I am the co-founder of the F.E.A.R. VG. We only have 8 gaming members but have 24 characters (each of us has 3) in the VG.
The reason we got involved with CoV was the enticement of the bases and raiding for IoP's. We have a SG in CoH "Unexplained Investigations" and we wanted to have a base for CoH so we bought CoV and decided that a base in each group would be great. We were involved with beta testing and got the 2 day head start. We have worked our main characters up to level 25. Some of which have been gaining prestige since OutBreak. In CoH, we have roughly 50 characters but only the same 8 players. Our highest level characters are closing in on 50 and they have almost all of the badges and accolades in the game. We have almost all of the TF badges at this point too. As you can see, we play the game for the content.
Our main goal was to get to a PvP base and do the trial for an IoP then tryout the raids. Now that the misty rose colored glasses have been removed, we realized that there is absolutely no way we can achieve our goal. We are a small group that has been playing together most nights of the week for about 3 hours per night over the last 1.5 years. We have a lot of fun trying to do all the content of the game. We have our own style of play that has been altered a great deal lately with the changes in the game due to herding, number of targets affected by Nova, Blizzard, Psychic Wail, and Inferno, and now the enhancement changes.
We can no way, no how get to an IoP because of the number of people it takes to do the mission. If we split into 3 groups during the mission we will have max 3 players on one team. Not going to be enough to do the trial. Also, we can no way shape or form get to the prestige needed to build a raidable base and pay the rent. Thus, we changed our goal and gave up on being part of the PvP IoP portion of the game. Truly disheartening that we can't enjoy the full content of the game and keep only our close group of friends in the VG.
So we have decided to just make the base as functional as possible for our use. Now, the items we want to place we cannot create because the healing badge for the SG is bugged, we don't have enough salvage, and we don't have enough prestige to place it when we can create it.
All in all this has been an extremely frustrating venture into CoV and one that will end relatively soon I believe. We have started playing our CoH characters again and are not even thinking about building a base in CoH. There is much more content and fun things to do in CoH at this point and no reason to pursue a functional base in the near future.
*Frustrated Sigh*
