Which arcs would you want to see re-done?

personal vote would be striga isle and the hess tf. given that it's a villain dominated zone it may make sense to make it a co-op zone. it also quite readily allows for alignment applications.

the hess tf needs 1 more thing after burkholder and the destruction of the base. that giant mekman needs to escape and begin to make its' way to talos in a similar way that babbage spawns for the synapse tf. i'd love the opportunity to beat on the bot while walking down the side of the volcano, across the island and into the water. failure to destroy the mekman then causes a mission fail, but not an outright tf fail. you simply didn't meet your objectives and that one guy in a sailboat bought the farm before a collective assault from talos island stopped its' advance.

i wonder what a 'public opinion' mechanic might look like actually. for instance, you've failed a mission and the public 'hears' about it, somehow causing an effect. something like bad press and what that might do to a hero...

/2inf

Any and every villain arc where the theme is "You stand on the precipice of true villainy. Are you ready to forgo redemption?"

I believe Westin Phipps is one. Hardcase is another. I want each and every one of those to have choices scattered throughout. Choices that give and take rogue points.

Anything that does the same mission twice or more in a row (e.g. Unai & Citadel) or does more than one street hunt in the entire arc.

All of the random mission street hunts should be dropped - it feels too much like your contact is busy and throws it out for the pesky hero to do to get you off their back. Replace them with real missions. None of the villain contacts (that I'm aware of) do this. I've seen hero contacts, especially the ones in IP, give out 3 or 4 of these in a row.

Most of the 3-mission "Story Arcs" villain-side need to be fleshed out a little to make them meatier and turn them into true arcs instead of a couple of related missions. Then again, after running villain tips all weekend... I'd settle for putting in enough of these to get us from level 20 to 50! They are wonderful missions and I never felt more villainous on my stalker. Great stuff! MORE MORE MORE!

I'll throw in another vote for the Patron arcs.


Also, Vanguard arcs. I know the tech was not available at the time, but still, such a huge missed opportunity.
Play up the 'we take everyone' aspect by providing content for all types.
Keep the nice 'rescuing people' stuff and add in some 'extreme measures' missions and put choices between them.
"We do not accept villains just because we need fighters. There are tasks that a true hero would never do. And they must be done. The invaders must be fought on every level with all means available. We can not afford restraint!"
Make/add an actual villain as one of the contacts.
"<Vanguard person>: Your next contact is, uhm, not very likable. But when we need to smash through rikti defenses there is none better than him and the Vanguard Maul."
"Black Scorpion: So $name, you want some impervium bling too? Or just like killing aliens? I don't really care but if you're with me then you better be tough!"

As someone already stated all of blue side storys and TFs.

1. Hunt missions suck. I don't mind one now and then, but blue side is full of them.
2. Can you count how many times you have to zone to finish an arc. Look at Red side most arcs are in the same zone.
3. Most of the old TFs have to many cloned missions. Synapse has how many kill alls, and Citedal has how many kill alls... it gets old quick and you lose intrest in the weak story.
4. An TF needs to have that epic feel to it. The perfect example is last mission of Silver Mantis, fighting at the Skyraiders Fortress in Sharkhead.
5. Shadow Shard. With the new story lines shouldn't the military be out, and Vanguard be in. This should be done while revamping the TFs there. And yes, give those people cell phone, satelite phones, Psychics, or something to communicate with the TF members.

No blueside stuff as that has had special treatment for the longest time.

On topic: Vivacious Verandi's arc.

The problem with the broker system is that in the early zones by the time you've completed 3 papers and a mayhem mission you've outlevelled half the contacts in the zone, and the smoothing of the xp curve in the early game has made that even more of an issue.

My latest villain ran Kalinda and Mongoose, mostly in a duo at 0/0 setting, and one solo paper at 0/x2/bosses. I didn't even do much street sweeping on the way. She's now level 10. So that's ALL of the PO contacts outlevelled except for The Radio and one unlockable contact at Fort Hades.

So what now? If I finish the papers and run the mayhem I'll get the Radio. By the time I finish the Radio and run the requisite newspapers and mayhem in Cap au Diable I'll easily be level 15, thus outlevelling the 10-15 Cap contacts.

If nothing else I wish they'd extend the level ranges a bit - make Vendetti, Heck and Bocor 6-15; put Themari and the other 10-15s up to 10-20; and extend Brass and the other 15-20s up to 15-25. This would also mean we're not forced to go to Sharkhead at level 20.

That said, Darrin Wade in Sharkhead requires no introduction, and when you conclude his arc I believe he offers you an intro to one of the other Sharkhead contacts, so you can probably skip the papers in Sharkhead altogether if you're so inclined.

hey guys

you can halt exp gain

you know

I'd like to see pretty much all of the hero arcs rewritten to some degree, with the goal of giving personalities to the contacts who hand out the missions. All of the original CoH contacts are so bland that they're completely forgettable, especially among the 1-30 contacts, since there are multiple contacts handing out the same missions. They're all so interchangeable that, after six years playing, I can't even remember who gives out what missions.

Please devs, give the hero contacts some personality.

Heh. Make the last one a choice of buckling under to Hard Case or an option to immediately spawn an instance where you fight him as a Boss.

Still here, even after all this time!

I think the Malta arcs really have potential. One of the great things about Praetoria is the pull that different factions have on you. You have your handlers wanting you to do one thing and the opposite faction trying you to go deep cover and sometimes those goals align and sometimes you're just being set up for the fall... That's what the Malta arcs should be -- these people will stop at nothing to control you, and if you want to help Indigo and Crimson fight them, how far are you willing to go? Would you let a bus of schoolchildren go over a cliff if it meant stopping them from completing a Kronos Titan? Because they'd sure be willing to put the schoolchildren there to get you out of the way. Would you let a gunslinger walk free if he threatened to kill a hostage? That's what I think it should be -- Malta forcing you into situations where you have to make the call, and then dealing with the fallout from that, plus having to work around whatever shady tactics are in the game due to the Color Coded Spy Agency.

A lot of the villain arcs need work -- so many of them are constructed with the concept of your character as the thug or the hired muscle. That's great, except what we're seeing now is that's really the province of the Rogue, not the Villain. The cloning factory was a great start. Even though I didn't have many choices to make in that arc, the fact that I was assembling my own factory was a pleasant change. I've always wanted more of that... let me rally my Legion of Discourtesy and ransom the moon! (I initially got into a long discussion here on the problems with the alignment system/tip missions now, but excised it for focus.)

Since CoV launched, I've maintained that my absolute least-favorite remains Hardcase. He's an example of the worst railroading tendencies of the game. I realize that not every mission can offer me KOTOR choices, but... I still feel like I went to CoV promised a more "active" (as opposed to heroic "reactive") role, and I really just got "go flunky for me." I think I could actually ENJOY Hardcase if I were subverting his work in the Praetorian mode. While he's trying to quell the demon's, I'm secretly working to get them even more riled up, and his efforts get increasingly desperate as nothing works, culminating in me... I don't know, forcing him into a binding circle and getting him dragged down to You-Know-Where to meet all his old foes. That would be a VERY welcome change. I imagine some people would feel the same way about subverting Phipps. Or Kelly Uqua (because, really, who is falling for that act?).

Ghost Widow has already come up, too, and that was one of the most disappointing arcs for me -- I was enjoying everything about it and then comes authorial fiat and now I have no choice but to enforce the status quo. I remember discussing the frustration of this arc with Samuel_Tow back in Issue 7, and my disagreements with it remain. I think most of the patrons suffer from the inherent problem of CoV's setting -- it can never decide if you're just gunning to sit next to Recluse at the grown-up's table or if you yourself are trying to RULE THE WORLD.

And then the VEAT arcs. The first VEAT I made, I did a mission for Alan Desslock and enjoyed it. One mission and then... come back at level 5? I waited six issues FOR THIS? And that summed up the entirety the VEAT storyline. I really wanted to like it but (and I do not say this lightly) every moment of that story felt phoned in and perfunctory.

I would also like to see "hunt" missions replaced with the new Praetorian badge mechanic. If you're dead sent on it, have us hunt 20 "points" worth of Lost, where minions count as 1 and bosses as 3. Personally, I'd rather do away with hunts entirely, or at least give us the opportunity to handle them in a scanner/paper mission.