Author: Dave

So, rumble was that we were going to do a taskforce Saturday evening. Margie and I worked during the afternoon to get P-Siren up to 12th level snuff and beyond, so that she could participate (which also worked to knock off some debt with Velvet Jones and get her up to 15th, finally). We invited along Stan, who brought Robenmatsu 3, his blaster. Doyce had his new scrapper, [NAME REDACTED].
Since TFing involves a lot of visiting the TF-giver (in this case, Positron in Steel Canyons), the decision was that Velvet would be the team leader, since she now has Super Jump (which is so incredibly fun it’s worth the price of admission). The first mish for Task Force Manhattan was CoT stuff up in Skyway City …
… and they kicked our asses. We barely got out of the foyer, and that took two deaths and a hasty retreat back outside the building. Lots of seriously nasty spectral demon spirit bad juju types in there (click on the picture to the right for the full deal — Velvet, P-Siren, and [REDACTED], looking up at the nasty hovering over the balcony …).
After we barely managed that, and got upstairs and saw another room with still more, we invoked Lee’s Law (“This is crazy. We’re outta here.”) and left, cancelling the TF, and resolving to just clear out old missions.
Which we did, Stan firing up Zazi as his alt (thinking I was changing over to Psi-clone). Various mishes down in Kings Row, honing tactics (“Pull back! Let them come to us!”) and then off to the Hollows. There we picked up Avocet as blaster support, and basically ran the Trolls With Bombs mish three times for different players. The first two were walk-throughs, since the mishes were pretty old — all grey and green and blue and “I’ll take that flock on the right, you take the flock on the left, and we’ll meet at the flock in the middle” sort of thing. Low XP per body, but lots of bodies.
The third iteration, Avocet’s, was a lot dicier — yellows and oranges to me (who was still the highest level). That meant using tactics again, and when Velvet dinged up to 16 in mid-mish, at Doyce’s urging I left the mish, went back, trained up to get Taunt, and came back (love that Super Jump) and had fun experimenting with that.
Click on the pick on the right for a bigger shot of the Trollbane Five. That’s [REDACTED], P-Siren, Zazi, Velvet, and Avocet, and our omnipresent bubbles.
Good, good time, and enough to wash the bad taste of the failed TF (and my huge debt load from Friday) out of my mouth.
UPDATE: Redactions now unredacted.

I’ve started posting the current stable/cast of characters for myself and Margie off in the sidebar. I’ll update them (and their levels) periodically.
I’m vaguely worried that I’m not focusing enough on one (or maybe two) characters to keep pace with others, and that eventually folks will bypass me and go off together into the rarefied climes of the 20s and 30s and 40s while I plunk along with a variety of alts.
On the other hand …

1. I enjoy all the various people I have here, Velvet, PS, Torchielle, and Honeygun, as well as the others, each have a different feel to them. It keeps the game fresh.
2. As long as I have someone to run with Margie, I’m happy. Our biggest problem is, when teaming, finding a good Crunchy/Squishy pair, since both of us tend toward the latter to the former.

Anyway, there you go.

I had Honeygun sitting in a transit station for about 15 minutes while I did some various and sundry other stuff. I suddenly noticed, in the background I could hear the announcement “Mind the Gap,” the standard intoned message on the London Tube (referring to the gap between the platform and the train).
Fun.

Die once on a mission because the group is up against heavy odds and is not attacking coherently … well, those sorts of things happen.
Die twice in a mission for the same reasons … time to seriously look at the team, the mission, and participation in both.
Die a third time, even after additional team strength has been added, and largely because some folks don’t understand the concept of “wait until we’re ready” or “everybody ready?” or “how can we draw just a couple of these jokers?” … it’s your own damn fault, and doubly so if you don’t simply head back to hospital and greener pastures.
So Velvet died thrice on a mish. A full 25% debt. Bleah. And, later, Psi-clone died once (though he did eventually ding up to 12). Annoying.
I’m kinda beginning to think that I like squishy characters. A lot harder to solo, but a lot easier to keep in the relatively safe background on mishes.
Ran a bit with Torchielle this afternoon, alongside Avocet. Fun, and she dinged up, too.

I have not achieved a high enough level to get tells requesting assistance in PowerLeveling, though I certainly see the [Broadcast]s and (for those who are at least following a couple of rules of etiquette) the [Request]s coming across the Chat window all the time.

Sprinting through Steel Canyon, I spot a corpse lying in the road, about 100 yards from Blyde Square. Curious, I stop to look. It’s a Level 2 blaster. I do a double-take. Yes, Level 2… alone, in the middle of Steel Canyon.
Then I get a tell from him: “plvl me plz?” – followed immediately by a team invite.

I decline team invite for the moment, and reply with a tell. “I’m on my way to a mish and I don’t do power-leveling. Want a teleport to the train?” I figured I’d be nice, since my mish was in King’s Row and I was heading for the Yellow Line anyway. I would have even given him an Awaken, patted him on the head, and sent him on his way back to Atlas Park.

His reply: “no rez me and help me level”

I glance at the group of level 18 Tsoo standing nearby, presumably the ones who placed him in his present concrete-kissing predicament. “I can’t rez.” I reply. “You can go to the hospital, and I’ll tp you to the train.”

Another reply: “no staying here”
I don’t know that I’d go so far with some of the “taking revenge on annoying PLers” stuff as the folks commenting in the post above (though I strongly suspect most of them wouldn’t actually, either), but I understand the desire. Trolling strangers for unearned achievement is annoying; the ‘tude that some of the PLers seem to adopt (“I am entitled to this. You are a high level. Your duty is to PL me, even though I have a silly handle, an ugly costume, and am in the game just to to prove I am cool and 1337, and am clearly not interested in investing the time and effort that you did. And if you don’t, you suck.”) is just plain old rude.
But I agree that the best way is simply to ignore them, even if there is that temptation to SK them out to Talos Island and then leave them there.
Now, I have been fortunate enough to have some higher-level players offer to help me get some XP or take me on some higher level outings (as I’ve recently written), and I’ve tried, when they’ve done so, to be both duly (and sincerely) grateful and to pull my own weight in the team. But I would never presume that that they must, or even that they should, regardless of the bonds of friendship, any more than I’d presume that any of them would just give me money on demand or come over and help me mow my lawn.
Rudeness is no basis for a society. Folks who don’t learn that don’t last very long. At least, it’s nice to think so.

While it is not nearly as nice as being home, it was very fun running around with Margie (Honeygun and Kazima) last night. Even if the resolution of the modem failure has not resolved the mapserver discos (and at least one service outage last night) …
Also, thanks to both Doyce (Hang Time) and Lee (Cap’n Carnage) for squiring Velvet around through Very Bad Places (Talos Island and Peregrine Island). I picked up about half a level and about 60k of enhancements.
The hairiest part of the adventure was on PI when Lee stopped, ran back to me, said, “That doesn’t look good,” I asked “What?”, and he messaged back, “I’ll stay here till you get back,” at which point the Mapserver Disco message came up for me. Eep!
And it wasn’t a simple back-and-login. The hotel broadband account had “expired” (despite my having chosen three free days), so I had to re-register and get back on, several minutes later. I had images, Lee’s reassurance notwithstanding, of reappearing in the midst of PI with my little 13th level character no longer SKed to a 50th, and facing innumerable Things that were not only Purple, but Ultraviolet to me. Eep!
Cap’n Carnage may not be very cute, but he was beautiful to see when I reappeared … 🙂
Anyhow, I hope I acquitted myself well against the various nasties and that Lee wasn’t too bored by it all.

Last night, Velvet Jones had the chance for some late-night missions run through various zones of Paragon City, including the first-time-visited “Boomtown,” alongside an enigmatic new visitor to the city who goes by the nom de guerre of the Strategist. He seemed to be gathering information about the city and its inhabitants, including various metas.
Whatever. Velvet was just tickled that she dinged to 14, taking Super-Jump at the Strategist’s suggestion. The photo of the two of them was taken atop “the Giant Penny” at the Kings Row police station.

Maybe I should set up a new Gallery page for these …

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Dear Mom,
I think I’m finally beginning to hit it big here in Paragon City. Somebody asked to take my picture, and then sent me a copy of the print. Neat. Did that ever happen with you and Dad?
Hope all’s well there, and that you weren’t involved in that Alien Eggs thing I heard about there the other day. Anyway, things have settled down a bit at the office, so I expect to get out for more “action” in the coming weeks. With luck, I may get invited onto one of the Super Groups they have here.
Love,
Torchielle

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A good chunk of Saturday was taken up with the “P Squad” — top-to-bottom in the picture Margie’s P-Siren (Bubble Defender), Stan’s Puck Bunny (Grav Controller), and my Psi-clone (Illusion Controller).
Missions were slow (no tanks to wade in, no blasters to nuke the bad guys) but, frankly, nothing could effectively stop us, especially when we managed to dry-gulch a hapless thug like the one in the pic.

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After a while we got tired of (a) the Hollows, and (b) teaming with all squishies, so we headed back for the “real” part of town (Steel Canyons), and Stan swapped out his character for Robenmatsu 3 (tanker, on the right), so we had someone to draw good aggro for us.
Psi-clone is here in his going-to-church clothes …

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One of the really keen bits about CoH is teaming with the wife. That’s tended to involve lots of new characters, as Margie plays around with different archetypes. Here’s the Buckle Brigade: my AR blaster, Honeygun (left), with Margie’s longswords scrapper, Kazima (right).
(Kazima was a celestial type that Margie put together for the Necropolis game a while back. Since she couldn’t have wings, Margie went for the horns instead. Fun character, especially running around with that oversized broadsword …)

Because you really wanted to know. I can tell.
Current roster:

• 13 – Velvet Jones – Sci Tank (Inv/SS)
• 11 – Psi-clone – Mut Ctrl (Mind/Emp)
• 10 – Torchielle – Mut Blast (Fire/Energy)
• 10 – Snipehunter – Mut Blast (Energy/Energy)
• 9 – Selene – Mgc Scrap (Claws/Regen)
• 7 – Sister Chinook – Mgc Ctrl (Ice/Emp)
• 7 – Truly Unstable – Mut Def (Rad/Rad)
• 7 – Honeygun – Nat Blast (AR/Dev)

I could put the above info in the sidebar and update it there, as someone noted. But that would suggest an obsession with the game, like every other post was going to be about CoH or something, so I think I’ll give that a pass at the moment.
I set up Global Chat (“/chatbeta 1”), but I can’t figure out what I want to use as my “handle” — using a character name (the default, and, for me, currently “@Velvet Jones”) is a bit too … obsessive for my taste. But I don’t have a normal semi-anonymous nom de plume I use. And you only get one chance to redefine your handle. Hmmmm. It would, though, resolve the annoying problem of people building and changing around long lists of heroes for me to track. Ahem.
Our connectivity this weekend was really wonky. Mapserver disconnects way, way, way too frequent — except when in door missions (more limited maps) and while moving. Really irritating. I’m tempted to blame it on our network connection altogether, but that the server we were on (Champion) had an emergency we’re-kicking-you-off-now reboot last evening makes me think it wasn’t just us (though the problem didn’t seem to get better afterward). I did some preliminary research into a cable gateway; nothing resolved yet (and not likely to do so until next weekend at the earliest, anyway).
Margie’s all “What character do you want me to work on while you’re away on business this week?” To which I’m “What makes you think you won’t see me online? They have broadband at the hotel I’m at …”