Violet Sorceress

The SSA's for the most part haven't thrilled me. I play the first run through for the merit and then do one that's easy for whatever character I'm on at the time. At least 6 didn't involve so much standing around not being able to do anything. The story hasn't engaged me so much except for inside Sister P's mind which now feels like a set up to make me feel bad she died. I actually liked the character development in that one but now it doesn't seem genuine so I'm less involved in it. I think the 3rd person narrative cut scenes are difficult to handle and haven't been done well. It makes it difficult to separate what I the player know from my characters. Switching narrative voice is very advanced writing wise and I don't know how well this medium handles it. I'm not aware of anyone who's handled it well in an RPG environment where the player character is really the first person voice having the element of agency pulled from the player into a set piece we have no control over is a bit jarring. Movies and books have trouble with switching narrative voice and it's a lot easier in those media.

I'm not sure what you're complaining about. I wish I could have an invisible head for some character. I haven't actually any idea what that character would be but I would immediately roll an alt for invisible limbs.

Yes Violet started as a blaster NRG/MM. I played it to fifty and just didn't like the blaster feel. I rerolled her as an Earth/Kin controller and couldn't be happier.

I think the fight would end up with Fusionette getting the aggro of three random mobs on her way to the fight. Said mobs then kill them both. That just seems to be the most likely scenario from my experience with the characters.

I've been on a couple pugs with no repeat AT's and we steamrolled everything in sight. It was awesome. Everyone was useful and we all had great fun.

Yes it is live, I did this on a team about a week ago. You just have to check in with Montague to get the option to complete the mission you hold you just did. Then get the next one. You can do this for the whole arc assuming you don't fail Lady Jane's mission. If you do you will have to run it until you succeed or all fail. Considering how many Ruin mages and ghosts spawn for a full team on that map plus ambushes good luck. I was not able to move forward on the mission chain and didn't seem to be able to autocomplete while I was teamed. Maybe people could try passing the star and see if you can autocomplete that way? I haven't tried yet as it just occurred to me.

Also if you fail the mission with assisting Lady Jane only the mission holder is able to move forward with the arc. You have to succeed or continue running the mission over and over until everyone has gone through it. On a full team without an appropriate dedicated protector for Jane you may need to run it eight times. This just happened to a team I was on the other day. We simply couldn't keep her alive with the size of the spawns and buffs available.

I can't believe no one has done this part yet! There are good names out there if you try. I created an Illusion controller named Ms. Perception on Virtue last night. I think we've now covered all the bases for the issue. I personally don't mind the unique naming at all. I doubt that many of my names would be in high demand so I don't really care if we have unique names or not. It doesn't impact my characters I generally come up with unique names pretty quickly. If the devs changed it tomorrow to non-unique names my characters would still most likely retain their uniqueness. I would be concerned that making such a huge change could break things horribly and result in some serious bugs.

I'm fairly certain an elastic man type of powerset would not happen due to the intense development time and perceived interest being low. A beast mastermind or shape shifting set I can see as possible and there is obvious interest. People also ask a great deal for quadrupedal character avatars but that is most likely never going to happen due to animation needs. I think some limited animation time for a shape shifting set is possible and would sell in the market.

I haven't been on many failed trials in fact after the first couple runs it really gets routine. I'm not sure that instructions beyond follow league chat and repeat warnings in league chat for everyone don't basically solve the multiple issues trials have.

I think it would be cool if there were a chance to confuse or disorient based on your attacks and how frequently you shape shifted. We've been getting some combat modifier sets and I think that could work for this powerset. I would honestly think that shapeshifting secondaries would need to be toggles or inherents and the set would probably just be melee. I would also add that emotes and temp/vet powers are going to be greyed out while in non-human form. The animation time involved from development would pretty much guarantee we won't get shapeshifting otherwise. I would like to see actually six to nine forms with two to three attacks that do different things and get the player to shift and attack multiple times during a battle. I think it would be more dynamic and exciting. I would have shifting be near instantaneous as a hallmark of the set.

I run this four times to get the badges and the boosts. It certainly encourages altitis as I can try all sorts of powersets before putting significant time into a build I may wind up deleting after getting a feel for it. I find it enjoyable and useful although I honestly can't imagine running it to 50. That would make me not want to play at all. It might be helpful to give some sort of message that Positron wants to talk to them when they level into posi's Tf range. I think a Tf might be a nice segue from trial to normal game content especially if they enjoy the teaming aspect. Although I ran a midnighter badge run yesterday and had a number of players ask what that was and want to know why it was important. Montague's contact info does pop up when you hit ten so not certain if the contact stuff is helping. I've noticed I'm getting the contacts frequently while actively in combat so people are missing or forgetting them altogether. I wonder if the contacts can wait to pop until your character hasn't activated powers for a bit?

Or the design of trials could just be cleaner. Usually with the fog of Fx soup and latency during some phases it's easy to miss most of what you need to know. Explanations from league leaders are usually required before starting a new trial or for new players. Following the pop-up text, narration, and league chat is either difficult or if its in slideshow mode impossible. I've missed info plenty of times from text pop-ups just due to white-out conditions with powers going off. I see no reason why time and development money should be put into a feature that the players reviewing the league chat function before the trial can completely address.

I haven't noticed any jerks at all. I've run into lots of returning VIP's and premiums who are a bit confused at all the changes. I've seen tons of helpful players showing them new things and answering questions about all of our new content. Seems like business as usual for our player base. Also as a side note I play on multiple servers and haven't noticed a change in people's willingness to help on any of them. The most ******** I've seen from the player base involves the difficulties with not being able to send tells to free players and help them learn the game.

I think you'd have to have the buffs affect self much more than they do now in order for the AT to be survivable. Otherwise it might be less survivable than a blaster with lower DPS. If you could bubble or cast shields on yourself as the starting area of effect it might be doable.

I have only used Emp merits for costume unlocks and most of the people I've leagued with are far more interested in salvage. I'm not sure this change will work. If I need incarnate salvage I will still do the trials I know I can succeed in and get that salvage. My impression from game play is this is a major reason Lam and Baf are run so often.

They probably are playing the new content. There's tons of new stuff right now so most players are checking it out. I assume farming will start up more when we've played through all of it on our new powersets.

I've picked up a few names that I like Justice Song and Freezing Frost strike me as suitably heroic although I play those two rarely and sonics aren't fun for me so Justice will likely get deleted in favor of something else.
I've really had some fun with silly names like Dr. Lingerie and Agent Hedgehog. Dr. got deleted but the man bitten by a radioactive hedgehog is still around as I play around in the costume creator to make him more spiky.
I'm enjoying Cuain my FF/NRG defender as she's ocean colored and her powers all look like water or bubbles.
My favorites are my sorcerer and sorceress characters like Violet. Originally from the early days of the Mu Oranbegan war an experimental spell sent them to the current day. Their names are actually titles as they were from mystical orders that eschew names, wealth, personal power, and glory. Having a strong belief in using their magic in service to others they became heroes upon arrival in Paragon City.

I haven't noticed that much hate towards the game. Some things within the game garner criticism and it gets heated but that quickly turns personal about the other posters. So really they don't hate the game, they hate you.

I think it is also important to remember that while the trials were being released not only where the Dev's working on Freedom but also building a new zone. That's a huge amount of work to do.
I'm not saying that players shouldn't be asking for solo and small team incarnate content I think we should. I am saying moderating the tone with new info in mind would be a welcome change. At this point people seem to be more invested in fighting with each other, this argument has been ongoing for months and some posters seem invested in arguing with other posters beyond the subject at hand, than in critique of the system. It doesn't cost us anything to respectfully disagree or consider the other person's point of view. It looks like posters are perusing other posts and pulling quotes out of context in order to bait them, make absurdly illogical statements based on unfalsifiable assumptions, and ignore any reasonable and moderate statements looking for the hot buttons.
Personally I want to see small team and a solo mission leading to the trials and placing the onus of explaining the narrative on these missions. It is too chaotic and visually overwhelming to follow a big chunk of the story while doing a trial. We need some lead up to the final battle with the big AV which is what these trials are missing. I'd also like to see having the trial have to split into different instanced objectives similar to the way big comic book super teams split up before the big showdown. Each side instance leading to the final battle could work better for different classes to give everyone something to do not needing a tank or blaster but more buff/debuff is useful here, melee damage is needed in this objective, ranged is more help in this instance etc.. You could also have a very large league with fewer latency issues if we had separate objectives in different instances to complete.
I also think fleshing out the end game to include these smaller team lead ups helps integrate the incarnate system into the rest of the game. I understand other games end game is all about raids but CoX is different in many respects and consistency of play experience is important. It should all feel like one game not a game with something tacked on. If you like the 1 to 50 experience generally you should generally like the end game. With some exceptions of course in certain tasks. Currently the end game is thin and that's understandable. What I do not understand is arguments against making this system more robust and diverse. We do not want players who come here to raid, raid, and do some more raiding PL'ing their way to 50 because they aren't interested in the rest of the game. We've all been on trials where people couldn't even locate their temp powers in their powers tab. Do we really want that to be happening more frequently?
Narrative is important in an RPG especially one inspired by comics and hero myths. I'd like to see a clearer narrative in the end game that helps players get emotionally invested in what's happening to the Praetorians and how are characters can help or take advantage of the situation depending on alignment.

Actually I found it helpful to increase RAM on my end. I was wanting more anyway and it's helped. There are still some real issues but I believe the Dev's have mentioned new upgrades are coming.

I find the trials the least social content in the game. I'm far too busy to chat in a trial. Player sponsored events and normal content are far more social. Sometimes people talk when waiting for them to start but we're all busy when it starts.

Hairball is a judgement attack

I think a lot of this furor will die down once the next issue pops up. Yes there will be trials but there will also be a brand new zone not incarnate related with stuff to do. It seems players not interested in trials feel they haven't gotten much lately and this is true. If the Dev's strike team thing works out, and they've mentioned in Ustream it is going very well, trials and non trial content will be consistently added to the game. Hopefully we'll be getting a great deal that appeals to many different styles of play.