My top 5 CoH annoyances ...

[SuperJames]

9 hours ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

But Twinshot's just falls apart if you think about it. You get attacked by Arachnos, You track Arachnos down to Justin Sinclair, and then he reveals that the Arachnos you've fought are a bunch of actors? Even ignoring the fact that I'm tearing through the enemies with an Arsenal Assault Dominator, and you need to have a lot of faith that I'm using that thing nonlethally, you're still recruiting people to intentionally put themselves in a position to get the living crap beaten out of them? And this is a test? Manticore's supposed to be CoH's Batman. He can't just tail us fighting Skulls, or even point us in the direction of a REAL Arachnos operation somewhere? By the point I was running this, I'd done Thiery's arc, so it's no surprise that Arachnos is there... Just the idea that Manticore's idea of a test is "hey, beat up a bunch of actors in costumes"... why?

 

This gets me, too! In a city overrun by criminal gangs, Manticore decides you should fight his friends. I do like to think that I just beat up the Freedom Phalanx in disguise. No wonder those Arachnos bosses were so strong.

 

I guess this is because the writer wanted to set up a surprise twist at the end. It irks me when writers do this. A good twist is great, but when the set up turns into a convoluted mess then it stops looking clever and just looks contrived. Sometimes it really kills the payoff, too. Like here, you didn't really stop an Arachnos plot. It was just a simulation.

 

Spoiler

The third part of Twinshot's arc always leaves me feeling rather depressed. The plot twist tears your team apart. Good job hero, you just defeated one of your friends, and your leader is so downhearted she decides not to carry on the fight. Off you go!

 

Also, has anyone else ever knocked out Maelstrom and then looked around to see the rest of your team is down and four bosses are converging on you? That took more than one trip to the hospital.

 

[SuperJames]

14 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Visual interest.

 

It must work, because I do love running around the city, despite the frustrations of getting from A to B.

 

That's what keeps bringing me back to the game. It feels like it could be a real city. And it's a cool city, a city I want to live in. I'm playing a hero with superpowers having adventures in a cool futuristic city. It's awesome.

[tidge]

Re: Zone maps.

 

The most confusing thing for me about Paragon City map layouts is the water table. I really don't mind the "War Walls" choice.

 

My least favorite 'classic' zone is probably Skyway City. I don't find it particularly easy to navigate for any travel option (doors, trams, gates) although some have it easier than others. Odd level choices and lots of things to have to navigate around. Terra Volta would be worse, but there is almost no reason to be there.

 

I feel like the Live team learned a hard lesson with the Hollows. The Rogue Isles maps don't bother me... except a little for the highly vertical Grandville. It is obvious that was a choice, but I do find it odd how BIG the zone's footprint is given that choice.

[srmalloy]

8 hours ago, Stormwalker said:

Carnie Master Illusionists.  It's not because they're dangerous (they are, but I don't mind that.  Challenge is not a bad thing).  It's because they spend half the fight phased out and so it takes freaking forever to defeat them,

And that they summon regular Illusionists, which also spend half their time phased out, dragging the fight out even more, and summon a Phantasm who summons a decoy that is invulnerable but becomes your target at annoying moments, so you have to keep checking your target window to make sure you haven't accidentally switched to the decoy and are wasting your attacks. If it weren't for the badge for defeating their summoned pets, it wouldn't be worth fighting them at all.

[lemming]

3 hours ago, SuperJames said:

This gets me, too! In a city overrun by criminal gangs, Manticore decides you should fight his friends. I do like to think that I just beat up the Freedom Phalanx in disguise. No wonder those Arachnos bosses were so strong.

One of my characters as their backstory was an employee of Manticore who got nearly killed by being put into that scenario.

Nothing like being put into a live fire scenario where the people shooting at you think you work for Arachnos.

[BasiliskXVIII]

5 hours ago, tidge said:

Re: Zone maps.

 

The most confusing thing for me about Paragon City map layouts is the water table. I really don't mind the "War Walls" choice.

 

My least favorite 'classic' zone is probably Skyway City. I don't find it particularly easy to navigate for any travel option (doors, trams, gates) although some have it easier than others. Odd level choices and lots of things to have to navigate around. Terra Volta would be worse, but there is almost no reason to be there.

 

I feel like the Live team learned a hard lesson with the Hollows. The Rogue Isles maps don't bother me... except a little for the highly vertical Grandville. It is obvious that was a choice, but I do find it odd how BIG the zone's footprint is given that choice.

 

I feel like the worst part of this aspect is how obvious it makes it that Paragon City isn't a city but a city-themed video game level. Skyway City has all of these big elevated roads and almost nothing there for the roads to go to. Even zones that are more reasonable, like Kings Row, have weird overpasses and things that seem pretty clear that the only reason they exist is because someone in the design phase of the game was like "Oh, and you'll be running along and see a group of villains threatening someone below you, so you can jump down and be like Batman"

 

Except, who does street sweeping?

 

The only saving grace with Grandville, I find, is that at least they decided to build a zone with a lot of verticality and didn't fall back on "roads" as the driving force for it. What we got still doesn't make any damn sense, but at least it makes no damn sense in a decidedly Arachnos way.

[Vic Raiden]

Re: Twinshot's questline

 

I never really put much thought into the whole 

Spoiler

"Manticore has a platoon of friends posing as Arachnos soldiers"

thing, but now that you brought it up, it does kind of make no sense. But what I'm more bothered by is two other things:

- The presence of Praetorian Clockwork as main enemies in the second half. As far as I understand, the player character is supposed to have never seen anything like that before, and yet at no point are they ever explained in-character. Manticore just offhandedly calls them Praetorian machines and the player's only possible response sounds as if they immediately knew what's going on.

- The whole finale, which just... 

Spoiler

Turns out Proton's actually a Praetorian mole with false memories, and it's the player character breaking these news to him after the final battle. It feels super awkward to me, having the PC just randomly completely understand things they most likely couldn't even possibly completely understand at that point. And of course, such a shaking twist leads to the entire Shining Stars team disbanding and Twinshot herself giving up, ending the scenario on an uncharacteristically somber note for something this early-game.

---

Re: urban planning

 

As a Pole, I'm considerably irked by certain stylistic choices across Paragon City, such as all roads being four-lanes or the only visible form of public transport (aside from buses which are at least supposed to exist) being maglev monorails instead of something more practical like trams or subways... or more importantly, the lack of any tangible transportation hubs that could lead to the wider world aside from the two harbors. For Statesman's sake, the official tourist map of Paragon has an airport marked near Boomtown's eastern wall, and yet there's not even ruins of one in the game proper! The other airport is listed as being between Skyway City and Talos Island, so out of player reach. No such thing as a railway station anywhere at all, though.

Also, pleasant as Paragon looks from a distance, I just can't get myself to understand how skyscrapers could make such an overwhelming majority of buildings across the whole city.

[BasiliskXVIII]

1 hour ago, Vic Raiden said:

As a Pole, I'm considerably irked by certain stylistic choices across Paragon City, such as all roads being four-lanes or the only visible form of public transport (aside from buses which are at least supposed to exist) being maglev monorails instead of something more practical like trams or subways... or more importantly, the lack of any tangible transportation hubs that could lead to the wider world aside from the two harbors.

Yeah, that's just North American urban planning. /s

 

Quote

For Statesman's sake, the official tourist map of Paragon has an airport marked near Boomtown's eastern wall, and yet there's not even ruins of one in the game proper! The other airport is listed as being between Skyway City and Talos Island, so out of player reach. No such thing as a railway station anywhere at all, though.

Also, pleasant as Paragon looks from a distance, I just can't get myself to understand how skyscrapers could make such an overwhelming majority of buildings across the whole city.

 

The map from the Wiki does at least show that the zones we play the game in aren't the sum total of the city. The war walls surround specific neighbourhoods, but there's significant areas outside the walls that are still just kinda doing their thing. There's an airport between Skyway and Talos, for instance, but you're right that it's weird that they'd put a Baumton Airport in an area that it's pretty apparent that there isn't an airport in and couldn't have been one before it was ruined. But it does, at least, seem fair to say that there's probably suburban development happening outside of the parts of the city that we see.

[Jaiclll]

Not being able to hit esc to log out, the ui in general is what turned me away and almost lost me. Luckily nintova videos helped me understand what was even going on.

 

All powers not being useable. Example I want to make a stalker archer because the dark armor/archer theme seemed like a cool idea to me. Well I cant because stalkers are melee and its just dumb. Game has the biggest power customization I've ever played but it does suck you are still locked out of doing things like merc/thug mastermind

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Jaiclll said:

All powers not being useable. Example I want to make a stalker archer because the dark armor/archer theme seemed like a cool idea to me. Well I cant because stalkers are melee and its just dumb.

 

Have you considered using Power pool choice for one of the archer classes? If you really want Dark Armor, there is a Sentinel and you could take Infiltration as early as level 4 (if you don't want to wait until level 20 for Cloak of Darkness)

[Go0gleplex]

5 hours ago, Vic Raiden said:

 

Re: urban planning

 

As a Pole, I'm considerably irked by certain stylistic choices across Paragon City, such as all roads being four-lanes or the only visible form of public transport (aside from buses which are at least supposed to exist) being maglev monorails instead of something more practical like trams or subways... or more importantly, the lack of any tangible transportation hubs that could lead to the wider world aside from the two harbors. For Statesman's sake, the official tourist map of Paragon has an airport marked near Boomtown's eastern wall, and yet there's not even ruins of one in the game proper! The other airport is listed as being between Skyway City and Talos Island, so out of player reach. No such thing as a railway station anywhere at all, though.

Also, pleasant as Paragon looks from a distance, I just can't get myself to understand how skyscrapers could make such an overwhelming majority of buildings across the whole city.

You think it irk's you? lol I've been in civil engineering on both sides of the permit desk and the unreal nature and just overall wrongness of Paragon's so-called-street grid and (lack of) actual zoning has my brain constantly picking things apart. Even the speed signs posted are wrong as is the channelization in many places. The suspension bridges in IP are another not really thought out sort of thing as well.  I think the airport was a potential future zone and skipped due to how much memory and work would go into dealing with the various plane models and national guard type facilities. 

 

The skyscrapers mixed in with some of the other buildings make little sense especially from a zoning code standpoint. It's like having the PPD HQ in the most run down lawless neighborhood in the city rather than either near Zig or in Atlas in easy reach of the politicians and then go to a small precinct house to get the radio and all that when the main building is a couple blocks away. The majority of the bombed out burned out leaning towers of Damocles defy both actual physics and material strengths since more than a 10-15 degree lean off vertical would tear most of them apart under their own weight. 

 

Some of the villains in a few of the zones are kinda square pegs in round holes as well...like the DE around Terra Volta. But...as long as it's still fun to play I just tell my brain to shut it and deal no matter how much it grumbles. lol

Edited January 27 by Go0gleplex

[Stormwalker]

7 hours ago, BasiliskXVIII said:

 

I feel like the worst part of this aspect is how obvious it makes it that Paragon City isn't a city but a city-themed video game level. Skyway City has all of these big elevated roads and almost nothing there for the roads to go to. Even zones that are more reasonable, like Kings Row, have weird overpasses and things that seem pretty clear that the only reason they exist is because someone in the design phase of the game was like "Oh, and you'll be running along and see a group of villains threatening someone below you, so you can jump down and be like Batman"

 

Except, who does street sweeping?

 

The only saving grace with Grandville, I find, is that at least they decided to build a zone with a lot of verticality and didn't fall back on "roads" as the driving force for it. What we got still doesn't make any damn sense, but at least it makes no damn sense in a decidedly Arachnos way.

 

To be fair, in the early days of the game, a lot of street sweeping happened.  You leveled up a lot slower then, and typically your story arcs were not enough to get you through to the next set of contacts, so you either joined other people's teams and did their arcs, or you street swept. 

 

Being someone who likes to play at my own pace and therefore mainly only teams for TF's and iTrials, I did a LOT of street sweeping back in the day.

 

Things like reductions in how much debt you get, and Patrol XP, plus adding more story arcs to the game, changed that.

 

As for Grandville, that zone is unforgivably obnoxious on any character using Super Speed or Infiltration.  My redside 50 street samurai with Infiltration keeps a set of temp power rocket packs around because otherwise she can't get anywhere in Grandville.

[Stormwalker]

10 hours ago, srmalloy said:

And that they summon regular Illusionists, which also spend half their time phased out, dragging the fight out even more, and summon a Phantasm who summons a decoy that is invulnerable but becomes your target at annoying moments, so you have to keep checking your target window to make sure you haven't accidentally switched to the decoy and are wasting your attacks. If it weren't for the badge for defeating their summoned pets, it wouldn't be worth fighting them at all.

 

Yes, exactly.

 

Master Illusionists might be even more egregious time-wasters than Paragon Protectors.  And that's saying something, because Paragon Protectors are terrible (speaking as someone who recently did the Revenant Hero Project story-arc again and, yes, that's why my list included Paragon Protectors three times).

[Stormwalker]

2 hours ago, Jaiclll said:

Not being able to hit esc to log out, the ui in general is what turned me away and almost lost me. Luckily nintova videos helped me understand what was even going on.

 

All powers not being useable. Example I want to make a stalker archer because the dark armor/archer theme seemed like a cool idea to me. Well I cant because stalkers are melee and its just dumb. Game has the biggest power customization I've ever played but it does suck you are still locked out of doing things like merc/thug mastermind

 

They actually tried this originally, where you could just select any two powersets you wanted.  The reason they went away from it and created AT's was it was way too easy to make completely unplayable builds, to the point that it was basically a trap for players.

Edited January 27 by Stormwalker
how many typos can I make in two sentences?

[Stormwalker]

On 1/25/2025 at 3:46 PM, Octogoat said:

Wheel of destruction turn turn turn show is the lesson that we should learn....

 

The lessons we should learn are "Don't listen to Azuria" and "Don't assemble dangerous magical artifacts that were presumably broken up and scattered for reasons."

[srmalloy]

16 hours ago, Stormwalker said:

 

Yes, exactly.

 

Master Illusionists might be even more egregious time-wasters than Paragon Protectors.  And that's saying something, because Paragon Protectors are terrible (speaking as someone who recently did the Revenant Hero Project story-arc again and, yes, that's why my list included Paragon Protectors three times).

It depends a lot on the flavor of Paragon Protector; the claws scrappers don't get significantly harder when they pop their MoG, nor are the healers. It's the energy blasters that go full-on unhittable if they're allowed to get their MoG off.

 

On 1/25/2025 at 1:46 PM, Octogoat said:

Wheel of destruction turn turn turn show is the lesson that we should learn....

Back on live, I picked up the habit of saying "Hello, Azuria? I'd like to have this piece of the Wheel of Destruction filed under 'Will Call' for the Banished Pantheon, please" as a recognition of the existence of a hidden walk-up window outside the MAGI vault for enemy groups to show up and collect items from the vault.

[aethereal]

2 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

It depends a lot on the flavor of Paragon Protector; the claws scrappers don't get significantly harder when they pop their MoG, nor are the healers. It's the energy blasters that go full-on unhittable if they're allowed to get their MoG off.

Some Protectors have Unstoppable, not Moment of Glory.

[Stormwalker]

36 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Some Protectors have Unstoppable, not Moment of Glory.

 

Yep.  The ones with Unstoppable are easier to hit (they just don't take very much damage).  It's the ones with old pre-Regen-nerfs MoG with waaaaay too much duration that are really obnoxious.  Focused Accuracy helps, but unless you're exemp'ing down for that story arc, you're unlikely to have that power since the earliest you can possibly get it is 35 (and I usually don't take it until one of my last two power slots, so it's right out for me)

 

I have been at times tempted to put a "Nerf Regen (for Paragon Protectors, that is)" thread in the suggestions forum.   If we as players only get 15-second MoG, then Paragon Protectors should only get 15-second MoG!

Edited January 27 by Stormwalker

[BasiliskXVIII]

36 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Some Protectors have Unstoppable, not Moment of Glory.

Claws gets unstoppable, Spines gets Elude, and Energy gets MoG. Elude and Unstoppable aren't too bad to deal with. For Elude, throw enough attacks, and eventually one gets through their defence and they go down, since they're already at low health, it's even easier if you have autohit powers or big -def debuffs. Unstoppable is likewise not too tricky, since it usually just means landing a few more hits. MoG is really the only one that's bad, since the combination of the two means that you can't hit them and when you do, it does no damage. Then, they also go into "afraid" mode and proceed to haul ass away from you at fly speed, buzzing around the entire map like a directionally-challenged housefly, only to eventually saunter back, and there's still entirely too long left on MoG.

[groobark]

On 1/25/2025 at 10:54 PM, biostem said:

One of the biggest annoyances for me, (and maybe it's due to the conditions surrounding CoH's operation when it was still live), but there's a significant lack of "taking a 3rd option" in missions - there didn't seem to have been any thought, effort, or both, put into allowing a way for things to still play out so they "fit" with the current timeframe, without our characters kind of helping the Council.  It'd have been nice to be able to try and undermine both groups, only to find out your efforts have actually forced them to come together, thereby leading to the same outcome, only without you directly aiding one side...

Well there is at least sort of an arc that tries to show what happens if you try to fight both/pit them against each other. Talking about Laura Lockhart. And btw. the variation of that arc has to be my favorite mission in all of CoH.
I run the initial arc every time with my kids, because it is so *sad*!

[groobark]

On 1/26/2025 at 1:56 AM, BasiliskXVIII said:

 

This actually reminds me of something that I was thinking this morning while running a new character on Victory.  What the heck is up with Twinshot's arc? I decided to run it just because I had no one around to do a DFB, First off you're getting a tutorial in an arc you can't access until level 5 or later and it starts with finding out how to level up? It also brings you to the hospital, as if you're ever going there without being teleported, and the police station, as if there's anything to do there. The only one that makes any sense at this point is maybe the auction house.

 

But then there's also the plot. Graves gets a lot of stick because it's... just so bad.... But Twinshot's just falls apart if you think about it. You get attacked by Arachnos, You track Arachnos down to Justin Sinclair, and then he reveals that the Arachnos you've fought are a bunch of actors? Even ignoring the fact that I'm tearing through the enemies with an Arsenal Assault Dominator, and you need to have a lot of faith that I'm using that thing nonlethally, you're still recruiting people to intentionally put themselves in a position to get the living crap beaten out of them? And this is a test? Manticore's supposed to be CoH's Batman. He can't just tail us fighting Skulls, or even point us in the direction of a REAL Arachnos operation somewhere? By the point I was running this, I'd done Thiery's arc, so it's no surprise that Arachnos is there... Just the idea that Manticore's idea of a test is "hey, beat up a bunch of actors in costumes"... why?

I did not list my annoyances about the difference in quality of writing for quests or even consistency, because. to be fair, writing in MMOs isn't the reason we play this. That said, CoH (and to a degree CoV) has a bunch of very nice arcs. Writing is still a bit short for the most part, but I can understand it. Praetoria was better. Not necessarily overall writing, but consistency between Arc and a certain theme to all of the stories.
Recently though, after doing the whole "gold side every quest line with one character without ORO by switching sides every mission" I went back to play some blue side with my kids and the "non consistency" is really jarring.
Taking down the suparadine ring should put a damper on the skulls operations, but nothing changes in Kings Row. That they can introduce changing environments even based on a single player they actually showcase in the very first arc multiple times, where an entire section is replaced, mobs and everything in the open city.
I absolutely loathe Twinshot, though I have to say Part3 is actually one of my favorites. Also this arc is annoying to do flashback (because you have to always run back to twinshot to get the number) and is actually semi neatly built into the Kings Row arcs. But it is still super annoying to do, because it is required for Atlas Med.

[groobark]

On 1/26/2025 at 6:49 AM, Stormwalker said:

I have another one to add after doing an outdoor mission on +2x7 that seemed to never end.

 

Carnie Master Illusionists.  It's not because they're dangerous (they are, but I don't mind that.  Challenge is not a bad thing).  It's because they spend half the fight phased out and so it takes freaking forever to defeat them, and it's that much worse when you have an outdoor mission that has tons of them in it, and you're just thinking, "Can this mission please end already?" and yet... more Master Illusionists wasting your time even more.

 

So, I guess instead of just "Paragon Protectors" and "Master Illusionists", I should combine them into "Enemies that constantly waste the player's time".

 

In fact, the whole reason I'm on +2x7 instead of +2x8 is because I got sick of getting three Master Illusionists in a spawn.

Yes.
Sometimes there is a reason for kill all, sometimes its not. Sometimes factions have a certain gimmick, like Freakshow rez (which I find annoying, especially in kill all missions) or the council wolf transformation (which sometimes makes sense, and sometimes totally not and occasionally is extremely annoying and time wasting. like every boss in a 4/8 mission turning into another 4/8 boss and you don't even get the xp for the first one I believe)
Anyways, when it is clear that time is supposed to be wasted and nothing more then i take a bit of an issue, with game design and everything.
There is something like a social contract in there somewhere between devs and the players.

Now it is *theoretically* possible that the devs didn't realize how absolutely frickin annoying these illusionists become. Maybe they didn't care. But honestly the time it takes to do a 4/8 carnie missions is so much different from others in the same tier its not funny anymore. As I mentioned, I turn off bosses and set the mission to -1/1 immediately when I see a carnie mob in a mission (from AV 4/8).