Am I the only one who hates doing side mishs?

Huh. I could not feel more differently if I tried. Mayhems are utterly dull, so hit the bank and get out of there. Side missions in Safeguards add to the hectic nature of them, so hit those in between rushing around to stop all the vandals.

I like doing that solo with my Stalker or Brute and then I'll Super Jump all over the map just before doing the Jail Break. I love watching that steady stream of Longbow drift out of the elevator and moments later drop at my feet.
Mua ha ha hah ha ha

Oh, sorry, don't know what came over me there.

Same here. Destroying inanimate objects for more time is pretty boring. Both hero and villain I usually hit the bank, hit the badge and leave.

I know of very few more frustrating experiences than doing either a Mayhem or a Safeguard with a team. Solo, I can defeat a time-giving spawn in about 15 to 30 seconds (depending on the character), making them a net break-even or slight timer gain. With an 8 person team, we lose timer on every spawn we fight, which costs us all the lovely side missions ... and, not infrequently, costs us successful completion of the main mission.

I'm vaguely weirded out by the two examples (so far) of Mayhem mission hate. The Mayhem missions are, more than all of the rest of City of Villains combined, more than anything else, what I wanted City of Villains to be when it was first announced: picking my own route, searching for opportunities for crimes to commit, terrorizing the cops, recruiting a sidekick to show them how much better than them I am, destroying superheroes sent to thwart me. And all the more so once I reach Brickstown and have a guaranteed 4 or more side missions. If City of Villains had been nothing more than a long string of, say, a couple of hundred Mayhem missions, one for every neighborhood of every zone in Paragon City, I would have been happier than a pig in Congress.

Safeguards, a little less so, but only for two reasons. I do agree with the original poster that it gets old defeating a spawn of enemies to get a key and then finding out that the actual mission is on the far side of the map. And the constant running or flying back and forth as vandals spawn all over the map gets really old. And Safeguards lack the sheer joy of smashing up all of that stuff; there really needs to be more missions in City of Heroes where you go into a villain's lair and smash up their carefully-crafted super-weapons for bonus points. As objects decline in relative hit points, the later Safeguards make it way, way too easy to lose time to random spawns blowing up property. And even before then, the timer really gets tight; I still think the random enemy spawns should grant 30 seconds to the timer.

But aside from the lovely rewards, I "get" that Safeguards are a lot closer than anything else in the rest of City of Heroes to a realistic "day in the life" of a superhero: more things going wrong at once than you have time to respond to, villains who don't wait for you to show up to start their evil deeds, and so forth.

It feels to me like almost nobody "gets" that part of what's so cool about City of Heroes is the overwhelming variety of ways to level up, of ways to enjoy the game; people take each others' word for what's the most XP-efficient and loot-efficient way to level, and migrate to that in thundering herds. City of Heroes is a game where you can choose street sweeping solo, street sweeping in teams against more dangerous public enemies (hero only), stand-alone randomly generated missions, multi-part solo stories, multi-part team-required stories, "Danger Room" simulations, PvP and PvP zone missions, realistic "day in the life" superheroics (hero only), and intense terroristic crime waves (villain only).

Most MMOs would only have at most 2 or 3 of those choices. Yes, I admit, CoH could stand another balance pass on the content to make some of the less-chosen paths less disadvantaged relative to the others, so you don't feel like a chump if you try to recruit a team to street sweep Perez Park, say, or so you don't feel like you're wasting your time if you Go! Hunt! Kill Skuls! But one the list of things I love this game for is that it has all of these viable choices, and they all work; it's a marvel of game design.

The side missions are okay. My complaint with them is the same I have with the whole of Mayhem missions: they feel really petty. Random, wanton destruction just doesn't feel supervillainous to me; I don't see the point in smashing up the city when I'm trying to rule it. The scattered destructible objects are the worst part. Kicking over trash cans and punching newstands doesn't make me feel like a supervillain, it makes me feel like a Skull.

Hmm, I haven't run into that since I8 beta when they were introduced. I had assumed that they took out the ability to lose time to vandals.

That's exactly what I love about Safeguards. There are villains committing crimes, not just standing around, and they're fast and frantic and never dull. I feel the same way about Safeguards as you do about Mayhems; if I could have long strings of them, I'd do almost nothing else.

Setting fire to buildings makes my fire/thermal corruptor feel like a Hellion...



... alright, more like a Hellion.

This.

Angel Red
"We're heroes. Fighting injustice is the thing we do." ~Rebel Scum

Yeah it's odd - the majority of the players out there are looking for "teh max XPs" and I think a well-run Bank mish is one of the best opportunities for a nice long, uninterrupted stretch of straight-up XPs.

Yet people are sometimes reluctant to "use" the Bank mish as it was designed, going for the Temp power and nothing else.

Personally I've only REALLY enjoyed the Bank mish on maybe 2 or 3 PuGs I've ever been on...and again, it was when the team didn't get split up "out in the open" hunting Vandals, and proceeded directly to the doors once those showed up.

Here's the thing: in theory, in mayhem missions, we're supposed to hit the bank last. In theory. In practice, that's not how it works out.

Safeguard missions force you to work in reverse to how the devs thought players would work in mayhem missions. You go for the bank first, and take out the smaller heists later.

Well, of course that is your option (ie. exiting).

I like sides sometimes, myself. The district is in chaos with a major villainous intrusion, so yep, seems to me they should feel scattered, with the heroes running around putting out fires (sometimes literally (g)). Barely controlled chaos (sometimes even not that controlled). Easy for the team to get separated or ratpacked from different directions. A fracas.

AKA team carnage! Heroes dont stick together, heroes split up and take each sidemission head on solo!

You've clearly never played a Plant Dominator, or a Thug/Dark MM.

I always interpret that as being for the same reason that V blows up The Old Bailey and the Parliament building in V for Vendetta: to demonstrate that the superheroes cannot save you, to demonstrate that if you're siding with the superheroes because you're sure they'll always win, you're on the wrong side.

What time pressure does a Safeguard have? Run in, slaughter the hero, and do whatever.

It is very hard to screw up a Safeguard unless you have a team that can't follow the simple instruction of "Go to Bank".

This. Mayhems are about the only place in the game you really feel villainous cause you can break stuff heh. The sides are also important for FON accolade.