Please give us back our Freedom(tm) at lower levels

I used to really enjoy starting a new hero. Every time I entered Atlas Park with a fresh character and heard that signature theme, I always felt a bit of a thrill, recapturing a sliver of that feeling I had when I first entered Paragon City more than 6 years ago. I liked playing the low levels, slowly jogging around the zone, getting the feel of the new character and its style of play, slowing building an idea of his or her personality from the character's interactions with the early contacts and performance on those early missions. Also, depending on the character's origin, I could be fighting anything from Clockwork to the dreaded Vahzilok.

This week I started my first new character since Freedom went live. (I had two others I wanted to get to 50 first.) I had been looking forward to the new opening in GC, and it was nice enough, though I was surprised how short it was. "Ok," I thought, "they don't want people to get bored having to play the same long arc for every character they create, so they wanted us to get into Atlas and start having some freedom of choice." How wrong I was.

Now, I understand that some people hate the early levels and want to rush through them. That's fine, and the game now has the new sewer trial for them. But for those of us who want to play at a "normal" pace for the early levels, we have only the Habashy arcs (which are ok, with a single choice in deciding which contact will precede Thiery) and then the excruciating Twinshot arc, with the most insufferable characters ever written into any MMO.

Some other MMOs have unique arcs based on class or race to give you a special intro into the world. A new MMO about to come out continues these class-specific arcs throughout the game. I admit that the origin-specific arcs in CoH could have been better, but at least it gave us some variety when starting out. One of the main complaints about CoV at first was the single path you had to follow in early levels. Luckily, the devs saw the light and at least offered us one more option. Now on blueside all the origin arcs have been taken away. I realise we can choose a fast-track TF, random radio missions, or street sweeping, so there is *some* choice, but if you want actual written story arc content, there's only one path.

I remember when GR came out and I was thrilled to have some interesting options with improved writing for the early levels. I kept thinking that sort of design improvement would be applied to Primal characters' starting experiences, but instead we seem to be going backwards, losing what choice we did have.

Can't we at least have the old origin arcs back?

It's bad enough we have to go down this single path, but the Twinshot arc is so bad that I feel I have to comment on it further. I've tried playing through it using the suggestion someone else made on the forums that the horrible characters are meant as irony, illustrating some of the most egregious types of annoying player characters (the Thinks-She's-Cool character, the technobabble character, the inscrutable alien, the one who won't shut up, and the Obviously-from-Another-MMO character). Even trying to see it this way, I still have trouble getting through this arc without wanting to strangle them all. I did create a macro for the facepalm emote to use after almost every interaction; that helps a bit when the dialogue gets truly painful. But, if this irony is indeed the excuse for these characters, wouldn't that be lost on a new player?

There are also the numerous grammatical/spelling errors, but worse than all this is the feeling that comes from playing this arc. One of the big advantages of early CoH play has always been the fact that your characters feel powerful from the start -- no spider or frog hunts here. But this arc consistently talks down to you, with characters that are no better than you constantly reminding you that you're a noob, and telling you you can't handle these mobs when you do most of the fighting anyway. The main goal in the arc seems to be to gain the approval of these repellent characters in order to join their group, which is the last thing I actually want! And of course at the end of the first arc [slight spoiler] you find you have been played by an even stronger hero, and your character's only reaction seems to be, "Wow, thanks so much for being interested in me enough to send me on a wild goose chase." I come out of that arc feeling both annoyed and belittled. Not heroic in the slightest. Is this really how we want new players to feel when they start this game?

And now my character is level 9 with the only option for continuing story content being Wincott, followed by a threat of the return of Twinshot at lvl 10. Really? If I don't want to essentially skip the lower levels via the sewers or play random missions, the Hollows is my only option? That's all I get at lvl 9?

Where's the freedom in that?

They havn't removed any freedom.
If you wanna do the old contacts you can.

All of Kings Row's arcs are still intact. That covers 5-10 without touching Twinshot's crap. From there it's onward to Skyway or Steel as usual if you don't want to head to the Hollows.

That does leave 1-5 to a single contact, as you mentioned, but 1 to 5 is less than an hour of playtime of a character's 'life'. Even just street sweeping. Given that, I can see why they decided to fill that hour up with a single new tech arc instead of going through the effort of remapping old origin mission doors and contacts to the new Atlas Park. If the devs found themselves with extra time I certainly wouldn't mind seeing the Atlas origin missions make a return for variety's sake (though I've never done them. Ever. I preferred taking 20 minutes in Galaxy sweeping to 5 and then hitting Kings Row.)

It's good to know I'm not the only one who hates the entire Twinshot arc, not to mention the entire team she assembled. (I mean, most of the forum's vitriol seems to be reserved for Flambimbeaux....)

I'd like to see origin arcs return too, revamped obviously since the original arcs are complete garbage, but at least something to give the low-level game some variety.

Like the OP, I am annoyed by the new opening arcs that I skip them entirely. Now, it's:
street sweep to 5 (less than an hour);
go to KR and do the 3 Radio Mish and a Safeguard (now almost level 7);
and then either do (a) contact mishes or (b) continue doing Radio/Safeguiard mishes until 10.
After that, contacts in Steel or Skyway open up quite frequently.

I did the new stuff a few times (including Twinshot @ 10 and 15) and now cannot stand the thought of ever doing those arcs again. They are not well written and fail miserably in their objective of being an all inclusive introduction to the game. Most of what new players learn, they will learn from other players and not those boring arcs.

It can help to find some low level Architect missions you like, or make your own.

I think the main reason for 'standardizing' (I guess) the early levels was so that players could get together at low-levels and do the same missions without having to see who had what contact, etc, so that everyone could get the mission arc completion bonus.

Edit to say that my opinion on this isn't particularly valid because I have an intense dislike for the game pre-22. I simply don't feel 'super' enough until I have more powers, more slots, and the enhancements to make them... well, enhanced. This isn't so much a statement on the low level content as much as it is the experience.

You can also try the Hollows arcs in that level range.

It's the circle of development hell.

Group X complains that the existing story arcs are boring and not worth playing, that the only thing to do from 1-10 is run the sewers over and over and over again.

The developers hear this and make a completely new lowbie experience, getting rid of the old missions because hey, players said they were boring and they needed to move things 'forward' in lore anyway.

Group Y, who had heretofore been invisible because they were happy with the status quo and weren't paying much attention to complaints, gets upset that the story arcs they liked are gone and begin to complain.

Developers crack open their fourth bottle of Jack that morning.