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Miko's State of the Game (On Life Support)
keikomyst
Posts: 595 Arc User
Hello, heroes, and welcome to this thread where Miko steals a title and pokes fun at the current subtitle of On Alert! Everything else below this is just my opinion, but I feel like typing it all out anyway because I need a break from learning C++ and studying for the CompTIA A+ certification.
OK, so, in the last few months CO has been stagnant. Big surprise, right? We all know this. The developers we have were only able to crank out alerts that took weeks to make, but I'm willing to forgive that because the Lemurian ending was a flawed gem. It was epic in scale, the map work was superb and there were definitely mechanics at play that you generally don't see anywhere else in the game. Vehicles were merely shoehorned in but a good player could pick up a hoverdisk and take to the skies anyway, popping the exocets out of the air with their fists, shurikens and lightning or assault rifle, all of which wound up doing better than vehicles.
Sure, the climax was dumb (so he just turns into a statue at the end? no big Contra-ish explosion that satisfies the craving of 'stuff must blow up, he is big, so he must blow up good'? c'monnnnn) but it was still a solid alert and it actually encouraged waiting up for your team because the mobs could easily take you out if you weren't careful and you're alone. Let's not forget it had some really good rewards, too! A free vehicle (as bad as vehicles are, a 'foot in the door' for players to give vehicles a try is not a bad thing), a cool action figure and a neat costume piece (with all of the material options there!) were great motivators to play the alert again. Not to mention they weren't obnoxiously rare and the alert, as a whole, was fun to play.
So, when this epic event gets taken down, I was like 'UGH', but in the back of my mind I thought 'Hey, they really raised the bar this time, that alert was cool! I hope they do something awesome next!' Then we get an Ask Cryptic! Sure, they dodge a lot of the big questions but we still get a hint as to what's happening next: the Forum Malvanum! 'Hell yeah!' I thought, naive. 'We're going to get to participate in gladitorial combat with aliens and monsters and punch Ironclad's stupid face in and get immersed in Malvan lore!'
Then the rings happened.
I was OK with this at first glance, considering that players requested a vehicle race course to make vehicles more appealing, even though you could just fly through the rings with a normal travel power (thanks for that, by the way, we wouldn't want this dumb part of the event being pay2win) but then I started to realize... I'm a superhero. Flying through rings. I turned my draw distance down and quickly found a screenshot of Superman 64 to compare it to.
Oh my god, I was playing Superman 64.
I was OK with this, though. It was different, it was new, there were neat costume pieces to get! So I worked hard and got them all while testing out a variety of TPs to do the race with. I unlock them all, and go to the tailor to whip up a sweet new outfit composed of them... only to find out that the boots and gloves are stuck as metal and the helmet is stuck as cloth. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. When Cryptic has to rush something to the point where they can't even get the best part of their game right, you gotta wonder what's going on! I understand that this is being looked into now, but seriously!
So I got over it. I still made the costume I wanted to make, it looks fine save for the helmet being cloth (i used some costume trickery to make the eyes look like they're part of the helmet rather than empty eye holes) and I was ready for the next leg of the arc.
So... wait a week, find out we're getting... a new race course! Oh boy! Just what I wanted more rings to fly through! ... and no new rewards attached to it, huh? No... metal version of the helmet? Leather version of the gauntlets? Cloth version of the boots? Guess not... oh well, I'll do these rings for fun---- Oh GOD IT'S A RING SCAVENGER HUNT!
So I only did it once after memorizing where the rings were when a race wasn't going on and I never touched the race again.
So... I wait another few weeks, give Neverwinter a spin (Mindflayer, Niko Easton the level 17 human Rogue or Keristra Valken the level 30something Great Weapon Fighter) and it was fun, sure, but it would have been more fun with superheroes. The melee combat system is wonderful! I sure wish it could be adapted to CO. Boy, the Foundry sure is awesome, but it'd be more awesome with supervillains and banks being robbed and Kaiju roaming the city and... I'll stop there because I'm just depressing myself.
I'm not going to start this one with the word 'So'. Now, I go to check the CO website, see that we're getting the Forum Malvanum alert soon! I wait, I don't bother testing it on PTS because I just didn't feel like it (and I never got my AF for the Lemurian event either, but that's water under the bridge) and I give it a try when it hits Live and ... I'm overwhelmed by how underwhelmed I am, if that's even possible. We fight mooks. We fight Nemcon copy-paste bosses. We fight two high defense jerks with a strict time limit. We fight Firewing, who is pitifully easy... and after all that, the rewards don't even have a decent chance of dropping. Huh. Just 3.9g the past few times I've done it, and I can't summon up the motivation to do it again.
Cryptic needs to get their game face on in regards to CO. These dinky little alerts will only go so far. Power updates are nice but we need new things to use those powers on! Vehicle system is bad, I won't go too in-depth on that because I'm sure you all know how I feel about vehicles, and if you don't you can post about it and yell at me. Finish up this power pass, fix up some engine bugs like certain powers always critting if the first hit ticks (and don't fix it with a kludge like 'ok let's make the power NEVER crit!') and instead of adding alerts, add new areas to MC or some other map that leads to these alerts anyway! Add in a celestial portal to the other realm that takes us to some heavenly Chinese temple to prepare for the assault on Hi-Pan, let us go to Harmon Labs and find some clue for Warlord's attack or something! Hell, a Malvan spaceship to go to the Moon which takes us to the arena locker room/wherever gladiators hang out would be nice!
That's all, really, CO just needs to get its crap together.
tl;dr: miko cares too much about this game and really needs to buy a Hero of the North founder's pack for Neverwinter, the exciting new game by Cryptic
ps. lockboxes are dumb, lockbox keys are dumb, please kill them violently
OK, so, in the last few months CO has been stagnant. Big surprise, right? We all know this. The developers we have were only able to crank out alerts that took weeks to make, but I'm willing to forgive that because the Lemurian ending was a flawed gem. It was epic in scale, the map work was superb and there were definitely mechanics at play that you generally don't see anywhere else in the game. Vehicles were merely shoehorned in but a good player could pick up a hoverdisk and take to the skies anyway, popping the exocets out of the air with their fists, shurikens and lightning or assault rifle, all of which wound up doing better than vehicles.
Sure, the climax was dumb (so he just turns into a statue at the end? no big Contra-ish explosion that satisfies the craving of 'stuff must blow up, he is big, so he must blow up good'? c'monnnnn) but it was still a solid alert and it actually encouraged waiting up for your team because the mobs could easily take you out if you weren't careful and you're alone. Let's not forget it had some really good rewards, too! A free vehicle (as bad as vehicles are, a 'foot in the door' for players to give vehicles a try is not a bad thing), a cool action figure and a neat costume piece (with all of the material options there!) were great motivators to play the alert again. Not to mention they weren't obnoxiously rare and the alert, as a whole, was fun to play.
So, when this epic event gets taken down, I was like 'UGH', but in the back of my mind I thought 'Hey, they really raised the bar this time, that alert was cool! I hope they do something awesome next!' Then we get an Ask Cryptic! Sure, they dodge a lot of the big questions but we still get a hint as to what's happening next: the Forum Malvanum! 'Hell yeah!' I thought, naive. 'We're going to get to participate in gladitorial combat with aliens and monsters and punch Ironclad's stupid face in and get immersed in Malvan lore!'
Then the rings happened.
I was OK with this at first glance, considering that players requested a vehicle race course to make vehicles more appealing, even though you could just fly through the rings with a normal travel power (thanks for that, by the way, we wouldn't want this dumb part of the event being pay2win) but then I started to realize... I'm a superhero. Flying through rings. I turned my draw distance down and quickly found a screenshot of Superman 64 to compare it to.
Oh my god, I was playing Superman 64.
I was OK with this, though. It was different, it was new, there were neat costume pieces to get! So I worked hard and got them all while testing out a variety of TPs to do the race with. I unlock them all, and go to the tailor to whip up a sweet new outfit composed of them... only to find out that the boots and gloves are stuck as metal and the helmet is stuck as cloth. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. When Cryptic has to rush something to the point where they can't even get the best part of their game right, you gotta wonder what's going on! I understand that this is being looked into now, but seriously!
So I got over it. I still made the costume I wanted to make, it looks fine save for the helmet being cloth (i used some costume trickery to make the eyes look like they're part of the helmet rather than empty eye holes) and I was ready for the next leg of the arc.
So... wait a week, find out we're getting... a new race course! Oh boy! Just what I wanted more rings to fly through! ... and no new rewards attached to it, huh? No... metal version of the helmet? Leather version of the gauntlets? Cloth version of the boots? Guess not... oh well, I'll do these rings for fun---- Oh GOD IT'S A RING SCAVENGER HUNT!
So I only did it once after memorizing where the rings were when a race wasn't going on and I never touched the race again.
So... I wait another few weeks, give Neverwinter a spin (Mindflayer, Niko Easton the level 17 human Rogue or Keristra Valken the level 30something Great Weapon Fighter) and it was fun, sure, but it would have been more fun with superheroes. The melee combat system is wonderful! I sure wish it could be adapted to CO. Boy, the Foundry sure is awesome, but it'd be more awesome with supervillains and banks being robbed and Kaiju roaming the city and... I'll stop there because I'm just depressing myself.
I'm not going to start this one with the word 'So'. Now, I go to check the CO website, see that we're getting the Forum Malvanum alert soon! I wait, I don't bother testing it on PTS because I just didn't feel like it (and I never got my AF for the Lemurian event either, but that's water under the bridge) and I give it a try when it hits Live and ... I'm overwhelmed by how underwhelmed I am, if that's even possible. We fight mooks. We fight Nemcon copy-paste bosses. We fight two high defense jerks with a strict time limit. We fight Firewing, who is pitifully easy... and after all that, the rewards don't even have a decent chance of dropping. Huh. Just 3.9g the past few times I've done it, and I can't summon up the motivation to do it again.
Cryptic needs to get their game face on in regards to CO. These dinky little alerts will only go so far. Power updates are nice but we need new things to use those powers on! Vehicle system is bad, I won't go too in-depth on that because I'm sure you all know how I feel about vehicles, and if you don't you can post about it and yell at me. Finish up this power pass, fix up some engine bugs like certain powers always critting if the first hit ticks (and don't fix it with a kludge like 'ok let's make the power NEVER crit!') and instead of adding alerts, add new areas to MC or some other map that leads to these alerts anyway! Add in a celestial portal to the other realm that takes us to some heavenly Chinese temple to prepare for the assault on Hi-Pan, let us go to Harmon Labs and find some clue for Warlord's attack or something! Hell, a Malvan spaceship to go to the Moon which takes us to the arena locker room/wherever gladiators hang out would be nice!
That's all, really, CO just needs to get its crap together.
tl;dr: miko cares too much about this game and really needs to buy a Hero of the North founder's pack for Neverwinter, the exciting new game by Cryptic
ps. lockboxes are dumb, lockbox keys are dumb, please kill them violently
Post edited by keikomyst on
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