Hello, WoW I remember an escort mission there that I could never successfully complete on anything but a paladin with the plate armor + heals. The ambush you walked into had just too many enemies, most of them ranged and spread out so that you couldn’t even get to them all before they whittled you down. This was at a low enough level that most classes didn’t have AoE attacks yet. Thankfully, that was a quest that went bye-bye when they revamped the Old World.
Speaking of Fusionette, I just looked again at a screenshot I took of the mission with her where you end up temporarily allying with an Arachnos Arbiter. Looking more closely at that screenshot, the Arachnos guy appears to be an Elvis impersonator.
I just ran the mission in question again on another character and spotted the actual dialogue, which I got wrong:
1st Resistance Guy: What are we glimpsing for?
2nd Resistance Guy: Blueberries.
ETA: D’oh! Just realized Blueberries = cops. The ones you’re down there to rescue.
Especially when that last enemy/glowy you missed is way back on the first floor of a 4-floor map.
And speaking of 4-floor maps, I see what some of you were saying about impossible architecture. In Faultline I entered, at ground level, what was clearly a 2-story building. Then I took elevators to the 4th floor.
Well, the Son of Santa has now acquired some more toys to go with his caltrops, and I have to say the acid mortar really makes that character 3 times as fun to play for some reason. And the shield drone is just cool.
Do you know how many hours people wasted going through a nearly-empty map looking for one last hidden mob in outdoor kill-alls? Looking for a glowie tucked away somewhere in Oranbega? How many GM tickets had to be opened else they would lose an entire night to one stupid mission?
Frustration isn’t challenge.
Oh, and by the way:
What the hell were deaf players supposed to do? I’m not even mentioning all the players who choose to play with game sounds off, since I know you’ll just say that’s a choice.
Personally I love that “Point to the last one” feature too. I see where you’re coming from but as someone who has been frustrated for way too long to just finish a mission at times, I am all for it.
Okay, I see the consensus is you guys all like having the final objective given to you. I think it was an unnecessary “improvement”, but I’m a casual player who’ll be on, maybe, 5 hours a month, and searching for the final mob was, for me, part of the fun. I’m sure in a couple of months I won’t care less one way or the other but, for now, missions just seem a little less challenging to me because of this change.
I finally found my way to Praetoria for the first time. Is Pocket D the only way to get there? Beautiful place, but no one’s there; no players that is. I see that the redesign of City Hall in Atlas Park was influenced by the buildings in the Praetorian zones. I like that there are no visible walls between the 3 main Praetorian zones.
Some older costume pieces are no longer available. I went to the tailor to make a minor change to one of my characters and the bottom half of his attire was completely different in the editor. I searched for his old pants, which had an upper and lower portion that I’d applied different designs to, but they weren’t there. In fact, I no longer see selections for upper pant and lower pant. I knew the game designers added costume pieces from time to time, but I had no idea they also removed some. Another of my character’s tops is unavailable and since I, for the most part, like the way he looks, and couldn’t make a minor change without him ending up attired completely differently, I canceled out of the editor. Looks like he’ll be stuck with his current costumes forever.
I finally got through the 4 initial incarnate missions in Ouroboros (sp?) on one of my 50s to open my alpha slot. I understand that collecting shards, through various missions, and converting the shards and slotting the result will provide enhanced abilities to certain powers. What I don’t know (yet) is how to enable anything after alpha.
As a new player coming from WoW, without those mob markers, I would have been horribly confused by a few missions early on. There are two “standards” of instance behavior in CoH that you don’t see in WoW:
• Exit button at the end so you don’t have to run all the way back
• Enemies spawning in previously-cleared areas.
From playing WoW I’m accustomed, when I enter an instance or (since I’m a mostly-solo player) any cave-like area, to clearing everything on my way in so that I don’t have to bother with it on my way back out. So in CoH, when I killed the boss/found the last object at the very end of the map and the mission info at the top of the screen told me that guards/reinforcements/whatever had arrived and I needed to defeat them, I ended up standing around near where I had defeated the boss expecting these new enemies to come charging into the room. Because that very thing had happened on previous missions. So I stood around … and stood around … and started to think something had glitched. It wasn’t until I happened to open the map and spotted the enemy markers “way over there” that I realized I needed to run back through previously-explored/cleared areas.
Oops, my second bullet point up there should have read “• New enemies spawning in previously-cleared areas.” Obviously, in WoW, if you’re in a non-instanced cave or building, the same mobs you killed on the way in can respawn if you take long enough to get back. I meant to refer to new, mission-objective enemies spawning way back in previously-cleared areas, which doesn’t happen at all in WoW.
Anyway… more Going Rogue questions:
• I keep coming across “Captured PPD” officers who are kneeling with their hands behind their heads in front of some criminal (usually a Destroyers gang member). Why are these PPD hostile to me? Are they not really PPD, but rather gang members disguised as cops, acting as decoys to lure unsuspecting heroes (or other PPD) into a 2-on-1 fight? Maybe there’s a mission I haven’t come across that explains this.
• I’m also puzzled as to why my Resistance character, who is level 10 now and has been doing plenty of Resistance missions, keeps running into Resistance mobs that are hostile. Basically, any Resistance mob who isn’t a Contact is hostile.
Strictly speaking, you’re working undercover. Your contacts know who you are, but the general Resistance grunts think you’re just another Powers Division jerk working for Cole. IIRC, the story arc text occasionally makes some mention of that, saying stuff like “You’ll have to stay undercover for now” or “Yes, you’re going to have to beat up some of our guys, but that’s the price we’ve got to pay.” I’m paraphrasing heavily, but it does come up.
And it’s true no matter which side you choose. You have both Resistance and Loyalist contacts, and both sides will treat you like a friend or an enemy depending on the mission and potentially your actions in it.
The mobs on the streets are enemies regardless of faction for pretty much the same reason, plus it makes for more guys to fight and thus more xp.
Also, you may have noticed that PPD and Clockwork on the surface typically have a yellow (neutral) reticule if you click on them, while Underground they are red (enemy). Occasionally you’ll hear PPD Underground comment about how “everything down here is Resistance or a sympathizer!”
You do the Incarnate Trials - the BAF and Lambda trials occur fairly often. You gain Incarnate Experience to unlock the slots, and special salvage to craft powers for them.
There’s also a running feud between the Powers Division and the PPD cops. Marauder/Praetor White is an arrogant bugger, and so are most of his minions, so it’s understandable that some of them would want to take a poke at you, even if they don’t think you’re with the Resistance.
Admittedly, though, doing so when you’ve just tried to help them out is rather silly. It may be that the game is spawning the wrong mob for the captured PPD–it may be supposed to spawn the neutral guys, and be fetching the hostile ones instead. You could file a bug report on it.
Okay, this is starting to honk me off. What is the deal with missions in Praetoria being front-loaded with Lieutenants a level higher than my character? I’ve got one Loyalist character that is running into this over and over again. She’s level 11, walks in the front door of the mission location, and is warmly greeted by some level 12 “Resistance Heavy Barrel” who proceeds to kick her ass seven ways to Sunday. And then I can’t even get past the first room because every minion is paired up with another one of these guys.
And to top it off, the “Abandon” button is disabled again. I’m can’t make heads or tails over when and why I become incapable of abandoning a mission. I want to reset my combat parameters to fight enemies -1 my level, figuring that might actually get me enemies my own level to fight, but if I can’t abandon the mission those same level 12s are just going to still be there.
The Resistance/Loyalist attacking their own thing is just nonsensical and, while you can fanwank it to some degree, it’s best not to think about it too much. The same goofiness occurs in the Rogue Isle with Arachnos. Cole can send mental spies patrolling the streets to suppress disloyal thoughts and has Clockwork eyes throughout the entire city but he can’t stop his rank-and-file cops from busting into open warfare in the streets with his elite “Powers Divisions” agents?
Mister Rik, I don’t know why you can’t abandon the mission but sometimes they do that when one mission feeds directly into the next. I would load up on inspirations to break through the first part or seek help. I believe three purples (defense) is enough to soft-cap about anyone where only 5% of attacks will hit you.
Begging for help with Frostfire will probably be effective since people still have fond memories of taking him down and a new player doing legacy Hollows content is more warmly received than a new player begging for AE farms.
Again, I can’t stress enough the value of loading up on inspirations for tough fights. Especially defense inspirations. You can buy them for 50 inf at any AE building, at hospitals or else from contacts you’ve done a mission or two for. A couple purples will make you close to invulnerable and a few yellows will seriously increase your ability to hit higher level mobs. You can do reds but I’d rather fill the slots with more purples in case the first batch wear off before you’re done. I wouldn’t bother much with oranges; the resist inspirations are pretty weak.
Kind of off track but along the same lines, here’s something to try. As you get inspirations, fill almost all of your slots with what you want to keep for tough spots: a couple purples, a couple greens, maybe a yellow or two or a rez… but leave one slot free. Now, as you go through a mission, each time you get an inspiration drop in that slot, use it immediately. Obviously this doesn’t work for Break Frees and Rezes but you can either delete them or use a different slot. Inspirations drop often enough that you’ll go through most of the mission with something boosted, be it your defense, damage, accuracy or resists. It can make a pretty noticeable difference and, even if you don’t think it does, inspirations drop so often you have nothing to lose.
I remember an escort mission there that I could never successfully complete on anything but a paladin with the plate armor + heals. The ambush you walked into had just too many enemies, most of them ranged and spread out so that you couldn’t even get to them all before they whittled you down. This was at a low enough level that most classes didn’t have AoE attacks yet. Thankfully, that was a quest that went bye-bye when they revamped the Old World.