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July 28, 2006

Blogathon!

Occured to me that there may be folks over here who never read over there, so ...

From 7 a.m. Saturday morning to 7 a.m. Sunday morning (MDT), I'll be part of the 2006 Blogathon, blogging every half-hour on the half-hour for 24 hours on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  So far, ten folks have verified pledges totaling $377 to be donated to the EFF for my efforts. 

My blogging topic will be comic books -- reviews, recollections, good stuff like that.  Which certainly ties into the CoX theme of this blog.  So swing on by during the day (or night) and drop off a comment or two to keep me company.  And if you feel like pledging to a mighty fine cause to encourage me, who am I to stop you?

So if you don't see me in Paragon the next couple of days ... now you'll know why. 

 

Posted by Dave at 6:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: True Life

July 26, 2006

Future zones

Long interview with Archon Voss:

I can tell you that currently the city planners have decided that with the Rikti now quelled, and Arachnos identified, that it is time to rebuild. Faultline will be the first project, along with zone clean ups in Boomtown and expansions. It's safe to start bringing War Walls down.

Hmmm.  Very cool.  The Boomtown and Faultline zones are almost wastes of space (and certainly redundant). Some evolution of story is certainly something to look forward to.

Some cool hints as to the future of CoX ...

Which, coincidentally, ties into this.

Posted by Dave at 11:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

July 25, 2006

Munched

Harrumph. Rather than Monday Munchies, I got to apply myself to working on last-moment budget changes and documentation for the office.

Ho Ho will return.

Posted by Dave at 6:11 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

July 24, 2006

Double, half, whatever

Double XP Weekend turned out to be less of a CoX-fest than I'd expected.  Part of it was just fatigue.  Part of it was feeling like I just had to be out there maxxing my XP generation every moment, and resenting that feeling.  Part of it was just other things to do.

At any rate, my actual gameplay was no more (and somewhat less, in fact) than other weekends. 

We did get Torchy and Hildy up to 35, a power level, which was nice,  I'm torn between Electricity and Fire for my Epic Pools, and I don't have a lot of stuff in the sub-Epics that I'm eagerly looking forward to -- some nice-to's, but no must-haves.

Margie got Blue Point to 49 (yow), and pushed her new solo alt, Last Ice Dragon, to 14 (I need to get LID onto my list at the left).

We briefly played with Cetus and Lunulata, getting them both up to 9, with the intent of then pairing them off with Christmas Present and Al McGordo, but that didn't go very far.  Fact is, it still a slog going through the sub-14 levels, and I just didn't have the patience for it.  That, and I'm finding the squids less than thrilling (though it's hard to judge an AT by just a few levels).

Eliza Dee has been starting and aborting the same Vaz mission, oh, four times now.  I really need to spend some time with her.  And with Lynn, who has similarly started and aborted the same CoT mission a similar number of times.  Frustrating.

Posted by Dave at 7:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay

July 23, 2006

Matched set

While the Double XP Weekend has been a bit of a bust for me (more on that later), this particular double-up has been kinda fun.

I do like the revision on the "temp power" stuff, so that the Nemmie Staff sticks around for 3 days in-game, which means if you have to be gone for a long weekend, it doesn't vanish, and if you aren't running your character constantly you still get a decent run with it.  It divorces in-game from out-of-game, which is always a fine idea.

Hildy and Torchy haven't played Volley-Mob with anyone yet, but I'm sure we'll give it a try before the Nemmy Staff goes away.

Posted by Dave at 9:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

July 21, 2006

Devs are Just Plain Folks on Live

Someone suggested that the Devs have various cheat codes that let them tap into God Powers while playing CoX.  Positron replies:

When we play on the development servers or Training Room, sure... but when we play on Live servers even we dont get any special commands or cheats. We level up just like the rest of you... I know I will be on with my Dominator a bunch this weekend.

Someone questioned Posi's veracity about being a Dominator, to which he said,

Level 37 Fire/Energy... finished the second Respec trial last night.

And when asked about whether the trial was tough ...

 I think I died 3 times on the final mission, all to the Thorn Tree itself, and I had a full Domination bar at that point too. Once we got to the point where we were all attacking it (Brute, MM, Dom, Corr), it went down pretty easy, and no one died... unlike the first Respec trial, where we had multiple TPKs in the final room.

Cool.  Somehow good to know the Devs endure TPKs, too.

Posted by Dave at 4:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

Prestigious

So, on top of Double-XP Weekend, the Devs are rewarding every SG Member 20,000 Prestige.  I.e., each SG 20K Prestige/member. 

W007!

Posted by Dave at 2:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Consortium of Justice

Obligatory what-I-did-last-night post

Not much, to be honest. Got a late start, and Margie was making noises about heading to bed early, so I got on as Eliza.

Overall, not very satisfying. Took a mish, got bugged by an invite which I eventually took when I got killed (damned zombie vomit). The PUG was tackling the "drop off the Outbreak virus" mish, and we started pretty well, but about half the team kept churning (and not for the better) and I eventually went down twice before finding the last glowie. "Thanks for the team" and off I went.

At least I dinged up to 15.

And ... still no decision about how we're going to take advantage of Double XP Weekend. Though Jackie was making noises about some sort of TF/SF on Saturday night. I'd suggested that, actually, thinking of the ginormous XP that SFs usually generate -- but it occurs to me that hitting the level cap will have twice the effective effect, so maybe that's not so hot of an idea.

Posted by Dave at 6:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

July 20, 2006

Base notes

Various comments from Positron about upcoming changes to bases.

 Two of the biggest complaints we see about the base system is “Stuff is too expensive” and “It takes us too long to get a base that does anything useful.”

Statesman and I have looked closely at the data. We have looked at various Supergroup sizes and how they have been earning Prestige since CoV launched. One thing became clear, and that was that players were not earning Prestige at the rate that we had expected them to.

To this end, you can expect to see an (approximately) 25% increase in Prestige earning. This will be in an upcoming patch (have to get it through QA).

To address the issue of “It takes us too long to get a base that does anything useful” we are adding in some new rooms (in the same patch):

He goes on to describe some new "starter" rooms with lower capabilities and lower costs.

Our goal has been refined since the original launch of City of Villains. We now want to allow a small Supergroup of 4 or 5 fairly active players to be able to afford something new in their base every few weeks. These new, lower cost rooms, and combo Control/Energy item, allow us to do just that, without making large Supergroups attain the top tier stuff too quickly.

This week Statesman and I (among others) will begin looking at the larger Supergroups and determining where the shortcomings are at that end of the system and figure out what we need to implement in order to get larger Supergroups to a level where both they and we are happy.

Even better is a later comment that they are looking at an auxiliary item for base teleporters that will send you straight back to the mission (or mission door).  Glee!  That would make it worth going to bases rather than to hospital in many cases.

Most exciting, perhaps -- the whole question of base "rent" is in play. 

 In regards to Rent: This is one of the items we are looking at closely this week. The "glass ceiling" was a design decision to prompt SGs into recruiting more members to get past it. It's fairly obvious (and has been for months) that you all universally hate the idea.

I don't mind rent all that much -- I wish it were lower, and I wish you didn't have to frelling run back to city hall to pay it, but as it's the only thing that causes an SG to actually do much on a continuing basis, it's not a bad mechanism.  That said, if it goes away, I shall shed no tears.

Amusing from the above were the never-satisfied people who requested (demanded) that if rent were eliminated, all the previously paid Prestige be refunded.  Yikes.

Posted by Dave at 10:18 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Mayhem Multiplied

Got on early yesterday afternoon with Eliza Dee, and shortly thereafter got a tell from Grellim, offering to team. We ended up doing the Skyway Bank Robbery mayhem mission, and it was a freaking blast. We did the bank, both side missions, and literally cleared the zone of anything that could be punched, burned, shot, or otherwise taken down. I mean, a good half-hour to forty-five minutes of non-stop (except when I had to catch my breath) action, and most of a level for Eliza.

Thugs are fun, and the Gang War power is just too much enjoyment to watch. Margie's previously commented, with Day Old Shelf, that Masterminds rock on mayhem missions, and throwing in a Brute to take care of particularly problematic opponents works great.

Last night was Villains Night, and Jackie had been trying to get a SF organized. Alas, some SG Leadership / Coalition barriers interacted with annoying base zoning problems to keep things from starting up without losing at least one player. So we bagged that and just went out missioning -- including, eventually, the same mayhem mish (Ravvy got it). Good fun, again, if not quite as well organized (a group of 8 on a mayhem mission is almost sure to eventually turn into a group of 3 and a group of 5, don't ask me why). Ravenous and Charity both ended up withe better part of a level in XP for the night.

Still haven't decided what/who we're doing for Double XP Weekend.

Posted by Dave at 6:44 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

July 19, 2006

Lack of Virtue

I've started toying again with Eliza Dee (the Virtue instance of her) as another character to do solo stuff with.  I burned my I7 respec to fix her (lack of) Fly problems, and was all ready last night to do a bit of playing around with her.

Unfortunately, Virtue has evidently been flaky as hell the last couple of nights, and I was mapserving every few minutes (and I wasn't the only one).  It would recover on its own, but then go down again.  The only time it didn't happen was while I was on a mission (though I mapserved getting the mish, thrice getting there, thrice getting back, and once again while clearing it).

Those problems have now (according to CuppaJo) been cleared up.  So ... good.

Posted by Dave at 11:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

July 17, 2006

Zone, zone, zone ...

Teleport beacons for all zones, not just hazard ones, are on the way.

Granted, with Pocket D, transportation between pretty much anywhere has gotten a lot simpler.

If I were to add a zone in CoH for t'porting, though, it would probably be Bricks. Maybe PI after that.

And, now that I'm almost all leveled out of it, remind me next time that the CoJ has a port to Striga, too.

Posted by Dave at 9:59 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Double the Pleasure, Part Two

Yuppers.

Heroes and Villains,

Many of you have heard about it, and now it is quickly approaching.

All players get a chance to earn Double XP (including double Prestige and Inf/Inf) just for playing the game THIS weekend.

Here are the times:

Start: Friday, July 21st at 9am PST / 12pm EST
Finish: Sunday, July 23rd, 8:59pm PST / 11:59pm EST

Why are we doing this? Why, I'm glad you asked! This is a special thank you, because we really do appreciate you all-through the thick and thin.

You get to decide how you want to take advantage of this. Perhaps you want to work on your alts, or get that one character up to level 50. It is simply all up to you.

So what is the catch? No catches. It's just that easy

So let that XP just pour in...and HAVE FUN!

Margie's already, "Let us talk, then, about our CoX plans for the weekend ..."

Posted by Dave at 9:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

HeroStats

It occurred to me the other day that I almost never run HeroStats any more.  Back when I was doing Psi-clone all the time, it was de rigeur.  I couldn't live without it.  Now -- well I ran it for the first time yesterday, briefly, in a month or more, and then turned it off as an unnecessary drain on system resources.

The difference is largely that I don't have any toons like PC that are heavy buffers and other timed power types.  None of my Tanks / Brutes / Scrappers / Masterminds really worry about when something is going to wear off or be back available again, beyond what the power tray and the power icons (now) show. 

I might do a bit of running with it for a couple of toons, briefly, to see where my accuracy and damage are running.  But as a perpetual monitoring/timing tool?  Or to know the estimated minutes to level?  At the moment, I don't need it.

If I get back into the Controller or Defender game again, I'll reconsider.

Posted by Dave at 10:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

July 16, 2006

The Grind

Some people complain about the "grind" in CoX, running through the 20s-30s -- endless repetitive missions, fill-in powers, etc., etc.

I've never had much of that problem with duos that click. But the big reason that, since I5, Velvet and P-Siren just haven't done much anything playwise is, aside from the nerfing of the already-weak FF Defender, they just have a wretched DoT. Really. PS has a snipe. Velvet has SS tanker punches. it's not that they don't do damage, is that they don't do scrapper/blaster-level damage. So doing mishes with them is one demned horrid grind, as Dickens put it.

So, Phalanx Prestige Day today. A little slow starting, but eventually there were the above pair, MacroLass, Sword of Asgard, Avocet, and MassiveImpact. Of those three were tanks. SS/Inv tanks, no less.

On small teams (PS, VJ, ML, Avo), not much problem. But later on we got stuck in this endless Devouring Earth mission. I mean, like a couple of hours worth. Avo had to drop, and so we figured out a way to get ML and SoA on without messing up the SK/RSK stuff too much. And then we slogged through the grind, to mix my metaphors. I almost cried when I realized it had turned into a Defeat All mish.

At long last, we made it. And, to be sure, it wasn't bad -- we seriously owned the place -- it was just painfully slow, even with one blaster or one scrapper on the team. No danger of defeat, with all those tanks and a bubbler. Just no danger of finishing too soon, either.

On the bright side, VJ dinged 32, and PS got close.

As it stand, though, that mish exemplified why VJ/PS just aren't fun to duo, any more than Ho Ho/Peep would be. In a big team, yeah, definitely a blast. On their own, nope.

But they'll continue to be there for Phalanx Prestige Days. It's a great excuse to play them.

Posted by Dave at 9:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

Virgil Tarikoss - the Conclusion

Previous posts in the SF:  1, 2, 3

Team members of Strike Force Charon:  Mister Ravenous (Brute, CoI), Charity at Home (Corrupter, CoI), Venenata (Dominator, CoI), Barbarity (Brute, Entropy), Face of Destruction (Stalker, ?), Lord Maleficus (Stalker, ?), Black Pharoh (MM, Sanguine Society)

Wrapped up the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force tonight, in a 2-hour run on the final mission.  Compared to my original experience, it went swimmingly, in part because of foreknowledge, in part because we were a much more balanced (level-wise) team, and in part because, well, we just rocked.  Spoilers below.

The "classic" clever tactic, until recently, was to click on the altars via Invis/Hide, get Bat'Zul and his demons in fighting Inferno and his gang, and mop up the left-overs.  We tried that again this time, knowing that Invis/Hide are now suppressed when you click on glowies.  The first altar worked, but the next two the scouts got swarmed by Hangers-On of Bat'Zul.

So, back to the old-fashioned tactics again.  Maybe.  Someone (Margie?) came up with the idea of trying to taunt/draw/pull Infernal out of the main hallway and into the lava pit room -- either to hurt him with lava, draw him from his mobs, or engage him with the Hoi-Polloi of Bat'Zul.  BP tried that, and actually managed to get some of the CoT at the end of the corridor engaged with Infernal and his back ranks -- but his zombies also managed to draw aggro, which meant that even after he TPed back (barely alive), the Legacy Chain and Infernal were upon us.

So, a big, brutal battle, with Ravvy going toe-to-toe with Infernal for a short bit, dropping, temp-rezzing (huzzah), attacking some more, dying when the greens ran out, hopping back from hospital -- to find that everyone was dead or out of the room.  Whew.

But, we'd cleared everyone but Infernal and one minion.  And when we deliberately and calmly and bought up Inspirations at the CoI base, and double-buffed our flames outside the mish and in, we basically waded in, wore Infernal down, and beat him.  Huzzah.

(In the first picture, we have a shot of Rav, Barbarity, Mal and one of BP's zombies, at least, pounding on Infernal.)

Wave attack of Rabble of Bat'Zul took us a bit by surprise, but we prevailed.

Then we started slowly but surely clearing out the Miscellaneous Grunts of Bat'Zul from the arms of the cave around the lava pit.  During tihs time, I finally dinged 20 -- huzzah!  That made life a bit easier as well, but we didn't have too miuch problem.

Got to the last altar, and set things up.  My recollection was that Bat'Zul arose as soon as the last altar was broken.  So we left a stalker back at it, someone at the lava pit end of the entrance hall to pull Bat'Zul in, and everone else stationed further down.

Hrm.  Turned out that the last altar simply triggered another two or three waves of Those Guys of Bat'Zul, which we successfully fended off. That was the cue for the Big Guy to finally appear. 

And, as with the previous attack, it was pretty simple and straight-forward.   Get him out of the lava pit (where he regents and summons imps), and then pound on him a lot.  Good control/debuffing from Ven and BP, good heals from Charity, and lots of punching, and Batz went down pretty darned quickly.

(The Bat'Zul pic shows him where Rav actually knocked him on his demonic ass.  Fun.  He also spent a lot of time wrapped up in monstrous thorny vines.)

SOs all around, a ton of badges, and loud huzzahs.  And pictures, of course. 

After saying good night and all, Rav and Charity went out on a couple of mishes to finish off her run to 20, then we parked them for the evening.

Highest ranked CoV toons.  Makes me wonder what we'll do with them next.

(Final pic, L-R: Black Pharoh (in civvies), Lord Maleficus, Mister Ravenous, Virgil Tarikoss, Barbarity, Charity at Home, Face of Destruction, Venenata.  Virgil has no idea that immediately after this picture, we're going to drag him out back the portal and give him a serious ass-whuppin' for deceiving us as he had.)

Posted by Dave at 8:02 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

July 14, 2006

Virgil Irony

I am amused that this blog entry shows up as the fourth entry in Google if you search on "bat'zul infernal" (and this one is third). Yikes.

I am even more amused, as I read the post and its comments that Black Pharoh (who is on this SF with us) was one of the Sanguine Society folks who was also running the same SF that same day as the CoI was doing it.

I'm doing some research into the Bat'Zul/Infernal final mission to figure out how best to handle it. There are some good notes there. Lots of purples for the Stalkers. Figure out what debuffs, if any, we can throw on the Infernal. And, from Doyce since then, try and figure out how to rope Infernal and Bat'zul (and company) into all fighting each other. That latter is more difficult now that clicking the altars takes down invis, but worth consideration.

Posted by Dave at 11:02 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules , This Blog

Double your pleasure, double your fun?

So various bits of chit-chat about a Double XP period on Test today, Friday, along with double Influence and Prestige. Okay, big whoop.

But then there are rumors that there's going to be a Double XP Event on Live -- next weekend:

For all you City of Heroes and City of Villains players out there, NCSoft let us know that there will be a "Double XP Weekend" soon. From 11AM CST on Friday, July 21 until 9PM CST Sunday, July 23, everything you do in the game will get you twice the usual XP. According to NCSoft, the weekend "will give players the opportunity to level up their characters and gain access to many of the new features available in both City of Heroes and City of Villains".

It's been echoed at Warcry, but I've seen nothing official/red-name on the boards.

So -- unfounded rumor? Well-laid plan? Distorted interpretation of today's Test event? Time will tell.

(Lots of bitching about it being over San Diego Comic-Con weekend, interestingly.)

And, if true -- hmmmm ... wonder what toons I'd want to push that weekend. Go for existing high-levels, make another set of middies into higher levels, or try to push as many lowbies into travel powers as possible?

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Filed under: Resources & Rules

The Night of a Million Zillion Longbow

More fun and games on the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force, this time with missions 3-5 -- Legacy Chain, CoT, and Longbow. Things went overall pretty smoothly with the first one. The second one had a few dire moments when patrols would wander along mid-battle, or when people got a bit overextended -- one battle avoided being a TPK only because Ravvy got away at the last second (huzzah for Unyielding vs. the Ruin Mages). My recompense for that one was that a mapserv knocked Rav and Charity out just before the final battle and we missed the mission credit.

The 5th mish is the infamous Never-Ending Longbow Ambushes. The first time I ran this SF, it was an unending nightmare of red and purple mobs. This time it was yellows and oranges with an occasional red boss, but it was still unending and vaguely nightmarish.

Ravvy went down three times (once brought back up by his temp rez power). Others sufferered similarly. And the damned Longbow seemed to delight in hanging out by the front door.

Eventually, we managed to prevail by adhering to a few basic principles:

1. Pulling is good.
2. Corners are your friend.
3. Pulling from a distance to bring them around the corner doesn't work if you intercept them halfway or stand there waiting for them to shoot at you.
4. Letting all of them concentrate their fire on you by running deep into the advancing wave is bad.
5. Looking around to see what others are hitting on so you can help concentrate fire on those targets is good. (Two mobs with 50% damage have twice the firepower of one dead mob and the other at 100%.)
6. It's great if the bad guys are all clumped up, so you can be clumped up, too (which means you can concentrate fire and area heals can get everyone). It's great if the bad guys are all strung out coming toward you, because that means you can defeat them in detail. It's all good.

I fear Ravvy got a bit pushy about things, and people -- some of them inordinately squishy -- still seemed determined to . But, at length, we prevailed.

By which time it was a bit late to tackle the final battle against Infernal and Bat'zul. That's for Saturday evening. Some tactical discussion beforehand would probably not be amiss ...

---

After that, we got on with Hildy and Torchy, natch. We started doing some stuff, then discovered that this was the Second Grand Alliance Pick-Up Meeting, which I felt vaguely guilty about not attending, but it was a bit late (in the night and the week) for roleplay and revelry for me.

We bashed Council robots and Devouring Earth, then called it a night.

Posted by Dave at 6:13 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

July 13, 2006

Mister Virgil, he much happier with us now

Rebooted the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force last night with much the same crew, many of them up a level or two. Strike Force Inferno still had a 15-20 spread, but close enough to be able to SK the lowbies.

First mish? Mister Ravenous was pleased to see pleasant shades of yellow and orange, rather than the angry red and purple that dominated last time out. We did suffer a TPK in that first going, against a room that was, in fact, full of reds and oranges and three purple bosses, all of whom annoying decided to come running after us at once. But, aside from forgetting my rez temp power, that wasn't so bad, and we had cut the group in half and managed the other half easy-peasy. Charity was the resident healer, and did a fine job of it.

The second mish (CoT at the outdoor power station) was handled through wise use of our invisible stalker resources -- and we relearned the lesson of pulling the folks you want out to the exterior of the map, rather than going in and dealing with wandering patrols (who always wander by at inopportune times, like when you're hip-deep in opponents already) and spill-over to neighboring groups.

As mentioned, the level difference made all the difference in the world -- especially with the SF being front-loaded as I keep being assured it is. Red bosses I can handle. Red minions with ultraviolet bosses, not so much.

Was still having endurance problems, even with an EndRed DO in each attack, if things went beyond a single mob at a time.. And going up against Ruin Mages, and being the Guy with Status Protection, it wasn't like I could toggle any of my armor off. I forgot to try Doyce's trick of auto-firing Brawl -- I'll try that tonight and report back.

By then it was around 9:30p, so we adjourned for the evening. Margie and I re-signed in as Torchy and Hildy and blew up a lot of Council and DE Real Good.

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Filed under: Gameplay

July 12, 2006

It's the Cheesiest, man!

Okay, , so after I'd posted the below, I became obsessed with doing this.  Behold Dangerously Cheesy.

So I can't take full credit for the design.  I was about 90% there (and actually had the toon out and running) when Margie got home.  She was amused by the whole thing, which was when I started describing the design problems I'd had. 

The biggest one are the shoes.  Chester Cheetah clearly has white high-tops.  Male toons can get sneakers -- with knee-high athletic socks. Margie opined that was lame, since women didn't have that limitation -- at which point I told her that I'd given that a try, but you also lose the dots on the legs below the knees.  And I told her I'd actually put together someone who would have been Chesty Cheetah, but decided to go back to the male.

At which point, nothing would do but for her to make that very character.  Which she did.  And she also lit on the improvement of, rather than an orange face with the Spots pattern, she went a full mask with the Gills pattern (and white skin), which allows for a white muzzle and the appearance of whiskers.  Nice. 

She also came up with the idea of trying to do a white spot on the chest by doing a large, round white-on-white chest emblem.  It didn't look good on the female toon, but worked okay for me.

Alas, the photo of her doesn't do the toon, ah, chesty justice.  And I'm not sure about the cowboy boots, but, hey ...

So, Dangerously Cheesy (Scrapper - Claws/SR) and Chesty Cheetah (Controller - Grav/Kin).  We ran around with them for a couple of hours, until Freedom started getting flaky.  The combo, even at low levels, was pretty good.  Of course, I'd been thinking about a soloable character, not another duo -- but it was still fun.

I decided on the "motto" character name, rather than calling him "Chester Cheetah" or something like that largely so as to avoid petitionable trademark problems.  So, in the picture to the right, which do you think is going to be the first to be petitioned?  (And, yes, kudos to the very nice "Freakazoid" toon).

Posted by Dave at 5:55 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

Best of the night

Best character name:  A lizard-man named "Ereptile Dysfunction"

Best NPC dialog:  Purse-snatching victim in Atlas:  "I hope you get a cut on the clasp!   I hope it gets infected, too!"

Posted by Dave at 5:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Humor

July 11, 2006

Hostess Heroes - the Next Generation

Like I really need more alts, but Kate's inquiry about running the Spelunker mission, and the comment that there were various other HH's still at lower levels, made me suddenly want to ... well ... you know ...

The official Hostess product listing doesn't offer much new or interesting -- Twinkies, Cup Cakes, Ho Hos, Suzy Q's, Ding Dongs, Donettes, Mini Muffins, Fruit Pie -- but I suppose ...

... hmmm ... Chester -- a cool-looking, sun-glasses-wearing, orange-furred, black-spotted cat-scrapper ...

And, yeah, I know, Claws scrappers are nothing new in the Hostess Heroes, but ... someone I could solo whilst playing catch-up or pick-up.  And I might just make it Super-Reflexes to make it interesting.

"Dangerously Cheesy."

Hmmm ...

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Filed under: Character Design

Munchies

Hostess Heroes on Monday Munchies last night. First part of the evening was running around the low-level zones to pick up the badges and plaques needed for the Atlas Medallion, which I'm pretty sure everyone on eventually got (even those of us, ahem, who didn't see it when it flashed across our screen).

From there, we headed over to Striga, where we ran both Peep and Ho Ho's final wedding band mishes, then various and sundry other bits. Okay, ready to be done with Striga now.

Wrapped up with the pair of us and Brownie Points knocking over the last 800 xp Ho Ho needed to level to 27. Which was good enough, save that she's dead broke and now has some empty and red slots to deal with. *Sigh* On the other hand, she suffered no deaths last night, despite being the sole tank, and continued to hone her Taunting. All of which (both brokeness and sturdiness) is due to her having already invested heavily in SOs.

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July 10, 2006

Global Chat Frelled

Quoth Cricket (emphasis mine):

It has now been confirmed that we are unable to revert the global chat system. We understand that this affects a large percentage of our players, and for several days great efforts have been put forth to restore the global chat system to its original state.

The investigation is still ongoing, and additional measures are being put in place. Once this is complete, the global chat system is going to be backed up every 20 minutes.

We understand that this affects a large number of our players, and we apologize to those who were affected. Please note that there will be compensation for this issue. As previously stated, additional information will be posted about the global chat status as soon as it comes in. Although a revert is not possible, new information is expected to arrive in the future.

It's been a pain, to be sure, but no more than, say, toggle drops on zoning or similar technical glitches (for me, at least). I don't see a need for "compensation" (except, maybe in gaming terms -- some sort fo freebee maybe). Heck, it's been balanced by having temp timed powers never going away -- Hildy and Torchy mopped up Croatoa with our never-ending Runes of Warding ...

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July 9, 2006

"I'm being followed by a Moonfire, Moonfire, Moonfire ..."

The Fourth Shadow Shard plans for this afternoon were aborted by missing some of the planned players, including the Tank.  We dropped back and punted and, instead, ran the Moonfire TF with the Hostess Heroes.

(In the picture, L-R:  Ginger Snap, Princess Peep, Ring Ding, Moonfire, Ho Ho, Bear Claws, Brownie Points, Twinkie Kid)

Let me just say that I remain astonished that these "joke" characters have gotten all the way up to the 25-26 range. 

That said, the TF was okay -- a lot of Council and Vampyri and a blend of hunts and door mishes.  Nothing too exciting.  I was very pleased at how Ho Ho did -- no deaths, even with a lot of deaths around her (and a lot of folks who seemed to think "scrapper" meant "run in first and draw all the aggro"). 

Dinged to 26 on the mish (as did Princess Peep).  Kind of a blah level:  Tough Hide for me, Hasten for her.  That said, just waiting for 28:  Whirling Axe.  AoE, baby!

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July 8, 2006

Gender bender

Female CoX player who does voice chat with your gameplaying peers? Worried that all those grotesquely sexist male CoX players will be turned off / turned on / dismiss you / hit on you / be inexplicably challenged by your competence at gaming?

Fear not! Now you, too, can have a male-sounding voice worthy of Brian Blessed. Then all those nassssty adolescent boys won't be intimidated by your 1337 gamer skillz.

(N.B. While most of the CoXers I know are male, the females (presuming I actuallly know their genders) include some of the most terrifyingly competent players out there. My wife heads up that list. So if you, as a male player, are dismissive of female players, get the hell over it. If you are intimidated by them -- well, you damn well should be.)

(via BoingBoing)

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Cry mayhem!

As part of the Drive to Virgil Tarikoss, Ravvy and Charity ended up running back-to-back Skyway City Bank Robbery Mayhem Missions.

Oh, my. The fun.

Most Mayhems I've run in have been a big group, and the mobs have been dreadful. This duo (albeit set on merely villainous) simply strolled through. Travel power to the bank, run in, clear out the guards, take the loot, beat the wimp, exit the bank. Easy-peasy, and many minutes left on the timer.

Through the help of Margie's maps, we pretty quickly found the side missions for the instance and did them, too -- ransack the package, smash-and-grab at the weapons shop, kidnap the dude. On the two mishes we ended up having about 10-15 miinutes, at least, after the primary objective was done, and if we didn't clear the zone in either case, we came close.

I was amused that if you blow up Stuff next to the law enforcement types, they take damage when it explodes. That makes it easier, in turn, to earn resisting arrest bonuses.

These were the first Mayhem Missions I actually enjoyed. Good stuff.

And by the time it was done, Ravvy had topped 19 (indeed, was 2 pips in), and Charity was just two pips out from level. So I think we're going to leave it at that until Wednesday with them -- since we'll likely level-plus during the SF, and since we have magical res temp power that is good for 2 days in-game time, and I suspect those will come in hand on the SF, if memory servers.

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Saving a Wretch like him

By the time we finally got on, it was pretty late. Nonetheless, we did the whole Seer Marino / Ghost Widow / Wretch arc, which netted us both DOs and got Charity up to 18. If we can just get Mr. R to 19, I'll feel more sanguineabout doing the SF next Wednesday ...

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July 7, 2006

Malta Meals

New villain backgrounder on the Malta is up online. Good stuff, as usual -- no real new info (for those who read all their mission info), but I like the Malta (conceptually), so it's a fine read.

But better than that is the comment from someone after the announcement:

Ah, my favorite villain group.

And by "favorite" I mean "AAHH! KILL IT WITH FIRE."

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July 6, 2006

TF Guide

Gleepwurp's Task Force and Trial Guide. Nice.

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End of a Zone

Hildy and Torchy wrapped up the Croatoa content (except the TF) last night -- and, in so doing, each dinged 32 -- literally, with the final check-in to the contact. Woot.

(Inferno! Yeah!)

And thanks to T'lauro who jumped in to lend a hand on the second Protect the Henge from the Redcaps mish.

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Novel interruptus

Per Manticore, the current line of CoX novels is done.

CDS will not be publishing anymore novels for us. For the record, that decision was made well before Freedom Phalanx hit the shelves. We are definitely looking into other possibilities for more CoX books but right now there are no official plans. Hope that helps clear things up.

Which is a shame, because the next novel planned, The Rikti Wars, is a lot more interesting to me than the previous two novel concepts (the 1930s founding and 1980s foundering of the Freedom Phalanx).

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TF/SF Mob Difficulties - an Inquiry

Okay, since I know there are Many Knowledgable People out there, certainly someone can answer this.

What determines the mob level in a Task Force/Strike Force?

1. The level of the team leader (star)
2. The rep of the team leader
3. The average level of the team
4. The average rep of the team
5. The highest level on the team
6. The highest rep on the team
7. The TF/SF itself (i.e., it's fixed)
8. It varies between TF/SFs

Every time a TF/SF comes up blinding purple or blah blue, everyone asks the question, and everyone seems to have a different opinion. Does someone have the definitive answer?

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July 5, 2006

A valiant villainous effort

As part of "Villains Night," we gathered up at the Praetorian base and chose up teams (high-level/low-level) to run the Virgil Tarikoss SF. The low-level (18 and below) team was Mister Ravenous, Charity at Home, Venenata, Ghost Maiden, Barbarity, Lord Malificus.

7:00p - Ostensible start time.

7:30p - Actually rolled from the base.

7:45p - Low-level team TPK in a room full of purples on the first mission. "Let's try dropping everyone from Malicious to Villainous." And lessons learned: stick together, stay near the healers, concentrate fire, pull minions.

8:15p - Get rolling again, with Atomyc Furie now on the team for more heals. Many purples. Some reds. More purples. Still more purples. One TPK. Two TPK. And, "Let's do something else.

So we ran a couple of missions, revelled in facing yellows and whites, etc.

MR did ding up to 18, huzzah -- and Health, which can't hurt, though so dying for Stamina it isn't even funny. Ran some of the melees with one of my two armors down, just for the endurance. Actually replaced a damage in each of my attacks with an EndRed. Let's see how that works.

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July 3, 2006

Munched

For Monday Munchies, we ended up running with the Devils Food gang. Which had a number of amusing moment, but was more than a bit frustrating:

1. Lag on Freedom was bad. Really bad. I was considering re-booting, but I kept hearing everyone else complaining, so I knew it couldn't be all my computer's fault.

2. The DF team (5-7 at a time) was fairly squishy. One brute (Dr. Frankenberry), a couple of Masterminds, a smattering of Corrupters and Dominators -- and nothing resembling much of a healer most of the night except Maitre D'mon (Mastermind with Poison secondary, which is pretty piss-poor healing).

   The result was numerous partial or total party kills, and veering away from challenging missions.

For all that, it was, as usual, fun to play with others. And MD got up to 10, which was nice.

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Planner software

I've been a long-time user of Joe Chott's CoH Planner for forever-and-a-day (or at least as long as I've played CoH). BD pointed out that the program hadn't been updated in a while (since I5 or so -- maybe a bit more recently, but definitely fallen behind), and recommended looking at Sherksilver's Character Planner instead.

Downloaded it this morning. A couple of thoughts.

1. Since it works, and is being updated, I'll probably move to this. That's made easier by the program's import function, which will bring in a CoH Planner character into the system (kinda-sorta ... a couple of glitches there).

2. The user interface is similar (since the functionality is similar), though a lot busier and less well organized that Joe Chott's program. One thing that both helps and hinders: slot levels for the enhancements are shown on the same screen, which is both a tremendous convenience and a lot more visual clutter. You do have control over nearly all the fonts and font sizes and font colors -- and you need it, too.

3. Sherksilver's program has a lot of added features, tables, calculators, trackers, etc. It's a much more complete resource. If all you're doing is tracking slotting for your toons (99% of what I'm looking for), that's not a huge benefit, but it's interesting to view (e.g., look at movement speeds with different powers and enhancements on).

So I'll probably start converting my active toons over to the new program. Thanks for the reference, BD!

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July 2, 2006

Ask your doctor!

So Margie and Stan and I were watching the Food Channel, and this commercial for "Zestra" came on, which, so far as we could tell, was something designed to enhance female sexual response, but it was phrased and presented so oddly, we had to quick check it out online.

Went to the site, and found out all about Zestra(R) Feminine Arousal Fluid. Well, actually, found out all about it via the package insert. To make a long story short, so far as we were able to tell, Zestra ("All-Natural Ingredients - Pure Botanical Oils and Extracts - No Hormones") works largely through it's application -- a "gentle application" and "tender massage" to the appropriate female bits for several minutes. Which would certainly, I'd think, lead to an improvement in the female sexual response in question in conjunction with any number of fluids, not just Zestra, but I digress.

This was all just far too amusing, and Margie immediately set out to create a CoH character named Zestra (Mind/Kin Controller), which then meant that she insisted on my making a character to duo with, which led to Satisfied Partner (Spines/Regen Scrapper). Both of them have a character description of "Ask your doctor" and war cries of "Clinically Proven!" and "For best effects -- don't rush!" respectively.

Had fun with the costume design. Tighty-whities are pretty easy, esp. with the cloth belt option. Pity about the circles around his eyes -- poor fellow doesn't get much sleep since he discovered Zestra.

We ran around iwht htem for an hour or so, getting them up to 4. Fun stuff. I have no idea if we'll do anything more than just this post, but if the Monday Munchies crowd ever transition from Food to Medication, we're ready for them ...

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Why Velvet gets very little play time

Velvet and P-siren really haven't done much since we hit 30 with them and did various the various TFs at that level. One reason was that I was just getting really tired of the slow DoT for Velvet, the other was disdain with the Bubbler issues of PS (esp. when duoing with a tank).

So Margie took it into her head that Ho Ho and Princess Peep really need to pick up the Wedding Ring at Striga before we outlevel the missions. So Saturday was Striga Day.

Thought we were going to die.

Not literally. I mean, on Heroic, it was all blues, and Ho Ho was tough enough to stand up to anything the Family and Council dished out, and with Peep's debuffs, they didn't stand a chance, unless we died of low-DoT boredom. Peep's radiation did slow, steady damage, and Ho Ho's axe did slow, ponderous damage. And ...

Oh, for a blaster. Or a scrapper.

The Wedding Band is worth it (eventually). But it really reminded me of how Peep and Ho Ho are definitely team builds, and assume someone other than the two of them will be around to actually, oh, do some damage.

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