In my last post I wrote about the linearity of Going Rogue, and the way in which the player is locked into a specific set of contacts if they want to see the story they started through to the end. As it turns out there is a way to interrupt that succession of missions, and I did it without even knowing I could, because I outlevelled the last contact in the resistance crusader arc in Imperial City.
This isn't the first time I've outlevelled contacts in City of Heroes. Back during my run through the Rogue Isles I mentioned how easy it is to out-level 3 of the 4 regular contacts in Port Oakes – in fact it's actually easier to out-level them than it is to stay on-level long enough to access them – but being able to out-level a contact in Going Rogue is different.
The final arc in each zone of Praetoria usually wraps up the overall story for that zone, often referring back to what has gone before, tying up loose ends and, most importantly, offering a moral choice which gives the player the option to stay on their current path or switch sides. With the last contact out-levelled I'll see none of this, and so have to move on to Neutropolis having resolved nothing in Imperial City. It's decidedly anti-climactic.
Not long after the launch of Going Rogue two new contacts were added into the 1-20 zones. Back then some players were having problems earning enough XP through missions to stay on-level for the story arc contacts. The new contacts acted like the radio/newspaper in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles, handing out generic missions to fill in the gaps. Out-levelling contacts wasn't something that happened then, and I'm not sure how it's happened now.
I do think there were some changes to the rate of xp gain made back when the game was live that have carried over to the revived game. I didn't notice this on either of my previous characters, but the linearity of GR makes it far more obvious where exactly you should be at any particular level.
Still, I doubt any changes to the rate of xp gain have been that dramatic. Similarly I've done very little street sweeping on this character – probably less than usual given the limited time I've spent on the streets during this run. So it's not that either.
XP boosts are available on the server I'm on, but they're optional and, as usual, I haven't used them at all. I did raise my notoriety – which does increase the xp gain per mission by dint of throwing more and/or higher level enemies at you – but that was for exactly one mission, after which I dropped it back to the same +0/x1 which I've been running since level 5.
If anything I might have expected to be earning XP at a slower rate than usual, seeing as I've been using Seeds of Confusion fairly often in the last few levels, and that reduces the XP I gain since I get less/none for mobs partly/fully defeated by other mobs.
The only way in which my notoriety settings differ from the default is that I've been facing bosses since level 5, as I always do. Has that made such a big difference that I'm now at least 2 levels ahead of where I should be?
Thinking about it, it's possible that it has. There's a lot more boss mobs in GR – far more than in most regular CoH/CoV content. Back in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles on these settings I'd expect to face one boss per mission, whereas in Praetoria I've ran several missions where the frequency has been closer to one boss per room.
That, I suppose, will add up.
I wish I'd noticed this sooner, and realised that I could in fact out-level contacts in Praetoria. I didn't though, and as I head into Neutropolis (a 16-20 zone) I'm already very very close to level 17.
If a game offers a way to turn off xp gain – as CoH does – I rarely make use of it for much the same reason I avoid xp boosts, but I will this time, once I reach level 19. It's that or run the risk of out-levelling the finale of the entire story of Going Rogue.
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