So, once again I’ve got a fistful of random crap to report. You know the drill. There’s going to be a lot of game mechanics stuff, a healthy dose of griping, and maybe a few random observations about the human condition. Or not. Hell, I’m freewriting this, so I don’t know. It’ll be all over the place, and in no way in chronological order. Ready? Here we go!
Ok, first…my impressions of the i21 VIP head-start. I’ve played a lot of MMOs over the years…UO, DAOC, AO, WoW, CO, LoTRO, Horizons, and that’s just off the top of my head. So, I’ve seen my fair share of new content releases. I have to say, I was impressed. Aside from a couple of minor annoyances – the map reset all my markers, and the UG trial I did failed because Desdemona got bugged and wouldn’t follow anyone - I can’t really find anything to complain about. It was pretty smooth as releases go. IMHO, anyway.
I ran through some of First Ward’s content with Dealer Frost. So far, I’m a fan. There’s this thing called the Shadowed Path or something. They’re areas where you can supposedly walk safely…but the screen gets all dark and reddish and weird. Scared the FUCK out of me the first time it happened. It’s a freaky effect, and you all know how much I dig freaky shit. Two thumbs up. The missions seem pretty well written to me, and the area itself is well designed. It also answers a question I had about the Praetorian lore, namely why there was only one city, really.
I can’t comment on the Underground Trial too much, because the first time I ran it was the aforementioned fubar, and my Internet died during the second, causing me to miss it. I will point out that I like how the map progressively changes as you go, and I really liked earning Physical AND Psychic iXP at the same time. :D I got Erik his tier 2 Alpha, unlocked his Judgement, and got a tier 1 ability in it.
The store is pretty solid. I wasted like 1200 credits on Priest, though. More on that later. I bought the rocket board power. And it is good. Caden’s having himself a great time with it.
The sewer trial was pretty decent. I like the trainer NPC’s conveniently placed at the beginning of each ‘stage’.
I made a beam rifle/time manip corr called Skiptracer (arguably my best name grab ever). He’s a bounty hunter from the future, who takes on contracts to track and apprehend criminals who travel to the past to avoid prosecution. However, I don’t get a heroic vibe from him. At best, I see him as a vigilante. More likely, he’ll be a rogue.
The VKD people finally finished Lauren’s arc. Thank GOD. The player needs to log on more often. If they did, maybe they could feed us all this backstory and plot and history a little at a time. But nooooo, we get to have VOLUMES of this stuff force-fed to us. I’m pretty good at following along, but even I was lost.
On that subject…NPC dialogue in AE is designed for relatively short amounts of text. Do NOT try to get one of your NPC’s to explain the ENTIRE plot in one or two giant text bubbles. As the player/writer, exposition is YOUR job. I can’t read that fast in the middle of a firefight, and most won’t even try. If you have a lot of plot, and can’t be on often enough to trickle it down to us, find a way to simplify it. Or post it on your VV page and let us read it at our leisure. Or SOMETHING. I do enough studying and cramming in school. Don’t make me do it in game.
Eric was utterly lost (le gasp), and for him, the entire plot eventually got boiled down to ‘bash evil robots.’ Which I suppose was really all we needed to know. Evidently, there was some Matrix-like entity that bestowed Incarnate powers on Lauren. Jack checked out when the entity revealed that it could have solved the problem at any time, but chose to test Lauren instead. Uh, fuck that. Jack almost called it ‘Gabriel’.
Techno was, of course, running out ahead and soloing everything so the ladies could swoon over him. Or some shit. When Jack called him on it, he got all sullen and said he was scouting. Eric pointed out – brilliantly, I might add – that it’s not scouting if you engage the enemy.
Next VKD night had Priest leading some Portal Corp missions. Mostly because I wasn’t in the mood to play Jack anywhere near Techno. It went well, and then Techno called out Priest for an arena match ICly. I knew it wasn’t going to work out well for me, but I had no IC way to have Priest refuse or back down. *shrugs* Priest lost 3-0, but Techno a) had pets that did –DEF, and b) after the first time, he was attacking Priest before I got his toggles up.
There’s a lot of IC and OOC reasons why Priest’s still a badass and shouldn’t take it to heart, but it still bothers me. Anyway, I took it as a wakeup call for Priest OOCly. I played around with an alternate build, and I think I might be able to softcap him to S/L/E/N, and give him more efficient end usage. I bought three sets of 4 pieces of Reactive Armor from the new store, which will give him good resist and a fair bit of S/L defense.
If Techno starts gloating and disrespecting Priest or Jack because of this shit, I’m just going to boot his punk ass. His toon concept is so ridiculous even Raina would probably scratch her head in confusion. He’s a scrawny, music-wielding DJ who we’re supposed to accept as some kind of a huge threat. He hits on every woman, but keeps mentioning he has a girlfriend.
Hell, I don’t know. No one else really seems to have a problem with him. I think I lost respect for him when he tried to have his DJ auto-hit Tenma by kicking him in the nuts. Not to mention his ‘music powers’ evidently allow him to see through the Kages’ stealth effortlessly. That’s just BULLSHIT. I’m just going to stay clear of him. Maybe I’ll just take Caden to team nights for a while, except I don’t know what to do if he challenges Caden to a match. Caden wouldn’t ICly back down either, but he’s got even less chance of winning. And I’m not going to keep sacrificing toons to build his ego. It’s already big enough to require its own SG.
I don’t know. I think a lot about leaving VKD lately. It’s not really any fun for me anymore. I don’t know what would make it fun again. I guess I’m bored, and want something new. My toons are all stagnant where they are now. ZF would be great, but there’s really not any RP outside of missions on team night, because everyone immediately bolts back to redside when it’d done. :P
*shrugs* It’s hard to get excited about CoH lately. The new stuff is neat, but I’m not here for the ‘stuff’.
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