Returning Player Diary

Mind, TGA files come out *HUGE* (up to 10MB each!!) so hopefully you've got a lot of space or use it sparingly.

Quote:

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.

Okay, doing a bit of Lizardroid tonight, finishing up Laura Lockhart's arc.

Her dialogue is a bit too self consciously sassy for my tastes, but I'm enjoying the missions well enough. I like the Steel Canyon instance one quite a bit- basically a simple 'kill all' but with nice window dressing. My habit of ignoring most mission text nearly got me in trouble here, as I didn't notice the timer until it was almost too late, dawdling about the map. Got the last guy at the towers with 10 seconds to spare.

5th Column are just better than Council, period.

Hung a beating on a 5th officer, stole his mask and winkeled some info out of their informant- off to stave off an assault on UNSF outpost.


Okay, now THAT was a terrific mission.

Nice use of the 'destroyed lab' map, seemed like a typical 'find the hostage' deal, but with a twist. And the giant hoard at the end was a great surprise- thanks to copious use of inspirations and the lovely AoE of Thunder Strike & Jacob's Ladder I actually took them all out, including the red boss- left me feeling quite heroic, even as I was gasping and wheezing for Endurance at the end.

Now to put the smackdown on that punk Leon, who I had pegged as a traitor from the get-go.

Off to the mish, happy to find a nicely appointed 5th Column warehouse instead of the usual cave. Mow a couple of spawns & hit 18, used the big defense to zip to the end & find Leon.

Nice dialog, the battle starts and I have to pop some insps to deal with the alpha. Hit Build Up, Thunder Strike....and that's it for Leon?! WTH. The 5th stooges take more effort to mop up than Leon did!

Slightly anti-climactic, but still a fun mish and a good arc.
Color me satisfied.

Hit 'find contact' and it's off to Jim Temblor in Faultline- looks like time to find my old pal Fusionette again!

another detour: thought of a good name on the way home from work last night, this morning created my new mace/stone brute The Scab Factory. Went villain to check out the new lowbie stuff red side. My son helped with the costume, and it turned out pretty good anyway- although given my druthers I don't think he'd be wielding a white mace.

Ran the initial guy's stuff, standard street sweeping & head cracking. My son really liked "bonking" the Longbow, which he called "Megatroids", and we spent quite a bit of time wandering around up on the system of catwalks above the city.

Took Firewire for my second contact, that was a good time. Really liked the modified bank mission- something about those piles of burning NPCs warmed my villainous heart, annoying as they've been over the years. My son was aghast when Firewire showed up at the end and started shooting at us- "Hey! He's our FRIEND!" His favorite parts were when we got to put on costumes, and when we blew up the building. "Let's blow up MORE buildings!"

Hit level 5 and got hooked up with Dr. Graves before logging out.

I like the revised Mercy- Arachnos being hostile was always a bad design choice, having them just hanging around makes you feel more like you're part of something instead of just a lone wolf battling the entire world. Longbow as the main enemy is good, and I liked 'recruiting' skulls as allies for that final bank mish. Red side doesn't have to be all touchy feely, but not having literally every hand turned against you from the moment you hit the zone is a huge improvement.

I've never run a mace OR a stone armor character- so far I'm liking them both. My lad really likes the disorient effect- "Dada, that guy got all DIZZY! Hahaha! Make him dizzy AGAIN!" Stone graphics have always been a problem for me, but with this guy's look it fits right in. I'll post a screen tonight, if I remember.

Looking forward to Graves' arc, will hopefully be able to check it out this evening.

it was weird being at an arachnos base, then walking 20 feet and arachnos there would attack you.

also, I like not doing the snake missions - they just seemed out of place. But I miss the snakes since they don't show up anywhere else

Ok ran Harris' arc.
Really good, especially for a veteran player familiar with the locations. The setup was a grim chunk of undiluted misogyny, but hey we're in the Rogue Isles and anyway that basic scenario plays out all the time IRL. Missions are a fine example of moving action out into the zone & giving some places that looked like they should 'be' something a context- I especially liked setting the Arachnos prisoners free- that little compound always looked like something interesting should be going on there, but never was.

I also liked the Skulls coming along to lend a hand at the finale, along with that guy in the weird coat I didn't kill in an earlier arc. Good for immersion, and rewarding positive social behavior (even in the context of CoV) is a good thing. Let the maniac psycho-killer contingent pursue their nihilistic agenda solo while throwing a bone to the less scorched earth villains out there. A nice touch.


Finished it up and headed back to Graves to check out his arc.
So far so good on the redside lowbie revamp.

Okay, decided to stick with Flux until I got the Frostfire mish, which I dimly recall being fun. Burned an auto-complete on the street sweep, and happy happy joy, the next mish is Frostfire.

In I go, and it's still fun. Been so long since I last ran it I'd never seen the cutscene, which amused me. Good fights, sliding around on the ice is still funny, solid mish.

I finish it off and Flux sends me to Julius the Troll- as I've never hung around the Hollows a moment longer than strictly necessary, I decide to check him out.

Mission One: kill 10 trolls.
Mission Two: kill 10 trolls, OH WAIT over by the dam, so that's totally different, right?
Mission Three: kill all creatures in cave.

WTH!

Finally something different on #4, 'Rescue Slaves', and happily it's at the same mission door I just exited. Karma!

Toggle Ninja Run and zip through a really ridiculously giant cave map sniffing around for slaves to rescue- happily, they were't the sort you have to escort out, my single least favorite mission type. Clean it out, find out Sam Wincott is alive somewhere else, get an unexpected dose of reward merits and Julius tells me to get lost.

I now leave the Hollows permanently, my prejudice against the zone justified and intact. If it took someone more than an hour to plot and write up every arc I played in this zone, I'll eat my hat. Awful even by the low standards of 'old time' content- when they shuffled things around they should've taken the time to enliven the actual content- not much point making it easier to get to missions when the missions themselves are still hot garbage.

PS:

Street Justice is fun enough that the overall crumminess of the Hollows didn't bother me much in a practical sense because in micro-scale I was having fun busting the chops of individual spawns. Conceptually it sucked that there was no overarching goal or obvious storyline to provide context to my actions, but credit Street Justice with making the actions themselves quite enjoyable.

Just a fast, fun, well animated set with terrific sound effects.

Made it to level 12 amidst the hubub and headed to Steel to run the invention tutorial and hit up Montague Castellana for some more appealing missions before logging off.

Ok, finished off the first section of Dr. Graves' arc this morning- my son unexpectedly slept in and I had some free time. He woke up and toddled out just as I finished blowing up the Longbow base, so I turned him loose to explore Mercy for a bit while I made Mother's Day breakfast for the wife.

(Note to Fulmens: if you got any indecipherable chat replies, that was my son. =P)

As an arc I liked it quite a bit. It shares the same strengths and weaknessess of the Twinshot arc- dialog & plot heavy, which made for a fun first trip through but will probably dampen my enthusiasm to run it again. I liked the way it addressed many of the perennial complaints about red side- "I feel like a hired goon", "I don't feel evil", etc. Getting to put one over on everyone else, screw over an Arbiter, cheat your way to victory & come out ahead of the game was fun. It also featured some quite tricky writing that was very well done- while I so far prefer Twinshot's arc, Graves' arc is the better written one- the difference I think boils down to likeability.

All of the heroes in the Twinshot arc are engaging in their own way, even the traitorous Proton. The villains in Graves' arc are interesting and equally well written, but your character is there to dominate, not bond with them. Twinshot creates a sense of community, Graves creates....something else.

The factional difference in a nutshell.



Anyway, it was enjoyable and I'm looking forward to picking it up again.
Scab Factory is most of the way to level 9- what new red side stuff should I play now?

I think that's about it redside

There is a Mortimer Kal strike force at level 15 or 20, but they really haven't done much redside since the content there is so much better than blueside already

First of all, it's been great to get some perspective from a recently returned player. I've been watching this thread for a while and I've been enjoying your writeups.

Also, red side has two new contacts that are at the same level range as the Laura Lockhart and Graham Easton arcs you already ran (As in 15-24). These contacts are Bane Spider Reuben and Brother Hammond, both of which are in Cap au Diable. I'd definitely recommend doing both.

If you haven't done Vincent Ross's arc yet (I think you were here when that came out but I'm not sure), I'd also recommend doing that, especially if you've also done Diviner Maros' arc.