Council vs. 5th Column - adjustments?

[RikOz]

I don't know if there's really any easy way to fix this, but there is one frustration I have that goes back to when I was playing before the shutdown:

 

Council street-sweeping missions.

 

Nearly every time I get sent to defeat Council in the streets, I look around and think, "Why? It looks to me like the 5th Column has the situation well in hand!"

 

What I mean is that more often than not, the only Council I can find are involved in firefights with the 5th Column, and the 5th Column are invariably getting the better of those fights. If I'm on a melee character, it's hopeless trying to join in these fights because the 5th Column soldiers end up doing more damage, more quickly than I can (mainly because they've already shot up the Council guys a bit before I can even get in there), particularly if my character in question doesn't have much in the way of AoE and I have no choice but to fight one enemy at a time, and I end up not getting mission credit for the Council guys I do manage to defeat before the 5th Column kills them.

 

Other times, I find one, lonesome Council soldier lying on the ground, unconscious, at the feet of a group of four 5th Columnists, so I beat up the 5th Column guys and then ... it just doesn't feel very heroic clobbering the unconscious guy on the pavement just for mission credit.

 

Every once in a while I'll find a single Council guy standing on a soapbox in Steel Canyon, apparently trying to do some recruiting, and I can smack him up, but I can fly around forever trying to find those guys.

 

We need some Council spawns that aren't being harassed by the 5th Column. Or some skirmishes where the Council has the advantage, so that I can attack them without the 5th Column stealing my "kills".

[n00baka]

I think some spawns and missions could use another look at and adjustment. Wincott in the Hollows has the same problem. He will ask me to hunt down the Outcasts, only for me to find more Skulls than anyone else. Same with the Trolls, until you start branching out to the higher end sections further from Wincott. My Lvl 5 self can make it out that far, sure, but I won’t be able to take on the level 9+ groups.

 

I’m guessing a lot of these missions can be traced back to before certain events and stories occurred, but were never altered to adjust for the new spawns in their zones.

[justicebeliever]

I agree this could use some looking at.  Having to street sweep council in IP sometimes means i am going from the north monorail all the way to the NW corner of IP to find enough council.  If the mission was to arrest 5th column, i would be done wihin 20 yards of the monorail.

[RikOz]

It's also an issue because with so many contacts you pretty much have to do these street-sweeping missions before they'll offer anything else. I'm usually hoping to find an actual storyline in there, but I go talk to a contact and they give me an initial choice between "Go defeat 10 of such-and-such specific group for vague reason" or "Go talk to the Perez Park security chief", who is just going to give me a different street-sweeping mission. And from what I've seen, the Security Chiefs don't start storylines, they just hand out one-shot street sweeps.

 

So I manage to find enough mobs to fulfill the street-sweeping mission, return to the contact, and they just give me another street-sweep for the same number of the same mobs for a slightly different vague reason.

[justicebeliever]

It's also an issue because with so many contacts you pretty much have to do these street-sweeping missions before they'll offer anything else. I'm usually hoping to find an actual storyline in there, but I go talk to a contact and they give me an initial choice between "Go defeat 10 of such-and-such specific group for vague reason" or "Go talk to the Perez Park security chief", who is just going to give me a different street-sweeping mission. And from what I've seen, the Security Chiefs don't start storylines, they just hand out one-shot street sweeps.

 

So I manage to find enough mobs to fulfill the street-sweeping mission, return to the contact, and they just give me another street-sweep for the same number of the same mobs for a slightly different vague reason.

 

It's a good way to get your step count in, I guess...  :P

[BeeVee]

Honestly if nothing else, they can mitigate it by setting up 'warring' spawns to be less common, or making hunt prereqs smaller.