Slaunyeh

When facing a zombie invasion, even the Templar come off as good guys!

Personally, I couldn't stand the Dragon's Nemesis-esque "oh, so our plan failed but we totally saw that coming and planned accordingly" attitude.

And the intro scene didn't help.

Templar get the best deck outfits through. So good, in fact, that I was almost tempted to switch main. Most of the Illuminati deck outfits are really boring (or horribly bad). The Dragon is mostly in-between, with each outfit being either hit or miss (I really like the Martial Artist, but find the Ninja almost hilariously bad).

Augh! How many times are they going to make me buy the same game?? Stupid Cyanide.

(And, for the record, we're currently at three).

From an in-character perspective thing, you're not really given much of a choice in who recruit you. The choice you make in chargen is, essentially, which faction gets to forcibly recruit you first. So, in-gamely, there's no assumptions made about how you feel about your faction. The game doesn't expect you to go "yay, I have a bomb in my spine now, hooray!" just because you picked Illuminati.

Of course, you, the player, should be comfortable with your faction choice. And then pick Illuminati.

We get quotes like:

"Heinous sea monsters react the same way to their buddies getting teabagged as everyone else."

"It's like seeing a group of Templars dancing - it's awkward and out of character and signals that something has gone really ******* wrong."

Ah, fair enough. Yeah, there are a number of buffs like that. I haven't really used any of them, but I hear some of them are really good (even if you just solo ).

True. Every type of weapon (ranged, melee and magic) build resources differently.

The advantage of ranged weapons is that they build resources on everyone you hit, so if you build five resources on three guys, you could hit all three of them with finishers before worrying about building resources again (and if the first guy dies, those resources remain on everyone else you've build it on). This is, in particular, an advantage for Shotgun because it has at least one very good AoE resource builder (assault rifle and pistols might be less well off).

The advantage of the melee resource system is that you you start most fights with 5 resources, so you can open with a heavy hitter. That's quite nice. The advantage of the magic system is that... uhm... that it uses the melee system except without the melee system's advantages. So. Uh. Yeah.

It's funny because, when I tried melee weapons, I found it extremely limiting that I could only ever have five resources because they were only building on myself.

I guess the main attraction for me, was to blast large groups of zombies with pump action, then stab one of them with a chaos finisher and watch every single one of them die from the ensuing mayhem. I essentially picked shotgun because I liked Pump Action as a basic resource builder. In Kingsmouth where just about everything is hordes of zombies, that's much more efficient (and fun!) than a single-target builder. Admittedly, the frequency of large groups of enemies tend to go down in the next zones, but it remains useful! I found it rare to fight less than two guys at once, anywhere, except for boss fights (and not necessarily even then). And bosses is what I keep the single-target finishers handy for.

If that makes sense.

I'm not sure I understand the question.

I started out by randomly picking 'stuff I liked' from Chaos and Shotgun, with very little thought beyond 'hey, that one is cool', and that build carried me easily through 95% of the game, solo (and I only switched by the end of Transylvania, because I kinda wanted to try something else and actually look deeper into skill synergies.) I realize I might have been really lucky with my build though.

I used Pump Action as my resource builder. It didn't require me to target anything (if I remember correctly) and also build resources on everyone it hit. Then I used Out for a Kill as my finisher because single-target finishers work best for me (which becomes increasingly apparent by the end of Tarnished Coast). I think I did used to have an AoE finisher, but I can't remember which one. Or maybe I was just relying on the Hit and Run passive (which is amazing against hordes). But it's important to note that shotgun (or any weapon, I think?) doesn't build resources on the person you have targeted. It builds resources on the person you hit. For single-target skills, the difference is largely academic, but for, say, cone attacks there's a significant difference.

I primarily pick abilities that have A) no activation time, and B) AoE potential, because blasting hordes of zombies is fun. I really don't like activation-time.


So, to clarify:

• Assumes I'm in a group. - How so? I don't think I've ever used shotgun in a group, so is it somehow different?
• Assumes I want to target just one person at a time. - Isn't that true of every single-target power in the game? Shotgun is certainly not, in my experience, the most single-target focused weapon in the game. Which weapons doesn't make this 'assumption'?

There are (currently at least) far more clothing options available from in-game vendors than in the cash shop. I agree that the cash shop clothing is pretty expensive, bordering on the crazy expensive, but you don't need it.

Also, changing clothes doesn't cost anything, if that's what you're asking. You can do that any time and anywhere you want, on the fly.

You do have to pay ridiculous amounts of Pax (the in-game currency) to change options you picked in chargen (like face and hair). I don't know if you can buy tickets for that in the cash shop, but I assume so (I haven't looked).

I think the closest thing to unarmed fighting you are going to get, is actually Chaos Magic. It is fairly 'kung-fu magic' styled. (Ironically, some of the attacks also use magic claws. But since you can't equip everything anyway, those are easy to avoid).

Why are you betraying CoH by reading these clearly subversive threads? Shouldn't you be out there doing something non-traitorous?

Don't you get it? Fiction is just another word for lies. Authors are professional liars. You can't trust them!

/tinfoil

I don't think it's the disagreeing he takes issues with. But I'm sure a smart guy like you knew that already.

It's only creepy whe... if I changed my name to Thirty-Eight.

Holy crap. Issue 3 went live. I guess they didn't kid when they said the delays on issue 2 wouldn't delay the September issue.

Yes, not half bad.

I'm not much of a 'raider' (I haven't even seen any of the current dungeons!), but yeah. I think the New York raid is scheduled to hit before the end of the year. I hope it'll be spectacular.

As slogans go, it's more punchy than "We're angry citizens and this is what we can't be bothered to do."

I'm also pretty sure the game isn't called City of People Who Aren't Nearly As Cool As Real-Life Firemen. If you'd tried (or just read about) the game, it would be pretty clear what 'we are heroes' actually refer to.

Never sign a paper that states that the company is contractually required to have you killed before they can close down their game.

Not to derail the thread with Torchlight, but yeah. Fun game. I'm currently working on a dual-pistol berserker.

We probably differ significantly in this, but I just wanted to touch upon the mundane nature of the setting. Because I actually wish it was a little more mundane.

The game will take you from the quaint little New England town (overrun by zombies), over a mummy-infested Egypt to the werewolf-infested woods of Romania. For a game set in the modern world, it almost goes out of its' way to take you out of the mundane core setting. I'd have liked to see more of the modern world influencing the various zones, and I think that's why Solomon Island, and in particular Kingsmouth itself, is my favourite area. It has more of a "bad stuff happening in the real world" vibe than the later areas, that are primarily mystical in nature.

I am really looking forward to the (largely urban) Tokyo zone coming next. And I hope they are considering adding more content to the three faction-controlled cities. I'd rather stalk werewolves in London than openly fight mummies in a 'secret undiscovered valley' in Egypt.

But those are minor issues.

I haven't tried any PvP, so I don't know precisely how it works. But, there's no open-world PvP, and there's no duelling. I think PvP is solely restricted to the "battleground" style instanced encounters, one of which (Fusang Project) is a persistent PvP area. I could be wrong on the details.

The only influence PvP will have on your play experience, unless you actively seek it out, is a faction-wide buff you get depending on how much of Fusang your faction currently controls.

For me, at least, TSW took a little while to sink in. So if you have a lot of 'must play nao!' games on your list, I'd definitely recommend doing yourself a favour and postpone looking into the game 'till you have a more quiet moment.

As for the skill wheel, It was only recently that I started to really dwell into the various possible builds, and I have to say I was quite impressed with the depth of the synergies across the wheel.

While you can only use active skills from your two equipped weapons, you can use any passive skills you have unlocked. That leaves a lot of options to consider. My old 'grab everything from chaos and shotgun and go shoot zombies' build still works fine (surprisingly so, actually), but now I've started investing in more refined builds. Like the Chain build I'm currently working on, that mixes elements from Blood Magic, Pistols, Elemental Magic and Fist Weapons to very interesting effects. (A 'chain' is a particular attack type that usually chain across several targets. Think Chain Induction.)

If anyone's curious, you can see my build here.

That's why you want to get the game on Steam. TSW is not an EA game. Funcom has a distribution deal with EA, so if you buy the game in a store, EA gets a cut. Buy it on Steam (or directly from Funcom) and EA gets nothing (and, obviously, if you buy it from the Origin store, EA gets your soul).

TSW's launch was actually incredible smooth. Especially compared to certain other recent MMO launches. But, let's be honest. The smoothness of a launch is pretty meaningless unless you're on heart medication.

I'm on Arcadia as "Incantrix". Although, I must admit, my recent playtime has been entirely consumed by Borderlands and Torchlight (and isn't bound to improve come XCOM).