Grey Pilgrim

Not too much into farming/repeatedly running the same arc over and over, but what's the "Spy Hunt" flashback? It doesn't seem to match up to anything in the Wiki description.

Excellent video, well done. Both this video and Dark Respite's "Do You Want to Date My Avatar" did a great job of tying in the song with the game... I enjoyed watching both back to back.

Konshu, you're assuming a lot more than I feel safe to. From the videos and people who were at Herocon, there were a lot of questions asked about GR that the devs "could not respond to yet." Besides that, their track record certainly proves they're willing to expand the game and add a lot of stuff, so I'm reasonably hopeful that there is a lot more to hear... they're just not saying it yet. Which I do think is an issue.

As for the "clues not being read by players," that's partially a player thing. If you're not going to read the clues, etc., you're missing out on a lot of the game. And reading stuff like that isn't all that uncommon for any game.

They have added cutscenes, but you mostly want to add those for flavor, and not give a lot of detail. There is a balancing point for cutscenes, as not every player wants to sit through them (especially if they've seen them before). Using cutscenes with written content is probably a good approach to that issue, I would say.

I haven't seen a lot of omissions in stories for CoX, as you seem to suggest. Yes, they have ongoing stories that are still being revealed, but I would hardly call that an omission. They should get to adding more to those storylines, though.

Last night was pretty good on Team Hamster, too... except for that one lab room where we ran into about 3-4 mobs of Rikti at once. That wasn't so fun. Left me wishing Liquefy would recharge sooner, as I started getting pegged a lot more when it dropped.

I don't mind throwing out the occasional heal on my Earth/Storm Controller, but it does tend to drive me nuts the more I play with other characters, though. If you don't enjoy having that be a consistent ability, you might want to dodge Defenders. This Sonic/Sonic of mine is going to be my only one... feels way to meh, to me. Controllers technically have low damage, too, but being able to control a mob so well makes up for it, and the epic powers help out in the damage department as well.

Whereas my Defender just feels weak. Probably a good reason not throw a Defender there.

But who knows, the "stronger" options out there for you sound done to death, so maybe you should give it a go. No matter what, going for something where you won't have to redraw too much is probably better. My Arch/Dev Blaster was okay because I didn't have to use the Devices powers too much in the middle of a fight.

Voo, none of the animations for Dual Pistols are being re-used from the Mastermind set (which I think grabbed from the animation for Gunslingers). I watched that video a few times of Herocon, and it's not similar at all. The Mastermind attacks are more "traditional" pistol attacks, and the Blast set looks nothing like it. They do have less fancy non-Gunkata like attacks, too, but they're not the same as what is in game now.

You're also supposed to be able to change your ammunition as you go, adjusting to the mob (as I have read it, hopefully someone wasn't communicating that wrong from Herocon), which is completely different for a set as well. It's going to feel pretty different with all of that, and I'm looking forward to it. I completely understand if that still doesn't draw you, but I figured I would let you know.

From the concept art from the Herocon video, they are not reusing demons from the game, but creating new forms (which has some excited about the possibility four-legged skeletons). BAB also created new animations for the whip, which apparently were quite difficult to do. No way to know if they'll look good, but I've liked most of the new animations the game has gotten over the past couple of years.

No info on what the powers for demon summoning will be, but what you summon and the whip animations will make the set feel quite different, too.

Mind you, I do want a lot more from GR, but I think the two sets coming with it will be quite robust... I just wish I would want to try an MM again (let alone a demon summoning one, which I find iffy, personally), which I don't. I get to take a Pistols Blaster for a spin at least.

I don't have too much issue with the current formula for merits, per se. Redside arcs really are a lot faster... someone mentioned arcs like the Freaklympics, etc. blueside, but those take a LOT longer than most arcs redside. I'm generally surprised when the merits pop up on my villains, as I always expect the arc to go on for longer.

Really, the things that MIGHT hold it up are the need to unlock contacts (which I really don't like... I don't enjoy the generic paper/radio missions, and hate having to do them to unlock contacts), and that there are only so many story arcs per level range.

For those touting the merit counts for Posi and Synapse, I suppose it's nice if you're a farmer. If not, I'll take any of the newer TFs, redside TFs, etc. If your only motivation to do Posi is the merits, that's a problem, in my book. The Task Force has far too many filler missions and is quite long and boring to play. I do it once on characters needing the Task Force Commander accolade, and that's it.

Yeah, I don't think there was anything particularly wrong with your original costume. I do have a tendency to think like Viv with costumes: for the majority of the costume parts, I have two colors. Then for certain pieces that I want to really pop, I make them a different color. On Crey Hunter 1.0, for instance, he has a mostly red and black martial arts outfit, but it's set off by changes in his skin color (he's an android), etc. For his trench coat/Matrix look, he's got a solid red trench coat that contrasts well with black pants, and a white business shirt. I'd have to toss them your way to see what I mean.

Dual color schemes can work pretty well, too, though. Sunset Samurai uses a lot of the samurai costume parts that look fantastic in red and gold. Kind of depends on what you're going for.

This new change looks pretty good, but it might be even better if just that skull face had the gray/white coloring, maybe the belt, too. When I add a third color, I take awhile turning it on to different parts of the costume to see what works best.

I'm waiting on making my Elec/Elec Brute until Going Rogue hits, as I want to run him heroside. My Stalker and VEAT that I'm leveling up redside are about as much as I want to have on redside at this point.

Given my extensive experience with Fiery Aura on Tanks, I don't think I'm going to have too many issues with Electric Armor, especially after the added the Heal. Between the heal and picking up the fighting pool, Grey Pilgrim was just fine before IOs. Afterwards, he's even better with all the +defense, +recharge, and +HP he picked up. I'm going to go the same route for my Brute, I believe.

I am rather surprised Dark Melee isn't a good pairing with Electric Armor. You have an extra heal with that, plus the negative to-hit. WP is easy street on my Scrapper with Dark Melee... I can dial the difficulty up pretty far with him, even in the 20s.

No matter what, Enigma, you should come. It's more about having fun than anything... I'm not enthralled with my Defender's capabilities, either (he seems quite helpful to the team, but I like to feel like I can do a fair amount myself as well).

I'll be there... not sure what The Golden Howler is at now... hopefully 41, so he isn't too far behind after missing last week. Still need to work on his Tina Mac story arc... hopefully I'll get that done tonight, rather than having to work on those on my own.

Picked up the Martial Arts pack, which is pretty fun. Works quite nicely on a few of my characters, and having a few more robe options is nice... I was overusing a couple of the existing ones on some of my characters.

I... think that's kind of what we're saying, though. It sounds like they're trying to rework graphics and what 50s can do, among other things.

Unfortunately, they've been very quiet about all this, so we don't know much about what to expect, what to look forward to, etc. I was rather surprised that Herocon really only discussed the graphics update and a little of side-switching. That's nice, but not really a whole lot.

As I said earlier, hopefully their PR machine will get going soon so we can have something to look forward to. I don't want to still be wondering about this now, let alone in February or even up to when beta starts.

From what we have been told, that's a feature and not a bug, Fireheart. It's one of Willpower's tradeoffs for being so well-rounded in other respects.

It's not really that big of an issue, either. My WP/DB got around it by doing what all my other tankers do... attacking and taunting liberally.

Some players are complaining about how some of the new difficulty settings seem to be spawning more bosses than before, and how that's not too much fun while soloing.

I do like fighting AVs, but too much in one go is not very fun (I find some of the level 40 and above story arcs to have a few too many archvillains... I kind of prefer the ones that save the AV for the end, to keep things more unique, and less of a "team required," even though I've soloed through most of that stuff with Tanks, Scrappers, and Blasters).

So yeah... Aion sounds not very fun because of that. Big, very hard targets should be reserved for unique situations, I would say. It almost sounds like they need to create an Elite Boss category... unless they have it already.

Looking at other games, STO's set up for missions sounds interesting, but I still don't think the gameplay itself looks strong enough. I think I'd always be left wanting more tactical ability from the game, when it's set up more like an MMO than a strategy game.

Star Wars is looking interesting for its focus on story (I think the CoX devs could/should put some of that focus on revamping our game... same thing for STO... picking up missions if we wanted while patrolling the city would be a cool feature), though it is making me wonder how the social/MMO portion is going to work. Some of the attack animations you can see in videos seem a little too... bland? Might not be the right word, as they are leaping around, etc., but the animations look and feel a lot like the animations from the first KOTOR. Which weren't bad for then, but I rather want more from this game.

Wow, good catch, all. Guess we should check the values on ported sets just in case something like this happens again. Thanks for looking into this, Castle.

Yeah, I need just a bit more cash before we can add another room and get some bins. I forgot how long it took my solo SG on Victory to get a room that could hold multiple bins and actually have bins in it.

I'll even try to decorate it a bit so it's not too bare.

Zam, unless the devs announce what they're working on from one moment to the next, we can't really say much about how they're allocating their time. As for the walk thing, that's a pretty minimal thing that he could work on in his spare time. We don't know about the productivity of other people in the dev team... for all we know, BAB felt like working a little overtime to get it done because some people would like it, or got done on some projects sooner than they anticipated. I'm not going to hold the devs accountable for how they spend every minute of their day, and I do find it a little crazy how some people are grumping so much about the Walk animation being added.

I do agree that GR really needs to set a bar, however... we haven't been getting a lot of things for awhile now (like new missions, etc.), so GR really has to deliver on those. So that IS an expectation we can have. I think the devs are expecting a lot from it too... it's a lot of work.

If it doesn't give us a lot of things, people do have a right to grump. I've been somewhat okay with not having as much "content" in the past year because other things were in the works, but if I don't see much, I won't be happy. We have a bunch of new developers, and still not too much to show for it that WE can see. Which does make a difference.

The marketing for GR does confuse me quite a bit, though. I've seen previews on a few sites, but they really haven't done anything official here other than announce it. A bit of info here and there would go a long way towards keeping up interest in the future and present of this game.

Yeah, I've never had such trouble with Northern Lights before. I did my best to kill them off, but they really did not like me. I'd kill a couple, and then 15 or so more seemed to be pegging me and killed me in short order. Ugh. I'm glad the rest of the team could focus on the WL... the one time I moved close to him, a bunch of team members died because of the AOE I brought from the Lights. Harsh.

Of course, we did have one full team and... what one other person? That makes that extra stuff tough.

Just to keep clarifying, exemplaring DOES have bearing on the issue, as the devs have put enhancement caps on those early levels. I don't know what those caps are (as I don't keep those numbers in my head and have no desire to look them up right now), but they are below SO levels. So no matter what, you are weaker at those levels.

It has bearing, because it makes the removal of TOs and DOs less worthwhile than some of you are suggesting. You are never going to have SO levels of enhancement below level 20 or so, unless you can convince the Devs to remove those caps... and good luck with that if you really want to.

So influence levels are not the only reason to keep the system as is. The system is bigger than just the type of enhancement, given the caps. Basically, TOs and DOs are a visible way for players to see themselves growing stronger as they level. Experienced players may not care as much about this, but you still want the game to be understandable from the ground up... not to mention make you feel stronger as you level. If you take them away, it can make it more confusing.

At any rate, I don't love TOs or anything like that, I'm just saying there's a rhyme and a reason to the current system, and I don't see the devs removing it completely. You could make the argument that we should move to a DO/SO system, which works for me, but I don't see an SO system happening.

If anything, the current system is better because you can do what you want with it. You do have multiple, viable options, which is a good thing.

Meh, not that big a deal. Anyway, on a completely unrelated note... Des, what did you not like about the higher levels in Aion? I was a little worried about the game's emphasis on PvP, but I know you seemed to like the game at start- what changed?