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Focused Feedback: New Player Experience (NPE) Improvements


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10 minutes ago, Number Six said:

 

If you don't mind, could you re-test on RC3.5? Copied characters from live should now default to "Classic", while newly created characters get "Modern" unless you've overriden it by saving default key bindings.

 

 

Yep, it appears to be fixed.  I deleted the character I had on Brainstorm, copied a character back over, waited a few minutes, logged on and:

 

 

2024-02-18_01-49.webp.852fef116d29b9fccb6a674ebca5d874.webp

 

 

2024-02-18_01-50.webp.a08aadb30d90bdde089be50dbf6af97d.webp

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8 hours ago, Number Six said:

If you don't mind, could you re-test on RC3.5? Copied characters from live should now default to "Classic", while newly created characters get "Modern" unless you've overriden it by saving default key bindings.

 

I can confirm that a newly transferred character gets none of the new control scheme changes. The profile under keybinds shows up as "classic". Characters that were previously on the beta server also have the "classic" profile and no longer have the new functionality.

A newly created character does have the "modern" profile by default, and has the same experience I outlined before - they correctly inherited my saved default keybinds, and the only new control scheme functionality they have by default is the quicklook on left click. This makes sense because it uses the new "LeftDragWorld" label, which I have not overwritten with my default keybinds.

I think that means it's working as it should be.

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29 minutes ago, Fade said:

I think that means it's working as it should be.

 

Yep, that all sounds right!

 

A big part of the problem was that it turns out the profile system with the drop down didn't ever really work right to begin with. Seemed to be unfinished. I guess nobody noticed because almost no one used it. So that had to be fixed to actually work...

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Window resizing is back to normal.  In fact, it might be better as grabbing the corner to increase height and width seems easier to do now.  I no longer get a small window change and then camera move.  In fact, I now get no camera move at all with Left Button drag.

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1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

Window resizing is back to normal.  In fact, it might be better as grabbing the corner to increase height and width seems easier to do now.  I no longer get a small window change and then camera move.  In fact, I now get no camera move at all with Left Button drag.

 

Can you try on a new character using the Modern scheme? If you're getting no camera move at all that means you're probably on one who got switched to Classic and doesn't have the left click camera stuff at all, so it's not really testing if the issue with window sizing is fixed.

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Tested resizing a window while using quicklook, and its working great. Moving the chat window is also working great. No issues anymore.

 

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14 hours ago, Number Six said:

The keybinds.txt file created by clicking the button to save bindings has always taken precedence over the defaults for new characters.

 

So, PSA for players like me who knew about this feature and already have a keybinds.txt with a bunch of custom binds:

 

If you'd rather just edit your keybinds.txt file directly, simply add the following line to the file to make all new characters default to the Classic scheme:

 

KeyProfile Classic

 

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1 hour ago, Fade said:

Tested resizing a window while using quicklook, and its working great.

 

Ditto on a new character.  Can move windows, resize windows, and move camera when not doing those.

 

On a different NPE note:  Should we be advising players during the tutorial that windows, trays, and HP bar can be moved?  I think we should.

 

Also: This guy is still a bit repetitive:

 

Screenshot2024-02-1815_16_32.png.5e31c62208939598de48222f99b1485a.png

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I think flat-out discouraging players from going to Praetoria is the wrong idea.

 

Praetoria is well-designed for new players in that it is significantly more comprehensible and engaging than the rest of the game at comparable levels.

  • Lest we forget, it was actually a launch area for what I would say was live CoH's best period of the game. I brought several new people in with me to Praetoria.
  • As noted earlier in this topic, it has the best existing tutorial.
  • It has modern-adjacent game design sense. The mish areas are not nearly as long on average, the win conditions are varied.
  • You can play the goodest of good guys or pretty bad guys with sympathetic perspectives
  • It has beautiful visual variety across its aboveground zones, and the underground zones are still much more appealing than their counterparts in Paragon and the Isles.
  • Moral choices are a perennially popular feature.
  • The story isn't CoH at its best but it's CoH at one of its better ends, and it *is* CoH at its best in presentation of that story. A modern gamer is more likely to understand what is happening in Praetoria than to understand what's happening in Primal, which significantly outweighs the presence of easter eggs. I ignored most of CoH lore before Praetoria myself and only started caring about Primal's plot outside of the Rikti after wanting to know more about the Praetorians I met.
  • It's easy to traverse and rewards a variety of travel powers. Concealment, Leaping, Flying, and Speed are all very reasonable, which is highly relevant when you can get all these powers from a very low level.

 

What is the usual reason cited for why Praetoria is bad for new players? It's that Praetoria is hard.

  • You need to understand a lot of concepts for both the general genre and the specific, like target prioritization, using the environment, etc. 
  • Ambushes are either bugged or poorly thought out (I don't know which) with no spacing, turning into tower defense waves. I like it as a veteran, but that would be terrible for a new player.
  • The game's mechanics are overly vague and poorly explained.

 

I would also argue that Praetoria's experience bands need to be reconsidered to avoid the overleveling problem that causes people to clip a lot of arcs, though that's partially come up in the topic already so I won't rehash that. It remains a point against it.

 

I'm not saying that these are small problems -- even if I had brought this up at the very beginning of the open beta period, it would be far too late to do anything about them in a beta cycle. But I do think that "NOT RECOMMENDED FOR NEW PLAYERS", or "RECOMMENDED FOR NEW PLAYERS" are the wrong approaches. People are generally going to expect the "recommended" experience to be the most polished and engaging one. I have met very few players under the age of 30 who speak positively of blue-side (and most people want to be heroes), and red-side is spoken of in more measured tones still.

 

Also, origin powers being much more useful for the first 10 levels will go a long way to mitigating the lack of offensive options many ATs have for dealing with the zone early on. Therefore, I would go with language more like

"THIS IS THE CLASSIC CITY OF HEROES EXPERIENCE." and "THIS IS A CHALLENGING, MORE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE."

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I don't think new players should be guided to Primal Earth because it's easier, really, I think so because so much of Praetoria's story's impact is lost if you aren't already familiar with the characters and situations that Praetoria is presenting funhouse mirrors of. 

The Crime Syndicate is just a bunch of villains if you don't already know who the Justice League are.

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57 minutes ago, Sunsette said:

Also, origin powers being much more useful for the first 10 levels will go a long way to mitigating the lack of offensive options many ATs have for dealing with the zone early on. Therefore, I would go with language more like

"THIS IS THE CLASSIC CITY OF HEROES EXPERIENCE." and "THIS IS A CHALLENGING, MORE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE."

 

This...actually makes a lot of sense and is accurate.  Despite any individual issues I have with Praetoria, I've always felt like Precinct Five is the game's best tutorial (with Breakout being the second and Outbreak and Galaxy's Last Stand tying for third).  The rest of your comments I have thoughts on but I feel a larger discussion is needed outside of Beta.

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1 hour ago, StarkWhite said:

I think so because so much of Praetoria's story's impact is lost if you aren't already familiar with the characters and situations that Praetoria is presenting funhouse mirrors of. 

The Crime Syndicate is just a bunch of villains if you don't already know who the Justice League are.

 

As I already mentioned, I do not agree with this evaluation. Going Rogue was used as a launching point for the game's second expansion and it explains itself far better than primal earth does over the same level range. The Phalanx and their mirrors are pastiches of common concepts. The general cultural concepts serve well enough to explain the important things with the better presentation of Praetoria. Statesman, Manticore, Positron, etc. are not particularly novel variations on their clear and publicly well-known inspirations, while other characters like Calvin Scott, Marauder, and Marchand are sold effectively even if you have no idea about their original versions.

 

One sentence apiece that briefly sums up the differing advantages of the two starting zones rather than calling one recommended and the other not is a much more accurate representation.

 

It's not ideal in that you do want to present players with a unified starting experience and the starting experience possibly offers too many decisions to players already, but you already have three options in Primal Earth and the best of them (Breakout) suffers from the villain disadvantage to begin with. I think being upfront about what Praetoria is good about is more likely to meaningfully retain players.

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I agree that Praetoria offers a more interesting starting experience, but the fact of the matter is that it *is* a harder experience by far, in the same way that Redside is a little bit harder than Blueside. The map spawn points in Praetoria are better thought out, so you have a more even distribution of mobs, leading to less ability to sneak around and having to directly fight them. The enemy groups are more challenging, because they were developed at a time when Paragon Studios finally knew what it was doing and wasn't throwing spaghetti at the wall. 

It's a wonderful starting (1-30) experience... for players who already have existing characters and know how the game works.

It's painfully difficult for people who don't yet, and they don't have the context either for the decision made at Rift Enclosure to know what they're getting into when it comes to choosing between Paragon City and the Rogue Isles at mid-levels. 

The GR starter experience was created specifically for veterans to have something new to do, and they tacked on a decent tutorial for new players who decided to choose it anyway. The new descriptions make sense.

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I did not and do not dispute that Praetoria is much harder and too difficult to be the assumed default. However, I think a meaningful fraction of players can look at those descriptions I provided -- classic versus challenging/more cinematic -- and decide for themselves that's a challenge they want to take on, or don't. The blandness of early blue-side content is a barrier to retention, and I'm sure it's one the HC team is aware of -- this slight wording change would help mitigate that somewhat until a more complete improvement can be implemented someday.

 

As it stands right now, someone who tries the recommended start and goes "this is boring" has little incentive to go "wait, what if I like this other thing". If we actually lay out a brief description of the pro/con of each, however, they might find something they like instead.

 

I am not advocating for walls of text -- I am advocating for an equally long (one-sentence) description to replace the proposed that tells people what they are getting into.

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Even completely setting aside all concerns about difficulty and assumed familiarity with the Primal storyline, I wouldn't recommend Praetoria to a new player. Praetoria's storyline is more engaging and cinematic right up to the point where the path you're following abruptly stops because you unknowingly deleted the next contact off the face of the earth in another mission. Moral choices are fun unless you level up too much in the arc leading up to one and just never get to do it. There are just too many sharp edges to cut yourself on.

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5 hours ago, Sunsette said:

I did not and do not dispute that Praetoria is much harder and too difficult to be the assumed default. However, I think a meaningful fraction of players can look at those descriptions I provided -- classic versus challenging/more cinematic -- and decide for themselves that's a challenge they want to take on, or don't. The blandness of early blue-side content is a barrier to retention, and I'm sure it's one the HC team is aware of -- this slight wording change would help mitigate that somewhat until a more complete improvement can be implemented someday.

 

As it stands right now, someone who tries the recommended start and goes "this is boring" has little incentive to go "wait, what if I like this other thing". If we actually lay out a brief description of the pro/con of each, however, they might find something they like instead.

 

I am not advocating for walls of text -- I am advocating for an equally long (one-sentence) description to replace the proposed that tells people what they are getting into.

 

Placing a "This is not recommended for new players" already does that, it implies a higher level of difficulty. Also blueside bland? You're stating an opinion as a fact, and while I wont disagree that maybe it's a bit more bland then gold side for vets, this is more likely due to overexposure and it being easier. It's easier for a good reason too as it's designed for NEW PLAYERS that are just coming to grips with the game and learning the basics of the system. I spend alot of time in help and alot of time directly helping new players and never once have I heard complaints about the game being bland to a fresh player, in fact if anything they are usually overwhelmed. CoH is a extremely complex game, especially compared to other current MMOs and I think it's something alot of veterans forget as we learned most of this ages ago. I was actually going to suggest this very thing but they added it themselves, as this is a common issue that crops up in help chat. I often see players asking "Is _________ set/AT just bad, did I make a mistake choosing it" and more often then not they are in Preatoria getting stomped. Adding "Not recommended for new players" is the correct move because to put it simply it's "Not recommended", if someone wants more challenge there is nothing stopping them from checking it out.

 

Difficulty aside, another reason I would want to direct new players to blue/red side is population. Lets be honest, gold side is normaly fairly empty, aside from maybe a solo player or two in a corner of the zone. It's not the best idea to drop newer players effectively alone in the deep end of the pool, with no one to teach them how to doggy paddle. Help chat can help with this, but that's assuming they know it's there and can figure out how to switch to help chat. It also gives players the wrong impression about the games health when they don't see another soul around, and in a MMO it's very important to get the impression of a healthy population. AP on blueside is just about always populated regardless of server, even mercy usually has quite a few players around in the starting area. When players pop into Nova Preatoria and see a ghost town they may assume the games dead. This is another question I've seen pop up multiple times in help chat.

 

I want to state I'm not against putting a bit of info stating that it's a "More Challenging experience" or something to that effect, in fact I think that's actually a very good idea as it gives a better impression of what it's like. However I feel the "Not recommended for new players" tag is VERY warranted, as more challenging difficulties tend to not be recommended for newer players.

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While we're marking Praetoria as "not recommended for newbies" maybe we could adjust the "Find Contact" button to actually find appropriate level contacts in blue and redside content post level 20 instead of every contact being First Ward/Night Ward?

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I keep seeing complaints that Galaxy City isn't a good tutorial compared to the others and while it's not very informative on it's own, we need to remember that it was not intended to be the end of the tutorial. As soon as you load into Atlas or Mercy you're directed to Matthew Habashy or Operative Kuzmin whose arcs (and those of the contacts they introduce) continue to guide the new players along, slowly introducing them to new mechanics. Then, you're automatically introduced to Twinshot/Dr. Graves, who give you yet more mechanic learning missions. All these arcs are also quite cinematic compared to the standard blueside/redside fare, since they were all created at the same time as the Galaxy City revamp.

 

All those contacts are completely skippable. I can't remember the last time I ran Twinshot because I don't need the information. But it's there, there's a great big pop up when she's unlocked that I ignore every time I hit level 5, and it's still part of the tutorial that the Paragon Devs gave us the ability to skip by dropping us in the open world that was already there.

 

Just wanted to point out that Galaxy City is not the end of the tutorial, but rather just a climactic beginning.

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11 hours ago, Riot Siren said:

Difficulty aside, another reason I would want to direct new players to blue/red side is population.

 

You have a point about population and it is a good one, but it also really frequently applies to red side, and that's very visible in help. 

 

The majority of people who bounce off blue side for its blandness — and it simply factually is, the game's presentation of story on any launch content and mission design is nigh impenetrable and monotonous — will leave before they get to the point of asking for help. I've seen this happen with a large amount of the players in three different discord servers who have been sparked to try the game given recent news. They love the character creator, then DFB is okay, and then... what are they doing, why do they care why they're here?

 

The game's basic mechanics are difficult, I am a teacher, I would never claim otherwise. The majority of that difficulty originates from how badly it explains anything to the player, and it is something I find consistently atrocious throughout the game. Anytime I want to invite a friend to join me in this game, I have to ask myself if they're really going to enjoy it without me walking them through everything every hour I can first (between the impenetrable mechanics and the early content) and the answer is frequently no. That is less of a problem for me with my current schedule than it was five years ago, but I extrapolate that to a broader population and I am daunted. 

 

Also, I haven't done twinshot in a hot minute but I just did graves, and it is remarkable how bad a job it does at teaching almost anything in virtually every regard. Late CoH did a lot right, but its new player experience was not one of those things. 

 

Anyway, I think the most pertinent thing here is that I would be fine with the proposal to make it a two sentence descriptor that includes both recommended/not and classic/challenging, cinematic. I don't think it would be the best choice, but it would still be a significantly better one than a flat recommendation or non recommendation. 

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21 hours ago, Sunsette said:

I think flat-out discouraging players from going to Praetoria is the wrong idea.

 

Praetoria is well-designed for new players in that it is significantly more comprehensible and engaging than the rest of the game at comparable levels.

  • Lest we forget, it was actually a launch area for what I would say was live CoH's best period of the game. I brought several new people in with me to Praetoria.
  • As noted earlier in this topic, it has the best existing tutorial.
  • It has modern-adjacent game design sense. The mish areas are not nearly as long on average, the win conditions are varied.
  • You can play the goodest of good guys or pretty bad guys with sympathetic perspectives
  • It has beautiful visual variety across its aboveground zones, and the underground zones are still much more appealing than their counterparts in Paragon and the Isles.
  • Moral choices are a perennially popular feature.
  • The story isn't CoH at its best but it's CoH at one of its better ends, and it *is* CoH at its best in presentation of that story. A modern gamer is more likely to understand what is happening in Praetoria than to understand what's happening in Primal, which significantly outweighs the presence of easter eggs. I ignored most of CoH lore before Praetoria myself and only started caring about Primal's plot outside of the Rikti after wanting to know more about the Praetorians I met.
  • It's easy to traverse and rewards a variety of travel powers. Concealment, Leaping, Flying, and Speed are all very reasonable, which is highly relevant when you can get all these powers from a very low level.

 

What is the usual reason cited for why Praetoria is bad for new players? It's that Praetoria is hard.

  • You need to understand a lot of concepts for both the general genre and the specific, like target prioritization, using the environment, etc. 
  • Ambushes are either bugged or poorly thought out (I don't know which) with no spacing, turning into tower defense waves. I like it as a veteran, but that would be terrible for a new player.
  • The game's mechanics are overly vague and poorly explained.

 

I would also argue that Praetoria's experience bands need to be reconsidered to avoid the overleveling problem that causes people to clip a lot of arcs, though that's partially come up in the topic already so I won't rehash that. It remains a point against it.

 

I'm not saying that these are small problems -- even if I had brought this up at the very beginning of the open beta period, it would be far too late to do anything about them in a beta cycle. But I do think that "NOT RECOMMENDED FOR NEW PLAYERS", or "RECOMMENDED FOR NEW PLAYERS" are the wrong approaches. People are generally going to expect the "recommended" experience to be the most polished and engaging one. I have met very few players under the age of 30 who speak positively of blue-side (and most people want to be heroes), and red-side is spoken of in more measured tones still.

 

Also, origin powers being much more useful for the first 10 levels will go a long way to mitigating the lack of offensive options many ATs have for dealing with the zone early on. Therefore, I would go with language more like

"THIS IS THE CLASSIC CITY OF HEROES EXPERIENCE." and "THIS IS A CHALLENGING, MORE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE."

 

I understand your points, though I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion.  That aside, I wanted to address a potential issue with this proposed language.  When I read those two descriptions, it would make me think that the "classic City of Heroes experience" is what was officially created when the game was live, which would then imply that Praetoria was something unofficial created by others after the game shut down.  It may be a minor bit of confusion, but it could possibly work against your goal in that people might be more likely to opt for what they think is the "real" version of the game as intended.

 

12 hours ago, Duuk said:

While we're marking Praetoria as "not recommended for newbies" maybe we could adjust the "Find Contact" button to actually find appropriate level contacts in blue and redside content post level 20 instead of every contact being First Ward/Night Ward?

 

This.  Please.  So much!  Stop sending all of my Primal characters to FW/NW contacts, when there are plenty of legitimate Primal contacts out there!

 

6 hours ago, Taurus Maximus said:

Then, you're automatically introduced to Twinshot/Dr. Graves, who give you yet more mechanic learning missions. All these arcs are also quite cinematic compared to the standard blueside/redside fare, since they were all created at the same time as the Galaxy City revamp.

 

If I could, I would make sure that Twinshot lost my number and could never automatically contact any of my characters again when they hit level 5.  She and her arc are just so annoying.  Plus, it always pops up while I'm in the middle of either Hashaby's arc or the City Hall contacts' arcs, and to pursue Twinshot I'd have to abandon those and likely outlevel them and be unable to return to the arc in progress.  Graves I can tolerate a bit more easily, but something about Twinshot and her cohorts just rubs me the wrong way.

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1 hour ago, Blackbird71 said:

I understand your points, though I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion.  That aside, I wanted to address a potential issue with this proposed language.  When I read those two descriptions, it would make me think that the "classic City of Heroes experience" is what was officially created when the game was live, which would then imply that Praetoria was something unofficial created by others after the game shut down.  It may be a minor bit of confusion, but it could possibly work against your goal in that people might be more likely to opt for what they think is the "real" version of the game as intended.

 

That's an excellent point. I'm not sure how to feasibly address that since I am mindful of also giving too much information. I'll think about it. Overall, my goal is not to get more people playing Praetoria for the sake of people playing Praetoria; it's to mitigate the effect I've seen in my non-CoH communities where a lot of people bounce off after a week or two of play because they think the game is a snoozefest devoid of interesting content similar to Champions Online.

 

The ideal would be a significant revamp of the 1-20 range for both blue and red sides in that order, but if wishes were horses etc.

 

1 hour ago, Blackbird71 said:

This.  Please.  So much!  Stop sending all of my Primal characters to FW/NW contacts, when there are plenty of legitimate Primal contacts out there!

 

I might go so far as to go the other direction relative to my other input here, and say it's worth considering removing them from Find Contacts altogether unless you're a Praetorian character. They should certainly be deprioritized; First Ward and Night Ward stories are at a range where Blue and Red actually have plenty of good content that's accessible, interesting, and still not nearly as hard as First Ward or Night Ward can be. Dean MacArthur and Jenni Adair as well as Croatoa all immediately come to mind. The wards, unlike Nova Praetoria, also have plots that actually lose quite a lot if you are not familiar with prior lore (Praetoria in specific in this case). They are classic "mid-expansion" content as opposed to "expansion launch" content. Though not impenetrable or unenjoyable, they should probably be deprioritized in some way. At the very least, throwing both Doorman *and* the pre-Doorman contacts is redundant, and Hellewise I don't think makes any sense as a contact to bring up via Find Contacts at all. If I could snap fingers, I'd actually introduce Hellewise's assistant in Night Ward first and have her brought in via Montague or Ward.

 

I don't have any strong opinions about the repeatables from the Wards, other than that I wish we could somehow make it so that repeatable mish givers in general don't show up until you're running low on non-repeatables.

 

 

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I'll second the need to do a serious pass, particularly Blue-side, on its 1-20 missions.

 

The Praetorian + Statesman/Sister Psyche deaths did a huge number on the comprehensibility of the low level content blueside (Red-side you're mostly a self-serving type so its early content doesn't feel nearly so out of order).

 

Basically, I think some things about where things are in the timeline need to be settled because right now its a quantum mess where one minute Penny Yin is some teeny-bopper hanging with Clockwork looking for her daddy, and not 5 minutes later you can start her task force where she's a grown women, then in the Lady Grey taskforce she's back to being a teen again.

 

As much as killing Statesman off was a cathartic "take that!" at Jack, it fudged up a LOT of the low level content by making it retroactive in the previous "zone level = time order" staple.

 

I'd actually suggest semi-reversing that decision in that, prior to the level band where you can run the signature stories where they die (Level 40) that the game treats Statesman and Psyche as alive. This means you don't have to change any of the late game content (Ms. Liberty can continue to give out the TF, Maria Jenkins still gives out the revised Praetorian missions), but perhaps switching out the Penelope Yin model handing out the Task Force in Independence Port to her younger version (or maybe a hybrid costume to show a little time has passed since Faultline) and making a few dialogue tweaks to how she's acting in that level range as Sister Psyche's protégé (vs. her replacement).

 

Some slight dialogue tweaks in the newer lower level material that acted like Statesman/Psyche had always been dead when you play them would do a LOT to make it feel more coherent along with one other tweak...

 

... Put the Signature Story Arcs into the regular contacts/find contact system (perhaps in place of the First Ward ones) at the appropriate levels. Now new players will get exposure to some of the more interesting missions that also have a grander story connected to the lore as part of them. Have completing each one unlock the next contact in the chain (with the last of the Who Will Die arc unlocking the first for Pandora's Box) and I think a lot of the story of City of Heroes as new players are experiencing it will hold together a lot better.

 

Because right now a rather significant part of the Blue-side lore and what's going on with Penny Yin and several other factors is hidden off in contacts you don't even know exist unless you've read the wiki.

 

Plus it gives you 12 more contacts to replace all the First/Night Ward ones with on the Search for Contacts bar.

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3 hours ago, Chris24601 said:

perhaps switching out the Penelope Yin model handing out the Task Force in Independence Port to her younger version (or maybe a hybrid costume to show a little time has passed since Faultline) and making a few dialogue tweaks to how she's acting in that level range as Sister Psyche's protégé (vs. her replacement).

Arguably this only draws more attention to the continuity issues, since IP and Faultine have overlapping level ranges. You can easily take a break midway through the Faultline story to do a Yin TF, then go right back to doing missions where she's a kid and it's supposed to be a big surprise when you find out she's a super powerful psychic. At least with the current arrangement you can assume she's a time traveller and for some reason it just isn't mentioned anywhere.

Edited by Tatterhood
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Just needed to chime in one more time re: the Primal EARTH and Praetorian EARTH labels.

 

The design is emphasizing the wrong parts of the name and as a result the buttons are confusing.

 

Instead of appearing to be two different flavors of the same thing, the buttons ought to clarify that they are Two Very Different things.

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