Nethergoat

I play totally randomly, although solo for the most part due to my unreliable schedule.

I just spent a bit going through all the new low level stuff they added during my hiatus, now I'm going to flip the coin and check out the Incarnate system with my fire/ice blaster- unlocked the alpha at some point, never did anything with it so I figure I'll nose around.

About the only thing I don't do is TF/trial content.
My playtime usually comes in 10-20 minute bites, it's rare I can string enough together to run even a short TF.

a couple of 'WTH, Blasters!' threads over the last while have me thinking a bit about what's wrong with the AT & thus playing my (few) blasters a bit more. Paraleghell I mentioned above- he'll be my incarnate stalking horse to see if I can get into the system at all.

My ar/dev Big Payback is basically "finished", I dragged him to 50, dropped multiple billions on a l337 IO build, softcapped him to ranged and if it didn't quite make him the killing machine he was back in the day, it at least bumped him up to "not lame".

Which leaves Psicops, my psi/psi blaster. I made him back when the set released because I had a notion- I'd always wanted to use the 'third eye' face from the costume creator, I'd always wanted an excuse to the PPD chest emblem, and with Psi it all came together- a PPD beat cop who 'awakened' to his psychic potential but still stayed on the payroll.

I got him up to 20 before my hiatus, and while he was the beneficiary of a comically huge market windfall while I was kitting out his enhancements I hadn't played him much.

Until now!

So, with enhancements slotted I opened the contact window and hit 'find'.
The changes to the contact system is probably my favorite QOL upgrade (no, wait, /ah is better...)- no more sifting and sorting and trying to remember who you'd run on which character, no more having to figure out how to get to new ones, just a quick search and usually a 'teleport to contact' and you're good to go.

So I bopped over to Mercedes Sheldon, who I don't recall dealing with, and got rolling on the Dirge of Chaos arc.

The arc was plain vanilla mechanically, but the story was fun. One thing bugged me though- the MacGuffin was a cassette tape. Every time someone mentioned it, I grumbled. I don't know how old this mission is, but I'll bet the whole iPod revolution was well under way. A minor quibble, but an irritating one.

First mission, Investigate Troll Rave.

Fairly problematic for my guy, but then most everything is problematic for him.
As I mentioned in another thread, 'Burn Inspiration' might as well be part of his attack chain.

Lots of freaks, and a string of Tanks I'm supposed to take down.
Plenty of touch-and-go, one faceplant remedied by the vet rez, lots of time spent sleeping waiting for someone to bash me so I could wake up. Made it out more or less in one piece, and got acquainted with my attack chain.

One sort of offputting thing about this guy is the sound of many attacks give me bad Lost flashbacks- I fire them off and my brain trips the ABERRANT RECTOR! ABERRANT RECTOR!! alarm.

Anyway, finished it with the help of an almost unbroken string of burned inspirations. The key to the tanks was damage overload- eating a couple of reds, tripping aim & buildup and going whole hog worked *much* better than my usual tactic of purples, purples & more purples.

Also, hover blasting.


Next up, Defeat 20 Freaks in Talos.
Orly?

There's just no excuse for missions like this still being in the game. Hire a summer intern to comb through the game and either cut the # to something reasonable or replace it with an equally time consuming but less pointless alternative.

Complete Current Mission?
Yes, please.


Next up, a standard 'freaks in an office' mish.
I liked the boss (KILLDOZER, nice nod to a really bad horror flick from my youth), the clues I collected were amusing, so I'd rate it above a standard radio mish.

On to the final mish, another Freaks in an Office offering. I'd have liked a change of map just for the sake of monotony- it doesn't make any practical difference, but plowing spawns seems less repetitive when the locations are mixed up a bit.

note to self: add slot to Hover at 22, blow some of that 900m bankroll on Steath IO.

So it's a long slog through multiple levels of boring office space before I happen across the DIRGE OF CHAOS looming over a cowering lady- he looks surprisingly like a Spectral Demon Lord. Orange boss, in one of those weird hallway/rooms that promise multiple spawns hiding in the nooks.

I figure I'll just burn all my inspirations and try to take him down fast, and if the masses get me oh well.

I had one purple, some reds & a couple of oranges. Aim, Build Up, and off I go.

Yikes!!

I guess hurting him triggers ambushes?

On top of the expected bonus spawns hiding around the corner.

On the plus side, he goes down pretty fast, and the quarters are so close not many of the OCEAN of ghosts and freaks can get off their melee attacks.

On the minus side, AN OCEAN OF GHOSTS AND FREAKS!

Somehow, I managed to survive. I was burning inspirations as they dropped so I don't know what they were, but I came out the other end with next to no health and next to no endurance.

Chaotic, but fun!


But what's this, no mission complete?

ESCORT THE HOSTAGE?

BAH.

Nearly as irritating as 'Arrest 500 X'.


Somewhat fortunately I'd had to kill my way through so the only enemy between me and the door was the sub-moron hostage AI.

Was thisclose to 21 after calling in the mission, so I wiped a couple of likely looking spawns on the street & headed to the trainer.

Considering my options, I went with Will Domination.
I hate sleep powers, but as I'm essentially a full-time soloist it will come in handy. And it apparently does okay damage, so....



I had fun, so Psicops lives to blast another day.

I <3 this SG.

I was a collector back in the day and followed all my favorite titles month to month, sniffing through the new arrivals looking for good new stuff to add. Now, too much life going on. It's all I can do to lay back and cherry pick the best stuff in TPB form as determined by my pal who owns a shop.


Sad, when you reach a point in life that you have to out-source your good taste to professionals.

A change of pace for this thread- inspired by the release of I23 I've actually checked out a bit of Incarnate content. It's a system I haven't actively avoided, but neither have I sought it out. It ended up being sort of like Praetoria- I was interested before release, but the actuality didn't inspire me.

But while fiddling with and poking around my various characters, I discovered Paraleghell, my fire/ice blaster, has an unlocked Alpha slot. It's empty and I don't recall unlocking it, but there it sits.


So I figured hey, why not check out this new contact on my list, Belladonna Vetrano. My highest level Praetorean is like 13, so I'm not that invested in the whole storyline, but figure it ought to be fun to run Paraleghell through his paces- he's the only blaster (other than my ar/dev pre-ED) that I've enjoyed playing.




Full report later!

This thread is giving off the sort of vibe usually found in "why don't you PVP" threads, where all reasons for not enjoying it are met with variations of LRN2PLAY & LRN2BUILD.


a big attraction of this game for me is it's really really easy.
you can *make* it complicated on various levels if you like, but generally the out of the box experience is you get to run around feeling super with pretty much whatever you play.

This isn't the case with Kheldians, or at least wasn't my experience with them and judging by this thread I'm not alone.

Whether or not that can be worked around or confounded by planning & skill is irrelevant- it presents a play hurdle other ATs don't suffer from.

As always when these sorts of threads pop up regarding unpopular ATs the question shouldn't be why don't you like/play X? , but what changes should be made to X so people will like/play it?

You can't browbeat people into liking something they don't think is fun.

Reading over this thread is seems to me not only did they know this was coming, they planned it this way.

Just want the unlock?
Farm the opening.

But if you want all the goodies you need to finish.


They knew it would be farmed regardless, so they made that farming as painless as possible.