The perils of 'official' content

I mean as someone you fight against, not as an ally.

Back in the day, I knew some invuln tanks who'd use rikti monkey spawns to buff their invincibility.

Luck of the draw, so to speak.

My Dom on the EASIEST setting used get missions which consisted mostly of +1s, whatever group he was fighting. Since this was pre-stamina and pre-i16 difficulty settings it meant I had to outlevel the content slowly by tackling street mobs of lower level or by joining a team where he had support. Needless to say he fell way behind when my MM of six months later rocketed past almost all content with relative ease.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Good to know they aren't totally useless. =P

I don't really seek out rikti, but I have run the War Zone stuff a few times and don't remember the preponderance of monkeys I've been getting on this arc.

>:

I'm starting to consider using -1 level myself for those reasons. Getting quite sick of lowbies having +1s thrown at them all the time when I have no stamina, no enhancments, and ran out of inspirations a couple rooms back.

The Shadow Shards or "why no-one cares about Rularuu".

As I have a lot of alts that I wanted to get the day jobs for I get them the out of the way places first (the places with no cell reception like Dark Astoria or PvP zones) so I can log in, check progress, maybe drop a mission and then log on to the nezt one. My scrapper had been spending his time in the Shards. I nabbed a 'Rescue the patrol' mission off one of the male scientists (Boyd, IIRC) and dropped it. "That's 3 men who'd never have seen light again thanks to you" was the return dialog (assumption; a 3 person hostage mission).I thought nothing more of it till I logged in several days later, grabbed a near identical mission with a slightly different location and was given the exact same return dialogue. Word for word. Having retained the mission brief I checked what the next mission on offer was; a 'patrol Point X' and ... rescue a patrol... with the near-identical mission brief with a slightly different location.

Yeah, the very definition of filler and DESPERATELY in need of revamping.


Something extended out as I thought about this; 'Remember'. It's something that we take from each mission we do and while we might not remember the specifics; we take the feel of the mission and story arcs with us.

I cite the Hollows and the Shards as prime examples of this. The number of players using the Hollows dropped so much it prompted a revamp. Why? Because people were sick of playing 'run the gauntlet' to try and get to a mission door a mile away that some sadistic piece of code decided to put there. And with Kings Row one tram ride away with its own hospital, paper missions and safeguards giving low level players a temporary travel power it became a more popular alternative. Things were changed because they needed to be and they were changed for the better. You still get the odd crazy door that has you run a gauntlet but it's a significantly shorter run, there's a hospital (okay, triage) inside the zone so no more waiting for returning players from Atlas or Skyway, repeatable missions from Meg Mason (not a lot but they are endless) and Frostfire, one fo the first E-Bs I ever faced got his own cutscene! And it's good. There's new allies in the south along with a few new enemies to keep things interesting. I have to say that I was one of the people who played the old Hollows a couple of times and then steered well clear but I have actually worked through the arcs recently to gain the souveneir for the CoT Trial. It was fun and (as I said on another post) there was some nice UNIQUE scenary popping up. Frostfire's place was suitably iced and one of the Troll caves, despite being cave eleventy-billion, had wrecked cars, barrels, a greenish hue and was much darker than all the others. It felt worn in and left me with a wish to go back and see it again.

I tried a few of the Shadow Shards and they are so bland and boring. Filler after filler in huge zones means you can spend more time travelling than actual fighting (I do take flight though so it may be a factor of avoidance). But it leaves a taste of bitterness. While the enemies are fairly interesting, overseers being freaky-awesome, there just isn't enough to justify spending ANY time there, not with the RWZ, Cimerora and even Peregrine (Crimson's arc anyone?) providing a more galvanised experience. The TFs are long and arduous and I don't know of anyone who prefers to do them unless it's for a) Merits and/or b) badges. In my own list of preferences I'd prefer the burst appeal of ITFs, STFs and the LGTF to doing a shards TF. The only good thing to come out of the Shards is a couple of interesting maps and the Rularuu weaponary which I've not heard a bad word for yet.

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

There is also some wicked cool scenery (the giant head and throne in FBZ, the rivers of blood in the Cascades, the twisted trees in the Storm Palace and the storms around the Palace itself) and a lot of very cool but sadly underdeveloped lore.

It's a pity those zones have been completely abandoned in favor of yet another Nemesis plot and hitting us on the head again with yet another alternate version of signature characters nobody cared about in the first place.