Author: admin

Character sketches

Best/scariest CoV design I’ve seen to date: Eggman, who is, esseintially, a giant chicken. Small monster legs in yellow, bright white body (including “wing” shoulders) with red trim, bald with a red crest, a yellow beak/breath mask, smoking a cigar …
Coolness.
Then, at Le Peep this morning, my eye was caught by a lady with longish blond hair wearling a short black pleated skirt and highish black leather boots, and I’m all, “Hey, I could make her in the character designer.”
I was even more amused to find out that Margie had spotted the same lady and had the same reaction. We decided her name would be Le Femme Peep, and our only question is whether she’s a hero or a villain …

Yes, it’s too late …

… for me to be posting, so I’ll sign off in a minute.
Finally managed to get on. Margie was in the midst of taking advantage of the free costume respec being given out overnight to use all her old costume respecs on characters. Lynn and Kazima both grabbed a second costume (Lynn having realized she’s getting prominent enough to actually put her aunt in jeopardy if she’s recognized), and we fixed the colors on Mrs Azure (a bit off since Margie rerolled the character).
Margie was going to do a little more costume tweaking, so I hopped over to CoV to play with Eliza Dee. Did a bit of soloing, did a duo mission with BD, did a very mediocre PUG with some folks two levels lower level (and two dozen points lower IQ) than me, dropped, got invited to another PUG that turned out to be pretty decent (except for the MM who did a lot of “pulling” with his robots before anyone was prepped).
And stayed up too late. 🙂

Costumage

A new free costume respec will go live overnight. It will replace any that you presently have, so here’s your chance to experiment a bit …
Though, of course, bugs with the costume system (faces that change, etc.) are the reason for the (now that it’s fixed) respec, so …

Non’Sync

Well, both Psi-clone and Amorpha got the intro mission for the Organ Grinders story arc. Ran one of them —
— the other didn’t get the “shared completion” option. Ran the duplicate mission.
Went to the second (which we both also got). Ran for one of us —
— the other didn’t get the “shared completion” option.
Dunno of something’s screwed up with that code, or if there’s some other factor we’re unaware of, or what, but it’s irksome. Margie /bugged and /petitioned it.
Good XP, regardless. We’re both 2/3 – 3/4 of the way to 40. Yay.

Villainy

Spent Saturday running Mister Ravenous and Charity at Home (or, as Margie puts it, “I understood there was to be Punch and Fry”) together through the wilds of Port Oakes. Lots of fun, and we got up to 11 by the time the day was done.
A few deaths along the way, mostly due to a rather, um, goofy PUG that we ended up volunteering to join Atom Smasher on. There were a couple of good players, a couple of okay players, and two extremely goofy and counterproductive Masterminds. And when a third one got recruited, A.S. opined that every one he meets lowers his opinion of the AT.
Which makes me think I need to do some running with Mister Thorne so I can be considered the best-played MM on the Rogue Isles … (certainly I’m already in the upper quartile).
I think, by the bye, that MM’s, as the “new, exciting” AT, acculuate lots of bad players. Especially ones who get the giggles watching their zombies dance to boom boxes.
The mission was interrupted just before the end by all the East Coast servers crashing. Yikes. Though it let us duck out of the team in a graceful fashion.
Charity does the typical “Defender” thing of casting buffs on random characters she meets. Though she does it by casting fire shields on them.
“You just like setting folks on fire, don’t you,” Mister Ravenous opined.
“Well, duh,” Charity retorted.
So it goes.

Toggle drops

Are damnably annoying. Since I6, various toggles drop at random when zoning between neighborhoods or into/out of missions. The latter is particularly annoying/dangerous, as if there are bad’uns just inside the door (or just outside of it), you may find yourself defenseless. Yikes.
I do hope this gets solved Really Soon Now.

The Plant

It’s now blindingly clear to me that “Operative Burch” is actually a plant, a test for new villains to the Rogue Islands, an update of the classic, “Well, you’ve shown us you have the stuff, now take this [unloaded] gun and put a [“click”] bullet in the head of this cop we just captured snooping around, so we know you’re on the up-and-up.”
I mean, the guy is the first person every new character is sent after.
The so-called “Longbow Agents” there are almost certainly turned or guys in captured costumes, too.
I’m just sayin’.

Two by two into the Arc

We’re trying our darnedest to get Psi-clone and Amorpha into the Omega Level Clearance (the Body Snatchers, I think is the formal title) story arc. I’ve finally gotten the initial mish on it from the contact; Margie keeps trying added missions from him, as well as clearing other missions and stuff, to (as yet) no avail.
Still, plenty of Rikti goodness last night. Died, both of us, twice, on the same mission (each of ours — unsynced, so we didn’t get to both take mission credit on one). Mistakes on our part — rushing in and not having the sense to rush back out.
PC is being hampered a bit by

    … frelling Drones that both spot through the Invis and, themselves, don’t render on my screen until I’m practically in their visual range, too (is that a graphics setting problem or just the way it is? I can certainly see the Headmen and other full-size Rikti earlier on, and the Drones will reticle — they just aren’t visible until it’s nearly too late). Lesson: “Walk carefully, Grasshopper …” (a/k/a, “Don’t get cocky, kid”).

  • … the lack of perma-Hasten. Still have the power on PC, but it’s good for only about 2/3 the time, and the rest of the time I feel sluggish. That becomes a real issue when the balloon goes up and I need to pump A with heals and heal myself and call out Fred and his cousins to run interference and blind anything that moves and …
    Hrm. An AoE control might be of use. I might have to look into that Flash power I’ve never taken.

  • … the lack of status proection. I just picked up my “Restrained” badge last night, meaning I’ve been held/slept/mezzed a whole bunch. Not to mention (thanks again, Drones) knocked on my ass too often. Especially when A goes down and they all instantly turn their firepower on me … So I need to pop Breakfrees more, and I need to look into Acrobatics, and …

Hrm. Maybe a good thing I still have a trial respec.

Video issues

I’ve managed to bypass the I6/CoV-era ATIOGLGL.DLL lock/crash problems on my notebook (ATI Mobility Fire GL T2 card) by adding the switch -useTexEnvCombine to the shortcut that invokes COHUPDATER.EXE. That makes for less complex graphics (I now watch Margie’s screen with envy), but it works, and it doesn’t look all that bad.
The cost is worth not having the machine crash three or four times on load …
CuppaJo comments on graphics.

Level best

2005-11-09_lynn.jpgQuick entry, just for the record. At home sick Mon-Wed, but managed to do a fair amount of relatively mindless Scrapper play (whether that means I was well enough to be at work I leave as an exercise for the reader).
In so doing, managed to get Amethyst Crown up to 13, and dinged Lynn Calodo up to 20 (at which point Valkyrie snarkily pointed out that Lynn could use a new outfit, and Lynn replied with an impolite gesture).
Scrapper solitaire is fun. I’m pretty sure I’m behind on whatever level Margie’s gotten Blue Point up to …
Meanwhile, we created another set of alts on CoV — Eliza Dee and Mistress Bacchante. Lots of fun.
2005-11-07_eliza-bacchante.jpgEliza is modelled after the JLU “Galatea” (who was the statue brought to life by Pygmalion, the title of Shaw’s updated play where Henry Higgins, reprising the title role, recreates Eliza Doolittle, hence her name). Funny thing is, Galatea is modelled somewhat after the DCU’s Power Girl, an Earth 2 Supergirl version (origin rebooted multiple times). So, after creating her — visually inspired by Galatea to the extent I could get the costume creator to do so — not 30 seconds had passed before someone ran by and said, “Evil PG, I like.”
*sigh*
Of course, then someone ran by saying, “nais ondies” (which, after a minute of puzzling, I translated to “nice undies,” but by then he was too far gone for Eliza to pummel him).
Eliza herself may, or may not, be based on another Paragon hero. She’s a Crey escapee, regardless, so …
Anyhoo, fun. Works well with Bacchante’s plant mastery.
Last, but not least, got both Psi-clone and Amorpha up to 39 last night, after an overly-long marathon session beating back the Rikti again (a/k/a Rikti farming off in some emergency-force-fielded neighborhood). Good, clean fun. Now, if we can just get to some of the 35-39 story arcs before we level out …