Got in a little more gameplay last night on the VIP nights for COH:Freedom. More early impressions …
- Atlas Park sure is prettified.
- The initial mission arcs in Atlas are also nicely crafted (even tying into the Galaxy events, as should be).
- There are a lot of open zone/instance hunt missions (“Hunt 10 Skulls [in this area where they will regen moderately quickly]”). It has a different feel (not necessarily good) from the traditional hunts for some reason, perhaps because so many others were hunting there, too — largely because the proposed area to hunt is now highlighted on the maps.
- I do like the giant arrow coins over the heads of the contacts, rather than just a colored circle at their feet. Less realistic, sure, but it does make them easier to see.
- There are several early adventures where you end up split up as individuals on a team (single-person instances, run in parallel). Which is great, but at present buggy — every time, the mission didn’t give credit to the non-leader on the team, and we had to rerun it.
- In addition to an Icon in Atlas, Ms. Liberty also lets you buy costume tweaks. It looks like there are 5-6 slots you get through the normal means, and then another 5-6 you can buy (if you are really into costume changes). This is actually a nice feature, to allow this at such a low level, since what looked good in the costume maker doesn’t necessarily look good once you’re running around staring at the toon’s butt the whole time.
- It’s still possible to make a lot of money very quickly at Wentworths. If one is so inclined.
Travel Powers:
Okay, my life is much easier because of two costume packs I already had purchased — Steampunk has a jet pack, and Animal pack has the most excellent Beast Run. Those become available at lvl 4 — which is the point that the Power Pools become available.
All the Travel Pools now have five powers. The first 3 come up at lvl 4, which removes that problem, the 3rd of them being the traditional travel powers. However, there is now a 5th Travel Pool power that comes available at 14 (if you’ve chosen two in the pool already):
- Afterburner (Flight): Increases your fly speed and makes you much more difficult to hit for a time. However, you can only use self-directed powers while it’s running. This should be cool.
- Spring Attack (Jump): Heavy damage attack where you land in the middle of a crowd, knocking them down (“boom” for jumpers). Looking forward to this, too.
- Burnout (Speed): In exchange for a big Endurance hit, you recharge all of your powers. Not quite as usable as the others, but I can think of a few situations.
- Long Range Teleport (Teleport): Increases TP range, including across zones.
Interestingly, these extra Travel powers counteract the recent trend, where (a) you could get the real Travel power without any prerequisites (besides level) and (b) the Fitness pool became automatic. Suddenly, I’m eyeing what I’m going to want to take in the way of powers, and when, and realizing I’ll have to compromise.
Good stuff so far. A very nice issue.