Terenos

One of Ashley McKnight's greetings has a "PlayerName" set wrong.

Both of the doors for the mayhem missions in Port Oakes are way out on the edges of the zone map, often requiring you to go through some of the more dangerous areas of those zones to get through. The second one is minor, but the first one (especially at sub level-10 where players may not have travel powers beyond those on the P2W vendor) feels excruciating - especially because you then have to make the trip back to whoever your broker is. This would be a good QoL change, as there doesn't seem to be anything particularly special about those doors (except the submarine, which has the villain choose-your-own Mayhem contact next to it, which I expect he's there more because that's near where one of the doors is than because he needs to be out there) beyond being "a ship" and "a submarine."

To be honest, the AT descriptors need a more complete editing pass to bring them all in line with a single voice. Some of them talk about the AT mostly in the third person, some of them talk about them in the second person, and some switch back and forth indiscriminately. My edits were mostly just to address a low-hanging fruit problem.

There are a couple of places in the archetype descriptions where it still genders the AT. Here are the ones I was able to catch, along with fixes: Blaster The Blaster is an offensive juggernaut. This hero can deal a ton of damage from a distance. But the Blaster must be careful, because he's they're somewhat fragile compared to other heroes. The Blaster can't stand toe to toe with most opponents at melee for long. His A Blaster's best defense is a great offense! Defender The Defender tends to help his their allies, and attack his (no pronoun needed here) foes, from a distance. The Defender excels at powers that assist friends, but can also hinder his their enemies. The Defender is able to attack at quite a range, however, the Defender is not built for hand to hand. He They might be able to dodge a few attacks, but the Defender won't last for long. Dominator As a Dominator, you control a devastating combination of control and assault powers. A Dominator can freeze foes in place, render them unconscious, or cause them to flee in terror. Dominators can also smite their foes with a selection of single-target melee and ranged attacks, with devastating effectiveness. Additionally, each time a Dominator attacks, he comes they come closer to unleashing his their true sadistic power of Domination. With so much emphasis on diverse offensive powers, Dominators lack in defenses and work best with teammates who can provide protection.

I think this is the difference in our opinions that probably won't be reconciled. I don't see making the early game slightly easier as providing a crutch. I see it as making sure we're not breaking people's legs right out the gate. I've enjoyed discussing this with you, but I think we're just going in circles now.

Okay, this is disputing the frame of my argument, not the point of it: not everyone has a "me" they can feel comfortable with reaching out to to ask questions. Let's take another analogy to try to get to the heart of the matter. There is a room that is really cool, but to get into the room, you have to walk through a door. The top of the door frame is a little too short and the first time people come in to the room they will often hit their head on it on the way in. It's not a serious hit, no one is injured, but wow is it annoying to clip your head when you enter the room for the first time. Now, if I'm there at the entrance or if they call me, I can warn them about how they might hit their head on the door if they don't duck a little bit. There's also a whole bunch of reviews online advising that, if you want to enter the really cool room, you should duck when you get to the door. But the really cool room isn't private, so there's people who end up going in without seeing any of those warnings or who don't have a friend who can warn them that the door is like that. And then they hit their head on that door frame - not because they don't understand how doors work, or because there's something wrong with them. It's just because this particular door is a little too short and a little too unlike other doors they've seen recently, and it's a little annoying, but that's okay because the room is really cool. Except this is just one door that leads into the room. There are a bunch of other doors with varying height problems that aren't quite like other doors they've seen. And they have to pass through all of them to get fully into the really cool room. Some people will get frustrated and look up the reviews online, and see where they have to duck and make it to the really cool room a little flustered but wiser. Some people will soldier on, hit all the doors, and eventually get to the cool room and ask others, "hey, did you hit those doors on the way in, too?" and get the answers they need. Other people will hit some section of those doors and decide the really cool room can't be worth all this hassle and leave without ever getting to see what makes the really cool room really cool. When we hear enough people complain about hitting their head on one of the doors to the really cool room, our response shouldn't be, "well why didn't you look this information up." It should be "why aren't we making the door easier to get through?" Good news! This is one of the changes being made with the next issue (which I'm very happy about). I think it's a big step in the right direction, but I honestly feel like some of the options we've discussed here would also go a long way to helping out new players just beyond this change without significantly impacting the game for vets.

We don't need to teach them how the enhancement system works, the game is surprisingly good at that through multiple tutorials. The assumption is not that new players are incapable of learning how to slot little orbs, it's that the cost of the system is too high for new players to utilize without having to look up outside guides on making infamy or efficient slotting techniques or just feeling like they're doing something wrong. We even added this neat little button that would automatically upgrade all your slotted enhancements for you instead of making them go to a vendor each time (it's just too bad that without outside knowledge or inf it's generally too expensive to use)! For players approaching the game with fresh eyes, it can be a frustration point that builds on top of the already frustrating task of dealing with 20-year old game and UI design - it doesn't need to be that way and any solution that makes getting and using enhancements more smooth can go a long way to getting those players to the point where they're comfortable enough to ask questions in chat or deep dive in the forums for build advice (and then run across other information - like making inf and the most efficient way to do enhancements, etc.). I'm passionate about this less because I'm passionate about enhancements as a system, and more because I see it as one system of many that can make it a hard sell to get otherwise awesome people to stick around and enjoy CoH. I'm also not really talking hypothetically here about player bounce when faced with so many old or revamped systems - when Homecoming announced the deal with NCSoft, I got a lot of friends asking me for advice about how to do this or how to do that or how to deal with some form of outdated UI decision. I ended up linking them to a lot of great threads here and writing up my own little guide that I could send them via Discord on stuff to do at the start to improve play experience. Many of them ended up shelving the game, though, because there was too much arcane knowledge required to make the early levels enjoyable - finding and keeping up on "gear" (their words, not mine) was just one of many bounce points.

I posted this exact suggestion two weeks ago, and got the exact same pan of arguments that we've been having in this thread. Somewhere there's something about helping new players with a minor change to the enhancement system that really sets people off. I feel like there's a feeling around here that all new players should have to suffer through the start of the game with a frustrating system just because we vets did. Suggestions to fix the system have been put in this thread multiple times: Lower the cost of early (1-20) DO enhancements; make enhancement drops more universal. But the rebuttals keep coming back to how easy it is to make inf, or that making these changes somehow destroys a low level economy that doesn't exist in any meaningful way. Selling enhancements to a vendor are not a major enough source of inf to afford enhancements until you start hitting higher levels (30+) where leveling slows down and enhancements start lasting longer and longer in comparison to the amount of inf you're taking in from a lot of sources. No one in this thread is disputing that it's possible to make inf and afford enhancements at any level if you know all the tricks. Those of us who are advocating for changes to the system are disputing that you should be required to learn those tricks to afford early enhancements just because that's the way it's always been. Research and min-maxing and learning optimal paths for alts should be something a player gets interested in once they're invested in the game and have joined the community, not as some sort of hurdle or litmus test requirement to do so.

I think we're coming at this from different perspectives. Yes, what you're describing is the most efficient way for a new character to do enhancements and manage infamy. But none of this is knowledge that new players come into the game with. I say this as someone who knows the little tricks to gaining infamy at early levels, who knows what the best to things are to buy with merits, and the easiest ways to kit out a character - looking at a screen like this just feels terrible (19 blaster), so many empty slots! And with just the infamy I've earned from doing missions and arresting baddies, it's not enough to fill those slots up. It feels like I'm wasting potential here. Now, do I need enhancements in these? I and you, as veteran players, know the answer is no - this character will be able to do missions just fine, and if I miss here and there it's not the end of the world. But if I'm a new player and I've been told that enhancements are a thing I should use by the tutorials, it's incredibly frustrating to realize that between drops and trying to buy them, and then dealing with the fact that I'm leveling past some of them that I can't keep up. (Yes, I'm aware I don't actually need to upgrade the stuff in the screenshot to 22, but it's hard to kit out a build with low enough level DOs at 19, and this screenshot was more to demonstrate the cost of upgrading) The requests to improve availability of low level DOs through price is not an efficiency thing. As vets, we know it's not the most efficient use of resources and no one here is arguing that the way to do enhancements you're describing is not objectively correct (it totally is). But the game experience of people who start and are willing to read the forums, or willing to ask questions in the in-game chat (because the community is always very helpful when this question comes up in-game) are going to be very different to people who download the game, maybe play with a friend just as new as them, and then see they can't fill all those slots and start seeing their accuracy go down as they level up and their stamina running out mid-fight faster and faster as they get more abilities and then never think to even ask the question of is there a more efficient way to do this. Enhancements requiring the level of institutional knowledge you're describing is not something that new players should be expected to deal with during the early levels of the game. They shouldn't have to know the most efficient way to spend merits, how and what to post on the AH to get a good inf/merit threshold, and what the break points are for where IOs overtake SOs. I get that we all learned this eventually, and that there are resources outside the game that are really helpful to new players. But they're outside the game. and the advice we give on this as vets is not something that's apparent during the normal course of play. Obtaining and maintaining enhancements as they currently are, in the early (sub-22) levels of the game, is a frustrating experience without help that has to come from outside the game - they shouldn't have to be.

I don't disagree with you. Those five enhancements are great, and new players should absolutely be directed to them and using them. I just also think that early on players should be able to interact with more than just those five enhancements without as much friction (looking up a guide outside the game to learn about using merits to make inf on the market, or about relative levels of IOs to purchased enhancements). I know it's unpopular to bring it up, and I'm completely in favor of having gotten rid of them, but TOs were a good opportunity for new players (and I mean new players, not new characters) to interact with the enhancement system. Sometimes things need to exist that aren't the most efficient to make adoption easier in a game.

Sorry, I should be more clear. I'm not saying they literally don't know that Red Side exists. "Realizing Red Side exists" is a rhetorical device here. I'm saying that there's way more teaming opportunities being advertised there, so the default choice (or awareness) feels like it should be to always remain a hero because it's easier to see rewards and teams there. Getting people to step foot on Red Side for the first time is often the hardest part - once they're there, they may take the time to do a story arc, and then maybe their next alt is a Villain to experience some of the stories there. Then, if people are also running the SFs there, that also means there's teams there to break up soloing - as it stands, SFs just don't get organized nearly enough to create those opportunities.

That's a band-aid at best. It's a good band-aid, and I think they really are great enhancements that carry very well into the low 30's, but it doesn't address that there's an entire system that players aren't expected to interact with until (according to all our common advice) level 22, but is introduced at level 1 and then we assign useless slots every odd level starting at 3. If we don't need enhancements until 22, then the solution to the problem is even simpler: get rid of enhancement slots, force a respec at 22, and then introduce enhancement slots and enhancements then trigger the University IO quest. (Yes, this is a hyperbolic argument, but I'm hoping it gets my point across). We've had a bit of this back-and-forth previously and I expect we have a fundamentally different approach to the early game and how we feel players should experience the game. The advice of "wait until 22" makes me think that a lot of people feel like 1-22 is a part of the game to be endured rather than one to be experienced and to learn the game (including slotting and using enhancements) without having to look up a guide or feel they have to ask in chat for what is presented at level 1 as a key part of the system. My defense here isn't that there shouldn't be a more efficient way to do things, and I'm not advocating that the advice presented is bad, but what I am saying is that the system as it exists is not new-player friendly.

I mean, that's one obstacle taken care of: getting the to realize there is a red side, they can go there, and that there's fun/teams to be had there. The goal of a change like that is not to get people to abandon Blue Side entirely (which I think is no one's goal), but to make it appealing to team up on Red Side. The side benefit is that suddenly there's teams playing some sort of content Red Side, which means those who are there to play villains and enjoy the total experience have people they can join up with and do more content.

The problem is that enhancements are a system that the game tells players they should be interacting with from the start. I don't think lowering the cost of SO's is necessary, but certainly lowering the cost of DOs within the first 20-25 levels should be considered. Not all players are enfranchised players, or research-focused players, and it takes time for a lot of people to want to do deep dives into guides for a game they may have picked up for a little fun. I don't want to minimize the advice here - it's useful for a new player to learn so they can maximize their experience in the long-term and for the many alts they're likely to make, but brand new players should not be expected to know that the market is the main way to make inf to afford even DOs that substantively improve the experience of the game (not missing as much, not having to wait as long for powers to recharge, etc.). If the advice we're providing here is not in-game, then it may as well not exist for some people, especially those approaching the game for the first time. I, for one, would rather the early enhancement system just be good enough to help players get to the point where the question we get is from level 20-25's asking "So how do I afford these SO's?" and then launching into an explanation of how IOs are cool or how to convert Merits into an appreciable amount of inf. Expecting a player to launch into a research dive is a great way to see them bounce off the game entirely.

This is definitely the common wisdom (I've given it out in help channels on more than one occaision), and makes sense if you're leveling predominately through teaming (where your levels are usually moving up way faster and more safely, and 22 is basically a stone throw away from 1). But, even here, having the dropped enhancements be immediately useful would mean that, as you level up through that Posi 1 or whatever you're doing, you're not suddenly finding your attacks missing way more often, your recharge speeds going down, and your end use/management cratering quite as much just because there's no real time to stop and shop (and not enough incentive to do it because you could possibly be out-leveling the enhancements during the content). I don't think this is an issue for veteran players (lord knows I have enough inf and knowledge across my characters to fund the leveling process several times over, even self-funding via the market on a given alt isn't even approaching difficult for me), but for players without that knowledgebase it feels counterintuitive. It's an odd thing that we've come to accept - it would be like in any other game telling people, "Don't worry about equipping anything until you're at least halfway through the game."

Definitely, I also recall this, but these days it's far less likely that (outside of pre-made leveling groups) people will be trading enhancements with each other. Even then, I can't actually think of a time I traded a stranger for enhancements back then. I can understand the price of SOs (they represent such a significant power jump and can act as an inf sink once it stops being quite as tight in the late game). Largely, though, this is more of a suggestion to create less friction in the early leveling process that probably doesn't need to be there anymore (and it's arguable if that friction ever needed to be there, but that's a 20 year old game design decision).

This is largely an early game problem, but enhancement drops should always be usable by the character who receives them - similar to how drops from AVs work. Especially at low levels, enhancements are difficult/expensive to get, especially without TOs existing anymore. As the baked-in accuracy bonuses drop, it becomes more and more frustrating to watch attacks miss or damage begin to fall off as you level past the few enhancements that you have available (that were lucky enough to drop for your specific origin). Purchasing enhancements should exist to fill holes that drops fail to fill, rather than being the main way to enhance your powers in early levels, with drops being essentially saleable items that you can't use most of. Prices, especially for low level characters, for DOs are too high to expect to meaningfully slot your powers unless you are gaming the market (which is not an intuitive play experience) or receive a windfall of inf from another player. The flow of inf from a combination of drops and enemy defeats is not enough to maintain enhancements while leveling (this is assuming a player is buying DOs and not trying to slot out SOs early). An alternate solution to all drops being usable, is to lower the price of DOs through almost all level ranges. I'm not sure on the current math across all levels, but using my level 12 character as an example, completing a newspaper mission Red Side on Torchbearer provides approximately 2% of the price of a level 15 accuracy DO (the lowest level available on the quartermaster currently). Completing a mission provides 3% a total level (and the disparity between minion exp vs. minion inf is even more stark, driving you to level much faster than the income you can expect to spend on enhancements).

An old report, but bumping because it's one that still exists. In Dr. Grave's Mission "Win the Killing Game." Upon defeating the last hero, it looks like a debug script happens that is probably supposed to be some sort of line of dialogue to help you find Grave's via the text box pops up. As the above poster said, the words make no sense in context of the mission itself.

Reading through this, I'm starting to realize I must be some sort of rare unicorn: I love Red Side, and play it almost exclusively. I started playing when CoV came out back in the day (after all, how many sandbox games at the time gave you the option to play as a villain?), so I never had the experience of starting out Blue Side - my first impressions of the game were breaking out of jail and coming off the boat in Mercy. From there, it's fighting snakes, trying to figure out what this whole "Destined One" subplot was and adapting my character's simple backstory around elements from the quests, all the way up to the Patron missions and beyond. The first time I went to Blue Side (I believe, and I could be wrong about this because it was awhile ago, that there was a point where you couldn't actually play CoH if you only owned CoV and vice-versa) I found it confusing. And boring. There was so much filler content, so many delivery missions, and way, way too many contacts with no real path through an over-aching story. Everything about Blue felt disjointed, and the writing for a lot of the arcs you ended up doing was awful. I remember thinking, "My god, why would anyone want to play this side?" I've since taken characters all the way through Blue, but beyond a few key contacts that were written/introduced much later in the game's life cycle, I couldn't tell you what I was doing or how those stories shaped the way I conceptualized my character. So, to this day, if I plan on playing/leveling a character, I tend to start Red Side, and then only switch to Rogue/Vigilante if I want to do TFs. So why do I think people prefer blue to red? I think a lot of this has to do with familiarity. I know how Red Side is put together basically by heart, so I'm extremely disoriented when I play Blue Side. I quite literally have to go to a wiki to navigate to certain places Blue side. I know almost all of the contacts and their stories Red Side (and there are a few who I will never visit again, Westin Phipps being the ones who come to mind most readily - I had to take a shower after finishing his arc all those years ago, and it obviously still sticks with me), so I know which ones will fit my character concepts and which ones won't as I RP in my head (as well as those I just want to re-visit and re-read). I also really enjoy (in a broad, general sense) the design of almost all the original SFs - good mission diversity, and very few of the missions ever feel like filler (I'm looking at you Citadel TF, with your pointless, endless Council Base jumps). I imagine familiarity like this is one reason a lot of people prefer Blue Side over Red; it's like a warm blanket, and there's very little you can do to make people want to try a different blanket when they already have one that's their favorite. How could you encourage people to play or try Red Side? I think the best suggestion I've seen in this thread is to get rid of the restrictions for travel and grouping. One of the hardest things about forming groups for SFs (to my memory, it's been a bit since I've wanted to go to the trouble) is getting people over to the right "side" for the group to even work. Assuming the player is even willing to do it, having them have to go to Null, change to a compatible alignment, and then get to a zone where you can even invite them (and hope they don't accidentally go back to a Blue Zone) is so many hoops. As a result, a lot of people probably never even set foot in the isles as a character with actual levels, so the experience of Red Side is always going to be basically 1-15. The other really great suggestion I've seen is to add a lower level SF, similar to the Positron TF. Wretch doesn't have an SF, but neither do most of the Patrons - Scirocco could be a better early option, since he makes an early appearance during the Hearts of Darkness tutorial questline, so he obviously has some canon interest in interacting with new Villains (this would also help to establish more contact with the "big names" of Arachnos earlier to better reinforce their presence in the early levels - as it stands, your first major interaction with the higher ups isn't until level 20 and Silver Mantis). tldr; I think lowering the threshold for interacting with the Rogue Isles and encouraging earlier level teaming on content that's compelling to the Destined Ones story would go a long way to improving Red Side representation. Moving a bit from the more helpful general suggestions - from an RP and story standpoint (and I think this is probably where people will disagree with me), I think there's a block for people who started on the Hero Side in that the story (insofar as their is one for Heroes) and most arcs never really force you to examine your character's place in the world-building or your character's motivations - you are a hero, you do good. If you want a satisfying RP experience Red Side, you have to meet the established story half-way, or ignore it completely. Being a Villain in the Rogue Isles is less of a sandbox than being a Hero in Paragon City - the story for the Villain game is built more like a traditional MMO, in that it makes certain assumptions for and about your character that the Hero side of the game does not.

You can also think about the emotional state of the psychic. Are they a stable person or have their powers made them go a little (or a lot) crazy - this can inform face choices and color palettes. I also like adding small details to characters with more subtle powers or "street clothes" costumes like tech pieces on the head (maybe it shields them from obtrusive thoughts), separate glove styles (maybe that's where their secondary power comes from), chest details, and back ornaments. Sometimes it's the little details that can make a character stand out for you if you're having trouble.

There are definitely enough stories Redside to do several different playthroughs. One difficulty in terms of accepting the story arcs Villains have access to versus heroes is that, within fiction, there are very few popular stories of Villains progressing in power or influence. For heroes, it's a common trope, and so the hero storylines that people play through don't really have to make up a reason why you're helping them - that's just what heroes do. Since villains tend to appear in opposition to heroes, they only enter the story when they are a credible threat to the hero (or enter immediately as a threat that needs to be stopped). If they do do work for someone else, they're acting in a weaker/subordinate role and rarely emerge from the conflict unscathed. It's also part of the reason why many of the villain arcs have to be small wins or outcomes that seem trivial when you want to initially imagine your character as a world-endangering threat. Back to the point of the thread, Redside story arcs mostly falls into the category of gathering power/allies for you villain that align with whatever goal or theme you've made up for your villain. You will never, in the acknowledged fiction of the game, achieve that goal, but that's a limitation of the game in general (the same is true if you have a hero that has a goal that's outside the scope of the game's storytelling). Looking mostly at the early game, as others have noted, the two distinct paths you can take are: working with Arachnos or working around Arachnos. This makes sense within the game's story, you're a small fish in a big pond of sharks, and the only thing saving you is that for some reason you're a small fish that's been declared useful by the biggest shark and you've got a useful skillset to everyone who cares to notice you. It's not until towards the end-game where RP and story choices allow your character to feel like they have agency. Again, this is also an issue with the hero-side story arcs, it's just less pronounced there since it's generally accepted that heroes help people in trouble, not to further their own selfish goals. If you want to set the tone for your character, here's how I generally view (at its most basic) Villain arcs: Working With Arachnos: Mercy: Kalinda, Mongoose Port Oakes: Veluta Lunata Cap au Diable: Seer Marino (technically Mercy, but is in Cap level range), Marshall Brass, Operative Wellman, Bane Spider Ruben Sharkhead: Operative Vargas, Operative Kirkland Working Around Arachnos: Mercy: Matthew Burke, Doctor Creed Beyond: pretty much anyone else. Port Oakes and early Cap have a few contacts you may miss out on simply because it's really easy to out-level that area very quickly. You've also got he New Mercy contacts, as well as the SSAs. There is also one path that opens up when you get past Port Oakes, which is the monstrous contacts. These are ones I make a point to avoid because they're frankly malicious and a little/lot over the line for what I want in a story. The first one kind of straddles that line, but the second one is absolutely on my no-fly list of stories (I played through him once on Live and that's how long I've remembered him). Cap Au Diable: Peter Themari Grandville: Westin Phipps Other than those two, however, I've found that the majority of villain side content is fun and, as long as you go into it with the idea that your villain is a work in progress, doesn't have to fall into the pattern of lackey/sucker/sociopath unless you want to view them through that lens (and "professional lackey" is not the worst idea for a villain ever). Consider it gathering power/allies for your eventual rise to true power.

In the mission "Destroy Main TEST facility" from Calvin Scott had one of the small explosive clickies spawn inside of a pillar on the side wall. Restarted the mission, but it seems like the mission is on a fixed map as it was exactly the same both times. The mission does not seem to be able to be auto-completed via the menu either. Sent a petition in-game for help, but figured I'd post the bug here as well just in case it helps in the future.

I appreciate the feedback (despite the arc being compared to a can of celery soup), although I definitely think this comes from us approaching designing story arcs from very different perspectives. One of the things that actually annoys me about some low level arcs is the stakes feel way too high for something that's meant to be experienced in the level 10-14 range (which is where I imagine this arc would take place in the loose timeline of villain arcs). The threat of a full on Hero at that level feels more interesting than actually directly facing them to me: setting yourself as the thorn in the lion's paw while you're still a weak villain. I can definitely see where the arc comes off as generic. I wasn't super happy with the last mission, but the iteration I ended up on is more interesting than the original one I had in mind (which was mostly thwarted because I couldn't find a good outdoor map to use). The use of Outcasts probably also feel a bit generic, especially if you come from playing largely on the hero side of things where they dominate the level range they appear in. I actually started writing this arc way back before the snap and only now sat down to finish it, with almost all of my play experience being in CoV, where you basically never encounter that enemy group (they get replaced largely by the Mooks enemy group in that level range, which is what made me link the two groups together during planning). When I start designing my next arc, I'll keep in mind that I perhaps need to think bigger on theme. Maybe I'll design the second arc to this one and see if I can make the further adventures of you and Bedrock's crew more explosive.

The Outcasts haven't had much a presence in the Rogue Isles - until now! This is a low-level, villainous storyline in which you've been hired to help the Outcasts establish themselves as leaders in the Superadine trade in the Rogue Isles. Canonically, this story would take place shortly after Frostfire's arrest in the Hollows. This arc is meant to be able to be run solo or in a group by low level characters with minimal enhancements (but probably not completely unenhanced). While the arc is "Villainous" there's no truly, truly heinous acts in it - just good ol' fashioned opportunism. Any feedback is welcome! Enjoy!

I just finished playing this new arc and the storyline was a lot of fun - it was really interesting to revisit this old contact and see the Vahzilok and Freaks in a whole new light. The varied enemy types were a lot of fun, and the twists and surprises (especially the Crey one) were great! I'm going to do my best to give feedback with minimal spoilers to the arc since my only big complaint was a mechanical one (and could possibly be a bug). The flow of the missions themselves were fine - while each one was fairly same-y (beat up EB/AV, steal something), the differences in environment and lore didn't make them boring. My biggest complaint for the arc comes in with the ambushes that happen throughout the arc, especially when fighting the EB/AVs. For some reason the spawns seemed to double up whenever an ambush was called in any of the missions. As a solo 33 Brute (SM/Inv) running on 0/2 (with bosses, EB) (I've run several other missions around this level/notoriety range on this character without issue), it was incredibly tough and these double ambushes caused a few jumps to the hospital in almost all the missions they appeared. At first, I thought I might have accidentally pushed the bosses through two health phases (causing a second ambush to spawn before the first found its way to me), but by the second EB, and paying closer attention to the NPC dialogue as I fought, I realized that there were indeed two ambushes spawning at once. The only time this didn't seem to happen was in the penultimate mission - the number of freaks who spawned during the boss fights seemed normal. Because I didn't want to hit the hospital too hard in the final mission and concentrate more on the story than surviving, I dropped my notoriety to 0/1 (with bosses, EB), This helped (I did die once, but that was to the triple bosses and some unlucky big hits on their part), but on the final escort mission, the double spawns happened again, along with ambushes spawning well before the first ones were finished. In this case, the double spawns made sense, since it's two separate enemy groups attacking, but the spacing between ambushes seems too short. While I didn't have any trouble with them this time (no EB/AV to fight alongside them and the reduction in my difficulty settings), it was still surprising to be half finished with one group, and then the next two sets are spawning in. Overall, the arc was a lot of fun, but the upward shift in challenge level compared to similar arcs at this level range because of the way ambushes were spawning made it incredibly jarring (and made me glad I was playing it on a fairly survivable character I'm familiar with).