Category: Gameplay

… 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. 🙂

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.

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.

This was our Villains Night.
Pre-dinner, ran Mister Ravenous and Charity at Home (Elitists) up to level 4. Post-dinner, ran Mister Thorne and Undone to 7 (and pretty much out of Mercy Isles missions).
Both pairs are fun. For myself, I’m jazzing on the whole Brute thing — the adrenaline rush of charging forward, Light Brigade style, as fast as you can, ignorning wounds, trying to keep the SMASH bar as high as possible. It’s giddy. Charity’s healing and sonic debuffs are pretty handy, too.
For the other pair, the whole Mastermind Merc thing is a kick. I get to be both hands-on and have ranged blasting powers. As the healer, I get to try to keep the soldiers and Undone both alive (which, given the vagueries of Twilight Grasp, is an intersting challenge, helped by everyone else drawing a lot more aggro than me).
Good stuff.
Kudos to BD for building the CoI base, such as it so far is. I may subcontract out the CoJ base, too.

Since yesterday was the Halloween debut of CoV, we chose to run on CoH instead. Psi-clone and Amorpha scurried about amidst relatively deserted city streets, cleaning up some old missions, earning prestige, picking up salvage from Freaks and Council, cleaning some old story arcs, and …
… getting contact assignments in Warburg.
Of course, the biggest trick to Warburg is knowing just where the heck to go. For the record, you reach there via helicopter, taking off from a rooftop near Kings Row’s police headquarters.
We headed over there on as much of a whim as anything else — PvP remains something I’m not entirely sanguine about. We ran through a couple of missions there, using invis. to avoid the crowds of (hero) PvP.
(There appear to be a couple of different story threads you can follow in Warburg. One involves taking control of a rocket seized by Arachnos. This is competitive between heroes, at least, hence the PvP stuff, and it was interesting seeing groups of heroes suddenly com orange as they turned into opponents. The other thread is just general heroics, though the missions can affect the abilities of other heroes in the zone, e.g., you seize a bit of tech that adds 1% to the damage done by all heroes, etc. Still not clear on all the details, obviously).
Ended up with a bugged mission — you can lead the Com Officer to the door, but you can’t make her exit — after having successfully taken apart various Arachnos nasties. Some good stuff there, though I suspect the generic Arachnos set pieces will get as tiresome as the generic Crey/Rikti/high-tech set pieces.

So with our travels, we managed to miss almost all of the Two Day Pre-Release Soiree for CoV. We made up for it, some, by being antisocial with the in-laws and getting into CoV last evening.

• The production servers are running much better, natch, than the beta/test servers. I will be curious to see what the load is like tonight.
  Actually, no, I’m not. I’ll probably do some CoH tonight (more below).

• Got Mister Ravenous built, and joined him up with the Elitists on Virtue. Didn’t do much with him (yet).
• Got Mister Thorne (abruptly aware of all the “Misters” I have as alts) built. Jackie raced to get to 10, and built the CoI and invited me in then quit so I could be the boss. Yay! Immediate crowding around the entrances as folks tried to get in. Duoed with Margie’s Undone. Finally got to some missions we hadn’t done in beta.
• Despite previous understandings of stuff (and maybe I was just confused with the Beta Test server), global @handles remain the same. Which makes me even more glad that mine is not CoH-centric.

The biggest question on my mind at the moment is — CoH? CoV? Champion? Virtue?
Only so many hours in the day.
My inclination is to:

1. Still focus primarily on CoH/Champion/CoJ stuff, in particular Psi-clone (and Amorpha). They’re the furthest along, they’re the “best” characters we have, and we have certain SG responsibilities to fulfill. Plus, they’re fun.
2. Secondary focus on Mister Thorne and the CoI. Again, responsibility, but also the prospect of some good fun. Thorne and Undone have a very … odd relationship developing, sort of the nasty side of the PC/A relationship. Duoing with Margie is always fun, regardless of the folks involved. At least sign in every couple of days to say howdy. (There would be some RP advantage to his being high in level, but, realistically speaking, that’s not likely to happen. He’ll just have to exercise his influence … some other way.)
3. Tertiary focus on Mister Ravenous and the Elitists. He seems like a fun character, and they should be a fun group.
4. All other spare CoH/CoV time to our other CoH alts. Make an effort to get our FP/SK folks on every once in a while. Keep an eye open for things to do (TFs) with our other alts there, but let them lie a bit fallow for a while.

Only so many hours in the day (and night), alas.
There’s obviously a huge interest in CoV from a lot of the Alliance “regulars” on CoH. Especially for folks who’ve gone through to 50 on CoH, I can see where the new opportunities and content in CoV would be attractive. Will Paragon City become a ghost town?
I don’t think so, but I’m a lot less sure than I was a month ago. At that time, a lot of folks were kind of, “Yeah, well, I’ll buy CoV for the extra four slots and maybe do a little tinkering with it, but I like being a hero and plan on sticking around here.” That’s not been gainsaid yet, but, again, a loit of focus this past weekend (from those of us in town) on CoV. It will be interesting to see over the next few weeks, as the novelty wears off (a bit), how folks settle out with their game play balancing.
Mine, too.

Spent a fair amount of time in the latter end of the week, and Friday/Saturday, with Psi-clone and Amorpha. Both were in spitting distance of 38, and after the Nights of a Million-Zillion Rikti, we managed to ding there.
In the meantime, of course, we were in endless Rikti story arcs, including some outdoor mishes — which served (esp. the untimed ones) as massive XP farms.
PC still managed to die twice.

1. When I signed on Saturday afternoon, I knew I was at the Brickstown train station. I walked away as it came up to do something … and a bit later heard some worrisome sounds. Came back to find myself reeling about, stunned, and several orange Council folk whomping the tar out of me.
   Not sure if it was my ambush or not, but it sure took me down hard.

2. We had to go down into the Abandoned Sewers (first, we had to find the Abandoned Sewers) and hunt Rikti. No problem. Until we got stuck in one of those little zig-zag cofferdam rooms with a Hydra blocking the door, and the timer ticking. After trying to sneak past it (we were invisible) for thirty seconds or so, A. decided to just blast her way through — which resulted in (a) many Hydra coming into the room, (b) A. getting through, but my getting stuck behind the body, and (c) my getting hit for many points of damage.
   Free of the room, finally, I ran as fast as I could — and realized I was visible — as I ran through more Hydra — and they took it amiss — and I, similarly, missed the side passage A. had gone down — and …
   … a free trip to the hospital. W007!

Still managed, somehow, to ding.
Sunday, while frantically trying to get Margie’s machine CoH-ready, the Consortium Meet-n-Beat started up. Eventually joined up, again in the PC/A duo. Discovering everyone was 20-21, we exited out and returned as Torchielle and Kazima. Ran some blue-and-white missions with our many friends, no prob. Hit the Hollows and discovered a mish full of purple Ruin Mages …
… and many collective deaths.
Finally managed to bust through that, and then we (and the one remaining M&B player, Ciunas Bas, plowed through a Sky Raiders mission, complete with a few deaths of its own — but not enough to keep Torchy from dinging 22.
Which ding was supposed to garner the Aim power, but after spending half the Hollows mish on my butt or locked in stone, I decided to go for Acrobatics instead …

Managed to get on and actually play CoH last night (Amorpha and Psi-clone, with a bit of help from Zazi). Between external commitments, doing some scattered CoV testing, and just busy life, we’ve been woefully short of game time of late.
Beat up a lot of Crey to make up for it. As well as a few dozen Rikti monkeys.

Margie got home late and continued working right until she headed up to bed around 10. I had a vestry meeting until 9, so didn’t really get onto CoH until after she’d called it a night. Bummed around briefly as Psi-clone, visited a contact, but decided not to solo anything, and the few folks who were on were either just hanging, were just about done with their final mish for the evening, or were on a TF.
Ah, well.
Ran over to CoV briefly and experimented with Mr. Thorne (a Soldier/Dark Mastermind) and with Very Bad Kitty (Claws/Regen Stalker). Getting awfully tired of those first two missions …

Between a hectic weekend, with essentially no blocks of evening time free (nor, really, much in the way of blocks of day time), and then server problems last night, haven’t been on to CoH with any of our characters in, well, days. Rrg. Likely limited tonight, too, due to other commitments.
Did a little bit of CoV, but not worth speaking of. Playing around with Masterminds; a great concept.
Chatted with some folks about CoV and whether there’s likely to be a migration, not just of the “I wanna play a bad guy and kill stuff” folks from CoH, but of decent and enjoyable players, too. I hope not — while CoV has some fun elements, I still prefer playing a hero, and still have stuff to do in CoH before I get tired of it. 🙂
That said, there’s some CoV stuff I wouldn’t mind doing — Mister Ravenous is a lot of fun, and … some other plotty bits that would be enjoyable to dabble in. But I don’t see CoV as my main platform at this point.

Fired up City of Villains (Beta – Training Room) this evening.
Along with every other beta tester in the world. The words that best describe the experience? “LOST CONNECTION TO MAPSERVER.”
No, really, Margie and I were singing, “I’ll be laggin’ my way back to you, babe!”
To be fair, it’s the test server. And the game really is much fun. Lots of imaginative character names, some fun-looking characters, and much villainy afoot.
I would post a fun picture of my character, Mister Ravenous — but that would violate the NDA. No screenshots.
That said, damn, there’s a ton of costume accessories that are perfect for CoH, too. I hope they are brought over.
‘Nuff said.

For all that CoH has a (deserved) reputation for character design/costuming, I remain amazed by the things one cannot do.
So, for example, Torchielle went in last night to get her lvl 20 costume from Serge at Icon. What I wanted was jeans and a t-shirt. Basic, simple mufti.
Nuh-uh.
The jeans part is no problem. But for the top, I can
(a) get a form-fitting “top with skin” t-shirt form that looks like I’m in a wet t-shirt competition. Not very Torchy.
(b) get a loose sweat-shirty kind of thing that’s the same “baggy” as her uniform. Not very distinctive.
(c) get an actual “shirt” that has a cropped midriff (of various styles). I went with that … but, again, it’s not the best fit for Torchy.
A t-shirt. Simple, one would think.
Ah, well.

So Margie downloaded all the CoV beta stuff, and created a Brute named “Brimstone Released,” doing the basic Breakout bits (once the test server was workikng properly). Her screen name on the forums is “Slightly_Evil.”
I didn’t get a chance to get everything downloaded before the daily beta period (5-8 MDT) was over (I’ll be firing all that off tonight), but I already have a character concept in mind. My forum name (and, likely, first character name, sans underscore) is “Mister_Ravenous.”
More as I can NDA-tell you.

Due to an endless series of phonecons today (the last one letting out around 6:30p), we were beyond late for the Storm Knights Meet-n-Beat with Fazenda and Araware. Rats.
On the other hand, we dinged to 15 with little trouble, handing missions of mostly-oranges with little trouble. So, no worries.
For the ED Record, Fazenda was planned to be 6-slotted in Hover (Fly), Recovery Aura (Recharge), Stamina (Recovery), Adrenaline Boost (Recharge), and Power Buildup (Recharge) — which means I probably would have set up with Hasten instead. She was 4+-slotted in Healing Aura (Heal), Heal Other (Heal), and Nova (Damage). Oh, well.

Sunday was kind of quiet for us. We cleared up some old business with Psi-clone and Amorpha — duoed saving the War Walls (no problem), cleared out some old mishes, tried to figure out how to get into some story arcs we want to get involved in, etc.
Accelerated our Rikti Monkey hunting.
Then over to the Azures, who we played with most of the afternoon. Uncharacteristically, we were quiet on the comms. I wasn’t feeling particularly sociable, at any rate. We did punch through some very nasty missions, including a sewer-full of orange abominations. The Mrs. died twice, I managed to just squeak away without debt, which is odd given that I’m the scrapper. That aside, I was still pleased by Mr. A’s performance — he seemed very effective at kicking the snot out of pretty much anything we ran up against, even without always my full attention (Kitten was watching our Superman animated DVD, and there was at least one ep I hadn’t seen before).
In the evening — I decided to watch a movie instead. So there.

All I want to know is why we spent all that time Friday night hunting down Paragon Protectors in Crey’s Folly, in order to get the Infiltrator badge (thus the Conspiracy Theorist accolade) when …
… well, last night, we ended up slogging against endless PPs on various missions against the Crey. Except these were all purples. Psi-clone and Amorpha, joined by Dubh Bas and Toy Maker. We did pretty well — no TPKs, but close, and everyone died at least once (DB and A managed multiple times) — and still everyone managed to level, a tribute both to the huge amount of XP we were getting plus the new “half debt in mission” rules.
So PC/A both hit 37. Hurrah! Now to figure out how to deal with all those yellow SOs without outright replacing all them with 40s. (Yes, I know how to do it, it’s just annoying.)

Ran around last night trying to finish up the Conspiracy Theorist accolade for Psi-clone and Amorpha — ran the mission (The Doctor’s Ally badge) and took about two hours to get our Infiltrator badges (take down 100 Paragon Protectors — not Crey Protectors, mind you, but Paragon Protectors).
Only nearly died twice, both times because the Invis dropped before we were ready for alpha strike.
The rest is just a bunch of search badges, most of which we have. Crey Pistol, here we come …
UPDATE: Wrapped it up for both of us this afternoon. Not something to frequently use, to be sure, but against Bosses, etc., it should come in handy.

Rather than any number of useful errands I could have been running, I played with Amethyst Crown. Now that she has Parry, she has a pretty decent attack chain without Brawl (Parry – Hack – Parry – Slash …).
So I ran a mish on my own, which was okay, then decided to head over to the Hollows. Level 8 should be just right, right? And I was confident enough of her survivability to be willing to risk a bad PUG.
Well, it actually worked out okay — I was at 8 and a large group of mostly lvl 10 or so pulled me in for what turned into two consecutive Frostfire mishes. During which time I dinged up three times, ending up at 11. Yay. Only died once (after I hit 10, of course), and felt pretty good about her performance.
Good times.
Have decided against Hasten at this point (since there’s not a lot I’m dropping recharges into, and, as I said, she has an attack chain that’s good and will only get better). That freed me up to take Swift as her one power on the even level, which, with Sprint, is almost as good as a travel power until 14.