Story arcs.. Do people play um any more?

one of my favorite things about this game were the unique arcs.. But i dont seam to see people playing them much. (granted ive only been back a week). I see lots of requests for radio missions (boring) Or Arcitect farms, (even more boring) Or just rerunning one of a hand full of Task forces.


Does anyone lvl the old fasion way? play story arcs, in there lvl, get a group going for a night and run an arc? So many fantatic arcs around, with such unique feel, but i never see people looking for um these days.

im on justice for hero side, and infinity for villains..

am i just missing the new places to hang out and find teams? or do people just not run this stuff anymore?

back in the day you could just go PUG's and get story arcs rolling with out much effort, is there a place that people do this today? Or is everything about farming or ITF rewards?

If there is a server more geared to this style, Please let me know..

I play them but mostly solo. When I'm in groups I usually do stuff that's plotless or minimal plot, so I don't feel like a dick for making everyone sit around while I read dialogue. For stuff like TFs I click through as fast as possible while playing, then go back and read (or even better, read in advance) the story on paragon wiki after beating it.

Recently started to do these again with SG. Including doing patron arcs as they need to be done anyway to get the powers unlocked redside.

In short... yes... but you need the righth connections.

Everyday.

I think there are a lot of people who feel the same way you do. I know I am one of them. I would suggest you do what I try to do. Advertise in your server's global channels that you are running the (insert name) story arc for (insert aprox lvl range).

Another thing you can try to do is put together a static team to run once or twice a week. My buddy and I put together an all dual pistols team which started out running story arcs, but recently we've been running a different TF every week so as not to get bored. Our goal is to run every TF in the game.

Don't worry if you aren't the team leader type, generally speaking when it comes to contact missions and story arcs, all you are really expected to do as team leader is set the mission.

Edit: When CoH: Freedom launches, I imagine finding teams for story arcs will be much easier since freems won't have access to AE.

I still do on occasion when I can't find teams, but mostly I wait for pick-up teams to grab me for random stuff or I solo some AE content (non-AE farming content that is). Over the past 7 years, I've done nearly all the story arcs in the game. I actually used a spreadsheet and tracked each contact in the game and, using ParagonWiki, ran though all the arcs available. When new ones come out, I run those immediately to see them.

I will never say the story arcs and content are bad in this game. They are very, very entertaining. But, even highly entertaining content gets boring the 10th of 15th time around.

I also do the story arcs solo mostly. If it's one I want to read, I dislike making folks wait on me, and even if I'm not reading it since I may have done that arc many times before, I always feel a big bad if I'm the only one getting the rewards. Doesn't seem fair if I run with 5 other people and only I get the merits at the end. If I know someone else that wants to run the arc at the same time, great, but that doesn't seem to happen often outside of a static team or level pacted environment.

The problem with story arcs are that they don't share rewards. The whole team is basically incrementing the merit counter for one person.

The other paths are equal for everyone - since everyone shares the same experience, inf, drop chance, and hero merit advancement.

I do plenty of story line missions, but always feel bad about asking anyone to join when it is so one sided in my favor. If I end up leading a group, I always try to rotate whose mission we are doing to keep it sort of fair. I can't think of a non-exploitable way to make it more inherently fair, but as the system stands, it's easier just to run hero tips when you can get a group. There should be some way to sync everyone up on a mission chain easily, but I'll be damned if I know how (unless you get lucky and don't need to do anything but run a couple of catchup missions.)

It's the one downside of having so many missions combined with the locked contact thing. Maybe that's the way to fix it. Complete one mission on a team for a contact, and then you get that contact for free without needing to do the whole bank mission thing. That way we run one mission, then start at the beginning of the thread to catch everyone else up.

I mostly run story arcs. Just finished running World Wide Red, a great (and long, and at times frrustrating) story arc.

I mostly play solo, though. I find it hard to really enjoy the story behind an arc when teaming, so I can understand why teams aren't as into them.

I tend to run through story arcs each time i put a team together, which happens almost daily (unless i don't feel like teaming or just want to grind up a trial or two).

The only time i am NOT running arcs when leading a team is when i'm trying get some specific contact, meaning i need to complete some radio/paper missions to get a safeguard/mayhem.

So yeah, people do run em though most teamleaders seem to prefer radio/paper missions due to easiness of access or whathaveyou.

well actually, back in the day.... (before IO's) I used to play alot. I did PUG's every day, always ran arcs, found a lot of people to join me, made many friends. Always did the odd group, not the normal teams typically but always had a fun time. I recall foundly one TF. (forget the name, its the one on the island with the giant robot) it was one tank and 7 blasters.. talk about a ride.


anyways, it just seams lots of people arnt interested in the slower more casual arcs. (like that one poster that said, I make sure to click as fast as i can so i dont slow people down) thats sorta what im talking about. I rather not do that. Take your time, grab a coffee inbewteen missions, enjoy the night.


Are any servers more geared to that style? justice is where most of my toons are, i do have a full load on virtue with alts, as that server was once consitered the RP server. All my villans are on infinity. (justice is the only server ive tried)

Basically im back, and a few freinds are joining me.. and trying to get a feel for what the game has turned into, along with where players of like minds are..

When i was around, justice was a solid population, get groups of like minds pretty easy (population seams to have dropped, or atleast spread out)

virtue, i didnt play a lot, but it was a bit heavier in RP.. groups not to hard, but like minds didnt always work. Seamed people were kinda in there way of play, and not entirely flexible outside of it.

Infinity, seamed like a smaller server, i played only villans side. groups were freindly though which was nice.


Im always game to try something new, especially after having been gone so long with no real ties other than a base on one server. So any suggestions are welcome. Kinda just looking for an older crowd, more laid back, likes arcs, and taking your time, and just having fun.

I definitely run arcs trying to get ones I haven't run lately on whatever my latest alt is I'm leveling up. I only run radios/safeguards when I can't seem to get the contact I want. I run tips as filler now instead of radios. I only run AE missions for the tickets or as a change of pace. The current fire tank farms just make me sad.

Red side, since I'm forced to do newspapers for contacts, tends to go too fast in the lower levels to do many (or any) arcs but after level 20 or so things finally slow down enough that I can start doing them over there too. I find it harder to do red-side leveling though because most of my friends want to do blue-side so I reserve it for my solo characters.

I do story arcs every day.

If I feel like teaming, I'll send out broadcasts, recruit via the global channels, etc. If I get a team; great. If no one replies, I don't start writing forum posts about it. I move along and play em until the next mish, then send out broadcasts, global channel invites, etc and rinse and repeat for each following mish til I have a team.

My intention is that IF I want to team, I'll form a team if I see none starting up; IF I don't want to team, I go on hide (I may have a busy home schedule, requiring me to get up and afk a lot in one session/evening, ergo, I'll shift to hide mode so I don't waste anyone's time but my own).

With Issue 21/CoH:Freedom coming out, I'm not worried about teaming; I'm sure I'm going to have many hundreds to choose from and amongst.

P.S. - Also, the two locations you mentioned, Justice-blueside and Infinity-redside are not the highest volumes of team players of late. If you're looking for more folks to team with, I'd suggest Union, Freedom or Virtue.

You can add people below 25 to an Ouro arc if you start them from the SG base crystal. ^_^

I've rarely made use of that though. I did run two Ouro arcs last night, but I was doing it solo and moving as quickly as I could for the rewards. Generally someone who wants to run a PuG team using regular mission content has to plan ahead and have a couple of contacts started so that he doesn't suddenly run out of missions, or have to make the team wait while he runs back to the contact. It just takes more planning and work, but I know people still do it, I was on a team like that just last week.

I think they started to drop in popularity once radio/newspapers came out becuase they were faster to get and run and there were no moments of "GAH, another fed ex mish!" involved with doing a pre-set arc (plus that whole "done these a jillion times already" thing). Most of the PUGing I do these days I never see them run, can't recall the last time I did see one.

The fwaythat only the mish holder gets the merits bugs me too, I was kicking around an idea where the devs could set up a way for us to sign up for an arc as if it were a ST/TF, that functioned under those same parameters ("no one can be invited while it's running" and so on) and let all the players get those merits. Dunno if the idea has any legs though.

I love running arcs. I like the merit rewards at the end. Run at a casual pace. I like em. What I don't like is if multiple people on a team get the same arc, the missions don't run in the same order, causes problems. This is one QOL that should be enabled. Having people with the same contact get the missions in the same order as the leader in order to complete it at the same time.

I don't have any heroes on your server, but if you were interested in running some, I wouldn't be averse to creating one.

I do, but when I do I have the nagging feeling that I'm playing in a suboptimal manner (yay, 8 missions for...15 merits). Sometimes they end up being run only as fallback, if I've exhausted my alignment missions for the day but don't feel like playing another character.

I try to play arcs whenever I can, because I'm generally bored to tears of the same radio/paper missions over and over and over and over...

The other day I defeated Archon Leery four times in a row.

I find story arcs not worth running anymore for multiple reasons:

1. Poor rewards. If you're level 50 (and nearly every character I play these days is), you only get a marginal influence bonus for completion, and a token amount of merits. You can get more reward merits by running TFs, the vastly superior alignment merits from tips, HOs/SHOs from STF/LRSF/Hami Raids, and, most importantly right now, Astral/Emp Merits and incarnate salvage from trials. For redside in particular, if you're doing the old 1-50 grind, doing papers to get your mayhem missions are much more productive, so you can get progress for Invader and Force of Nature.

2. Poor for teaming. Unless your team is in perfect sync with getting the same contact and the same missions at the same time, the only person getting the rewards at the end is the mission holder. TFs, trials, and tips lack this problem.

3. Done it all already. Outside of Praetoria, I've done every single story arc in the game, on both red and blue side, multiple times, as I'm sure a majority of veteran players have. Nothing about them is new to me, so it's essentially no different than running papers in terms of repetition. And for the Praetorian arcs, those can only be completed on new Praetorian characters anyway (which excludes the characters I exclusively play these days). And yes, I've also done every TF and trial in the game, but those at least have the rewards and fun factor going for them.

4. Aged content. This primarily applies to hero side, but the majority of the heroside story arcs are from before the City of Villains release, which almost universally have horrible writing, cardboard-flat character personalities, and practically no mission mechanics aside from defeat-all, kill the boss, or grab the glowie. Even on the odd occasion that I feel like doing an old story arc, I am soon reminded why I avoid them. Villain missions are much better in this regard, although even that feels pretty dated with stories and mechanics of tip missions (particularly the I19 vigilante->villain and rogue->hero tips, which are fantastic) and the quality of Praetoria stories.

The exceptions for me are the patron arcs, considering you need them to unlock Patron Pools and the ability to start an LRSF. I run those on every villain.