Content overload! A reaction from a returning player.

Firstly, hi, everyone! Some of you old-timers might remember me; I posted here pretty frequently from 2004-2006. CoH was a different game back then; I loved it, god knows, and I really loved the world and the storytelling, and I played the hell out of it till I was just straight-up, legitimately burnt out - but coming back to it now there's no denying that what we have is a vastly superior, more user-friendly experience in almost every conceivable way.

Except one.

As a huge fan of the lore, which I tried to keep up with even when I wasn't playing, what going through the game again with a bunch of new friends has really driven home that while I love the gameplay and quality-of-life changes, some of the cool story stuff has been lost or obscured. One of my friends, a new player, was complaining the other night that she feels really disconnected from what's going on or what anything in the game is, and I can't really blame her, because she is constantly being presented with possible options (go here! do this!) that she then outlevels, sometimes while in the middle of a story. Hell, I'm an experienced player, and I just finished Jim Temblor's missions only to get the cold shoulder from Penelope Yin - again. Imagine what it's like for all these new folks!

As an example, she's got a level 20something now, and she's encountered the Vahzilok and the Lost all of once, in the new sewer trial, with no idea who they were, and no explanation given, and now she's out of their level range for good. In 2004 the idea of playing through the first twenty levels without encountering those groups would have been absurd unless you were one of those people who started powerleveling at Peregrine Island right out of the tutorial.

CoX is in the weird position of having so much content that it's all crowding itself out. You might be interested in the Faultline story, or First Ward, but god forbid you take any missions or spend a night grouping outside of those zones, or you might be locked out of seeing the middle or end of the story. And none of this is presented in any sort of consistent way - get to a new level range and you'll have five or six contact popups appear, with no indication that this guy gives you a seven-year-old Clockwork arc, that guy gives you Ouroboros content, and this other guy leads to a zone arc.

My friend was legitimately surprised when she overheard me and another friend excitedly discussing the implications of the new Desdemona underground trial. She had no idea the game's lore had that kind of depth. And really, how could she? CoX is packed chock-full of exciting mysteries and revelations, but if you miss the setup - which is *incredibly likely* - everything after is going to be a confusing mess. Discovering the truth about the Rikti, or the relationship between the Council, Arachnos, and the 5th Column, are exciting moments - but it's only exciting if you actually are invested in the story behind the Rikti, or if you've ever actually done missions against the Council, Column, and Arachnos and had a chance to explore their background. Otherwise it's just a blur of noise and color.

The story of Paragon City really has the potential to be an exciting, drama-filled tapestry, but so much of it is locked away in tiny, individual text clues in obscure story arcs that may not even be accessible anymore without the use of Ouroboros. What's the number of players who have fought the Hamidon versus the number of players who have any idea at all that he was once Hamidon Pasalima, fanatic biologist, and that there is an interesting story attached to him beyond being a zone-sized blob?

I'm back in Paragon City for the long haul, I think, but what I would really like to see in the future is a rethinking of the mission and arc paradigm combined with a project of going back and revisiting/revamping old mission chains, cutting out the fat, and making them actually do-able in a five level timeframe; then presenting all of that in a way that lets you customize your experience beyond taking missions ad-hoc and hoping you don't outlevel the contact or the zone before you finish up the story.

Back before the game came out - waaaay back when I first saw it on the cover of PC Gamer - I seem to remember whoever was talking about it then (Rick Dakan, maybe?) mentioning that they wanted to have it where, like, you could roll up a dark urban avenger, or a magic dude, or a cosmic hero, and do dark urban avengery things or cosmic things or whatever all the way from level one to forty. And to some degree that's actually possible now! If you, as a player, were really dedicated to having a specific experience for your new magic guy, and were willing to do a lot of planning, you could, for instance, cobble together a "magic campaign" by starting in on the Hellions and Hollows stuff before moving on to the Midnighter Club, doing the Circle of Thorns and Banished Pantheon in the 20s, and then Croatoa followed by the high-level CoT and Mu arcs. Alternatively, you could do a "patriotic hero" campaign, where you spend your time dealing with Arachnos, the 5th Column, the Sky Raiders and the Council - and going to places like Striga Isle and Faultline - before topping off with Malta.

But of course that all relies on a lot of preknowledge and planning. What if there were something like that for *new* players? A roadmap for new characters to let them - in as much as possible - experience a certain side of Paragon City, encounter an enemy group often enough to become invested in its story and therefore invested in seeing that story through to its conclusion. I don't know - it's just a thought. What I do know is that my friend really loves the game, and has gone from F2P to having spent $30+ in the last week alone, but she enjoys it purely for the gameplay and the flexibility of the character creator rather than for its "confusing" story. That seems like a shame to me.

First off, welcome back and glad ya brought a friend with ya

Secondly, there is a lot of content now and a lot to do. Best advice I could give is to turn off the XP if you are a lore hound like I am. Your friend will still get all the drops, influence and if she is in an SG prestige but will be able to see all the content for each level.

The story is all there and it's easy to get distracted from all the directions you can go but turning off XP is the best way to ensure you get to see everything at a certain level.

You can turn off XP in options/general

I have to say, this is a great complaint to have though lol! Again, welcome home!

I still think arcs should exemplar you if you are 'too high'.

Not to mention it being stupid that 'Oh, you're too powerful for this'. Who's to say that a Hero wouldn't pause to help with any situation? Or that a Villain would kick back with a nice bit of easy bullying, extortion and general head-cracking?

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I feel that a lot of the low-level content needs to be extended another five levels to cover a 10-level range. Back when we got debt at level 5 and levelled up significantly more slowly, it was feasible to run three or four low-level contacts, but these days all of one or two will get you from 1 to 10, depending on how you go about it.

Furthermore, the game needs a much better way of identifying what missions and arcs a contact will offer BEFORE we pick said contact. I'm not sure how that could happen, but I'd really rather not have to go to ParagonWiki to find out which contact has the next step of a multi-part story like the Library of Souls -> Envoy of Shadows one.

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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.

The single biggest way to improve this fast is to have Matthew Habashy (and the redside equivalent) introduce you to one of the old school contacts. Effectively locking all of the original content behind radio missions was a huge mistake.

This is something I've been thinking about too, and it's especially noticeable in the level 20 area. First Ward is great. Faultline is great. There's a couple great villain contacts there. Tips start. There's so much going on right there, there's no way to do it all. Faultline was crawling with players when they updated it, and for good reason. But now it's as empty as ever because the Next Big Thing keeps overwriting it.

A lot of content takes multiple characters to really see. We start learning about Vahzilok, for example, and fight a bunch of his schemes (including the Sewer Trial), discover his full backstory, and finally defeat him once and for all in Posi pt. 2. There's a full story arc that we're supposed to accomplish there. Same thing with Clockwork King and the Synapse TF, with a bit of Penelope Yin thrown in. Clockwork King's story arc again becomes important when you're experiencing Praetoria and some of the cross-dimensional high-level missions, and many players aren't even going to know who he is. I see problems like this fairly often in the brand new lowbie content, as well as the newer high-level stuff. I've been playing for nearly 7 years, and I know a goodly amount of the game's lore. These missions expect that I know that. They're putting the Praetoria/Coming Storm storyline front and center, but that story is built on the foundation they've spent several years building. So to understand what's going on, I'm supposed to know seven years' worth of content, even as a new character. I do feel bad for the new freebie players in this respect. I've got several freebie friends and all they want to do is team and do the new stuff like the Sewer Trial. One friend started Jim Temblor's arc because I encouraged them to, telling them Faultline had a cool storyline. First of all, they didn't know anything about Faultline's destruction and reconstruction. Secondly, they didn't read most of the text and had no idea that there were other contacts that would continue that zone's story arc. This problem is mades worse by the lack of Ouroborus- as a VIP, I have the luxury of running as many characters as I want. Freebies get two, with no potential of going back and doing missed story arcs without teaming with a lower level character and reading their mission texts. It's a real shame that they're going to miss out on so much of this great game.

Part of the problem is that as a rule the devs have put all the new (non-incarnate) content into the 15-30 range because "that's where most of the players are", but it means that there's now a *massive* amount of content 15-30 and still something of a dearth of new content in the 30-50 range (no, retconning Praetoria doesn't count as new content).

I think pushing Praetoria has become a larger problem with the game as a whole. It used to be relegated to level 40-50, but now it feels like it's everwhere.

I think we might get some new 30+ stuff soon-ish

EDIT: And welcome home

The problem is that the developers are beset by a myriad of conflicting requirements: players want to level quickly; players don't want to outlevel contacts; players want new content because the old stuff is boring; players want new zones and interesting locations; players want new and interesting mechanics; players want shorter trials and arcs; players want access to the old stuff.

Every time the developers add something new something old is displaced because you level past it too quickly. Keeping long-time subscribers happy is more important than making it easy for non-paying players to run through the old content.

The devs do have a solution that they've already used to bring to your attention missions that they feel are worthwhile. The Find Content button on the Contacts window will teleport you to the Hollows and Faultline at level 5 and 15 (I assume other contacts will show up at the appropriate level, but I haven't noticed them).

Arcs like those and Croatoa aren't in the "mainstream" of the old contacts, but the arcs are shorter, don't require you to waste as much time running all around the city, have better mechanics than the old stuff and are better written.

All of that just makes those missions more fun to do. Missions like Frostfire in the Hollows are still fun after 7 years, but many of the oldest arcs and task forces are way too long and way too repetitive.

The old arcs and trials consisted of up to a couple dozen missions that can take days to complete, while the new arcs are much more compact and streamlined, and can often be completed in an hour or less. Considering how fast characters level now, long arcs just don't make sense anymore.

So, rather than dump players into content that the devs know is outdated and, frankly, tedious, they choose to send players through arcs that are shorter and more fun.

What I'd rather see is the old arcs be revamped like the newer content, with each contact having only three to five missions that pack in all the interesting and useful information. The update of the Positron trial is a good case in point.

At that point the Find Content button can be used to direct players to those revamped contacts, which I assume will also mean that you can just walk up to those contacts and talk to them at the appropriate level and get the mission (the way you can with the Croatoa arcs).

For now you can always do those arcs in Ouroboros. I'd actually like to see the system changed so that you can walk up to any contact and do their missions, and if your level is too high, you'd get exemped down to the level of the mission once inside. That would also solve the problem of having missions from contacts that you've outleveled. Ouroboros would still be useful for the conceit of doing these missions repeatedly.

I doubt we'll ever get something like this, honestly. Sure, it'd be great to be able to follow the "magic track" or to follow the "Circle of Thorns track" and learn everything there is to know in those areas. It'd be really, really cool. But the Devs have a hard enough time updating old arcs with the new retcon of what REALLY happened with each new issue. To really do this well, they'd need to do "Issue 25: The Content Update!" which was just updates of the old stuff, better mission story progressions, and maybe revamped contact skins. Sad truth is without something New and Shiny or For Sale Now in the Paragon Market, we probably won't see these sorts of big sweeping content updates.

I agree there is too much content between level 20 - 29. I already had to turn off XP twice on every toon to finish Faultline, Mercedes Sheldon's mission arcs, Striga Isle, the new Talos Island mission arcs, and Croatoa. Then they added First Ward. Which I've skipped completely on new toons, 'cause, as I said, I already have to turn XP off twice between levels 20 - 29, and doing Striga Isle and Croatoa stuff unlocks task forces.