MrCaptainMan

I think the fact that the LRT power exits you at the train station is awful. I'd rather have a random point in the destination zone.

"I can teleport to any train station in the city!"

"PI has no station"

"Oh, right...OK, I can teleport to any train station in the city and to one specific spot neqr this building in PI"

Eco.

Me too, like:

Bunch of flowers
Fish
Parrot
Skull
Bowling Trophy
Lavalamp

Snowglobe

Eco

Cheers for the advice. I'm not far off lvl 28, maybe if I level I'll have better luck. I'm in the Abyss, there aren't any floating islands.

Eco

TIme/Ice Defender, lvl 27.

I could probably whittle him down if he didnt keep rezzing his minions.

Eco

If I'd paid extra for this, I'd be asking for a refund. Video Games need a paradigm shift in the way they're presented to the consumer IMO. If I bought a book printed in a language I could read and the last chapter was in a language I couldn't, I'd take it back witha "WTF?'. If I wentto see a movie and the last 20 minutes were shown in some spectrum I couldn't see, I'd be able to complain. Pople think if they can't finish a video game, it's the customer's fault not the vendor. It's wrong. Difficulty settings, people. We can scale reward gain, turn off rewards and have everything con grey, then we can ALL experience the story, not just the damn AV-Killers out there.

Eco

And they could link us in to this system straight from the character creator, so they wouldn't need any actual zones. That would make travel powers less important too, so people woupdn't have to waste choices on Fly or Teleport or other powers that don't give any xp for using them.

Then they could get rid of the 'City' bit of the game's name.

Eco

My suggestion is for a tab to be added to the interface. The authors would decide if their arcs were 'farm' or 'story', not player votes.

Eco

Yes, I gathered that about the speech bubbles + 'briefing window' info dumps. If they're going to give us the info in speech bubbles, they shouldn't bother with the briefing windows. But then they wouldn't be able to present us with FIVE windows in a row full of expository blather that sotrely needs editing.

There's a mission where you're presented with loads of apparitions who explain stuff to you. It's awesome. I loved it, rotating my camera as one by one these spirits spioke their piece. No ambushes, no other window cluttering up the place, just a nice atmospheric sequence. So they CAN do great narrative delivery when it suits them. It's a shame that the other 99% of First Ward is so poor.

I too reached a point where storywise, my hero was for some bizarre reason agreeing to go slaughter people. I'm not RP-bound enough to abandon it then, but it blew as a story direction.

Eco.

I hope they don't make the assault on the Asylum a trial. I think they will, but I hope they don't.

Eco

I mean it's a rubbish bit of story/background/rationale or whatever. The mobs, they're people, are they? What do they do when they're not bring all vengeful in missions? Freaks, Council, resistance, Sky Raiders, Luddites, skulls, Arachnos, PPD, all these give the impression that they have some sort of 'off-duty lives. Supernatural entities I can imagine just floating around moaning and clanking their chains, even the Vahz have sewers to mill around in. The Carnival of Vengeance get new armor once they're turned? Where do they come from?

Eco

Hm. That's what's going on?

That's rubbish.

Eco

He's awful. It's ironic that in another storyline, I'd probably like him. I love the Sky Raider guy in Faultline who acts in a similar way, but his attitude in the FW story jars so much with the rest of it.

Eco

I don't care.

Eco

I was trying to read the text, but i kept getting distracted by ambushes and dying and text windows appearing at the same time as speech bubbles and "hello hero - blah blah blah now go see vanessa and then come back and then go speak to her again and then come back and ignore the comms we've all given you by now, you've got to physically go there" and by then, I was sick of it all, tbh.

Eco

Incidentally, I totally agree with venture that the storyline for First Ward is largely awful. The Carnival of Vengeance reveal especially seems like the kind of terrible stuff I was writing for pen n paper RPGs when I was 14.

I was also extrremely irked to find Diabolique and that chick with the bob (who is she? She just turns up and everyone acts like they know who she is - I thought she was War Witch for a while) in a quite cool cave with the big bird statue, and then I'm sidelined as the two of them and Midnight enjoy themselves in a cut scene, and then because i'm on a squishy i have to just sit at the back whilst Diabolique finishes the arc for me.

I'm now in Striga, enjoying actually being a hero in missions that are enjoyable, for contacts who aren't wankers.

Eco.

Says who? I've spent over 5 years playing CoH and being able to do a bit of a mission, park my toon, gomake a cuppa or have a cigarette break, come back and continue. I've seen parents commenting on how they like it because if the baby cries they can just retreat to a cleared area and no problem. If my doorbell rings, I can click back thru that elevator and i'm safe. They have taught us that safe and steady and player choice and 'at your own pace' is the design for the majority of the game's life. Blah blah I don't give a monkey's about debt, debt just gets me more badges. it's the annoyance factor and the way that ambushes often cause huge disconnects in theme and storyline. When I fight my way through a base and find the Final Glowie, What I want narratively is a clue to read there and then, and either a mision end, or a heads up that I have to fight something else, but just that, a head's up - I don't want the fight to be plonked down at me immeditately before i have the chance to set toggles or whatever. I'd be quite happy for such glowies to trigger patrols or a front-loaded boss to fight. It's not the extension of the mission that's the problem either. it's the lack of control over the situation i object to.

If I die in that situation, ganked by a mob essentially, and I have to go to the hospital, then the narrative is borked, and frequently in First Ward the mission entries are the contacts themselves, who give you the exact same mission briefings when you go back to them to re-enter the mission. It makes no sense.

Some have said 'well, just toggle up and inspir before you click the glowie then'. The problem with that is,we don't know at any stage what exactly is going to trigger an ambush, so it's possible I might eat a tray of Lucks and click a glowie only to have nothing happen. I have a similar problem with the bosses that give up half way through for a chat. Since it's likely that Johnny Ambush might think it great fun to force 5 pages of conversation on me and THEN ambush me, I find myself tempted to skim thru the text really quickly so that my inspirs don't run out before I have to fight again.

I think the main problem is that there's no consistency to the new ambush paradigm, so it's difficult for those who dislike it to forge a consistent strategy for it. Players like to control their game as much as possible, and this situation takes away that control.

Eco.