Atlas Parked: Pictures from an Exit...bition 2

Right now, I'm "Disconnected from the Server" at the load screen to a zone. The strange thing is, the client knows how to detect that and tell you that, but it doesn't know how to go back to the login screen. This means that if you ever get disconnected while in the loading screen (very often), you have to ctrl-alt-del and kill the client entirely.

Not that I am that keen on logging back on. I just feel kind of disinterested in the game. It seems caught up in a vicious cycle.

1) People don't want to team, because there is no teaming culture and they're used to soloing, because it's been possible to pick up certain powers to build a strong soloing character.

2) The powers that aren't strong, and good for soloing, tend to be pretty gimp and useless. These powers tend to either have been broken from start and never fixed, or useful once and then heavily nerfed.

3) Devs nerf the strong powers. Your previous soloing build become weak, and you're not sure what new build to use now.. The powers keep getting tweaked so it's like trying to build a house on a foundation of sand.

4) You can't solo your group missions (which you probably shouldn't be able to in the first place), but finding a team is a terrible chore because nobody wants to team. And besides, your build is all wacky now.

Strangely enough, I seemed to have hit upon some "broken power" by trial and error. Regeneration passive defense was not doing it for me, so I just tried out various powers to give my character more durability. Enter the Circle of Primal Domination. I tried it and was surprised at how effective it was, and have been relying on it ever since.

Then it got nerfed. Okay, from a gaming viewpoint it was overpowerful. But the thing is, using it meant you couldn't move. The only time you moved in the fight, was if you got knocked out of the circle, and you are trying to get back inside. It made some enemies terribly tedious to fights because you become more susceptible to mez while in the circle (you end up being mezzed a significant portion of time).

I looked over the patch notes when it happened but didn't really take note of it until I logged in and started an instance. Boom! In a few seconds, the first group of enemies had wiped me.

Okay...

Already so many powers are considered pointless, broken and useless. But they're not fixed. It's smash the nail that pokes out down. In the end, when the nail are all flush against the wood there will be true balance?

Meanwhile, I'm sure people are moving on to the next good combo of powers.

Anyway, some screenshots. I still like the environment. This is going into a supervillain hideout in Canada.

The way down a snowy crevasse to another supervillain hideout. They also have zombies there... :P

Fountain/statue/waterfall in the city. Millenium city has really huge scale to it. The statue is stories tall, the water falls down into a waterfall and at the bottom of it is another enemy hideout.

Nice guns in the villain hideout.

Evil scientist and supervillain contemplating evil plasma TV shows...

Scale...Millenium City is awesomely 3-D, in a way that makes sense. Grandville feels contrived, but here you have quite normal skywalks between skyscrappers.