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.

Short cuts make long delays

Margie and I were pairing up with Kazima/Honeygun again last evening, looking for some good catharsis after a long day for the both of us.
We had a mish down in the south end of Atlas Park (one of the final Atlas missions, since we’re both up at 9, and we’re trying to clear out the mission screen). When we were done, Margie suggested, we could wrap up a Hollows mish she still had, which was way on the south end, by the southwest entrance from Skyway City, which happens to have a nearby entrance from the south end of Atlas.
Well, looked good to us. Last thing we wanted to do was schlep all the way back up Atlas, enter the Hollows by the “usual” Wincott door, then schlep all the way south in the Hollows. Been there, ran that.
Heh.
Skyway City is not scary to Velvet. She’s 16th now. No prob.
But to a couple of “youngsters,” all those level 10-16 mobs look awfully orange-red-purple-purple-purple. And it’s not exactly the easiest shard to get around in. It was a looooong trip cutting that short corner.
Once into the Hollows, though, it was relatively straightforward. The mish entrance was only a 100+ yards away. Of course, we had to get through a couple of CoT circles to get there, but they weren’t too bad. Got in, did the mish (Jewel of Hera), got out.
Hmmm. Man, that was a pain going through Skyway. Let’s just do what we should have done in the first place and take the long route through the Hollows up north to the Wincott gate. I mean, it can’t be any harder than the NW-SE corridor there we usually end up taking …
Except, of course, that CoT are like prairie dogs there, frequent and vigilant. And Margie stumbled into a pair of very nasty mages (the book-reading kind), fought rather than fled, and I was trying to support her from the ridge and y’don’t do too well against yellows when you’re asleep/held/stunned half the time, and …
… and then she was dead, and I was staggering away …
“I have a rez, if you want.”
“Don’t bother. They’re just standing over my body, healing each other.”
“Great.”
“I could go back to the hospital, which would get me out of here, but that would leave you by yourself.”
“Go.”
So I got to make the rest of the run (well, rather, the creep, peek, dash, stagger, stumble, crap-they-just-spawned-there, run, dash, flee) back up to Wincott, having discovered that more powerful nasties had moved in behind us closer to the south entrance. Great.
Maybe we’ll tackle something a bit less, ah, logistically difficult next time around.

You say you want a resolution?

The backlight on my notebook went out yesterday (again), and so I had to find a spare monitor from a vacant cube and plug it in at work.
All was fine until I got home. We have a couple of old 14″ monitors upstairs, and I brought one in and plugged it into the notebook as I started it up.
Nada. Well, the “signal” light on the monitor turned green, but it wasn’t —
— oh. Resolution. Frelling thing doesn’t take the high-res squinty settings I usually keep my desktop at (sure, it makes stuff harder to see, but it makes so much stuff hard to see!).
Of course, it’s hard to boot up a machine and change the resolution — when you have no screen to see by (unless you know the keystrokes for Safe Mode by heart). Fortunately, the actual LCD isn’t dead, just the backlighting. So if I shine a flashlight straight at the dark screen, I can just see the windows and so forth (akin to using a match to light up a crowded room, in the dark, full of smoke). Doing that, I was able to go into Display Preferences and turn the res down to 1024×768.
I didn’t even think that it would be a problem in CoH. Ha. Yes. Yes, it was. And it was a real pain trying to get back to the “Windows” mode of visibility once I went into CoH and was confronted with another blank screen. Hrm.
There may be a way to manually tweak the resolution down outside of CoH, or pass along a command-line string to the program, but I couldn’t find it. What I did find was a program called TweakCOH, which gives you a nice windows interface to the Options screen outside of the program. With that, it was a piece of cake to lower the CoH res to 1024×768.
Which sucks as a res, given the real estate taken up by various subwindows in CoH (which I’m now used to having up), but it’s better than (literally) nothing.
I recommend TweakCOH as a standard download for any CoH user. It doesn’t do a lot, but what it does it does well, and there’s nothing else obvious to do it with.

Experience, teams, and thou

From the most recent Statesman interview (formatting and [annotations] by me), some good basic info on experience and teams and SKs and Exemplars:

Question: Could you give a complete overview of how experience is awarded when in a team? How does the level of the team members affect the xp earned and how it is split between players? What effect does Sidekicking or Exemplaring have? Is there a group bonus, and does it change based on the size of the group? (Apparently much of this has been explained in dev posts on the US boards, but as these are no longer available, new European players like me would really appreciate the info.)
Answer:
On the top level, XP is divided by damage done. If two heroes both attack and defeat a single mob, each hero is given XP proportionate to the amount of damage received by the mob.
Within a team-up, XP is divided equally among each member, but levels are taken into account. So if a 35th level Blaster teams up with a 32nd level Tanker, the 35th level Blaster would receive proportionately more XP (on the assumption that the higher level character contributed more to the conflict).
When two or more different groups of heroes attack the same mob, the damage of each group is added up and used to divide the mob’s XP.
For every person in a team up, there is an XP boost. The experience points of each mob are multiplied by a value before being divided among the team members. Currently, the XP boost values are this:
Team Size – XP multiplier
2 – x1.25
3 – x1.5
4 – x1.8
5 – x2
6 – x2.1
7 – x2.2
8 – x2.5
[So team-ups divide the experience from a mob, though there’s a slight compensating multiplier shown above and certain tiers of team size will increase the overall numbers of mobs, and, thus, aggregate XP. Still, the truism that the smaller the group the better the XP, dying-horribly-and-taking-debt aside, is true.]
Sidekicking allows players to play at a level higher than their actual Security Level. While Sidekicked, a hero is considered to be at this higher level for XP division. But the hero receives XP depending upon the relatively levels of the mobs he faces. Example: my 15th level Scrapper is sidekicked to a 28th level Controller. For purposes of combat, my Scrapper is now 27th level. If I went out and fought 29th level minions, their XP would be calculated as if they were 17th level minions.
[Thus, the SK doesn’t get XP as though defeating folks 14 levels higher, just 2 levels higher.]
One thing to keep in mind is that as a sidekick, a hero is counted as a full high-level hero when doling out rewards even though he doesn’t have as many powers as a natural hero would. So the risk for the mentor (and teammates) is slightly higher but they get the same reward. If you are within 3-5 levels of your buddy you might want to think about being a regular teammate and not a sidekick: the rewards might be better. This will depend on the villains you are fighting, your aversion to risk, and the composition of your team.
While Exemplaring, a hero receives XP in a similar way. The hero’s actual level is brought down to that of the Aspirant. The Exemplar takes XP from mobs depending the relation of the Exemplar level and the mob level. Example: A 45th level Defender is Exemplarred down to 29th level. He fights a 30th level Minion. The Defender earns XP as though it were a 46th level minion. However, an Exemplar does not gain XP; anything earned is applied exclusively to XP debt.
(via CoH LJ)

The sound of silence

I never … I mean never … get any useful info from the Broadcast channel. Local, Team, Tell, Friends, Supergroup … all of those are useful. But all Broadcast seems to be good for is “Sumbody PL Lvl 10 Blster to 20 plz? 50K infl!” sorts of things.
I ran across across a reference in passing to turning the Broadcast channel off, but I can’t actually find a command for doing it (and, for obvious reasons, don’t want to do a “/broadcast off” or “/broadcast 0” without knowing that’s the actual command). The one additional reference I found said it was “incredibly simple,” so they didn’t mention it.
Okay, call me incredibly simple, too, but … any clues?
It’s not that I find the Broadcast channel offensive or irksome in and of itself, but any of the useful (usually Local or Friend or Tell) messages in the default window end up scrolling off too fast because of the idle chatter.

MMORPG of the year

CoH has been named by CGW (Computer Gaming World) as the MMORPG of the Year. World of Warcraft got Game of the Year, with CoH getting the other award, but …

We don’t mean that in a “second place” sort of way, either — City of Heroes flies high above the competition, thanks to its staggering character-customization options, its immersive setting, and hands-down the most creative use of source material we’ve ever seen in this type of game. And, perhaps most importantly, it really makes you feel like a superhero.
Yay.

Issue 4 Video

To my eye, the biggest challenge to the planned Player-vs-Player CoH Arena is actually being able to see what the heck is going on. Think it’s difficult with a group of Invisible Heroes with Bubbles and various glowing Auras in a Shadowy Setting? Try it with two groups, with various power FX going off around you …
I honestly don’t have much interest in the PvP stuff, at least as a loner. I prefer coop play, myself. Though, to that end, if a group I knew was going in on something, I might be willing to lend a hand. We’ll have to see.
(via Doyce)

Statement of Responsibility

Just to make it publicly clear, I take full responsibility for the amount of time I’ve been devoting to CoH over the past weeks (and the time I’ve not devoted to other things that would like doing). Despite giving Doyce the occasional ribbing for getting me hooked, and Margie the occasional ribbing for not being my usual sanity check/brake on my obsessive hobby activities, it’s my choice and all that.
For all that I’ve been playing, the most rational evaluation I can give things is that I haven’t let anything important slip because of it. Sure, the Christmas decorations are still up (at least in the living room), and there are similar discretionary housekeeping tasks that I could be doing. But most of what’s slipped has been other hobbies and the like (and if I weren’t not getting around to taking down the tree because of CoH, it would be because of blogging, or the wiki, or gaming, or other pastimes).
I’ve been trying to make sure that Kitten’s needs are being met, and we’ve been making a point of doing walks with her, playing games, etc.
And, ironically, Margie and I have been spending more evening time doing something together than usual, via CoH, so that’s pretty cool, too.
So regardless of the “I blame Doyce” bits (which are meant, of course, all in fun), or “It’s Margie’s fault I’m chronically short of sleep” (not something most husbands complain about, mind you), I do acknowledge it’s my responsibility and decision and all that. I can quit any time (and will, if I think it’s a real problem). Really.
Now, whether I’ll be able to drag Margie away from the keyboard … 🙂

Saturday in the Park

So, rumble was that we were going to do a taskforce Saturday evening. Margie and I worked during the afternoon to get P-Siren up to 12th level snuff and beyond, so that she could participate (which also worked to knock off some debt with Velvet Jones and get her up to 15th, finally). We invited along Stan, who brought Robenmatsu 3, his blaster. Doyce had his new scrapper, [NAME REDACTED].
Since TFing involves a lot of visiting the TF-giver (in this case, Positron in Steel Canyons), the decision was that Velvet would be the team leader, since she now has Super Jump (which is so incredibly fun it’s worth the price of admission). The first mish for Task Force Manhattan was CoT stuff up in Skyway City …
… and they kicked our asses. We barely got out of the foyer, and that took two deaths and a hasty retreat back outside the building. Lots of seriously nasty spectral demon spirit bad juju types in there (click on the picture to the right for the full deal — Velvet, P-Siren, and [REDACTED], looking up at the nasty hovering over the balcony …).
After we barely managed that, and got upstairs and saw another room with still more, we invoked Lee’s Law (“This is crazy. We’re outta here.”) and left, cancelling the TF, and resolving to just clear out old missions.
Which we did, Stan firing up Zazi as his alt (thinking I was changing over to Psi-clone). Various mishes down in Kings Row, honing tactics (“Pull back! Let them come to us!”) and then off to the Hollows. There we picked up Avocet as blaster support, and basically ran the Trolls With Bombs mish three times for different players. The first two were walk-throughs, since the mishes were pretty old — all grey and green and blue and “I’ll take that flock on the right, you take the flock on the left, and we’ll meet at the flock in the middle” sort of thing. Low XP per body, but lots of bodies.
The third iteration, Avocet’s, was a lot dicier — yellows and oranges to me (who was still the highest level). That meant using tactics again, and when Velvet dinged up to 16 in mid-mish, at Doyce’s urging I left the mish, went back, trained up to get Taunt, and came back (love that Super Jump) and had fun experimenting with that.
Click on the pick on the right for a bigger shot of the Trollbane Five. That’s [REDACTED], P-Siren, Zazi, Velvet, and Avocet, and our omnipresent bubbles.
Good, good time, and enough to wash the bad taste of the failed TF (and my huge debt load from Friday) out of my mouth.
UPDATE: Redactions now unredacted.

Our Heroes

I’ve started posting the current stable/cast of characters for myself and Margie off in the sidebar. I’ll update them (and their levels) periodically.
I’m vaguely worried that I’m not focusing enough on one (or maybe two) characters to keep pace with others, and that eventually folks will bypass me and go off together into the rarefied climes of the 20s and 30s and 40s while I plunk along with a variety of alts.
On the other hand …

  1. I enjoy all the various people I have here, Velvet, PS, Torchielle, and Honeygun, as well as the others, each have a different feel to them. It keeps the game fresh.
  2. As long as I have someone to run with Margie, I’m happy. Our biggest problem is, when teaming, finding a good Crunchy/Squishy pair, since both of us tend toward the latter to the former.

Anyway, there you go.