Category: MMO

CoX: I17 news up

Wanted to comment more fully on the new CoX I17 stuff coming out Real Soon Now (based on the overview page).

Features

Ultra Mode

Ultra Mode includes a superior graphics rendering process for players who have higher-end graphic cards. Each feature can be enabled or disabled in the graphics menu options and will be scalable. Ultra Mode works on both Macs and PCs. In specific, it offers dynamic shadows, screen-space ambient occlusion, and dynamic environment reflections (including planar reflections and environment mapping of reflective surfaces).

I’ll be very curious to see how much of this will run on my and Margie’s newer machines.

Epic Archetypes Unlocked at Level 20

Previously, you had to have at least one character at level 50 to make an epic archetype character. No more! Now you can create an epic archetype character as long as you have any one character at level 20 or higher.

A sign of the aging game, perhaps, but also worthwhile.  I guess now I can make a VEAT (since I already had access to Kheldians).

Animated Tails

No more tails lying about like dead weight! You will now be able to select tail body parts that will react to your movement and have a swaying or swishing idle animation mode. You will need to go to a tailor to upgrade to the animated version.

Yes!  Excellent!  (And will they be free upgrades? No matter — I’m swimming in Tailor Tokens.)

Content

New Story Arcs: Issue 17: Dark Mirror features two new Hero and two new Villain story arcs for levels 20-30. Each of these story arcs has four missions, and the story arcs highlight the Dark Mirror’s sinister new enemy. Acquire the first Hero story arc in Talos Island, and the first Villain arc in Sharkhead Isle.

A good “sweet spot” area for some new content.

Silver Mantis Strike Force Update: The Silver Mantis Strike Force will now be available to all Villains, not just supergroups. You now can access the Silver Mantis Strike Force via Silver Mantis, located in Sharkhead Isle. You can also run this Task Force from your supergroup computer.

Interesting.  And, it makes me think, a sign of the slow social decay of CoX. How many people are active in SGs any more?

Positron Task Force Update: This Task Force has been split into two halves and dramatically upgraded and updated to ramp up the fun. The final battle of the Task Force takes place in the Faultline Dam and incorporates the new Dark Mirror enemy.

Positron TF?  Wow, that brings back some memories.  Sounds like it’s bringing the TF back to what was originally intended, plot and division-wise.  Nice.

New Badges: Along with adding badges for 500 Badges Earned, 750 Badges Earned, and 1,000 Badges Earned, we are adding new exploration badges to city zones, almost doubling the number of exploration badges. You can learn new Accolades for finding all of the exploration badges in each city zone.

Um … okay.  Those who like those sorts of things will find them the sorts of things they like.

New Player Emotes: We’ll let you know more about the new emotes soon.

Ditto.

Quality of Life Improvements

Craftable Temporary Powers: You will now have a much cleaner and more consistent way of finding and crafting temporary powers.

Never found much use for craftable temp powers.

Increased Mission Count: You can now have seven active missions (previously three).

Now that’s pretty interesting.  Honestly, I’ve never felt much need for more than three, especially these days, and even with 3 it’s easy to end up with stale mishes.  Expanding to seven feels more like a copy-cat move than something all that worthwhile.

Show Last Objective: This UI improvement lets you find your last objective on a mission map, making it easier to find something you’ve missed.

THANK YOU, LORD!  Best QoL Improvement EVAH.

Auction House: The UI gives you new options for sorting search results, your Auction House inventory is now separated by clearly marked tabs based on the item’s status, the Auction House text entry box now autocompletes, and a single click on a recipe displays all salvage needed for that recipe.

I’ll have to play with it, but any improvement to the auction system is a good idea.

In-Game E-mail: You can now use in-game e-mails to send Influence/Infamy to your own characters or to other players’ characters via in-game e-mails. (You still cannot send Influence, Infamy, or items from a Hero to a Villain or vice versa.)

About time.

Mission Architect Improvements

Experience: You can now handpick the powers for custom enemies and still receive experience for them (within game balance limits).

New Maps: We have added approximately 20 new unique maps.

Giant Monsters: You can now add giant monsters to some outdoor maps.

Exit Mission on Complete: You can now specify that players have to leave the mission manually on completion.

Escort Missions: “Lead to place” technology allows you more control over escort objectives.

All sound useful for those who do MA content. Though the idea of adding Giant Monsters … (Can we create the Good Old Days at Portal Corp …?)

Overall, sounds like quite a nice issue, especially with the Going Rogue around the corner.

Does STO need a “meaningful” cost of dying?

Star Trek OnlineIn a recent interview, Star Trek Online’s exec producer Craig Zinkievich indicated that STO might need a more significant “death penalty” than just going back to the nearest respawn point.  Or at least, that’s what some players are clamoring for.

Zinkievich explained Cryptic’s feelings on death penalties, saying that they are usually just a time penalty, preventing players from getting straight back into the game and having fun.

“I get that people want to feel a sense of risk when they’re fighting in battles, but if the only emotion you feel when you’re playing a game is fear that you’re going to lose some time due to an arbitrary gameplay mechanic, we’re probably not doing something right, ” he said.

However, the game’s developers aren’t against the principle entirely; “we are looking into finding a meaningful way to give players a deeper sense of loss when something bad happens. But we want it to feel right, rather than just like an arbitrary penalty.”

I’m of two minds here, of course.  I don’t know about anyone else, but seeing my beloved ship blow up and suffering for 30 seconds of cooldown before getting back into action does feel meaningful.

And what are the alternatives?  Thinking of CoX and CO and (I believe) WoW …

  1. Loss of experience or slowdown of experience gain (CoX):  You could justify this as saying that Star Fleet looks askance on ships being driven to (“near”) destruction, and so your meteoric rise to the admiralty is slowed for a bit.  I find this irksome, but not horrifically bad.  (By the way, when is STO getting a “Level Pact” feature?)
  2. Loss of capability (CO):  As you succeed in CO missions, you get stars, up to five, which provide a buff.  As you get killed, you lose the stars.  This has the paradoxical effect of making you less effective against the things you have to go up against again.  I don’t like it.
  3. Loss of swag (WoW):  I’m thinking here of the mechanic of having your body looted, etc.  This is perhaps the most realistic — a finite chance of some system or feature on your ship getting wiped out, or inventory lost — even (perhaps with successive failures) the death of a Bridge Officer.  Eek.  Most realistic, but I’d be seriously hating it.  It suffers from the disadvantage of #2 (making you less effective against a foe you’ve already established is dangerous), unless you delay it until after the battle/mission is over (you survived, but those great twin disruptor cannons that your engineer kept together with spit and baling wire have finally given up the ghost — time to return to Star Fleet for a refit).  Losing a BO, though — yeah, I can see it game-wise, but I’d hate it play-wise.

So the variation on #3 perhaps makes most sense if you have to do something about deaths. And, yes, it adds some “realism.”  I’m still not convinced it’s necessary, or that folks who take untoward risks now will be all that much less likely to do so even with penalties.

Thoughts?

Wanna be my STO Buddy?

Note from Cryptic this evening:

Have a friend interested in Star Trek Online? Maybe he or she saw you vanquishing a Borg cube and was interested in more? Now, with the Star Trek Online Buddy Key, you can invite them along on your adventures, unrestricted, for five whole days.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Visit the Star Trek Online Buddy Key claim center to claim your key.
  2. Click “Claim My Buddy Key.”
  3. You’ll be redirected to your account page. In the upper-right corner, you’ll see a section labeled “Unused Keys.” Your Buddy Key will appear there!
  4. Send your friend the Buddy Key, as well as a link to the Star Trek Online key registration page. (To claim the Key, your friend will need to create a Cryptic account if he or she hasn’t yet.)
  5. Your friend is ready to enjoy Star Trek Online. He or she can download the client at our download page.

After five days, your buddy will need to purchase a retail copy of Star Trek Online (and apply a retail key to his or her account) to continue playing.

Thanks again for your continued support, and we can’t wait to see you and your buddy in game!

– The Star Trek Online Team

Fiendishly clever.

So if anyone out there is interested in giving STO a spin for five days for free, let me know. (Amanda, I’ll hold onto one of those for you. 🙂 )

So how’s that Star Trek Online working for you, Dave?

Pretty darned well.

Both our duo and my solo are LT7. I’m enjoying each new zone as I go into it (I’ve just started to scratch the Neutral (PvP?) Zone stuff with my solo).

It’s fun enough that I keep waiting for the next time I can hop on and play. That hasn’t happened for a long while with CoX, and never really did happen with CO.

I do wish some of the social stuff that currently works in CO — auto-Tweets and a “portal” page for my toon — were working in STO. And I wish the zoning with team mates worked a bit more solidly. And I wish the documentation were better.

But aside from that, I don’t have much to complain about. Except not enough hours in the day to play as much as I want to.

CoX I17 ups the ante

This CoX post shows what the new “Ultra Mode” graphics will look like. And it is damned beautiful. I have no idea whether my machine will support it but, damn — that’s pretty.

Other I17 (“Dark Mirror”) announcements:

• New badges, new missions and new player emotes
• Epic Archetypes now available at level 20
• Improvements and additions to Mission Architect
• Enhancements to UI and game systems

All of which sounds nice (if non-specific) — though some folks are apparently having conniptions about EATs being available at 20.  “I fought my way to 50! Now you’re cheapening that effort by making the available at 20!”  (I assume that’s what it means — I haven’t seen a Redname confirming what all that means).  I guess it’s an acknowledgment that a lot of the CoX population is veteran, not newbies, so enough people have a lvl 50 that it’s not worth holding that out as a carrot any more.

I don’t see it as a cheapening of lvl 50.  I’m kinda glad I’ll be able to access the VEATs (having not 50ed any Villains), but I don’t feel like anyone has “stolen” Kheldians from me for my various lvl 50 Heroes (I’ve yet to really get the swing of Squids, anyway).

On the other hand, it sounds like there’s not a lot of content to I17 (which makes sense, if the content folks are all hammering out Going Rogue, but is still a little disappointing).

Remember Going Rogue? That’s right, how could you forget? Well, you have the opportunity to get access to the Dual Pistols and Demon Summoning power sets in March and April, if you pre purchase City of Heroes Going Rogue (MSRP $29.99 USD)!

Ooooh.  Well, that sounds pretty keen. Dual Pistols for the win!

You will also be able to get your hands on an exclusive item pack if you get the City of Heroes Going Rogue: Complete Collection (MSRP $39.99 USD), that will be available when Going Rogue releases in July! What’s in that item pack, you ask? Well, a few nifty things like:

• Alpha- and Omega-themed auras
• Alpha and Omega themed costumed sets
• Four stance emotes
• The Shadowy Presence invisibility power

Hmmm.  Not sure any of those are worth the extra $10.

But, overall — good stuff.

Ask Cryptic, decryptified

Cryptic has reinstated the “Ask Cryptic” as part of the firestorm of “Communicate, dammit!” messages Jack Emmert got when he published an open forum note asking how Cryptic could do better. This week’s installment:

Halorin: Where does Champions Online fit into Cryptic’s plans a year from now? Two years? Three? And what resources are Cryptic willing to invest in the game see those plans to fruition?

Jackalope: We’ve just started working on the next step of widening the Champions Universe and we’ve nailed down our ongoing content plans. In short, you can expect to see new adventures every other month (roughly). The content will be far more story based and focused on the background of the game. Meanwhile, we’ve got some other things afoot (and some of you might be able to deduce what that is) and we’ll talk about it more soon.

A dedication to new content, background-focused, is probably just what the game needs right now.  The questions on everyone’s mind, is (a) what levels, (b) will it be pay-for-play, and (c) will it be persistent content or one-off (or even repeating) event stuff.

Darth-Log: How confident are you that Champions Online can succeed considering its current lackluster performance and in lieu of upcoming competition? What have you learned, what are your short term considerations and long term goals?

Chronomancer: We remain dedicated to the Champions Universe, and we have plans to continue to grow it. While our numbers of players is less than we would like, it is also more than several other MMOs that continue to service their communities.

The question is, how much service can you provide if the money model isn’t there?

The upcoming expansion is an excellent example of our plan to make the game bigger and better while also addressing the desires of our players.

And make more money.

We learned a great many lessons from Champions, and I think you can see some of that knowledge expressed in how we ran our beta testing and approached content creation in Star Trek Online.

STO has been a much more pleasant (not flawless, but improved) experience.  Though the nature of the different and its pervasiveness makes it hard to believe that’s all due to lessons learned from the CO beta/roll-out.

Game development is continued learning, iteration, and alteration to fit the needs of an ever-changing market. A game that was a huge hit five or ten years ago probably wouldn’t do anywhere near as well today. The interests and demands of gamers have changed. So we have to learn from our mistakes as well as our successes and move forward.

(Mumbles, waves hands, what’s so special about CoX anyway, nothing to see here, move along.)

In that regard, we’re going to be focusing more on creating content to provide multiple paths of advancement within Champions Online. The plan is to create more of what you want in smaller bites so we can do them on shorter timelines.

Creating more parallel material is definitely a Good Thing.  Doing it in small bits is also a good idea.  Think of each of the “zones” in the desert — rather than recreate a whole desert, you could easy crank out one or two more zones of that sort in the course of a couple of months (if you had good writing).

We also want to provide more ways and reasons for players to group, which is what much of the Flashback and Difficulty Slider work has been focused on.

The difficulty aspect suffers not from a “slider” but from uneven mob strengths and missions.  Making it easier for people to group or PUG would be useful — and since the server scales groups, even if the population is down it shouldn’t be difficult to do.

In the long term, we’re working on creating new stories, game play mechanics, and locales for the Champions universe. We’re increasing our presence in the community and being more open and communicative with you so you know what we’re thinking and working on. And perhaps most importantly, we’re continuing to look for ways that we can make Champions a better game.

All of which is (a) unquestionably a good thing, and (b) very unspecific.

FongSolo: What is Cryptic doing, or even planning behind the scenes to rebuild good faith in the company and this product that many of us paid the lifetime subs for?

Arkayne: Aside from a ton of things that we just can’t talk about right now, but will be very soon, we’re actively making a couple of changes around here: We’re stepping up the communication. We’re going to do more Ask Cryptics, more Dev Chats, we’re going to be in-game, playing with you more, Our GMs are going to start letting you know the status on the current bugs, and the entire development team is going to start being more active on the forums. On top of that, we also moved Stormshade back to Champions. We know you don’t know him well yet, but believe us when we say, he gets really loud when you guys aren’t happy. Oh, and that “soon” we’re talking about up there, that’s not a “soon(tm)” that’s a soon, as in as soon as humanly possible soon.

Communication is definitely an area where Cryptic has fallen down.  It will be interesting to see how this new resolve works (and how long it will last).

Derangement: Are there any plans to eventually include more non-seasonal content as part of a free update, or will you be focusing the revenues from monthly subscriptions on bug fixes and otherwise upgrading the game’s core, while relying on microtransactions for added content?

Stormshade: We have plans to add more free content to the game very soon, not seasonal stuff, and we’ll be talking about that shortly. (Sorry gang, you’re not getting a Valentine’s Day Event, but we do still love you.)

Frankly, I’d rather see fewer events and more persistent content, so this is a good thing.

Heathenish: I’d like to know what the relationship between STO code and CO code is. Because this past patch seems like you guys just dropped the “improved” STO engine right back into CO. Seems like a crazy thing to do, but for instance the direction-reversing and crazy camera bugs seem to have come straight from STO beta. Also, are both games sharing the same server? It doesn’t seem fair to have login problems because some other game is flooded.

Poz: Champs and STO share Cryptic’s global services: the chat and mail server, the account server, and proxy servers. The games themselves do not share any servers. As you noted, the account server is what we’ve had some problems with due to Star Trek. Unfortunately, we couldn’t safely change how our system works and split the two games apart there. Many of the load issues are fixed already, and we have programmers whose highest priority is keeping the account server working smoothly.

It makes sense as a model, and is probably the right thing to do — if it’s done well.

IchbinVol: Will there be any reason to have a theme based character in the future? Perhaps a synergy bonus for having a certain set of skills?

BigOtter: That’s actually one of the goals of our Tier 4 powers being introduced in our upcoming expansion – to provide high-end thematic meta-powers for each of the power groups.

Hmmmm.  An interesting idea.  I love CO’s mix-and-match concept, but super-heroes are all about theme.  If I were starting a supers game from scratch, I’d see how I could divorce powers from FX.  I.e., there’s no reason most of the various powers (maybe splitting melee vs ranged) wouldn’t work if you could do them each with any number of visual cues.

Btw, I find it fascinating that we’re getting so many different Dev names showing up in this.  That’s probably a good thing.

DawningDestiny: When is the melee rebalancing coming? You’ve talked a lot about it, but I’ve seen nothing that wasn’t a nerfy baseball bat to the face when it comes to melee. It’s by far the most underwhelming, underpowered set in the game. So yeah, what’s your timetable for that fix?

Akinos: Our melee review is currently underway. It is a massive review that involves 5 full framework reviews as well as an overall look at melee as a whole. It’s too early to give an ETA but rest assured is it being worked on.

Good to hear. It seems to me that there are problems both with melee overall in CO and with some power sets beyond that.  I’d rather they take time to do it arguably right, than rush out ill-considered bumps and nerfs.  At least … take some time.

Overall:  a lot of generic filler (“We love you! We will continue to love you in new and exciting and surprising ways! Please love us!”) with some promising nuggets of possible truth.  The right message, at a minimum.

STO: Starting out pretty well

I don’t have a lot imaginative to say about STO. I’m quite pleased with the game thus far, though — it feels more polished in many areas than CO did on launch.

Some items for improvement (of course):

  1. It feels like there’s a vast array of both options / powers / skills and places and ways to display them.  That’s gotten me confused  so far more than once.  “Wait, hey — where was that power lurking? And why can’t i drag it within the tray?”  An example of that is the “hidden” Transwarp power.
  2. Some of the peripheral mission content is still a bit wonky.  Contacts that don’t glow when you approach them.  Unreachable anomalies (ground and space).  Bits like that.  Still early days and all, but it’s a rough spot that needn’t be there. Plus, no explanation, to date, about what to do with all those samples being swept up.
  3. While far, far better than CO, there are still plenty of places where it isn’t clear the distinction between different gadgets one picks up.  Is X better than Y?  If it’s just different, how is it different?  There doesn’t seem to be a lot of room to figure that out other than picking up X and seeing how it works.
  4. It’s great that they’ve added sensors (V) to find anomalies.  It would be even greater if they could spot the nearest one and the one after that, so that our duo could clean things up better.
  5. “Pick up items” is not always clear, persistent enough on screen, etc.  Indeed, a lot of those screen prompts tend to flit past too quickly.
  6. Contacts sometimes come back, over and over again, to get you to listen to something.
  7. They seriously need to do something about the spamming on the chat channnels.

On the other hand:

  1. It is so nice that you don’t have to trot back to Starbase Earth all the time to do stuff. You can contact contacts (Hail Starfleet) immediately, you can level when you get the points while still in space, you can sell through the Replicator if your trays get full.  There are things that have to be done back at Earth, but it’s a lot less inconvenient.
  2. The game remains very pretty and fun, with an array of ground and space combat scenarios.  I don’t know if it’s balance or if we’ve gotten a lot better, but the space combat seems a lot less lethal than it was in Beta.

We’re up to Lt. 4 with our duo.  I’ve also started a solo character just for those occasions when it makes more sense.  I’m pleased by the amount of individual detailing and configuration you can do with your lead toon and his/her crew; I’m wondering how much of that will translate into personal RPGing (in my head, if nothing else).  I’m also wondering whether the 2 slot limit (more slots available, doubtless, at the C-Store) will feel like a limitation at some point, or when/if we’ll want to see a respec sort of mechanic.

Overall, good stuff.

Not a good Friday evening over in Cryptic-land..


From CO:

Currently, the Champions Online Server is down. We are aware of this issue and are currently working to bring the server back online as soon as possible. Please keep an eye on this page for updates, and notification when Champions Online is available again. Thank you, The Champions Online Team

From STO:

Currently, the Star Trek Online server is down. We are aware of this issue and are currently working to bring the server back online as soon as possible. Please keep an eye on this page for updates, and notification when Star Trek Online is available again. Thank you, The Star Trek Online Team

Man, someone’s weekend just went in the crapper.

STO: To Boldly Go … where 1 million other subscribers have gone before

Well, the STO discs arrived today, so after Kitten was to bed we fired things up and had at it.

I’m Lt. Rho Nyn, Bajoran, commanding the USS Audacious. Margie is Lt. Terry Chestnut, human, commanding the USS Rembrandt. Together, we fight crime! Um … if Star Fleet asks us to.

We’ve gone through the intro tutorial adventures, wandered around the Earth Starbase, and now are ready for adventure. And, ah, Starfleet Credits.

I have my account set up to shoot Accolade notices out to Twitter (for here). I need to set up Margie’s for same.

The only problem we’re having at the moment is that Margie’s sound isn’t working. Which is weird because it works for everything else, including Champions Online. But for Star Trek Online purposes, her computer is deaf. Or mute. Irksome, in any case.

At any rate — expect some Star Trek adventures over the weekend. Make it so!

UPDATE: To fix the problem, go into (on the login screen), go to Options, Advanced, and then indicate “Ignore X64 Check” … and it works.  Of course! It’s obvious! “A child could do it!”

CO: Margie on Champions Online

(Margie originally wrote this as a comment down in this thread, but it was a big enough effort to warrant its own post.)

As the recent tweet dump confirms, my main solo Stilt Walker hit 35 over the weekend. I would like to get her to 40 before I say goodbye. I am a completionist that way. I hope it’s not a grind.

One of the funny differences between CO and CoX that I recently noticed. With CoX, a ding means more, especially if it is a power level. With CO, after about 20, I might have 2-3 level-up sitting there waiting for me to hit the powerhouse. I think there are 3 reasons for that.

First, it takes a long time to decide what power or attribute to take. The matrix powers are a blessing and a curse. There are too many choices and it’s too hard to figure out what X really does, much less if X is better than Y. At the end of a session, I can easily spend hours leveling, selling, and crafting. And I don’t take any of those too seriously.

Second slots, after you have slotted your block and slotted passives, you are left with mostly attacks or junk. I want a well rounded character. Slotting a character for Aggressive, Defensive and Balanced builds doesn’t work for me. I don’t want to spend the extra power pick and I know that I am unlikely to switch between builds effectively. Don’t even get me started on having different enhancements in each build.

Finally it’s hard to feel good about your selection. You are always worried that you made a bad choice. With respecs being as rare as hen’s teeth or a paid commodity, it is easy to second-guess yourself and also feel that each level choice is a major commitment.

All of the above make CO less friendly to the casual gamer.

I’ve also grown to appreciate CoX enhancement slots. When I slot an enhancement I know exactly what it’s doing and how it is improving that power and my overall character. I hate trying to decide what widget is best for each of my 6 slots. If I take X it will improve Y but drop Z. Is cool thing A really worth dropping stats B and C. I think that CoX has struck an interesting balance with the crafting system. You can slot just your drops or just SOs and have a useful character. Or you can dig into the details and find the sets that tweak your toon just the way you want it.

And finally, I always have and always will hate having one bag for all my crap. Mission stuff should not take up space. I dislike having to wade through crafting, mission and devices to find my new enhancements.

It is the housekeeping that frustrates me. Having to break off your cluster of missions deep in the zone to find someone to sell your crap to. (I know you can just drop it, but that’s wasteful.) Having a crafting system that doesn’t give you anything much of value other than consumables. You can find better stuff cheaper in the auction house. That is, if you are willing to spend the time and brain drain to use the auction house – YUCK. That is after you go across 3 zones to get to the auction house (I’m talking to you, Lemuria).

Why can’t you sell stuff to more NPCs?

Why do you have to physically touch a contact to end a mission or get a new one?

Why do some areas have more missions than you can have at one time?

Why does it take so long for the last mcguffin to drop from the mob you have been farming for an hour?

I will be curious to see how STO handles some of this. How much of these issues are a management decision to make it take longer to get to level 40 and how much was a team or system decision?

CO: Ending my CO-dependency?

I’ve been thinking — really thinking — about Champions Online.  And whether I’m going to play it any more.

Having been back with gameplay the past few days, I’ve done some CO solo … some CO in a duo with Margie … and some CoX in a duo with Margie.

Duoing with Margie is fun whatever the game.  But I really had a lot more fun playing CoX.

There are things I like, really like, about CO.

  1. The graphics.  The look.  I know this is hardly a unanimous opinion, but I really like them. They fit the genre.  The characters also, for the most part, move well.  And I think the stance stuff is a great further differentiator (Beast stance ftw!).
  2. I like that many powers have multiple actions associated with them, esp. in the martial arts / swords categories.
  3. Acrobatics is a great-looking “travel” power.  Especially in Beast Stance.  And Teleport is handled well.  And I like all the flight/TK variants.
  4. I like the idea behind a classless system.  It promises flexibility to play the way you want, and create the character you want.   You can make your concept character with minimum interference from the game.
  5. The physical scope of the game is also neat.  No War-Walled neighborhoods.  Tundra, jungle, desert, urbanscape, etc.
  6. I like the power-building mechanism, and, yeah, I think blocking is a cool thing. The concept behind the way powers in combat are handled is a serious step above the attack-chain-ridden CoX.
  7. The shardless setup is also cool — no name contention, easy to join up with friends, no “deserted” servers.

So, lots to like.  But it’s mostly lots to like in the concept, the idea, the presentation.  The actual execution continues to cause me fits.

  1. The execution of the classless system sucks. Powers and power sets are grossly unbalanced.  If you decide to go for a simple class … well, you’re crippling your character from the get-go.  Melee and ranged characters have differ severe disadvantages.  Figuring out what a power actually does is like pulling teeth — copious notes online with poor explanations.  And the complete flexibility of the system means it’s impossible to find a decent guide (assuming you can find anything on the boards).  As a result, I always feel like whatever choice I make at each step is probably a horrible mistake that’s going to cripple my character.
  2. Which I feel like.  Honestly, I feel weak in any of my toons, solo or duo.  Objectively, that may not be true, but I feel like too many battles (esp. solo) are life-or-death, and that the balance point can be tipped way too easily. I don’t want the game to be trivially easy by any means, but when I play a super-hero I would kind of like to feel … heroic.  Is it build? Is it balance? Is it improper expectations?  I have no way of knowing.
  3. Acrobatics is the coolest-looking thing on 2-4 feet, unless you have to actually climb up anything.  Sniper on the rooftops?  Sorry, Kitsune — try the fire escape.  Add the instant slow-down as soon as you get aggroed by someone (inevitable as you lope at ground level through the city), and travel is a real drag.
  4. Trainers and stores (assuming one must have them) are annoyingly centralized, meaning you have to travel to them. (See above, though it’s an annoyance regardless of the travel power.)
  5. I’d have explored a lot more of the system if I weren’t limited to 8 toons, total.  Sure, I can buy more, but … no.
  6. It’s not the limited content I mind so much, as that the content doesn’t do a great job (after the intros in both zones) of guiding you to it.  What should I do next?  Everything? Or a few things?  Hit every contact you find, and it all starts to blur, story-wise.  Just take a few at a time, and you discover that you have to re-clear zones because of mission overlaps.
  7. The landscape maps may be War Wall-less, but the layout is as silly sometimes as a D&D dungeon module.  Take the desert.  You have a big research fortress next to a wasteland of radioactive mutants next to a haunted ghost town next to a camp of bad guys next to a bunch of lakes full of radioactive mutants next to an amusement park next to a missile silo next to a prison next to … There are no War Walls, but it’s still pretty goofy when the entire setting changes just because you went through a pass over over a ridge.
  8. And goofiness is not restricted to geographical proximity.  There’s a lot of damned silly writing.  A bit of silly writing — well, that’s just witty.  Too much, and it makes sure that it’s difficult to take the game itself seriously.  Which I’d kind of like to.

So … lots of cool stuff that I desperately want to love.  But some massive key frustrations that keep me from doing so.

Frustrating.

The question is, am I going to keep playing? Especially if I’m still playing CoX and start playing STO?

Decisions, decisions …

STO: Shall we “engage”?

Star Trek OnlineStar Trek Online goes live in production … tomorrow?! Yeesh, how the months have sped.

I haven’t been on STO since the closed beta, for a variety of reasons.  Even there, we didn’t devote endless hours — I really didn’t want to invest a lot of hours creating characters I wouldn’t be able carry on later.

Here are some thoughts on the game, and where we (Margie and I) are headed on it.

  1. The game is nicely immersive.  It feels like you are in the world of Star Trek (despite the efforts of some players).  The writing is pretty solid.
  2. A nice mixture of “Away Team,” admin/base busy-work, and ship-to-ship combat activity, each of which provides a different flavor.
  3. Ship combat is … fun.  Felt very war-gamy.
  4. Away Team activities are more complex, but managing an actual away team is a nice feature.
  5. The idea of growing yourself, your crew, and your ship adds complexity to the gameplay — but is also pretty cool.
  6. It’s less “role-playing” in some ways — yes, you have a race, and a history, and so forth — but, essentially, it remains a tactical game that is not focused just on your toon but on your team.
  7. It’s nice that not everything is about combat — but that will be an ongoing challenge (war in the Alpha Quadrant or not).  Star Trek is not, basically, Star Wars, DS9 notwithstanding.

Overall, it feels well-balanced, well written, and potentially a lot of fun.  I think (formal discussion pending) we’re going to subscribe, and stick with it for some period of time.

That would make three MMOs we’re subscribed to, which may be too many.  More on that to come …

CoX: Masterminding Made Easier

I’d read they were doing this, but hadn’t been on with my MM in so long I’d forgotten.  Mastermind pets now zone into missions with you, so you don’t have to spend the first five minutes of each mission summoning and buffing your crew.

It’s a small thing, but a big thing at the same time.  Makes playing a MM a lot more fun.

I did notice that pet ownership seemed a bit buggy last night — in a couple of chases in one mission, pets didn’t handle elevators well, or suddenly stopped responding.  I had one case where my pets followed me across a zone, but stopped being “mine” — I saw just generic names, they didn’t indicate as belonging to me, and I couldn’t command them (“You have no pets”).  But they kept following me, and at the next zone, all the ownership was restored.

Weird — but worth it, just to have them zone in painlessly.

Gameplay with our MM duo — Gifted Kid (FF/Robots) and Special Educator (Dark/Gang) — remains a hell of a lot of fun.  And now we can get into the fun even faster.

CO: Kitchen sink patch and coming stuff

Whew. You turn your back on the game for a few months, and everything goes all crazy!

After having been away (Real Life Sucks) from CO and CoX for a while, I have a few things to say, separately, about coming back. But, in the meantime, some thoughts on the CO news.

I won’t go into a lot of details on the Kitchen Sink patch (except to note the patches to deal with the patch that immediately followed). I think it’s cool that they’re trying to incorporate as many concerns and problems as they can.

That all said … looking at the “coming attractions” ….

“New Costume Sets in the C-Store” – Oh, boy. As in, so seriously not interested. I’m actually pretty happy with the costumes I have on the toons I have, and since I have no more slots available (mutter), there’s no big driver for me to change costumes. (Which, honestly speaking, I don’t do in CoX that much any more, either; I now have a Vet Award that gives me 50% off all Tailor Sessions, and most of my toons have free Tailor Tokens in the double digits.)

“I See a Blood Moon a Risin’” – Well, if we can have Rikti Invasions at random intervals, I guess we can have Werewolf Invasions every lunar month. Meh.

“This One Goes to Eleven” – Okay, this one looks good.

We’ll be introducing difficulty levels that players can set both for individual heroes and for their team. With 1 lower and 2 higher levels of difficulty to select from, players can create a challenge that fits their play style and ability.

Excellent. Soloists will be able to dial back difficulty levels. That will make life a lot easier.

“Flashing Back” – I don’t have any characters so far along that I feel the need to flash back with them.  It does make me worry that so many people do that this feature is considered worthwhile.

“Vibora Bay Watch” – Hmmmm. Okay, on the plus side, more content.  On the minus side, is the game so unbalanced that we need to focus on Lvl 37-40 content already?

Evidently there are indications in some references to this expansion pack that it’s going to be a paid content item, which has some portion of the CO community up in arms.  It’s certainly a different model than CoX (which has had one paid upgrade pack, with another coming soon, both of which were not just new zones), but we knew CO was designed differently from the start.  It will be interesting to see this play out.  I certainly don’t feel any compelling need to acquire it any time soon.

Especially for level 37-40.  Yeesh.  Give me a 12-20 zone, or a 20-30 zone, and I think you’d hit a lot more customers.  Self included.

Flashing Back

CoX: Okay, now I’ve hit 5 years

Not sure what the precise date issue was, but I got my 5 Year / 60 Month “City Traveller” badge this evening.

Which is kind of a cool QoL feature, basically letting you take at Lvl 6 a main Travel Power without the pre-req pool power. E.g., you can now take Fly without taking Hover or Aerial Assault. I suspect this will be most helpful for Fly and TP; most Super-Speed folks use Hasten as well (as do most supers, regardless of travel power), and Combat Jump is a reasonable power on its own, even if you’re angling for Super-Jump.

Five years ago today …

… I succumbed to intense social pressure (coughDoycecough) and tried out for myself that newfangled “City of Heroes” game.  I didn’t actually blog about it for a bit because I was sort of, um, keeping it secret from Margie (I knew I could quit any time).

The rest, as they say, is history.  And while my  own gameplay over the past few months has been near-nothing, Margie continues to solo her way through endless hours of fun with CoX and CO.

And as soon as Kitten goes to bed and they both get off the Wii (where they are playing Scooby-Doo), she and I are going to play some City of Heroes.

And who knows … maybe I’ll actually start playing again.  Heck, maybe I’ll start posting to this blog again! Stranger things have happened!

See y’all in Paragon!

CoH: Free Server Transfers?

“That’s usually not a good sign,” says Margie.

City of Heroes® is proud to announce that starting today character transfers between servers (within North American OR European server lists) will become free to all players and remain that way through the end of January 2010.

Now you will have more freedom to fully enjoy the game and each other…but don’t go haphazardly jumping servers without knowing the Character Transfer limit and all the other facts. Visit our Knowledge Base to learn all the specifics so that you can make educated transfer decisions. Amongst other things to bear in mind:

  • Transfers are not available between North American and European servers.
  • You will be able to complete up to 6 transfers a week (7-day period) per account.
  • Not all possessions will transfer over with your character so be sure to read the corresponding Knowledge Base article before you decide to transfer a character.
  • Super-group affiliation, Prestige and access to your Supergroup base items will be lost.
  • You may lose your character’s name when transferring from a server.

Then all you have to do is transfer away and enjoy the holiday server ride!

So I wonder what’s going on here?  Are paid transfers simply not being done?  Is this a prelude to server consolidation?

Some clarifications from the KB article:

Between December 15th, 2009 and January 31st, 2010, you will be able to complete up to 6 transfers a week per account. For example:

  • You can transfer 1 of your characters to five different servers then back to his/her original server in the span of a week.
  • You can choose to transfer 6 unique characters to a different server, or
  • You can transfer 3 characters to a different server and back, etc.

[…]

With Character Transfers, when someone does use it, do they receive a warning that their name is already taken prior to the move?

No, there is no warning. However, there is now a Name Check feature included in the game. By using this feature, found at the character select screen when logging into a specific server, you can check if a name is available on the server you are currently logged on to prior to purchasing a rename token. Be sure you are logged into the correct server when you are checking names.

Please keep in mind that while a name check may come through as showing a name available, there is still no guarantee that someone might not choose that name just before you use your rename to obtain it. Therefore, there are no guarantees that any name will be available.

If you do go through with a Character Transfer and there is a name conflict on the destination server, the character’s name will be appended to have a numeral at the end and be issued a free rename token. When you next log that character in, you will be able to use the rename feature to obtain a new name. […]

Do all your possessions move with you when you do a character transfer?

Yes, including your auctions on the Consignment Market. Here is a list of things that do not move:

  • Your non-global Friends list of players will no longer be valid.
  • You will be removed from any Supergroup that character was in, and will lose access to any SG storage.
  • You will also lose all Prestige accumulated within your Supergroup since you will be effectively leaving it (even if you are going to be re-creating the same Supergroup on your new destination server).
  • Taskforces or Strikeforces that may be in progress will be abandoned.
  • Kiosk stats will be preserved, but rating positions will likely change.
  • We cannot guarantee that your character’s name will be available on the destination server you move to. Should there be a name conflict, your character will be issued a free character rename to change the name.

Still … can’t stop wondering what the metameaning behind all this is … The (non-conspiratorial) speculation is that it’s giving folks a chance to clear the decks for the “Going Rogue” expansion. But it still has that server-consolidation feel that some folks are so terrified about.

CO: Passive Aggressive

Forcfe of Will
Force of Will

Hrm.

So I’ve been doing more looking at various builds, whilst playing CO solo (what little duo play we’ve been doing has been on a hypothetically mysterious and intermittent game that I can’t talk about).  My current solo character is Force of Will, a TK blades character.

I’m reading through guides, and reviewing build suggestions, and making notes, and figuring out what I want to take at different levels.  And I finally got to another power level with her, and glanced at those notes, and …

… and WTF?

All the guides are all, “Hey, gotta have that Passive Defensive early and often,” followed by bitter debates about which is best (which is, as far as I can gather from the tenor of the debates, Anything But Lightning Reflexes).  Well, that’s all well and fine, but the TK Blades guides are also all full of debates about which is better, Ego Form or Shadow Form — most people prefer the latter, but there’s a vocal and vehement minority that argues the former.  And, hey, there was Ego Form, ready for selection.  I should give that a try …

… um …

It’s a slotted Offensive Passive … and I can have only one slotted Passive thing at a time.  Which I choose depends on … which build I’ve selected.

So, to have both the oh-so-critical Defensive Passive, and the oh-so-critical Offensive Passive, I have to be also toggling between builds.

Let me say, that’s probably one of my least favorite bits of CO thus far.  Okay, I like the variety of approaches you can have, both within a framework and from outside (vs. the comparatively much more channeled CoX power choices).  But I find the Build mechanic to be one more decision point than I want to have to make.  And so I’ve been basically ignoring it — only to discover now that, um, I actually need to make use of it if I’m going to achieve golden heroism?

Now, I’m sure that people do get soloing and making that choice.  And I’ll get along without it.  I just find it … annoying.  Part is my own ignorance, part is the lack of decent player education. Yeah, if I was using a character builder program, I’d have probably figured this out, but …

Harrumph.

I’m baaaaack …

After (1) illness, (2) job brouhaha, (3) NaNoWriMo, and (4) a week-long business trip …

… I’m actually back in the game (so to speak).  Just in time, of course, for (5) Christmas shopping, (6) Christmas carding, and (7) Christmas vacationing.  So we’ll see.

Meantime, I haven’t gotten onto CoX or CO yet … but if I were at liberty to describe what I’m doing … which, in theory, I’m not … since hypothetically anything I might say about things I can’t say anything about might violate an NDA that, of course, I can’t confirm that I’ve agreed to, even though it’s regarding something where no man has ever gamed before.

Ahem.

It’s all Margie’s fault.  But I had a lot of fun for the 15 minutes I was on until the hypothetical event limit was reached.  We’ll see.  (And since I saw a lot of folks logging in and out, we’ll see you, too.)