The perils of 'official' content

You missed out on the best thing about it- originally it was bugged and you had it permanently.

=D

You are right to despise Family Guy, it's a pathetic photocopy of better shows populated by non-jokes that we're supposed to laugh at simply because they reference some pop cultural niche we recognize.



Nerva does have an interesting mix of stuff, but like IP it is basically just a huge zone that annoys most people. My archetypal Nerva story is getting that Rob Speakeasy mission and having it be WAAAAAAAAAAAY out in the jungle by the portal mission guy through a cave door.
Must have been the world's most secret speakeasy.

If CoH were more like WoW and those interesting places in Nerva triggered stuff to do, it's be fine. As is, it delivers nothing but sightseeing for its own sake and pointlessly long runs to missions out in the jungle, which may or may not have a thematic reason to be there.

Grandville bothers me less now that my computer doesn't lag out every time I zone in, but as cool as it looks it's pointlessly complicated to navigate. And again, the 'cool' stuff is just window dressing for mission doors.

Nerva wouldn't lose anything if it were half the size it is, and would attract many more players.
Grandville wouldn't lose anything if it were easier to navigate & didn't bring lesser computers to their knees, and would attract many more players.

I have a bit of a problem with the scale of the entire game. The Nerva Archipelago looks like it's supposed to be a chain of small islands, with a couple of big islands off to the North. But space and zone sizes in CoV being what they are, the small islands are tiny and jammed together, and the big islands are barely a mile out to sea. That's not actually "out to sea" at all. Primeva and Thorn Island should be well, WELL within clear view of everywhere in the city part, but due to view distance they simply are not.

This isn't restricted to Nerva. All of CoH and CoV are like that. Sharkhead Island's Hell Forge is ludicrously tall, but in terms of land area, it is pretty small. We have these "gigantic" 40+ storey skyscrapers all over Steel Canyon, yet their footprint is not a lot bigger than that of an average house, something which is decidedly not true for real skyscrapers. Many apartment buildings have a wall that's lined by five-six windows jammed next to each other like no-one would build them, yet the full width of the building isn't much more than the room I'm sitting in as I type this. And I don't live in a big house. Ghost Widow's "tower" is an outright joke. It's supposed to be an entire section of the fortress with multiple storeys, vaults for magical artefacts, machines and facilities and... It's not even 10'x10' at the base, growing thinner as it ascends. This kind of structure shouldn't have big levels with lifts. It could barely house your typical medieval castle tower's single winding staircase.

This is somewhat less noticeable in CoH, because the zones there are all city and are implied to be only a small subsection of a much bigger, sprawling cityscape. We can even see that extend outside the war walls. So even if they're small, the city itself doesn't feel as small, and the fact that the buildings are undersized doesn't register. Clever tricks, such as incredibly low-ceiling storeys small, single-room windows being smushed together like there were many rooms sort of covers it up. But the illusion outright FAILS in City of Villains, because what's in each CoV zone is ALL there is to the islands in question. So, we have these incredibly tiny cities with all of five meaningful buildings in them, yet they're sold to us as metropolitan areas. We have these tiny little islands that'd barely house a single building presented as burroughs of an island chain city. We have these miniature giant buildings and segregated areas that have a little bit of everything jammed together.

To me, CoV is claustrophobic. Everything is tiny, everything is small, you can always see pretty much clear across an island from one side to the other and most islands aren't more than a couple of super jumps across. Grandville sort of works, because it IS one of the largest islands in the game, and the imposing walls, towers and buildings mask the fact that it's small in terms of land area, but it's still small. About the only islands I actually feel good about are Port Oaks and Cap Au Diable, because they're both part of the same island, with unknown amounts of mountainous wilderness between them. I can climb up on top of the Cau Au Diable tunnel for Port Oaks and look across Mount Diable and I will see mountains, rocks and plains. I don't know how big the island actually is, but I can't see Port Oaks in the distance, so I have to assume there is at least a fair bit of distance overland between them. I like this. It makes Cap/Oaks feel like the biggest island in the game.

I know you'll roll your eyes at this, but I have to say that Terra Volta is one of my favourite zones in the entire game. The biggest "industrial complex" in all of CoV is the undersized Hell Forge. CoH has AN ENTIRE ZONE devoted to nothing but a huge, huge, HUGE industrial complex with dozens of different buildings, factories, installations, trenches, walls and silos all around. This is HEAVY INDUSTRY personified, just as it should be, and in a zone with such a... Basic premise - big industry - it manages to be very diverse. And I just love, love, LOVE the Terra Volta reactor complex, itself. No mere factory plopped on the edge of an island, this is a humongous installations replete with the single largest structures in the ENTIRE GAME - the power plant coolant stacks - and situated in its own separate complex of elevated ground, protected by not insignificantly tall walls. I love the zone. Occasionally I go there just for the sake of seeing one of the few truly BIG areas places in the entire city.

To me, it's not really so important that I travel a lot or that I see a lot or that there be lots of land area and structures. What matters to me is that the city FEEL big. Bigger than we see, bigger than we know, bigger than we can imagine. It doesn't matter if it IS, as long as it feels that way. CoH manages to pull that off. CoV does not. And I'm starting to think that if all CoV zones were different sections of the same large island, or at least different sections of the same two-three islands, the game would feel a LOT bigger than it is and a lot bigger than it feels now, for literally no increase in ACTUAL size.

In this case, I suppose, I should blame art design and direction.

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.

Really? Because I've always seen most of CoV's population in Cap au Diable even before Mission Architect.

It may be a well populated zone, but the only location where you'll see more than some random team is the BM, and they aren't just hanging out they're buying and selling stuff.

It's like they purposefully designed CoV zones to discourage public gatherings.

I was thinking about this and the CoV zone that popped into my mind to contrast Atlas Park was Grandville. Then I realized how interesting it is (story wise) that the center of the hero world is the beginning and the center of the villain world is the end. (Center is my attempt to describe a point of attention.)

CoV is about Recluse while CoH is about the new hero seeing the heroic statue of Atlas and the flag waving over the City Hall. In CoH the new hero is welcomed with the shining premise of doing great deeds while in CoV I may be the chosen one but I am going to have to prove it and meanwhile I am going to be treated like poo on the street.

CoV needs new leadership. We need a man like Lex Luthor.

The Alpha and Omega?

Interesting. I always thought the Vahz story arc, along with the wasting disease, was some of the better content. The disease only lasts for a single mission, and is one of the few moments in the game where you aren't babied and coddled. Actually, as far as I can tell, it's fully unique in what it does. And it's not like it makes the mission impossible. I've completed it solo on defenders (who do horrible damage). You have to pace yourself, certainly, but it actually adds challenge to the game, as opposed to all the buffs continually given out to make everything easier and safer. The story arc is also nice in that, without having to initiate a task force or some other special action, you are presented with an AV-class villain (and one of the best-designed ones, when you really look at him).

Then again, I liked when the code for ambushes was broken and the game would send a dozen ambushers after you. I found it refreshing that the constant feeling of safeness (which doesn't really fit inside this genre) was totally shattered.

Agreed, but there is a middle ground between "waiting ain't playing" and "not having everything handed to you on a silver platter.

Personally, I don't see ANY travel in this game as "lengthy." Even the longest trip in this game (which would probably be from Galaxy City to either the Hive or the Storm Palace) won't take any more than 5 minutes. Peregrine to Perez is a snap.

But to each his own.

Folks, especially ones who like CoV more, tend to remark how much the devs "learned from the mistakes of CoH".

My suspicion, just from what we've heard about Going Rogue is that they've learned from the mistakes they made with CoV. I'm guessing that Emperor Cole (Tyrant's) Praetoria is probably a paradise (on the surface). Assuredly, he's still a villain, but probably a much more complex one than the cartoonish villain of Lord Recluse.

these things are, as always, relative.
I consider my 15 minute commute to work short.
I would consider a 15 minute trip in CoH to be a virtual equivalent to the Trail of Tears.

In the context of the game a multi-zone jaunt is a 'long time' however many minutes of real-world time it takes.

Back to my original point, I was running some missions last night, somebody in Bricks, forget the name. After a bit I get a fairly annoying "rescue 8 hostages and find information" on an outdoor map full of rikti. This was on my ar/dev, so the rikti were a pain. Finally finished it.
"Oh, go talk to this gal in Founder's Falls."
Not as wretched as it used to be, since they have a train station now, so whatever.
The entirity of our interaction was "Oh, the next Rikti raid is at this other place- go stop them!"
What was the mission, you wonder?
Rescue 8 hostages and click the glowie on the EXACT SAME outdoor map full of rikti.
Except now it's timed.

That was my cue to log off and let it fail.
Hopefully the remainder of this arc is less irritating.

And people wonder why I call most of the old COH legacy content dreck.

Granted, it's relative, and I can't really argue with how things feel. But I've timed it.

Once upon a time I was asked to log in my level 50 Scrapper and join a team of old friends. He turned out to be about mid-way into the Storm Palace. Just to be a fool and conduct a thought experiment, I decided to travel all the way back on foot without dropping off the islands (which would have shortened my trip back to the return Horta Vines).

I joined the team and found out that the mission was located in Perez Park. For those keeping score, that's Storm Palace -> Chantry -> Cascades Archipelago (or whatever) -> Firebase Zulu -> Peregrine Island -> Talso Island -> Steel Canyon -> Perez Park and the mission turned out to be directly across from where I entered the zone. All told, and while chatting along the way, too, it took me shy under 10 minutes. That was in a time without teleporters of any kind, and indeed without Pocket D. We may have had the Paragon Dance Party, or we may not have. I don't remember. Essentially, my only choice was to walk.

This is, as far as I can imagine, the LONGEST trip the whole game has to offer without rethreading zones. And even that was not 10 minutes long then. I have to say, if I can cross the entire CoH universe in under 10 minutes, no travel time can be long in my eyes.

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.

When my level 30-ish travel time to any in-zone mission is measured in seconds, 10 minutes is an eternity.

A minute of in-game travel is a long time, relatively speaking.

If that travel time is leading me to some significant destination, I don't mind so much- the Treespec, for example. It's about as far away from anything as you can get, but it's a really cool area and you're making the trek for an 'important' reason.

But when I'm getting boomeranged around the game for no reason other than bad game design, I take exception.

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.

Don't talk that way about my hero Unai, the fount from which all zombie farms flow!!1

>:z

This is all that needs to be said.

Useless travel in empty space will always be terrible game design as far as I'm concerned. It's one of the reasons I DESPISE the shadow shard so much.

EDIT: It's one of the reasons many players played newspapers/radios instead of contact missions, and stick to the AE after issue 14, and why many players liked COV. Useless travel (no matter how fast it is) for just travel sake is idiocy. Other's MMV.

That is my problem with "lengthy" travel times, the fact that they're lengthy for no particular reason other than the hell of it, or the RNG. I don't say a word if a high-level contact in PI sends me to (for ex) The Hollows if there's something actually happening there that couldn't happen bleeding well anywhere.

Sending me there because the Malta for whatever reason have decided they want all the Trolls in the tunnels buried alive? I'm there. Mayhap I'd rather help set up the bombs than stop them, but that's not the point.

Sending me there so I can wind up in a generic office map for some unnamed company for an arbitrary Macguffin-fetch? Stupid waste of time. Bonus points for not bothering to explain why this company is doing active business in a hazard zone at all. (Perez Park is another good one for stuff like that.) It doesn't matter what shortcuts I can take or how long it actually takes to get there, it's the reason I'm traveling so far in the first place. If it's an old company warehouse and that's the last-known storage place, I'm back to being cool with it.

Nowhere did I say it took hours to travel in this game.

Except the funny thing is that on my last Citadel run, while the bases were at the same door and all Council maps the actual layout was totally different.