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There are three stacks of things on or near my desk at home. Each stack has a book, a movie, and a game in it.
1.
2.
3.
These stacks were not intentional groupings, but the pretty much indicate what I'm planning in the way of games to run.
Okay, they fixed ArchVillains and Giant Monsters on CoX.
Who wants to do the last Shadow Shard TF, and when?
This weekend is very much "out" for me.
Updates to my City Of Characters. A few brief highlights:
Pummelcite
Pushed through last week and got him to 32, got Granite armor and respecced him to drop the vs.Energy armor and pick up Stone Skin and three-slotted swift. I love Granite Armor's upsides -- tanked the Kronos Titan for 30 minutes and didn't die -- don't mind the slow-down to attack rate: it keeps the endurance consumption VERY manageable; but really hate the (lack of) movement speed with that and Rooted running. Need to get better at teleporting in mid-fight and taunting alot.
Granite is a GREAT team-tanking power, and decent for oh-crap moments when soloing, but because of the lowered mobility I'm really going to have to beg teams on on to give me a few seconds to pull the bad guys in tight, cuz if they're all over the room it's really going to be tough to cover everyone.
Still, I really really like how Pumm plays and how his powers have worked out. Very good guy to play when you want some good old fashioned ass-kicking.
Kethos
Dinged 30. 2/3rds of the way to Stamina. Added like five more people to Devil's Night, which makes me really happy. Tried to run the respec trial, but the AV at the end makes the thing friggin' impossible right now.
Markov
Ran few mayhem missions, which have been surprisingly sucessful. Respecced to make him a bit more survivable, which seems to have actually worked. Dinged 23 and slotted a little more damage into his two main attacks -- MUCH happier with the damage he's doing. Shadowslip and Markov have been working really hard on tactics to increase survivability, and that seems to be working much better.
I *hate* Tsoo with Markov. Hhhhhhate. There's just no frigging mez protection on a Corruptor, and unlike HT, Tsoo missions are really hard to simply avoid in the mid-20's.
-----
And that's about it. Except for the 3rd Shard Shard TF with Hang Time on Sunday and a little running around on Markov afterwards, I wasn't online this weekend.
Take a movie poster, make it an RPG poster. Result: The Funny.
New Photoshop Challenge: RPGs go to the movies - RPGnet Forums
Failure is Always An Option: Character Defeat is Player Victory Too
The biggest benefit of failure being entertaining for players, is that they can stop worrying about try to play to win, and instead concentrate on playing their characters in a way that's entertaining. This is how HeroQuest facilitates heroism - not with Hero Points there to save the character's bacon, that doesn't work a remarkable amount of the time - it's loving failure as much as victory that drives players to have their Heroes act, well, like heroes.
One bright day in the middle of the night,
Two dead men got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came and shot those two dead boys,
If you don't believe this story's true,
Ask the blind man; he saw it too.
I keep thinking...
"You could run a game where this would all be possible."
and
"It could be serious."
and then I get creeped out.
This forum was basically created to be a midway point between RPGNet and The Forge.I love the friendly geeky discussion on RPGNet ("What game would be best for Firefly???"). But I don't like the constant outages, the attitude, the bickering and the screaming.
I love the directed discussion of gaming theory-as-practice and actual play, gamebuilding of The Forge, but I also want my geek friendly gaming chatter, too.
So this is basically a discussion playground for role-playing games. Here's some ground rules:
* If you really want game building advice, go to The Forge or RPGNet. Seriously, the Forge is the workshop for that shit, and I'm not going to try to recreated that community here.
* If you see something awesome at another forum or on someone's blog, post it here in the Links category. People can feel free to jump over to that area to discuss the topic there. Or, if you want to meta-discuss it here (as in "Why it's being discussed over there), that's cool too.
* No one gets banned here unless they mess with the zen.
* Actual Play: "Cool gaming moments" are fine. You don't have to build up a huge story to tell us the one or two awesome things that happened at gaming last night.
* "Praxis!" is the theory forum. But here's the thing: It's discussion specifically related to creating, marketing, publishing, selling etc games. I'll eventually put my foot down if I see too much theory not tied to practice. There's plenty of other awesome places to discuss "theory before it hits your game or the table".
* Political, religious, sexual, or other topics that don't involve a game go Elsewhere.
* Swearing, taunts and personal attacks are strictly awesome, as long as they are done in jest and don't mess with the zen here. Keep the taunts, bickering and personal attacks to a minimum: Like "Zero". Also, we're buddies with other forums and playgrounds.
I just... I dig it. A lot. If the Forge is too... whatever... try this place out. Start with the thread "Which D&D race would you shag?" Hi-LAAAR-ious.
Diagram Designer -- a sort of Visio-lite program that seems ideal for charting out relationship maps for highly-social games.
A very simple example I did in about five minutes.
Can you do the same thing in Visio? Yes you can. Is Visio a free download? No it is not.
Couldn't agree with this poster more: I'd like to take a moment to promote the current state of giant monsters.
...and then, as my team fills out to eight and yet another group starts forming, we see the health bar on Kronos budge. And then, as the fourth team fills and a fifth starts, it starts falling in a definite manner. Cheers start to rise from those skilled enough to type and attack at the same time. Down, down, down goes the health... and then, finally, the mighty droid falls!35 heroes, half an hour from when word went out. That was the most excitement I've ever had playing CoH. I'd love to do it all over again.
Mind you, none of this applies to archvillains.
I love fighting giant monsters on CoH. LOVE it. I loved the Winterlord event not for the xp (I limited myself to one fight a day), but for the BIG GIANT MONSTER TO FIGHT! The change to GM's has been great fun, a zone-assembling event (it took three teams to take out Deathsurge in Cap au Diablo this weekend, but Dolmen was the leader of Team One), and I like that, a LOT.
AVs? Hell, I don't think the change itself is a bad one... if the AVs were built to a STANDARD, but they aren't, which makes some of them impossible to beat with an 8-person team which, at least on a task force, is all yah got.
For example: did the first Villain Strike force... rolled it... got to Infernal -- he's unbeatable.
Synapse Task Force: you can get help on Babbage... but the Clockwork King... with the AV patch in, he's not beatable right now.
Some AVs are... some aren't... no standards.
Multiplayer game designer Raph Koster offers some observations on the Lifecycles of a Gamer:
In many ways, we are all heading for a Socialization Destination. Everyone gets bored of a given virtual world. They then hang out there only because it’s where their friends are. The games in these worlds are like the beer at a bar, the rides at a carnival. They are diversions, and the point for most ends up being the other people.
Something I've heard over and over: "if it weren't for the people, I'd have left this game by now."
Which is why I'm more interested in organizing regular group activities these days, I suppose: it's things like Monday Munchies and regular task forces and events that pull together all the people I really like playing with that, for whatever of a 100 different reasons, I don't get to see in game with the same regularity as in the past.
Someone beat the Lord Recluse Strike Force.
Yeah, the one with Four level 50 heroes all standing together.
Yeah, the one with Five MORE level 51 heroes all standing in the same room.
Yeah, the one with EIGHT level 54 heroes all standing together in the same room, including every major name in the Freedom Phanlanx.
The cunning plan for taking on that final pack of the Earth's Paragon's Mightest Heroes?
Rush in and beat the living crap out of them.
Yes. That's it: Do unto them metric assloads of damage.
So I ran into one of those 'impossible' AVs last night -- the ones that are supposed to be made more palatable with the next patch.
Now, up to this point, I was starting to think the Impossible AV thing was a bit of an Cityof urban legend. Since i7 went in, I've been on a team that took out Rudalak the Strong (4000+ hit points), and another one that took out Clamor.
Now... the main thing they're fixing with AV's is the regen rate, and I can sort of see why -- they've basically amped up the regen rates right now to about 10 or 11 times what they used to be, and said they'll dial back to about 3 times what they used to be. Fine.
But like I said... we've done a couple, and the dectupled regen rates didn't make them undoable, and one of THEM was given as an EXAMPLE of un unbeatable AV.
Last night, I ran into an AV that was TOTALLY unbeatable...
Why? It was his (Infernal from the Tarikoss SF) regen rate, yeah, but it's the same boosted rate as everyone else, and the team wasn't totally retarded, so why did it matter this time?
Hit points.
Lemme lay this out. Regen in the game doesn't work as a set number. There's no healing or regen power in the game that's written as "You will heal 52 points," or "you will regen 3 points a second"; they are all written as a percentage of your total hit points: "this power will heal everyone nearby a number of points equal to 25% of the healer's total hit points" or "you will heal 1% of your hit points every second."
That's why Dull Pain is cool: by raising your max hit points, it also raises the amount you heal from second to second.
So... why were those other AV's beatable and the guy last night impossible?
Rudalak: ~4000 hit points, with a big regen rate.
Result: Eh. That's a lot, sure, but, compared to the heroes fighting him... not A LOT. Hype (who wasn't there, but I know his stats) has around 2300 hit points himself. Rudalak has less than double that, a really good regen rate, and something like seven maxed-out level 50 characters pounding the snot out of him. Yeah. He drops.
Clamor: ~???? hit points (didn't look), with a big regen rate, but whose healing rate was, in turn, DEBUFFED by a Radiation power.
Result: We cleaned her clock. If you have a power that slows down a regen rate by half, and they have a HUGE regen rate, the debuff is, likewise, going to be HUGE. Honestly, the fight versus Clamor didn't feel any different than an "old" arch-Villain fight, which I take to mean that we (and by "we" I mean "Peep") had her debuffed down to nearly her old numbers.
Infernal: ~5300(!!!) hit points, with a big regen rate.
Result: Utterly unable to dent him. Why? Duh. He's got more hit points and, thus a BETTER regen rate than an AV who's been DESIGNED to take on a group of EIGHT level-50 characters. Sure, he's not hitting as hard as Rudalak (no 600-point Area attacks), but when your health bar never drops more than 75 points out of THOUSANDS before you tap back up to full... well, you don't need to work fast.
7 level 50's beat on Rudalak for about 10 minutes to take him down. What possible chance does a group of unmaxed character ranging from 18 to 20 have against a guy who heals faster than that and has more hit points to start with?
Zero.
So... three hours or so, messing around on a Strike Force last night, and good End of Mission XP for the missions, but in the end... no joy. The guy was simply impossible.
But the problem isn't the regen rate. I've been on teams that have demonstrated that it's not really the hit points that are the problem; it's that there appear to be no standards or guidelines for how tough an AV should be for a given level -- designers are just pulling hit point totals out of their ascii and plunking them in.
Regen rate or note, if the guy was a similar power level to OTHER level-20 AVs, we could have taken him.
As it was? No chance.
Risusiverse, the Risus Wiki.
Awesome.
Changed around the layout on the page for my City Of Characters, to two purposes:
1. Lets my just update that page with note-like updates, instead of here.
2. Page change isn't as easy to see on all on page when reading, but is WAY easier to read in the edit screen. MUCH EASIER.
As noted here, played Kethos and Pummelcite enough over the weekend to get Keth up two levels to 29 and Pummelcite to 31.
And ran about 8 to 10 hours on a task force with Hang Time.
... and talked about another Task Force tonight with the Munchies.
--
Think I need to go golfing or something.
Was going to do Firefly on Friday night, but between how I was feeling and some other stuff, I wasn't up to GMing.
I need some regular games, or some kind of regular things that lets me see the locals more.
Coming out of my cage
And I've been doin' just fine
Gotta gotta be down
Because I want it all
-- The Killers, Mister Brightside
Paragon City, Brickstown (AP) Officials are, reportedly, baffled at the recent successful Ziggurat escape affected by criminals Torrance and Matthew Bright, a.k.a Lady Optimism and Mister Brightside.
"It's not that they couldn't have escaped -- they're both really smart folks," commented one anonymous guard. "But that's just it -- being a criminal mastermind isn't enough -- to get out of the Zig, you need connections on the outside, and these two didn't have any. They've done too many bad things for a hero to help them, and most of the guys in the Rogue Isles... even inside the Zig think they're really... annoying."
"Hell yeah," a passing prisoner added, "I was going to break out that night too, but when I heard those two were getting out, I figured I'd stay. A guy needs a break more than a break-out, y'know?"
Notorious in Paragon City for their upbeat attitude, steadfast smiles, and constantly climbing bodycount, the two Ph.D criminals may have failed to make many friends with Arachnos, but their escape in night proves that someone wanted them free and unleashing their own personal brand of bright-eyed mayhem.
"It's been really, really super staying here," reads the perfectly handwritten note on Torrance Bright's cot. "Thanks SO MUCH for having us, and remember what I suggested about the new window treatments and some wake-up yoga for Cell Block E. E is for Exercise!
- <3, Torrie."
It's simply difficult to imagine who.
Lady Optimism and Mister Brightside: the kind of villainy that Virtue shard deserves. Go team!
Current chatter about how difficult AVs are to beat in i7 is making me a bit nervous about the end of the Rudalak TF on Sunday...
And... as the post listed above is about the Sister Psyche TF, and I wanted to do that TF during Monday Munchies this week... yeah.
BTW, who wants to do Sister Psyche during the Monday Munchies this week? Seems like all the active folks are in the 20-25 range for it.
Random Heroquest thought, prepping for the Firefly game tonight: Failure means conflict.
Spoileriffic: Shadow Shard Task Force Two Checklist
Used a few of the free respecs over my lunch break today -- mostly on my bad guys, where I had the most re-thinking to do.
Dolmen (18)
With Dolmen, the real problem is the balance between surviving combat and holding aggro -- he does the latter just fine with his current build, which in turn makes the former task REALLY difficult. Further, endurance is an issue, and will continue to be until he gets stamina at... 26th? Oy. I could get it sooner, at the expense of him being boring to play. Thank you; no.
Brutes are basically designed to be able to solo darn well -- they're facing group sizes they can handle, and automatically get all the incoming aggro to build fury -- but unless they pick up a bite-me aura or taunt, they don't contribute the same level of SMASH to a team, because they don't have enough attacks coming in at them to build fury. The downside is that if you build you brute to GET the group aggro that'll build fury, you're pulling a whole team's worth of damage, and frankly, brutes just. can't. take it. Not without help, and sometimes not even then -- most corruptors and masterminds with support abilities just don't think in terms of those abilities most of the time.
((For example: Markov is an AR/Kin. Lots of folks have to change their tactics somewhere when they get into a group versus soloing, but if a corruptor wants to support well, their role changes DRAMATICALLY. Hiding behind a brute last night, letting her take the aggro, and helping her SURVIVE it meant switching from 80-90% attacks and the rare heal, to 80% support powers and MAYBE one or two attacks in a WHOLE combat -- that's what I DID, but in my experience with my Brutes, VERY FEW corruptors switch modes like that when they're in a group -- you are ON YOUR OWN most of the time as a brute, which the Corruptors circle the fight looking for some beat-up schmuck to get Scourge going on.))
Not entirely thrilled with what I did on Dolmen's respec, since it essentially amounted to a fine-tuning of the build he already had -- things I could just as easily have fixed with the next odd-level slot allocations -- and of course I thought of what I *should* have done a few minutes after I saved the respec and moved on, but c'est la vie. Not like I ever said I was patient.
Thing is, what I SHOULD have done was drop the taunt-aura power and pick up boxing -- more fury built, more quick and low-endurance damage, and I don't have to worry about pulling too much aggro in a team setting.
Couldn't do it. Without that aura, I had no real way to protect the team, and while I'll never build a brute with taunt, I can't abandon EVERYTHING -- my tank instincts are too strong.
Also, that damage aura means a LOT fewer attacks I have to use to finish off the last couple guys in a group, so it's an endurance thing also.
That said, I probably WILL Respec and drop the damage-aura at a later time -- probably the same level I pick up Cloak of Fear. :)
Tested in Play: Not really, but like I said, I didn't really change much. Nice thing: I was able to sell off all his yellow enhancements and pick up lovely green ones for all his powers, and still had a whole 4k left over. Woo!
Markov Chain
Markov's problem is simple: too much aggro, not enough endurance -- a problem compounded by the fact that I'd like to keep stealth running, both for concept reasons and because Markov works with a Stalker most of the time, and with your partner either Hidden or placating, you do NOT need help getting aggro.
Solution: move flamethrower to later in the build to pick up a LITTLE less aggro. Moving that, plus committing the heresy of not getting Siphon Power (burn me! burn me now!) means that I could get Markov into Stamina at level 20 -- a power he didn't even HAVE in the current build -- and get anther endurance reduction into Stealth. Honestly, flamethrower looks great and has a fine area of effect, but damn it's slow and damn it's an endurance hog and it only REALLY pays for itself in big groups with large crowds... which I'm not doing right now -- I'm actually considering pushing it off a few more levels and maybe getting siphon power back at 24 -- the damage boost is meh, but the damage REDUCTION versus your target will be huge when fighting bosses and Signature Heroes -- like a 25% boost to everyone's resistance armor.
In play: I ran a quick mission with Markov after the respec and reslotting (had enough money to get into green DO's with a few SO's here (Stamina) and there (Stealth). Granted, I ALWAYS have fewer endurance issues when I solo with Markov (hell, I'd probably never hit the ground if not for bosses, where he just doesn't do enough damage), but between Stamina, the extra slot in Stealth, and no flamethrower, his endurance bar never went below half, and neither did his health. Sounds good to me. Maybe it won't help a bit -- here's hoping it will.
Kethos
Kethos was another respec where I basically just wanted to tweak his slotting more than his power selection. In this case, I have the same powers, but picked them up at much different levels -- Touch of Fear at level 8; cone attack at 24, for example -- and reallocated slots to (a) max out his armor and (b) get another slot in brawl.
What's that?
I ran some HeroStats analysis a few days back and noticed that plain ol' Brawl is very good damage for Kethos -- makes sense -- between the speed of the attack itself, the Fury Bar, and the fact that I FORCE myself to let it autofire between every one of his real attacks to keep his endurance costs manageable (he doesn't have Stamina), the damage really adds up.
The only thing that keeps it from being a leader is the fact that Brawl only hits about 75% of the time (one accuracy, fighting at invincible), while everything else hits about 94% of the time (2 accuracies). So... let's do that math: one more slot for 20% increase in damage for that attack. MmmmmmOHkay.
In play: I dunno. Haven't had a chance to run with him yet, but again, this is just a tweak to a build that, basically, works damn well.
What I was REALLY happy about? He's level 27. I sold off ALL his level 25 Single Origin enhancements at the end of the respec, got ALL level 30's, and STILL had 400k left over to bank against the next big upgrade at level 32. That right there is going to really help him out right now.
Yeah, I know this is exciting stuff (yawn), but it's where my head's at right now.
Planning Stage for the Second Shadow Shard Task Force
When: Thursday evening, 6/8, 8pm Eastern til whenever. Wrap-up on Sunday, 6/11, at around 5pm eastern.
Where: Cascade Archipelago
Who:
Anyone willing to help us filling Balnks (I've been on a lot of PuGs lately), comment below.
From the CoV LJ community: Mayhem Missions -- YES!
Sounds like a friggin' ball -- though I'm not sure Markov may not be much good at it, but Dolmen, Kethos and .... "MB" will love it.
Arcanaville (who figured it out and pointed it out to the Devs, who hadn't realized it:)
Although I cannot say she was the first to put it this way, it was Kali's multiple reports of lucks "not working until enough of them were used" that got me thinking that they might not have been broken, just weaker than advertised. Which caused me to run specific tests looking for the ramp up/ramp down behavior, which I was able to reproduce consistently in at least one instance.The question I posed to pohsyb was this (paraphrased): are lucks modified by the AT scale modifiers, in such a way to reduce their strength, because they appear to me to be working at lower than their advertised numerical value.
The real numbers?
DEF
S - 12.5%
M - 25%
L - 33%
ACC
S - 7.5%
M - 18.75%
L - 37.5%
RES
S - 10%
M - 15%
L - 20%
DMG
S - 25%
M - 33%
L - 50%
Issue Seven releases today. Key bits of stuff from the release notes, below the cut:
Issue 7 - Destiny ManifestCombined (CoH and CoV)
Known Issues
((All of which are cool, and which I'm not going into.))
((That's really cool))
((Hmmm... I need to see this... I think I have a Freak Tank clone with Invul sitting out there somewhere.))
Started up a long list of where all my toons are and what I'd like to do with them, but it wasn't holding MY interest, so I doubt it would tickle anyone else.
Here's the short version:
Hang Time: I like the lil' story of recovering himself that he's got going on. I'd like to run some TF's with him, but aside from that, the likelihood of ever getting into Blaster Mode long enough to clear out his OWN arcs is vanishingly small.
Hype: I'd like to do the Hydra Trial with him until I figure out how. I'd like to do Katie Hannon for the sake of completeness. I'm very interested in the expansions to level 50 content in Issue 8. That's all.
Epitaph and Strategist: Mid-30 blahs. No regular play partners. Would like to run Numina with both of them. Need level 35 for both of them to do that -- perpetually 7 bars away on both of them.
Pummelcite: Might likely see level 35 before either Strat or Ep. Love playing him, and really just need someone to team with for the social aspect. Just his 30 and can go back to Croatoa to wrap up that arc. I love RPing this guy, but it's just not how things shake out for him, normally.
Kethos: My highest level villain (at level 26), Keth's been seeing a lot more gameplay lately, and I've gotten comfortable with playing him on the highest difficulty, solo. I'd like to get him in a decent light-RP Supergroup over on Virtue, but... eh. At least I know a couple folks over there to run missions with.
Markov: He's not as easy to play as Kethos, and I can in no way run him at the same difficulty, though they're close to the same level, but he's still fun. Fact is, I like melee guys alot, and I've never played a defendery-person, so Markov is a gameplay and tactical challenge that I'm still figuring out.
Dolmen: I'd like to play this guy a lot more than I get to right now. I like I could end up liking him more than Kethos, maybe. I'll never TRULY love Shadow Maul, and I adore the Stone Melee set.
Zero at the Bone: This guy could be a really really good tank. I don't NEED another tank, but by gosh, I've got one, and I like him.
CityOfHeroes / Task Force List to include the Villain Strike Forces and Trials, and added checkboxes for the three guys I have in range for such things.
So the Devs put up a contest for the Test server: they give you six days to finish the new level 40+ strike force, as it exists on Test. The reward? If you're the first group to finish it, they'll give you year's subscription for free.
No one won.
Some folks tried it, and the spoileriffic results are here.
Here's a non-plot-spoiler bit that I liked:
The SF team was [subjected to] a strange cycling phase-shift on each player because of the temporal disruption. We never quite figured out the pattern or timer - people would phase in and out uncontrollably.The mission objective was simple: Manticore, Sister Psyche, Numina, and Back Alley Brawler were standing on City Hall. Together. Defeat these 4 level 50 Heroes, while your teammates are randomly phasing in and out, and the mission is over.
It looks incredibly hard. It looks incredibly cool. It SOUNDS like the kind of epic smack-down you'd expect for a level-50 TF.
