Less than impressed...
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The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
Everything Dark Armor | The Softcap
don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.
Most of the genre makes the money from baubles and systems, not content. Notice how it's been already suggested that buying one of the "arcs" may be worth it for Freemium just to have access to the rewards table. And that's how it goes, selling mangy content like this at premium prices in F2P is basically a roundabout way of selling the shinies at the end of it.
Games that have to sell actual content (DLC) have to put noticeably more effort to entice customers to pay for it. |
I'd take two carefully constructed, usefully repeatable, well written arcs over that junk any day.
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In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
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Would it be that difficult to give higher level versions an appropriate power loadout to remain challenge at higher levels?
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Justice Blues, Tech/Tank, Inv/SS
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Fighting The Future Trilogy
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What she said. And remember, all that time is going to be taken away from working on new content. And not just coders. You would need new animations, new powers, new designs for new mobs, new missions, etc. All so that when we get to level 50, we can still fight Hellions and Skulls.
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If they are charging for it, then it should be worth the effort.
'Good enough' shouldn't be their motto for premium content.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
Some thoughts:
1. Masterminds lose a whole lot of their functionality without their T3 pet, and/or with only one of the T2 pets.
2. From what I've heard, very few characters or builds would have a hope of doing this content at 10, making the invitation to try it at 10 sort of questionable.
It seems to me that tuning this for 20-30 might have produced a more pleasant experience; people wouldn't be getting into it at a level when they really do lack most of their functional abilities, and people who had levelled to their T9 primary power wouldn't be trying to do without it.
... People are complaining that this is TOO HARD?
I soloed it with my defender.
"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
Actually is the most boring experience I have seen in this game in a long time. This is not a good step forward IMVHO.
Being bumped down to level 20 was my only complaint with the mission. Everything else was great!
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The Queen's Menagerie
Some thoughts:
1. Masterminds lose a whole lot of their functionality without their T3 pet, and/or with only one of the T2 pets. 2. From what I've heard, very few characters or builds would have a hope of doing this content at 10, making the invitation to try it at 10 sort of questionable. It seems to me that tuning this for 20-30 might have produced a more pleasant experience; people wouldn't be getting into it at a level when they really do lack most of their functional abilities, and people who had levelled to their T9 primary power wouldn't be trying to do without it. |
However, brutes and MM's are argueably the MOST soloable characters pre-20, thanks to fury and pets. I have no plans to try this solo on my low level controllers, mostly thanks to the EB at the end, and I would not want to try it on a defender if I had one (obviously that would depend on the fender - a rad/sonic would laugh at the end EB, even at L10, something with a lot less single target damage and resistance debuff not so much).
I think the real problem is that if you DON'T know how to shortcut things ahead of time, you are likely to fail the first mission when the timer runs out (no biggie there, but annoying), die in the second mission when you are overwhelmed by the ambushes and be suddenly shocked by the EB at the end - especially if you are mostly used to blueside content which tends not to have EB's in them.
Worst is if you are a free/premium player who is entirely new to the game or is a very old returning player - the difficulty level in this story arc is a step above the difficulty in the rest of the game up to this point unless you had the bad luck to start in preatoria - and there is little to no warning in the intro dialog.
For something that is a bonus for the VIP players, the current rewards (2 hero merits the first week you run it, 1/week after that) make it worth running 1-2 times, although after we get higher level signature arcs I will probably never touch this one again. For something that the dev's expect preems to play cash up front, this is kinda sad - especially when the preems won't have access to the same rewards we do in most cases.
A lot of the problem here is similar to issues I saw in the new underground incarnate trial - the dev's are trying to fit new mechanics into a game interface that doesn't support them well and it gets very confusing. In the UG trial, there are so many gimmicks the UI can't warn you about all of them, so they try to fill you in with in mission chat - but that is hard to spot, is not easy to read while in combat and tends to scroll of if you aren't carefull.
In this arc they want to play cute games with secret doors and ambushes that are on a timer but the info in the UI is not clear enough to easily figure it out the first time through. It took me 2 runs to figure out that the timer in mission 2 is NOT a 'mission fail' timer like it was in mission 1. Instead I died to the ambushes, losing my temper and patience because PPD are UGLY for an FA brute when they spawn at 0x2 every 30 seconds and I figured I had failed the mission. When I came back from the hospital the fact that the timer had cleared, the ambushes where gone and the mission was still there - so I was able to figure out the tricks. If I had been a premium player who payed real money for this, I might have ended up quitting the game at that point.
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2. From what I've heard, very few characters or builds would have a hope of doing this content at 10, making the invitation to try it at 10 sort of questionable.
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I am certainly not going to avoid it because it is too hard.
Justice Blues, Tech/Tank, Inv/SS
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Fighting The Future Trilogy
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"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound
Just throwing this out there again, the EB has no ranged attacks (unless they rectified that already), so he's easy pickings for hover blasting, also, he's susceptible to knockback.
"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
I didn't have a problem with the mission. I thought it was pretty good for a monthly kind of thing.
Anyway, about the lvl 20 issue--didn't bother me exactly but my heart kind of sinks whenever a mission is under level 35 or so. I play a lot of low damage Controllers. "It's just 10 powers" has a different impact when when it means you get to solo with Block of Ice, Chillblain and no pet.
And the complaints about being exemplared to level 20 is mainly about "missing powers" IE: "It's too hard".
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I think I only mentioned my general dislike of exemp'ing in here once, in my positive review of the arc. So, I don't think I've "complained" and I have zero interest in arguing over the validity of such opinions...
However, I thought I may as well explain my reasons for not enjoying exemp'ing so much.
It has zero to do with difficulty (especially not in this arc. I had no problem whatsoever, so far).
It's somewhat a matter of comfort/familiarity with a general strategy with a given character and their powerset and their advanced stage.
e.g. Electric-Knight, at 50, locks Bosses down with Static Bolt and Tesla Cage (and Shocking Grasp too). He saps all enemies' endurance with Short Circuit AND Power Sink.
When he's level 20... I can't do that fun stuff. I really have no options, but to blast and brawl! Not that that isn't fun, but I like my options!
It's also a matter of role-play/iconic familiarity.
Electric-Knight has such and such powers. When he doesn't... he doesn't feel quite right.
Hehe, it is not a big deal, but it is just a matter of preference for myself.
I know my wife is very much the same way.
We like having our characters as they are, not as they are exemp'd and/or as they were, hehe.
Anyway... None of this is meant as a complaint. I just thought you (and/or others) may find it interesting.
I can adapt. I can live. I can even have fun doing it sometimes! However, I generally prefer not to!
My dislike of losing powers isn't about it being too hard, it's about disliking losing powers. If I were exemped down to level -1 with nothing but Brawl to face enemies that couldn't hurt me and which died in one attack I would still be ticked off about losing access to my powers. Difficulty has nothing to do with it.
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and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
But I find that being level 50 doesn't help me out there much either unless you could Ion Judgement .
And anyway, you have an ST immob, ST hold, AE immob, AE hold.... like practically every other Controller primary.