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March 31, 2005

Takin' 'er out for a spin

Ran Velvet around with P-Siren (and BD's Puck Bunny) last night. Endless string of Hollows mishes (mostly), which will end (in two mishes for Margie) with the Chamber of Transcendence, or so we believe.

Biggest problem was that the endless, endless hordes of Trolls were all conning green and grey (with a very occasional blue, and, once or twice, a white). Which not only was boring, but which made creeping up to 19 with Velvet excruciating.

On the other hand, it did give me a chance to play with different toggles on her -- what to use as a default, balancing damage resistance vs. endurance cost (so ... must ... get ... Stamina ...). And, ultimately, we became pretty good at looking at the victory conditions carefully, and just doing them, not clearing the caverns. No need to arrest a few hundred trolls (for an hour) when all you need to do is take down Atta and his two guards (and find a clue or two). And since many of them would ignore us (grey) unless we whomped on them, and those who wouldn't ignore me couldn't do much through bubbles and Unyielding, that wasn't that huge a deal to do.

Not sure completely why they all conned so low. The mishes were new (though the trial may be old). Annoying. They were PS's mishes, so I may break out of that assignment chain with Velvet (who was getting the same stuff from good ol' Talshak the Mystic) after the next one.

Anyway, Velvet dinged to 19, P-Siren to 18. Good stuff.


Posted by Dave at 6:37 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay

March 30, 2005

"Word up to my homie, as it were."

CoH forum poll on the best NPC line in the game. There are some hoots in here.


Posted by Dave at 11:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Humor

"Hey! A blimp!"

Last week, as Psi-clone came out of the Hollows into Atlas, he looked up and ...

"Hey! A blimp!"

"Where?" BD messaged back.

I flew up to it, but was vaguely disappointed that it didn't have any logos or "messages" flashing on its sides.

Now you can read more about the blimp yourself.


Posted by Dave at 6:26 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

Ding-ding

Managed to get on and play with Margie for the first time in a few days, which was very nice. Both Psi-clone and Amorpha dinged to 17 after three pre-TF-so-blue-and-green door mishes.

It's actually a bit scary that PC is now only a level below Velvet, who've I considered my "main." I haven't been playing her much, though, to let Margie get P-Siren up to her level (to which end, P-Siren is now a member of the Freedom Phalanx).

I also brought made up some file folders for the guide print-outs I've made for my various alts, which should make the leveling process a bit easier in the future. I *should* use CoH Planner to lay out where I'm going with these guys, but even with the guides, I still find myself changing my mind sometimes about what seems the most needful based on the experience of the level I've just completed.


Posted by Dave at 6:56 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

March 29, 2005

My uninformed opinion

Long, long, long, loooooong thread on the CoH forums about this announcement from Statesman:

We changed the XP range from “Zone-wide, all the time” to the following:

200’ if you are simply on the team, and alive. You do not have to have inflicted any damage on the villain in order to receive XP at this range.

Zone-wide if you are on the team and dealt damage to the villain. You will always get your XP credit if you are in the zone and you did damage to the villain.

In other words, if you are on a team and in a zone, right now you get your XP share regardless of where you are and what you're doing. Under these rules, you may not. The idea is to try and beat some forms of PLing:

The reasoning behind this change was that the typical “power-leveling” tactic was to park the low-level heroes in the Safe Areas of zones, while the rest of the group hunts in the most dangerous places brings a lot of XP to the safe low-level guy. Forcing the low-level guy to actually move WITH the group (staying within 200’) prevents the most common power-levelling tactic in the game. It's OK if the low level guy is in the zone and contributing - but that player needs to have some risk to go along with the reward. We give credit to 200’ for even those who did not contribute to combat to ensure that buffing/healing types, who don’t actually damage the enemy, but are active participants in the defeat of the enemy, get their credit. You need to be ALIVE for this credit to be given however (or very recently dead). This is to circumvent Recall Friend’ing a dead low-level player around (completely safe) and getting him XP credit when not participating in the battle. We chose 200 ft. because that's right around typical visual range of players, but we're going to keep our eye on this when it goes active in the Training Room.

If you did ANY damage to the enemy, you will receive your credit no matter where you are in the zone (but you still need to be in the same zone).

Objections being raised are:

  1. Why is PLing bad? I can see the point from both directions here, so I can't comment. PLing as a lifestyle seems wrong, but does it actually harm others?

  2. What about when our team splits up and defeats mobs separately? A good point, I think, particularly for "Arrest X Whatevers" sorts of missions, where teams splitting up is often most efficient, or when everyone splits up to find the mob or clue that was missed.

  3. Why damage as the qualifier? Another good point. Some ATs contribute to the team in non-damage ways -- buffs, debuffs, mezzes, heals, bubbles. By tying XP to Damage, it seems that only crunchies and blasters are valued (and might as well go into something unteamed). Granted, if you're within the 200' you still get credit even if you didn't do any damage, but, philosophically, if you bubble up some folks who wade into melee, did you help, and should you get XP, regardless of where you stand? Versus, say, someone who does a snipe for 2 HP then runs out of the room? I think so.

  4. Two hundred feet?That does seem to be a short distance, if you ask me. It's easy to get separated that much within an inside mish, let alone an outside one.

What I think this proposal does is actually devalues the team concept. There are still advantages to teaming, but fewer than before.

One comment, applicable even under the current rules, has to do with "in-zone" restrictions. Two places where I could see legitimately arguing that you should be anywhere, not just within the zone (aside from further potential for PL abuse (see #1 above)) would be

(a) Teams going from Point A to Point B on a TF or other teaming plan, and those who are teamed who fight someone before everyone gathers not sharing the XP for that. If you're a team, you should share the credit. (Thinking of comic books, for example, the Avengers remain a team, even if they split up against the bad guys.)

(b) Zones where there are no hospitals penalizing folks vs. zones that have hospitals. If I fight in a melee in Skyway, then die and rez in the hospital, I'm still in-zone and get XP credit. If I do the same in Perez or the Hollows, I'm SOL. The current rule doesn't change that, though, in some ways, it makes it worse; if you didn't do any damage before dying (alpha strike, anyone?) and you head to the hospital, you get no XP for the melee.

I understand where the devs are going with this, but for those who are not PLing, it's kind of neat to get XP dropped in your lap while on your way to a mish, or back from the hospital. The amount is not huge, but it makes you feel, well, like you're on a team, that what others do on the team affects you.

I guess, in part, it comes down to what XP is supposed to represent, and what the game experience goal is. If XP is truly experience, then, sure, I can see this, but I can also see further limiting XP awards based on some elaborate formula of what you actually did, rather than splitting things up amongst the team whether you contributed 5 pts of damage or 500.

If, on the other hand, you are assigning value to the team concept, then (at the risk of folks abusing the system to PL), teams should mean things, and should share credit, broadly, alike.

Thinking of my desktop RPGs, there's usually a standard award for everyone, modified slightly by respective level and by particularly exemplary actions. Of course, there are no PLers in those games, either.

My suggestions, along these lines, for other places to start with something like htis:

  1. Tweak XP rules for SKs (especially SKing with broad ranges of levels) further, or impose modifications of these rules on SKs only (if you're trying to stop PL abuses). Or just limit how many levels up (gauged by the highest level person in the team, not your SKer) you can SK.

  2. Give credit not just for damage done, but any sort of hit (e.g., a debuff) or for any buff placed on a character who in turn does damage.

  3. Bump it up to 200 yards. At least.

  4. Instead of eliminating all XP for outside of 200', drop it to 50% XP. You still get something for being on the team and contributing, but it's less valuable for PL abuse.

  5. Impose the limits if the team is not within 200' of each other every 10 minutes (or drop folks from teams who are not within 200' of each other every 15 minutes, or something like that). That would make PLing more annoying (having to run back to the low-level character), but interfere less with team splits and other reasonable tactics.

  6. Consider restrictions not on combat XP but on mission-complete XP.

  7. Reconsider the whole Fight to Stop PLers. Yeah, they're "cheating," but mostly themselves, and the devs are spending too much time tweaking things to prevent it when they could be tweaking things to improve the experience of all players.


Posted by Dave at 9:43 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Fancy meeting you here ...

Signed in briefly as Velvet last night. Quick checked the Global Friends list, most folks were on, and ... there was Avocet.

No, not on the list (well, yes, there, too), but standing right in front of where I'd appeared, at the Steel Canyon side of the Boomtown gate.

We chatted a sec, then I bounded off to sell some stuff.

Swapped over to Truly Unstable, went running from Galaxy to Atlas to Kings Row ...

... and ran into Avocet again, standing in the tram station, as his Power Fists alt.

We chatted a second, then I ran off again.

I signed off again shortly thereafter. But by that time if I'd run into him one more time on the way upstairs to bed, I'd have not been completely surprised.


Posted by Dave at 6:07 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

March 28, 2005

The Most Unstoppable Villains of All

Mercifully, this problem hasn't afflicted this blog yet. Though I'm sure it will.


Posted by Dave at 3:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: This Blog

March 26, 2005

Positron TF

2005-03-26_positron.jpgWent on our (Margie and my) first Task Force last night, Positron. Pictured, left to right:

Now that I think of it, I can't recall Lee's character name precisely, 3-odd hours later. More on that below.

So it was a pretty well-balanced team, and, all told, once we shook out, a pretty effective one. Gilly died, um, four or five times, while I got my now-primary role as Empathy Guy (i.e., the team healer) down (and Gilly refined her Tank stuff for the group). Of course, I died in there once. As did LB. As did Mofo (though, to be fair, that was on the way to the first mish). I think only Margie came through unscathed.

And, for all that, everybody dinged. Indeed, PC was just barely at 15 when we started, dinged to 16 midway through, and was about 75% to 17 by the time the TF was over.

(I took Group Invis at the level, which, along with Deceive to soften them up -- Murk Eidolons and exploding Embalmed Abominations were the most fun for softening -- made me feel like I was carrying my own weight. I'm really not a very good Defender.)

We all got our complimentary SOs at the end, too. I got a very nice lvl 18 accuracy; Margie, I think, got a recharge time.

Three of the group flew; Amorpha and Gilly had Superjump. We did end up criss-crossing several zones, most particularly the Steel Canyon that Positron hangs in, but including Perez, Boomtown, and Skyways. Oh, and the Hollows, once. We fought Vahzilok, Clockworks, and Circle of Thorns (which is, by the end, part of the point of the TF) and in office buildings, caves, sewers, and ... hmmmm, interesting hi-tech settings.

Technology-wise it went pretty well. Occasional lag. Margie had horrible performance problems at the very beginning -- which turned out to be her thrice-bedamned Norton AV kicking in for its inexpicable Friday Night Magic. I discoed once (during the final photo shoot). Everyone else was, I believe, pretty stable.

Fun time, in sum. A good group to work with, certainly, not to mention entertaining (I wish I'd kept a log of the dialog; Lee, in particular, is a hoot online). And we ended at ...

... well, we started at about 7:40, and we ended at ...

... um, 3 a.m.

Why, yes, that was only about three and a half hours before I began this post. Welcome to the world of having a four-year-old in the house ...


Posted by Dave at 6:33 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

March 24, 2005

Words to live(ing dead) by

2005-03-23_vahz.jpgVahzilok are bad.

Go up against too many vomiting Vahzilok, and you will die. No matter how buff a Scrapper you are.

Have a distracted healer (e.g., one who's actually a Controller with Empathy), and you will die a lot faster. Especially when he's busy getting vomited to death, too.

Pull them off, pick them off, deal with small groups, watch your health, don't be afraid to run.

Just some thoughts ...

(screen cap of A Chorus Line via Boulder Dude)

(And Psi-clone still managed to ding to 15, despite dying twice on the mish.)


Posted by Dave at 11:05 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

Design tweaks

Played around with the design a bit to get the sidebar a consistent width -- and ended up shifting it to the left.

Had a deuce of a time doing it, too, mostly because of CSS rendering differences between Firefox and IE (and praise be for the Firefox IEView extension). Finally ended up swiping div styles from the 20x20 Room, which worked.

(Amazing how many sites use the dual-fixed-width-floating-columns code, by the by.)

I want to do some tweaking of colors here, too, eventually. The powder-blue/powder-grey bit is putting me to sleep.


Posted by Dave at 2:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: This Blog

March 23, 2005

More Issue 4 details

Lengthy list of changes the devs are reporting in Issue 4 -- lots of Arena details, lots of power, enhancement, and AT changes. The Resolve vs Break Free Inspirations have been combined, lots more chance for blaster powers of all sorts to knock down toggles, other spiffy things.

Interesting new "click to move" optional setting (default off, but with an optional shift-key to turn it on while depressed): click on something to move to it; double-click to move and interact with it.

And lots of comments about (a) how their hero is going to kick butt, (b) how their hero is now useless, (c) how they need to majorly respecc their hero but have no idea exactly how, and (d) how spiffy it all is.


Posted by Dave at 10:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

More Issue 4 features

A report from someone playing with Issue 4 features on the Test server. Some interesting stuff, including this bit:

New Team Search features. Now when you search for teams or what to be on the list you have options. For those who want to be on seek team you can designate what you are looking to do (e.i. TF, Trial, Missions, Street Sweep, or whatever). You can also add some comment about yourself. You could list that you are an emp healer or reliable teammate. If you are looking for a team member you can search by the criteria of what you are doing and then search away.

Not that a lot of the more annoying people make good use of the search feature anyway, but it's nice to have that intelligence built in. I hope you can specify an "any" or multiple optoins of what you're looking for.

It's also nice to be able to specify (or search for) more specific info. Nothing like getting a Defender to heal the group, only to find out that they don't actually heal, just debuff or bubble (or vice-versa) ...

Looking forward to it.


Posted by Dave at 8:17 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

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 ... :-)


Posted by Dave at 7:16 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

March 22, 2005

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.


Posted by Dave at 7:20 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

March 18, 2005

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 ...


Posted by Dave at 9:29 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

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.


Posted by Dave at 11:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

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.


Posted by Dave at 6:05 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

March 17, 2005

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.


Posted by Dave at 6:20 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

March 16, 2005

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.


Posted by Dave at 1:06 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Humor

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 ...


Posted by Dave at 9:43 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

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).


Posted by Dave at 6:11 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

March 15, 2005

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.


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Filed under: Media

Column tweaks

Made the main section 80% wide and the sidebar 20% wide, since working at 1024x768 I was getting kinda nasty scroll off the right side (even in the individual archive pages). Holler if something looks broken.


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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 ...


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Filed under: Gameplay

March 13, 2005

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).



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March 11, 2005

I wish I had a character slot (or time) to spend to do something like this

Best. Hero. Ever.


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Filed under: Humor

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.


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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.


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Filed under: Consortium of Justice

March 10, 2005

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.


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Filed under: Consortium of Justice

Supergroup Idea

As inspired by Boulder Dude:

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


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Filed under: Consortium of Justice

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?).


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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.

Posted by Dave at 6:33 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

March 9, 2005

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.


Posted by Dave at 11:42 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack | Edit
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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 1024x768.

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 1024x768.

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.


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Filed under: Resources & Rules

March 8, 2005

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)


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Filed under: Resources & Rules

March 7, 2005

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.


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Filed under: Resources & Rules

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.


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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)


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Filed under: Resources & Rules

Now with 50% less squintiness!

Increased the text sizes in the main part of the blog upward a tick from the MT defaults. I need to do more CSS tweaking on the site (the colors, etc.) -- but that will require cutting into my home CoH time, which, of course, I will never do until my playing slacks off, at which point the blog will be less important, at which point, who cares about the CSS?


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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 ... :-)


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Filed under: True Life

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.


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Filed under: Gameplay

March 6, 2005

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 Marg