Nethergoat

The 'look and feel' is vitally important to my enjoyment of a character.
I'm not an active role player but every one of my characters has a more or less elaborate backstory & their own position in the game world.

With crabs (and to a lesser extent *all* the EATs, none of which I've logged much time with) I feel like someone's handed me one of their characters to play. I've given it many shots over the years, but however 'good' their powers supposedly make them I just can't get immersed in their story.

Tonight's escapades:

Mostly logging in characters and tweaking costumes/checking market slots.

Logged in Joan of Orc, a level 4 brute I haven't played in forever and who'd escaped deletion only because I really liked how her head turned out. The rest of her, eh. A case of an idea the costume options at the time didn't really support, and costume dis-harmony usually prevents me from enjoying a character. She's so old there was no 'save costume' functionality- if there had been I'd have no doubt saved that head & promptly freed up that slot for other things.

But, tonight she served as an excellent culture-shock introduction to the re-designed Mercy Island.

Y'see, that last time I'd logged her off she's just leveled, so she was standing by the trainer at the old starting point. It was really disorienting logging in and having *nothing* there- no trainers, no Black Helicopter, no merit vendor. At first I thought it was the /sync bug making a comeback, but reality gradually dawned on me. I saw a contact who's name I didn't recognize attached to a waypoint all the way over on the other side of the map, a dim bell rang in the recesses of my memory and I muttered "huh, they must have changed a couple things!"

Navigating my way to the contact was a terrific exercise in confused dislocation- I can't tell you how many characters I've run through Mercy Island. After ED I briefly quit the game but picked up CoV, liked it and played villains exclusively until the arrival of Inventions, when the unfair disparity between the segregated markets drove me back hero-side.

So, that's a BUNCH of game hours logged in Mercy.
My memories of what and who went where were set in stone.

I did a literal double-take (and was nearly face-planted as I stood goggling like a Bornean tribesman suddenly teleported to downtown Manhattan) at the crowds of Longbow milling around on the street which had fueled so many of my halcyon memories of street-sweeping snakes on my way to this or that mission.

The rest of the zone was no more comfortable, swarming with Longbow, Legacy Chain and the only bit of familiarity, some puking Blighted.

I didn't have time to run any of the new mishs with her, and will probably be re-rolling her in light of the addition of more thematically appropriate powerset choices (she was Stone Melee because I created her before proliferation, and it was the closest I could get to a giant barbarian weapon). She may be the character that inspires me to check out one of the new powersets, specifically Titan Weapons.

An unexpected afternoon nap for my son combined with the wife heading out on some errands let me hit Paragon this afternoon. Whee!

Poking around random servers I found my fire/elec brute Hellitosis and logged him in. I figured he'd benefit from the fire/ice costume stuff, but this time my intent to costume tweak was sidelined by gameplay.

He was pretty close to 24, so I did a bit of street sweeping. In the process of that I got a tip mission drop, and having not run one since getting back in the swing I decided to check it out.

I really like tip missions. They don't quite measure up to the better story arc stuff, but they're a big improvement on radios & most of the older content in the game. Ended up running a couple of them (forgot how much I hate Sky Raiders- engineers are as irritating as ever I see), leveled, hit the trainer and THEN fiddled a bit with my costume.

Adding costumes to the trainer was a stroke of genius on someone's part. So much more convenient.

Adding a power made me look at his enhancements (a fine compliment of generic IOs), which made me think "hey he could use more attacks", which made me /respec him to take advantage of Inherent Fitness. As much of a chore as that can be with high level characters packed with set IOs, it's no biggie when you have generics and not a tremendous lot of powers.

I had a good time with him, I may level him for a while and slot some set IOs. He had less than 50k on him- I assume I stripped his bankroll to feed the Crazy 88's INF-cinerator at some point. I'll run a few mishs and see if he gets enough drops to jump-start his earning....or I guess I can just gleemail him a few hundred million from one of my other characters.

I'm always forgetting about these modern conveniences!

thanks for keeping it on the radar- I was expecting the forum monster to have snacked on it, but there it was!

Laughing at myself for dropping 2b+ on that Glad defense, going on hiatus for a year and returning to find it in the 300m range.

Heehee!

But the soft cap is worth whatever you have to pay for it as a blaster- Big Payback is a badass again!

AND I'M BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!1



Ok, I don't remember ANYTHING about where I was with this character, but I logged him in tonight and it looks like I managed to get him to the ranged soft cap? Anyway he's got some ridiculous ranged def (40% ish?) and I had a pretty rough mission (take down Vanessa DeVore, with its endless parade of Master Illusionists).


Cleared it no problem on +1/x3.

Mmmmm, yeah, ranged def is g000000d.

I somehow didn't end up with ignite, and I missed it. Caltrops + Ignite is so much fun...but, pretty much nothing hit me, so...

Hurrah for the game I've been playing *almost* as long as I've been married!

I have a separate Twitter account for gaming stuff, but even so the next time I get my panties bunched over someone tweeting *too much* will be the first.

If it's vaguely related to CoH, the more the merrier I say.


in the words of comedian Doug Benson (@DougBenson), "If you can't stand the tweet, unfollow the kitchen."

Very cool!

she also wrote a 'guest' arc for Mission Architect, afair.

thanks for the tips!

I only have two characters that have done any alignment stuff, my stalker Mope & the Goat, so I'll run my hero through the process before I tackle anything.


Again, last night's playtime was hijacked by Icon, this time giving my fire/rad controller Three Mile Isleman a makeover.

I also finally figured out where the Super Packs I picked up a while back were, so I checked 'em out.

VERY NICE.
I can see how they'd get addictive fast.

I also found myself slightly bemused by the quality of the interface- the whole 'claim pack, flip cards, collect rewards' deal was much smoother and more involving than I've come to expect from Paragon over the years. In fact, the whole Freedom overhaul is top drawer...well, except for the clunky interface of the actual *store*, but we can't have it all, can we?

Anyway, had two packs which yielded a bunch of cool stuff- a couple of costume bits (this, I fear, is going to be my downfall...), an IO for a pretty cool sounding Mastermind set that insta-sold for 20m on the market (thank you, '/ah' command!) and weirdly, SEVENTY FIVE merits, which is more merits in one fell swoop than I've ever accumulated on *any* of my characters since they introduced the system.

Pay to Win, indeed! =P

But whatever, it's a pretty sweet system. I enjoy the randomness- I'd never buy most of the stuff I got directly, but as part of a game of roulette it's good fun.

My one gripe (of course, being how I am) is the rarity guarantee of one rare or super rare per pack- how are they rare if you know you're getting one?

I got two super rares in my two packs, the aforementioned Mastermind IO and some sort of crazy looking gun model for the tailor.

I'm staying away from Icon tonight, so I should be able to fit in a few missions.

yeh, I can see why they put them in, but I LOL at anyone paying real cash money for stuff that's so easy to earn in-game.