Levelling upwards

Most of last evening was doing some more running around with Amorpha and Psi-clone, trying to get them to about the same level (and finally succeeding, leaving Amorpha about 35% of 14th level behind me).
2005-03-22_wecanfly.jpgMost of the running around was split between a Boomtown Clockwork hunt (with Psi-clone, flying, providing recon as well as drawing at least one pack of trolls unintentionally during a sloppy landing) and running up and down in Steel Canyon.
One death in that time, when Amorpha got into too thick of a pack of Outsiders and Psi-clone lost track of the Brick to keep him under control. Much running, sniping, and controlling later, I was able to rez Margie’s character and let her have the coup de grace on the Brick.
Most amusing point: running past the Green Line rail station at the north end of the zone and spotting — gah! Purple Council types, including one of those hoverbots and a trio of similarly nasty things that I was slugging out with Velvet as SK last weekend. Yikes! Not sure how they got there, and they weren’t actually chasing anyone (unlike the Zenith War Valkyrie and company that came tromping through Kings Row the other evening), but it was a bit jarring.
Best news with Margie’s ding — she now has an official Travel Power, Superjump. Which, with Psi-clones Fly (great, flexible, a real endurance hog) led to the attached picture, once Margie figured out how to get high enough up on a neighboring building to jump to the top of the statue.
Meanwhile, OFFICER is back to being the same level, pretty much, as Deep Dark Earth, so they can go out duoing.
Margie wants to get P-Siren xped up to closer to Velvet‘s level, so they can go out duoing again as well — we really need to get her into the FP SG, so she can do some stuff with them and “catch up.” That means a lot less Velvet time for the nonce, alas, though I might do some “on the air” chit chat to keep her presence up (she’s currently having a bit of a personal downer, having seem some Evil Labs during the weekend that reminded her of some bad decisions she made when she was younger, so that explains her being off the air the past few days).
Meanwhile, the in-laws are out for the weekend, which means a lot less CoH play. Though they do tend to go to bed early … 🙂

Weekend update

Lots o’ stuff:

  1. Velvet Jones got to run around during the big Council-bash for the Freedom Phalanx. SKed into a quartet running around in high-level (30ish) adventures amidst such fun bad’uns as Devouring Earth and Crey and Vampyri-creating installations and other spiffy stuff. Eek!
    On Monday, I ended up spending a fair amount of time bopping around Velvet’s favorite hunting ground, the north end of Steel Canyon by the Boomtown gate. Good hunting, fast repops. No deaths, lots of running-out-of-endurance stuff, and enough additional XP to get within a bubble of 19.

  2. Amorpha and Psi-clone did a lot of running about, too, including a fairly harrowing jog across Skyways. Managed to get us both up a couple of levels, including getting PC up to 14, which means …
    I can fly! I can fly! I can flyyyyyy!
    Ahem. Fun.
    Actually, it’s a really good duo, scrapper/controller. Current favorite pair for us to go out with.

  3. Last night, we had a special family night — dinner out and then The Incredibles DVD. Late by the time we got Kitten to bed, and our cable was acting pretty wonky (at least with Champion — I’d blame it on the server, except that the modem kept resetting, and even when we tested some stuff out on Infinity, it kept resetting there, too).
    As to that test, we forgot that Triumph was the official local alternative server, but we did some test running of Mr. and Mrs. Thunderclap, the storm/katana ninja couple I mentioned a while back. Good stuff so far.
    Interestingly enough, you can team on Coyote’s mission in Outbreak, but you only get XP for your mission.

Hero’s Progress

Friday afternoon/evening …

  1. Tried to make up for the OFFICER debacle of yesterday. Did much better, dinging up to 6 (so I can run with Margie). Duoed with a blaster who eventually asked how old I was, claimed he was a Canadian 10-year-old, and, when I said I was significantly older than that, asked if I was in high school or college …
  2. Went out later with Velvet Jones, sidekicking Margie’s Carilian. Got involved in a Lost mish in Kings Row that turned out to have very nasty customers in it. Eventually called for help from the Phalanx, which resulted in Jackie bringing Shock.Therapy in to help, EXed down. Fun and profit for us all (well, except for Jackie).
  3. Got tied in with a significantly higher level group (30s) who wanted a tank and were willing to SK me. Which was … interesting. I think I held my own, and did okay, but it was … interesting. Lots of settings and villains I’d not run into before — Devouring Earth, Freakshow, powerful hi-tech lairs with robots and guns …
    Fortunately, they took a mish in Terra Volta, which I couldn’t enter (minimum level 20), so I took the opportunity to put Kitten down while they were busy.
    Lots of running around in areas that made me Very Nervous. Fortunately I had Super-Jump, so that when the hero SKing me flew off to the mish, I at least was mostly above ground level …
    The brightest part — aside from running with a good group (and a good Defender / healer), and that truly was a joy — was that Velvet dinged up to 18. W00T!

The big drama over at the FP sounds like it is coming to a head tomorrow. We’re off to a church dinner tomorrow night, but hopefully I’ll get some game play during the day …

Ask Statesman

The latest issue of the “Ask Statesman” news is out.
Biggest (or at least most locally-questioned) bit is:

Once the body slider/face slider changes go live with issue 4, will we be able to change our body/face at Icon or will our current characters be ‘locked in’ to our existing body?

You’ll be able to change your avatars at Icon.
Mildly disappointing (that we have to go to Icon to do it, with, presumably, the associated costs), but not surprising. Actually, if Icon allows changes in body type as well, that’s probably better than I suspected we were going to get.
There’s also this:

What do you think are the most important lessons you’ve learned from City of Heroes, and how are you applying them to City of Villains?

First, make every zone dynamic. In other words, make them come alive. We accomplished this quite well with Striga; that zone provides a new standard for us. Secondly, communicate the story better. We?ll have some new technology in City of Villains that will allow players to see the plotlines in a cool new way. Thirdly, give players what they want. We have a much better understanding of what makes Archetypes and powers cool. Lastly, make missions feel unique. One of the earliest criticisms was that our missions were repetitive. Now we’ve got over a year?s worth of new tech and art to use as we write the City of Villains missions from scratch.
Actually, it sounds like some CoV lessons might make their way back to CoH.
Which raises an interesting question (to me, anyway): will CoV make the gameplay better on CoH? In terms of (more specifically) folks who are “I like CoH because I like to smash things and run around in an undisciplined fashion and cause chaos” more likely to migrate to CoV? Just a thought. Granted, there are other reasons to go to CoV, too, both for the tech changes listed above, and as a different sort of play style and RP possibility. But I have this gut feel as well (or maybe just prejudice) that some of the less desirable (to me) sorts in CoH might shift over to CoV because … well … I don’t want to call them “evil” or “villains,” but … well … because they’re anti-social undesirables.
Just a thought.

Frustration

Not a good CoH day for me yesterday …

  1. I took the standard Fifth Level Face Plant yesterday. Four levels, no problems, no deaths, competent character build and lots of downed bad guys. Fifth level, inevitably, the introduction to debt.
    In this case, the first death (yes, there were more than one) came as the phone rang just as I ran in to attack an orange Lost in Kings Row. Ring, ring, ring, damn, damn, damn, kick, kick, run to grab the phone, get back, red health, crap, run, run, run, run, draw stray shot from someone, down.
    *sigh*
    It was, at least, someone I wanted to talk to (Margie).
    The second one happened way too soon after that. Oh, look, Vahzilok, white and blue, no sweat, jump, kick, kick, kick, kick, hell, vomit, vomit, vomit, yellow, orange, ongoing toxic damage, run, run, eat concrete.
    At which point it was time to grab some dinner for an evening meeting I needed to attend.

  2. Got back from the meeting, sat down, decided to run Torchielle with Margie’s Amorpha. No probs. Headed off for a mish, got to the door, went in.
    Torchielle runs over to the first corridor, peers down, sees a couple of blues. Nice. “Are you joining me?” I ask Margie.
    “I’m right here.”
    “Where?”
    “Right around the corner here.”
    Run back. She’s not there. Run back to the entrance, she’s still standing there.
    “I meant, join me in the corridor where those guys are.”
    “I’m right there, don’t you see me?”
    At which point we got lost mapserver messages (explaining the odd situation) and were down and out, watching the cable modem reset, reset, reset, on, down, reset, reset, reset …

We’ve been having CM probs again. Tech came out yesterday, but the service was up and they didn’t see any problems. Margie — who has the Comcast number memorized now — got on the phone and called Comcast again. She talked to a very nice CSR, went over the recent history, and he promised he was going to escalate it.
How nice.
So we went to bed. Which was probably good anyways, since I was dog tired. Too bad I didn’t feel I’d gotten anything accomplished, CoH-wise, before doing so.

Running low

Had fun last night …

  1. Running OFFICER, trying to get him up to 6 so I can team him with Margie’s Deep Dark Earth. So far, a very effective Scrapper.
  2. Running with Velvet Jones here and there, alongside P-Siren and Puck Bunny. This trip to Boomtown wasn’t nearly as scary as the last (having gone up three levels or more probably helps that), and helped fill in a bit more of the FP saga participation for me.
    I do need to run her on some higher mishes, though. The clockworks door mish was too low (top enemies blue), and Stan’s Marrowcrusher one was likewise. While it’s occasionally fun to just wade in without having to exercise any “stragedy,” it doesn’t do much to bump up the old XP count.
    On the other hand, it does cut down on the Involuntary Debt Accrual, so it’s not all bad.

  3. Glad to see that Global Chat has finally progressed out of Beta. Now it automatically comes on, which actually makes is useful for tracking people.
  4. Probably going to hold off on the husband-and-wife team until Issue 4 comes out, so we can take advantage of the cool new costuming/body bits.

Another character idea

Martial arts type, katana, modeled as close as possible after the oriental warrior mobs hanging out here and there. Watch heroes come running up to fight you, then peel away when they see you have a hero reticle with the name, “What Tsoo Lookin At?”
Well, it was funny to think of, anyway.

Man and Wife

I’ve seen some “common theme” groups on Champion, but not many. So the idea of a husband-and-wife team (players and characters) is not beyond the pale, but it’s not common.
Margie’s experessed an idea behind a storm controller. Since that means we’d need a crunchy, I’ll probably go for a scrapper (controllers meaning less need for aggro accumulation that a tank would provide). I’m currently thinking of Katana/Invuln combo (maybe with this build) would be fun.
So make it an Oriental/Storm motif. Mr. and Mrs. Stormdragon, or something like that. Make ’em shortish in identical ninja outfits (greyish, with cyan magical highlights), so that folks get us mixed up. Magical origin (magical amulet of some sort of Storm/War god, metaphysics of marriage, powers split between us, etc.). Could be fun.
(Margie and I haven’t discussed the the details, so no ideas are by any means settled.)
Of course, the last thing I need is another active alt to run …

End of an era

snipehunter2.jpgofficer.jpgI dropped one of my oldest alts yesterday, Snipehunter (NRG/NRG blaster). While I liked the costume, the power set wasn’t sending me, and I just wasn’t getting the “buzz” of excitement from playing him — and, thus, wasn’t. I never even inducted him into the Consortium. Enjoy your retirement, guy.
In his place, O F F I C E R (Optimize For Fighting, Integrated Combat-Engineered Robot, or something like that), a MA/SR Scrapper. He first came to “consciousness” in an alley in the “Outbreak” neighborhood, and just started in on fighting crime. Lots of robotic goodness (even if he keeps being sent after Clockwork …), and the MA power is fun. He’s my current lowest level character, and I’ll be running him with Margie’s Deep Dark Earth controller once I get a bit higher in level.
Margie and I are toying around with a matching “husband and wife” team. That bodes ill for a couple of the remaining underplayed characters (working on the assumption that we want to keep them on Champion).

City of Heroes … the Game!

I suppose it’s very nice that City of Heroes is going to be turned into a conventional role playing game, but I can’t say I’m terribly excited by it. I mean, there are any number of keen supers RPG systems out there (which I’d enjoy playing), and I’m not sure that either the online-engendered limitations or the setting of Paragon City would be what I’d be looking for in a supers campaign.
Not to mention that combat resolution would seem (if like most RPGs) so slow, compared to the online rendition.

A mish too far

By the time we got Kitten to bed after Margie’s (last, for now) church adult ed dinner, it was about 8:30. Plenty of time for some CoH action.
Signed in as Velvet Jones to get the latest on the Somebody Killed a Bunch of Freedom Phalanxers saga. Got a quick invite from Boulder Dude to a mish with him and Avocet, but also got a ping about some “story” in the saga that I could pursue.
Decided to do both, with Margie in tow as P-Siren. Headed off to Hollows with my 16th level Tanker, Margie’s 15th level Controller, to help BD’s MoFo Firefly (13th level Blaster) and Avocet’s, er, Avocet (16th level Blaster) take on some Pumicites.
The consensus very quickly was that Tanks and Bubbles make a big difference when fighting rock-hurling earth elemental types. We pretty swiftly cleared the cave …
Well, then, we needed to go on to Avocet’s Troll Base #2 mish, which was nearby. That was a little bit hairier (since the mobs were 0/+1 to me), but nothing too difficult.
After that, we twisted the others’ arms into heading over to Perez Park for a sewer mish (see clue, above). Margie, alas, had disco/login problems on the way over, so we burned a good 15 minutes or more — and, because of the disco, we couldn’t get into the mish before she arrived.
Not that it would have been a big problem, and, in fact, it was likely just as well, since the mobs inside were -2/-1 to me — Lost, of various sorts — since it was a rather aged mish that Margie had on her pallette. Made for some good RP fodder for the saga, though.
Now at this point, it was 10:20p. Another mish? Margie said, “Sure!” since we were going back to the Hollows to do yet another rendition of Frostfire (Margie’s, this time, and fresh). Much faster to get there (time enough for me to bop ten grey trolls on behalf of Whozits the Mystic between Super-Jumps).
By this time, I have the place mentally mapped out (“Are there any bad guys up th –” “No! Move on!”), and it being Margie’s mish, the folks were blue/white to me. We pounded through the place without too much trouble (for the first time in the last three outings for me, FF wasn’t right up by the final door), and finally broke out …
… at about 12:30p. I have no idea what took all that time. Maybe I have the times wrong. But it was way too late by the time we turned off the light.
On the other hand, Velvet dinged to 17, P-Siren to 16, and MoFo to 14, so it was a profitable evening. And, yes, a fun one. And, yes, too long of one …

Weekend warriors

Various screen caps from this past weekend (give or take a bit) of gaming (click on them for full-size):

First off, Velvet Jones atop the HQ in Atlas Park. From here I could see … well, a seething sea of blue hero names clustered on the plaza below.

The Consortium grows, with Margie’s Carilian (and my Sister Chinook) joining up (left), and Margie’s Kazima, too (right).

I call this series, “Drawing Aggro,” which is what Velvet practiced doing this weekend, in particular in a lengthy run with Stan’s Puck Bunny and Margie’s P-Siren.

And last, but not least, the Blue Girls get a post-mission debriefing from a friend, who asked that his name not be associated with this image (it’s amazing enough that he stood still for the picture being taken).

Marvel Smack-Down

From the official NCSoft press release (emphasis mine):

LOS ANGELES, March 11, 2005?A U.S. district court judge in Los Angeles dismissed several key claims by comic book publisher Marvel Enterprises, Inc in the company’s trademark and copyright infringement case against online computer game publisher NCsoft® Corporation and game developer Cryptic Studios?. Marvel sued NCsoft and Cryptic Studios in November of last year, claiming that the City of Heroes® online computer game allows players to imitate comic book characters owned by Marvel.

In a March 9 order, U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner agreed with NCsoft that some of Marvel?s allegations and exhibits should be stricken as “false and sham” because certain allegedly infringing works depicted in Marvel?s pleadings were created not by users, but by Marvel itself.

The judge also dismissed more than half of Marvel’s claims against NCsoft and Cryptic Studios, including Marvel’s claims that the defendants directly infringed Marvel’s registered trademarks and are liable for purported infringement of Marvel’s trademarks by City of Heroes’ users. In addition, he dismissed Marvel’s claim for a judicial declaration that defendants are not an online service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The judge dismissed all of these claims without leave to amend, meaning that Marvel cannot refile these claims.

Although the judge allowed certain claims to survive the motion to dismiss, NCsoft and Cryptic Studios are pleased with the result and are confident that both the law and the facts will support their case. In fact, citing a 1984 Supreme Court case holding that the sale of video cassette recorders did not violate copyright law, the Court noted that “It is uncontested that Defendants’ game has a substantial non-infringing use. Generally the sale of products with substantial non-infringing uses does not evoke liability for contributory copyright infringement.” Only “where a computer system operator is aware of specific infringing material on the computer system, and fails to remove it, the system operator contributes to infringement,” the Court stated.

The defendants have 10 days in which to answer and dispute Marvel’s allegations and to assert legal defenses to the remaining claims as well as to assert any counterclaims.
I’ll be keeping my eye out for the responding Marvel press release.

The Consortium’s Premiere

consortium_1.jpgFirst night out as the Consortium was fun. Psi-clone, as “Consort Prime,” brought in Margie’s TT, and ran about doing some head-thumping (including taking on a pretty nasty red-level-to-me-purple-to-Margie boss). We recruited Zazi in (huzzah!), and Margie and I wrapped the evening loading up alts and inviting each other in.
So far, so good, though some costumes don’t “work” as well in the team colors. But, then, I don’t have expectations of everyone being in SG colors all the time.

Welcome to the Consortium of Justice

uncle_psi-clone.jpgThe Consortium of Justice is now online on Champion. Founder and Consort Prime, Psi-clone, will be figuring out how to invite people in Real Soon Now.
Everything came along per the description below, with two small exceptions:

  1. I wasn’t able to find quite the shade I wanted, so I settled for a deep, rich blue and a silvery light grey. Not bad looking, I think.
  2. I discovered that you can’t change an SG’s colors once they’ve been set, which kind of makes it difficult to tell what will really work well together, eh?

Anyhow, there you go.

Supergroup Idea

As inspired by Boulder Dude:

  • Group Name: The Consortium of Justice (because you just gotta get “justice” in there somewhere)
  • Motto: “You Never Walk Alone”
  • Team colors: Indigo and silver
  • Team insignia: That cool diamond of boxes that shades between light and dark.
  • Mission: A convenient place for the non-aligned/SGed folks in the Hill-Kleerup (“Consortium”) orbit to SG together (and thus see each other while online) — a fancy, slightly less functional, but currently operating local version of Global Chat. (I’d ID it specifically for our Colorado group, but we’ll likely open the doors to Avocet, too, at least. It is largely (for RL purposes) a social grouping; for RP purposes, it’s a way to easily team up on stuff. RP for characters not required (but always fun).

The floor is open for comments. Barring any significant changes, I’ll probably throw this together tonight.

Characters in my brain

Character thoughts:

  1. I have several other power combos I’d like to try. I’d like to play with some of the other Controller and Blaster types. Hell, I’d like to play with some of the other Defender types. I should probably try a Scrapper again. I think I have all the Tanky goodness in Velvet that I need for now.
  2. As much as I want to gen more characters, I am constrained by (a) not enough time to run the fine characters I already have, and (b) no slots available. Well, the latter I could work around. I’d probably drop Snipehunter and Selene, or I could go to an additional server (though I’d rather not).
    But the time thing is already an issue. I feel the need to keep advancing Velvet. I really want to do more with Torchielle (and get her into an SG). I want to advance Psi-clone, too. And I’m having fun with Honeygun (and running her with Margie’s Kazima). The other two — Truly Unstable and Sister Chinook — can stay where they are until I get back to them, but I really want to keep the others fresh and moving.

  3. I want to do an anime-style cat girl, with ears and tail. Actually, I was thinking of doing a character of that sort using Katherine as the model. I just haven’t decided on the archetype (kinetic controller?).

Fashion design

Pretty new costume bits are being previewed here. Nice, particularly (for folks who like the “civilian” look) the jacket (will we get back logos, too?). The question, of course, is whether we’ll be able to respec costumes with the new features or not (I suspect not, just logistically), but it’s good stuff nonetheless.