Played for a while last night, even put on a level or two doing so!

Last I played I was in the Divide, another actual zone. Its a bit hard for me still, so I did what I could then went back to the Wilderness where I'm a little more bad-ass. Upon reaching level 12, I got access to a shotgun I had been saving (minimum level 12) that replaced the one I was using (minimum level 6? 8?). The damage is significantly higher, plus it uses plain ol' regular ammo which is quite a bit cheaper than the energy cells for the other one (2 per round vs 3). I also started using a laser chain-gun of a nice level, which goes well with my normal chaingun (which needs replacing). Two things:

1) Using the EMP chain gun to take down an enemy's shields/armor then switching to another weapon works very well for me. Very well.

2) The shotgun's cone is a thing of beauty. Like in COH with Assault Rifle, its really worthwhile to maneuver around so you can get two or more enemies lined up in it. The knockdown is great when it happens, but then I love soft controls. As soon as I get my firearms up to 5 I'll be quite the happy camper.

I did an instance (Caves of Do...something), and it was difficult to solo. The NPC AI isn't as bright as it could be (surprise), so one of them kept attacking dead bodies, and the other one was a bit passive. The zone chat had someone asking for help on that same instance, so I left, joined up with them, and it was metric tons easier. What was nice but surprising was that the turrents/mortars I had destroyed earlier were still gone. I'm NOT complaining. The PUG went nicely, the two other folks were nice (not one drop of l33t came out), and we finished it off, including the mission I kept failing involving rescuing some lost Foreans.

Sky came on later on that night and we ran around for a while doing Target of Opportunities goals. He's progressing pretty well, and I'm curious to see which way he goes when its time to branch off again. We both went Recruit / Soldier so far. I'm planning to go Recruit / Soldier / Ranger, but am still deciding between Sniper and Spy.

I got my XP multiplier up to 3x. That was thrilling. I'm also doing the overkills now too since they give a nice little bonus reward (wonder if that's affected by the multiplier too?). Given how range-orientated the game is at this point, its a nice incentive to close into melee.

Since I actually took Chemistry (on of the crafting skills) I fabricated some hand-grenades last night, passed them onto Sky. And I was right; it's like COH's crafting system which completely makes sense to me. Give the machine the schematic and the appropriate components, and after a few seconds you get your stuff. People who say the crafting system needs work, unless I am given a real reason why besides "Its not like WOW," are freakin' nuts. Sorry, but I do not want to have to make 20,000 rounds of standard ammo just so I can get to the second level of Engineering: Chemistry. While you still have to dedicate points towards advancing your crafting abilities, you're not stuck with a completely useless time-sink method of advancement, its consistent with everything else you advance in, etc. I am quite happy with the compromise between COH's skill-less crafting and the typical grind-heavy method other games use.

I also discovered the disassembling aspect of crafting, which is where you get the goodies you need to do item modifications. That makes me quite happy. Now I've got the Phase Shifter I need use the Modification: Armor Piercing's I've got (if only I could find one for my chainguns). Very, very nice, simple, and we all know that goes a long way with me.

Still debating on a clan name. I was thinking maybe Fawkes PMC or something.

Oh, and when I saw this? I can't think of a single MMO that shouldn't steal this idea, ASAP.
http://www.rgtr.com/news/latest_news/feedback_friday_5232008.html

When the interactions group started thinking about the Looking For Squad system, we wanted to focus on ways to make it easier to group up. While thinking about this, we realized that we first needed to solve a problem that kept occurring when we would play with each other. This is a typical scenario: Six of us would decide to run an instance together. Unfortunately, instead of just one person starting a group, I would start a group, then another person would start a group, and in the end it turned into this:

"Hey, you guys are in a group, you need to leave. I'll invite you."
"No, you leave. We have more people."
"brb – bio"
"Oh fine, we'll disband, but we'll need an invite."
"Um.. I think someone's afk, so you guys really should leave your group."
"Fine, I'll disband. Everyone disband now."
"Wait, did you guys disband too! OMG!!!! Epic fail."
"That's it… I'm coming over so we can work this out. Get a soda and leave your computers unlocked."

In the end, it would take us 30 minutes to get together… and this was with us all in the same building. That's just not a good sign.

In an effort to combat this, we decided that the first step in creating a looking for squad system was to introduce the concept of merging squads. What we've done in D9 is add new functionality to merge squads. To do this we've modified /invite and added a new concept of /join. The difference between the two is best summarized with an example.

Want. Oh. So. Want. Hopefully the COH team is looking at this particular goody :D