rian_frostdrake

my first and second character were my two mains who i still play, rian frosdrake and seraph blue. owing to a curious bug, i had to re-roll rian 6 days after making him due to a strange log in bug (this was 7 years ago) which is why he has different horns than originally planned. he is a ma scrapper, i tend to like to play martial artists in any game i play, and have pointedly not played games that lack a martial artist class, no matter how popular the game is. its my thing. ma wasn't that great back in the day, but that just meant i got to see rian get stronger and stronger thanks to course corrections by the devs.

seraph is an empathy/lit character. not gonna lie, emp is slow going solo, luckily my friends play and my work schedule was a lot more agreeable back then, don't think i could run an emp up these days. would have loved to switch her to an archery secondary rather than lightning one, but i hate re-rolling. her concept is as a traditional christian interpretation of an angel, but back in the days we didn't have real wings pre-issue 8, so i had to cheat with organic shoulders, and later the insect cape. other characters i started with i have tried to bring back in some form or another when new powersets out. cuddle bug, originally a spines scrapper i got rid of because its an ugly set, im thinking he might be back with a time controller. sea anemone a mermaid who also was a spine scrapper) was reborn as vendace, a kin melee fighter, because i just loved the character.

i also still have the same villain as my main and a secondary as i did in cov beta, violet tendencies, a plant thorn dom and dire worg, a ss brute, his secondary changed due to energy aura being a bit lacking at beta-launch. and yes, i know thorns is basically spines, but on her, it clicked.

defs are one of my favorite ats anyhow, and most of mine werent affected by this, but my one sonic/cold glesengel is going to benefit from this buff and i'm going to enjoy playing her a lot more now.

everything really, outside of pvp which i dislike and base designing, which i dont have the talent/patience for. but other than that, some nights its tips, others its classic hero startup, other times its alt heroic startup (striga, hollows, cro) papers are fun and i love mayhems and safeguards. I like trials because they are fast, have lots of enemies to stomp, and with the large groups i get in on more combinations of team chemistry. even a cop when i can find one, though my current work schedule conflicts with my home server's main time for it. but im pretty much Go with the flow. everything is fun in its own right and i play without pressure to grind this that or the next thing. now i dont make any kind of crazy progress, If i want to "achieve" i'll go lift weights , i play to have fun and relax.

heck, some nights i just craft and market and tell horrible, horrible puns on the server channel. amazed they haven't banned me for them yet.

i enjoy it as well. it carries the heroic them very well, not only because of the arbieters, the supposedly untouchable judges of recluse's realm, but then they throw three big bads at you, and in front of everyone you just keep stomping them into the ground. its like with each one you deflate recluse's bravado that much more. basically, its your "big damn hero" moment.

Thus far i have only ran it with my rad/rad/energy, i was concerned that she isnt exactly a soloing machine, but since they come in single file, some radiation softened them up nice and agreeably. cant wait to obliterate it with rian.

but yeah, as ego boosts go, its basically going into your enemies house and humiliating him, and the best part is watching the crowd cheering you (my only complaint, they stay silent, one suggestion i have is have them taunt you initially, then after each of the 3 that you stomp, they get conflicted and eventually are cheering you, that's the only set piece that would make it more epic.)

have you read any threads about trapdoor? here's the deal. i want a solo/small team path eventually, but i also understand that balancing the content and rewards to not disincentivise one play style or the other is going to take a great deal more work than you give it credit for. if its like paper missions/moralities, then they will just find the group they are strong against, ghost what they can and blow through the system like people currently do in those situations. you know all those threads where people seemingly have to make their own thread rather than joining in an existing one about the incarnate system being grindy? making them intermittent drops during specified regular content or a very small number of new incarnate arcs wont fix that(which realistically, is what they will be able to make if they switch gears suddenly from what they are doing now, revamping low level content, more i-trials for the people that have waited several YEARS for a endgame progression system AND giving a lore appropriate zone for magic users in praetoria...also things people have asked for). it will still be grindy and still annoy a vocal subsection of the forums.

and as for the ending in an av thing. I'm going to assume that was a joke, as people were upset about trapdoor and the dual eb fight , a high level av would be an even more unrealistic goal for a good majority of the players without their incarnate powers and would provide no real solution.

you know moo, this could not have been in one of the other threads already on this topic? you are just too special to contain this particular comment to one of the several other threads already discussing this?

i like the masks as well, hopefully they are something we see eventually. one thing i like about that pic is that most of the other parts include player accessable costume parts, and the masks themselves appear to be base items with other parts (the halo-ish thing and the wing) added on as details. now, that doesnt actually guarantee anything, but in line with the statement that they were trying to make new npc groups with player costumes in mind, and given the high demand for "carnie" parts in the one all things art thread, it at least suggests that these were designed with quick portability to players as a consideration. hope springs eternal and all that. they did mention the two costume sets we were getting in i21 were the idf set and that tights set, but perhaps we have seen a vip perk, or something on which to spend our stipend?

billz, here is the thing. are you really, based on your experience here, completely convinced that there will be no solo or small group option to earn them later after actually filling out the trials options a bit more? Is that a common part of the behavior of the developers here? As i see it, right now we are getting trials, which we have not had at all, and a very stitched together solo path that is useless for most players. now, given the realities of how big the team is, and even how long quality content takes to come out even from the largest of the mmo houses out there, does it really strike you that there will never be a other option simply because they dont have one now? I mean, how long did it take for them to allow use to earn shards while exemplared? that was a qol issue the developers listened to, did they not say in the ustream chats that there will likely be a path but its further off? it seems blatantly obvious that a path is coming, but right now there is a mechanic they are adding that is new and they want to fill it out first.

this really just seems like a intensely dramatic reaction by people who have seen this go a few times now. i waited 16 issues for power customization, and still am waiting for some decent martial arts animations, patience really is needed.

hmm, this actually tells me something nice, they are using whole dollar value amounts for at least some of the pricing. one thing that annoys me elsewhere is the idea that points always leave change. i cant put 5 bucks down, get a 400 point item (in this case a story arc) and not have some remnant sitting there.

I realize this is done to nudge people to spend further, and we still don't know the prices of clothing sets , animations or the like. but honestly paragon, im not a hard sell, make quality stuff and ill buy it, dont try to do the point offsets to try to nudge me, as it has lead to me buying less on other gaming services because i hate having loose ends. please keep em even.

love it.

in my experience, yes, it removes the item from options.

spiffy, need 4 more emps and ill have the full set of the shiny armor.

In regard to incarnate areas.i love it. and would leave the forums for a month to give them time to clear the radioactive fallout from the reaction of specific vocal members.

so..scrappers then?

last time i was asked that i found out the area had a new vice cop.

for me, costumes are the obvious, anything cosmetic, i get a little concerned at actual game balance affecting ideas like powers or specific buffs. those create a imbalance of players, but cosmetic things work for me.