Vidiotmaps

Huh. Never saw this posted anywhere before, but I’ve been trying (unsuccessfully, natch) to get to the Vidiotmaps site for weeks. It is the home of the greatest map resources, map patch stuff, badge tracking, etc. anywhere for CoX.

Or, was.

So, going over to Badge-Hunter.com, I find the Vidiotmaps page with plenty of stuff that’s been done in there since this news blurb:

Sunday, July 02, 2006 – One of the companies involved with hosting vidiotmaps.com has gone out of business. This will be the temporary location of vidiotmaps until everything gets worked out. Please be advised that this quasi-mirror does not have full functionality and is a work in progress.

At first glance, most if not all of the Vidiotmaps stuff seems to be there (including Mayhem Mission maps), plus all sorts of other goodies. Yay. (The LJ article also has a link to the ParagonMaps
map resource, which looks interesting.)

Bits and pieces

Tuesday night, played one Hildy/Torchy mish before my tendonitis started causing me problems.

Last night, had a nummy dinner out with BD and Jackie and Margie, then came back and finally finished a Lynn mish I’d had interrupted three or four times. Oranbega – bleah.

Tonight — I’d been hoping to do more, but Katherine’s VBS thang is having their “big show” tonight, so likely not much. We’ll see.

Continue reading “Bits and pieces”

Patches and Glitches

New patch out today.

Global Chat was completely offline for some time (supposed to be back on by now, but haven’t seen confirmation).The server status
page includes Global Chat status.

And logging out or getting sent to the Grandville Hospital is locking toons in Limbo. The Devs recommend staying out of Grandville for the nonce.

As to the patch itself …

General

  • Improved network performance across the board.
  • Fix for pets to get through doors more easily if they get in each other’s way.
  • Long distance Supergroup invites no longer crash the map.

Power

  • Hyper Phase Temporary Power now has the 30 second shut down.
  • Gambler’s Cut for Stalkers and Scrappers now properly calculates Critical Strikes.
  • The 5% Defense reduction in Scrapper and Brute versions of Unyielding has been reduced to a 3.75% Defense reduction. This value matches then unenhanced Defense gained from the Tough Hide passive power in the same power set. The Tanker version remains unchanged, as the values already match properly. [What’s a few percent between friends?]
  • Added Toxic Resist to Sonic Dispersion power for Corruptors, Controllers and Defenders. The help text has always stated that Toxic damage was resisted by this power, so we added it.

City Zones

  • Players should no longer get stuck in the Pocket D Elevators. [Never happened to me, but, then, I haven’t used PocketD to go into PocketD for, oh, months.]

Missions

  • Moved certain spawns in CoT Maps to higher ground for hostage purposes.

Tasks

  • Several doors which were giving XP but were not supposed to have had the xp reward removed.

Bases

  • Items placed in Storage Containers are saved immediately.
  • Base storage will now allow combined enhancements to be stored/removed.

Tailor

  • Fixed the Gloves for Huge Robotic 3.
  • Huge Upper Body Jacket selection now has matching sleeves. [Maybe Mr. R. needs to get something a bit more casual …]

Chat

  • Added additional logging and error checking code to global chat. [Which may be why it’s not working? 😛 ]

World

  • Fixed a problem with pets getting stuck in elevators.

City of Heroes

Powers

  • Tanker War Mace: The order in which the powers Clobber and Jawbreaker are received have been swapped. This means that Jawbreaker will now be available at level 4, which should help War Mace’s ability to deal damage at lower levels. Lower level characters that have already selected Clobber will still have it and can continue to use it and slot it normally.
  • Power Boost epic power now works properly with Kinetics, Transfusion.
  • Peacebringers in Light Form can no longer appear invisible to players who suppress extra player effects.
  • Defender Epic PowerBuild Up now enhances Transfusion’s heal.

City of Villains

Badges

  • Born In Battle Accolade no longer needs the Nigh Indestructible badge. It requires the Unbreakable badge instead.
  • Added the Defeat Recluse badge to patron arcs that were missing it.

Missions

  • Nemesis Mole Machines no longer give experience.
  • The first mission of Citadel’s Task Force now gives a reward as expected.
  • Added a Patron Respec to the first Patron Story Arcs.
  • Modified the Lorenz Ansaldo mission to make the generators smaller.
  • Completion of the Temple of the Waters Strike Force now awards the badge correctly.

Powers

  • Domination is now usable when the caster is under the effects of Hold, Stun or Sleep.
  • Changed first tier Mastermind Upgrade power descriptions to “Recharge: Fast.” [Yay! The going-in-the-door delay while summoining henchfolk is really irksome, and serves little purpose.]
  • The Domination effect for Dominators now grants them some protection from most status effects for the duration of the effect.
  • Corrected short help text of Corruptor Cold Domination Ice Shields and Glacial Shields to reflect Melee, Ranged and AoE defense bonuses.
  • Stalker Placate Powers endurance costs are now more consistent.
    Mastermind Henchmen Medics/Protector Bots now heal/repair as expected. [Yay!]

City Zones

  • Stopped Kalinda from floating above ground in Mercy Island.
  • Improved the paths of Pier 2 and Pier 7 Scrapyarder spawns in Sharkhead Isle.
  • Fixed elevated Arachnos Flier paths which were causing clipping in Grandville.
  • Fixed a bug where Arachnoid Web Frames were not visible in Grandville.
  • Brute Electric Armor Power Surge now has the correct feedback at end of the effect.

Tasks

  • Villains who have already received their Patron Power Sets will be granted a Patron Respec upon logging in. This respec stacks with the Thorn Tree respecs as well as the free respecs given out when major power changes happen. This respec allows your character to do the Patron content at any point in their career, even level 50, and be able to add the Patron Powers to the character. These respecs can be redeemed from Arbiter Lupin.

World

  • Fixed a missing Mission Door in Grandville.
  • Fixed a mysterious floating beam in Mercy Island.

Critters

  • Players no longer get experience when Coral minions expire on their own.

Crisis of Characters

So I haven’t been playing CoX much over … oh … the last week, at least.

I don’t know if this is a break, a cooling off of interest, a seismic shift in my evening focus, or what. I just haven’t had the fire in the belly for it.

Which has nothing to do with the folks I play with, mind you. And it’s not because I’m hopping into some other cool game. I’ve just been doing … different things. A couple of external functions. Reading. Working online. Watching DVDs.

What I haven’t done is rushed home with every fiber of my being screaming to hop onto CoX and keep pushing all my beloved characters.

No idea what this means, really. And no idea if, having written this, I’ll be back onto my nightly schedule as of tonight.

Just wanted to mention it, since I have the space here to do so.

Blogathon!

Occured to me that there may be folks over here who never read over there, so …

From 7 a.m. Saturday morning to 7 a.m. Sunday morning (MDT), I’ll be part of the 2006 Blogathon, blogging every half-hour on the half-hour for 24 hours on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  So far, ten folks have verified pledges totaling $377 to be donated to the EFF for my efforts. 

My blogging topic will be comic books — reviews, recollections, good stuff like that.  Which certainly ties into the CoX theme of this blog.  So swing on by during the day (or night) and drop off a comment or two to keep me company.  And if you feel like pledging to a mighty fine cause to encourage me, who am I to stop you?

So if you don’t see me in Paragon the next couple of days … now you’ll know why. 

 

Future zones

Long interview with Archon Voss:

I can tell you that currently the city planners have decided that with the Rikti now quelled, and Arachnos identified, that it is time to rebuild. Faultline will be the first project, along with zone clean ups in Boomtown and expansions. It’s safe to start bringing War Walls down.

Hmmm.  Very cool.  The Boomtown and Faultline zones are almost wastes of space (and certainly redundant). Some evolution of story is certainly something to look forward to.

Some cool hints as to the future of CoX …

Which, coincidentally, ties into this.

Double, half, whatever

Double XP Weekend turned out to be less of a CoX-fest than I’d expected.  Part of it was just fatigue.  Part of it was feeling like I just had to be out there maxxing my XP generation every moment, and resenting that feeling.  Part of it was just other things to do.

At any rate, my actual gameplay was no more (and somewhat less, in fact) than other weekends. 

We did get Torchy and Hildy up to 35, a power level, which was nice,  I’m torn between Electricity and Fire for my Epic Pools, and I don’t have a lot of stuff in the sub-Epics that I’m eagerly looking forward to — some nice-to’s, but no must-haves.

Margie got Blue Point to 49 (yow), and pushed her new solo alt, Last Ice Dragon, to 14 (I need to get LID onto my list at the left).

We briefly played with Cetus and Lunulata, getting them both up to 9, with the intent of then pairing them off with Christmas Present and Al McGordo, but that didn’t go very far.  Fact is, it still a slog going through the sub-14 levels, and I just didn’t have the patience for it.  That, and I’m finding the squids less than thrilling (though it’s hard to judge an AT by just a few levels).

Eliza Dee has been starting and aborting the same Vaz mission, oh, four times now.  I really need to spend some time with her.  And with Lynn, who has similarly started and aborted the same CoT mission a similar number of times.  Frustrating.

Matched set

While the Double XP Weekend has been a bit of a bust for me (more on that later), this particular double-up has been kinda fun.

I do like the revision on the “temp power” stuff, so that the Nemmie Staff sticks around for 3 days in-game, which means if you have to be gone for a long weekend, it doesn’t vanish, and if you aren’t running your character constantly you still get a decent run with it.  It divorces in-game from out-of-game, which is always a fine idea.

Hildy and Torchy haven’t played Volley-Mob with anyone yet, but I’m sure we’ll give it a try before the Nemmy Staff goes away.

Devs are Just Plain Folks on Live

Someone suggested that the Devs have various cheat codes that let them tap into God Powers while playing CoX.  Positron replies:

When we play on the development servers or Training Room, sure… but when we play on Live servers even we dont get any special commands or cheats. We level up just like the rest of you… I know I will be on with my Dominator a bunch this weekend.

Someone questioned Posi’s veracity about being a Dominator, to which he said,

Level 37 Fire/Energy… finished the second Respec trial last night.

And when asked about whether the trial was tough …

 I think I died 3 times on the final mission, all to the Thorn Tree itself, and I had a full Domination bar at that point too. Once we got to the point where we were all attacking it (Brute, MM, Dom, Corr), it went down pretty easy, and no one died… unlike the first Respec trial, where we had multiple TPKs in the final room.

Cool.  Somehow good to know the Devs endure TPKs, too.

Obligatory what-I-did-last-night post

Not much, to be honest. Got a late start, and Margie was making noises about heading to bed early, so I got on as Eliza.
Overall, not very satisfying. Took a mish, got bugged by an invite which I eventually took when I got killed (damned zombie vomit). The PUG was tackling the “drop off the Outbreak virus” mish, and we started pretty well, but about half the team kept churning (and not for the better) and I eventually went down twice before finding the last glowie. “Thanks for the team” and off I went.
At least I dinged up to 15.
And … still no decision about how we’re going to take advantage of Double XP Weekend. Though Jackie was making noises about some sort of TF/SF on Saturday night. I’d suggested that, actually, thinking of the ginormous XP that SFs usually generate — but it occurs to me that hitting the level cap will have twice the effective effect, so maybe that’s not so hot of an idea.

Base notes

Various comments from Positron about upcoming changes to bases.

 Two of the biggest complaints we see about the base system is “Stuff is too expensive” and “It takes us too long to get a base that does anything useful.”

Statesman and I have looked closely at the data. We have looked at various Supergroup sizes and how they have been earning Prestige since CoV launched. One thing became clear, and that was that players were not earning Prestige at the rate that we had expected them to.

To this end, you can expect to see an (approximately) 25% increase in Prestige earning. This will be in an upcoming patch (have to get it through QA).

To address the issue of “It takes us too long to get a base that does anything useful” we are adding in some new rooms (in the same patch):

He goes on to describe some new “starter” rooms with lower capabilities and lower costs.

Our goal has been refined since the original launch of City of Villains. We now want to allow a small Supergroup of 4 or 5 fairly active players to be able to afford something new in their base every few weeks. These new, lower cost rooms, and combo Control/Energy item, allow us to do just that, without making large Supergroups attain the top tier stuff too quickly.

This week Statesman and I (among others) will begin looking at the larger Supergroups and determining where the shortcomings are at that end of the system and figure out what we need to implement in order to get larger Supergroups to a level where both they and we are happy.

Even better is a later comment that they are looking at an auxiliary item for base teleporters that will send you straight back to the mission (or mission door).  Glee!  That would make it worth going to bases rather than to hospital in many cases.

Most exciting, perhaps — the whole question of base “rent” is in play. 

 In regards to Rent: This is one of the items we are looking at closely this week. The “glass ceiling” was a design decision to prompt SGs into recruiting more members to get past it. It’s fairly obvious (and has been for months) that you all universally hate the idea.

I don’t mind rent all that much — I wish it were lower, and I wish you didn’t have to frelling run back to city hall to pay it, but as it’s the only thing that causes an SG to actually do much on a continuing basis, it’s not a bad mechanism.  That said, if it goes away, I shall shed no tears.

Amusing from the above were the never-satisfied people who requested (demanded) that if rent were eliminated, all the previously paid Prestige be refunded.  Yikes.

Mayhem Multiplied

Got on early yesterday afternoon with Eliza Dee, and shortly thereafter got a tell from Grellim, offering to team. We ended up doing the Skyway Bank Robbery mayhem mission, and it was a freaking blast. We did the bank, both side missions, and literally cleared the zone of anything that could be punched, burned, shot, or otherwise taken down. I mean, a good half-hour to forty-five minutes of non-stop (except when I had to catch my breath) action, and most of a level for Eliza.
Thugs are fun, and the Gang War power is just too much enjoyment to watch. Margie’s previously commented, with Day Old Shelf, that Masterminds rock on mayhem missions, and throwing in a Brute to take care of particularly problematic opponents works great.
Last night was Villains Night, and Jackie had been trying to get a SF organized. Alas, some SG Leadership / Coalition barriers interacted with annoying base zoning problems to keep things from starting up without losing at least one player. So we bagged that and just went out missioning — including, eventually, the same mayhem mish (Ravvy got it). Good fun, again, if not quite as well organized (a group of 8 on a mayhem mission is almost sure to eventually turn into a group of 3 and a group of 5, don’t ask me why). Ravenous and Charity both ended up withe better part of a level in XP for the night.
Still haven’t decided what/who we’re doing for Double XP Weekend.

Lack of Virtue

I’ve started toying again with Eliza Dee (the Virtue instance of her) as another character to do solo stuff with.  I burned my I7 respec to fix her (lack of) Fly problems, and was all ready last night to do a bit of playing around with her.

Unfortunately, Virtue has evidently been flaky as hell the last couple of nights, and I was mapserving every few minutes (and I wasn’t the only one).  It would recover on its own, but then go down again.  The only time it didn’t happen was while I was on a mission (though I mapserved getting the mish, thrice getting there, thrice getting back, and once again while clearing it).

Those problems have now (according to CuppaJo) been cleared up.  So … good.

Double the Pleasure, Part Two

Yuppers.

Heroes and Villains,
Many of you have heard about it, and now it is quickly approaching.
All players get a chance to earn Double XP (including double Prestige and Inf/Inf) just for playing the game THIS weekend.
Here are the times:
Start: Friday, July 21st at 9am PST / 12pm EST
Finish: Sunday, July 23rd, 8:59pm PST / 11:59pm EST
Why are we doing this? Why, I’m glad you asked! This is a special thank you, because we really do appreciate you all-through the thick and thin.
You get to decide how you want to take advantage of this. Perhaps you want to work on your alts, or get that one character up to level 50. It is simply all up to you.
So what is the catch? No catches. It’s just that easy
So let that XP just pour in…and HAVE FUN!

Margie’s already, “Let us talk, then, about our CoX plans for the weekend …”

HeroStats

It occurred to me the other day that I almost never run HeroStats any more.  Back when I was doing Psi-clone all the time, it was de rigeur.  I couldn’t live without it.  Now — well I ran it for the first time yesterday, briefly, in a month or more, and then turned it off as an unnecessary drain on system resources.

The difference is largely that I don’t have any toons like PC that are heavy buffers and other timed power types.  None of my Tanks / Brutes / Scrappers / Masterminds really worry about when something is going to wear off or be back available again, beyond what the power tray and the power icons (now) show. 

I might do a bit of running with it for a couple of toons, briefly, to see where my accuracy and damage are running.  But as a perpetual monitoring/timing tool?  Or to know the estimated minutes to level?  At the moment, I don’t need it.

If I get back into the Controller or Defender game again, I’ll reconsider.

The Grind

Some people complain about the “grind” in CoX, running through the 20s-30s — endless repetitive missions, fill-in powers, etc., etc.
I’ve never had much of that problem with duos that click. But the big reason that, since I5, Velvet and P-Siren just haven’t done much anything playwise is, aside from the nerfing of the already-weak FF Defender, they just have a wretched DoT. Really. PS has a snipe. Velvet has SS tanker punches. it’s not that they don’t do damage, is that they don’t do scrapper/blaster-level damage. So doing mishes with them is one demned horrid grind, as Dickens put it.
So, Phalanx Prestige Day today. A little slow starting, but eventually there were the above pair, MacroLass, Sword of Asgard, Avocet, and MassiveImpact. Of those three were tanks. SS/Inv tanks, no less.
On small teams (PS, VJ, ML, Avo), not much problem. But later on we got stuck in this endless Devouring Earth mission. I mean, like a couple of hours worth. Avo had to drop, and so we figured out a way to get ML and SoA on without messing up the SK/RSK stuff too much. And then we slogged through the grind, to mix my metaphors. I almost cried when I realized it had turned into a Defeat All mish.
At long last, we made it. And, to be sure, it wasn’t bad — we seriously owned the place — it was just painfully slow, even with one blaster or one scrapper on the team. No danger of defeat, with all those tanks and a bubbler. Just no danger of finishing too soon, either.
On the bright side, VJ dinged 32, and PS got close.
As it stand, though, that mish exemplified why VJ/PS just aren’t fun to duo, any more than Ho Ho/Peep would be. In a big team, yeah, definitely a blast. On their own, nope.
But they’ll continue to be there for Phalanx Prestige Days. It’s a great excuse to play them.

Virgil Tarikoss – the Conclusion

Previous posts in the SF:  1, 2, 3

Team members of Strike Force Charon:  Mister Ravenous (Brute, CoI), Charity at Home (Corrupter, CoI), Venenata (Dominator, CoI), Barbarity (Brute, Entropy), Face of Destruction (Stalker, ?), Lord Maleficus (Stalker, ?), Black Pharoh (MM, Sanguine Society)

Wrapped up the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force tonight, in a 2-hour run on the final mission.  Compared to my original experience, it went swimmingly, in part because of foreknowledge, in part because we were a much more balanced (level-wise) team, and in part because, well, we just rocked.  Spoilers below.

The “classic” clever tactic, until recently, was to click on the altars via Invis/Hide, get Bat’Zul and his demons in fighting Inferno and his gang, and mop up the left-overs.  We tried that again this time, knowing that Invis/Hide are now suppressed when you click on glowies.  The first altar worked, but the next two the scouts got swarmed by Hangers-On of Bat’Zul.

So, back to the old-fashioned tactics again.  Maybe.  Someone (Margie?) came up with the idea of trying to taunt/draw/pull Infernal out of the main hallway and into the lava pit room — either to hurt him with lava, draw him from his mobs, or engage him with the Hoi-Polloi of Bat’Zul.  BP tried that, and actually managed to get some of the CoT at the end of the corridor engaged with Infernal and his back ranks — but his zombies also managed to draw aggro, which meant that even after he TPed back
(barely alive), the Legacy Chain and Infernal were upon us.

So, a big, brutal battle, with Ravvy going toe-to-toe with Infernal for a short bit, dropping, temp-rezzing (huzzah), attacking some more, dying when the greens ran out, hopping back from hospital — to find that everyone was dead or out of the room.  Whew.

But, we’d cleared everyone but Infernal and one minion.  And when we deliberately and calmly and bought up Inspirations at the CoI base, and double-buffed our flames outside the mish and in, we basically waded in, wore Infernal down, and beat him.  Huzzah.

(In the first picture, we have a shot of Rav, Barbarity, Mal and one of BP’s zombies, at least, pounding on Infernal.)

Wave attack of Rabble of Bat’Zul took us a bit by surprise, but we prevailed.

Then we started slowly but surely clearing out the Miscellaneous Grunts of Bat’Zul from the arms of the cave around the lava pit.  During tihs time, I finally dinged 20 — huzzah!  That made life a bit easier as well, but we didn’t have too miuch problem.

Got to the last altar, and set things up.  My recollection was that Bat’Zul arose as soon as the last altar was broken.  So we left a stalker back at it, someone at the lava pit end of the entrance hall to pull Bat’Zul in, and everone else stationed further down.

Hrm.  Turned out that the last altar simply triggered another two or three waves of Those Guys of Bat’Zul, which we successfully fended off. That was the cue for the Big Guy to finally appear. 

And, as with the previous attack, it was pretty simple and straight-forward.   Get him out of the lava pit (where he regents and summons imps), and then pound on him a lot.  Good control/debuffing from Ven and BP, good heals from Charity, and lots of punching, and Batz went down pretty darned quickly.

(The Bat’Zul pic shows him where Rav actually knocked him on his demonic ass.  Fun.  He also spent a lot of time wrapped up in monstrous thorny vines.)

SOs all around, a ton of badges, and loud huzzahs.  And pictures, of course. 

After saying good night and all, Rav and Charity went out on a couple of mishes to finish off her run to 20, then we parked them for the evening.

Highest ranked CoV toons.  Makes me wonder what we’ll do with them next.

(Final pic, L-R: Black Pharoh (in civvies), Lord Maleficus, Mister Ravenous, Virgil Tarikoss, Barbarity, Charity at Home, Face of Destruction, Venenata.  Virgil has no idea that immediately after this picture, we’re going to drag him out back the portal and give him a serious ass-whuppin’ for deceiving us as he had.)