Holiday Goodness

[Xanthippe]

Neato. 

Log in if you have an account and see what's up.

I love holiday stuff that game companies do.  I don't know why, I just do.  It makes me feel appreciated as a customer, and it's fun to boot.

[Nebu]

I actually bought and started playing CoV this past week.  Without ruining the secret,  I have to say that I loved the holiday surprise. 

I'm on Pinnacle btw.

[ClydeJr]

New costume options like a Santa Hat. Not sure if they're in yet


The jetpack is a holiday colored Longbow Eagle jetpack.


Presents!


http://rpg.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=10018

[Llava]

As a note, the only thing that isn't already available in the costume generator in the above picture is the hat.

Some people were asking in broadcast "Oh, I can't wait until we get the costume swirlies!"  You have them.  They've been there since beta.

[Xanthippe]

Received this email today:

A New Toy!
The holidays have come to Paragon City™ and the Rogue Isles™! Thanks to the kindness of Miss Liberty™ and the greed of Black Scorpion™, heroes and villains alike are zipping around with their brand new, top of the line jet packs.

The first gifts have arrived but that was only the beginning!

Happy Holidays?
As the sounds of joyful holiday celebrations in Paragon City reach the shores of the Rogue Isles, Lord Recluse™ grows uneasy. Fearing that his destined ones will be lured away by the promise of a jolly holiday season, he has set Operation Scrooge into action. At his bidding, villains will soon begin to creep towards the peaceful streets of Paragon City, bent on making sure that no one has anything to celebrate.

Whiff of this nefarious scheme has reached Miss Liberty and she has organized a counter strike. No one will destroy her plans and so she sets Operation Holiday Cheer in motion.

Heroes and villains prepare to enter enemy territory! Beginning December 15th, Operation Scrooge and Operation Holiday Cheer will battle for control of the holidays.

PresentGamester's Holiday Festival of Fun
As these operations are set into motion, a new figure watches from the shadows. Acting outside any simple definition of “hero” or “villain”, a mysterious figure known only as Gamester has entered the scene. Delighted by the growing holiday tension, he is ready to intervene and announce his presence in a shocking way!

No simple trickster, Gamester is irrationally fond of dangerous pranks and knavish shenanigans. Seeking fun in his own twisted mental world of games and puzzles, he has no concern for the outcome, searching only for the next game to play.The bigger the risk, the more thrilling the challenge.

Inspired by the holiday scheming of Miss Liberty and Lord Recluse, Gamester has hatched his grandest game yet and now he plots to release it upon both cities. Gamester’s Holiday Festival of Fun is a game of chance that allows everyone to play to see what fate holds in store.

With gleeful anticipation, Gamester plans to unleash his Holiday Festival of Fun across Paragon and the Isles on December 19th!

Come and see what fortune might be yours before the games end on January 2nd!

Having trouble logging in? Email support@plaync.com and they’ll be happy to assist!

What does this mean?  Intriguing....

[shiznitz]

Got this too.  The desire to re-sub is nil. I level faster in EQ2 now at 45 than my CoH character did at 24 when I quit last year. How sick is that?

[Nebu]

Got this too.  The desire to re-sub is nil. I level faster in EQ2 now at 45 than my CoH character did at 24 when I quit last year. How sick is that?

I resubbed recently to look at CoV and the grind is the first thing I noticed as well.  I decided to blow it off for the most part as there really is no reason to rush to the endgame anyway.  I have to admit that the other night I logged in to face a warehouse full of mobs and decided that I'd rather log out than grind another uninspired mission.  After level 20 it just starts taking a while between getting new toys/abilities to mess with. 

CoV/CoH is a great PvE game to play with a bunch of friends for a couple of hours maybe 1 or 2 nights a week.  It's a superficial game with great character customization and some outstanding use of the z-axis.  As much as I want to love this game, I just find myself boring of it quickly.  I'm not even sure I know why.  Lately it has become AIM with a 3-D shooter attached.  I guess that's fine on one level, but I really find myself wanting more.  I guess I need to lower my expectations if I want to keep playing MMOG's.

[Signe]

I go back and forth on CoH/V, too.  Right now I'm in off mode.  I go back because the combat is such fun but after a few weeks or so, I wander off again.  Maybe this is just the way I game now?  WoW couldn't keep my interest for more than a few months, either.  I've not felt an urge to go back to WoW though, at least not yet.  I do get a twinge every now and then for EQ2.  I didn't play very long and would like to fiddle with it a bit more, but the populations in low levels is almost non-existant, it seems.

[Nebu]

I lasted 2 weeks in WoW and about 3 weeks in EQ2.  I'm starting to think we should compare psych evaluations. 

I even dabbled in ATitD some last night... I do need help.

[Signe]

I lasted 2 weeks in WoW and about 3 weeks in EQ2.  I'm starting to think we should compare psych evaluations. 

I even dabbled in ATitD some last night... I do need help.

We're just getting old, maybe.  I know my short term memory is getting ver

[Llava]

Looking forward to this event.  Not as much as I'm looking forward to the return of the 5th Column, whenever that happens, but still.

[Typhon]

I go back because the combat is such fun but after a few weeks or so, I wander off again.  Maybe this is just the way I game now?

I think that after you go through one or two MMOs where you really get into it, you're done.  You've experienced the "high end", you've done the time and you can see that the next game's high end is no different and you just move on.  You are unwilling to lash yourself to the next great white game that comes along because you know what the bottom of that ocean looks like (although you still beckon to your friends).

I'd classify those people as the "play to play" type of gamer (which I think is the larger set of players) or "us".

Another set of gamers are those that "play for prestige" or "fucking nuts".  They really don't care about the gameplay, they just want the high end to be hard to achieve so they can look back at the wreck their real lives have become with a sense of accomplishment.  Oh wait, I didn't mean that.  They want to look back at all the things they have done with their characters with a sense of accomplishment.  I'd also call that type of player, "what I used to be".

Which is what makes CoH/V good right now.  I can get in and out very quickly and have fun.  If I focus more on that, and getting together with friends, I can ignore that all the battles are very similar.  I hope they figure out a way to add more fun bits, instead of long tedious ordeals a la Trials of Atlantis.

[Glazius]

Got this too.  The desire to re-sub is nil. I level faster in EQ2 now at 45 than my CoH character did at 24 when I quit last year. How sick is that?

I resubbed recently to look at CoV and the grind is the first thing I noticed as well.  I decided to blow it off for the most part as there really is no reason to rush to the endgame anyway.  I have to admit that the other night I logged in to face a warehouse full of mobs and decided that I'd rather log out than grind another uninspired mission.  After level 20 it just starts taking a while between getting new toys/abilities to mess with. 

CoV/CoH is a great PvE game to play with a bunch of friends for a couple of hours maybe 1 or 2 nights a week.  It's a superficial game with great character customization and some outstanding use of the z-axis.  As much as I want to love this game, I just find myself boring of it quickly.  I'm not even sure I know why.  Lately it has become AIM with a 3-D shooter attached.  I guess that's fine on one level, but I really find myself wanting more.  I guess I need to lower my expectations if I want to keep playing MMOG's.

Well, CoX is easy to walk away from. You don't have to keep up with your friends. You don't have to keep up with the evolving server economy, either. It's not very sticky, and I'm pretty sure that's by design.

Shameful secret: I spent about an hour last night laying out one corner of O.C.E.L.O.T.'s evil lair. We finally got the scratch to have functional workbenches, and the cost of decorations compared to the cost of functional bits is stupidly low. So I kitted it out with a wraparound counter with lab gear and monitors and put an array of supply cabinets on the walls. It was weirdly satisfying.

Also weirdly satisfying was going to town on an office building full of Wyvern with my brute. Stone/stone, and I have the mallets and Fault slotted with DO knockback, which means they can actually ragdoll-toss +1s around. Wyvern minions do that little snap shot thing as their range attack, and quick weak attacks = I HAVE FURY. The 'boss room' was three-tiered, with negotiations happening on the top floor that I needed to smash into, so I stoked my fire cleaning out the bottom floors, then ran up to the top floor right into the middle of things. Fault-stomp, and the Wyvern and Longbow bosses go flying in opposite directions - Wyvern over the balcony edge and down to the floor, Longbow against the wall. By the time the Wyvern boss picks himself up and re-establishes a line of sight to shoot explosive arrows at me, I've already smacked down the Longbow leader.

The only time I worry about getting to the next level is when I've got a few pixels left on the last bar after I finish off a mission. And while in some senses I'm aware I'm just going through warehouse after warehouse of mobs, I'm too caught up in the combat to care. Positioning matters, line-of-sight matters, both are controllable parts of every combat that can be affected by something as simple as a stack of crates to hide behind, and just about every powerset has something to take advantage of one or the other.

But if you don't have fun with the combat, you'll never really have fun with CoX.

--GF

[kaid]

The one thing I never understood in coh/cov is why they bother having such a steep grind after 20. I mean hell most people I know make a bazillion alts to play with. Even if people got to 50 fast its not like its going to hurt their subs their players all like trying new hero concepts constantly anyway. Hell their end game is to start over at level 1 with a new archtype.

It is faster now than before but still I never quite understood it.

As for eq2 that game is not grindy at all xp wise. I am still dinging about as fast in the 40 range as I did in the 20 range.


kaid

[Glazius]

Sigh.

Well, I, for one, am officially fed up with paying for beta. So the devs have a system in the pipeline that'll include clickable glowies as parts of a normal overworld spawn. They might make something interesting out of it, one day, but that's no excuse to just dump it on the playerbase now. I'm supposed to believe some insane trickster scattered presents around the city?

And it gets worse. They're _reusing_ the monsters from _last year's_ winter event. Apparently this Gamester, whoever he is, wanted us to meet some 'old winter friends'. They didn't even bring back the giant city-dwarfing Winter Lords, just the little snow henchmen. How am I supposed to get my alts up to 20 in 4 hours now?

I mean, we're fighting exactly the same monsters as last year, getting exactily the same rewards (oops my bad you also get a PET SNOWMAN for 5 FREAKING MINUTES, like that's anything special), and we're supposed to be impressed that they're trotting out this random-glowie code?

--GF

Snowmen ragdoll really interestingly. If you hit 'em right you can lose the facial features inside the crumpled heap so it looks like you've just got a big kump of snow.

[Typhon]

Well I have to say I liked halloween from last year better.  It gave the feeling of tick or treating, had amusing rewards, and badges that weren't soul crushing to obtain.  Overall I was just more entertain and I actually grouped more with strangers for that event that at any other time in CoH/CoV.  It's still the high water mark for me.

This year's event, on the other hand, seem to generate more competition then cooperation, and didn't really seem to fit with the spirit of the season (note: I'm not arguing that presents aren't within the theme of the season, I'm arguing that fighting over presents isn't really within the spirit of the season).  Getting another costume option was nice.  Adding the ability for outdoor clickies is nice.

Maybe a spring equinox event (cause not everyone cares about the easter bunny) where we hunt for items (glowies) would be more in the spirit of that season.  Although I'm more a fan of events that encourage without enforcing grouping (like the halloween event).

[Llava]

Hm.  I haven't really seen people fighting over the presents, and I play on Virtue which is pretty high population.

I think it's a decent event. Fun, amusing for a bit. Not world altering, though, which is Statesman's stated goal with events- for those who Just Want To Keep Playing.

Halloween was definitely the best one so far, though.