Princes of the Apocalypse, Session 37: “Rising Tides, Part 1: Ankle Deep”

Wherein stealth and subtlety get the party only so far before the wheels almost come off.

Princes of the ApocalypseThis is part of a series about my DMing Princes of the Apocalypse, a D&D 5e adventure by and copyright Wizards of the Coast.

Table of ContentsThe Party

There will be SPOILERS. If you are playing in a PotA game, please don’t read this. But if you are DMing a PotA game, or are a DM who wants to see what the ride was like … read on!


GM Recap

Session 37 (Day 35)
In the Temple of the Crushing Wave …

  1. Symbol of the Crushing Wave
    Symbol of the Crushing Wave

    The party searched through the rooms Morbeoth had come from — an arcane workshop and adjacent living quarters. In the quarters they found an iron chest under the bed with both wealth and letters from Justran Daehl, the Cellerer and apparent Crushing Wave spy in Red Larch (Morbeoth’s Notes), including questions about evidence against Thuluna Maah that should be taken to Gar Shatterkeel.

  2. In the workshop were pieces of some sort of apparatus being assembled from a glass bottle and copper fittings. The overall room was identified as something for creating artifacts powered by the magic of elemental water.
  3. The next room was apparently the copper brewing vessels of the old brewery on their map. There were three of the completed bottle apparatuses against one wall. At least one of the tanks contained a Water Weird.
  4. Traveling onward, they crossed a canal on the Bridge of Dragons, and encountered from under the bridge an Aquatic Troll. William invoked the name of “Olhydra,” which caused the troll to let them pass. A similar strategy worked in a further room where there were two more of them.
  5. Passing the Court of the Merfolk they found a room with a richly decorated but desecrated door. Inside were two Ogres, who refused to let them pass and bother Thuluna Maah. The party ambushed the ogres at the doorway and eventually handled them, as Thuluna the Old Lady tottered out of a back chamber, frightened and bewildered by what was going on.
  6. The sound of the battle attracted a group in the Market Hall to the north. Though the cultists there were easily handled, a Fathomer managed to Hex then Eldritch Blast Faith multiple times. Only the party’s last Fireball, and a charge by Faith and Theren and Moony, saved Faith from a grizzly necrotic death.
  7. While the rest of the party searched the Market Hall, finding all sorts of trade goods and supplied, many of them most likely pirated from the Dessarin River traffic, William questioned Thuluna, spotting a terrifying, murderous gleam in her eye. He called to Moony, and after a few more questions, they quietly agreed to lock her into her room … but before they could, she dropped her illusory visage to become a creature of unspeakable hideousness

Player Recap

That’s Not Beer!

Nala tries to persuade the magic user to come back and talk about his offer. She then peeks her head into the room he ran through. The room is empty. As the others move into the large chamber, Moony drags a bugbear body to block the door into the loft room. The focus of the room is a delicate looking device with a central large glass vessel and many copper tubes . Looks like it is powered by elemental water energy but the purpose remains a mystery. There is a room to the North that looks like it is being used as a bedroom. There is an area that looks like an arrow slit that has been filled with rubble. William notices a small iron chest under the bed. Moony examines the chest. It looks like it is latched but not locked. It contains silver and platinum pieces and some letters. Most of the letters are in a mix of block text and script. It looks like the writing of the spy letter we found in Feathergale Spire. There are also some fine notes in the margins of the letter. 

The brewery room. Of the eight copper kettles, there are a few that are cold and have condensation on them. William decides to check out the content. Standing on a chair, he quickly opens and closes the hatch. He is not quick enough to prevent a Water Weird from escaping. Faith waits to see if it is hostile. William calls out to it in Primordial “We mean you no harm, depart and be free.” The others also hold off. When the Water Weird reacts he charges William and envelopes him. Moony and Theren respond with attacks. Nala tries to shove the hatch back down on the elemental. She succeeds on her second try and Faith climbs on an adjacent 

Leaving through the north door of the brewery they come to the bridge of dragons. A blue troll stands up and demands something in a language that the group does not understand. Ninetooth the aquatic troll leaves the water and climbs the steps on the far side. William sets a bonfire in front of the troll and says “Olhydra says let us pass.” The rest of the group moves closer together and holds their actions. The troll pauses and questions “Olhydra?” and steps back down the steps about 15 feet. William says “Olhydra! Let us pass.”  crosses the bridge and moves into the hall on the far side. The others repeat the phrase and pass to the corridor. 

There is a door at the end of the hall and a corridor to the North that leads to a courtyard with a fountain. Moony listens and hears voices. It sounds like more trolls. The group decides to try their bluff again. They open the door and see two aquatic trolls. The first challenges Moony and William. They repeat the catch-phrase and the trolls stand aside. (It would have made more sense if there was another exit from the room.) They step back out and close the door.

Fountain shaped like a tree, with dancing merfolk. It is badly damaged. There are halls to the north, east, south (where they came from) There is also a door in the northwest. Moony listens at the door. It is covered with painted glyphs and aquatic images. They are very damaged. 

Moony listens at the door and then peeks into the room. Ogre “Get out of here. Don’t bother Thuluna.” The group decides that it is best to take care of this now. While they are fighting the Ogres a wizened old crone steps out from behind a cloth curtain in the back of the room. When the ogres are defeated the crone begs for mercy. William believes her and worries that they have been hasty in their attack. As the Ogre battle is wrapping up several cultists come running down the North hallway to attack. The fighting ends in the large chamber North of the market hall. 

Returning to Thuluna William questions her. “They were keeping me from leaving. They thought I knew about where the Shatterkeel was hidden or secrets about the temple. They were so cruel.” William can tell that she is lying and has a malicious gleam in her eyes. He calls Moony for healing help. After he arrives, they look to back out and spike the door. William decides to torch the drapes to see if there is another exit that way. This is when Thuluna turns on them and drops her illusion  A visage so hideous and otherworldly that to look upon it is to know terror. Slimy scales covering her pallid skin, her hair a seaweed that covers her unnatural body, her glassy eyes as lifeless as a doll’s. 

Game Notes

Searching Glances

The Temple of the Crushing Wave is a bit more traditional of a dungeon crawl. Though it has the water features, it’s also got a real “and now you move on to Room C12” vibe to it, with various rooms of bad guys, hints of underlying story, some politics, and various directions one can travel.

The group did the normal search through Morbeoth’s place, puzzling over the weird glass-and-copper tank under construction. I gave a noodge to have them find the chest under Morbeoth’s bed (to be fair, I’d forgotten it was there when folk were scattered about searching). I’d beefed up the payload there. Ordinarily there are notes from Justran Draehl, the cellerer at the Helm at Highsun tavern in Red Larch which, in case similar notes had been missed back at Rivergard Keep, would establish Justran as a Crushing Wave spy.

Well, the party had already resolved that mystery,  so I decided to pay with it a bit — calling out particular notes about things Justran (and, after Justran had fled, some other mysterious hand), outlining things the party had done in Red Larch (and a few from elsewhere, also mysteriously) …

plus some commentary in the margins by Morbeoth, trying to interpret the party’s actions, wondering why they hadn’t taken out Feathergale Spire or Rivergard Keep the first time around (who was influencing them?), mentioning that Urshnora (a Crushing Wave fugitive … or is she?) was hanging with them … and speculating that maybe this was evidence of Thuluna Maah’s treachery.

(The whole Morbeoth / Thuluna rivalry, plus Thuluna’s desire to usurp Gar’s place, create for some fun things to play with, but there just aren’t a lot of opportunities to do so in the game. By fleshing out the writings here, I could both make their previous actions come alive as part of the campaign, and maybe lead them to some fun times.

Weird!

Water weird
Water Weird

William’s player decided that the kick-in-the-door-and-kill-everything bit might not be the most effective, given the somewhat dire battle last time vs the Bugbears and Reavers. So when they investigated the brewery and, ta-daaah, released a Water Weird, he decided to be diplomatic because he could speak Primordial to it.

Which would have gone great, except that he offered to let it escape from its tank, which, since Water Weirds can’t actually leave their pool of water, was taken amiss as an insult, and it attacked. 

(The party actually had the bright idea of trying to close the hatch on the tank, which treated as an Athletics match, actually worked.)

water tank
Better than nothing

The whole idea that Morbeoth was trying to harness (or even enslave) elementals into weapons technology was kind of cool, even if it goes nowhere. Worse, though there is mention made both of glass tanks and of partially completed mechanisms, there are no visuals provided by the game, in the book or on the map.

I jiggered some visuals together from a bottled water image, and I thought that helped.

Talking with Monsters

This zone is full of canals (with kind of finicky sight lines, so that’s nice).  When the party tried to cross the nearby bridge, there was, of course a troll underneath it (which appeared just as the players started joking about such a thing).

Aquatic Troll (Velrock)
Aquatic Troll (Velrock)

Ninetooth was an Aquatic Troll. Nobody in the party could speak Giant, but they could understand when William started talking about “Olhydra,” and the book text makes it clear that Ninetooth will go along with the flimsiest reason to let them pass. So they did. Encounter averted! Inspiration awarded!

(And, again, a great reason for Milestone Leveling — no incentive to kill everything.)

Aquatic Troll token
Aquatic Troll token

There is no token provided for an Aquatic Troll, just a normal troll one. Bah. I figured one out.

A similar tactic worked at the room where two other Aquatic Trolls hung up — the party was hesitant to go into the Court of the Merfolk because they were sure something awful was going to happen with the broken fountain there.

Nope, but they did end up in a big battle around Thuluna Maah.

Language

This was really the first place where there’d been multiple encounters where language was a barrier (or, looked at a different way, where the party actually wanted to understand, if not communicate with, the opposition). So I actually got around to looking at what people knew, and what languages they spoke, and what languages other groups of critters spoke, and created a Handout about it, for my easy reference, but also for the party.

(I also found a nifty, if not quite canonical, linguistic family tree, which can help cover some edge cases:)

Languages
Languages

Annoyingly (on both sides, to be honest), most of the conventional opponents spoke something that the party didn’t. They did have a sorcerer who could learn Tongues or Comprehend Language, but hadn’t figured out that might be a good idea.

Thuluna Maah

ogre
One of Thuluna’s ogre bodyguards.

So Thuluna is 2nd in Command in the Temple. She’s a Sea Hag, and lives in luxurious (if torn up) quarters in the center of the map, with two Ogres in her antechamber to keep her from being disturbed.  

The Ogres, like the Lizard Folk, like the Trolls, all love Thuluna — or worship / are devoted to her — because she looks after them as part of her power base against the “normal” humanoids that cluster around Morbeoth. As such, they are determined and vocal in protecting her, which gave the battles this session and next a bit more oomph.

That said, the party was maybe lulled a bit by the very pliable Aquatic Trolls. The Ogres give them a bit of shit for disturbing them, and demanded they leave before Thuluna was awakened. (Moony could have actually snuck open the door and closed it again, except that everyone was standing around with light spells blaring and it was dark inside.)

Rather than leave things be, they decided to take the Ogres down, cleverly using the doorway as a choke point — a Bonfire plus Spirit Guardians plus the Ogres being constricted (and thus at Disadvantage) trying to get through the door. Clever. 

Thuluna Maah, as kindly (?) old lady
Thuluna Maah, as a kindly (?) old lady

Mid-battle taking the Ogres down, three things happened:

  1. Thuluna, in her “I am an innocent, if ugly, old crone, tottering along” guise tottered out and was “bewildered” and “horrified” by all the violence occurring.
  2. The cultists in the Market Hall to the north (with no additional Random Encounter critters added to their number, thank Bog) harkened to the noise and came running toward the party.
  3. William decided that they had been hasty in thinking that the Ogres were Water Cultists, and tried to calm things down.

The Cultists were quickly cut down (in fact, by being taken down in the corridor, they served to slow the party members trying to advance, actually keeping the team together for a time), but the Fathomer with them had a perfect opportunity because everyone else was occupied with the Ogres but the cleric Faith, who was quite visible down the corridor. The Fathomer managed to get off a Hex on her, then started peppering her with Eldritch Blasts. So not only was she taking a ton both Force and Necrotic damage, but her CON rolls were hampered, so her Concentration rolls were Disadvantaged, which eventually knocked down her Spirit Guardians.

She almost got taken down, which was both gratifying (not in a “I like to kill players” way but “Hey, I’ve been an actual threat” way) and is now the second session in a row when that had happened, which was illuminating for the player.

Thuluna token
Thuluna (kindly old lady) token

Meanwhile, Thuluna and William were having a nice tête-à-tête, with Thuluna playing the “Woe is me” routine, trying to figure out when best to strike. The Sea Hag can drop her illusion and be revealed in her Fear-inducing self — but it only had a range of 30 feet, and unsupported by her Ogres, she wanted to have everyone there, but by now everyone had run off to deal with the cultists.

sea hag 5e
Stock 5e Sea Hag, which, frankly, isn’t very scary.

By the time couple of increasingly skeptical players had decided the thing to do was to slip from the room and spike the door (the skepticism enforced by a truly horrific disparity in an Insight vs Deception roll), Thuluna realized she wasn’t going to get a better shot. As they backed out, she dropped her illusion, revealed in her mind-boggling, terrifying self …

The stock picture for a Sea Hag is … kind of pathetic. Less “so hideous that it drives people mad with fear” and more “so hideous that all the kids in school make fun of her.” So instead I found this great pic by Frank Calico that looks like a Mike Mignola and has that very otherworldly Elder God “so unnatural it drives people mad with fear” vibe.  

Sea Hag calico
Sea Hag (Frank Calico)

 

Sea Hag token
Sea Hag token (Calico) – Thuluna once she drops her illusion

As previously mentioned, I subbed out a lot of tokens in the game for ones that I liked better. Usually it was for a named character that either didn’t have a token at all or had a generic monster type token (e.g., Morbeoth as a One-Eyed Shiver). Thuluna is a one-off (there are no other Sea Hags in the campaign), but this was another case where searching for a better image made me feel a lot better about the game I was presenting.

temple of the crushing wave (post-2)
Where the party had explored by the time they were done.

Action Economy

Thuluna is another case of Action Economy dominating the game (as was the incident with the Fathomer). Spellcasters are very powerful — but also fragile. 

Crushing Wave Fathomer
Crushing Wave Fathomer

The Fathomer only was able to pull off the Hex+Eldritch Blast combo for a couple of rounds because Faith was a lone target (everyone else was around a corner, intentionally) and was at range. Once she got reinforcements, the Fathomer’s only hope was to take her down before he was (and that attempt failed).

Thuluna was in a similar quandary. She’s got an awesome “Anyone who sees her has to save vs Gut-Wrenching Fear” thing, plus a follow-up power to literally kill a person who is already afraid … but she either needs to do it when everyone is in the room (and scare them all), or else when there are just a couple of people in the room (to take them out quickly).

Thuluna was certainly doomed as soon as she dropped shields and attacked.  The only question was … how many will she take with her?


<< Session 36 | Session 38 >>

Because I could use some distracting right now

I came to the conclusion this morning that I have the MMO itch again. I just don’t know how to scratch it. Short of going back in time and fixing it so that my beloved City of Heroes doesn’t get canceled (and that never ends well), I’m stuck looking at the old or trying to figure out the new.

(And, yes, my long-time correspondents are probably sick to death of this post, since I’ve repeated it periodically the last four years. Sorry, folk.)

On the “old” side, I’ve tried LotRO enough times to know that (a) it’s an amazing recreation of Middle Earth and (b) its gameplay just drives me nuts.

I’ve also tried WoW in the past, and it never quite gelled for me. Obviously it’s the benchmark for all things MMO, but in the long run we just sort of ran out of gas on it. It might be worth giving it another try.

We tried out WildStar, but for some reason it, too, didn’t the cut.

Star Trek Online? Nicely steeped in Star Trek lore, but more of a ship simulator in the ST universe than a role-playing game. Also not really suited (that I found) to duoing with someone.

DC Universe Online ended up feeling to button-mashing for me. And, again, it really didn’t seem to lend it self to partnered play (almost anytying but).

Is Champions Online still out there? Also a bit button mashy, not very duo-abled, and I found it tonally offputting. Also, the auction house was irksome.

What I am looking for from an MMO? Fortunately, I have some posts whining about that dating back (yeesh) a number of years. In sum (and roughly in order of priority).

1. Duo-friendly. A big part of my gaming life is playing with Margie. A game that makes it difficult for us (and usually just us) to play side-by-side, due to different start points, or poor leveling / sidekicking setups, or advancement requiring guilds / raids, or whatever, is going to be a frustration to us.

A game that actually rewards or scales properly to team-ups is a big advantage.

2. I need to feel heroic. Jogging everywhere in the world? Doing boring grind missions? Imperiled by battling three opponents? That’s not feeling heroic. (Note: this doesn’t necessarily mean “super-hero” or “comic book hero”.) I’m not looking to slay dragons on Day 1. I am looking to feel like I’m triumphing more often than not, and in a meaningful fashion. (This was an area where LotRO failed me.)

3. A variety of content / replayability. I don’t want to feel railroaded through just one course of action. I want parallel ways of gaining experience and exploring the world and so forth.

4. Well-written content. I don’t mind humor, but overall I want to take the story seriously. (One of my problems with Champions Online.)

5. A good resource / loot / crafting mechanic. Yeah, I know. I want to be able to play and advance without spending hours in a crafting room or haunting auction houses. Alternately, if I feel like doing that, having reasonably enjoyable / profitable mechanics for it are to be desired.

6. Soloable. Though we game together a lot, sometimes we like running solo, just to try something new, or because the other person isn’t around or doesn’t feel like gaming. (This tends to be tied a lot to #4.)

7. A reasonable, non-pervasive payment structure. I don’t mind paying money for a subscription (I know, how drolly 00s of me), but I’d like a chance to get my feet wet before I buy. On the other hand, I do not want to end up in a freemium game where it’s in my face all the time that only by spending my own cash on a regular basis am I going to get anywhere. I’ll pay for something special, but if I have to be regularly spending to play and advance, I’d rather have a monthly sub and not worry about it.

8. Alt-friendly. For whatever reason, Margie and I are both alt-aholics. Paper dolls are our friends. We like to try out different character types and combinations. We’d like to play something (in conjunction with requirement #3) that doesn’t require us to delete characters in order to roll up new ones.

9. Optional but available social options. Sometimes you feel like a PUG. Sometimes you don’t. A decent gaming community where there are options to group up when one is so inclined (e.g., when soloing) would be keen.

10. Instanced missions are keen. Because a bunch of PCs standing around waiting for the bad guys to respawn is kind of lame. And frustrating.

I also want a pony and a rocket ship and a Winnebago and peace on earth, goodwill toward men.

With the understanding that I’ll never find everything I want, and the CoH servers aren’t going to magically restart next weekend — anyone have some suggestions?

#gaming #boh

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In Memorium – CoH – Pinnacle

Continuing my series of City of Heroes characters, server by server …

Pinnacle was an oddball server for us — some early legacy characters, plus one pair that really took off.

So Margie had a character named Kazima on Champion, a Broadsword / Invuln scrapper.  She started out partnering with Honeygun for a while, but when Dave dropped that character (long story elsepost), Margie kept playing her.  Margie had a lot of fun with the toon, but eventually wasn’t playing her much. So we decided she had a sister …

… Leilah, a Plant/Storm controller. And Margie rerolled Kazima onto Pinnacle, and the rest was 36 levels of historic fun. The two of them were devas, brethren spirits from an Arabian realm. They had sort of a Thor / Loki vibe, with plenty of vain bickering between the two. They were also pretty darned effective together.

Plant Control was just a heck of a lot of enjoyment to use. I kind of wish I’d done more of that power set.

Leilah was one of those annoying flying types who didn’t like to be on the ground. She took a lot of slots in Hover.

 

Honeygun has … a long story.  One of the earliest toons I rolled, she was a police woman whose cop boyfriend was killed and who thus turned vigilante. Assault Rifle/Traps Blaster.  And, boy, did her power set suck. The “super-soaker” gun was ugly as sin (only later in the game could you choose between rifle designs), Gadgets/Traps was a crappy secondary, and she just didn’t feel “super”, even teamed up as she did with Kazima early days.

Her bete noir was the Transcendence Trial, an early days (level 12-15) task force. It was a bitch of a mission, for a variety of reasons (it was very easy for the whole thing to fail after a lot of time investment). A bunch of us ran that thing three or four times, with Honeygun one of the characters, and failed each time.  This made her very depressed, RP-wise … especially when we did it again, with Torchielle as my toon, and succeeded.

Upset over her failure, she left Paragon and pursued mysterious occult ways to get her the power she thought she needed. When she came back (rerolled), she was the black-clad Taste of Honey, a Dark/Dark Defender.  And, of course, they actually won that trial, after which she realized what she had done and at what cost, and departed Paragon City again …

… only coming back latest days as Honey Gun on Pinnacle.  Never did much with her then (beyond getting her to 10, because Rifle Blaster is still a sucky power, even if you can have a nicer-looking rifle), but the story needed retelling.

Winter Storm Warning was an Ice Blaster I got up to 22 (with Margie, I think). Don’t recall why I stopped running her, except that we didn’t frequent Pinnacle after a while.  Ike Berg was an Ice Tank, a big hulking guy with refrigeration units on his hands (which he would ice himself up with); cool concept what I would have loved to play except I really grew to hate playing tanks.  Djinn Taniq was a Storm Summoning Defender, who floated as was appropriate for a djinn; I loved her name.  Are You My Mummy  was my tribute (never played, just paper-dolled) to Stephen Moffat’s “The Empty Child” episode of Doctor Who.

Honorable Mention: Shishiko (again); Lord Maxwell (after Maxwell Lord); Mule One, Mule Two, Mule Three (generated by Margie using the beast sets for some sort of resource transfer, they just looked very cool).

Player Nerfs Movement Power!

So, just as I was getting back into the swing of playing … Margie slipped and broke her ankle on Monday.  Hospitalization ensues.

She finally got home last night (huzzah!), and now the question is … hmmmm, how are we going to play games?

Margie (who has to stay off her feet for the next couple of weeks) can sit at her computer desk for a very short spell, but it’s not ideal.  So her idea is that I let her borrow my laptop to use on the couch, while I use her machine, so that we can play CO and CoX and the like.

Which is fine, but … well, it still feels weird.  Like trading underwear or something.  I mean, different screen sizes and resolutions, different keyboards, and some macro issues as well (on the CoX side, at least).

We’ll see how it works out.

CO: Having fun again

I spent most of the free hours of the weekend — which were not as many as I’d have liked — playing Champs with Margie.  We basically carved our way through levels 15-17, and are now leveling up to 18, leaving the Westside of Millennium behind for what looks like all new stuff up north of Renaissance Center.

We were playing with Kitsune (Dual Blades) and Surprise (Electricity), and the two are doing pretty nasty AoE damage to mobs.  We can still get defeated, but it didn’t happen much (and rarely did both of us go down).  Nice.

Still finding myself annoyed by Acrobatics and the “I just ran past some gray mobs and they’re still plonking me and I’m slowed to a crawl, boo-hiss” syndrome.  Looking at getting Versatility next time I get some enhancements to play with.

Lessons from Mission Architect

An interesting and lengthy article by Eric on Elder Game (cited by BoingBoing, via Ginny) on the experience of CoX and user-generated content. Bottom line — Paragon ought to have known this was going to have problems, from past times when it’s been tried.

When designers would bring up this feature (and yes, it’s been brought up on every game I’ve worked on), the veteran designers would tell them, “That’s going to backfire tremendously. People will exploit it to make the easiest possible missions, and you won’t like the results.” This is always countered by some variety of “you can’t possibly know that for sure!” But actually, working on a live team teaches that lesson very quickly. From AC2, I learned:

  • Players subconsciously calculate the cost-to-benefit ratio of content when deciding if it’s fun. For most MMO players, more reward = more fun. (This is a bitch of a lesson to learn, too. “My custom-scripted quest was so incredibly cool! Why aren’t players doing the quest? Well, yes, the reward was a little sub-par, but so what? You’re telling me they aren’t playing it because of THAT? Players can’t be THAT shallow!” Ha ha, newb.)
  • Players aren’t objective reviewers. If you ask them to grade content, they will grade more rewarding content higher than other content even if it isn’t as good by other metrics (like plot, writing, annoyance factor, or originality).
  • Many players spend incredible amounts of time finding ways to min-max the system so they can get more power for less effort. That’s part of the fun for many players. So there are tens of thousands of people actively looking for mistakes, loopholes, and gray areas in your game. All the time.

“Yes yes,” the other designers would say, “those lessons from the live team are interesting, but that isn’t exactly the same situation as user-created content, is it? Nobody can say for sure if user-created quests are problematic.” Maybe, just maybe, users could be convinced to grade content fairly. Maybe they would discover how fun it is to run really well-plotted quests instead of just trying to level up as fast as possible. Maybe players can change their stripes. Nope. MMORPG players are as predictable as the sunrise.

As the article continues, as soon as Mission Architect came out, people were coming up with min-maxed systems. The Devs have since come out to try to stop it, by punishing “cheaty” content — but then the issue becomes defining that. (In many ways it’s like managing a forum or mailing list and define what type of content violates the terms of conduct and what doesn’t.)

The Devs have decided not to define what is cheaty and what is not, causing a “chilling effect” by deliberately not creating clear guidelines beyond the vague “Disregard for the risk and/or time to reward ratio.”

This is startlingly unhelpful to people trying to figure out how to make ban-safe, but fun, content. To keep this fiasco from chilling the buzz, they need to publish guidelines about what is and isn’t “fair”, or better yet, code this fairness into their tools. As I write this, pick-up groups are running user-generated quests consisting of nothing but max-level boss monsters, so that doesn’t seem to be “unfair”… of course, since there’s no guidelines, who knows if those quests are about to get banned? Since deletion only happens after an “abusive” quest is reported to customer service, it could just be a matter of time before any quest you play gets banned and your hard work gets reversed. Worse yet, since the rules are secret and enforced by numerous people, it is very likely that they will be enforced semi-arbitrarily, and will tend to become more aggressive over time.

Worse, it’s not clear that the enforcement itself will clear, either. What lessons will actually be learned, how clear will the feedback be, etc. And how clearly will it be reported? “I had a friend of a friend who got banned …”

More importantly, the author says, this won’t resolve the problem, because players will always design content to maximize gain at minimized risk. Unless the tools lock that down intrinsically, there will be distortions of the risk/time : reward ratio, and the Devs will be unhappy. Throwing internal staff at the problem to review all content is hardly cost-effective (nor useful for players). And, of course, the more attention they have to pay to this, the greater the opportunity costs for other content.

In the end, it may (sadly) turn out that Mission Architect is as big a white elephant (and real estate eyesore) as the Arenas — used by a small population, but a tribute to how what people say they want (and how the Devs decide is best to give it to them) don’t always work out as planned … especially if lessons of the past are ignored.

CoX – Game play report

So I did end up doing some CoX playing over the past few days, getting some good time in with Lady Zebra, Woe Nellie, and Miss Crackle.

I also took up Arty’s invitation to join up with the Repeat Offenders global group — consist of a global channel and a bunch of SGs in coalition spreading across the Hero and Villain side of Freedom and Virtue. I had mixed luck with actually leveraging Lady Zebra getting into one of the alt RO SGs and from there actually getting gameplay with the group — but I did end up with lots of time with Woe Nellie playing alongside Arty and some of his other cohorts, which was kind of fun.

I also spent $10 and transferred Miss Crackle over from Victory to Freedom, just because things have been serously dead on the former server for PUGging. And I then had a great time in two different groups for the next few hours, which probably means it was a worthwhile investment.

Overall, good times. But I’m looking forward to duoing with my favorite gaming partner real soon now.

Going to the Maul

I love Shadow Maul in the dark set. I know there are some folks who hate it — largely because of that prolonged “whiff whiff whiff whiff” when it misses — but I love it, and hitting that perfect cone and seeing multiple numbers bubble up is the next best thing to — well, things that you can only effectively do outside of the game.

There’s been a lot of talk about SM of late, largely because of its unbuffable cousin, Sands of Mu, becoming a Veteran Reward (I’m kind of surprised that they didn’t rename SoM). And here’s an interesting note from Castle on the power.

Numbers-wise, Shadowmaul is really a single target attack. In fact, it actually does MORE damage then the formula stipulates for a single target for a variety of reasons. The fact it is a cone and can hit 2, 3 or even 5 opponents is strictly a bonus.

That said my highest level scrapper is DM/Regen, whom I have played since about 3 weeks after launch. I rarely ‘try’ to get multiple critters in the cone — the extra damage is probably worth it over time, but it detracts from my fun to focus on it.

I’m a ‘recovering power gamer’ — I’m the guy who, in Champions would try to get a multipower with mutually exclusive attacks in them (a ‘Killing Attack’ which the target has to have resistant defenses to defend against and a ‘No Normal Defense’ attack which only worked on targets with no Resistant Defense, as an easy example). So, believe me when I say I understand the temptation to focus on maximizing performance. I understand that stepping back and seeing something as a bonus can sometimes be hard. This power,
however, is possibly the best example in City Of Heroes/Villain of a power which you have to fight that temptation with.

Margie is a lot better than me in setting up that perfect cone (probably all that Amorpha practice, but she’s just better at maneuvering than I am). I’ve learned to seek small opportunities for it, but not to make it a be-all/end-all of my attack chain. If nothing else, someone like me can really frell up his DoT by taking multiple seconds to try and set up the cone, vs. just going in and beating the snot out of stuff.

There are also a couple of comments in the thread from others on how to get mobs to line up more effectively. For what it’s worth. 🙂

Good vs. Evil

A new joint CoH/CoV bundle will be on sale soon. Spiffy enough — except for the exclusive bits going to those who decide to drop a bundle on the new bundle.

  • Exclusive in-game bonus items!
  • Jump Jet Prestige Power
  • “Pocket D” VIP Card Teleport Power
  • Exclusive Hero and Villain Costumes
  • Full versions of both City of Heroes and City of Villains
  • DVD bonus digital items: City of Heroes comic books, Prima Issue 7 Strategy Guide update pack, movies, game trailers, screenshots, and more!
  • Exclusive two-sided poster featuring Paragon City and Rogue Isles maps
  • Twelve character slots per server (four additional character slots)
  • All content updates including Issue 7: Destiny Manifest
  • NCsoft game trials and other offers
  • First month of play included

Most of the tchochkes don’t rile me that much — but exclusive costume and jump jet power stuff? I cry (provisionally) foul.

Illness and a Good Diet

After my last round of conference calls, I tried to take it easy for the day, recovering from my throat infection. Eventually spent some time on as Honor and as Lynn, ran in a few PUGs, continued apace.
After dinner, signed on with Ho Ho to join in on the Hostess Heroes. Ran (yet once again) the Valentines Day missions, and ran into the increasing problems of (a) too many people to comfortably fit on one team, (b) too broad a range of levels, and (c) too few obsessively-driven mission leaders, such that we spent a lot of time standing around.
Eventually broke up into two teams, and mine ran off to the Hollows. Made a lot of progress, had fun, etc. etc.

Diverse hands

Tried to continue the Snap missions last night with Christmas Present and Mr. Ravenous, but, even dialed down to Villainous, still had major problems. The spectrals were smash resistant, and their and the arrow-slinger debuffs were slowing our attacks even further.
Got a request from Doyce for a Virtue hero to assist in similar efforts. Ended up with, instead, him and Ana and Jackie and BD and Sword joining us. Much, much fun — a good group to run with, both playwise and banter-wise.
Mr. R dinged to 14, so … travel power! Huzzah!
Reorganized after that arc was finished to a similar team (only with, for us, Fazenda and Araware) to do the Ganymede missions again. Which made (with Pizzaz) two Emp/Nrg Defenders, which was kind of fun (as took turns being the first by a half-second to do targeted or area heals).
Again, good banter, fun times.
Nice evening. It’s actually been kind of fun doing stuff with a variety of different characters (both ours and others). We’ll be finally getting back to Psi-clone/Amorpha this weekend, but it’s been kind of nice taking a break.
For the record (and for anyone who is confused, which sounds to be many from chatter):

  1. Any toon that signs on in the Valentines time frame will get the Heart of Xness badge and the toga costume part.
  2. There are various exclusive badges available in the various PocketD missions during this period — the Hero/Villain missions, for example, are exclusively in this period. Not sure if that’s true for the DJ Zero mission.
  3. If you give someone your CoV trial code and they then upgrade to a real account in the timeframe, then you (and they) will also get the laurel wreath and sandals costume pieces.