test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
New Adventure Zone: The Great Outdoors
ddesjardins
Member Posts: 3,056 Media Corps
The devs have really delivered something amazing this time. I am very impressed.
There is a hidden, backdoor Adventure Zone called The Great Outdoors (TGO), or 'Outside' for those of us familiar with it. No expense was spared in its development. Depending on your country of origin, different seasons and weather patterns are visible, with accurate day and night cycles.
While no new rep system comes along with TGO, it's populated with a variety of characters I have not seen in years. The characters and mission options seem unlimited and despite graphically intensive constructs (including odor generators), my graphics cards have never been running cooler.
To access TGO, the developers have hidden an alternative access method. For most of us it was triggered during or shortly after the login process. Many players were automatically sent there, while other used the traditional 'dashboard of holding' trick while searching for missing consumables.
For the commerce inclined, the WTF search function on the Exchange provides another backdoor if you look long enough through the unusual results.
Clearly all of Cryptics error checking and QA processes were focused on the TGO project, and it shows.
I'm working on a 45th Level Project Manager toon, piloting a BMW 320i. It lacks in forward and rear weapons slots, but it fun to pilot.
Mt Two Bits...
Admiral Thrax
There is a hidden, backdoor Adventure Zone called The Great Outdoors (TGO), or 'Outside' for those of us familiar with it. No expense was spared in its development. Depending on your country of origin, different seasons and weather patterns are visible, with accurate day and night cycles.
While no new rep system comes along with TGO, it's populated with a variety of characters I have not seen in years. The characters and mission options seem unlimited and despite graphically intensive constructs (including odor generators), my graphics cards have never been running cooler.
To access TGO, the developers have hidden an alternative access method. For most of us it was triggered during or shortly after the login process. Many players were automatically sent there, while other used the traditional 'dashboard of holding' trick while searching for missing consumables.
For the commerce inclined, the WTF search function on the Exchange provides another backdoor if you look long enough through the unusual results.
Clearly all of Cryptics error checking and QA processes were focused on the TGO project, and it shows.
I'm working on a 45th Level Project Manager toon, piloting a BMW 320i. It lacks in forward and rear weapons slots, but it fun to pilot.
Mt Two Bits...
Admiral Thrax
Post edited by ddesjardins on
0
Comments
I mean, I obviously get the 'joke', but I don't get why you posted it...
You didn't also see the ocean-front beach houses in Arizona they had too? :P
I've noticed one thing about this expansion that I don't think people have gotten yet. The story line changes by the day. I played through it immediately after the servers came online and the story line was basically telling me "we have to to take control of this and that area!"... When I replayed it with my wife the next day, the story changed to "we have to keep the Voth pushed out", and now that I replayed yesterday it seems the story is changed yet again. I'm not sure if this was intended but if it was, this is a very dynamic story-line that needs some appreciation.
Secondly, this expansion has not fully opened for us yet because of Cryptic's artificial timesyncs (that I absolutely loathe), so I'm sure (by seeing a zone I can't yet access) there is more content that we're just yet privy to and I can only imagine that it will unlock after more progression in the story.
Most MMO's out there use a different type of time sync that Cryptic would do well to follow and that is the wait-time for random loot drops that are required to complete a quest. This would not only get rid of the glaring "you can't go any further because we say so" stigma, but would give players a greater sense of achievement for sticking it out while camping an area for this loot they need.
Also, I think stories and substories should have been built more inside the sphere than outside -- most of the story could have been told just as well either way and that is concerning. I do wish that the story would have taken you more on a tour of the sphere than a simple cut-screen showing you the places.
Lastly, I have to say that I do desire the direction they are heading. They're not there yet, but considering where they were, they exceeded my expectations in really opening the game up as a MMO and not a team-dungeon multiplayer game with social persistent zones. This also opens other doors as well such as open raids (which they've already done). My only wish in this would be that they would allow more than 20 people in per zone, and perhaps in S9, they make the zones bigger both in size and in how many players can exist per instance. I also hope, that with this new persistent space zones that they will allow captains to fill their group with their un-used bridge officers as captains of old ships they've bought and have docked.
The most mature way to deal with not getting what you want is to make sure no one else is happy until you get your way.
What a ripoff... if I wanted to work I'd get a job.
"I guess she's bald on both ends now."...said the racoon...