ShadowsBetween

In my opinion, Mercs suffers from a few longstanding issues, and from collateral changes to other parts of the game. First, many of the attacks are cones, and the AI is pretty much incapable of doing much with them. I'm fairly sure the cones are also narrower than for Robots, which means that it's even less likely than normal for more than one target to get hit.

Mercs also got hit pretty hard when recharge enhancements were disabled for pets. The powers that they do have with AOE or control effects are all on long timers. This might not have been as serious before, but it means that now Mercs will struggle to have an attack ready all the time. And as with any other pets, they have a nasty habit of firing "big ticket" powers at exactly the wrong target. They'll Flashbang the lone Conscript that just pushed them, and then be unable to use it on the Rikti Mesmerist that's trying to scramble your brain.

Mercs also don't seem to have a lot of self-synergy with their powers. For example, the Commando likes to start a fight with his rocket launcher, which scatters the targets all over the room and makes it even more unlikely that any of their cone or long recharge control attacks will do anything useful. And all of the mercs have melee attacks, which they *will* use if nothing else is ready. So get used to seeing your medic trying to rifle slam a boss. The Spec Ops troops have stealth, but unlike their Ninja counterparts, they don't appear to have any stealth strike attacks.

The Medic is a paticularly annoying pet, since he does a lot of things, and doesn't do any of them very well. He has a healing power, but it can be interrupted, and he's not very good at prioritizing with it. He also has an AoE grenade and a brawl attack, so he tends to start a fight by aggroing everything in the room with a grenade and then trying to punch a Devoured One in the facial tentacles. In contrast, the Thugs Arsonist is just as suicidal, but more specialized. The Arsonist can only set things on fire, and he gets killed because he's really, really good at it. The medic dies a lot because he's just stupid, even for a pet.

If you use a lot of keybinds and micromanage the heck out of your pets, you can work around some of these problems. (Except the medic, who is totally hopeless.) If you're really, really patient and attentive and quick with pet commands, you can even force the set to be above average. However, for the same effort you could take any other Mastermind set and be utterly awesome.

*Edit* I forgot Serum. This power is widely regarded as being the worst of all the Mastermind "Level 18" utility powers, and some people consider it to simply be one of the worst powers in the entire game. It's a single target pet-only buff on a hideously long timer (I think only the Patron Pets have longer base recharge) and it crashes the pet's endurance when it expires. And the buffs it grants aren't even particularly impressive to begin with. (Especially compared to Extract Soul, Living Hellfire, and Gang War.)

I'm assuming it doesn't address purple shards until they specifically state that it does. As in, clearly, indisputably state it. The quoted line is not clearly stating "you'll be able to craft a Notice of the Well from normal Incarnate shards." And until they say *exactly* that, as far as I can see the rare boosts are still locked behind mandatory team content.

Why can you even still see her posts? Seriously, a little /ignore goes a long way. It'd go farther if people would quit quoting her.

Vemisher. But yeah, it looks like Punisher gone goth, not Venom.

Right, but that whole game clearly had two major design criteria for every area. First, look gothic and scary enough to possibly creep out even Tim Burton. Second, make sure the Bat Gadgets will actually work. The whole island is Bat Friendly. In fact, if you could somehow play through it as a flier or speedster, that whole game would be a nightmare. Superman would have to walk or get hung up constantly on all the Gargoyles and gothic details, and trying to use superspeed in there would make people think of the Circle of Thorns caves with actual fondness by comparison. And even on an island built from the ground up to be a playground for Batman, going outside mostly means that you're walking from point A to point B.

*Edit* And just to clarify, I'm pretty sure that it's the standard Bat Grappling Hook for swinging from gargoyles and for zipping up to ledges. There's a separate "heavy duty" grapple/harpoon that he can use to pull down "weak" walls and a handful of statues, and yet another system he uses to get across the bottomless pits.

Well, it's not perfect, but it's not Jabba the Hutt either. The NCSoft Launcher basically is (bloated, messy, slow, and difficult to deal with.) I'd guess it's a marketing mandate, so they have a single place to feed ads and "buy this game" news. I wouldn't be surprised if ArenaNet has gotten a memo "requesting" that Guild Wars be fixed up for the Launcher, too.

Was that bug ever actually fixed?

It wasn't, as far as I know. If anything, it's based on the fact that the Incarnate system is adding power progression without adding level progression. Once we have all ten (or whatever) slots unlocked, the effect will be *as if* they added ten more levels to the level cap, even though they didn't. IE, you'd be able to go to Cimerora and curb stomp the boss goons as easily with your "still level 50 on the character sheet" hero as any normal level fifty could deal with the critters in... well, whatever the level 40 zone is, I forget.

In my case, several reasons. First and foremost, the setting and nature of the game itself. Other than the Flying Nocturnal Mammal Man in Crazytown game, there really isn't any other good super hero game on the market at the moment. I guess there's also still the tactical superhero rpg from a few years ago, but I finished that a long time ago. The costume creator is fun to play with, to the point that I've filled my normal server with alts and gotten a second account. I like my main server, and I'm not ambitious enough to start a new solo SG on another server.

And having the *option* for social contact is... interesting, even if I don't go out of my way to use it. If I actually WANT to team for a little while, or talk to one of the handful of people on my global list, I can. Basically, however, I play any MMO *despite* the multiplayer aspect, not because of it. And to really blow your mind, MMOs are the only games I will play in any kind of multiplayer mode. Any other game I play, even FPS, is strictly in single player mode with or against AI NPCs.

Except I am not required to be objective about it. This issue contained almost nothing of interest to me personally. I expect the next two issues to contain even less. If it was any other product, this wouldn't even be a point of discussion: you'd hardly recommend that someone spend money on a car or DVD set or clothes that they dislike, I think. The simple fact is, that from MY point of view, I'm being asked to keep paying for a product that is increasingly turning into something I don't want. For the first time since I've started playing, I'm beginning to consider that maybe I should be spending my money somewhere else. I'm not making threats, I'm not demanding that anyone else agree with me. But the devs appear to be asking for feedback, and I'm providing them with my opinion. They are free to ignore it, and I expect that they probably will.

I'm not obligated to provide constructive criticism. The devs are, essentially showing off a list of new features and saying "See? It's new and big and shiny! Don't you just love it?" To which my answer is "No, I do not." I can't provide them with a "useful" list of what else I'd like them to add, because I frankly don't *know* what I'd like. But I know what I *don't* like, and Issue 19 was full of it.

Right. In CoH, my character is as important as I want them to be. Mid level thug, mild mannered detective, or someone powerful enough to jump to the future and beat up one of the most powerful villains in the world, then jump back and hand his "now" version his own armor and essentially dare him to do something about it.

Or I could play that other game, and, you know, end up doing FedEx quests for Aquaman. Yeah. I'll get right on that.

I expressed my opinion. (I don't like those arcs.) And you seem to find it necessary to attack me for it. Along with everyone else who says something you disagree with, apparently. My condolences for your apparent self esteem problems. But hey, if it makes you feel better, feel free to continue. *I* know how the Ignore feature works.

Right. I choose not to participate in the current Incarnate Task Forces, which clearly represent the majority of the content that was added in Issue 19. And are apparently the major focus of Issue 20 and 21. So, while I'm not participating in content I don't like and have no use for, what else is being added that *will* interest me? New Tips missions? Don't care, I don't like how they're written and the massive assumptions they make about what my characters will do and for what reasons. They may as well be Newspaper missions. (I do them, but only because they are the only way to earn purple merits or to change sides. At this point, I only pay enough attention to the mission briefing to be sure what the mechanical goals are that will complete the mission.) If you're not going to do the two new TFs, Issue 19 added almost nothing outside of Inherent fitness. (I found the two new story arcs utterly forgettable, and now that I've done them once I probably won't do them again.)

I'm not demanding that they change the game to what *I* want or else. I'm simply stating that, in my opinion, Issue 19 and what I know of Issue 20 contain almost nothing that I find interesting or valuable. No, the rest of the game didn't suddenly go away. But tell me: if you were looking at spending time in a game where, for all intents and purposes, nothing was going to be added for at least a year that you haven't already been doing for at least two years already, how happy would you be?

And on that note, I wish they'd actually picked an alignment arc for the various NPCs and stuck to it. Instead of "Desdemona is always the opposite of whatever you are."

But it's still only TWO mission arcs and a handful of random Tips missions. To me, Tips missions are just "new Newspaper" missions. I do them to change alignments or to collect purple merits, and ignore them otherwise. Because almost NONE of them are what I'd want my character to do. The Villain missions are "Saturday Morning bad guy EBIL," the Vigilante missions seem to assume that everyone is the Spawn or the Punisher (and therefore perfectly willing to solve problems by hunting down jaywalkers and ripping out their spines,) and the Rogue missions are just weird. I do them because the in-game rewards are fairly significant, but at this point I don't bother to pay any attention to them beyond checking what the mission goals are. As far as my characters' personal stories go, Tips missions never happened.

If you aren't going to run the new TFs, Issue 19 contained essentially nothing of great interest, other than a handful of QoL changes that they could just as easily have slipped into any other patch.

I'm pretty sure that the Jedi in the movie is supposed to be Shaak Ti. Ahsoka didn't exist until they started the new series. Of course, given George's willingness to retcon his own movies in the most bizarre ways (Han shot first, Luke *silently* hurled himself to almost certain death, etc,) anything is possible. In fact, I'm almost certain that one of the Jedi shown to have been killed in the movie officially got better, due to the fact that she was originally from "Lucas approved" material set *after* the Emperor took over. Or at least, that's what I remember reading somewhere. (No, really, it's true. I heard it from my uncle's cousin's former roommate.)