Mirai

Well, I was thinking of doing the upper 40s hero story arcs with my level 50 Energy/Regen Stalker. I suppose I might get enough shards out of that, if I'm lucky, and I kill everything. But I was also thinking of doing hero flashbacks heavily with that character. And I have a lot of other characters to play. And again, there's that lack of incentive to get the shards.

I don't do those. My normal play is: do story arcs and miscellaneous missions. Solo. At level 50, I don't do those much. I have little incentive to play at 50, and getting shards every long now and then that are used for a slot that is best used for content I won't do... is not an additional incentive.

Issue 4 was mostly useless to me too, since it was all about the arenas and I don't do PvP. I got a some costume options out of it. If they can throw a few minor goodies in for me in Issue 20, I won't mind the focus on stuff I won't use.

And yes, I'm looking forward to the I19 inherent Fitness.

Start with 1 for the first item, and double it for each additional item, up to a maximum of 10. So if you had just added some Spock ears, you'd be at a perfect 10.

Right, I missed the line in the middle.

Yes, that's the part I mentioned I don't do, which is why I'm not getting my hopes up for the Incarnate stuff. I'm currently assuming that any solo-friendly Incarnate mission content will be tiny at best.

Although that's good, I'd prefer to pick the original Dreadstar story. The one where he and friends destroy the Milky Way galaxy. On purpose.

Well, I haven't been 1-shot by the Halloween bosses yet, but they can chew up a lot of my characters. Most of my characters who are well-suited to the ToT badges finished with those badges last year. Most of my remaining characters will be avoiding knocking on doors this year. But my Praetorian Demon/Pain MM is pretty good at fighting the Halloween enemies. (My Praetorian Kin/Will stalker is hiding indoors until November.)

The new Tip mission fails to interest me at all. I've done it a few times, but it's not worth the badges for me.

Frankly, I've been spending most of my time designing and playing AE missions. I got some good ideas just after the Halloween event started.

It's not even an interesting mission. You rush to the last room to fight the elite boss, trying to defeat him before the short timer expires and unleashes an ambush on you. And that's it. Beat the EB and the mission is over. Don't stop to admire the scenery, because time is short.

Admittedly, it can be a fast mission. You have an incentive to finish it in under five minutes. Some of my characters won't be suited to doing that, but others shouldn't have a problem with it. My Will/Mace tanker zipped right through the mission easily enough. Still. Rush to an elite boss fight. Really not my kind of fun.

I really have a hard time getting excited over getting these badges.

What does this mean? Are there actually new costume temp powers? After playing a while on the test server, I didn't see anything along those lines.

I'm in favor of being able to solo elite bosses (because I'm stuck with them in my solo missions), but not AVs or GMs. AVs and GMs were intentionally meant for team play, and I have no problem with that, as long as the AVs downgrade to EBs in solo play for me.

I've soloed plenty of EBs. Afterwards, I've applauded the overpowered nature of purple inspirations. They let me get by those annoying EBs... if I don't simply auto-complete or intentionally fail the mission.

No, at level 50 it's way too late for me. The EBs start showing up at level 5.

If the EBs were handled in a consistently climactic way, I'd be more interested in putting in an effort to fight them. Far more often than not, the EB just gets thrown into a story for little if any good reason. "Oh, by the way, Silver Mantis will be there too, and you'll have to beat her up. Good luck with that." That pretty much kills my interest in fighting EBs at all, even when they're used in a proper climax to an arc.

I gave up on fighting AVs and GMs a long time ago.

I don't doubt the merits of the medium. Hellblazer wouldn't have lasted so long if it wasn't popular. Fables has won national attention for its storytelling. Y itself was quite a success.

It just doesn't interest me.

Similarly, I don't expect most people around here to like Claymore, even though I think it's an amazing manga series. Different people are amazed by different things.

Ludicrous but stylish!

Frankly, the original CoH weapons were ludicrously oversized too. Not quite as bad as what you see in a lot of fantasy games, but still too big. Fortunately the devs added a lot of more reasonably-sized weapons, and I ditched those huge legacy weapons in a hurry.