Category: Gameplay

A lot of what we’ve done lately has been our Scrapper duo, Rita and Runt (and it is just freaking scary that they are at 33).  It was a very entertaining transition last night to flip over to the opposite extreme and pull out our Mastermind duo, Special Ediucator and Gifted Kid.  Great pair, lots of fun.

Haven’t done nearly as much CoX whilst Margie has been away as I’d thought I would.  Still, managed to get Lady Zebra to 18 (Big Kick!) and Fr. Frank to 12 (Fortitude!).

Both Honor the Flag and Lady Zebra, solo toons, are in SGs. No great devotion to said SGs, just invites that were responded to, Prestige earned, and ranks granted.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I was on with either of them, so I took advantage of an opportunity this afternoon and did so.

Honor had been kicked.

It was … very strange. It’s not like I was bound body and soul to the SG. My time with them was sort of peripheral — earning Prestige, getting a promotion, chatting with a few members and a few CC members. I’m not 100% certain I even recall the SG name. Yet, I felt strangely bereft in finding myself kicked. No message in Mail. No warning. Just … pffft.

In retrospect, I realize that the SG itself may have gone bottoms up — its activity level was not all that great. But, still, it was a very odd sensation, like, for some unknown reason, someone had drawn a big line through my name, and I was Out.

Signed onto Lady Zebra and was (a) happy to find I was still in my SG, and (b) quick to run out, kick some bad guys, level, and get into a PUG.

Odd.

Wrapped up the second Croatoa arc last night (dinging Rita to 31 in doing so) with the “free the enchanters, protect the henge” mish. While similar in structure to the “stop the Fir Bolg from escaping” trial mish in the first arc, it has some substantial differences that make it … well … actually enjoyable.

1. The bad guys are not monomaniacally sprinting for the henge. They will, in fact, engage you in combat if you hit them, or come within their aggro range. Granted, Red Caps are a bit more clever than Pumpkin Heads, but, really, the way the FB trot past at high speed unless you actually manage to hit each and every one with something (and, even then, they’re only temporarily distracted) is one of the most maddening things about the first henge mish.
2. There’s a mission timer. Once the last enchanter is in place, a 15 minute clock pops up. While that’s quite a while to stand there and deal with wave after wave, it avoids the other most maddening aspect of the first henge mission, wondering how much longer / how many more waves there are to go.

There are other things about the first henge mish that are difficult — the haziness of the atmosphere making it difficult to see the FB under the trees; the long pauses between waves — but those are just challenging, not “Can we just let the next wave through and be done with it?” frustrating. If the above two items were incorporated into the FB mish, it would be ever so much more enjoyable.

Rita and Runt have both graduated to 31, meaning they’re off in Brickstown, fergoshsakes, doing missions.

Not too shabby for whim characters …

Rita and Runt continue rolling through the opposition (with a couple of caveats). We finished up 28 and most of 29 — picked up the Wolf Whistle, and concluded the whole first half of the Croatoa arc.

Including, of course, the dreaded “Stop the 30 Fir Bolg from Trotting Past You at High, Nearly-Unaggroable Speed to Get At the Door, Which Looks More Like Stonehenge” mish. Not the easiest of things to do with a pair of scrappers. We did last a while, though, taking them as they came, usually with at least one or two slpping through each wave.

I do so wish there was some sort of “progress bar” or timer on the mission. When that 30th pumpkin flees, it’s almost a blessing.

We each had the mission, but for some reason I didn’t get credit for it. So instead, I “Cancelled for Credit,” which netted me the same XP as about 7 waves and no SO drops, but took a lot less time and a lot less aggravation.

After that, we wrapped up the rest of the sub-30 content in Croatoa. The final “Stop the Eternal Battle” mish got a bit bloody — one death for me, about three for Margie, mostly alpha strike issues, which are the greatest vulnerabilities for regen scrappers. The Mooses are fairly flimsy, but in aggregate they hit pretty hard …

UPDATE: I note with amazement that R&R have become our third fourth highest pair (after PC/A, Hildy/Torchy, and Velvet/P-siren). Wow.

Rita and Runt continue to forge their way toward 28 — in Margie’s words, “I can’t believe we’re almost ready for Bricks and Founders.” Did one of the two Talos “Stop the IP Bank Robbery” mishes and got the requisite gobs of XP … wrapped things up after clearing the map, making sure it was clear, and still having 9 minutes on the clock.

(A nice Quality of LIfe feature would be an”Okay, you’ve finished the mission and cleared the map, down to the last little cowardly minion, so no more XP are left to grab — exit the damn mish already!” flag.)

Current task is finishing our Striga material sufficient to get Wolf Whistles — it always being nice to be able to summon a few extra <s>targets</s> friends during tough battles.

Doing the regen scrapper pair is, if I may sound fanboyish, freaking awesome. We just do a crapload of damage (the best defense being a good offense), our health bars tend to go up during battle as often as down, and besides the healing powers I almost always have half a tray of greens to chew on. It is, in fact, possible for us to go down, but usually we were just running from encounter to encounter, mowing down oranges, pausing to polish off the red lieut, then onward. Easy-peasy.

Our gameplay has been a bit constricted of late — too many projects and activities and the like.

I did get on a nice PUG last night with Honor and got her dinged up to 18.5 (like all tanks, I long for Stamina). We did a bit of running about over the weekend with Torchy/Hildy, earning about a pip (not bad for lvl 48), and did a bit as well with Rita & Runt. But, overall, not much …

So we were down at Lee and De’s today, and in the evening Doyce and Lee were (again) talking WoW, and Doyce pulled up some of his toons, and at one point Margie said, “Move over,” and sat down to create a character — a female Tauren hunter.

Now, 95% of what I know of Wow is from what I hear people say, and 5% is now from the couple of hours she and I spent taking turns running the Tauren through the first few levels. So, my largely uninformed thoughts:

1. WoW has beautiful graphics. Okay, so we were looking at Lee’s $300 graphics card, but, still, the richness of detail and texture were much nicer than CoX.
2. WoW has a highly textured and rich backstory and setting.
3. WoW is full of so many twiddly bits — things to keep track of, inventory, supplies, crap like that — that it would drive me absolutely buggy trying to play it full time.

Really. I mean, yeah, there’s a bit of that in CoX — but, really, for the most part CoX is about going on missions to defeat/commit evil. The “supplies” you need to track and find room for and all that are largely abstract Enhancements and Inspirations (and, honestly, a good chunk of that I find irksome). It’s mostly about the missions — which, no matter how much one might bitch about the annoyance of pre-Travel Power jogging through Paragon City, are far more convenient and available
than loping along miles across the veldt to find wild boars.

But WoW seems to be all (or at least much) about the encumbrance-and-supply-inventory mechanic — just the sort of crap that I always hated in tabletop gaming, and which is no more entertaining here. One could, honestly, run a CoX character who never slotted anything in their powers and never popped an Inspiration. It would be annoying (and kind of unnecessary), but you could do it. So far as I can tell, you can’t advance at all in WoW without keeping track of (and/or gathering and/or selling)
broken claws and pig snouts. Margie’s hunter ran out of ammunition. Which is accurate from a simulationist standpoint, but just freaking annoying from an heroic story standpoint.

Now, if Margie turned to me and said, “Dave, I’ve fallen in love with WoW and want to play it from now on,” I’d smile, grit my teeth, and play WoW with her (and hope that my vague impressions of how problematic WoW is for soloing and duoing are not correct). But given my druthers, I’m still getting plenty of kicks out of CoX, and didn’t see much tonight to change my mind.

Though the graphics, and the setting, are very cool.

Dinging to 2nd Level while still taking out Outbreak mooks, pre-Coyote.

Rita and Runt dinged 23 last night, which makes them tied for 5th in the numerous duos Margie and I have run, and that in record time. (The roster can be seen in the sidebar.)

I’m not sure if it’s because they’re fun to play, or because two regen scrappers just kick ass so mightily (thus far). That was all mostly on Heroic, too — we just bumped up to Unyielding or whatever the middle setting is.

Anyhoo — if you have a good duoing partner with a similar Brute-like inclination toward kicking ass, the double-scrapper set is a lot of fun.

Rita & Runt finished up the upper Faultline activities — all the Agent G and PCM and Arachnos and Hidden Tunnels bits. Some great stuff, solid story-telling, a great temp power, cool battles …

Most annoying bits were the “go find this place, and it’s down under tunnels so you really can’t use the mission reticle too much, and it’s not going to be clear which side of the Faultline Dam it is.” That got a bit irksome, but we prevailed. We are, after all, heroes.

Man, if they could revitalize every zone with some of the content they’ve put into Faultline, CoX would have an assured future. Heck, just insert some solid stories into some of the Level 1-10 stuff (Atlas/Galaxy/Kings/Hollows), and you’d see a lot more new characters (and, maybe, players) out there. Well done zone.

Rita and Runt hit 20 last night, which put these kind of frivolous “Hey, let’s just have fun with two scrappers” characters ahead of our “serious” new characters, Unchained Path and Idzuna. Weird.

But, let me just say, the Regen Scrapper Duo is Teh Roxxor. Highly recommended.

Meanwhile, Lady Zebra finally dinged 14 and got her Super-speed. And she’s not hurting for endurance, either. Not bad for an occasional solo pick-up character. Life is good.

With Jackie over, and in-between other tasks, we’ve been busy doing various Christmas goodies — gift exchanges at a minimum, and Father Time mishes as possible.

Last night, we ended up hooking up with varoius New York people and ran through the Father Time mish several times. Velvet, got her gloves and boots (to go with the hat — which one wistful player, not around last Christmas, asked about). (In the picture, Velvet and Merrie Mayhem demonstrate the joy of knockup/down/back.

Also ran things with Mister Ravenous, which was also greatly amusing.

My only critique of the event is that the temp powers (rez and rings) only last for a short period of Real Time, which makes it unlikely the alts I get them on will ever actually use them. Ah, well — made for a few nice bonus titles and a chance to play some folks (like Velvet and Mr. R) whom I don’t get out nearly often enough …

Bumming around with Lynn last evening, got invited into a small PUG for the Father Time mish. Got in too late to get any mission credit/goody. So we started it over. Went in, got cocky, got sent to the medbays in Pocket D. Re-entered Pocket D, clicked on the mission door.

CRASH.

Reverify files (ho-hum). Load up Lynn again …

CRASH.

Hmmm. That’s not good.

Let’s try another toon for the evening.

Ended up running a while as Lady Zebra, duoing with someone I’d been in a PUG earlier in the day. That went pretty well, until we found out how difficult hunting ten igneous in Grendel’s Gulch could be. Did get her up about half a level (so … close … to … 14 …) but a lot of debt, too.

Then I pulled on Honor and got hooked up with a team in Faultline that was one of those that renews your faith in PUGs — blasting through the opposition, minimal stupidity, maximal XP, to go a full level to 17.5.

Most amusing thing was the “Stop the Steel Canyon Bank Robbery” safeguard mish, waypointed deep in Faultline. We went down there … to discover that the waypoint was actually outside the War Walls. “Hey! I can see my bank from up here!”

Overall good evening, and perfect timing, as Margie and Jackie were just getting back from their madcap night out …

Lynn signed in jjust fine this morning.

Managed to make it to our first Knights Night in a while. Not a wildly attended affair, but quite enjoyable — Mal as Horehound, BD as Cate Winters, Kessa (while maintaining a connection) as Id-Energy — and guest starring Margie and me as the Azures … who aren’t Storm Knights, though they fit right in nicely. A bit of egg nog and holiday cheer, and we were good to go.

It was actually a very “balanced” AT set — tank, scrapper, blaster, controller, (occasional) defender. We ran the first story arc in Faultline — which is just gorgeous, both in terrain and in missions — and had a great time, except for one room where we were (a) a man down, and (b) a bit cocky about drawing aggro from everywhere.

Playing the Azures was a kick, as usual (no pun intended). We may have to pull them out more often. Margie was rediscovering the joy of Deceive/Confuse (which Mal and I could have reminded her of any time), and I’ve been doing a lot with MA scrappers of late, and it was interesting to see how Mr. A’s build resembled/differed from ones I’ve been looking at (Jump Kick is a key part of his attack chain, which just seems odd). We both dinged 17 (only slots, alas), and are ready for more.

At any rate, a great time. We won’t likely be able to make it to the other two penciled in on the board (an announcement in the SG message might help pull more attendance from others), but we’ll definitely be watching for next month’s installments.