Now before all the happy go lucky naive morons jump in and make me ignite my flame thrower, don't be too quick to judge, i've decided to put aside my bias towards all the general problems i have with mxo and simply provide an opinionated view on the recent update/updates. Though i fear that the ice in hell may cause problems i may even have some positive things to say.
=
12.1 crits, new gear aswell as function construct
The new style of missions is a sort of win lose scenario, it's a desperately needed change to the archaic and redundant style of old what with the kill this, search this, upload this and blah blah blah. A special nicety rests in the value of forcing the players to actually travel around the city as opposed to gathering in one area where inevitably players will show up with half-thought out charachters to attempt deep and insightful rp that's as redundant as ever.
Despite my usual reaction to the majority of 'story' presented by rarebit this most recent view of the return of trinity aswell as the deeper insight into ghost is quite interesting. I really enjoy the concept of a man both supported and crushed by destiny, as a great philosopher it's interesting to see ghost confront silent inner demons while trying to maintain a general karmic positivity within the world around him. Though i see the grounds for it to turn into some horrible jerry springer like event nonsense in the future, there's a great deal of potential and cool story concepts that rest within it. It's also especially nice to sort of step back to a closer tie to the movies, as these wireframes and see through bubblegum people have sort of become annoying.
The cinematic was entertaining and intersting, though i stand by my past opinions that the quality should be better, and if it can't be then it shouldn't be something effort is wasted on, but all the same it was an interesting watch, and brought up some neat discussions and questions in faction chat. The arrival of two new 'oligarchs' is something i'm not crazy about but the whole oligarch story has been a little less then impressive to me, though i'm still following with more interest now but still not digging the bubblegum people.
In terms of the new NPC's, the functions are difficult especially as they work together, but ultimately i find them to be lacking in terms of interlock combat or a challenge, so much as one simply has to avoid the logic cannon of the second npc they'll inevitably fight. It's challenging especially solo but at least not impossible. The executeables are a fairly neat twist in terms of the usual enemies, i especially appreciate the different means people have tried and succeeded with in taking them down.
Moving forward in that light the new pseudo-construct downtown that houses the overides and serves as a sort of instance if you will is actually quite cool - granted it's nothing we've not seen before in terms of texture but it's neat that it's so high above the city and that it does have a sort of tactical necessity in order to complete it. The level 70 is quite a boss to be reckoned with especially now that everyone still seems to have more theories then confirmed efforts against it, taking one down is quite a challenge let alone dealing with his high level guard spawns. There's some neat little short cuts and helpful things you can do along the way that might not be intentional but are certainly fairly interesting in terms of planning and execution.Granted were still talking about farming, but when the effort is working to kill one guy as opposed to killing 500 it's a little more enjoyable albeit much more difficult.
The refresh rate isn't too painful which is nice, but the npc's have a sort of tendency of bugging out and unintentionally patrolling the area, also the random people who run through and pull the mobs can really easily mess the group up. As fun as the construct is there's a whole lot of potential for griefing. Also there are a few things that bothered me - there doesn't really seem to be a way to stop additional spawns from the executeable, it was theorized he coudln't do it in interlock but craftyzee and his team myself included who farmed several kernels can confirm the best way to do it is take him out asap - as is usually the case.
What also bothered me was that the same consumeable (the runtime anti-overide) which is credited as stopping enemies from spawning additional support on you and apparently/allegedly worked on danielle wright does not work for the executeables. I understand that it's a different update, but either it should specifify it only works for wright or it should work - i think it would be more interesting if the patches had more ties to one another - like say you could get some of the stuff you needed to farm enxt update in this one or at least tools that could help you. Also the logic i'm inclined to apply is that it prevents oligarch programs or bodies from spawning additional support on me. If it works on wright, why wouldn't it work on these ones, but this is a rather minute detail. I'm only really upset as i got my hands on 10 of them, only to find out they don't work.
===
And thus we move to the swag - the loot- the quested after items that most of us will acquire much sooner then we logically soon, or we'll crave so long and hard that the final achievement of said item will leave you unfufilled. Moving forward -
Pheonix items - All in all, i'm not really impressed, i mean i'll admit i don't know how long it takes to make clothing in game, but i do know that if i've already seen it you're going to have a hard time convincing me it took a lot of effort. I have the pheonix shirt and i'm really unimpressed granted not surprised, but i have the time to grind and i figured i'd try it before knocking it. The gear is clearly for lower levels, but aside from the buffs the general look or appeal is just not there for me - granted that's subjective but a lot of people seem to share the same sentiment.
The beret - It's a pretty good item, accuracy and dmg can do no wrong, not to mention it looks cool, and it's got the SSR logo as a few people really wanted to see in game, i can only imagine should the ssr trend continue we'll wind up with swat stuff, but i stand by i hope it's done in pieces so the farming can be extended without being redundant - i know that statement sounds rediculous but i'll come back to it.
The earing - The fact that you need to run through the missions twice irks me, i don't mind farming things from the same people but literally re-running the same mission over again i think is blatantly unappealing and bluntly an effort of just taking up time, it could be argued it's there to make you take a second look at the missions but i can tell you it's raining when it might not be if you catch my drift. The item looks good on females but i've yet to see a male where it was animated properly not to mention looked less then rediculous. Again subjective, i managed to trade mine to someone so who knows.
The boots- Basically retextured boots already in game they look kind of cool but for the level of farming required and the fact that you need a friend in the org or an alt i don't really have the desire but if you've got a lupine fetish or RP one then why not, it goes well with the earing i suppose.
The shirt - Again it strikes me as an item prodominantly for females as it just doesn't look very good on males, it's your taste and your clal but ultimately i fail to find the appeal in this shirt......well actually i failed to find the appeal in this shirt till i saw nicks wearing it.
Finally:
The skull cap - I don't really get why anyone would want this on it's own, i mean not only is it outwardly a pain to farm but it doesn't really look good or serve a logical purpose, even the collector wearing it sort of shows you why you shouldn't bother. But if your after the header you need it so by all means.
The mask - A fairly cool object actually, it's a skin tight cut out that doesn't show your eyes which is a nice change from most of the gear, it's also nice to have male face masks as like many other things we'd been told it couldn't be done. I hope to see eventually a male ninja mask as it would practically be the same thing as the header with the eye area simply removed so the flesh could show through.
The header - This item is very unique and cool but if your on vista its a bit more difficult to appreciate, effectively it's not so much a mask or headgear as it a direct skintight entity that covers your whole head and face in black, it leaves your neck exposed but if you pair it with the commando jacket it looks like the way you've wanted it to look since the commando gear dropped back when.
Now approaching the problem's previously eluded to but delayed - in order to actually get the high end gear -
The earing needing two .2 completion tokens is just sort of lame, i mean if he'd made it like 5 overide traces or something that's fine, but literally making me re-run the same mission back to back when i'll have to do it again and again if i want the new gear anyways is not only tedious but frustrating, if you go for all the loot by the time you finish you can practically re-collect the missions word for word phase by phase.
For the header and mask your required to produce the 10 shells, and 1 kernel, aswell as 1 mission .3 completion token per piece.
So not only do you have to run all 3 missions twice, but you need to farm two overide traces which a lot of people felt impossible to get one. Aswell as 20 function fragments which isn't impossible but rather tedious on top of the continual mission grinding but for the beret even - you need to farm 10 just to get to the third mission, and then additionally need to hand in another 10 for absolutely no other reason then to draw out the entire ordeal. I do appreciate the whole trading in two halves for a whole and liked what the header is, but it's undeniable the amount of work and coordination it takes to get one. But in the end, if you have the time you can get what you're after.
=============================
=============================
Christmas update -
(i'm only writing about the newest stuff, not the snowballs or snowmen, or party hat stuff, that's all unique and fun in it's own capacity but we've also had it the past few years.)
The snow is always a nice touch and refreshing in terms of reminding me of the winter playground of the constructs i can no longer access. The vendors are a nice touch, cake is always welcome provided i'm eating it or female RSI's are. And we've even got new clothing this year, the word new has a sort of sour esque twinge to it as again technically the only real new clothing in game in terms of the chrismas update are the boots - which a lot of people don't really like the look of. Personally i picked up a red pair for the sheer rediculousness of them. As i don't have a female RSI i didn't bother with the gi's but to be honest i would have gone after a male bathrobe for the comedic value and was sort of saddened when i learned the picture was a joke. That being said the concept of recoloring old gi models doesn't exactly strike me as fresh, but it's just my opinion.
As i said earlier, i don't know what it takes to edit or change or add new clothing to the game, but when only the texture has changed it becomes a lot harder to convince me that it takes a great deal of time. I really like all of the male shirts despite the fact that they too are that sort of "coca-cola" new, where it's still coke but it's ....different. I've wanted a red and black shirt vest combo - and apparently i'm not the only one. The problem with cool looking clothes in game is that pretty soon everyone is wearing them, and that whole individual class, grace and beauty of a vibrant and different world fades a little. Ultimately the craving for new cool shirts isn't a negative, but in truth we just need waaay more.
One problem with the shirts however, is the interior collar color glitch, if you throw on say the black shirt with white tie combo it looks fine as just the shirt, but put a jacket over it and the interior collar of the shirt around your neck takes on the color of the tie and it can sort of hurt the look your going for. Granted it's rather finiky, but it's merely a truth - if you don't care you probably didn't even farm the shirts.
The snow globe shades didn't really interst me, they were unique and different and a few people grabbed them, but a lot of people didn't seem impressed, i can't say i'm going to argue i wasn't intersted enough to go after them, but they looked like the awakened shades painted white with stange arms on them.
That about summarizes the new content on the winter side of things, still a lot of new stuff to come out in terms of clothing, but nothing too different then what we've already seen. I can't say i don't want to see not only more stuff but more different stuff - but i will say anything is better then nothing.
========
In closing, i've got to say i've been rather impressed with this super update as a whole, though i also fear it may have spoiled us since it was technically two updates in one, come 12.2 with only the new criticals and maybe some other super secret rarebit projects which could still be enjoyable, there will still be undoubtedly less to do, thus i fear the super farmers who i have to classify myself as one will burn through it and then wollow in area chat about how bored they are. This is where the events come in - but for the sake of maintaining the attempted unbias in this post i'll refrain from talking about live events, what they could, should and will be.
There's a lot of neat stuff to get out of this update, and the new system despite it's damage to the live events most of the max level's crave is a neat twist to motivate players to do just a bit more then grind ceaselessly, the level of fun and interaction and planning that went into the overide/oligarch construct almost reminded me of the old days and seeing my faction mates get excited about the tactical execution of things was great too.
I think in the future the next crits should focus a little less on farming and maybe a little more on searching and travelling, really get people to make use of the things they've forgotten about like datamine and the constructs around them, and movie spots and places downtown or in westivew. Also show off some of the stuff that a lot of people still don't know about. You'd be amazed how many people don't know where digger is let alone how cool his spot is.
I also think if the missions need to be re-run over and over there should more benefit to actually doing that, put in messages and hidden stuff that the players might not catch the first time, such that playing through them again won't be so painful - or better still avoid making them re-run the same missions over and over. Also i know it's been mentioned and produced before but putting in an ocasional hidden collector or un-annouced collector who gives out different stuff not even for the sake of buffs but maybe unique looks - leave them around to be discovered eventually but i think rarebit shouldn't be afraid to try wacky and different stuff, if you become to clingy to an arch-type stuff get's old and brittle, but if you try to keep things fresh every now and then you might get really lucky.
All in all, i'm rather impressed - i just hope the meetings which i intend to 'behave' at in the near future don't put me off.
~Darminian
