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I've saved the world countless times. I've saved thousands of worlds, all at once, also countless times. I've come from a different dimension, made my home in another, and returned to that first dimension to finish what I had begun. I've defeated gods and tyrants, alone and with help. I've busted up drug deals and artifact smuggling rings. I've fought zombies, robots, ghosts, Nazis, Romans, aliens, giant snowmen, giant octopuses. I've beaten back armies and hordes. I've hammered down (and been hammered down by) my evil doppelgangers, be they mechanical or cloned or other-dimensional. I've been to caves, warehouses, ships, sewers, the far future, the ancient past. I've fought on the moon. Eight years in the City of Heroes, and it still doesn't seem enough. Tags: coh
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I'd like to apologize to anyone who tried to talk to me online if I seemed distracted or terse. I was, shall we say, otherwise engaged. The interesting thing about being in a closed beta early on is that even if I play the heck out of something, it will still remain fresh in the end, because the version I play is full of stuff that's going to get changed anyway. City of Heroes: Going Rogue is great fun for veterans of the game, although I have my own doubts about how fun it will turn out to be for newbies. It's not bad, and in fact it's pretty awesome, but since it's only levels 1-20 so far, when the player gets into Paragon City/Rogue Isles, suddenly the quality seems to drop. There's also a zillion references to the original game, with characters that stand alone fine on their own, but players who already know their Primal Earth counterparts will get the changes in the Praetorian Earth one. The net result is that Praetoria feels alive, and Primal Earth feels kind of shallow by comparison. Hopefully the devs will start updating the older story arcs. I've stopped playing the GR beta for now, because I didn't want to burn myself out on it. I think I'll wait until it goes Live before playing again; I've done my beta-testing part with all these bug reports. I like to think I was responsible for at least one change, and one fix. At least in part. Yes, I know the change was really minor, but still. Tags: coh
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If anyone cares, I've kind of lapsed in Star Trek Online for lack of anything to actually do. Rear Admiral (rank 5) Taynni Jariz, Science Officer/Science Vessel all the way, is sitting in Borg space waiting for the level cap to be raised, or at least the skill cap. Engineering Officer Amizae Nix (before anyone rags on me for the names, this is apparently standard for the species, according to the Random Name button; Amizae is a Joined Trill, Taynni is a Betazoid) is on hold until Cryptic releases its first major patch, since otherwise I don't think I can stand levelling through the same things again. Not a lot of content variety in this game; this would not be so bad if some of the missions weren't so stupid. (If I mention the Vulcan Ambassador to P'Jem, I think most players will know what I'm talking about.) I honestly think the main reason why I actually didn't dislike the game is because I had the Ace Combat soundtracks (4 to 6, including Zero) to listen to. When cruising along solo in an instanced mission alone, I like to just watch the scenery fly by while listening to this bit of Ace Combat 5. Meanwhile, yes, I'm back in City of Heroes with a Dual Pistols character (Dual Pistols/Mental Manipulation Blaster), like everyone else. Not that I've had much time to play recently past the double XP weekend, but at least I have a new character. I strongly suspect that despite how superior numbers-wise Fire Blast is to Dual Pistols, I'm having a great deal more fun with Dual Pistols because it's so flashy. It's like my character is putting on a performance just for me. Tags: coh, star trek online
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This is working out better than I expected. Not a lot better, but certainly more than my initial low expectations. World of Warcraft is turning out to be a good "alternate" MMO to City of Heroes, but definitely not enough to dethrone CoH as the "main" MMO. WoW is a lot slower-paced, to the point where it's less demanding of my attention, but occasionally (well, getting quite often now) it's a little mind-numbing. Travel times are still a pain, although the Keep On Top function of Media Player Classic is helping with that. The key benefit, I've found, is that WoW doesn't lag as noticeably, possibly because it has a lot more infrastructure behind it. Since CoH tends to lag on weekends (I suspect my connection here in Singapore), I can play WoW then, and go back to the far less aggravating CoH on weekday nights. I wonder how Champions Online will fare against Singapore cable connections. Tags: coh, wow
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So I may be turning into the sort of person who quite literally follows his dreams. Not in the Look To Inspiration sort of way, but more like a Wannabe Oracle of Delphi. Last night's dream was predictably geeky/nerdy/dorky: two things happened, both in no way life-changing or serious, but more of the sort of "oh hey, that's interesting" kind of way. The first was that City of Heroes Issue 16 had entered Open Beta, and this gave me a little start when I woke up and it turned out to be true. Which means that I'm seriously considering the second dream occurrence: for some reason, in that nocturnal world, I got back into World of Warcraft. Now, this doesn't mean that I'm tired of City of Heroes or anything: indeed, with I16 closer to Live release, even now I am considering the possibilities of colour. But since I've been tempted by Champions Online anyway, the mental barrier for paying for two MMOGs has been lowered. I'm well aware that the last two times I tried WoW, I quit in disgust. It would not be fair, however, if I did not admit that my disgust may have been due to subconscious bias: a sort of "why isn't it more like this", where this is some other game or feature. If I remember correctly, there were three things I could do to improve my experience in WoW: - Get a UI add-onA number of complaints I had were due to UI problems, broadly speaking. For example, when a quest giver tells me to "go to that ruined tower to the southwest", I have no idea where I'm supposed to go, other than vaguely southwest. Is it directly southwest? Is it more south than west? Are they talking about this tower which looks kind of ruined, but that may just be the art style? Or this collection of ruins which may have been a tower, once? Installing some kind of UI helper may solve this sort of thing. - Remove all chat from windowsBoth times I played WoW, broadcast chat had nothing but flamewars, trolling, and "hey let's go pwn some low-levels" calls. (Also "help me make some item, my materials" stuff, which invariably led to flamewars.) Private chat had nothing but RMT requests. Removing them entirely will likely save me a lot of aggravation, and lose nothing of value. - Play in windowed mode if possibleMy biggest complaint was that the gameplay was slow. I found that I was basically paying for a game where I had to find some other way to entertain myself while my character strolled very slowly from point A to point B. I'm going to see if I can spend that time watching anime or something, thus making more efficient use of my free time. This is dependent on my computer being able to handle it. Overall, I am of the sneaking suspicion that all this is because what I really plan to do is play Champions Online as a "side game" to City of Heroes, but I'm hesitant about the whole "brand new game" aspect of it (ie bugs, launch issues, gameplay immaturity). After all, City of Heroes itself is more user-friendly now than before, so it could pay to wait. So I might go play World of Warcraft (again, with City of Heroes as my "main" MMOG) until Champions Online shakes out most of its problems, and then drop WoW and switch. Tags: coh, ramblings, wow
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I'm kind of stuck in City of Heroes. Well, not so much stuck as more discontent; I keep getting the feeling that there's this Perfect Costume out there, and it's scratching away at the back of my head, but I can't quite grasp it. So I spend my time blankly staring at the screen while trying to come up with that Perfect Costume. It's a very weird feeling, especially since I usually spend something like five to ten minutes per costume normally. In the meantime, I'm making a few other alts, possibly because I'm still looking for that Perfect Costume. This means that all my high-level characters who haven't hit 50 yet are still sitting there, and I'll probably not play them again for several months. So it goes. What else? I took down my one story arc ("Corvus") because it has become abundantly clear that I really don't want to spend the time to rework it to be less AAAANGST and suchlike. On the bright side, I've got a more upbeat story arc idea, that unfortunately has been put temporarily on hold while I try to work out a good enemy group to use that isn't bloody Circle of Thorns again. Currently I'm thinking Arachnos, assuming people aren't already sick of them. I've also had to scrap a random idea I had about a sort of Endless Eight-inspired (well, technically Groundhog Day, I suppose) loop because I just played through three such story arcs in a row, entirely by coincidence. (If you're wondering, the first one was pretty good, the second one very forced, and the third one okay-ish.) I didn't know the concept was that popular. I actually have two incompatible story ideas, meaning two possible arcs, but one has a generic plot and little else, and the other is based on a gimmick that requires the player character to be either a genius or a sucker. Of such things is the creative process made. Tags: coh, coh ma, notes to self
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The sad thing is that most of the feedback I got is good (as in useful-type, rather than positive-type), and I thoroughly appreciate it, but I can't do anything about them. As a sampling (paraphrased, since I forgot to record it): "The first mission completed as soon as we entered the mission" - Bug that I can't control. You're supposed to rescue an ally and click a glowie; I can only assume that neither spawned correctly. I've never encountered this bug before in my own arc, but I have in others', so I can only shrug and leave it in the hands of the devs. "First mission too short and easy" - Intentional. I wanted it to be short, non-annoying, definitely not too much challenge for a lowbie solo character. "Custom group too boring" - I may have overused them; three missions out of five, of which two are Large maps. It was either them or more Circle of Thorns, though, and I tried to make them less annoying than CoT, especially below 40. "No challenge" - Intentional. As mentioned, I'm going for soloability above challenge. "Pointless and unfun" - Unfortunately nothing I can do about that, short of rewriting the thing. (Incidentally, that was the whole feedback.) Which is, of course, an option, just not now. The arc says it's at four stars with three raters (yes, I know I mysteriously got more feedback than ratings), which could mean anything from 3.5 to 4.4. I'm inclined to believe the lower end, since it's not that good. I see it as a learning experience, and I do think that my future story arcs will be better for it. It's just that sometimes I wish fixing stuff was a lot easier. Tags: coh, coh ma
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Contrary to what it may look like, I'm not disappointed that nobody's played my Mission Architect story arc yet. It's been less than a week. I'm actually seeing how long it'll take before someone takes notice of it, in much the same way when I posted my Card Captor Sakura fanfic to Fanfiction.net. That one took three months before anyone else (other than myself) read it, much less reviewed it. The emotional progression is mostly "I'm so excited, I wonder what everyone will think!" to "Nobody's biting. Well, it's still early" to "Still nobody. Maybe I need to advertise better" to " Still nobody. I wonder what's up" to "Wow, it's been a while, and still nobody. I wonder how long this can last?" to "This is awesome, I think I'm setting some kind of record!" I am a strange person. Tags: coh, ramblings
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- Grab several non-Dev Choice, non-Hall of Fame arcs, and play until I get 1,000 tickets (technically 820 tickets). This will likely take two or three five-mission arcs to get. - Unlock the necessary content for my own arc. - Publish my arc. Hope someone can tell me if the enemies are overpowered; I have the sneaking suspicion that they are, but cannot prove it. - Work on the next arc. Make it funnier, dammit. Not very imaginative, I admit. - I should probably come up with a set of guidelines for star ratings that I give out. Zero: Did not finish, for whatever reason. Lost interest, no time, too difficult, whatever. 1: Waste of time as published. Unsalvageable without major rewriting and rebalancing. 2: Needs major work, the sort that requires several pages that list every single fault. 3: Okay-ish. My time is cheap, so it's not that big of a deal, but would not bother with it again. 4: Might play again if the mood strikes me. Most canon story arcs fall under this rank, which is the guideline I use to determine if a player-created arc is worthy: if it seems like something already in the game (and this is not a terribly difficult thing to accomplish), it gets four stars. 5: Will play again. No glaring problems that I can see. This does mean that the majority of arcs I'll play will get four stars. I have given out five-star rankings to various arcs on Test, though; these are often not to the people you'd expect. A lot of the Dev Choice OMG AWESOME arcs that get a lot of publicity I ranked at four stars; one of them at three. I think the mechanics of Dev Choice ranking have changed since then, though, so I may not be able to do that now. For those who don't play CoH: "Developer's Choice" means an arc that a developer, or rather a developer who has the privilege of doing so, has played, and thought "hm, I like this". It's already generated several flame-filled threads on the forums about the subjectivity and bias. Personally I don't really care; if I'm aiming for an accolade, it'll be Hall Of Fame, which is if a lot of players really like the arc. - I'm not sure if it's because it's on the Test server (and thus already self-selecting in terms of player population), but the quality of player-created arcs is not bad. It's not the cesspool that people have been expecting; it's not uniformly great, but I've been four-starring the vast majority of what I play. Time will tell if this will also apply to the Live servers. Tags: coh, notes to self
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Arc Number: 20568 Title: Corvus Published by: @Bdaly Spleled (my Thugs/Poison MM. Yeah, I love that name.) Level: 5-54 Length: Five missions. Took me about forty-five minutes on a fast-solo character. Map sizes are Small, Large, Small, Small, Large. Enemy Groups: Circle of Thorns, Custom (Those Deep Within) Morality: Heroic (ie anyone can play, but it assumes you're a hero) Difficulty: Ah, here's the rub. I intend for this to be soloable, above all. No Elite Bosses or Archvillains; the last mission has three bosses to take down, but I included a boss-rank ally as well. Please give me lots of feedback: I'm aiming, above all, for soloability, by any build that can solo a regular newspaper/radio mission. I'd like to challenge those, which means that the IO-ed out builds, or teams, will likely steamroll over the opposition. This is perfectly okay. One thing I'm worried about is that for the Circle of Thorns to be at the full level range, I had to put the boss-type as "Random". I don't know if this means "random boss-rank critter", or "random any CoT critter, including Archvillains". Story: I came up with it in ten minutes. It's not Shakespeare. My concern, right now, is game balance, but I'm willing to listen to advice for the plot for the second pass. It's a very OMG SERIOUS story; I could barely keep a straight face through it. It is built on cliches, at least as I saw them. And yes, the last bit is pure railroading. Trivia: I spent about two hours typing up all the text. I spent two days coming up with suitable costumes for the custom group. In the end, I made one design, and then spammed it for every critter. I suck at design. Going to have to make a note of which bits are unlockables. I know the wings are, and I think one of the maps is; not sure about the others. Will copy-and-paste to the CoH boards. Tags: coh
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On another note, I've gotten over my City of Heroes Mission Architect block, ie finally managed to stop thinking about how to fit tsundere stereotypes as a villain group in itself. Now I've got a vague idea of a basic plotline to work with, except that I'm limited in what I am able to do with the system. The story works best with a branching scenario (actually, just the last mission ending dialogue), but this is impossible to do under the present system. (The devs can't do it either, so at least it's not just me.) The original plan had the Good Ending be achieved by not fighting, and the Normal Ending (I don't do Bad Endings) be achieved by wiping out everyone on the map. However, the only way this can be done in City of Heroes is to assign one to Mission Success and the other to Mission Failure. I'd really rather not have a giant "MISSION FAILED" sign for those who made a choice based on their beliefs on how the story should go. In fact, I'm not even sure if I can do this in the Mission Architect, or if the example mission I'm thinking of (one of the Rikti War Zone arcs) is a one-off hack by the devs. Also, in the original concept, I suspect that the choices in the branching will be broadly split down cultural lines (with the usual exceptions): individual freedom (Western mindset) versus filial piety (Eastern mindset). It's not an extreme case either way, but more of "who knows best what is good for them?" kind of thing. Both sides are willing to compromise, but neither are willing to accept the degree of compromise the other offers. So basically I need to come up with an ending that is acceptable to the majority of players, without seeming to railroad them into What I Think Is Right. I'm going to have to railroad them anyway, what with the inability to do branching plots, but I'd rather not be obvious about it. Maybe I should go back to the tsundere bosses. Tags: coh
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Tiny Shiny Widow, Arachnos Night Widow, Infinity server, after 149 hours, laying the smackdown onto Statesman in Alan Desslock's final mission. This character felt far squishier than Happy Punch, and I went through my fair share of defeats. Even so, perhaps thanks to the improved XP curve, I managed to solo my way to level cap (again). People keep asking me how I managed to level so quickly, and the only answer I can think of is that the base inherent for the Villain Epic Archetypes (improved recovery and regeneration) allowed for lower downtime. Other than that, I have no idea. Tags: coh, notes to self
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Happy Punch, Dark Melee/Super Reflexes Scrapper, Justice server, after 198 hours, fending off a Rikti assault on the Vanguard base. Originally I was going to name her Rabbit Punch, and then Spiked Punch, but every variation on those were taken. I'm still not happy with the name "Happy Punch", but I suppose it doesn't matter now. Happy Punch received the benefits of a double-XP weekend to tide her past the 35-40 range, as well as the improved experience curve. This let her be the one character of mine to break the 200-hour mark, although I expect that other characters will be as quick to level now. Also, Happy Punch soloed the entire way to 50. I did the same feat last time with Bdaly Spleled, so now I have a hero-side version. This, incidentally, brings me up to parity in terms of level-capped characters on both sides of CoH/V: three heroes (two Scrappers and one Controller), and three villains (two Masterminds and one Brute). Six level-capped characters. I suppose the main reason I'm still playing this game now is because I can make horrible puns as characters. Tags: coh, notes to self
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Issue 11 spoilers, sort of. Except that there's nothing that hasn't already been publically revealed and available. I wonder if being on the forums too much has spoiled my ability to be unspoiled. It's all the speculations earlier about what the Ouroborous symbol could mean, and maybe a bit of earlier experience with this sort of thing. Also, I've been doing this to all the other contacts for a while now, without much payoff. But when I saw the name of the last contact of the Menders of Ouroboros in the Ouroboros zone, Mender Silos, I stared at it for a while, then groaned and went "oh, now I get it". This, without actually doing anything in Issue 11 as of yet. (If you want to know, comment. Obviously this means that the comments will actually be spoilery.) Tags: coh
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This video illustrates pretty well why I love playing City of Heroes/ Villains: it's just so flashy. We got our big explosions right here. Of course, the primary caveat is that it's much more fun to watch the highlights of someone else doing it, rather than go through the missions ourselves. After a while, the button-clicking becomes repetitive and tedious, and the game begins to feel like a clickfest and nothing more. But when one stops and thinks about what one just did, like going up to a car and slamming a fist down onto it which causes it to blow up, well, that's just awesome. On a completely unrelated note, I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong with Final Fantasy 3. Basically, I'm quite early in the game, about to scale Dragon's Peak (entirely because the characters heard a random rumour about some guy who went up there for some reason; RPG plot contrivance yo), and I'm facing a problem of attrition. Let's recap: I have 2,000 gil to start out with. I start climbing the mountain. Every encounter gives me about 40-80 gil. The inn in the nearest town costs 40 gil. So I need one encounter to pay for one night at the inn. There are certain enemies on the mountain which can Petrify me. To cure Petrification status, I need a Gold Needle (since I cannot cure it simply by sleeping it off). Gold Needles are selling for 100 gil each. So I need a minimum of two battles to pay off the cost of one Gold Needle. I'm getting Petrified at the rate of one character per battle. Every time I get Petrified, I have to go back down the mountain, buy a Gold Needle, use it on the unfortunate character, and then climb back up the mountain. I'm beginning to think that maybe I'm underlevelled, or have the wrong equipment, or something. I've got a Warrior, a White Mage, a Red Mage, and a Thief, all with as much Mithril equipment as I can buy. Everyone but the White Mage has a Mithril Shield. This does help against damage, but not much against Petrification. I must be missing something, even if that "something" is "go back to the cave beside the castle and grind skeletons". Tags: coh, gaming, random ramblings, videos
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Back, I say!
