Author: admin

Slog between dimensions

Ran the Hero-side Pocket-D missions last night (starting a scosh late) with Amorpha, Mister Thorne, and BD’s Gasta Bas.
Death rode on our shoulders the entire way, and, unfortunately, was as busy pecking on our ears as anyone else’s.
Problems we had:

  1. There were three of us. Unbalanced. And because we’d started on Amorpha’s mission set, the only thing we could do is SK Mr. Thorne to her, and leave Gasta to hang back and spam heals. And, oh, yeah, die a lot from various Arachnos AoE and cone attacks.
  2. Mr. Thorne is way too squishy for all the aggro he draws.
  3. Though fighting at level 47, Mr. Thorne lacked the powers that would come between where he is (17) and there, including some added firepower for the Mercs and better buffs for his team. As a result, his contribution to combat was pitiful — mostly distractions and horribly slow healing.
    So … tired … of that build.

  4. Amorpha had serious “invis” problems from the bad guys, which didn’t help her combat abilities any.

So the standard order of combat in the Arachnos part of the mission arc was …
… We suddenly realize GB has been taken down, along with one or two of the boys.
… The rest of the boys go down faster than I can recreate them.
… Mister Thorne goes down.
… Amorpha survives about half the time.
Mercifully, PocketD has its own healing areas, and plenty of chicklets to buy. It also has some super-buffs to sell, though they didn’t seem to help as much as we needed.
*sigh* Finished around 11. Thorne had dinged, Amorpha had gone up a pip, GB was still in debt.
Still have the villain mishes to do — and Amorpha’s already observed that 11 of her powers go “grey” when she exemps down to our level. Should be entertaining.

Stuff, briefly

Hostess Heroes last night. The Hollows turned out to be a bit more problematic than I thought, for a variety of reasons:

  • Full team meant any delays, problems, etc., had more impact. A couple of drops by folks added to this.
  • Real Life issues (like getting Kitten to bed, and others for others) meant a lot of standing around waiting.
  • More bodies than team slots meant in-game reshuffling and more waiting.
  • Early interruption due to other plans/commitments/fatigue.
  • Despite having some very intelligent and experienced players, way too much “Hey, let me take the short-cut through Grendel Gulch with my Level 8 character” goings-on, exacerbated by missions that were (literally) all over the map.
  • A broad range of character levels (6-10, I think) means running something above Heroic is likely to lead to problems.

That said, it was still a lot of fun, and even those bits didn’t take much away from that. A good evening.

The more things change …

2006-02-04_charity-ravenous.jpgWent ahead and brought Mister Ravenous and Charity at Home over from Virtue to Champion (and the CoI). It’s the third time I’ve done this (I believe I’d originally built him on Champion), but no regrets.
A solid evening of play got us both up to about 8.5. We ran through the Burke path, rather than Kalinda, which made it a bit fresher.
The pair of them work together, and playing a brute just remains plain fun. The comm chatter with them is pretty enjoyable, too.
I look forward to doing more with them and with the CoI.

Best toon seen of late

Ran the other day with “Inside-Out Boy.”
Smallish figure, using one of the alien or chitinous or some other sort of rough-textured exteriors, all in red and pink. With veins …
… and he was a Spines scrapper, of course, so he looked even more messed up then.
Would never want to run him, to be honest, but it was very, very nicely done.

Characters in review

HEROES

  • 46 – Psi-clone: Momentum went down a bit this week, between various other distractions, but still on track toward 50. Posted something for him related to the Great Schism which drew a few kudos from folks.
  • 31 – Velvet Jones: No activity this week. Mainly pulling her out for Phalanx Prestige Days, which is fine. Did some comparative stats with Stateswoman, who hasn’t EDed herself yet.
  • 22 – Torchielle: No gameplay, but thinking a lot about her. I may throw her into an online story that’s starting up. And I’d like to focus mor eon her in the future.
  • 21 – Lynn Calodo: No activity. Trying to decide whether to keep her in the erstwhile Allies (which feels vaguely uncomfortable) or pull her into the as-yet-undefined new allies group. Did post a story about her a week or two ago, giving her thoughts on some changes in her life.
  • 17 – Fazenda: Much fun the other day during Knights Night. As is obvious, I like Empathy characters, and she does a nice energy attack, too. I’ve seen a good half-dozen references to EMP/NRG Defenders in the last week or so, so obviously it’s a popular build. And she’s fun to play.
  • 15 – Mr. Azure: No gameplay. Not sure what’s going on there.
  • 14 – Amethyst Crown: No gameplay. Fun to solo, but I still sort of feel like Margie’s Blue Point has taken over the BS/Reg franchise in the family.
  • 10 – Big Lungs: No gameplay. I keep thinking I’mg going to scrap her, but I like the way she looks (other than that, silly), and she’s good for teaming. Prognosis uncertain.
  • 10 – Honor the Flag: Heavy solo play. Doing well. Keeps running out of breath, but fun and teamable.
  • 09 – Al McGordo: No activity. Still like him. Not sure when I’ll get back to him. Margie’s HH is a Rad/Rad, too, so I don’t know if that will obsolete him in mindshare or make her realize how much fun I have iwth him.
  • 09 – Fr. Frank: Another soloing character for teams. The Zen of Healbotness. Haven’t gotten a voice for him, but I like the way he looks and behaves.
  • 08 – Ho Ho: Too much fun. I really hope folks don’t take /petitionable offense, because she’s great. Looking forward to running her on Mondays.

VILLAINS

  • 17 – Mister Thorne: A fair amount of gameplay, duoed and on teams. Definitley keeping him around, for various RP reasons, but I don’t expect much gameplay beyond “we need a level 17 CoV character for this activity” sort of thing.
  • 14 – Eliza Dee: No activity. Shame, because I like her, but I’m not enjoying soloing (esp. the Elitists being defunct).
  • 11 – Mister Ravenous: Too much fun, too long neglected. I plan on porting him over to Champions and the CoI soon.
  • 10 – Eliza Dee: See above. I’d like to do more with her duoing with Mistress Bacchante.
  • 06 – Major Morena: Meh. An experiment that’s not likely to go anywhere. May drop her off the active list and into the “vast pile of experimental alts I have sitting out there.”

Evil intent

Did a fair amount of inconclusive running about with Honor the Flag (ding ding) and Fr. Frank (ding) yesterday afternoon while Margie was at the office, then in the evening ended up joining in a big CoI confab — three missions, I believe, all told.
Fun group, esp. a combo of new players (relatively speaking) and old. Dinged a level with Mr. Thorne and Undone to 17.
And … Margie and I realized we just weren’t having any fun with the characters per se. Fun group, and fun concepts, but I find Mr Thorne ponderous to maneuver in battle, and Margie finds Undone too squishy in a group setting.
So seriously considering re-rolling Mister Ravenous and Charity at Home over onto Champions and into the CoI (they were originally rolled up for the Elitists on Virtue). That means tossing away 11 levels or so, but I think it would be worth it. Actually, I just want to run a Brute (so Eliza Dee would do), but Mr. R is way too much fun.
We’ll see how it goes, timewise. Still have plenty to in Paragon, too.

Knights night

Last night was the first (monthly?) Knights Night, a Storm Knights gathering, organized by Mal. We had an amazing turn-out — at least a dozen on at one point, and some beyond that, too. Fazenda and Araware got on earlier than I’d expected, did some initial teaming in Skyway; shifted over to a team with Baron Rufus and Silver-Streak, et al., fighting Nemmies and Rikti via Portal Corp (and let me tell you — negotiating through PI at level 16 is a hoot); nearly went to the new dance club; ended up going back to Portal Corp to help Pummelcite’s team take down Psychic Babbage …
2006-02-02_sk-babbage.jpg… which last was, nearly, a cakewalk. No deaths. No serious injuries. We had more trouble and took more time getting to the dude than actually taking him down. Mal spent more time Deceiving his attendant clocks and getting them to fight one another than we did in finally wiping out Psychic Babbage.
That was helped by having a lot of Controllers — the managed to lock down PB in ice for a while, and Mal even managed to Deceive him briefly — plus three bubblers of various sorts, plus a couple of folks with healing, plus plenty of damage-dealers, plus a strong tank build in Pummelcite. (The pic shows, by the way, from L-R, Starrboy, Kessa, Araware, Fazenda, Mal, Puck Bunny and Noelle Frost — Pummy is on the opposite side of the frozen PB, keeping his attention.)
Both Araware and Fazenda did end up eating dirt some four times over the course of the evening, most often in conjunction with being out of SK range whilst in PI or beyond the Portal. Way too easy to get one-shotted. In at least one case, everyone in the group went down.
It was interesting shifting, in-between battles and missions, between “energy blaster” mode and “heal spammer mode. Tried to use Faz’s “witty banter” keys, which was fun, and I think I managed to contribute pretty well. Early-on tuning of the energy blasts to avoid untoward knockback were countered by ending up on an early team that was riddled with energy blasters — Kessa (NRG/NRG) and another EMP/NRG Defender. Almost seems to be a requirement for the Knights …
It was great seeing the turn-out, and heartened me considerably.
Since the SKs are still in CC with at least some of the CU teams, I did end up hearing more chatter there — and got some nice examples of exactly the sort of thing I don’t miss having during my game sessions. I leave that to the SK management, though — I can put up with it on rare occasions. 🙂
Didn’t get into the Pocket-D club, but it’s going to be convenient having something that bridges Talos, FF, and Kings Row. We already “borrow” the FP porters to get to some of the hazard zones. Between that and Pocket-D, transport time should be even further reduced.
A good evening.

New patch today

Patch notes [And my notes]:

COMBINED NOTES
Powers:
* Updated Kinetics/Increase Density text and buff Icon. The Mez protection of Increase Density will stack, but the damage resistance and the slow debuff will not stack.
* Targeted AoE powers now properly hit moving primary targets; this includes most Tanker attacks. [Yay!]
* Fixed bug that caused power animations on some teleports to play twice [Yay!]
Training Room:
* Character transfers will now transfer Influence/Infamy to the Training Room.
Arena:
* Fixed awards for Scheduled Tournaments. It is no longer possible to actually lose ranking by winning a Tournament.
* Rated Gladiator matches now award points correctly to the match victor.
Paragon Dance Party:
* DJ Zero’s transdimensional dance club has been renovated and expanded.
Rewards:
* XP earned for defeating Archvillains/Heroes has been doubled. [Yay!!]
* Defeating an Archvillain/Hero will result in a random SO Enhancement 3 levels higher than the level of the AV being awarded to everyone who received XP (if you have inventory space). [Yay!!]
* Defeating an Archvillain/Hero will result in a random Large Inspiration being awarded to everyone who received XP (if you have inventory space). [Yay!!]
* Defeating an Archvillain/Hero while in Supergroup mode will award you a piece of Salvage 100% of the time. [Yay!!]
UI:
* Improve movement in “Free Camera” mode: Pressing up will now move the player towards the top of the screen, instead of the last direction of movement. Rotate will now rotate the player and the camera instead of just the player in. Click to move no longer cancels autorun.
Bases:
* Fixed bugs with Move Room function that allowed players to create rooms that are impossible to get to.
* Fixed several bugs with Base data not updating properly when a new Item of Power Mount is added to the base.
* Characters will no longer be able to rez to Base Reclaimators from the Tutorial Zones. Characters who did this and then used base telepads to enter city zones would not be given any level 1 contacts.
Miscellaneous:
* Fixed issue where the DE Eminator would sometimes not spawn. [It will be interesting to see how Eden plays now …]
CITY OF HEROES
Powers:
* Modified Blaster/Energy Manipulation/Bone Smasher. Increased its energy Damage, decreased its smashing damage (no net change). Increased its unresistable damage in PvP to its proper 30% .
City Zones:
* Independence Port and Talos Island: fixed bug that where the Ghost ship would sometimes get stuck in one location. [Boo! [Ha!] ]
CITY OF VILLAINS
Powers
* Gamblers Cut for Ninja Blade was inadvertently giving double the critical damage. This has been corrected.
* Fixed some Combat text for Mastermind/Mercenaries Player Assault Rifle. [Hopefully including the spelling “Safety” properly.]
* Fixed Mastermind/Mercenaries/Commando Grenade Launcher range. [Hopefully increasing them. 🙂 ]
* Freedom Corps Sonic Grenades no longer have an irresistible hold.
Tasks
* In Hardcase missions, wave attacks properly spawn after protection OR destruction of obelisk. Mission can now complete in either instance.
* Caleb is fixed and should spawn now. Bring on the madness!
Tailor
* Arachnos Cape unlocked by buying the Special Edition DVD for City of Villains now appears correctly in costume selection.

Return to the Rogue Isles

Finally, after way too long, broke out Mister Thorne and Undone for some CoV play. Feeling vaguely guilty, since they are SG leaders and all that.
Hrm. Granted that the super-team of PC/A can spoil one, the DPS for the pair we ran sure felt slow. Nice to see the Mastermind’s Mercs chewing up the competition, but Dark is slooooooooow (which I remember every time I create a someone with Dark Defender powers), and Stalkers are fraaaagile.
It was good to cleanse the palate, and we’re started on a fun story arc (Ghost Widow and Wretch), but I don’t see us shifting our attention away from Paragon as a standard thing, at least not with this pair. Maybe to run out Eliza Dee and Mistress Bacchante, to get them (at 10) up to the other two’s levels (16), then partner swap to see how that chemistry works.

I7 and Beyond

Quoth Statesman:

As several have noted, I7 features content mostly for City of Villains (levels 41 to 50, in fact). This is exactly what we did for CoH. City of Heroes will receive a cool graphics upgrade, new base items (Empowerment stations!) and access to Recluses’ Victory. It’s true that CoV received more attention, but that’s mainly because we needed to fill out the levels. I had the option of releasing I7 or waiting until we could fill out the City of Heroes content. Obviously, I chose the former. New content should get out there when it’s ready. We’ll be focusing equally as much as possible on each product moving into the future…

For those who have speculated that Newspaper missions are coming to City of Heroes, they aren’t…yet. That’s coming a little later in the year. I’d like to add something different to the CoH system…

Subtle

While there are any number of standard hero names (“Captain Megaton”) and quite a number of dubious ones (“Rectal Damage”), not to mention funny ones (see Hostess Heroes), occasionally one comes along that’s a lot more subtle.
So the other night, we ran across “Proverbs 31 Woman,” which had folks scratching their heads.
Proverbs 31:
9 Epilogue: The Wife of Noble Character
10 [c] A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
11 Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.
12 She brings him good, not harm,
all the days of her life.
13 She selects wool and flax
and works with eager hands.
14 She is like the merchant ships,
bringing her food from afar.
15 She gets up while it is still dark;
she provides food for her family
and portions for her servant girls.
16 She considers a field and buys it;
out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
17 She sets about her work vigorously;
her arms are strong for her tasks.
18 She sees that her trading is profitable,
and her lamp does not go out at night.
19 In her hand she holds the distaff
and grasps the spindle with her fingers.
20 She opens her arms to the poor
and extends her hands to the needy.
21 When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
for all of them are clothed in scarlet.
22 She makes coverings for her bed;
she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
23 Her husband is respected at the city gate,
where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.
24 She makes linen garments and sells them,
and supplies the merchants with sashes.
25 She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come.
26 She speaks with wisdom,
and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
27 She watches over the affairs of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
28 Her children arise and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
29 “Many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all.”
30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
31 Give her the reward she has earned,
and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.
And there you have it. Don’t recall if she was clothed in scarlet, but there are some fun things in there for a hero. Not sure how you’d nickname her. “P31”?
I’d be curious to read her backstory.

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

2006-01-30_infernalwithzeph.jpgHad the first Official Monday Munchies night. Ho Ho and Princess Peep ding(dong)ed up to 8. I’ve never done low level missions with a full team of solid players, and that plus the jokes made for a very enjoyable time.
Next week — the Hollows. I expect we’ll have the whole zone cleaned up by the time we finish. Certainly we should plow through to Frostfire.
After that, Psi-clone and Amorpha joined up with an elite band — including Emerald Shrike, Avocet, and Seventy-Six — to bring Zephyr-Storm home to 50. Clean and tidy through Dominatrix and Infernal — indeed, it was the first Infernal mish I’d been on where nobody died. And it wasn’t that there was a full-blown Empathy Defender and a Controller with Empathy secondary. I did a fair amount of buffing, but very little healing — the team was that good.
Well done.
UPDATE: Gah! Forgot Puck Punny, even though she’s standing right there in the frelling picture. Sorry, BD.

Issue 7 details

Not yet on the boards, but here.
Mostly CoV stuff (new zones, powers, Patron stuff).
For CoH, too:

  • New Base Features (Heroes and Villains) Players can take their bases to the next level with Storage Items, Empowerment Stations, Supergroup Banners, and Base Color Tinting. [Yawn.]
  • Quality of Life Features: (Hereos and Villains): New Global Chat and UI features improve the overall ‘City of’ experience. [Okay, QoL stuff is always nice, and Global Chat is definitely on my radar right now …]
  • 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. [Which, hopefully, will not make it unplayable for lower-end graphics machines.]
  • New Costume Items – Details to follow. [Yay!]

On a clear day you can see forever

Evidently someone forgot to turn on the fog machines in Dark Astoria on Test. See what the zone really looks like while you can.
What’s interesting is how many folks are happy to see the fog gone (even if through a bug). To me, as annoying as DA is, the moodiness is very nice, and otherwise it becomes just another city neighborhood with a big graveyard in the corner.

Looking ahead

As we near 50, my own mind is turning ahead to What Next. Or, rather, Who Next.
We’ll certainly put together some Kheldians, but assuming we slow down a bit with PC/A, what duo will we start pushing forward next, and what changes will that bring?
Probably not Velvet and P-siren. Fun enough characters, but a very low DPS for them, not to mention ongoing problems with the whole FF primary for Defenders.
More likely Torchielle and Hildegard — fire blaster and fire tank. I’ve been pleased with how they’ve worked together previously, they have a good DPS factor, and, I think, decent survivability.
It’s going to be a big change, though. PC/A work with highly planned tactics — controller lockdown of the worst in any given group, followed by scrapper tearing them apart, with Phred along for added damage if warrented. It’s a careful, intricate juggernaut, and the only time we get in trouble is when something interferes with that tactical planning — ambushes, running into something unexpected, etc. If I’m not on top of Amorpha’s buffs and healing, or if I get targetted too massively, it can all fall apart.
Still, alongside the fact that Amorpha is “frighteningly efficient” with the damage dealing, the combo of controls and Empathy and Group Invis that PC provides dictates how we handle nearly every mission.
A more “conventional” tank/blaster pairing will change that. No invis to sneak around with (let along stealth missions). No controls to pre-mitigate the worst of any encounter. No heals aside from what we carry in our pockets. We will almost certainly not run on Invincible. It will be more letting the tank lock down the attackers, then overpowering them with damage.
I suspect we’ll end up respeccing to some Medicine Pool bits. And maybe Stealth and/or Recall Friend. Some compromises in design to make the duo more duoable.
I’m looking forward to the challenge.
Of course, there’s the little bit about getting up to 50 first …