Primal

Oh, we've no doubt that the Cyst was a surprise. I daresay we've all been in that situation. I recall a full-team mission against CoT in a sewer map, where the darn Cyst had managed to spawn right around the corner of the doorway in one of those bottleneck-type rooms. And of course there was a mass of CoT hanging around too. When you walked through that door you spawned an army. Pure death.

You just got unlucky, that's all. It's like when your team faces a spawn, and another spawn turns out to be a wee bit too close, and then, oh my, when did we trigger an ambush!

Did someone actually just use "slap in the face" in a non-sarcastic manner? Wow. It's been a while.

That aspect Socorro mentions is my biggest problem with them. They're supposed to be special, a new threat that high-level Khelds must now face. Yet they're common, it's just a matter of time if there's a Kheld on the team even if they're not long out of newbiehood. Overusing special enemies takes that special part out really quickly.

In my experience, Cysts are only a big problem when a) they spawn in a way that you just happen upon them around a corner and b) the team lacks the immediate coordination to take them on (or spends time gawking).

I use my non-combat pet for flavor, nothing else. My AR Blaster breaks out the Mek Man as a spotter when she feels like Sniping something. There's no point to it from a numbers point of view, the sniping OR the pet, it's just something I consider fun. I also like the idea of a domesticated Rikti Monkey as a pet, it makes me think of the pet Headcrab from Half-Life 2.

These pets are of far more use to me than, say, the Reveal power. I will never use that at all, that fog tells me where I haven't been. It's a 63-month vet reward, and it's spectacularly useless to me. But you know, I won't be complaining, because I've received a far better reward, i.e. 63 months of access to a great game. A bonus on top of that is really quite incidental.

I translated the OP to German and back, and here are the results.

I was running around Striga with a team, street-sweeping on the way to a mission. Don't remember the character specifically other than it was a Scrapper. I kinda got into a zone, attacking away with the team, doing very well. Suddenly I realized that every name around me was blue, and in team chat were variations on "We're at the mission, what the hell are you doing?"

I apologized profusely to both my team and the other street-sweeping team I had blundered into whose defeats I was zealously stealing, and got laughs from everyone. Scrapper-lock, what can you do.

I've had one character ever kicked from a team. My Ill/Rad Controller, around level 10 at the time, got an invite, accepted, then shortly thereafter was dismissed because "Oh, we wanted a healer." Rather than argue the point I figured that wasn't a team I'd want to be on anyway, especially considering that "not a healer" was in my LFT message. Healer mentality AND neglecting to read? Oh yeah. Looking back on it I should've checked to see if everyone was set to Invincible, to complete the debt trifecta.

Nerf drag.

I have characters that were around before IOs who I haven't bothered with changing around. My two 50s (Hero and Villain) were 50 before all that started, and since I don't really play them except for just goofing around there seemed little point. Heck, Primal is still built and enhanced like ED never happened, since she retired before that hit.

All my characters moving up in levels now slot IOs, but I'm very casual about it, mainly just using the ones that drop that I happen to have a use and the salvage for. Occasionally I'll look for something on the market, usually for concept purposes or because it's useful. Those Knockback protection IOs for example are so hella useful for Blasters and such that I'll go looking for them, or my Archer will shop for a Sting of the Manticore. It's only as much time as you wish to spend on it really, there's no need to blow hours or "play the market" unless you're just into that, I'm not at all and I seem to do just fine. Eeking out a few more percentage points is THE big draw for some people, but despite what they might say it's not necessary for anyone else.

Clearly the Vahzilok were just trying to save face.

Colossal, huh? You know what they say. Big bat...

no cattle.

I never understood that one either but that is what they say.

I've always imagined my characters fitting right in in a Marvel vs Capcom type game. Therefore it's not a huge stretch for those characters to fit in here too. Remember that little monkey-girl with the staff? Or BB Hood/Bulleta? Hell yeah!

Plus this game would really benefit from a whole lot more flash on the screen, and yelling out attacks. Especially when you finish off an enemy, everything ought to slow down while the name of your attack shows. It must be something epic and ridiculous like

ARMAGEDDON SMASH!

or

GEHENNA ART FINAL!

And there'd be an announcer of course. A highly enthusiastic one. Afterwards we'd hear all characters say something sarcastic and/or pithy. Or emo. Yes, all of this must happen after every single victory!

It'd be glorious. Just glorious. And oh, how I'd laugh.

I'm all for more War Witch front and center. I dig her hair.

Oh, sorry, got distracted there. In light of this latest sad news, I have just deleted all my characters, and I now sit forlornly in my sackcloth and ashes. Thank you Dispari for opening my eyes to the sad inevitability of the end.

I seem to recall seeing level 11 DOs at least.

He'd upgrade to a full helmet first.

The problem with cutscenes and cinematics and VA, is that in an MMO you're inevitably playing with other people who'll feel very differently about them than you do. For every one person that feels games are improved by all of that, there are plenty that detest it and aren't afraid to say so.

I remember Guild Wars having really pretty, informative cinematics where your character actually talked and interacted, as well as general ones that introduced the area and so forth. If you were on a team though, what you saw at the bottom immediately was something like "FighterChick and MonkMan want to skip this", so now you either follow their lead, or ignore that and inevitably get yelled at about it, neither of which is immersive. Look at the threads in the past here that have asked for some VA or more cutscenes, and you'll see the same sort of resistance. *I* agree with you, I think some VA especially would be cool, but we're a minority.

I feel sorry for the writers in this game. They do a decent enough job, don't get me wrong, but with so many character and concept possibilities they have to sadly either railroad you into following the story or be incredibly generic about it. Hard to say which is worse, but what choice is there?

At one time there was a bug that had characters in missions listed as being in a SG base, a bug that might still be around. Those names could be farming a BP mission for inf and salvage with the xp turned off, and the "business" only has 11 accounts (or just 11 showed up for work, heh).

Speculation, of course.