I suppose these observations should've been made during beta, but I wasn't around for the beta. Well, then.
At any rate:
- Orange cons shouldn't run.
Much like our beloved TERRAH LEVEL!!!1 chart, the game uses a color-coded system to gauge the threat level of any monster you're facing. It's really an evolution of the old MUD 'consider' system, with colors added: a white con is a monster with a level equal to yours; an even match. Blue means the monster is slightly weaker than you, green con is significantly lower than you, and a gray con is so weak compared to you that you probably won't get any experience for defeating it, because it would just be too easy. On the other side of things, yellow means it's a little higher than you, orange significantly higher, red means STRANGER DANGER and purple means it's beyond the spectrum so bring a friend or two if you want to accomplish such trivial things as surviving. Got it?
Now one of the things about City of Heroes is the fact that, when you encounter bad guys on the street and do battle, they may decide to flee. Depending on the encounter, this can be really fun -- the bad guy, on his last legs, takes off down an alley and so you run after him and the chase is on, as you leap over fences and dodge trees and maybe even run into another pack of bad guys before you take aim and with one lucky shot knock the miscreant down in the middle of the street. (If your character favors melee over ranged attacks, well, sometimes you don't have it so easy because the way the combat system deals with attack ranges is kinda weird -- you have to run in front of the bad guy so you can then turn around and throw a punch or whatever.)
Like I said, this chasing can be a lot of fun. But it can also be a pain and a half if you charge a group of three and the one you start to attack takes off. Do you face the remaining two and hope to catch up with the runner later, or do you take chase immediately to avoid further annoyance? The issue is further compounded by the fact that if the bad guys have been harassing a local citizen, you will receive a reward from the grateful civilian if and only if all villians involved have been vanquished. This makes hunting the third down slightly more critical if you want a little extra sump'n sump'n, which can range from a kind word ("I've never met a hero before!") to an enhancement for your powers or even Influence (the game's unit of currency.)
Now then, back to the con system. A white con isn't the highest you can take on solo, no sir -- some archetypes, based on how they deal out damage and can avoid taking it in return, can easily take on higher cons. Currently my level 6 scrapper can take on three orange cons and is reasonably successful at defeating them all, as long as most hits land. (This will not be the case as the character progresses through levels, of course, but at the early part of the game it's kind of nice to be able to churn through experience points rather quickly. Gives a sense of accomplishment.)
The problem occurs when of that group of orange cons, two decide to go running off at the first sign of attack. What a bunch of wussy bad guys! I mean, honestly -- sometimes they even say something like "The numbers are on our side!" as they charge me, and then two veer right off and light out for parts unknown? WUSSES. The game should realize that one foolhardy player is attempting to single-handedly take on three monsters several levels higher than him. Maybe the monsters should realize that there's an insignificant-looking person heading their way, so laugh some and try to stomp 'em flat. At any rate, no higher-level monster should be fleeing right from the start. Maybe once their hit points go down some, maybe. But these mobs should be as foolhardy as the players. As it stands now, they're nothing but an embarrassment to their peers -- and it's a pain to run and hunt them down, as they take significantly more thwacks to the head to defeat. Anyway. - What you've targeted should show up on your radar.
Maybe they thought too much stuff on the little compass radar would be cluttering things up, but the radar can currently show you where your next mission destination is, where your chosen contact is, where a point on the map is, or where your team leader is. It shouldn't be too hard to add a little target point on the radar. This would help greatly when, as mentioned above, one of your mobs takes off running and you have no idea where he got to. - The game map should reveal geography by line-of-sight, not by character presence.
There's a nifty map in-game which not only shows the map of the neighborhood you're running around in, but also automatically maps any "instanced missions" you happen to take on. An instanced mission is one that's generated for you and your group when you start it -- maybe there's a bunch of drugs hidden in a warehouse that you need to confiscate. Or maybe a group of thugs have taken over an office building and it's up to you to save the hostages. When you reach the building or the warehouse and click on the door to go in, the internal geography is built on the spot just for you (the computer architect is especially adept at creating soulless office buildings with atriums and recesses where lurk the soda machines and recycling bins.) As you go up in level, of course, the missions become harder and the geography more labyrinthine, sometimes even with multiple floors and sublevels and stuff. The worst are the cavern stretches since they adhere to no geometrical guidelines and instead meander and twist all around with low ceilings and hard-to-spot tunnels branching off to where you need to go.
Thankfully the map will help you see where you've been by revealing the parts your character has walked through before. However, the radius of revealing is very small and if you want to make sure a room completely shows up on your map (doorways and all) you have to walk around the perimeter. It's annoying to run through a room and choose one of two routes out, only to have to backtrack later and find that second route so you can defeat all the enemies inside. Sometimes the map won't show that second route branching off because you didn't walk close enough to it.
Changing the way the map reveals itself would alleviate these problems entirely. If the revealing was dependent on the character's line of sight, yeah. It'd make things much easier. You could easily look around a room and notice ok, there are the corners, there's two hallways leading out, there's some obstruction like a fallen bookcase so you couldn't see around that, but at least you know where the exits are. See? Simple. And you don't have to play monkey-around-the-room anymore. Unless you like that. - We should be able to annotate the outdoor map.
There's a lot of stuff in each neighborhood. There's trainers, places to sell Enhancements you don't want and special places to buy high-level enhancements, and specific gangs who like to hang out in certain parts of the neighborhood. The outdoor map is pretty good at showing you most points of interest, like your NPC contacts (who give you missions) and the monorail station to get to other neighborhoods, but it'd be really nice to be able to place your own Points of Interest on the map and annotate them -- "The Hellions hang out here" or "Store for magic enhancements." You get one "Thumbtack" on each map, but there's no way to label it and I think it goes away if you change neighborhoods. Not particularly useful, really. - Poochie should be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine.
Also, when Poochie is not in the scene, the other characters should ask, "Where's Poochie?"
Oh, and if you're still playing and enjoying the game and are doing so on the Victory server, you're invited to join my supergroup, The League of Above-Average Gentlemen. Our motto is "66th Percentile or Die!" and right now it's just me and a friend and all our alts, but you're more than welcome to join too, and all your alts. And then we can team up and beat up bad guys and stuff. If you're on Victory, shoot Dr. Plutonium or the Barista a /tell one of these days.
