City of Rogues – bits and bobs

I’ve been playing a fair amount of the “Going Rogue” world in City of Heroes.  Various random thoughts.

1. While not “CoH 2,” Going Rogue sets a whole new standard for arc quality and world-building.  I’m almost afraid to run through some of the older CoH bits.  There are few silly, random, Hunt X, Get Y, Do Z cookie-cutter missions.
2. A huge (but obvious) improvement: increased and randomized mob spawn points.  You know that room (you know, that one) where the opponents are always right there so you come around the corner here and do this and … nope. No more.  Discovering that the bad guys aren’t in the places you remember is remarkably refreshing.
3. The morality system is fascinating, but is annoyingly nuanced in its presentation, but binary in its results.  It’s got all the irksomeness of those tests “A is like B as [blank] is like C … and you don’t get to  ever argue as to which of the various arguments for the options that could fill in the blank you chose.  So, for example, I am running a Resistance character (Velorio) who faced a decision point where, after much soul-searching, she had to choose to oppose another Resistance person’s effort.  Okay, so a great RP kind of thing.  But the result was not just some concerns amongst my peers, or an evaluation in the cold light of day of what I should have done but … I was immediately labeled Loyalist.  I was able to continue in the Resistance storyline (good thing, since Margie chose differently), but I couldn’t use the Resistance entrance to the Underground, etc.
4. There are still a few bugs here.  Margie and I went into the final battle of the Penelope Yin arc, and because we were labeled as different allegiances, our ally was always attacking one or the other of us (and we could PvP each other, too).  Made our mission a lot more … interesting.
5. I love that there are a lot of folks on the street who are potential enemies — but only if you attack them.  That makes a lot more sense than the  opponent-filled streets of Paragon (and a bit more over the similar situation in the Rogue Isles.
6. Enriche! It’s wonderful! And creepy!
7. I love that this parallel world not only has Marcus Cole in a parallel role (Spock! With a beard!), but a number of other characters from CoH / CoV — including minor ones suddenly having more prominence.
8. The various GR arcs are much more interesting than the hand-off between various contacts pointing to various mob types to now fight.  “Now it’s time to go see Fred Smith and fight a bunch of Circle of Thorns opponents.”  There’s real difference in sophistication of the whole thing.  Well done.
9. Would folks in Dimension X really refer to  another Earth as “Primal Earth”?  Yeah, didn’t think so.

Overall, triffic stuff.  Folks who liked CoH/CoV, but fell away because of the repetitiveness, should really consider some CoGR.