Category: Gameplay

Pulled out Hildy and Torchy (after some playing with a new Katherine toon and Margie trying to get a Mayhem Mission on CoV). We both had the Pumpkin Henge Croatoa mission, and wanted to take it on.
Everything was for us. We ratcheted to Heroic. We’d levelled since getting the mishes. We both had the one-shot Rune of Warding.
We lost both missions. Hildy couldn’t hold them enough with her fiery aura and taunt. I didn’t have enough AoE attacks and couldn’t take them down fast enough. The little buggers move like greased lightning. We tried both one-person patrols (each of us) and both sticking by the henge, and it still didn’t help all that much.
Rrg. Hate that mission. That puts me 1 for 5, and if I never take it again it will be too soon, unless I’m on a sizeable enough team and/or one with a couple of Controllers.
So we ran off and beat up on mooses.
The other part of the frustration was … well … the sort of echo chamber out there. Very few people on my Global list were showing up as on. Only a couple of tells on CC. So either a lot of folks are running ghidden and silent, or what should have been a Big Night demonstrated how thin on the ground our particular CoX circle has become.
Bleah.
But we did get to beat up on mooses, which was nice.

Getting back into the swing of things again, in between blogging and unpacking and cleaning.
Spent a good part of Sunday with Hildy and Torchy, pushing them up to 29. Yay. Got the Evil Plinth mission (both of us) in Croatoa, but we have Runes of Whozits, and we’ve levelled since we got it, so we’ll probably tackle it tonight.
Ran with the Hostess Heroes last night. Ho Ho was on without Peep for a while, as Margie had Real Work she had to do from home. And even after, we were both hopping on and off as we were watching after Kendall and Tyler who were playing and eating with Katherine while their folks were packing for their long trip to North Carolina.
First part of the evening was in Bloody Bay, which was going pretty well and fun until a Villain decided to both start gacking people around the pillboxes and stealing their meteorite ore. Bleah. So not into that sort of PvP. We left shortly thereafter.
Rest of the time was fighting red-orange (to me) nasties in Striga, where I levelled. Yay!

Got a late start last night, since Margie and Katherine had to do some evening-time shopping for the latter related to our upcoming trip.

1. Soloed a bit with Lynn. She was still on Heroic, and I was getting some pretty blue-white missions, so I bumped up to Rugged — and started a new arc of missions (Croatoan witches) that took me down twice in ten minutes.
   Hrm. Rejiggered back to Heroic until I catch up a bit. Half-way to 31.

2. Post-Kitten-bedtime, we hopped on with Hildy and Torchy, also in Croatoa. More, analogous Witch trouble, as those crazy broads refuse to herd well. Still, few worries.
   Midway through that mish, got a @tell, so hopped over to …

3. CoV and Mister Ravenous and Charity. Kinda crazy fun — three brutes on a team of six or seven tends to guarantee things will be a bit chaotic (I didn’t envy Margie in her buffy/healy role, let alone our being kinda rusty with these character, which meant hitting the right powers was more conscious than it should have been).
   Played a while (too long a while), then hit the sack. Charity dinged to 16. Should (may) do more with those two. In our copious free time …

Managed, with all the foofoorah last evening, to get Cetus and Lunulata up to 6th level, which means Squid Nova form.
Spent the next couple of adventures running around doing double-Squid action. No real threats (yet) to our relative squishihood, and it was fascinating to actually see them in action.

Didn’t actually play all that much, but some at least.

1. A bit of hopping around/soloing/PUGging with Lynn.
2. Created new Kheldian pair, Cetus and Lunulata (me/PB and Margie/WS, respectively). The intent is to get them up to 8-9, then pair them off with Al McGordo and Christmas Present. The character stories have not quite gelled in my head yet, but should be fun to play with.
3. Did the first Shadow Shard TF, starting … what, Thursday? … and ending last evening. Like most of the SSTFs, this one was kind of annoying. I mean, some eerieness with the Rularuu, but also a lot of seemingly pointless running around between the Shard and Founders and Bricks, a lot of repetitive missions, and a climax that was sort of anti-climactic.
   Solid team of 50s, though — Psi-clone, Amorpha, Hang Time, Noelle Frost, Sword of Asgard, Leroy Jones — along with a 44 — War Bones. The most interesting thing about it all was artificial: the team composition kept changing over time, which meant tactics and strengths and weaknesses kept changing, too.
   That we were mostly 50s, and thus didn’t have to worry (annoyance factor aside) about death/debt or missing out on XP meant that our tactics shifted subtly (or not-so-), too.

After all that time playing PC, it will be odd shifting back to Ho Ho tonight.

Knights Night last night. Margie and I got on a bit late, and between east coasters dropping off and serious performance problems for some people (blamed on the I7 pre-downloads), didn’t go very long en masse. Still ended up with Fazenda and Araware running something late with (at the end) Noelle, which was fun, given both her devil-may-care attitude and the always-welcome contributions of a Controller.
Both F and A are halfway to level, which is nice. We should give them more playtime. Though I need to rebuild some of her macros, since at least one of them went away when I respecced her for Fly.
(Note to self: really need to do something like this for the Consortium. Really do.)
After that, Psi-clone briefly helped start up the Shadow Shard TF (#1) that Doyce is organizing. Ran around with the crew for a while, and was shocked to discover that I was the Team Healer; there’s usually one or another full Empathy Defender running around in this group, but last night they had to make do with just me — which led to a sort of Zen “Stand in the middle of battle, watch the team health bars, spam heals and buffs at anyone having trouble, toss in an occasional Blind as opportunity presents.”
Nice to pull Psi-clone out to do something, though. After having been running Fazenda, I was astonished by how fast he flew. And, really, even taken down to 41 or whatever the TF auto-exemps to, not much in the way of powers were grayed out — Regen Aura, Psionic Tornado (bleah), an Accolade or so. Not bad.

Between a sinus infection and Mr. Momness, I decided to take the day off (which still meant getting up early enough to get Kitten to the bus). So I took the opportunity to finish getting Lynn up to 30, which was a lot of PUGgy fun.
And what faboo power did I get at this juncture? Oooooh … gotta be … Hurdle! Woot! A life-changing power!
(Actually, needed it — it will synergize with Super-Jump, and will give me a vertical movement if I’m running low on Endurance and needing to leave Combat Jump off.)
And, by the bye, she seems to have the most Prestige contribution of anyone in the Boomtown Saints at the moment …

As I pined away this evening, with pangs of separation from Margie (on a business trip) wracking my decrepit frame …
I managed to get Honor up to 15, and Lynn up to 29. Ironically, both ended up on PUGs that ended up unable to finish a Mission from Hell (which garnered both massive XP and a single death each). Synchronicity.
Re Honor: Being able to fly over the Hollows is a thing of joy.
Re Lynn: I find it more than a little disturbing that she’s almost at 30.

An interesting battle on why Boss Battles in a video game are the make-or-break of the game itself.

It’s partly because a boss battle is the most mythopoeic part of gaming. An adventure game, after all, typically puts you on some dread quest in which the foes get bigger and nastier until you face one final, hellish climactic baddie. This is a pure apocalyptic narrative — the same story line that has obsessed the West for millennia, from the Bible to Das Kapital to the Epic of Gilgamesh. Boss battles make games seem cosmic.
But personally, I think the allure is much more straightforward than that, and also, in its own way, more complex. We love boss battles because they represent game design at its purest and trickiest.

Thinking of the CoX, the bosses/monsters/AVs are the classic finales of adventures — TFs, arcs, the final big Praetorian missions. Where they work is when there’s something to make them interesting. A single AV alone in a room provides one of three choices: you can grind them down, you can be ground down, or you get into a stand-off. All three are not all that interesting in and of themselves, because CoX tactics are, in most cases, a matter of what powers the participants have and how they slot them (and, with less impact, how they employ them). So you go in with a plan and it either works or it doesn’t.
The “good” AVs are the ones where it’s not that simple. Infernal is the classic example — how do you balance the gate, the demons in the room already, and Infernal himself? Who keeps the AV busy while other folks shut things down while other folks keep the team alive? It’s a skin-of-the-teeth battle, much of the time, with enough variables that tactics spell the difference between disaster and success.
The end of the first CoV Strike Force has some variability, too — two AVs, with a variety of interesting tactics that can be employed (many of which have to do with getting them to fight each other) to maximize advantages or minimize weaknesses.
The “bad” AV battles, though, are the villain who stands there and either dukes it out with you or goes down hard. There might be a surprise (a massive attack last ditch nuke by the AV that knocks some of the party out, suddenly changing the balance), but too many of the AV battles are grinds, settled before the first punch is thrown.
The “bad” AV missions can be a useful climax to a long story, but too often they’re disappointing. That’s because, really, there aren’t a lot of strong active tactics that take place in most battles — the decisions have already been made, the powers chosen, and the only question is whether variables of luck, or a sudden mapserv, will take the decision out of the players’ hands. The player mix can spell a huge difference — but that’s already decided by the time the battle rolls around.
Interesting.

Last night was going to sort of be the kickoff to the Boomtown Saints team activities (I do not envy Doyce trying to figure out how to get a 41, a 33, two 28s, a 14 and a 13 all doing something productive, until we get a few more at each of those levels), so I signed on with Lynn, who’s joined the group.
(While Lynn is definitely not saintly, she does find the whole thing very gothic, what with the titles and all that, plus she actually digs the street-level bits, so there’s potentially a good fit there.)
Official proceedings were delayed, so I ran her through some more Croatoa missions, until she got an invite for a PUG in Croatoa. She was the lowest of the team, which ran from 27 to 32, but, hey, good XP, right?
Hrm.
It was the “save the 4 hostages from a huge outdoors hillside platforms Faerie map full of Redcaps” missoin, and we suffered both attrition in deaths (largely avoidable — lots of “I’ll go scout over here, hey, aggro, oh, Quantum, crap ..” kinds of things) and, ultimate, players, which then led back to the first kind of death.
Throw in a bubbler who wouldn’t advanced with the big combat bubble, a blaster who kept knocking away all my opponents, and folks who … well, let’s just say it’s a whole sainthood-earning string of miracles that we managed to both complete the mission and I only died once.
After that, Epitaph was on, so I ran with him a bit, kind of getting some beginning RP into the relationship (Lynn is both fascinated and freaked out by the Kheldians, and is freaked out by her being freaked out by it). Wrapped up a Council mission, then off to fight Crey — which, unexpectedly, led to Paragon Protectors, which Lynn, amazingly, did not die in front of (and, hopefully, contriibuted toward the defeat of).
It was fun doing more actual RP with her, as well as doing the very scrappery duo. I look forward to the next (coughGAMECALENDARcough) time.

After all the setup, it was almost anticlimactic, save for …
Well, we started gathering up around 6:15p, trying to figure out a nice AV mish. Ended up with Neuron, which was okay, but, given the preponderence of robots, not terribly psi-power friendly (which made debuting the Flash+Psychic Tornado respec combo less than impressive).
Still, everyone was … really supportive. Wanting to be there. Wanting to see it. It felt … well, heartwarning, in as gooey a fashion as you want to make it out to be.
When the double-ding actually happend for Psi-clone and Amorpha, I almost missed it. I had a fair amount of lag, so the animation almost slipped past, though the “EPIC ARCHETYPE UNLOCKED” message didn’t.
Too. Cool. And it wouldn’t have been nearly as cool without so many of our friends and comrades-in-arms being there.
Hyperthermian, Sword of Asgard, Avocet, Noelle Frost, Kessa, Puck Bunny Shock.Therapy, MacroLass …
And pre/post-ding congrats from Lady Photon, Captain Atomyc and Mia, Pearl Thunder, and Malcalypse.
It seems weird getting all virtually chocked-up over a bunch of super-hero avatars, but it was really nice, and affirming of the community we’ve been in and contributed to that so many folks (players) were either there, or were interested in being there, or wished they’d been there, or just said “grats.”
What next? Well, editing some photos and a movie that Avo shot and all that, and getting pics posted up here. And then …
… well, we certainly aren’t short of alts to play, and, of course, we can now roll up some Squiddies.
Looking forward to the next 50 ding.
Thanks, people. I mean it.
See you in the comics …

---

And, beyond all that …
Thanks to Doyce for getting me hooked on this crazy thing.
And thanks to Margie for making it all possible.

Got an @tell from Doyce last night that he’d spotted Paladin over in Kings Row. Turns out it was “spotted” by way of “two-shotted whilst reading the post-mission text.” Quick changed over to Lynn Calodo and hustled over there to meet Pummelcite and Sable Fist.
Searched unsuccessfully for a while, until Doyce noticed clockwork making a beeline in a direction. We followed, and up from below popped Paladin.
Bim, bam, boom. Took a couple of minutes to bring him down, and Lynn burned her last Christmas Present, but it was a good kill. (Pummy’s hard to see in the pic because of Sable’s glow and his color scheme matching Paladin’s.)
(Amused to discover that Sable was also a Dark Melee/Invuln Scrapper with Super-Jump as her travel power. Some sort of an echo in here. Though she’s a level higher than Lynn.)
No badge (you get that for stopping Paladin being built, it appears), but a nice chunk of XP.

Last night’s Monday Munchies, Starring the Hostess Heroes, was just a blast. It was Task Force night, with several of us doing Synapse, and others doing Positron.
The Synapse TF went (you should pardon the expression) like clockwork. Six of us originally — one tank (Ho Ho), one defender (Princess Peep), one blaster (Ginger.Snap), and three scrappers (Bear Claws, Brownie Points, and, initially, Ring Ding).
For a group lacking a controller we pretty much had the bad guys locked down. Only two deaths all night, and only rare senses of desperation (usually when we split the team).
Five hours and (for Margie and me) 2.5 levels. Now we’re well into 20, and wondering what sort of keen adventures await!

---

The crew takes on Babbage. The schmuck never stood a chance. He never even got a chance to run. He was locked down, debuffed, and carved into chutney. I didn’t time it, but I’d guess it took us no more than a minute or two.

---

“Hey! Where’s the creamy filling?”

---

The Clockwork King wasn’t really any bigger of a menace, to be honest. I certainly didn’t see any risky blue or green bars during the battle. Like Babbage, he went down in only a few minutes.

---

Hostess Heroes Triumphant! L-R, that’s Brownie Points, Bear Claws, Ginger.Snap, Ho Ho, and Princess Peep.


Many thanks to Doyce for helping organize the soiree. Great fun, and one of the best Synapse runs I’ve been on.

Post-near-50-ding with PC/A, didn’t do much. Saturday was pretty much a wash. Did spend a goodly chunk of time on with Torchy and Hildy. reaching 27 with both of them. Switched over to Mister Ravenous and Charity for the evening, only to have the servers brought down after only one mish. Jumped over to Virtue with Honor the Flag and Copper Mountain.
Tired, though, so I wrapped up early, watched Doctor Who (while Margie, bless’er, busily shifted got on with Honor and solved her PUG-centric contact problems).
Hostess Heroes tonight, complete with an attempt to run Synapse. Should be interesting — almost like real work with that crew.
Still need to figure out when to do the Ding Party. Fact is, it looks like we’ll be unable to have it at a time and date when all who’d like to be there (or who we’d like to be there) will, in fact, be able to be there. Which means we should just organize it around when it’s good for us and let people make it if they can. /em grump