I quite like the mix of missions with quests, partly because I don't have a lot of time to play MxO these days so having content tied up in one package seems to work for me.
Best aspect of this update? RSI masks. I've had a lot of fun farming these, honestly. I've gotten re-aquainted with a lot of the neighborhoods and gangs, especially gang bosses that don't drop any keys so you normally wouldn't have any reason to seek them out (on the lower end and the higher end of the spectrum. Party Boy Floyd, Jack the Hack, Lt. Morales and Capt. Falco ftw! Also, its a cool factor in PvP, since in the heat of a battle you cant immediately gage your opponents gear and guess at his or her loadout with a mask on.
I am also a big fan of the new Neighborhood Contact mission. Not so much for the gloves but for the lowbie content and the immersion factor. I really like the foreshadowing of Sister Margaret, hope she's next!
As far as the new abandonment of dynamic storyline, I'm not a big fan at all, but that's for another discussion!
Now if they would just make it so the neighborhood contact missions were replayable, somehow. It's one of the few examples of content in the game that can't be replayed easily. Some people haven't done some of those missions for years now.
Othinn1 wrote:
Totals.
Lots of good points here, too many to quote em all, so il just add my two sense.
First:The cinematic was pretty cool. Liked the style, and the bit of extra story along multiple fronts.
Second:I lked the new quests, and I like that I can get items out of them. Seriously, 8 new items total was way more than I expected. Yes some of them weren't amazing (waaaa.. my org got pooped on) but come on... if you take the long view this approach will create a LOT more clothing options down the line for all of us.
However....
I agree with the notion of timing the release of the new quest content. Spacing it out brings people back to the game.
And I DIDN'T like having to farm, to get stuff, to get the next mission. In other words, If i didn't get the pen the first time, I have to run the mish over again just to get the second mish. And I had to run the second mish like 7 times before i actually got drops of all four bits i needed to make the trade, to get the item, to get the next mish. I found that a little frustrating. Im fine with farming to trade for items. Farming just to get to the next mish was a nusiance, and I hope next time that gets dropped.
Lastly: I'll echo many others in saying I am missing the LE's. The fact that SOME LE's were just filler doesn't mean that they should be sent to the scrap heap. If LE's needed to be scaled back, I'd have been fine with them being every other day, or even every three days, rather than daily.
Even though I attended very few due to my schedule, the LE's made me feel a part of the game. MxO is more than a game, its an extension of the Matrix World, which is a pretty cool world indeed. Logging in to the forums and seeing yerself in the screenshots and chatbox... it was like being a bit-player in the movies. Even if I couldn't attend, I would often see people from my Faction at them, and after just a year, I know by acquaitance nearly EVERYONE whos there. I LIKED skimming through the LE posts and trying to keep up on the story.
Now I feel sidelined, and like everyone I know here has been sidelined. If the loss of REGULAR LE's is an exchange for getting a cinematic, then, I'm sorry Rare, we can do without a cinematic.
HOWEVER, if the exchange for the LE's is that yer up in yer cubby cranking on our first expansion pack, then I'm all for it.
At this point, I just wish I knew where we all stand. I even feel like this is all a nice spin on us losing Rare, at least as a FULL-TIME dev. I hope this is not so...
psilody wrote:
Lastly: I'll echo many others in saying I am missing the LE's. The fact that SOME LE's were just filler doesn't mean that they should be sent to the scrap heap. If LE's needed to be scaled back, I'd have been fine with them being every other day, or even every three days, rather than daily.Even though I attended very few due to my schedule, the LE's made me feel a part of the game. MxO is more than a game, its an extension of the Matrix World, which is a pretty cool world indeed. Logging in to the forums and seeing yerself in the screenshots and chatbox... it was like being a bit-player in the movies. Even if I couldn't attend, I would often see people from my Faction at them, and after just a year, I know by acquaitance nearly EVERYONE whos there. I LIKED skimming through the LE posts and trying to keep up on the story.
Very good post, Psilody, and I agree with pretty much all of it.
My issues (which, yes, I've stated before but haven't actually changed since the first details of this update were released) remain based around the following two points:
1.) Doors being closed to new players. I know we don't get many of them these days, but the changes do nothing to attract new players or make the new player experience better. In fact, by virtually locking the new content away from new players, this update actually makes the game less appealing. The changes include a lot of make work content for vets (having to level their old rep based alts to get the new missions, making multi server alts more important, etc.), much of which the vets aren't happy withto begin with, but nothing positive for the new or low level player. I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again, but if you come into the game today you either have to burn your way to level 30 and skim over all of the content you out level along the way or you take your time but are left doing stuff and half experiencing story from years ago. As a low level player in the old system you could get crits fairly early on, not to mention being part of LEs, interacting with your liaison and following along/responding to LE posts here on DN1.
2.) Static storyline. We have rarely experienced a storyline we could actually impact and alter the direction of, but at least the story we had was always kept moving forward. Via the combination of cinematics, weekly critical missions, daily live events, live event report/recap posts, liaison org interaction, etc. the story was kept moving forward and the story was always the focus. If players wanted, they could get as deep into the story as they chose. Now we have one storyline update, with included cinematic, every 6 weeks. That's it. Sure the org meetings may have a taste of storyline, but with no new missions, LEs, etc. it will be little more than a drop in the ocean. There is pretty much nothing to do for 6 weeks once a player has done the 2 hours worth of "critical quest content" and the week or two of farming if they want all the items. Even if we don't get weekly crit style time released content and/or full on daily LEs back, we need something to keep the storyline from being static for 6 weeks at a time. This new way of doing things also drastically reduces the content that can be packed into 6 weeks of storyline time. If you are setting 6 weeks of story to be crammed into, at most, 2 hours of content, you are going to lose a lot of story detail and nuance (or you're going to drag things out forever over multiple 6 week spans).
Also, I have some question as to the current critical quest system going into the future. If all orgs collect basically the same trade in items and are thus going to be subject to the same spawns at basically the same times, how different can the critical quests really be other than the text in between? Sure, the old crits were rarely mindblowing in their differences between orgs but just by playing through the arcs one can quickly see that the missions were actually quite different.
I can understand wanting to change the format of the crits, but having all the content at the beginning of each update with the combination of the cinematic and the quest leads to a lack of anticipation there used to be present for the crit the following week. Surely there must be a way to split the content, yet maintain the ablility for each org to have access to the storyline, as what Rarebit indicated was one reason for this change to begin with.
The lack of live events is the change which concerns me the most. True, some had no new storyline content, per say, and perhaps the game can do without them, but, on the other hand, it is quite obvious that the current state of affairs is unacceptable to those that have stuck by MXO through all these years.. For most of us, anyway, the Matrix storyline is what attracted us to this game to begin with, along with the chance to interact with the characters, and truly feel that we were indeed part of the story itself. Unfortunately, the planned org meetings are not enough to make up for the feeling of actual participation in the storyline unfolding that had gone with prior live events.
I think most of us agree that MXO has needed change to a certain extent for some time, but I do believe that the time has already come for a reassessment of the changes as they presently stand, and that consideration for the possible implementation of some of what has been discussed in this thread is acknowledged and acted upon.
Has anyone else noticed Logic Bomb 2 acting oddly since the change?
Cadsuane wrote:
I have not. What's it doing?
I have noticed something odd with Logic Bomb 2, yes.
In interlock, when you use Nuke and Bomb back to back, the new timers say Bomb only has a re-use of 2 seconds. Therefore, it's available to be used immediately after Nuke goes through. However, if you activate it right after a successful Nuke roll, Bomb will turn solid red as if it hit, then either blink, blink, blink, to infinity, or do nothing. Out of many tests, I never was able to get the new re-use timers to work in interlock. Ability activation breaks in interlock if you try to activate Bomb faster than the old timer.
Bayamos wrote:
I have noticed something odd with Logic Bomb 2, yes.In interlock, when you use Nuke and Bomb back to back, the new timers say Bomb only has a re-use of 2 seconds. Therefore, it's available to be used immediately after Nuke goes through. However, if you activate it right after a successful Nuke roll, Bomb will turn solid red as if it hit, then either blink, blink, blink, to infinity, or do nothing. Out of many tests, I never was able to get the new re-use timers to work in interlock. Ability activation breaks in interlock if you try to activate Bomb faster than the old timer.
This is consistent with my observations.
When is Update 65? I'm guessing Thursday Dec. 11th.
Villemar_MxO wrote:
Hmm... looking at it, 6 weeks is the 18th Dec I think, however I think that's a little late to start the winter stuff so perhaps the winter holiday event will go live on the 11th and the update on the 18th? Although, if we're lucky and have been good girls and boys this year they could both go live on the 11th...
Bayamos wrote:I have noticed something odd with Logic Bomb 2, yes.In interlock, when you use Nuke and Bomb back to back, the new timers say Bomb only has a re-use of 2 seconds. Therefore, it's available to be used immediately after Nuke goes through. However, if you activate it right after a successful Nuke roll, Bomb will turn solid red as if it hit, then either blink, blink, blink, to infinity, or do nothing. Out of many tests, I never was able to get the new re-use timers to work in interlock. Ability activation breaks in interlock if you try to activate Bomb faster than the old timer.This is consistent with my observations.
Aye. Same for me as well.
sugaree wrote:
Loved the screenshot and completely understand what you're saying. I wonder if it might be related to your operating system or videocard. Very nicely textured screenshot overall, regardless!
I see this post everytime I click on this thread (last post button never works, dodgy forums) and gets me wondering if it is an issue with my system or video card, but then occasionally I see screenshots posted from other people who show the same type of see-throughiness, for lack of a better word. Take this screenshot by Cads for example...
http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k...nshot_7lite.jpg
[Ok, anyone else have a problem linking text to anything in Firefox? It's doesn't like the link box on mine and it's bloody annoying]
The shades are layered on top of the firewalled silver skin, normally you'd see the eyes (unless the shades were opaqe) but in this you can see right through the head. This leads me to believe its not a personal system or video card issue but has something to do with the game's texture layers and certain combinations, specifically I believe, regarding those items which have a degree of translucency.
As I said before though, it's not much of an issue and most likely one that can't be fixed without fiddling about with some deep code or something. Once again it's just a simple observation and one that we're all living with.
