Hero contacts: stay in your zone!

[GastlyGibus]

This is a change that I believe is long overdue.

 

Every blueside team I join ends up just doing police scanner missions over and over, and the reason why is obvious. It's far easier to just get an endless stream of missions all conveniently in one zone than it is to deal with hero contacts sending you on a giant Paragon City road trip.

 

Contacts for villains learned this lesson, and it's one of the many reasons I prefer redside over blue. If I get a contact in Sharkhead Isle, I can be reasonably sure that 90% of that contact's missions will be in Sharkhead.

 

Contacts for heroes, on the other hand, do not do this. I swear every single mission they give me is in a zone other than the one they're currently in. I'll get a contact in Brickstown and they'll be like

 

"Hey, go to Perez Park and do this thing."

 

"Hey, go to Founder's Falls and do that thing."

 

"Cool, now go talk to this guy in Independence Port so he can send you on another mission in Terra Volta."

 

No wonder people constantly run radio missions. Even with the SG base macro, it's far more convenient to just stay in one zone and run missions. And honestly it makes me sad, because radio missions are boring, and I'd love to see teams run story arcs again, but nobody wants to because it's just such a pain having to travel all over the entire city twelve times over. 

 

Make hero contacts stay in their zone wherever possible. My legs are tired, I'm running out of money for monorail passes, and my supergroup is wondering why the electric bill is so high because I keep using the teleporters. 😛

Edited August 7, 2020 by GastlyGibus

[Vanden]

👍

[Onemantankwall]

Vill side lacks all the extra zones which is why it sticks to map, if heroes did this ud likely never enter a hazard zone again which would pretty much shrink hero side rather largely

Edited August 7, 2020 by Onemantankwall

[GastlyGibus]

6 minutes ago, Onemantankwall said:

Vill side lacks all the extra zones which is why it sticks to map, if heroes did this ud likely never enter a hazard zone again

Nobody ever goes to hazard zones anyway save for the occasional giant monster. Hazard zones are a dead relic from launch. Even Paragon Studios was aware of this,  which is why the old devs were steadily working on revamping and repurposing them until the game shut down.

Edited August 7, 2020 by GastlyGibus

[Coyotedancer]

The old devs and mission writers DID get better about that as time went on... But, yeah. Those early arcs really do send you half-way around the world sometimes. o_0

[Vanden]

7 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

The old devs and mission writers DID get better about that as time went on... But, yeah. Those early arcs really do send you half-way around the world sometimes. o_0

They pretty much had it down from Issue 1, but there was a whole lotta content in Issue 0.

[Greycat]

52 minutes ago, GastlyGibus said:

Nobody ever goes to hazard zones anyway save for the occasional giant monster.

Don't assume. I'll regularly go there to street sweep, even aside from explore badges, and I've had RP groups use them as appropriate settings.

Frankly, I find redside's *lack* of zones an issue that leads to faster burnout on that side.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Greycat

[GastlyGibus]

44 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

The old devs and mission writers DID get better about that as time went on... But, yeah. Those early arcs really do send you half-way around the world sometimes. o_0

And that's precisely my point. The old guard realized that it was boring and unfun, and the new content reflected that shift in attitude as it was added. The only problem is the old content was never brought in line with the new, and it gradually just fell out of favor instead of bring fixed. 

 

20 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Don't assume.

The issue of hazard zones being virtually deserted is pretty well established. And besides, the problem of hazard zones and what to do with them is another topic for another day.

 

The issue here is that hardly anybody runs standard contacts because they send you out to a bunch of random zones. The overwhelming majority of teams I see being advertised blueside are running radio missions, because they're more convenient and don't send you to twenty different zones to arbitrarily pad playtime. Does literally everybody run radio missions? No, of course not. I'm one of the players that likes to run the Issue 0 contacts, but I dislike being sent on a giant tour of the city as a consequence, and I don't like forcing my teams to do it with me because not everybody has the SG teleporter macro handy. Hazard zones need their own unique content to draw more players in; having a contact force me to go to Boomtown for a one-time mission isn't going to make me stop and enjoy the zone. 

Edited August 7, 2020 by GastlyGibus

[Wavicle]

Even just adding the RADIO, or a contact like Meg Mason or Ephram Sha to zones like Perez Park, Crey's Folly, etc, would be great.

Edited August 7, 2020 by Wavicle

[0th Power]

I don’t mind some zone changing but a reduction would be nice

[SwitchFade]

I thoroughly enjoy traveling our city, so...

 

No vote, sorry.

 

I think it's part of the spirit of CoH that you fly, speed and leap about saving the city.

 

Lore source material also indicates that all comic heroes did this.

[Razor Cure]

20 minutes ago, SwitchFade said:

I think it's part of the spirit of CoH that you fly, speed and leap about saving the city.

Saving teh city..that is a stretch for some of those god awful blueside arcs. I forget which, but one has you visit a dude in one end of SKyway, then go talk a guy in teh OTHER end, and then come all the way back. What a load of bullshit time padding.

Why does the lore material matter anyway? pretty sure none of our toons where in those comics. We save (and terrorise) the city our own way.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

Honestly gotta say nope to this. I would sooner see mish tp made a 0cd insta cast ability so folks can just port to mish if they want, At least that would be worth doing for the sake of simple speed. And you would still be seeing the other zones.

[Greycat]

7 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

Why does the lore material matter anyway? pretty sure none of our toons where in those comics.

Very little of anything in the comics is in the game, mission/lore wise.

 

And some of us do care very much about the COH lore. That said, from context, I'd say Switchfade was talking "the source material" as in comics in general.

[Six-Six]

It's all about the story. Good movies are the ones with engaging stories, not wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am gratuitous action/sex/horror/crying scenes. Good books are immortalised by the stories they plant in your head. Even Facebook adopted the idea of "your story". CoH is no different. You're a friggin comic book character for crikey's sake. carve out your story.

The initial sentiment makes me imagine Bats investigating his latest caper: Hmmm, there's a bomb somewhere in Gotham, but the lead takes me to Central City. (Hops on Batwing)... crap now it I have to go to Japan... to far, screw that. 😃  Imagine if you HAD to pay for the tram with inf. Or from what I hear from the "back on live" folks, travel powers weren't as commonplace and they had to foot it most of the time. the request just sounds lazy and entitled to me. I bet he/she never does the Numina TF, or much less the Dr. Q.

So a solid no on this one. In fact, I would like to seem more "cross overs" where a contact will send you to "the other side" for a certain mission and not just an instanced van/tugboat map. Besides, it's a nice city. the devs put a lot of effort landscaping it. the least you can do is enjoy the view. I for one enjoy running to and from missions even with the TP powers or SG ports. 

[huang3721]

It seems the game randomly selects the city zone anytime you accept a mission. Unless it specifically mentioned the place. 

I multi boxed three characters. They phoned the contact from Atlas Park. (It was Clockwork Captive story arc.) Each character received the same task from the contact but had to go to different locations. Andre's mission was in Atlas, while Gina's and Luigi's were in Steel Canyon.

I never knew Lou had so many wives. 

I didn't want to run this same mission twice, so I made Gina and Luigi abandoned their mission. They keep calling (and abandoning) their mission until the contact assigned them to Atlas Park. I still had multiple entry points at Atlas Park. 

I have questions. Multiple. How many wives this mechanic has? How did he feed them? Why did he house them in the same city zone? What happened to those women I abandoned?

[Lines]

I'm in favour, especially if the narratives of the arcs at least nominally tied the stories to the location, so that an arc in Brickstown actually implied that they have a local impact.

 

It's not the act of travelling that bothers me; I like hopping around the city. It's the vagueness of the plot contexts in old arcs that isn't great.

 

Though I'll say I don't see this impacting the ratio of arcs vs radio missions.

[Outrider_01]

Seeing as enterbasepasscode, SG ports, Oroborus, Portal tunnels at the trains,  and interconnected Tram instead of the separate two....

 

Exactly how inconvenienced are you?  Hell of a lot faster now, especially with lower requirements for travel powers.

 

Nothing special about villian side, it has less zones to begin with (rushed to meet expectations? ) and all are bigger than most hero side. 

[Patti]

I think redside had fewer zones at start because the devs learned their lesson.   Each redzone has way more stuff in it than any early bluestone.   Hardly any new redzone adterward was probably because it didn't get enough players but that topic has already been horsedeadhit.

[Apparition]

2 hours ago, Patti said:

I think redside had fewer zones at start because the devs learned their lesson.   Each redzone has way more stuff in it than any early bluestone.   Hardly any new redzone adterward was probably because it didn't get enough players but that topic has already been horsedeadhit.

Matt Miller said on one of the AMAs that they did have ideas for more red side zones, but they were scrapped as CoV was not nearly as popular as they had hoped.

[GastlyGibus]

17 hours ago, Six Six said:

It's all about the story. Good movies are the ones with engaging stories, not wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am gratuitous action/sex/horror/crying scenes. Good books are immortalised by the stories they plant in your head. Even Facebook adopted the idea of "your story". CoH is no different. You're a friggin comic book character for crikey's sake. carve out your story.

The initial sentiment makes me imagine Bats investigating his latest caper: Hmmm, there's a bomb somewhere in Gotham, but the lead takes me to Central City. (Hops on Batwing)... crap now it I have to go to Japan... to far, screw that. 😃  Imagine if you HAD to pay for the tram with inf. Or from what I hear from the "back on live" folks, travel powers weren't as commonplace and they had to foot it most of the time. the request just sounds lazy and entitled to me. I bet he/she never does the Numina TF, or much less the Dr. Q.

Now imagine if we, the audience, had to sit through Batman's 20+ hour flight to Japan. Imagine if in The Dark Knight when Batman goes to Hong Kong, Bruce Wayne packs his things, gets on his private jet or Batwing or w/e, flies the 18+ hours it takes to get to Hong Kong, scouts out the buildings, climbs to the top of one, and finally begins his little extraction, and we, the audience, had to sit and watch the entire 24+ hour affair with no cuts or edits whatsoever. How many movie-goers in the theatre would have walked out within the first hour?
 

Yes, I am aware it's not nearly that severe of a problem here (thank God). I get that it's "realistic" for a hero to travel all around the city to stop crimes, but from a gameplay perspective, it's annoying having to travel to so many different zones. And honestly? The whole "but you get to explore!" aspect is not accurate, and let me explain why. This might be long winded, but bear with me.

Let's say I'm a brand new player; I just installed the game, make my very first hero and get dumped in Atlas Park. "Wow!" I think to myself. "Look at that statue! This place is pretty!" My very first contact is, of course, Matthew Habashy. So I go talk to him, and he sends me on missions in Atlas Park. By doing his missions, I get to travel all around Atlas, explore the city at a nice, even pace, I get to street-sweep and stop random purse-snatchers and drug dealers, and I'm feeling real cool.

 

By the time I've finished the whole Atlas Park contact line, I've gotten to explore a good chunk of Atlas Park. I'm level 8 now, and I've had fun, but I've been in Atlas Park for a while now. I've seen what it has to offer, and now I'm eager to see more. So, off to the next contact, Shauna Stockwell.

 

Now I'm in Kings Row, a brand new city with brand new sights and brand new villains for me to fight. Awesome! All of her missions keep me in Kings Row, and as I'm stomping about the city, going from mission to mission, I'm exploring the whole zone at a nice pace, maybe fighting more street mobs on the way, having a ball and getting to explore and find my way around Kings Row.

 

So now I've explored two cities pretty thoroughly. I finish the Kings Row stuff, and now it's off to the next zone, Steel Canyon.

I go into another new zone, this one all bright and modern like New York. And once again, there's brand new enemies for me to fight and a whole new city to explore! Look at these Council and 5th Column guys! And those Outcasts! New stuff, super cool! So I grab myself a police scanner, go beat up some baddies, and get my next contact, Wes Schnabel. I go and talk to Wes, eager to repeat my previous experiences in exploring a new city.

"I need you to go to Atlas Park and beat up some bad guys."

.... Atlas Park? But I've already been there, and I wanna explore Steel Canyon some more!

 

"Nope. Atlas Park. Get to it."

 

Okay, I begrudgingly accept. I take the tram back to Atlas Park, go do my thing, ignoring all the street mobs because they're all grey and not worth the time, and eventually go back to Wes. Cool, now I get to explore Steel Canyon, right?

"I need you to go to Kings Row and retrieve this stolen thing."

What?! Kings Row? I just left there! Come on, Wes, you're in Steel Canyon! Don't you have something for me to do here, so I can see the sights and explore a brand new city?

 

"Nope. Kings Row. Get out of my face."

And this is how the rest of the standards contacts will treat you from here on out. Every time I go into a new zone, instead of being given tasks in the zone and given the opportunity to explore a zone at a nice pace as I travel from mission to mission, getting to fight street mobs appropriate to my level, I'm instead forced to constantly backtrack and go to places I've already been, and since I've already been to these places, I don't feel like taking my time and exploring the zone. I just want to get the mission done and get it over with. And this problem only gets worse as you get higher in level, as every new zone contact keeps forcing you to leave the brand new zone and go back to old places where you're horrible over-levelled and there's no incentive to get on the ground and get your feet wet. Being constantly thrown around from one zone to the next with no rhyme or reason doesn't let you take a breath and really explore. As soon as you get in one zone and finish a mission, it's off to a completely different place. No time to explore, no time to see the sights, no time to smell the roses, and no time to fight street mobs.

 

It doesn't make sense to have a contact in Bricktown, which is a level 30-38 zone, with missions for level 30 heroes, to constantly keep sending you back to places you've already been and where the mobs out on the street are beneath you and not worth the effort. Sure, in some instances it might lead me somewhere I've never been, but the majority of the time, it's just constantly throwing me from one zone to the next. Having contacts stay in their zone would only naturally lead to exploring more of that zone at a nice, even pace, being taken on a tour of one zone at a time, compared to sporadically throwing darts at a map of Paragon City and letting that decide where the mission is.

 

10 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

Seeing as enterbasepasscode, SG ports, Oroborus, Portal tunnels at the trains,  and interconnected Tram instead of the separate two....

 

Exactly how inconvenienced are you?  Hell of a lot faster now, especially with lower requirements for travel powers.

 

Nothing special about villian side, it has less zones to begin with (rushed to meet expectations? ) and all are bigger than most hero side. 

Admittedly, it is a minor inconvenience, but it's one that should be pretty easy to fix and has absolutely no reason to exist. The whole reason blueside even does this is because of the old MMO mindset of inconveniencing players by arbitrarily padding out game-time. After all, if you have a player running from zone to zone, that's more time spent playing the game, and that's all that mattered.

 

In addition, the fact that these changes were added later, the fact that new contacts added later didn't have this problem, and the fact that they were actively working on revamping and improving the "dead" zones that nobody went to just goes to show that the original developers knew this was a problem and were working to address it. They realized it was unfun and boring being constantly shuffled across the entire city for no reason, and actively began taking steps to remedy it. The way I see it, making this change only continues that goal of making the game just a little bit less inconvenient and more fun to play.

 

And finally, to bring an end to what is my longest forum post to-date, it doesn't even make sense from a roleplaying perspective. All of the standard contacts on blueside have in their description that they deal with specific villain groups. Kong Bao, a standard blueside contact, has in his info "The recent and terrifying rise of the Tsoo is of particular concern to Mr. Kong. He has redoubled his efforts to curtail the gang's recruiting among Hmong youth, with some success." So tell me why Kong Bao, a guy who mainly is concerned with the Tsoo, is hanging out in Skyway City? There are no Tsoo in Skyway City. Wouldn't it be more appropriate from a roleplaying perspective that a contact who resides in a certain zone would give you tips and clues on happenings in said zone?

Edited August 8, 2020 by GastlyGibus

[Wavicle]

45 minutes ago, GastlyGibus said:

 

Yeah, that's all true, but the fixes are largely already there.

The Hollows is a great set of arcs all in one zone for low level players.

In Steel we have Graham Easton and Laura Lockhart. Also, Montague Castanella.

At 15 you can start running Faultline. At 20 Striga Isle and First Ward.

 

In Talos there's Roy Cooling, Keith Nance, and Jenni Adair.

 

In IP there's the Vigilante contact Braun. In Bricks there's another Vig contact and later there's Provost Marchand.

Then there's Croatoa, Night Ward, the Rikti War Zone, Cimerora (small though it is), and at 50 Dark Astoria.

Also, the Signature arcs sprinkled throughout the city.

I'm sure I'm leaving something out.


So, again, not to say any of your points are wrong, they're not, but to a large extent there are already fixes in place.

[Vanden]

29 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

So, again, not to say any of your points are wrong, they're not, but to a large extent there are already fixes in place.

Having a working motorcycle doesn't fix a broken car in the same garage.

[Wavicle]

1 minute ago, Vanden said:

Having a working motorcycle doesn't fix a broken car in the same garage.

sure, but with limited resources the car may remain broken and we can still travel on the harley

[huang3721]

32 minutes ago, Wavicle said:

but the fixes are largely already there

No, they are not. 

 

The new contacts (Habashy, Stockwell, Adair, etc.) are OK. It is the old contacts that need fixing. They randomly assign players to different city zones every time said player accepts the mission. Is it possible to reduce those mission entries into a single city zone?

 

Quoting Lines:

15 hours ago, Lines said:

especially if the narratives of the arcs at least nominally tied the stories to the location

Travelling to advance the story arc is good, random hopping is not.

Edited August 8, 2020 by huang3721
typo on someones's name. Sorry