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Still dominated by Mission Architect grinding?
Bangdo
Member UncommonPosts: 1
I've played CoH in stints in the past due to money problems. Although I've had an account since 2006, I only have 9 months Vet rewards.
Last time I played the game, I completely gave up. I played right after the Mission Architect (AE, I believe it was called?) was introduced, and I couldn't find a single mission group in the Hollows, or even in Atlas Park at sometimes.
Problem was, there were tens upon tens of AE groups that were soley made to farm hoards of mobs.
While the leveling in CoH is somewhat of a grind, the missions are what made the game what it was! Grouping with random people and making new friends by doing the toughest instances. I missed it.
I quit for good.
However, a friend of mine has recently joined and is begging me to play. Is the game as bad as it was? Is it still an AE Farm to 50?
Comments
They hit the AE pretty hard recently, and much of the population is back to normal missions (though there are still AE teams, just a lot fewer than before).
So I say yes, get yourself a free trial to try it out again (one can be obtained from the official site). Make sure to play on Freedom or Virtue (Freedom if you like PvP, Virtue if you like Roleplay, either one if you just want regular PvE teaming).
Try it out and please post back here if you enjoy the experience or not. But I think you'll like it, and Issue 17 launches on the 28th!
I played a couple months through halloween and it was a lot of fun, but the grinders are still going crazy. Many people have multialts and they take them to the Battle Maiden repeatable mission and just hammer it with a fire controller. People try to run missions every once and a while but mostly it takes more time to find a team then it does running the missions. COH is one of my favorite games during the holidays but after that it's back to grinding alts for most of the people on there. Such a shame that the mechanics for this to happen were allowed to evolve. Whatever keeps the players addicted and paying the subs I guess.
"I'm not cheap I'm incredibly subconsciously financially optimized"
"The worst part of censorship is ------------------"
I've been back the last few weeks after a year off and I've not had a single tell asking me to fill for a farm...they fixed something!
It's rare these days to see AE farms. I played my mid-level villain yesterday and without even looking I was getting group invites to teams for normal missions. Pretty much all the AE farming exploits have been quashed, and there's a big update coming out tomorrow.
What server were you playing on? The only reason I ask is because i just started playing again and as a villain, maybe because of the hours I play, I hardly ever see anyone.
Freedom, about 11 am on a Monday. The weekends are even better. Plus, CoH has great lfg tools. Easiest way is to just use Find and ask others if they want to join you.
Bear in mind that Red side is a lot quieter anyway, more than likely even quieter after Going Rogue when people will be able to bring their characters over to the other side.
It could go the other way as well if there are a lot of people who've only played blue side deciding to check out what red side is like.
Perhaps, but i'm more inclined to believe that it will be red side becoming quieter. People seem to like the archetypes from there but not the zones.
Either way, i'll be rolling a few villains that i haven't in the past simply because it's too quiet over there. If it gets busier i'll stick with red side but if it goes the way i think it will i'll just roll them and stick them on blue side. Win win i suppose as i've only played 2 toons over there in the past but would have liked to have had more.
Regarding quietness, especially villain side, I highly highly recommend joining global channels. Every server has several, often focused around badge hunting but sometimes just for teams. They are especially good if you like Task Forces / Strike Forces, or Mothership/Hamidon Raids, or other coordinated stuff.
Here's why they are good. Suppose it's slow, and I'm hero side on Infinity. You're a villian on Protector, and I have characters there. But you'd never know it. Speak up that you're forming a SF on the global channel though, and I can see it wherever I am.
Here's the channels I use most for the 4 servers I play on:
Protector: Protector Watch
Liberty: LB
Infinity: Infinity Badges 2.0
Pinnacle: Pinnacle Badges
To join one, either right-click on the chat box and find the option, or type /chanjoin "channel name"
The only catch is that you do have to adjust your tab setting then for every character. (Although options lets you save and load a default.)
Anyway, yes it's much better. Architect has been nerfed, and rebuilt, and nerfed again, and personally I think they're still spending too much time poking at the corpse but it's not a problem anymore. They also put some other cool stuff in, like power customization (colors or animations).
Currently playing:
DC Universe
Planetside 2
Magic Online
Simunomics, the Massive Multiplayer Economic Simulation Game. Play for free.
Well I don't think it is on Victory.
However, I was powerleveled by level 40s and higher at Mission Archetict through endless grining mostly because I joined the game for RP and a bit of RP-PvP and not really for the missions and leveling . Some of those missions are boring and just annoying. RPing isn't bad and it is actually good on Victory where is Freedom is all about PvP and that is why there is like groups thats do powerleveling.
If anything you should look for a server to suit your needs because each server is sort of kinda different. xD
I'd find this surprising since as a long time player, I find the redside zones far, far more interesting than blue. There just aren't enough of them. Additionally, many of the redside missions are much more sophisticated and interesting than blueside.
choujiofkono: CoH is a bit different from other MMOs in that rolling alts is highly encouraged. This is why they give you so many slots per server (3 to 4 times as many as most other MMOs). Creating brand new characters with the fantastic character creator is a mini-game in itself. The typical MMO approach of one main with maybe an alt or two is not what CoH was made to do. It was made for players to make lots of different characters.
With Going Rogue, an end game system is being added to the game. It remains to be seen what impact that has on the alting culture of the game (if any).