Agent White

Not bad, though, it seems odd to give a character bio a full issue late and to one who is already dead. It's a nice bit of fluff, but I can probably think of other characters more relevant to the general plot that don't have bios.

Still, well written.

Unfortunately I'm inclined to agree, since he talks about helping us wit the Shivans and all that.

Quite a shame. I hope they at least give him some better dialogue instead of the garbled "for kids" scifi speak.

Waaay too much.

And just more temporary powers to go along with the dozen I pick up from missions, oh and the promo sprints I wish I could not take on every character. ;9

finally finished running a lowbie hero through Twinshot's arc.

I'll admit, it didn't leave as bad a taste in my mouth as Graves. The characters were more likable in general though ironically I felt they were less developed than those in Graves. Where Graves gives each character their own mission where they're the star, Twinshot just throws you into a few missions and sometimes you rescue and/or have one of them as a tag along (usually grym/flambeuax). In fact I kind of like Grym and Flambeaux wasn't that intolerable. Dillo was flat out irritating, a JarJar with super powers. Proton.. I honestly can't say much about because he got so much less development than anyone else, and given the twist at the end he feels more like a set piece than anything.

Really, I kind of liked the general flow of the story. The 'twist' at the end is hamfistedly bad, it's completely obvious Twinshot isn't the traitor and that Proton is... well, again, he had so little development it's a non issue. I can't even feel bad for the guy, I had no attachment to him either way.

The railroading was kind of annoying, but not half as bad as Graves. Twinshot taps you with the clueless ball. Graves tapes the idiot ball to your head.

But again, Graves actually had better development for the characters. You got to know who they were, their background, some of their interests, and how nuts they all were.

Twinshot... well, you get the most face time with Grym but you don't learn much about him. Next is Twinshot herself, and the dialogue with her isn't that bad and I found her connection to Maelstrom somewhat interesting. Flambeaux is mostly a valley girl and you get half a mission with her tagging along. Dillo.. ugh. No missions with him explicitly, just having to talk to him a few times (thank goodness, though even that is too much). And then there's Proton, who is mostly in the background til he is done as his time as a set piece.

Compared to Graves. Well, you get a solid feeling for Graves personality with the (possibly overlong) dialogues with him. Crosscut is extremely creepy. Zephyr, as much as I dislike his surfer dude schtick, is actually kind of neat as the physical embodiment of an abstract entity. Omnicore is a whackjob. Dollface probably gets the least development but then she, like Proton, has the 'big twist' to her character. Though even then, she still gets a bit more time than Proton I think. But still, we got to know more about these guys.

Twinshot's just felt like my character was actually a part of this event going on. Graves... well, aside from being tedious and annoying, was just ridiculous. The 'game' is a farce from start to finish and by the end we feel like idiots and pawns. Where's the fun in that? And heroside at least introduces something that becomes relevant later on (Praetoria). Graves has nothing to do with anything in particular, and I don't think people even want to see Babydoll or cthulu or whatever she is later on. Whereas, I actually wouldn't mind seeing stuff develop with the Shining Stars more, I'd like to see more of Grym and Twinshot and even Flambeaux.

Though, both still completely fail as tutorials. There's just so much wrong with all of them. I mean even by the time you start them, you should already know about Enhancements, Trainers, and Inspirations. And come on, introducing Field Analysts/Fortunatas on how to adjust the game difficulty when you're level FIFTEEN? What kind of moon logic is that? Especially Twinshot's arc. Was it just me that got sent to Croatoa?? That's some serious wtf there, new players shouldn't be anywhere NEAR there unless whatever you're looking for is RIGHT at the entrance (like Annah).

It still just surprises me how bad the tutorials are compared to the Praetorian intro. Love or hate praetoria, you can park just about anybody into the tutorial there and they'll know enough about the game to get by. 15 minutes or less and you've got targeting, running, enhancements, inspirations, mission doors, dialogue, badges, alignment choices, trainers, difficulty slider, vendors, merit rewards and day jobs explained. Short, sweet, to the point and let's you jump into the game.

Kind of curious if the devs actually plan to use and develop these characters anymore, at the least. Or if they're just stepping stones that will be promptly and completely forgotten by the story at large. I kind of wouldn't mind them, even the graves crew, showing up later, seeing them develop as heroes/villains, etc.

Anyway, my 2 cents. Was okay to run through once, probably no more than that.

Ran it again the other night, ended up in a team with 3 masterminds and a scrapper (I was one of the MMs).

I can definitely see the reasoning against making it for too many players. The map is small and the hallways pretty cramped, especially with so many minions running around. Needless to say we literally steamrolled through *everything*.

It is a bit of a shame the trial is *exactly* 4 players, I wouldn't have minded running it with just a friend. I'd love to see some more 1-4 player trials in the future. I can kind of understand why this wasn't solo optional, given all the huge bosses and the unique badge challenge. Though I don't see why they couldn't scale the bosses to match the team level. I've only had a couple successful badge runs, it seems somewhat dependent on time make up, I kind of agree that the abomination at least resists psionic, my first run through was all Illusionists and we were all wailing on it and it was just slow going even with debuffs in place. my fastest time was easily with the mastermind crowd, we racked up zombie kills with 5 minutes to spare and steamrolled him in 2 minutes flat.

Still, I think it's a good trial overall. Very fun design, quick fun gameplay and good ambiance. It's kind of a shame it's going away in a week.

Yeah I'd kind of prefer something like

3 minion power - Wolves
2 Minion power - Werewolves
1 Minion power - "Alpha" werewolf

for a beast summoning set

Just ran it again on a new character, jumping from 14 to 16.

It really is just the absurd amount of easy arch villains in this thing that makes it such an easy leveling tool. Now the SSA was nerfed when the Elite Boss at the end was handing out Arch Villain size experience and people were farming it, and here we have a very low level trial dumping it on people by the bucketfull. Really odd kind of logic there.

I'd rather see the Arches turned to Elites and the Kraken Xp attached to the badge for killing it, leaving in the bonus goodies.

Honestly, if the logic behind keeping it this way is "Well why do all the boring low level stuff when I can skip my way to 50 where I have fun" and the Devs agree with it, they may as well just let us make characters that start at 50.

oh no no, we formed the team before we hit the queue. We didn't all join in as singles. Unless it's peak hours, I've found you usually *can't* get into the trial by signing up by yourself. I've joined the queue and run around trick or treating and taken care of 'beat up X of Gang Y' style missions to pass the time. Usually I give up after 15 minutes (Though with the holiday trial, I've only tried about twice like that). When I actually ran it is when I advertised for a team and we coincidentally wound up all being Illusionists. We all joined up and as soon as we hit the queue we entered the trial.

The min/max 4 team limit isn't bad, though odd, and makes it a lil harder for just random singles to get into a game without forming up a team of 4 to begin with. And there seems to be an odd bug with Rogues/Vigilantes where selection "First Available Trial" tells them they can't join the event.

The trial itself is pretty fun, it's another mad dash like Death from Below. I ran it last night in a PUG and randomly wound up on a team of 4 illusions controllers XD 1 empathy, 2 Storm, and 1 Radiation (me). Everything went pretty smoothly, though we missed out on the 99/Abom badge, we nailed the 99 in about 9 minutes but just couldn't nail the boss fast enough in the time left, it took us about an extra 2-3 minutes after to drop him.

We also hit Experiment 9, which not everyone seems to hit. Anyone know what the trigger is for that event?

I'd say nerf it, it's a low level trial, it shouldn't be used to get to high levels. Attach the big experience to the badge for killing the hyrda heads so that players get it *once*, and leave the 4 power boosts so people still have reason to run it more than once (besides badge runs).

I rather like the idea of the halloween events, but yeah I'll echo that I think it's kind of a bummer that I only get access to some of these things for a very small part of the year when some of their rewards are something I'd like to be able to get any time of the year, like if I want to make a new character later on.

There's nothing wrong explicitly with making unique items for these events, but then there needs to be some alternate way to get them when the events are not being run.

Like, the Witch's Hat? If I don't want to (or can't) run the Tip mission to earn the meticulous badge, I can wait to do katie Hannon's taskforce and go for the badge.

Now a problem example is like, the bat aura. I can run the limited time trial, sure, or I can buy it in the market, but the market listing is only available til Nov 18th. It's an account wide unlock, sure, but if someone doesn't get it before the trial or market listing is gone, that's it. That's a bummer.

Anything listed in the market shouldn't be limited time. Maybe limited promotions like discounts or extras associated with it, but the items themselves should not be taken off the market.

Again, really, if there's an alternate way to get all this stuff year round (even if its harder) I'd have no major objections. But relying solely on being active during a (relatively narrow) window for things like costume pieces and emotes.. eh. I'm not thrilled.

Assault sets are already a mix, if you want specifically melee or range you just go with whichever assault is more heavily in favor of what you want.

Personally, I'd rather Doms *not* get illusion control, I like the idea that each AT keeps at least 1 unique powerset no one else has.

I'd definitely prefer some sort of shadow/darkness/void control

I wouldn't go that far >>

I mean, the real second class citizens are the free/premium players. I don't mean that as insult, they pretty literally are, having no access to end game or other important content.

As for a solo path for incarnate, yes, I said it would be slower and likely require more grind. That's ok with me. Really I'm just looking for variety in the Incarnate content. So far, it's all huge raids, there's more of them now so there's variety *within* the raids, but they are at their core still raids.

And again, major content updates should be more than just adding endgame stuff. I'm all for endgame stuff, but for players not *at* the endgame, it's an update that means nothing. We just launched freedom last month, so besides the folks power leveling off DFB and other stuff, there are a *ton* of non-Incarnate players right now. We do need endgame content as a carrot to go VIP and stick around with your 50's, but it shouldn't be the only carrot offered because it's a very *niche* carrot.

It's less about the fact that they're making end game content so much as all the end game content they're making are Raids requiring several teams of players to get together, rather than the relatively small task forces and solo missions in the other 95% of the game. It's a different dynamic because there is *no* way to solo any kind of Incarnate content (except Ramiel's arc to 'begin the path')

Though, I will agree in part that the 'end game grind' is a bit of a fallacy since they're only a major grind because there's so few events at the moment and the more they add the fewer times you'll have to repeat any specific one. Even when they get more out you'll still have to repeat them, but less so than now.

But it is a little disappointing that as far as they have told us about Media Blitz, it's catering almost entirely to Endgame players. Major updates should try to include more than just that. That isn't to say lowbies have been left entirely in the dust, First Ward was out with Convergence and that is a pretty fun and interesting middle level zone (for all it's foibles), and the signature story arcs (though they're slowly ratcheting up in level to the point that, unless a few remain in middling areas, they'll hit the 45-50 range by episode 4, out of a 7 mission arc. Not to mention the SSAs are, in general, pretty short).

If there's nothing else being included in Media Blitz then it means for players like me, that have no level 50 characters, won't see anything out of the content update (til I hit 50. Eventually >> but that's likely to be another 1-3 major updates from now). It'll be nice when I get there, but in the meantime it means really nothing.

So it is really great they're adding more stuff, but they're adding the same *kind* of stuff they have, where at least some of us would prefer *smaller* events and a solo path. We know the solo path will be slower and likely much grind-ier, but we still want the option.

Actually thinking on it, if the levels continue to rise, and there are seven parts, it really wouldn't surprise me if at least the 7th part is a 'level 45-50' contact, if not just plain Level 50.

This is intended to be a major arc and killing off a major character, ending it as faux incarnate content seems fitting (Though I doubt it'll *require* incarnates/being incarnate)

Though it also means that in April we'll be resetting for SSA2 and the level range will probably drop back low again

Wait, Serene's coven was hunted down and killed? maybe I need to play through the arc again but I remember Nadia was a part of her coven.

If they are going to restrict it like that then I would call for having the rewards table expanded with an extra item or two for non-50's.

20 reward merits is ok, but the game dumps them at you by the bucketful already.