"story mode" for new players?

I picked up CoH/V and started a character. I am totally new to MMOs. Anyway, after playing for a month or so I've found that the game tends to just sort of pop me into different cities and stuff and there isn't a lot of past info. Am I missing something? I want to start up a character and sort of play through the game linearly a bit?

Any advice?

Much of the backstory about CoX is actually told in optional objectives known as History Plaques or History Badges. These are scattered throughout most of the zones in the game in both Paragon City and the Rogue Isles (Paragon has considerably more of them than the Isles - which is due to City of Villains being added as an expansion after the initial launch of CoH).

The only problem with the history badges is that they are generally placed in oblique areas and in order to read them all linearly, you have to hop between zones to find them - sometimes going into areas where you're very underpowered in comparison to the roaming critters. You'd also have to know where they are, but the above links should help with that. You should save that website, by the way, it is the wiki for the game itself, which can provide a LOT information about what happens in game both mechanically and story-wise.

Outside of that, my suggestion is to just start with your starting contact and work through the storyline of their missions. I will say this - given the speed at which the early levels go - you will outlevel the contacts pretty fast, or be given access to other contacts (which sometimes makes new players think that they have to abandon the first contact; you don't). This means that you might outlevel missions from your contact before the "story" of their mission arcs are completed, and they will not let you proceed. The only way to be certain to avoid this is to Disable XP* (yes, you can turn off gaining XP in this game) until you're finished with that story to your satisfaction.


ASIDE:

Being a new player in CoX at this point, some six years after launch means that there are a lot of veteran players. These vets usually have quite a few alts, which means that a large subsection of the player base have been through the same missions and storys several times over - so they are looking for fast levelling, steamrolling through missions for the maximum amount of XP in the minimum amount of time. On Hero-side (aka Blueside), a lot of people start "sewer runs" for this purpose. This is just "street sweeping" in the sewers to get through the first eight to ten levels - if you want to do "story based" content - SKIP THESE TEAMS. There's nothing wrong with them innately, but they'll be moving at a high speed and there's no "story" to what is happening. It's just grind.

As a new player to the game, you may also wish to put a call to the Mentor Project and there is a New Player Global Channel (which I think is N_P_C; but I'm not sure of that). You should see someone from either of these player-run mentoring groups post in here pretty shortly.

ETA: Oh, I forgot about an easy way to learn more about the lore of the game. When you're walking around or in a mission, right-click on a targeted critter/enemy and select "Info". Pretty much all of the critters, enemies, allies, and NPCs (except wandering citizens) will have a short-write up describing who and what they are. Sometimes this description will give you a general idea of their abilities in the game-world from which you can guestimate what they will do in-game.

Like a lot of MMOs, it's not really designed to be played linearly. Some of that is for the obvious reason that you will likely team up with other players somewhere else along in the story while some of it is to make sure players don't have to play content to advance to the next level.

Nevertheless, there are stories in the game, sometimes they have to be recreated in your head after the fact, depending on whether you saw that content or not.

For example, there is a guy named Dr. Vahzilok that shows up in a story arc (series of missions). It culminates the story of the Vahzilok enemy group, which caps out around level 20. You could just level up past 20 and never encounter him, but he is part of a linear story related to Vahz. Of course, even after you defeat him, you can still encounter the Vahz in low level zones.

After you reach L25 you can go to Ouroboros (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Ouroboros), which gives you the option to "flashback" and discover a lot of content you might have missed. It's a clever game mechanic, it is as if you actually did the stuff and are just re-entering a previous time stream.

You can find more information on the backstory here:
http://www.cityofheroes.com/game_info/history/
http://www.cityofheroes.com/game_info/story/
http://www.cityofheroes.com/game_info/geography/
http://www.cityofheroes.com/game_info/contacts/
http://www.cityofheroes.com/game_inf...our_adversary/

I'd read them maybe roughly in that order. It gives you context. It's hard to make it more immersive, partially because you are not really the focal point of the game, you are a participant in it.

Also, you may end up with Souvenirs (http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Souvenir) that will give you a breakdown of what you did.

Hope that helps!

I think the global channel is "N P C" without underscores:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=212083
Join / be invited to the N P C global channel

You can join that channel by typing: /join N P C

Once you get high enough to begin them, there are also Task Forces and Strike Forces, which are dedicated storylines and team challenges which tell a story about some (relatively) large or important threat. These are challenging missions, however, which have mandatory level requirements (and require a certain number of players on a team to begin). In order to get all of the info from the contact, you generally should be the leader of the team - but you can read the mission briefing text and clues even if you aren't the leader.

+1 on Ouroboros & Arc Souvenirs (which are found in the "clues" tab on the Navbar).
+1 for Trying the Hollows, Faultline, Striga, etc. Again, you just might outlevel the contacts pretty fast though.

The arc the details the origin of the Circle of Thorns is a really great story as well.

Good enough that you feel a little sorry for the bad guys and pissed off enough to take down those COT sacrifice circles long after you get XP for them. Trying to clean up Perez Park is like trying to bail the ocean out with a cup.

One comment on TFs: The veteran players who have done this all before? Will be rushing through the task force as fast as possible looking for the rewards at the end. Which could be very frustrating. It's like someone going through a powerpoint presentation looking for a specific slide, instead of actually giving the presentation. Click-click-click -click-click-click "Hey, that looked interesting!" click-click-click ...

Story arcs: If the contact you're talking to has an open book under their name they have story arc missions for you. (They shuffled this around a little bit in the last six years- anyone want to clarify?) In City of Heroes the arcs start around level 10 or level 15- before that you're beating up muggers, getting coffee for your contacts, whatever. In City of Villains you start getting into the meat of things around level 15 as well.

The Hollows/Faultline/Striga/Croatoa zones have one story per zone- which might make it simpler. You do each contact all the way through and you get the whole story.

One important aspect: If you are not the leader of the team, you will miss out on the mission dialogue from the contact. I have always found this disappointing -- New players usually want someone else to lead until they get a good handle on the game, but that means that they will miss out on all the stuff that the contact says.

This is even more true for Task Forces. However, many of the later-created TFs and other content has cut scenes and captioning that the entire team can see.

The best way to "take your time" to read all the stories is to solo, but that's not always easy on every character. A lot of fun from the game comes from teaming.

You know, I'm surprised that no one's mentioned this yet, but on blue side after you hit level 20, you can speak to the City Representative in City Hall in Atlas Park and you can run the Cape Mission to unlock the ability for your character to wear Capes. This arc touches on one of the most important events in the recent past for Paragon City.

Thanks everyone for all of the great information. You've been very helpful.

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