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June 30, 2006

Popping (red)caps

Hildy and Torchy headed back to Croatoa, back to a level (30+) to take Buck's missions -- the first of which was one of those awful Faerie Fort maps, rescuing prisoners. We dragged along Ciunas Bas, SKed up, and finally managed to clear the map (after a few Hildy and a few more CB face-plants).

Interestingly, I've drawn the parallel between H/T and Psi-clone/Amorpha, with the basic difference that the "controller" in H/T is actually the one in the middle of the melee (Hildy), while the killing machine is, rather than a scrapper, the blaster in the back ranks.

One other difference that occurred to me yesterday afternoon is that with PC/A, if things went pear-shaped and Amorpha went down, PC had both the control and the healing to take a few moments to ponder the best course (run in an rez? duke it out? turn tail and come back later?). With Torchy, though, there's no question -- she's horribly squishy, has no self-healing besides chicklets; generally speaking, when Hildy goes down, Torchy is hightailing it out of there.

(That, in turn, is a bit more difficult now that she's a Flyer rather than a SJer, as speed suppression on Fly is a lot more noticeable, and can spell crucial seconds in bailing out. On the other hand, while SJ can get you behind things, and faster, it can also drag you into trouble; Fly lets you just Get Away.)

I do need to figure out a way to make Torchy marginally less squishy.

Anyhoo, both of us dinged to 31, huzzah. CB managed to end up out of debt, and with a bunch of high DOs in her tray, so it was, hopefully, a worthwhile outing. The soiree was incredibly rich, drop-wise, and I ended up with an entire tray full of SOs (and having gotten rid of several DOs along the way, and not counting the couple of SOs I could use).

It was also neat to see more than two CoJ folks on at a time. Almost had 4, but T'lauro signed out before Hildy signed in.

Earlier in the evening, was running around with Lynn doing CoT mishes. Bleah. I really hate those maps, and inevitably miss a side passage or a mob behind a wall or something. Lynn's got a mad-on at the CoT, though, because of a hostage she couldn't find, who turned out then to be dead. Making her cranky.

On the other hand, before the tunnels, she had a Hunt Council mish over in Bricks, and she just kicked ass. I mean, groups of seven or eight reds, or a couple of purple with red escorts. Not without a couple of white knuckles, but still, impressive enough to make me wonder if I need to ratchet up her reputation more. I tend to be conservative on these things (or cowardly, if you prefer), but maybe that's not as necessary with her.


Posted by Dave at 8:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay

June 29, 2006

MMORPGs by the numbers

MMOGCHART.COM tracks subscriber numbers for MMORPGs. It's kind of interesting to look at -- in particular, related to CoX, it's odd to see spelled out something that's So Big in My Life is so trivial, subscriber-wise, in the MMORPG world. (Reminds me of my taste in TV shows.)

Granted, CoX is a top tier game, but compared to WOW, Everquest, Lineage I or II, Final Fantasy, or RuneScape, the subscriber base is a drop in the bucket. Or, put another way, we're at 1.4% of the overall MMORPG subscriber world, tucked between Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.

Interesting stuff.


Posted by Dave at 10:49 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Media

Note to self re CoV

Never, ever, ever design a Villain again that uses Super-Jump as a travel power. You can tell Arachnos is in charge of the Mercy Island because the place is a veritable spider-web of buildings, cat-walks, piping runs, towers, and other things that make getting from Point A to Point B an exercise in frustration.

I imagine Super-Speed would be similarly frustrating, given the street layouts. Teleport works better, but it's a PitA in and of itself.

Fly, baby. Fly.


Posted by Dave at 6:52 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

June 28, 2006

Maybe we need a Costume Storage device in bases ...

The new free costume tokens -- one per slot -- mentioned yesterday are now up.


Posted by Dave at 2:25 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Torchilympics

Once I got back to the ol' homestead last evening, it was time for more Torchielle and Hildegard.  In this case, we were wrapping up the Freakolympics story arc, which was fun.

I find the combo of Hildy's crowd control plus my damage magnitude to be a lot of fun.  It's a reshuffling of the Psi-clone/Amorpha stuff.  Hildy, like Psi-clone, does the holding and protecting (as a tank), while Torchy does the damage-dealing that Amorpha does.  The only difference is who's in the bad guys' faces.

Almost up to 32.  Wow.

And, meantime, respecced Torchy to take Fly rather than Super-Jump.  Fit it into her story, too.  And made some minor changes to her costume. Fun.


Posted by Dave at 9:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay

June 27, 2006

New patch (6/27)

Big new patch going out today.  Comments in italics.

Combined

Tasks

Powers

Graphics

Game

City Zones

Badges

UI

Tailor

City of Villains

Tasks

Powers

Tasks

City Zones

City of Heroes

Tasks

Overall, sounds good.  Nothing earth-shattering, but who wants earth-shattering right at the moment.


Posted by Dave at 3:58 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Yet another test (from Blog of Heroes)

Trying to figure out the blogrolling.com non-pinging problem.


Posted by Dave at 2:16 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: This Blog

June 26, 2006

Well, he's kind of a wuss AV, after all

Hostess Heroes last night cleaned Klamor Maestro's clock. Despite his being an AV (and thus currently regenning 11x as fast as he used to), we didn't have much problem. Hell, the stupid 'fan boys" were a bigger irritant.

In the pic we have (front) Ho Ho, Brownie Points, Twinkie Kid; (back) Bear Claws, Princess Peep, Ginger Snap, Ring Ding. Oh, and in the middle, Klamor Maestro having his noisy head handed to him.

Ho Ho and Princess Peep both dinged 25. Halfway (numerically) to 50. Yikes.

It's a bit funny. I enjoy playing Ho Ho -- doing the tank thang with a big team and all. But there was something kind of exhilerating about first building her, and having practically any option. Doing a regular big team is spoiling me -- makes me want to do more of it, but with different ATs. Another blaster. A different controller. A claws scrapper. Endless possibilities ...


Posted by Dave at 10:05 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay

Not-so-temp powers

Haven't heard anyone complaining about this -- or, at least, haven't seen any Dev comments on it (which is what I monitor in the forums), but the temp power timers are ... well ... not.

Temp powers with uses are working fine. You can see this by the new patch that lets you go to the Info on the power and see how many uses remain. So, last night, Torchy's Holy Shotgun Shells got almost down to zero.

Temp powers with durations, though -- "this will last X days until you have to send it back to Azuria" -- are ... well ... showing things like "512345689 days left" under info. I have Sands of Mu, and Runes of Warding, and other goodies like that, and no sign of their going away (yay, another cone punch-out power for Lynn, even if I can't slot it).

Ssssshhhhhh ...


Posted by Dave at 12:57 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Like I need more motivation

RPG Motivational Posters. The thread would be even more entertaining if folks didn't reply to posts quoting the entire previous message (including large graphic). As it is, it's now stretching over 242 pages.

And for the MMORPG-lovers among you, there's this accompanying thread. Though, as the plain RPG one I have pictured here (dedicated, in my mind, to War Bones) demonstrates, there's a lot of cross-over between the crowds.

Oh, and RPG Movie Posters, too. Glee.

(via Doyce and Les and Doyce)


Posted by Dave at 12:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Humor

Faathim the Jaegermeister

Went through the third Shadow Shard TF yesterday, wrapping it up in 4-odd hours, despite various crashes and Real Life interruptions. Like the last time, it went pretty smoothly if ...

... well, fact is, it's a pretty awful TF. You spend a lot of time jumping (literally or figuratively) around the Shadow Shard. You spend way too much time doing the same "Hunt 50 Servants of Rularuu" and "Fly over and click the glowie," etc. Very few "missions." And the final payoff is ... meh.

Psi-clone and Amorpha had actually already done it before (we dinged 48 on it), but we pretended RP that we really hadn't (since the alternative would have been weird). PC only died once, and that was when my machine hung up mid-battle.

Good group -- PC/A, plus War Bones, Noelle Frost, MacroLass, Sword of Asgard, and Hang Time -- which made it all worthwhile.

(Over in the pic, Psi-clone is wearing his "Silver Age" outfit. Ick. It is now returned to the bit-bucket.)

Given the large numbers of AVs in SS #4, we're going to hold off on that one until the AV regen stuff is fixed.


Posted by Dave at 6:28 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

June 19, 2006

New stuff coming soon ... or not ...

Re future expannsion set stuff, Tal_N posts:

Curently confirmed facts

A new powerset for each AT (not confirmed if some will be shared)
A new AT
A new zone
A system intended for endless end-game content which extends what will be added in i8.

The rumors and conjecture
(based upon previous comments from devs and conclusions)

The new powersets will include Shields which will be both an offensive set and a seperate defensive set for the Melee ATs, A tech theme defence set for Melee ATs, street fighting offensive set for scrappers. Circus Mastermind set. Weapon themed Brute set.

The new AT will be the Incarnate. At the moment only two of this AT exist, Lord Recluse and Statesman. It has been previously stated that the Incarnate's will be themed around 'combos' however it is unclear what this cryptic clue refers to specifically. It is expected that existing characters are transformed into Incarnates much like Recluse is a Mastermind Incarnate and Statesman is a Tanker Incarnate.

From the recent poll the devs took the zones players requested the most were the Rikti Homeworld, Underwater zone and Arctic zone. One of these will most likey be the new zone added. My bet is on the Rikti Homeworld considering Positron's interest in advancing the storyline.

The new system is an updated and revised version of what was going to be added to CoH at its launch. It used to be called The Fame system and was essentially a leaderboard for players where their success and failure as a hero effected their rankings. Top runners on the rankings will find statues raised within the city in their honor, have their character appear on billboards as they get approached to promote retail goods and you find villain groups targetting you for extermination. Rank also unlocks special content, rewards and various other perks. Time spent offline causes your fame rating to slowly degrade which means in order to stay at number 1 you have to play regularly although it may not be purely based upon how much time you spend online completing missions.

To which Positron replies:

The new powersets will include Shields which will be both an offensive set and a seperate defensive set for the Melee ATs, A tech theme defence set for Melee ATs, street fighting offensive set for scrappers. Circus Mastermind set. Weapon themed Brute set.

None of that is true, or true anymore.

Which raises the question: is it that none of the original post is true, or just the quoted paragraph ... which latter would imply that the other stuff is true ...


Posted by Dave at 9:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

June 15, 2006

This one's for Noelle

The lead costume/avatar guy speaks:

Howdy I’m Jay. I’m the guy that now makes costume pieces, and characters for the game. I have also read every post in this thread and tried to address all the bugs that needed fixing. So if you love/hate anything you can praise/cruse me.

The ears where moved into a separate category just for you. That’s right, you. You asked for it and you got it. I also made the demon and vampire ears at the last minute to address the concerns that the ears didn’t look enough like the “pointy ear.” I tried my best to make the Demon ear look like the original “pointy ear,” only better. The original “pointy ear” now looks really bad when compared to the new ones. The new horns were dual colored because of a request from this thread along with a ton of other little tweaks that you may or may have not noticed. I even went so far as moving a single dread on the female hair “dreadlock” so that one could recreate a character with the new ears. See how much I love you.

All this week I have painfully recategorized and alphabetized all costume pieces. So now when you go to the female/upper body/chest/ all of the texture options are there and they all use the mask texture correctly. Holy crap was it in disarray, now it’s all pretty and things are named right and easy to find.

Look at the female skirts too. They are exactly like the original skirts now. I know because I have the original files. A lot of you where mighty upset about the skirts not looking enough like the original. When I compared the two; you guys where right, the new skirts were noticably different. Not any more. Oh and I redid the V belt just for you. You said it sucked now it unsucks.

I also made a change this week to the Male/lower body/Tight/pants/Tights. The legs have a new and improved tight texture. I hated the old one so I made it better.

There where a few comments that female shorts where too long. Yeah I screwed that one up, Oops. It should be fixed now. And to make up for my mistake I added a new bikini bottom.

OK I’m done with bug fixing for issue 7. The updated stuff should be in next week; Today is 6/13/06. So if you have any bugs that you want me to address go ahead and post them. I’ll read them; I may not reply but know that I do read them. I’m off to Issue 8 make some bad guys and some costume pieces. I hope you find a little more happiness now Djeannie.


Posted by Dave at 3:59 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

June 14, 2006

Float, flutter, fly

Having gone on the Walt Disney World "Soarin'" ride (during our visit earlier in the month), I can guarantee that, were I suddenly allowed to attain CoH powers, I woud most definitely choose Fly. To be able to swoop and soar over the landscape would be truly awesome.

Superspeed would be okay (and kind of fun), but not as keen, Superjump would be annoying (for many of the same reasons it's annoying in the game -- dealling with what you're jumping into at all times for one thing). Teleport would be nice, I suppose, but if it had the same range limits as in the game, it would hardly be of value for commuting.

But for sheer thrill of Seeing Stuff, it would have to be Fly.


Posted by Dave at 10:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , True Life

June 13, 2006

Cheese and Hammy

The whole Hamidon Raid phenominon is just plain old bizarre to me the more I think about it. It's not a challenge, really -- set, arcane, ritualistic behavior has been codified and passed down from hero to hero across the servers, making the biggest challenge to success in Hamidon whether your connection/graphics card will handle it.

Which is why the current rants about the changes to Hamidon are so amusing in the vitriol they're eliciting. The changes:

Added to the patch notes:

The Hamidon has been increased in difficulty. It is now capable of using one of its attack powers even when Held, Slept, or Stunned.

Evidently Hammy got a laser beam on it's head a long time ago but just now figured out how to use it.

The Mitos are AVs and are acting according to this patch note:

AVs/Heroes and Giant Monsters now ignore threat level damage multipliers for different Archetypes. They are still affected by Taunt as before.

The latter meaning that they don't care whether you're a Tank or a Defender -- if you do the most damage, you draw the most aggro.

There's some justifiable irk over the missing patch note (a real problem from the CoX team). But people are even more up in arms over the idea that they can't magically know if Hammy has been Held by its being unable to attack. The horror! The confusion! The old magic no longer works! Blasphemy!

Frankly, I think Hamidon ought to adapt over time. Make it, perhaps, less God-like in power but a tad more unpredictable. Break the old elaborate dance. Let people know that, about once a month (or two, if we're generous), Hammy will change his tactics -- evolve.

50-100 heroes ought still be able to take it down, and the rewards should be worth it. But it should be something a bit more than a magical sequence of teams and tactics that are more or less guaranteed to succeed (assuming your machine doesn't crash or someone doesn't summon the Kronos Titan).


Posted by Dave at 5:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Psyche!

Hostess Heroes last night focused on the Sister Psyche task force.

Last time we'd tried this -- with Pummelcite, Fazenda, and Araware -- the Freaks handed us our hats, with our heads still in them. This time, we just rolled the damned thing, to the point that we were basically sprinting from encounter to encounter and being a bit shoddy with our alpha strikes. Even with frequent interruptions/AFKs, mission lags, and discos, we went from around 7 to 11, stealthing what we could (even with the "hey, invis gets suppressed when you click a glowie, doesn't it?" new feature.

Even Clamor, one of those ostensibly unstoppable AVs, went down fast hard (thanks in no small part to Peep's Rad -- but at one point she and the Blasters had her held, fergoshsakes -- see the pic to the right).

(I had an even better picture up against one of the Freak bosses, all of whom were decked out with loudspeakers and other fun, noisy bling, but taking it crashed my session, alas.)

Ho Ho and Peep both hit 24 (and, nearly 25), plus two +3 SOs and an evening of fun.

Others on the mission: Bear Claws, Twinkie Kid, Brownie Points, Ginger Snap.

I find it noteworthy that a "goofy" SG is just so kick-ass. Granted, we're not running around on Invincible, but it's noteworthy that good players (and well-played toons) make such a difference.


Posted by Dave at 6:11 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

June 12, 2006

We're at what?

It almost defies belief that Hildy and Torchy are at 31.

Or, for that matter, that Lynn is at the same level, and only a couple of pips from 32.

I remember Lynn struggling with Council in Steel. I remember Torchy being stuck at 22 or so for the longest time.

It's also weird to think that both are about to supplant Velvet as my second-highest character.

And plenty of folks in the wings, waiting to take over ...



On that note, I started playing a new alt (ha!), Chained Path, She's a Mind/Kin controller, something I picked up after reading a very cool Controller guide that Margie had printed (URL to follow some time).

So far so good with her -- the control with her is pretty awesome, and I like the look and story of the character.

Was my first time since the I7 neighborhood redesign running around Atlas, though. A couple of notes:

  1. Seemed to be a lot fewer mobs of mooks around the edges of the Green Zone.

  2. The mobs are of more varying sizes, and, in some cases, made it very difficult to get from Point A to Point B without engaging in combat>

  3. I was surprised that my third mish (a chain from the first, talk to someone for the second, who sends you off to the third) was way the hell off in the Red Zone of AP. Like, "Gah! Purples! Lots of Purple mobs!" far. I ended up doing a lot of roof-crawling.

  4. There's a lot of nice, new, funny dialog both there and in Galaxy. There are also some fun groups (like a Tourist taking pictures of a couple of Longbow agents). (And wouldn't it be cool if civilians interacted more with you -- running up and asking to take a picture, coming over and telling you about some Hellions causing trouble, etc?)

CP is designed for soloing. We'll see how long my interest is maintained.


Posted by Dave at 2:11 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay

June 11, 2006

Signs of the Times?

Is anyone else besides Torchielle bothered that the Talos Island Magic Shop has turned into a Mexican restaurant? Especial para los brujos y brujas, no doubt.


Posted by Dave at 9:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Humor

Shadow Shard #2

Finished up the second Shadow Shard TF this evening, continued from Thursday. About half the missions, running about 5 hours. Hang Time, Noelle Frost, Shock.Therapy, War Bones, Sword of Asgard, Amorpha, and Psi-clone.

The final AV battle, Rudaludarulaluk, or whatever his name is (Rudalak), was just what it should be -- tough, white-knuckly, but doable. We zapped most of the near minions, went in, pounded on Rudi for a while, inadvertently drew the far minions, nearly all died, rezzed up, zapped the minions, fought Rudi some more, had Rudi come into the outer room, fought Rudi still some more, and, finally, long-last, beat the SOB.

PC face-planted four or five or six times -- ended up 86k in debt (which, of course, doesn't mean all that much right now). At that, everyone else did close to likewise. Lowest death count was probably Shock, since she tended to wisely stay way back.

The pic at the right is Rudalak. From the ground (where PC was, flat on his back), looking up over the head of War Bones, who just Taunted the god. Yes, he is that tall. Yes, he stomps like he is.

I was able to confirm, over the afternoon that in mass-hold situations (esp. something nice and visible like Noelle's ice stuff), Psionic Tornado is great fun. A nice AoE damage power, with Containment.

Much fun.


Posted by Dave at 8:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay

June 9, 2006

Is it live, or ...?

Les has a post demonstrating how cool computer game graphics have gotten ... scary-good. Four pictures. Spot the ones that are generated with the new Crysis graphics engine and which are real.

I got them right -- but only because the real photos were there to compare. Otherwise, I'd have been fooled after a cursory look.

CoX isn't at that level, of course, nor should it be (a bit of cartoonyness is appropriate for comic books). But some day ...

Hmmm. That raises a cool idea -- wouldn't it be neat to be able to choose an artistic style for your CoX install? CoX as drawn by Jack Kirby, or John Byrne, or Gil Kane, or Jim Sterenko, or Michael Golden, or Mike Mignola, or Arthur Adams, or Jim Lee, or Frank Miller, or ... wow. That would be really cool. Tailor it to each toon, too -- suddenly each alt is a different immersive experience, not just a different set of powers.

I would pay money for that.


Posted by Dave at 9:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Media

June 8, 2006

Unshiny!

Part of I7 is tweaking Invulnerability on the CoV side to not be all shiny. This makes sense, as, well, having a silvery gleaming sparkling fiendish villain is aesthetically dissonent.

They fixed this by turning the white pixels in the Invuln effects into black (maybe dark indigo) ones. In theory, this sounds pretty good. In practice ...

Well, it's not all swirly/cloudy like Dark, but it just looks ... off. It looks like a negative (which it is), but with the same "offness" that looking at a negative has.

I didn't take any pictures yet (not sure why), and it may be that my eye will adjust to it eventually. But in the meantime ... weird.

Much discussion online about it, too.

(The ultimate answer is the ability to personally color-tune effects for your toon. This has been talked about as a QoL improvement, but I suspect it remains fairly low on the list.)


Posted by Dave at 11:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

Mayhem

Margie was burning a couple of freespecs last night (prior to new ones being issued today), and she was doing it with Blue Point (47) and Amorpha (50), so it took her a while. I amused myself with Lynn, and was pleased that I could handle clusters of 3-4 orange CoT without much in the way of white knuckling. She may be on her way toward being and A.F.R. ...

After that was all done, we hopped over to CoV, pulling out Mister Ravenous and Charity at Home. I continued to have toon-switching crashes (with subsequent file verifications), as well as the irksome "Lose global chat while zoning" Known Issue during the evening. (Had that with Lynn and Mr. R -- in one case, it actually trashed the channel selections for one of my tabs. Might be worthwhile checking that for all my channel-based tabs.)

Still, eventually ended up on a team with Venenata and Barbarity, later with Mastadon Rex ("City of Brutes!"), and saw a couple of other folks on (a lot more people than the previous evening). That led, in turn, to my First Mayhem Mission, featuring a bank robbery in Skyway City.

A few observations:

  1. Fun! A roller coaster ride of things to Smash.

  2. Way too many cops. Didn't get to smash enough things because of all the yellow and orange SWAT teams and Longbow types around. Yeesh. I mean, why don't we see that sort of presence in Skyway most of the time?

    Indeed, we had a slew of character deaths and rezzes and the like.

  3. We had problems with keeping the team together, not helped by Mr. R going to smash a truck, only to find it was the way he'd arrived and zoning out for a minute. *sigh* But lesson learned: stick together!

  4. Interesting tension between "smashing things buys you time" for the timed mission (taking down a group of cops gives you 30 seconds for "resisting arrest") and wanting to get straight to the mission (because, damn, there were plenty of cops inside).

  5. Of course, if you go to hospital, you end up in jail. Which was fun, but time-consuming.

  6. Lots of patrols/ambushes, esp. inside the bank. This was like a heist mission on steroids.

  7. The super-hero to defeat wasn't all that tough. A red AI spines scrapper. Ho-hum. We smashed.

Ultimately, we failed the mish (we got in, got the money, took down the hero, but didn't either exit or zone out before the timer completed). Ah, well. Still, hella fun, and I look forward to more.

The Prima PDF guide for I7, btw, has maps for the Mayhem Missions. Worth peering at.


Posted by Dave at 6:28 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

June 7, 2006

New HeroStats version available

Here. Updates for I7, among a few other bits.


Posted by Dave at 7:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

The Freedom Phalanx

The next CoH novel, The Freedom Phalanx, even though by a different author than the previous installment, The Web of Arachnos (Robin Laws vs Robert Weinberg) suffers from many of the same problems -- cliches, uninvolving characters, etc. -- of its predecessor, but without the pulp charm. Set in the late 80s, it details the reformation of the FP by Positron and Synapse. The original FP has fallen apart over time as its members have squabbled and died off, leaving the heroes of Paragon disorganized and listless, and the life of the city increasinly chaotic, corrupt, and crime-ridden,

Ho-hum. The majority of the interest in something like this should come from learning more about the "signature characters" and the city of Paragon. As to the first, we do, but nothing there really grabs -- Positron is smart and earnest, Synapse doesn't want to be a hero, Manticore is an anti-social vigilante, Statesman is filled with "all my loved ones will die around me as I live eternally" ennui, and Sister Psyche is truly screwed up. Ho, and again, hum. That's about the depth of the characterization, which can be surpassed by 90% of the novels (and 75% of the comic books, and 40% of the CoX character logs) out there.

And as to Paragon City itself -- the book seems riddled with what are either fundamental mistakes (the gleaming corporate towers of Skyway City?) or reflect a pre-Rikti world that has radically changed since then. Hard to tell, and hard to care.

It's not that it's a bad book. It's just not all that good of one. Suitable for light-fluff reading in an airport or something like that. Any of the locals who want to borrow (after that glowing recommendation) are welcome to.


Posted by Dave at 7:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Media

Uninspiring

It appears that Inspirations (combat-related) are a lot weaker than either the text descriptions provided or the Devs thought they were:

DEF (Luck)
S - 12.5%
M - 25%
L - 33%

ACC (Insight)
S - 7.5%
M - 18.75%
L - 37.5%

RES
S - 10%
M - 15%
L - 20%

DMG
S -25%
M - 33%
L - 50%

The Resist and Damage inspirations are working as advertised, but Defense and Accuracy are, clearly, not.

Castle has added it to the bug list.

Cue endless discussion of whether this was always a problem ("The Devs are incompetent dolts!") or was a stealth nerf ("The Devs are evil manipulators!"), which sound oddly like discussions of Washington politics ...

(via Doyce)


Posted by Dave at 7:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Some frustrating evening ...

Pulled out Hildy and Torchy (after some playing with a new Katherine toon and Margie trying to get a Mayhem Mission on CoV). We both had the Pumpkin Henge Croatoa mission, and wanted to take it on.

Everything was for us. We ratcheted to Heroic. We'd levelled since getting the mishes. We both had the one-shot Rune of Warding.

We lost both missions. Hildy couldn't hold them enough with her fiery aura and taunt. I didn't have enough AoE attacks and couldn't take them down fast enough. The little buggers move like greased lightning. We tried both one-person patrols (each of us) and both sticking by the henge, and it still didn't help all that much.

Rrg. Hate that mission. That puts me 1 for 5, and if I never take it again it will be too soon, unless I'm on a sizeable enough team and/or one with a couple of Controllers.

So we ran off and beat up on mooses.

The other part of the frustration was ... well ... the sort of echo chamber out there. Very few people on my Global list were showing up as on. Only a couple of tells on CC. So either a lot of folks are running ghidden and silent, or what should have been a Big Night demonstrated how thin on the ground our particular CoX circle has become.

Bleah.

But we did get to beat up on mooses, which was nice.


Posted by Dave at 6:44 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

June 6, 2006

I7 Release Notes

Massive set of release notes this time, not surprisingly. My commentary (on highly abridged notes):



Combined (CoH and CoV)

Known Issues


2. Recluse's Victory signature heroes and villains give debt when they defeat characters. This has been acting to discourage characters under level 50 from fighting them. The debt will be removed in a future patch, and the Temporal Point reward for defeating them will be increased. Good to know.
4. Mastermind pets are not keeping names when defeated and re-summoned. Eek!

New PvP Zone - Recluse's Victory

* A new high level PvP zone set in an alternate version of Atlas Park and open to players of Level 40+. I do have an interest in this, actually. We'll have to see.

* Alternative 'sally port' exits are available in both Hero and Villain bases, to help alleviate front door camping. Each base has two doors near the temporal portal on the ground floor - in the Hero base they appear as manholes, in the Villain base they appear as sewer entrances. These are connected to 5 doors inside the zone, which will be randomly chosen each time a door is used. The outside doors are not guarded, so players use them their own risk. Clever idea. We'll see how well it works.

PvP Zones

* In PvP zones, if a character is revived at the Hospital, they will respawn with 1 hit point and 1 endurance. This is to enforce a short delay on all characters before they can get back into battle. Not much of an issue to me, but ... well, it seems annoying.

Powers - Players

* Modified PvE critter accuracy. Defense powers will now work equally well against critters, regardless if they have higher accuracy. For instance, your defense powers will work equally well against a Boss or any critter up to 5 levels higher than you, as it does for an equal level minion. Previously, a more accurate critter could circumvent much of your defense, but this will no longer happen. Yay! SR/FF characters of the world, rejoice! Heck, even tanks will welcome this.
o More accurate critters may have a greater chance at the extreme low end of the To Hit scale than previously due to this change. For instance, an Archvillain's To Hit could previously be reduced (with enough Debuffs) to 5%, but will now have a 7.5% minimum. Interesting, though not that much a biggie.

* If a character is at 100% health, they cannot be reduced to 0 HP by a single application of damage. (For example, if an uninjured character with 1000 Hit Points was hit by a Blazing Bolt for 1500 Damage, the character would be dropped to 1 HP. As soon as the DoT portion of the Blazing Bolt ticked (a second later), the character would drop to 0 and be defeated. If the character was down even 1 Hit Point below maximum when the Blazing Bolt hit them, they would immediately be dropped to 0 and be defeated.) I understand the point of this, but, as the examples note, the actual application of it doesn't seem to help that much. We'll see.

* All powers which have an Endurance Drain component will now drain a percentage of a PvE target's Endurance, rather than a set number of Endurance Points. This fixes the issues created when enemies' Endurance Pools were increased. Yay.

* Origin Specific powers will no longer be lost after level 10. Characters who already lost these powers (or who never had these powers) will be granted these powers. People without ranged attacks will be happy about this.

* All Temporary Powers will now show duration or charges in their info. Ah! Great Quality-of-Life thing.

* Powers that put you into a self-contained state (Rest, Phase Shift, PFF, Invisibility, etc) now display "Only Affecting Self" in the mez state text below the buff bar. Nice.

* Stealth and Phase Shift Powers will suppress (for self buffs or toggles) or cancel (for external buffs) when a player interacts with Interactive Objects, such as Plaques or Mission Objective Objects. Suppression of this type has a duration of 10 seconds. This makes a great deal of sense, even if it makes stealthing missions a lot harder.

* The Claws Power sets for both Scrappers and Stalkers have new animations for the powers Swipe and Strike. The animation for Slash has been replaced with the old Strike animation in order to better match the activation, recharge and damage values. Yay!
* Reduced End costs on Claws high level powers. Yay! I might have to rebuild ol' Selene again.


* Fiery Aura/Healing Flames activation time reduced. Yay!

* Energy and Ranged Defense will now apply to Pool/Teleportation/Teleport Foe.
* Negative Energy and Ranged Defense will now apply to Warshade/Starless Step.
* Resistance Inspirations (the Sturdy Line) now offer 100% resistance to Teleport. This will not prevent a player from teleporting themselves, it only applies to Teleport Foe, Wormhole and related powers. These are evidently all PvP-driven. Yay.

* Confuse has had the delay after animation removed. Yay!

* Modified sprint fx to only play while running. Not Flying. Not swimming. Not jumping. Just running on the ground. Big yay!

Powers - Critters

* Arch Villains/Heroes and Giant Monsters have been significantly boosted. They should now require more people in order for them to be defeated, especially at higher levels. That should be ... interesting.
* AVs/Heroes and Giant Monsters now ignore threat level damage multipliers for different Archetypes. They are still affected by Taunt as before. Not sure I follow this, but, okay.

Bases

* Several new Storage items are available that allow you to store various items in your base:
o Inspiration Receptacle: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store Inspirations that they may not be using, but other members can use to greater benefit. A permission set in the SG Permissions allows a character to withdraw Inspirations from the Receptacle.
o Enhancement Container: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store Enhancements in the Supergroup's base. Members with the proper SG Permission will be able to withdraw Enhancements from the Container.
o Salvage Bin: This item allows all members of the Supergroup to store salvage in the Supergroup's base. Members with the proper SG Permission will be able to withdraw Salvage (and just 'see' it from the base's worktables as well).
We'll have to see about this. I'm not sure it's going to be all that useful, except for the Salvage Bin. Well, I can see dropping off Enhancements while back at the base after dying mid-mission.

* SG Logo Items: Numerous items can now be placed in your base that will display your Super Group's logo, including banners, stands, floor plates and more. Oooooh.

Tasks

* Changed the parameters for when an AV/Hero will spawn in a mission:

Reputation/Notoriety Level 1: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 6 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 2: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 5 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 3: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 4 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 4: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 3 or greater.
Reputation/Notoriety Level 5: AV/Hero will spawn at team size 1 or greater.

* AV/Heroes will spawn at Elite Boss level if it is below the threshold needed to spawn them.

Good to know, and, especially with the new, nastier AVs, good to be able to go for.

Tailor

* Players with combined City of Heroes and City of Villains accounts now have access to all costume pieces (Hero and Villain) for their characters. YAY!
* New costume pieces added.
* Several costume pieces revamped and updated.
* Fixed many geometry and clipping issues with various costume pieces And, again, all with the YAY!

Badges

* Added many new badges to the game, Villains now have access to their very own Accolade badges as well, with equivalent powers to the Hero Accolades.
* Defeat Badges now require that you or your team do 10% or more damage to the entity to receive credit for the badge. (The former system required that you deal 25% or more damage to get credit). This is good, especially with the nastier AVs.

* All exploration badges now give a small amount of XP when you find them (based on your level). Excellent!
* Troll Task Force badge is now given out for spending time in The Hollows. Yay!

Graphics

* Changed the way the texture quality slider is interpreted:
o Very High: all textures at full resolution.
o High: texture dimensions capped at 256x256.
o Medium: texture dimensions capped at 128x128, all textures reduced by one mip level.
o Low: texture dimensions capped at 128x128, all textures reduced by two mip levels.
o Texture quality is now treated the same in CoH and CoV.
* Added new lower Shader Detail options to disable bumpmaps.
* Added new "recommended low-end" or "performance" option on the Graphics Quality slider that should set graphics detail levels to approximately CoH-launch values. All sounds good, especially that you can ratchet things back down if the newer graphics give you fits.

* The camera has been changed to be smoother and avoid 'popping' for small items - for example, a light pole between yourself and the camera should not jerk the camera forward now. Yay.

Quality of Life

* Several new options have been added to the display of Buff/Debuff icons in the Status Window (beneath the HP/END/XP bars), the Group Window and the Pet Window. The options for the different windows can be accessed either by right-clicking on an icon in the appropriate window, or from the 'General' tab of the in-game Options:
o Hide Auto Powers: The icons for 'automatic' powers (those that are always on) can be set to be displayed as usual or hidden.
o Disable Blinking: Set whether the icons for powers that are near the end of their duration should start blinking or not.
o Icon Stacking: Icons for multiple versions of the same power can be set to stack on top of other, to display a single icon with a number showing how many versions of the power are affecting you, or not to stack. All sound good. I think I saw the Icon Stacking working last night.

* In combat, attacks avoided due to Defense powers will now show text messages such as "Avoid!" or "Eluded!" instead of simple "Miss!" This sounds like it could be distracting, but I think it's a good thing. But shouldn't be in the same tense?

* A 'Do Not Allow Invites' option has been added to the Looking For Group flags. YAY!

* There is a new window that allows the searching of Global Chat channels. To access this window, right click the chat window and select "Channel Search". You can search for channels with a certain name, the most active channels, or all channels you are a member of. From this window you can also set the channel description and MOTD. Not thrilling, but decent.

* Several new emotes have been added to the game. And they look like a hoot.

* If you receive a tell while AFK, an automatic reply will be sent to the tell sender with your AFK message. Excellent!

City of Heroes

Powers - Players

* Illusion Control/Deceive has had the long pause after cast removed. YAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!

City Zones

* Spawns updated and adjusted in several city zones. Street encounters in lower level zones have more variety. Spiffy!

* Fixed delay when you click on helicopter pilot to zone from Kings Row to Warburg and back or Bloody Bay to Skyway and back. This seemed to already be working last night -- much faster to zone (and a nice "please, feel free to board now" gesture from the pilot, too).

Badges

* The Task Force Commander badge is a new Accolade added for Heroes. For ... leading TFs, I assume. Good. Not my cuppa, but a nice recognition for leadership. Heck, I wouldn't mind seeing some sort of similar badge for time spent as team leader (boosted for team sizes).

Graphics

* Updated and improved many textures and visual effects throughout the game. I look forward to, ah, seeing it. Though I'm glad I'll be able to ratchet stuff down again.

City of Villains

Mayhem Missions

* Mayhem missions allow villains to enter a large instanced outdoor mission map and create chaos. The eventual goal is to rob a bank - but there are lots of other things going on, too. Mayhem missions are set up for single players and teams. Extra mission time is awarded for destroying property and defeating police. Side missions that appear within the mission map award more extra time and other rewards. Nice.
* The old Heists (Bank and Casino) are now available as normal Newspaper missions. So are they not Heists any more?

Powers - Players

* Mastermind Bodyguards: You can set any Mastermind pet to Bodyguard by selecting the Defensive Stance and the Follow Orders. Your pets must be within Supremacy range for this function to work.
* Bodyguard Damage Mitigation: When set to Bodyguard mode, the Mastermind and his pets share damage from any attack that the Mastermind takes damage from. Each pet takes one 'share' of the damage, and the Mastermind himself takes two 'shares'. This is in addition to any damage that the pets themselves might incur from Area attacks. Coolness.

* Decreased the recharge time for Mastermind Minion Henchmen summon powers.
* Increased the recharge time for Mastermind Boss Henchmen summon powers.
* Dramatically decreased the recharge time for Mastermind Second Tier Upgrade powers. All sounds good. The current delays had been madenning.

* Visual f/x for Brute Invulnerability powers changed. They are now darker and more villainous. Heh. That makes sense. Look forward to seeing how that works with Mr. Ravenous.

Overall, esp. on the CoH side, nothing dramatic, but lots of nice polishing. Spiffy!


Posted by Dave at 2:06 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

I7 is live!

Nuff said.

Yes, it's true - Issue 7 is being patched to live servers!

Everyone should get a free tailor token as the servers come back up for all your tailoring needs.

Free Respecs will be handed out this Thursday morning 6/8/06, during normal maintenance time. Free respecs do NOT stack, so if you have an old one use it or lose it!

Huzzah!


Posted by Dave at 12:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Quick bits

Getting back into the swing of things again, in between blogging and unpacking and cleaning.

Spent a good part of Sunday with Hildy and Torchy, pushing them up to 29. Yay. Got the Evil Plinth mission (both of us) in Croatoa, but we have Runes of Whozits, and we've levelled since we got it, so we'll probably tackle it tonight.

Ran with the Hostess Heroes last night. Ho Ho was on without Peep for a while, as Margie had Real Work she had to do from home. And even after, we were both hopping on and off as we were watching after Kendall and Tyler who were playing and eating with Katherine while their folks were packing for their long trip to North Carolina.

First part of the evening was in Bloody Bay, which was going pretty well and fun until a Villain decided to both start gacking people around the pillboxes and stealing their meteorite ore. Bleah. So not into that sort of PvP. We left shortly thereafter.

Rest of the time was fighting red-orange (to me) nasties in Striga, where I levelled. Yay!


Posted by Dave at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay