groobark

This is another interesting riddle. Scarlet mentioned travel in the early days, and it is true that, in line with other MMOs in the same era, this unquestionably made the game more "interesting": "remember, if you die on the way to the mission or in the mission itself, you loose everything, have to re-buy and re-equip all your stuff and then do it all again". There is nothing like the feeling of having spent half an hour dodging dark red mobs on the way to the mission, managed to survive the hard fights in the mission with a hair of health left and, scraping the consumables barrel, made it to the objective. But ... it impedes a lot of other things that are fun in an MMO, like the ability to easily team up and face greater challenges together or mowing mobs down in a blind exhilarating rush through missions. In AO, if one or two people accidentally die in a mission, everyone has to wait at least half an hour for them to make it back, and if someone dies on the way, then you can basically forget about it completely. With CoH's approach, for all arcs to require around 60-90 minutes, it is in a very good spot compared with most of the other MMOs. I actually believe that they timed the completion of arcs when they made the content originally, especially on blue side it is almost uncanny how most arcs finish around the same time mark for the same character. Arcs that have a lot of stealthable missions, tend to have quite a bit of running (bring x to Azuria) or hunting rare mobs (Carnies in Peregrine) or one or two kill all missions to pad the completion time of the arc. Super long arcs (0.40 The New Recruits, which was the original Posi) are rare or have subsequently been split in regular content. The only answer I found to this is: play two different games that focus on these two aspects. I may actually give TS a go ...

The character creator in Biomutant is a bit like that, your appearance adjusts based on your traits, making you more cute or more brick like as you adjust strength and such. This would theoretically allow the world to react to you based on how you look. ... Which it doesn't and also I realize that this is the opposite way of what you described. In Mask of the Rose there are hidden modifiers on clothing that influences the way the world reacts to you. Unfortunately, to highlight this particular gimmick, they have made it actual gates to overcome, meaning the game forces the secondary effects of an outfit on you as something you have to manage, rather than leaving the choice of how you want to look to the player. A few gamebooks on the choice of games platform have tried to build in responses to the players looks, but in all cases this has been "Oh look at your $size, my but you have beautiful $eyecolor eyes.", which is kind of worse ... This touches on things I have been thinking about for a couple of years now: How can you introduce something that is meaningful for the player, without sidelining it in the game (i.e. it does have some more than meaningless impact) while also ensuring that it doesn't affect game balance in such a way that it can be used to abuse game mechanics or make it mandatory. Unfortunately I do not have an answer (yet). But thank you for reminding me of this problem.

I never create a new toon, unless I am absolutely happy with looks. My kids constantly create new characters, just because they love the creator so much. It is actually great. But ... There are things that I wish we could change, like there are no ursine heads (I have an idea for a char I cannot make because of that), there is plate armor, but there is no mail, no chain, just ringmail shirts, which are "under" and just the one. I am also with you on the asym thing, but I have played (briefly) on some experimental servers that had literally billions of options for everything (all parts could be selected asym) and 90% of the selections where sh*** because they clipped, had the wrong size, made the char look like a DallE picture ...

The occasional stuck mob in DFB? Yeah, we all have been there. Nothing like me as a 50, hyping up a bunch of new players to run the easiest bestest mostest funnest trial with clickies at the end and then all of us are stuck watching a Lost struggling with the headspace, unable to target him (or her ... wait are there even female lost?)

I feel like there are missed opportunities here. I get it how the story arcs are independent stories that do not have a big impact on the world, and I do not want to advocate for the tired faction XP systems, but this is one of the things even my kids started to notice when they do stories: that the different groups have no real identity, because they are not connected. The early missions around Superadine, Trolls and Skulls kind of give them a framework. Even Family sort of have a home. We all know what 5th Column/Council is supposed to allude to, but again, why are they fighting? It is cool to see different groups hack it out in Crey's Folly or the bullying that they do to each other, but we do not ever really connect with the leaders? Praetoria is different, and the arcs there actually make me feel part of the system there. Blue side, apart from Tsoo, we do not talk/respect/interact with the groups identity much. (yeah there is lady grey, I get it, and its a cool story line, but still you are NDA'ed, so that sort of doesn't count 😛 ) And for some reason I cannot get into Red arcs. As you have said, we are simply legbreakers. The goons for the dirty hands on stuff, and never ever more than that, no matter how many heads we bash in. I feel less respected by my fellow red's (NPCs) than in real life ...

Before I made this post, I thought long and hard about it, the wording, the content, even the fact if I should post it or not. In fact I have been thinking about this post for over a year. The primary reason I did not want to post this is because sooner or later these posts always devolve into flame wars, name calling, and ultimately they will be taken down. No amount of chatGPT like answers will change the fact that annoying things, whilst and because they are very subjective, are quite literally annoying to the person being annoyed by them. And the purpose of forums, to an extent, is to collectively think about these frustrations. (I do not want to say vent the frustration) That escorts are annoying in pretty much every video game that employs them, and for similar reasons, is so commonplace, that even memes about escorts and the annoyances connected with them rarely raise more than a tired yawn. @Scarlet ShockerPlease do not take any of the things that I am writing here as a personal attack on the things you enjoy or like or yourself as a person. Please do not derail the post further than it already is. I can only assume you mean that none of the City of Heroes annoyances impede my real life in any way, and you would be quite correct. This is simply not true within the game and its world and the context in which these things appear. Based on the criteria I listed of the things that annoy me, would you be so kind as to suggest, which of the story arcs or which missions in which arcs in Oro I should skip? If you cannot do that, then I am afraid this does not actually mean what you think it does. I started with Everquest (1999), then quickly moved to Asheron's Call (1999), but the one MMO that I stuck with more than any other (outside of CoH) was Anarchy Online (2001), which I played for almost 5 years before I discovered City of Heroes in 2006 (around two years after it released). Every time I got too frustrated with CoH and AO I would go play something else over the years, like Ryzom (2004), Eve Online (2003), Star Trek (2010) and of course World of Warcraft (2004!) Given that CoH was released quite a bit after the initial rush of the "earliest true MMOs" and the same year as the biggest, which more or less killed all the others (WOW), I kind of fail to see the point you are trying to make. Personally I believe that the systems behind CoH are the most elegant and balanced in all MMO's, past and present, has the best group content, power design and the best mechanics to connect and play with others. Most MMO's were designed to impede progress as much as possible. In fact CoH was the one that removed a lot of the obstacles, which made it much more streamlined and faster to play than any of the others in its era (besides wow) You have not seen difficult travel, unless you have run to a mission door in Avalon or Perpetual Wastelands without a Yalmaha. And when you are sub 100 and are one shot by a sandworm you not only loose hours of progress in terms of XP, but all your items are unequipped, which in turn may take hours to re-equip. A lot of these things they have removed from the game since then, and to some extend this has made the game more boring, just like having instant fast travel to anywhere anytime in CoH has made the world even more redundant, but in the interest of playing together I do not necessarily mind. I had hoped the wording of what annoyed me had made it clear what I meant: I do not mind long travel, difficult missions, things you have to think about (heck I have a lifetime subscription for secret world), I do not even mind, when someone says to me: "hunt 45 Crey in Boomtown" (yes I know that's not a thing, I am trying to make a point) immediately followed by "hunt 50 Malta in Founders Falls". This is very slightly annoying in Oro, but otherwise fine. All other MMO's are like that. Perhaps re-read what I and others have written? Please explain to me, how not finishing a story arc in Flashback allows me to participate in trials or monster hunts. Again, if you cannot do that, then I am afraid this too does not mean what you think it does. I do actually play the missions and story arcs for ... their story.

Yes, and you have no idea for how grateful I am for this. And in no way did I meant my post as a general "this is shit" complaint ... In fact, if you take it slow and just do a mission a day, group for fun stuff like hunting monsters and such, then it is more than fine. But ... i dunno ... I don't want to be like "If only" because it is never that easy, but there are so many missed chances. Building the engine, the network code, creating all those assets, then painstakingly placing it all (heck, I have get massive motivational problems just adding a chair to my supergroup base), creating the animations for the mobs and placing thousands of badges all over all the areas took so much time ... and then ... they don't have anything that happens there. Red side is better zone pacing and Praetoria is generally cool (but has its own annoyances, like outleveling contacts and the weird stealth/follow/ambush mechanics) KR has a handful of contacts, 2-3 story arcs, that are on the more interesting side of writing and on the not-so-much-time-wasted side of mission length, and a cool GM, but take Boomtown: I think that one died when they added mob stacking and max mobs affected for scrapper powers. And has anyone really been south in Faultline for any length of time apart from running to a mission? Just the other day I thought to myself: what if someone took just the the abandoned sewers and made a rogue like around it, a bit PoE delve like.

OMG ... yes ... Before they added flashback, this was one of the reasons I stopped playing. I absolutely HATE, outleveling stuff. Why would Frostfire suddenly be less of a problem, just because you got a new sec clearance?! Imagine the police would be like "Car theft? Nah, that's below our pay grade!" That said, this is now one of the absolute strengths of CoH to virtually all other MMO's and games in general: The ability to play with anyone on any content, no matter the level disparity. It's just a tiny bit sad, that they didn't keep the original contacts in and just exemped you automatically down to the max mission level, while INSIDE the map (similar to how in teams when you select a mission of someone else, the levels are adjusted for the whole team to the level of the person whos mission it is). Flashback is fine for completionists (like myself), but it doesn't have the same feel, you have to run the first mission to get the number again, you can't group missions (from different contacts in the same zone), and while you are on the TF, no you can't just pause the story arc in the middle to go hunt a Lusca, you are permanently down no matter what areas you go through ...

Yesterday night I simply wanted to do run one more mission after a very fun day. The single map turned out to require almost an hour in itself so I was reminded that there are quite few annoyances when playing CoH, which may or may not have contributed to my longer absences from the game ... What is your take on the top annoyances in the game as it is currently? 5. Kill all missions They tend to take quite a bit more time and are generally uninteresting. The occasional wandering mob or one that is hiding in a crevice of the reactor room and this turns from slight annoyance to rage. Sure, sometimes a mission now has a red marker for the last group of mobs. Sometimes! This may very well be one of the reasons why certain ATOs are not played. My tanker runs x/8 Kill All faster than my average Defender or Controller x/1 (especially on lower level). Being able to stealth a lot of missions with no repercussions exasperates this issue IMO. 4. Runners I love elec, but it can turn even an AV into a runner and some of these cannot be slowed or immobilized. I remember this one time when an AV in summer blockbuster heist was completely end drained, jumped into the storage racks, and could only be targeted when jumping (not hovering) in front of the rack. It took almost an hour, and she never came down. Ah, fun times ... Silent runners in x/8 missions are hard to spot and can turn a Kill All mission into a nightmare, especially if there are runners from two groups (because then the red arrows are not showing up). Occasionally the geometry is such, that they get stuck in really really hard to find places. 3. Intangible mobs I never much paid attention to this, but when running several Nemesis missions, finishing a story arc turned from an average of 70 minutes to well over two hours. At the absolute top of my hate list are Carnie Bosses. You know which ones. Recently it has gotten so bad, that every single time there is now a Carnie in a mission, I immediately leave it and go from +4/8/boss to -1/1/no boss. Mind you, different mob mechanics make the game a lot more interesting and fun. Standing next to a mob that every 5 seconds goes intangible for 10 seconds? Not so much. 2. Ambiguous mission descriptions What am I supposed to do with "Investigate raid"? Is it a clickie? A surprising turn of events when there is suddenly Malta in a Crey mission? Sometimes they are just Kill All. In the past I have tried to find out if there is something specific I have to do, which added an extra 10 minutes to the map on top of Kill All. Just the other day I have spent about an hour flying over the farm in the final mission from the book in Night Ward, then spent another half an hour investigating the mission and finally gave up on it, under the assumption that the boss did not spawn or spawned outside the map. 1. Search missions in open area maps I don't think there is a single open area map in the game that is free of problems with geometry, non glowing/humming clickies, visibility of non map objects, hostages under stairs or bridges, etc. Search missions are the reason I have started an excel file listing all missions and story arcs, just to note especially annoying arcs so I never ever ever run these missions again, ever with any other toon. Ever. Needless to say it has been grueling. The mission from yesterday? "Kill raid leader and his crew", usually very fast missions: Stealth to the named mob, take him out, then start clearing around the room until it pops. Not so. Firstly there was no named mob on the massive map with no less than 7(!) elevators. It wasn't clear which one was the "last" room and to top it off the mission popped halfway clearing a side room on one of the middle floors.

I am probably committing a necro crime here ... The last is called body pulling in literally any MMO that has advanced aggro management. In some MMOs it is absolutely vital to know how to correctly pull mob groups apart. When I found CoH in 2006 or something, I brought with me all the advanced pulling stuff and really impressed some people, being able to pull single mobs out of a group with a sniper attack on my defender, while being out of line of sight. A couple of months later, I rerolled a tanker, because nobody cared back then going "slow" or one mob at a time. And that was before powers introduced mob limits or breaking stealth (anyone remembering skating in Perez up and down with a stealthy fire tanker?) or mob spacing (stacking all of Boomtown in a tiny container for the spines scrappers?!). We all know how it ended, groups rotate their incarnate stuff through all but the highest level missions. Anyways. I think pulling is important, but I like CoH for the fun group stacking it allows more than for yet another MMO you have to wail on a single mob for 15 minutes ... Ran market crash the other day, and really enjoyed switching turns with another tank to constantly pull groups into the blaster AOEs. Really love and enjoy jousting ... sorry for the necro 😛

It is still the case, that the final boss may spawn way out of play area.

It turned out great! The small horns are missing and I didn't feel the others fit well. Remember: not all girlfriends from hell have to be horny! Anyways, The color of the wings is a smidge too dark, but I like it better this way. And obviously the emblem is "only" the devil and not the cool pentagram devil from the original. Thanks for all the help!

Brilliant, thanks so much!

I would appreciate a bit of help with a costume ... There is a mission you have to go into a hideout to find some crate to click on after fighting an informant. One of the starter missions in Atlas. If you go into the mission with a female character you turn into a Hellion Girl. Can you actually build that costume in the designer? I played around with the options and for the life of me I cannot find the pieces. Any help hunting down the pieces in that massive costume tree is much appreciated!