One Reason People Get Bored: A History of Instance Palettes

I think if we had more reasons to go OUTSIDE of the instances, and play in the game world... we wouldn't get so bored with the instances themselves. The game world is a great and wonderful place to play in, we just need more reasons to play in it.

I think they swung the pendulum just a LITTLE too far with promoting so many instances.

This is the biggest fault with COH and has been since launch. It's the reason subscriptions aren't as high as they should be in the era of the superhero movie.

Well, if we're talking about the biggest mistake, it could be argued that it was to make the fundamental rewarded activity the act of defeating enemies, instead of preventing crimes and disasters. Sometimes the divergence between these two approaches doesn't amount to much - you stop bad men by hitting them until they fall down. Other times, however, it leads to the promotion of behavior that has absolutely nothing to do with the superhero milieu (e.g., setting loiterers on fire) or foils concepts in keeping with the genre (e.g., saving civilians from falling rubble or stopping runaway trains). If I were trying to make a superhero MMO right now, I'd put a lot of thought into how to reward a broader concept of doing good rather than defeating enemies. This is a significantly harder design challenge, it must be noted.

But for this game, that's water so very far under the bridge that it's nearly useless to consider.

I too agree that the missions styles get a very repetitive. Maybe if they could masup missions, in random combination, so in-mission events like fires, betrayals and ambushes were always a surprise, even if you had played that mission before.
For instance, you get the standard Rescue Leroy Jenkins mission. As you're leading Leroy out, BOOM. The way out is blocked by a fire. All fire extinguishers in the area now become glowies that give you the hose backpack, as per the Hellion event, so you can fight the fire and escape. And of course, as you fight the fire, the villains attack, feed the fire, etc.

Another example- your mission is to recover Chemical X. When clicking on the glowie, there's a % chance it will confuse 1 teammate for the duration of the mission. The confused teammate can now attack his/her own team and try to escape. His/her teammates, conversely, must try and defeat them. If the confused teammate escapes, they get the collective mission bonus xp (that's 7 x mission complete, if you evade or defeat 7 teammates.) Attach some badges to it, to really motivate people, and it becomes a fun suprise. It's random, so you can't really farm it, either. They could be cured after the mission is complete (med evac, fresh air and sunshine, whatever.)
Maybe later in the arc, a CLONE of that character appears as the final boss fight.

As someone mentioned about knowing every spawn on every map, a lack of surprises leads to boredom. Randomless, chance, surprise, that makes the game more exciting and challenging.

Well said Slash.

Now this is how you constructively criticize a game, as opposed to what most other people do when they try to dis CoH.

The only thing you're missing are a few suggestions to improve the areas you note as lacking.

Why is it that I feel that the same old tilesets never bothered me? Perhaps I'm just hard to bore?

I tried Freedom Force and couldn't stand it.

It was like someone wanted to make Command and Conquer, or Dungeon Siege, but with superheroes. No thanks, I don't want to select one character, right click the enemy, choose an attack, THEN my character goes over to the enemy, THEN he wacks the enemy.

If I wanted to do that... I'd go play Dungeon Siege again and imagine that it's taking place in a city.

I just can't stand that style of play for anything but military strategy games. It just doesn't feel right to me.

I think GR will add some interetsing twists on the current mission types we have.
For example, there's a lot of scope for stealth type missions, especially for Resistance players.

I am another one that's very hard to bore, at least as far as visuals go. I enjoy warehouses and offices the most of all. Granted I can't stand the blue caves, but not because they're boring.

Obviously I'm not opposed to new maps/tilesets/palettes. And frankly I wish some of the current maps got used just a teensy bit more, there are some great ones and you MIGHT see them once or twice. Obviously YMMV on this subject, but what I'm thinking of specifically:

1) Arachnos lab map, except it's the one with the gigantic catwalk-filled area. Not so great for a defeat-all perhaps, but as a side room? Fantastic.

2) The huge outdoor map that's in a rusty factory area, with a central tower, Boss/objective at the top. I simply adore that map, makes me feel like I'm storming a castle. Seen it like twice ever.

I wouldn't mind more missions like that one in the RWZ, that actually calls for a bit of stealth. The one where you have to go around collecting but should avoid patrols. Of course, as always, I've seen plenty of complaints about it because you're dissuaded from fighting. Sometimes though it just makes sense to, for a different example, get to the glowing PC, upload the virus, and then get out without anyone knowing you were there. Nope, you have to clear the room too no matter what. It's a little silly.