I agree with you that contact need a bit of tweeking and your right it is possible to outlevel entire arcs now with SSK and Patrol XP making it easier and easier to zoom up quickly in the lower levels.
The fact is we screamed for more content for a long time and finally got it and now we have so much its virtually impossible to actually eperience all of it (NORMALLY). There is a way around it however through Ouroboros. Any arc you miss can always be picked up once you hit level 25 and get access to time travel. In fact I actually use it quite a bit to pick up badges I used to labor trying to coax out of a contact simply by time traveling back and doing Spelunker, Negotiator, etc. In addition to the badge I also get a few reward merits for completing it as a TT mission and there are a whole series of badges to be earned by traveling backwards.
Sounds like you enjoy teaming so why not do the Task Forces? I have characters that made their way quickly to 30 or higher doing Positron, Synapse, Sister Psyche, Moonfire, and Citadel. In the process the also earned Gearsmasher/Tank Buster (toward the Freedom Phalanx Accolade), Slayer/Silver Bullet (Toward the Atlas Medallion), and got a good start on Soul Binder (towards Archmage). By the time I completed those all I needed was Manticore and Numina to earn the Task Force Commander Accolade as well. I picked up a huge amount of reward merits and then added to them by time traveling to get the door badge missions I'd missed.
At this point there are so many different ways to level a character you can pick any method you please and have fun doing it. :-D
�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
As a general point, once you out-level an origin contact they should give you a new contact if you go and talk to them, even if you're never done a mission. If they are telling you to go and talk to the AE person then it means that either they think you already have a level appropriate contect or they aren't one of your contacts.
So if you need a new contact the trick is to look at your active contacts list and go talk to someone who is a) in the main city (i.e. not one of the zone contacts) and b) isn't a special contact (the AE manager or university instructor). Talking to one of the contacts there should give you either a mission or a new contact. If your level is a multiple of 5 then they will generally ask you to do a mission or two before giving you a new contact but if you've completly outleveled them they should do it automatically.
Red Tomax has an explanation of how it works:
http://tomax.cohtitan.com/contacts/coh.php
or you can do a couple radio missions and the safegaurd and get a new contact that way.
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If you're 20+, you should be able to talk to Temblor again and he should send you to Doc Delilah.|
Originally Posted by Inphiniti
By the end of Tremblor's arc, I was level 20. He gave me Penelope Yin as a contact as expected, but she would not give me missions (her limit is lvl 19).
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Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
As a general point, once you out-level an origin contact they should give you a new contact if you go and talk to them, even if you're never done a mission. If they are telling you to go and talk to the AE person then it means that either they think you already have a level appropriate contect or they aren't one of your contacts.
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The Architect Manager starts a series of talk-to missions all in the same AE building. Complete them and the other contacts should send you off on some real content.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
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Yeah, that's what SHOULD happen, but it's NOT what's happening. Or actually, it is... The problem is by the time I completed Tremblor's last mission, I had already outleveled P. Yin. If you have outleveled a contact the first time you talk to them, they won't give you any misisons, and if you haven't done any missions for them, they won't give you a new contact. [Actually I have seen Azuria do it, which leads me to think that zone contacts behave differently than origin contacts, or that there's a phase-of-the-moon bug that makes the behavior vary.] If you don't believe me, TRY IT. Do the Faultline arc, get Tremblor to introduce you to Yin, and wait until you're lvl 20 to talk to her. She won't give you a mission, and she won't give you a contact. I promise. |
Originally Posted by Adeon Hawkwood
As a general point, once you out-level an origin contact they should give you a new contact if you go and talk to them, even if you're never done a mission.
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That, or a variation of it, happened to me at least a half a dozen times in the last 2 weeks with different arcs (had same problem in Hollows) and contacts.Look, I'm not a n00b, I've been playing this game for 3 years, I have 7 lvl 50's, and I've done content in every zone in the game hero-side. I've done most of the task forces, gotten most of the accolades on more than one toon, etc. etc. I'm not clueless. I know how to get contacts, and I know what the options are. You're missing the point. Faster leveling without adjusting the levels of the contact's arcs causes outleveling the progression of contacts before you even get them, which in turn causes 3 annoying problems:
1. You have to chase down contacts a lot more often, because you outlevel the contacts in the zone you're in before you get them.
2. You are forced to miss content you like when it is level appropriate.
3. You still have to level your toons, which means you are forced to do content you *don't want to do* in order to make progress in the game.
The old origin content is, in most cases, vastly inferior to the content in the newer zones (blue caves, anyone?), and it's hard to find people that want to play it. Soloing is slow and tedious, especially if you like to play controllers or defenders. The best solution to all these problems is to relax or eliminate the level restrictions on zone content.
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Tried it, more than once on more than one toon. He didn't.|
Originally Posted by Fleeting Whisper
If you're 20+, you should be able to talk to Temblor again and he should send you to Doc Delilah.
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| More likely, his contacts are telling him to talk to the Architect Manager in the same fashion they've always told you to talk to David Winnicot, or the PvP Liason, or the Hero Corps Representative. |
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| The Architect Manager starts a series of talk-to missions all in the same AE building. Complete them and the other contacts should send you off on some real content. |
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You're missing the point. As I said Origin contacts will give you a new contact if you outlevel them. Zone contacts behave slightly differently, they will give you a new contact but only within their zone. So if you're in the level 20-24 range then either Penelope or Jim should pass you on to Doc Delilah but if you're 25 or higher they won't give you an out of zone contact. It's possible that there's a bug that affecting you but I know it works this way because I've done it multiple times on different characters both in Faultline (I frequently skip Penelope) and Striga (where I tend to skip Long Jack and sometimes Stephanie as well).
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Originally Posted by Inphiniti
Yeah, that's what SHOULD happen, but it's NOT what's happening. Or actually, it is... The problem is by the time I completed Tremblor's last mission, I had already outleveled P. Yin. If you have outleveled a contact the first time you talk to them, they won't give you any misisons, and if you haven't done any missions for them, they won't give you a new contact. [Actually I have seen Azuria do it, which leads me to think that zone contacts behave differently than origin contacts, or that there's a phase-of-the-moon bug that makes the behavior vary.] If you don't believe me, TRY IT. Do the Faultline arc, get Tremblor to introduce you to Yin, and wait until you're lvl 20 to talk to her. She won't give you a mission, and she won't give you a contact. I promise. That, or a variation of it, happened to me at least a half a dozen times in the last 2 weeks with different arcs (had same problem in Hollows) and contacts.
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With Going Rogue arriving soon, I thought I'd give CoX another go, and started a couple of new toons. I noticed that, just doing missions at roughly "normal" difficulty with full teams, the toons outleveled their contacts and had a hard time getting new ones.
One specific example: I started the Jim Tremblor missions in Faultline at level 16. Granted, this is one level later than you could start that arc, but on both of the toons I was playing, that was what level I ended up at when I finished Frostfire in Hollows. By the end of Tremblor's arc, I was level 20. He gave me Penelope Yin as a contact as expected, but she would not give me missions (her limit is lvl 19). Meanwhile, I had also outleveled my origin contacts, who would mostly just tell me to go talk to the Mission Architect.
The problem is, the devs have made leveling faster in general, and much faster at the lower levels. But they have not made a corresponding adjustment to the levels at which contacts will talk to you.
Now, I'm all in favor of faster leveling. The game is most interesting for me after lvl 35. But you have to get there, first... which means you need contacts to give you missions. I think if you're going to make leveling faster, you need to increase the number of levels that individual contacts will give you missions, so that you don't out-level a contact, or more importantly break the arc by outleveling the NEXT contact.
And sure, there are zone contacts throughout the game, and you can always do radios, so you can dig up missions *somewhere* -- but it becomes a chore finding them, and you tend to miss out on content that you like doing. Not all arcs are created equally, and not all toons are enjoyable to play against all enemies. I think the number of levels a contact will give you an arc should be expanded from 5 to 8 or 10, at the least. Personally, I've never really seen any reason to have such limits at all, and would prefer that they just be eliminated entirely, to give the players the maximum flexibility of playing whatever content they want, whenever they like... But I can see that there may be some good reasons not to do that.