Peeve #2: Insult + Injury

OK, look... something need to be done about this annoying little detail.

Insult: Suddenly, around level 12, your contact refuses to give you any more missions until you learn about setting your Reputation. In my case, the contact in question is accessible to me only after running a gauntlet of villains 2-4 levels higher than I am.

Injury: Not only can't I have any more missions until I've learned about Reputation, I have to run to another zone to hear about it.

Look, guys... This has all the earmark of government operation: a good idea done wrong. First of all, I'm willing to bet that there's about a 1:"very high number" ratio of characters whose players don't yet know about Reputation, so this is a major pain in the ass and waste of time for almost everyone. Second, you're not even given any XP for carring out this "mission" which you have no option of bypassing.

Fix: Either let the damn contact give out the damn information right then and there so we can move on, or give me a standard "deliver X" mission's worth of XP for this time waster.

"I Think We've Just Stumbled Upon a Larger Plot"

You know, heroes aren't just puppets to be ordered around by an army of contacts (who seem to be the only ones who know what's going on in Paragon City). Heroes can discover the nefarious plots of evil-doers too! We're not just tool, after all. There should be a system in place to allow heroes to find their own paths (and gather that XP bonus) without needing the say-so of a contact. I've combined this thought with my ongoing desire to make random street hunting more interesting. There's a couple ways I can think of to do this:

1: At random. While hunting (these kinds of "missions" would only be discovered through defeating non-mission villians), the hero discovers a "clue" of some larger, unsuspected plot. I like this option, but I've always like the occasional random special encounter.
2: After defeating enough villians of a given type (Hellions, Freaks, etc.) a hero gets a "clue" that something is afoot. This can be kept track of by the game in the same way that "defeat X baddies of a given type"-badges are. Perhaps at about 3/4 full bar of such a given badge, the hero discovers the clue.

At the time of discovery, the hero can choose to either follow the clue (ie, accept the mission) or "pass it on" to an existing contact to to be followed up on later. The mission would be listed the next time the hero checks in with the contact.

This idea also falls into the concept I'm developing for hero "skills" (which I'll expound upon shortly). This could be part of a "detective" skill.

Half-baked Notion #1

My level 11 scrapper took a mission in Boomtown the other day. After sweating the run from the yellow line station past dozens of angry level-11-eating-machines, and bumping off a bunch of annoying Clockworks, I was finally done. ...and dreading yet another hike across the zone. My first exhaustion-muddled thought was, "there's never a cab around when you need one." This, of course, sparked an exhaustion-muddled thought... There aughtta be cabs in Paragon City. Cabs that heroes can take across town. It could cost Influence and travel time. I'd pay.

Yes, this is completely superfluous. Someone get to work on it immediately. I command it!

Power Specializing

I was just reading someone else's CoH blog tonight. He was complaining about how at the mid-levels you're sometimes forced to take a power you really don't want. I've been there myself. It brought me back to a question I had some time back... Why can't you take a power more than one time? If I don't want to take Crippling Ax Kick for my martial arts scrapper, why can't I take Crane Kick a 2nd time? It's obviously less "powerful" (from a game mechanics aspect) than CAK as it falls lower on the power "heirarchy," so at first glance taking it twice wouldn't appear to be game unbalancing. It would also contribute greatly to character variety. I'm sure someone at Cryptic gave this some thought at some point, but I'd like to know what their reasoning was for not allowing it.

Hey Look, Hostage Rescue!

As part of issue 5, it seems that hostage rescue missions are now, in fact, hostage rescue mission... Just like I outline in an earlier post! So either I'm thinking along the same lines as somone at Cryptic or someone at Cryptic has found my blog. Good show, guys. I'm sure I'll have more suggestions to come.