Chyll

I watched my DVR of this last night.

Nice potential. Main plot hooks identified. Characters more than cardboard. TV special effects above average. I remain optimistic.

The extra child question bugged me, too.
the scale and support of the Tera Nova project seemed... off to me. Where was the heavy construction equipment, the armies of engineers and construction workers, just the sense of scale that would be pouring through a real gate/escape in that scenario. And you know the gov't would have had a nice healthy presence rather than a single man running things. I set these questions aside for now, but they all occurred to me while watching.

On the pen&paper side, I have always liked the systems that pair mutable and immutable aspects to measure how well you can do things. Granted, rarely are these truly immutable - so call it attribute/skill pairing.

At setup you assign your attribute and skill starting points @ creation.

Skills would be wielding the hammer, shooting a gun, scavenging, etc. Earned points in play would allow improving existing skills, or selecting new ones.

Attributes being things like strength, agility, wisdom, etc. Earned points later cost more to increase attributes, making changing these more difficult.

OK, having level set my preferred approach - probably essentially bucketed in the XP-Skill category RemusShepherd mentioned, and maybe not that far from SuperOz's comments.
(Incidentally I have drafted something based on this approach on my desktop for a tabletop superhero miniatures skirmish game...)

Archetypes/Class is how some of the balancing questions could be tackled - they could be as loose as defining base starting skills and suggested attributes that you then can modifiy before starting, or perhaps only certain specialized skills are restricted to certain archetypes (which you could say was based on background/training pre-zombie-OMGalyspe, such as military, police, scientist, etc.)

Zombies as an archetype would then enter in... starting points focused on constitution/resistance to be insanely durable compared to a human and earned points to work a different skill tree - movement speed, etc.

To the question of balance, though... in tabletop work what I've done before is define to units/figures exactly the same, then give each one different power and play out the results - scored the result and cost them accordingly when you finish your combinations. There has to be a better way for computer game/testing/modeling, but you would need to work out that x-point increase in zombie speed provides y improvement in zombie survivability. In a team/buff environment that gets wonky - which I seem to recall the CoX devs discussing before.

Frankly, I'd probably make a zombie player an MM-style AT... to convert and absorb humans into their 'character'. Each individual zombie less than a human but get several of them together... Lose a couple, gain a few, lose a couple, gain a few...


((I think I'll quit rambling now. I hope on the whole it added to the discussion.))

I would have probably used a light-hearted comment to draw them in when I first saw the make-up, "This should fun 4 [wonderful buffs] at once! yay!" Or something along those lines - reminds some players of their tools, establishes your expectations, and sets yourself up as an enthusiastic team mate. Then if the going gets... rough... you can ask questions or provide guidance without ruffling feathers quite as much.

Another option would have been to ask what the plan was at the first encounter - of the leader and/or team. Were they expecting you to tank - at low levels it isn't always fun to tank as a tank, let alone a scrapper. Or did they grab you purely for DPS? A quick question would have helped delineate the rolls.

That all said, you probably didn't do anything 'wrong', but I doubt I would have just bailed without speaking up. At worst you tick some ppl off that think they know what they're doing. At best, you help teach a new player, or a player with a new AT/powerset, what works. Or maybe even learn something yourself.

My biggest disappointment in what I consider to be a great, great zone is that if you were (or still are) a Praetorian the FW contacts - including ones you have met and interacted with just a couple of levels ago - have no idea who you are or that you are any different than that Primal schlub that just ran by.

I for one am loving the game play improvements and faster loading I am experiencing after some of the recent efforts.

I laud what they are doing, and if I have to put up with a couple more intervals of interrupted playtime so things continue to get better, I say "hooray!".

I cannot get logged in at all

Same, though I was on Virtue

There is indeed a mixed bag of degenerates, heroes, and scoundrels wandering around Paragon City.

But, it appears you are going to fit in nicely.


Welcome, Rapthorne!

I was confused by this:

Played through both arcs vill and hero last night: solo exed-down and on a new character at the right level range, both squishie corrs. Then on a team with my namesake blaster. Tons of fun. I heartily approve and look forward to more of the story.