random average

I5 is out. Here is the official list of updates, sans numbers.

Posted by Doyce at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Hard numbers on Scrapper defenses: SR, Invul, DA, and Regen.

First reaction: Wow. Super Reflexes is screwed.

Posted by Doyce at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Shade Dancer: The Avatar of Malak Ta'us (praise his name), meets Alliance people for the first time.

Damn that was fun.

Posted by Doyce at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Pretty normal weekend. Mom-in-Law was in town, so Jackie and I had lots of 'free' time. M-i-L fooishly thought this would mean us going out to a movie or something, but there was nothing much out that we both wanted to see, so... CoH!

Hype and Syn, if I remember right, and some time on the kheldians.

Saturday, deleted Lightborne and rerolled him as Epitaph -- same background, same basic build (but taken in an order more accurate to the background, etc.)... put in his application with the Guard.

Saturday afternoon, Hype and Syn participated in the CoJ "Cavern of Transcendance" Trial, which has been nicknamed the Cavern of Pain for some very good reasons that... just didn't seem to apply here.

As Syn-player said, "This is not the trial I ran with [my other character]. This was fun!"

And it was. We smoked that thing in record time. No deaths. Hype got to mess around and fight some of the baddies while standing down in the lava (a trick I first pulled with Archon Burkholder in the Hess TF), and Dave's group-friendly build of Honey was a total godsend.

Sunday consisted of a really late start with Hype and Syn, since the morning was an interminably-slow-starting run on the Fortune Teller mission with Epitaph (already level 7) and a bunch of folks, OOC. The TF Twins picked up Omega Level clearance from the Vice-President (revealing to us one of the Really Cool Secrets of The Game) and tore most of the way through the "Terra" Devouring Earth arc, then we pulled together a 'Dream Team' to run the Eden Trial, recounted here.

I'd done this trial with HT; it was fun at the time, but mah boy died like... 8 times? Nasty, nasty trial.

This time?

Flawless. Fast. Fun. No deaths. Just... awesome. Hype and Syn also dinged 40 in the process.

So, this weekend: Cavern and Eden Trials -- both cakewalks.

Might have something to do with folks we play with, I think.

Posted by Doyce at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Few quick updates:

Shade Dancer: Level 10 and fun as heck to play.

Lightborne: Level 8, a semi-solid background, but no chance to RP with him yet, so no personality yet -- generally no more or less playable than any other AT -- haven't found him more or less survivable than a blaster once I'm in melee, though I can see that possibly changing.

Hype and Syn: Still 38th, so doing the Eden Trial this weekend seems iffy, unless it's maybe Sunday, specially if the hurricane in Florida doubles back from the gulf.

Statesman said at GenCon that I5 would roll this week, but he was then sent to the doc for an illness, so that seems to have delayed things.

Unless they do what they did with the last big release Issue 3 and drop it to the servers Friday afternoon.

Posted by Doyce at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Okay.

I'm not putting this up on the forums, because I've no intention at all of making this a free-for-all, first come, first served kind of arrangement because, frankly, the Eden Trial is a stone cold nightmare and I want to pick and choose the team. Most of the team reads this site, so...

Here's what I'm thinking.

* Hype and Syn will be level 39 tonight sometime, probably. This brings the Eden Trial within range, technically.
* Because of the extremely narrow level-range for the trial, SK-ing to the auto-exemped (to level 41) level 50's won't be possible.

This means the options are:

1. Run it 'now' (this weekend):
** Cons: Everything will be +4 to Hype and Syn (not really a big deal, but suboptimal for getting Holds and buffs off).
** Pros: Avoids the big changes from i5 that will upgrade this Trial from Nasty to Hellish.

2. Run it 'later' (when Hype and Syn get to 41):
** Con: I5 will most probably be in place by that point, making the whole thing an experiment in finding out what will work (all the holds are short duration, etc.).
** Pros: Everyone involved will be around the level-max, making the group as a whole more effective, and if the 'bug' with level 41's autoexemping to... level 41 is still in place, I don't have to worry about debt when we try out different ways of beating this thing.

My optimal group for this would be:

1. Hype
2. Syn
3. Shock
4. Kin
5. Mal

Beyond that:
6. Another blaster
7. Someone else with Holds (Puck needs 4 more levels, alas)
8. Another tank

Thoughts?

Posted by Doyce at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)

Non-Gloranthan Magic

Posted by Doyce at 4:28 PM | Permalink

Heroquest: Can you do EVERYTHING with an Extended Contest?

Posted by Doyce at 4:18 PM | Permalink

As noted here, managed to mess around with CoH a bit over the last week, despite rampant having-a-babyness. Notably:

Got the background written up amnesiac kheldian "Lightborne" (not to be confused, please, with Jackie's "Lightborn" :P), and the delusional Joan-of-Arc-like kurdish zealot "Shade Dancer". I sort of need a respec for Shade Dancer already, but both of the kheldians are fun to play, regardless. I've yet to take an 'alien' form on either of them.

Got a few hours in, here and there, with Hype and Syn. I've a free respec on Hype that I'd like to use-it-or-lose-it before we get the OTHER one with Issue Five, but frankly I don't feel like there's anything I want to change with him that badly.

Got HT on for an hour or so last night to play with the magical memory-blanking plot that's going on with him while Scorpia is ICly MIA -- took the opportunity to group with the Consortium folks and pick up the Negotiator badge while talking about how tough Clockwork and Skulls were on the SG channel. Much fun.

Got Hangbot into the Storm Knights -- something else I'll be able to use for some fun foreshadowing this week.

Posted by Doyce at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

The Risus - MYSTERY MEN Website

What is Risus? Risus is a complete FREE Role Playing Game (RPG) designed to be a "RPG Lite". While it is essentially a Universal Comedy System, it works just as well for serious play.

What is Risus - MYSTERY MEN?
A comedy RPG campaign using the Risus rules and inspired by the 1999 movie MYSTERY MEN (which was inspired by the Bob Burden comic book).

Posted by Doyce at 2:12 PM | Permalink

Jamie Chambers, the creator of the Serenity RPG posts on FIREFLYFANS.NET
about the upcoming launch of the highly anticipated game at Gen Con this weekend.

I want it -- if not for the system (I don't), then just for the (inevitably wrong, compared to fireflywiki.org) source material.

Posted by Doyce at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Something I should have mentioned before, which just occurred to me.

Hype and Syn dinged 37 sometime early Friday evening and, as we'd already planned to get the Numina Task Force done during the weekend, figured 'what the heck' and set about seeing if we could get a group together.

This turned out to work really well -- the range of the TF was level 35-38, Zepher-Storm was (a) interested and (b) level 38, and we got three 'fifties' who were willing to come and play with us auto-gimped down to 38 for the duration: Shock, Kinetica, and Malcalypse.

Now... I was expecting things to go well -- in my estimation, Zepher, Kin, Mal, and Shock represent four of the best players I've ever played with when it comes to doing what those character's do ((I mean... Kinetica is an Energy blaster who knocks mobs ONTO my ice/burn patches.)) -- I and Syn-player have played with all of them a LOT as Hang Time, and I thought I knew what to expect.

Honestly? I entirely underestimated them, because I'd never seen them from the Tanker angle.

Best TF team I've been on -- possibly the best team Hype & Syn have been on, period. As I said, everyone was playing what I think of as the character they are 'best' at, and I'm including myself and Syn's player in there -- I gravitate to tank-mode even playing HT and Strat... and Syn's abilities suit that player right. down. to. the. ground.

You know those nasty first couple missions they throw at you to discourage people from just doing the TF on a lark? Yeah, we blew through those things -- Syn and Hype were a level lower than everyone else in the group, and thus all the baddies were a bit harder, but since we usually run with the difficulty dial set to Invincible anyway, it just didn't matter.

The big bad guy at the end? The one that uses a club made from a tree and Cadillac? Yeah...

Cakewalk. Hell, we help him frozen for part of the (very short) fight.

There was some nastiness during the TF due to a bug with the ambush-code that sends ambushes aimed at the highest level character in the group BEFORE exemps are considered (and thus we were getting level-50 ambushes when everyone was gimped to 38), and Zepher was 'gimped' from 38 to 38 and getting no xp (known bug), but all in all, it was great.

But that wasn't the best part.

See, the Numina TF sort of has a sequel. It's called the Eden Trial. Trials are a bit different from Task Forces in that they are (a) timed (b) nasty as HELL. The Eden Trial, specifically, nearly requires that you have a tank who can handle MASSIVE aggro from MASSIVE groups, and that the group has the ability to take out very large groups of bad guys, very fast.

The Issue Five downgrade upgrade is coming out soon, and a lot of the stuff coming out with it is going to make the already-damn-hard Eden trial... really friggin' difficult. This has created a sort of Gold Rush mentality surrounding this Trial -- "Get it done before it can't BE done."

Hype and Syn aren't going to be high enough level to run the Trial until after Issue Five is out... for sure.

I don't care. I want to run that damn thing in Issue Five -- Frankly, just to prove that it can still be done and show folks they were wrong.

I mentioned this during the TF once and two of the fifties said "yeah, we should do that -- I don't have that badge yet." Cool.

Still not the best part.

We got done with the TF -- went back to Numina, took the team photo...

One of the players said "Listen, when you two (Hype and Syn) are ready to do the Trial, call me. I want to do it with you."

Another player chimed in with a strong affirmative: "I would very much like to do with with the both of you."

Hype and Syn have grown up a bit in a vacuum -- grown up quickly for all that, but in general, we play a duo and we don't need anyone else -- we kick much ass and take many names and, unless it comes down to a task force that requires a minimum number of people, we don't group... a lot.

Some, but not alot. We've leveled up fast, though, and as a result, we're getting to a point where the Task Force Twins can start hanging out with the "main" characters of the people we know.

Those folks for whom I hold very high regard as players ran a task force with us -- largely for the first time -- and when they were done they looked at this ball-buster of a trial and said "I'd like to do that, with you two."

Translation: You're good. Please look us up in the future.

"It's a pleasure working with professionals."

I love those two characters. Love the story they have going on, and love playing them. Most of all , I love knowing we're playing them well -- hearing it from people who know what they're talking about.

Really really felt like we'd 'arrived', right at that moment.

Still smiling about it.

Posted by Doyce at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

As noted here, dinged Hype/Syn to 37 and 38 this week, and picked up Greater Ice Sword on Hype, because I just didn't feel like getting Weave.

Jackie, left to her own devices, has been teaming up with a bunch of the other recent 50's and has gotten her new Peacebringer up to 10th, working with them.

Someone more impressive, she started a new Warshade yesterday who, as of yesterday, was level 8. Yowza.

Meanwhile, my squid-in-a-fleshbag languishes in the interests of the characters I know a lot better. :)

We check into the hospital tonight, The plot that will beautifully take HT and Scorpia out of the public eye during this tumultuous time should be advancing this evening and tomorrow, cuz we're so darn prepared.

To all the game folks -- I'll see you when things normalize a bit.

Posted by Doyce at 9:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

When Respec, as a function, first came out on test.

Also, more recently, two Synapse teams get ambushed by Babbage right next to each other.

Posted by Doyce at 8:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I5 Stealth Discussion

Look, it's right in the description of the change:

Basic Stealth Powers (Pools, temp powers, and Powers not in a Defense set like Blaster Cloaking Device, Controller Illusion Invisibilities):

Toggles:

If you Attack, or are Hit - Critters see you. You loose half your defense buff (and your PvP stealth) for 10 seconds. Your translucency is reduced to indicate this change.

Clicks

If you Attack, or are Hit - All enemies will see you. You loose half your defense buff. Your translucency is reduced to indicate this change.

Primary Stealth Powers (Those in a defense set like Dark Armor/Cloak of Darkness, Dark Miasma/Shadow Fall, Storm Summoning/Steamy Mist, Warshade/Shadow Cloak)

Toggles:

If you Attack, or are Hit - Critters see you. (You loose your PvP stealth for 10 seconds). Your translucency is reduced to indicate this change. No Defense is Suppressed

Yeah, so... I wasn't wrong.

Also, note that Group Invis from the Controller group (And bestow Invis from the Stealth group). ALSO drop all 'aggro reduction' ability as soon as you attack, AND the defense from the cuts by half.

Suck. Suck. Suck.

And hey... even with Invis... all you need is one guy with Perception -- ONE GUY -- to see you and hit you, and the Invis drops for EVERYONE in range.

Guess they don't want anyone stealthing missions at all.

Stealthy heroes don't fit the profile?

What crap. Crap put into play to control its use in PvP, which I don't even do.

And...

What is the point of having defense from a power if that defense is going to only work when no one is firing at you? Or ceases to work the moment you are fired upon or attack?

Sorry, but that's just stupid.

Posted by Doyce at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)

captious: (adj) disposed to find fault or raise objections.

That is all.

Posted by Doyce at 8:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)

Had a chance to mess around a bit on Test with my entirely non-optimal MA/SR build (Strat). A few quick thoughts:

- Damage on the attacks seems to be about 112 to 114% of Live.
- Generally I'm running down through endurance more slowly.
- I kept stealth running throughout just for the hell of it -- didn't seem to do much of anything, not even between fights for reducing aggro range.
- XP totals per defeat seem up to about 124% of Live's numbers on minions and 135% on Lts.

The big question: increased or decreased survivability.

I was fighting white and yellow Banished Pantheon and, as a general rule had no more or less problems with survivability with the groups I was dealing with. I DID notice more incoming damage when the Death Shamans started to raise more minions -- since my defenses are down with i5 and the minions accuracy (already the lowest) didn't change, loading in a lot of minions increased my incoming hits noticeably -- still won, but I was more beat up.

End result: totally playable -- it's possible I'd have never really noticed any changes they hadn't been pointed out, simply altered play-style unconsciously. I *am* a bit miffed about essentially a 'wasted' power (Stealth) required to get Strat's "sneaky-mode" (invis) -- that power's pretty much pointless now (and getting bestow invis instead makes no sense at all). Ahh well: price of an RP build.

Posted by Doyce at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

* Increased the recharge time of Burn (about x4. Decreased its damage (about 25%). Also, current iteration of the AI has mobs fleeing Burn asap, and cannot be taunted back.

Messed around with this a bit on Test server. This info will be most useful to folks who have such tankers, useless otherwise:

1. Burn actually takes (a bit? a few seconds?) *longer* to come back than Ice Patch which, untweaked, lasts 30 seconds and recharges in 40 (with a 10 second downtime, natch). Therefore, what you're looking at with Burn is a 10 second uptime followed by a 35-second downtime, whereas it's pretty much perma now.

2. Damage-per-tick is reduced 25%. I can still take out a pack of white-cons with one burn... but I've got flame burst (or whatever it's called) running in there too, so YMMV.

3. The info in #1 and #2 = net reduction in damage output of 81.25% in perfect conditions. Pretty nasty. One recharge reduction in Burn gets it down to where it's coming back as "fast" (air quotes) as Ice Patch, and in theory going 3 dam/3 rch rdx would get you to the point where you could "open" and "close" a fight with Burn, at the cost of probably another 5-7% damage, net (ie.: the tics would each do about half what they do on Live right now, and you'd get the burn out about a third as often.

3a. At THIS point, the power shifts from a 'must have' to a 'if it suits my playstyle'. I think, at this point, if they stopped here, it would be a GOOD move toward balancing the power. Seriously. I dunno if I'd keep it or not -- it'd be neither better nor worse than other powers available to me in my Primary and Secondary, and I think that ultimately, that's sort of what you want your power sets to be. I've played around on live with this change by simply firing off Burn only when Ice Patch comes up, and the effective change is that I can take the same baddies down -- it just takes longer -- about as long as any OTHER tank, especially with the proposed i5 changes. Perfect, right?

But of course, they didn't stop there. :)

4. Absent any compelling reason to stick around, any baddies on the Burn patch will take about one second (three ticks) of damage, then (when I'm ALONE) run back out to ranged attack distance and shoot at me from there. I know they kind of do that in i4, but it's NOTHING like it is now. Triple-layered taunts (Taunt and two different attack punch-vokes) didn't keep them ON the patch and couldn't bring them back (best part: they back up JUST far enough to be out of range of your local punchvokes! :) ) I've heard that if you're fighting with a team the baddies also change targets, but I haven't had a chance to test that yet -- hoping Amorpha (or whoever) will want to to pick up some non-debt with me in the near future and find out.

This part really makes it a bit stupid for most tankers to take Burn: the mobs basically start acting like they do with Rain of Fire -- scatter -- last thing in the world a tank wants. Now, I happen to have Ice Patch, which will keep them from running away so this fear-change is a 'meh' for me, but other than that SPECIFIC build, there's literally no other secondary power in any tanker set that makes Burn worth it -- plan to perma-team with a controller with group-holds or immob, I guess.

Posted by Doyce at 3:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As noted elsewhere, HT and Shock both dinged 50 this week, so that was really the big news. Lots of 50-dings this week, actually, kick-started by Kin's the week previous: HT, Liberty Bill, Shock, Malcalypse... a couple others. Pretty crazy. Expect a glut of kheldian applicants to the Alliance.

[[deleting snarky 'despite better judgement' comment]]

In other news:

1. Hype and Syn dinged 36.

2. Created a couple Kheldians, one of which (the warshade) I'm sort of already suspecting I might have screwed up, but if there's a free respec coming out with i5, I'll keep leveling her up as is and just fix things then (reduce reliance on human-form powers, so I can open up massive slotting on the squid form, whereas the Peacebringer may be pure human, all the way).

3. I've finally ported a few characters over to the Test server to take a look at I5, since there will be a lot of respeccing for some of my characters. Thus far, I've made copies of Strategist, Gilly, Hype, and HT. Reports and musing on that in the near future.

4. I don't have enough time to play all the characters I want to play.

Posted by Doyce at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Click to embiggen.

Posted by Doyce at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

MMORPGS and the Dunbar number

This all leads me to hypothesize that the optimal size for active group members for creative and technical groups -- as opposed to exclusively survival-oriented groups -- hovers somewhere between 25-80, but is best around 45-50. Anything more than this and the group has to spend too much time "grooming" to keep group cohesion, rather then focusing on the thing the people want to spend effort on in the first place -- say to deliver a software product, learn a technology, promote a meme, or have fun playing a game. Anything less than this and you risk losing critical mass because you don't have requisite variety.

Emphasis mine. Emphasized because it sounds really

really

familiar.

Very tired of the Alliance Leadership boards today.

Posted by Doyce at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Please be advised that the link for the RSS feed for RandomWiki is now http://random.average-bear.com/Site/AllRecentChanges?action=rss

Posted by Doyce at 10:47 AM | Permalink

Click to embiggen.

Update
873 hours on HT. Considering I started right around New Years, that works out to around 30 hours a week. Roughly. Not quite a second full-time job.

(Until you consider that he's one of three 'mains' that have gotten a lot of attention, and that besides those three my list of alts ALSO includes a level 21 controller (deleted now -- I said I'd do it and I wasn't kidding), and a level 18 tank and level 16 defender. I should probably add up everyone's net time so I can be accurately shamed.)

Posted by Doyce at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Seventh Sanctum - Name Generators

Whole pages of them. Much recommended -- a few excellent superhero ones, for example, and even some fun CoH-specific stuff.

Posted by Doyce at 11:12 AM | Permalink

Please be advised that RandomWiki will be locked vs. editing while I upgrade to 2.0.

This upgrade will allow for many lovely bells and whistles, but most notably allows for IP blocking and other nifty bits of spam-control.

Posted by Doyce at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)