***Dave Does the Game
UPDATED: Added time zone, Avocet. Corrected P-Siren & Rose.Red’s levels, Jackie’s status, powers, BD.
———-
Okay, making a note of the, well, notes here, the plan is …
Saturday, 7:30 p.m. MDT
Current Lineup:
(Jackie’s decided to sit this one out.)
TF range is lvl 15-21.
Give a yea, a nay, or a “Hey! What happened to my character?!”
Got a latish start last night, but figured it was time to run Kazima and Honeygun again and work off some debt from Monday night’s bloodbath.
We eventually ended up in a nice Vahzilok door mish, with many yellows and occasional whites and oranges. Lots of vomit, plenty of danger, and pushing to the HP/END limits, but we finally freed all the hostages in the office building, during which we both dinged to 15, which gives us that much better power (and slotting) for the next time we try the Cavern of Transcendence (which we are now at max level for).
Okay, I love PvP — as a comic. As a way of playing CoH, not so much.
I guess one of the things that really attracts me to CoH is the cooperative play — the sense that, yes, we really are all heroes. Reading the tales of griefing in other MMORPGs, I’m glad CoH has the restrictions it does.
Now, that said, I can understand why some people would like the PvP challenge. Live brains + complicated builds = exciting challenge. Me, I’d rather team up with others and bop the bad guys. But, then, that’s me.
I am worried, a bit, about what I read regarding how PvP is (a) forcing changes in the basic game system, even for just PvE, and, worse, (b) changing how folks are doing builds to make them more PvP, vs PvE, competitive. The latter shouldn’t really bother me (it doesn’t affect me, after all), but it’s still disturbing. It turns CoH into Mortal Kombat.
Does that mean you’ll never see any of my alts in the Arena (once Issue 4 goes live and the thing actually works)? No. If there were a group of friends doing it, it might be fun, strictly as a one-off change of pace. But as a “this is why I play the game” sort of thing, as I keep seeing people write? No.
On the other hand, it will be interesting to see if both the Arena and the upcoming CoV draw off some of the more raucous of Paragon City’s denizens. That might be a good thing.
Yes. Yes, I did go ahead and buy a cape last night. So there.
Velvet tells the story herself …
Since it looks like this is in the hopper, here’s some info I’ve started collecting:
Key points:
Nice post (if, as the discussion points out, a bit flawed here and there) on travel powers and their relative speeds and slotting.
I currently have two heroes (Velvet, Torchielle) with Super Jump, and one (Psi-clone) with Fly. And Margie’ P-Siren has Teleport.
My observations …
Super Jump:
Speed: A
Control: C
Safety: C
Fun: B
Summary: Good fun and great speed, but you run the risk of touching the ground on a regular basis (and possibly getting Mezzed or shot), and you inevitably find yourself bouncing down right behind some freakin’ wall.
Fly
Speed: B
Control: B
Safety: A
Fun: A
Summary: It won’t get you there as fast, but it will get you there in style. And you can (with some up-front messing about with keybinds and the like) control your path and speed with precision. Safety is very high, at least at low levels (though you can draw agro as you come in for a landing, ahem, and you need to watch for rooftop nasties). But, damn, it’s flying, and who can beat that?
Teleport
Speed: A
Control: B
Safety: D
Fun: B
Summary: With practice (a good caveat) you can really move quickly, and accurately. But anything that lets you easily fall great heights isn’t very safe.
Honeygun’s Sprint+Swift power is almost travel-worthy (DADC), and she’ll be getting Super-Speed next up, so I’ll let you know how that goes.
Went on the Monday night Session 3 of the Cavern of Transcendence. And …
… well, it all went to hell. Twice.
First time in, all looked like it was going pretty nicely. Good team — Darkthorne the lead, Kazima, Honeygun, Dubh Bas, Avocet, Dr. Meson, Tanker-belle, and Liberty Bill. Made it through the troll tunnels with no sweat (thanks, Kinetica) and only one death (mine, dammit, too close to a troll TNT stash when it blew). Got in, battled our way forward. Good thing to have two tanks along this time, drawing agro. Cleared out the initial group, most of the groups to the left, started working around to the right, then the center … we were doing great, ahead of schedule …
… and then made our first mistake, as we tackled the group at the top of the ramp, without clearing out the last group on the left. Which got pulled into it, which overwhelmed us, leaving half the team dead on the ramp.
After several minutes of fruitless pulls, abortive resurections, and general additional debt incursion, we gave up. The deaders went to Atlas for hospitalization (we had nobody with Rez, except for one who could do it in battle). The livers stayed in place to prevent a re-pop.
Except that, nearly to the mission entrance again, somebody discoed out. They got back in, but the TF was broken, and we all had to exit and restart. Which was disappointing, but doable, and the mission clock reset.
We went in again, no problem. Got to Cavern … and found the enemies had popped up a level. Swell. Fought one group. Fought another group. Fought the next group. Fought the … crap, pulled some extras, or there was something off with the healing, or … well, half the party went down. More than half. All but two. Honeygun, fleeing to the exit, ended up embedded in the rock next to the lava.
And most of the deaders were smack where the Igneous were milling about, stepping on their corpses.
One unsuccessful pull (and death) later, and we realized that was about it for the night. The last person threw himself on the enemy (so he could get a death-teleport back to Atlas), and we called it an evening, with promises to try it once again, maybe next Monday.
On the bright side, we got a couple of new Lessons Learned.
Statesman speaks out about the balance goals of City of Heroes, in terms of what sort of opponents should be solo-able, and where the devs think the current state of the game needs to be changed. Much interesting conversation (if not necessarily anything that seems to be changing Statesman’s mind) ensues.
Meanwhile, some changes on tap for Issue 5:
1) Instead of the first five levels being debt free, the first TEN levels will be debt free.
2) XP debt will be halved on mission maps (that includes outdoor mission maps, too).
#2 should encourage mission play, vs. street sweeping (which goal is near and dear to the devs’ hearts). #1, though, only delays the Ceremonial First Major Debt Face-Plant to moments after dinging Level 11 instead of moments after dinging Level 6 …
Katherine, feeling cabin fever being shut in with the snow, called up (or asked for someone to dial on her behalf) Jackie and Doyce, and then proceeded, in her sweet way, to read them, Uncle Bear in particular, the riot act regarding our recent hobby. To summarize:
“Ever since they got City of Heroes, they play and and don’t play with me, and if you stop playing then they won’t play. And tell Justiin to remember to tell you that if you forget.” Or words to that effect.
As Doyce put it to Margie afterwards, “That was cute … in a gut-wrenching and guilt-inducing way.”
It wasn’t tearful, or angry, more of a “wheedle” manner of speech. If we could spend 24/7 focusing on her, that would probably not be enough for her desires (nor healthy for her, for that matter). The reality is that we’re trying to be careful not to let City of Crack lead us to neglecting Kitten. We go for walks. We worked together on the yardwork on Saturday. We took time out yesterday to, the three of us, play some games with her. We try not to use the TV as a babysitter.
But the fact is that, like other hobbies and interests, it does take time from her — not more than before, I think, but it’s a more readily identifiable chunk (i.e., it’s replaced several other time sinks, rather than creating a new one). And the time it takes tends to be less interruptible and bigger-blocked than reading and gaming and blogging. Hence Katherine’s good-natured reprimand.
That said, it’s worth bearing what she’s saying in mind. And we’ll continue to try to spend quality (as well as quantity) time with Katherine. That’s where the real heroism in our lives comes in, after all.
UPDATE: Added some photos from Margie, and reorganized the post to put all the photos at the bottom.
After an afternoon of Psi-clone/Amorpha running about (clearing older mishes at breakneck speed via Group Invis), Margie and I hooked up with the Alliance of Champions Meet-n-Beat (Second Session) for an evening of …
… well, a lot of standing around, actually. 🙂 Took a while for things to gel up, especially as we were waiting for occasional additional people to drop in. The time was not a waste, since we were able to do the “meet” part and get in some RP — sort of the Brian Bendis approach to comics adventuring (only not as realistic or witty, my own contributions included).
The group eventually split up in two, with P-Siren going off with one group to do an intense timed mish with various nasty demon-looking types (lots of explosions from Margie’s PC, and much laggy high-graphics action), and Velvet going off in another group to …
… well, stand around a while at the park (NE corner of Atlas Park), then stand around at the Atlas statue (lots of ugly costumes, a very few good ones), then, finally, a quick mission (see picture) in Talos (at which point, like every hero does, I was filled with It Must Be Mine Lust for the Sky Raiders’ jetpacks), at which point we returned and …
… sat around. And chatted.
Eventually, the other group returned, bloodied but unbowed, and then we stood around figuring out how to balance the levels in the group again, at which point I realized I needed to get up in 6 hours or so and bailed out for bed.
Not sure if I am on tap for tonight’s third run at the Caverns of Transcendence — depends on if they need another right-level (Honeygun). May be an interesting group, looking at the participant list.
The Meet-n-Beat (late slot) team: (L-R) Velvet Jones, Shock.Therapy, Dr. Meson, The Hushman (back), Black Mynx, Liberty Bill, P-Siren, Puck Bunny, Darkness Heals.
Velvet’s “Beat” team: Velvet Jones, Dr. Meson, Darkthrone, and Darkness Heals.
Some of P-Siren’s “Beat” team: (L-R) Shock Therapy, P-Siren (legs only), Black Mynx.
Back to the Meet part: (L-R) Darkthorne, Velvet Jones, Darkness Heals, Zepher-Storm
(Below be spoilers, me hearties …)
We ran through the Cavern of Transcendence Trial a couple of times last night, with two different teams. Here were some resources we checked out first (though I didn’t read the CoH Forum info):
The following are some lessons learned we took from the trial efforts (one of which was successful, the other of which wasn’t). Hopefully they’ll be helpful to others. A lot of these apply to Task Forces in general, too …
(UPDATE: After the third try, we learned a couple of new things, identified as “NEW” below …)
Continue reading “Lessons Learned in the Cavern of Transcendence Trial”
The Cavern of Transcendence trial is, frankly, quite the trial — long tunnels mobbed with trolls, then a cavern complex mobbed with igneous, regenning mobs, coordinated actions, a very nasty boss at the very end … and timed. Yikes.
Margie coordinated putting three groups together to do it, from three people who had the mission ready to go. It’s evidently pretty popular, since one of the juggling jobs she did was trying to fit in both folks within the specified level (12-15) and folks up higher (some much higher) who wanted to Exemplar down to do it.
Two groups ran last night. Team 1 took a while to get initially coordinated (both teams did, but the mix of personalities and the “first out the gate” complications made Team 1 more awkward). Of the locals here, Jackie’s Shadow.Cat was mish leader, I was running Honeygun, Margie was in as Kazima, and BD as Puck Bunny.
Utter disaster.
The initial troll tunnels were mobbed a lot higher than we were expecting. Half the team tried to fight, half tried to run, and lots of people died.
*sigh*
We eventually reorganized, restarted the team (to overcome a disconnect), and pulled in someone from the outside to clear the trolls for us. Once in the main trial, it was hard slogging, too. Eventually we had five of the team in place behind an obelisk … and the last trio got themselves killed by pumicites down one tunnel. Honeygun stealthed in and managed to get one of them rezzed … and then we all died again in the ensuing battle.
Ah, well. Quit the TF (which dumps you back, alive or dead, at the troll caves again).
Second TF got started, but we were a lot more coordinated with the trolls (having brought in two ringers to help clear). Again, looking just at the local names, I was in as Torchielle, Margie as mish leader P-Siren, Doyce exempling down Hang Time, BD as Ciunas Bas.
The bad guys in the final caverns were nastier than before, but we were more coordinated in our attacks (Doyce did some good leadership there). We slowly cleared out the side passages, and the main cavern, went to get in position …
… and the side caverns had repopped.
Cleared out a few more, got people into position, stealthed/tported into the last few … and triggered the main door.
Battled our way in, rescued the kid, battered at the purple villain … and heeded the call to “OUT!”
W00T! Transcendent badge!
Some final blasting through trolls, and out. Fresh air! The stars! Yay!
Good adventure, and I plan on noting some Lessons Learned here later today (along with pictures). But kudos to Margie for doing the heavy lifting with organizing this thing — it’s almost as much of a bitch to get the adventure put together as it is to actually execute it!
Velvet hit 20 this afternoon. She and P-Siren were hanging around, waiting for the rec center groundbreaking to gel, and eventually ended up at Velvet’s favorite lvl 18-19 hangout, near the Boomtown gate at the north end of Steel Canyon. Velvet hit 20, P-Siren hit 19, and I discovered that Serge at Icon won’t even bother talking to you if you have a full mission plate.
(Velvet is seriously jonesing, so to speak, for a cape. I think she’ll consider herself to have “arrived” if she has one. Even if it’s kind of silly.)
Oh, she took Swift, on the all-too-slow path toward Stamina at 24 (will likely take Hurdle at 22 to compliment the Super Jump).
P-Siren will get a chance to do some catch-up in level tonight during the Cave of Transcendence trial, assuming that Margie’s disco problems this afternoon don’t come back to haunt her.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Mmmmm … carpet …
Well, all the usual wrong things happened. We got split up, we hesitated too long in the face of Serious Damage Being Ladelled On Our Respective Asses, and we got confused as to where we were which made getting away from the damage dealers more problematic.
The one amusing part of the above photo is that, in both of our cases, we had (separately) staggered into the elevator with our last breaths, and plopped out a floor below, dead.
We eventually (right after we rezzed and regrouped here) went in and finished off the boss that did this, but it was (especially after we discussed what went wrong over dinner) more entertainin in retrospect than annoying, especially with that picture …
Cuppajo has passed on a fine resource for naming your hero: The Phrontistery, a collection of great and often obsolete words. Just on one page, I found some great names whose meanings would make for fine hero names:
Gablock, Gadarine, Galanty, Galeate, Galliard …
Hey, it’s gotta be better than dYYN0m8te! or something like that, and a lot less likely to be taken than Captain Thunder.
My favorite main, DaveMargie, dinged 10 today. Coolness. Certainly the best toon I’ve run, and the one I’ve run with longest — powerful, resilient, capable of dealing with mobs and with bosses. Good to run with our various friends, but also solid to run solo. Always seem to have a lot of mishes, but that just keeps things fun.
Got sort of a late start with running DaveMargie, but I look forward to many, many Security Levels to come.
Margie was busy watching Iron Chef, and I discovered that I was able to get past the Comcast-induced connectivity problems this evening, so I fired up Truly Unstable, my Rad/Rad Defender (lvl 9) and had at it.
Headed off to the Hollows, got an invite to a Team, and trundled off to it.
Bad. Very, very bad. Lots of “bad guys, charge!” and “hey, let’s split up and clear this level” and …
Well, I did a lot healing and debuffing, but when the second mish started, the first encounter had a passle of oranges and a purple Caliban (for me — and I was one of the highest-level guys in the group). It could have been managed, with care, but “care” was not a watchword of the group. “Charge!” piecemeal … fighting … small successes … crap, tank down before I could … retreat … team mates behind me … do they need my …
Oh. Hello, Mr. Carpet.
Margie was ready to play, so I took the opportunity to bid good night, and we headed out together, with her playing Carilian (Fire/Rad Controller, 8). We kicked around Kings Row for a bit, then spotted BD playing Dubh Bas (Dark Defender).
We headed off to the Hollows, since we had some missions there, and … well, for a team of Squishies (Ctrl/Def/Def), we (a) had a lot of fun, and (b) were remarkably effective. I don’t think it really took us any longer to do the door mish, or handle street gangs, than if we’d had crunchies with us. If only people wouldn’t kill my Radiation Infected targets …
Margie dinged up, and I’m about half an hour away from doing so. Cool stuff.
TU is a fun character. Short, armored, body and brain being slowly eaten away by radiation, and just as likely to fantasize that he’s a medieval knight as to make some quip about a TV show, he’s a nice, loopy PC to run.
As a team, our only deaths were BD and myself, whilst running over to a door mish in the Hollows, all separate, and … oh, crap, Pumicites, I’d better try to (crash, bang, smash) … (beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep …) Worked through that debt pretty quickly, though.
Fun time.
We got a late start last night, due to getting Kitten down and Margie playing with keybinds. When we did get going with Honeygun and Kazima, we cleared out a couple of door mishes in KR pretty easily, then headed off toward Perez Park for Hellion Hunting and Fortune Teller Rescue.
Not the most successful journey in the world.
The first part was pretty straightforward. The second part had us going into the park, over the wall, over by the boat house. That particular journey gave us a couple of badges, which was fun. And HG dinged to 14, also fun (I ended up taking Haste, planning on Superspeed next level for travel.)
The group of Lost we decided to take, over in the red zone, was not. All of a sudden, HG was in red and having to run as fast as her stealthy legs could carry her (and good to be stealthed, since there was another group around every corner along the wall). Recovered enough to charge back in as I saw Kazima going orange and red, and polished off the ones she hadn’t managed to down.
Whew. Our first warning.
Wandered along the edge of the forest, trying to find a way in. All red zone, all the time, complete with repeated pairs of Big Clockworks. Eek. Took out one pair, with difficulty (and discovered that Buck Shot works wonders on Gears that spawn from them). Decided to work our way around the other direction, found another Big-ass Prince pair, engaged … and ended with HG running for her life, and K eating turf.
Hrm.
K got back from the hospital after a while, and we bypassed the pair and headed (finally) into the forest. We bypassed one group of Lost, sweated through another Clockworks encounter, and entered the mish.
CoT. With yellow Archers, yellow Spectral Nasties, and orange Mages.
We managed a couple of successful pulls in the first cavern, but on the third, HG got disoriented about her retreat path, got trapped, didn’t have support from K (who was busy fighting her own battles), and went down.
K came over to stand over the body while I rezzed, hoping it wouldn’t attract the attention of the Spectral Nasty around the corner. After all, it hadn’t attacked me while I was being carved up, and it wasn’t reacting to Kazima standing there all glowy.
But rezzing heroes are, evidently, good eats. It charged in as I staggered up. Kazima fought it, while I lurched away — and got spotted by another Spectral Nasty attracted to the sound of battle. Whomp, and back down again, shortly followed by Kazima.
We decided to bag that mission for the time being, and go hunt trolls in Skyway. Which we did, with modest effectiveness, nearly ending up the evening out of debt …
Not our finest hour.
Welcome to anyone who came here from the Official CoH Fansite Portal. Look around, pull up a chair, and set a spell (or toggle a power, whichever you want).
HeroStats is a fine little CoH utility (open source and free) that sits in the background and monitors what’s going on in your CoH session. It collects statistics on what you do that you can review later, and provides some real-time monitoring that’s quite useful
The Good
The Bad
The Ugly
Overall, it’s definitely worth it for the buff/recharge tracker, secondarily for the stat analysis of hits/damage and the XP/time to level. The latter would not keep me using it, but the former definitely will.