Author: admin

I7 powersets are announced

Here.
Includes the Thugs powerset for Masterminds (Pistols, Call Thugs, Dual Wield [pistols], Equip Thugs, Empty Clips, Call Enforcer, Gang War, Call Bruiser, Upgrade Equipment) …
… what the … Pistols? For a Mastermind? And not a Scrapper? WAUGH!
Electric Melee for Brutes (Charged Brawl, Havoc Punch, Jacobs Ladder, Build Up, Thunder Strike, Taunt, Chain Induction, Lightning Clap, Lightning Rod), along with Electric Armor (Charged Armor, Lightning Field, Conductive Shield, Static Shield, Grounded, Lightning Reflexes, Conserve Power, Power Sink, Power Surge). All sound fun.
Stalkers are getting Dark Melee and Dark Armor (flavored similarly to Scrappers).
Masterminds will also get to designate minions as a Bodyguards, which lets them take a third of the damage taken by the MM (who only takes two-thirds). Nice.

Live and Direct – a new patch

Patch Notes Here.
Most of the stuff was already previously commented on (when it went to test). The items that caught my eye this time:

The maximum mission reward that a character can receive is now character level +3. Example: A level 10 character (not sidekicked) in a group running a level 20 mission will receive the equivalent reward of a level 13 mission upon completion.

Guess that will end the “you wanna bridge for us?” thang, if I understand it correctly.
Positron later noted:

Just so you all understand… The change is ONLY for the “end of mission” rewards, not the individual defeats of enemies. +3 levels was chosen simply because the level range for fair XP sharing during missions is around +3, that and when you are running at the highest difficulty level, +3 enemies will tend to show up.

Moving right along …

* Help Channel: New players will receive a new tab called “help” which defaults to a new server-wide help channel. We encourage experienced players to share their wisdom.
* Chat spam limiter: You are now allowed one message per second, You are allowed to break the rule 5 times. Every second you don’t chat one rule break is forgotten. If you break the rule more than 5 times you will be banned from chat for 2 minutes. If you continue to try to spam while chat banned, you will continually reset your 2 minute timer.

Cool. Previously said it, but cool.
Costume tokens were also handed out, finally.

Purple! Purple! Purple!

Hostess Heroes tonight. Kitten was dawdling and downstairs as we started, and as we were tied into the final Doctor Vahzilok mish, we couldn’t take the time off to get here up into bed.
So she instead ran back and forth between our computers whenever she’d spot a purple mob. “Purple! There’s a purple there! Look out! He’s purple!”
Very … um … helpful.

The picture shows (L-R) the HH team: Twinkie Kid, Bear Claws, J A W Breaker, Princess Peep, Ginger.Snap, Ho Ho, Otter-Pop. and Ring.Ding. Not shown, alas, is Capt. Funyun, who mapserved (though not before getting victory credit and the SO).
Ho Ho and Princess Peep both dinged 18 over the course of the evening. Invincibility for me, some sort of PBAOE radiation debuffer for Peep. Invincibility, as I demonstrated on the next mish, needs a little warning label: “INVINCIBILITY: Note, does not convey actual Invincibility” — though it’s certainly a fine defensive power.
Need to get taunt. Currnetly slated for 22 (20, of course, is the desperately-needed Stamina).
I’ll be out next go-around (somewhere over the Atlantic, in fact). Week after that: Synapse (1, 2, 3).

0.27 … and counting …

(The above to be said, of course, in a slow, German-accented voice …)
Damn. With travel and anniversaries and that sort of thing, surprisingly little CoX play for me this week. Finally got on tonight with Psi-clone and Amorpha and hit the mother-lode: 7th Generation Paragon Protectors, all orange and red and utterly snackable, 2600 to 3400 a shot, plus the boss and the missions.
By the time we were done doing the mission two and a half times (one of mine, one of hers, and one mapserv-interrupted of hers), we were averaging 13K/min, had about 1.3MM to go, were up to SL 49.73, and were at an estimated 1:45 to level.
I figure one more good evening’s worth of beating on stuff, and we’ll be ready for a “concluding” mission — something fun and party-like, invite the friends and colleagues. Should probably start sending invites out now, given everyone’s busy schedules.
Looking forward to it.

Speciallly made for Malta missions

Just what you need the next time Crimson gives you a call.

Thor Shield is a polyester fabric bonded to a conducted material that effectively loops the electricity coming from a nonlethal electricity weapon back to the weapon.
“If you are hit, the Taser gun won’t work,” said Greg Schultz, co-owner of G2 Consulting in Tucson, Ariz., which invented Thor Shield. “We return the voltage back to the gun.”
Tasers and other electricity weapons work by jolting a person’s body with enough electricity to overwhelm their neuromuscular system. When fired, a Taser launches two probes, connected to the gun by wires. When the probes hit a person’s body, they create a circuit and 50,000 volts that pass through an individual’s system.
A hit from a stun gun is incredibly painful and knocks individuals instantly to the ground in most circumstances. For maximum effect, the probes need to land four inches apart.
Because Thor Shield is conductive, it can complete the circuit with probes without having the electricity pass through an individual’s body. In a video submitted by G2–and not independently tested by CNET News.com–Greg Williams, G2’s other co-owner, takes a jolt to the head from a stun gun but remains unfazed. He is wearing a cap made of the material, according to G2. He also remains nonchalant in a Thor Shield windbreaker after being repeatedly zapped.

More I7 goodness

On the I7 hit parade:

  1. Freespec!
  2. Am I goofy for saying I don’t see significant graphics differences between these pre-I7 vs. I7 screen shots? Not enough to warrent, at least, the no-doubt ruinous added burden on my graphics card.
  3. UI changes in I7:

    [T]he protectors of Paragon will also have access to Global Chat upgrades such as an improved ability to switch between chat channels, default channels, and a channel search feature.
    Their new User Interface will allow heroes to fine tune control of their powers with buff icons that blink right before they go away, toggling of buff powers in the icon list, and the ability to access character and power information through the r-click menu.

    The Global Chat stuff doesn’t sound that exciting (it may make more sense once it comes out). The idea of having buff icons blink before they wear off is a nice one … though, now that I think of it, I think they mean the little personal “this power is up” icons under the health meter, which I don’t reference all that often. Adding some right-click context menu stuff would be helpful, too.
    Still, not all that thrilling.

Ho … ho … ho … zzzzzzzzz …

Stayed up way too late last night playing CoH. Well, I wasn’t planning on staying up that late, but when I signed on I saw the Hostess Heroes were up and about, so I just had to join in the fun.
A long, exhasting slog — literally, as I was both very tired and Ho Ho was chronically short on endurance — but I got her up to 17, which was fun. Good team which managed to avoid deaths despite some very red/purple characters and no Princess Peep (or other strong healer) to keep us going.

A Virtuous interlude

Hung out at Doyce & Jackie’s last night, and played CoH with Jack. Champion was down, so we fired up a couple of toons on Virtue (Honor the Flag and Copper Mountain) with Jackie bringing in a Kheldian named Rejoice and, eventually, bringing in a number of other player toons, including one of Mal’s and one of Rufus’s. A fun, if short, time.
So … want … to ding … 14 …

Patch notes

Now Testing in the Training Room – 3/31/06 – 11am CST. Not all that faboo, but a couple of interesting things.

Powers
• Leadership/Vengeance will no longer stack from multiple casters. In other words, only one application of Vengeance buffs can enhance a group at a time. [Pity, that, but not a huge issue to me.]
• Fixed combat Spam for IR Goggles. They no longer report that they increase your resistances.
• Changed To Hit Debuffs to use the 5/10/20 Enhancement progression. These were causing problems with Dual Enhancements (such as Hamidon Enzyme Exposure) [there’s more on this here and here.]
• Hurricane’s Repel effect is now slightly less abusive in PvP situations. It will still Interrupt Assassin Strikes, unless the Stalker has Repel Resistance, but it should no longer be possible to pin a player in a corner during Base Raids.
• PvPTaunt changes: When a player is being taunted, the effect can now be broken by running a good distance away. Additionally, hiding out of LOS of the taunter will cause the effect to expire sooner.
• You can now string multiple teleports in a row w/out delay of actual teleport function (does not wait for animation to finish). This fixes a bug that would sometimes cause skips in animation when stringing together multiple teleports. [Um … okay, I have to actually try that to see what they’re talking about.]
Badges
• Spider Smasher badge is now granted properly.
• Fortunata Seer badge is now granted properly
• Not all Ancestor Spirits were counting toeards the Swift Steel badge. This has been fixed.
• Longbow Tanker gladiator is now properly unlocked when the Politician badge is granted.
• Female Paragon Protectors defeated now count towards the 7th Generation Paragon Protector gladiator badge.
• All Madness Mages now count towards the Soul Binder badge.
Bases
• Characters in base raids are now set to an effective level of 50 rather than 40. (Preparation for 41-50 villain content)
• All Base Items are now level 50. This should make them more sturdy, and in the case of Base Defenses, more effective.
Tailor
• Fixed bug with sleeveless jackets that caused sleeves to be changed by default when players begin a Tailor session.
Chat
• Help Channel: New players will receive a new tab called “help” which defaults to a new server-wide help channel. We encourage experienced players to share their wisdom.
Existing players will not get this chat tab, and will have to add this channel to existing or new tabs. [Ooooh. I like. Now, if people will just use it as directed …]
• Chat spam limiter: You are now allowed one message per second, You are allowed to break the rule 5 times. Every second you don’t chat one rule break is forgotten. If you break the rule more than 5 times you will be banned from chat for 2 minutes. If you continue to try to spam while chat banned, you will continually reset your 2 minute timer. [Oh, yeah, baby! The Dash likes!]
CITY OF HEROES
City Zones
• Shadow Shard: Rebalanced the Kora Fruit award. Harvested fruit are now medium-sized inspirations rather than large-sized. [Not all that iimpressed with Kora Fruit anyway. Ho-hum.]
Badges
• Heroes can earn a badge by defeating Mu Guardians.
CITY OF VILLAINS
Powers
• Fixed a bug that was causing Longbow Wardens with the Gravity Distortion power to do too much damage.
• Void Hunter Rifle no longer does extra damage to Kheldians. The Stun and Knockback effect against Kheldians has also been removed.
• The Longbow Boss, Romulus, has had his resistances increased.
• Stalkers’ Placate ability no longer grants the same strength Stealth in PvP as Hide. It is now roughly 75\p of that value. This should reduce the ability of Stalkers to fade out of view of an entire group of players after attacking.
• Fixed Lethal portion of Dominator Plant Control Roots — it was doing unresistable damage and should not have been. Also, the lethal damage will no longer report as smashing in the combat log.
• Corruptor Heat Loss power was not modified for PvP, allowing it to drain 4 times as much endurance from players as intended. This has been corrected.
Missions
• Changed Psimon Omega missions to span 30-35 (to match contact level range).
• Changed re-spec trials so that they go 24-33 and 34-40 (Preparation for 41-50 villain content)
• Now Arbiter Leery will always be willing to talk to you after you’ve done the respec trial.
• Completing Mongoose’s mission arc once again grants a souvenir.
• Completing Billy Heck’s mission arc grants a souvenir.
City Zones
• Bloody Bay: Patrol missions now correctly award experience upon completion.
Installation
• Fixed issue when launching City of Villains for the first time (from a fresh install) in 98/ME. An error message appeared stating that 1024×768 is not supported in fullscreen mode and that the resolution is being switched to 800×600. 1024×768 resolution was and is supported.

Report to me in the transporter room

Thanks to a big wave of salvage downloads (it took about 45 minutes for Zazi to accept all the crap Psi-clone had in his pockets), the CoJ now has a couple of teleport pads.
One pad goes to Perez Park and the Hollows.
The other pad goes to Dark Astoria and Boomtown. (I’m somewhat certain of the latter — I was relying on Margie’s recollection when she came upstairs.)
As part of the Alliance, our pads are open to any other coalition group (only fair, since we use the Phalanx pads to Crey and Striga on occasoin.)
Once I confirm the second pad locations, I’ll post something up on the boards.

I smell respec!

Okay, so Mental Blast from the Psionic Mastery epic pool is a real bust – lowish damage, very slow (3 sec) activation.
So I’m looking for a replacement power. I noticed this evening that I have a respec, so …
Top choices:

  1. Flash: I don’t have any AoE spell (beyond pets), so this might be handy, just as another tool on the belt. It’s a low-level Illusion Control power, an PAoE blind.
  2. Superior Invisibility: On the one hand, not really necessary given that I have Group Invis. On the other hand, being a toggle instead of a click, it would allow me to do the Invis thing indefinitely. That might be nice.
  3. Regenerative Aura: Nobody turns down Regen Aura on the team. I’d rather do something more aggressive than add another Empathy power, but, it’s a very nice Empathy power, doing an AoE health recovery boost for 60 seconds. Wouldn’t be able to fully slot it, though, so 8 minute recharge or 37.5 Endurance cost would stay highish.
  4. Vengeance: I had this planned at one point, then dropped it. Add DMG, ACC, DEF to a team (AoE) if someone on it dies. Might be cool to have, though only as a team player, less useful as a duo …

Other powers in the pools I don’t have are Absorb Pain (I’m usually the one low on HP, thanksverymuch) and Clear Mind (definitely not something I need with Amorpha). Also Health (I’m an Empath), Hover/Group Fly (yawn), Flurry (I have Air Superiority), Super Speed (hmmmm), and Maneuvers (which is so tiny an increment these days, from my understanding, that it’s not really worth it). Oh, and Psionic Tornado (definitely not in keeping with the character).
Thoughts? I’m leaning still toward Flash, but I can see how Vengeance might be situationally handy.

AV vs. Elite Boss

Okay, went back and actually read the only thing I could find on the subject, back here. Statesman said:

AND now…we’re changing the way Archvillains spawn. A ton of forum goers disliked adding so many AV’s into missions a while back…so we’ve come up with a solution. If the team size and mission difficulty are ABOVE a certain level, an Archvillain spawns. Below that, players will face only an Elite Boss. If the mission is set on the first two levels of difficulty, it takes 4 heroes or more to spawn an Arch Villain. On the third level, 3 heroes or more. On the fourth level, 2 heroes. On the highest (Invincible), a solo hero will spawn an AV.

So, for PC/A, we should be able to still get Elite Bosses at the 3rd level of Reputation — which should get us better (tougher) spawns, but still keep it in the duoable Elite Boss range.
We’ll have to give that a try.

Good guide to reputation here.
The third level is:

Rugged/Vicious – Mission spawns at +1 level to your level (i.e. +0 to +2 mobs, but usually mostly +1 with some +2). Spawn sizes are normal. AVs become Elite Bosses when team-size is two or less.

And this worked great — we did a (non-AV/EB) mish and, carving through orange and reds, the XP was faboo — about 14-15K/minute. Keep that up, and we could be at 50 in 3 hours or less.
As Margie noted, we need to consider what we want our Big Mish to be.

CoH Trivia

According to Statesman, did you know …

-that Dr. Vahzilok is named after George Vasilakos, owner of Eden Studios (for whom I co-wrote several RPG books).
-that the name Rikti came from a conversation where I said “Rikki Tikki Tavi is a cool name. How can we get that into the game?”
-that the name “Cryptic Studios” was inspired in part by the first RPG book I co-authored, “Cryptozoology.”
-that Shane Hensely, a current designer, created Deadlands.
-that Thomas Foss created a minis game Pirates!
-that Statesman was a character created in several pen and paper super hero RPG’s over a decade ago. Many former character names have found their way into the game.

The overall thread is full of all sorts of intersting CoH trivia. Some of which (“do you remember when?”) I actually, appallingly, remember.

More I7 stuff

Big article on I7. Coolest bit is the picture at the right, showing how Recluse’s Victory (Atlas Park, other-dimensioned) changes dynamically as the balance between Hero and Villain victories changes. Fun.

Recluse’s Victory, or what the Heroes know as Atlas Park, is the first PvP zone for the series. Heroes and Villains will vie for 7 strongpoints, called “pillboxes” places around the map. Waypoints to these pillboxes are always one click away (no fullscreen map fiddle-faddling needed) and have 4 heavy turrets a piece, which must be destroyed before the pillbox can be captured (and don’t forget that you’ll have to deal with PvP aggression in the meantime!). And when the pillbox is captured… I hope you’re sitting down for this…. a “temporal anchor” is placed, and the buildings around you dynamically re-skin to fit the faction’s vision- reskin not just for you, but for everyone in the zone! In Villain areas, drabness, dead trees, proganda posters, and other signs of Recluse’s influence is everywhere to be seen. Even the large Atlas statue turns to, you guessed it, Lord Recluse with arachnid legs wrapped tightly around the world. In Hero areas, it’s goody two-shoes cheerful cleanliness, flora and fauna, and Justice League banners. When one side captures all the pillboxes, they get five minutes of victory time to try to gain 1,000 PvP points as everyone jockeys for postion. Doing so yields you temporal enhancements that you can take out of the instance, such as a robotic tank. But the real show stopped is this zone-wide dynamic reskinning. It’s never been done before in any MMO, and it’s at least as cool as it sounds.

And also:

Finally, one of my original, comparatively meager complaints against City of Villains was the lack of truly villainous content. All that changes with Mayhem Missions. Whereas you used to get a bank or casino heist mission after completing five newspaper (randomly generated) missions. These special missions will go into the regular rotation, and Mayhem Missions will take their place. Basically, you grab a team of villains, enter a special instance, and wreak as much havoc as you can within a given timeframe. Commit federal no-nos like destroying mailboxes, municipal no-nos like fire hydrant destruction, and those innocent civilians wandering around… heh. It ain’t GTA, and you can’t defeat them, but you can sure make them run scared. Discrete thresholds based on how much damage you do award bonus time. Just about everything is destructible, including buildings! Set them on fire through setting bombs in side missions, or (in another side mission) raid a local shop for the phat loot. Sneak past roving cameras (which, when activated, spawn waves of the newly formed local police force) and break into vaults and secure areas. The rewards and loot you earn are considerable for the minimal time investment (20-30 min, though features like this are still being fine-tunes), and you’ll want friends to gang up for your raids so you’ll be invited to their Mayhem Missions.

Aside from Recluse’s Victory, there’s still (as earlier noted) no glitzy joy for CoH.

Quality of Life Features: (Hereos and Villains)
New Global Chat and UI features improve the overall ‘City of’ experience.
CoH Art Upgrades (Heroes)
City of Heroes gains reflective windows, added bump and specular mapping, a variety of higher resolution textures, and full screen depth of field effects.
New Costume Items

I just hope the Global Chat/UI features (of which I’ve heard zilcho details) make up for what will no doubt be further lagging graphic “enhancements.”

Countdown

Finished up the Praetorian arc last nightj with Psi-clone and Amorpha — Dominatrix and Marauder, followed by Tyrant. Took many fun pictures standing next to Statesman, who looked quite rugged.
I’m of mixed feelings regarding the whole AV/Elite Boss thing. On the one hand, it let us duo the whole grand story line, which was convenient and fun. On the other hand, they were almost too squishy — Tyrant was red, and, frankly, no real match for Amorpha even without much help from me.
If we redo the arc via Amorpha, I’d like to play with the settings a bit, to see if we can make them nastier without bumping them to AV level. AVs I’m pretty sure (given past experience, and their recovery rate) we can’t duo, but we should be able to find a way to make the EBs more of a challenge.
Now at 49.45.