Running between zones hero side

[madmalkav]

 

Most of my other chars were villains or praetorians in their teens, but I'm finding a whole lot of the missions I take as a hero in my teens and at least the start of my 20's involve running to different zones. Does it stay like this Hero side into the higher levels too?

 

Villain zones seem great about sending you closeby or sending you off to kill something that is at least in the same zone.  First Ward is a little more difficult than villain zones, but at least all the missions seem to be close to the mission givers and the mission givers seem pretty close to one another. Trying to play the hero content, it's been very hit or miss. Steel Canyon mostly kept me running around Steel Canyon, it felt like, but Skyway keeps sending me off to Steel Canyon and Boomtown for stuff, and in Talos Isle my first mission sent me to Founders Falls. I'm a newbie, so I always have to look up how to get to these other places too if I haven't seen them in the options on the tram. One Skyway mission was the worst, since it told me to go kill Outcasts, and I ran all over the zone looking for Outcasts before checking Paragon Wiki and finding out that I needed to look for them in other zones. It feels like it could've recommended a place in the mission text or put a star on my map. At least my villain quests normal tend to mention subsections of the zone I am in to go look for certain mobs.  As far as good experiences hero side, Faultline and Striga were both pretty self-contained. Are there recommended zones for heroes that don't send you running all over the place maybe? I'm considering burning a respec to pick up a real travel power and prioritizing it on my other chars that want to stick hero side, but it is awfully nice having tough early, and I definitely wouldn't of felt this need on my villains (which all took travel powers from habit playing live and not having ninja run but would've been fine without). 

[Psyonico]

Hollows/Faultline/Striga/Croatoa all are self contained.  The rest are very hit or miss.  There are a few contacts (like Maria Jenkins) whose story arcs don't take you to different zones but that's about it.

[Vulpoid]

Base teleport codes are a game changer if you do not consider it cheating.
/macroimage Veteran_TeleportBase BaseTP "enterbasefrompasscode code here"
Depending on your server there are different public TP bases available.
Feel free to ask in game!

Edited May 12, 2020 by Vulpoid

[Apparition]

This is one of the reasons why I exclusively play red side.

[Doomguide2005]

It's largely a legacy thing born of a time of paid monthly subscriptions, travel powers coming at 14th level, no jet packs or other p2w travel powers and mission design that including burning player in game time to help the profit line.  Hence far worse in the early hero side (the only side at the time) vs later game content.  Then they added CoV, then Praetoria, radio missions and the growing realization by all (Devs included I'm thinking) that the player base reached 50 ... and then started over doing it again and again and again rather than move on to the next mmo.  Bye bye any profit reason to 'burn player time" to keep them paying longer.  And greater reason to design to avoid annoying the player base with filler missions and travel times between missions.

[MTeague]

I personally refuse to use base teleport codes, but I'm pretty good at navigating all other available options, roads between adjacent zones, tram, pocket D, midnighters club, paragon dance party, vanguard, normal base port entrances, etc.  

 

Blueside will deifnitely send you far more often.  Redside will do it some.... a Grandville mission sending you to St Martial, etc.  It happens. But FAR rarer on redside. 

also for this reason, I'm much less likely to delay picking up a travel power when I'm blueside.

[Seigmoraig]

9 minutes ago, MTeague said:

I personally refuse to use base teleport codes, but I'm pretty good at navigating all other available options, roads between adjacent zones, tram, pocket D, midnighters club, paragon dance party, vanguard, normal base port entrances, etc.  

 

Blueside will deifnitely send you far more often.  Redside will do it some.... a Grandville mission sending you to St Martial, etc.  It happens. But FAR rarer on redside. 

also for this reason, I'm much less likely to delay picking up a travel power when I'm blueside.

See I'm the exact opposite, I base teleport every opportunity I have and I don't even buy a travel power for most of my characters. Sprint + Ninja Run + P2W Jetpacks are all I need because of base port

Edited May 12, 2020 by Seigmoraig

[Mister Mass]

Yes, blue side will send you all over the place.  Part of this is the legacy of CoH at launch having 2 zones - plus a hazard zone or 2 - per level band:

 

Level 10-19 Skyway City, Steel Canyon, Boomtown

Level 20-29 Talos, Independence Port, Terra Volta

Level 30-39 Brickstown, Founder's Fall, Crey's Folly, Eden

 

The contacts would send you to contacts & mission doors within the level band across zones indiscriminately, in addition to often sending you to lower level zones as well.  Things got a bit better at level 40+, where the contacts were basically all in Peregrine Island, but that didn't stop most of them from sending you back to lower level zones quite often.

 

But with experience & all of the tools available to get around these days, it isn't as much of a hardship as it was back in the old days, when we had to walk (or superspeed, jump, fly, or teleport) uphill to our missions - both ways!  And know which zones (& parts of zones) the un-unified Green & Yellow Lines serviced!  You kids have it so easy these days.  Oh, and get off my lawn! 😠

Edited May 12, 2020 by Mister Mass

[Redlynne]

8 hours ago, llcawthorne said:

Most of my other chars were villains or praetorians in their teens, but I'm finding a whole lot of the missions I take as a hero in my teens and at least the start of my 20's involve running to different zones. Does it stay like this Hero side into the higher levels too?

Indigo ... a contact in Founders' Falls was especially bad at this.

She was located in south Founders' Falls, south of the gate to Eden, and in those days there was no tram in Founders' Falls ... so you had to tram to Talos and then travel "manually" into Founders' Falls by the tunnel and then continue to travel all the way to Indigo in order to talk to her (oh and she wouldn't give you her cell phone number until you'd done most of her missions, hope you like getting your exercise hero!).  So she was located in one of the most inaccessible long distance locations possible (basically a zone and a half away from the nearest tram) and she would almost NEVER give you a mission that would take place in Founders' Falls.  Most of her missions wound up being in Crey's Folly(!).

 

So the trip (without a supergroup base portal) amounted to:

 

Indigo

Across Founders' Falls (south to north to the tunnel)

Talos (south tunnel to the tram)

Brickstown (tram to the southwestern gate)

Crey's Folly (go to the mission door)

 

So going from Indigo to the mission door was a LOT of traveling and needing to cross large chunks of multiple zones.

 

 

 

So yeah ... Contacts stop sending you to places that aren't "local" on Blueside once you get above Level 9 ... mainly because they can, since there are multiple zones in the same level ranges.  Redside and Goldside don't suffer from this problem because they have fewer zones, the zones are more "segregated" in their content (although Goldside has underground and aboveground zones until Level 20) and so the travel distances to get from Contact to Mission Door(s) is nowhere near as obnoxious.

 

That said, Paragon City certainly FEELS like a much larger "place" than the Rogue Isles or Praetoria do, so there's that.

[MTeague]

Clearly what we need is a giant Bioshock style underwater city and sprawling complex of underwater tunnels connecting Paragon City and the Rogue Isles.

And underwater 3D zones and combat and 

 

*is roundly pummelled into submission by players who have seen underwater zones cause all kinds of rage in other games*

Edited May 12, 2020 by MTeague

[Peacemoon]

It can be a bit annoying but personally I like the excuse to visit different areas of the city. The new zones and remade zones are all ‘inclusive’ which can make them feel a bit separate. It’s nice that the city zones are more interconnected, and just because your contact is in Brickstown, doesn’t mean that’s where the bad guys are developing their evil plot. 
 

Granted sometimes things get a bit silly, like Numina’s TF, but generally I quite like it...

[Mister Mass]

2 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Indigo ... a contact in Founders' Falls was especially bad at this.

 

You mention Indigo & don't mention the Indigo-Crimson milk run?  Basically when doing a story arc or mission for one or the other, you get sent to talk to the other one face-to-face, with Indigo in FF & Crimson in Peregrine Island (at least close to the ferry.)  Have these 2 superspies never heard of a cellphone with encrypted comms?  Aren't they concerned about the possibility that Malta or other agencies are using high-powered listening devices to eavesdrop on their mission briefings to you that take place out in the open, instead of in a SCIF?  When they do this, I feel like pulling a Maxwell Smart & insisting on a Cone of Silence. 🤫

[cranebump]

I’m sure this originally developed as a way to get players to tour the zones. With the whole cosmic TP, it really isn’t a thing. Sometimes it’s good to have a short break, I would think.

[Gulbasaur]

8 hours ago, cranebump said:

I’m sure this originally developed as a way to get players to tour the zones.

They were clearly really proud with the implementation of travel powers - remember frantic dash across Steel Canyon and Skyway City to hop monorail lines? The devs were proud of the world they made and how you move around it and it shows.

 

Padding for length was also a real thing. City of Heroes was of an era where the grind was real and convenience was of tertiary importance in MMOs. WoW, which started in a similar era, had a flight path that could take around fifteen minutes of real time on what was a glorified tour of "look what we made!". 

 

I actually sort of miss it, but I admit it's so much more convenient being able to just teleport across zones. 

[Techwright]

10 hours ago, cranebump said:

I’m sure this originally developed as a way to get players to tour the zones. 

Maybe I'm just jaded, but I'd always seen the excessive back-and-forth as a way to pad gameplay, and keep the paying players from burning up content too fast.

 

Regardless, without the cosmic/base teleporters nor the team transports in the original game, I found it kind of fun to memorize all the shortcuts, including things like Pocket D, sewers, and the auction house teleporters saved up from day jobs, to plot the best route from point A to point B.  It became kind of a mini-game for teammates to see who could get to the next destination most efficiently.  Of course, those were also the days of the taxi supergroups, so invariably someone crossing a zone would hollar for one.

 

[cranebump]

48 minutes ago, Techwright said:

Maybe I'm just jaded, but I'd always seen the excessive back-and-forth as a way to pad gameplay, and keep the paying players from burning up content too fast.

 

Regardless, without the cosmic/base teleporters nor the team transports in the original game, I found it kind of fun to memorize all the shortcuts, including things like Pocket D, sewers, and the auction house teleporters saved up from day jobs, to plot the best route from point A to point B.  It became kind of a mini-game for teammates to see who could get to the next destination most efficiently.  Of course, those were also the days of the taxi supergroups, so invariably someone crossing a zone would hollar for one.

 

Man, that is dead on. I forgot about that. I guess this explains why I like to log out at WW for the teleporter. And I do remember the taxi bots. 

[MTeague]

6 hours ago, Gulbasaur said:

.....

WoW, which started in a similar era, had a flight path that could take around fifteen minutes of real time on what was a glorified tour of "look what we made!". 

....

I also get very nostalgic for it.  Back in EverQuest, crossing from Freeport to Qeynos to Erudin on a lvl 14 Enchanter was ... daunting.  Less so because I had Bind and Gate and Invisibility, but it was gonna take me at least an hour, probably more, and I might end up doing a few corpse runs on the way.  It really made the world FEEL more epic in size.  And I definitely remember hanging out with people at the docks waiting for Boats and chatting with them on the boat travel, because what else were you gonna do?

 

Was that all cynically put in place to keep us logged in longer?

Probably, though lets face it, most MMO players log CRAZY amounts of hours anyway, and did even after they had friends who could teleport them across the world.

 

I definitely remember the MMO worlds feeling more vast, feeling more worthy of being explored, and taking joy in finding nooks and crannies I discovered for the first time before instant ports and bamph-there-now became the norm.  You could argue some of it was also that I was a more naive gamer fresh into MMO's for the first time, and there is a kind of "you can never go home again" effect in play.  But I don't think so.  Because I still enjoy travelling around single player games, like Fallout series, or the Elder Scrolls series, and finding new things off the beaten path, and I still enjoy leaping around paragon city and spotting plaques I don't remember seeing and reading the lore as I go.

 

Teams have no patience for that, but solo it's all still there, if you take the time to smell the roses.

[Peacemoon]

16 minutes ago, MTeague said:

I also get very nostalgic for it.  Back in EverQuest, crossing from Freeport to Qeynos to Erudin on a lvl 14 Enchanter was ... daunting.  Less so because I had Bind and Gate and Invisibility, but it was gonna take me at least an hour, probably more, and I might end up doing a few corpse runs on the way.  It really made the world FEEL more epic in size.  And I definitely remember hanging out with people at the docks waiting for Boats and chatting with them on the boat travel, because what else were you gonna do?

 

Was that all cynically put in place to keep us logged in longer?

Probably, though lets face it, most MMO players log CRAZY amounts of hours anyway, and did even after they had friends who could teleport them across the world.

 

I definitely remember the MMO worlds feeling more vast, feeling more worthy of being explored, and taking joy in finding nooks and crannies I discovered for the first time before instant ports and bamph-there-now became the norm.  You could argue some of it was also that I was a more naive gamer fresh into MMO's for the first time, and there is a kind of "you can never go home again" effect in play.  But I don't think so.  Because I still enjoy travelling around single player games, like Fallout series, or the Elder Scrolls series, and finding new things off the beaten path, and I still enjoy leaping around paragon city and spotting plaques I don't remember seeing and reading the lore as I go.

 

Teams have no patience for that, but solo it's all still there, if you take the time to smell the roses.

Yeah there always seemed to be a bigger emphasis on exploring in the older games. These days we seem to be much more objective-driven. We need a mission or a quest to tell us what to do otherwise we feel stuck. I played a game called Asheron’s Call like 20 years ago, and it was just one massive world with not many quests. You had to explore and create your own your own adventures. 
 

Who does street sweeping these days? I used to do that a lot. Particularly on the bridges in IP or around urban districts in Terra Volta, Brickstown, etc. Knocking enemies off the bridge, fighting up to rooftops, fighting on the industrial gangways, it was always quite fun. I’d do it solo and just dream up my own adventure, and it was always fun to fight more regular enemies like the Sky Raiders and Mafia (magic is overdone in this game, sorry!)

Just finally to add, I noticed I felt much more connected to the world when I made my superspeed character rather than fly. Having to navigate vertical terrain made me think about  what I was doing a lot more. Fly is a very afk-type of transport.

 

For those that want to do a bit more grounded play, try doing the next Ouroboros without travel powers enabled. Not only do you get a badge, but it’s quite fun trying to travel the city as Johnny Ordinary 😃

[Heraclea]

17 hours ago, Mister Mass said:

You mention Indigo & don't mention the Indigo-Crimson milk run?  Basically when doing a story arc or mission for one or the other, you get sent to talk to the other one face-to-face, with Indigo in FF & Crimson in Peregrine Island (at least close to the ferry.)  Have these 2 superspies never heard of a cellphone with encrypted comms?  Aren't they concerned about the possibility that Malta or other agencies are using high-powered listening devices to eavesdrop on their mission briefings to you that take place out in the open, instead of in a SCIF?  When they do this, I feel like pulling a Maxwell Smart & insisting on a Cone of Silence. 🤫

The restraining order forbids Crimson from calling Indigo directly......

[Shred Monkey]

I started writing a response to the where I referenced Everquest and how giant worlds that took 2 hours to cross are actually better than what we've got now.  Then I glanced up a few responses above me and saw you guys already went down that road.  You guys are awesome!

 

Personally, I think CoH is the game that broke that mold.  We got travel powers and an train stations!   Other games had to evolve to keep up.   And they did. 

Edited May 13, 2020 by Shred Monkey

[Techwright]

3 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

 

 

Personally, I think CoH is the game that broke that mold.  We got travel powers and an train stations!   Other games had to evolve to keep up.   And they did. 

Even our train stations evolved.  It used to be that we'd travel the yellow line then cross a zone to get on the green line.  A third line, the red line, was destroyed in the war.  At some point the devs just threw up their hands and merged everything.  I kind of always wished the red line had been partially resurrected, and remained separate.

[Redlynne]

I honestly wish the Green and Yellow Lines would get separated again here on Homecoming, so people would have to make that north/south run in either Steel Canyon or Skyway ... or run east/west through the tunnels from King's Row to Independence Port or Steel Canyon to Independence Port or Skyway to Talos Island.  And that's not even including Paragon Dance Party and Pocket D for making those transfers.

 

And that's not even including the convenience of Base Teleporters.

 

Beyond a certain point, extra convenience of being able to go anywhere from everywhere winds up making the world smaller (ironically) because you can skip over the world to get where you need to go.

[SwitchFade]

Travel to missions is part of the fun of CoH, as travel here is SUPER, and really not that long. You get to explore, get badges find plaques go save a hostage or fight for a different part of the city. It's truly an open world.

 

This game was meant for the open world to be alive and traversed. It's part of the story, where they send you to.

 

Which is why i generally recommend not slipping a real travel power from the pools.

 

In fact, just answering this has inspired me to make another toon I was thinking of and slow down again like it's issue 2, when I joined, and read story arcs, check out clues when I get them, select new contacts...

 

Thank goodness for travel in CoH!

[Doc_Scorpion]

8 hours ago, Techwright said:

Even our train stations evolved.  It used to be that we'd travel the yellow line then cross a zone to get on the green line. 

Originally you could only do that in Steel Canyon.  The Skyway City Green Line station was added in...  Issue 10 or 11 I think.

[Parabola]

The city feels a much more real place to me when I travel through it rather than teleporting from place to place. My favourite zones are all low level ones and I'm pretty sure that's got something to do with spending time running around in them. Kings row is indeed the best row!

 

I actually had a similar experience living in London. Using the tube is a bit like teleporting from one place to another. You get there but you don't get a feel for how the city actually connects together. It's only when you explore above ground for a bit that all the seperate locations join together into a whole. You also discover just how close together certain stations on different lines are.