New Cape Mission

No, no it shouldn't. A pound of good stuff with an ounce of crap is still crap, just like a pound of crap with an ounce of good. It's called adding value to the game. Your selfish view as a veteran damns the game for new players who don't know what's old and what's new and just want good content all around. These same new players are thrust into Atlas Park, playing content that was bad five years ago and wondering what's so great about this game.

Yeah, there are alternate paths, but the first one that isn't five years old is Faultline, and by the time a new player gets to 15, he will already have had to go through some of the WORST content the game has to offer, including the misbegotten Positron TF, the mandatory hazard zone hunts, the endless fex-ex missions, the constant running around between multiple zones for no legitimate reason, the stupid stories and missions, replete with bad writing, cheap mechanics and uninteresting design. Currently, the worst the game has to offer is found in two places - 1-10 and 40-50. 1-10 is what new people first see.

So unless you expect that we, the ones who've been here for years and already seen it all, can support the game all by ourselves without caring for new players, then having GOOD content should be a priority, be it new or revamped old. This isn't a grab bag of everything where only quantity matters, forget about quality. It's about making a solid game where you can't point to any one thing and say "This sucks! Why haven't they fixed it yet?"

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy the "new to me" argument.

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.

Not necessarily go away, but just not have capes tied behind it. I actually rather enjoy the mission, itself, and I would hate to see it removed from the game. But, yeah, tying capes behind it was unnecessary and unproductive.

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.

Allow me to clarify my comment, as this I agree with. Leave the mission concept in.

Heck, I wish the City Rep had an epic Story Arc (like the Khelds).

No.


Don't think so. You can't sneak lowbies on Ouro missions if they're below the minimum level (a product of TF-mode).

But I wonder if a level 20 doing it for the first time can sneak in a level 1 to get that level 1 a cape... hmm....



Or how about this: Capes are available from level 1, but this special mission unlocks a special cape, let's say Hero 1's Union Jack cape (we know players can equip it since it was equipable as a bug once on Test).

Yeah. I LOVE when the hero that comes to save me don't even ware a cape to steal...

I figure in those cases he/she knew they were going down and tried to hide it.

Yeah, to bad there are only 5 enemies in the mission (solo, on regular level setting) and it take 1 minute 30 sec to do it.

Uuh... OK, that'll definitely make things easier.

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.

It's not like the old one was exactly big. They reduced it in size and made it easier several times on player request.

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.

Double confirmed. By using a Base Ouro Crystal you can have a level 1 toon join the team and do the Omega Team Time Capsule mission (in the 45-50 range) and if that level 1 is in the last mission when completed, they will get their capes opened up.

However, this does not work if done outside flashback. I took a level 20 and a level 1 toon through the real-time non-flashback cape mission and the level 1 did not have capes opened up.

I'm pretty sure this is because with regular arcs, the leader gets the special at the end (Merit, Souvenir, Badge) but with flashback arcs, everyone gets rewarded the special at the end (because of the pseudo-TF mode).

Capes are now available to level 1 toons (but not at creation).

Damage from Rikti attacks means it needs to be rebuilt and made more secure

I agree with this.

Also I hope the tag along cape earning method posted in this thread is not a bug, and remains.

Hear, hear!

The more old junk they spruce up, the better for everyone.

Maybe it's time to upgrade your connection and/or computer. It sounds like you're either running a computer that can barely handle the game or using dial-up or both.

But, if he were using reflections effects, you wouldn't know what his real costume looked like.

Last time I made a new character, less than a week ago, I ran the missions from the starting contact, and outlevelled them before I finished them all. I then went to KR, and talked to my first contact. He gave me one mission, then sent me to talk to David Wincott.

The Outcast and Troll hunts were tricky, because they were +1 to me, but there was constant traffic around the trainer, store and hospital at the entrance to the Hollows; I'm sure I could have easily formed a team had I wanted to.

By the time I was doing Flux's street hunt, all the Outcasts I had to deal with were grey. No problem there. I entered Frostfire's mission at level 9. I was 11 by the time I reached him, so the fight wasn't that difficult. I didn't feel like doing Julius' missions, so I ignored what the game was telling me to do, and forced it to give me a different contact.

As it stands, a new player who does what the game tells them to, is led through the Hollows, Faultline, Striga and Croatoa, because - even though the vetran players complain about it - the original contacts stop giving out their crappy old missions and go into "Talk to Wincott/Temblor/Peebles/Bower" mode until you do. And as soon as you talk to one of those people, they offer their missions, deflecting you from the "worst content in the game."

This is the most laughable part of your claim. Yes, you listed other things, fine. But to claim that a new player has to go through the Positron TF to get to level 15? When I started over 2 years ago, I ate up ll the content thrown at me - including many of the missions that I now roll my eyes at because of how bad they are. I was level 20-30 on at least three characters before I joined any global channels, and it was only then that I learned that Task Forces even existed.

There is a LOT for newbies to do, and the repetitive old missions aren't repetitive (yet) for people who haven't done them yet, so they aren't that bad. And they don't get repetitive that quickly either; especially with the greatly increased levelling speed, it's easy to take a totally different route to 25 on multiple different characters.

Yeah, and aside from Jim Temblor, how old is all of that stuff you mentioned? The Hollows is I1, which puts it at Q2-Q3 2004, and to the best of my knowledge, the missions themselves have not changed, aside from a couple of cutscenes. Striga Isle is I3, which puts it at either Q4 2004 or Q1 2005. Since I got my Katana Scrapper to 50 in January 2005, and he'd had the I3 Katana animations since he was level 20 (and ended up with 750 hours on the clock) I'd vote for Q4 2004. Croatoa is I5, which is pre-CoV, which puts it at some time in 2005. Probably Q2.

That is all, by the definition of what the words mean, five year old content. Nothing has changed about these zones. At all.

Do try to read carefully, please. I mentioned the Positron TF because it is part of the 1-15 content, because it is 5 years old and because it sucks. Just like the Atlas Park missions, just like the Kings Row missions, just like the Hollows, Striga and Croatoa. Very much all the content prior to CoV is five years old and BAD BAD BAD by now.

The missions aren't bad because they're repetitive. The missions are bad because they are bad. Old, outmoded design which shafts you with defeat-alls for no reason, which has precisely zero narrative value and which is, in very real terms, just "go there, kill this, click that." Newer content, from CoV onward and especially from Faultline onward does much better with the narrative and with making missions easier. But the old content is very, very evidently just basic excuse as to why you have to go into an instance and beat up a boss and his cronies, then click a glowing filing cabinet. Literally we're looking at newspaper missions, only they come from contacts.

And the Hollows, Striga and Croatoa are the worst. Pointless, aimless hunts that contribute nothing to the story, a complete LACK of a cohesive story even within the contacts' own mission rosters, and they end up in TFs that barely anyone does these days. The Hollows, especially, ending in the Caverns of Transcendence, an 8-man timed Trial against some of the toughest enemies in the level range, burried deep within the Troll tunnels stuff in a level band that everyone outlevels by the time they even get Karsis. Yeah, fat load of good the story does when you're missing the last chapter. Same for Striga, same for Croatoa. At least Faultline was designed around having a story with an end you could experience.

The old content is bad because it's bad. Fixing it is imperative. And by your own admission, the new players aren't bored of the old content and looking for more, so fixing missions does not rob them of something they're desperate for. What it gives them, in return, is a game with content that doesn't frustrate you with pointless timesinks introduced into the game for no reason whatsoever.

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.

"No cape, eh? Guess I'll just have to make do and skin 'em."

I always assumed I stole it off a Longbow Warden. Usually one of those guys shows up, and they do wear capes. It's just the named cape doesn't wear a cape.

Yeah, the Troll Tunnels are terrible. Honestly I never even understood the point to that zone, except they either thought the new BROWN tunnels were cool and wanted to show them off or Statesman wanted to fluff the issue update by saying it had *two new zones!* when the tunnels are nothing but a bad copy and paste job. Even in the first year it's not like they saw hordes of heroes descending into the Sewer Network or the Abandoned Sewer Network to dungeon crawl through them. They're terrible to crawl, except in that level 1-10 range before everything goes gray. Making a level 10-14 Trial one of the most teamwork-intensive missions in the whole game didn't help either. "ok, click. GUYS CLICK YOUR GLOWIE HURRY PLE--aaaaaargh!" (and the rock men inside respawn, too, I think, something which no other mission has ever done)