My top 5 CoH annoyances ...

[groobark]

Yesterday night I simply wanted to do run one more mission after a very fun day. The single map turned out to require almost an hour in itself so I was reminded that there are quite few annoyances when playing CoH, which may or may not have contributed to my longer absences from the game ...

What is your take on the top annoyances in the game as it is currently?

 

5. Kill all missions

They tend to take quite a bit more time and are generally uninteresting. The occasional wandering mob or one that is hiding in a crevice of the reactor room and  this turns from slight annoyance to rage. Sure, sometimes a mission now has a red marker for the last group of mobs. Sometimes!
This may very well be one of the reasons why certain ATOs are not played. My tanker runs x/8 Kill All faster than my average Defender or Controller x/1 (especially on lower level). Being able to stealth a lot of missions with no repercussions exasperates this issue IMO.

 

4. Runners

I love elec, but it can turn even an AV into a runner and some of these cannot be slowed or immobilized. I remember this one time when an AV in summer blockbuster heist was completely end drained, jumped into the storage racks, and could only be targeted when jumping (not hovering) in front of the rack. It took almost an hour, and she never came down. Ah, fun times ...

Silent runners in x/8 missions are hard to spot and can turn a Kill All mission into a nightmare, especially if there are runners from two groups (because then the red arrows are not showing up). Occasionally the geometry is such, that they get stuck in really really hard to find places.

 

3. Intangible mobs

I never much paid attention to this, but when running several Nemesis missions, finishing a story arc turned from an average of 70 minutes to well over two hours. At the absolute top of my hate list are Carnie Bosses. You know which ones. Recently it has gotten so bad, that every single time there is now a Carnie in a mission, I immediately leave it and go from +4/8/boss to -1/1/no boss.

Mind you, different mob mechanics make the game a lot more interesting and fun. Standing next to a mob that every 5 seconds goes intangible for 10 seconds? Not so much.

 

2. Ambiguous mission descriptions

What am I supposed to do with "Investigate raid"? Is it a clickie? A surprising turn of events when there is suddenly Malta in a Crey mission?
Sometimes they are just Kill All. In the past I have tried to find out if there is something specific I have to do, which added an extra 10 minutes to the map on top of Kill All.

Just the other day I have spent about an hour flying over the farm in the final mission from the book in Night Ward, then spent another half an hour investigating the mission and finally gave up on it, under the assumption that the boss did not spawn or spawned outside the map.

 

1. Search missions in open area maps

I don't think there is a single open area map in the game that is free of problems with geometry, non glowing/humming clickies, visibility of non map objects, hostages under stairs or bridges, etc.

Search missions are the reason I have started an excel file listing all missions and story arcs, just to note especially annoying arcs so I never ever ever run these missions again, ever with any other toon. Ever.

Needless to say it has been grueling.

 

The mission from yesterday? "Kill raid leader and his crew", usually very fast missions: Stealth to the named mob, take him out, then start clearing around the room until it pops.
Not so. Firstly there was no named mob on the massive map with no less than 7(!) elevators. It wasn't clear which one was the "last" room and to top it off the mission popped halfway clearing a side room on one of the middle floors.

Edited 18 hours ago by groobark

[ZemX]

[Go0gleplex]

1. The claustrophobia that the Oranbega and some cave missions trigger. I don't even do CoT missions because of this.

 

2. Level disparities in the zones. KR for instance is labeled 5-10...so why are the mobs 8-16? I get placing challenges...but sheesh. Or was the assumption that it would be primarily teams coming into the zones? 

 

3. The majority of villain missions not being very villainy but rather simply mercenary or blue missions with altered flavor text. White washing the nasty nature of villainy to keep people playing and not treading overly harshly on social mores is understandable...but seems more anti-hero than villain. I get that there are some lines that shouldn't get crossed...but that's sort of villainy's whole schtick.

 

4. The distinct under use of some villain groups. I mean, outside of radio missions and Matthew H's initial bit there really isn't much involving the Hellions in terms of story line it seems. With all the 5th column troops putting the beat down on the Council troops in their various clashes throughout Steel, Boom, and elsewhere that they occur, the hunt X# Council missions are a PitA...and where do all these better trained 5th Column maroons come from...not like there are any bases in zones like the Council or Arachnos have.

 

5. Paragon's zones and useless war walls themselves. But that's more due to my day job profession. I get building challenges for movement and the effort spent going into creating it all...but they had no concept of actual construction and planning/zoning or such initially it seems. It got better with the islands and even better in Praetoria...and later additions like Kallisti fortunately. Not a big thing for most folks but after 4 decades it gets hard to disengage that type of critical thinking.  

 

 

[Glacier Peak]

Which Archvillains can't be immobilized?

[srmalloy]

9 hours ago, groobark said:

5. Kill all missions

They tend to take quite a bit more time and are generally uninteresting.

It's not the defeat all missions themselves, but the missions, like most of the ones you get from Anton Sampson, where the mission goal is "check out Nemesis Base", where the mission doesn't complete until you defeat everything in the mission -- but the mission goals never update to indicate this.

 

1 hour ago, Go0gleplex said:

3. The majority of villain missions not being very villainy but rather simply mercenary or blue missions with altered flavor text.

This is part of the problem I have with redside as a whole -- your character is a legbreaker. You start as a legbreaker for street thugs, and work your way up to being a legbreaker for more and more powerful patrons, until you become a legbreaker for Arachnos and Lord Recluse -- but no matter how high you go, you're still just a legbreaker. You don't get the opportunity to be a villain in your own right.

9 hours ago, groobark said:

2. Ambiguous mission descriptions

What am I supposed to do with "Investigate raid"?

Another one that continues to annoy me is a mission where the mission goal is to "defeat all [description]" -- i.e., 'defeat all Freakshow' -- but when you enter the mission, not only do you find both Freakshow and another group fighting in the map, but the other group is also hostile to you, and you have to defeat all of them as well to complete the mission, instead of having them decide "They're on our side" and become friendly.

[Oklahoman]

My top 5 CoH annoyances (in no particular order):

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

[Scarlet Shocker]

on the other hand, you can actually still play the game.

 

 

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

This is part of the problem I have with redside as a whole -- your character is a legbreaker. You start as a legbreaker for street thugs, and work your way up to being a legbreaker for more and more powerful patrons, until you become a legbreaker for Arachnos and Lord Recluse -- but no matter how high you go, you're still just a legbreaker. You don't get the opportunity to be a villain in your own right.

Yeah.  I never finished Redside back in the OG days, and having to deal with this is a big reason what I'm not going back and finishing it now.

[tidge]

14 hours ago, groobark said:

1. Search missions in open area maps

I don't think there is a single open area map in the game that is free of problems with geometry, non glowing/humming clickies, visibility of non map objects, hostages under stairs or bridges, etc.

 

Sometimes, finding objectives is like...

 

[Techwright]

14 hours ago, groobark said:

5. Kill all missions

They tend to take quite a bit more time and are generally uninteresting. The occasional wandering mob or one that is hiding in a crevice of the reactor room and  this turns from slight annoyance to rage. Sure, sometimes a mission now has a red marker for the last group of mobs. Sometimes!
This may very well be one of the reasons why certain ATOs are not played. My tanker runs x/8 Kill All faster than my average Defender or Controller x/1 (especially on lower level). Being able to stealth a lot of missions with no repercussions exasperates this issue IMO.

 

 

 

2. Ambiguous mission descriptions

What am I supposed to do with "Investigate raid"? Is it a clickie? A surprising turn of events when there is suddenly Malta in a Crey mission?
Sometimes they are just Kill All. In the past I have tried to find out if there is something specific I have to do, which added an extra 10 minutes to the map on top of Kill All.

Just the other day I have spent about an hour flying over the farm in the final mission from the book in Night Ward, then spent another half an hour investigating the mission and finally gave up on it, under the assumption that the boss did not spawn or spawned outside the map.

 

 

Regarding #5:  While I enjoy some Kill All missions, the ones repeated ad nauseam in task forces (*glares at Citadel*) make me empathetic to your pain.  I wonder if on such a modification might be made where the NPCs have...I don't know...perhaps a heighted alertness, not unlike the Nemesis army, that actually draws them in towards the players.  The challenge then moves from finding and eliminating them all in a short time, to the potential of attracting too much attention and having the whole cave/warehouse/office building on alert and moving towards you.  But you'd probably not be hunting strays or taking too long.

 

Regarding #2: Without intending to malign the dev team, this is the one in your list I'm most surprised hasn't been fully addressed by now.  A thorough review of the text seemingly should allow for a "simple" rewrite to improve the situation.  I say "simple" because I've no idea if there's a complication to the process or not.  I realize there's a lot of text to read and possibly improve, but I'm thinking in terms of chunks each update.  I know some has been done in updates past, and do not wish to forget to credit on that.

[Oubliette_Red]

Outleveling a contact.

[Hedgefund]

My 1-5 list goes;

 

1) escorts

2) escorts

3) escorts

4) take a guess 

Spoiler

it's escorts

5) escorts

 

I could put more details for each one, there are specific differences that provide annoyance.  Like, walking up a ramp (see Praetor Duncan in the first mission of her DA arc) or attaching to enemies when you get within about 30-40 feet of them (see Desdemona in Belladonna's incarnate finale).

 

I would be thrilled if there's a whole update named "Escorts follow you now" where exactly that happens even if that's the only thing changed.  Just propagate Mr. Yin to everyone else.  His follow AI is good enough.

[ivanhedgehog]

9 hours ago, Go0gleplex said:

 

5. Paragon's zones and useless war walls themselves. But that's more due to my day job profession. I get building challenges for movement and the effort spent going into creating it all...but they had no concept of actual construction and planning/zoning or such initially it seems. It got better with the islands and even better in Praetoria...and later additions like Kallisti fortunately. Not a big thing for most folks but after 4 decades it gets hard to disengage that type of critical thinking.  

 

 

I love the war walls. But then I might be crazy.