Whew. You turn your back on the game for a few months, and everything goes all crazy!
After having been away (Real Life Sucks) from CO and CoX for a while, I have a few things to say, separately, about coming back. But, in the meantime, some thoughts on the CO news.
I won’t go into a lot of details on the Kitchen Sink patch (except to note the patches to deal with the patch that immediately followed). I think it’s cool that they’re trying to incorporate as many concerns and problems as they can.
That all said … looking at the “coming attractions” ….
“New Costume Sets in the C-Store” – Oh, boy. As in, so seriously not interested. I’m actually pretty happy with the costumes I have on the toons I have, and since I have no more slots available (mutter), there’s no big driver for me to change costumes. (Which, honestly speaking, I don’t do in CoX that much any more, either; I now have a Vet Award that gives me 50% off all Tailor Sessions, and most of my toons have free Tailor Tokens in the double digits.)
“I See a Blood Moon a Risin’” – Well, if we can have Rikti Invasions at random intervals, I guess we can have Werewolf Invasions every lunar month. Meh.
“This One Goes to Eleven” – Okay, this one looks good.
We’ll be introducing difficulty levels that players can set both for individual heroes and for their team. With 1 lower and 2 higher levels of difficulty to select from, players can create a challenge that fits their play style and ability.
Excellent. Soloists will be able to dial back difficulty levels. That will make life a lot easier.
“Flashing Back” – I don’t have any characters so far along that I feel the need to flash back with them. It does make me worry that so many people do that this feature is considered worthwhile.
“Vibora Bay Watch” – Hmmmm. Okay, on the plus side, more content. On the minus side, is the game so unbalanced that we need to focus on Lvl 37-40 content already?
Evidently there are indications in some references to this expansion pack that it’s going to be a paid content item, which has some portion of the CO community up in arms. It’s certainly a different model than CoX (which has had one paid upgrade pack, with another coming soon, both of which were not just new zones), but we knew CO was designed differently from the start. It will be interesting to see this play out. I certainly don’t feel any compelling need to acquire it any time soon.
Especially for level 37-40. Yeesh. Give me a 12-20 zone, or a 20-30 zone, and I think you’d hit a lot more customers. Self included.
Yeppers, it was fun to see the both of you back on line again on CO, and I am still amused that CO and STO can talk to each other.
As to CO:
I would love one more zone for each of the decade levels, or just more things to do, as well as better point to where to go to next in a zone. That last bit was part of my major annoyance, nothing more annoning that to stumble upon quest givers several levels after they would have been helpful ( ~shakes fist at Are 51 and the Prison in the Desert~ ).
I think it’s actually rather clever of Cryptic to tie the clients and chat systems together.
Yes, one of the things about CO is that your character moves along …
a. Like he’s strapped to a railroad car, with noplace to go but along those rails.
b. Until he’s dumped in the middle of nowhere with either eleven zillion choices or none at all (visible) to progress (see: Lvl 13).
I find myself liking CoX’s restrictions on how many mishes you can carry and the minimum amount of “I spent all day over on the West Side because I had two dozen hunt missions over there and it takes so long to get back to the Renn Center to drop off swag and level and all that” kind of stuff. Though I was muttering last night playing CoV and being shuttled from one island to the next … “I’ll help you on behalf of my cohort on St Martial who sent you here, but you must go over to Nerva first and do something for me …”