It's getting worse (new content)

Please keep in mind, the following is my opinion and not a basis of fact. Please add any comments on how you feel about the following:

Decided to finally take a stroll through First Ward...

The zone is visually beautiful and unique.
The lore is deep and astounding.

The system elements within are getting worse.

• Mission Accept text (or interaction text) ran off the contact gump 1/3 of the time. Yes, it even happens during a cut-scene of all things.
• NPCs spam the screen with dialogue at an astounding rate at times.
• Player interaction follows a script when dealing with contact vs offering a general reaction. Comedic Example: "I'm gonna punch you in the face, $contact" vs "Express your discontent with $contact"
• 2 Reward Merits per arc. Period.

• 1 Alignment Merit on a Signature Story Arc in 15 mins
• 1/2 Alignment Merit credit in about 30 mins doing Tips
• Roughly 15 (edit - 26) Merits per hour in Ouroborus on certain old arcs (these can be acquired on teams for all members to boot)
• 1500 Tickets in around 5 mins towards rolls in AE

Well, you can't compare the story arc rewards to SSAs or tips or TFs, you can really only compare them to other story arcs. That said, I'm admittedly unsure how the FW arcs stack up to regular arcs, but I do know the FW arcs were all pretty quick, like 3-4 short missions each.

I saw First Ward as an experiment, myself. They were trying to pack the story into the mission rather than compartmentalize it into the accept/complete dialogue and Clues. It worked for me, as although I do my best to read mission text when soloing, I don't always grok the plot, whereas I did for the First Ward stuff. The avalanche of NPC text was indeed overdone, though, especially since it frequently happened at the same time as an ambush or similar.

I didn't...hate the zone? But it's not really repeatable for me either. I went through it once for the story, but I have no pressing desire to return with another character.

I personally loved the story of 1st Ward and didn't even realize I was getting any reward besides exp until after I was done and I started running tips (then noticed how many merits I had). Frankly, if I want rewards, I can go do the aforementioned farmed content for that.

But I have to admit, this is more a solo-oriented thread of content in my eyes. I did run some missions of a few strangers I met when I was in 1st ward, but it was their missions and I had already done the ones they were on...I enjoyed the twists and turns but only the mission holder would really get a feel for them.

Yes, any tag-alongers could read the NPC dialog because much of what is said in those windows is said in chat for everyone to read, but it zips by so fast, I was forced to make a tab for the dialog so I could go back and reread anything I missed.

All in all, I liked it but unless there are some other twists (by my choices) in this thread, I probably won't run it on any other characters. This little thread of content will be [Y] character's bit of thread in the tapestry of the CoX lore, just like Vincent Ross' arc is [X] character's thread or Dean McArthur's arc is [Z]'s. The only time I'd ever run those arcs again is if I were teamed and primarily for the fun of it but will only be 'canon' for my X, Y and Z characters.

There are some arcs that just feel 'right' as a one-man show vs a team. Anyway, I'm hoping there's a good deal more content like this. I give it a thumbs up

I don't see the justification for not rewarding the other players and only the mission holder. That kind of stuff has repercussions that someone on the dev team never gives it the consideration it deserves. Not to mention the ramped up enemies you encounter.

I ran it once on one of my scrappers and returned only to help some friends get through it. It is a pity to spend that much dev time on something only to have it almost ignored due to bad decisions that are out of line with the rest of the game. Silliness.

I stopped playing when I realized that every attack the Carnival uses has a -End -Recov component.

Screw that noise.

Hell, I'm mostly just pissed off that:

A) Once you hit level 30, no more First Ward. It would have bee nice if someone had mentioned that First Ward was going to be a one-chance event. Of course they could try fixing Ouro so that Praetorian missions are included, but why fix broken content when you can pile on more broken content? Its really piss-poor planning on Paragon's part to include a storyline that you can easily outlevel by running the damn storyline, and then be completely screwed out of the right to play it. Why add content if you aren't going to let people play it?

B) Quick, count how many Seed teams you've seen in the past month. Wanna know how many have been on Virtue? I'll give you a hint: It's somewhere between zero and "What's a Seed?". Maybe if you didn't have to jump through hoops to get to the zone, people might actually know it exists and go there. There is nothing, nothing that points you to First Ward. The freakin' Egg Hunter badge is more common knowledge than First Ward.

All the First Ward arcs are available through Ouro

And lets not forget how villain-unfriendly the story arc is. It literally ignores you as a villain.