Nethergoat

some kind of system to 'concentrate' the existing population would help- cross server teaming, say.

but yeah, all notions about improving/changing the content so suddenly a bunch of people decide to play villains is Utopian daydreaming.

Goat.


=)

I love this one- the computer is as big as the desk.

Feh!
oh well, the levels are still zipping past- won't be long before I'm there.

I remember what a long, arduous slog it was to get my first character to 14- jogging everywhere, getting pointless fed-exs, nothing more than running off to some distant point in another zone, then running all the way back to the contact who of course wouldn't give you their phone # until you'd basically out-leveled them. Getting ridiculous "kill XX" missions in Perez where 'XX' was buried deep in the park and required a mighty effort just to fight your way there with a good sized team, punctuated by the inevitable deaths which meant a trip to the Atlas Park hospital, a long run back and then a desperate sprint back to your team past giant spawns.

The sheer volume of gameplay improvements and QOL upgrades since then is mind boggling- I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty of really annoying stuff.

Like, I remember when pretty much the only way into or out of the heart of Perez was through one of the gates. Liberalized power pool options & stuff like Ninja Run make getting over the wall wherever you like a trivial thing- to find my Lost for the wand mission I just hopped along the wall until I found some spawns. Back in the day, I'd likely have had to recruit a good sized team to hack my way through the Hellions and Clockwork just to get to the Lost. We had a trick where once you were in the park you could get back out if you found a tree close enough to the wall- run up, leap into the tree, bounce over the wall, hope you didn't aggro something on the other side. Tricky, but preferable to hacking your way all the way back across the map to the gate.

Seems like a little change, but it's made Perez vastly less annoying.
Not that I don't have some fond memories of those early days, but they're the memories of a mountain climber recalling a bad expedition from the living room couch, with a cozy fire crackling in the hearth.

Even a seemingly little thing like the expansion & revision of the train system has made my life vastly easier- anything in King's Row used to be a giant PITA. Combining the lines means I can zip from one end of Steel Canyon to the other in an eyeblink- it used to be a long, annoying slog.

The list goes on and on.

Will do!


Okay, I guess I've somehow never done this arc, because I crafted a Lost Wand & spent way to long in Perez Park zapping 20 of em? I seem recall Pretty cool mission, except 20 is kinda ridiculous given the sloooooow recharge on this puppy. 10 would make more sense.

I did have fun with it- found a couple of GIGANTIC Lost spawns, and when I'd zap a guy and cure him the rest would aggro on him. So I just sort of hung out watching them fruitlessly unloading on a gray Citizen while my wand recharged.

Called my contact, gave the Midnight dude his password & collected my xp and merits.

About halfway to 14, but that's it for tonight.
Twinshot will have to wait....

Thanks, glad you're enjoying it.
I always like it when other people do stuff like this, so I figured it was my turn. =P



Tonight's session, finishing up the Midnighter's arc and hopefully getting to Twinshot.

Just cleared a team-up with Lady Jane to get some Hero 1 blood from a chest, which required wading through a sea of CoT. I like their new duds, very chic. To show how out of 'shape' I am, an energy mage actually nailed me with his HULK SMASH! low health explosion- thankfully I was solo or I'd never have heard the end of it.

Fun mission, feels like it got spruced up at some point- I don't recall Lady Jane having dual pistols, & her dialogue was fairly involved.

Build notes, inherent stamina is just an amazing QOL improvement. I ran through the whole mission SCRAPPER STYLE, just charging spawns, running three toggles (both shields + lightning field) & didn't have to pause once. I ran low a few times, but keeping a few blues handy took care of that.

This mission made me appreciate another one of those QOL changes, as an 'objective' waypoint showing where the chest was popped up after I'd cleared a few rooms. Very handy.

I hit 13 after the first spawn, so it looks like 14 & Twinshot are well within range.

Okay, next mish.

the screams of complaint from players with no interest in redside (which is most of them) would deafen everyone on the internet.

And they would be completely justified.

Redside lead dev was Zeb Cook, although I'm sure Jack's permanent aura of terrible ideas made itself felt.

The point is, right now red side is what it is- meaningful improvements would require resources equivalent to making a whole new game.

And I don't see much they could do now to make redside more demographically palatable. There are just too many conceptual problems selling you are the bad guy compared to you are the hero.

seeing other people's characters out in the game world is one of the signature enjoyments of CoH. Since my return I've been running into a lot of *really cool* stuff that didn't exist when last I played- the other day I saw someone tooling through Steel Canyon on a flying carpet! I followed them for a couple of blocks checking it out. And the other night I saw my favorite character since forever, a big steampunk-looking cyborg guy with a classic 'brain in a jar' head that was FDR continuing the good fight.

Player diversity has always been a strength, and the Paragon Marketplace seems to have given it a big boost.

sounds like you haven't played WoW in a really, really long time.

Exact opposite for me.

I rarely have enough concurrent play time to hop on a team, but one of my great enjoyments is seeing other players characters out doing their thing as I travel hither and yon through the game.

"jackie chan head grabbing meme" on google got me the lowdown.

=D

It's more challenging than it would be on a busy blueside server, certainly.

That's a real problem I hope they address at some point.

But even with the additional difficulties imposed by low population, in my experience it doesn't take a huge effort to get a team rolling, just the motivation to send tells and round some people up.

At some point in my CoH career a lot of things they thought we had to "earn" became more trouble than they were worth. I can't remember the last time I bothered to run a cape or aura mission. I wouldn't run the in-game respec trial if you paid me. I took one character through the alignment switch, and while I don't regret the time I spent I won't be doing it again.

Things that used to be fresh and interesting get tedious in an MMO. Gating achievement behind tedium isn't a winning formula.

I guess ideally they'd re-work all those annoying missions every so often, but that's not practical. I'd much prefer them giving us another way around to making us bang away at the same old thing.

I poked my head into the Crazy 88's base last night, which Fulmens 'hired' someone to design for us (although it's still only 1/2 finished), and HOLY WOW what a tremendous amount of work it represents!

Even my own couple of personal bases, none of them very extensive or spectacular (I pretty much stick with stock placement of off-the-shelf items) represent more hours of fiddling than I care to admit.

Given the existing population of players who're heavily invested in their bases, and the extreme peculiarity and fragility of the legacy programming involved, my guess is their idea of how to handle bases is about the same as how to handle a land mine- give it a wide berth and hope it doesn't malfunction.