Planner software

I’ve been a long-time user of Joe Chott’s CoH Planner for forever-and-a-day (or at least as long as I’ve played CoH). BD pointed out that the program hadn’t been updated in a while (since I5 or so — maybe a bit more recently, but definitely fallen behind), and recommended looking at Sherksilver’s Character Planner instead.
Downloaded it this morning. A couple of thoughts.

  1. Since it works, and is being updated, I’ll probably move to this. That’s made easier by the program’s import function, which will bring in a CoH Planner character into the system (kinda-sorta … a couple of glitches there).
  2. The user interface is similar (since the functionality is similar), though a lot busier and less well organized that Joe Chott’s program. One thing that both helps and hinders: slot levels for the enhancements are shown on the same screen, which is both a tremendous convenience and a lot more visual clutter. You do have control over nearly all the fonts and font sizes and font colors — and you need it, too.
  3. Sherksilver’s program has a lot of added features, tables, calculators, trackers, etc. It’s a much more complete resource. If all you’re doing is tracking slotting for your toons (99% of what I’m looking for), that’s not a huge benefit, but it’s interesting to view (e.g., look at movement speeds with different powers and enhancements on).

So I’ll probably start converting my active toons over to the new program. Thanks for the reference, BD!

Ask your doctor!

So Margie and Stan and I were watching the Food Channel, and this commercial for “Zestra” came on, which, so far as we could tell, was something designed to enhance female sexual response, but it was phrased and presented so oddly, we had to quick check it out online.
2006-07-02_zestra.jpgWent to the site, and found out all about Zestra(R) Feminine Arousal Fluid. Well, actually, found out all about it via the package insert. To make a long story short, so far as we were able to tell, Zestra (“All-Natural Ingredients – Pure Botanical Oils and Extracts – No Hormones”) works largely through it’s application — a “gentle application” and “tender massage” to the appropriate female bits for several minutes. Which would certainly, I’d think, lead to an improvement in the female sexual response in question in conjunction with any number of fluids, not just Zestra, but I digress.
This was all just far too amusing, and Margie immediately set out to create a CoH character named Zestra (Mind/Kin Controller), which then meant that she insisted on my making a character to duo with, which led to Satisfied Partner (Spines/Regen Scrapper). Both of them have a character description of “Ask your doctor” and war cries of “Clinically Proven!” and “For best effects — don’t rush!” respectively.
Had fun with the costume design. Tighty-whities are pretty easy, esp. with the cloth belt option. Pity about the circles around his eyes — poor fellow doesn’t get much sleep since he discovered Zestra.
We ran around iwht htem for an hour or so, getting them up to 4. Fun stuff. I have no idea if we’ll do anything more than just this post, but if the Monday Munchies crowd ever transition from Food to Medication, we’re ready for them …

Why Velvet gets very little play time

Velvet and P-siren really haven’t done much since we hit 30 with them and did various the various TFs at that level. One reason was that I was just getting really tired of the slow DoT for Velvet, the other was disdain with the Bubbler issues of PS (esp. when duoing with a tank).
So Margie took it into her head that Ho Ho and Princess Peep really need to pick up the Wedding Ring at Striga before we outlevel the missions. So Saturday was Striga Day.
Thought we were going to die.
Not literally. I mean, on Heroic, it was all blues, and Ho Ho was tough enough to stand up to anything the Family and Council dished out, and with Peep’s debuffs, they didn’t stand a chance, unless we died of low-DoT boredom. Peep’s radiation did slow, steady damage, and Ho Ho’s axe did slow, ponderous damage. And …
Oh, for a blaster. Or a scrapper.
The Wedding Band is worth it (eventually). But it really reminded me of how Peep and Ho Ho are definitely team builds, and assume someone other than the two of them will be around to actually, oh, do some damage.

Popping (red)caps

Hildy and Torchy headed back to Croatoa, back to a level (30+) to take Buck’s missions — the first of which was one of those awful Faerie Fort maps, rescuing prisoners. We dragged along Ciunas Bas, SKed up, and finally managed to clear the map (after a few Hildy and a few more CB face-plants).
Interestingly, I’ve drawn the parallel between H/T and Psi-clone/Amorpha, with the basic difference that the “controller” in H/T is actually the one in the middle of the melee (Hildy), while the killing machine is, rather than a scrapper, the blaster in the back ranks.
One other difference that occurred to me yesterday afternoon is that with PC/A, if things went pear-shaped and Amorpha went down, PC had both the control and the healing to take a few moments to ponder the best course (run in an rez? duke it out? turn tail and come back later?). With Torchy, though, there’s no question — she’s horribly squishy, has no self-healing besides chicklets; generally speaking, when Hildy goes down, Torchy is hightailing it out of there.
(That, in turn, is a bit more difficult now that she’s a Flyer rather than a SJer, as speed suppression on Fly is a lot more noticeable, and can spell crucial seconds in bailing out. On the other hand, while SJ can get you behind things, and faster, it can also drag you into trouble; Fly lets you just Get Away.)
I do need to figure out a way to make Torchy marginally less squishy.
Anyhoo, both of us dinged to 31, huzzah. CB managed to end up out of debt, and with a bunch of high DOs in her tray, so it was, hopefully, a worthwhile outing. The soiree was incredibly rich, drop-wise, and I ended up with an entire tray full of SOs (and having gotten rid of several DOs along the way, and not counting the couple of SOs I could use).
It was also neat to see more than two CoJ folks on at a time. Almost had 4, but T’lauro signed out before Hildy signed in.
Earlier in the evening, was running around with Lynn doing CoT mishes. Bleah. I really hate those maps, and inevitably miss a side passage or a mob behind a wall or something. Lynn’s got a mad-on at the CoT, though, because of a hostage she couldn’t find, who turned out then to be dead. Making her cranky.
On the other hand, before the tunnels, she had a Hunt Council mish over in Bricks, and she just kicked ass. I mean, groups of seven or eight reds, or a couple of purple with red escorts. Not without a couple of white knuckles, but still, impressive enough to make me wonder if I need to ratchet up her reputation more. I tend to be conservative on these things (or cowardly, if you prefer), but maybe that’s not as necessary with her.

MMORPGs by the numbers

MMOGCHART.COM tracks subscriber numbers for MMORPGs. It’s kind of interesting to look at — in particular, related to CoX, it’s odd to see spelled out something that’s So Big in My Life is so trivial, subscriber-wise, in the MMORPG world. (Reminds me of my taste in TV shows.)
Granted, CoX is a top tier game, but compared to WOW, Everquest, Lineage I or II, Final Fantasy, or RuneScape, the subscriber base is a drop in the bucket. Or, put another way, we’re at 1.4% of the overall MMORPG subscriber world, tucked between Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.
Interesting stuff.

Note to self re CoV

Never, ever, ever design a Villain again that uses Super-Jump as a travel power. You can tell Arachnos is in charge of the Mercy Island because the place is a veritable spider-web of buildings, cat-walks, piping runs, towers, and other things that make getting from Point A to Point B an exercise in frustration.
I imagine Super-Speed would be similarly frustrating, given the street layouts. Teleport works better, but it’s a PitA in and of itself.
Fly, baby. Fly.

Torchilympics

Once I got back to the ol’ homestead last evening, it was time for more Torchielle and Hildegard.  In this case, we were wrapping up the Freakolympics story arc, which was fun.

I find the combo of Hildy’s crowd control plus my damage magnitude to be a lot of fun.  It’s a reshuffling of the Psi-clone/Amorpha stuff.  Hildy, like Psi-clone, does the holding and protecting (as a tank), while Torchy does the damage-dealing that Amorpha does.  The only difference is who’s in the bad guys’ faces.

Almost up to 32.  Wow.

And, meantime, respecced Torchy to take Fly rather than Super-Jump.  Fit it into her story, too.  And made some minor changes to her costume. Fun.

New patch (6/27)

Big new patch going out today.  Comments in italics.

Combined

Tasks

  • Fixed a bug with CoT Portals that required players to destroy the Portals to complete “Defeat All” missions.
  • Fixed bug in ‘Running Boss’ missions that caused any knockback or immobilization on the Boss to count as an immediate escape.

Powers

  • Trip Mines from all player sets have had their Detoggle ability set to 10%.
  • Giant Monster, Arch Villain and Hero class entities’ regeneration levels reduced considerably. Huzzah!

Graphics

  • Fixed issue with building lights not fading correctly if you have your world texture detail settings lowered.

Game

  • Improved server stability  Always a good thing.
  • All commands to make pets speak (/petsay, /petsayall, /petsayname, /petsaypow) are working again.

City Zones

  • Recluse’s Victory: Signature Heroes and Villains will no longer give experience or debt. They will continue to give badges. Temporal points for defeating them increased.  This was a controversial item.  Probably the best solution.
  • Recluse’s Victory: Fixed bug that caused player controlled heavies to persist after the player controlling them logged off or zoned.

Badges

  • Added female-style names to many male-oriented Badge Titles. Not sure what this means, but sounds good.
  • Added meters and hints to many badges that did not have them previously.  Huzzah!
  • Renamed ‘Media Junkie’ badge to ‘Couch Potato’. ‘Media Junky’ badge remains unchanged.

UI

  • Players can now set themselves to automatically decline super group and trade invites. Under the Options/General/Chat, there are now two additional options to turn this functionality on or off. By default it is set to off, which will prompt players whenever they receive a super group or trade invite.  Hmmm.  Probably good.
  • If a player is currently hidden from his global friends using the /ghide command, all global friend invites and global chat channel invites will automatically be declined.

Tailor

  • Female, Male and Huge costume creator clean up.  Good.
  • Unified naming conventions.  Yay.
  • Gloves and boots reordered for less confusion.  Good.
  • More Chest textures in every available category.  Very good!
  • Hip and Chest textures alphabetized.
  • Reptilian texture revamped.
  • Armored Pads added to chests and hips.  Nice.
  • Crey Tech added to chests, hips, boots, and gloves. 
  • Rough Leather added to hips.
  • “Chaos leather” revamped.
  • Shorts legs geometry fixed.
  • V belt revamped.  Good.
  • Skirts and Shorts revamped to fit tighter and prevent clipping with belts.
  • Some belts revamped to better fit revamped skirts.
  • “Plain long skirt” added.  HUZZAH!  Not everyone wears a mini-skirt.
  • Long skirts revamped so geometry doesn’t clip with V and lone skull belt
  • Matte boot texture added  Good.

City of Villains

Tasks

  • Hive Spires no longer give Bonus XP.
  • The high level Respec Trial now has level appropriate enemies.
  • Fixed mission in Black Scorpion story arc “Thwart Black Scorpion’s plans – timed”. The mission was not completing properly
  • Fixed graphics bugs in several Arachnoid Cave maps.

Powers

  • Dominator Icy Assault Ice Sword Circle has had the long pause after casting removed.
  • Corruptor Kinetics Transfusion was inadvertantly increasing a target’s regeneration rate in PvP, instead of decreasing it. This has been corrected.
  • Fixed typos in Thugs powerset description
  • Fixed a typo in the Mastermind Mercenaries Spec-Ops description.
  • Electric Armor Grounded will now have its protection from Knockback and Knockup scale per level at the same rate that Knockback powers scale by level. This should result in consistent protection throughout a characters lifetime.
  • Longbow Spec-Ops EMP Grenade power has had the amount of Endurance Drained per use reduced.
  • The Psionic Activator Temporary Power should work correctly now.

Tasks

  • Fixed issue that prevented brokers and newspapers from assigning Malta and Carnival missions.
  • Fixed some text errors in Beast of the Mountain strike force.
  • Fixed an uncompletable mission on Black Scorpion’s Patron arc. (“Thwart plan of Black Scorpion”)
  • Added badge reward to Mission 3 of the Future of Freedom Strike Force.

City Zones

  • Grandville: The plaques describing Patron Powers have been updated to give much more detailed information.

City of Heroes

Tasks

  • Eden Trial: Rock Beast Lts. should properly spawn Cairns again. 

Overall, sounds good.  Nothing earth-shattering, but who wants earth-shattering right at the moment.

Well, he’s kind of a wuss AV, after all

Hostess Heroes last night cleaned Klamor Maestro’s clock. Despite his being an AV (and thus currently regenning 11x as fast as he used to), we didn’t have much problem. Hell, the stupid ‘fan boys” were a bigger irritant.
In the pic we have (front) Ho Ho, Brownie Points, Twinkie Kid; (back) Bear Claws, Princess Peep, Ginger Snap, Ring Ding. Oh, and in the middle, Klamor Maestro having his noisy head handed to him.
Ho Ho and Princess Peep both dinged 25. Halfway (numerically) to 50. Yikes.
It’s a bit funny. I enjoy playing Ho Ho — doing the tank thang with a big team and all. But there was something kind of exhilerating about first building her, and having practically any option. Doing a regular big team is spoiling me — makes me want to do more of it, but with different ATs. Another blaster. A different controller. A claws scrapper. Endless possibilities …

Not-so-temp powers

Haven’t heard anyone complaining about this — or, at least, haven’t seen any Dev comments on it (which is what I monitor in the forums), but the temp power timers are … well … not.
Temp powers with uses are working fine. You can see this by the new patch that lets you go to the Info on the power and see how many uses remain. So, last night, Torchy’s Holy Shotgun Shells got almost down to zero.
Temp powers with durations, though — “this will last X days until you have to send it back to Azuria” — are … well … showing things like “512345689 days left” under info. I have Sands of Mu, and Runes of Warding, and other goodies like that, and no sign of their going away (yay, another cone punch-out power for Lynn, even if I can’t slot it).
Ssssshhhhhh …

Like I need more motivation

RPG Motivational Posters. The thread would be even more entertaining if folks didn’t reply to posts quoting the entire previous message (including large graphic). As it is, it’s now stretching over 242 pages.
And for the MMORPG-lovers among you, there’s this accompanying thread. Though, as the plain RPG one I have pictured here (dedicated, in my mind, to War Bones) demonstrates, there’s a lot of cross-over between the crowds.
Oh, and RPG Movie Posters, too. Glee.
(via Doyce and Les and Doyce)

Faathim the Jaegermeister

Went through the third Shadow Shard TF yesterday, wrapping it up in 4-odd hours, despite various crashes and Real Life interruptions. Like the last time, it went pretty smoothly if …
… well, fact is, it’s a pretty awful TF. You spend a lot of time jumping (literally or figuratively) around the Shadow Shard. You spend way too much time doing the same “Hunt 50 Servants of Rularuu” and “Fly over and click the glowie,” etc. Very few “missions.” And the final payoff is … meh.
Psi-clone and Amorpha had actually already done it before (we dinged 48 on it), but we pretended RP that we really hadn’t (since the alternative would have been weird). PC only died once, and that was when my machine hung up mid-battle.
Good group — PC/A, plus War Bones, Noelle Frost, MacroLass, Sword of Asgard, and Hang Time — which made it all worthwhile.
(Over in the pic, Psi-clone is wearing his “Silver Age” outfit. Ick. It is now returned to the bit-bucket.)
Given the large numbers of AVs in SS #4, we’re going to hold off on that one until the AV regen stuff is fixed.

New stuff coming soon … or not …

Re future expannsion set stuff, Tal_N posts:

Curently confirmed facts
A new powerset for each AT (not confirmed if some will be shared)
A new AT
A new zone
A system intended for endless end-game content which extends what will be added in i8.
The rumors and conjecture
(based upon previous comments from devs and conclusions)
The new powersets will include Shields which will be both an offensive set and a seperate defensive set for the Melee ATs, A tech theme defence set for Melee ATs, street fighting offensive set for scrappers. Circus Mastermind set. Weapon themed Brute set.
The new AT will be the Incarnate. At the moment only two of this AT exist, Lord Recluse and Statesman. It has been previously stated that the Incarnate’s will be themed around ‘combos’ however it is unclear what this cryptic clue refers to specifically. It is expected that existing characters are transformed into Incarnates much like Recluse is a Mastermind Incarnate and Statesman is a Tanker Incarnate.
From the recent poll the devs took the zones players requested the most were the Rikti Homeworld, Underwater zone and Arctic zone. One of these will most likey be the new zone added. My bet is on the Rikti Homeworld considering Positron’s interest in advancing the storyline.
The new system is an updated and revised version of what was going to be added to CoH at its launch. It used to be called The Fame system and was essentially a leaderboard for players where their success and failure as a hero effected their rankings. Top runners on the rankings will find statues raised within the city in their honor, have their character appear on billboards as they get approached to promote retail goods and you find villain groups targetting you for extermination. Rank also unlocks special content, rewards and various other perks. Time spent offline causes your fame rating to slowly degrade which means in order to stay at number 1 you have to play regularly although it may not be purely based upon how much time you spend online completing missions.

To which Positron replies:

The new powersets will include Shields which will be both an offensive set and a seperate defensive set for the Melee ATs, A tech theme defence set for Melee ATs, street fighting offensive set for scrappers. Circus Mastermind set. Weapon themed Brute set.

None of that is true, or true anymore.

Which raises the question: is it that none of the original post is true, or just the quoted paragraph … which latter would imply that the other stuff is true …

This one’s for Noelle

The lead costume/avatar guy speaks:

Howdy I’m Jay. I’m the guy that now makes costume pieces, and characters for the game. I have also read every post in this thread and tried to address all the bugs that needed fixing. So if you love/hate anything you can praise/cruse me.
The ears where moved into a separate category just for you. That’s right, you. You asked for it and you got it. I also made the demon and vampire ears at the last minute to address the concerns that the ears didn’t look enough like the “pointy ear.” I tried my best to make the Demon ear look like the original “pointy ear,” only better. The original “pointy ear” now looks really bad when compared to the new ones. The new horns were dual colored because of a request from this thread along with a ton of other little tweaks that you may or may have not noticed. I even went so far as moving a single dread on the female hair “dreadlock” so that one could recreate a character with the new ears. See how much I love you.
All this week I have painfully recategorized and alphabetized all costume pieces. So now when you go to the female/upper body/chest/ all of the texture options are there and they all use the mask texture correctly. Holy crap was it in disarray, now it’s all pretty and things are named right and easy to find.
Look at the female skirts too. They are exactly like the original skirts now. I know because I have the original files. A lot of you where mighty upset about the skirts not looking enough like the original. When I compared the two; you guys where right, the new skirts were noticably different. Not any more. Oh and I redid the V belt just for you. You said it sucked now it unsucks.
I also made a change this week to the Male/lower body/Tight/pants/Tights. The legs have a new and improved tight texture. I hated the old one so I made it better.
There where a few comments that female shorts where too long. Yeah I screwed that one up, Oops. It should be fixed now. And to make up for my mistake I added a new bikini bottom.
OK I’m done with bug fixing for issue 7. The updated stuff should be in next week; Today is 6/13/06. So if you have any bugs that you want me to address go ahead and post them. I’ll read them; I may not reply but know that I do read them. I’m off to Issue 8 make some bad guys and some costume pieces. I hope you find a little more happiness now Djeannie.

Float, flutter, fly

Having gone on the Walt Disney World “Soarin’” ride (during our visit earlier in the month), I can guarantee that, were I suddenly allowed to attain CoH powers, I woud most definitely choose Fly. To be able to swoop and soar over the landscape would be truly awesome.
Superspeed would be okay (and kind of fun), but not as keen, Superjump would be annoying (for many of the same reasons it’s annoying in the game — dealling with what you’re jumping into at all times for one thing). Teleport would be nice, I suppose, but if it had the same range limits as in the game, it would hardly be of value for commuting.
But for sheer thrill of Seeing Stuff, it would have to be Fly.

Cheese and Hammy

The whole Hamidon Raid phenominon is just plain old bizarre to me the more I think about it. It’s not a challenge, really — set, arcane, ritualistic behavior has been codified and passed down from hero to hero across the servers, making the biggest challenge to success in Hamidon whether your connection/graphics card will handle it.
Which is why the current rants about the changes to Hamidon are so amusing in the vitriol they’re eliciting. The changes:

Added to the patch notes:
The Hamidon has been increased in difficulty. It is now capable of using one of its attack powers even when Held, Slept, or Stunned.
Evidently Hammy got a laser beam on it’s head a long time ago but just now figured out how to use it.
The Mitos are AVs and are acting according to this patch note:
AVs/Heroes and Giant Monsters now ignore threat level damage multipliers for different Archetypes. They are still affected by Taunt as before.

The latter meaning that they don’t care whether you’re a Tank or a Defender — if you do the most damage, you draw the most aggro.
There’s some justifiable irk over the missing patch note (a real problem from the CoX team). But people are even more up in arms over the idea that they can’t magically know if Hammy has been Held by its being unable to attack. The horror! The confusion! The old magic no longer works! Blasphemy!
Frankly, I think Hamidon ought to adapt over time. Make it, perhaps, less God-like in power but a tad more unpredictable. Break the old elaborate dance. Let people know that, about once a month (or two, if we’re generous), Hammy will change his tactics — evolve.
50-100 heroes ought still be able to take it down, and the rewards should be worth it. But it should be something a bit more than a magical sequence of teams and tactics that are more or less guaranteed to succeed (assuming your machine doesn’t crash or someone doesn’t summon the Kronos Titan).

Psyche!

Hostess Heroes last night focused on the Sister Psyche task force.
Last time we’d tried this — with Pummelcite, Fazenda, and Araware — the Freaks handed us our hats, with our heads still in them. This time, we just rolled the damned thing, to the point that we were basically sprinting from encounter to encounter and being a bit shoddy with our alpha strikes. Even with frequent interruptions/AFKs, mission lags, and discos, we went from around 7 to 11, stealthing what we could (even with the “hey, invis gets suppressed when you click a glowie, doesn’t it?” new feature.
Even Clamor, one of those ostensibly unstoppable AVs, went down fast hard (thanks in no small part to Peep’s Rad — but at one point she and the Blasters had her held, fergoshsakes — see the pic to the right).
(I had an even better picture up against one of the Freak bosses, all of whom were decked out with loudspeakers and other fun, noisy bling, but taking it crashed my session, alas.)
Ho Ho and Peep both hit 24 (and, nearly 25), plus two +3 SOs and an evening of fun.
Others on the mission: Bear Claws, Twinkie Kid, Brownie Points, Ginger Snap.
I find it noteworthy that a “goofy” SG is just so kick-ass. Granted, we’re not running around on Invincible, but it’s noteworthy that good players (and well-played toons) make such a difference.

We’re at what?

It almost defies belief that Hildy and Torchy are at 31.
Or, for that matter, that Lynn is at the same level, and only a couple of pips from 32.
I remember Lynn struggling with Council in Steel. I remember Torchy being stuck at 22 or so for the longest time.
It’s also weird to think that both are about to supplant Velvet as my second-highest character.
And plenty of folks in the wings, waiting to take over …

On that note, I started playing a new alt (ha!), Chained Path, She’s a Mind/Kin controller, something I picked up after reading a very cool Controller guide that Margie had printed (URL to follow some time).
So far so good with her — the control with her is pretty awesome, and I like the look and story of the character.
Was my first time since the I7 neighborhood redesign running around Atlas, though. A couple of notes:

  1. Seemed to be a lot fewer mobs of mooks around the edges of the Green Zone.
  2. The mobs are of more varying sizes, and, in some cases, made it very difficult to get from Point A to Point B without engaging in combat>
  3. I was surprised that my third mish (a chain from the first, talk to someone for the second, who sends you off to the third) was way the hell off in the Red Zone of AP. Like, “Gah! Purples! Lots of Purple mobs!” far. I ended up doing a lot of roof-crawling.
  4. There’s a lot of nice, new, funny dialog both there and in Galaxy. There are also some fun groups (like a Tourist taking pictures of a couple of Longbow agents). (And wouldn’t it be cool if civilians interacted more with you — running up and asking to take a picture, coming over and telling you about some Hellions causing trouble, etc?)

CP is designed for soloing. We’ll see how long my interest is maintained.