

TW/Elec Optimization

 

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Originally Posted by SlickRiptide View Post
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.
I very much agree. Another problem bugs me is how a lot of arcs are restricted to certain level ranges in annoying ways.

Example, right now I'm working through the kheldian arcs and it gets annoying in that I have to make sure to finish them all on time as each as a set level range. This means that if I get sidetracked and join a TF or lackey up to a big high-level team and level past the maximum of the arc that I started earlier, I am now stuck having to finish that arc before I can begin the next one. That gets really annoying as each arc is 6-8 missions long and I could be wading through several defeat alls (which they also have too much of) full of greys just so I can get back to content at my level.

The Rikti War Zone on the other hand handles this well by giving each arc a set minimum level but no maximum level. You can start the level 35 arc given by the first contact on a level 47 character and it will be a level 47 arc. Granted that is easier as the enemy groups involved are all designed to run the entire 35 to 54 range but still, it'd be nicer if the Kheldian arcs at least gave some leeway in the max level of each arc.

 

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Originally Posted by _____ View Post
conveience is probably part of it but if ma teams are any indication repetitive content isn't much of a turn-off
This.

I find it funny. Those who say the normal content is repetitive, I usually find to be the same people who run AE farms over and over.

Note: I'm not against AE farms or farming in general. Just saying...repetitiveness isn't what's keeping people from "official" content and a bunch of people looking for AE teams.

BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection

 

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Originally Posted by BrandX View Post
This.

I find it funny. Those who say the normal content is repetitive, I usually find to be the same people who run AE farms over and over.

Note: I'm not against AE farms or farming in general. Just saying...repetitiveness isn't what's keeping people from "official" content and a bunch of people looking for AE teams.
Most often those that complain that Regular content is repetative are veterans of anywhere from 6 months onwards.

The AE is repetative BUT is also offers better rewards, people are willing a certain amount of grind especially if it is seen as the lesser of two evils.

Repetative story content that you've already done once or really isn't any form of story content at all but a loosely slung together series of missions with a thin layer of story vaguely linking them all together.

Why do the same arcs you've already done, especially when you're not given the choice of going elsewhere (City of Villains, it will always go Bruke -> Creed or Kalinda -> Mongoose and there's no other story content on offer...you can go smack street mobs around to level if you have no interest in story however) or it's just plain not story content (most, apart from The Hollows, of City of Heroes levels 1-15, thankfully at 15 story arcs about the Tsoo, Trolls and Vahzilok come in with proper story to them).

Even if you do the good story content, you will only want to do it once unless you're feeling particularly nostalgic about it or something about it just clicks (The Freakylimpics for me) so if you manage to do as much of the decent story content arcs while levelling that just leaves the awful almost-not-story arcs left for a second trip though 1-50.

Everything pre-Issue 6 (I believe it was Issue 6 that was when CoV was released) in City of Heroes was designed under the same tedious philosphy as EQ and WoW were (in WoW it originally took the same amount of experience to go from 50-60 as it did to go from 1-49...making the last ten levels a complete chore where it seemed like almost every third quest leads into a dungeon or is group orientated).

Everything pre-Issue 6 needs an overhaul, plain and simple.

Devs, for once just put a hault on the train of "NEW AND SHINEY!" and actually sit down, look at the things you already have...and make them so much better, like we all know you can be. Yes "NEW AND SHINEY!" can lure in people but when they see such crappy content (with a few nuggets of story gold) it's not going to grasp them as much as a fully fleshed out world that's got amazing story driven content from the get-go.

I think this is the problem, we have CoV, Faultline and the RWZ to compare to vanilla content. Faultline and the RWZ have amazing overarching plots with decent to good writing and all the contacts in the zones have a personality (which sooooo many of the vanilla contacts lack, they might as well be post-it notes plastered to a mission noteboard).

For example:

When doing "The Evil Countess Crey," I ended up getting 3 "go hunt Crey in the Rikti Warzone" missions within a short time of each other (45 Crey for first mission, 45 crey for the second hunt mission and finally 100 Crey for the last hunt) with the thin excuse that you're "doing it to beat the info out of crey employees" or just generally cleaning up the RWZ of their presence (can't Vanguard do that?). It came across as artifical playtime lengthening of the worst kind, the kind people would notice...

I believe atleast one of those wasn't involved with the story at all but a random side mission, yet I had the misfortune of picking it because of having to make a fairly random choice as to which of the two missions on offer to pick since either looked like it could be a story mission.

It's jarring and completely breaks the flow of the story.

 

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Further adventures with Tina Macintyre!

I'd totally forgotten she's also the hag who hands out that ridiculous Save a million Circle mystics in the biggest, most convoluted cave we can find!

Whoohoo!

Fortunately, my radar for these kinds of things has been honed by years of fruitlessly running around seemingly cleared maps looking for the hidden nook containing the last objective.

It took a while just because the map was SO HUGE, but I managed to finish it off with no backtracking and a minimum of scouring.

On the other side of the annoyance spectrum, she gave me 'Rescue Vivian van Dyne'. I didn't mind the giant farming map full of freakshow (same map as Dreck, if I recall), but I was fairly annoyed by the objective not being in the spot the objective nearly always is. Had to backtrack toward the entrance and mow a bunch more Freaks before finding her.

Finding one hostage on a giant map is not quite as annoying as finding a million of them, but isn't what I'd call an ideal gameplay experience.


I guess what I'll start doing when I run 'real' content is hitting the Paragon Wiki to see what the various contacts have in mind for me.
And I'm dropping her like she's hot the second I get Unai Kemen's info.
>:E

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

 

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Originally Posted by Nethergoat View Post
CoH, CoV, whichever you play you're dealing with a small handful of generic entrances 99% of the time. Warehouse, snake hole, office building, tunnel, etc.

IMHO A generic entrance that's a few hundred yards from where I'm standing is preferable to a generic entrance two zones away.

Distance does not impart originality.

You must just love IP & Nerva.

I on the other hand prefer a compact, well integrated environment to a sprawling, unplanned one. Give me New York over Los Angeles any day.
Lumping all that in the same quote, I actually do like IP and Nerva. I've been playing for five years and there are still places in IP I plain haven't seen before even once, and plenty of locations I've only ever been to a couple of times or so. It's not about distance, time or effort, it's about the game requiring at least some exposure to these zones. Granted, we can always fly/jump/teleport miles above them and see precisely nothing, but then THAT is what reduces it to an exercise of minimizing time, distance and effort.

I have a friend who believes doing ANYTHING in outdoor zones, especially fighting enemies, is a waste of time. He will refuse to do that even if we're fighting the same enemies of the same level and in the same spawn sizes as we will be in the mission. He just doesn't like the very concept. Me, especially in the lower levels, I prefer to kill stuff on my way to my mission. It's pretty easy to accomplish, too, as the lower-level zones, especially CoV-side, are designed to pit you across enemies relatively your level. I gain more experience travelling to and from missions than I do in the actual missions, themselves.

Granted, it becomes annoying once you NEED to get somewhere, say to level up, to sell or buy, to meet other people and suchforth - then terrain and enemies become a road block. But I simply do not and will not subscribe to the notion that AVOIDING terrain, enemies and travel as much as possible is a good idea. I do not enjoy the notion of "hub zones" like the Ouroboros citadel and all of Cimerora. In fact, I wish there were missions the objective of which was SPECIFICALLY designed to make players travel on foot at walking speed without travel powers. I wouldn't force that on anyone outside, but a mission or two with a travel power suppression field would be nice.

This is actually why I'm wary of too much convenience - once everything is convenient enough, players look to skip more and more of the game. I don't believe that's always a good thing.

[/quote]I dislike the harshness of many of the custom MA groups, but I've also found custom enemies who are surprising and different without being murderous. And of course there are players who enjoy leaping face-first into the meat grinder and seeing if they can survive.[/QUOTE]

Honestly, what I dislike about custom critters the most is the fact that they're all humanoids identical to what you'd see on a player. I'm not a great fan of other people's costumes and so I'm not a great fan of other people's custom critters, regardless of what they may do. I like enemies like the Hydra, the Devouring Earth, the Rikti, the Soldiers of Rularuu and so forth. Even if I know all of them, it's still something different to fight them. Fighting other people's custom critters... Eh, I've seen all the pieces and I've tried a lot of the combinations. They look like player characters, and that doesn't do it for me.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

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Originally Posted by Dr_Mechano View Post
Most often those that complain that Regular content is repetative are veterans of anywhere from 6 months onwards.

The AE is repetative BUT is also offers better rewards, people are willing a certain amount of grind especially if it is seen as the lesser of two evils.
Actually, the lesser of two evils is not playing at all if your only choice is between boring and MORE boring. I don't get it. Why do people play these games if the best they can hope for is an experience that is, at best, somewhat less boring than completely intolerable. It's like if I walked into a soup kitchen and the only things they were serving were diesel and raw sewage. I wouldn't wonder which one is less dangerous to my health, I'd go back home and eat last night's supper.

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Devs, for once just put a hault on the train of "NEW AND SHINEY!" and actually sit down, look at the things you already have...and make them so much better, like we all know you can be. Yes "NEW AND SHINEY!" can lure in people but when they see such crappy content (with a few nuggets of story gold) it's not going to grasp them as much as a fully fleshed out world that's got amazing story driven content from the get-go.
If you think that will fly, you're in for a culture shock. The moment they announce "This Issue we're not adding any new content, but we'll be cutting missions off the old one and rewriting our briefings" you'll see the forums implode in on themselves. It's like the old "Make one Issue ONLY bug fixes!" fallacy. It's an interesting idea, but if you don't give people anything new, they complain and leave. I6 introduced City of Villains, and people who played City of Heroes complained. I7 brought City of Heroes up to speed, and City of Villains players complained. Not getting new content for the sake of redoing old content in bulk will not happen. Period.

You might see fix here and there, maybe a couple of story arcs at a time. And Lord knows, pretty much everything from I1-I5 needs to be re-examined. But a large-scale redoing just isn't in the cards.

[/quote]I think this is the problem, we have CoV, Faultline and the RWZ to compare to vanilla content. Faultline and the RWZ have amazing overarching plots with decent to good writing and all the contacts in the zones have a personality (which sooooo many of the vanilla contacts lack, they might as well be post-it notes plastered to a mission noteboard).[/quote]

CoV, Faultile and the Rikti War Zone are also HORRIBLY GRATING. Specific to the post-Issue-8 content is the fact that each new zone added or remade has what amounts to ONE contact spread over 10-15 levels. Faultline is a good example. Temblor has 3 missions, then Penelope has three missions, then in the next level range Doc Delilah has three-four missions and Agent Six has something like five missions or so. On paper, the zone has four contacts and four story arc. In practice, the zone has less content in its 10 levels than a single contact has in the old game in a 5-level range all by himself, and you have five of them per level range.

New content is good and well-written, most definitely. New content, however, is painfully short and, because it's displaced into its own individual zones and has stories that never send you anywhere else, is very, very easy to remember by heart. For all of its faults, the original CoH game has so much to do that I never really ran into the problem of remembering all the story arcs word for word. I never really did the same arcs in the same order, so I couldn't even if I tried. I CAN'T do the story arcs in Faultline in any other OTHER than Temblor -> Penelope -> Delilah -> Six, and once I start doing them, there's no reason to stop doing them. And because they were "the new thing," I ended up doing them I think three times in three weeks. Now I remember that damn PCM storyline word for God damn word.

Quality is good and all, but quantity is no less important. In fact, the MAJOR reason why I prefer CoH to CoV has nothing to do with quality at all and everything to do with Quantity. No matter how well anything is made, that game has a handful of zones and very few contacts, each with very few missions. No matter how well they are written, I got bored of them all two years ago, because EVERY time I start a new character, I'm going through either half of the same contacts. When you consider that a lot of them are designed to be unpleasant (Peter Thermai, Darla Mavis, Westin Phipps) and a lot are needlessly unlockable, that makes the pool of contacts and arcs smaller still. And I HATE Sharkhead island. 5 levels of the same damn black sand and the same damn missions in the same damn Hell Forge a hundred times over.

Quality content and quality writing is cool, but FILLER content with average writing is also something that shouldn't be overlooked. And, no, the Architect does NOT serve to fit the gap. Between farmers, people with without any concept of difficulty and people people who plain can't or don't want to make a good arc, the place a flushing toilet with a couple of spinning gems in it. Good luck catching anything but crap.

From time to time, I like redoing the old CoH content everyone keeps condemning because I simply don't remember it, and I do the old story arcs every time.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

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Originally Posted by Nethergoat View Post
The CoV approach of "mostly in one zone, with occasional detours" is my preference.
More Redside Love!

Go Red!

Woo!

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Originally Posted by eltonio View Post
This is over the top mental slavery.

 

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
Lumping all that in the same quote, I actually do like IP and Nerva. I've been playing for five years and there are still places in IP I plain haven't seen before even once, and plenty of locations I've only ever been to a couple of times or so.
I on the other hand have seen every square inch of IP.
Why, you ask?
Back in the day my friends and I got so tired of running back and forth across the zone to various mission doors that were a million miles away we just farmed our way around it in a circle. All the way around it. Until we out-leveled the zone. We even mowed down the Devoured Earth that hang out on the island around Terra Volta, because we didn't know any better.

I didn't see anything during this marathon that really stood out or endeared the zone to me. The bridge is different, but hacking your way across it isn't far removed from working your way down a regular street full of spawns.

What architecture can I see in IP that I can't see in any other city zone?
I put forth that its only standout feature is its immense, annoying size.

And as I've already said, distance doesn't impart originality.
No zone in the game delivers such a knockout, immersive, interactive environment that I miss anything by simply bee-lining to various mission doors as efficiently and quickly as I can.

Well, except maybe the Shadow Shard. Not that it's any more interactive than anyplace else, but it is visually stunning.
Of course, it's also so tremendously annoying for most people to traverse they're forced to stop and smell the spine-shooting eyeballs & waterfalls of blood. =P

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It's not about distance, time or effort, it's about the game requiring at least some exposure to these zones. Granted, we can always fly/jump/teleport miles above them and see precisely nothing, but then THAT is what reduces it to an exercise of minimizing time, distance and effort.
There's nothing compelling to do in zones besides sightsee, and I guess RP, although that's not my gig.

For nearly every player in the game, zones are just lobbys to cross on their way to missions. If the devs want us to approach them differently, they need to give us some motivation.

It's fine that you think walking across a giant zone is the fun thing to do- whatever floats your boat.
But objectively it's not an activity that appeals to many players.


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Granted, it becomes annoying once you NEED to get somewhere, say to level up, to sell or buy, to meet other people and suchforth - then terrain and enemies become a road block. But I simply do not and will not subscribe to the notion that AVOIDING terrain, enemies and travel as much as possible is a good idea.
Nobody's asking you to- do whatever you like.

But most players are like me, and find lots of pointless running around to this or that distant outpost annoying.
But don't take my word for it, just observe the various changes to the game over the years- train stations for previously dead-end zones, temp travel powers for the low levels, purchaseable travel powers for the higher levels, the City Traveller vet reward, the Oro portal, base teleporters, Gather the Team, etc etc etc.

The original 'vision' of retarding progress by making us schlep everywhere stunk on ice, and they eventually figured that out.

If you like it, fantastic- I'm not trying to convince you of anything.

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This is actually why I'm wary of too much convenience - once everything is convenient enough, players look to skip more and more of the game. I don't believe that's always a good thing.
Convenience is badly needed by most of the older content in the game.
If they can't go back and re-write it, giving us greater travel flexibility is a helpful work-around.



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Honestly, what I dislike about custom critters the most is the fact that they're all humanoids identical to what you'd see on a player. I'm not a great fan of other people's costumes and so I'm not a great fan of other people's custom critters, regardless of what they may do. I like enemies like the Hydra, the Devouring Earth, the Rikti, the Soldiers of Rularuu and so forth. Even if I know all of them, it's still something different to fight them. Fighting other people's custom critters... Eh, I've seen all the pieces and I've tried a lot of the combinations. They look like player characters, and that doesn't do it for me.
It's like anything else involving the player population- some designs stink, some are impressive.

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

 

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Granted, there isn't any actual POINT to running around the zones short of atmosphere, and I know we see that differently. Fair enough. I've often felt there ought to be more to do in the outdoor zones. Not specifically phat-lewt-related, mind you, but more than just badges. Hidden missions, spontaneously-occurring contacts, unique and interesting enemies, more events that don't include beating on a giant monster, that sort of thing. Sure, people after lots of experience and drops will still avoid all that, but at least those of us who DO like to move around the zones will feel less stupid and you may feel more inclined to travel or explore.

As for IP, I just like the fact that a lot of the locations are, if not unique, then at least custom and hand-made. Me and a few friends used to make newbie runs where we took level 1 characters from Atlas Park to Peregrine Island on foot, which means no trains, no teleporters, no Pocket D and so on. Tunnels only. I picked the course, and I selected Atlas Park -> Steel Canyon -> Independence Port -> Terra Volta Gate OVER LAND -> to Kings Row gate via water crossing -> I don't remember where. I think Skyway to Talos to PI. That lap around Independence Port overland was the highlight of the race, because it didn't involve just running around, but actually using the terrain to escape one-shot death (before the one-shot code was implemented).

Then again, I've always been a fan of free running/parkour elements in games, and things like Ubi's Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed games are easily my favourite single-player games of all time, so I'm biassed. Still, I enjoy working WITH terrain, rather than against it. I still like to take characters with only Combat Jumping and take them on a trip around Cap Au Diable. The rooftps there are so close together that that's a LOT of fun. I also like following the PTS pipeline from where it starts West of the Port Oaks ferry, walking over the pipe to where it ends in the hillside North of Aeon City.

Granted, that's "make your own fun" just the same way as super-jumping without stepping on the ground is, but at least you should know where I'm coming from.

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It's like anything else involving the player population- some designs stink, some are impressive.
For custom critters, it's not just the fact that people suck that ruins them for me. It's the fact that they are LITERALLY identical to what I can make in the editor. Sure, I've found costumes I REALLY liked on other people, but not on custom minions. For instance, I like Malta's Hercules and Zeus Titans as designs. Short of simply recolouring one of them, players are NOT going to have a custom critter that's anything like that. After five years, I've seen all the limitations of the editor and I've done all the hacks and kludges to make things work like they aren't supposed to. There's nothing that will really impress me left, unless it's a very cool custom boss. For custom minions, lieutenants and run-of-the-mill bosses, though, I'd take developer-made NPCs over player-made ones every time.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

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Well that's probably because the devs can only give us a limited subset of their tools to work with. When you make the rules, you can make whatever you want.

The problem with custom enemies is that they're basically the same as player characters.

 

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I find it interesting that people are talking about the MA as if it's composed strictly of bad custom groups and farm maps. How many people have played through the Developer Choice arcs? Or the Hall of Fame? Admittedly, you need to read the mission text, the clues, and the souvenirs to get the impact, but I think it's worthwhile. There really is some good stuff in there that rivals or exceeds the official content.

Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)

 

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I'm actually glad for the AE for saving me from Grandville. Specifically, for some reason, my Mac client crashes every 30 - 300 seconds in Grandville. Sometimes I can make it to a mission door before a crash, sometimes I cant. Using the reloadgfx command after zoning isnt helping on this one (tho it does stop the Mac random crashes).

Thanks to the AE, I can actually play villains from 40-50 on my new Mac. YAY!

Lewis

Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan

 

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Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene View Post
I find it interesting that people are talking about the MA as if it's composed strictly of bad custom groups and farm maps. How many people have played through the Developer Choice arcs? Or the Hall of Fame? Admittedly, you need to read the mission text, the clues, and the souvenirs to get the impact, but I think it's worthwhile. There really is some good stuff in there that rivals or exceeds the official content.
What are some of your favorites? I wonder if there is a thread dedicated to finding the good arcs, or even better, reviewing them. I guess I'll go see if there is an appropriate forum somewhere. So far, I have stumbled through a bunch of AE content randomly.

Lewis

Random AT Generation!
"I remember... the Alamo." -- Pee-wee Herman
"Oh don't worry. I always leave things to the last moment." -- The Doctor
"Telescopes are time machines." -- Carl Sagan

 

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Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon View Post
What are some of your favorites? I wonder if there is a thread dedicated to finding the good arcs, or even better, reviewing them. I guess I'll go see if there is an appropriate forum somewhere. So far, I have stumbled through a bunch of AE content randomly.

Lewis
So far I'm working through the dev's choice arcs - I've found Phantom of the Abyss and Saul Rubenstein's Discount Task Force to be fun - there are others, but I'd have to log in and look at my souvenirs to check them.

There is an MA subforum under player help, too, and there's a thread for people to suggest arcs for dev's choice inclusion.

I've played a few other arcs that aren't HoF or DC, but are still good - but those fall under the "Have to check the souvenirs."

I've mostly been playing the official CoV missions, with occasional MA breaks.

Elsegame: Champions Online: @BellaStrega ||| Battle.net: Ashleigh#1834 ||| Bioware Social Network: BellaStrega ||| EA Origin: Bella_Strega ||| Steam: BellaStrega ||| The first Guild Wars: Kali Magdalene ||| The Secret World: BelleStarr (Arcadia)

 

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Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon View Post
What are some of your favorites? I wonder if there is a thread dedicated to finding the good arcs, or even better, reviewing them. I guess I'll go see if there is an appropriate forum somewhere. So far, I have stumbled through a bunch of AE content randomly.

Lewis
Head here and look at the various review threads

My own arc (info in my signature) has a currently review rating (out of two reviews) of 3.75. One review from Talen Lee who is quite a tough reviewer (his average review score is 3.50 I believe).

 

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Originally Posted by KaliMagdalene View Post
I find it interesting that people are talking about the MA as if it's composed strictly of bad custom groups and farm maps. How many people have played through the Developer Choice arcs? Or the Hall of Fame? Admittedly, you need to read the mission text, the clues, and the souvenirs to get the impact, but I think it's worthwhile. There really is some good stuff in there that rivals or exceeds the official content.
In my experience devs choice does not mean an arc is good, has good writing, lack of custom groups, or is fun. It means one thing. A dev liked it. And tastes differ alot.

 

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
Granted, that's "make your own fun" just the same way as super-jumping without stepping on the ground is, but at least you should know where I'm coming from.
Oh absolutely. I'm all for whatever people find fun.
Right now I have a 'concept stalker' I'm playing. A regular guy with a sword, no superpowers, so no travel power. He's getting by on swift, hurdle & Gift of the Ancients +runspeed. And, whenever possible, he travels to missions without setting foot on the ground (he's in Sharkhead now, which is a good environment for it).

I wouldn't press the restrictions on anyone else, but I'm enjoying it.



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For custom minions, lieutenants and run-of-the-mill bosses, though, I'd take developer-made NPCs over player-made ones every time.
This I don't understand.
It's not like most of the minions and lieutenants in the game are that fascinating, or that we don't fight them a billion times during our careers. Novelty has its own value.

I like the creative aspect of MA for the same reason I like checking out player bios while I'm running around the game. It's fun to see what people dream up, even when most if it is junk.

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Toony View Post
In my experience devs choice does not mean an arc is good, has good writing, lack of custom groups, or is fun. It means one thing. A dev liked it. And tastes differ alot.
I've played a couple of Dev's Choice arcs I thought were as good as anything else in the game.

And in my experience having devs create an arc does not mean it's good, has good writing, or is fun. =P


Any creative endeavor is going to be a grab bag.
Pros will create a more consistent product (hopefully anyway), but get enough amateurs working on missions and their best efforts will stand tall in the ranks.

The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by _____ View Post
conveience is probably part of it but if ma teams are any indication repetitive content isn't much of a turn-off
Except

AE repetition farms bring tons of rewards very fast. Tina doesnt.

Not to mention its less walking, and lets be frank, if theres one thing that pissed me off over double xp weekend when I tried going out in the world and did the Dr Q taskforce? it easnt the length. it was that ALL OF THE CLICK 4 COMPUTER AT THE SAME TIME MISHES WERE THE EXACT SAME LAYOUT AND YOU HAVE TO DO 4 OF EM IN A ROW WTF DEVS

Want comedy and lighthearted action? Between levels 1-14? Try Nuclear in 90 - The Fusionette Task Force!

Arc ID 58363!

 

Posted

Okay, so lots of people mentioned a mission blue-side where you have to save 50 hostages, and I have to wonder, is this exaggeration, or is that the actual number? At this point, I cannot tell anymore.

I do have to agree, though, that many end-game arcs feel artificially lengthy, with lots of filler missions, the worst being Carnie hunts in PI. Christ, it's like every contact wants me to hunt the rarest group in CoH, and 100 of them at a time. And why? Because they're bored like that, I guess.

The worst time was Madeleine Casey's arc. So I give that voodoo guy some plot item for him to magic around with, you know, nice plot stuff. Then, I swear, he gets all "oh, you want a mission to do? Whatever, go beat up some Carnies and Rikti in PI, kill some time".

One suggestion I saw here, I forgot by whom, is to split the mega-arcs into several smaller arcs. I'm entirely certain that might just fix the problem of tediously long arcs. I have to think of Mage-Killer Zuhkara's arcs: She has three or four of them, all relatively short with three missions, but they're all connected, all essentially one large arc, and I found it so much easier to do three or four small arcs than one mega-arc.

The thing with me is, I don't care too much about rewards or merits at the end of an arc. What I care about is that feeling I accomplished something. With contacts like Zuhkara and Vernon von Grun, the end of an arc is always a nice time to stop and I can continue later when I feel like it, but virtually every end-game hero arc, I end up thinking "when will it end? Oh god, when will it finally end?"

Maybe it's because with smaller, inter-connected arcs, there's less filler missions but more story content, because I swear most hero arcs can be condensed into three mission arcs by cutting out the filler garbage.

And please, PLEASE, do something about the Carnie hunts in PI. They are, by far, the most tedious part in the game. It is NOT fun to travel around PI for hours to kill 100 Carnies, when you find like five every fifteen minutes. Hunt missions with ridiculously large numbers are bad enough, but make the necessary enemy type rare as hell? Whoever came up with that is in dire need of a lobotomy.

 

Posted

While I am quite sure it was not the OP's intention, he has given me a marvelous idea. An idea I am sure will never see the light of day, much to my dismay, but an idea nonetheless.

What if, instead of a universal entrance just behind the contact, AE missions pointed to REAL entrances located in a level appropriate zone. Think of it.. all those arcs that push all members to 50 would be forced to go to Peregrine Island (on the Hero side) or Grandville on the Villain side. To make it even better, with the new super side kicking. If the team leader was some level 10, wanting to be power levelled.... THE ENTIRE TEAM WOULD HAVE TO MAKE THE RUN AS LEVEL 10's UNTIL THEY MADE IT TO THE MISSION DOOR.

MMMMMwwwwwwahahahahahahahaha....

- Garielle
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frosty_Femme View Post
I said "ur" which is not a word. It's a sound dumb people make when you ask them to spell out "you are".