Grouchybeast

Have you joined your server's global chat channel? If not, check for the name on the server forum, and join it. You'll find the chatter happens there -- very little takes place in broadcast, because that channel isn't cross-zone.

I personally don't bother with taking the Entrusted With The Secret badge missions any more. It's much, much easier to wait until level 25 and just ask in local for someone to drop a portal for me. No one would consider that to be begging, and most people are delighted to help out, especially with a new player. We have an incredibly friendly community here, and no one would give a second thought to dropping a portal for you, which, after all, will take them all of a couple of seconds to click on a power.

(Or if you're really absolutely dead set against asking, you can always just wait until you see someone drop a portal and click on it before they do. Portals only close after the original owner uses them, so you won't be inconveniencing them in any way at all.)

There are so many different ways to level through CoX that there's no guarantee that any player will have done a particular mission, and the devs explicitly cater for that. There are some arcs which give the Ouro badge, as a way of advertising its existence, but there's always the exploration badge inside Ouroboros itself as a quick route for people who didn't want to do the arcs, or missed them, or whatever.

I promise, you really, really haven't been cut off from anything, especially the Alpha Slot, which you can't start to get involved with until level 50 anyway.

I promise it will be the first thing I'll do as soon as the devs merge the EU and US server lists.

But in that case, all I can say is...

...what a magnificent triumph for Fulmens' visionary genius! {round of applause}

What, you mean 'hey, guys, some supergroup somewhere totally has a bunch of prestige!' didn't convice you? What are you, some kind of weirdo empiricist?

I was generally pretty disappointed by the solo missions in GR. Even given that it's for sub-20 level characters, the absolute necessity to make it possible for even the most team-oriented support character to complete it successfully left it all feeling a bit anaemic to me. The build-up and mission text were all very nicely done, but in a way that just made the actual encounters feel limper.

At least now Praetoria has difficulty sliders, which goes some way towards fixing that.

Can you imagine the state of the market interface if every level of IO came with thousands of combinations of condition? Ouch.


Overall...it seems like an awful lot of faff and fuss and programming time and effort for something that's going to be a boring drag in game. Some people don't like the market, but at least *some* people get a lot of fun out of it. I can't imagine many people getting fun out of the chance to pay to repair their enhancement.

If the only point of it is to drain inf, why bother with such a complex system? Simply slashing the amount of inf generated by high-level characters would be a much, much easier solution to inf oversupply.

And not only is she super hot, but she's a really, really good marketeer and she's contributing TONS of prestige to the mystery SG!

I thought your costume was awesome :-)


And big thanks again to Riff and Avatea for organizing the event and providing such great prizes. (And for finally fulfilling my long-cherished ambition of a Ring Mistress cossie code :-)

Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!!!

I find the key is not to bother reading the mission text. Just follow the directions in the little box, and ice breath will soon be yours. :-)

CoX has always been like that, I think. I remember when I was a new player that people were always willing to lend a hand with help or advice.

I try to do the same for new players I notice (I'll usually have a look at vet badges on lowbie characters in starting zones), and at the very least ask if they're enjoying the game, and if I can explain anything or offer any help. Once you have a few high-level characters, you can easily afford to help out new players e.g. with some inf or a few common IOs from base storage of their enhancements have gone red.

The problem with using your own special definitions of words is that it makes it hard to communicate with other people. For most people who play this game, solo and casual mean different things. If you conflate them into one, then people will misunderstand you, like I did. What's wrong with just saying 'solo'?

I agree that, for strongly committed solo players, the Incarnate system as it stands is weighed in favour of TFs -- one arc v. two TFs -- and seems like to continue with a TF/Trial bias. However, it's also early days.

Yep, it's true! I have a tab set up solely for market notifications, so that I can see from the name colour change if a trade goes though.

I don't think that you're really differentiating clearly between 'casual' and 'solo'.

I agree that a TF/Trial focused end game would be solo unfriendly. However, from what we've seen of the Incarnate system so far, it seems just as casual-friendly as the rest of the game.

I'm a pretty casual player. I play in phases, sometimes logging in most days, sometimes playing once or twice a week. All my characters are in my personal SG, and I'm not in any coalitions, so I don't have any SG/VG channels to find teams on. Pretty much the only teaming I do is joining TFs from the server global channels, plus recently one weekly trio team.

The incarnate system is about the most casual-friendly end game I can imagine. To 'qualify', I have to do one short, solo-able arc, and then take part in a couple of the existing TFs (and if I don't mind picking up shards more slowly, then even the TFs are optional). It really is the Midnighter Arc for level 50s. Once I've done that, then I get the advantages of the Alpha slot for all 45+ content, and I can keep making progress collecting more shards even if I never play a single Incarnate TF.

I don't have to join a guild and commit to a raid schedule. I don't need to spend hours and hours grinding out the required gear from specific raids -- any 50+ content will do. If I'm willing to accept the trade-off of slower progress, I don't have to team once to unlock and start making use of Incarnate levels.

The Incarnate TFs themselves are a little different to others, but I wouldn't say they're particularly much harder than the current level 50 TFs. Primarily, they're new, and people are still learning how to play them. They're also short, making them great for players who have limited time to commit to a team.

Honestly, it's hard to see how the devs could have made the basic Incarnate system much more casual friendly than they already have.

Ooh, awesomesauce! I did not know that, thank you.

Didn't they change the way the search work a while back, so the list is still truncates to 50 but it no longer shows the total found? If you want a reasonably accurate count you need to keep filtering by level or AT until you can get the results down below 50.

I was on an all-blaster ITF that was a boatload of fun. Our tactics were slightly more complex, though -- "KILL THEM ALL (and bring a tray of wakies)!!!!"

Honestly, I think if that you're in a PVP zone, and a PVPing player leaves you alone when asked so you can carry out your non-PVPing business there, you really don't have that much room for complaint.

One thing about CoX is that for the majority of the time, most players are inside instanced missions and so you don't see them. If you get yourself onto some of your server's global channels, that's a best way to find teams.

There's not really any 'old content' in CoX, as people often have dozens or hundred of alts. So unless there's some very shiny new toy at a higher level (which is true to a certain extent at the moment with the new level 50 task forces) then there will always be new low level characters starting.

I guess it depends on how annoying he finds himself :-)

No, no, no. It's the other party's burden to laugh, and then go write more fanfic. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Speaking of in-game misinformation, I levelled up to (I think) 12 in Praetoria, and actually paused read the info on the trainer screen rather than just clicking the link to level. I discovered that Praetor Duncan was helpfully telling me all about how I could invite characters at least three levels lower than me to be a sidekick.