Swing and miss... which story arcs are most in need of revamp or outright removal?
By
Arilou,
Posted on: 2011-09-19 24:40 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Most of them already do |
Originally Posted by Olantern
If there were one thing I could change about the player base, it would be to have people understand and accept this.
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@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
Any contact that wants to teach me something I already know.....or send me to a place I have been too hundreds of times....needs to go BYE BYE....I'm looking at you Mr. How to Craft contact!
Any contact that thinks my super works for UPS or FedEx.....GONE!
Amanda Loomis....at the FAR FAR end of Indy Port.....lady......just go away....please!
But the worst......the worst by far.....the I HATE her arc contact.......Janet Kellum! Here...please fight these 400 Crey power tanks.........now......fight these 400 Crey power tanks......very good.......now there are these 400 OTHER Crey power tanks you have to fight......you are determined.......how about THESE 400 Crey power tanks.......and ON AND ON AND ON! You don't need to grind Incarnate trials to get your obsessive complusive fix....just go see Janet!
I forgot to mention the Praetorian Loyalist arc.
"Thanks for all that kind-hearted-yet-difficult crap you did for us, $character. Your Emperor thanks you. Now that you know about my invasion, get out. I don't care if you want to be on my side."
My guides:Dark Melee/Dark Armor/Soul Mastery, Illusion Control/Kinetics/Primal Forces Mastery, Electric Armor
"Dark Armor is a complete waste as a tanking set."
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Here's a bit of a funny story: A few years ago, a person asked me to review his Architect arc - believe it or not, multiple people have asked me to do this, and I made a few friends out of it. So he asked me to review his arc, and I did. There were a few typos here and there, a wonky mission objective or two, as is normal for Architect arcs in progress. Overall, though, the arc had a solid story, it worked and it was interesting.|
Originally Posted by Dollymistress
"Go to the back of the mission to talk to this guy. Okay, now find another person who's about halfway up the map. Now go back to the beginning. Now go find that Unique Transmitter you passed earlier and click it. No, not THAT Unique Transmitter, the OTHER Unique Transmitter. Now, go and click the other transmitter. QUICK! Hurry to the fron of the mission again, no wait...I meant the back! No wait, the middle! I said quick!!
Yeah, okay. You had all the time in the world, I just rushed you for lulz. Now go back to the beginning and defeat the security team. No, not all those guys in a group standing together who look like a team, I said THE SECURITY TEAM! THAT single guy standing THERE named "The Security Team" by his parents...!" |
Except the final mission. The author wanted to have a sequence of PA messages from the final boss that played out as the player progressed, and they needed to show up in order. So he did the only thing he could and had each boss fight keyed to trigger only after the previous boss had been defeated, for a chain of at least around 10 bosses. The result was that I accidentally missed the first boss spawn which had occurred inside those open containers on ship maps, so I ran through the whole map, seeing NOT A SINGLE ENEMY. Finally I traced my steps and found the boss spawn in the middle of the ship, defeated it and another one spawned. Somewhere. I searched the map up and down, found that, triggered the next, searched some more and did this close to a dozen times.
One major point in my feedback was that you just can't do that because it breaks immersion to leave the mission empty, making me roam around trying to stumble across whatever trigger makes the plot move forward like I'm playing a Bishujo game. You can't have enemies appear unless they were expressly supposed to NOT have been there before. I honestly don't remember what he did about it in the end - my idea was to transform the PA narrative into dated journal entries, so that even if players found them out of order, they would still know what order to read them in, but I don't recall what the author elected to do.
Lo and behold, I'm running into precisely the same problem in Dr. Graves' mission. "Trick Zephyr into following you" says the game. I move ten feet forward and Zephyr is following me. "Great!" I think "I tricked him into following me!" Except the instance is now barren, there's a computer I can't use and I don't know how to continue. Then I remember an old Tip mission and think "Oooh! I was supposed to TALK to Zephyr!" so I spoke to him and pop goes a spawn of enemies 20 feet ahead of me within line of sight. I proceed forward and sure enough, the map is now full of enemies.
The same exact problems I've been bugging Architect writers that ask me to review their arcs for years now are starting to show up in developer-made arcs these days. Both in terms of writing and in terms of mission setup, the developer arcs start to come off like fanfiction.
"Save Crosscut's captive" says the game, so I find a Skull attacked by a Cobra, save him and speak with him. "Save the Crosscut's captive" repeats the game. I just frikkin' saved him! But no, I had to fight all the other Snakes around him before he was truly saved. But now he won't follow me. That's OK, I can beat Crosscut without the Skull. "Confront Crosscut with your new lackey" says the game. I confront Crosscut WITHOUT my new lackey who won't follow me, but I can't attack him. He's registering as an ally. Can I speak with him? No. Can I kill him? No. Is he like those clickies that you have to bring a hostage to before he will activate? Do I have to bring the Skull to him? Well, apparently yes, because I reset the mission, killed all the Snakes BEFORE I spoke with the Skull, brought the Skull before Crosscut and NOW he became hostile and started fighting me.
The mission structure in City of Heroes is becoming a huge mess. I can't attack people I'm supposed to attack until I arrange the soup cans to spell his name, my enemies don't show up on the map until the screen scrolls far enough to the right, three quarters of my enemies want to speak with me before we fight, speak with me half-way through the fight then speak with me at the end of the fight, I can't click a damn objective without having to converse with it and and go through at least three screens of text...
Why? Is all of this necessary? Sure, the old missions were basic in terms of game mechanics, but at least I had at least SOME control over how they turned out and they felt at least somewhat believable. If there's an enemy I'm supposed to kill, I can attack this enemy on sight, and he'll attack me on sight, too. We want to kill each other. If there's an objective I need to click on, I can just walk up to it and click on it. If there is a number of enemies I need to kill, all I have to do is find them, not worry about who I have to speak with to make them appear.
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I say City of Heroes suffers from the "TNA Wrestling Syndrome" because we spend almost all of our time talking and almost none of our time wrestling, and whenever we do get to wrestle, it's a gimmick match. "Why have a match, when you can have a gimmick match?" Why have a wrestling match when you can have a table balanced on ladders in a cage match? Why have a boss match when I can speak with a computer, speak with three different NPCs, then speak with the boss, fight him, have him leave, have him return and set the oil rig on fire and then fight me only for there to be an even bigger boss match?
I came to City of Heroes to make awesome characters an have them fight lots of enemies. Everything else is subservient to that. Sure, interesting game mechanics help mix things up, but sacrificing gameplay for talking is missing the forest for the trees. Most of the new arcs make me feel like I ordered a toy and they shipped a box of nothing but packing peanuts.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Hideous writing
Dr. Greaves arcs 1 and 2: Biggest mess of railroading nonsense in the game by FAAAR. This arc commits the cardinal sin of putting words in my character's mouth which are also incredibly stupid, making me feel like a knuckle-dragging idiot. You don't write stories like this in a game where people make their own characters. You simply do not. If words must be put in characters' names, then options must be given. This storyline commits more travesties against player characters than I can count. And it's written VERY sloppy, to boot. I quoted a random text for unrelated reasons out of one text box, and it ended up having a "viscous stare" in it completely by accident. It's rife with typos and suspect grammar, and it is NOT written as a story arc should. Crimes against canon The Origin of Powers: Never in my life have I seen such an amazing fictional universe so thoroughly disembowelled by a horrible idea. The Origin of Powers' entire storyline takes what is a very open, very varied world and not only clenches it by the throat, suffocating all creativity that ever existed, but it uses deus ex machina to reduce EVERYTHING EVER down to a single plot point. This is a crime against fiction so bad I don't think I have an apt metaphor to describe it, though I'm sure if I actually read comic books, I might. DC's Countdown comes to mind as a comparison, though. Idiot ball bonanza: Kelly Uqua: Christ almighty, this arc treats both me like I failed my IQ test. Kelly Uqua is a Rikti spy by the name of Kel'Uqua. I'm not spoiling anything, that's obvious pretty much from the word go. And yet I have to spend the entire arc scratching my head like a knuckle-dragging idiot trying to figure out why the woman who looks like a Rikti, acts like a Rikti, cavorts with Rikti and is said to be a Rikti spy by no less than two separate people seems suspicious. If I end the final mission, I never even suspect. If, on the other hand, I fail the final mission and the Ballista's message goes through, I begin to suspect that maybe, just maybe, there was something wrong, but I don't know where. Because I have the IQ of a box of hammers. Dr. Graves second arc: "Mental time bomb" is all I have to say. The game has me act like a complete idiot, it has Dollface, Dean John ******* Yu and even Dr. Graves make fun of me, all while I don't even realise I'm being mocked. I'm not a smart guy in real life and I still found that offensive to my intelligence. It's not funny, it's just degrading. To me, personally, let alone to my character. |
Some of them can be fixed by just occasional text rewrites BTW.
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
I've said this before, and I'll likely say this again, but writing doesn't mean just what's written in the text dumps. The story isn't read in an MMO, it's experienced by the player doing actions. Much of the older content is literally dumped on you by walls of text, to the point where you go and do a door mission and every piece of reasoning is told to you in clue boxes, massive text dumps in contact talk and little blurbs upon entering and exiting. Much of the tmie it would be boring to simply sit there and read it, because frankly when i want to sit and read I don't go to video games, I go to books written by awesome people.
Orson Scott Card wrote a video game called Advent Rising, which had an interesting story, but almost every piece of important story architecture took place in non-interactive cut scenes to the point where it felt superfluous. Beyond the technical aspects of the game being poor, this was what made the game, for me, ultimately uninteresting. It felt like I was being told the game rather than playing the game, and when I go to the game, much of it feels the same.
I find a lot of the older content, especially things like WWR, and a lot of the content in the 30's and 40's, all of the old TF's (Posi - Numi, Shard TF's) feel like "told" stories. The stories might be interesting and the text dumps well written, but ultimately I find them unengaging and uninteresting. Say what you will about Roy Cooling and the like but the storytelling there keeps the story moving forwards, and keeps the player involved. Same thing with the Leviathan arc villainside. It actuallyfeels like you're doing something, which simply never feels that way with older arcs.
"Be a beacon?"
Blue Mourning: lvl. 50 Katana/DA
Bree the Barricade: lvl 50 Stone/Axe
Last Chance for Eden: lvl 50 Fire/Kin
Myra the Grey: lvl 50 Bots/Traps
1 Minute to Midnight lvl 50 Spines/DA
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For me, Advent Rising is one of my favourite games because it has unique gameplay AND a good story. I don't necessarily need my story and gameplay to be occupying the same space, especially when the story can often be disruptive to gameplay and the gameplay to storytelling.
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Originally Posted by Blue_Mourning
Orson Scott Card wrote a video game called Advent Rising, which had an interesting story, but almost every piece of important story architecture took place in non-interactive cut scenes to the point where it felt superfluous. Beyond the technical aspects of the game being poor, this was what made the game, for me, ultimately uninteresting. It felt like I was being told the game rather than playing the game, and when I go to the game, much of it feels the same.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Excellent summary of where I've arrived at after giving the content you cite a decent amount of study. I've now recently replayed at least once, if not thrice, the entirety of single player blueside contact content in each bracket from 20 up to 45, including all legacy arcs and one offs. And what you say describes after giving a little time to digest the experience my feelings about most of it, despite any nostalgia I might still harbor for the "old game."|
Originally Posted by Blue_Mourning
I find a lot of the older content, especially things like WWR, and a lot of the content in the 30's and 40's, all of the old TF's (Posi - Numi, Shard TF's) feel like "told" stories. The stories might be interesting and the text dumps well written, but ultimately I find them unengaging and uninteresting. Say what you will about Roy Cooling and the like but the storytelling there keeps the story moving forwards, and keeps the player involved. Same thing with the Leviathan arc villainside. It actuallyfeels like you're doing something, which simply never feels that way with older arcs.
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For those wondering this took me about a year of turning XP off in each bracket as I casually alted through a number of characters moving through the midgame. I've done it, seen what I wanted to see, especially if this content gets buried under new stories of a total revamp such as what Atlas and Mercy seem to have gone through. I'm glad a FEW of these stories should forever be available in Ouroboros because some, like the Freaklympics, are still fun ideas with at least playable execution. Though this hasn't turned me into an outright power leveler, barring a few small narrative exceptions (like pingponging a new villain between Crusader and Power arcs goldside), I won't be using the XP off option any more blue side. (still working to see "it all" redside on a couple characters though. In my 30's currently with those two.)
As a whole, despite a few minor grievances, I am much more pleased with where the game is currently heading from i20 forward especially in terms of how stories feel and play. Despite the brevity of part 1 of the signature arc, very pleased with the central role my characters have played in that.
I think the two blueside legacy Praetorian arcs are in the worst need of a revamp, and not for the sake of art assets (although it's a good point). Repetative outdoor "defeat all" maps, glowie hunts, etc. THe story behind it is good, but the execution was poor due to the limited tools from Issue 1. The sort of mission design mentality that existed when the developers thought that people would just go to Hazard Zones to wail on stuff all day. And we saw how that ended for Faultline 
I'll sit back and note your catches, if you want 
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Assuming you are talking about Tina MacIntyre and Maria Jenkin's arc's they WHERE revamped when preatoria was released - the current arcs you get from the two contacts use the new preatorian mobs, maps and AV's. While I haven't played Tina's yet, I just finished Maria's on my stalker and it is a fairly quick arc, especially for a stealther - I don't think there is a single kill all and most of the objectives are fairly straight forward and simple. The story might not be the best but it's simple, which leaves less room for them to mess up. I wouldn't rate it as one of the best arc's out there, but it wasn't bad either.
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Originally Posted by Obsidius
I think the two blueside legacy Praetorian arcs are in the worst need of a revamp, and not for the sake of art assets (although it's a good point). Repetative outdoor "defeat all" maps, glowie hunts, etc. THe story behind it is good, but the execution was poor due to the limited tools from Issue 1. The sort of mission design mentality that existed when the developers thought that people would just go to Hazard Zones to wail on stuff all day. And we saw how that ended for Faultline
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Globals: @Midnight Mystique/@Magik13
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I really wanted to like Advent Rising. The idea of the game play was inspired and the characters, while rather run of the mill, were at least fun to watch and interact with. There were also a few cool gameplay moments. The problem, however, is that I found the gameplay, when compared to a game like Halo 1 - Reach, to be far less polished than it could be.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
For me, Advent Rising is one of my favourite games because it has unique gameplay AND a good story. I don't necessarily need my story and gameplay to be occupying the same space, especially when the story can often be disruptive to gameplay and the gameplay to storytelling.
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Actually Halo is a really good example of when they allow you to "take part" in the story vs. when they "show you" the story in cut scenes. In 343 Guilty Spark the flood have already been released, but they allow you to experience your own first encounter with them to great effect. In Halo 3 they used cut scenes to set up the next level, but you fought every conflict MC was involved with on your own. The games clearly have some issues, and they're not perfect, but in terms of storytelling and world building it's up there. Mass Effect is another series that knows when to do what.
"Be a beacon?"
Blue Mourning: lvl. 50 Katana/DA
Bree the Barricade: lvl 50 Stone/Axe
Last Chance for Eden: lvl 50 Fire/Kin
Myra the Grey: lvl 50 Bots/Traps
1 Minute to Midnight lvl 50 Spines/DA
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Why would you want to fight the Center? I mean, sure, they could make him an AV, but not everyone rises to leadership because they are physically powerful.|
Originally Posted by Finsplit
- The Tsoo arcs. Overstuffed, overpadded, and it's been years and would it kill the devs to let us actually #$&()% fight Tub Ci at some non-Praetorian point? (I feel the same way about Sebastian Frost and the Center, by the way.)
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Some of these people might just be good leaders, and the fights would be terribly anti-climatic.
Say you're doing an arc, and at the end of it, you discover someone with the approximate resilience of a Rikti Monkey is at the head of everything. Do you really need that arc to end with a fight against a Rikti Monkey?
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...yes.|
Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
Say you're doing an arc, and at the end of it, you discover someone with the approximate resilience of a Rikti Monkey is at the head of everything. Do you really need that arc to end with a fight against a Rikti Monkey? |
Because that would be hilarious. If, of course, done right :P.
"Be a beacon?"
Blue Mourning: lvl. 50 Katana/DA
Bree the Barricade: lvl 50 Stone/Axe
Last Chance for Eden: lvl 50 Fire/Kin
Myra the Grey: lvl 50 Bots/Traps
1 Minute to Midnight lvl 50 Spines/DA
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It doesn't have to be a fight. I'd settle for actually being able to MEET the Center (other than in a couple of missions villainside that are locked behind one of the most annoying set of requirements in the game). I don't see the point in dropping allusions to the leaders of various groups if you're never going to actually interact with them in the game.
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Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
Why would you want to fight the Center? I mean, sure, they could make him an AV, but not everyone rises to leadership because they are physically powerful.
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34 heroes,
20 villains, Victory, Justice, Infinity, Virtue, Triumph, Exalted -- some more active than others
I would remove Hunts. Never liked them*
*Note, coming from the old school player who groaned every time I saw hunt 10 Circle of Thorns in Kings Row. Its much easier now, but it was oh so awful back in the days. It certainly left a scar.
H: Blaster 50, Defender 50, Tank 50, Scrapper 50, Controller 50, PB 50, WS 50
V: Brute 50, Corruptor 50, MM 50, Dominator 50, Stalker 50, AW 50, AS 50
Top 4: Controller, Brute, Scrapper, Corruptor
Bottom 4: (Peacebringer) way below everything else, Mastermind, Dominator, Blaster
CoH in WQHD
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I'd take the opposite view with those. Sure, the "Defeat 20 Outcasts/Trolls" in The Hollows back in Issue 3 was pretty much a death sentence if you were soloing below level 10 ... but they at least made sense.|
Originally Posted by newchemicals
I would remove Hunts. Never liked them*
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No ... the thing that I object to are the "Patrol" missions that have you going around town to pick up the phone on these yellow callboxes FOR NO GOOD REASON.
On Virtue server, we call those chained "click a phone box" missions Pizza Runs. They literally serve no purpose other than to make you "run around" the zone ... ignoring everything in between the mission objectives. Heck, you don't even click on the callboxes and have your Contact give you "new instructions" or anything. It's just Click 'n' Run. They're just Travel Power Exercises ... and bad ones at that!
Feh.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
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The Center's super power is leadership. Let's keep it that way. I didn't like fighting Malta's directors and I wouldn't like to fight the Center.|
Originally Posted by MajorDecoy
Why would you want to fight the Center? I mean, sure, they could make him an AV, but not everyone rises to leadership because they are physically powerful.
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| Say you're doing an arc, and at the end of it, you discover someone with the approximate resilience of a Rikti Monkey is at the head of everything. Do you really need that arc to end with a fight against a Rikti Monkey? |
Eva Destruction AR/Fire/Munitions Blaster
Darkfire Avenger DM/SD/Body Scrapper
Arc ID#161629 Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black
Arc ID#431270 Until the End of the World
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/facepalm|
Originally Posted by EricHough
Assuming you are talking about Tina MacIntyre and Maria Jenkin's arc's they WHERE revamped when preatoria was released - the current arcs you get from the two contacts use the new preatorian mobs, maps and AV's. While I haven't played Tina's yet, I just finished Maria's on my stalker and it is a fairly quick arc, especially for a stealther - I don't think there is a single kill all and most of the objectives are fairly straight forward and simple. The story might not be the best but it's simple, which leaves less room for them to mess up. I wouldn't rate it as one of the best arc's out there, but it wasn't bad either.
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You are right. I think the problem is that my wife's character had the mission for SO LONG that it still has the old version of the arcs
Glad I helped her clear it out then LOL
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And here I thought you were deliberately fishing for suckers |
Originally Posted by Obsidius
/facepalm
You are right. I think the problem is that my wife's character had the mission for SO LONG that it still has the old version of the arcs Glad I helped her clear it out then LOL |
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Originally Posted by Blue_Mourning
I really wanted to like Advent Rising. The idea of the game play was inspired and the characters, while rather run of the mill, were at least fun to watch and interact with. There were also a few cool gameplay moments. The problem, however, is that I found the gameplay, when compared to a game like Halo 1 - Reach, to be far less polished than it could be.
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Sure, driving sucks. Sure, the game is bugged up the ***. Sure, the RPG elements are unnecessary and unwieldy. Sending a fully-charged Aeon Pulse through a massive dropship, taking it down in one hit, then diving into a swarm of enemies, spinning in mid air and shooting them all full of holes with dual pistols and then riding giant alien thing and breaking its neck with one hand while shooting at his buddies with the other... That kind of makes me forget about any bugs and bad design I might have encountered.
The story may have mostly taken part in cutscenes, but I've been playing video games for 20 years now, and this has never bothered me once. I hope and pray that that game gets a sequel at some point, because it's easily one of my favourites of all time.
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Originally Posted by Blue_Mourning
Actually Halo is a really good example of when they allow you to "take part" in the story vs. when they "show you" the story in cut scenes. In 343 Guilty Spark the flood have already been released, but they allow you to experience your own first encounter with them to great effect. In Halo 3 they used cut scenes to set up the next level, but you fought every conflict MC was involved with on your own. The games clearly have some issues, and they're not perfect, but in terms of storytelling and world building it's up there. Mass Effect is another series that knows when to do what.
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Sure, games like Half-Life manage to have the player participate in events and get away with only pseudo-cutscenes, but I don't find this to be necessary. Darksiders, for instance, has a rather involved story with lots of backstory to it, and I love it to bits, but the game never really lets me take place in important story bits, nor does it give me any input. I'm not sure if Samael even has an in-game model, because I only ever see him in cutscenes.
My point is I don't need the story woven deeply into the game. Once "story" becomes an excuse for ****** gameplay, I draw the line. I don't care if "the plot said so," if I'm forced to endure a stupid AI escort or hideously unfair location protection or, heaven help me, one of those last stands with automated turrets that Half-Life 2 loved to throw my way, I call foul regardless of how good the justification is. I want to play a good game with a good story, but when the story interrupts my gameplay, BOTH of them suffer.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Just played through the Meteorologist badge "mini" arc and boy, this one could use a revisit.
It SHOULD be epic and gorgeous. The theme is compelling and classic. Nemesis about to gain full control of the weather? But it lacks any urgency. Any sense of consequence or engagement. It's a string of legacy content talk-to across zones of travel and defeat all after defeat all at the end.
New now existing FX and enemy customization should be enough to have some climactic encounter with a Fake Nem with storm powers and a repurposed and recolored sky box from First Ward, showing some gathering hurricane. Maybe even the weather devices could pulse [gale] at random intervals... or the map could, targeting friend and foe alike? Anyways, great theme, great concept. Miserable telling. Even more miserable play through.
A lot of the older contacts with their various storylines, mostly on blue side, could use revamping. I've been leveling up some new characters recently, taking them through the newer content. There's a huge wealth of newer stuff available from 1-29, and a lot of good stuff past that. I've used the flashbacks feature a lot. But on a whim, I decided to try and do some of the older contacts that were in the original game, to see how it compared and how effective it would be, and it drove me mad. Timed missions, things that require 3 teammates to do (which isn't annoying, unless you're on a late hour and not many people are available.)
One of the contacts that stood out to me is Steve Sheridan, aka Dr. Science. Considering that he appears in Praetoria, it would be nice if he had a revamp and a mission arc to reflect that fact.
I could go through a huge list of older blue side contacts that are in serious need of updates, graphically and story alike, but that would waste time.
A newer mission arc that I think needs to be updated even more is the Praetorian arc from Maria Jenkins. Mostly, it would be nice to have some form of acknowledgment if you run the toon as someone who came from Praetoria. Even if it's only slight dialogue tweaks. Generally, though, a lot of the Peregrine Island contacts need revision, because most of the arcs are either too long and unfocused, or just seem outdated compared to newer content.
Oh! And pretty much all of the blue-side task forces outside of Positron's. That's probably been said to death though. But for me, I have hardly any idea of what they were about, or why they're important enough to be task forces. To this day, I still don't know why Countess Crey isn't the villain of a task force centering around her minions. It seems like it would make more sense.
Another arc that could use some revising are the arcs of the Hollows. They just feel outdated compared to the newer content. Frostfire is still an enjoyable mission, but the missions leading up to it are bland, and most of what happens after that in the zone is bland as well. It's just not really memorable - I've done it recently on a few new characters, mostly out of nostalgia for when the zone used to be a lot more popular, and it just didn't have the same appeal anymore.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Halo, by contrast, is easily my LEAST favourite game of all times. I've only played the original Halo, as to the best of my knowledge, that's the only one which exists for the PC. It's an endlessly dull, repetitive, boring shooter that ran me through virtually the same five locations so many times I started worrying I'd gotten turned around and was backtracking. It really doesn't interest me what I take over when the sum total of the game's environments can be summed up as "field and base." It has the same problem as the Unreal Engine games of today - nothing looks like anything, so everything just looks like fields, caves or indecipherable high-tech bases. It's the same problem Arachnos bases have now - they don't look like anything, so every place in them looks exactly like every place else. |
What I find odd Sam is that how you describe Halo is how I find the bulk of the old content in this game, which is why I can't figure out how you're viewing the content....
"Be a beacon?"
Blue Mourning: lvl. 50 Katana/DA
Bree the Barricade: lvl 50 Stone/Axe
Last Chance for Eden: lvl 50 Fire/Kin
Myra the Grey: lvl 50 Bots/Traps
1 Minute to Midnight lvl 50 Spines/DA
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This.
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Originally Posted by Blue_Mourning
What I find odd Sam is that how you describe Halo is how I find the bulk of the old content in this game, which is why I can't figure out how you're viewing the content....
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"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
***
I consider most of the i0/i1 arcs to be in serious need of reworking. Though the plots don't need to change, they could be covered adequately with many fewer missions. In fact, with today's quick leveling, it can be difficult to complete some of those long "legacy" arcs before outleveling their level ranges.
I'd particularly like to see Crimson and Indigo's arcs die bloody, horrible deaths. Malta do not make sense as a group found standing around in warehouses; they're generally portrayed as spies and dedicated strike teams. The arcs run far too long, and despite the high stakes in the stories, there's little sense of time pressure placed on the protagonist, even in the timed missions. Further, the contacts themselves are pompous jerks. (While this applies to a lot of contacts throughout the game, most of those to whom this description could be applied aren't meant to be likeable.) I really, really can't stand characters who are written as "wise and capable and all-knowing." (This is one of the reasons Sister Psyche is my most-disliked signature hero, too.)
The arcs involving the Tsoo are also very weak, as previously described here.
Finally, while I don't think it's one of the worst arcs out there, I should mention my particular peeve with Roy Cooling's arc. I don't get as picky about absolute control of every aspect of story as most players who read the text do; unlike them, I acknowledge that the game can't conform all that well to any particular concept of mine because an MMO's content is the same for each player character. So I don't have a problem with the backstory of Cooling's arc. However, I just get flat-out confused every time I run it. There are too many names and too many factions involved for me to keep things straight easily. I played the thing not two nights ago, and I'd have difficulty trying to tell you who the villain in the arc was, simply because there was so much going on behind the scenes.
"Bombarding the CoH/V fora with verbosity since January, 2006"
Djinniman, level 50 inv/fire tanker, on Victory
-and 40 others on various servers
A CoH Comic: Kid Eros in "One Light"