Next up: Nerfing Rikti Comm Officers

When the Mission Architect was first announced, folks were immediately worried about farming. And the Devs said, “Worry not, we have ways to keep that from happening.”

Ah … yeah.

So all those constant Broadcasts for “LF farm ae team” and “Lvl 50 boss farm lfm” are just folks being deluded.

I spent a little time at this today, just to see. There’s a sort of weirdness about the farming routine that’s almost fascinating for about 15 minutes, after which you need a shower. 

I took Al, my Fire/Rad Troller, who had just turned 20. I joined up as the lowest person on a farm mission.

Target: a mission full of Rikti Communications Officers. Like, 20-person spawns of them.

It’s perfect. Comm Officers are (since they changed how they were awarding Portal spawns) pretty high XP, but they are, in and of themselves, pretty wimpy. You never see them alone in the wild, let alone in packs.

Bang. Instant farming. In two relatively short missions (the simple looping city map), I dinged Al over five levels.

Two missions. Forty-five minutes tops, more likely thirty. Five levels.

Now tell me about no farming?

I will be very curious to see how the Devs adjust this (and how much wailing and gnashing of teeth there is). The irony is that they just set things up, after a year and a half, so that PvP nerfs don’t affect PvE. How they will have AE nerfs that don’t affect normal mission play will be a real challenge.

 

As a postscript, I can see some value in “farming.” The pre-14 movement power gap is now gone, but pretty much everyone (no matter what the Devs claim is needed) is grinding from 14 to 20, just waiting for Stamina. Except for those folks who get Quick Recovery earlier, but that’s pretty few in number.

So I can see some value in doing farming missions at that level to jump over that hump to being “really” superheroic. I don’t see a lot of point in doing it at higher levels, and I seriously don’t understand people who farm their way up to 50 … so that they can … um … I have no idea. But that’s been the whole PL conundrum to me, too.

One thing I can say for the Farm League, at least at the moment — there’s always something hopping there. That beats a lot of the action sometimes, on some servers.

I15 already? Yeesh!

Along with the Five Year Anniversary today (well, yesterday), and the recent I14, they’re now announcing I15. Crikey!

5th Column Task Force 

  • Villain Strikeforce (Levels 45 – 50): 5 Missions
    • The Villains are hired for what seems like a simple, high-paying job: Steal information from the Hero 1 Time Capsule. Things go awry when the job ends up leading to the return of an enemy from the past. Now the villains have to deal with the mess they’ve made – while trying to make as much profit from it as possible.
  • Hero Taskforce (Levels 45 – 50): 5 Missions
    • The Heroes follow the trail of some stolen information to find that an old foe is returning… in a big way! Forced to deal with an invasion, the Heroes must scramble to find a way to defeat a seemingly unstoppable enemy.

Enough to make me wish we were hanging with a large enough group to do TFs/SFs.

New Costumes – New Issue 15 costumes include the Vines and Ulterior themed costume sets. More details to come!

New Costume Change Emotes* – Just recently introduced in Super Booster II: Magic, Costume Change Emotes represent a brand new feature type that provide fun and colorful transitions between two different costumes for a given character. Players activate them using the costume change interface, selectable from the main Menu.

  • Backflip
  • Salute
  • Howl
  • Evil Laugh
  • Peacebringer Transform (Kheldian’s only)
  • Warshade Transform (Kheldian’s only)
  • Vanguard Sigil

*By default characters only have one costume slot, and must unlock additional costume slots through activities in the game. This can be accomplished by completing costume slot missions at levels 20, 30, and 40; and by using Halloween Event salvage (which can also be bought, sold or traded via the in-game Consignment Houses).

Huh. So are the ones from the booster pack still going to be only available from that, and these are additional emotes?

I do like the idea of fading into a different costume under the cover of an Evil Laugh …

New Character Faces – Over 20 new character faces provide even more options for character customization

Always nice to see more faces.

Mission Architect Updates 

  • Architect toolbox allows players to better and more easily polish their content before sharing it with the public.
  • Missions can now be selected for both “Hall of Fame” and “Dev Choice,” allowing players to attain both badges. “Dev Choice” missions also have selectable reward types.
  • Enhanced searching and navigation options like key phrase tagging and arc difficulty display help players find the content they’re looking for even faster
  • New Server-wide Architect Chat channel
  • Plus several other features and improvements to Mission Architect

Hmmm. Honestly, not quite as robust a set of things as I’d expect for a new issue. A bit of content (a TF/SF). Some costume parts. Enabling costume change technology (already present) for all. Fixes to Mission Architect. Seems a bit lightweight to me — almost feels like leftovers from the I13 / I14 split.

On the other hand, presumably this won’t take too long to beta and roll out.

How you gonna keep ’em up off the farm?

Sunday morning I was up a bit early, so I hopped onto CoX with some Atlas-level characters on Freedom and Virtue (the only two servers worth PUGging on, given populations.

Now, normally, the Atlas Broadcast channel is filled with (a) invitations for sewer missions and (b) inane chatter, often around costume contests past or future. Not Sunday. Wall-to-wall AE mission solicitations. And not just “I wanna run some Mission Architect stuff,” but “LF AE farm mish” and “AE farming team LFM.”

Yes, it was around before, but farming has now Officially, Really, Truly come to CoX — not as an odd manipulation of certain missions and rules, but as an integral part of the game structure.

Now, there are limits as to what you can do farming. Yes, you get XP. But you also “just” get tickets, which are partly usable for more Mission Architect building swag, or for chances for high-level bits. But that seems to be enough to make AE a big, green farming machine.

Hopefully, this is a matter of novelty. Because, while farming is sketchy per se, the worst part of about this farming is that it’s on generally craptastic missions, which can only hurt the CoX brand. And, meantime, it’s seriously cutting into PUG activity … unless it’s a PUG to do some farming.

I strongly suspect something will be done about this by the Devs, if it continues to be a problem. We’ll see.

 

On the other hand, there are some good AE bits. We played “The Butterfly Effect” last evening with a couple of 21s (Leilah and Kazima), and had a fun time. It’s clear that while there are some fun things you can do with actual mission construction, a lot of the fun is with dialog and color text. Which, upon consideration, has been true with a lot of my favorite arcs.

 

Margie’s Old Star, fire/rad controller, has hit (solo) 48. Woot! She finding limitations on being able to solo AVs (her control can’t overcome their recovery for long enough, and she just doesn’t have the sustained DoT to take them down.

But there’s a lot of other goodies she can use to grab for the brass ring. She’s a great soloable character (and the inspiration, power-wise, for my rebuilt Al McGordo).

 

It was “Bring your old account back for some fun” weekend, and it was nice to see Doyce back on with some old names.

Costumes changes!

Margie picked up the Magic Booster Packs for each of us as a late anniversary gift. Aside from some very pretty outfit pieces, one of the coolest things it included is the ability to do a costume change with a resulting special effect: casting a spell, calling down a flash of lightning, a smoky presto-chango, and a Wonder Woman-like spin. It shows up as an option on the costume screen, so any change follows the emote.

These can also be done as a macro, with the /cce command. Notes are here.

There’s also a new “Mystic Fortune” power you get, which lets you do a tarot-like reading that generates a fairly nice set of non-stackable buffs (mostly) on someone for 20 minutes. It’s actually something worth keeping an eye on and using on your team. Inappropriate for non-magic characters — but valuable enough to use anyway.

Mission Architect gameplay

Friday I ran in a MA arc that Margie wrote (still under development, formal release TBA). I found it very interesting the amount of control the MA system provided, and the ability it gives the creative mission writer to create not just new content, but types of stories. (I may be prejudiced, but Margie’s carnie (not Carnie) arc was just plain fun, as well as being interesting.)

After that, we tried another mission picked at semi-random (search for 4 or 5 stars, few grades). This one (I didn’t note the number, but it mentioned “Dragonettes” in the text) featured a custom group, the Geishas, which were nicely constructed — they looked good, provided a challenge, were interesting. The final mission / encounter, though, turned out to be too hard at our level — insufficient control and DoT for our Lvl 21 duo to get either of the bosses down.

That, in turn, inspired me to write up a quick arc (Lvl 37-50, not yet formally released), which Margie was gracious enough to go through with me a couple of times over the weekend, playing one, then another of our Lvl 50 duos. 

There are still some awkward bits to crafting an adventure — how to make the last glowie give you the clue, how to have EvE battles not trigger so early, how to have anything not trigger so early. It’s also way too easy to drown players in text (a weakness of mine in all circumstances).

Plus, if you test the mish pre-published, you don’t get any inspiration drops. That can be a serious disadvantage.

I think I’ve got it decently polished — one more test, and I’ll officially publish it.

Last night I did some PUGging at the Architect with Miss Crackle, my Lvl 40 Electrical Blaster. The first encounter was against … frogs? Horrible, powerful, frog gangs down in the sewers. It was conceptually awesome, and waaaaay overpowered.

After that, the team leader (well, the new team leader) chose a mission attacking a group of women warriors, “Amazons,” on the skinny city map. We plowed through them, not much challenge.

We did the mission again, set to Boss level. And … plowed through them, with a bit more difficulty, a bit more slowly, but for a lot more XP.

Then we … did it again. Which I’d not realized going in (the introductory interface for MA mishes if you are not the team leader is not very helpful), but it was a little different team makeup, so we plowed through it again.

Yes, I found myself farming Amazons. I hang my head.

It was (a) great XP, (b) not at all fun after, oh, about a third of the way into the second mish. If I’d realized that was the plan, I would have dropped before the third mish; once in, though, I wasn’t going to quit the team.

Not that the mish was a piece of cake — nearly everyone died at some point or another, mostly because the tanks kept rounding up bigger and bigger mobs. But half-way through that last mission I realized something that made these guys cannon fodder: no ranged attacks. I could hover over them and just rain death from above and be absolutely safe. Indeed, at one point, there was just me and one of the tanks (the better one) still up. No problemo.

So, yes, it’s possible to create farming missions using the MA.. Not trivial farming missions, to be sure, but still, XP farms. Sort of “The Most Dangerous Catch.” (Do you incur debt in MA mishs?)

It’s also, if you’re not doing that, quite possible to make impossibly difficult missions. Indeed, I think the biggest weakness of most beginning mission authors is overdoing stuff — too many mobs, too many bosses, too high level, too many clickies, too much everything. A more balanced, nuanced approach is something one has to learn.

Oh, last evening? Katherine, at 8, wrote her own mission (also TBA once tested). She was very jazzed.

Thumbs up on Mission Architect. It both provides an opportunity for added creativity in the CoX world, and teaches respect for the professionals who have written decently balanced missions for the “real” game.

Blog of Heroes news

I will likely be tackling converting this blog over from Movable Type to WordPress Real Soon Now. My MT installation is frelled, and while I can use an external client to post from (the ever-popular ecto/Linear), I can’t actually do much from inside the MT control panel, including adding our latest 50s to the sidebar, adding arcs we write to the sidebar, etc. Feh.

I don’t plan on doing anything fancy, and I’ll give people warning beforehand. Biggest challenge will be maintaining the rather elaborate web of internal links (which I feel obliged to do); I can make that work, but it will turn a half-day effort into a full day or more.

Well, if it were easy, everyone would do it, right?

I14, huzzah!

Well, I haven’t been huzzahing, but only because of serious distractions elsewhere in my life (holidays, blog melt-downs, etc.). 

Margie and I did finally hop on last night, and tried out one of arcs she built (which I’ll advertise here when it’s ready for prime time). I have to say that the whole Mission Architect thing is damned cool, and I see a lot of folks potentially doing most of their heroic careers playing in it (which is why the meta-reality around it seem wrong, somehow, though I don’t have any simple answers to that).

So, yes, I’m sure I’ll be designing something myself, Real Soon Now. Next time I have an afternoon free at home, perhaps.

DING!

And Kitsune-chan and Ex-Terra hit 50. Woot! We were both a scosh fumble-fingered in battle, but we both got the aftermath of the Big Ding.

Kitsune-chan and Ex-Terra — you were just named Heroes of the City! Where are you going now?

“We are going … um … going someplace really cool! And fun! And — cool!”

“It is very pretty here.”

“Yes. Pretty.”

“Quiet. Peaceful.”

“Yes.”

“And … pretty.”

“You said that.”

“And peaceful. And … hey, what say we go find that Statesy mortal again and see if he needs help beating up bad guys. He is awfully cute, in a non-Kitsune kind of way, you know?”

“Best idea you’ve had all day!”

They Might Be Tyrants

“We have Tyrant on the ropes! Look! I got him all glowy and slowed down in his awe over my cuteness! And my boys are keeping him all distracted! And Scary Sam even has him trembling in his very unfashonable boots! The big guy is going down!” 

“Then (urg) why are you (smack) way so far over there (oof) on the opposite side of him (snick) from me?”

“Just, um, because — I, ah, I do not want to get in your way! And maybe block some of your pokeys inadvertently! I am far too clever and cute a tactician to ever cause you any problems in combat!” 

“Riiiight (ugh). And why (smack) are you still wearing (erf) the Wedding Band?”

“Oh, that! Well, I — uh — well … aha! I do not want Statesy to think I am ‘available,’ of course. When I rescue him down from the wall. Yeah, that is it! He has an awful rep with the girls, you know.”

“…”

 

“Wow, Statesy — your Evil Twin sure had good taste in chairs! This thing is pretty darned comfy, even if the view of the lava pits is not all that great.”

“Is she, er, always like this.”

“You have no idea.”

 

“Hey, look! I got my Statesman imitation down pat! ‘Look at me! Proud and patriotic protector of Paragon! Huh-huh-huh.’ Except I am much cuter.”

“…”

Sigh. 

“Oh, poo, Exterry. You are just jealous because I got to sit in the big chair and you are afraid of going all spiney and damaging the very nice upholstery. Hey that gives me a very brilliant idea! Statesy! Think you could help us move this thing to our Super-Base? It would look very, very cute in my room!”

“…”

Coming Concepts

Soccer Dad: MA Scrapper (“Here, son, let me show you the right way to kick.”)
Soccer Mom: Grav Controller (“You! Stop right there!” and “You wouldn’t believe what I have in my purse!”)

Margie sees them as “suburbs” heroes — non-city/core zones (Perez, Striga, DA, maybe Boom and Faultline, Eden …). Just to keep it different.

(I suppose, in parallel, Mom could be a Sonic Blaster. Dad could be a mace (baseball bat) tank.) 

Together, they fight crime — and raise a famly! 

 

“You may be eaten by a Quantum Grue.”

Ah, the golden age of computer games, when Dungeon and Zork and the like made you wander through “twisting, turning passages, all looking alike.” How I fondly remember and miss those days.

Which made yesterdays City of Heroes: The Golden Age a nice April 1st hoot. Make sure your computer has the horsepower for it! (Now, where did I leave that 1200 baud Hayes-compatible modem?)

Positron gives us the full text.

Welcome to City of Heroes(R), Horatio.
You last played on 4/1/87.

You find yourself standing in Atlas Plaza, the statue of Atlas towers above you. There is a
plaque at the base of the statue, and Miss Liberty stands on a platform to the north of the
statue.
To the south is Paragon City Hall. To the North is Atlas Drive. To the East is Emmert
Street. To the West is Dakan Ave.
Also here are Capt. Liberty, Ms. B. Haven, and The Luckster.

>Go North

You are on Atlas Drive. A small park sits to the North. To the East is Emmert Street. To
the West is Dakan Ave. To the South is Atlas Plaza.
There are two Police Officers here.
Also here is Mr. Awesome Guy.
Mr. Awesome Guy yells “Someone changed my name!”
Mr. Awesome Guy smiles at you.
Mr. Awesome Guy whispers to you, “Want to team up against some Thugs?”

>Whisper no

You whisper to Mr. Awesome Guy, “no”

>Go North

You find yourself in a park with a small lake in the middle of it. The park looks a tad run
down and unkempt. To the South is Atlas Drive. To the North is a lake.
There is a Thug here.

>Ataack Thug

I don’t know what you are trying to do.
The Thug shoots you with his pistol. (Rolls a 93)
The Thug hits you!
You lose 5 Hit Points.
You have 45 of 50 Hit Points remaining.

And it goes on from there.

Y’know — come to think of it, I don’t miss those days at all.

Homing in on 50

Kitsune-chan and Ex-terra continue their march toward the Big Ding. We wrapped up the Praetorian arc last night, defeating Tyrant with … well, I won’t say ease (he hits hard), but without any deaths (in that particular battle). We then stood around with Statesman and posed for many fun pictures.

Alas, I did not bring my HD that has said pix with me, so they will have to wait for another post. And, of course, Tyrant teleports out, so there’s no body to gloat over.

Anyway, we’re at 49.3 at the moment. Despite having gotten a couple of purple uber-IOs, they don’t work until 50, so (since we tend to retire characters at that point) I don’t expect we’ll get a lot from them.

Now, of course, I need to start considering who next to start moving on the March to the Top. Rita and Runt are in their low 40s (and seeing how some of these higher-level opponents can be handled with just two scrappers would be interesting).   Gifted Kid and Special Educator are at 30 (and are Villains, which would add some novelty), And then we have a variety in their teens and twenties. 

We’ll see. For now, glory awaits …

I14 is coming …

Or so we’re warned.

Greetings Heroes and Villains!

NCsoft’s latest free expansion “Issue #14: Architect” is coming soon, and the data content is now available for download prior to being released on the live servers. So give yourself a head start! The download will begin after you exit your play session rather than prior to entering the game. The download is purely optional – you can cancel at any time.

It is important to note that you will not be able to see or experience the “Issue #14: Architect” content until it has been officially released on the live servers, but, again, receiving it ahead of time will allow you to play right away (once the content is available), instead of waiting for a large patch to download.

Remember – you can cancel the download at anytime. Your progress will be saved and you can resume downloading the content the next time you are done playing City of Heroes®.

Please visit our Game Updates page to get an overview of what’s included in “Issue #14: Architect”.

Note: The download window is currently not showing the text explaining this process. The patching system is still working correctly.

 Margie’s been doing some serious playing around with the Mission Architect. I’ve had a few ideas for a mission arc, too. We’ll have to see.

Praetorians Gored (Part 2)

As Kitsune-chan and Ex-Terra have been plowing their way through the second Praetorian arc (finding Statesman), we’ve been doing it on Invulnerable so that we can get the Praetorians as AVs. Results?

Of these guys, Infernal was definitely the hardest — but only in the first Praetorian arc (the one in the temple with all his friends). In the second arc, in the water, he’s not nearly as bad (and since we’d done it once, and not realizing it was an easier setting, we did it the second time as an Elite Boss, and didn’t take a picture). That first time out was the only one of these battles where we died — but we’d taken the portal out, so the rematch worked much better.

Bottom line, we buff the hell up, I send in “the boys” (Phantom Army) to take the Alpha, Margie goes in and just starts spining the hell out of the AV while I throw all my Rad debuffs, and pepper with Blinds, Spectral Terror, and my new epic mind blast. I rarely get hit by anything after the initial attack, my holds and illusions often keep the AV distracted at least, and Margie lets the air out of their tires. So far, it’s worked out great.

Next up — Tyrant. There will be, of course, pictures.

Catching up with I14, again, some more

A few Dev/Comm posts of late of import:

Supergroup Super-Leaders!

Ta–daaaah! It’s Super-Leader! 

Actually, this is a new SG rank coming out in I14. It’s not a rank per se, but it give a way for customer support, et al., to deal wit SG leadership problems (leaders unavailable, leaders behaving badly, etc.). Per Sun Storm:

This tool essentially allows us to resolve your tickets more rapidly, keeps us from getting involved in SG/VG political drama, and also keeps groups that may have lost leadership from losing access to a fully operating base.

The new rank introduced in this issue is called, duh, duh, duh … “Super Leader” The super leader title does not have to denote actual leadership or rank within the SG, consider them mainly to be the key master or owner of the group.

Due to the current format in game, we had a few options, we could either demote everyone but one person or we could auto promote a single leader into the new position. We opted to go with the second option.

So when Issue 14 goes live, the highest ranking leader that had most recently logged in will be promoted to the “super leader” position. This ensures that every group that is currently active will have someone who recently played the game in this rank.

Any of you wishing to pinpoint who that person should be can effectively set up those permissions now by changing the ranks of members so that you have the one person you would like to have this access be the only SG leader at the time Issue 14 goes live.

Unlike some forum chat, it’s not necessary to demote everyone — but if you don’t, it will be a random thing based on which Leader was logged in last.

The super-leader, as I understand it, essentially allows someone to deal with the other Leader rank toons. Promoting someone to SL (which the SL can do) makes that person the new SL (demoting themselves to just plain L). It makes sense, I suppose, and should help Customer Service a lot, as well as some SG logistics. It’s probably a net benefit (until demonstrated otherwise) in helping with the Drama.

We’ll see.

So, about all that I14 Mission Architect stuff …

I’ve been woefully remiss in keeping up on CoX board reading. So … a quick update!

Some comments by Posi.

More red name info for you to read and muse upon as you await I14 coming out not very long from now.

My thoughts?

  1. Okay, yeah, I’ll have to do some of that thing. If nothing else, it will engender an understanding of the powers and limits of the overall COX system.
  2. The virtual reality of it bothers me, too. From a story-telling standpoint, it feels kind of cheesy. Unless there’s more to this than we know.
  3. Brilliant way to create more generic (though quirky) content (as in the police band / newspaper missions) while the Devs work on (one hopes) some new whiz-bang content.