A Charlie Brown Christmas?

I logged in this morning for the first time on i21 (had network issues at work and so a couple of very long days to resolve it) and I was happy with the new content. I did see a few things that made me feel like Charlie Brown.

I decided to make a new Beam/Time corruptor. I wanted to build her on Exalted so I did and Heart of Glass entered the world of CoH on a new server.

Looking through the new stuff I see Beam powers and buy them out of my 1750 points. I then decided the Heart chest piece looked nice and fitted the theme and bought that. I went through and created the character and while it was odd to be spending points everytime I turned around I had plenty for now.

Then I noticed a few real problems and feel they should be mentioned.

First, if you have a single item that is a part of a pack - like the Bridal items - when you go to buy the single item please also list the full group and its cost as that would definately be helpful and feel less like nickel and dime your players.

Something like Bridal gloves - 40
Entire Bridal pack with all items 200

The other issue and the title of the thread is that as I started to play and saw emails with things to buy, costumes to buy and basically everything in the City now appearing to be for sale - I felt like Charlie Brown looking around and expecting to see price tags on the villians and the ability to buy their defeat with points. Maybe having to pay per bullet for my gun. I expected the Sham Wow guy to step out and offer me a deal for winding my watch in Time Manipulation.

In short I felt that Christmas was suddenly commercialized.

The game was cozy and full of cheer and now it had a cash register where cheer now can be purchased for 200 points - per character. I like many of the changes in the game and it is a fresh and exciting look. I fear that the heart is gone in some way - that a MacDonalds was built in the Shire.

I wonder now as I travel if I destroy something am I going to get charged points to repair the stuff I damage? It feels like Mr. Incredible did when sued for rescuing someone without permission.

Perhaps that needs to be my next Villian - Crass Commercialism.

The shop buttons all over the place are rather an overkill.

So you didn't feel like this when we had to buy booster packs for new costumes?

They weren't in the costume creator but locked out with a buy button then.

Holiday Cheer will be a 5 charge temp power for 200 points. Get your facts straight.

One of my heroes

I really don't mind the one on the main screen or the buy buttons in the costume creator pieces I don't have. Most of the posts I make about it are good-natured ribbing or at least intended to be so.

The only one that bothers me is the one on the enhancement screen. It just doesn't need to be there. Too much of the button being everywhere might turn free players off to the game.