Contact Review: Jonathan St. John Smythe, Atlas Park 1-5

[DougGraves]

Jonathan St. John Smythe is the starting contact for Science heroes in Atlas Park, in City Hall.  He is part of SERAPH.

Rating: C

 

I got six missions from him.  Was able to call contact after getting 4th mission.  I ended at level 4.  The missions were fairly close, but running back to the contact was annoying.  In total it took about 30 minutes.

- Overall is a C.  The first 3 missions were lame to okay, worse then radio missions.  The last 3 missions had more story, more internal goals, and were more fun than radio missions.

 

1. Talk to a lady then go to door to defeat all Vahz.  First spawn was 4 +1 mobs. I ran into a lot of spawns of 4 from this contact.  Not sure if this is a Vahz thing or how the missions were set up.  One room mission.

- The mission was very tough due to lots of cadavers.  But also ridiculously short, one room.  So a lot of running for little fighting.  Mission is a D.  Just making the mission larger would help a lot.

2. Read Plaques.  Read the plaque of Atlas.  Took a minute to run there and back.  Some flavor, little time.  Not a problem.

3. Talk to Security Chief then defeat 5 Hellions.  A lot of running for little fighting.  Mission is a D.  Just making it be 10 or more Hellions would help a lot.

4. Investigate Vahz was a defeat all plus a couple of rescues.  Mission was small but not tiny.  Was a satisfying mission due to the difficulty.  Nearly defeated a couple of times by mobs of cadavers.

5. Rescue missing citizens.  Had to rescue 3 hostages.  Mission was small but not tiny.  Was a satisfying mission due to the difficulty.  Nearly defeated a couple of times by mobs of cadavers.

6. Deliver to Henry Wong then defeat all and rescue hostages.  Mission was fairly large tunnels.  Had to search to find hostages.  Was a satisfying mission due to size, exploration, and difficulty.

 

[oxmox]

What a delightfully in depth review of such a forgettable contact. Though if a contact without even a story arc gets a passing grade I feel your scale may be a bit inflated.

[drdread]

He was one of the original starting contacts in Atlas Park. You had different contacts, depending on your origin, and you would be sent against different enemies.

[DougGraves]

17 minutes ago, oxmox said:

What a delightfully in depth review of such a forgettable contact. Though if a contact without even a story arc gets a passing grade I feel your scale may be a bit inflated.

My grading system is for solo worthiness meaning story + interesting events:

A - Story is good and the missions are very interesting in their mechanics - the new KR mission arcs

B - Story is good or the missions are interesting

C - Radio mission quality.  There is a story and the mission has mechanics.  There is nothing wrong or bad about the missions.

D - There is something wrong with the missions.  They have too much running around, too hard to figure out, go back and forth between zones, etc - and nothing redeeming to counter them.

F - The missions are bad.  D but more so.

 

This contact I gave a C to because of the last 3 missions which were B-'s.  The first 3 were D's but short and easy.  So I don't say to skip this contact, but I don't recommend it.

[gameboy1234]

I'd love to see these early missions improved, even maybe made into more the sort of tutorial that Twinshot should have been.

 

Then again everybody just runs DFB instead and bypasses these early contact anyway, so I don't think it could be justified in terms of the labor involved.  Still neat to think about.

 

I think the security chief is/used to be the contact you'd get to continue missions after you'd exhaust your first contact (JSJS in this case).  Not sure if they do that any more.  Out of these groups of missions though his seems like a random insert, something that does nothing to further the story, and imo is the worst one for that reason.  Could be removed entirely, or maybe the security chief could be an infinite mish giver for levels 1-10, just something to do when you run out of missions.

 

Overall, what all of these early missions need is less wall-of-text type missions, and to have a basic explanation made into a short cut scene at the beginning of each mish.  Then teammates would know what is going on with the mission without having to make heroic efforts to read the mission text.  Keep it short and simple, but explain what you are doing here and why.  Fit it into the larger arc of the story being told.  (In this case, the Vahz are kidnapping people and trying to do experiments on them, turning some into zombies.)

 

Slightly more ambitious would be to have everyone on your team standing close by participate in a short cut scene as you talk to the contact, further explaining the set-up for the mission.  You might want to add a dialog to accept the cut scene or reject it.

 

 

[nightroarer]

1 hour ago, gameboy1234 said:

Then again everybody just runs DFB instead and bypasses these early contact anyway, so I don't think it could be justified in terms of the labor involved.  Still neat to think about.

Perhaps "most people" would be a more accurate assessment. My family and I never run DFB; we do the early level missions. Some of our characters run the new contact missions, some do the outbreak tutorial and run the original missions. Some do a blend of old and new contacts. Variety is good. 🙂

[Outrider_01]

17 hours ago, DougGraves said:

The missions were fairly close, but running back to the contact was annoying.  In total it took about 30 minutes.

So...30 minutes of your life wasted running around doing....the easies contacts and mission content.  Yeah, you ran into +1 but there even cons as you level up. 

 

Running to the contact, annoying?  Buddy, its so easy now  you can't complain.  We ran up hill, both ways, with nothing but our basic hero PJs on.  We had nothing.  Beast/Ninja run + sprint is pretty quick, you also got passive swift...we had a speed between walk (near sprint, sort of de-levels you with no powers to practically crawl like a turtle speed) and sprint on.  No passive, no enhanced speed...basic newb starting content at traffic jam speed, for an ancient released game.  What would you expect?

[Riverdusk]

12 hours ago, nightroarer said:

Perhaps "most people" would be a more accurate assessment. My family and I never run DFB; we do the early level missions. Some of our characters run the new contact missions, some do the outbreak tutorial and run the original missions. Some do a blend of old and new contacts. Variety is good. 🙂

Exactly.  I still do the starting contacts for every character I start.  In fact I usually do a few of the the different Atlas Park building starting contacts.  You aren't origin limited and can go and talk to anyone you want.  I tend to always do Azuria's as one of them as she gives mostly easy Hellion stuff.

 

 

13 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

I think the security chief is/used to be the contact you'd get to continue missions after you'd exhaust your first contact (JSJS in this case).  Not sure if they do that any more.  Out of these groups of missions though his seems like a random insert, something that does nothing to further the story, and imo is the worst one for that reason.  Could be removed entirely, or maybe the security chief could be an infinite mish giver for levels 1-10, just something to do when you run out of missions.

 

 

Security Chief missions in my experience show up usually way before you run out of other missions from a contact.  A lot of them seem to be level based.  You get to the minimum level of specific zones and you'll then get them popping up in whatever (of the older original type contacts) you visit.  Perez Park is a classic one, it'll start showing up once you hit level 7 for the old go "kill 10 CoT in Perez Park", which can be a real pain at that level.  A lot of times you'll get stuck having to do them in order to get to other missions you might want from a contact.  I'd love to see them just go away.

 

17 hours ago, DougGraves said:

 

3. Talk to Security Chief then defeat 5 Hellions.  A lot of running for little fighting.  Mission is a D.  Just making it be 10 or more Hellions would help a lot.

 

Adding MORE to a generic Security Chief kill mission is the last thing I'd like to see.  That'd make it (and the rest of them) even worse.

 

Cool review though. 😀

 

Edited January 14, 2020 by Riverdusk

[Riverdusk]

36 minutes ago, Outrider_01 said:

So...30 minutes of your life wasted running around doing....the easies contacts and mission content.  Yeah, you ran into +1 but there even cons as you level up. 

 

Running to the contact, annoying?  Buddy, its so easy now  you can't complain.  We ran up hill, both ways, with nothing but our basic hero PJs on.  We had nothing.  Beast/Ninja run + sprint is pretty quick, you also got passive swift...we had a speed between walk (near sprint, sort of de-levels you with no powers to practically crawl like a turtle speed) and sprint on.  No passive, no enhanced speed...basic newb starting content at traffic jam speed, for an ancient released game.  What would you expect?

Too true, but it is a little weird though that the starting level 1-5 contacts don't give you their cell phone until you do several missions from them.  Pretty much all of the contacts beyond that (level 5+) that you run into now give you their cell phone after completing just 1 mission for them.  Not sure if that was done on purpose for some reason or just an oversight.

[siolfir]

1 minute ago, Riverdusk said:

Too true, but it is a little weird though that the starting level 1-5 contacts don't give you their cell phone until you do several missions from them.  Pretty much all of the contacts beyond that (level 5+) that you run into now give you their cell phone after completing just 1 mission for them.  Not sure if that was done on purpose for some reason or just an oversight.

I'm guessing it was an oversight since you were supposed to be running the newer low-level content.

[quixoteprog]

Just a guess, but I will go out on a bit of a limb and say that all of the initial origin based contacts fit this same template. There is a reason why so many people breeze by the early contacts content by doing DFB. So much of it is not bad so much as meh. At least that is the case for CoH. It's a bit better for CoV I think, but not by much.

 

Say what you will about DFB but it is a pretty cool mission arc. It is much more fun to me than any of the missions given by starter contacts and the rewards are WAAAY better than anything you get from them. Probably too good. But be that as it may it might be cool if you were rewarded with a SO, or something like that, when you finished all of a beginning contacts missions.

[ChzBoi]

This needs a 'Doug Score'.....Mr. DeMuro