Carapace

This last weekend, my wife and I attended the PAX COH panel. Now, we haven't played in a few years- but before that, we played COH pretty intensely, starting in Beta. Since then, we've played WoW, AoC, and now we're playing Champions. Anyway, we got fairly excited by what we saw at PAX, and when my wife won a signed copy of the game at the Paragon party, we figured it was a sign.

So when we got home, we (re)installed the game. And...

... I'm not sure, yet. When we last played the game, everything was hopping. Heck, it was almost too crowded. Now, though... we played for two hours last night and I think we saw a grand total of six other players... and two of them were AFK. The city was a ghost town. I looked in Atlas Park, Steel Canyon, and parts of the Rogue Isles... and everything felt just so empty. Where the heck is everyone?

It may be that our server (Victory) is just deserted. Moving to another server would kinda suck, though, as it's unlikely we could get the same names (and I'm very attached to names).

We also found that we couldn't really remember how to play. One feature I was very interested in was the Level Pact system- but we couldn't find any documentation on it. How're we supposed to find out about features like that? And why couldn't I change the colors of my Peacekeeper's powers?

My main character is a stealthy Claws/Invul scrapper. Being stealthy is his entire concept... but with the upcoming changes to stealth, I've had zero desire to play him. I'm completely unmotivated now.

I honestly don't get it- Stealth will (in I5) fail if you attack or get attacked, and the amount of defense it provides will be halved... and yet the endurance drain of keeping the power turned on will still be active, and you'll still move slower if you've got it on. Um... what's the point? Why would anyone take this power?

I frankly don't much care about the defense aspects of the power. I'm a scrapper, so the amount it gave me wasn't that huge... but being able to avoid nearby aggro fit my character PERFECTLY. I built my guy around Stealth- I took the fitness pool Swift and Stamina so I could keep Stealth running at all times.

Now, if Stealth becomes not only useless, but an actual detriment to have, I'll have to completely rebuild my scrapper as something else- and he'll be that much closer to being just another cookie-cutter hero.