Rare, Uncommon, Common

Quick one. Just a short commentary on “rarities” and “uncommon” objects. Isn’t it strange human nature to want to chase something rare? The value of it goes up, and so does the demand. It’s like gold. No, it’s more like printed paper money. Or MUD gold. Inherently valueless but the object is afforded significance by a common pool, so then it becomes valuable.

My point? The Calvin Scott TF and the limited edition, Issue 3 souvenir, baby.

Hrmph. No, I don’t really agree with it from a player perspective, because from POV of a singleplayer game, I like all parts of the game to have an equally accessible chance. And CoH appeals because its pace is like that of a singleplayer game, you can pick it up and play, basically.

But because it has multiplayer roots, it must still give the nod to MMORPGs too sometimes, I guess. They’re taking it that way with as much forced teaming as they can get away with, nerfing powersets, and now limited edition souvenirs? I guess from a design perspective, I can understand (but not like) how having change, and purposefully injecting change creates this sense of history and continuity and flow in the overall story of the game.

So that people who have been here don’t get bored of the same-old, same-old. They can talk about the Halloween event of 2004, the WL event of 2004, and count by Issues. Post I2, post I3, PvP in by I4, etc.

No, I will never get a Halloween badge. Wasn’t here for it. Won’t get Cold Warrior either, though I have Frozen Fury everywhere. Somehow these didn’t matter to me because they were one-off events. Special events. Coolness but completely separate, ya know?

But now they are removing something that has previously been in-game. It disturbs me mildly, rocks my sense of balance and my expectation that it’ll alwas be there for me to do.

You know what though? I’m going to learn to fight the urge. I do not have to collect them all. Not even in Pokemon I can collect them all because I am not attending any real-life “events” to unlock speshul islands with speshul pokemon.

I am sorry, Explorer side, but you cannot have them all. I will not cater to the powergamer in me any longer who is screaming from the benches, “Lemme at ‘em, lemme at ‘em, I will level up in 5 days to level 30 so that you can do a Calvin Scott TF before they even finish tweaking PvP on Test.”

And what will I do after I get the souvenir? I will have missed dunno how much rich content during the level 20s. (And dunno how many relevant kill whatever badges, or TF souvenirs, etc, etc.)

I don’t know what the devs are thinking. First the WL (which hopefully States has said they’ve learned from it) and now this. Well, if the goal was to egg people who don’t think their way through these things to higher and higher levels, they’ve succeeded. People will be pleveling their way to catch this rare pokemon and then go, shit, I need to exempl down to do such and such.

A proper reward for reaching a certain level is not by creating rarities, it’s already in place. Hit 30 and you unlock auras and so on.
Rarities just unlock the uglier side of human nature. I have this, and you don’t. Nyah nyah nyah. I want to have it, I want it so bad – who do I have to kill to get it?

I wuz here first, so I am da senior, baby, I have dis kewl stuff and u don’t. Caters to the “I have a level 50 and so I know everything” crowd, doesn’t it?

*sighs* I guess it is an inescapable part of playing an MMORPG. Because the devs know there are sure enough shallow folk out there following the path of materialism and who will chase rarities without even thinking about why they’re doing so, because it’s habit to them. Money money money. Rare cool collectible.

Been there. Done that. Funny how hoarding three subversions and dunno how many sets of seth pales in fun when you run out of friends to play the game with.

This time, I will choose the path less taken.

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CoH update. Week started, my playtime has dropped to virtual nil again. I managed to egg myself on and clean up the junk in my room and I actually untangled 10 different extremely long wires and set me up my speaker system. Now “Into the West” can echo through the place without me having to be chained to the comp by headphones. Woot, gradual progress, yes. Just a matter of tidying up the wires left.

Since I’ve got so many young brats hitting 20, it’s time for me to go explore the content of it. Back on Ravenhill, the insanely powerful killer. (Actually, it’s still a challenge because I just jump into the whole group, so my hp plummets as I swing and try to kill them all. I wouldn’t even consider doing it on another AT but tank, since doing that would be immediate lemming suicide.)

I hit my first solo outdoor map with the Wheel of Destruction story arc. Wow, it was cool, and I resisted the urge to clear every mob. Didn’t need that much xp. I did find all the pieces though, and took a couple screenies. Shucks, too bad they took it away when I gave ‘em back to contacts though. I wonder if people have ever tried keeping it and taking up a story arc slot? I liked the fire shield especially, and the sword and the fire blast were all quite cool. If it stacked on with Invulnerability, wowzers. And I would have ranged on a scrapper, and a pretty cool extra melee attack. Would make a fairly interesting pvper, I think, or be very useful on TFs. Just like me hoarding the 30 charge special attack wave scrambler to use on the Clockwork King. Very neat. Makes me also wonder if the devs ever thought about such uses and “loopholes” players are bound to find. I’m not even a dedicated loophole finder, but I know there are lots more hardcore than me out there.