Worst room in game?

[Snarky]

My personal favorite is the Arachnos Reactor room with ramps and elevators that is about 17 stories tall. 
 

There is the layer cake room. The Council pool room. The cave that snakes back around on too of itself in a corkscrew.  
 

Any others?  
 

Post what you think are the worst!

[KaizenSoze]

That's easy, it's the one you are in.

[LegionAlpha]

Cake room or the layered area that hides the objective behind every nook and cranny somewhere. 

[DoctorDitko]

It's not a room, but my least favorite mission is the one where you get dropped into a giant industrial open-air complex, and have to find bombs and rescue civilians. And there are more nooks and crannies than an English muffin, and none of the glowies make any sound!

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 04:24 PM by DoctorDitko
typos

[catsi563]

the lab room. its such a raging pain to clear 

[bAss_ackwards]

Any narrow corridor. Especially the ones with small bits of geometry that catch your character (or pets) as you're moving along. 😛

[Erratic1]

I dread the Crey wraparound lab. Hate it!

[arcane]

Barracuda laser rooms. You want to TP teammates in there, but people get so sensitive these days 🙄

[Skyhawke]

The Council caves where you have to jump down those square chute things. Rarely do I hit it on the first try. It's usually me running over it too fast or jumping onto an edge and moving too fast over it or just missing it all together. Bonus hate points for trying to stealth the one in the Trapdoor mission with anything other than Superior Invis. 

[srmalloy]

3 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

Bonus hate points for trying to stealth the one in the Trapdoor mission with anything other than Superior Invis. 

I always craft a Grant Invisibility buff at an empowerment station before running that, and I don't seem to have a problem with drawing unwanted aggro. Are you remembering to turn off any aggro auras before you make the run? I made that mistake once. Well, twice... 

[Go0gleplex]

anything and everything Oranbega...  The artwork and scenery is awesome...but it's the absolute worst for tripping my claustrophia. (shudders) So I end up avoiding that entire set of story lines. 

[Kaika]

The old blue/brown caves in their entirety, with the aforementioned layer cake room.

 

I honestly love them from a atmospheric standpoint but they are just BAD. Narrow winding corridors filled with random bits of geometry to get stuck on. Many rooms have multiple floors with tons of nooks and cranny to hide out in. The tight corridors make travel powers and movement, my favorite aspects of the game, feel anywhere from frustrating to useless. Worst of all the enemy are always spread out through out the room, you would think "this would things harder" but no it actually makes things considerably easier. In newer maps groups are often spread out in a area to prevent fireballs from ending the fight instantly, which makes them harder, however in a cave a single group is often spread out so far that even a team of 8 PUGs with no attempt at stealth will only take half the group at a time, or less, without trying. That's not even to mention some of the room layouts, the layercake room is infamous but thats not even to mention other rooms, like the room that requires you to jump up to the second level to find a tunnel that lets you go forward. God forbid you get a "defeat all" in a caves, or even a "defeat the boss" with a layer cake room.

 

They were very much made by a inexperienced dev team that still had little to no idea how their game actually played, even at the time. It's little wonder that at a certain point, they just entirely stopped using them and basically replaced them with the tunnel map in newer content.

Edited yesterday at 05:36 PM by Kaika

[Triumphant]

9 minutes ago, Kaika said:

The old blue/brown caves in their entirety, with the aforementioned layer cake room.

 

I honestly love them from a atmospheric standpoint but they are just BAD. Narrow winding corridors filled with random bits of geometry to get stuck on. Many rooms have multiple floors with tons of nooks and cranny to hide out in. The tight corridors make travel powers and movement, my favorite aspects of the game, feel anywhere from frustrating to useless. Worst of all the enemy are always spread out through out the room, you would think "this would things harder" but no it actually makes things considerably easier. In newer maps groups are often spread out in a area to prevent fireballs from ending the fight instantly, which makes them harder, however in a cave a single group is often spread out so far that even a team of 8 PUGs with no attempt at stealth will only take half the group at a time, or less, without trying. That's not even to mention some of the room layouts, the layercake room is infamous but thats not even to mention other rooms, like the room that requires you to jump up to the second level to find a tunnel that lets you go forward. God forbid you get a "defeat all" in a caves, or even a "defeat the boss" with a layer cake room.

 

They were very much made by a inexperienced dev team that still had little to no idea how their game actually played, even at the time. It's little wonder that at a certain point, they just entirely stopped using them and basically replaced them with the tunnel map in newer content.

 

Yeah, that's pretty much my main gripe, as well.  I could wish that they would go back and revise these to make them a bit more open and traversable.  It's why many people will skip caves altogether, as they're more irritating than fun.

[El D]

8 minutes ago, Kaika said:

They were very much made by a inexperienced dev team that still had little to no idea how their game actually played, even at the time. It's little wonder that at a certain point, they just entirely stopped using them and basically replaced them with the tunnel map in newer content.

 

That's a very interesting point. The original mission map designs feel a lot more like FPS maps of that era than MMO maps, much less anything like the map designs CoH got later or that MMOs institute now. Travel powers being accessed much earlier - and the overall cranking up of gameplay speed - definitely adjusted how open and free-roaming mission maps became. Though, remembering the original map progression, by the time players had travel powers a lot of those big 'area of city zone/destroyed zone/forest' maps were more available around then too, so there was some semblance of player-related progression there. A lot of the endgame maps back then were also the giant open-air ones.

 

Also I'll echo some earlier posters - the massive Oranbega maps with all the little side rooms and buildings to explore is a fantastic set piece, but a major pain on any character taller than the default height. My main for a long time was an 8'+ tall demon man and he'd end up getting caught on every one of those green crystal chandeliers. I imagine its even worse if your character is a Huge player model. I have friends whose mains use the Huge model with near max height and body sliders and I don't see how they've managed all these years.

[srmalloy]

43 minutes ago, Triumphant said:

I could wish that they would go back and revise these to make them a bit more open and traversable. 

Even something as simple as going back and upscaling all of the tunnel geometry by 25% in each dimension would make a significant improvement in the navigability of the caves. The concern I have is how it would spill over elsewhere, since the Council/5th Column base maps use the same geometry dressed differently -- I don't know if they actually use the same internal tileset with different colors and greeblies, or have their own tileset; if they use the same tileset, it would break all the Council/5th maps or generate scaling issues with the greeblies.

[Kaika]

1 hour ago, El D said:

 

That's a very interesting point. The original mission map designs feel a lot more like FPS maps of that era than MMO maps, much less anything like the map designs CoH got later or that MMOs institute now. Travel powers being accessed much earlier - and the overall cranking up of gameplay speed - definitely adjusted how open and free-roaming mission maps became. Though, remembering the original map progression, by the time players had travel powers a lot of those big 'area of city zone/destroyed zone/forest' maps were more available around then too, so there was some semblance of player-related progression there. A lot of the endgame maps back then were also the giant open-air ones.

 

Keep in mind, in the original release of the game travel powers had much higher end cost, and often combat downsides when running them. This was also back in the day when stamina was supposed to be a power pool power that you really had to invest in to get (and basically everyone did). Both fly and super speed used to lower your accuracy fairly significantly and teleport had a end cost so high it practically rendered it unusable as a travel power without slotting for end. Originally travel power were VERY MUCH intended to not be used in combat. However if you played back in the day, you would know that basically none of the original design intentions like this worked, as without ED, you could 6 slot stamina, and never have end issues again, then 6 slot tactics and never have to worry about accuracy and this was all without travel power suppression. Needless to say, their efforts didn't even really work from the get go, at least once people started to learn how the game worked.

 

Once the Pandoras box of being able to use these in combat was open there really wasn't and putting them back in it. Overtime they made travel powers less and less restricted as it turns out, going fast is fun. Honestly I think it's for the best, but it's kinda interesting looking back on the original design intention, as missions were intended to be done at what we would consider a glacial pace by today's standards.

Edited yesterday at 07:00 PM by Kaika

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, Skyhawke said:

Bonus hate points for trying to stealth the one in the Trapdoor mission with anything other than Superior Invis. 

I just use the Celerity:stealth and SS. I have never had any issues with aggro getting to trap door. How many bonus hate points do I get? 

[Sakura Tenshi]

Not exactly hated for objective purposes, but there’s a hallway/room of tech labs that has the diagonal columns, ending in a door, and I notice there’s a huge among of spawns crammed in close to one another making it hard to take them down one by one if you’re solo and in bigger teams can actually result in faceplants.

[MoonSheep]

i dislike the horrible dark arachnos base maps more than blue caves. all of CoV is just way too dark and gloomy

 

mercy island is also a really bad starting zone, far too big and difficult to navigate when starting out + has nowhere which can be used as a “third place”. which on that topic, the only place that ever was a third place in CoV was the black market in cap

[Oubliette_Red]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

Even something as simple as going back and upscaling all of the tunnel geometry by 25% in each dimension would make a significant improvement in the navigability of the caves. The concern I have is how it would spill over elsewhere, since the Council/5th Column base maps use the same geometry dressed differently -- I don't know if they actually use the same internal tileset with different colors and greeblies, or have their own tileset; if they use the same tileset, it would break all the Council/5th maps or generate scaling issues with the greeblies.

 

If I recall correctly (and I may not because 15 years or so have passed) but I believe the maps comprise of cubes of map pieces that are fitted together to make the completed map. During one of the last Meet'n'Greets I believe one of the Legacy Devs mention that they were trying to figure out how to make those pieces come together on generation to make for truly random maps (I think for AE anyway) but because of glowie/mob spawn locations it was proving to not be so simple. Resizing the maps may not be nearly so tall an order but spawn points and connections would likely still require manual adjustments for the Devs.

[Sakura Tenshi]

1 hour ago, MoonSheep said:

i dislike the horrible dark arachnos base maps more than blue caves. all of CoV is just way too dark and gloomy

 

mercy island is also a really bad starting zone, far too big and difficult to navigate when starting out + has nowhere which can be used as a “third place”. which on that topic, the only place that ever was a third place in CoV was the black market in cap

 

Don't get me started- Oh, too late.

 

I do agree Redside's popularity probably suffers a lot from the overly oppressive and gloomy aesthetics, and while I get that sort of was the point when it was designed, it does undercut a desire to hang out there. There is also writing issues of just "there's all kinds of ways to be a villain" but that's a story for another time, but it does contribute with Arachnos' shadow cast over the player from 1-50 and even endgame with zero reprieve. (No one complained about the Freedom Phalanx, to my knowledge, because most people didn't even start in Galaxy City)

 

Arachnos bases are absolutely hideous and highly impractical, for one is the schizophrenic flooring which seems unable to decide between non-slip grates and honeycomb metal grating (and while forcing female personnel to wear stillettos? Really?) or the fact that the bases are filled with random drops and rises in elevation with no means to ascend or descend that doesn't involve jumping your own body height, the massive, ugly pipes sticking out everywhere with no apparent purpose (seriously, what's Lord Recluse directing through them? Sewage? Incarnate juice?) that even extends outside of Arachnos bases, and honestly I wonder Lord Recluse took over his own country just to escape OSHA.

 

So, my ideas for an actual solution, which I won't be so crazy as to call a full suggestion as it would involve some heavy work and map changes and even story adjustments would probably be something like:

 

• Villains start out in a small 'town' built around the Ferry port, giving quick access to other places similar to Atlas Plaza's tram accessibility. For a bit of a gag, newly rolled villains spawn right in the water. Being implied Arachnos booted you out of a flier and into the ocean in a literal 'sink or swim' test.
• The plaza should have proper buildings, albeit look a bit rough like Kings Row or so, but still livable and have a direct connection to Mercy above, preferrably something more like a road ramp (afterall the new starting plaza is a small town built around docks) instead of just those tiny lifts.
• Mercy itself should probably be cleaned up a bit to look nicer as it's the area Arachnos has directly invested in and where they're letting the 'elites' of Mercy island live on

 

So you basically end up with a kind of clean trisectional of Rogue isle society: the new Docktown basically being 'middle society', Mercy represents the upper strata, and then you have the ruined urban sprawl of the rest of Darwin's landing, broken up further with Fort Darwin and the Water Treatment plant area.

 

Other suggestions for improving Redside are kind of bias, but focus on my two favorite zones and are a lot more vague:

1. Tidying up St. Martial and Nerva Archipelago, including updated buildings and vegetation
2. Change the sky box from the normal Rogue Isle overcast to the Praetorian skybox for more the 'tropical island' feeling

Edited yesterday at 09:13 PM by Sakura Tenshi

[Scarlet Shocker]

5 hours ago, KaizenSoze said:

That's easy, it's the one you are in.

 

For me it's the one that @Snarky is in!

[MoonSheep]

52 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

 

Don't get me started- Oh, too late.

 

I do agree Redside's popularity probably suffers a lot from the overly oppressive and gloomy aesthetics, and while I get that sort of was the point when it was designed, it does undercut a desire to hang out there. There is also writing issues of just "there's all kinds of ways to be a villain" but that's a story for another time, but it does contribute with Arachnos' shadow cast over the player from 1-50 and even endgame with zero reprieve. (No one complained about the Freedom Phalanx, to my knowledge, because most people didn't even start in Galaxy City)

 

Arachnos bases are absolutely hideous and highly impractical, for one is the schizophrenic flooring which seems unable to decide between non-slip grates and honeycomb metal grating (and while forcing female personnel to wear stillettos? Really?) or the fact that the bases are filled with random drops and rises in elevation with no means to ascend or descend that doesn't involve jumping your own body height, the massive, ugly pipes sticking out everywhere with no apparent purpose (seriously, what's Lord Recluse directing through them? Sewage? Incarnate juice?) that even extends outside of Arachnos bases, and honestly I wonder Lord Recluse took over his own country just to escape OSHA.

 

So, my ideas for an actual solution, which I won't be so crazy as to call a full suggestion as it would involve some heavy work and map changes and even story adjustments would probably be something like:

 

• Villains start out in a small 'town' built around the Ferry port, giving quick access to other places similar to Atlas Plaza's tram accessibility. For a bit of a gag, newly rolled villains spawn right in the water. Being implied Arachnos booted you out of a flier and into the ocean in a literal 'sink or swim' test.
• The plaza should have proper buildings, albeit look a bit rough like Kings Row or so, but still livable and have a direct connection to Mercy above, preferrably something more like a road ramp (afterall the new starting plaza is a small town built around docks) instead of just those tiny lifts.
• Mercy itself should probably be cleaned up a bit to look nicer as it's the area Arachnos has directly invested in and where they're letting the 'elites' of Mercy island live on

 

So you basically end up with a kind of clean trisectional of Rogue isle society: the new Docktown basically being 'middle society', Mercy represents the upper strata, and then you have the ruined urban sprawl of the rest of Darwin's landing, broken up further with Fort Darwin and the Water Treatment plant area.

 

Other suggestions for improving Redside are kind of bias, but focus on my two favorite zones and are a lot more vague:

1. Tidying up St. Martial and Nerva Archipelago, including updated buildings and vegetation
2. Change the sky box from the normal Rogue Isle overcast to the Praetorian skybox for more the 'tropical island' feeling

 

you are spot on with everything you’ve written

 

CoV would benefit from a makeover and then have a month long special event which incentivises redside play, e.g DXP in non AE redside missions

[Techwright]

2 hours ago, MoonSheep said:

i dislike the horrible dark arachnos base maps more than blue caves. all of CoV is just way too dark and gloomy

 

I'd have to agree on those as possibly the worst.  People (and strange cybernetic people) are supposed to work in these spots?   They're so pitch black, you're likely to be eaten by a grue.

 

4 hours ago, Skyhawke said:

The Council caves where you have to jump down those square chute things. Rarely do I hit it on the first try. It's usually me running over it too fast or jumping onto an edge and moving too fast over it or just missing it all together. Bonus hate points for trying to stealth the one in the Trapdoor mission with anything other than Superior Invis. 

 

Just like the black Arachnos bases, I have to ask: did the designers ever consider what it takes for the inhabitants to traverse these areas on a daily basis?

[Skyhawke]

3 hours ago, Ukase said:

I just use the Celerity:stealth and SS. I have never had any issues with aggro getting to trap door. How many bonus hate points do I get? 

 

Yes? 😄