The Good, The Bad, and the City of Heroes...

[Heraclea]

At low to mid levels, any enemies that excessively debuff recharge, ToHit or Endurance. These are all pretty trivial issues to solve at 50 with liberal use of IOs and inspirations (the tray of 20 really helps). However, even with IOs I still dislike enemies that summon boat loads of minions/pets so that tanking is effectively impossible because of aggro caps (looking at you, Lamp people in Night Ward).

 

As for missions and maps, mostly defeat all missions and the intricate multi-layer caves that are a pain to navigate.

 

Having said that, a lot of the Praetorian enemy groups are a pain in the ass before 50. I don't mind fighting them too much, but many of them seem to be tuned for IO'd out 50s rather than 20s with generic enhancements. Currently playing a 35 duo with a friend that's planned to be synergistic (Defender + Brute) and even only at +1/x4 Night Ward goons sometimes come very close to whooping our asses when we can effortlessly clear vanilla enemies at +2/x8. The challenge is fun when I'm playing with an experienced friend, but I probably wouldn't do that content with a bunch of randoms until 50.

 

Night Ward is another of the zones for which once eight years ago was enough.

[Rathulfr]

Runners. Just f***ing runners, man.

 

Shooting runners in the back is probably one of the things I love most about playing ranged characters.  ;D

[Heraclea]

To be honest, I love running all that content - at +4/x8 and solo, on teams, anything.

 

It's the "Dark Souls" conundrum: one person will die twice and see the experience as an unbelievably tedious slog. Another person will die forty times and see it as an enjoyable challenge.

 

(And of course, there's yet another group of hardcore minmaxers who will power through the whole thing without blinking and call both former groups "noobs" for dying at all.)

 

We have another thread where people are arguing incarnate powers trivialize everything in the game. Ultimately, I think there's great virtue in the tacit admission players are looking for a variety of different experiences; giving them the tools to tailor that experience, a little bit of guidance, then letting them roam free. There lies the greatness of the game, if you ask me. From costume creation to the way you interact with the content, CoH embraces personalization to the point nobody will truly get the exact same thing from the game.

 

To be honest, this content is probably quite playable on the blaster that I built, like I build most of my characters, for close range team support.  At level 50 she has about as much stealth as she can get (invisibility, stealth IO in Sprint, super speed, and of course Recall Friend).  The character is also a sapper: she can go into the middle of most spawns undetected and nuke their endurance dry in one or two passes.  She plays to her strength by using Incarnates for extra sapping. 

 

To me the most interesting thing about this is that it sets up LOLRP.  My Roman Amazon characters share political and religious institutions that are unique to themselves.  Heraclea considers Yamnaya's tactics to be un-Roman, un-Amazon, and unfair.  Yamnaya is with the New Colchis intelligence services, a tiny elite with disproportionate political clout on the home islands.  In New Colchis politics, this is expressed by weird religious radicalism that claims to restore the old ways.  In Paragon City. the intelligence service is altogether too friendly with Vanguard.  Heraclea considers Vanguard to be villains not much better than Malta, using similarly immoral methods.  She barely tolerates the presence of a Vanguard trainer in the Amazon Army camp in Paragon City.  (The alternative was having a man, as if one of them could teach them anything.)

 

Catrina, my second 50 tanker, stands between them.  She is a religious innovator, a firm adherent of the spirit possession hero cult brought to the islands by African women freed from slave ships, that is somewhat disliked by more traditional Roman Amazons. Roman religion has always freely appropriated gods from different cultures, so there's no real grounds in its very informal belief systems to disapprove.  On the other hand, she is motivated by self-interest to disapprove strongly of sapping tactics.  These religious differences are basically the local equivalent of party politics.  Catrina is a 'liberal', Heraclea a 'conservative', Yamnaya a radical who pretends to be a radical traditionalist.

 

Up and coming characters like Grandma Gnosis are entirely too friendly with the intelligence branches.  Heraclea is grooming characters like Maiden Heaven and Mother of Vinegar whom she hopes will boost her side's political support in the Paragon City mission. 

 

(The Roman Amazons welcome women with budding super powers from Paragon City who are willing to learn enough Latin to get by.  Some of these characters are Amazon trained, rather than by birth.  They also welcome female infants who manifest superpowers; a baby with superpowers can quickly become a problem for its civilian parents, but Roman Amazons know how to cope with this.  Others are super powered women who wanted the training and put up with the culture.) 

 

I am going on and on in excessive detail here, I guess.  ;)

[mousestalker]

Pet Peeves? Ok:

 

1. Blue caves. I groan every time a mission takes me into one. There is an old country and western song called "Hello Walls". It plays every time I'm in a cave.

 

2. Sappers. 'nuff said.

 

3. Pop ups. The game should be renamed "City of Pop Ups". If I were new to the game, I wouldn't mind so much. But I've seen every possible pop up several hundreds of times.

 

4. Map re-sizing. The game does this from time to time and it galls me.

 

5. The Chantry and all its friends. Everyone must take flight or have a temp fly power or else. Plus almost every mission is 'defeat 50 X' which is boring.

 

and lastly,

 

6. Gratuitous Zoning. In Apex and Tin Mage it's especially egregious.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

5. The Chantry and all its friends. Everyone must take flight or have a temp fly power or else. Plus almost every mission is 'defeat 50 X' which is boring.

This is a common misconception but it's not actually true. While there are a few places where the path is difficult (primarily in the Cascade Archipelago due to the geysers being a bit wonky for vertical travel) in general a character with Super Jump and a map of the gravity geysers is faster than someone with flight. This is especially true with the Jet Pack or Steam Jump inherent powers since activating those lets you remain in the air while traveling at the jump speed cap instead of the fly speed cap.

[Black Zot]

Worst enemies:  Anything that spams mezzes, drains end, or otherwise shuts your character down.  There are lots of ways to make a fun fight in a video game; "you don't get to play" is NOT one of them.  And neither is "you can play, but nothing you do will have any effect".  Whoever designed Kadabra Kill, get the hell out of game design before you poison another product with your stupidity!

 

Worst map:  The layer-cake cave.  UGH.  Another instance of design so bad you'd think it came from a low-end fanfic.  At least half the enemies on any cave map that features the layer-cake room will be hiding in various crannies of this 5-story mess, and you have to take out EVERY SINGLE ONE to clear any mission that sends you in here.

[Clave Dark 5]

Runners. Just f***ing runners, man.

 

Shooting runners in the back is probably one of the things I love most about playing ranged characters.  ;D

 

I often like to throw out a "You better run you coward!" or something similar afterwards.  :)

[Heraclea]

Worst enemies:  Anything that spams mezzes, drains end, or otherwise shuts your character down.  There are lots of ways to make a fun fight in a video game; "you don't get to play" is NOT one of them.  And neither is "you can play, but nothing you do will have any effect".  Whoever designed Kadabra Kill, get the hell out of game design before you poison another product with your stupidity!

 

Example of this: a mission called 'Meet Hamidon's Fury'.  Think the contact was 'Number 6'.  Don't take anything from him.  At any rate, at the end of the mission, which had the typical shifting goals, the mission spawned three 'Avatar of Hamidon' archvillains.  First time, at the tanker/mission owner's chosen level, we died instantly and uncomprehendingly to these things.  Nothing in the mission suggested a strategy.  We reset the mission with difficulty set to baseline.  Something put enough of a dent in these things - a green light flashed and they were two thirds dead - that enabled the team to separate them and beat them down.  I was not the owner, and did not read the mission text - but it definitely seemed like these things were killed by a deus ex machina.  The player character 'heroes' definitely contributed very little to the 'victory'.  By the time it finally ended we were just grateful to see the 'mission exit' button.  The mission was a trap: when we reset it we had to Ouro out of it.  Choosing resurrect to supergroup base was apparently deliberately broken; you still resurrected in a broken hospital without the expected inspiration vendor.  And you're in an instance, so of course no auction house.  No amount of interesting new maps changes the fact that this content is simply team unfriendly and badly designed. 

[Hyperstrike]

Runners. Just f***ing runners, man.

 

Shooting runners in the back is probably one of the things I love most about playing ranged characters.  ;D

 

I often like to throw out a "You better run you coward!" or something similar afterwards.  :)

 

This is me:

 

[Williwaw]

Worst enemies:  Anything that spams mezzes, drains end, or otherwise shuts your character down.  There are lots of ways to make a fun fight in a video game; "you don't get to play" is NOT one of them.  And neither is "you can play, but nothing you do will have any effect".  Whoever designed Kadabra Kill, get the hell out of game design before you poison another product with your stupidity!

 

Example of this: a mission called 'Meet Hamidon's Fury'.  Think the contact was 'Number 6'.  Don't take anything from him.  At any rate, at the end of the mission, which had the typical shifting goals, the mission spawned three 'Avatar of Hamidon' archvillains.  First time, at the tanker/mission owner's chosen level, we died instantly and uncomprehendingly to these things.  Nothing in the mission suggested a strategy.  We reset the mission with difficulty set to baseline.  Something put enough of a dent in these things - a green light flashed and they were two thirds dead - that enabled the team to separate them and beat them down.  I was not the owner, and did not read the mission text - but it definitely seemed like these things were killed by a deus ex machina.  The player character 'heroes' definitely contributed very little to the 'victory'.  By the time it finally ended we were just grateful to see the 'mission exit' button.  The mission was a trap: when we reset it we had to Ouro out of it.  Choosing resurrect to supergroup base was apparently deliberately broken; you still resurrected in a broken hospital without the expected inspiration vendor.  And you're in an instance, so of course no auction house.  No amount of interesting new maps changes the fact that this content is simply team unfriendly and badly designed.

 

The Number Six incarnate missions were still in testing on the Beta Server when the game closed, and so may still have some bugs and/or balance issues.

 

I'm not sure that's what happened here, though.  You get a number of NPCs to help you with the three Avatars of Hamidon (unless you deliberately choose not to have them help, which nets you a badge).

[GamerKate]

I haven’t had much difficulty against the Vahzilok for some reason, and I’ve recently taken 10 toons from 1-15 doing The Hollows and Midnighter, Vahzilok Pollutant Plot and Lords of Death arcs, but the goddam igneous are doing my head in. Why? Because they run about like they’re on amphetamines and the goddam knockdown from having rocks thrown at my head makes me AAARGH lol.

 

I don’t have any toons above lvl 16 yet, but I look forward to hating the carnie illusionists and Malta sappers and gunslingers all over again.

 

As someone else said, I’d fight Malta sappers every day until my deathbed if it meant COH was still

Up then :D

 

Worth. Every. Whiff.

 

MCM

[srmalloy]

Runners. Just f***ing runners, man.

 

Shooting runners in the back is probably one of the things I love most about playing ranged characters.  ;D

 

It's not just shooting runners in the back; it's seeing the runner, taking the shot at them as they scurry off, and watching the trail of your shot curve to follow them as they duck around a corner, which tells you that, no matter how fast and how far they run, they're going to get it.

 

And sometimes you get the weird effects, too; back on live, I had one where I was on the docks on the W side of IP with my AR/EM Blaster attacking a spawn of Tsoo. I'd fired an M30 round at a Red Ink Man, enough damage to finish him off, and I watched it arc over and begin to descend... then the Ink Man hit me with Siphon Speed and took off running -- and I watched the grenade turn in mid-flight and begin ascending again as it disappeared into the distance chasing my runner. And about 20 seconds later I got the XP and inf for his defeat, without ever seeing him again. You can't buy satisfaction like that.

[Abraxus]

Now I have one bad thing to say. 

 

I don't have NEAR enough time to play, as opposed to how much I want to play.  Well, I guess that's not a criticism of the game, as much as life in general.  8) ;)

[justicebeliever]

Now I have one bad thing to say. 

 

I don't have NEAR enough time to play, as opposed to how much I want to play.  Well, I guess that's not a criticism of the game, as much as life in general.  8) ;)

 

QFT, +1 Inf to Abraxus, -1 inf to life in general

[Eva Destruction]

My most hated enemy group is the freaking Longbow, because they are SO BORING and they are so overused redside.  At lower levels you at least get the occasional Legacy Chain or Wyvern mission to mix things up, but after 30 it's one sea of red and white generic do-gooders after another.

 

I actually love Malta because they make good villains.  There's none of this "you've defeated the AV!  Yay, the villain group is done forever!  Oh, we want to use that group some more, looks like the AV has escaped from the zig" nonsense.  Their "AVs" are old men sitting around a conference table who aren't going to fight you because they're not stupid (except when they started sending their AVs to fight you, because CoX writing is about as consistent as comic book writing).  They get to be a constant threat, from a story perspective.  And really, they're not that hard.  Even before sappers got nerfed multiple times, they were only "hard" in the sense that a fire or invul tank couldn't just herd up a whole room of them without breaking a sweat; if you were a squishy back then, everything at those levels could kill you pretty fast anyway so Malta were no different.  Now that everybody builds for defense, they're kind of a joke, since they have none of the "LoL at your defense" abilities that many of the newer enemy groups do.

[DocRadio]

On ‎7‎/‎4‎/‎2019 at 6:43 AM, Williwaw said:

 

The Number Six incarnate missions were still in testing on the Beta Server when the game closed, and so may still have some bugs and/or balance issues.

 

I'm not sure that's what happened here, though.  You get a number of NPCs to help you with the three Avatars of Hamidon (unless you deliberately choose not to have them help, which nets you a badge).

I ran that mission Solo... The NPC's were LONNNNNNNNGGGGG damned dead by the time I got to the final battle.

Edited November 20, 2019 by DocRadio

[SaintD]

On 7/4/2019 at 12:44 AM, Heraclea said:

This is also why in i25 you don't start worrying about inf until level 25 at the earliest.

Level 22. You craft IO's equivalent to SO's and forget about them entirely for most of your continued leveling.

[EmmySky]

On 6/30/2019 at 6:22 PM, madpoet67 said:

Most hated enemy group: Tsoo - Chicken sh$ts... all they do is run away and make you chase them all over map... and sorcerers are the worst of the lot.

Sky Raiders are way worse about the running thing.  I still enjoy them but the 'joy' fades as they continue running.  Oddly, I dont have near as much trouble with them when sweeping as I do actually in missions.  Aside from the porters (who, like sorcerers, take off to Nederland every 5 seconds) the wing raiders seem to think running around, back and forth, like a chicken with their head cut off is a viable defense mechanism.  

 

I like fighting 5th Column, especially on my PB (there are no wants in that enemy group, I think it predated the kheld code that spawns them in every enemy group a PB encounters), they are a nice easy straightforward group with very few surprised.

[Luminara]

On 6/30/2019 at 7:22 PM, madpoet67 said:

What are your most hateds?

 

I acquired the Illusionist badge on my TA/A.  I never even attempted it again, even on my strongest characters, because the experience of farming those insufferable jerks nearly drove me to quit the game.  Leveling that TA/A to 50 before Issue 7 was a cakewalk by comparison.  My loathing for Carnies burns with a heat unrivaled by the corona of a blue giant.

 

Also, Warwolves.  For years, the lieutenant who self-destructed and respawned as a Warwolf always became a boss, regardless of difficulty setting, and they typically conned purple to my characters.  This was before IOs, and always in the mid-20 level range, so I never had a key power, or sufficient slotting or enhancements, or anything more than a few inspirations.  So many hospital runs, so much debt... I eventually just stopped doing any Council or 5th Column missions.  Even long after the bug was fixed, I avoided them.

[Xeres]

Here's another which is a mixed bag for me - the ambushes.  Now I really really like them!  It's such a good idea and adds a lot to the game IMO.  But, usually when I leave a door mission I call my contact and find the next place to go and hit my travel power and speed or jump or fly off.  I REALLY don't like leaving a potential ambush hanging especially if I'm in a much lower level zone.

 

So I don't know the answer to this.  If I get an indication that an ambush is coming then it's not really an ambush, is it?  Maybe make the mobs run faster?  Maybe I need more patience.  There have been times when I'll hang outside my (now) previous mission waiting for the potential ambush to arrive.  It's very much a love / dislike aspect of the game for me.

[Lost Ninja]

Hates:

 

Freaks that res 15 minutes after you kill them... Every other self ressing mob in the game does so pretty immediately after you defeat them. The freaks that wait around until you're ready to move on then either shoot you in the back or run away. I actively avoid Freaks if the mission is a kill all.

 

All small sized maps, be that crystal caves, oranbega or council/5th column bases. The rooms are fine (apart from Layer Cake Room) just the tunnels between them. Annoying to navigate, frequently misleading with dead ends that still catch me out after all these years and for Oranbega and Council Bases, clutter on the sides of the tunnels to get stuck on. Seriously believe these environments were designed to annoy.

 

Misleading Mission texts, "Interrogate Crey" What the hell does that mean? Is it a kill all? All mobs in last room (even though the last level of the map has two "final" rooms)? What? Oh wait it's some random boss mob not on the final level or even named...

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Xeres said:

Here's another which is a mixed bag for me - the ambushes.  Now I really really like them!  It's such a good idea and adds a lot to the game IMO.  But, usually when I leave a door mission I call my contact and find the next place to go and hit my travel power and speed or jump or fly off.  I REALLY don't like leaving a potential ambush hanging especially if I'm in a much lower level zone.

 

So I don't know the answer to this.  If I get an indication that an ambush is coming then it's not really an ambush, is it?  Maybe make the mobs run faster?  Maybe I need more patience.  There have been times when I'll hang outside my (now) previous mission waiting for the potential ambush to arrive.  It's very much a love / dislike aspect of the game for me.

 

My solution would be to add the ambushes to the next indoor mission in the player's queue.  It would require new code, or jiggery-pokery with the existing code, but it would be more thematic and less traumatic for the lowbies (been on the receiving end of someone else's purple-con ambushes as a lowbie... not fun to be one-shotted by a bunch of Malta casually loitering at the tram in AP).

[Shred Monkey]

As I read through the lists of things people hate, I keep thinking to myself... "what's wrong with you people?   That's the good stuff!  Do you want, a room filled with enemies who are specifically built to not hurt you and spew an enormous amount of rewards for almost no risk?"   And then I remember what A.E. turned into and I realize that yes... that's what many of you people want.

 

Give me extremely hard content and the tools to just barely beat it if I do everything perfectly.  That's what great gaming looks like.

[Myrmidon]

While I like the alignment system in Going Rogue, I believe that the Devs completely missed the boat with Praetoria. All of that should have been Incarnate-level content so that we could just play the game for Incarnate abilities and didn’t have to trial run ad nauseam. At least we have that Incarnate option here.

[Doc_Scorpion]

18 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

While I like the alignment system in Going Rogue, I believe that the Devs completely missed the boat with Praetoria. All of that should have been Incarnate-level content so that we could just play the game for Incarnate abilities and didn’t have to trial run ad nauseam. At least we have that Incarnate option here.

They didn't make it an all incarnate zone because they didn't know the game was soon to be shut down and that we'd be stuck seven years later without incarnate content.