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January 29, 2007

Oh! Patch notes!

Hmmm ... I don't recall downloading a patch tonight. Oh, wait -- it's on Test. Anyway ...

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COMBINED NOTES

Powers

• Burn: Normalized all versions of 'Burn' to now have a recharge time of 25 seconds. This is a reduction for Tankers, and an increase for Brutes and Blasters.

Made changes to the following graphics effects for performance improvements:
• Psychic Shockwave
• Drain Psyche
• Oppressive Gloom
• Death Shroud
• Whirling Hands
• Foot Stomp
• Stalagmite
• Circle of Thorn Crystals
• Devouring Earth Eminators
• Poison Gas Arrow.

• Brute and Scrapper versions of Invincibility taunt effect should now work properly.

• Animate Stone's attack powers now use knock down, not knock back. Really. We mean it this time!

• Power Thrust: Corrected an issue with PvP Knockback suppression.

• Assault Rifle Sniper Rifle animation: Fixed the 'hitch' in the that happened if used in conjunction with Targeting Drone.

• Assault Rifle will no longer root the player while being drawn.

• Assault Rifle/Sniper Rifle power animation will no longer interrupt itself, which will prevent the power from appearing to be interrupted when it's really not. This was specifically reported as happening with Targeting Drone active.

• Will Domination and Dominate rooting time while flying is now the same as standing.

• Drain Psyche's rooting time has been reduced and changed to work more consistently.

• Added priority values to help correct Mastermind Thug pets from wearing the incorrect costumes and Kheldian from slipping back into "human" mode.


UI

• Base Salvage is now all categorized under "Base". This is done to clean up the lists for when Invention Salvage is added.


Game

• The storm that had blown over Founders Falls and Croatoa has moved on and the more appropriate sky should now be seen there.

• Improved Game Stability, including correcting an issue with capes that could lead to a client crash.

Posted by Dave at 10:20 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Powers and ATs I have problems with

Allow me to say that the Flame and Cold Melee powers (whether as Brute or Tank) are unutterably goofy to behold almost entirely because of the crazy-ass swords. "Flame Sword!" "Ice Sword!" Looks and feels like bad 70s cartoons.

They may be faboo power sets, but I've never been able to bring myself to take them.

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And on a related note, one of the other duos Margie and I were looking at was Mastermind/Mastermind, which sounds really fun -- except that I really dislike all of the MM Secondaries. Granted, the non-minion Primaries are often kind of cool, but ...

Posted by Dave at 2:58 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

Looks like I chose a bad week ...

... to take Rise of the Phoenix as my lvl 47 power. Quoth Castle:

As far as I know the invul period has always been broken, the sad part is the christmas event rez actually had a working invul period in that power.

And the fun part of THAT is that they are exactly the same, mechanically. Gotta love mystery bugs. Needless to say, this is (and has been) on my list of things to fix.

Actually used it once since I got it (at the end of a rather confusing (and poorly encountered) Malta conflict in which Margie was shouting "Sapper! Sapper!" and I was shouting "Where?" "Around the corner!" "Where!?" "Around the corner!!" "There's nothing around the corner but a Hercules class --"

I didn't get to test the invuln portion of the power, but the knockback portion did in fact kick the Sapper ("Oh, that corner!") ass over teakettle so I could get my toggles up and him down.

Posted by Dave at 2:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay , Resources & Rules

I am (or will be) Devoted

According to my account page, I get my 24 month Vet Reward today -- two years of playing this thing, complete with ups, downs, triumphs, tragedy, and (best to me) spending time with my wife doing something geeky.

More items for Bases are available at this level. Now players get a selection of the City of Heroes comic-book covers that they can add to their base as small and large posters. Players can select this reward an unlimited number of times.

A new power is also granted at this reward level: The Emergency Base Teleporter. Now players can access their Supergroup’s base from anywhere in the world. This power has a long, interruptible cast time so players won’t be pulling it off in combat, but makes up for this by granting extremely convenient access to the base.

Level 15 characters will also have a whole new set of titles that they can add to their character name. Simply visit any Trainer and check out the new titles that are available.

The base teleporter is probably the keenest item. (Though it makes me wonder -- if you leave the base by the "front door," where does it put you?) Margie, at any rate, indicated her insane jealousy (she hits 24 late next month -- I got her first involved in the game with a Valentines Day free account).

Anyway, thanks to Doyce for getting me hooked on this thing (no, really, thanks). It's been a long, fun road, and I'm still enjoying the drive.

Posted by Dave at 7:25 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , True Life

January 28, 2007

Double XP Weekend

Friday

Having had such success with a Scrapper/Scrapper duo, we try out a Blaster/Blaster duo. Get them up to about level 8 and decide, no, that's really not all that much fun.

Saturday

Sign on with Hildy and Torchy and basically spend the afternoon bumping them up from 46 to 47. Woot! Also spend the afternoon fending off "Do you want to mid? Will get you to 50 real fast? Mid? Pweeeze?" requests, usually about one ever 5-10 minutes. Yeesh.

Oh, also fend off the Kronos Titan, as we continued with the Crimson arc. Yikes. Gathered together a quick ad hoc team, and broadcast to get another team, and eventually took that puppy down. In the meantime, Torchy died twice, Hildy once. Ah, well.

In the evening, we tried another duo experiment -- All Brute/Brute Action! -- but it didn't quite gel. Haven't given up, but ...

Sunday

This is supposed to be my 2nd Anniversary, according to the NCSoft page -- doe the magical "Oooh, Veteran Rewards" stuff take place the next day? Hrm.

Anyway, we focused in the afternoon and evening on Torchy and Hildy again. We finished up Margie's older Nemmie arc, and finished up the Crimson arc, too (including the final Kronos Titan war walls grind). Big money, big prizes. Started doing Portal Corp. mishes, and ended up dinging to 48, which made a nice way to end up the weekend.

Overall, pretty successful, I think. Tried a few things, went back to a successful team, played a fair amount but not obsessively. Had fun. Hard to beat that.

A few photo shots:

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Once the Kronos Titan was loose (and after Torchy had already died once), Hildy tried to guide it out toward the zone entrance gate (and the police bots), while Torchy flew hiiiiiiigh overhead. Ultimately, it wouldn't budge far enough, requiring calling in a team.

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Afterwards, Torchy, having gotten a new security level, and tired of dying, contacted her dad (the dragon) for some dragon mojo that might help avert the condition. He gave her some (Rise of the Phoenix), but it had ... irritating results.

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Cammie Kandachi, the Lightning Kami, and Ana Kojiki, the Sunlight Kami (a/k/a Electrical Melee Brute and Energy Melee Brute). Kami just wanna have fun.

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Clash against the Kronos Titan (again, in-mish). Torchy is sniping. Hildy is ... um ... underfoot. Literally.

Posted by Dave at 4:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay

January 26, 2007

One oddity of Double XP Weekend

Dinging to 2nd Level while still taking out Outbreak mooks, pre-Coyote.

Posted by Dave at 5:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

January 25, 2007

Roots

The devs have been trying to standardize what powers root you -- cause you to stop, stand in place, animate, and generally not keep traveling and/or fighting -- and what powers don't. Eventually, it will all make sense, but at the moment it's still (as it has been) a scosh higgledy-piggledy.

Latest installment:

Hey everyone. The changes to toggle power animations and the standardization of what does and doesn’t root you should now be up on live. I just wanted to clear up any confusion about some other changes to click powers that also happened at this time. The only intended changes to rooting were supposed to be for toggle powers at this time. We’re in the process of standardizing click powers to follow their own set of rules, but they’re not going to be slightly different than the rules for toggles.

Right now, our intent is to use these rules for click powers:
1. AOE Heals will not root
2. Self Buffs will not root
3. Self Heals will not root
4. Everything else will.

You may have noticed some click powers that used to root you and now don’t. These powers snuck their way into the wrong build (see what happens when we don’t root them), and most of these will change back in the next build that makes it to live. Consider this an official head’s up.

Again, sorry for the confusion this has caused. We’ll get it all sorted out shortly and we thank you for your patience and understanding.

Posted by Dave at 2:25 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Rapid ascent

Rita and Runt dinged 23 last night, which makes them tied for 5th in the numerous duos Margie and I have run, and that in record time. (The roster can be seen in the sidebar.)

I'm not sure if it's because they're fun to play, or because two regen scrappers just kick ass so mightily (thus far). That was all mostly on Heroic, too -- we just bumped up to Unyielding or whatever the middle setting is.

Anyhoo -- if you have a good duoing partner with a similar Brute-like inclination toward kicking ass, the double-scrapper set is a lot of fun.

Posted by Dave at 10:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

January 24, 2007

The holidays giveth ...

... and the holidays taketh away.

Folks are all a-twitter that the temp powers from the Holiday Event (in particular the Rez and the Five Gold Rings), which were evidently always intended to be real-time duration, but were rolled out as game-time duration, have been changed to real-time (and poof!).

Ah, well. Having the (very short) hold was kinda handy, and the rez was okay, but, jeez, to read some posts, you'd think the Devs had pissed in their corn flakes.

There is, to be sure, some minor justification for all those folks who ground their dozen alts through all the Holiday mishes to get the powers, but, as someone noted, "12 days of game time" is 288 hours, which is enough for some folks to get to 50. Which is hardly a "temp" power.

This one (since I declined to invest all that time) get a big "Meh!" from me.

Posted by Dave at 8:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

New stuff a-testing

Test stuff as of 22 Jan:

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COMBINED NOTES


Powers

• Consignment House Teleporter power will no longer be issued to players upon login

• Stone Armor/Earth's Embrace will no longer root the player while activating

• Super Reflexes/Practiced Brawler will no longer root the player while activating

• Regeneration/Instant Healing will no longer root the player while activating

• Radiation Emission/Accelerate Metabolism will no longer root the player while activating


Game

• Players will no longer be notified of Enhancement drops received by teammates.


Incorrect animations

• Some animations were flawed in the last version that went to the Training Room on 1/12/07. They have been repaired.

• Jumping straight up should play the correct animation again.

• Super Reflex/Practiced Brawler should play the correct animation again.

• Invulnerability/Unstoppable should only play the soundFX one time

• The animation for Tough should play again

• The animation for Integration should play again

• Various powers had an additional 'hop' animation that played afterwards. This has been fixed. (please continue to report specific powers if you still see this occurring)


CITY OF HEROES

Powers

• Chilling Embrace animation changed to better suit the power

• Ice Armor/Energy Absorption will now briefly root the player while activating

• Scrapper/Dark Armor/Cloak of Darkness will no longer root the player while activating

• Temporary Power/Wedding Band will no longer root the player while activating


CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Ninjitsu/Kuji-In Rin will no longer root the player while activating

• Cold Domination/Arctic Fog will no longer root the player while activating

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

January 21, 2007

Faultline fray

Rita & Runt finished up the upper Faultline activities -- all the Agent G and PCM and Arachnos and Hidden Tunnels bits. Some great stuff, solid story-telling, a great temp power, cool battles ...

Most annoying bits were the "go find this place, and it's down under tunnels so you really can't use the mission reticle too much, and it's not going to be clear which side of the Faultline Dam it is." That got a bit irksome, but we prevailed. We are, after all, heroes.

Man, if they could revitalize every zone with some of the content they've put into Faultline, CoX would have an assured future. Heck, just insert some solid stories into some of the Level 1-10 stuff (Atlas/Galaxy/Kings/Hollows), and you'd see a lot more new characters (and, maybe, players) out there. Well done zone.

Posted by Dave at 4:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

January 20, 2007

I9 news

Via Warcry:

Scheduled for release sometime during Spring 2007, Issue 9 "Breakthough" will introduce new depth and gameplay to the City of game setting. Players will be able to acquire and invent new toys through use of the Invention System in form of Salavage and Invention Recipes. Resulting items may be enhancements, costume pieces, powers, gadgets, and much more.

Unless this is really interesting in-and-of itself, I don't expect to do much with it. If it turns out to be a sine qua non for real advancement (which the Devs have promised it won't be, though they said that PvP wouldn't affect PvE, either), then it would be a serious blow to my interest.

In addition, Wentworth's Fine Consignments will open up in Paragon City. Serving as auction houses, players will be able to buy and sell all manner of items. In the Rogue Isles, the placement of black market trucks will serve the same purpose, allowing villains to fence and buy their ill gotten goods.

Whatever.

Heroes will receive a new Task Force titled Statesman's Task Force. A high level mission set, this charges up to eight heroes to face and defeat some of Paragon's greatest foes. The reward will be some of the games greatest in return for this monumental achievement.

Well, that might encourage me to break Psi-clone out for a run.

Both villain and hero alike will also find that the Hamidon has grown ever more powerful. Villains will find a new raid encounter against the gigantic leader of the Devouring Earth while heroes will see the need to change how they have kept the menace in check.

Heh. While I'm sure the Hami Raiders will soon figure out the new play book, I'm pleased that things on that end of the world will be disrupted a bit. Ideal for me, with Hami, would be something that required both strategy and tactics. There have been hints that the Hami raid might become a cooperative zone effort (i.e., something that allows and requires both Heroes and Villains). That would be nice.

As with all Issue expansions, Issue 9 will be free to all subscribers.

As always, nice.

Posted by Dave at 11:41 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Ding-dong

Rita and Runt hit 20 last night, which put these kind of frivolous "Hey, let's just have fun with two scrappers" characters ahead of our "serious" new characters, Unchained Path and Idzuna. Weird.

But, let me just say, the Regen Scrapper Duo is Teh Roxxor. Highly recommended.

Meanwhile, Lady Zebra finally dinged 14 and got her Super-speed. And she's not hurting for endurance, either. Not bad for an occasional solo pick-up character. Life is good.

Posted by Dave at 11:25 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay

January 18, 2007

I guess I am a gamer

Scored a 64% on this bad boy ...

Nice one, I guess you are a gamer!

(via BD)

Posted by Dave at 4:25 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Media

January 17, 2007

Double XP Weekend - 26-28 January

Official word here.

Which is keen and fine and looking forward to it and all -- but Doyce writes of something that they do double-XP-wise on that other game which sounds pretty keen, too.

Posted by Dave at 2:11 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

A figure from the past

Yes, I don't need another alt, but this one just sort of hit me from the blue: Old Saucy Jack, the latter being one of the (self-styled) nicknames of Jack the Ripper. Which means, of course, he must be a broadsword scrapper ...

I don't know if I'll ever pull him out to play again, but he strikes me as potentially a lot of fun.

Posted by Dave at 6:57 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design

January 15, 2007

Be careful what you wish for

On the bug list, folks were complaining about the AI on Animated Stone and other pets, in terms of how dynamic and intelligent attack choices were.

Castle's response:

As for AI, I am extremely aware of the issues and problems that exist. Trust me when I say that many, many critters beside controller pets have these problems and most of them are not pets...quite the opposite.

Which I read to mean:

A lot of the bad guys have the same AI bugs -- do you really want them to behave more intelligently in their attacks on you?

The answer, of course, should be "yes," but I'd expect great wailing and gnashing of teeth were it to happen.

Posted by Dave at 2:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

January 13, 2007

Now testing in the Training Room

As of 12 Jan:

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Base Rent Overhaul
Base Rent is now calculated solely on your plot size. The larger the plot, the larger the rent. Secure plots also pay more rent, due to the number of defenses they are allowed to have. When they are re-introduced, Items of Power will reduce the amount of Rent due.

Existing supergroups will see this change take place immediately, but it is not retroactive. No supergroups will be receiving refunds for rent already paid. [If this reduces rent, I'm all for it.]

[... plot and rent list redacted ...]

Powers

• All Taunt power animations have been slightly adjusted. They will now root the player for the same amount of time and take the same amount of time to 'hit' a target. The timing was normalized around Dark Melee's taunt, which was the quickest activating version, so this equates to a minor buff for most versions of taunt and provoke.

• Gauntlet and related power effects should now work properly on all ranks of targets. Underlings, Minions, Lieutenants, Bosses and Elite Bosses should have Gauntlet effects work normally. For Archvillains, Heroes and Giant Monsters, Gauntlet effects require a harder to hit check in order to effect the target.

• Many power animations were changed so that they do not play faster or slower based on the size of the character.

• All toggle activation animations have been normalized to fit the following rules:

• Any toggle that only affects yourself should not cause you to be rooted while activating
• Any toggle that affects yourself and/or allies should not root you while activating. Leadership, Shadow Fall, Dispersion Bubble, etc
• Any toggle that affects yourself and debuffs or damages enemies should root you while it activates.
• Any toggle that only affects enemy mobs should root you while it activates. (Blazing Aura, Icicles, etc)
• All "Tier 9" powers will root the player while activating. This includes Granite Armor.
• The activation time is consistent for all at 1.5 seconds. This generally resulted in a shorter rooted animation. [This sounds, tentatively, positive.]

• The Golden Rings and Renewal of Light Temporary Powers' lifetime is now measured in real time days, not /played days. [Dang. That's irritating. Anything that makes you feel like if you don't play on a given day, you're losing something, is irritating.]

• Stone Armor/Earth's Embrace - Changed effects so that dirt, stones, and rock portion will only play on the ground.

• Patron Power Pets should now die when their creator does.

• Fixed a bug in Tanker and Brute Super Strength Rage which would allow players to bypass the Endurance 'crash' at the end of the power's duration.

• Animate Stone Pets Stone Hammer and Hurl Stone powers now do Knockdown, rather than Knockback. This is to help the pet stay in contact with an enemy longer, which should improve his overall effectiveness.

• Psychic Assault/Psychic Scream corrected pause after using when flying

Rewards

• Key Reward Choices that you do not qualify for will not be selectable, and will tell you why you can not select them. For example, if you complete a Respec Trial and have already earned the maximum amount of respecs possible for a character of your level, the respec reward choice will be unselectable, and tell you that you have already earned the maximum amount of respecs for your level.

Known Issue: This feature is not currently working with the Lord Recluse Strikeforce in this build.

Game

• Characters' wings will no longer be visible while using the alakazamreact emote while they have Force Shield on them.

• Vahzilok kill task in Numina's Task Force should count Vahzilok defeated in the new Faultline zone

• Added team member info messages for enhancement drops. [See previous post.]

• Corrected an issue with a specific mission map where players could click to go to the Hospital, re-spawn and die from nearby critters.

• Fixed a problem with elevators in a specific mission map

• Players will no longer be able to create or edit a supergroup while shapeshifted. [Um ... shapeshifted?]

Tasks

• Characters are no longer able to talk to their contacts via cell phone while in PvP zones. This change is necessary to prevent bugs that can cause players to receive no reward for completing missions.

Critters

• Redcaps can now correctly spawn at levels below 35.

Badges

• The Dimensional Warder badge will now display a progress bar.


CITY OF HEROES

Powers

• Blaster Devices Targeting Drone now grants a damage bonus to the Assault Rifle Sniper Rifle power [Yay.]

• Changed Blaster Devices Taser animation and cast time.

• Removed erroneous text from Devices Cloaking Device Long Help text.

• Increased Kheldian Antagonize durations in PvE, added PvP Duration modifier.

• Kheldians Inherent Taunt ability in Dwarf Form will now work on all ranks of critters.

• Snow Storm FX have been reworked. The base effect was modified and an effect was added to indicate the anchor. Also fixed a bug in the power definition that was causing the base effect to play on every affected mob, rather than the targetted anchor. This should prevent Snow Storm from stacking with itself and becoming blinding white.

Tasks

• Nightwolves in the Bastion Task Force should no longer appear at levels not within the level range of the task force.

• Banished Pantheon Masks should no longer show up in missions higher than their given level.


CITY OF VILLAINS

Powers

• Brute Secondary powerset attacks were generating Fury vs. high rank targets too quickly. This has been adjusted and these power now have the same bonus as the Brute Primary powers.

• Brute Patron Powers bonus Fury vs. Players and high ranking critters has been lowered to the same amount given by normal Brute attacks.

• Increase maximum range for Dominator Blaze, Power Burst and Thorny Barrage from 20' to 40'.

• Fixed Photon Seekers levels for both Transcended and Quantum PPD. They were spawning at too high a level in some cases.

• Players using Ghost Widow's Patron Power "Soul Storm" will go into the normal combat stance after it is cast rather than going into a different animation.

• Domination: the bonus given to Domination gain based on team size, although it was being calculated, was not being applied properly, resulting in lower Domination gain. This has been fixed

• Patron Power Pets should now be defeated when their creator is defeated.

• The Patron Power Pet Mu Guardian should now use his Sentinel of Lightning power properly.

Tasks

• Numina will no longer ressurrect Ms. Liberty during the final battle of the Recluse Task Force

Posted by Dave at 9:00 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Yay! More pointless information!

Someone noticed a change in the training room patch:

• Added team member info messages for enhancement drops.

Which, it turns out, means you'll get to see what drops other folks on the team get. The idea being, apparently, that with the Invention System people will want to know about these things and trade them with their friends.

Um ...

1. Who really wants more info scrolling down their chat windows?
2. Who expects a bunch of in-mission trading. "Hey, I see you got a magic range SO -- wanna trade for my nat endred SO?"
3. Who thinks this is a realistic simulation of heroic (or even villainous) behavior?
4. Who really has memorized all the screwball names of the TO, or even SO enhancements in various origin flavors, so that the freaking thing is actually meaningful. "Hey, I see you got a magic SO Nectanebo's Carbuncle Polish ... um, what the heck does that do?"

At present (though that's not set in stone), there's no option to turn it off (separate from all the Rewards text). Hopefully Lighthouse (who commented in the thread) can do something about that, as it sounds wildly annoying.

I think I understand what they're driving at with the Invention System, but, like PvP, I'm afraid we're all going to go through a lot of gyrations for a limited number of folks who want to take advantage of it.

Posted by Dave at 8:51 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

January 11, 2007

Defiance Defined

Spiffy post (even Castle thinks so) on how Defiance (the Blaster Damage boost when HP drop low) works -- hard numbers and (proven) equations from the devs.

An interesting table the writer generates:

Current   Damage
Health:   Bonus:   Notes:
100.00%    0.55%   Full health
 57.00%   10.88%   Assault (10.5%)
 45.00%   25.00%   Small rage
 42.00%   30.78%   Circa one-shot death from average boss
 41.00%   32.99%   Fortitude (31.25%)
 35.00%   50.00%   Large Rage (50%)
 31.00%   65.98%   Aim (62.5%)
 28.00%   81.23%   Perma Rage (80%)
 25.00%  100.00%   Build Up (100%)
 15.00%  200.00%   Circa one-shot death from average LT
  9.00%  303.14%   Damage Cap (assuming 3-slot damage)
  8.00%  324.90%   Circa one-shot death from average minion

The notes show either equivalents (at 35% health it's the same as having a Large Rage) as well as some danger points (yeah, you get a 200% bonus when you're at 15% -- but average LTs at that level can one-shot you ... numbers based on Level 50s).

And I thought this was interesting, too:

The interesting stuff, as you might expect, happens at or below half health. But you don't need to be at a sliver of health to get a significant benefit. Also, in spite of conjecture to the contrary, my own testing indicates that the defiance bar lags, but defiance itself doesn't: if you have X% health when you fire a shot, you'll get that much defiance boost, period. If you are there when you hit the activation button, you'll get the boost (at least as far as my testing so far indicates).

I've never had a good sense of Defiance on the blasters I run -- if I'm around 25% health I'm a bit too busy to see what sort of damage I'm doing or where the Defiance bar is, I'm just either fleeing, popping greens, or trying to Blast Him Before He Blasts Me.

Defiance also adds a (tiny) TH bonus, but nothing to write home about.

Posted by Dave at 2:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Double Your Pleasure, Again

Woot! Double Experience weekend is coming up soon(ish).

We will be testing the double experience event on the Training Room this weekend, January 13th and 14th. And yes, if everything goes well with this test then you will be seeing a Double Experience event weekend again soon on the Live servers! Of course, we want to be sure our test of the event is good before announcing the Live event times, but you know it is coming!

No doubt it will happen during the World's Worst Weekend for it, but still looking forward to it. Now, to consider who to run through it. My first thought is our higher characters (Hildy/Torchy), just because of the XP needs at higher levels.

Posted by Dave at 2:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

January 9, 2007

Travel Powers

Got Rita to a level a few days ago that she actually had a legit travel power ...

... but, to be honest, she'd been swooping around just fine prior to that for the past week with a Jingle Jet. And she had a Raptor Pack in reserve before that for special trips across hostile terrain. Both of which had made Skyway (and the Hollows before that) a lot less menacing.

And, of course, with GvE, and Superjump (said travel power), she's got uber-jumping ability for 30 seconds at a time (good enough to cross most zones).

I find it interesting that temp travel powers (in which I'd include Pocket D (and the GvE VIP pass) and SG bases and coalition SG bases) have so significantly changed the game, albeit in an odd, incremental fashion. Back in the day, we were foot-bound until 14, and even after that were at the mercy of the Paragon Transit System. Now there are generally two or three ways to get fairly quickly from A to B. Is that a good thing? I think so -- which makes me wonder whether the whole travel power thing ought to be just recognized in some fashion outside of temp powers and SG stuff.

Posted by Dave at 11:12 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Animaniacal

So we're playing Rita and Runt, and we run the Faultline mish with the Arbiter ally to rescue Fusionette (again).

And when it's done, I'm all, "Can we keep them as a pet?"

"Which one?" Margie asks.

"I call dibs on the Arbiter. You get Fusionette."

Which made me realize that then instead of Buttons and Mindy we'd have Buttons and Mindy.

(None of which will mean anything unless (a) you've watched Animaniacs and (b) you've done the Faultline stuff.)

Got Rita and Runt to 17, which is pretty amazing. The dual scrapper thing is a lot of fun.

Posted by Dave at 8:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Gameplay , Media

January 8, 2007

A Quality Response

It's nice that QA responded so quickly to the bug report I filed, but should I worry that the response had headings ... in French?

Réponse suggérée Thread de discussion

Unless NCSoft QA is located in Montreal, or something. :-)

Posted by Dave at 6:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules

Return to Paragon City

For various reasons, during our stint in Faerie I touched not a drop of CoX. Read about it, thought about it, blogged about it, but didn't play.

Last night, Margie and I got on, and had some nice, if brief, fun in Faultline. We saved Mr. Yin (a fun story line), which actually opens up his store to us. Glee! And aside from being visually fun, he sells SOs. In Faultline. Starting at level 13 (and continuing at other odd 5-level increments and in limited flavors). It's very strange, and yet another bit of I8ish goodness.

Also got to play a little with a Christmas gift I got Margie and myself -- the GvE pieces, in particular the Jump Jet. (haven't yet had a chance to play with the Pocket D teleporter -- we had actually parked over at the Chalet, so we reappeared inside of Pocket D. Well, not quite -- Idzuna reappeared outside Pocket D for a few moments, before he game changed its mind and put her inside.) The jump jet definitely helps a Super Speed character, though it's got this weird 30 second timer on it. Still, it looks nice and will come in handy.

I have determined that Unchained Path needs to take Leadership, in particular for the Tactics (+10% Acc baseline). That would free up many slots that ... well, that I should be able to use elsewhere. Or maybe not, given ED slot richness. I just hate double-slotting Acc on everything (or more, given that all my powers really require hitting things to be of use). Biggest problem is that there are very few powers in my Primary or Secondary that I really don't want to have, which makes fitting a couple more powers in there problematic.

And so it goes. Happy New Year!

Posted by Dave at 9:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Character Design , Gameplay , Resources & Rules

January 4, 2007

Sky Raiders

New backgrounder on the Sky Raiders is up on the official site.

I like these backgrounders, and the take the CoX setting beyond what little glimpses one gets in the game (where one tends to focus as much on combat tactics as backstory) -- but I wish there was even more integration between the info in them and the dialog, actions, and missions concerning these groups.

Posted by Dave at 2:44 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Edit
Filed under: Resources & Rules