Happy to report I played with Azure Twilight over the weekend and had a blast.
Totally not thinking, I picked Friday night to be the first night I attemtped to play with them. I dutifully setup Teamspeak 3, ran through all the configuration info on their website, read the rules and watched the short video on Ops protocol and procedures (which I think is a really cool way to introduce people to how they play). Then I loaded up and attempted to join in…
…during the middle of the Ultimate Empire Showdown. Needless to say it was complete chaos. Half the outfit was playing new characters on Connery joining several of their founding members who were actually playing live at the event in LA representing VS. The other half of the outfit was playing on their home server (Matherson) coordinating efforts to lead the VS to victory in the three challenges that were part of the event. The challenges only took place on Amerish, and the queue to get into Amerish was over an hour (obviously hardly anyone logged out during the event). The queue to try to get onto Connery was even more ridiculous, with a timer of over 4 hours at one point. The end result was that I got to hear Azure Twilight ops as they were going down live, but could not participate that evening. It was still fun though, especially when I watched bits of the stream and recognized events I could hear happening live.
I tried again Sunday night and it was much easier. I jumped into an AT squad right away, and spent the night running with two full platoons of AT folks capping bases and holding ground. We rolled as a long armor column at one point, did GALs and Libs at another point, and had a great time on a ridge using annihilators and hades launchers to lock on and decimate TR armor down below. It was really fun to be part of something coordinated for a change, and I’m looking forward to more of the same.
If anyone from the QT3 Matherson outfit is looking for a good time in PS2 I highly recommend jumping into an Azure Twilight squad for an evening, maybe joining them on their TS3 server as well (link to their site is above), and having fun.
Houngan
1762
Pretty much identical for me. I’ll start looking you up when I log in and see if we can get on the same squad.
I’m guessing then that the Qt3 outfit is dead, pretty much? I’m torn about what to do. Usually I just log in and follow the zerg for an hour or so, then go away. I’m not sure I have the energy to hook up with a real outfit and voice chat, et al. And I’ve pretty much had my fill of guilds/clans/outfits with leaders, rules, procedures, etc. over the years.
Houngan
1764
Well, stay tuned and I’ll let you know how annoying it is. This is my first ever attempt to work with a non-acquaintance group. So far it’s not so bad, though it does get chatty when things are slow.
The AT website and general guidelines seem fine, and in-game I’ve had no issues with AT people. It’s just that I’ve done the whole TS channels full of people group grope style gameplay online for years, and I’m not sure that’s what I want now. I enjoy going on and doing my bit part in PS2 as I see fit, answering to no one and basically helping out where I can. But, I realize as well that organized unit play is really cool in general.
Houngan
1766
Well, I played 2/3 as a solo over the weekend, I only jumped into a platoon when I felt like doing so. If AT turns out to be hardasses about me running around on my own I’ll quit.
KevinC
1767
I joined NNG (No Nonsense Gamers) a while back. They’re organized but there’s none of the rules/procedures etc stuff you’re talking about (I’m sick of that crap as well). My play experience with them has been to log in, join their platoon, and have a lot of fun. They’re organized and do have their own Teamspeak server but I generally just rely on in-game voice. If AT isn’t up your alley feel free to give NNG a whirl, they typically have a squad or two open to the public during most hours if you want a trial run. They’re an organized outfit that thus far has lacked the “guild drama” and “second job” type mentality that oftentimes encroaches into these games.
Regardless of who you join, I can’t stress enough how much better this game becomes when you’re working with an organized outfit instead of solo/zerg.
DARK is also an option for VS on Mattheson.
I played with NNG squads a few times awhile back and actually applied on their website to join the outfit before finding Azure Twilight. NNG is a good bunch of folks, they have fun while trying to stay marginally organized. After I applied I was never able to find an open NNG squad though and thus wasn’t really able to play with them enough to make it through their one week trial. Nobody ever contacted me in game either.
With AT it’s more organized, and I like it. So far the Teamspeak ops have been relaxed. They do like to keep coms clear, which I like, but they have another channel for just shooting the shit if you solo or run a squad outside of the main platoons. AT does want their folks to stay together and all focus on the same objective, so if you’re more of a solo, run around and do your own thing guy it’s probably not a great fit. On the other hand, playing with them last night my K/D was the best it’s ever been in a single play session. Even though we were outnumbered and losing ground through a lot of the evening (and thus getting killed more often) I still managed a slightly better than 1:1 ratio, which sounds terrible until you consider my normal solo ratio is like 1:3 (0.33). =)
Octagus
1770
You’re allowed to run around and do your own thing in AT, provided you’re not part of a platoon doing official AT ops. While part of an op they expect you to follow orders. They’re very nice about it and no one is barking orders, but we keep tight timelines and you may be asked to recall to warp gates, normally to organize mass gal drops.
Houngan
1771
That’s fair, I just wanted to make sure the [AT] tag didn’t mean I couldn’t solo around.
Togra
1772
Big patch available to download, servers are up soon.
The base changes, tank balance tweaks and performance improvements are probably the most important things listed here but the “always run” toggle key is pretty much what I was really missing from PS1. :)
KevinC
1773
Prowlers and Vanguards got some big, big buffs. Watch out.
EDIT: To elaborate, now that I have a keyboard to type on:
Prowlers: +25% HEAT damage, +20% AP damage, +10% muzzle velocity
Deploy mode now gives major muzzle velocity increase on top of reload speed
Vanguards get about 10% more velocity, their Enforcer secondary missile weapon got a 300% speed boost, and their side/top armor buffed to take ~ 1 extra tank round.
Magriders got the speed of the Saron nerfed and the hover height from Rival/Racer chassis removed. (EDIT: They just clarified on Twitter that this change isn’t going into the patch, it’s being removed from the patch notes).
The patch is also 4.4GB so uh… start downloading early if you intend to play today.
Joined AT when game launched, its great to have so many people playing, but sometimes they take the game a bit to serious
4.4gb… that is a big patch…
Downloading very slowly as well. I suspect the servers are pretty taxed trying to push out 4+GB to all the people wanting to play later today (in other words just about everyone).
I wonder why so large? A lot of the patch note stuff seems like it’s either mostly server side or would be tiny data tweaks to the client files. I suppose it’s the changes to the bases and towers. Lots of new graphics and whatnot to push out.
Still having great fun playing with Azure Twilight. Seems like they moved their more “serious” ops up to about 5pm EST, and by the time I’m ready to play around 9pm EST they’ve relaxed a bit and there is more com chatter and looser structure, which is fine, and lots of fun. Last night 2nd platoon rolled all armor and sundys and took a lot of territory on Amerish from the NC while they were busy fighting the TR and our zerg. Lots of cap xp and plenty of kills, and I got a chance to learn the layout of a few places I’d never spent much time in, which is always handy.
The new layouts for some of the spawns are pretty good. The SMG seems nice–I did a preview of it for my LA. It’s pretty deadly close in, no real range, and small ammo capacity. With the ammo cert upgrade and a short-range sight I’m guessing it’d be nasty.
Tried out the new smg on my engineer and ended up liking it a lot. It gets the good upgrades too. This will be replacing my vx6-7 i think.
Also tried out skyguard for the first time in a long time. It still sucks.
Also had my first experience with the new spawn defenses. I was attacking a base and noticed myself taking damage in one of the open spawn rooms. So i jumped down some hole to get out of it and ended up stuck in a pit with a locked down. Had to suicide.
Houngan
1779
Yeah, it’s mostly good changes but they’ve brought back a number of bugs. The disappearing world is back, bad stutter is back, enemies doing the warp thing is back. They’ll get it worked out.
Yes, i noticed really bad lag, lots of warping and people complaining about lag tonight. I assumed it was just a bad night for my internet though.
