Storylines - sidelined?

4 years in and I haven't even been to the Shadow Shard. Heck, I don't even know how to get there. Having said that, I rebooted a number of heroes I have, and have been running as much content as possible, mostly solo, since I don't want to outlevel the content. It's been fun. Ran a Council arc the other day that I hadn't run, about a time travelling German from 1940, was pretty cool. Have one hero running the Striga arcs, eventually hoping to do Ernesto Hess.

Either via Flashback, or as stand-alone arcs, I'd like to see stories that flesh out the signature heroes and villains and their origins, especially some of the ones that don't get as much attention as Statesman or Recluse.

For example:

See how Ghost Widow went from a living woman to what she is today. I know there's arcs that touch on it, but I'd rather play through the story than just read text about it.

See how Numina came to be.

See how Manticore and his nemesis Protean got involved with each other.

Maybe see how some of the older heroes, like Dark Watcher or Vambrace did their thing. We've gone back in time to see Arachnos in it's embryo stages in the Rogue Isles. I'd like to see how the original Freedom Phalanx handled business.

See the original Rikti Invasion, where most of the Heroes got wiped out, and maybe do some missions where you buy the Signatures some time to help others. I'd like to see Atlas in action, even if he's just moving around in the background of a mission map.


My ideas are more just fleshing out some of the stories we get in text form as something more interactive. They wouldn't be pushing any stories forward, but I feel like we just got the Cliff Notes on a lot of them.

Agreed. I'd love to live through backstories and see them happen. Like that story arc in the game that recreated one of Hickman's CoH comic stories - I can't remember it right now. I just thought it was really cool.

I'll add my vote to something being done with the Shadowshard, that place is great.
Also, the Dark Astoria story lines, in particular what the Tsoo are looking for there.

One thing I'd like to see more of is the Warriors. The story line literally just kind of ends with nothing happening. We never get to see Odysseus, their leader, though the AE description of the warriors links him to the Well of Furies, which has now come about in the latest issues. The time seems ripe to tie him in with the current story line.

So after years we found a cure for the lost. What about a cure for the DE? I want to save Terra. Another thing that really bugs me, is that there is no lower level human component to the DE. We just start fighting giant shrubbery and moving rocks. I would love to see more of a build up to what they have become. Hamidon was human once and the Terra arc talks about the Fauna First people helping the DE.

Ok some storylines I want to be revisited/added onto include:

- Whatever happened to the missing hero taskforce/army that attacked Shiva and were never seen again? Could turn into a kind of recover hero X kind of storyline

-General Hammond. That guy is like a bucket of untapped stories

Brigadier General Marlon Hammond is the man in charge of the allied expeditionary force exploring the dimension dubbed 'The Shadow Shard'. From his early years in the SAS when he battled subterranean reptile men to his coordination of the British defenses against an invasion of alien mutant cyborgs, General Hammond has displayed an uncanny ability to handle the strange and unknown on numerous occasions. This made him a natural choice to command this expedition.
REPTILE MEN! ALIEN MUTANT CYBORGS?! come on tell me you don't see that!

- Like the others, more on Upstart and The Hellion's leader in the zig. Maybe a TF that shows Upstart's freaks and Tempter's Hellion horde coming into a conflict and breaking out?

-Rikti and the Battalion. we need to take both of them down!

-Paula Dempsey's family history poses some interesting stories

Paula Dempsey moved to Paragon City as a child, when her parents were killed by an invading space armada in the late 60's. She grew up with her grandfather, a famous mechanic who did a lot more than just fix cars. Paula's grandfather maintained the fabulous weapons and equipment used by a hero named Gauge Steele, and Paula grew up hearing stories of their adventures. With a role model like that, there was never any question as to where her career path lay. Today, she not only fixes things, she invents them. She's got a wealth of contacts and has been an excellent resource for new heroes for over a decade.

Small stories like these would make things more interesting. I mean Malta, Nemesis, Crey, Arachnos, Council, Preatorians, 5th Column. Yeah these baddies are scary but they seem a bit plain. I want fantastic robot mutants who want to take over the world or weird alien conquerors that the rikti are afraid of.

I understand that development resources is limited, and this will, in all likelihood, never happen. But this is my wishlist, as far as content is concerned:

* A massive revamping of the legacy CoH i0/i1 storylines. Seriously, compare it to the arcs in CoV, much less Praetoria, and it's laughably bad. Those arcs need more memorable contacts (get rid of the "each origin has its own set of contacts who all look the same and provide the same missions anyway" clutter), more variety in the missions instead of "click this" or "kill all enemies," and less pointless zone-hopping.

* While we're revamping the i0/i1 storylines, have the lv1-20 stories be morality choices where your character flip between hero/vigilante (similar to the Loyalist/Resistance choices in Praetoria). Also do the same with the lv1-20 CoV stories (villain/rogue).

* Along with the above, the "Surviving Six" TFs need Positron-type revamps. Right now they're just a series of kill-alls, kill-bosses, or click-glowies, usually with the same enemy group throughout, on dull maps. Although there are far fewer CoV SFs, they easily outshine the non-Positron, "Surviving Six" TFs and the Shard TFs.

* CoH has quite a few "dead" zones. Boomtown, Terra Volta, Dark Astoria, Crey's Folly, Eden, and the Shadow Shard all come to mind. All of those zones need a Faultline-like revamp. I'd start with DA, CF, and Eden because there's a significant lack of content in the Lv30-40 range.

* Over at CoV ... it needs one thing that CoH has -- more paths to choose from. The arcs in CoV are generally better than CoH, but there's only one path throughout the game. I'd love to see a completely new set of arcs, from Lv1-40, throughout the Rogue Isles. There are some aspects that were barely touched upon (the Luddities come to mind) that could contribute themselves to new, non-Arachnos storylines. A few new zones like Hollows/Faultline/Striga/Croatoa, with zone-specific storylines and SFs, for CoV wouldn't hurt either.

* CoV's single biggest hole? The lack of a Lv30-35 Strike Force. Fill it. Seriously, it's been, what, 6 years now? I'm shocked this hasn't been addressed yet, and seems unlikely to be addressed any time soon.

* The Shadow Shard. I know this will take up a lot of dev time and resources, but make this co-op, revamp the four zones so that they're not so bleeding huge and doesn't require fly to get around, add story arcs for each zone, rework the TFs (especially DrQ) and give each zone its own TF. Bonus? Add in the end-game incarnate trails to the Shadow Shard and show the other aspects of Rularuu that we haven't seen yet. The end-game shouldn't be all Praetoria, all the time.

Now, I realize that the above list is pretty much unrealistic, espeically considering the devs' limited time and resources, and the fact that my "wish list" won't bring in the big bucks like the end-game stuff will. But it'd make CoH a much more streamlined game, and make the transtition between the "new shiny" stuff such as Praetoria and the original CoH game look much less jarring. Ah, one can always dream.