Biggest Problems with the Game Today

The biggest problem in the game is that the Baby New Year mission map isn't in the Mission Architect. If I17 fixes that, I'll be very happy.

I'm also annoyed by elite boss fights that can't be dropped or failed. There aren't too many of those, but I don't have much else to complain about these days. (I've sworn off the CoV patrons because of this issue though, so changing those missions would be nice.)

My opinion on the initial question...

1) It takes WAY too long to get bugs addressed and fixed. I'm sure most of us can site at least one example of a bug that's been around for ages. Even as mentally fatigued as I am after being up all night I can recall that the Kneel emote has been broken for a while.

2) The age of the game's content. Ultra Mode will certainly bring a fresh coat of paint to the city, but it's still teh same old city. The outbreak plague is STILL running loose in the noobie yard FIVE YEARS later. Likewise, nobody apparently has figured out how to patch that leaking crack in the city dam after five years either. There's other examples, but I'm sure we all get the idea. In real life, five years can bring tremendous change. Not in Paragon City however. Faultline and the Hollows got a moderate facelift. Fairly well done too in both cases.

I'd like to see more of that however, starting with Outbreak. Then revive the zones people figuratively never play in; Perez, Skyway, Dark Astoria and Independence Port primarily. Terra Volta would never see any action either if not for respec trials and the occasional street sweeping badge hunter.

In issue 1, when The Hollows was nothing but a closed blast door, Perez saw a ton of action. I have fond memories of team leveling by Hydra hunting way back then. The city needs a continued facelift. Freshen up and change some of the mission content through the game too. It's bad when us old timers don't even need to read any contact's mission briefings because we're seen it all several times.

My biggest problem with CoH is with the pre-I3 blueside content just feeling so sub-par and bland compared to the CoV redside content in particular, but also when compared to all post-I2 new/revamped areas such as Faultline, RWZ, Striga, Croatoa etc. It's the major reason I play redside so much more than blueside. The Devs can keep adding new content, but if they don't revamp older content then it will still always be there, making this MMO look its age, and giving this game's detractors something to point at and say "look, see how outdated this game is".

Seeing the Positron TF being revamped for I17 gives me hope that now we have a new lead Dev with a background in world design rather than new systems, we'll see revamps of all the older content sooner rather than later - and not just arc/TF revamps, but faction revamps (like the Rikti makeover), contact revamps (blueside's contact system is clunky and outdated - it needs streamlining, with missions personalised to specific memorable contacts, like on redside) and outdoor zone revamps (Boomtown and DA in particular are desperate for a Faultline/RWZ-style makeover).

I also have a minor problem with safeguards/mayhems feeling mandatory in each level range if you want the explore badge from them and their temp power. I hate mandatory content that you can outlevel, so feel pressured to do on every character - this game avoids it for the most part thanks to Ouro - accordingly I'd like to see all mayhems/safeguards either added to Ouro, or able to be picked up from their Detectives once you outlevelled them (in both cases they'd function like a repeatable TF and would auto-exemp you).

• Abandonment of even the pretense of game balance with the new difficulty settings
• Static world and abandonment of storylines; granted that many of them should be abandoned thanks to....
• ...poor writing. Yes, there are a few rubies in the mountain of rocks but it seems that every time the devs deign to add new content, they dump more rocks on the pile. The new expansion takes a long-awaited feature and ties it to one of the least imaginative plot devices in comics history: the goatee universe (and please, do not insult my intelligence by claiming "it's not a goatee universe")
• The market is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, and those are its good points; horrid implementation broke in all the ways anyone with a grade-school education in economics predicted and it's not going to be fixed
• Gameplay feels slow and dated compared to the competition

The biggest problem with the game today?

Today's not July...

It's funny reading over a few of the other posts now that I've had the time to do so...

Mainly I'm thinking the economy complaints. The LAG with WW and the BM is unholy beyond words. HOWEVER, while I agree that the economics are a bit screwed up, take a look at some of the other games with higher level ceilings and greater ease of transferring money and equipment to alts. I briefly played WoW for example. I saw the high end gear for LOWBIE characters going for 50,000 to 100,000 in some cases. My level 25 Blood Elf Rogue... No way in hell he could have ever afforded anything but the low end, standard gear. I was a very casual player and didn't have PLing and farming connections.

CoX is the model of sanity compared to at least MY experience with the economics of Everquest 2 and WoW. The reality here is almost nobody is willing to take the poison pill it would require to bring the economy totally into balance. You'd have to kill farming completely to do it. It's the farmers raking in vast amounts of influence/infamy and rare salvage/recipes that are driving up prices.

How many threads were there here screaming about AE farming getting nerfed though? People completely overlooked what AE farming was doing to prices at the auction houses at the time. All they cared about was they couldn't have a new 50 in 2 days. THAT coincidentally was HORRIBLY lowering the quality of play out in the "real" game world too.

Anyway, that's a side issue. Sticking to the point, I think the Devs have done a fair job of balancing the economy. Not great, but fair. Farming and PLing are always going to be a part of games like this it seems also, so we have to expect that there's going to be a bit of a gold rush economy. Those of us who can't afford to completely purple set out our toons have to accept that trade off for having more of a life outside the game. The horribly expensive stuff in the game is supposed to be ultra rare anyway.

Day Jobs. Grrrr... haaaaaate...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

Really Really want new mission maps, and I know I'm gonna catch some flack for this but I agree with Perfect Pain. Some new content such as hazard zones with contacts and an alternate story line for villains, and for heroes the fleshing out of the abandonned hazard zone including full sotry arcs and a 1-50 story arc for normal hero ATs that gives some purpose besides arrest the latest cult or facist group. Heros could use an optional "destined one" style story arc and villains could use an "I dont work for Arachnos" story.

When you you take away all the extras like story and names the missions in this game basically comes down to this simple statement, Some noun did some verb so now you must verb his noun. I'd just like some new stories and some new instances to discover those stories in.