Bakuryu

So...when is this available in stores again? I can't seem to find it. =3

This is awesome! Thanks a ton for taking the time to put this together, Leandro. If you get the time and inclination I'd love to see more videos with you expanding on the things we can do with this.

A wizard indeed!

I just wanted to give jubilant 'thank you' to Doctor Aeon for coming to hang out with us on Virtue a bit ago tonight. He stuck around for nearly an hour just spawning GMs and AVs on request for us to fight while chatting it up a bit with the players. I think almost everyone in the zone had a really good time (the ones that didn't were probably the poor AFK torch bearers that were slaughtered and must have come back with no idea why).

Me on my main, Blackrose of Thorns, along with all the heroes backing Paragon in Atlas Park fought off hordes of Rikti, a Rikti Drop ship, Dr. Kane's minions, Jack, Eochai, the Avatar of Hamidon (ouch), Stateszombie (okay, so it was just Statesman), some Rula-Wades, normal AV Tyrant, Shadow Hunter, and Magi trial Tyrant. And those are just the ones I recall right off the top of my head. For the Magi Tyrant fight we didn't have enough firepower so an army of Statesmen rushed in to help us save the city. In the end, most of them were sadly devoured my Mot's mouths, though a couple escaped with their lives to be Wade-food another day. Sadly, I didn't think to take too many screen shots because, frankly, I was just having too much fun. Most of the ones I did take are just a mess of powers and jumbled heroes, but here's a picture of the Avatar of Hamidon invading Atlas Park to remember the occasion.



Thanks for taking time out of your personal life to jump in and play around with us on the Virtue server, Doc. Rest assured that it's very much appreciated.

We've got the best devs out there.

Thanks a ton for your hard work, Guy Perfect. All of the Titan Network folks, really. Even if the worst occurs it's a small comfort to have some aspects of our characters saved.

Thanks again!

Gosh, there's a ton of things I'd like to know, but here's a few off the top of my head:

1) Were we ever going to get a Ghost Widow/Ice Mistral cat fight over Scirocco? Rawr!
...Okay, but seriously, did you have any plans for that love triangle?

2) Can you share some plans you had for future SSAs? I was really fond of them.

3) Did you have plans for Recluse and Arachnos as a whole moving forward? Without Statesman as a nemesis and with Red Widow back at his side, I really wanted to see where he was going.

4) Can you tell us about some powersets that you had bounced around that seemed like they were realistic additions we might have eventually seen?

I'm not really sure yet. I'm still holding out hope for a miracle until November 30, but assuming things stay on the morbid track they're on right now there's a couple of games I'm looking at.

I'd already bought Guild Wars 2 prior to this whole mess and I don't blame ArenaNet in any way so I'm sure I'll tinker in that game every now and then. Having taken a character to level 13 though, I can already tell that it won't replace CoH for me as my primary hobby. It's just casual fun that I can easily hop in and out of, particularly with the world events.

I'd played SWtOR with a good friend of mine (who recently came back to play CoH with me; she was the one who introduced me to this game in the first place almost 7 years ago, I think) not long ago. We'll probably both dust off a few characters to finish up some class stories once it goes free-to-play, but I have a hard time rationalizing spending money on that game either given the current state of the end-game. Maybe things will turn around, but I doubt this will be the MMO to grab me either.

The friend I mentioned earlier had mentioned some interest in Tera as well, and though I know very little about it aside from it being rather action-oriented, if she wants to give that a shot I probably will too. I don't know enough about it to really even have a preliminary guess as to how much I would like it though.

Then there's the Secret World. I figure I'll try out one of the free trials they seem to have going pretty frequently and see if it grabs me. In theory, I -love- the setting and the atmosphere that I imagine would come along with it. But will it have the hooks that I crave mechanically? I have no idea. But I want to give it a shot.

In the future, I'm keeping my eye on WildStar (yes, I know), Worlds of Darkness, and Phantasy Star Online 2. I have tried Champions Online and DCUO in the past, but Champions I just flat-out dislike largely because I can't stand the art style and DCUO just feels too repetitive to me even though I do appreciate the month that I spent with the game.

So ultimately I'm really undecided. Much of it depends on where my partner-in-gaming ends up (so long as it isn't WoW), but I certainly don't see myself getting engrossed in another MMO as deeply as I did CoH. I love, love, love numerous of my characters (and they'll be reborn elsewhere if need be in some incarnation) and was really proud of some of their builds, too. I absolutely adored playing around in Mids' and seeing what I could come up with.

Once the sting wears off, months and months from now, I'll probably open up Mids again and just mill around and reminisce. Like playing the game has been for me since the news, it'll be bittersweet but fun in its own way.

I hope to see some of you guys around, wherever I end up.

I honestly don't expect anything to come from this, but I'm willing to grab at a lifeline even if it might be a mirage. I certainly can't think of another company I'd rather have CoH in the hands of.

Sent.

This game has been a consistent part of my life for over five years now. A really good friend of mine urged me to give it a shot despite my vocal dislike of general MMOs, and within a hours of toying around with energy blast after making a fantastically unique avatar, I was hooked. I haven't looked back since despite some decisions that I disagreed with (vocally) over the years. I love this game. I love its community. And I'll really miss it.

To all the devs that have poured your time, heart, and ideas into this game over the years, I want to say thank you. You've brought many, many smiles to my face and countless hours of entertainment my way. I hope you all land on your feet and go on to do something even better.

Thanks for all the memories.

Hey guys.

I just wanted to seek some confirmation here before I spend a fortune on one of these IOs only to find it acts finicky in the selected power. Does anybody use the Overwhelming Force Knockback to Knockdown proc on water spout? If so, does it function properly? It's been awhile since I've used this power, but I remember it sending enemies just absolutely flying all over the place. I'd love to take this power on my SF/EA scrapper provided the IO will keep the enemies from being flung around out of the range of the delicious AoEs of Staff Fighting. I looked around for an instance of someone using this combo but haven't been able to find anything in my scouring of the forums.

Thanks!

I appreciate all the additional feedback. I ultimately rolled up a StJ/FA toon and got him to 22 so I could have sweet, sweet SOs post double xp weekend. He's been fun so far, but that's also exclusively running with teams. I'll be looking forward to running him solo a bit after the weekend is over.

Hmm...thanks for the candid insight. I guess that makes the choice fairly easy. I'm looking to roll it with /FA, but I'm avoiding weapon sets because I hate redraw. It's a real shame EA is in that kind of a state, but I guess that makes my decision easy if nothing else. The only other primary that wouldn't cause constant redraw that I haven't played is Stone Melee, and from a conceptual standpoint that isn't the kind of thing I'm going for.

Thanks!

Hey guys.

I was just wanting to get some direct feedback on how Energy Melee performs these days. I've seen posts here and there and from what I deduce its not faring so great. I understand that its AoE is very limited, but is the ST damage at least at the top of its class? I've never played a EM toon so I've never really followed how it's progressed. I seem to recall Energy Transfer being nerfed, but I could just be confusing things.

Anyway, any direct feedback from EM players out there? I'm trying to decide whether I want to play a StJ or EM brute up some this 2xp weekend. =) Thanks!

I was afraid it would work out like that but so it goes. Thanks for the swift and useful replies!

A quick question about the mechanics of this IO. I was hoping to slot this IO into Afterburner and have it active like a global enhancement even when the power isn't active for awhile (in missions I'm likely to be using hover instead), but I'm not certain that it works that way. Is this a situation where the power needs to be active every so often to gain the benefit of the IO, or is it always active even if placed in a toggle that is not on?

Thanks gang.

From a mission design point of view I really enjoyed the story arcs. There's no defeat-alls which is an absolute blessing but the missions do have some nice surprises along the way to mix things up from a standard defeat-the-boss fare we're so familiar with. While I know it's a controversial bit, I enjoy the 'escape' mission objectives. I do feel that it would be more interesting if escaping didn't simply involve backtracking. I know the first mission sends you to a different part of the Organbegan map but I feel like having an actual cave-in or something blocking the way out of the final room and having to find an escape route from there would have allowed for a more continuous feel of progression. But of course, I understand there are environment limitations from a practical perspective.

The plot was interesting and has a really good hook at the end to keep players invested, but the hero and villain sides were so similar in structure that it was a bit disappointing. If I had to say which side I thought was more interesting it would be a clear victory for villains. Being able to assert yourself with the Circle as an ally or an independent villain added some flavor as well as some depth to how you could approach the final mission. Frankly, I also thought Alastor was a more interesting contact than the Lost whats-his-name contact for heroes. Villains also get a more substantial fight at the end with a few waves of ambushes by heroes. If the arcs are going to remain this closely linked in structure I do hope that we'll see more ways to deviate from the static adventure that heroes have in this arc for both sides.

I also was a tad disappointed that it was only three missions for what is a paid product for premiums. I hope we get more lengthy adventures as the signature story arcs continue. Finally, I hope we won't be stuck at level 20 for this entire arc. Let us use those abilities we've been working on in those incarnate trials!

One thing that I want to point out that I continually enjoy is the vastly, vastly improved sound design in the game. The music cues that we're getting these days are fantastic and I hope we only see more of them.

Overall a good first effort but I hope to see some minor tweaks as the arcs move forward. Keep the fun coming!

Oh boy.

I hope they aren't actually thinking of using the purchase data on beta as some kind of indicator of what people will spend their money on when it goes live. When I'm using play money I'm not really too concerned with what I'm spending it on. My real-life cash? That's another matter. I doubt I'm alone in that.

Yes, that's right, Chris. That is unless you purchase an Alpha unlock via Astral merits in Ouroboros, but you need to do Incarnate Trials to get those merits so I'm guessing that's not really an option for you. Honestly, I find that to be a waste of merits anyway myself. So yes, unless you purchase an Alpha unlock, you have to do Mender Ramiel's arc in Ouro before Incarnates are unlocked for that character.

I think you already know this, but this arc only unlocks your Alpha slot. Judgement, Lore, Destiny, and Interface all have to be unlocked with iXP in trials.

Huh, I just always kind of assumed that he was a FP member from how he always seemed to be hanging around with them. It was only reinforced in my mind by how he's a Praetor in Praetoria. One way or another, I'd say the writers have some tweaking to do.

Holy COW. I went from being "ew" on this revamp to "wow!" This goes reeeeeally far to recapture the original look of the Thorns. Nice work!

I'd speculate that it'll be either Citadel or Synapse.

Citadel is just...amazingly boring, has a grindfest of a task force, and hasn't really been used in much of the more recent content. I can see the devs feel like they aren't losing much potential with dropping him. Hopefully this wouldn't end up with any sort of cop-out ending where he comes back because his data was stored somewhere and he was recreated with a new body.

Synapse has more personality than Citadel for sure, but also has an awful task force that needs to be looked at. Like Citadel, he also hasn't been prominently featured in any newer content that I recall. I also feel that he also has a lot more potential than Citadel for going out in a blaze of dramatic glory.

I don't think it will be Statesman because they redid the Maria Jenkins arc centered around saving Statesman not more than a year ago. I doubt they want to ditch that much work this quickly.

Sister Psyche is in the new tutorial and, from my perspective, is one of the more popular signature blueside characters.

Manticore embodies the vigilante movement in the game and -- maybe this is just my perception -- but I feel like he's involved in more story arcs out there than any other Phalanxer.

BaBs is in the new tutorial and is featured prominently (as was mentioned already) as the melee damage rep in the game. Again, I also think he's one of the more popular blueside signature characters. This doesn't necessarily disqualify him, but I don't think he's the prime candidate.

Positron is popular, has a revamped task force, and is States' second-in-command (although he's got a lot more support -- go figure). He's the least likely candidate from my viewpoint.

Numina...well, she skirts the line of possibility in my mind, but I don't feel like her task force is as universally panned as Synapse or Citadel. I also feel like there would be less impact than say, Synapse if Numina's spirit was sealed or destroyed. I mean...she's already 'technically' dead. Of course, one could argue that Citadel is in much the same situation what with being a robot. Numina's a distant third possibility to me.

No matter what direction they take this story though, I hope they do leave said individual dead so that the impact is really there. I'm psyched for these signature story arcs and a lore-changing death could go a long way to driving home these stories as must-play experiences for anyone that enjoys the story or characters in the game.

I certainly approve. The prices look right and it really does look to be a no-brainer to be a VIP subscriber. At least in my case. I love new story arcs and they each cost 400 points as a premium member. Further, you get 400 points for being a VIP subscriber on many things that I'm sure would be too shiny for me to resist anyway. So technically that's already $10 worth of stuff that I'm essentially already paid up on every month. At that point I might as well be paying just $5 to access Incarnates and AE. I'll forego a value meal for that.

Well played, Paragon. Well played.