Remember when...

[Hardship]

22 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

The clever people went to Kings Row, exited on the west side to Independence Port, and made the relatively short run to the Icon there. A somewhat higher level range, but a much shorter run.

 

I did do this eventually. Once I got to IP in regular content and learned about the shop there.

 

I think I must have altitus from the start...  Actually Homecoming is probably the LEAST amount of altitus I've had. I have really enjoyed playing my 50 doing raids and trials. I think that the more reachable incarnates has made getting them much less daunting and I have found it enjoyable. I did a Rikti Mothership Raid for the first time the other day, it was a very cool visual when taking down the pylons seeing the whole group "flying" from one pylon to the next.

[Arnabas]

On 7/14/2020 at 12:14 PM, DoctorDitko said:

 

Agreed.

 

The brilliant thing that AE did was crowdsource content.

 

It turns the normal MMO dynamic on its head, leveraging the creativity of the players to help keep themselves amused. Too bad about the farming, there are some excellent stories in the AE system, eclipsed by the "Quick and easy path" of which we were warned by the little green guy.

AE is great for adding new content. I love that there are some very good stories there, and I enjoyed making my own.

In my opinion, what could have helped avoid all the headaches is if AE was unlocked on a per-character basis upon reaching level 50. That way there would be no farming, and players who want new content after "completing" the game could have it.

[DoctorDitko]

22 minutes ago, Arnabas said:

In my opinion, what could have helped avoid all the headaches is if AE was unlocked on a per-character basis upon reaching level 50. That way there would be no farming, and players who want new content after "completing" the game could have it.

That's a very interesting idea. Today, though, that would just mean endless begging in LFG for PLing via Dreck mishes or some such.

[Bill Z Bubba]

Just now, DoctorDitko said:

That's a very interesting idea. Today, though, that would just mean endless begging in LFG for PLing via Dreck mishes or some such.

This. It's gonna happen. Doesn't matter what all the anti-farmers want.

[DoctorDitko]

Maybe we need a badge for awarded for leveling only from non-AE missions. Maybe with a power analyzer temp power attached. Appeal to the badge-hounds and mini-maxers among us. (I might be a bit of both.)

[Bill Z Bubba]

17 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

Maybe we need a badge for awarded for leveling only from non-AE missions. Maybe with a power analyzer temp power attached. Appeal to the badge-hounds and mini-maxers among us. (I might be a bit of both.)

Great. Only takes a little over twice as long to use DA repeatable missions to PL an alt from 1 to 50.

[Greycat]

59 minutes ago, Arnabas said:

 

In my opinion, what could have helped avoid all the headaches is if AE was unlocked on a per-character basis upon reaching level 50. That way there would be no farming, and players who want new content after "completing" the game could have it.

Ha.

 

Ha ha.

 

Ha ha ha.

 

There would be no farming. Oh, that's cute. As my empaths who were flooded with tells on hitting the early 40s in the early days would tell you, there would *definitely* be farming. The only thing that would change would be people complaining about "all these stupid lowbies in PI begging for battlemaiden/council/other mission farms" instead. And level-locking AE to 50+ would have killed it. My SGs used it for storytelling. Not everyone was 50, and it was used on the way up for relevant plot points.

 

 

[Dazl]

Trying to log in when the game officially launched to reserve the names I wanted. Using notes from the beta to recreate the characters and costumes as fast as possible.

[nightroarer]

On 7/15/2020 at 2:28 PM, Greycat said:

My SGs used it for storytelling. Not everyone was 50, and it was used on the way up for relevant plot points.

This. I had a few characters head to the AE right after the tutorial and level exclusively via AE *story-focused* missions (never farms). Talk about slo-o-o-w leveling! But it was a lot of fun.

 

Running story missions in the AE, often in combination with regular content, added variety to the leveling and story paths for different characters. For those of us with a lot of characters, this was a great boon to keeping the game fresh and entertaining.

[Killobot5000]

Remember when there was no DFB so you whenever rolled up a new toon on blue side you just grabbed a bunch of pugs and ran through the sewers until the whole team wiped?

 

When Frostfire's base had a visual bug that made all the ice inside it invisible?

 

Also, never went through it myself because I joined after it was fixed but, I distinctly remember a bunch of my friends on the live servers recounting horror tales from the early days of the game when controllers needed to re-summon their pets at every zone change or whenever taking an elevator mid-omission.

[EmmySky]

...there was no blue exit button and you had to retrace your way back out the door?

[Skyhawke]

When there was neither respecs or Icon and if you hit your mid teens and weren't happy...it was a reroll with the scramble to get a costume right and out the door to reclaim the name you just gave up?

 

 

[Greycat]

How about "When RIkti drones were bugged and would just... keep...exploding over and over?" THat was amusing for a while.

[Skyhawke]

When you first stepped out of that tutorial, at the steps to Miss Liberty and just stood there...and stood there, panning the camera around and taking it all in? That, is a feeling I really wish I could recapture...very few games have given me that giddy feeling since. 

[0th Power]

52 minutes ago, EmmySky said:

...there was no blue exit button and you had to retrace your way back out the door?

You could click on th words mission complete still though. 

[0th Power]

10 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

When you first stepped out of that tutorial, at the steps to Miss Liberty and just stood there...and stood there, panning the camera around and taking it all in? That, is a feeling I really wish I could recapture...very few games have given me that giddy feeling since. 

I wish I could capture the feeling from logging in the 1st time. That feeling was almost recaptured when I logged in here on HC the 1st time.  

[Skyhawke]

1 minute ago, 0th Power said:

I wish I could capture the feeling from logging in the 1st time. That feeling was almost recaptured when I logged in here on HC the 1st time.  

True statement, indeed. 

[Oubliette_Red]

On 7/14/2020 at 10:32 AM, MTeague said:

Dying in the Hollows trying to get to a mission as the Pumice / Igneous rock dudes burst out of the earth.

Dying on the way back to a second group of them as you tried to avoid the first group.

Carefully working your way through Grendel's Gorge back the third time, only to watch a teammate awaken the Pumice / Igneous and being "Oh god! Oh god no!" as you die horribly a third time.

Asking yourself why you didn't take Hover, no matter how slow it may be.

Eventually getting a Recall Friend to the door.

Gathering all the exploration badges in the Hallows on sprint alone at L10.

[Skyhawke]

1 minute ago, Oubliette_Red said:

Gathering all the exploration badges in the Hallows on sprint alone at L10.

One of the few times, I took my ff/dark defender out solo was to badge hunt.  PFF for the win!

[Oubliette_Red]

On 7/15/2020 at 1:25 PM, Arnabas said:

AE is great for adding new content. I love that there are some very good stories there, and I enjoyed making my own.

In my opinion, what could have helped avoid all the headaches is if AE was unlocked on a per-character basis upon reaching level 50. That way there would be no farming, and players who want new content after "completing" the game could have it.

What they should have done when they added AE was make it rewardless, other than relevant AE badges and author-created souvenirs. Our RP group used it quite a lot to advance our character's own stories. Playing user-created content should have been it's own reward.

But no going back now.

 

[drbuzzard]

On 7/15/2020 at 3:21 AM, Myrmidon said:

Babylon 5 was a stellar series.

Out of this world, even.

[nightroarer]

21 minutes ago, Oubliette_Red said:

What they should have done when they added AE was make it rewardless, other than relevant AE badges and author-created souvenirs. Our RP group used it quite a lot to advance our character's own stories. Playing user-created content should have been it's own reward.

But no going back now.

 

Or rewards that were specific to AE. No rewards probably would have made the AE dead out of the gate, because many players are rewards-oriented. Why waste development resources on a robust system that relatively few use?

 

For myself, I could have gone without rewards, although it would have precluded leveling via AE story missions. I'm okay with AE the way it is.

[Parabola]

1 hour ago, 0th Power said:

I wish I could capture the feeling from logging in the 1st time. That feeling was almost recaptured when I logged in here on HC the 1st time.  

The first time I logged in back on live I'd never played an mmo before and felt mainly lost. First time on homecoming I was struggling to see past the *ahem* something in my eye.

[cranebump]

I inadvertently ran right into the cape mish villain side recently. Ran the thing anyway, even though the character costume was meant to be capeless. I was like, “Oh yeah...I remember sometimes teaming up with folks to run these.”

[Myrmidon]

On 7/14/2020 at 7:39 PM, Hardship said:

And... remember when there wasn't collision avoidance on the enemy and if the tank herded them right, ALL of the enemies would jump in and stack on top of on another so that even a single target attack would hit them all?  Could literally wipe out an entire map with a good build up, aim and a good single target attack or two?

Don’t forget when that would cause Energy Transfer users to fall over dead from attacking too many at once.😂