Level best

2005-11-09_lynn.jpgQuick entry, just for the record. At home sick Mon-Wed, but managed to do a fair amount of relatively mindless Scrapper play (whether that means I was well enough to be at work I leave as an exercise for the reader).
In so doing, managed to get Amethyst Crown up to 13, and dinged Lynn Calodo up to 20 (at which point Valkyrie snarkily pointed out that Lynn could use a new outfit, and Lynn replied with an impolite gesture).
Scrapper solitaire is fun. I’m pretty sure I’m behind on whatever level Margie’s gotten Blue Point up to …
Meanwhile, we created another set of alts on CoV — Eliza Dee and Mistress Bacchante. Lots of fun.
2005-11-07_eliza-bacchante.jpgEliza is modelled after the JLU “Galatea” (who was the statue brought to life by Pygmalion, the title of Shaw’s updated play where Henry Higgins, reprising the title role, recreates Eliza Doolittle, hence her name). Funny thing is, Galatea is modelled somewhat after the DCU’s Power Girl, an Earth 2 Supergirl version (origin rebooted multiple times). So, after creating her — visually inspired by Galatea to the extent I could get the costume creator to do so — not 30 seconds had passed before someone ran by and said, “Evil PG, I like.”
*sigh*
Of course, then someone ran by saying, “nais ondies” (which, after a minute of puzzling, I translated to “nice undies,” but by then he was too far gone for Eliza to pummel him).
Eliza herself may, or may not, be based on another Paragon hero. She’s a Crey escapee, regardless, so …
Anyhoo, fun. Works well with Bacchante’s plant mastery.
Last, but not least, got both Psi-clone and Amorpha up to 39 last night, after an overly-long marathon session beating back the Rikti again (a/k/a Rikti farming off in some emergency-force-fielded neighborhood). Good, clean fun. Now, if we can just get to some of the 35-39 story arcs before we level out …

Tech issues

Since the arrival of I6 graphics (first detected during the CoV Beta period), I’m having a problem where the game hangs for the first 2-4 times I try to load it, or when I first zone in from selecting a character. After that I’m fine, but it’s sort of frustrating.
Reading the boards for advice. The error points to a DLL associated with my ATI Mobility Fire GL T2 card on the notebook, though I can’t find that DLL mentioned on the boards. I’ve updated to the latest version of the driver that IBM/Lenovo admits to knowing about, but CoH continues to chide me for having an “old” driver. I’m reluctant to download the latest-greatest beyond what my manufacturer is supporting, but may give it a try nonetheless at some point.

Dark deeds

This was our Villains Night.
Pre-dinner, ran Mister Ravenous and Charity at Home (Elitists) up to level 4. Post-dinner, ran Mister Thorne and Undone to 7 (and pretty much out of Mercy Isles missions).
Both pairs are fun. For myself, I’m jazzing on the whole Brute thing — the adrenaline rush of charging forward, Light Brigade style, as fast as you can, ignorning wounds, trying to keep the SMASH bar as high as possible. It’s giddy. Charity’s healing and sonic debuffs are pretty handy, too.
For the other pair, the whole Mastermind Merc thing is a kick. I get to be both hands-on and have ranged blasting powers. As the healer, I get to try to keep the soldiers and Undone both alive (which, given the vagueries of Twilight Grasp, is an intersting challenge, helped by everyone else drawing a lot more aggro than me).
Good stuff.
Kudos to BD for building the CoI base, such as it so far is. I may subcontract out the CoJ base, too.

Potpourri for 1000 Prestige, Alex …

Various bits from the boards that I’ve missed over the past days:

  1. A mini-FAQ on Prestige and Bases. The various Alliance groups were quite busy building and chatting about them yesterday, so I suppose the CoJ needs to gets its act online. That said — paying monthly rent? In person? Yeesh. The more I look at this, the more annoying bases (even if you don’t make them raidable) become.
    Various red-name responses follow further down. Individual/personal bases (apartments) are coming, evidently. And the claim from poz is that Infamy (Influence) tapers down in favor of Prestige when in SG mode until you hit 35 or so when it goes to 0 — but that doesn’t fit what I saw with Psi-clone last night. Hrm.

  2. Statesman on ED and how it tested out. Yes, things are supposed to be more difficult and require more teaming (for AVs, at least) and active participation, at least in the (affected) 25+ world (States says it only really affects SOs), and to ensure that Controller/Defender buffs are always valuable. Numerous follow-on messages. “There’s a problem if folks are making large teams and then abandoning them after entering missions just to increase spawn size.” Also coming up — a way to abandon missions (once “newspaper” technology gets introduced to CoH).
  3. AI limits on herding. The magic number is 17, period.
  4. You can cash in Influence for Prestige, at a rate of 500:1.
  5. Suggestions on soloing with Brutes. Scroll to the top. Accuracy and Rest are your friends, evidently — though Rest and Smash seem incompatible.
  6. A new Brute power, as previewed in the “trailer” movie for CoV …

Heading off to Warburg

Since yesterday was the Halloween debut of CoV, we chose to run on CoH instead. Psi-clone and Amorpha scurried about amidst relatively deserted city streets, cleaning up some old missions, earning prestige, picking up salvage from Freaks and Council, cleaning some old story arcs, and …
… getting contact assignments in Warburg.
Of course, the biggest trick to Warburg is knowing just where the heck to go. For the record, you reach there via helicopter, taking off from a rooftop near Kings Row’s police headquarters.
We headed over there on as much of a whim as anything else — PvP remains something I’m not entirely sanguine about. We ran through a couple of missions there, using invis. to avoid the crowds of (hero) PvP.
(There appear to be a couple of different story threads you can follow in Warburg. One involves taking control of a rocket seized by Arachnos. This is competitive between heroes, at least, hence the PvP stuff, and it was interesting seeing groups of heroes suddenly com orange as they turned into opponents. The other thread is just general heroics, though the missions can affect the abilities of other heroes in the zone, e.g., you seize a bit of tech that adds 1% to the damage done by all heroes, etc. Still not clear on all the details, obviously).
Ended up with a bugged mission — you can lead the Com Officer to the door, but you can’t make her exit — after having successfully taken apart various Arachnos nasties. Some good stuff there, though I suspect the generic Arachnos set pieces will get as tiresome as the generic Crey/Rikti/high-tech set pieces.

Timing is everything

So with our travels, we managed to miss almost all of the Two Day Pre-Release Soiree for CoV. We made up for it, some, by being antisocial with the in-laws and getting into CoV last evening.

  • The production servers are running much better, natch, than the beta/test servers. I will be curious to see what the load is like tonight.
    Actually, no, I’m not. I’ll probably do some CoH tonight (more below).

  • Got Mister Ravenous built, and joined him up with the Elitists on Virtue. Didn’t do much with him (yet).
  • Got Mister Thorne (abruptly aware of all the “Misters” I have as alts) built. Jackie raced to get to 10, and built the CoI and invited me in then quit so I could be the boss. Yay! Immediate crowding around the entrances as folks tried to get in. Duoed with Margie’s Undone. Finally got to some missions we hadn’t done in beta.
  • Despite previous understandings of stuff (and maybe I was just confused with the Beta Test server), global @handles remain the same. Which makes me even more glad that mine is not CoH-centric.

The biggest question on my mind at the moment is — CoH? CoV? Champion? Virtue?
Only so many hours in the day.
My inclination is to:

  1. Still focus primarily on CoH/Champion/CoJ stuff, in particular Psi-clone (and Amorpha). They’re the furthest along, they’re the “best” characters we have, and we have certain SG responsibilities to fulfill. Plus, they’re fun.
  2. Secondary focus on Mister Thorne and the CoI. Again, responsibility, but also the prospect of some good fun. Thorne and Undone have a very … odd relationship developing, sort of the nasty side of the PC/A relationship. Duoing with Margie is always fun, regardless of the folks involved. At least sign in every couple of days to say howdy. (There would be some RP advantage to his being high in level, but, realistically speaking, that’s not likely to happen. He’ll just have to exercise his influence … some other way.)
  3. Tertiary focus on Mister Ravenous and the Elitists. He seems like a fun character, and they should be a fun group.
  4. All other spare CoH/CoV time to our other CoH alts. Make an effort to get our FP/SK folks on every once in a while. Keep an eye open for things to do (TFs) with our other alts there, but let them lie a bit fallow for a while.

Only so many hours in the day (and night), alas.
There’s obviously a huge interest in CoV from a lot of the Alliance “regulars” on CoH. Especially for folks who’ve gone through to 50 on CoH, I can see where the new opportunities and content in CoV would be attractive. Will Paragon City become a ghost town?
I don’t think so, but I’m a lot less sure than I was a month ago. At that time, a lot of folks were kind of, “Yeah, well, I’ll buy CoV for the extra four slots and maybe do a little tinkering with it, but I like being a hero and plan on sticking around here.” That’s not been gainsaid yet, but, again, a loit of focus this past weekend (from those of us in town) on CoV. It will be interesting to see over the next few weeks, as the novelty wears off (a bit), how folks settle out with their game play balancing.
Mine, too.

Costuming

Quoth Statesman:

To be clear: the code for sharing costume pieces between City of Heroes and City of Villains is NOT yet in…heck, it isn’t even written yet. BUT we’ll do it after release – hopefully very soon after release. Then heroes can have access to the new options.

To be honest, this idea came specifically from this thread. Since people wanted the new costume options, I checked with Software – who said it could be done. Just wanted to let you know that yes, we do take suggestions!
It sems so obvious, I’m shocked it wasn’t one of the plans already. But, still, good to know.

FYI – for those who don’t like the idea because villains should look different than heroes – remember that villains already have hero options. They can create a character identical to one that exists in City of Heroes.
True. Of course, that’s just a sign of their desceptive treachery …

Parts is parts

Since CoV and CoH all share the same codebase and resources, why wouldn’t you be able to get CoV costume parts in CoH?
Answer: You probably will.

OK – here’s the most likely outcome…

If you own both games, you get all options – the new CoV sets will be accessible for your heroes.
Granted, most heroes don’t go around with barbed wire headbands and exposed brains and the like — but, then, that should be a player decision. If there’s no technical reason to prevent it, it shouldn’t be restricted.
If nothing else, it will be cool seeing “cat girls” with the CoV Cat Face feature. Not sure about “War Wolf” heroes, but, well, heck, why not?
And, of course, this eases (or does it trivialize?) the Villain Goes Good mechanics.
Now — when will this happen? Again, no reason (I can think of) why it wouldn’t be doable from Day 1, but believe it when you actually see it.
(Dave goes off and joneses for one of those cool leather jackets for PC …)

Weekend review

Spent a fair amount of time in the latter end of the week, and Friday/Saturday, with Psi-clone and Amorpha. Both were in spitting distance of 38, and after the Nights of a Million-Zillion Rikti, we managed to ding there.
In the meantime, of course, we were in endless Rikti story arcs, including some outdoor mishes — which served (esp. the untimed ones) as massive XP farms.
PC still managed to die twice.

  1. When I signed on Saturday afternoon, I knew I was at the Brickstown train station. I walked away as it came up to do something … and a bit later heard some worrisome sounds. Came back to find myself reeling about, stunned, and several orange Council folk whomping the tar out of me.
    Not sure if it was my ambush or not, but it sure took me down hard.

  2. We had to go down into the Abandoned Sewers (first, we had to find the Abandoned Sewers) and hunt Rikti. No problem. Until we got stuck in one of those little zig-zag cofferdam rooms with a Hydra blocking the door, and the timer ticking. After trying to sneak past it (we were invisible) for thirty seconds or so, A. decided to just blast her way through — which resulted in (a) many Hydra coming into the room, (b) A. getting through, but my getting stuck behind the body, and (c) my getting hit for many points of damage.
    Free of the room, finally, I ran as fast as I could — and realized I was visible — as I ran through more Hydra — and they took it amiss — and I, similarly, missed the side passage A. had gone down — and …
    … a free trip to the hospital. W007!

Still managed, somehow, to ding.
Sunday, while frantically trying to get Margie’s machine CoH-ready, the Consortium Meet-n-Beat started up. Eventually joined up, again in the PC/A duo. Discovering everyone was 20-21, we exited out and returned as Torchielle and Kazima. Ran some blue-and-white missions with our many friends, no prob. Hit the Hollows and discovered a mish full of purple Ruin Mages …
… and many collective deaths.
Finally managed to bust through that, and then we (and the one remaining M&B player, Ciunas Bas, plowed through a Sky Raiders mission, complete with a few deaths of its own — but not enough to keep Torchy from dinging 22.
Which ding was supposed to garner the Aim power, but after spending half the Hollows mish on my butt or locked in stone, I decided to go for Acrobatics instead …

Another look at I6 (in Test)

The patch notes for the Test release:

Now Testing in the Training Room – 10/20/05
Issue 6: Along Came a Spider
New events in the far off Rogue Isles are beginning to have an effect on Paragon City.
[…]
PvP Zones:
The contested zones of Bloody Bay, Siren’s Call, and Warburg are open for exploration by Heroes on the Training Room. There are a number of new missions available in these zones. Eventually, both Heroes and Villains will have access to these zones and be able to compete for the prizes they offer. These are PvP zones. If you enter these zones, you will be subject to attack by other players, except for small safe zones.
I find it interesting that these zones are not just for PvP, but PvE as well. I don’t know if that makes it better (less Arena-like) or worse (if there’s content there and there’s PvP, then some folks will get their jollies gacking people trying to get to the content).
Supergroups:
* Characters in Supergroup mode can now gain Prestige and Salvage. These will be useful to players who own both City of Heroes and City of Villains in base building.
* There are new Badges that can be earned by Supergroups.
* Newly expanded Supergroup ranks and Supergroup permissions.
* Supergroup Leaders can change the colors and emblem of the Supergroup after creation.
* Players can now choose to hide their Supergroup emblem when in Supergroup mode.
These last two are critical, esp. tied to the first two. SGs can earn badges and base-buying/building stuff, but only when their members are in SG mode, which some folks hate because of the colors and insignia. Which now can be better tailored or ignored. Nice. So, for low and mid-range characters, there’s no reason *not* to go into SG mode.
Graphics:
* More levels of graphical detail available.
* Character texture quality and world texture quality can be set separately now.
New refresh rate and vertical sync options.
* New graphics options to enable Depth of Field and Bloom visual effects on supported video cards.
UI
* New Options window with many newly available player options.
If this is the same as on CoV, it’s a nice improvement.
* The confirmation screens for adding and deleting enhancements can be now be disabled.
Huzzah!
* New Pet window available from the Options window that displays the health of your pets, and grants the ability to unsummon specific pets.
Oh, yes, huzzah!!
* Macros can now be edited directly from the power tray.
Hot diggity dog!
* You can now give inspirations to teammates by dragging them on to the team window.
W007!
* New targeting commands: /target_custom_near, /target_custom_far, /target_custom_next and /target_custom_prev. To get a list of parameters, type the command without any parameters.
Interesting. I’ll have to look these up.
* UI changes to Trade Window. You can now trade salvage and type in the amount of influence to be traded.
But it’s still limited to 99,999. Which sucks.
Powers:
* Fixed a bug in the Thunder Clap power. It was Auto Hit, meaning Defense based characters had less chance of mitigating its effects than intended. This change affects Defenders and Controllers Storm Summoning sets, Banished Pantheon Witch Doctors, Circle of Thorns Air Casters, one of the Heroes Captured by the Devouring Earth and Skyfall from the Tsoo.
* Super Reflexes Auto powers now add some minor damage resistance that improves as the caster loses HP.
* Reduced the Endurance cost of Dark Melee/Siphon Life and Dark Blast/Life Drain.
* Pool powers: Stealth, Grant Invisibility, Invisibility, Combat Flight, Weave, Maneuvers, Vengeance, and Combat Jumping now Buff Defense to ALL attacks. This change was also made to all Primary and Secondary Stealth and Invisibility powers (including, but not limited to, Cloak or Shadows, Cloaking Device, Superior Indivisibility, and Group Invisibility). All Defense powers should now stack properly with each other. All powers short and long Help Text was updated to indicate this change.
* Improved Damage DeBuff of Tanker/Ice Armor/Chilling Embrace.
* Defender/Controller Empathy Resurrect Powers Endurance cost reduced.
* The Lightning Storm pet was generating Detoggle messages erroneously.
* Sonic Repulsion and Sonic Dispersion:
* * Sonic Buff/Clarity and Sonic Dispersion powers have been switched in the order in which they can be chosen. This change affects Defenders and Controllers.
* Glue Arrow should no longer fade when the target dies.
* Poison Gas Arrow should no longer fade when the target dies.
* Disruption Arrow no longer accepts Damage Resist Enhancements. They were extraneous and had no effect.
* Flash Arrow should have Debuff FX more visible throughout the duration now.
* Changed Long and Short Help of Moment of Glory to clarify which Defenses it offers.
* Martial Arts/Eagles Claw critical hit now properly does smashing instead of lethal damage.
* Fixed bad short help text in Spines/Taunt. It said it was an AoE, but it is a Single Targeted Taunt.
* Fixed Teleport animation from animating twice.
* Fixed Dark Miasma/Tar Patch cat animation from sometimes locking you into an animation loop.
* Fixed Empathy/Adrenaline Boost animation from activating before the power was recharged.
* Removed Resist Damage Enhancements from Acid Arrow.
* Some Electrical Blast, Electrical Melee and Electrical Mastery powers now have a chance to return some of the endurance they drain back to the caster.
* Force Field/Insulation Field now also buffs defense to AoE Attacks. Dispersion Bubble now also buffs defense to Melee and Ranged attacks. This will all Force Field powers to better stack with all defensive powers, even Super Reflexes, and even with multiple shields from multiple allies.
* Slightly Modified some Scrapper Martial Arts damage scales, end costs and recharge times.
* Reduced the Terrorize duration of Dark Melee/Touch of Fear.
Those of the above I recognize are all good, if not spectacular.
Stores:
Most stores and contacts that only sold 10 types of Enhancements of a given type will now sell all Enhancements of that type. (In other words, we fixed key stores that were selling just the Power 10 to sell all Enhancements of that type).
Huzzah!!!!
Debt Cap:
We have cut in half the amount of Debt you can carry at a maximum at any given time. Previously it was set at 10 defeats worth of Debt, it is now set at 5 defeats. (Defeats inside a mission map count as ½ a defeat since they generate only ½ the Debt). If your character has more Debt than the current cap when they log in, they will have their Debt lowered to that of the current cap.
Never reached this, but I think it’s good.

Discussion of ED, prevously posted, omitted, though it’s worth reading.

People who post to the CoH boards

  1. “I am a dev. Here’s what’s going on.”
  2. “Nerf! Doom! Doooooooooom! DOOOOOOOOOOM!!!! I am so sad!”
  3. “Nerf! Damn devs hate us. They are laughing at us! We hates them! Hates them forever!”
  4. “Nerf! I quit!”
  5. “You nerfed X, but didn’t nerf Y! You helped Y, but didn’t help X! I’m so sad. I quit!”
  6. “It’s not really that bad, people. Actually, some good stuff there. Thanks, devs!”
  7. “You guys who thank the devs are super-gullable fools! And you’re insulting those of us who know that the devs are laughing at us! You’re fools! And lackeys! And evil minions! And fools! Nerfed evil lackey fools!”
  8. “Hey! Cool icon!”
  9. “The new issue has too much stuff I’m not interested in. Nice going, you evil nasty laughing-at-us devs! Steal more of my money, please!”
  10. “The issues are coming too quickly! The devs are desparate!”
  11. “It’s been too long since the last issue! The devs don’t care any more!”
  12. “The devs promised feature X months ago. It hasn’t show up! They lied! They hate us! They’re lauging at us! Bait and switch! Nerf! Poit!”
  13. “Here are my questions A-M and concerns N-Z …”
  14. “I am a dev. Here is the answer to your question J. Or a partial answer, at least.”
  15. “The answer to all your questions, even question J, is that we’re doooooomed! The folly of all your concerns is that the devs hate us! And they laughs at us, they does, my Precious! Nerf! Quit! Fool! Doom!”

Sure seems that way, sometime. Jeez.