Radio missions causing stupidity
By
Agonus,
Posted on: 2010-06-14 11:55 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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"See that one right there? Mary Ellen Moffat. She broke my heart." |
KingSnake compares scars: Mid I6?  Try running FF missions Per I1 and having every... single... one of them send you to Brickstown... back when there was no tram in FF so you had fly to Talos tram and connect to bricks.. only to finish the mission, and fly back.. cause you didn't get the phone number till you nearly maxed the bar... only to be sent to bricks AGAIN... and AGAIN... and AGAIN...
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| This is epic game, let me assure you, but it is not an "explorer" game IMO. |
Dec out.
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Originally Posted by Decorum
"See that one right there? Mary Ellen Moffat. She broke my heart."
I never said it was. I noted that some of us have that as a personality trait. The game has little to do with that. In fact, sometimes the less a game is an explorer game, the more I'm tempted to go poke around in the corners. |
Fair enough. Maybe it's just my ingame age showing, I think at one point in time i may have been more "excited" about seeing the sights. And i'm sure i'll be eager to "explore" the newer zones coming in GR. But still.. to me, a contact in a zone should have contacts for that zone. It just makes since. Like cops have ares they cover, there jurastiction. Always hit me as both odd and slightly or epicly annoying that the founders fall people were so worried about what was going on in brickstown.. and vice versa.
@KingSnake - Triumph Server
@PrinceSnake
My common sense is tingling... ~ Deadpool
If you can't learn to do something well... learn to enjoy doing it poorly...
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Well, Bricks is where the prison is, and we know it's like a revolving door. |
Originally Posted by KingSnake
Fair enough. Maybe it's just my ingame age showing, I think at one point in time i may have been more "excited" about seeing the sights. And i'm sure i'll be eager to "explore" the newer zones coming in GR. But still.. to me, a contact in a zone should have contacts for that zone. It just makes since. Like cops have ares they cover, there jurastiction. Always hit me as both odd and slightly or epicly annoying that the founders fall people were so worried about what was going on in brickstown.. and vice versa. |
I remember when I played the PUG Strike Force ae mission. It was so realistic, I almost started typing "TANK TANK WHY DON'T YOU TANK" at an AI bot.
My pet peeve is people who refuse to acknowledge it when I tell them my character has unlimited power. If I rp attack them they are of course disintegrated beyond the ability of any hospital or magic to restore. Yet despite this they refuse to delete their characters and still keep playing them as if nothing happened. ~Mandu, 07-16-2010
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Oh, I'm weird and I know it. I even have little "mini-games" I play with myself, like trying to pinpoint my position without using the map just using the surrounding architecture as my guide. |
KingSnake is just bored with the same old town: Fair enough. Maybe it's just my ingame age showing, I think at one point in time i may have been more "excited" about seeing the sights. And i'm sure i'll be eager to "explore" the newer zones coming in GR. But still.. to me, a contact in a zone should have contacts for that zone. It just makes since. Like cops have ares they cover, there jurastiction. Always hit me as both odd and slightly or epicly annoying that the founders fall people were so worried about what was going on in brickstown.. and vice versa.
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Dec out.
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OH MY Melancton I had a Safegaurd that was exactly like that. It was the Talos mission and I'd been with the PUG team through a few radios that went well so I didn't think there would be any problem. We headed straight to the bank and easily took out the mobs up front. As I headed toward the vault I happened to notice on the mini map that only one of the other 7 team members was still inside the bank. About that same time the "Bank robbers are getting away" posted and I found myself face to face with an AV and support. I did the best I could but even with my IOed Scrapper an AV and a mob designed for 8 not one was too much to handle. Obviouosly there was no time and no way to type in HELP and the one team member still inside the bank must have gone AFK since he never left the lobby. |
Originally Posted by Melancton
I have run a lot of TFs on PUGs but I have not memorized the "optimal" way to do things. So when a couple of folks take off down the hallway without comment in a mission, I am left to wonder what is going on.
Are they going to the end and TPing everyone in? Are they going to a particular place in the mission? Should I follow? Sometimes they don't say. I am a team player, and I play as smart as I can. I always look over the team composition and determine the best way to use my powers in light of what other folks have going, ie, I will not drop Rain of Fire unless someone else had dropped Ice Slick, Freezing Rain or an AoE Immob, etc. But I am lost if I am supposed to "know" to "run past baddies" like they are doing and somehow know where to go. And as you have noted, very often they have stealth or are Tanks, so THEY can get past the mobs... and when I try, I look like Swiss cheese before I can get four paces. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way around literally telling the team what to do at each point. It may be the 47th time someone has run the TF as a leader, but unless someone tells me which tower to assault or which mitos to defeat, I will not be on the same page as the leaders. Speaking of radio missions, I have run a couple Safeguards with two or three folks, all of whom immediately departed the bank when the message came that the baddies were "getting away!" Mind you, the AV was right there, wailing away-- it was very difficult trying to type a message telling my teammates not to leave while the AV suddenly had no other hero to pay attention to other than ME. But the message that they are "getting away!" confuses folks, and it is hard to explain it in the midst of a fight. I just could not pull it off, since you cannot move while you are typing a message, and I doubt my team understood what I meant by "Dont leave AV is ssssssssssssssswwwwwwweeeeeeeessssss" in any event. But I did have plenty of time to explain it post-mortem. That sort of learning curve just happens. PS-so I now explain it beforehand to any safeguard groups I lead |
After I rezzed I raced to the escape point and did find the team desperately trying to prevent the escape... they failed miserably and after some post mission finger pointing, which I stayed out of completely despite being the only one that actually TRIED to do things right, the team dissolved. Now for the truly crazy part of the thing. I always check team members powersets and even look for VET badges to get an idea of what the team has and what level of experience they possess. Most of the members had a year or less in game but the team leader was a 51 or 54 month vet????? I've run a lot of bank missions since Safeguards began and have never seen anyone use that sort of strategy before. I couldn't help wondering how anyone could be closing in on 5 years in game and not have a clue that there was more to the bank than just the lobby.
It wasn't long afterwards I discovered that people were selling veteran accounts on EBAY and now wonder if I managed to find myself an EBAY Vet with zero months of actual game play but a ton of VET badges running the team. If not I think I may have found the DUMBEST team leader in the entire game. LOL
�We�re always the good guys. In D&D, we�re lawful good. In City of Heroes we�re the heroes. In Grand Theft Auto we pay the prostitutes promptly and never hit them with a bat.� � Leonard
�Those women are prostitutes? You said they were raising money for stem cell research!� � Sheldon
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Yeah I remember when it was an accomplishment to be able to run from one side of the Hollows to the other at level 5. Those of us that would make it, would watch the health bars of those that didn't, go slowly (and sometimes very quickly) red, then they'd start the trek from Atlas and try again.|
Originally Posted by Decorum
I "grew up" in mid-I6, before I had most of that available to me. I still loved it. Hell, I loved how "the Hollows teaches us to run!".
Explorer types. Not everyone is one. |
Those were the days
I've always tried to get my toons in an SG, but mostly because I RP and it's nice having someone to regularly RP with.
However, I have learned that people who complain about PuGs really have it right. Here's my story.
I have a really nice tank I've been building. She doesn't do a lot of damage, but she's great at taking a hit (as tanks should be). As a consequence, I try to team her as much as possible.
For her first Posi, I joined one her SG was running. It went pretty smoothly, as most of us had run the new Posi before and knew what to do without saying much.
For her second Posi, I stupidly joined a PuG instead of asking SG and Coalie mates. It was a disaster.
On the first mission, I noticed that the one defender we had on the team seemed to be taking charge, which was fine with me. Someone has to and as long as they know what they're doing, that's great.
Well, he didn't. He never told them to follow the tank. And I just didn't instinctively follow behind a squishy defender. So, at one point, we got split. I could see from the team roster that they were getting mauled, but I couldn't do anything about it because we had already aggro'd a mob and I didn't want to abandon the ones who actually did the right thing and followed the tank.
They managed to survive (most of them, anyway) and when our split got done with the mob we had, I ran to where the defender was and we continued on from there (though I was trying to take the most direct path, but whatever).
Second mission, the defender and I are the first ones in the mish. As most of you probably know, it's in a warehouse, so when you come in the door, you're facing a wall that you have to go around before you're actually "in the mission." The defender and I did so and I figured we'd wait for the rest of the team to get inside. Not so.
The defender uses his weak blast to aggro what he /thought/ was a single minion. Uh huh. You guessed it. He brought the whole mob on us. I survived. He didn't. It wouldn't have been so bad, except that when the rest of the team got there, they tried to back us up, but the Clockwork picked them off as they got in. The defender laughed about it, saying something along the lines of, "HUh. That was weird. I just hit one and the they all came running."
Once everyone got rezzed, I started to suggest that they let me go first, but while I was typing, the defender pulled AGAIN! I played gimpy scrapper and helped clear the mob he pulled, not without difficulty.
The next mob in the mish is around a corner, so I started to tell them to stay where they were and that I would go and aggro them to that spot. Before I could get it out, the defender ran out AGAIN and by that time, I had had enough and simply quit the TF.
Now, I've been on bad TFs before where there was more than one team wipe. I /never/ quit TFs. Ever. But I did that one.
The sad part is, no one from the team asked for an explanation or anything. I can't imagine what they must have thought was the reason for me quitting the team. They may not have even realized I did, since they obviously didn't recognize me as a tank.
The even sadder part is, they probably finished the TF...eventually...and patted themselves on the back, thinking they'd done a great job.
Now, I've been on some PuGs that were awesome. But those are the exception, not the rule.
To be honest, that didn't sound much like a "bad pug", just inexperienced players. It's not like the def was freaking out on you and blaming you like most of these stories, he just took it in stride. A little patience and communication outside the missions probably would have straightened them out (not that it's your job to straighten them out).
I guess what I'm saying is that if you thought that was a bad pug, you really are hanging out with your SG too much. Or maybe just enough.
Dec out.
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Hey, I played AC to and have fond memories of that game, so *hug* :-)|
Originally Posted by KingSnake
Mid I6?
Try running FF missions Per I1 and having every... single... one of them send you to Brickstown... back when there was no tram in FF so you had fly to Talos tram and connect to bricks.. only to finish the mission, and fly back.. cause you didn't get the phone number till you nearly maxed the bar... only to be sent to bricks AGAIN... and AGAIN... and AGAIN...This is epic game, let me assure you, but it is not an "explorer" game IMO. I've played many an MMO that i'd consider true "explorer" MMO's. Back in my AC days, (Asherons Call, the original poormans Evercrack) we'd run for hours to get anywhere, big raid teams, running a cave quest in the diers would buff up, and have a marithon run, like 20 guys, booking accros the landscape for 20 mins. it was kind of awsome really... And it was accually pretty fun. (to an extent) Runing east to get to the dierlands, running by caves you'd never seen, jumping in and exploring them, getting mangled by mites in said cave.. losing every worldly possession you own... been sent back in shame to your home viliageto beg for a magic wand so you can do SOMETHING and start rebuilding yourself.... !@#$@#$ evil little mite sons of @#$@!@#~!s ..... ..... ..... Ok ok, i'm better now... that was repressed memory coming to the surface... anyways.. no visiable loading screens, new and shifting horizens and landscapes. It had an epic, you lost in the woods feel to it, and was FUN. SWG, for all it's flaws, was an epic explorer game. Huge planets. Hidden gems. Epic space tavel. Crawling into Rancor nests to try and steal there cubs... faily and running for your life... ah.. good times... CoH, does not, even with the new shinny ultra mode, live up to THAT. (IMO of course). Now doen't get me wrong, I'm still playing CoH and have played it longer then all my other MMO's combined... it's my FAV game, but it's not an explorer's MMO. All missions are relitively static selfinstenced missions. Each zone may have one zone event, some may have 2 at most.. they are relitively small when comparied with SWG's plantes or AC's world map in general. And... there's really nothing to "discover"... But, it's just not that style of game. The adventure of a superhero MMO imo doesn't come from exploring the city, but saving it. (IMO of course) |
Anyway, its nice to hear so many opinions about this issue.
I don't necessarily disagree with the need for PUG friendly missions, something which current CoH storyarcs can fail to cater for.
My main displeasure is the sheer repetiveness and simple nature of radio missions.
In my ideal CoH world, all CoH contacts will automatically be discovered once you enter a new zone (like what happens when new contacts are added to the game) and the contact UI is also updated to sort by zone. Cut back on the traveling involved as well, don't send people to Perez Park for a level 30 mission. Get rid of the "Now you must visit the Hollows before we'll talk." missions as well.
Personally I just find radio missions boring and only good for "quick and easy" grouping and xp. I just worry some players will never see anything past that, which will result in them quitting or getting bored.
Frankly, I don't buy into the "back in my day, we had to go through the snow uphill both ways to get XP!" talk, either. Yeah, travel time is infinitely longer in other MMOs, and it used to be worse in CoH's early days, too, but so what? I chose this MMO for a reason. Not to mention that the devs' mission isn't to copy other MMO elements because that's what all the cool kids are doing, but to make a fun game.
So, when was the last time you were euphoric about taking the tram from Talos Island to Brickstown or flying over Sharkhead Isle? These simply don't get people excited about the game, and I dare say these aren't the reason people play this game. And the best part? The devs agree with this. All the starter-arcs now have much-reduced travel times and from what I've been told, since I17 blue-side contacts give their phone number much earlier, too.
Feel free to keep waving your walking cane at us and telling us to get off your lawn, but I personally quite like that the devs learn from their mistakes and questionable mechanics instead of desparately clinging to archaic MMO design decisions.
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.